chapter eight
It was late, and the Big Top nearly empty. Red stood at the register, cashing out for the night. Big Rig sat at the bar draining the last of his beer. Buster and Franklin, at a table by the window, nursed the last swallows of their drinks. Red turned off the neon signs in the windows. Lucy counted out her tips.
She emptied the pockets of her apron onto the bar, finding very little in the way of negotiable currency. Mostly an assortment of play money, buttons, and funny badges.
“Yeah. I’ll be on my way in no time.”
“Money’s never much good here.” Red slipped Lucy an extra couple of twenties. “It’s the prestige. Being able to say you worked the Big Top.”
Franklin watched her and Red. There’s a joke she’ll never get.
Buster leaned across the table at Franklin. “She could be the most exciting thing that’s happened to me. Ever.”
“Try bungee jumping with strangers,” said Franklin. “You don’t need a condom.”
“Admit it. You had your eyes on her the whole night.”
“Just making sure she didn’t spit in my beer.”
Big Rig put the glass mug on the service rail, slid off the stool. He gave Lucy a goodnight swat and honk of the bulb horn on his belt as he passed behind her.
“If looks could kill,” said Franklin, “Big Rig would be a grease stain on the highway by now.”
Franklin watched through the window as Big Rig mounted the steps of his truck, pulling himself up to the cab. Franklin envied Big Rig his audacity, and the feel of Lucy’s fundament on the palm of his hand. Which was just shameful, of course, just shameful.
Big Rig was still on the step when he picked up a flyer plastered against the windshield.
The flyer had a bikini babe stenciled at the top and a hand-lettered headline below it. ‘Free! Free! Free!’ it read. ‘Fooling and Fueling!! Midnight Gas-Up for Clowns.’
Big Rig smiled. He was, after all, driving a gas hog. And he was a clown. He smiled at himself in the big side mirror.
Back at the bar, Lucy threw off her apron and grabbed up her purse. Franklin’s butt flexed, ready to propel him to the door and hold it open for her. The rest of his skeleto-muscular system refused to believe the electrical impulses from his brain were serious. It was finely tuned to Franklin’s crippling insecurity with women. It wasn’t ready for a risky act of chivalry.
Buster leaped to his feet and held the door for her. Lucy worked up a bit of a half-smile, letting Buster play the gallante. Franklin’s butt relaxed. His nervous system breathed a deep sigh of relief, glad Franklin’s near-brush with embarrassing stoogery had passed.
Red came over to the table to pick up the glasses.
“I can get those,” said Franklin.
“Thought I saw a little chemistry between you and her when you two first came in.”
Easy enough to recall the moment. Frozen, his arms still out and holding the air where she’d been.
“Like disco and nitroglycerin,” said Franklin.
“Come on. Looked like—”
Franklin could see himself still standing there, the phantom feeling once more filling up the now empty embrace. All the time he’d been thinking it was—
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
The glaze over Franklin’s eyes cleared. He noticed a black sedan in the parking lot of the thrift store, parked just out of the light from the street lamp. Odd, since the thrift store was closed for the night. The sedan looked like the one he’d seen the night Lucy had shinnied out of the apartment.
Franklin could see Lucy climb into Buster’s clownmobile and hear the engine start. An alley cat howled.
Franklin jumped to his feet.
“Gotta go.” Franklin dashed out the door.
Franklin hopped into his car, twisted the key, grinding the starter. Just grinding.
Buster appeared next to Franklin at the window.
“Should take better care of your car, Frankie-boy.” Buster clonked something down on the roof. “Things keep coming off in my hand.”
Franklin hopped out and found his distributor cap on the roof.
“Don’t lose that. It could be important,” Buster shouted back, already behind the wheel of the clownmobile. He threw gravel as he fishtailed out of the parking lot onto the street and into the night. With Lucy sitting right next to him.
Big Rig’s semi grumbled to life. Franklin ran and jumped onto the running board, hammering on the window.
Big Rig lowered the glass.
“Follow that van!” he shouted in at Big Rig.
“Sorry, Frankie-boy. No hitchhikers.” Big Rig bounced the wadded-up flyer off Franklin’s forehead. “Got a date with a gas pump.” Big Rig gave out with a yodeling trucker’s laugh. He closed the window, catching the tips of Franklin’s gloves. Franklin pulled loose, his gloves still caught in the window. He hopped off the running board before Big Rig could get the truck in gear and drive off with him still dangling from the side.
Left in yet another swirl of dust and gravel, Franklin bent to pick up the crumpled flyer. Seeing the pin-up and the headline, a very bad idea hit him.
Franklin rolled back the last few minutes, back to Lucy’s death ray scowl at Big Rig after he’d swatted her on the caboose. Thick blue lights lance across the bar and shrivel Big Rig in his boots, the crack and sizzle fading as smoke filled the room.
A very, very bad idea hit him.
♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎
Axle’s Gas and Go sat alongside an access road to the on-ramp for Interstate 80. The station was dark, except for one concrete island of pumps. Big Rig’s truck pulled into the station. He rolled past the large, hand-painted sign announcing, ‘Free Gas for Clowns Here.’ A painted arrow pointed to the lit-up pumps.
Big Rig hopped down from his truck and gave a shout, “Hey, hey, Big Rig’s here!”
Not another soul in sight.
“Dang.” He glanced around the dark station. “You’d think there’d be a line a clowns getting free gas.”
Big Rig gave a shrug. “More for me,” he said and went to work filling the large, saddle tanks on the Peterbilt.
A gloved hand reached from behind the pump, slipping a hose into the seat of Big Rig’s clowned-up Dickies.
Big Rig swelled until he was the shape and buoyancy of a beach ball. He tried to grab for the door handle on his truck, but his costume had fully inflated, all the way to his gloves. He could only swipe at the handle as his feet left the ground.
The gloved hand gave Big Rig a push and sent him bounding across the service area as Franklin’s car skidded to a stop at the entrance. He got out of his car. The rotundular form of Big Rig bounced directly at him. Franklin stretched out his arms to corral Big Rig before he bounced into the interstate traffic beyond.
Big Rig landed on Franklin, flattening him, bouncing over the fence and slamming into the night-time traffic. Franklin peeled himself up off the cement and ran after Big Rig. But the globular clown was in a sudden-death round of high velocity vehicular volleyball.
As Big Rig sailed from car hood to car hood, Franklin pulled out his cell phone, then stopped. He didn’t want them tracing the call back to him. And maybe her. Phyllis. Whatever her name was.
Instead, he ran for the payphone, sliding, slamming into the booth. He grabbed the handset, punching in 9-1-1.
“I want to report—I want to report—a runaway—beach ball!” Franklin shouted into the phone. “Right. A runaway beach ball—with a clown inside it.” He listened for a moment, then hung up.
“Yeah. They’ll take that seriously.”
Big Rig was already out of sight in the stream of traffic.
Another idea hit Franklin and he bolted for his car, revved it, and putt-putted back onto the interstate toward home.
Franklin drove along the street behind his apartment building, pulling in next to Buster’s clownmobile.
The makeshift rope dangled from the back bedroom window again. Franklin tromped the gas pedal and motored off.
At the edge of town, outside the bus station, Lucy sat alone in a pool of light from the building’s security lamps. Franklin pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of her. She wore his favorite sweatshirt, a pair of his pants, and a knit cap pulled down over her ears.
Great. Just great. A favorite sweatshirt he could never wash or wear again if he wanted to keep her smell on it.
He rolled down the window. She kept her head turned away, looking off into the night. He sat looking at her for a long moment. “Aren’t you afraid that private eye is watching the bus station?” he asked.
“Not two nights in a row.” She continued looking off into the dark.
“Doesn’t matter. No buses run after midnight.”
Her eyes closed and her head drooped. She twisted around to look up at the posted schedule behind her. The frame was empty. She flopped back against the seat.
Franklin got out and came around to open the door on the passenger side. Lucy sat there for a moment longer and gave out with a long, low, grunting exhale. She let her head drop again, the burden of it pulling her forward off the bench and onto her feet. Bearing the weight of the world, she slouched to the car, throwing up her arms to fend off any help from Franklin. She dumped her bag in the back seat and got in.
Franklin slid in behind the wheel. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine coughed to life. The headlights came on, throwing a wash of light across the sign board in front of the car. Happy, capering clowns decorated a giant poster for the Founder’s Day Golf Tournament.
Lucy cried out, squeezing her eyes shut against the assault springing at her from the darkness.
Franklin pawed at the ignition to kill the engine. The lights went out.
“Sorry,” said Franklin, small, trying to watch her without looking at her.
“It startled me is all.” Lucy pulled the cap off, slapping it into her lap. “Let’s get out of here.”
“It’s only a picture.”
“You’re not.” She stayed silent a long moment. “Sorry. I hate clowns, okay?”
“I guess I don’t understand how a fake nose and a little bit of goofy hair sets people off.”
“Oh, it is a lot more than that!” Lucy clinched her arms across her chest. “Because of your fake nose and goofy hair? You could machine-gun somebody’s mother and everybody would laugh at how funny the clown is.”
“I prefer poison lawn darts.”
She didn’t answer. Just sat shaking her head. “You could have told everyone about me back at the Big Top. Save yourself gas money.”
“What’s the point of making waves?” Watching her, the way she stared, he marveled how it made her eyes appear to glow in the dark.
“They might’ve let you drink my blood,” she said.
“You don’t look like there’s enough in you for me to enjoy.”
Lucy’s smile got the better of her, slipping free for a delicious moment before she grappled her face back to a sullen frown.
“So, I guess I should say thanks for not leaving me to sit there all night?”
“I was out driving around anyway. In the middle of the night. In the scariest part of town.”
Lucy latched onto Franklin’s mouth, gripping his cheeks and giving him the world’s chewiest kiss. The kind of kiss with the power to change a stronger man’s political convictions.
Franklin had to open his eyes to see if this was real or if he’d blundered into another of his fanciful and futile hopes. He saw Lisker leaning on the hood, staring in at them.
“Didn’t expect me, did you?” said Lisker. “I like to be where you think I’m not.”
Lucy unlatched her lips from Franklin. He inhaled with a hiss, air rushing out of a broken airlock lost in deep space. Franklin put his hands on the steering wheel, regaining his breath, dignity, and cynicism. Lucy still twirled a lock of Franklin’s bright blue hair in her fingers.
“I’m—I’m showing Phyllis all the places she should avoid late at night now the Slasher’s in town.” Franklin turned to Lucy. “So, write this one down, too. Avoid dark bus stops.” He rolled his lips in his teeth, sucking in the taste of her, while she wrote on her hand with an imaginary pen.
“Kinda dangerous,” said Lisker. “Who knows what’ll happen in all this dark. With a woman you hardly know.”
Lucy ran a knuckle along Franklin’s cheek. “Yethh. Thhumthing awful.”
“Slasher could be anybody. Gains your confidence. Gives you a false sense of security. Then—WHAMM! You wind up tomorrow’s headline.”
Lisker slid off the hood, slapping a hand-drawn wanted poster onto the windshield. A clown face done in black marker. He popped up on the other side of the car.
“It’s the last face some clowns ever see. May want to keep that in mind, buddy.”
Franklin rolled the window up, Lisker barely saving his fingers. He back away, fading into the night, leaving Franklin and Lucy alone.
“That’s twice,” said Lucy.
“You’re welcome.” He was glad she noticed who had been covering for her.
“That he’s seen me sneaking out of town.”
Then again, maybe she hasn’t.
Lucy twisted the rear-view mirror to check her face and wipe the greasepaint from her mouth and chin.
Franklin didn’t have the nerve to ask the big question. Seemed safer to ask, “You owe that guy money or something?”
“First morning I’m here, he picks me out at the diner. The one down from the shopping mall.”
“Pecker’s? Guy doesn’t seem smart enough.”
“The way I stuck out? I was the only one in the place not wearing a clown get-up.”
“Oh, right. Founder’s Day. It is kind of a big deal around here. Runs the entire week.”
“What kind of town makes everyone go around in wigs, those stupid shoes like yours, and their faces all painted up?” She was getting the teensiest bit shrill.
“It’s a charity thing. For Founder’s Day. Cops give out tickets for not wearing something makes you look like a clown. Stick you in the outdoor jail if they catch you downtown. Kind of funny seeing guys in the cage on the plaza. If they want to get out, they pay a fine and let a bunch of schoolkids paint their faces. Mostly harmless.”
“And everyone’s okay with that? You know what a nightmare that looks like from the outside? Like I really needed that. Get caught up in your bizarro world with a private eye on my trail.”
A few days earlier, Lucy, in her floppy hat and sunglasses, tried losing herself among the sleepy denizens starting their day at Pecker’s, with its legendary three-ring breakfast special. She’d slipped in, took a booth at the back, and stayed low behind the oversized vinyl-covered menu.
Lucy should have known right off something was wrong when Gabby the waitress stood next to her table. She had done herself up in wig and hair bow, red heart lips, and a clowned-up waitress uniform with an overstuffed bosom.
“I’d have never gone in the joint if they’d warned me,” Lucy said to Franklin.
Gabby put down a paper placemat, a mug, and flatware wrapped in a napkin. She started pouring coffee for Lucy who hid behind the menu.
“What’ll you have?”
“Give me a minute.” Lucy kept the menu up, covering her face.
“Sure thing.” Gabby held out a paper party hat trimmed with a spray of green hair. “You might need this, hon.” She left the hat on the table and went back behind the counter. Lucy peeked around the side of the menu. The place looked like a circus had exploded somewhere and all the clowns landed in the diner.
Lisker, wearing the same frazzled wig and the red nose, sat at the counter with Gabby and Officer Joe. The three of them scanned the diner, cataloging the customers.
“Everybody comes through here,” said Gabby. “We’re a straight shot from the interstate. Next to the motel and down the street from the bus station.”
“So. What’s this Slasher look like?” Office Joe tapped his coffee spoon on the rim of his mug.
“Never seen the face,” said Lisker. “It’ll be a stranger in town.”
“Got plenty of those out this way.” Officer Joe sucked the last of the sweetener stuck to his spoon.
“That’s why he thought it might be some drifter,” Franklin said to Lucy. “The day he came by to tell us about Blinkers.”
“You can tell the out-of-towners,” said Gabby, studying the faces in the diner. “They’re all wearing the party hats. The locals are way more serious about Founders Day.”
“What about the couple from Muncie?” Gabby pointed out the large man and woman chowing down on a pair of lumberjack breakfast specials.
“Slasher works alone.”
“The salesman from Ogden?” Gabby pointed out a scrawny guy slurping cereal while he pestered his counter-mate.
“Too loud. Slasher’s quiet.”
“Maybe he’s a she.” Officer Joe pointed toward Lucy’s booth, but Lucy was already heading for the door. Lisker watched her backside, intrigued.
“No one’s ever seen his backside, either.”
“I was trying to get on that bus,” Lucy said to Franklin, “and give him the slip. You decided to be a hero and stick your big red nose in it.”
“Tough luck for you, what happened to those clowns right after you showed up,” said Franklin.
“Yeah. Tough luck. That’s my life.” Franklin could see the irony was lost on Lucy. “Always moving, never one place very long, working odd jobs. Having to wait tables at truck stops and greasy spoon diners. Or working office jobs for guys who pay in cash and don’t ask questions if your skirt’s short enough.”
Franklin sees it. All the guys would look like clowns to Lucy. Clown-headed guys holding her tip out of reach to plant kisses up her arm. Clown-headed guys reaching up under her skirt to pull out a pair of bright red bloomers. All the other clown-headed guys stomping, whistling, and clapping at the antics.
“Then it happens. One of you clowns turn up dead.”
Classic noir is how Franklin sees it. A dumpster out behind some gas station. Clown shoes sticking out. Inside the dumpster, a clown corpse buried under the banana peels, pie tins, and peanut shells.
Lucy reads the local paper with her coffee, minding her own business. Franklin sees it all the way it looks to her. She sits, staring at a picture in the newspaper of the dead clown’s shoes sticking out of the dumpster.
“You all turn into a mob with torches and pitch forks to find whoever it is hates clowns so much.”
The whole town is one giant canvas tent turning inside out, deflating as the clowns sally forth to find the plain-faced monster.
“And it’s back on the road, off to someplace new.”
Franklin sees her alone by the side of the road, shivering, her thumb out to hitch a ride. She gets into some creepy guy’s van and disappears down the dark road until the taillights wink out.
“You tried sticking to one place?”
“Clowns keep dying. Everybody asking, ‘Who’s the stranger?’ Always wondering if you’ve got an alibi for every single second you’re awake. God forbid you have blackouts and honestly can’t remember every little detail.”
“Blackouts?” Franklin’s eyes popped wide so hard and fast, she must have heard his eyelids smack into his forehead.
“I hate clowns.” Lucy looked over at Franklin. “This the old out-of-gas routine?”
Franklin reached for the key in the ignition, but Lucy put her hand on his, stopping him.
“Do something for me first.”
“Ohhhhh-kay,” said Franklin when he finally found the breath to make the whole word come out. Write her name in the moon’s dust, fetch down a handful of the brightest stars, subdue a whole litter of rabid dragons. Nothing seemed too hard for him at this moment, the way her hand rested on his.
“Get rid of that thing?” She pointed at the flyer of the clown face stuck under the wiper.
He reached out and pulled it off the windshield, balling it up and tossing it on the floor. He twisted the key in the ignition, praying it would start. He had to put some distance between himself and the atmosphere of the place closing in on him. A place made unbearably magical by the moon, the dark, her scent, and the prickling skin of his hand where she’d touched him.
The engine coughed to life, and he aimed the car onto the street.
Back at the apartments, Franklin steered the car under the parking shelter. Lucy hopped out and slung her bags over her shoulder. She turned without a word and headed for the makeshift rope still hanging out the bedroom window.
“That could be very incriminating.”
“In case Buster’s waiting up for me.” Lucy shinnied up the rope with far more skill than Franklin would have imagined. He watched until her khaki’d derriere disappeared over the sill into his bedroom.
Franklin eased open the front door and tiptoed for the bathroom, hooking his foot on something in the dark. He went sprawling, landing flat on his face.
Franklin tore at whatever snagged his feet. He pulled it close to his face to see. Twine. Running from the knob of his bedroom door into Buster’s bedroom.
Buster came flying out of his room.
“Hah! I knew you couldn’t keep yourself locked away from me,” cried Buster. He saw Franklin on the floor. “Oh. Don’t waste your time. You can’t see anything good under the door. I tried.”
Franklin waved Buster in close.
“You’re barking up the wrong pair of shins,” said Franklin. “She hates clowns.”
“She spent all night selling beer to clowns.”
“Immersion therapy. Worst case of bozophobia I’ve ever seen. It’d never work out between you.”
Still on the floor, Franklin could see Lucy’s toes from under the door. She must be standing close, listening. Franklin lost himself in how those toes summed up the total wonderfulness of the person attached to them.
“Therapy? Like she’s got a problem?” asked Buster.
“Right.” Franklin tore his eyes away from the sliver of space under the door.
“Like—she’s got a mental problem?”
“You could say that.”
“Like—a girl would have to be bug-ass crazy to choose me over you?”
“I believe that’s the medical term for it.” Franklin picked himself up off the floor.
“Which do you think is worse? To have loved and lost, or never loved at all?”
That had to be the weirdest question Buster ever asked.
“You must’ve thought about it. You’re love life’s been a total failure since fifth grade. Which is worse?”
“You bringing it up again?”
“If you met the perfect girl, you’d do anything to get her to like you? Right?”
“Alcohol’s a tolerable substitute when your charm wears off.”
“She’s different. She’s got what no other girl in my life ever had.”
“A working gag reflex?”
“Something to hide.” Buster pulled out a scrapbook and started to hand it to Franklin. He changed his mind and held onto it.
“I found it in her luggage. In a secret pocket. Totally by accident.”
Franklin glanced at the sliver of space under the door. The toes were gone.
Buster flipped through the pages for Franklin.
The scrapbook was jam-packed with pictures and clippings about the Baggy Pants Slasher. The clipping about Blinkers was on top.
Franklin picked the old newspaper off the floor. He paged through it until he reached the hole where the Blinkers story used to be.
“She needs an alibi, and I need her undivided attention,” said Buster. “The way the private eye’s poking around, she could be gone tomorrow.”
“With any luck.”
“Oh, yeah, right. You’re just mad there’s finally a girl in your bed and you’re stuck sleeping out here.”
“What’ll you do if she turns out to be the Slasher? For real?”
“Come on, you and I both know there’s no way she’s the Slasher.”
“What about that thing?” Franklin pointed at the scrapbook.
“Maybe it’s a hobby. Like collecting stamps.”
“A gruesome hobby.”
“She doesn’t strike me as the type to take up knitting.”
“I don’t know. Seems a natural. Those long, pointy needles?”
“As long as there’s a chance the private eye thinks she could be the Slasher, I’d make a great alibi. And—while I have this.”
“You can’t blackmail someone into liking you.”
“Pish. I don’t want her to pretend she likes me. I want her to pretend she’s crazy about me.”
“If she’s not the Slasher, this won’t matter. If she is, you’ll wind up with your own page in it.”
Buster stroked the scrapbook. “All I want is time for us to grow on each other.”
“Watch out she doesn’t take pruning shears to your huckleberries first.”
Buster re-tied the twine to his toe and stood up. “On the other side of that door is the cure for what ails me. I plan on being sick a long time.”
Buster limped back into his bedroom, dignified, twine trailing. He shut the door.
“You’ve got it down to a fine art.”
“Pssst. You out there.”
Franklin looked around, realizing it came from inside his bedroom. He leaned his head close to the door.
“The nice one’s gone back to bed.”
“Not him. You.”
“Okay, what?”
“Since I was a kid, I’d pray at bedtime all the clowns in the world would burst into a big ball of fire,” Lucy whispered through the door.
“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll keep a bucket of sand handy.”
“I’m making an exception for you tonight.”
Franklin leaned back from the door, puzzled. Then he smiled.
He made his bed in the big chair again. Tonight, it didn’t seem as uncomfortable as last night.