Clown Girl by Monica Drake; Chuck Palahniuk Page B

He said, “Take ten at a time, up to thirty a day. Great stuff.”
    I took the box, opened it, and shook out an amber jar with a cork lid sealed under heavy wax. The writing was in Chinese. “This’ll fix my leg?”
    “Your leg? Ah, that. Ice it and apply heat. Back and forth. While you’re watching TV or whatever.” It was the same advice as Crack gave. He held my popgun out by the barrel and said, “Lay off the hostility. We store hostility in our hips and joints. It doesn’t do any good. Notice when you’re alienating yourself. And be glad you’re not dying. Earlier, I had a client with walking pneumonia, one collapsed lung. He may not make it. At least you’re not him, right?”
    This was my prescription: empathy with boundaries, gratitude for what I had. The gun quivered in my hand. I stuck it back in my bag.
     
    ON THE WAY HOME I SAW THE LAWN MOWER MAN PUSHING his lawn mower down the center of the empty road in his long, loping walk. He called over, “Hey, Clown Girl, ready to have your chicken-scratch lawn mowed?”
    I adjusted my daisy sunglasses. “Don’t think we can do it.”
    He stopped in the street. I limped forward, slow progress.
    “What’d you do? Looks like you got a case of the jake leg coming on.” He watched me limp toward him in my oversized shoe, one hand on my hat. “Get the right fit on that shoe, might walk a little easier. Goddamn, how big is that sucker anyway?”
    I waved a hand. “I’m fine.”
    “Well then, how’bout this. How’s about you buy this mower off me. Twenty bucks, and you can mow the lawn yourself as many times as you need. It’s a good mower. I use it all day, some days.”
    I knew then where he came from: For-Salesville. My head still buzzed with the hum of bees, but now I had the jar of Chinese pills deep in the pocket of my striped pants. I took a step, leaned on the cane.
    He said, “Got a brand-new blade too. Cuts grass like butter.”
    I said, “It looks old.”
    “Sure, from back when they knew how to make a lawn mower. Won’t quit on you. Like an old Checker cab, or a Singer sewing machine.”
    I hung my cane over the lawn mower’s handle. Twenty dollars. At least I’d know what I was getting—a simple thing. I didn’t care what Herman would say; I’d take my turn at the lawn, but not with the push mower while the weeds were high, while the sun was blasting, with a strained groin and the invisible hand that clutched my heart, squeezed my lungs, kept my breath shallow, and left the buzz in my brain. I pulled a twenty from the envelope stashed inside my pink shoulder bag. Clown money. Rex money.
    “Nice hat,” the lawn mower man said. “Got some holes in it, though.”
    I nodded, meaning, I know . He put the bill in his pocket and nodded back, meaning Good-bye .
    The sidewalks were uneven and the tires on the lawn mower hard as tires on a shopping cart. The machine rattled under my hands as I pushed it home. The rattle in my hands was a larger reverberation of the hum in my head. I leaned into the mower like a crutch. The single oversized Keds spanked the asphalt.
    When I got to Herman’s block, Herman and Nadia-Italia were on the couch on the porch.
    Herman saw me, jumped up, and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! House rules. No gasoline, no need. We got the push mower.” He came toward me, puffing on a smoke.
    I’d anticipated the resistance. Ready to negotiate, I called out, across the space between us, “I’ll use it once, get things trimmed back.”
    Herman was halfway across the yard when he ducked his head and made a fast U-turn. He did a stiff-necked walk back up onto his porch.
    I won the argument that easily?
    The cool shadow of a car pulled up alongside me. With the deep purr of a strong racing motor, a car slowed to match my own bum-leg, rattling-lawn-mower-for-a-crutch crawl. The car’s exhaust was hot breath, breathing down my neck.

8.
    Cinnamon Buns and the Angel Act
    I DIDN’T LOOK AT THE CAR THAT SHADOWED ME. IN BALONEYTOWN