With her eyes on the clown, Jill eased Brendan to the ground. “Honey, the car’s up ahead, OK?” she said, hitting the unlock button on her key ring and pushing him toward the Taurus. The car alarm chirped twice, calling the boy. Still he stood his ground. His eyes, like his mother’s, were transfixed on the giant in the polka-dotted sports jacket before him.
“Everybody loves a fucking clown. What’re you gonna do?” said the man. He pulled a package of cigarettes and a rubber chicken from his pocket. “Want one? Cancer stick, I mean?”
“Just say no!” Brendan announced.
“That’s right, honey,” said Jill. “Wait for mommy in the car, now. I mean it.”
Brendan only shifted his weight.
The clown lit a cigarette with his boutonniere. He exhaled and the smoke formed a tyrannosaurus in the air above his head. Finally, he tossed a nod toward Jill’s car and with an, “Away, then!” the boy took off running, make-believe sword held high.
“Nice to see you again, Milton,” said Jill. “I see you haven’t lost your touch with children.”
The clown shrugged. “It’s a gift,” he said. “You like the parachute pants?”
“If you touch him, I’ll kill you. You know that, right?”
The clown laughed, his red-lined mouth emitting a single, white feather.
“If you come near my home, I’ll – “
He stepped forward, his big, red shoe covering Jill’s foot. “There was a time when you liked me to come near your house, lady. I’d do a few balloon animals, you’d suck my dick. Remember?”
She remembered. “Give me one of those smokes,” she said.
The clown had to have a happy meal. “There’s a Circus Burger. Slow down,” he announced, pointing with a yellow-gloved hand. “Jesus, I could eat a horse. How ‘bout you, kid?”
“French fries!” Brendan squealed.
Jill hit the gas.
“What the fuck!” yelled the clown, the cigarette almost dropping from his lips.
“Fuck!” said the boy.
“Not a chance, Milton,” Jill said. “You know how much fat there is in one Circus burger? There’s a Soup Plantation up the street.” Then she directed her voice toward the back seat. “And, young man, I don’t ever want to hear you use that word again. I’ll stop this car and give you a good paddling if I hear you use language like that. You hear me?”
The boy slouched in his seat.
“Brendan?”
“French fries,” the boy mumbled.
Like a pointer in the field tracking a downed pheasant, the clown went rigid. “Look! There’s another one.”
“There’s a Circus Burger on every corner, Milton.”
“Holy Toledo, you wanna get rough?” The clown grabbed at his pants leg, revealing a pistol. He looked at Jill and cocked a purple-painted eyebrow.
“That’s a squirt gun,” she said.
“Hell it is.”
“Look, Milton, I can see quite plainly that that’s a pink, plastic squirt gun.”
The clown dropped the pants leg. “Hey, kid, what’s it take to get Jaqueline La Lanne here to pull over for a goddam hamburger?”
“Goddam!” said Brendan.
Jill stopped the car.
The clown, in his big top-sized trousers, took up the entire park bench. An irritated Jill stood staring in disbelief.
After a moment, he stopped chewing. “What?” he said.
Jill crossed her arms. “What are you doing here, Milton? I thought you’d given up all the clowning around.”
He dropped the burger, lowered his head and scanned the park. “Christ, lady, you don’t just give up the Chinese mafia. You don’t just drop the bozo whose fingers you’re sawing off and say, ‘That’s it, man, I’m going home.’”
How he’d changed. She’d met Milton at a backyard birthday party three summers ago, where he was riding a miniature bicycle from one end of the lawn to the other and, though she’d not known it, stalking the host. He’d fascinated her with his stories of travel throughout China where, in his younger, idealistic days, he’d served as a Baptist missionary.
She recalled Milton’s pulling a daisy-shaped cell phone from beneath his top hat and punching in a number. When the host had gone inside to pick up the ringing landline in his study, Milton had said, “Listen, there’s something I’ve got to do right now. But after I get back, and I do a few more laps, you want to grab a burger or something? I could eat a horse.”
She knew better than to get involved with a man in the children’s entertainment industry but those tales! What a life he’d led!
That Milton and the profane, menacing man in the fright wig before her now were two very different clowns. “You’ve become cynical,” she said. “And you’re still involved in organized crime.”
He raised an arm, issuing bubbles into the air. “Guilty as charged. On the getting cynical part, that is. But I’m retiring from the killing business. I’ve got this one more thing to do.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. “Then I’m out.”
“Finished?”
“Done.”
A bird in the bough above broke into song. It was the happiest tune Jill had heard in a long, long time.
“What’s the one more thing?” she said, finally.
More bubbles. “Oh, Jilly,” replied the clown. “You don’t want to know.”
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