Clown Girl Read Online Free PDF

few new props: an empty jug and a urine collection tray. The jug was orange plastic, as though ready to hold a quart of generic orange juice. The urine tray was white, shaped like a giant lucky horseshoe, meant to fit over a toilet seat. The middle of the horseshoe formed the actual tray, marked with measurements, ounces and cubic centimeters, and plenty of’em! It was pointed on one edge, like the mouth of a pitcher, for easy pouring—fresh-squeezed urine right from bladder to tray to jug. Voilà! I tucked it under my arm.
    The jug and the tray were a pair, a duo, a working team like Matey, Crack and me. Together they made up my new urine collection kit and waited for that third player, the piss itself.
    The world was brilliant, gleaming and hard, bathed in sun. It was a welcome-home party after the death rattle of the hospital. But my head hummed and my skin was fragile; I needed the world to be gentle. Rather than brilliant, bumbling and soft would do. I needed a feather bed, a velvet curtain, a high-wire net. Luxury. Mostly, I needed theof Rex, a prescription dose of his fine love act.
    I still felt the buzzing inside my skull, that swarm of bees, the drone of insects lodged between me and clear thoughts. But I didn’t feel faint. I swung my empty urine collection jug and it was light as a balloon. The first tinkle of the morning, according to the lab man’s plan, would be free to swim its way from the toilet to the ocean. The rest of the day, all the piss I could piddle would go in the jug, up until the first round of the second morning. The jug had to be kept cold, on ice or in the fridge, from the first collection until it came back to the lab. It sounded so simple! Deceptively simple. I tucked the tray over my shoulder, gave the jug a toss. The jug blocked the sun as it twirled in the air, then I caught it between the clap of my palms.
    The neighborhood that only one day before was the King’s Row Street Fair was now nearly empty, sidewalks still bright with broken balloons and trampled confetti. A woman with a cloud of pale blue hair carried a miniature terrier, bows in the dog’s fur. Her turquoise and pink makeup told the rest of the story: no way was I the only clown on the block.
    I stopped at a juice cart. The drinks were pricey. When it was my turn, I said, “Green Drink. The biggest you’ve got. For the health of it.”
    The juice guy said, “Toilet seat part of the act?” A raspberry was caught in his goatee. His lips glowed orange from an overdose of carrot juice.
    Now who was head clown?
    “It’s not a toilet seat.” I adjusted the urine tray over my shoulder.
    “Looks like a toilet seat,” he said. “What’s your shtick?”
    I took a straw, tapped it against my hat. “Urine. My shtick is urinating. Right now, I’m a little light on inspiration.”
    He gave me three-fifty worth of fresh-squeezed Green Drink. I kept walking.
    The hanging flowerpots, nylon street flags, and painted bus stops of King’s Row district gave way to a narrow band of neighborhood where the streets were a river of orange and black lettering: For Sale, For Rent, Will Build to Suit . Every car, house, building, and bicycle. A wheelbarrow, For Sale . A stack of tires. Even dahlias, cut from the yard, For Sale .
    For-Salesville marked the hopeful margin between ampedup gentrification and the economic downslide of my stomping grounds: Baloneytown. That’s what they called my neck of the woods, where baloney was all the steak anybody could afford.
    Between For-Salesville and Baloneytown there were two city blocks, and on those blocks were two sprawling, gutted warehouses. One building was in pieces—a lone storefront, the old Mor4Les Variety, now tied to no store but just all joists and rebar and bricks in piles. The other building had a broken-out wall in front, nothing but dust and darkness inside. Both ruins were marked For Sale , Keep Out , with a giant fine for trespassing. Graffiti on the brick and plaster walls