A Funny Bone

Light weaving through darkness.

A grin spread wide just for you, yes, for You – smile, please! How fabulous you look, how effortlessly stunning. Do visit again.

The red comes off and with it the hat, orange yet opaque. And why shouldn’t they? Benny the clown lived minutes ago; now it’s another’s turn to step in.

Benny, a dream, a singularly innocuous apparition unfolding within another. An obscurity pottering the streets of a metropolis, eyes searching, scanning for a burger-joint to fleece, where discounts come cheap, or making passes at a bum who isn’t enamored by mesmeric oddity. A saint and a fool, a vulture with many bones to pick, many homes to install within and yet adrift in a sea of particle-lessness.

The name is a misnomer, an ideological misconception – although one would be remiss to dismiss of the offerings the title provides at the height of some peculiar social-condition: take the networking-event occurring up on 11th Street this very minute. Decks adorned in some dirty purple, glasses being clinked while kinks are shared, abnormalities discussed since it seems confessing cleanses a slate. But once you offer a name – your truest calling-card – the drama crescendos to an epic’s proportion. Suddenly, you are someone with the potential of being a complete nobody.

I see Ruby, the hip charlatan, twice a week: the coffee-shop we patronize caters solely to the rich and the studious. We mint currency in the nights leading up to The Night – we figure if Monopoly can dominate this market, why not? All it takes is some goodwill racked up against the manager running some decaying press down by the docks. We’d do well to sneak in during the hottest hour, armed with a bagful of tricks. A card-toss here, a returning Houdini there, and we’re in.

In.

Goofing about the warehouse isn’t a pleasant business all that being said. The essence of fakery steals the show no matter what subsequent earnings it may offer. Ruby irons the sheets and Benny takes charge of security. Occasionally they will converse loudly over the din of grinding plates, envying mates, to discuss a sporting-event of the past, an opera that may yet take place in the future since we live in an age of renaissances. The workers have been advised to ignore our whimsical storytellings. We watch them dismantle wood from furniture, to be reassembled somewhere far up north in the country. A manor, perhaps, in disuse to the owner and therefore liable to be used.

I say to the chap named Charlie: “Are you paid well for all that you do, you crazy old bat? Those calloused hands of yours must be worth a fortune – the homes they will have adorned, the memories they will have created.”

His answer: “Best be minding your stuff, Big Ben. The cops, they’re like that sometimes, you know? They ask questions, questions one has all the answers to.”

I am aware to the machinations of cops and snitches, I inform Charlie.

“Are ya? Well, that must be some show you run.”

Ruby walks over, her swinging hips not exaggerating her intentions in the slightest. “Give me an axe and I’ll give you some lemons,” she says cooly, clearly not speaking in riddles.

That the statement is inherently blasé contributes to the victory of humor. The tension settled, Charlie stops pestering us despite us having approached him.

“What’s the matter with you?” Ruby snaps, holding a sharp motif to the midriff as we sip on cola by the crates. Perhaps a poker brought along just for new times’ sake. “I wouldn’t want to kill you, Benny. But a girl will go to great lengths to jeopardize her sanity – or haven’t you learnt anything from those textbooks I left behind?”

She’d be welcome to try.

The steel shaves half an inch off. “I’m begging you, Benny. Please. Don’t test me. I love you. I love you.”

We agree to meet each other at Pete’s Coffee House somewhere around seven. Walking home along the harbor, I am reminded of the lullaby Mrs. Snell would sing to her daughter Bethany growing up.

Sweet Bethany, one two three.

Grab thee the key and run fetch Brie!

My Bethany, one big epiphany.

Come here, honey, come, feather come…

“A bit early for a midseason gander, is it not?”

The blue cap and the tinted goggles are in stark compliment to each other.

“Best be watching where you go these days, sir,” the officer says as if he can think of no better advice. “No telling where these erratic quips might lead. You damn near committed some sort of an egregious misdemeanor there, I tell you.”

Where?

“There.”

The briefest of glances confirms my suspicions. No such incident has transpired.

“Ha!” The fleshy hand comes down for a handshake. “Do you offer personal visitations, good man? The young lad home would surely enjoy the company of an instrument such as yours. Mysterious and mirthful, with the just the right amount of madness sprinkled about. Come now, don’t be coy. Name a price. We’re talking round-numbers and fractions.”

Twenty-thousand.

“Deal.” The officer seems eager to brandish the punchline. “Twenty-thousand for a lot, not a jot short. In candy or coupons?”

Pleased, he walks away.

The sun shines down on the boardwalk. Vessels gossip among themselves as a fisherman falls short of landing his catch. Some vagrants toss over half-empty cans Benny’s way. Keep walking.

A grin spread wide, just for you, for You – smile, please! How fabulous you look, how effortlessly stunning. Do visit again.

#

The owner of Pete’s Coffee Shop, Mr. Peter Vivaldi, is a man of some forty-years with a herculean stature where there ought to be a hide.

He disapproves of the order placed vehemently and blatantly.

“You had them doughnuts last week,” he complains, in that intone native to some of our finest tongue-waggers. “Color me stupid, Benny and Ruby – I thought you’d be on your A-game tonight, seeing as this is your fourteenth anniversary and everything, no?”

“Mr. Vivaldi is right.” Ruby grips my hand from across the table. She points to the menu on which are lettered some other respectable options for our reflection. “Smoked cheese on burnt toast – how about it? Mr. Vivaldi?”

The owner summons for the chef and demands that the finest conjuring be conjured. “And maybe you’ll stick around for dessert if the spices hold up?” He wears a goofy smile, refusing to settle on merely breaking-even.

Ruby shrugs. “That would depend. You see, Mr. Vivaldi, my husband here is a man of many important appointments. The producers in Francisia don’t like to be kept waiting; they’re busy men and there are films to be made –”

“But of course, Mrs. Santner.”

“– tons of them last I checked. And a good actor is as prized as a forsaken doughnut these days, no?”

We have acquired dessert without so much as having to cough up another shilling.

“Do the skits pay you well, Mr. Santner?” Mr. Vivaldi asks sincerely, pulling up a stool. “I mean all the public get are rumors. You wouldn’t be dining here without some sort of a backup plan, would you?”

“That’s correct, Mr. Vivaldi.” These are only words I speak all evening. Ruby manages effortlessly. By the time two of the sweetest pastries in all of New Chandler have been devoured, we are on the cusp of a great loss.

“We must part ways, alas.” Ruby can’t stand straight, so fraught is she with sadness.

Mr. Vivaldi doesn’t even make an attempt to mask his distress. “Fourteen years – such patience, such courage. I don’t know how you do it.”

Ruby offers the man a hearty embrace. We’ll return, she says. Someday, when the star is reborn – wink, wink.

“So, how did it go?” I ask her, walking up to the buggy. “Did we do well? Did we? You were marvelous.”

She kisses me, holding me underneath a roof, above hot pavement, sliding her tongue down an exaggeratedly dry ravine. The night spirals into a maelstrom of innuendos and flashy half-truths from here on. Benny can barely keep up.

Benny – can you imagine?

#

The jagged class reminds the clown that there are chores yet to be accomplished. There is a dog to be fed, a woman to be married, a job to be found before another grabs it and doesn’t let go. There is a restlessness to be subdued, there is a woman to be married…

A woman to be married.

The cot offers not an ounce of solace, or perhaps it is because of this very discomfiture that one falls asleep all the quicker. A world devoid of dreams, cartoons, zigzagging shapes. Open pastures brimming with happy herds, shepherds who know their place in the world. A sun bearing down on a picture-perfect outback. And there, laying atop the meadow, a woman, serene, affable, vulnerable.

How could one not approach?

Walking down the grazed slope, a call penetrates the hemisphere which must lead to recognition somewhere. It is a cry, Benny learns, a sweet call preluding a bitter one. The hairs stand on edge, awaiting final instruction. One stoops over the body, realizing one hinge at a time how morbid this phenomenon of voyeurism really is. Looking in from the out. Benny doesn’t even have his make-up on, no effects to assign the guilt that is his. He must let his emotions run wild from here on, take a chance on something.

She opens her eyes, they are bloodshot and cold. She extends her hands up as if to plead upheaval. She is still, full of life, extraordinarily particular of what her likes and dislikes are.

It is the scrambling flies that plod Benny awake. They must have sensed an opening and seized on the chance to make their presence felt. So long have they been ignored. The place is a mess. On the kitchen-counter lies an assortment of instruments: knives, forks, spoons. I have never seen them before.

An identity is taking shape, going beyond the holdings of names, titles, fetishes no matter how morally-profound. There is somebody sitting behind Benny, somebody ever-present to a happening that is no happening, really. It is paramount to staring into an abyss, no ghoulish corridor this. The knife serrated, the spoons well-oiled, the forks surmise some sort of a melancholic close. The curtains are pulled back. We are center-stage. The show has begun.

I think of Mr. Vivaldi, the fabrication which was ours that we imposed unto him. Apologies are in order. Cleansing myself, I walk to the coffee-shop, not a long walk, where the man is stood outside as if in expectance.

“I knew you’d show up, you ambitious little punk. Think it’s funny, what you do? Well let me tell you something – clowns like you haven’t got a thing to live for. What is it that you do, anyway? Serenade old fools for some short-lived publicity? Don’t you come back. Officer! Ahoy! Will you escort this man from the premises, please?”

It is the cop I have encountered before. His steely manner all but affirms it.

“Knew you had a funny bone in you, sir.”