Pilo Traveling Show (Pilo Family Circus #2)

1. ABOVE

The reason Jamie moved away from the comfortable two-story brick nest he'd grown up in wasn't because a twenty-six-year-old ought not to still have his mother doing his laundry, cooking his meals, and chastising him for bedroom mess. In fact, those things (and even the same tired, ridiculous arguments replayed nightly between his parents), were an ideal tonic, with a sweet taste of normality. Comfortable, familiar. Stifling too, but so are bandages and splints.

He'd been through something, something not normal at all, but that was almost all he knew. Whatever it had been, no one in the world would believe it possible, except maybe those locked in mental wards (who may well be right about what they themselves saw and heard, for all anyone really knew). Whatever Jamie had been through had been real, actually real. It had changed and injured him, made the world and its reality a much less certain picture. The supernatural existed, he knew it in his bones. Maybe every tale about vampires and other dark things had some grounding in truth, safely hiding in plain sight behind "it's just a story."

To hear his father wailing in despair at the TV while his football team lost, like the TV itself were some unfair god which might show mercy and change the course of things . . . that was tonic too. There were people, in fact most people, whose gravest concern was a scoreboard at a stadium somewhere, their receding hairline, a hated boss, money, and all the usual everyday junk. Whatever Jamie had been through had no place in their world, even though some of them—his parents certainly—had seen hints and clues: that night the cops picked him up in a clown suit with blood on the oversized red shoes.

No, that was not part of their world . . . and so Jamie tried to be like them. He grew outraged at bad movies and poor service, howled in grief with his father when certain sport teams lost, went to his job and got drunk on weekends, just like everyone else. And yet . . .

Just as a deep part of Jamie knew better, knew that something had happened, a part of his parents knew it too. A glance when he entered the room, home from work, a glance with doubt and suspicion flashing in his mother's eyes for just one moment. From his father, gazing over the top of his newspaper at breakfast, studying his son's profile, as if seeking the first hint of peculiarity surfacing . . . then back to the paper when Jamie noticed him watching. The whispered conversations falling to silence and awkwardness as he came within earshot, when they may as well have screamed at him from a megaphone we are talking about you, our weird son. you are a puzzle we are afraid to solve.

It all said pretty much one thing: You did something, didn't you?

Jamie knew as well as they did, beneath the thin veneer of strained normality: the answer was yes. Hell yes. He'd done something, all right. But what?

•

According to the phone calls—they had started out sporadically, sometimes three in a day, sometimes nothing for nearly a month—he was a murderer. The first calls were nothing but breathing, deep and angry breathing, presumably from the same caller who mysteriously hung up if anyone but Jamie answered the phone. With time the breather worked up the courage to talk, or more likely, worked up the blind fury to talk. "You killed him. You killed my boy. Where is my boy?"

Of course it was Mrs. Rolph, Steve's mother. The disappearing Steve. The problem of course was that for all Jamie knew, Mrs. Rolph was quite right—maybe he had killed him. "I wish I could help you," he'd told her the first time, then said what he'd repeated so often to disbelieving cops, investigators, psychiatrists, and the occasional journalist, so often that the words actually felt dishonest: "But I have no idea what really happened that night, or before that night. No memory at all, I swear. Maybe Steve's still okay, still out there somewhere. Maybe he'll turn up any day now. I wish I knew."

"Tell me what you know," the hoarse voice growled through the phone. "Where's my boy? You were with him. They found blood on you, blood on your clothes, blood all over you . . ." The growl dissolved into sobs and choking gargles.

"I'm sorry," Jamie said. "I wish I knew, but I just don't remember. I was . . . driving home from work, from the Wentworth Club. And then . . . headlights, by the road side . . . wearing a clown suit . . ." he trailed off, looking back to that night and seeing almost nothing. All that remained was the clown outfit, now neatly folded in a box at the bottom of a cupboard upstairs. And the little velvet bag which had sat in its pants pocket.

"Murderer," the growl hissed, sizzled, spat. "Murderer. Killer. You bastard. We'll never forget."

"I'm sorry," Jamie said, then did what he would do every other time that same caller called, accusing, begging, or just weeping. He hung up.

•

The day he knew he had to leave the nest at long last was when he picked up the phone one Friday, lusting for pizza, and heard his mother's voice on the other end of the line. She'd not heard the click of the upstairs phone being picked up and he hung on the line a second or two, instinct telling him he was being discussed.

". . . and he wakes up screaming. No, not every night but often enough. Won't ever tell me what's wrong. Thrashing on the bed, you should hear it sometimes, those bed springs creaking. I had to check that he hadn't snuck a girl in there."

The other voice said, "Does your son have a relationship, Mrs. McMahon?"

"Only with his hand. And they're very close." Jamie winced. But it got worse. "When can you come and see him?" said his mother.

"Tomorrow," said the other voice, firmly.

"Oh, thank goodness."

"Whatever has caused memories to be repressed must be significant trauma. It's very unusual for an adult to block out memories like this. Is it just the dreams?"

His mother's voice lowered. "Well he's . . . since that time he disappeared then came back, he's different. It's hard to say why or how, just sometimes a look in his eye. Or it seems he's holding some private amusement, and occasionally he will make jokes that are just entirely inappropriate."

"There must be more to it than that," said the other voice gently. "You can't simply be concerned about bad taste jokes?"

"He never used to do this! I think of that clown suit they found him in—it's almost like sometimes he is trying to be like a clown. And that friend of his who vanished. I just don't know him anymore. There's someone else in there with him, I sometimes think."

Jamie shook his head in bewilderment, no longer able to wait for this conversation to end before hanging up. He eased the phone gently into its cradle. Fine, then. He would put the old girl—the old man too for that matter—at ease and get out of here, because he heard what she hadn't said: her son scared her.

Right away he texted Dean, an occasional drinking buddy from work and asked if he still had a room for rent. The reply came quickly: yea. furnished. beer in fridge. move in!!!

In an hour, Jamie's stuff was almost completely packed and his parents were clued in over breakfast. "Oh," said his mother, sighing in disappointment but hiding—he knew it—no small amount of relief.

The counselor came and got no more from Jamie than resentment and the repetition of "I'm fine" and "I don't remember." She asked him about nightmares. He just shrugged and hid the weird disquiet that squirmed in his gut like a snake uncoiling. Nightmares? Oh, yes there were nightmares . . . somehow familiar harsh voices, threats and curses over a backdrop of demonic creatures snarling and biting at the ground their feet slashed and pounded, attacking the earth, each other, and all the while carny music playing sugar sweet, carny rides and games flashing colors gaudy and more obscene than blood red . . .

"Really, I'm fine," he said again. "I don't need counseling, I'm getting on with my life and you just stole half an hour of it. Bye."

Then his car was packed and he was headed for a high-rise apartment in the city.

•

It was a week later when Mr. McMahon—a light sleeper, as ten-year-old Jamie and friends had discovered when they snuck out to throw rocks at the neighbor's roof—stretched out of bed at 3:00 am, his body popping and groaning like a cantankerous machine. He emptied his bladder, yawned, and for no reason he knew went to the bedroom window, holding open the curtain and spilling in a beam of street light. The cul-de-sac beneath, bathed in white moon- and street-light, held its breath in stillness. Not a shrub or tree leaf fluttered in any ghost of a breeze. The parked cars, front gardens, mailboxes: all seemed to silently stare just like Mr. McMahon did at something unfamiliar and foreign. Something that hadn't woken the dogs and got them barking, the way any other lurking

stranger would have done.

A clown stood at the top of the curving driveway. Mr. McMahon knew at once it was not his son, though his eyes checked to be sure. The horribly bright and mismatched colors of its wide suspender-held pants and its puffy shirt screamed with discordant cheer. Its white-gloved hand clutched what may have been an old pocket watch with a thin dangling chain. Under a pointed hat with bells, whose tinkling faintly tickled Mr. McMahon's ears and got his flesh goosebumped and shivering, the white face with its black painted smile (over the top of the actual lips downturned and scowling) tilted up, passed over the house's façade, then gazed again at the pocket watch, if that's what it was. The head shook, maybe in annoyance, sending more sweet ugly bell chimes up to the window as the clown muttered some curse or other.

Behind Mr. McMahon, the bed groaned as his wife turned over and murmured thickly, "What is it?"

He looked at her, pondering: it would be a mean trick to tell her a clown had come to visit, meaner still to let her come and see it, and then to privately chuckle to himself as she lay awake in uneasy fear for the next two weeks. Mean, but fun. He opened his mouth to tell her, then he thought of the resulting short temper he'd have to deal with. "It's nothing, love," he said instead, dropping the curtain back and lowering himself to bed. He pecked his wife's cheek and within seconds was convinced he'd done a noble thing from sheer benevolence for her peace of mind.

About the clown he didn't much trouble himself; some idiot kid who'd heard Jamie's story in the news and wanted to see the house as if it were a piece of folklore. His goose bumps settled.

Ah, the embarrassment of it all was finally easing off: ever since Jamie was arrested in the Queen Street Mall for setting off fireworks, Mr. McMahon's co-workers had been giving him hell. Then when the dumb kid disappeared, they gave him sympathy, which was worse. It was all in the past, now. His mind soon filled again with football, the job, the lawn, garden, and neighbors.

•

It was kind of funny—Jamie had no memory of actually packing into his car the rectangular cardboard box which held the clown outfit they'd found him wearing "that night." Yet here it was, the last thing in his Nissan's trunk to be carried up the lift to his new life in the city. The outfit had been forensically pored over for DNA evidence before they returned it to him. He'd been tempted to throw the box into the big industrial bin in the car park. But in his hands now was a link, a clue. It found its home on the floor of his walk-in closet, along with the little velvet bag the police had not seen cause to examine once they'd decided it wasn't full of drugs.

Every day, dressing for work before the mirror, the corner of the box caught his eye. Each time he quelled a curious, mild urge to open it and just take a look at the bright gaudy clothing. No harm in looking, surely? Just to look at it, run his hand over the printed flowers, stripes, dots, puppy dogs chasing bright blue balls?

His new job basically involved moving boxes of files around in the bowels of the Department of Finance, and being yelled at by the woman who ruled that dusty forgotten tomb of manila folders and file cabinets. Some days a pile or box of files did a complete tour of the room and wound up back where it started; why Jamie or his boss was being paid a decent wage to do this was never clearly explained. He managed to keep her voice to a background abstraction and theorized it was all some kind of temperament test for duties higher up the ladder—if he'd tolerate this treatment without a nervous breakdown, he'd be useful to the government as a fall guy when shit hit fans for top ranked bureaucrats or even ministers, one fine day.

Some days he longed for nothing more than to throw an egg at the dumpy schoolmarm, seeing clearly how it would sound and look, the frenzy of her reaction. The urge grew with surprising power. If not egging her, he'd leave a cream pie on her seat, or tape sharp pins to the light switch, put a cane toad in her top desk drawer. While it did occur to him that these might be the responses a clown would come up with in a similar circumstance, that hardly seemed relevant.

His roommate Dean rescued him from this particular torment and threw him into another. Dean's job was to give talks to various government employees about their superannuation, but one Tuesday when holed up with one of his female admirers, Dean said over breakfast, "Good news! You're filling in for me today. I already told your supervisor. Here's my notes, just read them into the mic then get out of there before they can ask questions. And enjoy the free sandwiches. It's easy."

"No way," said Jamie, but apparently it sounded exactly like "Sure, I'll do it gladly," because Dean clapped his shoulder and said, "Sweet, owe you one. Beers on me Friday." Dean pointed down at the not unimpressive erection tent-poling his blue boxers then nodded to his bedroom, making a none too subtle gesture with finger and thumb to indicate coitus would soon transpire. Given the way sound went through this apartment, Jamie didn't really need it spelled out—the words "Oh Jesus," "Cop it," "Give it to me," and "Oh no you don't, it's my pussy now," had periodically roused him from sleep.

So with just one terrified flashback of his last public speaking episode (Year twelve English. Discussion of Lord of the Flies. Some bastard—never found out who—wrote "i love tamara" on his third palm card. He read the words out loud then tried to suck them back in an instant too late, for he had indeed loved Tamara, and her shell-shocked, horrified expression had ripped his heart out while the rest of the class laughed mercilessly), he thought about the prospect of being in front of people, the center of attention, and . . .

And, well, actually he didn't mind the idea. In fact, suddenly it seemed pretty good, got his blood tingling in a way that seemed both new and familiar. Why, maybe he could think of a few jokes and one-liners to toss in. And as it went, he spent more time thinking about jokes to tell his audience than he spent studying Dean's notes, a veritable spring in his step and an intoxicating fizz in his blood, which built and built until that damned slow clock let him have his moment in the spotlight.

The sixty or so janitors and school groundskeepers brayed with appreciative laughter. "My name is Jamie, and I'm here to discuss your super. Of course, you're all super to me." More laughs, laughs at the lameness of the puns, his cheesy grin, hammed up delivery and patronizing smile. He couldn't stop. They loved him and he loved them, their laughter especially, could drink it down all day, must have more, more! "I'll be with you for the next forty minutes or so, which means if you like the sound of my voice, you're in for a real treat." Laughter, precious laughter. How it filled him up and made him feel feather light. Why, he could bound across the floor, do a back flip off the podium . . .

The clearing throat of Dean's supervisor made him—with great effort—think more serious thoughts. Somehow he managed to read through the notes, restricting himself to one wisecrack every five minutes. It was tough. Slowly he worked his way to another fine intoxicating sound, the applause of an audience.

The supervisor approved, in the end. She offered him a new job doing such talks regularly and said, "A few opening jokes to engage them, that's not so bad. But we're discussing people's financial future, so don't turn the whole thing into a clown show, whatever you do."

Jamie coughed, choked on his own spit. He managed somehow to get out the words, "Oh yeah, sure, clown show. Wouldn't want to do that."

•

On Friday it was drunk time/woman hunting time with a small gang of chaps from elsewhere in the building, led by the master hunter, Dean (who bought Jamie's first four beers as promised). Dean was six-two, well built with a gymmed-up body, but by no means the handsomest thing in the bar, as far as Jamie or the rest of them could tell. Which didn't bother the ladies at all—when bored with poker machines or moping to them about the one ex he'd truly loved, he'd approach a likely target, speak with her as if he'd already known her for years, and within an hour he'd have his prey. Sometimes it only took a few minutes. Jamie and the others studied him at it, tried to work out what he actually did, but there was really no telling. Often as not his prey was someone's fiancée, wife, girlfriend. A cop's? A karate instructor's? A mob hitman's? It didn't much matter to Dean. And all the while, every day, Dean still moaned, sighed, and waxed depressed about the one ex who had actually dumped him, not the other way around.

"Oh yeah, the excuses man," said another of the gang, as poker machines trilled and chimed their insane music around them, now and then clattering up a vomit of coins. "He hated being with that ex when he was with her, was bored out of his mind. Out cheating on her every weekend, off at the casino playing blackjack while she stays home alone. Feeding her the most convoluted sitcom excuses you ever heard. One time, he got me to smack him in the face in the cubicles at work, so he could claim he'd been mugged and bashed, couldn't make their dinner date that night. He came out drinking with us, talked a stripper into bed, or actually into an alley, fucked her right in front of a homeless guy who was asking for money the whole time. So his ex, this Broncos cheerleader, finally had enough, ditched him, and now months later he's in crazy love with her."

They watched Dean take his new friend by the elbow, both of them laughing at a shared joke as he led her outside, surely headed for the room next to Jamie's. The other two drinking pals were both near age twenty, when getting laid is more or less the point of everything else in life. They studied Dean's every stride, facial expression, and movement as he gradually wove through the busy sea of people breaking like waves on the pub's bar. Ding-a-ling, ching, chime, the insane poker machine music played and played, all too much like carnival music. "I'm out guys," Jamie said. "I stay here much longer I'll be dreaming all night about happy robots."

"Ah, Jamie, you're such a clown."

It was like a slap—Jamie's head whipped back, eyes wide, stunned a moment before murmuring goodbyes and making an exit more clumsy and drunken than it should have been after his four beers. The other two drinking buddies/hunters of the elusive female watched him ping pong off door corners, seats, and people's shoulders. "Interesting," said the one who'd called Jamie a clown. "I wondered how he'd react to that."

"What? Why?"

"That whole circus thing. Didn't you hear about it? That was him. Right in the thick of it. They didn't even find the bodies. He denied all knowledge and they believed him. I hear he even passed a lie detector test."

"Wait, Jamie was that guy they found?"

"Dressed like a clown, yep. Man, I knew Dean had some balls, but living with that guy? Dean's got some balls. Already one person Jamie lived with vanished from the face of the planet. Gone. They didn't even find his body. Only some blood."

A brief awed silence ensued. "Does Dean know?"

"Doubt it. But I'm going to tell him to watch his back. And we better watch ours."

•

Perturbed, Jamie found his feet taking him not home but on a veering detour, past an excited group running toward George Street where apparently some idiot was trashing a bunch of cars right in front of the cops. Jamie headed down through Queen Street, moving through packs of Friday night revelers, some whooping and laughing, while drunk teenagers new to all of this staggered by and gave him looks probably suggesting they were not to be fucked with, or something. He half expected someone to shout "That's him! It's that clown guy!" or maybe just "Murderer."

And here he was, in the quiet little arcade leading to the Wentworth Club. With some surprise he realized it was the first time he'd been here since . . . since returning to his life from some other place. But there was nothing here of interest, just the same high end clothes and shoe shops along the arcade, the eerie quiet that seemed by magic to repel any drunken youths from wandering through. No clues. Yes, that was why he'd come: to find clues. This place had been part of it, maybe where it had all begun. But now it told him nothing.

A tap on his shoulder cut off his thoughts. He'd not heard the club's glass door slide open, had been pacing up and down the arcade without realizing. He turned to see the smiling face of the current concierge beaming up at him from shoulder height. The smile was full of embarrassment; words came out of it: "Hello. Please. Go away."

"What? Why?" The smiley teeth veritably shone. This guy could sell toothpaste. Jamie said, "Hey, I used to have your job, you know that?"

"Oh, indeed. We at the desk have been given firm instruction to . . . and a picture of you, in case you should . . . several pictures, in fact, that in the event of . . . look, very important clientele, and . . . the management wishes to distance our establishment from . . . potential scandal, rumor, controversy."

"Scandal. Seriously, scandal? Wow. Listen to yourself. Our establishment, like you could take a part of it home if you wanted to. A real company man, aren't you. It's like you figure this job's got some kind of future."

"The police are to be . . . firm instructions . . . need I say it?"

Inspired by beer and rage, Jamie stepped closer, growled, "Listen, punk, I worked here and it happened to me. It could happen to you, too. Think about it. You think some of the late night crowd in here weren't involved? They are neck deep. Club management, the highest profile members, all of them. Watch. . . your . . . back." He drank deep of the dawning terror on the dweeb's face then walked away, thinking: Wow. This thing is really going to follow me around til the very end. Forever suspect.

Back out in the mall, among crowds of scantily clad young women and their male orbiters. Drunken shrieks, laughs, staggering steps in high heels. The people out there were coalescing at some point mid-mall, which finally caught Jamie's attention. A big group had gathered like the excited crowds that flock to the school oval for fisticuffs and antler butting, but it had to be something else given all the howls of laughter. "Look at him!" someone hollered.

So Jamie ambled over, took a look over the heads of the outer ring of people, and froze. Part of him must have known what he'd see. Confused and panicking within the ring of people was a round-bellied, white-faced clown with the weirdest eyes he'd ever seen. One was slitted and frankly a little scary with some weird animal quality, the other boggled around at the people like it had never seen such creatures before. Its thick round head refused to turn at the neck; its arms stayed locked at its sides with the hands bunched to fists, spasmodically uncurling, then closing. It wore a ludicrous puffy shirt with bright colors shamelessly splashed over it. Pants that ought to be baggy were stuffed tight with thick jiggling flesh, pushing at the seams with each frightened half turn while it looked desperately for an escape route in the ring of spectators.

Jamie alone seemed to find it other than funny. It frightened him, but also he alone could tell its distress was real—it was not playing around, it wanted to be away from their gazes and shrieks of laughter. "Its eyes! Look at its eyes!" someone cackled.

The clown's hands slapped over its ears to shut out the noise. One of the more drunken and daring in the ring stepped forward, a wiry young man with a goatee who had parted with his shirt. He leaned forward, offered the clown a hand to shake, grinning ear to ear. The clown slapped itself in the face, hard, then harder. Some of the crowd laughed even louder, but the slaps went on and got harder, til they rang out like a mound of dough or side of beef being pounded with a baseball bat, and the first spray of blood flew from its lips, then cheek, then ear, then eye, spattering the pavement, spattering the clothes of those nearest . . . only then did some of them stop laughing.

The young shirtless drunk, not perturbed by this, said slowly "Are you lost? Do you need some help? Are you a bit special in the head?"

The clown's lips peeled back. A hissing sound of indrawn breath made its belly swell and grow, fuller and fuller until the shirt popped a button and the fabric tore, letting hang loose a glob of pink-white meat. "How do they do that?" said someone to Jamie's right. "Those special effects . . ."

All at once a high-pitched wail exploded from the circle's middle. Those closest clapped hands to their ears, ducked down to their haunches. On it went, far louder than a car horn. The circle shrank back, no one laughing anymore. The shirtless drunk lay writhing on the pavement, hands to his ears.

Jamie stood with the blood pounding in his ears and adrenaline surging. You wanted a clue, he thought, and you just got one. This clown, he had seen it somewhere before . . .

The clown ceased its noise. Slowly, inevitably, it turned his way. The eyes met his and narrowed. One step, two steps, it came in a jerking rush. Crunch crunch, its oversized shoes trampled the young man and sent out the sick crack of a broken femur and rib.

Jamie backed up a few steps, then turned and ran through the crowd of people, most of whom had turned to stare down the mall at the noise. He risked one glance back—he expected to see it coming, but if it was, it was lost in the movement of people.

For the rest of the half run, half walk home, he tried to do what normal people would do, to convince himself it was just a street performance gone wrong, that those were indeed just "special effects," and most of all that it had nothing to do with him. By the time he got home, he had almost succeeded in kidding himself, but he knew that's exactly what he was doing.

•

The apartment was basically one round wall, two-thirds the way up a high-rise overlooking the Storey Bridge. The Brisbane River wound sluggish and placid below, in no mood just now to flood the human filth put into it back across the streets as it had several times before and surely would again, sooner or later. A tall gang of similar buildings stood around them in all directions, their evening glow proud ornaments in the gorgeous Brisbane night light display. A young city, the sense of possibility was as palpable as the sense of history layered thick in other places. This town was a nearly blank page, waiting to be written.

The high-rises opposite had their share of exhibitionists, old and young, attractive and distinctly otherwise, partial to undressing with the lights on and blinds open, not to mention bouts of shameless rutting. To that end there sat a pair of binoculars on the sill, military grade. Some nights the entertainment was better than watching TV.

Jamie entered the place, which already felt like home, expecting to hear all manner of the usual Dean bedroom war cries, but the flat was silent, the lights off with only the twilight glow of outside light seeping in. He had an urge to find Dean and tell him about the clown from the mall, to get a dose of the common reality which so easily rationalized away the dark and strange. (That clown had looked right at him. Had come after him, out of all the people there, watching it. Had recognized him . . . ) But a woman's giggling sounded faintly from Dean's bedroom followed by his low murmur. They were between festivities, then, and fireworks would soon ensue. Jamie sighed and went to his room, pulled back the blanket and screamed.

A knife lay on his sheets, which were rumpled and messed up. A few small but unmistakable spots of blood were sprinkled around it. A door slammed open. Dean rushed in, saw what he was looking at. "Oh, sorry. Forgot," he said, taking the knife.

"Yours?" said Jamie, relieved, then pissed off.

"Yeah. Sorry, bro. Hadn't changed my sheets yet, so me and Jodi had to start out in here."

"Why not change your own fucking sheets? Couldn't the sex have waited five minutes while you changed your sheets?"

"Got to seal the deal, bro. Take no chances. You'd be surprised how many deals get blown by an unflushed toilet or dirty sheets. Don't worry, mine are changed now."

"But . . . look, I'm no prude. But why a knife?"

Dean sighed. "This Jodi, what can I say. She's a crazy girl. Real intense."

"This is someone you just met tonight? About an hour or two ago?"

"Seen her around. The knife was her idea, she read some book and wanted to try it. Wanted me to wear a balaclava too, this fantasy about burglars? Hey if I get her in the right mood maybe you'll get an invite. Want me to ask? She likes redheads."

"Tempting." It actually was, upon reflection. "But no, not after the day I've had and not before having at least one conversation with her. Call me old-fashioned . . ."

"Suit yourself. Gotta go." There followed the coitus hand signal and Dean left as abruptly as he'd come. Jamie changed his sheets, lay back with eyes closed as bedspring music began to play through the thin, thin walls.

What was all this? All these urges to do whacky, antisocial, clowny things. His mother had been right: in most conversations back home he'd been looking for the chance to make a stupid one-liner, often in poor taste. He'd never even noticed himself doing it. Now this new delight—nay, addiction to making a room full of people laugh, not through any real wit or cleverness but with cheesy delivery. He could draw a laugh at any time in those presentations, and if his supervisor weren't there to watch, he'd clown around for the entire thing.

Clown around. Clown.

"Tell my cock you love it," Dean's voice suddenly boomed through the walls.

"I love, love, love your cock," came the reply.

"Don't talk to me. Talk to the cock! Don't look at me. Look at the cock! Call it Ramrod."

"I love you Ramrod. Oh jesus." The bed next door protested, staged its own earthquake. Jamie swore and turned on his stereo, cranked the volume high. "And now, an oldie but a goodie from ‘The Kinks. Death of a Clown!'"

"Are you serious?" Jamie said. He almost laughed as the song filled his room. The box in his closet caught his eye, lit only by the stereo's little blue panel light. It called him, that box, beckoned him like Sauron's ring of power.

There was no fighting it. He stroked the hideously gaudy fabric, the red shoes. Undressed himself, and . . .

The clothes fit. Perfectly. Better than perfectly—he was made for these clothes. The rustle of cloth whispered encouraging things. The fabric caressed his skin with gentle loving touches. A feeling of deep glee stole into him, tickled him, made him squirm and laugh. He put on the big red shoes. They squeezed down over his feet and felt so right. He was lighter than air. He could back flip around the room, out the hall, off the balcony and land on concrete, only to bounce right back up here like a rubber ball.

And the mirror said he looked awesome, hilarious, even a little noble. And the mirror said, "Jamie, help me. They're bringing me back, they're gonna bring everyone back. I don't want to be a clown no more, Gonko's pissed at me, he's gonna—"

Jamie, wide-eyed, watched his reflection's mouth move as it spoke to him in his own voice, the reflection's pleading eyes fear-filled. He screamed for the second time that night, ran out of the room in time to see Dean burst from his own room, naked, to investigate. Dean's eyes went wide. "Holy shit balls. What the hell are you wearing?"

Jamie, scared and sweating, pulled the clown shirt off—or tried to. The shirt wouldn't come off. Nor the pants or shoes. They clung hard, seemed to fight back as he tugged at them. "Look, don't freak out," Jamie began, but Dean's door slammed shut and no more sounds came through the walls that night.

•

Saturday morning: Dean was all sexed out. That Jodi was pretty cool, and wild enough to be a regular, but of course she was no Emily. No one in the world ever would be. Now and then he'd catch a look at Emily in her cheer squad outfit on TV during a Broncos game, and it never failed to bring him to the brink of tears.

Jodi had ducked out to meet a friend and do that shopping thing women seemed to dig so much. There'd be no car park fights with husbands for him to worry about this time, another plus, although he'd actually made some pretty good friends out of those dudes once they'd blown off some steam.

He ignored the ringing landline phone, suspecting it was work calling, but Jamie woke and answered it. No clown suit this morning, and just what the hell that had been all about Dean did not care to ponder. A dress-up role-play thing would have made sense if the guy hadn't come home alone. You never really knew someone til you lived with them, he supposed.

Dean paused in his doorway as Jamie's voice rose in anger. "How did you get this number?" he yelled into the phone. "All right, Mrs. Rolph. You got me pegged. I am a murderer. I killed your son, okay? I rubbed his face with a cheese grater til his scream was loud enough to break glass, is that what you want to hear? Then I ran him over with a wheat thresher. Slowly. Fed his body to wild pigs, and they told me he tastes like shit. I kept the finger bones, and I have them in a little jar. Every full moon I take the bones out and rub them on my crotch. Happy? You call me again, and I will visit you next. Oh, you bet it's a threat. Oh, you're recording all this? Neato. Yeah I slipped up, huh? You're a real super sleuth. You do that, tell the cops I said hi. Bye bye now." Jamie slammed the phone down, slammed his bedroom door and went back to sleep.

Dean frowned. He would be lying to himself if he said what he'd just heard was not the cause for some concern. Jamie would surely explain when he next awoke. "Cheese grater?" he murmured.

Dean's mobile rang with his Beethoven ring tone (violin concerto in D-major, the only classical music he knew.) As always he looked hopefully for Emily's name on the caller ID, but it was only Paulie. "Sup?" said Dean.

"Man, I knew you had some balls, but I'm telling you, you have got some balls." Dean smiled, pleased—the conversation had started well. "Check this out," Paulie went on quickly. "Police hunt violent attacker clown. From the news dude, online. I'll text you the link. Check it out, a guy in a clown suit beat up like ten people last night, almost trampled this dude to death, put like three in hospital, smashed up some cars and maybe there's more than one of them out there."

Dean was not smiling now. He could not remember—had Jamie been wearing the clown suit when he walked in the door? Dean had to swallow before speaking. "What's this got to do with me and my balls?"

"Man, let me tell you something about your roommate." And so Paulie told him all he knew, and then all he guessed and suspected.

•

It was near evening when Jamie woke again, kitchen and coffee and possibly nightclub bound. Also he wanted to get online, look into community theater, see if a guy like him could just walk up and get a role in some comedy. Dean, sans shirt, stood by the window, and Jamie noted without much interest or alarm the baseball bat in Dean's hands. "Howdy," said Jamie in the cowboy accent they had been amusing each other with for a couple of days now.

"Okay, let's just keep this quiet and calm," said Dean. "Jodi's having a quick nap in my room. No need to go crazy."

"Keep what quiet? Go crazy why?"

"I had you committed."

It took half a minute for the words to actually register within Jamie's skull. When they did, he knew it was not a joke. "You what?"

"Okay, I guess committed is a bit of an exaggeration. But they're sending people to talk to you. Medical people, mostly. From the hospital. Maybe there'll be police with them too—they were a bit iffy on that point." Dean hesitated. "Not that I, you know, emphasized that they should send cops to handle you. But it sometimes works out that way if the patient won't go willingly or seems real unstable or violent."

"The patient? Won't go? Willingly?"

"Hey let's keep this quiet. For myself? I personally don't doubt you're sane? Not for a minute. But then I'm not a professional medical guy. And it's like I told them, I never actually saw you do anything all that violent, not when I was around anyway. So stay cool and this should all go just great."

I will now kick this guy's teeth down his neck, Jamie thought. He is dead. So very dead. The knife rack caught his eye, sang a siren song. The rolling pin hung up on its stand looked a decent place to start. He grabbed it. It felt so natural in his hand.

Just then the front door burst open.

***