by Andrea Cavedo
Manny had been trying to compose a text for the last hour.
u know i was kiddin around…
Delete delete delete.
i been thinkin bout yesterday…
Garbage, delete.
Gia wouldn’t talk to him the whole ride home last night. The car had been oppressive with her silence. What had he even done, really? He was funny, he was good to her. But Gia was so sensitive, her sense of humor was so unpredictable. She didn’t always get his jokes. He knew he should call, but didn’t want an earful in the middle of his shift at the gas station. There was a chance she wouldn’t even pick up. Really, he wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say.
“’Scuse me, where’s the restroom?”
Manny looked up into a pale, grease-painted face with teardrop eyes and a broad smile. A circus clown. Gia thought clowns were hilarious. Manny had never quite seen the appeal.
“Round the corner,” he said, pointing.
The clown honked his red nose in thanks.
Manny watched him maneuver down the narrow aisle, then went back to his text.
i know u think i got my guard up…
Fuck no. Delete.
The door chime tinkled and a jagged smoker’s voice interrupted him: “Hey fella, you sell coffee here?”
Still tapping at his phone, Manny looked up to say, “Over by the soda fountain—”
It was the clown. Manny squinted. The eyes were diamonds, not teardrops, and the nose was blue. It was a second clown.
“You got decaf?” the clown asked.
Manny nodded.
This time he didn’t go back to his phone.
Already, another clown was pushing through the smudgy door. This one had orange hair, and started busily perusing the chips. Then two more came tinkling in, attempting to fit through the door together. The larger clown prevailed with a rubbery squeak and went to inspect the freezer case. Another pair followed them in, a sad hobo clown and a lady clown with pink pom-poms on a ringmaster jacket. A tiny, identically dressed dog was squeezed under her arm. Manny didn’t even tell her to leave the dog outside, because more clowns were already coming through the door. In minutes, they filled the store, so many clowns they could barely turn around for bumping each other, a jostling technicolor sea of clashing patterns, enormous buttons, and tiny hats.
They had a lot of questions.
“Are these beef sticks gluten free?”
“You got Wi-Fi?”
“Can I buy an atlas here?”
“Hey kid, pack of menthols?”
One of the clowns who’d nearly gotten stuck in the door was turning a Good Humor bar over and over in his hands.
“Too many preservatives. I can’t eat this shit.”
A neighboring clown said, “That is not shit, Eric. That is ice cream.”
Between ringing up their scratch-offs and bubblegum, Manny snuck a peek at the CCTV, expecting a parking lot crammed with vehicles, maybe a coach bus or two. But all he could see on the screen was a single minivan at pump three.
Soon they were all heading out the door, and through the camera Manny could see one after the other piling into the van.
“Seems impossible, doesn’t it?”
It was the original clown, rouged cheeks shining, the last to leave.
“But we do it every night. You just have to know how to pack everything into a small space.”
He rapped his knuckles on the counter next to Manny’s phone, dropped a twenty into the tip jar, and left.
Manny watched the minivan lurch ponderously away.
He picked up the phone and typed two words: I’m sorry.
Then he hit send.
Andrea Cavedo’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Chestnut Review, HAD, and others; she won the inaugural Ordinary Contest from Foofaraw Press, and has been a semifinalist for The Sewanee Review’s Fiction, Poetry & Nonfiction Contest. For the last decade she has taught history and government to Chicago high school students.
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