(A waiting room. BUB, SNOWBALL, JIM, and MIMSY are all seated.)
BUB: Forty-three years I’ve been with that circus, and this is how it ends? I’m going to die retired in some shack in Montana like a schmuck? I could have had a noble death. I could have been eaten by a lion or had my throat ripped out by a seal like Felix, but no. Instead they take my dignity.
SNOWBALL: I’m going back to get my degree.
JIM: In clowning?
SNOWBALL: No, in culinary. I don’t know if you all knew this, but I made all the pies we threw at each other. I’m not sure if any of them were good, but--
JIM: They looked good.
SNOWBALL: Thanks, Jim.
JIM: No problem, Snowball.
MIMSY: I’m going to walk inside an imaginary box and wait for time to ravage my body.
(A beat.)
BUB: There’s always that one weird clown.
SNOWBALL: Mimsy isn’t weird. She studied clowning in Europe. It’s very different over there.
BUB: Give me an American clown any day. You ever see a European trip on a banana peel and fall into a kiddie pool? It’s a disgrace.
JIM: Hey Bub, where did you go to school?
BUB: When I was starting out, you didn’t go to school for clowning. You walked twenty-four miles to an abandoned warehouse and a guy named Moe hit you in the face with a four-pound carp until you passed out. That was how you became a clown.
SNOWBALL: That sounds terrible.
BUB: That carp claimed a lot of lives, I’ll admit it, but the clowns that came out of that warehouse were some of the most talented and damaged people you’re ever likely to meet.
JIM: What happened to Moe?
BUB: It turned out he was a serial killer, but we didn’t know that at the time.
SNOWBALL: Goodness.
BUB: We used to have the best serial killers in this country. Bundy, Zodiac, Nancy Reagan--they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
JIM: Hey Snowball, what happened with you and Tony?
SNOWBALL: I mean, he still gets gigs here and there. They just hired him to do this gender reveal party--
JIM: An acrobat?
SNOWBALL: He prefers trapeze artist.
JIM: Right, sorry.
SNOWBALL: It’s fine. He’s kind of pretentious. But it was hot making out with him.
JIM: Did you make out on the trapeze?
SNOWBALL: Oh yeah. All the time.
JIM: What was that like?
SNOWBALL: Well, it was more swinging around than anything, but it was pretty exciting. Sometimes he’d be like, let’s do it without the net, and I’d be like, No, I don’t think, and he’d be like, Just one time, and I’d be like, Tony, we talked about this, and he’d be like, Nick takes his girlfriend up here all the time and they never have the net, and I was like, Well, why don’t you date Nick’s girlfriend then since she’s so awesome, and he was like, I don’t want to date her, she’s dating Nick, and also, she eats fire, and that’s weird, and I was like, Oh, that’s weird, but asking a clown to make out with you three stories up with no net isn’t, and he was like--
BUB: Remind me never to get in a clown car with her.
SNOWBALL: It’s just hard, you know, making it work in our field, and now that there’s no more circus--
JIM: Do you think they’ll ever bring it back?
SNOWBALL: I heard Disney might buy it.
JIM: The circus?
SNOWBALL: Yeah.
BUB: Sons-of-bitches.
JIM: What’s wrong with Disney?
MIMSY: Mickey Mouse is a symbol of failed hope. What are his pants? What are his dreams? Where does he belong in the lost place we call America?
(A beat.)
BUB: What’s wrong with them--is that all they care about is money. The circus isn’t about money.
JIM: Bub, we sold cotton candy for eighteen dollars. I’m pretty sure money was a big part of it.
SNOWBALL: What are you going to do now, Jim?
JIM: I’m going to become a make-up artist--
SNOWBALL: That’s amazing.
JIM: --For dogs.
SNOWBALL: For--what?
JIM: It’s this new thing. People are putting make-up on their dogs, but, like, dogs squirm a lot, so you really have to have a way with them to get them to stay still long enough to--and remember how I was so good with the dogs? Like, I’d just look at them and they’d jump through those little hoops? Plus, I’m wicked good with make-up and the other day, I practiced on this stray cat I found in the alley near my apartment, and I almost got half an eyebrow penciled on her before she tore a hole in my arm with her claws. But, like, cats are really mean, so I bet I’ll have better luck with dogs.
(A beat.)
BUB: You’ll be dead in six months.
SNOWBALL: Bub!
BUB: Three months if you try putting eyeliner on a pitbull.
SNOWBALL: Mimsy, are you okay? You seem so stoic.
BUB: She always seems that way.
MIMSY: I was just thinking about how one time I saw a little kid crying in the front row. I walked up to her. I asked her why she was crying. The circus was going on all around us, and there she was, weeping openly. Her mother was sitting next to her, but she wasn’t saying a word. It was as though she were a mannequin or a large doll. The crying girl told me that she was crying because there was so much life all around her and that the excitement and the enthusiasm created a vortex of deep-seated grief in her that could only be explained by the realization that life is three-rings and a tent and then it’s the sawdust swept up by a janitor and the elephants packed into cages and the faint smell of hot dogs fading in and out of one’s mind as the circus leaves town once again.
(A beat.)
BUB: I am not going to miss her.
JIM: Did you make her laugh?
MIMSY: Who?
JIM: The little girl.
MIMSY: Oh. I don’t remember.
SNOWBALL: I’m sure you did.
MIMSY: I don’t remember her laughing.
BUB: She probably had a complex.
MIMSY: But I’d like to think she did.
JIM: Yeah?
MIMSY: Yes. I’d like to think that maybe I made her laugh.
MIMSY: Yes. I’d like to think that maybe I made her laugh.
End of Play
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