Romance of the Red Nose

Abstract

It was a perfect picture of a school for clowns. Jugglers passed clubs, the glossy colors catching the Florida sun, while acrobats took turns doing flips on the grass. A gal in a purple leotard slid one foot, then the other, along a rope she’d strung between two palm trees. A kid in a Hawaiian shirt rolled on a unicycle, his legs churning down the sidewalk past the Venice Villas, our home for two months. In and out of courtyards stretched between a swimming pool and the Gulf of Mexico, 60 of us formed and reformed groups like mercury on a plate. Everybody was everybody’s buddy. A guy emerged from his room in clown makeup, and talked about circus with the kind of detailed knowledge that I’d seen in theater fanatics. Should I know this stuff? Did clowns have a secret handshake? With a joy buzzer? My roommate Bruce, with frizzy hair and glasses, sat on top of his brown van, strapping on home-made stilts and grinning. When he grinned, which he did a lot, his cheeks puffed out and his teeth pushed forward, making him look like a cheery chipmunk. Grinning, he said “Isn’t this great!” It was.

We lawyers are always curious, always inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds.

Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit