But in all that impactful white space someone had drawn a huge and surprisingly detailed...
Yeah, it was a clown.
An extraordinarily skillfully rendered, really vivid clown.
He was wearing puffy checked pants and long curly-toed shoes, and great luscious fluffy shocks of hair billowed out from the sides of his mostly bald head. And he was bent over at the waist, his gaze aimed lasciviously out onto the highway drivers.
His butt was high in the air and aimed right at Rebecca’s pursed lips.
“What. The Effing. Hell.Is. That.” Rebecca could barely get the words out through a jaw tight as a vise.
“It’s a clown,” J. T. explained mildly. “It looks like you’re kissing a clown’s butt.”
It was so funny it was practically a religious experience. He almost floated out of his body.
“I CAN SEE THAT.”
He let a heartbeat’s worth of silence get by.
“Good-looking clown,” he said mildly.
Her head whipped toward him. Lightning was practically shooting from her eyes.
He knew instinctively that the milder he was, the more incensed Rebecca would get and the funnier it would get.
He was comprised of total happiness.
“It’s fucking INSULTING.”
“It’s just a clown butt, Rebecca. You’ve probably kissed worse things,” he said. Mildly.
Rebecca was probably about to launch from her body, too. For other reasons completely. She was magnificent when in a temper. And horrible.
On the one hand, landing national ad campaigns and having your face on billboards and bus benches could be viewed as an impressive achievement.
On the other hand... clown butt.
It was an epic struggle, but he could not keep the smile from spreading over his face. As big as any grin sported by a circus clown anywhere.
Rebecca saw it and she clamped her mouth shut, mute with fury.
He was pretty sure he knew exactly who’d drawn that clown.
How she’d done it was a little worrisome. That wasn’t an easy climb.
Why she’d done it... well, this was the first time he’d ever felt peculiarly heartened by vandalism.
If Britt wanted to deface his ex-girlfriend’s advertisements, surely it was due to an excess of passion.
And maybe... just maybe... it meant that she cared. Even in spite of those photos.
Either that, or she had completely lost her marbles.
His thoughts were on her as he cruised through town with funeral-procession speed so they could inspect the bus benches. Rebecca’s thunderous face and whitely tight lips were aimed out the window, her arms wrapped around her torso like battle armor.
On one bench, Rebecca bounding with a purse had been transformed into a bunny. A really competent, charming bunny, with a full complement of whiskers and a pair of buckteeth. The purse had been transformed into a basket.
“Buck. Teeth?” Rebecca hissed.
