A Clown Joke (opens in new tab)

Pagalache the clown walks into a patisserie. Behind the marble stands the owner, a man with cold hands and a folded white life, who looks up from his wiping and says we’re closed; and Pagalache, who has never in his life heard a closed thing, says: she had a smell. You have to start at the smell, he says, or none of the rest of it lands. She smelled like the inside of a tuba; the spit valve specifically, not the bell, any idiot loves the bell. He loved the valve: the warm brass and the held b...