Excerpt from Stop Me If You've Heard This One by Kristen Arnett, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When she opens the door, I'm ready for her.

"If you don't give me my shit back, I am going to come inside your house." I widen my eyes and smile my wild Bunko grin. My voice goes up an octave, turns giggly. I pull one of the red noses from my kit and jam it onto my face. "And I'm going to stay here, rolling allllll around on your sofa, until your husband gets home."

Marcia puffs up, ready to scream at me, but then we both hear a voice. It's her son, calling for her from inside the house. She immediately deflates.

"Can't I keep it?" she whispers. She clasps her hands under her chin, like a child reciting a bedtime prayer. "Please. I just ... I'm begging you."

And I can see that she really does want the makeup. Wants it badly enough that she's willing to hide it from her husband, who is exactly the kind of guy I'd avoid at a gig: a dude who'd punch me not just be‑ cause I'd fucked his wife, but because I'm a clown and I scare him. I'm queer, but she's not. All she'd seen was the clown, and she'd wanted that. Nothing to do with gender. Everything to do with performance.

"I can't afford to replace it," I say. "And I need it for work." Her face lights up. "I can pay you."

The thought of going back out and having to buy the stuff makes me pause again. "It's expensive."

"That's fine, I've got the money. Wait here."

Of course she has the money. These people always have the money, don't they?

She disappears down the hall. I take off the clown nose and stuff it back in my bag. There's a food smell wafting from the open doorway, air redolent with sautéed onions and butter and garlic. My stomach growls, loudly, and I slap a hand to it, as if I might be able to shove the offending noise back inside my body. I haven't had anything to eat since my breakfast coffee, though Darcy is always quick to inform me that coffee does not actually constitute a meal. She's one to talk; she never fixes anything for herself, content to live at home with her mother, who packs her some of the most incredible lunch spreads I've ever seen. Back when I regularly saw my mother, I was lucky if she'd reheat me left‑ overs scrounged from the back of the fridge.

The woman reappears, clutching her pocketbook. "Smells good in there," I say. "You guys cooking dinner?"

She dismisses the question with a wave of her hand, unfolding her billfold to reveal a wad of cash. "How much?"

Incredible that a person could simply say "how much" and not worry about the amount effectively bankrupting them. I could say any number, but I figure I should keep it close enough to the actual price that she won't realize that I'm gouging her. "Two fifty."

"Fine." The fat stack of cash in her hands is obscene. As she's filling my open palm with crisp twenty‑dollar bills, she assesses me again, taking in the dusty work polo, sweeping her gaze down my wrinkled, ill‑ fitting jeans, which house a fair amount of hip but sadly not all that much ass. I suddenly remember the Wite‑Out Darcy put in my hair. I must look like a skunk.

"Aquarium Select III?" she asks. "What's that?"

"Oh." I hold out my shirt and look down at the embroidered logo.

It's gone fuzzy from repeated washings. "That's where I work."

I can see that she regrets ever letting me touch her. I'm not a kinky, horny clown, fucking her in a bathroom. I'm a random dirtbag who works part‑time at an aquarium shop for only slightly better than minimum wage. She stares forlornly at my face: my slender blade of a nose, my dark eyes with their even darker circles beneath them, my thin slash of a mouth with the barely‑there chapped lips. She's judged me, and the verdict is in: nothing all that great.

"You've got some white shit in your hair." She slips the last bill into my hand. "Thought you should know."

Excerpted from Stop Me If You've Heard This One by Kristen Arnett. Copyright © 2025 by Kristen Arnett. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.