Necklace of Kisses Read online

  Shelley smiled again and dabbed her lips with the tip of her tongue.

  Weetzie realized she had not kissed anybody in a very long time. She wondered if you could forget how. She wondered how her kiss could possibly help Shelley.

  The mermaid’s lips tasted like salt water. As they pressed against Weetzie’s lips, she felt a surge engulfing her.

  She was under water, tangled in seaweed, swimming with schools of iridescent fish through dim, wet, deafening silence. A woman who resembled Shelley, but older, lay on a coral reef, weeping as she pried open oyster shells with her hands. Instead of legs, the woman’s torso sloped into the thick, scaly tail of a fish. Before she could go to the mermaid, Weetzie was lifted, up toward the surface. Her head felt as if it would burst with the pressure. Then she splashed into a bright twinkling and the cry of seagulls. There was a sharp hook of pain in her hips and groin and a splatter of blood. A thick arm and hand covered with white hair reached out.

  Weetzie heard Shelley gasp.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “What?” asked Sal eagerly. “What did she do?”

  Weetzie was going to say that she didn’t do anything; sometimes her kisses were just strange that way, they took her places. They took Max places, too, but she had never thought too much about it. The only other people she had ever kissed—really kissed—were her best friends, Dirk and Duck, when they all made love to try to have a baby. She was going to say something, at least to try to answer Shelley’s question, but didn’t—there was something hard and cool in her mouth. She spit it out into her hand—a large baroque pearl. Shelley saw and quickly closed Weetzie’s fingers over it.

  “Maybe you should go now,” she whispered.

  Weetzie was too astonished to do anything except get up, find her bag, mumble a quick good-bye, and leave.

  There was a delicate mist hanging over the gardens, just like on her prom night so long ago. She could smell the night-blooming jasmine, the gardenias, and hear the splash of fountains and the chirping crickets. Phosphorescent green lights, hidden in the foliage, illuminated the pathway that wound back to her room.

  A chill started at the nape of her neck and slid down her spine to just above the band of her underpants. It was cool now, but the chill wasn’t from that. There were footsteps behind her. Were there? She walked faster, without looking back, her stilettos ticking louder and louder as she went. She reached for her key inside the white leather purse and fitted it between her knuckles.

  When she got to her door, she was panting. Her hands shook as she jabbed the key at the lock. When she was inside, she switched on all the lights, bolted the door, and collapsed on the bed. Outside, the gardens were completely silent. Even the crickets and fountains held their breath.

  Silly, she told herself. This is probably the safest place you could be. The cleaning lady had come in to turn down the bed, leave fresh towels, and put a pink chocolate box on the pillow.

  But the creepy feeling lingered like the memory of fingers along Weetzie’s vertebrae.

  She untied the gold ribbons on the box and ate the chocolates. Then she fell asleep in her clothes, lights on, the mermaid’s pearl still clutched in her hand.

  Witch

  Max sat on the floor in Weetzie’s closet for a long time. He touched different items of clothing, remembering places they had gone and things she had said. The zippered leather jacket she wore when they rode his motorcycle to the pier for the first time was the color of the cotton candy they ate while they rode the carousel. “Think pink!” she had said. The sleeveless sweater covered with opalescent sequins and the cream-lace miniskirt she wore on his twenty-eighth birthday made her look like Marilyn to him. He could hear her singing “Happy Birthday” in a breathy imitation of her screen idol. Each memory made him want a cigarette. Finally he realized that if he didn’t do something, he would go straight to the liquor store, buy a pack, and spend the rest of the evening in a cloud of smoke and self-loathing.

  He hadn’t noticed that night had fallen while he was in the closet. He hadn’t eaten anything, but he wasn’t really hungry. If Weetzie were here, she would have said he’d better eat, because his stomach might not feel empty but his nerves were going to be as raw as sashimi in about a minute. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to even think about food. If he opened the refrigerator and saw a plate of her soy cheese green chile enchiladas covered with edible orange nasturtium blossoms, he knew he would lose it. And if he didn’t see something she had left for him…that would be even worse.

  He went outside and got on his motorcycle. He had no awareness of the air on his skin, or the scents in the wind. He could have been dressed from head to toe in black leather.

  Max drove past the Chinese Theater, where Weetzie used to go to worship Marilyn’s footprints in the cement. He looked up and saw the HOLLYWOOD sign, where he and Weetzie had hiked the night she tried to convince him to have a baby. Even then, he had been afraid of bringing a child into the world. As grateful as he was for Cherokee, and his witch baby, Lily, he knew that now he could never have been convinced. Not after the thing he saw on TV almost two years ago. Not after those people leaping out of the windows as the planes crashed through the two towers.

  He drove past the row of all-night Thai restaurants with their strings of Christmas lights and shrines decorated with fake flowers. He saw giant neon cocktails buzzing in the air; the club where Weetzie had forced him to swing-dance in a zoot suit during her rockabilly phase; the small white shop with neatly manicured hedges and rose bushes in front. He wished he could go inside and look at the dresses hanging there in the moonlight.

  He ended up at a tiny bar where he used to go with Weetzie for drinks now and then. On her thirtieth birthday, she had worn a leopard-print silk slip and go-go danced in a gold cage, but tonight no one was dancing. He ordered a whiskey as a reward for not buying cigarettes. It burned his mouth like gasoline, and he wondered what made him think he could take something so strong. All he drank now was an occasional beer.

  What if she comes and finds me? he thought to himself. What if she was just hiding, waiting to see how I’d react, whether I’d pass the test? She will come up to me and touch my arm and tell me that she just wanted to know that I would miss her if she left. Just like that time when Duck left Dirk and then they found each other in a bar in San Francisco. Magic was always happening.

  Someone touched his arm and he jumped. His heart slammed in his throat. He turned and saw a woman. She was about forty, slender, with short, blond hair. Even though he knew this wasn’t Weetzie, part of his brain, soaked in whiskey, kept trying to believe it was.

  “Max,” the woman said.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Oh, please. I haven’t changed that much, have I? Just the hair color. It’s a wig. But I knew you always preferred blondes, as gentlemen do.”

  He patted his pockets, reflexively, for a pack of cigarettes. He could feel the carcinogenic burn already.

  “Did she finally leave you?” the woman asked.

  His whole body tensed as if she had slapped him. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Oh, come on. I know it was ages ago, but still.”

  Of course he knew it was Vixanne. He just couldn’t really accept that he had run into her on this night, just when Weetzie was gone. That wasn’t the kind of magic he wanted. Vixanne didn’t look that much different from the night Max had slept with her. Her face was harder, though.

  “Leave me alone,” he said.

  “Then you do remember.”

  Max got up and pushed his way toward the door.

  He knew, without looking, that Vixanne Wigg was following him.

  Heaven

  Weetzie woke late in the morning, took a long, hot bath with a whole new bottle of bath gel that the cleaning lady had left by the freshly scrubbed tub, and shaved her legs and underarms, nicking her ankle with the razor. After she had dried off with the fresh towels and put a Band-Aid on the cut, she called
room service. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was three minutes past eleven.

  “Am I too late for breakfast?” she asked.

  “Look outside your door,” said Pan.

  She put on her robe and peeked out. It was hard to imagine that she had felt afraid here. The sun was making the hotel look pinker than ever, the jacaranda trees were filled with wild parrots. A red-haired woman in a black bikini, a black beaded choker, and high-heeled black sandals with three buckled ankle straps was walking along, holding the hand of her red-headed toddler, laughing.

  On Weetzie’s doorstep was a silver tray. She brought it inside and took off the heavy silver cover. There were slices of honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon, pineapple, mango; there were blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and grapes. There was also a huge oat-bran muffin as big as a cake, two perfectly poached eggs, oatmeal, freshly squeezed orange juice, and yellow tea roses in a vase.

  She picked up the receiver. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I hope it’s all right.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Well, enjoy.”

  Something was glowing in the light that streamed through the windows, and she saw it was the pearl from last night. She picked it up and held it to the window. It was heavy and cool. It looked like the real thing, although she knew more about rhinestones from the fifties than precious stones.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, thank you, I will.”

  “And may I recommend, there’s an amazing performer at the bar tonight. The early show isn’t so packed. Her name is Heaven.”

  “That sounds divine.”

  “Okay, enjoy.”

  He hung up and Weetzie ate her breakfast very slowly, closing her eyes to see if she could distinguish the tastes of the different fruits, rolling the berries on her tongue, comparing their size and tang. At home, she always rushed through everything. When her girls were babies, she had gotten into the habit of swallowing whole meals without chewing.

  After she’d eaten, she decided to call Ping and check on the store. Ping was her best friend and a designer, and Weetzie could never have opened the store without her help, let alone escape on an adventure. She also had the best hair in the world and could always make you feel good about yours.

  “Weetzie’s,” Ping sang into the receiver.

  “It’s me.”

  “Hi, honey-honey, how’s it going?”

  “Great. I’m having so much fun. I wish you could stay with me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “You could come for lunch tomorrow.”

  “That sounds good. Hey, we sold the Chanel.”

  “You’re kidding, that’s great.”

  “And the silver Peter Fox platforms.”

  “Cool. Of course, now I want the Chanel.”

  “You always do.”

  They laughed. Then Weetzie said, “Has he called?”

  “Of course,” Ping said. “He called first thing. He keeps bugging me to tell him where you are.”

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not, girlfriend. But he sounds pretty desperate.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Weetzie said.

  “You asked me. Anyway, we’ve got a customer and Hilda’s daydreaming again. I’ll come tomorrow?”

  “Meet me at the front desk. We’ll have lunch by the pool.”

  They blew kisses at each other and hung up. Desperate, Weetzie thought, that wasn’t what she’d expected. Depressed, maybe, but he hadn’t felt desperately about her in years.

  She noticed that while she was talking to Ping, she had received a message on her cell phone, though she hadn’t heard it ring. For a moment she thought, Max! She had almost left the cell at home so she wouldn’t have to go through this. But when she listened to the message, a voice she did not recognize, and whose gender she could not determine, said, “Where are you? Please come home. We’re all so worried. Please come home.” Weetzie shivered in the warm air, though she didn’t know why.

  She put on her bathing suit and sunscreen and went to sit at the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the water. No one was there except the woman in the black bikini and her son. They were splashing around, giggling uncontrollably. The woman had green eyes and the reddest hair Weetzie had ever seen. Her son kept reaching up to tug on it. He had a sweet, impish face and a very small, fragile-looking body.

  Weetzie remembered how happy she had been when her children were that age. She called them her little vampires, sucking her dry, and she was almost always tired, but there was something wonderful about being needed that much. Sometimes she discovered cuts and bruises on her body that she had no recollection of getting; her own pain was insignificant then. Being a mother could make you brave out of necessity. Now she was acutely aware of the tiny razor cut on her ankle, how the chlorine from the pool made it sting.

  What if I had a baby now? Weetzie thought. But it would have to be an immaculate conception; Max would never agree to it.

  When the woman and her son left, Weetzie dove into the water. She came up through the spangled blue, remembering the mermaid’s kiss. She wondered if Max felt the things she did when she kissed him. They had never really talked about it. After they had watched those exploding twin buildings, he never pressed his lips to hers. Maybe he was afraid that even her love could not erase those images, even for a moment. Maybe he did not want to find out that this was true.

  Weetzie went back to her room and fell asleep. When she woke, it was evening. The soft, warm light stretched across the room like a tabby cat. Weetzie stretched with it, wiggling her toes until she shivered with pleasure. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken an afternoon nap followed by a long stretch. She realized that she hadn’t eaten much, but she wasn’t really hungry after her raw-fish binge.

  Then she heard the frozen Milky Way singing to her. It had a voice like Barry White. Not that it was something she normally ate, but she was on vacation! How often was there a chocolate candy bar sitting in your freezer calling your name with sexy soul?

  Weetzie ate it very slowly, washed it down with a bottle of Perrier on the ice she’d collected from the ice machine in the silver bucket, and went to the closet, trying to decide what to wear. Emilia needed to be washed, because somewhere during the course of the previous night someone had spilled beer on her. Nothing else seemed quite appropriate. Weetzie wondered if she really had underpacked. It was a great source of pride to her that she always took just the right amount of things. You had to think like Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly—elegant and intelligent but with a punk edge, of course. You had to ask yourself: what would Audrey do?

  Just then there was a knock.

  “Housekeeping.”

  Weetzie opened the door and looked out into the hallway. There was a cart but no sign of the cleaning lady.

  “Excuse me, missus. The ‘Do Not Disturb’ wasn’t up,” a voice said.

  Weetzie noticed a large feather duster floating in the air beside the cart, moving of its own accord. She jumped back.

  “What?”

  “I’ll come back,” said the voice.

  Weetzie stared as the cart wheeled away by itself down the empty hallway.

  She went back inside and washed her hair, putting together outfits in her head to distract her from the mystery of the invisible cleaning lady. It was just too much for her at the moment. When she got out of the shower, she put on the white satin trench over her bra and panties and belted it with the studded belt she used to wear to punk gigs twenty years ago, added her stilettos and white bag—she was set. For Heaven, she thought. And it was heavenly that she didn’t have to leave the grounds of the pink hotel to swim with sushi-eating mermaids and hear a diva sing in a small glass building with a domed ceiling that lit up like the planetarium.

  The stars on the ceiling were twinkling, and a deep, thrilling voice full of sadness and tenderness rose up. A spotlight found a slender figure in a long white satin dress.<
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  Heaven’s face was like a melancholy porcelain mask. Later, Weetzie would try to remember what Heaven sang, but she only had a vague impression of ballads that seemed to tell her own story. There were songs about finding your real family, even when it’s not the family you are born into. Finding your family and holding hands with them and flying off into pink skies, touching down in the dark world and then joining hands and flying off again. Only people who find their true families can survive, the songs said. By the end of the show, Weetzie had cried so many tears into her ginger ale that it tasted of quinine.

  She stayed sitting at her table, unable to move. Her legs were weak and her chest was still thudding under the satin. She felt as if her heart might fall out and roll away if she stood up too quickly.

  Just then, a voice said, “May I join you?”

  It was Heaven.

  Weetzie just nodded. She couldn’t speak for a while. At last she said, “Thank you.”

  Heaven grinned. “You looked like you were enjoying it. Or hating it so much you had to weep, but I thought I’d take a chance.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Weetzie. She usually chattered away when she felt like this. But then she’d never really felt like this before.

  “You don’t need to,” Heaven said. “Your face says it all.”

  Weetzie asked, “Do you know me?” and Heaven answered, “I’m not doing my job if I don’t make you think so.”

  “But the details…”

  “Honey, the details are everything, right? You know that. A ginger ale on ice. It’s really good if you put sushi ginger in the glass. A white trench belted with a studded punk number. I mean, look at the rhinestones on your toenails.”

  Weetzie said, “When did you see my toenails?” She slid her leg out from under the table and displayed the jewel flower on her big toe.

  Heaven shrugged. “Listen,” she said. “I’m having a little party in my room later. Say about midnight. I’m in the Cherub Suite.” She blew Weetzie a kiss and was off in a hush of satin.