Necklace of Kisses Read online

  “Like you’re doing here?” Pan asked.

  “In a way. Not that I ever have had that much responsibility. I mean, I’ve had to take care of my mom, some, especially when my dad died. And I raised my kids. And Max, that’s my boyfriend, he’s been having a hard time since 9/11.”

  “Sounds like you’ve slayed a few vampires,” Pan said gently. He twisted a ring on his finger. It had a large purple stone.

  “What’s that?”

  “Amethyst. It means ‘against intoxication.’ “

  He stared at Weetzie. She could feel her face getting hot again. “All kinds?”

  “What?”

  “Does it protect you against all intoxicants or just drinking and drugs?”

  “Why?” he asked.

  She looked away from him and turned on the TV with the remote. “What other shows do you like?”

  “Six Feet Under. Sex and the City.”

  “I love you more,” Weetzie said lightly. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you gay?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Only gay men and girls have such good taste.”

  He shook his head and gave her one of his lascivious looks. It made her breasts buzz.

  “So why do you like those shows? Undertakers in Los Angeles and frustrated, fabulous female friends in Manolo Blahniks in New York.”

  “Laugh. Cry. Come.”

  “I guess it’s the same criteria in any relationship,” Weetzie said.

  “You did those things to me in your film,” said Pan.

  She held his bright gaze for a longer moment. He looked just like a Roman marble of a faun, Weetzie thought. Tilted, wide-spaced eyes, high cheekbones, small, flat nose, broad mouth, cleft chin. But his skin and hair were dark and his eyes so dark brown they were almost purple, like his ring. It was hard to see the pupil, but Weetzie thought it had a slightly vertical shape, like a goat’s. When he smiled, there was a gap between his smallish, very white front teeth. Weetzie remembered hearing that gap was supposed to be a sign of sensuality. She wondered if he still had those constant high school erections, but she didn’t dare glance down at his pants.

  “I want to make you laugh and cry and come,” he growled softly.

  “We can’t,” said Weetzie, moving away from him. She examined her manicure for flaws.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “I just can’t. Because of Max.” She stood up. “I don’t know what I’m doing even having you here. I was scared and you’re so cute. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded, bouncing his shiny black ringlets. His skin smelled of almonds. “I’ll go,” he said. “No worries.”

  She saw that outside the sky was whitening and there was dew trembling on the leaves. The air smelled faintly of smoke. She wanted to tell Pan to come back but he was already far away, down the path.

  Dirk McDonald, Boy Detective

  When Dirk got to Weetzie’s, Hilda Doolittle was sitting at the counter in the sunny front room, drinking an iced mocha latte with extra whipped cream and writing poetry in her journal. She wrote, “The God in You,” and then crossed it out and wrote it again. She looked up, saw Dirk standing there, and jumped, then adjusted her heavy black-framed glasses on her nose. Her boss’s best friend wouldn’t want to catch her slacking, especially with a name like Doolittle. There was a new shipment of good-as-new vintage punk T-shirts to sort through, and a couple of customers were drifting around the store.

  “Hey, Hilda. Have you heard from Weetzie?” Dirk asked. His face looked worried.

  “Nope. Ping’s been working with me. I think she might be away or something?”

  “Where’s Ping?”

  “She had a lunch date.”

  Just then, Ping Chong Jah-Love came walking in, swinging her lavender handbag and tottering on her platforms, like a child playing dress-up. She hugged Dirk and complimented him on his hair. It was cut very short, dyed black, and styled with lots of product, the way he always wore it now. Nothing adventuresome, like the Mohawks or rockabilly pompadours he used to sport, but he liked the attention anyway. She could still get away with fuchsia-tipped locks, he thought. Some women have that advantage over men.

  “I was just asking Hilda about Weetzie,” he said.

  Ping gestured for him to follow her into the back room.

  “I’m not supposed to tell anybody,” Ping said.

  Dirk couldn’t help feeling hurt. Suddenly he was anybody? He had always been Weetzie’s best friend, since they were practically just out of headgears. It was true that recently they hadn’t been as close. Actually, maybe it was longer than he thought, ever since Weetzie and Max had moved out of the house they all shared and back into the cottage. But still Dirk didn’t understand why she hadn’t come to him.

  It didn’t take much for Ping to figure out what he was thinking.

  “She had to tell me. Because of the shop. But she doesn’t want Max to find out.”

  “I won’t tell Max,” Dirk said. “She knows that.”

  Ping noticed the box of T-shirts that Hilda Doolittle had neglected, and began to take them out. She held up a Siouxsie and the Banshees. “I wonder if this one was mine,” she said.

  “I know none were mine,” said Dirk. “They were all ripped to shreds by 1985.”

  Feeling satisfied with their proven cool credentials, in spite of their age, they were able to return to their conversation.

  “I promised Weetzie,” Ping said.

  “You just saw her, didn’t you?”

  Ping ignored him and waved a Cramps T-shirt in the air. “I have to go chew Hilda out for not getting these done!”

  When she left, Dirk picked up the light purple faux-crocodile purse and opened it. He knew that Ping was a hopeless lady-who-lunched matchbox collector. And there it was, among the jumble of tropical-drink-garnish paper parasols, bubble gum wrappers, and exotic shades of lipstick—a gold matchbox from a certain well-known pink hotel. Dirk tossed it back in the purse and slipped out the rear of the store.

  Daughters

  Weetzie’s night with Pan lasted until the Wee Hour Snack time, and it felt as if the minute she finally closed her eyes, she had to scrape them open again to answer the telephone. At first she denied it—her ears must be ringing with fatigue, it was the neighbor’s phone, who would be calling at such an early hour?—but finally she realized it was not going to stop, and she groped for the receiver.

  The Blue Lady said politely, “Good morning. This is the front desk. You have some visitors in the lobby.”

  Weetzie reflexively pulled the sheets over her breasts as if she had been caught in bed with a lover. She thought she could still smell Pan’s almond scent on the bed linens. Who could her visitors be? Had Max found her? Her mother? Not that Brandy-Lynn would bother; she was too busy having her hair done and drinking her martinis. Whoever it was—Weetzie felt like one of the twelve dancing princesses caught, unable to attend her secret nightly ball. Was her adventure over so soon?

  Actually, it was more surprising than a visit from Brandy-Lynn or Max. The guests, Blue Lady said, had announced that they were Weetzie’s daughters.

  Weetzie dropped the phone without returning it to the cradle. She pulled on the white tank she had been wearing the night before. The white jeans had some soy sauce on them, so she wore the black trousers with the studded belt and stuffed her feet into the orange sneakers. She didn’t stop to wash her face or comb her hair.

  Cherokee and Witch Baby were sitting in the lobby. When they saw her, they stood up. Their features were motionless in their faces, making them both look like little angry dolls. They didn’t say anything.

  “What are you doing here?” Weetzie said. “You’re supposed to be at school.”

  “What are you doing here?” Cherokee snapped. “You’re supposed to be at home? With Dad?”

  Weetzie gestured for them to follow her out onto the terrace. It was a humid morning and she was nervous; in seconds, she was soaked with sweat. She felt like a ladyf
inger that had been dunked in rum, while her daughters were chilled cucumbers, ready to be sliced for tea sandwiches. Maybe it was something about the hotel that made her think this way. The jacaranda trees were shedding purple blossoms, there was a faint scent of rain in the leaves, waiters in crisp white shirts were spreading linen cloths on the wrought-iron tables. On the lawn below the terrace, a white tent was being set up for a wedding later that afternoon. Men in white jackets were running back and forth, carrying chairs, tables, ice sculptures in the shape of swans, and urns of peonies, lilies, and white roses. It was all so elegant and perfect; she didn’t want it to end.

  “I needed some time,” she said. “A little vacation. This is the first time I’ve done this in my whole life. Ever.”

  “But you didn’t tell Dad!” Cherokee yelped. “He called us the first day. He sounded terrible!”

  Weetzie wondered what terrible sounded like. She thought Max always sounded that way lately, but then maybe just when he spoke to her, not his babies.

  “How did you find out, anyway?” she asked. “I told Ping not to mention anything.”

  “Dirk told us,” said Cherokee. “And that is so adolescent of you! To not tell anyone.”

  “I needed some time alone,” Weetzie said again. She realized how feeble it sounded. “Why are you so angry at me?”

  Witch Baby spoke for the first time then. Her purple, tilted eyes flashed as brightly as the diamond stud in her nose. “Look at you,” she snarled. “How old are you? Look at your outfit.”

  That hit Weetzie below the studded belt. “Excuse me, Lily,” she said sharply. “Look at your outfit.”

  Witch Baby had on a white men’s tank top, low-slung black trousers cut off below the knee, a black belt with silver studs, and orange suede sneakers. She turned away and smoothed one hand over her newly shaven head.

  “And you got everything you have on out of my closet,” Weetzie said to Cherokee.

  Her other daughter shook out her long, blond braids. She was wearing a hot-pink satin slip over jeans and pale pink stilettos.

  “Not the jeans!” said Cherokee. “They’re Juicy Couture. And anyway, we’re young,” she added softly.

  “I may not be young, but I am a cool mom and you are lucky to have me,” said Weetzie. “And it is just mean for you to come here and talk to me about my fashion sense. It is just mean!”

  She turned away and looked out over the hotel grounds. The palms rustled and the flowers turned up their faces with the first tiny drops of rain. The water in the pool whispered as the drops hit. The birds were silent, and there were no blue butterflies in sight. Weetzie wondered if the rain would affect the wedding ceremony, what the bride was thinking as she put on her veil, if mud would splatter her dress.

  “I will come back when I’m ready,” Weetzie said. “You can tell your dad that I need this time. And you both need to get back to school.”

  “Fine. We will.”

  Weetzie wanted to call them back, ask them to stay for breakfast, a swim, spend the night, maybe. They could all cuddle in the big bed, eating chocolates and watching cartoons like they used to. But she knew they wouldn’t stay.

  She thought of Cherokee, at three, watching Weetzie put on the gold-lace coat from Grandma Fifi. “Mommy, you look like a princess.” Cherokee dressing up in Weetzie’s leopard-print silk slip, fur-trimmed cream-cashmere sweater, and gold mules. “I want to look just like you.” Witch Baby never said that. She was sad a lot of the time. But Weetzie knew that even her changeling daughter had wanted, in some ways, to be like her. And now they had looked at her so coolly, as if she were only monstrous in her orange sneakers.

  Witch Baby

  On the ride back to Berkeley, Witch Baby put down the convertible top of the black 1965 Mustang that had been her high school graduation present. Now that her head was shaved, she didn’t have to worry about the nest of snarls the wind would make in her hair. She played a mix tape Weetzie had given her when she moved out, and yelled the lyrics.

  “‘She had to leave…Los Angeles!’”

  City of people with plastic in their faces and bodies, plastic in their wallets, worshippers of plastic. She was glad to be going back to Berkeley but it made her sad, too. She lived in a co-op on the south side of the campus, near Telegraph Avenue, but she never talked to anyone there.

  I’m busy studying, she told herself. That’s why I don’t have friends.

  Her arms and back always ached from the huge anthropology books she lugged around, and her eyes stung from staying up all night, reading. Her stomach growled. She lived on huge glass goblets of coffee from her favorite café and mushuritos from the cart on campus—flour tortillas wrapped around shredded carrots and cabbage, bean sprouts, tofu, and plum sauce.

  I won’t be here forever, she told herself. This is just a weird rite of passage—college in America.

  It helped when she thought of it as a ritual. Shave your head. Don’t speak. Fast. Walk everywhere. Look straight ahead. Don’t smile. Read until your eyes fall out. Do not think about the boy you have loved forever.

  “‘She bought a clock on Hollywood Boulevard the day she left/It felt sad…’”

  She arrived in the late afternoon. The sun was filtering down through the trees along College Avenue. The air smelled of coffee beans and flower pollen. Fresh-faced students with tan, muscular legs walked along or rode their bikes. There was no one here she could call to join her for a stroll or a coffee.

  She saw a pretty young girl walking along with her mother. They were dressed almost exactly alike, in Lacoste shirts, cargo pants, and sandals, and they both had blond, blunt-cut hair. Witch Baby remembered how Weetzie had driven her up here when school started. They had eaten vegetarian curry at an Indian restaurant and bought jewelry and CDs on Telegraph. Witch Baby got her ear pierced again, right on the street, at the very top of the ear, through the cartilage.

  Weetzie said, “Are you sure this is what you want?” and Witch Baby thought she meant the earring but it was about Berkeley. The homeless in People’s Park, the tiny, dark room in the co-op.

  “You know you can always change your mind.”

  Witch Baby just shook her head and taped to the wall above her bed a newspaper clipping about a young man who had been kidnapped and murdered because he was trying to save rain forests in Latin America. Being here was her rite of passage.

  But sometimes she wished she had gone back with Weetzie. As much as Witch Baby told herself she hated Los Angeles, she had to admit that a part of her loved it. She loved the poisonous flowers that grew everywhere, how everyone just accepted their virulence because they were pretty. She loved what the smog did to the sky, the cruel pink streaks it made. She loved the wild animals that lived right there in the middle of the city. That was how she felt in Los Angeles, like a wild thing hiding in a canyon. Finding patches of Mexican evening primrose and creek beds and caves to hide in.

  There was something else Witch Baby loved about that city, though she didn’t want to admit it. It was still the place where her family lived.

  Weetzie didn’t seem to need to punish herself, Witch Baby thought. Weetzie was sad sometimes, but she knew how to enjoy life. She saw the colors in things. Somewhere deep inside, no matter how confused she was, Weetzie loved Weetzie. That was why she could leave Max and his newspapers and stay at the pink hotel. Watching soap operas and getting her nails done, Witch Baby thought huffily. But then again, that was what Weetzie wanted.

  And what did Witch Baby want?

  When she got back to her room in the co-op, she sat cross-legged on her bed and went through her mail. Her heart pounded the way it always did when she saw the postcard from Nepal.

  Niña Bruja,

  Here my eyes are so full of beauty and sadness. I need to stop traveling for a while. I am moving back to Los Angeles, where I can work for my dad. Will you be there? Can you move back? I think I have found what I was looking for.

  Angel Juan

  Three more years, Witc
h Baby told herself. Three more years and then maybe you will be ready, you will have passed the test, you will be able to be with him again. Three years of living inside the big books, eating mushuritos, finding more places to punch holes in your body.

  What was Angel Juan looking for? she wondered.

  What am I looking for?

  Cherokee

  Cherokee arrived back in Santa Barbara in the blue ‘65 Mustang, which had been her high school graduation present, just in time to shower and change clothes for her evening shift.

  It was a clear night. The sea fog hadn’t come in, and the lights of the city below the hotel were like little fallen stars. Could you wish on them? Cherokee wondered. Beyond them she could see the bay. As she served pumpkin bisque and lobster ravioli she thought about her mother dining alone at a restaurant like this. A middle-aged woman in a beautiful hotel, trying to figure out what she needed. Sipping her Chardonnay, dipping her roll in olive oil and basil, patting her lips with her napkin, noticing the lipstick stain. Leaving behind her home, her lover, her babies.

  But then we aren’t really babies anymore, are we? Cherokee thought, even though she still felt like one sometimes.

  After work, she decided to take a walk around the hotel grounds. She couldn’t stay long; she knew Raphael would worry. He was home now, in their little bougainvillea-covered adobe apartment on State Street, reading his philosophy books. He’d been at class when she got home; they hadn’t seen each other since she’d left for Los Angeles. She moistened her lips with her tongue, thinking of the way he tasted, his hard hands and sensitive fingerpads, the almost-girlish fullness of his mouth.

  The pool was down the hill in the middle of an expanse of lawn. Cherokee imagined what it would look like from above. Whenever she went on trips as a little girl, she liked to see the Southern California pools from the airplane. They cheered up the brown landscape of Los Angeles, little spots of blue. And this city was so much prettier than L.A. She loved the tiled terra-cotta roofs on all the Spanish-style buildings, the missions and parks and roses, the cute shops filled with bright, sexy clothes, the houses in the hills with their dense gardens, the expanse of beach at the edge of the town.