Beautiful Boys Page 8

  “Sit down,” he says. “What would you like?”

  “I’m okay,” I say. I don’t want to eat but all of a sudden my stomach starts making noises like I haven’t had food in it for weeks. Then I remember I really haven’t eaten anything except some rice cakes in a while.

  He smiles like Miss Shy Girl Thing. He goes behind the counter and takes off his gloves. I can see the blue veins in his hands. Then he starts scooping and mixing and whirring until he has made this amazing thick frosty snowy whipped-cream-topped vanilla milk shake. He puts it in a tall parfait glass, plops on one of those poison red candied cherries Weetzie won’t let us eat, sinks in a straw and sets it on the counter. Then he presses raw meat into a patty and slaps that onto the sizzling grill. I haven’t eaten a hamburger in a long time because no one at my house is into meat anymore but that meat smells pounceable. I feel dizzy. I skulk over to the milk shake on the counter and take a sip. You know those cold-headaches you get from eating ice cream too fast when you are a kid? That happens. But the sweet milkiness is like warm kisses at the same time so I just keep inhaling on that straw even with my head and chest frozen and hurting.

  The man finishes the hamburger, slides it onto a fat sourdough bun, adds lettuce and onions and a juicy slab of tomato, stabs the whole thing with a toothpick and sets it in front of me on a plate. I almost fall on top of it. I can taste the meat before my teeth plunge in.

  The man puts on the jukebox and it plays “Johnny Angel.” I am so drugged by my meaty hamburger that it takes me a while to realize that Johnny Angel and Angel Juan are the same song. Same name. The voice singing “Johnny Angel” seems to be laughing at me, the whole jukebox shaking with laughter like, Look at this crazy girl following some stranger into his diner trying to save her boyfriend who isn’t even her boyfriend anymore because of some weird creepster dream.

  This is how people die. This is how kids are murdered. This is how you lose your mind and then your body and maybe this is how you lose your soul. Johnny Angel.

  The man puts on a white waiter’s cap like the one Angel Juan is wearing in the window and he leans over the counter staring at me with his no-color eyes.

  “I am Cake,” the man says.

  He looks up at the neon-rimmed clock on the wall.

  “I’m late,” he says like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, putting his gloves back on. “Come on. I have something to show you.”

  I don’t know why I get up and go with him. But I keep thinking about my dream and the Angel Juan mannequin in the window.

  Cake kneels on the floor behind the counter and lifts up one of the tiles. There’s a dark staircase going down. Cake moves his hand for me to go first. Cake smiles and he looks like a guy in one of those sexy jeans ads but all bleached-out.

  I hear music coming from down below and I think I recognize it. It sounds like the tune to “Niña Bruja,” which is the song that Angel Juan wrote by himself when he was in Mexico. It has a kind of psychedelic sixties sound. I look up at Cake. Behind him, in the window of the diner, I can see the back of the Angel Juan mannequin’s head.

  Then I take off my roller skates and squeeze down through the trapdoor.

  Cake follows me but it is more like I am following him even though I go first.

  We walk down a few flights of stairs. Every once in a while there is a gold hand sticking out of the wall holding a neon candelabra with neon-tipped candles and you can see that the walls are red velvet but it is mostly pretty dark. I can still hear the music and I start to smell the sweet smoky smell, like what Cake is wearing only stronger and coming from ahead of us. I can feel Cake smiling behind me.

  When we get to the bottom of the stairs there’s a door. I can hear the music jamming louder now, making the door shudder but it isn’t Angel Juan’s song anymore. It still has a psychedelic sound though. Cake opens the door.

  Here’s this room with walls paneled in gold paint, mirrors and white velvet, white marble floors with red veins running through and huge red neon candles everywhere and all these kids sitting really still like statues. They are of all different races but they look kind of the same, I’m not sure why. They’re all in white. All their eyes are really big and their cheeks are sunken and the girls look like boys and the boys look like girls. Then I realize they are statues like the mannequin of Angel Juan upstairs in the diner, which seems so far away now. One of these mannequins is sitting on a big overstuffed red velvet thing shaped like a mushroom and he’s holding a long neon pipe. Real smoke is coming out of the pipe and filling the room and I wonder if the smoke is why I’m feeling drowsy. It smells like Cake. There’re these other mannequins sitting at a long table. On one end is this guy with a really big droopy red velvet top hat that covers his eyes and at the other end there’s this girl with white hair and buck teeth and in the middle of the table there’s this huge teacup about the size of a baby bed which is what it is I guess because there’s a baby mannequin sitting in it. Then there’s a dark-skinned boy curled up on the floor and grinning so big and hard it looks like it hurts him even if he is a mannequin, which he is. The whole thing is too much for me and I think how I can get out of here when Cake comes up and puts his gloved hand on my shoulder.

  “This is Cake’s real shakin’ palace,” he says. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Are you a runaway?”

  I shake my head. It’s hard to talk.

  He smiles, pressing his lips together and nodding like—right. “I see kids on the streets like you. It’s a crime the way they live. I feed them upstairs and then we come down here to play. They’re like my family.” He takes off his white coat. He is wearing a white double-breasted suit. “Will you dance with me?”

  Before I know it I’m letting him twirl me around. I feel like one of those ballerinas on music boxes going around and around like I can’t stop. My baseball cap flies off and my hair snakes out. I want to stop but Cake is still twirling me. Finally I fall against his white suit. I have a flash of dancing with Angel Juan at my birthday party once a long time ago. Feeling so safe inside those arms. Nothing could hurt.

  “Don’t be afraid, little lamb,” Cake whispers. Lamb. Angel Juan used to call me that. “You’re home now. Cake will take good care of you.”

  When I wake up I’m lying in the softest bed hung with white silk. I might be dead. Everything is so soft and quiet. The whole room is covered in white silk.

  I feel sore and muffled from my cold, which is a full-on flu by now. I try not to think about who put me in this bed. Then I remember Cake and the mannequin kids. I’ve got to get out of here.

  That’s when I hear the whistling. I have never loved that goofster song so much in my whole life. Whatever it means. “R-A-G-G M-O-P-P Rag Mop doodely-doo.”

  Charlie B., Chuck Bat, the Bat Man. The glowy glow is hovering like a hummingbird. I get up and reach for a huge heavy silver hand mirror by the bed.

  And there he is looking at me and waving his hands around all frantic.

  “What is it, Charlie?” I ask. “Are you okay?”

  He’s not okay. I mean even for a ghost. His eyes aren’t just sad. They’re like tormented. I think he wants to tell me something.

  “Do you want to tell me something?”

  He points at me, puts his finger to his lips, points to the door. Then he turns slowly in the mirror so his back is to me. Stuck to his back are the wings I bought on the street! He looks at me over his shoulder.

  “Angel?” I mouth.

  Charlie turns back around and points to his heart. Then he clasps his hands together. I think about the brother grip.

  “Angel Juan.”

  Charlie puts his finger to his lips again. I look toward the door. When I look back there’s an ugster monster in the mirror. It takes me a second to get that it’s Charlie wearing the rubber monster mask from the trunk. He takes it off and looks at me with those crazed eyes again.

  Charlie’s face in the mirror
starts to blur. Then he flies out of the mirror like a comet. Out the door. I follow him.

  We go down a maze of red-veined white marble hallways that seem like they don’t lead anywhere. We pass mannequins half dressed in silk flowers and vines, sitting on garden swings that swing back and forth from the ceiling. Blonde boy mannequins on skateboards balanced on marble ramps. A glittery girl with blonde cotton-candy hair and a wand like Glinda’s from The Wizard of Oz. A huge fish tank with mermaid mannequin children and tropical fish. A tall angel with a very young glowy face riding on a statue of a fish with plastic kids kneeling all around him. And somewhere, behind one of these doors we pass—my grandpa’s ghost and me trying to be that quiet—is Cake sleeping with his pale eyes open. I hope Cake is sleeping. And maybe behind one of the doors ahead is Angel Juan.

  I’m out of breath. I lean against the icy-veined marble wall and it makes my bones ache. I feel like I’m in a tomb. I wipe my forehead. My whole body is pounding with fever-fear.

  Charlie’s light is doing the nerve-jig so I keep following him through the maze and into a room made of mirrors. And there in the mirror, jiggling like a puppet made of light, like the plastic charm-bracelet skeletons, like a life-sized Day of the Dead doll, is Charlie. He waves his hands all excited, his face scrunched with worry, and I figure out he wants me to press on one of the mirror panels and it opens. Out of the mirror he turns into a light again and we go down a staircase. At the bottom is a metal chamber room. It’s so small and crowded with naked mannequins that I feel like I can’t breathe, like the mannequins are hogging up all the air. A mannequin falls against me, hitting me with its jointed plastic arm and I look at its face and I see that it is Angel Juan. He’s bald but it’s him. I try not to scream but I jump back and bump into another mannequin and that one is Angel Juan too. I start slamming around and they’re all falling on me and every single one has Angel’s face. This is a room full of Angel Juans. What does this Cake want? What is happening here?

  Then I notice the Charlie glow lighting up a corner of the room.

  I touch the silvery angel that sleeps in the hollow part of my neck.

  A boy is slumped against a wall with the mannequins all around him and a guitar with the Virgin Mary in a wreath of roses painted on it leaning against his chest. His hair is long and falling in his face and he looks like he hasn’t eaten much in a while but even though he’s changed a lot I know right away who he is. And it’s like I understand stuff all of a sudden.

  Dear Angel Juan,

  Do you know when they say soul-mates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. “Soul-mate wanted.” It doesn’t mean too much now. But soul-mates—think about it. When your soul—whatever that is anyway—something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape—when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to—even if you can’t be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul’s wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. It must be like all the weddings in the world—gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets, showers of roses. And after that happens you know—that’s it, this is it. But sometimes you have to let that person go. When you’re little, people, movies and fairy tales all tell you that one day you’re going to meet this person. So you keep waiting and it’s a lot harder than they make it sound. Then you meet and you think, okay, now we can just get on with it but you find out that sometimes your soul brother partner lover has other ideas about that. They want to go to New York and write their own songs or whatever. They feel like you don’t really love them but the idea of them, the dream you’ve had since you were a kid about a panther boy to carry you out of the forest of your fear or an angel to make love and celestial music with in the clouds or a genie twin to sleep with you inside a lamp. Which doesn’t mean they’re not the one. It just means you’ve got to do whatever you have to do for you alone. You’ve got to believe in your magic and face right up to the mean nasty part of yourself that wants to keep the one you love locked up in a place in you where no one else can touch them or even see them. Just the way when somebody you love dies you don’t stop loving them but you don’t lock up their souls inside you. You turn that love into something else, give it to somebody else. And sometimes in a weird way when you do that you get closer than ever to the person who died or the one your soul married.

  I run over and fall down next to him and put my arms around him and he looks up like his head is almost too heavy to lift and his jaw drops but he doesn’t say anything. He almost looks as blind as those mannequins himself. But his heart is beating and he’s not made of plastic and I have my arms around him. He is in my arms.

  Charlie-light starts doing his nervous dance like he wants us to hurry.

  I try to get Angel Juan to stand up but it’s like he’s too weak or something—he just slumps down again, his fingers catching in my sweater and bringing me down with him. I try to think of what to do but every time I see the plastic mannequin faces staring at me and the plastic smiles made from my boyfriend’s lips and teeth I just go blank. I just keep thinking over and over again, What is Cake trying to do? How could this be? How can anything I do save us from this kind of a ghoulie demon-thing?

  And then we hear something that sounds like glass shattering. For a second I think of how I smashed that mirror in Charlie Bat’s apartment and how stupid that was and that I’ll be lucky if I’m around long enough to get seven years of any kind of luck at all. And then before any of us can move, the Cake demon comes storming into the room, pushing over the mannequins. He has blood on his hand. Maybe he cut himself on the mirror he broke in the mirror room. The blood is so red against his white hand and dripping onto his white silk robe. It almost seems like he wouldn’t have red blood because he is so white. Like he’d have white icing coming out of him or something. But it’s blood. I just stare at it. Then I see that he’s holding something wrapped in a sheet and his blood is getting all over that too.

  “What are you doing down here?” he says in his very soft voice. “Who said you could come down here?” He is King Clutch Warthog.

  “I was just kickin’.”

  “Well, it’s all right,” Cake says. “I have something for you anyway.”

  He starts to unwrap the thing he’s carrying. I see that it’s another mannequin and it’s smaller than the Angel Juan mannequins. I see the back of its head and it reminds me of the time when I shaved off all my hair with my dad’s razor. Then I realize that the reason I’m thinking that is because this mannequin’s head looks exactly like the shape of my head without any hair. Cake spins the mannequin around and there’s me, Witch Baby—it’s my face with the pointed chin and the tilty eyes. I hold on tight to Angel Juan’s hand.

  “When?” I say.

  “I made her while you were sleeping. You’ve been sleeping for a few days. I’m going to put you inside of her.”

  “Why?” I say.

  “Do you know about mummies? It’s a little like that. I give you a place to sleep. All the children that I find. It’s like you are immortal.” Cake strokes the cheek of one of the Angel Juan mannequins. “Usually I just make one. But he is so beautiful. I just keep wanting to make more of him. Now I guess I’ll have to put you both away for good.” He looks at us with his pale-crystal eyes.

  He comes toward me and puts out his hand—the one that’s not bleeding. I want to go to him. I feel drowsy. I wish I had the globe lamp Weetzie gave me to ward off evil.

  But:

  Believe in your own magic, Weetzie said. Maybe my own magic gave me Charlie Bat.

  Look stuff right in the eye, Vixanne Wigg said. Look at your own darkness. Maybe Cake is that. Maybe Cake is me. The part that wants to keep An
gel Juan locked in my life.

  All the ghosts and demons are just you, Charlie said.

  Look stuff right in the eye.

  But I can’t look in Cake’s eyes. I’ll be under his spell. So I take my camera and look at him through that.

  My own magic. Maybe magic is just love. Maybe genies are what love would be if love walked and talked and lived in a lamp. The wishes might not come true the way you think they will, not everything will be perfect, but love will come because it always does, because why else would it exist and it will make everything hurt a little less. You just have to believe in yourself. Look your demons right in the eye. Set your Angel Juans free to do the same thing themselves.

  I snap a picture of creepster Cake with the last shot in my camera. There is a flash like lightning.

  My wishes are: my beloved Angel Juan is free, Charlie Bat finds peace, Cake becomes who he really is. These are my wishes.

  Cake starts to shake. He is a white blur. Then he gets very still.

  Angel Juan’s limp fingers wake up in my hand. “Niña Bruja,” he says. I look at him. We are both crying like babies. I feel my fever break into clean sweat. Angel Juan takes my hand and presses it to his lips. We put our arms around each other in our brother grip. And we watch Cake seal up inside himself, becoming a bleached plastic mannequin man without a breath or a heartbeat. He’s not any different from before really. This is who he really is.

  We can leave.

  Charlie’s light leads us out of the chamber, down the halls. Angel Juan doesn’t ask about the light that looks like it’s coming from an invisible flashlight. He leans against me, holding my hand.

  We get to the gold-and-white room with the mannequin smoking a pipe and the family having a tea party and the grinning boy. None of them will ever leave. They look so real that it seems like we could wake them and take them with us but I know if I shook one of them the only sound would be the clatter of bones against plastic. Angel Juan knows what I’m thinking. He holds my hand tighter as we go through the door that leads back to our life.