Beautiful Boys (11 page)

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.

It’s dark when Charlie, Angel Juan and I come up into the empty diner. The jukebox is still playing “Johnny Angel” like it never stopped. My dirty dishes are still on the counter. But the Angel mannequin isn’t in the window anymore.

I put on my skates. We go outside and it’s so cold that Angel Juan and I can see the ghosts of our breath on the air. We put our arms around each other in our perfect-fit brother grip. We stumble-shake-skate back to the apartment following Charlie’s light.

If Charlie’s building reminded me of a beat-up old
vaudeville guy when I first saw it, now I think all the rooms are like songs he still remembers in his head. And the best song is on the ninth floor in the Rag Mop room.

There is a note on the door.

We go in. Charlie flies right over to his trunk and slips inside.

I look in the cupboards and the refrigerator. Mallard and Meadows filled them with food—apples, oranges, scones, bagels, oatmeal, raisins, almond butter, strawberry jam, tea and honey. Angel Juan and I
chomp-down lap-up almost everything and fall onto the Persian carpet wrapped in each other like blankets.

“Thank you, Niña Bruja,” he whispers, taking me in his arms. “You set me free, Miss Genie.”

His eyelids flicker closed and I can hear his breathing getting deeper. I get up and go over to the trunk.

“Come on, Charles,” I say.

I look into the mirror pieces. “Grandpa Bat?”

Slowly, like when ripply water in a pool gets still so you can see yourself, his face floats up out of the murky murk of the mirror.

“I’ll miss you, Witch Baby.” His voice fortune-cookie crackles, old-movie pops.

“You can come back with me to L.A. Weetzie would rock.”

“I can’t.”

“Well then I’ll visit you.”

“No. I’m going to leave now. I needed to finish some things and now I’m done.”

“Finish what?”

“I wanted to stay and meet you, little black lamb. And make sure you would be all right. I wanted to
help you but I messed up and really you helped me.”

“You didn’t mess anything up.”

“I didn’t help you find Angel Juan.”

“You helped me find me. You helped me rescue Angel Juan.”

“I guess I did. I did something right finally. Something besides Weetzie.”

“What did I do for you?”

“You made me see how I was—what is it you guys say—clutching? Onto Weetzie. Onto you so you couldn’t do what you had to do. Clutching on life.”

“How did I do that? I just hung out with you. You’re the one who showed me all around.”

“I saw you learning how to let go. And I have to remember I’m not alive anymore, honey.”

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“Take your pictures, play your drums. I should have kept writing my plays.”

“Don’t go away, Charlie.”

“Good-bye, Baby. Send my love to everyone. Especially Weetzie. I love you.”

“Charlie. Grandpa.”

But Charlie Bat smiles. It is strange and slow-mo.
Real peaceful like the Buddha. It seems like his eyes are smiling along with his mouth now for the first time, the pupils almost disappearing into a crinkle of lines, just shining out a little. He lifts his hand and waves it back and forth, long fingers leaving a trail of light. Then he disappears into the darkness like a candle blown out. The shiny restless whistling whirr of energy that was my grandfather ghost is quiet now. All I see in the mirror is a kind-of-small girl. Maybe she looks a little like an Egyptian queen.

I open the window and look out. Blast of cold air makes my snarl-ball hair stand up on my scalp. There are stars, electric light bulbs, candles, fireflies. There are a million flickers, glimmers, shimmers, flashes, sparkles, glows. None of them will sing “Rag Mop” to me. None of them will take me through the city. None of them will tell me that we have the same blood. But in all of them is some Charlie Bat.

“Good-bye, Grandmaster Rag Mop Man,” I whisper, lying down to sleep next to Angel Juan.

It’s almost the next night when we wake up, shy like we’ve never touched each other before or something.

I get the rest of the food and we munch it sitting on the carpet talking about the things we’ve seen. Angels and fireflies, temples and flea markets. How I found his photo booth pictures and his lost postcard. We don’t talk about Cake though.

“I started playing my songs on the streets,” Angel Juan says. “People give me money.”

“Can I hear?”

And Angel Juan plays the song on his guitar.

In all the time we’ve made music together I have almost never heard his voice by itself without the rest of
our band. It’s a little scratchy and also sweet. I look at him and think, he’s not a little boy anymore. He can go into the world alone and sing by himself. I am so hypnotized that at first I don’t realize that the words are almost the same as the letter I wrote to him and never sent.

“How did you know?” I say when he is done. I am out of breath.

“What?”

“You just know me so much. How do you know me so much?”

He grins. “Do you like it?”

I don’t have to say anything. He can see in my face.

“Baby, I missed you,” he says.

“Do you need to stay in New York still?” I ask it looking right at him trying not to crampy-cram up inside.

He looks back into my eyes and nods. “I think so. A little while longer.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“It’s okay now. It’s over.”

It is.

“Maybe you could stay with me,” he says.

“I have to go back to school and everything.”

“Do you want me to go home with you?”

I look out the window. I think about Angel Juan playing his music down there in the streets. I think about the crowds rushing past. Some of the people stopping. Breathing in his music like air. Feeling it warm their skin and take them to places where it is green and gold and blue. Taking them into their dreams. Suddenly they can remember their dreams and walk through the city streets wearing their dreams. They turn into panthers, fireflies, trees, fields of sunflowers, oceans, avalanches, fireworks. It’s all because of Angel Juan and his guitar.

“No,” I say. “You stay. You can stay in Charlie’s apartment.”

“Niña…”

I put my finger to his lips. They press out firm and full and a little dry against the pad of my fingertip. I can feel my own lips buzz.

“I don’t think I should stay in your family’s place,” he says.

“Weetzie would want you to.”

“Only if you ask her.”

“Angel Juan,” I say, “I found your tree house.”

He looks at me, his eyes so sparkly-dark. “Niña,”
he says. “Only you could do that.”

“Were you with anybody else?” I ask.

“No, Baby. I thought about you all the time.”

“What about that thing you said about us being together just ’cause we’re scared of getting sick.”

“I’m so sorry I said that shit. It scared me that you were the only person I’ve ever loved like this.”

“Who was that man?”

“He was our fear,” says Angel Juan. “My fear of love and yours of being alone. But we don’t need him anymore.”

I feel the tight grainy cut-glass feeling in my throat and my eyes fill up. Crying for the mannequin children and how we had to learn.

“Don’t cry,” Angel Juan says, but it looks like he is too. “You’ll get tears in your ears. Don’t cry, my baby. You saved me.”

Then I feel Angel Juan’s lips on mine like all the sunsets and caresses and music and feasty-feasts I have ever known.

It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had. But it’s not the only good feeling. I kiss Angel Juan back with all the other good feelings I can find inside of me, all the
magic I have found.

When we go downstairs to see Mallard and Meadows it’s kind of late.

Mallard throws open the door letting out steamy, fresh-baked-bread-and-cinnamon-incense-air into the hall. “There you are,” he says. “Meadows, she’s fine.”

“This is Angel Juan,” I say as we come inside to the candlelit apartment lined with magic carpets.

Mallard and Meadows shake his hand. “Happy New Year,” they say.

Happy New Year? Angel Juan and I look at each other. When did that happen?

“We lost track of time,” I say.

“Well, it’s New Year’s,” says Meadows. He smiles. “And Christmas too.”

Mallard points to some packages. “They came for you in the mail.”

We sit on the carpet eating cranberry bread while I open my packages.

There’s film for my camera.

I take a picture of Mallard and Meadows on either side of Angel Juan in front of a wall with a magic carpet on it.

There’s also a big black cashmere sweater and warm socks that I make Angel Juan take for himself.

From Weetzie there’s a collage she made and put in a gold-leaf frame painted with pink and blue roses. The collage has pressed pansies, rose petals, glitter, lace, tiny pink plastic flamingos and babies, gold stars, tiny mirrors and hand-colored cutout photographs of my family. In the center there’s a picture of me and a picture of Charlie Bat goofing in his top hat and it looks like we’re holding hands. Something about our smoky eyes and skinny faces makes us look like a real grandfather and granddaughter.

There’s a letter from Weetzie too.

The other package is from Vixanne. I know right away but I don’t know how I know. I open it.

The girl is staring with slanted dark-violet eyes under feathery eyelashes. Her hair is black and shiny
with purple lights, every strand painted so you can almost feel it. Her neck and shoulders are bare and small painted with creamy paint and there is a hummingbird hanging around her throat. She’s in a jungle. Thick green vines and leaves. You can almost hear the sound of rushing water and feel the air all humid. On the girl’s left shoulder is a black cat with gold eyes. On her right shoulder is a white monkey with big teeth bared. The scary clutch monkey is playing with her hair. Perched on top of her head are butterflies with wings the color and almost shape of her eyes.

“It’s you,” says Angel Juan.

It’s weird because I guess it really does look like me but I didn’t recognize myself. The girl is strange and wild and beautiful.

I think about Charlie like the black cat and Cake like the white monkey and how they are both parts of me and about butterflies shedding the withery cocoons, the prisons they spun out of themselves, and opening up like flowers.

Angel Juan just puts his arms around me. Mallard pours all of us some sparkling apple cider.

“How was your ghost?” I ask.

“He’s fine now. His daughter and he just had to let each other go. She had to believe…”

“That he’s inside her?”

“In a way. You know, Lily, you might make a good ghost hunter someday.”

I just smile and we clink our glasses watching the tiny fountains of amber bubbles.

“Happy New Year.”

Outside the window is New York City with its subways and shining firefly towers, its genies and demons. It is waiting for Angel Juan to sing it to sleep.

I look at Angel Juan. My black cashmere cat, my hummingbird-love, my mirror, my Ferris wheel, King Tut, Buddha Babe, marble boy-god. Just my friend. I know I’ll be leaving him in the morning.