Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block Page A

pounceably beautiful boyfriend who I take pictures of and write songs about.”
    “Yes.”
    “It might be even hard for him to be made into stuff by me until he starts making stuff of his own.”
    “Yes.”
    I take the strip of photos out of my pocket and try to look into Angel Juan’s eyes behind the sunglasses.
    While I’m standing in front of the pedestal boy looking at Angel Juan I hear something behind me.
    “Do you wish that you could turn him into stone? Make him a mummy? Keep his heart in a jar?”
    Another talking statue? But this time the voice makes me feel cold like marble. I turn around.
    No statue but that man—the one in the white coat, the one from the park.
    He slithers behind a wall painted with flower garlands and demon masks.
    I run after him.
    “Witch Baby!” Charlie calls.
    I don’t stop. My footsteps echo through the rooms. The blank eyeless marble eyes are all around.
    But when I get to the lobby the man is gone and I am still marble-slab cold.
     
    “Who was that ghoulie guy?” I ask the Bat Man back at the apartment.
    “I don’t know,” he says. “But you shouldn’t go chasing after that kind of people. Maybe you should take some pictures.”
    “Of what. Of you?”
    “I’m not very photogenic. You’re going to take pictures of you.”
    “What?”
    “Look in the trunk.”
    I jiggle the lock and the leather trunk opens right up. I choke on stink-a-rama mothballs and dust.
    Inside is a bunch of stuff. Clothes. Wigs. Masks. I figure either Charlie got off dressing up weird when he was alive or they were for his plays. Either way the trunk is filled with stuff to make me into all my dreams and all my nightmares.
    I turn into Nefertiti in a gold paper headdress and collar with cool kohl eyes and a pout of my lips.
    I wear a curly blonde wig, a wreath of plastic leaves and a toga sheet and do a Greek-dude-statueon-a-pedestal thing.
    I keep on the wig and attach the magpie-market wings to my back for a Cupid look holding a rickety bow and arrow from the trunk.
    I put my hair in a topknot and wear an old silk kimono and be Buddha cross-legged and meditating.
    I find a really ugster monster rubber monster mask. I don’t even want to touch it. It looks like some leper-monster’s shed skin all shreddy at the edges. Just like the one Charlie had in Brooklyn. But I put that on too and take a picture of my face with the eyesstaring out of two holes gouged in the rubber.
    I slick back my hair, put on my dark glasses, bandana, hooded sweatshirt, leather jacket, Levi’s and chunky shoes.
    Me as Angel Juan.
    Click. Click. Click.
    I stay up all night. The sky is starting to get pale.
    The black top hat that Charlie was wearing when we first met is in the trunk too and I put that on with a black tuxedo jacket, dark eyeliner circles under my eyes: the ghost of Charlie Bat.
    “Do I look like you, Charlie?”
    “You are a lot like me, especially the way I used to be. Even without the costume. You’re more like me than Weetzie and Cherokee. I think you are my real blood granddaughter.”
    I wonder if he knows how slink that makes me feel. How I feel warm for the first time since I’ve been in this city, I mean really warm. From the inside out.
    I hear his crackly voice. “We both believe in monsters. But all the ghosts and demons are you. And all the angels and genies are you. All the kings, queens,Buddhas, beautiful boys. Inside you. No one can take them away.”
    “So then that means nobody can take you away from Weetzie and me even though you’re—”
    “Yes, I guess you’re right.”
    Why doesn’t he let me finish?
    “You should get some sleep now,” he says.
    Suddenly I’m so tired. I collapse onto the carpet with all the costumes all around me.
    Dear Angel Juan,
    I dream about you for the first time since you left. You are wearing the magpie-market angel wings and standing on a street corner playing your guitar, singing for a crowd of people. You look so happy and free.
    But