Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block Read Free Book Online

leather jacket and a red bandana around my head.
    “That sounds familiar.” The woman squints again, this time at the shine of sunlight on tinsel which is really Charlie. “He liked my grits.”
    Angel Juan’s card is in the pocket next to my heart. The part about the grits and how I eat like a kitten dipping my chin. “That’s him,” I say.
    “Well, a lot of people like my grits. If it was him he hasn’t been here for a few weeks.”
    She walks away. I wish I had on sunglasses. I cantell my eyes are turning darker, bruise-purple with tears I won’t let escape. It’s like all of a sudden Angel Juan is so close and more gone than ever.
    But the waitress stops and turns around. “There was one thing kind of strange.” She looks at me and shrugs like, This child talking to herself in my booth won’t mind strange. “He had leaves in his hair. I told him and he laughed and said it was ’cause he was living in the trees.”
    Living in the trees. “Come on, Charlie.”
    Outside.
    It’s overcast again. I look for trees where Angel Juan might be living but there aren’t too many around here.
    I skate past the Apollo Theatre and Charlie whistles for me to stop. I look into the glass of the ticket booth, Charlie reflected next to me. He takes off his top hat, rests it on his chest and bows his head.
    “I used to make pilgrimages here from Brooklyn when I was a little boy. I wanted to move in,” he says. “All the greatest of the greats played the Apollo. James Brown. Josephine Baker dressed up like a chandelier or a peacock. Weetzie’s mother was alwaysdressing up in things like that when I met her. And then Weetzie started with the feathers.”
    I look at the theater. I try to imagine the music steaming out and the people rushing in, the dancing, sweating, the lights like jewel rain glossy on everybody’s skin. But it just looks like a run-down theater to me. I wonder if Angel Juan saw the Apollo, if he felt sad or if he could imagine everything the way it was. Maybe he doesn’t need me around to see beauty the way I need him to see it.
    “Charlie, I need to go now.”
    Some little girls are sucking on pink sticky candy and playing hip-hop-hopscotch in front of the theater to the ghetto blaster blasty blast.
    “That might make a good picture,” Charlie says.
    I hold up my camera not really planning on taking anything. But through my lens I see they are mini flygirls with skin like a dark pony’s velvetness. They are doing the Running Man and Roger Rabbit, Robocop and Typewriter in the chalk squares. There is something so complete about them. Like they don’t need anything or anyone else in the world. I wish I felt like that.
    “Go ahead,” Charlie says.
    I take their picture and they give me dirty looks at first but then they start getting into it showing off their moves.
    “Hey,” they say. “Hey. Yo.” And I snap more and more hip hop-hopscotch shots. Sometimes I can see Charlie workin’ it in the background looking kind of gawky and funny and rhythmless trying to dance with them.
    “You going to make us famous?” one of the girls asks.
    “Maybe so,” I say.
    After a while they stop and stand around me. They’re as tall as I am. One stares at my hair.
    “You could have some white-girl dreads if you wanted,” she says. My hair is so tangled it does almost look like dreadlocks sometimes.
    “What are you doing up here?” another says.
    I’ve forgotten for a little while. It was so cool watching them. “I was looking for somebody.”
    “Can you dance?”
    I look down at my feet in the roller skates.
    “Any kid who can skate like you can dance,”Charlie says. “Come on, Witch Baby.”
    I give him a grumpy scowly scowl. But the girls are waiting with their arms crossed. I take off my skates, hand one of them my camera and hip-hop into the chalk squares while Neneh Cherry raps on the ghetto blaster. The girls jump around laughing. When I get to the end of the hopscotch I do it backwards. I