Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block Read Free Book Online Page A

Cherokee.”
    Charlie said: “Weetzie, I love you and Cherokee and…Well, I love you more than everything. But I can’t be in that city. Everything’s an illusion; that’s the whole thing about it—illusion, imitation, a mirage. Pagodas and palaces and skies, blondes and stars. It makes me too sad. It’s like having a good dream. You know you are going to wake up.”
    “Daddy,” Weetzie said. “Please come home.”
    “I love you more than everything,” Charlie said. “You and Cherokee and Brandy-Lynn still, too. But I can’t come back. It would hurt you.”
    So Weetzie and Cherokee had to leave New York. They left Charlie Bat standing at the airport in his trench coat. He was smiling, but his eyes were like dark corners.
     
    “Mom,” Weetzie said. “I am worried about Charlie.”
    Brandy-Lynn looked up from polishing her nails. “What is it? What’s he doing to himself?”
    “I think you should call him,” Weetzie said.
    “It makes me too sad,” said Brandy-Lynn.
     
    Charlie was dreaming of a city where everyone was always young and lit up like a movie, palm trees turned into tropical birds, Marilyn-blonde angels flew through the spotlight rays, the cars were the color of candied mints and filled with lovers making love as they drove down the streets paved with stars that had fallen from the sky. Charlie was dreaming of a giant poppy like a bed. He hadtaken some pills, and this time he didn’t wake up from his dream.
    Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Dirk and Duck and Cherokee and Witch Baby huddled on the pink bed and cried. Grief is not something you know if you grow up wearing feathers with a Charlie Chaplin boyfriend, a love-child papoose, a witch baby, a Dirk and a Duck, a Slinkster Dog, and a movie to dance in. You can feel sad and worse when your dad moves to another city, when an old lady dies, or when your boyfriend goes away. But grief is different. Weetzie’s heart cringed in her like a dying animal. It was as if someone had stuck a needle full of poison into her heart. She moved like a sleepwalker. She was the girl in the fairy tale sleeping in a prison of thorns and roses.
    “Wake up,” My Secret Agent Lover Man said, kissing her. But she was suffocated by roses that no one else saw—only their shadows showed on her lips and around her eyes.
    “Weetzie,” he said, kissing her mouth. “You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my ‘Hollywood in Miniature,’ my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up,” he said.
    Weetzie curled up in a little ball in the bed.
    “Weetzie,” he said, “your dad’s dead. But you aren’t, baby.”
    She put her arms around him and cried. Their clothesfell away like clothes in a dream—like a dream peels away when you wake up. Their bodies clung together like warriors fighting out the pain in each other.
    My Secret Agent Lover Man finally relaxed, his body becoming heavy with sleep. Weetzie held on to him.
    “Don’t sleep,” she said. “Don’t sleep. How can we sleep? Suddenly I felt what it is like to know I am not always going to be able to see you and touch you.”
    My Secret Agent Lover Man wrapped her in his pale warrior arms. The veins pulsed with blue peace like rivers that lead to a mountain lake. Weetzie shut her eyes finally, and the roses did not grow over her in the night. She dreamed that she and My Secret Agent Lover Man were holding hands and climbing a waterfall.
    Weetzie went to see Brandy-Lynn the next day.
    Brandy-Lynn was drinking vodka and lying on a chaise lounge by the pool. She wore curlers and she was getting very tan.
    “When I was a kid my mother brought me to Hollywood,” Brandy-Lynn said. “We lived at the Garden of Allah. She left me alone all day and I went around the pool with my cute little autograph book. It said ‘Autographs’ on the cover in gold. Clark Gable even signed it! Everyone