The House of Impossible Beauties

by Joseph Cassara

  Time passed not in minutes, but in drinks and the men who bought them for her. The Long Island from the club kid in the green spandex bodysuit, the Manhattan from the daddy in the blazer, the Bloody Mary (really?—it was one in the morning) from the muscular Italian guy with the gold-chain crucifix that he told her was for bumping coke straight from the baggie.

  When she was drunk enough to feel everything spinning, she leaned her head back. The dome ceiling was designed like a fucking planetarium. There was a chandelier of sorts with dozens of multicolored lights projecting stars onto the dome in a dizzying jodienda. Angel could feel the booze tingling in her brain and buzzing with each pulse of her heart to the tips of her toes. Her chin, she was sure of it, was numb.

  She turned around to search for Jaime, but everyone looked the same. Each man, almost identical to the last, with the exception of his outfit. She looked out again, through the sea of muscled bodies gleaming with sweat, and there he was, twirling around in his white tank and black jeans. But who the hell was next to him? Jaime was dancing with some boy dressed in a white toga. The garb was clipped together at the shoulder with a golden olive-branch brooch. Angel took the celery stalk garnish out of the plastic cup and took a mean bite. She lit a cigarette and threw the Bloody Mary down to the floor. The liquid splashed at her ankles.

  Smoking with one hand, chewing celery with la otra, she walked up to White Toga Bitch, finished eating the celery, and placed her free hand on Jaime’s crotch. And she squeezed. Squeezed like his balls were an orange and she was making Sunday morning juice, fresh for church. “Who is this?” Angel said to Jaime, but White Toga Bitch beat Jaime to it.

  “Who the fuck are you?” White Toga Bitch screamed above the music.

  “What?” Angel screamed back. “Who the fuck are you? You’re dancing with my man, girlfriend.”

  “And what are you gonna do about it?”

  Angel thought about ripping the olive branch out, for starters, so that the toga would fall to the floor and he’d be left standing there naked. How dare he take that tone with her when she was only asking a question.

  White Toga put a hand on Angel’s shoulder to push her out of the way, but they were both too drunk for the fight to trip them up.

  “Get your hand off me,” Angel said. “Or I’ll burn you.”

  “Oh, you’re gonna burn me?” White Toga said, unbelieving.

  Of course Angel didn’t mean it in a figurative sense. She wasn’t going to burn him with words, or dish out a piece of shade so dim it would melt the tears out of his eyes. Oh no. Angel was going to leave a literal mark. She was drunk, sure, but she was also learning how to be ferocious.

  “I’m not gonna ask you again,” Angel projected so that the music wouldn’t hold back her words. She watched as Jaime watched them, just standing there. And with that, Angel took the tip of her cigarette and dug it into White Toga’s arm, on the inside-side of the elbow, where a heroin addict would shoot up. Most sensitive area of the arm. That’s why she picked it.

  “You fucking bitch,” White Toga said, holding rage. “You fucking burned me.”

  “You sound surprised,” Angel said.

  “Fine, bitch,” he screamed. “You can have his skanky ass.” He snapped twice in her face, twirled around, and walked away.

  “Damn,” Jaime said. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Like hell you didn’t,” she said. “And don’t pull that shit on me again. I don’t need to see you macking it up with other people.”

  He pulled her close and rubbed his hard dick against her leg. “You turn me on with your feisty spitfire.”

  Ah, Jaime.

  Jaime, with eyes that could melt the pyramids. Jaime, lean muscle fit perfectly in a leather jacket, as if he were the Puerto Rican James Dean. Jaime, the model on The Saint poster—his head thrust back as if in mid-orgasm, with rays of painted rainbows shooting upward. She placed her other hand around his back and on his shoulder blade and pulled him in, and even though she knew that he was a malcriado, a sinvergüenza, an up-to-no-good puto, she didn’t care because as the coke and the drinks and the lights swirled around within her, she pressed her body up against his, trying her best to silently communicate everything that she desired.

  * * *

  If sex was a language, then Jaime knew all the letters, all the words. The next three months she spent in and out of Jaime’s bed, in and out of the claw-foot bathtub in the middle of his kitchen. He would make her huevos estrellados as she smoked cigarette after cigarette in the bubble bath, saying, “I’d like to kiss ya, but I just washed ma hair.”

  She absorbed his sex. All it took was his hand on the inside of her thigh, or a serving of bedroom eyes at the right moment from across the bar, and she was his. And it was good. He taught her how to untwist a bottle of poppers with one hand. He held her other arm against her back as he fucked her. She huffed the poppers until she could feel her face flushing red, begging for him to go harder or deeper.

  One day at the end of May, the birds that lived inside Jaime’s AC unit were chirping. It sounded like they were trapped and screaming to be freed. She was starting to get the feeling that Jaime wasn’t much of a bargain. He was conceited and thoughtless and messy. But it was a problem, of course, because she could tell that Jaime was falling for her—the sex had gone from Intensity So Rough She Couldn’t Sit For A Day to Intensity Cariñoso Como La Flor. It wasn’t that this set her off, but that she had come to view any trace amount of gentleness with distrust. After all, she thought, what was it that he wanted from her other than sex? She couldn’t wrap her mind around the possibility that anyone would want something more from her.

  She lay there next to him and wondered when he’d wake up so they could get the fucking over with and she could go home. She wondered how many side-boys he had. That is, if he had any.

  It had been three years since Angel had fallen in love for the first time. His name was Kevin and he had lived in the same building as Angel before going off to UCLA on a soccer scholarship—one of the only boys in their building who was lucky enough to get out of state for college, or rather, to go to college at all. Angel was thirteen then. Kevin was on the verge of eighteen, had leg muscles harder than ripe aguacates, and was painfully straight. That didn’t stop Kevin from inviting Angel over to the apartment when his parents were out of town every other weekend. He poured the rum out of the plastic handle and mixed it with whatever they had at their grasp—jugo de naranja, Sprite, that coconut soda that was so sweet it burned the roof of Angel’s mouth.

  He fucked her slowly because he said he didn’t want to cum too quickly. He was gentle but he kept his eyes closed. When he turned her over, she put her hand on his cheek and said, “Don’t you wanna see me?”

  “Shh,” he said.

  When he came, he told Angel to bite his nipple hard enough to make him feel, but not hard enough to draw blood. He pressed the back of her head into his chest and said, “I love you, Ana. Don’t ever leave me.”

  And who the hell was Ana?! Angel had no idea, but she played along because that was easier than bringing it up. Angel’s worst fear was that Ana was some girl at the high school who had left him. The loca—who would ever leave a boy like him? So Angel thought that she could be Ana if that was what Kevin wanted. If Kevin wanted to fuck Angel facedown so that her boy parts weren’t showing, if Kevin wanted to close his eyes when he came and dream of a blonde girl with long flowy hair and nails that could scratch his back, then that was what Kevin wanted.

  When Kevin left, he promised to write, he promised to call, but then nada. More silent than a fly in outer fucking space. She vowed she’d never open herself again. She smoked a cigarette and stared at her body in the mirror, wondering what it was that Kevin didn’t find good enough. She cocked her head like Bette and said to her reflection, “I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.”

  Jaime was still asleep and his arm was holding her down, close to his bo
dy. She slipped out from under his grasp and went to the cocina. She took out two eggs from the nevera and set a pot to boil. Her plan was to wait until they were perfectly hard-boiled. She would eat breakfast, then she would walk out of the door for good.

  She could hear his snores from where she stood, as if someone were strangling him in his dream and he was struggling his best to fight for air. It never bothered her while she was in bed with him (when she was out, she was out cold) but listening was a different story.

  When the eggs were done, she cooled them down under running water and cracked the outer shell off. She popped them into her mouth, looked around the apartment, and thought, What a dump.

  She slipped on her heels and walked out the door to face the sunlight for the first time in lady clothes. Now she was a woman, she thought, as she walked out the door and up Avenue A in search of the nearest uptown bus. Now she was a woman, because now she had learned to muster up the courage to walk out that door for the first time in her life.

  * * *

  When she was outside her building, she called the apartment from a pay phone and Miguel picked up. She told him to meet her in the hallway, just outside the elevator, and when they were finally face-to-face, Miguel gave her a look like, oh shit.

  Angel was still wearing the dress from the night before. Her hair was frizzy with sex, and she bet that she probably still smelled like Jaime—the whiskey and Camels and lavender incense that clouded his apartment.

  “Shit,” Miguel said. “You walk here like that?”

  “What do you think?” Angel said. “Course I did.”

  “Damn lucky nobody beat the shit out of you.”

  “What you think Mami’s gonna say?”

  “Shit, pues no sé,” Miguel said. “Damn, Angel. Gonna get yourself killed. Whatchoo thinking?”

  “Hasn’t happened yet,” Angel said, “so I dunno what to say to you.”

  “Yet? Whatchoo think—she’s been drinking like always,” Miguel said, moving his hand up like he was draining a bottle, neck back.

  When they entered the apartment, Angel tried her best to keep her head high like she was some Miss Universe runner-up, too proud to cry in front of the audience. Save the tears for when the doors are closed, she thought, just save them.

  “Ma,” Miguel said. “Don’t flip out, okay?”

  Y entonces, they just stood there, where the little hallway met the even smaller cocina, where their mother was preparing the tostones and the little dish of olive oil with mashed garlic chunks. Angel watched her as she looked at the silver dress, at the heels, at the hair mess atop her head. Mami’s face went sour. “Ay, m’ijo,” she said. “So that’s where you went? Go fucking change into your right clothes. I pay for you to have jeans and shirts and you go off and dress like a puta?”

  Mami placed the glass so gently on the counter that Angel could see the ice cubes sway, but couldn’t hear them clink together.

  Angel regretted every decision she had made in the last hour. She wished that she could turn back time, crawl back into bed, and stay with Jaime. She had no idea what kind of bullshit was spinning through her mind to make her think that she could walk out the door dressed like that, like a whore. And of course Mami was drinking. Angel could have smacked herself for thinking so selfish—for thinking that just because she had made the decision to walk the streets as a woman, that her mother would be ready to accept that decision right there with her.

  “You look like a no-class whore,” Mami said. So calm, like she was reading a time slot out of TV Guide.

  Angel walked to the bedroom to change. He put on a T-shirt and sweatpants and looked at the boy in the mirror. The word whore sliced through him. Maybe Mami was right. Maybe he did look like a whore.

  He glanced at the silver dress on the floor, as it lay there like a puddle of fabric, and began to cry. He looked at himself in the mirror again—at the face that was too fea to ever be beautiful without makeup or glitter, at the legs that were too flacas to be manly, at the hair that was growing out, but could never be long and luscious like a blonde swimsuit model. He stared at the reflection in the mirror and he saw a boy—a flaco little boy in sweatpants and a dirty T-shirt. He saw a boy who was now wearing his right clothes. He lay on the bed and cried into the pillow.

  “No llores,” Miguel said. “C’mon, wipe those tears.” Angel didn’t hear the door open or Miguel walk in. He didn’t know how long he’d been all alone. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Miguel said. “But you won’t look pretty if you’re crying all the time.”

  Angel looked up at him, at that goofy smirk on his face. She smacked the side of his arm gently. “You joking?” she said. “Don’t joke with me like that.”

  “Come on, Angel,” he said. “She’s drinking. She had a bad day.”

  “Means tonight’s only gonna get worse.”

  “Maybe, but that don’t mean you gotta be a bitch about it and cry. I got your back.”

  Angel had never loved her younger brother more than right then. She would come back to this moment years later, after everything that happened, and marvel at how knowing her brother had been. How understanding. How comfortable in his own body that he could still look at his older brother, who was dressed like a whore in a silver dress, and understand.

  “Be straight with me though,” Angel said. “You stoned right now?”

  “Nah,” Miguel said. “I’m out of stuff. Why? You want some?”

  “No, I don’t want some,” she said. “I want you to stop with that shit.”

  Miguel laughed. “Look, I got your back. If you wanna dress like a girl or whatever, that’s alright. But I love my weed and you gotta let me love what I love, okay?”

  * * *

  Angel was standing too close to the pan. Pops of oil jumped up and burned the skin on his arm. He lifted each flattened banana chunk out of the bowl, where they’d been marinating in olive oil and minced garlic, and placed them in the pan so they could sizzle like burning chunks of flesh. When they were crisped just right, he took a fork, stabbed each one, and placed them on a paper towel to soak the oil out. He loved tostones, the way they crunched in his mouth and then settled into their own mushy kind of sweetness. Another droplet of oil burned his arm and he squealed.

  “Mira,” Mami screamed, “you’re standing too close.” She grabbed his arm tight to pull him back and away from the stove. “You wanna get burned like that?”

  Mami was downing a glass of water now to sober up because Miguel had drained the rest of the rum bottle down the sink when Mami went to the bathroom. Angel looked in the glass and saw the cubes of ice were melting away into little shards of their former selves. Mami’s breath stank like a pack of cigs left to curl in a bottle of Don Q.

  “I’m fine, Mami,” Angel said.

  “Yeah,” Miguel said from the kitchen table, as if he were backup support. He was doing his algebra homework. “It’s no biggie. I get burned all the time when I make tostones.”

  “Oye, peanut gallery,” Mami shouted.

  “Why don’t you take a seat,” Miguel said.

  “I’m just telling him to move back so he doesn’t get burned.”

  “Whateva,” Miguel said.

  Angel admired the way that Miguel was good at algebra problems. There was a kind of beauty to it. One night, when Miguel was balancing an equation, he told Angel about something called equilibrium. He said that in order to solve a problem, you just had to make sure shit was balanced on both sides of the equal sign.

  He formed the plátano and moved it from the burning oil.

  “Así you’re just selling your culo down there with the maricones,” Mami said, “as if it was a pussy, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Ma!” Miguel said. “Stop it right now.”

  “¿Y qué?” Mami said, swirling her drink and taking another gentle sip as if it were a fine brandy. “You think I don’t know how it is? I wasn’t selling nada when I was young because your father was a good man—it’
s the truth.”

  Angel added another tostón to the pan and it sizzled as it hit the oil. “I wasn’t selling nothing, Ma,” Angel said.

  “Pues, I didn’t raise no mothafucking tonto, tampoco,” Mami said. “If you’re gonna do it, you better at least do it right and get paid, shiit.”

  “Ma, I said that’s enough,” Miguel said.

  “Cállate, Miguel,” Mami said. “No estoy preocupada por ti. At least you got the looks to get a nice girl. Pero that one over there?”

  Angel turned around and said as soft as the cotton fabric on her pillow, “Mami, por favor. You’re not being very nice.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Angel,” Mami said. “I didn’t raise you to be nice. The world ain’t nice. You think shit was nice when they pushed your father off this building?”

  Mami started drinking more heavily the summer that Papi fell off the roof of their building. When the cops had arrived, Mami had screamed, Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, which in the months and years afterward had changed to, You’ll never understand, my husband was such a good man.

  Angel was convinced that it was all her mother’s fault. That she had driven him off that roof with her misery. Miguel had said that he thought Papi was too sad to even think about any kind of life. Pero it was Mami who insisted that he had been pushed, and there were some days that Angel entertained the possibility that, just maybe, she was right.

  “Nobody pushed him,” Angel said. “He fucking jumped so that he could get away from your crazy ass.”

  Mami slapped Angel so hard, Angel had to catch her balance so she didn’t fall into the oil pan. “I am your mother,” she said. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that. You want to be a woman, then you better learn how it is, my son.”

  Miguel watched from the table. Angel gave him a look that said, I got this. “You know, Mami,” Angel said. “You’re totally right. Papi was a good man.”

  Mami held her head higher and closed her eyes. Her head moved like the bobblehead that Angel and Miguel had got at Yankee Stadium on Angel’s ninth birthday—all Papi’s idea. The best birthday gift Angel had ever got. Angel refused to believe what Miguel believed: that their father was too depressed to want to live, because then that would mean that Angel was part of the problem, o por lo menos, if Angel wasn’t part of the problem, she wasn’t part of the solution.