The House of Impossible Beauties

by Joseph Cassara

  But he was silent as he grabbed the knife and held the lettuce in place. He cut off some bits and ate them. They tasted like—well, they tasted like lettuce. And what the hell was the taste of lettuce other than crunchy water? He was so hungry, he could’ve cried.

  The next day, when he told Nonna what he had done, she flipped her shit. “No grandson of mine eats dog food,” she screamed.

  She screamed and screamed, but Thomas thought that she just wasn’t understanding what his options were in the moment. All he had had was the dog food. He was hungry. He had gotten down on all fours and eaten Eva’s bowl of food. It was the slimiest meat sludge he had ever tasted, and he gagged the entire time. He had to stop breathing through his nose because if he didn’t, he was sure he’d throw it all up.

  “Do you hear this, Isabella?” Nonna screamed from the kitchen to his mother who was absent in the other room. “That dog didn’t feed Thomas proper.”

  “What do you want from me?” his mother pleaded. “I didn’t know neither.”

  “Porco dio,” Nonna said. “That man.”

  “I’ve almost got him,” his mother said. “He’s so close to leaving her.”

  “Ah, cagacazzo, and you still want him after this. Just take a nail and crucify your mother to the cross right now.”

  “No, mom,” Thomas said. “He’s not married. It’s all a giant lie.”

  Both of them stared at him. Nonna threw her hands up. It was her usual motion, a silent way of saying: You See, This Proves I’m Always Right.

  “You lying bitch,” his mother said. Thomas was expecting a slap across his face, but nothing came. She couldn’t even touch him in that moment, she was total stone. “You think you know my man? Tell me how can that be, Thomas, when you’re not much of a man yourself?”

  * * *

  His mother almost had him, is that what she had said? As if a person were a thing that could be had. Thomas wondered why his mother didn’t feel the same way about him. If a man were something that could be had, couldn’t a son also be something to be treasured? But he knew the answer to that question. He was young, but he wasn’t stupid. He wanted to scream at her, But I came out of your body! I was a part of you! But he knew. He had figured it out years earlier, when Sal and the bad boys had asked him where his father was. He told them he didn’t know and Thomas could still see the way Sal’s mouth had moved with disgust. That’s because you were a mistake.

  Thomas couldn’t deny it. He was a mistake. His mother had been so young and Nonna, when asked, told him that his father was a married man from Puerto Rico who was just on vacation and his mother had made a mistake, but that didn’t mean Thomas was a mistake, she said, because she loved him and did he know that?

  But Nonna’s explanation didn’t sit well with him. The more he thought about it, the more it became obvious to him: a person like Thomas could be a mistake, and a person like Antonio could be had.

  Years later, Venus would come to realize that her mother was just so young. She began to understand, though Venus was young herself, what that could mean—to just be so young, too young. What was it with their fixation with married men? As if the universe was telling them, You cannot have this, and so they wanted it even more.

  Venus would later think that her mother was just the type of person who fell hard, who took her desire and translated it into a sense of conquest. Like love’s force of gravity just hit that heart one notch too strong. And her mother loved even harder when she knew that the kind of love she wanted was the kind she could never have. Antonio never left his wife. Of course he didn’t. If he even had one! And Venus would guess that his mother knew that was the case all along, but refused, for whatever reason, to face the music. What was a challenge, Venus thought, if it wasn’t impossible?

  And years later, Venus would look at herself in the mirror and think, Oh god, I am becoming her. I am becoming my mother. It was a thought that sent a cold pulse down to her toes. Venus would never fall for a man like Antonio, and she would never tolerate a man popping black eyes anywhere on her face. She would realize that, like her mother, she was the type of person who was so lonely, she would cling to men who didn’t deserve to be clung to, just because she was afraid that they would walk out on her. She was afraid that if those men walked out on her, the deepest secret of the universe would be revealed—not the precise number of rings around Saturn, or which order that huge mass of planets was set up in, but rather, that if they left her, it would confirm her biggest fear: that she was meant to be alone because no one loved her, and no one ever would.

  ANGEL

  Girlfriend didn’t want no trouble. She just wanted to get down, dance, dish that shade. She wanted to enter every room like the world was an episode of Dynasty and she was Joan Collins playing Alexis: she’d sling mud at any beauty-salon-motherfucka who tried to front. And that’s just how it was, take it or leave it.

  Years ago, she had to sneak out of her mother’s house—her other clothes in a Pathmark shopping bag that was so crumpled, the plastic looked soft. She took the 6 from Hunts Point down into the city, slipping a fresh skirt up over her jeans, dabbing on eyeliner and lip liner whenever the train stopped moving.

  “What are you?” a young moreno once asked her. “Some kinda maricón?”

  “What’s it matter to you?” she snapped at him. “I got nails that’ll rip the face off your head, so you better step it on back.”

  Now she carried around a can of PAM cooking spray for that exact reason—if she had to take someone on, she could do it with the speed it’d take to press her finger down on the nozzle. She knew the subway was a mean place, and an even meaner one for a twenty-year-old with her cojones tucked down to her taint. It took too much work to shave her pelitos down there to get it all looking passable, so she would be damned if someone tried to fuck with her.

  Her stomping grounds were the piers at the end of Christopher Street. A real pain in the ass to get to, because she had to transfer at Union Square, take the L, and then walk. But she did it. The piers were all fucked-up, covered in graffiti and the chain-link fences were all rusty. This was their special place though. There was a charm to all the metal beams and abandoned overground railway tracks.

  Through the holes in the pier planks, she could see the brown water of the Hudson. Sometimes when there was a nice breeze, she would close her eyes and imagine she was on a beach, like in those white-people magazines. One time, she had seen a floating body in the river, all tranquilo and still. It was a man, but she couldn’t tell how old he was because he was missing his head. A perfectly good suit gone to waste, and of course, she was eighteen years old at the time and thought nothing of it, other than the fact that she was glad it wasn’t her.

  She stood on that pier now just like she did every Thursday, waiting to turn a trick and make some cash so that she could buy some new clothes and makeup.

  It was Dorian, the old queen that she was, who had taught her how to suck a dick.

  “Anyone can put a cock in their mouth,” Dorian told her, “but if you want to give professional-level head and make them come back for more, you gotta be ferocious. It’s like the difference between hosing down a car and powerwashing it. The suction is key.”

  They’d been sitting in the back dressing room of Collage, the hellish drag club where Dorian performed. Dorian sat at the old Hollywood vanity that was studded with lightbulbs. She whipped out a black dildo and plopped it on a side table by its suction cup. It swayed like a fresh Jell-O mold. “They don’t call it a job for nothing, honey. You gotta multitask that shit. Use some tongue, twirl it around, but don’t forget your lips. Suction seduction, baby, that’s what I always say in the back of my mind when I need inspiration: suction seduction.”

  Now she stood on her pier and gave mad eyes to the other putas who were running up on her zone. She watched as man after man cruised up and down, convinced that her nerves would cave and she’d get a case of the churras. Hector was supposed to call her earlier in the d
ay, which was always an ordeal because Angel’s mother was a real pain—always around the apartment. They had to be dodgy about their calls, but it had been not one, but two whole weeks without a word from him. Angel wanted to kiss him up and down and kick his ass, all at the same time.

  A white businessman walked up to her. He was taller than her, probably a solid six feet high, and he stared at her face. He took her hand and placed it over the boner that was forming inside his pants. The man wasn’t fully hard, but Angel could already tell that homeboy was thick. He asked how much for a blow job, and would she swallow. She stared at his suit, the crisp silk tie loosened, top button casually open, and she thought about the money.

  When she told him twenty, he said five, as if the concept of twenty was completely wack.

  “Five?” she said. “The fuck is a girl gonna do with five?”

  “Ten?”

  “Twelve,” she said. “And don’t push your luck.”

  He nodded and placed his hand on the top of her head to guide her down. She wondered, as she went down—as she always wondered when she went down—if this was the guy who would finally do her in: grab her throat and strangle her silly until her body was like an unfilled balloon. The head of his polla hit the back of her throat and she closed her eyes as she felt his cum drip down.

  When he was done, he thanked her and walked away. She folded the money and put it in her clutch. Fucking Hector, she thought. Where was he? Why was he fronting?

  The neon Maxwell House coffee ad across the way flashed once, then twice, as it tipped itself over to spill light-drops of coffee into a cup. She looked across the river, among the trees and the fancy new apartment buildings of Jersey. She’d have to call Dorian now to see if she knew what was up with Hector. What a pain. What a damn shame too.

  * * *

  That bulge! Ay, Dios mío. She had dreams about the fucking bulge in his pants. Because Hector always wore the same basic getup—tight crop top with high-waisted pants that made that package look like a meal. Yes, girl, Angel thought, please.

  But now he was missing and he wasn’t at the pier and Dorian hadn’t called back to give a heads-up as to his whereabouts. In all seriousness, it wasn’t just about his dick. It was about his heart too. Angel could sense that there was something special about him. That smile of his could melt her like the manteca on a roasted potato—todavía because that smile never got old.

  Maybe if they didn’t have to hide things from her mother, he wouldn’t have disappeared like he did. Two whole weeks, almost three. Angel checked the papers to make sure none of the bathhouses had burned down—not that Hector ever went to those, but just in case he had. She was pulling at straws. She knew that much.

  “I feel like his soul is a conga and a clave,” she once explained to Dorian, “and my soul is playing the bongos with a güiro. Then, when we come together, the ritmo harmonizes just right, like it can’t with nobody else.”

  She was at wit’s end, about to stomp all the way to his apartment in Alphabet City and keep her finger on the buzzer. Where would they even be if it weren’t for that apartment? Fifty-five dollars a month in Alphabet City. Hot damn. Hector always said, “Thank god for this apartment, otherwise we’d be out on the street just like the others.”

  She walked up to a payphone now to dial Dorian. She’d tell Dorian that homeboy wasn’t calling her back, wasn’t answering his door, hadn’t said a single word.

  As the phone rang, she thought about how beautiful Hector was. How he drank his Café Bustelo black, how he was as flexible as any dancer in Lincoln Center, which was his dream. She loved that he wanted to be a dancer. He wanted to express all his love and pain with that body of his.

  The phone kept ringing. The love she felt for him was the kind that made every word sound like a smooth jazz album. Her heart was turning like a freestyle beat. Best believe that Hector was that fine specimen of a man called a papi chulo. A man so fine, it made a queen wanna get on her knees and weep to the lord Jesus.

  Dorian didn’t pick up, so Angel hung up. Even if she didn’t believe in god, a man as fine as Hector could make a girl believe.

  * * *

  When Dorian called three days later, he said that Hector was working a new job at Yogurt Delite on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea. So, when Angel stomped up into the Yogurt Delite on Eighth Avenue, she saw him wiping down a counter with a white rag, looking as suave as a member of Menudo. When the door closed behind her, a little bell jangled as it hit the glass. Hector looked up and saw it was her. He smiled and chuckled to himself, just like he always did when he knew she was about to unleash on him.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “I’m in trouble, right?” He laughed as he wiped up some stray sprinkles on the countertop that he had forgotten to clean up. “I swear I wasn’t dipping out forever,” he said. “It’s been a rough few weeks and we gotta talk about some shit. How’d you find me, mama? Dorian?”

  “Hell yes, Dorian did,” she said. And it wasn’t easy. She had called Dorian not once, not twice, but three damn times, almost in tears by the time Dorian had finally called back.

  “That man can’t keep a secret, can he?” Hector said, and she thought, You have no idea. Angel had had to promise Dorian a new blouse from Saks, which she still had no idea how she was going to mop.

  “Three weeks, Hector,” she said. “Where you been? Are you dropping me and I’m not taking the hint?”

  “No, nena. It’s not that. You know I love you.”

  “What is that supposed to even mean?” Angel said. “Can you make me a cup of vanilla?”

  Hector stared at her and made eyebrows at her. “Is that what you want?” he said. “You came here for yogurt?”

  “Of course I didn’t come here for yogurt,” she said. “But it just happens to be here, so it’s the least you can do.”

  He asked her small or medium.

  “Large,” she said. “Damn, give me as much as you can.”

  As he turned his back on her, she watched his skinny body move slowly. He had the grace of a swan, whether he was working behind a counter or working to dish a vogue. A white girl was in the corner with her mother. She licked at the chocolate cone with the craze of a crackhead hitting a new pipe. The mother told her to be more gentle or the yogurt would go everywhere. “Lick the sides, sweetie,” the mother said, “so it doesn’t go drippy-droppy everywhere.”

  Hector handed her the cup and rang up the order on the register. When the lid opened, he popped it back closed without putting any money in. They stared at each other wordlessly as she guided the spoon from vanilla to mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “¿Por qué?” She rolled her neck to emphasize that she knew exactly what for, but wanted him to say more.

  “For keeping you out of the loop,” he said.

  “Why haven’t you called me back?” she asked. “I know my mother’s wack and I know that you know that, but she’s not home all the time. We can talk then.”

  “It’s not that,” he said. He cracked his knuckles and winced at the pain it probably brought him. “Mira,” he said, “we close in fifteen minutes. Just wait ’til they leave.” He motioned his eyes to the little girl, who had reached the cone. Her face was covered with chocolate and the mother looked pissed.

  Angel waited and watched Hector as he powered down the yogurt machines. She tried to imagine what it was like inside one of those metal machines, how much energy it took to turn all that into something edible. She watched as he Windexed the counters and mopped the floors. His body moved with grace, like he wasn’t trapped behind a counter. He had always been flaco, but now he looked too flaquito. He looked like he needed a good cheeseburger. She checked her clutch to see if she had enough money to take him out to the diner on Tenth Avenue. Get something fatty and delicious-nutritious. It was a running joke between them—to evaluate all the food they cooked together on a scale of no-way-no-how (unhealthy) to delicious-nutritious (super healthy), except when they said the words,
they had to do their best impressions of what they imagined a fancy French waiter would sound like. Hector’s impressions were always more banging than hers, and it made her giggle. She fingered the loose bills in her clutch and counted—she had three crumpled tens.

  When he finally locked the door, he motioned her to the back of the store. She asked him where they were going. He said they were going to the bathroom.

  “Ay, Dios mío,” she said. “Here? Are you bugging? Do I look like the type of woman who fucks in a bathroom?”

  “Angel.” His face was stern. “We’re not going for hanky time. This is important. Besides, you got no problem sucking people off on the fucking streets.”

  “Fuck you, Hector. Don’t act like you’ve never done none of that and that you’re somehow better than me because you work in yogurt now.”

  He apologized and she immediately regretted what she said. That look on his face could break the hands off a clock, turning time into something weightless and slow. Something was wrong, she could tell. She wanted to put her arms around him and take that pain away from him. She walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek.

  The fluorescent light in the bathroom buzzed and she could see the black flecks of dead bugs that had flown too close to the light. He took off his shirt.

  “Seriously, Hector,” she said, trying to be more gentle this time. “You just said we wasn’t—”

  “I need you to look at me,” he said. He pointed to his right nipple. His skin looked like it was squeezing at his ribs.

  “So you have a mosquito bite?”

  “It’s not itchy,” he said. “It don’t feel like nothing.”

  “So why worry if you can’t feel it?” she said. She looked closer, knowing that even things that had no feeling were worth attention. There was a deep red mark, bordering on purple, right next to the ring of pelitos that circled his nipple.