The House of Impossible Beauties

by Joseph Cassara

  They were stopped near the corner of Christopher and some street that Venus couldn’t read the name of. “Revenge for someone that I just met?” Angel repeated. “Nena, I gotta stick up for the people who look and sashay just like I do because if he hurts you, he’s also hurting me, don’t you see?”

  Venus nodded.

  “If you let these motherfuckers treat you like that,” Angel said, “they’re just gonna keep on doing it—to you, to me, to all of us. Not ever gonna learn. So let’s take this Sugar Ass to school, teach his bruto ass a little something about r-e-s-p-e-c-t—Aretha style!—and that’s what it’s gonna be.”

  “I’m just afraid,” Venus whispered. She moved her face closer to those drop earrings that dangled from Angel’s ear. “I’m afraid he’s gonna kill me.”

  “Not with me around he ain’t.”

  “No, but for real,” Venus said. “I wasn’t completely honest with you before.”

  “Oh?” Angel’s eyes grew all big.

  “You don’t know what he did to me at the shelter. He pulled a knife at me and forced me to give him head. Then when his girl walked in, he blamed it all on me.”

  Angel moved her neck back and squinted her eyelids a bit, as if to hone in some kind of eagle-eyed focus on Venus’s face. “So you just wanna let it sit?” Angel asked.

  “Yeah, no,” Venus said. “I don’t know.”

  Angel grabbed her hand and they turned around back the way they came from. “Fine,” Angel said. “Some motherfucker pulls a blade on you and you just wanna let it sit. Okay. Alright.”

  Venus reached for her clutch to get her pack of cigs, but when she opened the box, there weren’t any left. She asked Angel if there was a bodega nearby and Angel pointed to the corner. She asked Angel if she wanted to share in on a pack of Newports.

  Just as Venus walked up to the bodega, with its lit-up posters for the New York state lotto, there he was, sitting with his legs wide open on the stoop of the building across the way. He was chugging from a bottle that was covered in a brown paper bag. She watched his head turn, back and forth, slowly, as if the tip of his nose had a magnet that was attracted to every passing man’s ass. The pig.

  “That’s him,” she whispered to Angel. “I can’t believe it.”

  Venus stood where she was and watched Angel glide over to Sugar Cookie in those seven inchers. Angel’s dress glittered like little pieces of floating tinfoil. Her stilettos clacked on the sidewalk like flip-flops at the Coney Island boardwalk on a hot summer day.

  “Escuse me,” Venus could hear Angel say. “But, in the happenstance, did you manage to call my girl a faggot?” Angel pointed to where Venus was standing. Venus didn’t know what to do—if dropping dead in the flip of a second were an option, she’d take it—so she held up her hand and wiggled her fingers and offered a pained, toothless smile. Sugar Cookie looked at Venus, took another chug from his bottle, then looked at Angel as if she were carrying a garbage bag full of rotting fish.

  “And what the fuck is it to you?” he said.

  “What is it to me?” Angel said, bringing her finely did nails to the side of her face, as if expressing shock and a desire to fan herself. “She’s my child, that’s what.”

  “Your child?” Sugar Cookie’s laugh sounded like a roar. He was laughing so hard, he had to pause to make sure he didn’t vomit. After he dry-gagged, he said, “You’re not old enough to have a boy that old.”

  “Apologize to my daughter,” Angel said. “And do it right now.”

  Sugar Cookie burped a loud, wet burp. He scratched his crotch. He wiped his mouth with the part of his T-shirt that covered his shoulder.

  “Honey,” Angel said. “Don’t let this beautiful dress fool you or give you any kind of misconceptions. Do what I say and apologize to my daughter right this instant.”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  Angel took off her shoes, one by one. Venus watched as Angel whipped her arm up and back, and then slammed the heel part of the shoe against the side of Sugar Cookie’s face. He wailed while she clocked him. Again and again, like the goal was to drill cement. Angel was aiming for temple, for eye socket, for ear. Homegirl had gone Level Stiletto Powertool on his beat ass.

  When she was done, there was blood dripping down his face and his body was slumped on the stoop. She slipped on her shoes in two elegant motions and walked back to Venus as if nothing had happened. There was a line of blood on her hand.

  “Oh, my god,” Venus said. “Did you kill him?”

  “No,” Angel said. “He’s very much alive, but we need to run before he gets up and whoops both our asses.”

  Before they ran down those dark streets, Venus looked back to get a last glimpse of Sugar. Angel was right: Sugar wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even passed out. He just looked like he got into a boxing match with the wrong, angry drag queen. The sight of his blood didn’t make Venus feel happy, but it certainly did make her feel content.

  “I warned you,” Angel screamed at Sugar Cookie over her shoulder as they ran. “You shouldn’t have let all of this fool you.”

  * * *

  Angel guided Venus way west to an area near the Hudson where some boys were laying down cardboard boxes so they could spin on their heads without cutting skin up. When they sat on a bench, they stared at each other and laughed so hard, Venus was convinced she would bust an organ.

  “Did you see the look on his face?” Venus said.

  “I was took quick with running.”

  “You made him bleed,” Venus said. “He didn’t see it coming.”

  “Good,” Angel said. “That was the objective. I told him not to fuck around. And I gave him the chance to apologize.”

  “Day-um.”

  “Why don’t you sleep?” Angel said. Venus could feel Angel’s fingers massaging her scalp, then guiding Venus’s head into Angel’s lap as if it were a pillow.

  “Hey,” Venus said. “Thank you—you know, for everything.”

  She watched one of the boys squat down like a frog, with his forehead on the cardboard like his chin wanted to kiss the ground. Then his knees rested on his arms above his bent elbows. Once he was there, he sprang his legs up and used his hands to spin his body, and Venus was worried that the boy’s scalp would start to bleed.

  “No pasa nada, nena,” Angel said. “You know he deserved that shit. I’d like to see him pass me or you on the street one more time and try to play.”

  “You’re a sass machine,” Venus said. “I wish I got your sass.”

  “I’m giving some away,” Angel said, “all for free.”

  They sat and watched the boys break it down to Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force. They made Venus envy that kind of arm-leg coordination. She wished she had the kind of strength to balance everything on her hands so her legs could spin in circles. She watched as the main man of the group did a worm, then shot back up to his feet and waved his arms out like he was saluting the moon. Then a rat the size of a small cat scurried out from a nearby bush and they both jumped up and screamed bloody murder at the same time.

  “So many damn rats on this island,” Venus said.

  “Mmm,” Angel said. “Not just here, nena. But all over.”

  “Can’t believe we just screamed that loud,” Venus said. “My heart is still coming out of my chest.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Angel said. “Sometimes I get scared of my own shadow.”

  “Now that,” Venus said, “I don’t believe.” She lay on her side so that her knees curled up to her chest in a fetal position. Angel was playing with the hair near Venus’s earlobe—it had taken months for Venus to finally grow it all out to that length.

  “You know,” Angel said, “I don’t even know where you’re from?”

  “Somewhere over there.” Venus pointed across the river, to the patchwork of trees on the Jersey side of things.

  “And why’d you bust out?” Angel said. “Please don’t tell me it’s a sad story.”

  “My mom and grandm
a got busted selling numbers for some guy.”

  “Numbers?”

  “Yeah,” Venus said. “For some guy my mom was fucking.”

  “Shit,” Angel said. “The things we do for our men, can I get an amen on that? That is so fucked-up.”

  “You’re telling me,” Venus said. “What about you? Why’d you leave?”

  “I didn’t—not quite, at least,” Angel said. “I’m living with my man, Hector. His abuela was also selling numbers back when she was alive.”

  “Oh yeah?” Venus sat up on the bench, suddenly energized by this talk of a man. “Where you two living? Westchester?”

  “Girl, I wish. Get me a car and a little house and I’d be the happiest little thing in the world.” Angel reached into her clutch and took out her lip liner. “Alphabet City right now, so we’ll see what happens, sabes?”

  She watched as Angel carefully drew on two thick maroon lines around her lips. She nodded when Angel asked if they were even. Angel blew her an air-kiss.

  “Where’s your mother?” Angel asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Either with Antonio or in jail. I don’t even care.”

  “Ay, look at you,” Angel said. “You don’t even know where your mother is?” She giggled and looked up at the edge of the sky that was turning pink. Soon the city would start the slow curl out of bed, the sky would change from pink to orange to purple. People would leave the bars and the late-night diners, and go home. The bagel shops would open and the streets out front would smell like dough and butter. Then the purple in the sky would become a soft blue, and the sun would rise higher.

  Angel put her arm around Venus and looked her directly in the eyes and said, “Ay, nena, your mother is right next to you.”

  ANGEL

  They climbed the fire escape to the top of the roof. Two taxis were on the corner of Avenue A, one had hit the other, and the drivers were having words. “Oh,” Angel said, “you shoulda seen the nails on her though.”

  Hector didn’t laugh.

  “Honey, really, I’m joking,” Angel said. “That woman is a scam artist, but you can laugh when I throw the shade,” Angel said. She was talking about the santera that Mami had called. “With the money she’s charging, she could get those nails done three times a week, and I’m sure she does.”

  “You’re so bad,” Hector said. The sun was setting on the other side of the island, near the West Side Highway—avenues of buildings and blocks away, but they could still see the sky’s colors giving way. It was cold and the sky was a soft pink. If they couldn’t see the sun set, at least they could be around to feel it happening. “We gotta talk about something.”

  “Can’t we talk after the dance?” Angel said. She had popped the lids off some Goya cans and duct-taped them to the bottoms of their shoes. She told Hector that she wanted him to teach her how to tap dance. They had watched Too Hot to Handle so many times that they could recite the back-and-forth between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers like it was a thirty-second soda jingle.

  “Angel, come on,” Hector said, but she pouted and he gave in. “This reminds me,” he said in his Fred Astaire voice, “of the old days when we used to do shows at the old ball.”

  “Yeah,” Angel said, throwing Rogers realness, “we used to fight about the gate receipts.”

  She stared at him and thought about what a silly thing it must be for Fred and Ginger to fight over receipts. She knew that Hector had something to tell her. She knew what it was, but she wanted to avoid it. Had the results come back? She just wanted him to teach her how to tap.

  “You remember the Valentine I sent you?” he said, puffing out his chest. “The one with the heart and the arrow dripping blood?”

  Angel broke character but then got serious again. “I do remember,” she said. “I think that’s the only Valentine I ever received.”

  (And who was Ginger kidding? Angel thought. There was no way a fox like her could’ve only gotten one Valentine.)

  “That’s the only one I ever sent,” Hector said. He grabbed her and spun her around, their hands connected.

  “Those were some happy days then,” she said. “You know, I think I was in love with you then.” She spun into his chest and looked at his face—the dark circles under his eyes, the stubble. He squeezed her into his chest and she could feel his ribs.

  “I know you were,” he said.

  “Oh, you,” she said.

  “Oh, me,” he said. “And what’s more, I was madly in love with you.” He tapped around her but the lids on the bottoms of his shoes hardly made a sound. Even though she could tell that he didn’t want to do this performance for her, he continued.

  She wanted to stop it all, but it was too late, they were already in the middle of it. He brought his arms up and and flailed them back and forth. He rained down jazz hands.

  “We were funny, weren’t we?” she said, forcing Ginger’s line and thinking, There is nothing at all funny about this now. “Aren’t we?”

  Hector stopped. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said.

  “No,” she said. She walked up to him and by now the sun had set fully. There was no more pink in the sky. She put her hand up to his mouth and said, “Don’t continue.”

  She undressed him. It was so cold, both their nips were getting hard. She glided her hands over his body, searching for the areas that were so sensitive, he would gasp. They explored each other’s skin as if they were mapmakers in new territory.

  “We can’t,” he said, “have sex.”

  “I figured,” she said.

  He told her that the test had come back positive. They were lying on the roof now, too many clouds for any stars to be in sight.

  “I don’t give a shit anymore,” he said.

  “Don’t say that shit, Hector.” She didn’t know whether she should squeeze his hand, say it would be alright, or if that kind of thing would come across as corny, forced, or cheesy.

  “But it’s the truth,” he said. “Look at you, you have so much hope for the world, for the people in it. I hope the way you see shit never changes, but damn yo, sometimes life just sucks you in and chews you up. Just like this city. This city moves so fast, it don’t care who we small people are. It never did and it never will.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, fearing that she wouldn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry for everything.”

  “Why’re you apologizing?” he asked, but she didn’t have an answer.

  * * *

  The next day, she went to the clinic in Chelsea to get tested. There were only six chairs, so some people were standing. Skinny young boys, no families. The only woman there looked like a butch and she was sitting next to her fem queen friend, holding his hand and rubbing his palm and wiping the sweat off his forehead every couple of minutes.

  Angel was alone because Hector was working at the yogurt place. He had told her he would take off, but she said no. The nice nurse was wearing rubber gloves when she took the blood. She told Angel that the results would come back in two weeks, and asked for her phone number and address.

  Two weeks later, the test came back negative. She wasn’t relieved because it was more than that. Her first thought was that the test was wrong. There was no way in hell she could’ve been negative. But the nurse assured her that it was the case. She could come back in three months to get tested again, and the nurse even encouraged that.

  When she got back to Hector’s apartment, she didn’t say anything. She prepared a picnic of cheddar cheese sandwiches and cheap red wine. The white bread was so soft, it stuck to the top of her mouth. She was scared to drink the wine because she didn’t want her teeth to look like they were stained with blood.

  After everything was set up on the roof and they were about to start eating, she told him the test came back negative. “That’s great news,” Hector said. He gulped down the wine in his cup. “So is this, like, your celebration party?”

  “What? Why would you even think that?” she said, looking at t
he bottle of wine and the sandwich spread. It wasn’t supposed to be celebrating anything. It was just supposed to be dinner.”

  “Well, that’s great news,” he said again, looking down at which sandwich wedge he wanted to take.

  “Is it?” she said.

  “¿Y qué dices?” he said. “Of course it is.”

  She watched him pour himself another glass of wine and peer down at the street. He started to cry, but it was so gentle, so silent, that Angel wasn’t sure at first if he was. The rooftop was dark and they only had one candle up there. The mosquitoes were out and biting and Angel slapped her leg, thinking she had been bit.

  “I don’t really know what I’m saying,” she said. She didn’t know how to tell him that she felt guilty without using the exact words.

  The truth felt like a complicated mess, and yet, it was so simple if she had to boil it down. Hector had the virus and she didn’t. Hector would die, and even though she knew that everyone would die someday, this meant that Hector would die sooner. Much sooner. And she would go on living. She would have to learn how to live in the world after the man she loved was dead.

  His crying was so quiet, she didn’t say anything because she thought that he didn’t want her to notice. So she remained silent. She didn’t want to call out his tears, ask him what was wrong when she so clearly knew what was wrong. She let him have his moment, and she became furious at the most foolish of things. She was angry that the picnic had come across as a celebration dinner. She was angry that space existed. She was angry that she couldn’t turn herself into the tiniest speck of dust so that she could enter Hector’s body and soothe him. Not just soothe him, but cure him.

  “So what do we do now?” she said.

  “Oh, now you say something,” he said. He still wasn’t facing her, looking down at the street. “What do you mean we? I’m the one that’s gonna die.”

  “I thought Dorian told me about some people getting on a government trial,” she said.

  “Fuck,” he said, “might as well play the goddamn jackpot lottery.”

  * * *

  Later that night, after they finished their sandwiches and cleaned up the mess that they had made up on the roof, they climbed down the fire escape and used a latex condom to fuck. They needed to use extra KY so the added rubber-friction didn’t hurt her. When he first entered her, she held her breath, careful to show him that everything was alright, nothing hurt, and things could continue just as they always had been.