“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Venus said. “They seemed like perfect dolls if you ask me.”
“You just think that because they complimented your belt,” he said, holding the front door open for her. They both stepped outside and put on their sunglasses to walk to the boardwalk, but not before they both exclaimed, “Blinding!”
“Well, what can I do if they have good taste?” Venus said, and laughed. “Not like it’s a crime to give someone a compliment.”
“I think they were—” Juanito paused. “Oh, never mind.”
“No,” Venus said. “Just say whatever you were going to say.”
They had to stop at the crosswalk to wait for a car to pass before they could cross. Venus could feel the wind nipping at her ankles. “I think they were mocking you,” Juanito said. “I’m sorry, and I’m not certain about it, but that’s just how it seemed to me.”
Venus laughed. “You’re just being paranoid because you’re not used to walking out like this.”
“Oh, you don’t think I can handle walking out like this?”
As soon as Venus said it, she wanted to take it back. “Oh fuck,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No,” Juanito said. “No, you’re right.” He stopped walking and reached into the bag and pulled out the bar passes without looking Venus in the eye. “Here you go,” he said, cold as anything. “Just pin it to your blouse.”
“I’m sorry, Juanito,” Venus said, but Juanito still didn’t say anything. “I’ll hold on to it,” she said, the pass in her hand. “I don’t want to puncture any holes into the fabric.”
“You know what your problem is?” Juanito said. “You’re too trusting, Venus.”
She squeezed the pass and shrugged. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was too trusting. He was reading her harder than a medical book written in German. She didn’t want to fight. She just wanted to drink a nice glass of white wine and close her eyes in the autumn breeze.
“My trust,” Venus said, “is all I got, girl. Where do you wanna sit?”
Juanito pointed to an open table behind the bar.
“Good choice,” she said. “Just in case we need quick refills.” And at that, she kicked back her head toward the sky to laugh and kiki while Juanito walked over to the table, alone.
* * *
She loved to close her eyes on the roller coaster because then she couldn’t anticipate what was going to happen before it happened. She couldn’t stand the unexpected when it came to balloons popping, but a roller coaster was a different story. It was like a full-body experience: she was locked in tight, she was sitting next to her sister, she could throw her hands up in the air and scream all loud. Like she knew that shit was gonna drop, that she’d be thrust to the left and the right, like it was a roller coaster and that’s what people expected, right? But if she had her eyes closed and everything was dark, the twists and turns, ups and downs, all came as a surprise. So, when she sat there next to Juanito, squeezing his hand, saying, “Are you ready, nena? Are you fucking ready?” even though they were only going up, slowly, with the metal tick tick tick tick tick tick of the track, it was all in anticipation of the weightless feeling of her stomach going to mush in her very body. And when they went over that curve at the top and gravity took over, she let out a scream that bitches could hear on the farthest moon from the sun. She didn’t care if the wind fucked up her hair—the knots would be so unbelievable, it would for sure take a full hour to comb them out—but she didn’t care because this felt worth it. She squeezed Juanito’s hand as the coaster did a sharp right curve and Juanito’s body pressed up against hers. How could that boy not scream? Not even a peep out of him. Whatever, though, because she could scream loud enough for the two of them, and when the ride came to an end and there was no one in line behind them, the cute attendent boy with the delicious booty told them they could go on again, and that’s what they did, but this time she was all out of wind and instead of screaming, she just breathed in and out and felt the air against her neck. This was a rush she never wanted to stop, never ever.
* * *
That night, when Juanito asked what they were going to get for dinner, Venus rushed to her luggage and pulled out her final surprise: a little baggie of coke. “Who needs dinner,” she told him, “when you can have cocaine-dinner?”
“Oh, Venus,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“My treat, darling.”
Juanito said he was famished and needed to eat something before, so while she was cutting up lines on top of the TV, Juanito plopped himself on the chair in the corner and bit into an apple. Venus used a razer blade that was no longer than her pinky finger. It wasn’t that sharp—it must’ve been old and dulled out from various uses, all of which she didn’t want to know about—but it was perfect for cutting up the lines. She tried to be all mathematical about it: two thick rails, four lines, and two bumps. She rolled up a dollar bill and handed it out to Juanito. “A good ol’ George Washington for you,” she said and curtsied. Juanito laughed.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He looked at the dollar bill straw and said, “Hello, Georgie boy.”
When Juanito blew through his first rail, she clapped her hands and bounced on her toes. “I’m so proud of you,” she said, reaching out for George.
“For blowing a rail?” Juanito said.
“No, silly.” Venus walked over to the TV and leaned over to blow through her rail. When she popped back up, she pressed her nostrils with her fingers to put pressure on her septum. “I’m proud of you for winning your category. For walking the ball. That shit takes balls, you know what I mean.” She felt the rush in her head, in that sweet spot behind the eyeballs. The coke was starting to hit her. “I’m proud of you for being you, for doing you, for walking—”
Juanito wiped up some residue from where his rail was and rubbed it on his top gums and passed his tongue over his teeth. He nodded his head, yes, yes, yes.
“But let me just say,” Venus said, holding out her hands like there was a large audience in front of her and she needed them to shush. “First—I need to stand for this—” She stood and started to pace around the room, hands out like she was in need of some balance. “Let me just say that it was kind of fucked-up—no, it was a little more than fucked-up—that you didn’t tell us about it beforehand, because you knew we wanted to be there for you, especially me, I wanted to bethereforyou—”
Juanito blew through half of the next line and tried to say something, but Venus held out her hand.
“No,” she said. “Let me finish. What I was saying was that you knew we would’ve loved to have seen you out there, walking, strutting, doing your thing, and we would’ve cheered you on, watched you slay bitches, given you words of encouragements.” She had paced all the way to the closet door, so now she marched her little booty back to the TV to do her next line.
“I know, I know,” Juanito said. He put his head in his hand, like he was going to rub Vaseline on his forehead. It was a pose that the telenovela stars did when they were expressing woe. Then he bolted up and stood on the bed, right in the middle. “Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” he said, one hand over his heart, the other reaching out.
“The truth is”—Venus grabbed her comb and used it as a microphone—“I never left you. All through my wild days, my—”
“Venus!” Juanito said and snapped his fingers to attention. “I was saying—It’s just that I was so scared. I was scared that if I had everyone there, and if I fucked it up, it would be like I was letting you down. Jesus, this blow is strong.” He reached his handsies up to the popcorn ceiling to feel the texture of it. It looked like stubble.
“Ay, nena,” she said. “You shouldn’t’ve feeled that way.”
“I know,” he said, bringing his hands into fists and bringing them to his chest. “But I did, and you know we can’t control how we feel. We just feel.”
“I feel ev-er-y-thing,” Venus said. She was tapping all ten of her fingers against her
waist. She pulled out a stick of gum from her purse and started chomping on it. And, yes, she did know what Juanito was saying. She nodded and now her lips and teeth were all numb and the gum was there. Juanito said he couldn’t feel the back of his throat and he started snorting a little, like he was going to hawk a wad of spit, but he didn’t actually spit anything out, which made her laugh and she told him not to worry, that it was just the coke in action.
“I wish Daniel were here right now,” he said. “You think he’s mad that I didn’t tell him about the ball? You know, when I was up there on the stage doing my thing, I had a regret. Like I wished that I had told all of you about it. I thought maybe I made a mistake.”
All that was left for them to do were the two little bumps and she wanted to save those for when they needed a pick-me-up. She looked up at Juanito who was an electric pulse of energy right there on the bed, he looked like a kid about to start jumping up and down from a sugar rush. He was their newest, reigning queen, the sweetest most gentlest boy she knew, and he was in love. “Ay, nena,” she said, leaning against the bathroom door. “You really love him something hard, don’t you?”
“That’s it,” he screamed, as if he were realizing this thought for the first time. “I do. I really do. That’s what this feeling is. I should call him and tell him that I love him right this very moment.”
“Oh, no, no,” she said, walking over to the bed to grab him by the ankles. She told him to sit down next to her and she put his hands in hers. “That’s not a very good idea. You’re so coked out of your mind—and I’m not saying you don’t love him, because that much is true, nena—but you’re gonna dial that phone and all the words are gonna come out in a coke rush and he’s gonna be, like, What the fuck are you saying?—You feel me, nena?”
He nodded and now they fell back to lay on the comforter. He sighed. “You know I was thinking the other day—you know me when I get in a mood and I’m alone with my thoughts,” he said. “I was thinking that I want kids.”
Venus hummed and nodded. She blew her gum into a tiny bubble and devoured it in one, toothy bite. “You gonna leave us and start your own house, already?” she said.
“Nah,” he said. “I was thinking that I want kids with Daniel. And it’s a hot damn shame that the two of us can’t have kids together. Like how we’re taught that when two people are in love, they get together and live in a house and make a baby. Well, us two are in love and we live in a house and it makes me sad to think that we can’t make a baby that is half-part him and half-part me.”
She had never thought of it that way. She had never thought of herself as being capable of being a mother. It was as if being born in a trapped body made that out of the question, as if she was bound to spend her whole life trying to make her soul and her body parts match up, and because of that, she couldn’t even wrap her mind around having kids. All she could imagine from her life right now was having fun, finding her future husband, and getting her sex change. Then one day, if all of those things added up, she would think about taking on the responsibility of children.
“Ay, nena,” she said, putting her hand over Juanito’s heart. “You’re just setting yourself up for heartbreak with that thought.”
“I know,” he said. “But I still wish it could happen. Maybe one day, with science?”
“Ay, Dios,” she said. “Science can do many things, but now I think you’re asking for a bit much. How do you expect science to make it possible for two boys to make a baby?”
“You think what all the haters say is true?” Juanito said. “Like how it’s unnatural for us to even be together because nature makes it impossible for us to make kids?”
“Oh, don’t even get me started on that brand of bullshit,” Venus said, sitting up again to take the last bump of coke. “The natural world is more fucking complicated than the smartest motherfucker can make sense of,” she said. “So who the hell are they to tell us shit?”
Juanito slow clapped.
“Get your ass up here,” she said, holding out the rolled-up George straw. “You’re a reigning queen. You’re in love. And honey, we got some bumps to do.”
* * *
Well past midnight, Venus scurried into the bathroom to blow a rail of coke. Before leaving the room, she checked to make sure that Juanito was asleep. She adjusted the blanket so that it wasn’t covering his face. She wanted to make sure that he had fresh air to breathe while she stepped out.
In her chest, she could feel her heart doing the hustle. She walked out into the night’s cold breeze. The telephone booth stood alone at the edge of the parking lot, under the orange glow of a streetlight. She lit a cigarette and adored the way the nicotine meshed with the blow. It felt like a crank of electricity was lit in the back of her head. She could go on like that for hours, days, however long it would decide to last. She slipped the coins in and dialed his number from memory.
“Hello?” Linda said. “Who is this? Is everything okay?”
She waited, flicking the cigarette so it would ash, even though there wasn’t anything left on the end of it to ash.
“Hello?” Linda said again.
She dragged on the cig and hung up. After a pause, she fed more coins in and dialed again. She hoped that he would pick up this time.
“Is there an emergency?” Linda said.
Yes, she thought, there is. She didn’t say this though. Instead, she took the phone and bashed it against the metal box. Bam, bam, bam. A tinge of remorse bubbled inside her, but it was beat out by the rush of the blow. She let go of the receiver and let it dangle by its metal wire. Then she picked it up with two fingers and hung it up formally.
She finished the cig and killed it under her shoe. She put the last of her change into the phone and dialed one last time.
“If you don’t tell me who this is,” Linda said, “I will disconnect this phone, so help me god.”
“Put him on the phone,” she said. “You know who this is.”
Silence. She could hear Linda’s voice telling him something, but she couldn’t make out the words. That meant she was sleeping next to him. Not only was she still in the same house, but she was sleeping in the same bed. “Listen to me,” Linda said. “He’s going downstairs to take this call so I can go back to sleep. But if you think we have time for your Fatal Attraction bullshit, you are mistaken.”
“I’m on the other end,” Charles said. “I’ll take it from here.”
The sound of his voice made Venus’s heart sink. He sounded tired, so she cleared her throat and said, “Sorry to wake you like this, but I just wanted to say—”
“You called my house,” he hissed the last word, “at this hour because you just wanted to say?”
“I thought you two were getting divorced,” she said. She lit another cig and held in the smoke an extra heartbeat.
He sighed. “Things are complicated,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I’m feeling a lot of complications too. I miss seeing you. I miss hearing your voice.”
“Hang up the fucking phone,” Linda screamed.
“I said I will handle this,” Charles said. “Look, Venus. We have a daughter. I’m trying my best to figure out what I’m doing, and I really, really need for you to leave me be so that I can do that.”
“Okay, yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
“Can you do that for me, please?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t get it. What does that bitch have that I don’t got?”
He sighed and she leaned her head back against the booth’s plexiglass.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going to hang up now.”
“No, don’t do it. Don’t hang up on me,” she said, but it was too late.
* * *
Two days later, when she and Juanito got back to the city, she walked to the corner alone to hail a cab. She had the cabbie drop her off right in front of the salon, and when she told her girl Leilah to buzz it all off and Leilah said to the three other clients in the pla
ce, “Now this girl has lost her damn mind,” Venus thought that maybe she would regret shaving it all off, but she didn’t care.
“Just do it please,” Venus said.
Venus stared at herself in the mirror as Leilah passed her fingers through Venus’s hair. It felt good to feel another person connect with her body in a way that felt gentle. “Yes,” Venus said, “Absolutely. I want a crew cut like the military men.”
“Okay, baby,” Leilah said. “But I still think you’re crazy. How long did it take you to grow this all out?”
Venus closed her eyes and tried to count the months. It was like she hadn’t thought of the time in strict days, or weeks, or months. Time had passed in monumental moments, starting with the car, then the first time she had gone to Charles’s house, Cats, the hotel room, the days at the gym watching him sweat—she couldn’t bear to go on. She opened her eyes and looked at Leilah’s reflection in the mirror. “Months,” Venus said. “Not sure exactly how many, but yeah, months.”
“You want me to give you a number two all around?”
Venus nodded yes and felt the area in the back of her head where Leilah’s fingers were pinching hold at some of her hair.
Leilah worked her fingers and scissors. First, she pinched bunches of hair and snipped them away with the scissors. They fell to the sides of the chair and lay there all alone, scattered against the linoleum. Once it was short enough, Leilah used a mechanical taper that buzzed against Venus’s scalp and the vibrations soothed her. She closed her eyes and felt her entire head humming along with the clipper machine.
Leilah had shaved off the left side of her head and was moving the long black cord to the other side of the chair. Venus opened her eyes and stared at her head in the mirror. She saw herself cut in two by her own hairline. As if half of her head was trapped in the past, and the other side was rushing into the future.
Hurry, she thought, please hurry. She didn’t know how long she could stand to look at the half-finished product that was staring right back at her in that mirror.
This will be a new me, she thought. A new goddamn me.
The House of Impossible Beauties Page 28
