The House of Impossible Beauties
Page 41
“What’re you making for dinner?” she said. “It smells really good.”
“I’m making lasagna, Angel,” he said. “Maybe if you didn’t overdo it with the painkillers, you’d remember.”
She put the orange pill bottle back into the cabinet and closed the door slowly. “Who do you think you’re talking to like that? I’m in pain,” she said. “I’m not Juanito. I’m not the one with the drug problem and I never have been.”
He stopped stirring and grabbed the wooden spoon out of the pot. He watched her move back to the couch as if she hadn’t just taken a sword and shoved it into his heart.
“How’d you know about that?” he said. He hadn’t told her anything about Juanito’s drug problem. They didn’t keep in touch with anyone from the ball scene either, so he had no idea how the gossip train would’ve made it back to Angel’s ears. “I asked you a question,” he shouted and pointed the spoon at her. Tomato sauce dropped to the floor.
“He came here,” she said. “He needed help.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He didn’t know why Juanito would hide that from him, or for that matter, why Angel wouldn’t’ve mentioned it when he first arrived on her steps. “You’re lying,” he said. “What jodienda bullshit are you passing off?”
Angel shrugged. “It’s true,” she said.
“It’s not true,” he screamed. He waved the spoon in the air and sauce flew everywhere. “You’re mis-remembering. You’re going loca. You can’t even remember that we’re having lasagna for dinner tonight and you’re telling me that Juanito came here, to you, for help.”
“Sí, claro.” She was saying it so matter of fact. It was like he had asked her if it was raining and she looked out to see whether there was anything falling from the sky.
“If that’s all true,” he said, “then what happened?”
“I told him he needed to stop it with the drugs,” she said, “but then I told him I couldn’t do anything more for him and he needed to leave.”
No. He couldn’t wrap his mind around this. Angel had turned Juanito away. He wanted to know when this was: before or after the sofa, at what level of his addiction, before or after the clinic test.
“You turned him away?” he said. He didn’t scream. He clenched his fists behind his back as hard as he could.
“Turned who away?” Angel said.
Daniel couldn’t look at her anymore. He went back to the cocina to stare at the sauce. Their lasagna was almost ready, but he didn’t have an appetite anymore.
* * *
“I don’t think it tastes that bad,” Angel said, slowly bringing the fork to her mouth. The lasagna piece fell back on the plate and she had to retry.
“You think my cooking tastes bad?” he said. He didn’t have the energy to keep talking to her more that night.
“Es que, I just don’t understand why you’re crying into your food,” she said. “It doesn’t taste so bad that you gotta cry over it.”
He looked up. Her face was mad puffy from the Prednisone. She had no clue. “I’m not crying because it’s bad,” he said. “I’m crying because you hurt my feelings? Before dinner?”
“I did?” she said. “Pues, maybe you should come with me tomorrow on the subways. It’s Wednesday. We’ll dress up nice and get cheesecake.”
* * *
The suit, all buttoned up, gave Angel a jazzy look. By the time they hit Midtown, the car was packed and Daniel asked her if she wanted to move to a less crowded space. She swatted her hand at him to hush up. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the black veil she wore. “Don’t you feel it?” she said. Just where the veil cut off, he saw her lips. No lipstick, just purple lip liner.
“Feel what?” he said, fearing she was losing more than her memories.
She moved closer to his ear. “I love feeling everyone’s body up against mine. I don’t know how to explain it,” she whispered as the train screeched to a stop so the doors could open. “I just love feeling all this life and blood pumping around me.”
When they hit Union Square, people weren’t packed as close to them anymore. People were staring but Daniel didn’t know why. They were definitely staring. He looked at the floor, then at his hand on the pole. Angel was focusing on an ad like she wanted to memorize every possible aspect of it. Then he saw the problem.
There was a stream of brown coming down her leg. “Mama,” he whispered into her ear, not wanting anyone else to hear, even though everyone around them seemed to know except Angel. When he had her attention, he said, “Your leg, mira.”
Angel looked down at the shit running down her leg. Her breath went fast and deep. She fainted and Daniel had to remove his hand from the pole in order to catch her from falling straight out.
“Shh-shh,” he said. He was carrying her now and the smell was everywhere. “I got you, mama. We’re going back home.”
* * *
He put the suit on a hanger while Angel napped. He ran some cold water and dabbed the stains with a sponge. He knew he’d have to take it to the dry cleaner’s, but he was trying his best to do damage control before it got that far. He hoped it wasn’t ruined forever. There must be something someone could do. Surely there must be a way to take a stain out of fabric.
He swept the dust and combined all the trash bags in the apartment and brought them to the Dumpster on the side street. When he came back up, Angel stood in the middle of the sala in her pajamas. “There you are,” she said. Her face was puffy and she could barely open up her eyelids all the way. “Where’d you go?”
“Just getting rid of some stuff.”
She walked over to him and wrapped her bony arms around his shoulders. “Ay, Hector,” she said. “You should tell me when you’re going out like that. You know I get scared when people just walk out like that without words before.”
He swiped some hair out of her face. It was wet and sticking to her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said. He knew he had to play along.
“You know, Hector baby,” she said. “I’m so excited to be a mother. I think I found a new girl at the piers to be our first Xtravaganza. Her name is Venus. Don’t cry, babe. You got any sights on anyone who could be a good Xtravaganza?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go out there and do my best.”
He had a flash of what his life would be like now, when Angel was gone: walking the streets and bringing the nenas and the banjees and the fierce fire sparkler kings and queens into their house. He didn’t want this responsibility, but he had inherited it.
Angel unwrapped her arms from their hug. “Ay, mira,” she said. “I knew you’d be the best father this house could ask for.”
* * *
She wanted to go to the roof to dance. So that’s what they did. The sun was setting pink on the horizon and the Manhattan scrapers looked like Lego pieces from where they danced in the Bronx. “I could do this everyday,” she said, and Daniel hummed. He didn’t want to cry in front of her again.
In one month, she would die in St. Vincent’s, crying for her mother. Daniel wouldn’t know how to find her mother. He didn’t know her name or where she lived. In five months, Dorian would also die. Pepper LaBeija would call Daniel and they’d cry together on the line. A week afterward, Daniel would read Dorian’s obit in the New York Times and think, Of course this fabulous bitch is making headlines even from the grave! Months later, Dorian’s children would go through the closet and find the chest. And the mummy. A motherfucking mummified body, oh yes. Bullet wound, wrapped in imitation leather, because of course it was. Pinned to the body, a note: This poor soul broke into my apartment and I was forced to shoot him.
But now? Now it was just the two of them on the roof. “Hector baby,” Angel said. “Hold me up while we spin.”
They had the boom box, but they didn’t need music then. The sun was setting and he held her skeletal body close to him. She hummed a song with a one-two-three beat that he didn’t recognize, but they stepped one-two-three, one-two-three, she was guid
ing him forward, showing him where to go.
She released his hand and, without a word, started walking toward the staircase. “Wait,” he called out to her. “Don’t go yet. Let’s dance one more time.”
“Pero, Hector,” she said and he wept. “I’m tired, baby.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am incredibly grateful to my large and complicated family for instilling in me a belief in the power of love and perseverance. I’m also thankful for the power of their storytelling. Special shout-out to my parents, Maurice and Nanette, as well as to my sister, Jenna.
A million thanks to my agents, Ellen Levine and Alexa Stark at Trident, for seeing the spark of something in my early pages and for being fierce advocates along the way. Thank you to Claire Roberts and the foreign rights team, for representing my work to the larger world, and to Rich Green and Will Watkins at ICM Partners, for doing the same in L.A.
Enormous thanks to my editor, Megan Lynch, for her encouragement, enthusiasm, and brilliance. Thanks also to everyone at Ecco, for their belief and support, especially Emma Dries and Martin Wilson. Another thanks goes to Juliet Mabey and everyone at Oneworld in the United Kingdom.
To the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, for taking a chance on me. Thank you to Connie Brothers, Deb West, and Jan Zenisek. Thanks also to my brilliant peers there, especially Sorrel Westbook-Wilson, Shaun Hamill, Karen Parkman, Moira Casados Cassidy, Mgbechi Erondu, Magogodi Makhene, Derek Nnuro, Eskor Johnson, Melody Murray, Alex Madison, Maria Kuznetsova, Delaney Nolan, Sarah Frye, Lindsay Stern, Iracema Drew, Jason Hinojosa, and De’Shawn Winslow. All saw parts of this novel in various early forms, and encouraged me to finish.
Much love to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and to the jury who selected my sample out of the pile: Jeffery Renard Allen, Sarah Braunstein, Christa Fraser, Paul Harding, Porochista Khakpour, Paul Lisicky, Matthew Neill Null, and Joanna Scott. Spending those seven months living on a sand dune at the end of the world, in paradise, was the experience of a lifetime. Special shout-out to Alison and John Ferring, for endowing my fellowship there.
To the teachers who inspired me along the way: In New Jersey—Jaime Vander Velde and Andi Mulshine. At Columbia—Karen Russell, Sonya Chung, Stacey D’Erasmo, Josh Bell, Amy Benson, and Jenny Davidson. At Iowa—Ethan Canin, Bennett Sims, Sam Chang, Margot Livesey, Marilynne Robinson, Paul Harding, and Ayana Mathis. For their wisdom and advice along the way, Andrea Barrrett, Yiyun Li, Edward P. Jones, and Michael Cunningham.
Though this book is not a factual history, I am indebted to Jennie Livingston and Paris Is Burning for the creative spark that led to these pages. To Dorian, Angel, Hector, and Venus, whose lives and consciousnesses I’ve spent countless hours thinking about. When I started this, I didn’t think it would turn into a novel, but alas.
Finally, to all the gentle souls we lost to the virus, and to the brothers and sisters at Pulse who left us too soon. This book is for you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOSEPH CASSARA was born and raised in New Jersey. He holds degrees from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has been a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This is his first novel.
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CREDITS
COVER DESIGN BY SARA WOOD
COVER PHOTOGRAPH © FLORENCE TÉTIER AND NICOLAS COULOMB
COPYRIGHT
“the lost women” from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of the Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Excerpt from the title poem of Atlantis: Poems by Mark Doty. Copyright © 1995 by Mark Doty. By permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE HOUSE OF IMPOSSIBLE BEAUTIES. Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Cassara. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-267700-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267697-9
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