Necklace of Kisses

by Francesca Lia Block

  She saw that she had another cell phone message, though, again, she hadn’t heard it ring.

  It was the same androgynous voice.

  “Please, please, we’re all so worried. Please come home.”

  The red-haired woman and her son were at the pool that afternoon. The woman, wearing a black bathing suit that was held together with lots of silver hardware, was trying to apply sunscreen to her wiggly son’s white-white skin.

  “Thank you for my nails!” Weetzie said.

  “Oh, you’re quite welcome. It’s the least I could do. I would have had to go around with five naked toes!”

  “But it was so generous. I had no idea how much they charge here. I could have gotten about five of those for the same price at Happy Nails.”

  “Where is that?” the woman asked. “Is that where you are escaping from?”

  “Escaping?”

  “Stay still, Bean!” the woman cried as her son began to hop in circles around her. “I thought that everyone who stays at a hotel is escaping something. Or someone, I suppose.”

  “I’m just here to relax,” Weetzie said quickly.

  The woman smeared the last of the sunscreen onto the tip of Bean’s nose; she took off her sandals, took his hand, and they splashed into the pool. Weetzie came and sat on the tiled edge, swinging her legs, dipping her toes.

  “Where are you from?” Weetzie asked.

  “We’re escaping,” Bean said. He took a breath, dove underwater, and then came back up, shaking his head like a wet Irish setter pup, drenching Weetzie. “From the monsters.”

  “Really,” she said. “Then there really are monsters?”

  “When Bean was born, my family tried to take him away,” the woman said. “They have this horrid baby-stealing tradition. They take their own kin and substitute them for someone’s newborn. It’s just brutal.”

  Weetzie, who never in her life had been short on things to say, realized that it was happening quite a lot lately.

  “We’ve been all over. This place is especially lovely, though. But it is cutting into Uncle Red’s inheritance. Along with all the dominatrix clothes I got in Italy!”

  “Can I buy you dinner tonight?” Weetzie asked. “To make up for the nails?”

  “We don’t really go out after dark.”

  “Monsters,” Bean added.

  “Breakfast then?”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  Weetzie’s head was spinning from the sunshine on the water and all the talk of stolen babies. She mumbled something about meeting on the terrace at ten. She started to walk away but the woman called after her, “We don’t know your name yet.”

  “I’m Weetzie Bat.”

  “Peri,” the woman said. “Good to meet you.”

  “Be careful of the monsters!” Bean shouted before he plunged into the pool.

  Esmeralda

  When Weetzie returned to her room, the door was open and she saw the cleaning cart in the hallway. She tiptoed up and peeked inside. The feather duster was hard at work, flicking through the air by itself.

  “Excuse me,” Weetzie said, coming inside.

  “Yes, missus, sorry. I’ll be done in a minute,” replied the voice.

  “Do you mind explaining this to me,” Weetzie said. “It’s all seeming a little too surreal at the moment.”

  The duster stopped moving and the door of the room swung closed. Weetzie backed away.

  “Don’t be scared, please.”

  “Then please tell me what’s going on. Believe me, I know this isn’t an ordinary hotel.”

  “No,” the voice said. “That’s why I come here. And people told me I was good because people don’t want to see you too much.”

  “You’re invisible?” Weetzie said.

  “Yes. I come from El Salvador. I was a secretary there, for an executive. My grandma taught me how to make myself invisible, to keep safe. But one time, I tried to not be invisible anymore and it didn’t work. I stayed invisible. So I came here. It was easy to come here and get a job like this, so I don’t mind it so much now. I’m so sorry if I scared you.”

  “No,” Weetzie said. “No, that’s fine. I just wanted to understand. What is your name?”

  “Esmeralda.”

  “Hi, Esmeralda. I’m Weetzie.”

  “Hello, Missus Weetzie.”

  “I love the fresh towels and shower gel and how you turn down the bed and leave chocolates on the pillow. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Weetzie watched the door open and the cart wheel out of the room and down the hall.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said, before she remembered that she probably wouldn’t.

  Angel

  That night, Weetzie put on a freshly laundered Emilia with her white jeans and black sandals and took the red lacquer bridge over the koi pond to the Japanese restaurant. The fish glowed orange, red, and black under the surface of the water; their movements made her dizzy. She was still feeling light-headed and needed a nice, grounding meal, she told herself. Since she’d been here, she had hardly touched her diet staples, at least not her current ones. When she was eighteen, she could have lived on raw fish, chocolate, and beer, but not anymore.

  She sat at a quiet table surrounded by red and white cat statues with one paw raised, as if swiping at prey, and wiped her hands with the warm washcloth that the very tall, surprisingly broad-shouldered Japanese waitress brought. Then Weetzie ordered miso soup, spinach with sesame, edamame, sautéed pumpkin, rice balls with umeboshi plum, cold soba noodles with scallions, and tofu steak. Each item came in its own small red, black, or terra-cotta bowl or dish; she ate slowly with her chopsticks. Almost immediately her headache went away.

  While she was trying to decide if she could stuff another thing into her mouth, a gentleman approached her table. Weetzie rarely saw men she would describe this way, but he was the real thing.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but my friend and I thought we recognized you. Were you in Dangerous Angels?”

  Weetzie laughed. “That was so long ago!”

  “My friend, Sable, is a huge fan. He has a picture of you on his Web site.”

  Weetzie glanced over to his table, where a young, blond Kurt Cobain look-alike with a goatee and glasses was hunched over his rice bowl. He smiled shyly at her.

  “Would you care to join us?” the gentleman asked.

  Weetzie thought, A true adventurer must always accept the invitation.

  The blond, it turned out, was Tristan Sable, an actor who played an angel on a popular soap opera. The gentleman was his producer, Dashell Hart. Sable, he said, had recently introduced him to Weetzie and Max’s work.

  Sable smiled shyly. “He’s like the new Cassavetes.”

  “And that makes you Gena Rowlands, darling,” said Dashell.

  Weetzie sighed. “I wish. She’s a—”

  “Goddess,” they all said at once, rolling their eyes skyward, and laughed.

  “Are you working on anything new?” Sable asked.

  “I’m working on my store,” Weetzie said. “I have a store. Max is working on discovering how depressed the news can make one man.”

  Sable and Dashell nodded sympathetically. “And that’s why you’re here?”

  Weetzie shrugged. “I’m not sure why I’m here, exactly. I wanted an adventure. Or something. A rewrite. I had my high school prom in this hotel.”

  They all grimaced.

  “At least you went,” Sable said. “Did you go, Dashell?”

  “Heavens no! I was so shy I couldn’t even have asked anyone to sit next to me in the cafeteria.”

  “Me either,” Sable said. He looked at Weetzie. “In high school, I had a puppet named Stem. He was a lamb, I guess, but I never really thought of him as a lamb. He was just Stem. I carried him around with me everywhere. If I really got upset, I’d have to have Stem communicate for me.”

  “Prom-king material,” Dashell said gently.
r />   “Exactly. I was really desirable.”

  “Look at you now, darling,” said Dashell.

  “And you play an angel,” said Weetzie. “How cool is that?”

  Sable shrugged ironically. “Have you seen the show?”

  “I think it’s an unsung masterpiece, if I do say so myself,” Dashell said. “In its way. A bit kooky, though. All these vampires and witches and things we make him battle.”

  Sable said, “I really like how you met the witch in Dangerous Angels. That Jayne Mansfield fan club coven. How did he come up with that?”

  “It all happened,” Weetzie said. “Basically.”

  “And how Witch Baby came,” he said. “That was amazing.”

  Weetzie smiled. But she was thinking about Max sleeping with Vixanne Wigg, who gave birth to Witch Baby and left her on their doorstep. Weetzie hadn’t really thought about that in years. It was easier to consider the witch baby, Lily, as her own daughter. Suddenly her stomach cramped up, just like the first time Vixanne had come to the door. Maybe it was nothing; she had just eaten too many rice balls?

  “Do you enjoy producing?” Weetzie asked Dashell, to change the subject.

  “Let’s put it this way, as my mother used to say, it’s better than a stick in the eye.” He chuckled.

  Weetzie said, “My dad worked in the industry. It was a love-hate thing. Do you know Charlie Bat?”

  “Planet of the Mummy Men? My God! That’s kitsch of the highest order. I actually apprenticed with Irv Finegold for a while.”

  “You’re kidding!” Weetzie wished her father were here. He would have been able to tell them his stories about how her mother, Brandy-Lynn, insisted on tailoring the mummy rags to show off her figure, how he had once seen Marilyn Monroe on a set, about the hidden Holocaust and black-list references he and Irv Finegold had worked into Mummy Men.

  “What else did your father do?” Dashell asked.

  “Nothing was made. He moved to New York and did some plays. The whole thing was really frustrating.”

  “I’ve been trying to get my penguin movie made forever,” said Dashell. “Do you know much about penguins?”

  Weetzie shook her head.

  “They’re really wonderful creatures. The males stand on the ice forever, holding the baby eggs on their feet until they hatch. Isn’t that marvelous? What man would do that, I ask you? And the females go off to restore themselves. Just like you’re doing, darling.”

  “A little late,” Weetzie said. “I think I’ve needed this since my baby was born.”

  “Well, good for you. A girl’s got to get away.”

  “This whole place is like a movie,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe all the strange things that keep happening.”

  The way they cocked their heads inquisitively and the brightness of their eyes made her think of penguins. How could she explain strange? She was glad when the waiter interrupted with the check.

  “We’ll have to do this again sometime,” Dashell said as he kissed her cheek by the koi pond.

  Weetzie hugged him. Then she hugged Tristan Sable, who felt much more muscular than he looked. She thought she noticed something odd, prickly, bunchy-crunchy under his white shirt.

  The men asked if they could escort her to her room, and, at first, remembering the walk home after the mermaid’s kiss, she almost said yes. But then it seemed like an imposition, so she went down the path alone after the Valentino look-alike arrived with Dashell’s daffodil-yellow Jaguar.

  It was later than she had realized, and, once again, the walkways were deserted. I’m not going to be afraid this time, she told herself. I’m in the safest place in the world. Of course, this was also what the blond ex-wife of a certain infamous football player must have thought when she was attacked and slain just a few miles from here. Weetzie shivered from scalp to toes.

  The footsteps started the same way as before, even and precise like the ticking of a clock. Weetzie hurried under the shadows of the palm trees. There seemed to be another shadow, too, moving with her, but maybe it was just her own. Maybe the footsteps were just her own, too, echoing on the pavement. Still, she was dripping sweat and hardly breathing when she got to her door.

  There was a soft crunching in the leaves outside her window, then silence. In the morning, she told herself, she would look for footprints. Now she bolted the door, switched on all the lights, found HBO on cable. Then, although she wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, Weetzie called room service.

  Pan

  He came to the door wheeling a cart covered in linen. She had ordered fruit ices, because after the fright she’d suffered, she decided she deserved—and needed—a bit of sugar for comfort. There were six little scoops—watermelon, mango, peach, lemon, lime, and pineapple. They were decorated with wafer cookies and sprigs of mint. There was also a bottle of water, a glass of ice, a silver spoon, and pink tea roses in a vase.

  “Are you all right?” Pan asked when he saw her face.

  “I’m a little freaked. I thought I heard someone following me.”

  “Do you want me to call security?”

  She shook her head. She was too embarrassed for that. “It was probably my imagination.”

  He nodded and handed her the bill. She signed it, adding another big tip, and when she handed it back, they looked at each other for a moment. She felt a tingling in her breasts and between her legs. It surprised her and made her curious.

  “Are you having a good time?” he asked. There was something almost shy about the way he was looking at her now.

  “It’s amazing. Strange, though.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. The people. Like tonight. Do you know who Tristan Sable is?”

  “Isn’t he on that soap?”

  “Yes. He plays an angel. I met him and his producer tonight at dinner.”

  “I’d give anything for a part like that,” Pan mused. Then he added, “I rented one of your films.”

  Weetzie laughed. Oh, God, how weird, she thought. No one had paid attention to those movies in years, and now twice in one night!

  “I liked it. I’d like to talk to you more.”

  “Sure.”

  “I get off in an hour.”

  For a minute, she just looked at him. Her face felt hot. Then she realized he wasn’t talking about getting off that way. What was she thinking?

  “May I come by?” Pan asked softly. “We could watch some TV.”

  Weetzie nodded.

  “Your dessert is melting,” he said as he left.

  Pan came back.

  “Would you like something from the bar?” she asked.

  He held up his hands. “No thanks. I don’t drink.”

  “Soda? Juice? Water?”

  “I’m fine. Relax. Tell me about you.”

  “There’s not much to tell. I have a shop with my friend Ping. We sell vintage and our own designs. I have two girls in college. I used to be in these little films my boyfriend made.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Acting? Not really. I wish I could do something a little more meaningful now.”

  “It’s meaningful to people who watch you,” he said.

  He told her about how the teacher asked his first-grade class what they wanted to be when they grew up. All the kids raised their hands to say teacher or fireman, and Pan’s answer was “an actor on a TV show.”

  “Not a movie star. I wanted to be inside that little box my mother was always watching day and night. Then, when I got older, I really wanted it. I thought it would make me less of a freak.”

  “How were you a freak?” Weetzie asked. “You are so good-looking and charming.”

  “I was always so horny,” he said. “I think I went through my entire adolescence with a hard-on.” He laughed. “I scared all the girls off. I’d go home after school and sit in front of the TV getting high and getting off.”

  “What shows?”

  “Oh, anything. My So-Called Life. Claire Danes! And bad TV
. I mean, reruns like The Bionic Woman. Welcome Back, Kotter. I had this fixation with The Brady Bunch. I thought that the reason it was so popular was this whole underlying incest theme. I mean, here are these two families of kids living together, perfectly matched up, pretending to be brother and sister. These girls with their blond hair and miniskirts.”

  “You liked Marcia Brady?”

  “No, Jan. I liked to think about Jan and Peter.”

  Weetzie laughed. Then she admitted, “I liked Danny.”

  “Who?”

  “The Partridge Family Danny. He was this chubby, red-haired kid—I mean, Keith was the one you were supposed to like. But I thought he was kind of hot when I was eight. He was funny.”

  “That’s right. I told you about my dogs.”

  “You’re almost as bad as I am.”

  Pan said, “I figure if a show makes me laugh, cry, or come, I have to give it credit. If it does all three…”

  “Okay, which shows?”

  “You go first.”

  “No, you.”

  “Okay,” said Pan. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

  “No way.”

  “What?”

  “That’s my favorite show. I’m supposedly too old for it but I love it. And you are totally outside the demographic. What are you doing?” She playfully pushed his shoulder.

  “It fits my criteria. Laugh, cry, come.”

  “Buffy’s cute.”

  “She’s cute, but Willow’s the one for me.”

  Weetzie loved Willow, the shy, red-haired lesbian witch.

  “I love you,” Weetzie said.

  “What?”

  “You’re kind of a geek, like me.”

  Pan nodded.

  “I was heartbroken when that show went off the air,” Weetzie said. “But it was so funny, the last episode made me so happy. I thought for sure they would kill her off at the end. I was bracing myself. Instead, here’s this girl who has had this huge vampire-slaying responsibility on her shoulders her whole life and then she realizes that she’s finally free, she doesn’t have to save the world anymore. And now she knows she can just be a girl, finally. She can just go shopping. She can just play.”