Beautiful Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

one day Vixanne brought me and left me on the doorstep in a basket and Weetzie and my dad and Dirk and Duck made me like part of the family but in a way I’m not.”
    “Very confusing,” says Mallard. “Sometime you must draw us a family tree.”
    “Okay. But I’ll be okay at Charlie’s.”
    “What have you brought with you?” Mallard is looking at the globe lamp.
    “Weetzie thinks it’ll be good luck.”
    Meadows nods all solemn. “Apotropaic.”
    “What?”
    “It means something to ward off evil. You will be comfortable wherever you sleep. Can you have dinner with us tomorrow night?”
    “Sure.”
    Mallard hands me a set of keys on a big silver ring. My wrist is so skinny it could almost be a bracelet.
    “We know a macrobiotic place with the best tofu pie,” Meadows says.
    Soybean-curd pie doesn’t sound so great to me but I don’t say anything.
    “Meanwhile, you must take some of our groceries.” Mallard goes to the kitchen and comes back with a paper bag full of food.
    “That’s okay.”
    “You must. You have to eat and it’s not a great idea to be running around alone at night. I’ll show you up to Charlie’s place.”
    I say good-bye to Meadows and walk up six flights of stairs with Mallard, the keys, the food and a stack of blankets to Charlie Bat’s apartment.
    Mallard opens the door and lets me in. “No one’s lived here for a long time,” he says. “We take care of it and we tried to make it as nice as possible for you but still…”
    The apartment is smaller than the one downstairs and it’s cold and empty except for an old trunk thing made out of leather. The paint on the walls is peeling. But there is a view of the city, not a speck of dust-grunge anywhere and a Persian rug like the onesdownstairs on the floor. Suddenly I feel so tired I want to fall into the garden of the rug, just keep falling forever through pink leaves.
    “Now you’d better eat something and get right to bed,” Mallard says, putting down the blankets. “We thought you’d be safe and comfortable on the rug. There’s no phone but you just run downstairs anytime if you need anything.”
    He hands me the groceries. “Remember dinner tomorrow. Good night.”
    As he closes the door I feel loneliness tunnel through my body. I look inside the bag of food and there’s granola, milk, strawberries, bananas, peanut butter, bagels, mineral water and peppermint tea. I sit on the old trunk and eat a banana-and-peanut-butter bagel sandwich to try to fill up the tunnel the loneliness made. Then I try to open the trunk but it’s locked. I go stand by the window.
    New York is like a forbidden box. I am looking down into it. There’s the firefly building on Angel Juan’s card and the dark danger streets. All these sparkling electric treasures and all these strange scary things that shouldn’t have been let out but theyall were. And somewhere, down there, with the angels and the demons, is Angel Juan.
    I plug in the globe lamp and lie down on Mallard and Meadows’s carpet under the blankets in a corner.
    “Apotropaic,” Meadows said.
    I hold on to the globe like it is my heart I am trying to hold together. But my heart isn’t solid and full of light like the lamp. It’s cracked and empty and I just lie there not trying to hold it together anymore, letting my dry no-tear sobs break it up into little pieces, wanting to dream about Angel Juan—at least that.
    But when I do fall asleep it’s like being buried with nothing except dirt filling up my eyes.
     
    Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder-sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with.
    I drink some tea, get my camera and go out into the bright cold.
    As soon as I start skating I get the sick empty feeling in my stomach again. But it’s worse this time. How am I ever supposed to find Angel Juan in this city? It is the clutchiest thing I have ever tried to do.What made me think I could find him? Here is this whole city full of monuments and