Beautiful Boys Read Online Free PDF Page B

The food makes me stop shaking.
    “How did you find this place?” I ask.
    “We try everything but this is the best,” says Meadows.
    “This food helps us write better,” says Mallard. “We commune better when we aren’t digesting animals.”
    “What do you write?” I ask.
    Mallard looks at Meadows. Then he says, “We write about…phenomena. Supernatural phenomena.”
    “Ghosts,” says Meadows.
    “Like what my family’s movie is about.”
    “Really?” says Mallard. “That must be why they sent you here.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Maybe they thought you’d find a ghost here.” Mallard chuckles.
    “But you won’t,” Meadows says. “We haven’t found a single ghost in our building.”
    The waitress brings more tea and a cart of desserts that she says are made without any sugar or milk stuff. Mallard and Meadows and I share a piece of creamy you-wouldn’t-believe-it’s-soy-curd tofu pie, a piece of scrumptious yam pie and a dense kiss piece of caroby almond cake. The carob reminds meof the walk Angel Juan and I took before he left when we stepped on the St. John’s bread pods and they cracked open and smelled like chocolate.
    Why aren’t you here? I think. Why aren’t you here, Angel Juan?
     
    We’re sitting on cushions in Mallard and Meadows’s apartment listening to Indian sitar music. If I close my eyes I can see a goddess with lots of arms and almondy eyes moving her head from side to side like it’s not part of her neck, hypnotizing a garden of snakes. Maybe she’s hiding behind the veils that hang from the ceiling.
    “Feel better?” Meadows asks.
    “Yes, thanks for dinner. I’ll take you guys out tomorrow night.”
    “We have to go on a trip, Lily,” Mallard says. “We leave tonight.”
    “It’s for our book,” says Meadows. He turns his head to me. He isn’t wearing his glasses and suddenly his eyes catch the light. I have this feeling that he can see. “We are visiting a house in Ireland where awoman’s father keeps appearing.”
    “Except he’s dead,” says Mallard.
    “Except he’s about this big,” says Meadows, holding his hands a few inches apart. “Sitting on her teacup.”
    “If you want you can stay at our place instead of upstairs while we’re away,” says Mallard. “It might be more comfortable.”
    He looks very serious and I wonder if he’s thinking about how Charlie Bat died up there. I hadn’t even thought about it last night because I’d been so tired and crazed about Angel Juan: Charlie Bat probably OD’d in the same corner where I slept. But I kind of like being in my almost-grandpa’s place.
    I try not to show how I feel about my new friends going away, how I know tonight with its macro-heaven dinner and goddess music will fade, leaving me just as empty as before, loneliness attacking all my cells like a disease.
    “Thanks but I’ll be okay,” I say.
    “Did you sleep all right last night?” Meadows asks.
    “I didn’t even dream.”
    “We’ll leave keys to our place,” says Mallard. “Incase you change your mind. Use the phone anytime and whatever is in the fridge.” Then he goes, “I’m sorry we won’t be with you for Christmas.”
    “But we’ll be back New Year’s Eve day,” says Meadows.
    When I leave he hands me the meaty white lily Mallard picked.
    I carry the lily in front of me up the dark staircase like it is a lantern. And then a creepster thing happens. Light does start coming out of the flower. At first I think from the flower but then the light starts jumping all over the walls in front of me lighting the way. Someone is whistling somewhere. No, the light is whistling.
    I get to the top of the stairs on the ninth floor. The light goes out and the whistling stops. I must have imagined it because I’m tired. Maybe I’m going crazy.
    I think that all of me is broken. Not just my heart which cracked the night Angel Juan told me he was going away. Not just my body slammed with the sadness I see with no one