Read Online Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block - Free Book Online Page B

maybe from the sugar or maybe from the bug spray or maybe because it was our special secret stolen thing.
    Charlie points to a window on the top floor.
    “That’s where we lived when I was growing up.”
    “Hey, Charlie.”
    I turn around and hold up my camera. A little girl is standing in the street but she’s not a real little girl. She’s like Charlie, like her own movie without a projector.
    “That’s my sister Goldy,” I hear Charlie say. He runs over to her and they start throwing a shadow ball back and forth. Then after a while I hear somebody calling their names from the window. I can’t see anything but a champagne-colored glow until I hold my camera up and then I see the flickery face of a woman.
    “That’s my mother.” Charlie’s voice clicks a little. “She makes hats.”
    Charlie and Goldy run inside the building and I follow their echoing laughter upstairs into a deserted apartment that looks like nobody but maybe skulky rats have lived in for a long time.
    “Look through your camera,” Charlie says.
    The apartment changes. It’s suddenly warm and full of ghosty chairs and couches printed with cabbagy roses, crochet blankets, lamps with slinky silk fringe. There’s a table covered with laces and ribbons,a sewing machine and a bunch of mannequin heads wearing huge hats decorated with flowers, fruits and vegetables, tiny birds’ nests, butterflies, fireflies. I can smell onions cooking. The door opens and a man comes in. He’s tall and his eyebrows grow together making him look kind of scary.
    “That’s my father,” Charlie says to me. “He came from Poland on a ship when he was a little boy. They couldn’t understand his name so they put down ‘Bat’ because of his eyebrows. His father was a fisherman. In Poland in the spring they filled their cottage with lilacs and covered the floor with white sand.”
    Charlie’s dad goes over to where Charlie’s mom is setting the table with china plates and he puts his arms around her. She pushes him away like playing but he spins her and lifts her up onto his wing-tip shoes and starts dancing with her like that, two grainy black-and-white images twirling like they got bored of staying inside their movie.
    “Not tonight.” Charlie’s mom is out of breath. “It’s the sabbath. Now stop that.” She tries not to giggle.
    Charlie and Goldy dance too, like the ghosts in the haunted house at Disneyland. Angel Juan’sfavorite. He wanted to dance in the ballroom with me and see if the ghosts would go through our bodies.
    “Now stop,” Charlie’s mom says.
    She pulls away from their grinning goofster dad and straightens her apron. She goes over to the table and puts a piece of lace on her head. Everybody else sits down while Charlie’s mom lights some candles. She says a prayer with sounds from deep inside her throat. Then she serves baked chicken, peas, carrots and pearl onions. I’ve never seen a movie that smells this good.
    “We light the candles for your grandparents in a few days.” Charlie’s mother passes a loaf of braided bread.
    “When does the angel visit?” asks Goldy.
    “Elijah doesn’t come until Passover,” Charlie’s father says.
    “And he’ll drink the wine out of Papa’s cup,” says Goldy.
    “Maybe someday Charlie will write a play about angels,” Charlie’s mother says.
    “Charlie just writes about monsters,” Goldy says. “He scared me again today, Papa.”
    “It was just a mask.” Charlie holds up a rubber monster face. Goldy screams.
    “Charlie, don’t scare your sister,” his father says. “Your mother’s idea is good. You could write something about Elijah.”
    Charlie whispers to me, “The candles we lit once a year for the dead didn’t mean much to me then. Until my mother got sick and then she died and the candles meant something and nothing at all. I decided when I grew up I wouldn’t fast, light candles for the dead or pour wine for angels since none of it helped her stay alive.”
    Then