Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

“SAY WHAT?”

“You kept having to dress and undress—”

“Owh. My. God.”

“The number musta fallen outta my jeans—”

She listened with some hesitation, and took as much time as she needed, composing herself. “Then you're bi?”

Ponyboy's face turned red. Whether he was blushing or just overloading with anger, he took a moment, sucked deeply on the spliff, then exhaled white streams through his nose.

“They buy me, I'm sexual. ”

3.5

Like a shot Newell was off his stool, the cartoon child who has just realized his pants are on fire, the stagecoach driver with bandits on his tail, whipping the horses, flooring it, pedal to the metal, balls to the wall, he was sprinting, pushing through any opening that might present itself, shoving to create openings. Away from the slot machine island, away from the fuzz. His arms churned and his squat little legs pumped, and his reaction time was not quite as fast as it needed to be, leaving him unable to completely avoid the exposed chest of a middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt.

“Scuse me,” Newell yelled, and caromed off the man, bouncing with the impact, the momentum carrying him away and in a new direction. Upon reaching the mouth of the video machine bank, he shouted, “Pardon me,” successfully swerved around a retired farmer type whose barrel stomach hung out from the bottom of his T-shirt, and then swerved once more, this time as if his hips were on a hinge, a trick that allowed him to avoid, by fractions of an inch, what surely would have been a fatal collision, this time with the farmer's significant other, a brightly attired blue-haired woman, whose mooing face was inside a pocketbook the size of a Winnebago.

“GANGWAY, MAMA,” Newell screamed.

But what was this? His legs were entangled, constricted, they weren't working properly, there was a malfunction, something was happening, his oversize jean shorts had slipped too far, gravity had betrayed him, mayday, mayday, he was going down, leading with his face, plummeting amid a group of aged tourists, taking with him a laminated name tag from a nearby breast pocket.

Jackpot nickels flew out of his fun cup and scattered all over the carpet's flourish of patterned card suits. Blood roared through Newell's ears. Before he could decode any messages or recover any nickels, a hand pulled at the back of his collar. Considerable force was yanking, bringing Newell upright. Busted, he thought, and had a momentary flash of jail bars.

He almost did not recognize the face at first, for it was focused in a way that belied its usual uncertainties. Kenny's brow was tight, his eyes calm yet alive. The muscles in his jaw flared out of the sides of his face. Kenny looked at him and did not blink and then was on the move, taking the lead and pulling on Newell's collar, manhandling the boy, dragging him in the opposite direction of the table games, along a barrack of video poker machines, confidently directing their route, as if he'd already surveyed the floor and considered possible exits. Newell checked over his shoulder. He stumbled. Keeping up was a lot harder when you had to hold up your shorts.

“I think he's going for his holster,” Newell said.

Kenny's hair bounced lightly on his shoulders with every step; his elbows flailed. He looked in both directions for any more security guards, saw the wall of buxom women in sequined dresses, the oily jugheads with muscles popping out of brightly colored Italian shirts. To avoid a change girl and her pushcart of racked coins, he had to let go of Newell, and now moved a bit farther ahead of the boy, veering toward a wall of partitioned fun-house mirrors.

“We're losing him,” Newell said. “Keep going.”

3.6

Bing Beiderbixxe lived in a small house in the valley with two guys he knew from college, both of whom were in the second year of business school. Most weekends, the housemates’ girlfriends were around, lounging around in sweats and/or their boyfriends’ boxers, halfheartedly tossing their immaculately groomed heads, watching sports with their men and passing Bing's cereal between each other, picking at it, straight from the box. Usually around nightfall, the boyfriends would rummage through the overhead cabinets, pulling out dented pots and pans that Bing's sister had long ago outgrown and passed down. The girlfriends would chop vegetables, start on a pasta sauce. Garlic would bubble on a front burner, maybe some chicken breasts lightly sautéing on the back. For his part, Bing usually stood to the side, ready to help but not exactly jumping in (he was kind of out of his element once you got beyond spreading peanut butter on bread).

Their most recent meal had been like so many others, agreeable and, for the most part, easy, the dining area busy with the small talk of people who casually knew one another, the guys discussing the securities market, a girlfriend voicing polite and good-natured jealousy about how amazing the sauce tasted. Bing, however, remained fairly quiet, hunched over his food. An encouraging comment floated in his direction— been losing weight, huh, buddy? He looked down. His silverware scraped loudly against his plate.

It was the first weekend of August and the night was enjoyably cool, with just the slightest hint of a breeze. Standing outside, on the front walkway, Bing felt a mild summer wind pass over him and stared down the street for a while, looking at the houses with their trim lawns, the homes with the front lights on, and the homes that were dark and empty. Crickets and cicadas and other bugs were doing their thing and the night sky was the gentle purple of swaddling blankets. Many were the times Bing had sat on the front steps of his house and sketched the driveway. He used variations of this sketch whenever he needed something to take place on the street where his hero lived. That night, Bing went back inside to his room, sat at his drawing table, and looked at the mess of art books and movie stills and half-finished panel drawings on bristol board. For a time he stared at a black-and-white cityscape photo from the 1920s, which he was trying to adapt into a backdrop. Then he got up and looked for his cordless.

“Bingading! How's that deadline going? You made any progress?”

“Well, I'm gonna be hating life tomorrow—”

“Join the club, baby. I hate life every day.”

“And it's not like a meal with the zombies helps any. I swear, ten minutes of their inanity, I'm all but begging for death's sweet release.”

“I'm on my way down to Irvine right now for SAT boy. Figure at least a half hour.”

“Cool beans.”

“For you maybe. You don't have to recross the friggin’ county.”

“I know it's out of your way. I really appreciate it. Really, man. And like I said, I'll pay for gas.”

This was the summer of shimmery cabana shirts. The high-quality ones hung loosely off the shoulders, but were form fitting around the waist, creating a slimming effect that was totally excellent — or so Bing had been told by a salesgirl in a clothing boutique on Santa Monica. Under normal conditions, Bing was allergic to salespeople, but this girl had come up to him while he was picking through a rack, she'd literally grabbed the shirt out of his hands, hunted through the rack, and pulled out a different shirt, swearing it would fit his body type better. He was in the dressing room when she'd brought him three more shirts, all similar in cut and style, but distinct in their own right, totally worth trying on, just for variety's sake. For the sheer hell of it, she'd also come by with a pair of what she termed cracking jeans — if he was buying the shirts to party in, he might as well try some jeans, see how they looked together, why not make an outfit, right? The salesgirl had been wearing a pink slip as a summer dress and its shoulder strap had been falling onto her arm in a way that had been quite charming, and when she'd left to find Bing jeans in the proper waist size, he'd watched the slip clinging around her backside. Over the store stereo, some sort of nu metal-ish band had been playing, one of those heavy, noisy messes that Bing usually dismissed, but for some reason, this time he was really able to hear and appreciate everything the band was trying to do, and when the girl returned and asked, “How you doing in there?” Bing had answered, “Just cracking, thanks.” And when he'd exited the dressing room wearing that first outfit, she'd touched him on the arm and had smiled, and Bing had been utterly disarmed, and that day, he'd purchased every single outfit that the salesgirl recommended, putting them on the credit card that he had gotten specifically for car repairs and emergency expenses, but what the hell. The salesgirl had walked him to the register and told him her name and casually impressed upon him the importance of letting the cashier know she'd been the one who had helped him, and once his charge had been approved, she had put her arm around Bing and told him to make sure he kept in touch, and a week later, when he'd gone back into the boutique, the salesgirl had greeted him with a perky smile and a blank gaze, and for a second Bing had been unsure if she really knew who he was, at which point she'd asked how the outfits were doing, and she'd inquired whether he'd come back for more clothes, and, sure, granted, this was part of the sales world these days, you drank more often at the bar with a hot chick behind the counter smiling and flirting in a halter top, there were no virgins in a consumer world, okay. However, as Bing put on one of those hideously shimmering eighty-five-dollar cabana shirts, fished out a relatively unrumpled pair of ninety-five-dollar jeans, and readied himself for a night of getting good and crocked with his buddies, it was all but impossible for him to be reminded of anything other than his little shopping outing. Equally impossible was recalling this memory without feeling a mixture of enthusiasm and embarrassment; enthusiasm because it was exciting when a pretty girl was nice to you, and he did look smooth in those clothes; embarrassment because nobody ever goes home with that hot chick in the halter top behind the bar, because nobody likes it when they find out they've been manipulated, and it's even worse if you have been willingly manipulated, and, finally, because the reasons you allow yourself to be willingly manipulated are never easy to face. So what Bing did, he got dressed. Slapped some of his housemate's cologne on each cheek, his neck, and his underarms. He scoped out his reflection in the mirror and then rechecked the clock. Where were those fucktards, already?