Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Her reference to the tryout stunned him. The way everything had gone down was still prominent, obviously, in each of their minds, and this left Ponyboy especially vulnerable. What Cheri was saying was like a punch to his solar plexus. He had no response, not even a way to respond, he didn't even know how to try. But as for three-dimensional tattoos — well, what did Cheri want him to say? That in all the times he'd gone under the tattoo needle he could come up with a single instance where the ink had accumulated like some sort of fucking laundry pile? That the idea wasn't bizarre? Didn't sound like the kind of shit a twelve-year-old comes up with when he gets stoned for the first time? That tonight, sitting in a junked-out ice cream truck with a bunch of teenagers, Ponyboy hadn't heard plots for world domination, ideas about witchery, and a whole bunch of other garbage, any or each of which hadn't sounded a whole lot more plausible?

“Baby, it's not a stupid idea,” he said.

She softened and at the same time became excited, her voice speeding up. “Do you want to talk to the comic guy? He's right here and he's really sweet, he'll explain it lots better.”

Fumbling sounds were accompanied by a high-pitched electric whine, and a crackling fragment of some song, the Fox's sound system going good and strong. Ponyboy could almost make out an exchange: some guy saying you probably tell all your customers they're sweet; Cheri laughing out her response, answering— But you are —in that paralyzing way of hers, sounding erotic and smart and sexy and cynical, all rolled into a fine line of cocaine.

“HEY, COMIC BOOK GUY?”

More fumbling and then the guy's voice was uncertain, a little high-pitched and whiny. “Um, hey—”

“I want you to listen to me.” Ponyboy didn't wait for a response. “You touch my girlfriend, I will personally hunt you down, got me? First I will find you. Second I will slit your throat. And then my friend, then I will fuck the wound.”

Tension through the other end of the phone, silence.

“You understand me?” Ponyboy asked.

More silence.

“As long as we're clear on that, mama's little angel. Put Cheri back on.”

Why did Ponyboy have to be such a cock, Cheri demanded. And where the hell had he been all night? How hard was it to answer a goddamn beeper? Wasn't that the whole purpose of having a beeper, so that you would get in contact with the person trying to reach you?

“This is me calling you back, babe.”

The last word wasn't out of his mouth before Cheri wanted to know whose phone he was on. Before Ponyboy could begin to address that, another question piled on top. Ponyboy felt as if his legs were going to buckle beneath their weight. He felt wrung out and worn down, as if he could sleep for a thousand years. For a moment he actually thought of waking up in a new world. Then he realized that what he wanted was his old world back. A world where Cheri wasn't hostile. Or at least where her hostility wasn't directed at him.

He tried to say something along those lines, only the battery was beginning to go, the connection was getting fuzzy. And down the length of the alley, too, he could see some sort of vague shape, maybe shapes, Ponyboy couldn't tell, he actually wasn't looking that hard. But the shape or shapes were approaching, coming his way, and whatever it was, it was bringing these giggles with it, competing and high pitched and echoing off the casino walls. And different sorts of dragging sounds were coming too, the scrapes of unsteady footsteps, the murmurs of a conversation.

“I've always thought of myself as romantic,” Cheri was saying. “ But maybe romantic is just another word for sucker ?”

Her agitated breathing emanated through the receiver, but was drowned out by a high-pitched cackle — the fat shadow on the alley wall spreading and larger, the shapes nearing the dumpster, moving into the crescent-shaped swatch of light. Soft hues distinguished two separate bodies; Ponyboy zeroed in on the thin, tight figure draped along Danger-Prone Daphney's side. He tasted a kiss from earlier in the night. Its tang. Its ripeness.

There were only so many ways he could apologize and only so many things he could do, but Ponyboy was willing to do anything for forgiveness from Cheri, anything to make things better.

If things weren't going to get better, though, he could not help but want to be with someone who trusted him, someone who looked at him and believed he could do no wrong.

He slid down the wall, into a crouch, and kept staring down the alley, listening to Cheri talk about the plan for three-dimensional tattoos — how they hadn't done them yet but there was big money to be made.

Momentarily, Ponyboy had to shut his eyes, he had to lose himself in the oncoming laughter, the whimsy of teenage girls.

His mouth felt parched, his tongue heavy and thick. He tilted his head backward, looked to the sky, swallowed. “Okay,” he told Cheri. “I might have something. For this plan. I don't know but—”

And now a shriek of high-pitched recognition. Heavy hurried steps coming his way. Ponyboy heard his name and before he could fully straighten, stringy arms were wrapping around him, embracing him, and these were followed by a light weight, colliding with, flopping onto him. Lips that were feathery and sloppy and perfect pressed against his cheek. The girl with the shaved head fell into his arms. She tipped her lips to his ear, breathless and joyful, slurring and melodic: “Hey there, beautiful.”

—

And then his tongue was swirling in her throat and a molten sensation was flowing through the girl with the shaved head, this concentrated sense of warmth, building in momentum, thickening, accumulating its own density. And the practice sessions she'd performed on her stuffed animals would never be recalled the same way, for now there was the comparison of this kiss. That time in the fourth grade when she had chased the towheaded boy around the swing set; the birthday party games in which the girl with the shaved head had nervously participated — heading into a darkened closet with some boy she barely knew, surviving the first awkward seconds, then struggling to find the proper approach angle (clicking her front teeth against his)…; these, as well as the day when between third and fourth period, in the far right stall of the girls lav, she and Francesca had been dared for ten dollars to French for thirty seconds; plus the fumbling make-out sessions that had distracted her through so many empty afternoons: Duff, T.J., T-Bone, Mohammed, Javier, then Duff again. Every experience, fulfilling or not, in one way or another had contributed to her idea of what a kiss should be. From this point forward, she would see them only through the tinted lens of this kiss.

Beads of perspiration had formed on her forehead and were gaining enough mass to run down the side of her face, but she did not feel their trickle. She was vaguely aware of a warm wind whipping onto her upper back and neck, a breeze that bordered on hot, but that provided relief anyway. She possessed the knowledge that she was in motion, that the ice cream truck was moving and she was inside the truck once again, although how she'd physically gotten back inside the truck, the girl did not know. Nor was she aware where the truck was going. The girl discovered that she could not remember how to get her body to move in such a manner as to get Ponyboy's hand off of her knee. And, almost instinctively, she was okay with her limitations. Her disconnect felt unique to her, it felt delicious and pleasing. Somehow, she understood that the nebulous sounds and sensations were caused by Ponyboy's kisses. She knew that the gap between what was going on in her head and what was going on in the truck had been forged on the strength of Ponyboy's kisses. Ponyboy's kisses overloaded power grids throughout the South-west and were the guiding light through the blackouts they'd caused. His kisses parched rivers until they were dry beds, and they were the water that would save her from the thirst of his kisses as she wandered through the desert that also was his kisses. And if the girl with the shaved head wanted to survive, she needed to be kissing Ponyboy, she needed to be kissing Ponyboy more.