Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Her tongue pressed into his, circling, moving faster, her kisses turning urgent, powerful, they took control of her breathing, left her short of air. Her body was just alert enough to break the embrace, and Ponyboy bit lightly down onto her lower lip, and more of the world started filling in around her now, each sensation like a section from a color-by-numbers drawing: first the separate and contrary noise of two bottles rolling across the floor in different directions; then the crimson flicker of a lava lamp with draining batteries; and then the lights of a passing semi, a neon motel vacancy sign, both coming in through an open space.

The ice cream truck kept barreling down the open road, and in the mouth of the truck's opened door, she saw the shadowed bodies of different punks pushing at one another, jostling and cursing, most of it good-naturedly, everyone packed pretty tightly back there. In the darkness, a lot of the punkers had the appearance of parachuters bunched into the back of a World War II bomber, and the stench of their unwashed, baking bodies was worse than the smell of rotting garbage when the girl forgot to take out the trash. She remained unconcerned, kept staring at Ponyboy, at how the incoming breeze was playing lightly with his wilting spikes of hair, at the quarter moon of sweat knifing the side of his face. Although she could not read his expression, he was staring back at her, the whites of his eyes shimmering, his irises glowing with dazzling delicacy. And staring at him, watching him stare right back, the girl knew Ponyboy was examining something inside her. Studying the girl in a way that made her know that, for the first time in her life, someone understood the crucial details of her being.

But something else was happening, too, the larger atmosphere becoming charged, voices were rising, centered around what sounded like whelping, a happy animal, shouts and jibes and gleeful barks. Ponyboy's pupils flickered in response, drifting off center. And even as a pit opened inside the girl, she also did a half turn on the old tire, attempting to see between the blurring bodies, to the source of the commotion.

It was some sort of bizarre dance: this brownish animal in the door well. First the girl thought it might be a horse, but it was too small for that, so maybe like a dog. It was trying to get a sniff of wind, but someone was flicking its ears, play-slapping at its nose. The girl couldn't entirely make out who kept bothering the dog. Like some kind of walrus, only with this massive, bulbous stomach. The bulbous walrus was swaying and unsteady, but kept teasing the animal, feinting at it like a shadow boxer, and the animal was following along, tracking the hands, measuring their movements, making small lunges and then unleashing these rich, happy whelps.

In the recesses of the overstuffed closet that was the girl's mind, it seemed she had intimate knowledge of the walrus. If she had been lucid, the girl was sure she'd recognize its laughing sounds. Only now something else was intruding. Thin like a blade. But covered in black. A vampire.

“JESUS, DAPHNEY,” the vampire screamed, as he jumped between the dog and the walrus. Jerking on the mongrel's rope leash, he pulled the dog away from the ledge, back into the van. “Nice fucking mom there.”

The wheels of the girl's mind, rusty though they may have been, ground forward.

“Can't even take care of a fucking mutt,” Lestat continued.

The girl tried to get up, only to have her lack of dexterity reaffirmed. She tried again, barely getting to her feet and then plopping back down. Slurring, she yelled. “FUCKER. DON’T YOU TOUCH HER.”

Then became aware of the hand lingering on the edge of the broken hem of her thrift-store skirt; aware of Ponyboy's touch — calm, practiced, firm. The girl discovered she liked being touched by someone who knew what he was doing.

“Don't worry about them,” Ponyboy said. “Those two pull this shit all the time. Like some old married couple.”

“That vampire's lucky. If I had some protein in me, he wouldn't be picking on no dogs.”

Daphney's laughing protests were loud, as were Lestat's insults. The girl stumbled over a syllable, paused. “I'm not scared of nothing. Can magic like you don't know. All kinds of witchy shit. Gimme some protein, I'm castin’ spells.”

Her eyes welled. She managed to get her palm up to the side of Pony-boy's face. “I can't explain it to you,” she slurred. “I can, but I can't, you know?”

Maybe there was something better he and the girl could be doing, Ponyboy replied.

“People act like they're so bad,” she said.

A bump. The ice cream truck over some sort of pothole.

“Hurting each other, takin’ advantage for no reason. It just makes me, like I want to…”

Her hand fluttered in front of his face now, casting an enchantment.

“Destroy them motherfuckers.”

As if her words truly carried the power to perform the act, the ice cream truck turned gravely quiet, its bustling and barking giving way to the flapping of the trash bag over the hole where the rear window should have been, the lulling consistency of tires speeding down a straightaway. Ponyboy looked at her with an intense defensiveness, a fierce disbelief. The truck momentarily drifted atop those raised lane marker bumps. The night whistled by, roadside mile markers and sagebrush and cacti and tumbleweeds in a piecemeal montage. Ponyboy kept staring at the girl, and the lava lamp's flickering crimson gleamed against the small balls of surgical steel on his brow. His mouth was half-illuminated, tightly shut. Stoic and intense, he seemed to consider what the girl had just said, a cover of clouds passing over him now, his eyes turning small and hard, the light inside of him seeming to extinguish, or rather, withdrawing, turning inward, like a movie theater going dark before the images begin to flicker and roll.

6.3

A long block with a twenty-four-hour sports club. Shrubbery, a parking lot.

“Over there,” Newell said.

“What?”

“Dude, you see?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Slow down.”

“What's going on?”

“Just pull up to her, okay?” His voice was authoritative and dismissive at once. Kenny wasn't sure what to do, but followed orders, and slowed the FBImobile to ten miles an hour, approaching the bicyclist. Midway down the block, slowly pedaling.

Down went the passenger window. “Hello?” said Newell. “Hey?”

As the car pulled up, she remained curled on her perch, her T-shirt loose and drenched with sweat, her shorts made of the form-fitting Lycra of a serious cyclist.

“Ma'am?” asked Newell.

“What are—” Kenny asked, softly.

“Please?” begged Newell.

She finally gave in and looked. The boy paused, triumphant, trying to keep a straight face. “Do you know where the nearest gym is?”

There was a long second between the end of the question and the extinguisher's appearance, just enough time for the bicyclist's expression to change, her puzzlement twisting into the tangibly awful sense that she'd been taken. But by then it was too late: white smoke was hissing outward from the compression nozzle; she was being engulfed; she was flailing; slow, exaggerated motions; leaning one way; tilting the bike and capsizing into one of the prickly, decorative ferns.

The FBImobile screeched and its transmission didn't labor while jumping into third. Between wheezing laughs Newell called it a brutal facial, and let loose with a honking snort, the chlorine mist drifting from the extinguisher nozzle having little to do with his tears. Classic, he said, just about wetting himself. “What the fuck was that?” Kenny answered. “What the fuck are you doing?” Kenny's foot stayed on the gas and he shifted his eyes from the empty road to the rearview, and saw a guy running over from his car, vaulting the parking lot's miniature containing wall. In the rearview, the bright colors of the guy's workout clothes were shrinking into the darkness, but the guy kept sprinting — toward the dissipating white cloud; the guy crouching, taking the fallen woman into his arms.