Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

An insatiable lightness took her. A gust of uneasy delight. She sat and laughed and finally could not take it anymore. “Stop shitting me. Was there really an alien?”

Ponyboy gave her this constipated look. “Haven't you been listening? I'm not talking about an alien here. I'm fucking talking about SURVIVAL.”

And well, how was she supposed to keep a straight face? It was like watching your dog shit on some lady's lawn right when that woman's coming out of her house. It was like walking down the street and seeing a little kitten, so happy and perfect and cute that it was all you could do not to kick that little fucker. It was the moment when you saw something that you knew was fucked up and wrong, but still could not help yourself; when you could not control your actions and were going on autopilot, and maybe later you would feel bad about it and pledge to be a better person, but right now, oh well. The wrongness was the endearing part. Wrongness was the bond. The turn-on. And yeah, Ponyboy may have very well been a filthy obnoxious lying mooching philandering opportunist. Probably he was a moron to boot. But he was Cheri's moron. Whatever problems the two of them had in an empty kitchen, they had together. Whatever bullshit they had to face, they would survive together. And so what if Cheri could not sit still for ten seconds, think about the idea of a video camera capturing her naked body, and feel anything except a desire to run for the hills. So the hell what. Because the idea of getting filmed with her man, the thought of all those lonely people cueing up the videotape and watching her and Ponyboy —well, that was a lemur of a whole other stripe.

So Cheri watched his pornos and even studied his stupid-ass note cards. She got more turned on and the sex between them got filthier, and she shouted the nastiest names she could think of, the ones that hurt him worse than anything. Cheri told him, You don't deserve this pussy, you piece of shit, you fucking cocksucker, and she felt more powerful, more excited, closer to him than ever before. Their plan moved forward and Cheri followed his leads, and when the big day had arrived, she'd been full of nervous energy, and it was as if the two of them were embarking on a weekend trip up to Mount Charleston, something they'd always talked about.

Ponyboy drove. Let Cheri listen to whatever music she wanted — a first for him. He kept to himself, quiet, watching the road. They bypassed the route to the Strip, which surprised Cheri. “I guess I figured we'd be booked into a room at the Palms,” she said. “Somewhere classy.”

Ponyboy took her hand and wouldn't let go, which was sweet and assuring, but also kind of strange.

They passed the batting cages of a softball complex, and the long flat greens of a public park, and then made a right on Tropicana. Cheri checked the mirror attached to the back of the sun visor, and made sure her mascara was fine. Ponyboy roused from his thoughts long enough to stare at her. He said that right now she had to be the most lovely person on the planet, and he squeezed her hand, and they idled, waiting to make a left turn. Ponyboy was unlike his normal self in that he did not chance it and try to zip through some minor opening; rather, he waited for the coast to clear, then made the turn, and started the Jeep down a wide road busy with billboards for weekend room rates and flashing ads for cabaret shows. He pointed out a series of buildings where he used to crash when he first came to the city, which Cheri already knew about, but smiled at anyway. Her hand caressed his. Just ahead, distinct blue and maroon parking structures stood out against a wide backdrop of jagged, purple mountains. The sky was spacious and calm, off-white and thin, like a weak tea, maybe.

The small, toylike shell of a jumbo jet flashed its landing lights in tandem, leveled with the horizon, and gradually started its descent. A plain and everyday sight, it seemed to Cheri to contain an elegance that was just as regular, and she stared at it for a time. Immediately ahead of the Jeep, colored signs were hanging above the road, each sign above a different lane: ARRIVING FLIGHTS, DEPARTURES, LONG-TERM PARKING. Taxicab traffic was thick. Ponyboy got into the through lane. Cheri felt a rush of love for her boyfriend that was so ferocious as to throb. She leaned over and pressed her lips into his cheek with all the force in her body.

And so it had come to this: an office structure that looked like you'd visit for tax help, a maze of unlit corridors with cement floors, a black metal door without a company name or logo. Standing at the threshold, Cheri flashed back to another crappy office complex and that skeezey doctor — his pathetic comb-over, his patient leer. She reminded herself of all the money her new breasts had brought, told herself things had turned out more than okay. “Guess I'm nervous,” she said.

Ponyboy seemed to be looking at the window, those grimy blinds of faded yellow plastic, pulled all the way down. For a horrific instant Cheri worried he was going to go in through the window.

Thank goodness he went to the door.

Cheri smoothed out her outfit. Once more she asked about logistics, the order of how things were going to go, just to make sure she had things right, just so she could hear, yet again, that everything would turn out okay.

“Hey, hey there's that smokin’ body!”

The deep voice came as the door swung open. And just like that, this huge hulk of a man was in front of her. No neck, just a wide, flat head that seemed to have been screwed into his massive body.

“Hey, Jabba.”

Ponyboy stepped inside, eagerly taking one of the man's hands. “We made it. Right on time.”

Jabba's monstrously large forehead made an easy transition into a huge, bald dome, both of which were tanned to a char, the gray hair above his ears slick with styling gel, his smile revealing deeply grooved wrinkles around his eyes. Patting Ponyboy's shoulder, Jabba moved straight toward Cheri, opening his arms, his shirt almost blinding her: bright oranges and flaming yellows, unbuttoned to the middle of his stomach. He kissed her on each cheek; she smelled coconut oil, and a tart cologne, and beneath their layers, Jabba's natural body odor like the stench of sardines.

“Caught your set the other night.” His eyes drifted toward her chest. “Sensational.”

Cheri did exactly what she was supposed to — first giving her brightest, fakest smile, then straightening her back so Jabba had a better view. Leaning forward and returning his peck on the cheek, she gave him a better angle to stare down her blouse.

“You're sweet,” she said.

Jabba showed her in and she latched on to Ponyboy's hand, squeezing so hard that the blood left her fingers. The office was gloomy, its walls the color of dried vanilla pudding, its ceiling panels stained with nicotine soot. A crappy desk was covered in dirty magazines, littered with a few large, opened plastic containers of coleslaw. A revolving fan blew on one of the magazines, threatening to flip the foldout.

In the middle of the room, a skinny Japanese guy was figuring out the right height for a lighting apparatus. A man in coaching shorts was sitting on a sofa sectional whose dark leather remined Cheri of bitter chocolate. The guy was older, some, a bit thick in the stomach, his golfing shirt tight and short in the sleeves. He was patiently unpacking his bag, removing a flesh-colored dildo, a syringe kit, and a blue Velcro-looking sleeve of some sort.

Both men stopped what they were doing and watched Cheri's entrance, and the feeling was something she well knew. Putting some oomph into her hips, she sashayed into the room, graceful on four-inch heels, deftly avoiding a stack of videotapes, making herself the show, letting their eyes linger on her body. She pretended to examine the lone wall hanging, a poster of the Las Vegas Strip at night, black velvet inside a flimsy metal frame, and it was impossible not to feel something of a letdown, being in this office for what she was about to do.