Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Newell turned, staring out the window, the back of his head facing Kenny.

“I'm your friend,” Kenny said.

“You lie.”

“Maybe,” Kenny grunted. “But I am.”

“I don't believe you.” Newell kept looking out the window. “I don't believe anything you have to say.”

Kenny took in the boy's words, waited, and finally responded with a low exasperation, almost as if he were arguing with himself. “Well, fuck if I know what to do, then.”

“You lie just like everyone,” Newell spat.

“You don't want to go home. And you sure don't want to be in this car with me. So you tell me: what do you want to do? Fucking tell me, Newell.”

7.1

It sounded like a train wreck, feedback overwhelming the piles of home stereo speakers, distortion blasting through the amplifiers, coming out like revving lawn mower engines, aluminum bats pounding on sheet metal. Only there wasn't any edge. The sound wasn't dirty and driving, wasn't muddy and sleazy in the worst way, which is the best way. It wasn't an evil train wreck.

Way back in a previous lifetime, Lestat had been a stereo junkie. Even now his favorite way of scrounging bread was to work as a cut-rate sound tech at shows and ragtag gigs like this one in the desert. Sometimes bar managers gave him a job sweeping up afterward, and once in Austin — at least Lestat thought it was Austin — a band had let him sleep in their rental van. If Lestat had been the tech guy tonight, no way he would have put up with this droning bullshit, especially not out here where sound carried so well.

Emerging from a whirl of elbows and purple dreadlocks and kicked-up dust, he headed away from the mosh pit, unable to see for shit, the night filling in almost everything, the headlights of a few cars barely outlining the congestion in front of him — fans bouncing up and down like human bingo balls in a popper, punks holding their cell phones toward the stage. Lestat twisted in between a pair of skinheads; his knee felt stiff; he started favoring his right leg. But he survived the thickest part of the crowd and passed some dweeb stupid enough to be wearing a green wool stretch cap in the middle of August. Then he passed a stacked blonde too awesome-looking to ever talk to — alone, she had a camcorder pointed more or less toward the stage. The blonde had pink streaks in her hair, and she was swaying from side to side with a lazy sexuality that reminded Lestat of a similarly amazing brunette he'd hopped trains with before he had started rolling with Danger-Prone Daphney. Raven was her name. New Mexico and Arizona they'd traveled together, and she'd never let Lestat touch her. She'd had wild green eyes, Raven, and a penchant for mysticism. More than a few times Raven had explained to Lestat that she came from a lineage of important figures in the federal government. Lestat never found out that her real name was AprilWiss, that she was seventeen years old, or that her government lineage was a third cousin who worked nights sorting mail. Lestat never knew that April Wiss had last been seen at her residence inWichita, Kansas, on January 11 at approximately ten p.m. He never knew that April had not told anyone where she was going or when she would return. When they were riding on steamer trains in the black of night, April Wiss, aka Raven, used to put her head on Lestat's shoulder and nod off, and Lestat would feel her breath on his neck. April Wiss had three dots tattooed on her right hand, behind her thumb. She was supposed to take medication for mental illness but when Lestat and she used to ride trains, she took no medicine, just smoked bushels of weed. Frequently April became depressed and violent for reasons Lestat could not understand, and nothing he did helped. April had not taken any clothing or personal belongings when she left home, and her mother had not seen nor heard from her since that evening. When she needed money real bad, Raven disappeared. The next morning or sometimes even three days later Lestat would meet her at some predetermined coffee shop, she'd be sitting at the counter, all quiet and nonresponsive. They'd been in Scottsdale together and Lestat had gotten himself a job as a dishwasher and he'd given his first week's salary to Raven and still she'd refused to fuck him. Said it would have meant too much.

The cellular phone they'd gotten off that kid earlier in the night. Lestat wondered if the tip he'd been given about who had it was true.

The incline became steeper over the next twenty yards, and as Lestat's combat boots sank into the soft sand, he began the gradual climb, heading toward the interstate. Out here the crowd had fanned out, populating the desert basin in the manner of the stars in the constellations, and a few camping flashlights and lighters were floating around, which made the analogy especially accurate, Lestat thought. He approached a circle of pierced kids. They had a small flare lit at their feet, and were passing a bottle around, and as Lestat drew close, he saw that some were wearing concert shirts from hard rock bands that had broken up before their occupants were born. Lestat then noticed the insignias on some of the shirts weren't actually for real bands, but brand names. The fad shocked Lestat, and his irritation must have shown, because the pierced kids vibed him pretty good in return, and he veered sharply, avoiding the group entirely. He climbed a bit more, his legs heavy now, his lungs feeling a smoggy burn. But the music sounded cleaner out here, crisper; the band had settled down, found themselves a rhythm and stride, and Le-stat could hear the hook — it was kind of catchy, actually. Lestat paused and looked back, taking in the scene: the crescent moon on a high perch in the clouded charcoal sky; the mountain ranges crossing the horizon in jagged, looming shadows; the rim of civilization shimmering to the east and giving way to darkness. Amid the field of blackness, a horseshoe of truck headlights were focused on the party, and from this height and distance, the band almost seemed to him to be a set of action figures in motion atop a cardboard box. A few idiots were climbing onto the stage and dancing around with disjunctive energy, they were turning and running, leaping off the edge of the stage, into the mêlée of slam dancers and raised hands. But all this chaos was neutered by distance. The whole scene seemed insignificant from here, an excuse that allowed everyone to congregate and party, be they scruffy and goateed Hackey Sackers, ravers in bright oversize shirts, lotharios chatting up jailbait, or runaways. Yeah, they were out here, too.

Like maybe this guy he used to see on the street every now and then. Lestat never knew his name but the guy was funny as shit, just had a great sense of humor. Three or four times Lestat had landed in some new city with a decent runaway population and was trying to figure out the lay of the land, and wouldn't you know it, he'd run into that guy. Each time the guy had shouted Lestat's name and wrapped Lestat inside a bear hug and they'd spent the night laughing and catching up, like they were college roomies at the alumni club or something, and by then it was too late to ask the guy's name. Tall and yoked with muscles, the guy had a strawberry birthmark on the tip of his right ear. His right nostril and right ear were pierced, and he had three studs on his right eyebrow. He had a steel barbell in his tongue and a messy black cross on his right shoulder. Back when the ink of the guy's cross was still fresh and glowing, Lestat had teamed up with him for a while. They were both in the Northeast and it was one of those relentless winters, too cold to be out on the street. Lestat and the guy went halfsies on thirty-dollar flop rooms each night. Sometimes they ran shoplifting scams and split the take, but more often, at the crack of noon, each went his own way, out to panhandle, steal, and hustle up the bucks for a room. In addition to his backpack, the guy carried around a pool stick inside a thin black case. He also had a small set of Craftsman work tools. He'd find abandoned televisions and videocassette players on the street and spend hours dismantling and putting them back together. Lestat and the guy spent a fair amount of their time talking about gearhead stuff, it was yet another bonding point between them, finishing their hustles for the day and meeting up to gab and — if they had the cash — drink themselves insaner. Once when they were blasted out of their minds, the big lug might or might not have told Lestat his real name was Jeromy Dernay. Lestat only heard part of what he was saying, so he wasn't sure. Lestat had ended up blacking out and when he'd awakened, all the information from his previous eight hours had disappeared, so he continued referring to him by nodding and going Hey. The missing person's report on Jeromy Dernay, originally filed in Newton, Mass, related that Jeromy was six feet two inches, 210 pounds, with black hair, and a date of birth of May 19. On June 22 of some two years ago, following a fight with his parents, Jeromy left a note stating that he wanted to be on his own. Jeromy took clothing and personal belongings, as well as jewelry belonging to his stepmother. He was known to be proficient at the sport of billiards and had been sighted at pool halls throughout the Midwest, although each of those sightings would now have been more than six months old. The police's last reported sightings for Jeromy had indeed been in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. More than once Jeromy had been spotted at or around the WestCare health facility, whose officials did not report their clients’ comings and goings to authorities. One of the last times Lestat had taken Daphne to get checked out there, Jeromy had been in the waiting room. He'd given Lestat one of his sun-blinding smiles and had crushed Lestat's spleen with his hug and they had exchanged a number of sincere and heartfelt pleasantries, and Lestat hadn't said anything about the sarcoma lesion on Jeromy's chin. Lestat had remembered that the big galoot was in town because one of the pierced guys in the group with all the faux heavy metal T-shirts had the build and mannerisms of Jeromy. But Lestat wasn't about to go back and confirm, either way.