Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Things ended. They had to, moving toward termination from the moment they started. And when friendships, when relationships, when people were involved, it was Lestat's experience that things ended badly. You woke up one morning and found out that your unrequited love had rifled through your pack and taken all of your valuables and disappeared without so much as a goodbye note. You discovered that your pool hustling compadre was a profligate tweaker and when he got wired on crystal meth, he picked fights and attacked you with a pool cue. You traveled in the same circles as an irritating and crazy and completely enchanting pregnant girl and as much as you wanted to save something, to take care of someone, nothing you did could stop her from destroying herself, from retarding or destroying the life inside of her, you couldn't stop her any more than you'd been able to stop another unrequited love from toting her wares under an on-the-fritz streetlamp and, late one night, getting into the wrong car. Any more than you could stop any number of friends from accidentally filling a main vein with some bad shit. Any more than you could do anything about your own disintegration. Your own destruction.

A valley gust blew sand into his eyes and set his shirtsleeves whispering. He completed his route, and arrived at the dormant rows of cars, the small group of people gathered at its head, grouping around a pickup truck. Lestat glanced at the truck where three boisterous yahoos were standing — one taking money from a heavy-legged woman, another guy pouring beers from one of the kegs. The third yahoo tried a pickup line on the girl. As Letsat ran, he noticed the plastic of different cups shining atop the sand, and though he would not have minded a beer, he passed the plastic cups by. The bass line did not match the tempo of the rest of the song; the lead singer's voice had turned scratchy and off-key. Lestat wanted to be someplace safe and warm where he could write down everything he had ever seen. He wanted to write a book that would change the world.

He paid no attention to the popped hood on the station wagon, or the rat-tailed delinquent fucking with its distributor cap. Lestat's destination was just ahead: the ancient pink ice cream truck. It was shaking in place. Rocking to and fro.

7.2

Lincoln removed the videotape from the kitchen pantry, carefully wrapping its broken ribbon around the casing. If all went well, barely a blink would be lost, not even a handful of the twenty-four frames that filled a viewing second. But if the film had been crumpled or shredded, who could say how many images would need to be cut.

The editing geeks couldn't guarantee how things would play out with Lincoln's tape, not by just looking at it, which complicated things. For Lincoln, the possibility of having one more second of his son taken away was a gratuitous and keenly pointed insult, a lit cigarette to a wound that refused to heal. But really, what choice did he have?

He paid the fifty bucks to get the tape spliced back together, the twenty to transfer the contents onto a DVD, and the piddling surcharge to rush the job. If this went well, he had untold videotapes to convert. He had a short lifetime of material. Precisely at three-fifteen, the air-sealed package arrived and Lincoln closed the door to his office and felt his pulse in his throat. The disc he had been waiting all day for slid into the machine, and in short order, images Lincoln had not seen in months began as plainly as they ever had, the sequence tattooed on his brain: the lens zooming in, then drawing back; the children in bright orange jerseys, the matching baseball caps worn backward, the chins shining with grease.

The break came just before where Lincoln — and Lorraine, he guessed — always stopped watching and hit rewind. Newell was being ignored at the pizza party, growing frustrated, giving up and beginning to sink into his chair. A count later, the flesh of his cheeks would go slack, small eyes would cloud and turn dark. But no. A boy and girl in the team jerseys, busy playing rock-paper-scissors.

For Lincoln, watching the jump was akin to taking a step and discovering there was no ground beneath him, as if he had been sent aimlessly through space. The missing frames captured Newell slouching and unexpressive. They provided a clear glimpse of the trouble that Lincoln had refused to acknowledge before his son had disappeared, the unhappiness that, long after his son went missing, Lincoln still hadn't wanted to face, yet had forced himself to confront, studying the still image that stared back at him from thousands of those flyers, going over that video sequence as if it would provide him with the secret behind those blank eyes. Lincoln loathed those images. Lorraine always accused him of cutting the tape, and the truth was that if the idea had ever occurred to him, he well might have done it. But now he'd never have the chance to watch that sequence again. Those brief seconds no longer existed.

He zoned out through his four o'clock, settling on thoughts of Newell and Lorraine together in the living room, sitting on the couch and passing a box of cookies between them. Newell caustically dismissing a situation comedy or telling his mom to switch back to a summer blockbuster, Lorraine sticking to the classics channel, answering the boy in a pleased voice, just because the film's in black and white doesn't mean it's not any good. Their running commentary would continue throughout the prime-time schedule, and Lincoln thought about the regular occurrence of coming home to find the two of them on the couch, laughing at a clever bit from one of their favorite programs. He thought about all the nights when they were deep in some show and too absorbed to fill him in on what he'd missed. All the nights he was too tired to concentrate, but pretended to follow what was going on, and was just happy to sit there.

And, too, there was the brilliant summer day when Lorraine had put floaties on Newell's arms and taught him to swim. There was the time when Newell had given her the huge wax candle he'd made in art class for her Mother's Day present. And some random time when Lorraine tried to help him with homework, and she didn't know how the hell to figure out the questions, either, and they called Lincoln to come down from upstairs, just so the whole family could be utterly confused by this stupid assignment.

He would have sacrificed a limb to be able to watch any of it. We have the lovely and talented Cheri Blossom here tonight.

Focusing, the camera panned in. A dry white wall, a woman seated in the center of a brown sofa.

She was preoccupied, motioning toward someone just out of viewing range, but this did not stop the camera. Rather, its leer continued, documenting her blond, luxurious hair, her long-limbed body.

Skin seemingly carved from a deeply tan bar of soap glowed against her pink camisole of mesh fishnet, packed breasts all but bursting through the tight, sheer fabric. The gemstone in her navel appeared to posterity as a discolored flash. Where her waist tapered, and the swell of her hips began, black strings traced toward a thin panty. But her legs were crossed, so the view was blocked.

Life's hard when everyone wants you, right, baby?

As if caught passing notes by a teacher, Cheri stopped gesturing. Her face froze. If someone had adjusted the tracking on their VCR — and also had been staring above her neck — that viewer would have seen how unsettled she was.

Well. This is going to be a real treat. We are lucky enough to have Cheri Blossom with us. Cheri is like the hottest dancer in Las Vegas right now. And she's decided to get into the industry.

Her eyes settled on the camera. Blood-red lipstick stretched into a plastic smile.

How are you doing tonight, Cheri?