Free Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block Page A

ask.
    He looks down at me frowning like, How can this will-o’-the-wisp white child think she can hang with this? “Can you play?”
    “I know Fanga, Kpanlogo, DunDunBa, Kakilamba …”
    He raises his eyebrows. “This is a fast class. If you’re not good it will be bad for everybody.”
    “You’re good,” Charlie whispers.
    “I’m good,” I say.
    The man’s still frowning but he points over to a little drum. It’s perfect. A little heart of the universe.
    They start again and it’s a dance to heal sick spirits. The women throw spirits out of their chests, tossing back their heads with each fling of their hands. Their backs ripple like lanky lizards while their arms reach into the air and pull the healing spirits down into them. It’s my favorite dance and so strong that while I play the drum I feel pain smacked out of me.
    When the class is over the head drummer shakes my hand in his big callused hand. Him doing that is like having a medicine man pull out any other evil spirits that might be left over.
    Charlie is waiting at the doorway, a pulsing golden light. “Yes!” he says. “Phenomenal. You are a beautiful drummer!”
    I feel glowy all over, almost as bright as he is.
    We go outside. I look up at Charlie’s building. I wish I could take off the front of it and look into all the rooms like you do with a dollhouse. From out here it seems almost deserted like you’d never guess that magic-carpet-collecting ghost chasers live here and a whistling ghost in a top hat and that dancers and drummers are flinging bad spirits out of their bodies in one of the rooms.
    I just wonder what my bad spirits look like and where all the flung-out bad spirits go.
     
    All up and down the avenue shivering junkies are selling things. Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards. Where do they get this stuff? It’s a magpie Christmas market.
    “Look at that man,” Charlie says.
    I see a hungry face.
    “No. With your camera.”
    I look through my camera at the man and I can almost feel the veins in my own arms twitch-switching with wanting. In a way the junkies aren’t so much different from me or maybe from everybody.
    I guess in a way Angel Juan is my fix and I’ve been jonesing for him. If he were a needle I’d be shooting up just like these jittery junkies. I’d be flooding my veins with Angel Juan. When we made love it felt like that.
    And doing it can be about as dangerous as shooting up if you think about it.
    And I wasn’t the only one sad and lonely and freaked. There was a whole city of people. Some had to sell other people’s postcards on the street just tobuy a needle full of junk so they wouldn’t shatter like the mirror I smashed with a hammer in Charlie Bat’s apartment.
    “Hey,” the man shouts, “I’ve got something for you.”
    The man’s sunken eyes are like Charlie’s. I go over to his table and he holds up a pair of droopy soiled white angel wings. I touch the medallion in the hollow of my neck and think about the saint parade Angel Juan wrote about in his card. The little girls in feathers. I want those wings.
    “How much?”
    “Ten dollars.”
    “Five,” Charlie whispers.
    “Five.”
    “Eight and I’ll throw this in.” He waves a wrinkled postcard in front of his face. It has a picture of two Egyptian mummies on it. They remind me of my walk with Angel Juan when we saw the head of Nefertiti-ti on the piano in the window in the fog once upon time. I wonder if that king and queen ever screamed at each other and cried in the night with pain and desire or if they always looked so sleek and lazy-lotus-eyed.
    I give the man eight dollars I was going to spend on food and he stuffs the bills into his pocket and licks his lips like he’s already feeling what it’s going to be like when the needle hits the vein. He could be a writer like Charlie Bat or a painter or a musician. He could have a kid like Charlie had Weetzie. And all people see is a