Free Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block Page B

junkie selling lost wings.
    I flip over the postcard and it’s like the dream I keep waiting to have but better because it’s real. Is it real? Those slanty letters scrunching up toward the bottom like all of a sudden realizing there’s no more space. I know those letters.
    It can’t be.
    But there it is—his name.
    Yo Te Amo, Angel Juan.
    Dearest Niña Bruja,
    I go to the museum and look at the Egypt rooms. The goddesses remind me of you. There are jars with cats’ heads that hold the hearts of the dead.
    This city is like an old forest or house that youthink’s just rotting away and then you see there’s magic inside. I try to remember that about life and about my heart in me. I think by being by myself I am learning how to love you more and not be so afraid.
    Yo Te Amo, Niña,
    Angel Juan
    “Where did you get this?” I ask the man, almost screeching.
    “I don’t know. Found it.”
    “Where did you find it?” I growl, pulling feathers out of the wings.
    He shrugs. Then he says, “Somewhere down on Meat Street. It was lying in the gutter like somebody dropped it on the way to the mail.”
    “Meat Street?”
    “The meat-packing district. Somewhere around there.”
    I know I’m not going to get anything else out of him. But here in my hand is a postcard from the Metropolitan Museum addressed to Witch Baby WiggBat, stamped, ready to be mailed and written by Angel Juan Perez.
    I know where I’m going tomorrow.
    I slip the postcard into the pocket next to my heart with the other card and the photo booth strip, sling the wings over my shoulder and try to skate the shakes out of my knees. Charlie twinkles near my ear like a whistling diamond earring.
     
    Today Charlie and I go up the steps where people from all over the world are huddling in their coats with Christmas shopping at their feet. They’re eating hot dogs and salt-crystaled soft pretzels. The pretzels smell good. Buttery, doughy. But I’m not going to spend any money on food today even though Charlie keeps telling me I am too skinny and I have to eat.
    We go into the big entry that’s high and bright like a church. Perfume and flowers. Voices echo. Warm bodies. Cool marble.
    Egypt first.
    There is so much here I feel like, How am I supposed to even start? Rooms and rooms of glass cases.Mummies. Real bodies inside there. High lotus foreheads. Painted tilted fish-shaped eyes. Smooth flat jewel-collared chests. Lanky limbs. Long desert feet. I bet inside they don’t look like that. Jars with the heads of baboons or cats or jackals for holding the organs like Angel Juan said.
    Cases and cases of tiny things. Secret scarab beetles. Why did the Egyptians have this thing about dung beetles? Mud love. Sludge and mud. It reminds me of me when I was a little kid covering myself with dirt. Slinky cats with golden hoops in their ears. Chalky blue goddesses missing their little arms or legs. Where did the lost parts of them go? Maybe they reminded Angel Juan of me because they’re broken.
    “You know, you look like a little Egyptian queen,” Charlie says. His reflection ripples like water next to mine in the glass case.
    We come out of the dim tomb rooms and at first I can’t see—it’s so flood-bright. The glass walls let in the park and the ceiling lets in the sky. And in the center is this whole temple—this huge white Egyptian palace with the lotus-head people carved onthe sides and a shallow pool of water all around full of penny wishes.
    Charlie sighs. “This was Weetzie’s favorite place in the whole city. She did like the dancing chicken in Chinatown too.”
    Could you please stop bat-chattering about when Weetzie visited you.
    I think it and I don’t even care if he can read my mind.
    “I’m sorry, Baby. I’m trying not to be such a clutch pig. Isn’t that what you say? A lankster lizard?”
    I sit down on a bench facing the temple and pretend that I’m in Egypt. I wear a tall headdress, a collar of blue and gold beads and a long sheer