Free Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block

joyous thing, a brief interlude of peace and love. A time that will never come again. Celebrate the rain, the mud, Charlotte, I tell myself. Celebrate the lovely bare flesh, beating beneath the surface with young blood.
    Maybe someday you, too, can leave the earth with this memory inside you.
    I wonder, if so much of the mythology about us is untrue, what of the myth of the stake through the heart? Is that true? Who would do such a thing for me? Who would ever love me that much?
    London, 1972
    If not by disasters and music, I mostly remember my history by what I wore.
    Now it is floppy suede hats, minidresses, and psychedelic tights or bell-bottoms, purple suede platform boots. My eyelashes are false and sparkled. My lips are Mary Quant white. Billy in his three-piece dandy suits with the flared legs, thick-heeled boots. His hairbrushes his collar, and he sports a handlebar mustache.
    We live in a Victorian flat with garlands embossed on the ceilings and walls. I remember the flat by closing my eyes and seeing myself dressed in my Carnaby Street finery, dancing around the living room to the Rolling Stones. “Wild Horses.” That’s how I feel about Billy; nothing can drag me away from him. His favorite Stones song is “Sympathy for the Devil.”
    There are always people crashed out on our floor; you have to step over bodies in the morning to get to the kitchen. Some of the girls are the ones I have procured for Billy, lost souls with pretty hair, long legs and lashes whom I found at boutiques or bars or in dark alleys. I feel bad every time I bring one home, but I can’t seem to stop. I am like a loyal hunting dog dragging back the birds by their broken necks. But these birds have not been shot down yet; that is to come.
    Why do I keep doing it? Not only because it is my nature. Not only because I am devoted and afraid. I realize now that my participation in his work was the closest I could get to creating something when I had nothing left to make myself.
    Paris, 1976
    Sometimes Billy takes me with him when he goes out. We walk along the Champs Élysées at night. He is incensed by the McDonald’s they’ve put there, can’t seem to get over it.
    “And they think because they serve red wine it is all right! Merde!”
    In France, Billy wants me to dress elegantly and all in black. I have a collection of black dresses and a lot of colorful printed silk scarves.
    “They can make it seem that you have more clothes,” he tells as he gives me a new Hermès scarf as a present.
    I have my original black Chanel cardigan from the1920s and Coco’s No. 5 perfume. Billy prefers classic fashion for me, though he is quite a dandy himself, and I am still trying to please him.
    I really want to eat at McDonald’s and to buy one of the plastic necklaces full of virulent-seeming glow-in-the-dark green liquid that vendors sell along the boulevard, but Billy says they look cheap and are only for tourists.
    The city stretches out before us, twinkling with the magic of so many lovers’ fantasies and dreams. It has changed so much since Billy first brought me here. The fast food, the plastic, the traffic. But then, I’ve changed, too. He and I have changed. Once we loved each other all night long. He whispered poetry into my ear. He told me he would love me forever. Now we are like an old bickering couple, and we do not even have death to look forward to as an escape from each other.
    Manbattan, 1986
    Ten years can be a long time in the world of mortal fashion.
    I have my hair teased over the bandana at my brow. Strategically ripped white T-shirts over black spandex tights and shoes with pointed toes. Lots of bangles and chains. I want to wear big crosses for the fun, the irony of it, but it feels wrong, weirdly dangerous somehow, though I wouldn’t admit it. I am still dancing. The T-shirt, cut at the neck, slips off over my bare shoulders. The bangles click together.
    This time I am dancing to Madonna in a penthouse apartment lit with