Fade Into You Read online

  “As many times as I want,” I answer, kicking my feet up where I lie on her queen-size bed.

  “I have to take it back tonight,” she says, grabbing her green flower apron, throwing it over her head, and fastening it at her back. She spies the shoe behind the dresser, shoves her foot into it.

  “That’s fine.”

  Mom doesn’t like Elizabeth Taylor movies because in the sixties she looked like Elizabeth Taylor. A brown Elizabeth Taylor. Same eyes, same hair, same mouth, same face shape. People used to tell her that while she stood in line at the grocery store or while she was waiting tables in Houston. Mom always says Elizabeth has a fat neck and no legs. Mom also doesn’t appreciate when I tell her I love Elizabeth Taylor because she looks like the photos I’ve seen of her when she was younger. She always rolls her eyes. Uh-huh, she’ll say, because she knows that’s mostly full of shit. I don’t like Elizabeth Taylor because she looks like my mom, I like Elizabeth Taylor because she’s glamorous, beautiful, and dramatic.

  I will name my children Elizabeth and Elvis. They will have black wet hair and beautiful violet eyes and voices like angels. Mom likes Bob Marley and the Wailers, Los Lobos, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens. She’s always humming that Ladysmith Black Mambazo song. Mom was a hippie. Came to California on a Greyhound, nibbling tamales she brought inside her purse to not pass out from hunger, got off in Half Moon Bay. She hates the fifties, can’t stomach the early sixties. She’s all about, “My thirties were the best years of my life.” Uh-huh, I’ll say, knowing full well that’s a crock of cat food. I was born when she was in her thirties, and that’s when dad slinked out of state never to show his face again. That’s when my sister got married at nineteen and decided enough was enough with our trashy horseshit family, only to marry into a backwoods PCP family somehow trashier than ours. They might as well have raised their kids inside the stumps of the redwoods that lined their property, they were so much like wolves. And that’s saying a lot, seeing that Mom and Dad dragged Lyla up and down the United States in a VW van, living in communes like cheesy characters from Forrest Gump. Mom’s thirties are when we became, well, Mom and I, and I know firsthand that transition was hard.

  “Okay, but I’m sixteen and like Elizabeth Taylor, and Paul Simon is a dork.”

  “I’m going to be in Beverly Hills till around midnight. Can you take the bus to the Blockbuster? I need the car,” she says doing that thing where she ignores what I’ve said. It’s not that I don’t love you honey, it’s just that I don’t care.

  “Can’t we just pay the late fee?”

  “It’s already late.”

  “It’s getting dark out and I just started it.”

  “You’ve seen it a hundred times.”

  “Not a hundred. Five.”

  “That’s four more times than you need to see it. Please, Nicole, I’m tired and running late. Either I take it now or you take it later.”

  “I already took the bus all the way from Hollywood.”

  She stops and looks at me. “What were you doing in Hollywood?”

  “Nothing, fine, I’ll take it.”

  “Thank you.” She pulls a twenty from her purse and hands it over. “Get yourself dinner and be in bed when I get home.”

  “It’s Friday.”

  “It’s Thursday.”

  “God, I’m sixteen.”

  “You keep reminding me. Be in bed.”

  “No.”

  “Nicole.”

  “Fine whatever.”

  “Don’t whatever me. I can’t afford to put you in summer school. You’re too old to act like this.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “One more letter in the mail and it’s serious trouble this time. Deep-shit trouble.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m really scared,” I say, mocking her.

  “Don’t test me and don’t smoke cigarettes in my house.”

  “I don’t. I smoke them outside. And it’s dad’s house.” As soon as I say it I want to snatch it back.

  “Don’t smoke them!” she says slamming her arm down on the dresser, her loose jewelry rattles and the mirror shakes. “Goddamnit!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m just kidding. Relax.”

  “I’m not kidding,” she says, her voice getting tight and twisted like it’s getting pinched around the edges. “Please,” she says, looking up. “And it’s your grandfather’s house. Your father doesn’t own so much as a comb.”

  “Okay, chill. I wasn’t going out tonight anyway. I just want to watch Giant.”

  “I’m tired,” she says finally.

  “I know, okay? I get it.”

  “I wish you did.”

  ×

  Mike is sitting on his mattress unfolding a small square of tinfoil. Inside sits a sticky, caked-together yellow clump of powder. I dropped off the movie and took the bus to Whittier. Tweak. He sets the tinfoil on a 1970s thrift store copy of a National Geographic photography book about flowers, and cuts roughly. I don’t ask and he doesn’t offer. He leans down, covers one nostril, and snorts, closes his eyes, leans back, and shakes his head, flops it forward and snorts again. Dan is so full of horseshit and seagull rabies. I don’t moon all over Mike. I just love his company and well, if I moon over Mike then I also moon over Dan and Dan is a hog. Two wrongs don’t make a left. Hypothesis wrong.

  Mike’s aquamarine eyes open and he looks like a zonked dog. A sleepy-eyed, gorgeous dog. His lips part and I see his tongue resting inside like a fat sponge. His bare chest is sweaty and he wipes an open palm across it as he stands and walks to the metal clothing rack that his vintage Kramer shirts hang on. An overstuffed olive green 1950s armchair holds the remainder of his attire.

  “How come you sleep out here?” I ask, looking around the small garage. He’s invited me over a bunch of times before but this is the first time I’ve taken him up on the offer. Christmas twinkle lights hang around the room, there’s a vintage Playskool record player, and different postcards—James Dean from Giant, two pink marshmallow Peeps on fire, and John Waters, most likely ripped from the postcard rack at Penny Lane or Tower—are thumbtacked to the wall. His own giant oil painting hangs above the mattress: Dorothy’s head floating over Sally Bowles, Toto in hand, looking off hopeful together into the nothing, Sally straddling that chair, black bowler hat held defiantly above her head. A 1940s gay pinup of a naked blindfolded man in business socks with a black tie wrapped around his wrists, holding back his arms, hangs next to it. It’s been ripped out of an old beefcake catalog and I wonder what life it’s had, to make its way here, to 1996 La Puente, California, belonging to the half-white, half-brown answer to the question, What is the most beautiful thing alive on two legs? In the corner of the photograph, the shadow of another man looms forebodingly. Mike tells me it’s a Bob Mizer. Whoever that is.

  “Marta,” he says, meaning his stepmother, “won’t let me in the house,” finally answering after a long silence. “She thinks I’ll give the toilet seat AIDS and kill my sisters.” He snorts again and swallows phlegm. “And who knows?” he asks smiling. He gives a lazy laugh and bobs his head.

  “Who knows what?”

  “Who knows?” He stands and walks to an unfinished painting of Elizabeth Taylor in profile. “Here,” he says, handing it over and pulling a pack of smokes off his table. He pulls one out with his fat, long brown fingers and lights up with a lighter that magically materializes from his boxer shorts. He grins at me from under a flop of sandy brown beach hair, his brown face stubble pulling into dimples.

  “For me?”

  “Yeah. You said you liked Butterfield 8, that means you’re a real fan.”

  “But it’s not even my birthday or anything.”

  He snorts again and his eyes relax into half slits. He wipes his hand messily across his mouth. “When’s your birthday?”

  “Not for, like, I dunno, six months.”

  “Then happy half birthday. You can’t have it yet though, it isn’t finished.”

  “Oka
y, sure,” I say handing it back. “Cool, thank you.”

  “De nada.”

  “It’s beautiful. I love it.”

  His feet are brown and long, the toes wide and slender all at the same time. I have never noticed a man’s feet before and looking at his feet now, at the golden, sun-bleached hair around the ankles, I am struck by their beauty. His surfboard sits on the floor near the mattress and he shoves it with his foot and flips his hair again and smiles, nodding at me. I smile too, but I have no idea why.

  “Cool,” he whispers. He snorts and swallows more phlegm. “Oh, hey,” he lays the painting back down on top of a stack of other stretched canvases. “I’ll need it for class in a few weeks but that’s it. Gotta show Mr. Gotto and then it’s yours.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “Cool.” He sits back down next to me, and smiles. “Hey, let’s smoke a J, yeah?”

  “Yeah, totally.”

  “Cool. Can you roll?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna go inside and get some orange juice before they come home. The weed is in that box over there. Cool?”

  “Coolness.”

  “Cool.” He stops in his doorway and looks back at me. “Hey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey yeah,” he nods again as if listening to some music only he can hear. There is a long silence and his eyes glaze over as he looks past my head, a slow strange smile spreads across his face until his eyes flatten out and go gray, his mouth parting slightly.

  “Yeah?” I ask again.

  He shakes his head and smiles at me. “Do you want some OJ?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “It’s good for you,” he says, pushing the hair that keeps falling over his eyes out of his face.

  “No, I’m good, thank you.”

  He turns around and walks into the wet yard, the sprinklers hissing softly in the distance.

  We’re lying on the median, I have no idea what street we’re on. I’m in La Puente, motherfucking La Puente. I don’t even know how to get back home, but I’ll get there, sure as shit I’ll get there. I touch my cheeks and feel tears spilling from my face. It feels like my eyeballs have sprung a leak. I can’t catch my breath and my cheeks hurt.

  “Stop, stop,” I wheeze.

  Mike shakes the can like he’s taking a big gulp of air before diving into the ocean. He brings it to his mouth and pushes the nozzle sideways. We snorted K in his room while listening to Portishead, Dummy, and ran here. We’re on a tear. Or a tear. A page, a drop of saline. He takes a whip and coughs and throws the can, laughing. It hits the road with a clank and I sit up on my elbows and choke out more laughter as I watch it spin and roll into traffic. A car honks, its bright white lights obscuring everything but the steady stream of tires. “Oh shit!” I wheeze. “You can’t throw it man, you’ll cause a crash.”

  “Ha!” he shouts. “Give me your can, yo.”

  I shake the can like I’m about to go deep-sea diving, and spray the inside of the paper bag. Hot pink drips in bloody streams along the inside. Mike paws for it but I pull away. “Me first!” I say, holding it up to my nose and sucking. The bag shrivels like the lung of a dying man. I take another huff and fall back into the grass. I hand the bag to Mike and close my eyes, little fits of giggles petering out between coughs.

  “If I could suck off one person I would suck off Chris Isaak,” he says, turning and looking at me. He reaches toward my face and touches my lips with his index finger. I take in a huge gasp of air and release the last dirty breath inside me. I feel my cheeks warm and close my eyes. He palms the side of my face and I open again. The blue-green of his irises has been pushed to the edge of nonexistence by his black pupils, expanding and growing larger each day, every hour. The beauty of them, the gorgeousness of them, though. They’re still there, quiet and patient on the outside, waiting for the swell to recede so they can return, come home and rest where they belong, in the open; brave and delicate and shining.

  All the parts of who I am are alive at his touch. My breath slows and he moves his fingers lightly against my cheek. Grazing the outside of me. “You’re beautiful,” he says.

  “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” I return. We’ve always been in love, since the first time we saw each other in Algebra last semester. I’d seen him before, had been watching him since sophomore year and now here we are.

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t get me in the house.”

  I grab his hand and bring it to my mouth. “Michael.” He lets me part my lips on his loose fist. “I’m so high,” I whisper.

  “You’ll be okay, you’ll come down.”

  “And what about you?”

  “We’re the same fucked-up joke.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Our ancestors killed and raped our other ancestors.”

  “Everybody’s a thief.”

  “No. Not everyone. Not us. We were colonized.”

  “Yes, everyone. Even you.”

  “I’m a bean burrito and government cheese.”

  “At least you’re the right kind of burrito.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” he says. “At least you’re not an AIDS burrito.”

  “You don’t have AIDS.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Do you?”

  “No. I don’t think so, not yet.”

  I shake my head and smile. He exhales and his breath smells like paint and he has whip cream in the crease of his mouth. I leave it. I imagine kissing him and tasting it. Running my tongue along it.

  “I would fuck the shit out of him,” he says softly. He pulls me in and we hold each other.

  “‘Blue Hotel’ is the only song.”

  “Of all the songs, it’s the only one.” He chokes, starting to cry.

  We lie like that and even out into one another, our lungs rising and falling in jerky fits, the red and white head- and taillights passing on either side.

  ×

  “Stop, stop!” yells Mr. Hessler. Everyone stops marching, sweat rolling down our foreheads. I look in the long dance mirrors and lean against the bar, my head resting on my chest. “What is that, Ms. Darling?” My head snaps up and I can feel all eyes turn in my direction. Hell, I can see them; like some bad version of Suspiria, the mirrors have turned against me, like I always knew they would.

  “What?”

  “What do you think?” he asks, resting on his cane. He pounds the wood floor with it. I look outside through the open window behind the piano and into the hills. Below us in the courtyard Cal State LA students scurry to and from their classes. I am continuously amazed at how we walk amongst the newly legal and enlightened. They have an air of bravery unknown to our hunched shoulders, even the ones that probably drive home to do their laundry order their sausage biscuits in the food court with a sense of newly minted entitlement. We must seem so strange to them, brightly colored weirdos clogging up the hallways, loud and boisterous in our fake liberty, oozing teenage rebellion.

  My mind is a restless wandering blank. I scan the faces of my fellow thespians and feel dizzy. I am not a friend of a single one. Mr. Hessler walks toward me, his large straw hat flouncing on his head, his open white linen shirt flapping lightly in the breeze that carries through the open window, his gray T-shirt underneath. He is a wrinkled Kleenex. “What are you wearing?” The room has hushed itself to a deathly quiet. I can see out of the corner of my eye as everyone inches back against the mirrors, wiping at their foreheads.

  “I think I need water, I don’t think I was breathing enough. I feel light-headed.”

  “That’s because you smoke cigarettes before you walk into my classroom, Ms. Darling. You smoke cigarettes before we do Jerzy Grotowski. Before we do Tadashi Suzuki! The unbelievable idiocy of it! Do you understand these methods, the absolute importance of the physicality that they require? I see you outside my office smoking cigarettes. You think just because we are on a college campus you can
flaunt your cigarette smoking in our faces? This campus, this freedom, is a privilege. No one is forcing you to be here, Ms. Darling. Do you have any idea how many other students across the city are waiting for an opportunity to get into this school? Ready to jump at the chance to take your place, and you have the gall, the audacity to stand in front of my dance studio and smoke cigarettes?”

  “Mr. Hessler, I’m—”

  “Shut up!” he yells with usual dramatic flair. He spins around on his cane then hooks it under my tank top strap and yanks. “I asked you a question. What are you wearing?”

  Everything inside tells me not to but some other part I can’t control pushes past me. I try to hold on but it’s too late, it slips beyond the person that I want to be and reinforces the person that I am. “Chanel.” There’s an audible muffled response as the other students cover their mouths trying not to laugh. Mr. Hessler’s nostrils flare and he shoves me in the chest with the cane.

  “You think this is a joke, young lady? You think this opportunity is a joke?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Let me assure you that attending this school is a privilege and to shit on that privilege is to undermine the efforts of the students who get up every day at four a.m. and take the train here, it’s to shit on the students whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to Crossroads but who had the good fortune and talent to get in here. It’s to shit on everyone that walks into this room having memorized their work, it’s to shit on your peers that don’t come in reeking of marijuana with red eyes, my dear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “A tank top.”

  “Where are your theater clothes?”

  “In my locker.”

  “And why are they in your locker?”

  “I, um, I.” I look down and my face turns hot. I feel the click in my chest, a roller coaster car grinding and crawling slowly toward the top. It’s resting there ready to fall off, the hot burn around my eyes. I hold them back, I clench my fists like I’m sitting in front of the hottest boy at school and holding in a fart.