Beige

by Cecil Castellucci

  “FUCK YOU!”

  “FUCK YOU!”

  “FUCK YOU!”

  They yell beside me and around me while I shrink to the smallest size I ever was. Small like a child. Like a frightened mouse.

  “They’re something else, huh?” Lake says in her baby voice — no change in her. She’s all cool and clapping, sometimes throwing a fist in the air. Devil’s horns. Or middle finger. Or truck-stop whistling.

  I don’t even know what to say.

  I may have swallowed my own tongue.

  She sees my fear — I can tell. And she disapproves. She rolls her eyes.

  “God, you’re so beige,” she says.

  I fake being asleep in the car all the way home, so when The Rat asks me how I liked the show, I just kind of mumble incoherently. I must do a pretty good job of faking, because he just leaves me be and drives while beating out a peppy beat on the steering wheel. That suits me just fine. I am glad. I don’t have any good answers for the kinds of questions he might ask me.

  I don’t even think what Suck plays is music. And that “concert” was not like any concert I ever went to. Once I went with Leticia to see Boy Bomb. We had assigned seats and it was in a theater. And the boys on stage had dance moves that were coordinated. That’s the kind of music I can swallow. It was all very civilized. I even bought a program and a T-shirt.

  When we get home, I just excuse myself, go to my room, and close the door. I write Mom an e-mail. She might not even get it, but it makes me feel better to send it.

  Mom,

  The Rat’s friends behave like juvenile delinquents. I’m sure that child welfare services are going to take me away. Also, Suck sucks. I’m sure that I’ve already suffered permanent hearing loss from the noise they call music. Better send that ticket to Lima before I have to learn sign language.

  Bisous, Katy.

  I send it out into the ether. Like a cyber message in a bottle. SOS.

  The Rat is so into showing me the city of Los Angeles. He’s making all sorts of efforts.

  “It gets a bad rap, but this city is great,” he says.

  It’s officially true that you can only stand seeing so much touristy stuff before your head explodes. It’s also officially true that The Rat and I won’t agree on what constitutes a “cool tourist thing to do,” which is why we are sitting at the Hamburger Hamlet not talking to each other while he eats a California burger and I eat a veggie burger.

  I now know the entire sordid history of Suck. I know everything about Suck. I could get a PhD in Suck.

  I look out the window while The Rat starts talking. There are a bunch of people taking pictures of the feet in the cement (BORING) and taking pictures with people who are dressed up like Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe and various other pop culture demons (WEIRDOS).

  I point across the street to Mann’s Chinese Theater.

  “Does somebody pay those people?” I ask.

  “What?” The Rat says.

  “Those people dressed up as celebrities. Does somebody pay them to do that? Is that their job?”

  “I don’t think they’re paid. Charlie Chaplin asked me for a dollar once,” The Rat says. “I took my picture with her. It’s a woman. I tried to leave and she grabbed me with her arm, strong grip, and she whispered through her fake smile, ‘Give me a dollar.’”

  “It’s kind of a weird job,” I say.

  “Oh, I have had weirder.” He kind of eases his shoulders now that we are talking and not being quiet. I think the quiet drives him crazy. But I think he’s trying to be quiet for me.

  “Like what?”

  “Costumed message-delivery boy and singing telegram dressed as a gorilla usually. Making balloon animals at kiddie parties,” he says. “Oh! And a member of the midnight flamingo assault squad.”

  “What’s that?”

  “For a fee, we would sneak onto people’s lawns and plant hundreds of pink plastic flamingos.”

  “Mom’s been a receptionist, a salesgirl, a waitress, and a research assistant.”

  “That’s a far cry from the Leda I knew,” The Rat says.

  I know her best. I do.

  “She likes research assistant and teacher’s assistant best,” I say.

  “Your mom was a squeegee punk when I met her.”

  My mom? A squeegee punk? One of those dirty kids who wash your windows uninvited at red lights? They are disgusting. She’s never told me that she used to be one of them. That she could relate to their begging for change. She never told me to be quiet when I spoke about how disgusting they were. Now I understand why Mom always rolls down her window and gives them loonies.

  “It’s just a dollar,” she always says.

  I don’t let The Rat know that I didn’t know about that. I just put my burger in my mouth. Like, Oh, yeah. Squeegee punk. Right. Forgot about that one.

  “Did you kidnap her?” I ask finally. “Grand-maman always says you kidnapped her.”

  It’s one of those unanswered questions that no one ever answers around me.

  The Rat does a drumroll on the table.

  I hold my breath. This is where the story always ends. This is where the subject gets changed. This is where my mystery begins. This is where the questions I always ask remain unanswered.

  “No, your mom stowed away on the bus. I found her under the covers of my bunk when we got to Ottawa.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I kissed her.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “No, I didn’t even know her name. She was just a groupie on the bus.”

  “What happened then?”

  The Rat takes the saltshaker in his hand and starts to spin it around. His eyes seem to focus on something far away.

  “After the show in Ottawa, we all went to an after-hours party. We all got drunk.”

  “And high?” I ask.

  “Maybe.”

  He starts to look uncomfortable, but I don’t want him to stop. Not now. I gesture with my hand for him to go on.

  The Rat takes a deep breath. He pats his pocket where he keeps his cigarettes and then glances at the no smoking sign and puts his hand on the table. Starts drumming his fingers.

  I remind myself to breathe as he opens his mouth and begins to speak.

  “Your mom and I ended up on the roof of this warehouse. She started screaming at the city. Just howling. So, I started howling, too. Then we lay down on the roof, and I thought here was my big chance to have wild sex with this cute, crazy girl. I thought, I’ll just roll over and throw it in her.”

  Ew, gross, I think. But I don’t dare say anything that might make him stop telling me the story. Layers and layers deep. I am diving right to the bottom. At last he’s telling me something I’m interested in.

  “I turned to her ready to make my move and she looked at me with those wicked green eyes of hers and she opened her mouth and she said something along the lines of ‘I want to be able to float away in my body so I can finally catch up with my mind.’ And she took my hand and no hand has ever felt like that. So real. It was like suddenly I was completely inhabiting my own body, too. All I wanted to do was look into her eyes on that roof and hold her hand and never let it go.”

  “But you did,” I say. “You did let it go.”

  “Well, that’s another story,” The Rat says, leaning back in his chair, like he’s lighter. Like a weight has been removed from him. “But you should add merch girl to the rest of the jobs that she’s had. She sold our merch for the rest of the tour all the way to California. That’s how she got here and I’m why she stayed.”

  “Until she left,” I say.

  “Yeah, until then.”

  Because of me.

  And now I know the real story of how Mom met The Rat. But I notice that he doesn’t say how he was twenty-seven and she was sixteen and how she got hooked on heroin and ran away from Los Angeles back to Montréal with a baby in her belly. And how that was wrong.

  He was wrong.

&nbs
p; “What’s done is done,” Mom says. “It just happened that way. I was young. I was stupid. I told him I was eighteen. I thought it was so cool. I’ve moved on.”

  “What about you?” I ask The Rat. “What do you do now?”

  “Besides rock star?” He laughs. He does a drumroll. “To pay the bills, I’m an art preparator. I’ve got a toolbox and I know how to use it.”

  “What’s an art preparator?”

  “I install art and installations in museums, galleries, and homes. It’s flexible and steady and I can go on the road if I need to.”

  I mull it over while I sip my coffee.

  “Why don’t you just get a real job?”

  The Rat looks like he didn’t understand the question.

  “What?” I say.

  Then he laughs while shaking his head. “The point is, Katy, those were all real jobs.”

  “Not squeegee punk,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “In a way it was.”

  When we get back to the house, I go to my room and I hear The Rat shuffling around in the living room.

  I wrap my special knit blanket around me, savoring the one puzzle piece I have now, one thing that clicks into place. I think about everything, and before long, I fall asleep.

  “Do you know what I like best about us?” Mom says.

  I do know, but I like it when she tells me. I like to hear her say it.

  “I like that we’re friends,” she says.

  “Me, too.”

  “It took me a long time be friends with my mother,” she says.

  The fan in the apartment just moves the hot air around. It’s so hot I don’t want to eat lunch.

  “Don’t you have air-conditioning?”

  “No. It’s only really unbearable in August,” The Rat says.

  He’s sitting on the couch with his drumsticks hitting on a practice pad.

  “It’s unbearable now,” I say.

  “At least it’s not humid,” The Rat says. “God, I hate humid.”

  “But it’s still hot.”

  Hot as Hell, I think.

  “Go take a swim,” The Rat says without looking up from his SPIN magazine. “Knock yourself out.”

  I wonder if he really means, Get out of here — I’m reading.

  I leave my lunch on the table and head to my room to put on my bathing suit. Standing in front of the full-length mirror, I can tell one thing for sure: it’s a good thing I’m not staying here for too long, or I’d be an embarrassment.

  I’m sure I look West Coast terrible.

  I’m paler than pale and I have no boobs to fill the top of my swimsuit. Leticia calls them speed tits.

  She calls hers bodacious tatas.

  She always rubs it in. She looks like a woman, and I still look like a little girl.

  When I go back to the kitchen, The Rat hasn’t moved. I open the freezer and get a piece of ice to suck on, then I go to the balcony and check out the pool action. I don’t want to go down there if that boy is swimming. I don’t want him to see me in my bathing suit. But he’s not there. There’s only a lady sporting a big orange hat, sunning herself in one of the lounge chairs.

  I pop the ice out of my mouth and rub it on the back of my neck and my wrists as I head down to the pool.

  The woman looks up at me as I open the gate.

  “You must be Beau’s girl.”

  “Yah. Katy.”

  I start to put my foot in the pool.

  “I’m not going to be responsible for you,” she says, eyes on her magazine.

  “Excuse me?”

  “No minors can swim without adult supervision.” She points at a sign.

  I look to where she’s pointed and she’s right: tacked onto the gate is a sign that says no minors are allowed to swim without adult supervision.

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Not my problem,” the woman says, still not looking up.

  I consider going upstairs to get The Rat, but for the first time since I’ve arrived in Los Angeles, I’m alone, and I want to keep it that way for just a bit longer.

  I could disobey the rules. I could just swim anyway. I could be the kind of girl who would break the rules. But I know I’m not. I just sit down on the edge of the pool and slip my legs into the cool water and then lie back onto the cement and look up at the blue cloudless sky.

  A silver glint catches my eyes, and I scan the balconies facing the courtyard. My eyes fall on the swimmer from the other day. He’s sitting on his balcony, talking on the phone. I watch him as his mouth forms O’s as he speaks. He looks exactly like the kind of boy that you would meet in California. He’s tan. He’s fit. He’s beautiful.

  If I could meet him, I could go back home with a real story. He could save me from having a bad time here. Like a knight in shining armor. Maybe he’s a TV star. He’s that dreamy. I could just say he was. I could brag about it to Leticia. My time in Hollywood hanging out with a famous actor.

  “People make the best sunshade, don’t you think?” A woman holding a toddler towers over me, effectively blocking the sun. She is wearing a black vintage swimsuit and a straw hat and cat-eye sunglasses. Tattooed around the entire top of her right arm is a ring of fairies afloat on a field of flowers, and on the bicep of her left sits a mermaid. She has an anchor tattooed on her forearm.

  “Do you want to swim?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll watch you.”

  Her baby is blond and bubbly. He reaches for me.

  “Mine,” he says.

  “This is Auggie. I’m Trixie. You must be Katy.”

  “Yeah,” I say, getting up to shake her hand.

  She puts down Auggie and opens up her bag, which is covered with a skull-and-crossbones motif, unlike any diaper bag I’ve ever seen. She pulls out a little life vest and straps it onto him.

  “Go ahead. I’ll watch. Besides, as long as Leo is up on his balcony, we’re all safe,” Trixie says.

  Leo. The boy’s name is Leo.

  “He can’t dive from up there. He’d hit his head on the bottom of the pool,” the woman in the orange hat says, still not looking up from her magazine.

  Trixie looks at me and rolls her eyes. I roll my eyes right back. We both smile.

  I dive into the pool and let the water slide over me. Trixie hangs out by the steps with Auggie as he splashes the water and squeals with pleasure. Little kids are so easily amused.

  After a couple of laps, I swim over to Trixie.

  “I’m glad you were out here. I was going to come over and say hello. Beau had mentioned you were visiting,” she says. “I’m his girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” He seems to be so open with everything else, I wonder why he didn’t mention a girlfriend. I thought he was a loner. I never heard him ever mention any woman except for my mother. I try to picture him attempting to woo someone. I can’t.

  I must look surprised, because Trixie shrugs and laughs again. “He’s probably still working up the courage to talk to you about it. Men. They are so strange.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Don’t you have boyfriends?” Trixie asks.

  “No.”

  “What about your mom? She must have boyfriends.”

  “No,” I say.

  “Not ever?”

  I wonder if she’s fishing for information. I want to tell her to mind her own business. I want to tell her to talk to the hand.

  “No,” I say.

  “Hmm,” Trixie says. “That’s a shame.”

  No, it’s not, I think. My mom doesn’t need a man to make her happy. She’s happy by herself, with me.

  Auggie slaps the water with his hand and squints his little eyes and smiles. Then he reaches for me.

  “He likes you!” Trixie says. “I think that means we’re going to be great friends.”

  I look at her. She’s not even like a real person. She’s like a person who’s stepped out of a 1950s movie. I wonder if she dresses like that all the time
.

  “Anyway, Auggie’s a good judge of character. Aren’t you, Auggie? Aren’t you?” Trixie grabs Auggie’s little body and blows a raspberry on his stomach, which sends Auggie right over the moon.

  Watching Trixie with Auggie makes me hurt for Mom. I wonder what she’s doing today. I wonder if the site is everything she’d hoped. I wonder if she’s missing me. I dive back under the water so that even I don’t know if my face is just wet or if I’m actually crying.

  I pull myself out of the pool and grab my towel and head upstairs. I don’t want to hang out here.

  “See you,” I say, not looking her in the eyes.

  “Welcome to Grunge Estates, Katy,” she calls after me.

  Someone is leaning on the unbearably loud buzzer at the door.

  “Katy, can you get that?” The Rat says. He’s in the bathroom. Taking a long time. Stinking it up. Reading magazines. The Rat poops more than anyone I know.

  “Who is it?” I say through the door.

  “It’s Lake,” I hear that cartoon-voice say. It still makes me want to laugh.

  Lake’s hair is greasy and glinting in the sun. Her eyes are covered by too-big Gina Lollobrigida sunglasses. Despite the heat, she is wearing all black.

  “Hey, Beige.”

  “My name is Katy,” I say.

  “Right,” Lake says. “But you’re still Beige.”

  She just doesn’t want to use my name.

  She’s calling me Beige for a reason.

  It’s an insult.

  I can’t imagine that she is visiting me because I was such a great companion at the Fourth of July party. It’s more than obvious that she doesn’t think I’m cool.

  In my mind, I slam the door in her face, go back to my bedroom, pick up my book, and continue reading.

  But I don’t kick her out. I open the door wider. I let her in.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “According to the deal I have with The Rat, I’m supposed to take you ‘under my wing,’” she says, coming into the apartment and scanning the place. She sits down on the couch and kicks her long legs on the table.

  She’s not interested in me. I’m just part of the “deal.”