The House of Impossible Beauties

by Joseph Cassara

  The queen on the left was wearing a tight leopard-print mini-falda that barely covered her panties. The other queen was wearing a little black dress and had thick lip liner that made her mouth look clown-level fochi.

  “Oh shit,” Daniel wrapped his arm around Juanito’s shoulder and held him closer. “What you think they’re fighting about?”

  “No sé,” he said. “I gotta listen.”

  Pero, damn, listening was difficult in that hot moment. Daniel’s arms were around him and Juanito had to pay attention to the fact that he was breathing still out of a fear that he would forget to inhale.

  Lip Liner was scream-yelling at Leopard Print, calling her a puta. Over and over again, puta, puta. “Uh-oh,” Juanito said. “I bet you they’re fighting over a man.”

  “Scandalous,” Daniel said. “Alert the New York Post.”

  “They’d eat that up for breakfast.”

  “And lunch, who you kidding?”

  “Snacking on that bochinche,” Juanito said.

  Leopard Print’s heels were too high and her ankle wobbled and gave way. She went down hard. Lip Liner raised both hands high up in the air and whipped her clutch bag down like a whip. Leopard Print cried out, “I didn’t fuck him, you delusional crab-infested bitch.”

  “You lying puta,” Lip Liner screamed. “How dare you bring up the crabs.” She whacked her bag down again. “That was a horrible two weeks in my life. Your ass is lucky I don’t have a blade on me.”

  “Oh please, bitch,” Leopard Print said. “I wouldn’t even fuck your man if his cum was the fountain of fuckin’ youth.”

  “Is that how you talk to your mother?” Lip Liner said. “I didn’t bring you in off the streets and into our house so that you could be a shady bitch on wheels.”

  “Oh shit,” Daniel said. “She is getting her ass served back to her. Do you think we should go break up the fight?”

  “No,” Juanito said. “Not unless you want to give them a reason to tag team on you and make you bleed. Never break up a fight between house sistas.”

  “Okay, then I’ll pass on that,” Daniel said. He stood up and Juanito lay in his shadow. Daniel had his hand out like he was waiting for a low-five. “Hey, Juanito, you gonna give it to me?”

  “¿Qué?” Juanito said. “What do you want?”

  “The soda bottle,” Daniel said, “I’m gonna go throw it in the bin. Let’s head over there together.”

  * * *

  Juanito knew that Angel wouldn’t be a happy camper if, at the end of the semana, they came home empty-handed. Every Sunday evening, Angel sat at the dining room table while Juanito worked on his sewing projects. Half the table covered in fabric, the other half covered with crumpled bills that Angel stuffed into an envelope for food, rent, heat. Mama had that shit on lock down, and for that, everyone was grateful. “But I’m not some pimp,” Angel had said, a year earlier to Juanito when he had first arrived off the streets. He was only thirteen then, with a backpack full of old clothes and a couple of hundred dollar bills. “I’m not pimping out nobody.”

  “I know that,” Juanito said back to her. “You’re just keeping the house afloat.”

  “Pero sometimes,” Angel said, “sometimes I feel like a pimp and I don’t like that feeling, you know?”

  A week later, Angel bought Juanito that sewing machine, saying, “I know it’s not nothing magical, but when you plug it in, it sews. So work those fingers between the needles and make your crazy-colorful outfits, Juanito baby.”

  And Juanito had said, “Gracias, mamita. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know I didn’t,” Angel said. “But now we’re family, and I know you like to sew. You should have the chance to develop that, verdad? Maybe you’ll walk in a ball one day with an outfit all your own.”

  Now, Juanito didn’t want to think about letting Angel down. He couldn’t show up with Daniel on Sunday—Daniel’s first Sunday in the house—with no cash to hand over. But he also couldn’t stomach the thought of Daniel fucking with other guys on the piers, in those cars, down those dark streets in the Meatpacking. And he couldn’t even wrap his mind around the thought of Daniel taking the army knife for protection—he seemed too sweet for that and Juanito didn’t want to be the one who, even if it was indirect, pushed Daniel into the kind of danger that would require a blade.

  So Juanito taught him how to steal. Not nothing violent—Juanito was clear with that: no violence, ever—just a simple picking of the pockets. They spent Sunday morning on crowded trains, looking to spot tourists. They walked by outdoor cafes to look for purses that could easily be snatched.

  “The key to purses is,” he told Daniel, “you gotta find the ones on the ground that you can grab and walk away with, never making eye contact. Don’t run, because then they’ll see you and scream.”

  “You sure about this?” Daniel said. They sat down on a bench in Central Park near the open meadow. Groups of people were tossing around inflatable beach balls, the kinds that seemed to float in the air for a second or two before giving in to gravity and dropping back down, waiting for the next fist to punch it back up again.

  “Yeah,” Juanito said. “So the trick here is to sit close enough to the bag, and then put your jacket down next to it.”

  Daniel nodded and then darted his eyes around.

  “And then you can reach your arm under your jacket and slip it into the bag,” Juanito continued, “until you can feel a wallet. Then you slide it out of the bag, under the jacket and simply get up to walk away. If you’re smooth enough, no one will spot you.”

  “Smooth enough,” Daniel said. “Ay, Juanito. I don’t know about this. At least at the piers, we can do something and get money for it. Pero this is like stealing from people and we didn’t earn it or nada.”

  “You’d rather fuck around with someone and get the cash that way?” Juanito tried to keep his tone even. He didn’t want to show Daniel that the idea of it would somehow hurt his feelings.

  “Pues, I mean,” Daniel said, “isn’t that what you do?”

  The words stung, not because they were mean, but because they were true. Juanito never thought of himself as a whore, pero as someone who supported his sewing and creating hobby by hustling on the side. It was just something to get by.

  “I do it because it’s not like there ain’t nothing else I can do,” Juanito said. “You don’t think I haven’t tried to get some kind of other job?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Daniel said. “Damn, why are you yelling at me?”

  “I dropped out of high school to get away from my old life,” Juanito said. “You don’t think I’d rather be one of those fancy lawyers or doctors or whatever?”

  “Chill out, Juanito. I’m just trying to understand what I’ve got to do here. I’m not throwing shade at you.”

  He regretted overreacting and had never meant to scream. The words had come out like water out of a hydrant—he hadn’t meant to put his emotions out there on full blast. But he still couldn’t bear the thought of Daniel fucking someone else at the pier, which he knew seemed ridiculous now that he thought about it. He had just met Daniel, they weren’t dating, Daniel didn’t even know how Juanito felt about him.

  “Alright, we can go to the piers next week,” Juanito said. He looked at the beach balls floating in the air, and then at the sun that was so bright, if he looked at it long enough, it would cause all the other colors around him to fade. “If that’s what you want to do, we can do that. But now, we gotta take one wallet to bring back some money to Angel tonight—for food and stuff.”

  Daniel took off his jacket and placed it on the grass near the closest purse. The straight couple nearest Daniel was sprawled out on a blanket, taking bites of sandwiches and apple slices. They had a wooden picnic basket, which made Juanito think of Dorothy and Toto. The girl whispered something into the guy’s ear and he laughed and looked into her eyes so gently that it made Juanito want to cry. He had never had someone look into his eyes like that. He did
n’t like to see reminders in the world that looks like that even happened to other people. If he didn’t have to see it, he wouldn’t have to think about it. He watched Daniel’s arm slowly stretch under the jacket, and he leaned back to look again at the blinding sun.

  * * *

  After a long day at the piers, after a long afternoon walking around the city in search of whatever they were in search of that particular day, after Angel had sorted through the money at the dining room table and went off to work herself, Juanito liked to lay on the roof as Venus smoked a joint. Now that Daniel was part of the picture, Venus insisted that all three of them go up the stairs to lay out and smoke.

  But Juanito wasn’t that big of a fan of weed. After a long day or a long week, not nobody was looking for some rah-rah cheerleader cool down—porque that was the phrase that Venus used: cool down. As in, she just wanted to cool down and smoke a jay. Pero weed gave Juanito panic attacks most of the time. What could he say, he just couldn’t help but feel the feels—a dull ache in his shoulders whenever he’d tense up without realizing it. He could go twenty minutes without realizing that his shoulders were scrunched up and tense in a position that, to anyone looking at him, would look completely stiff. Whenever that happened, Juanito would search within and take a moment. Breathe, he’d say to himself, cálmate.

  “But why do they call that shit a toke?” Juanito asked. Venus had already lit the joint and Daniel was holding in his puff. They sat cross-legged on the roof and Juanito could feel the cement against his ass-bone.

  “No sé,” Venus said, primping her hair like the joint was gonna look her up and down before she took it in her fingers. “Why do we call shit anything anyways?”

  Juanito could see Daniel’s exhaled nube glow orange under the building’s only rooftop light. Daniel put his arm around Juanito and pressed his fingers into Juanito’s neck muscle like he was dialing a telephone. “Relax,” Daniel whispered to him. “Your shoulders are rock hard.”

  “Okay, party people,” Venus sang, whipping out a comb and using it as a fake microphone. She got up to her heels. “Deejay Vee Vee, lyrical master, giving it to you faster, on the blaster, flashing like the grandmaster—”

  “Drunker than plaster—” Daniel sang.

  “Uh—” Juanito said. “Walking up that StairMaster?”

  They laughed and now it was Juanito’s turn to take the joint. Venus kicked out a leg and said, “Mira, muñequitas, pero with these kinds of legs, you know your girl Venus don’t got no need for a StairMaster. I’ll just walk up and down that crazy island Manhattan—and don’t make me do my Rita Moreno show tunes for you now, darling.”

  “I wasn’t doubting,” Juanito said. “It’s not like I got those rhyming skills like you. How many damn words rhyme with faster, and you got me going at the end of the game—like shit, girl.”

  Juanito trembled as he put the joint to his lips. It was already half burned down. Venus eyed him hard. “You don’t gotta smoke it, Juanito,” she said. “It’s just supposed to cool us down, not give you a mad case of ansiedad. Pass it over if you don’t want it, no pasa nada.”

  The last time he had smoked on the roof with Venus, it had been way too much for him to handle. He had trembled even though it was nowhere near cold, and he was convinced that he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Venus had had to bring his nervous ass back down to the apartment, where he wrapped himself in one layer of taffeta, a fuzzy winter blanket, and crowned it off with a thin layer of tulle. He had called it his little cocoon of love.

  But that had been months ago—last summer—before Daniel had shown up. And now there they were, looking at the clouds take shape. Daniel was wearing a tank top and had his arm around Juanito’s shoulder. Juanito took a little sip of the joint, pinky up, and rested his head on Daniel’s shoulder. Maybe this would be his new cocoon of something.

  Night was something magical in New York and Juanito loved the sparkle view of the buildings downtown in Manhattan. Over that river, past that bridge, past the ripples of buildings of Harlem, there were the big glass boxes with yellow dotted lights. He thought of this view like he thought of snowflakes—just like each flake was a different shape and no two were the same, no two views of that city were the same no matter which night he saw it.

  He was high, pero only un poco. He could feel Daniel’s fingers gliding up and down his neck and he liked that. When “I Feel for You” came on the radio, Venus shouted out, “This shit is my jam—well now this is the perfect night.”

  “You and your Chaka Khan,” Daniel said. “I feel like I just met you but I know you love that woman.”

  “Well there’s clearly a lot to love,” Venus said. “Ch-ch-aka Khan is a star.”

  Venus and Daniel took turns using Venus’s comb as a mic. “Mic check one, two, one, two,” Daniel said, tapping his finger on the tip of the comb as the radio went to commercial break. “Can you hear me? Am I coming through to you?”

  “We can hear you,” Juanito said, sitting upright and clapping. “Sing that song. Belt that tune, sister.”

  One minute into “Burning Up,” Madonna went silent midword. The music stopped and Venus whined, “No me digas que los batteries freakin’ died out on us!”

  But what could Juanito say? The batteries had freakin’ died out on them. Daniel held out his hand, like he was gonna push the air out in front of him. He did a slow-jam breakdown of “Burning Up,” and soon they were all on their feet, singing and dancing and filling the silence with their breathing.

  The three of them smoked through another joint and lay down on the cement roof. Juanito was so high that he could feel precisely where the cement was uneven. He rested his head on Daniel’s stomach and laughed hard. “My body feels so heavy,” Juanito said. “Like one of those sumo wrestlers. I can’t get up.”

  “Help us,” Daniel joke-screamed. “We can’t get up, we can’t up. We’re too stoned to function.”

  Daniel snuggled closer to Juanito and squeezed their bodies together. Juanito could feel Daniel’s heart a-thumping through his light wool sweater. He stuck his finger in one of the holes on the side of the sweater and scratched Daniel’s nipple.

  Venus cleared her throat loudly and Juanito turned to her to flash a smile. Venus raised her eyebrows like she always did when she wanted Juanito to know that she was watching him. Juanito giggled and bit his lip.

  “I know, I know,” Venus said. “When I smoke, I feel lovey-dovey too. I just wanna go up behind Angel and give her a diva-hug and tell her that I love her.”

  “Y yo también,” Juanito said. “Like she always got food on the table for us. That’s some real-level love. Making sure we always got a bed to sleep in. Making that bomb-ass chicken soup.”

  “Pero she’d kill us if she saw us smoking,” Venus said. “Y ya tú sabes, Juanito.”

  “Mmm, why you think she’d kill you for smoking a little joint?” Daniel asked.

  “Because, papo,” Juanito started, and Venus finished, “She don’t like any kind of drug other than liquor. Says that white people already got conceptions of what they wanna see when they see us, don’t need to fit into any kind of premade stereotype.”

  “Like it’ll piss her off,” Juanito said, “if we do anything that confirms their racist bullshit. Or something like that.”

  Juanito could feel Daniel’s fingers massaging his scalp, and his eyelids fluttered. “I could see that,” Daniel said. Juanito could feel Daniel nodding.

  “Pero I don’t like to think like that,” Venus said. “I’d rather lay up on this roof, smoke my jay after a long-ass day at the piers, and dream.”

  “You got any rhymes about dreams, Vee?” Daniel asked.

  “Nah,” she said. “Rhymes are fun and shit, but dreams are the serious-level shit.”

  Juanito bolted upright and Daniel’s hand fell back onto his pecho. “Dime, reinas,” Juanito said, “if we lived in a world where you could be, do, or want anything, what would it be?”

  “Oh, I got
an answer, sin duda,” Venus said. “No question about it. I want a house in Westchester. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Yes,” Juanito said. “All kinds of yes, por favor.”

  “Sí,” Daniel said, “But then you’d have to mow the lawn every week. And shovel snow.”

  “Well,” Venus said, waving her left hand like she couldn’t be bothered. “That’s why my man would do it for me.”

  “I would have a custom-made Fiorucci one-piece,” Juanito said, “with a drop back, and elastic near the calves so it don’t go down all the way. And—a gold wristlet to accessorize with it. I could wear it to my first ball. Just think of the debut I’d make.”

  Venus opened her mouth but then must have decided that there were just no words. She clapped slow and hard, shaking her head and closing her eyes like yes-yes-yes.

  “I think I’d go the route of simplicity,” Daniel said. “But still practical, sabes? I’d get us a washer-dryer set. Can you picture it without buggin’ out?”

  Venus bit her lip. “Yes, queen.” Her eyes were closed and she looked up. “I can picture it.”

  “Clean clothes all the time,” Juanito said. “And no trekking to that stank-ass laundromat.”

  “And no more quarters,” Daniel said.

  “So practical,” Venus said. “You’re the new man of the house. I can just see it now.” She put her hand in the sky like she was blocking a blinding sun out of her eyes.

  Venus recounted the time she had let a gentleman take her home after dinner. She said that she had excused herself to powder up in his bathroom, and as she walked down the hallway, she saw the washer-dryer combo and was so turned on by that display of dinero, she insisted that he fuck her on top of it while it was on a vicious spin cycle.

  “Damn,” Juanito said. “You know Angel would kick your ass if she heard you went to his house.”