Necklace of Kisses

by Francesca Lia Block

  “How did you know?” Weetzie exclaimed. “You’re as bad as Heaven.”

  The man held her eyes with his gaze and smiled wryly.

  “Oh,” said Weetzie. “Whoops.”

  “I’m Haven,” he said. “Heaven’s animus.”

  Weetzie’s skin tingled, as if tiny bubbles were rising up all over under the surface. “Do you think that someone can have their male and female sides so fully developed that they don’t need anyone else?” she asked after a while.

  He thought for a moment. “Might not need. But when you get what you want it’s pretty amazing.”

  They sat quietly. The stars twinkled in the dome above them.

  “I’ve always been sort of passive,” Weetzie said. “I mean, I’ve done some things, I’ve had a baby, and raised two babies, plus my boyfriend makes three. I’ve acted and designed and made clothes and I have a shop and everything, but I don’t feel like I’ve really done anything, you know?”

  “That sounds like a lot,” said Haven.

  “When I was in high school,” Weetzie said, “I had this friend, Janet Planet. She was only about five feet tall, really cute, long cartoon eyelashes, dressed in Levi’s and checkered Vans. She had this VW Bug and she used to drive around really fast, honking and whistling at cute guys, especially firemen. She was obsessed with firemen. When we all talked about what we wanted to be when we got older, she always said ‘a hero.’ I thought it was the coolest thing, but it was so different from me.”

  “What’s she doing now?” Haven asked.

  “Last I heard she was a firefighter. Until she had her second baby and then she quit.”

  “Being a good mother is being a hero,” said Haven. “Right?”

  “My kids are all big now,” Weetzie said. “I’m not their hero anymore. I’m not sure I ever was—maybe their storybook princess, when they were really small.”

  “So what do you want?” asked Haven.

  “I want to do something,” Weetzie said as a shooting star burned across the glass dome of the bar.

  Weetzie and Dirk

  Weetzie went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. While she ate her blueberry pancakes, she glanced up through the glass doors that opened onto the lobby. A tall, dark-haired man in a robin’s-egg-blue shirt was standing there.

  Weetzie got up and walked straight into his arms.

  Smell is a very strange sense, she thought. She remembered hearing once that it is connected to a part of the brain where memory is stored.

  He still used the same suntan lotion. They were only eighteen. They surfed all day. Their hair was crusted with salt. Their noses and shoulders were peeling. Dirk pulled his wetsuit off his torso, tied a towel around his waist, and wriggled out of the rest of the suit, then slid on his shorts. He held up Weetzie’s towel like a screen for her to change behind. They ate burritos and sat on the sand watching the sun set. They made a campfire and toasted marshmallows. Their fingers were covered with charred, gooey sugar, and their bodies tingled with the heat of the day. Stars came out, and Weetzie and Dirk connected shining dots to find the constellations. The little hairs on their arms touched.

  The hair gel once helped a Mohawk defy gravity. They were standing in front of the mirror in the aqua-tiled bathroom. Weetzie shaved the sides of Dirk’s scalp with a razor. The skin was so thin at his temples. She thought she could see a pulse there. She held her breath, trying not to imagine his blood.

  Dirk’s aftershave smelled dry and green, and his breath smelled like good morning coffee under a light coating of peppermint breath mints. Weetzie lay in bed between Dirk and Duck. She was twenty. She was tipsy. When they kissed her, she saw babies swirling around her, little spirits waiting to come.

  She didn’t realize, until that moment in the pink hotel, how much she had missed Dirk McDonald since she and Max moved out of the house they all shared, back into the cottage.

  “You smell like our whole life,” Dirk said softly into her hair. “And what else?”

  “Blueberry pancakes. Come have breakfast with me.”

  When they were seated together at the table, he asked her, “When are you coming home, Weetz?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why? Why are you here?”

  She looked around the room. It was flooded with light. The linen napkins were doves ready to fly off. The glasses looked so bright they could have sung. There were crystal vases of orange freesias on each table. The air smelled of butter and maple.

  “I’m surprised you’re asking me that, of anybody.”

  “I mean, of course it is beautiful. But I don’t get why you did this now.”

  Weetzie asked, “Why didn’t you go to the prom with me?”

  “You know that, Weetz.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I wasn’t into all the high school hoopdeera.”

  “And why else?”

  “I wasn’t ready to tell you I was gay. But at the same time I didn’t want you to look back on that night and wonder why your date didn’t kiss you. And there was that guy, what was his name?”

  “Zane Starling.”

  “That’s right. What kind of name is that, anyway?”

  “It’s not that strange. Zane is another form of John.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Where? On Mars?”

  “Anyway…” she said.

  “Anyway, I knew you liked each other. And he was a hot guy. A little odd, but hot. I knew he would ask you and it would be the way it was supposed to be.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hell if I know. Normal. Whatever that is. Kissing. Hot sex. Not having some gay date who can’t even admit that to you.”

  She reached over and squeezed his hand. “I would have loved to go with you, honey.”

  “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  “I never even kissed Zane Starling. I was too scared. And I thought, somehow, by coming back here I could understand things better. I’m not sure why. And then, it turns out, he’s here—I mean, not here, but he’s having an art opening in three days.”

  “So you want to rekindle this thing with some guy from twenty years ago?”

  “No,” Weetzie said. “I didn’t know he was even going to be here. I just needed to finish something, or figure something out. I don’t know what it is. But I can’t leave yet.”

  Dirk nodded. Then he said, “Max is going crazy.”

  She looked down at the table and moved some bread-crumbs around the linen with her fingernail. “I’m not quite ready,” she said.

  Dirk reached into his pocket to pay the bill. She touched his hand again. “Will you spend the day with me?”

  First he treated her to a massage in her room. They lay next to each other while tall, tan Swedish twins in white rubbed their muscles with scented oils. Then they swam in the pool and lay on the lounge chairs under the green umbrellas. She told Dirk about the kisses and the jewels. None of it seemed to surprise him that much. Since they’d met, their lives were full of magic. Plus, the masseurs alone had convinced him that this wasn’t an ordinary place. But he did tell her he was worried when she mentioned Sal, the phone calls for Peri, and the footsteps on the path.

  “I’m fine,” Weetzie said. “I’m having an adventure.”

  “I just want you to be safe.”

  “Dashell Hart wants to make a movie about me, here,” she said. “With Max directing.”

  He glanced around at the tiled pool with its little fountains, at the pink hotel, which looked almost white in the brightness of the day, and the palm trees gleaming gold where the sun touched their fronds. He said, “This would be a great location.”

  “You should know,” said Weetzie. Dirk had a job as a location scout for a major studio. He got paid a lot of money for finding the best mansions and bars and parks and gardens in town, but Weetzie thought he missed working on their little movies.

  “And, of course, you’ll be perfect,” he said.

  “I feel a little too old, but it wo
uld be fun. I bet we could get you on it, too.”

  “What about Max?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’d work with him?”

  “Dirk,” Weetzie said, “I still love Max. I just had to get away. I have to see.”

  “What do you have to see? Zane what’s-his-name? That waiter guy’s curly tail?”

  “No,” said Weetzie. “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  She shrugged and twirled the paper parasol on the cranberry juice and mineral water she had ordered.

  “Why did you tell Cherokee and Lily where I was?”

  “They were frantic,” Dirk said. “They’re your kids. What if your mom did something like this when you were their age?”

  Weetzie said, “She did a lot worse.” She sipped her drink, imagining a tiny Brandy-Lynn swimming in a martini glass. Was coming to the pink hotel as selfish as that? Would it hurt her girls in the same way?

  “But she never went away without telling you where she was. They have a right to know,” Dirk said.

  “How did you find out, anyway?”

  He reached into his pocket and tossed her the hotel matchbox he had picked up after breakfast.

  She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to stop raiding ladies’ purses.”

  “Listen, Weetz, I was worried about you. And with all this about mutilated mermaids and freaky cell phone messages and stalkers…”

  “I’m fine,” Weetzie said. “I promise.”

  But that evening, when he was about to go, she hugged him for a little longer than usual, and he looked into her face.

  “Do you want me to spend the night?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He called Duck to tell him he’d be back in the morning. Then they ordered grilled salmon with cilantro mango chutney from room service.

  While they were waiting for the food, Weetzie changed into the suit from Lacey and spun around.

  “So she’s a spider?”

  Weetzie shrugged. “She told me she just started pulling the threads out of her body when that guy attacked her.”

  “Well, it looks hot on you.”

  She grinned at him. “You always know how to make a girl feel good.” Then, one by one, she took the kissing jewels out of the silk pouch Lacey had given her.

  “Wow!” Dirk said. He held the emerald up to the light. “The real thing.”

  “I think so.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Heaven said they’re for my necklace.”

  But even as she said that, it didn’t feel quite right. Why had she been given the jewels? Did she deserve them? What were they for? What about the family who felt she had abandoned them? Did they need kisses, too? Weetzie closed her eyes and made a wish for Witch Baby and Cherokee, as if the stones were birthday candles or first stars. She wasn’t sure what to wish for Max.

  Just then the food arrived. It made Weetzie feel calmer right away. The bottle of white wine didn’t hurt, either.

  “Remember when I used to have to chew pink bubble gum to tolerate the taste of wine?” she giggled.

  “Remember when you used to drink champagne with a straw?”

  “Remember when I could drink as much rum as you in one sitting?”

  “Even though I weigh about twice as much as you.”

  She put her hands on her stomach. “Oh, God, I don’t want to remember drinking that much!”

  Dirk said, “But there are so many good things to remember. Duck and I were talking about it the other night—how many amazing things happened for so long and how, now, for the last couple of years, it seems so quiet all the time.”

  “I think amazing things are happening again,” said Weetzie, and she leaned back against Dirk’s chest in the big, satiny hotel bed and closed her eyes.

  Mermaid

  Weetzie woke at dawn. Dirk was sleeping beside her, still wearing all his clothes. She kissed his cheek and went to the pool for a swim. The sky was still gray, just tinged with pink like the perfect shade of powder blush. The air smelled of rain. In spite of the early hour, someone had beaten Weetzie into the water. A woman was moving joyfully under the cool blue mirror that reflected drifting morning clouds. It seemed as if she would never come up for air.

  When the woman finally did surface, Weetzie was not surprised to see Shelley. Weetzie was a little taken aback, though, by the fact that the mermaid was completely naked. She tried not to stare at her huge breasts.

  “Hi!” Shelley said. It felt like forever before she finally covered her breasts with her robe. “Sal hates me to skinny-dip—isn’t that the craziest thing to call it? I mean, some of these things you say. Like, what would a fat-dip be? Wearing lots of sweaters? But anyway, I can’t help it sometimes. Luckily, I think he’s still asleep.”

  She glanced up at a window overlooking the pool. Weetzie thought she seemed suddenly anxious.

  “How are you?” Weetzie asked.

  “Oh, fine, and you?” It sounded rehearsed.

  “It’s been quite an adventure, being here.”

  “Really?” Shelley said wistfully. “Not for me, so much. It seems like nothing happens. I eat raw fish and seaweed, go to the salon, collect my mermaids. The best thing is swimming.”

  “What would you like to be doing?” Weetzie asked.

  Shelley glanced up at the window again. Weetzie thought she saw a figure moving behind the drapes.

  “I really miss the ocean,” Shelley said softly, almost whispering. “And my family. Especially my mother. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.”

  Weetzie said, “It must be hard.”

  “I better go.”

  “Wait.” Weetzie reached out and touched her hand. “I have a car. If you want I can take you someplace.”

  Shelley’s eyes filled with tears but they didn’t spill. She wiped them away quickly with the back of the hand Weetzie had touched. “I can’t,” she said. Her voice was very small, like a child’s.

  “Are you scared?”

  “I have to go.”

  “I’m in the last garden room by the arbor,” Weetzie said. “If you need me.”

  She went to say good-bye to Dirk.

  “Please come back soon,” he said.

  She kissed his cheek. “I will. I think I know what I need to do.”

  After he left, she spent the rest of the day by the pool. She had brought some hotel stationery and a pen, and on it she made notes to help Tristan Sable with the screenplay for Max.

  Mermaid in captivity—plastic surgery mutilation

  Faunish waiter

  Heaven/Haven explains anima/animus

  Changelings

  Fairy in Dolce Gabbana

  Flying bride w/ munchkins

  Spider lady

  Soap opera Angel w/ real wings

  Jewel kisses

  Mysterious footsteps

  She stopped at the last note and shivered in the afternoon heat. But she didn’t want to think about anything scary.

  Finding Zane Starling

  What is Max doing now?

  This was something she hadn’t let herself wonder. It was as if, in order to be here, she had to pretend he was just home alone in the cottage, watching the news and reading the paper. But maybe he was living his own story. She didn’t really want to think about this, either.

  She ordered a glass of lemonade and some chips and guacamole from the snack bar and kept working. Only once, when she glanced up at Shelley’s window, did she think she saw a figure standing there again. And later, just before she headed back to her room to shower and dress for dinner, Weetzie could have sworn she heard a woman sobbing.

  How Much Difference One Person Can Make

  Why are punk shows like ancient pagan rituals?

  Witch Baby was sitting in the silent, pale, cathedral-like library, unable to concentrate on the paper she was supposed to be writing. She took the crinkled postcard from Angel Juan out of her pocket. What was it he had been
looking for and finally found? Why was he coming back from his trip? Why wasn’t he coming here?

  Next to the postcard was a flyer Witch Baby had ripped off a kiosk that morning when she was getting her breakfast mushurito. It was for a hardcore punk gig in the city. It might help her with her paper, she told herself. And she needed to get out; she needed a distraction. Sitting here like this was useless.

  She got up and walked past the rows of students. Her steel-toed engineer boots echoed on the marble floor. She kept her eyes down, hoping no one was looking at her, wishing she had someone to go with her tonight.

  Witch Baby took BART into San Francisco after dark. Then she walked through the Mission to a warehouse where the band was playing. The streets were very dark, mostly deserted. The air felt cool and salty from the bay. Some skinheads walked by, kicking a beer can. One had a large scar down the side of his face. Witch Baby slouched further into her motorcycle jacket—glad she was wearing it, glad she was bald—remembering what Dirk told her before she left for college: shows were more hardcore up north than in L.A.; at least they used to be. She hadn’t gone to any yet, but Angel Juan’s postcard was like a little animal in her pocket, scratching, nipping; it made her need to keep moving.

  Witch Baby sat in the dark warehouse, listening to the ferocious music, watching boys flinging themselves off the stage and slamming into each other in the pit. All boys; there was hardly another girl in the whole place. Witch Baby tried to see something beautiful in the sweaty frenzy of bodies—something ecstatic, like a pagan ritual—but she just felt sad and alone. She imagined ancient rites where nymphs and satyrs played drums and flutes and danced together, celebrating the flow of the wine, the sacred marriage of god and goddess. But there was no sign of the goddess here.

  Witch Baby put her hand into the pocket of her leather jacket for Angel Juan’s postcard. Instead, she found something else.

  Dear Witch Baby,

  I know that you stole this jacket from my closet when you left for school. You could have asked me, and of course I would have given it to you! Anyway, I’m glad you have it, because I have a lot of nice memories of wearing it when I was your age. I’m also glad that you and I have similar taste, whether you will admit it or not. But the reason I am writing this is so that when you find it, you will know that I am thinking of you and loving you. I know that you don’t like to make yourself vulnerable, but remember, that is the way love comes. Don’t be afraid! I love you!