The Rose and the Beast

by Francesca Lia Block

  Once he’d come into the restaurant late at night and I took his order but he didn’t seem to notice me at all. I noticed him because of the color of his hair and goatee. I heard that he was this big promoter guy, managed bands, owned some clubs and galleries. A real patron of the arts, Renaissance man. Derrick Blue they called him, or just Blue. It was his house, his party, they were all making the pilgrimage for him.

  It was summer and hot. I was sweating, worried my makeup would drip off. Raccoon pools of mascara and shadow around my eyes. The air had that grilled smell, meat and gasoline, that it gets in Los Angeles when the temperature soars. It was a little cooler in the house so I went in and sat on this overstuffed antique couch under some giant crimson painting of a girl’s face with electric lights for her pupils, and drank my beer and watched everybody. There was a lot of posing going on, a kind of auditioning or something. More and more scantily clad girls kept coming, boys were playing music or drawing the girls or just lying back, smoking.

  Derrick Blue came out after a while and he made the rounds—everybody upped the posing a little for him. I just watched. Then he came over and smiled and took my hand and looked into my eyes and how hungry I was, in every way. I was always hungry for food—blueberry pancakes and root beer floats and pizza gluey with cheese—I thought about it all the time. And other things. I’d sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work—the boys with silver earrings and big boots—would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering windsongs about a tortured, gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies. And then I was hungry for him, this man who seemed to have everything, and to actually be looking at me. I didn’t realize why he was looking.

  He found out pretty fast that I wasn’t from around there, didn’t know too many people well, lived alone in a crummy hotel apartment in Korea-town, ate what I could take home from work. He knew how hungry I was. He asked everything as if he really cared and I just stared back at him and answered. He had blue eyes, so blue that they didn’t dim next to his blue-dyed hair. Cold beveled eyes. They made the sweat on my temples evaporate and I felt like I was high on coke coke coke when he looked at me.

  The crimson girl on the wall behind me, the girl with the open mouth and the bared teeth and the electric eyes, looked like she was smiling—until you looked closely.

  Derrick Blue caught my arm as I was leaving—I was pretty drunk by then, the hillside was sliding and the flowers were blurry and glowy like in those 3-D postcards—and it was pretty late, and he said, stay. He said he wanted to talk to me, we could stay up all night talking and then have some breakfast. It was maybe two or three in the morning but the air was still hot like burning flowers. I felt sweat trickle down my ribs under my T-shirt.

  We were all over his house. On the floor and the couches and tables and beds. He had music blasting from speakers everywhere and I let it take me like when I was at shows, thrashing around, losing the weight of who I was, the self-consciousness and anxiety, to the sound. He said, You’re so tiny, like a doll, you look like you might break. I wanted him to break me. Part of me did. He said, I can make you whatever you want to be. I wanted him to. But what did I want to be? Maybe that was the danger.

  The night was blue, like drowning in a cocktail. I tasted it bittersweet and felt the burning of ice on my skin. I reeled through the rooms of antiques and statues and huge-screen TVs and monster stereo systems and icy lights in frosted glass. If you asked me then if I would have died at that moment I might have said yes. What else was there? This was the closest thing to a story I’d ever known. Inside me it felt like nothing.

  That night he told all the tales. You know, I am still grateful to him for that. I hadn’t heard them since I was little. They made me feel safe. Enchanted. Alive. Charms. He said he had named himself for Bluebeard, if I hadn’t guessed. He said it had become a metaphor for his whole life. He took a key from his pocket. I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t quite remember the story. I felt the enchantment around us like stepping into a big blue glitter storybook with a little mirror on the cover and princesses dancing inside, dwarves and bears and talking birds. And dying girls. He said, The key, it had blood on it, remember? It was a fairy, and she couldn’t get the blood off, no matter what she did. It gave her away. I knew that Bluebeard had done something terrible. I was starting to remember. When I first heard that story I couldn’t understand it—why is this a fairy tale? Dead girls in a chamber, a psychotic killer with blue hair. I tried to speak but the enchantment had seeped into my mouth like choking electric blue frosting from a cake. I looked up at him. I wondered how he managed it. If anyone came looking for the women. Not if they were a bunch of lost girls without voices or love. No one would have come then.

  Part of me wanted to swoon into nothing, but the other women’s bones were talking. I didn’t see the bones but I knew they were there, under the house. The little runaway bones of skinny, hungry girls who didn’t think they were worth much—anything—so they stayed after the party was over and let Derrick Blue tell them his stories. He probably didn’t even have to use much force on most of them.

  I will rewrite the story of Bluebeard. The girl’s brothers don’t come to save her on horses, baring swords, full of power and at exactly the right moment. There are no brothers. There is no sister to call out a warning. There is only a slightly feral one-hundred-pound girl with choppy black hair, kohl-smeared eyes, torn jeans, and a pair of boots with steel toes. This girl has a little knife to slash with, a little pocket knife, and she can run. That is one thing about her—she has always been able to run. Fast. Not because she is strong or is running toward something but because she has learned to run away.

  I pounded through the house, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I opened it and collapsed inside. I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep.

  But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song.

  BEAST

  Beauty’s father thought that he was through having children. His two daughters were a handful, running around the house, demanding that he look at them, compliment them. He didn’t have much energy anymore. He was getting old, much older than his wife. Look at his wrinkles, look at his gray hair. What if he became ill and died before the baby was grown? But his wife convinced him—There’s one more. Please. I feel her. Beauty’s father said no; his wife insisted. She won. Soon after giving birth to Beauty, she was the one who got sick and died.

  Beauty’s father loved his youngest daughter, the child of his old age, more than anything in the world. Maybe too much. After all, it was he who had named her. That was the first clue. It wasn’t an easy name to have, no matter what you looked like. It predisposed her sisters to hate her from the beginning.

  Not only was the name a bad choice; Beauty’s father also picked the forbidden rose to bring to her. But it was necessary. Otherwise how would Beauty have met the Beast?

  Beauty’s father had to go away on a trip to purchase goods to sell in his store. He asked Beauty’s sisters what they wanted, and they listed silk dresses with silver sari trim, pearled camisoles, lace nightgowns, ruby earrings, and French perfume. Beauty, who had her father’s love and so didn’t feel a need for much else, requested a single rose—she knew it would make him happy. This irritated her sisters to no end. They might even have asked for roses, too, if they had thought of it, and if it would have made their father love them more. But no, it was always Beauty who thought of those things first, making them look foolish and selfish. Well, it was too late. Now they would have their nice gifts, anyway. How could their father deny them? He would have felt too guilty, since they all knew whom he favored.

  Beauty’s father found
the silk dresses with silver trim, the pearled camisoles, lace nightgowns, ruby earrings, and French perfume. He was going to wait until the last minute for the rose so that it would be fresh when he gave it to his daughter. But on the way home Beauty’s father lost his way on a deserted road on a cliff between an ocean and a dark wood.

  Then he saw a light, a melding rainbow light shining in the trees, and Beauty’s father felt compelled to go to it. He walked through the pines and the redwood trees that towered above him. There were a few charred tree trunks blocking the paths; new, young trees grew out of these carcasses. He had read somewhere that when a redwood is burned it will be shocked into sprouting new greens from its roots so that a young tree will grow. Otherwise the baby tree would never have been born.

  Pine needles and dead leaves slipped under his feet and he sank into dampness, branches catching at his clothes. His heart was beating at the root of his tongue and his hands were clammy but he kept on.

  Beauty’s father was relieved to come out of the forest. The house he had seen from the road was huge and made of stone. Each window was of stained glass, so that it almost resembled a cathedral. The garden surrounding the house was overflowing with flowering plants bathed in colored lights. The blossoms were the biggest, richest, and most succulent Beauty’s father had ever seen. He knew that Beauty would love them.

  Beauty’s father walked up stone steps through the garden. The plants formed a bower, showering him with droplets of moisture and sweetening the air. He thought he heard music playing—light and tinkling and otherworldly.

  The doors of the house opened as if by themselves, and Beauty’s father felt the warmth from inside, heard the music more loudly now, saw a glow of light. He walked in.

  There was a long hallway lit by torches in sconces in the shapes of outstretched arms. Trees grew up from the floor and out through the ceiling. Flowering vines grew over all the furniture. There were many low cushions in soft, luxurious though somewhat worn fabrics. Everywhere was a comfortable, warm corner to curl up in.

  Beauty’s father smelled delectable food wafting through the rooms. He followed the scent to a dining area with a low table and more cushions. Torches burned. On the table was a feast. Platters of steaming, seasoned meats, vegetables, and grains made Beauty’s father salivate like an animal. There were no utensils but when he saw the little sign telling him to Please Eat, he didn’t hesitate to voraciously lap everything up.

  Afterward, Beauty’s father lay back on the cushions. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  When he woke he began to explore. He came to a courtyard garden where the flowers were even bigger and more lavish than the ones he had seen in front of the house.

  That was when Beauty’s father noticed the rose. The rose that proved he loved his daughter too much. There was a little sign in front of it that read, Please Do Not Pick the Flowers.

  The rose reminded him of his daughter—open, glowing, pink and white, fragrant. Did he know it reminded him of her because it was forbidden? He only knew he had to have it. It looked fresh enough to last for days and he wasn’t that far from home—he could keep it in a jar of water.

  But when he leaned to pluck it the inevitable happened. Didn’t he realize? How often has this been told?

  The Beast came out of the shadows, lumbering on his four legs, his four weighty paws; his glossy black coat moving liquidly over his muscular body, his huge, heavy head swaying slightly, the squareness of it, his big jaw to hold his sharp teeth. All of this distracted Beauty’s father so much, of course, that he did not look into the Beast’s eyes. If he had, he might not have been afraid. Or maybe, more so? The Beast’s eyes were the dark, slightly slanted, loving, fierce, hypnotizing eyes of a god.

  You take the one thing that you are not allowed to touch? growled the Beast. You have insulted me and my hospitality.

  Beauty’s father apologized, wondering what had been in the food. What kind of dream was this? And how could he wake up?

  The Beast stalked around Beauty’s father in circles, like a nightmare, his head slung low between his shoulder blades, the hairs on his back standing up.

  Beauty’s father tried to explain, mumbled something about his daughter, Beauty, how all she wanted was a rose, he loved her, wasn’t thinking, had never seen flowers like that, never seen…

  After what seemed like a very long time, the Beast told Beauty’s father that he could go. On one condition.

  This was the part Beauty’s father somehow knew. He began to shake his head, no, not that, anything else. The Beast said it was the only way. Beauty’s father must obey, otherwise when he returned home he would become very ill and die.

  Beauty’s father left the Beast’s home, running down the stone corridors where the hands holding torches seemed to reach out to burn him, staggering out the heavy door through the garden that now smelled suffocating, into the dark forest that was now comforting. He saw a faint light at the edge of the sky and knew it would be day soon—he could find someone to take him to the nearest town. He was alive, he had had a terrible dream.

  But in his hand was the rose.

  Beauty’s father returned home with the gifts for his daughters. The two older ones weren’t particularly impressed—this was because they knew his love for them was not bleeding in the rubies or anywhere else. Only Beauty expressed delight. She kissed his hands, thanking him. His hands that were covered with pale brown spots and thick blue veins. His hands that had comforted and protected her since she was born, a child of his old age whom he thought he would never see grow into womanhood. She knew how precious the rose gift was. It was a sign of his devotion, and, ultimately, a release from it.

  A few days after he’d returned home, Beauty’s father became ill. Beauty put him to bed where she fed and bathed him. He had glass eyes and parchment lips. His skin burned with a mysterious fever. Beauty asked him what was wrong over and over again. She sensed he was hiding something from her. What was it? Had he been to a doctor and found something? Why wouldn’t he go see one now? Beauty’s father finally admitted that something strange had happened to him on his trip. He wouldn’t say more but one night, in a dream, he spoke out loud about the Beast and the rose, and Beauty heard. She made him tell her when he woke up.

  After Beauty’s father had told her the story, he regretted it and tried to say it was just delirium from the fever. But she was too wise for that. Besides, secretly, without even knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to.

  Because of this, it was easier than it might have sounded for Beauty to go to the Beast. She would not listen to her father’s pleas; she had made up her mind. It was the first time she had ever disobeyed him.

  Beauty rode along the coast, marveling at the changing colors of the ocean, the sea lions she saw sleeping on the sand like shifting black rocks, the formations of birds writing poetry in the sky, zebra grazing in a field among some cows and horses. She sang to herself and let the wind tangle her hair. She had never felt so free. This was the right thing, she knew.

  But then she got to the wood and saw the house and she became afraid. She had had so little time to feel herself, without the weight of her sisters’ jealousy, her father’s love. She wanted more wind and sea and zebras. Now she was going into another locked place.

  Still, she had made her promise. So she walked through the garden filled with tempting flowers, and through the doors that opened as she approached them, down the hallway lit with torches. She sat on a cushion in front of a low table that was spread with foods she had never seen or even heard of before. There were translucent sweet red and green fruits shaped like hearts, bright gold roasted-tasting grains shaped like stars, huge ruffley purple vegetables and small satiny blue ones. Everything smelled fresh and rich and light, and Beauty found herself stooped over her plate, licking it, like a wild animal. She ate until she was too full to move and then she lay back on the cushions and fell asleep.

  When she woke, the candles had burned down to lu
mpy puddles of wax, and she had been undressed and tucked into a bed made from the cushions. She sat up, holding her arms over her chest. Who had done this? Why hadn’t she heard or felt him? Where was he now?

  As if in answer the Beast came out from behind a curtain and sat down on his haunches before her, looking at her with those slanted dark eyes. She could not look away.

  Did you undress me? she asked.

  The Beast nodded his huge head. He looked so gentle and kind that she didn’t know what to say next. She wanted to stroke his fur and scratch his ears until he cocked his head and rumbled his throat with pleasure. She wanted to get up and run with him through the woods until they fell down weak and panting with exhaustion. She wanted to lie against his warm, heaving side and sleep.

  And this was just what happened. For the next few weeks Beauty and her companion never spoke. He knew her thoughts and tried to give her everything she needed. Even more—he seemed to feel her feelings. When she was sad he moaned softly in his sleep, then woke to nuzzle his cool nose against her neck. When she was happy he frisked around her, wagging and wiggling with joy like a pup. They ate together at the low table and ran together through the woods. The Beast showed Beauty secret pathways and how to hear sounds that had once been hidden from her, how to read the scents among the foliage—who had been there, what they desired, where they had gone. When the smells were evil the Beast became wild, baring his teeth, grabbing Beauty’s dress in his teeth, practically dragging her back with him to the house. She was never afraid, though, not with the Beast beside her, not with what he had taught her.