Beautiful Children

by Charles Bock

  For as long as she'd been going out with Ponyboy, he'd never paid for anything, and of all the things he never paid for, drugs was number one with a bullet. She looked at him and realized that he had dyed his hair midnight black, which he knew to be her favorite color. He'd even trimmed his fingernails.

  “What is it this time?”

  Ponyboy grinned, continued rolling a meticulous fattie inside the casing of a dollar cigar.

  “Actually, I was kind of hoping to talk with you.”

  He would not ever do anything to hurt her. And if she told him no, that was fine.

  And of course she told him no. Absolutely not. Sleazy guys were paid to scour strip clubs and escort services. If she had a nickel for every jerk who'd approached her to do something like this—

  “No,” she said. “No Fucking Way. I can't believe you. What do you think I am?”

  He licked the rolling paper, joined the ends together. “Fine. Totally copacetic. The answer is no,” he said. “This matter's settled. . . . So you might as well listen to me, right?

  “Baby, see the thing about getting involved with the industry is that if you do it right, you're set. Set. Like, the dynamics, they totally depend on where you are on the food chain. Once you make it onto the cover of a videotape box, you've got the whole enchilada, the guacamole, the salsa on the side.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, moved toward her, offered the spliff.

  “It's all marketing, see. When a guy goes to get a porno, only thing he knows about the film is what's on the box. Hard-core pervs may get to where they know directors and who's who in the cast, but they're pervs so who cares. The stuff you really choose a tape on, what really matters—is how bad you want to nail the girl on the box cover.

  “I've been researching like no tomorrow, Cheri, baby girl, sweetie pie. . . . Right now the adult film industry's like got this glut of European babes. They got third worlders, all kinds of chinks and spics and jungle bunny bullshit. But let me ask. Who's watching porn? The guys in your strip bar, that's who. They leave the Slinky Fox and at the next light they make a quick turn and some of them get a mag, but most of them watch a video. I seen it. You and me, we both know that your customers want to watch a white girl. They want the prettiest white girl with the blondest hair and the biggest tits. They want to watch Catholic schoolgirl cheerleader prom queen Miss America get thirteen inches of wood put to her. Baby, you look American like Chevrolet. That's a big plus right there. And, sweet sugar doll, from experience, I can guar-an-tee there's no problems in the fucking department.”

  How Ponyboy knew so much about this?

  “I told you already.”

  He stared at her like the cat with the feathers of Grandma's canary hanging from his mouth. Cheri blew smoke into his face. He coughed, blinked violently, forced out another of those shit-eating grins.

  “Research.”

  She blew another stream.

  “Baby, I'm telling you. You make it onto the covers of the videotape box, you gots it made in the everglade shade. Getting paid, getting laid, drinking king-size lemonade. All it takes is a demo. One demo and your future is locked up. Cover girls are famous. They get their own 976 lines and fan clubs and personalized websites. What do you think makes the Internet run, baby? It's horny guys—they love your movies, right? They pay twenty, thirty bucks a month for clips of you. They like go into special chat rooms with other fans, argue about which one of your scenes made them come the hardest. Swear to Christ. Box cover girls get on Howard Stern.”

  From outside came a compact discharge, a low-level explosive being detonated, the drunken cheering of overgrown boys with nothing else to do. For a moment, Cheri wasn't sure whether some jerks were playing with fireworks, if her mind was exploding. She grabbed a throw pillow, held it in front of her chest. Her brow furrowed.

  “Howard Stern?”

  “That's just the beginning, baby. Did you know that Paris designers put porn stars in their fashion campaigns? Sweetie, do this right, you get your own personalized blow-up dolls. You won't believe this, but there's this company? They do the dolls with a customized version of your mouth, plastic vag, plastic anuses. I know it's trippy but they do. For reals. I guess you like sit and they make a mold from off you and when it dries it's got all the contours and whatnot. You get a fifteen percent slice—heh—from all sales of the plastic version of your vagina. How awesome would it be to have a doll of you with like the bull's-eye and the light-up tits and everything? Right, I'm getting ahead of myself. But I see the world here.”

  His eyes were ablaze, the cords in his neck tense.

  “It's a breeze, baby. I already talked to Jabba.”

  She smacked him with the pillow. “You got this from him?”

  “He's totally willing to help.”

  “I bet.”

  “You just got to go in there, do a interview. Q and A stuff. One interview scene, baby, that's all. Hell, you could do it with me.”

  “It doesn't matter to you that the whole world's gonna think I'm a slut?”

  “It's not like that. You do it one time. All anyone sees is the video.”

  “Yeah—a video of me fucking somebody.”

  “You do it with me.” Ponyboy rocked in place and he looked down and his cheeks ballooned and he rubbed his hair and tried to rein in his temper. “I mean, shit, Cheri, you're already lighting your fucking tits on fire.”

  “THAT’S NOT FAIR.”

  A few silent seconds. Ponyboy looked at Cheri with pleading, lost-puppy eyes. When his apology was successfully communicated, he eased the pillow from her grasp. “I swear to you,” he said, “all it is is one time. You do this, we'll find out where we stand. Either you get into an agency or they put you on the B-girl heap. If it's a B-girl, forget it, we're out. No discussion. Goodbye, thanks for playing. But if we get you to the right agency, baby, you're on the fast track. Hell, cover girls don't even do porn. Maybe a flick a month. Maybe. Two scenes a month, tops.”

  “I don't know.”

  “You bang your boyfriend ten times a year in front of a camera. Lick a girlie maybe ten more.”

  A smirk. “What's a B-girl?”

  “Huh?”

  “What's a B-girl?”

  “Don't worry about it. It's just a name.”

  She pulled on his sleeve. “Why are they called B-girls, then?”

  Ponyboy did not react, then seemed to concentrate, his face becoming vague, almost childlike. “Don't you worry about them, baby. You're cover girl material no problem-o. Guaran-fucking-teed.”

  “That's not an answer.”

  “Baby. You just worked the longest shift of your life, right? Made more money in one night than in what, a week? I mean, let's look at things. Flaming nipples are a great trick. But they're a trick all the same. You been doing it how many times a night now for what—five months. And the Garden, they just don't seem to have your number.”

  Ponyboy rubbed his jaw. “I'm sorry, honey, I hate to say it, but they don't. And the way things are going, if nothing changes, I mean, if you don't get your shit in gear, you're going to be stuck in the Slinky Fox, on your knees in the back room, sucking some loser's crank for a hundred dollars a pop.”

  Cheri did not try to hide how each word made her feel, she had to shut her eyes, shielding herself.

  “All I'm saying,” Ponyboy continued, “one way or another, it seems like this is where you're headed. But we do this right, Cheri, honey, sweetie, listen to me, we get you on the box covers, then you're a name, you get to say who you work with, you get to say when and you get to say where. One week a month, you're making a movie. The other three weeks you travel to the best strip clubs in the country.”

  She opened her eyes; he was still there.

  “Better than the Garden of Venus. I promise. I promise you. The big time, baby.”

  She swallowed slightly. “Suki and Jane have been telling me about Guam.”

  It was a fragile statement, one that wasn't easy to make. Afte
rward, Cheri waited for Ponyboy's reaction. When there was none, she hesitated, then continued. “They say it's this really beautiful island. White sandy beaches. Waterfalls. Even a real volcano.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It's supposed to be a like eighteen-hour flight from America, but people from Japan vacation there all the time. I guess the army's got all these naval bases, for refueling and stuff, so there's all these clubs. It's really hard to get hired. If they sign you, it's for two months. Suki worked there and she bought an Escalade when she came back.

  “We could go off to Guam together,” Cheri continued. “Take a vacation.”

  “That's what I'm talking about,” Ponyboy answered.

  “Go snorkeling. Fall asleep in a hammock at sunset.”

  Ponyboy scooted toward her, took her hand, and kissed it. “Baby, we do this right, we'll be living the high life. You'll see. Rock and roll all night. Party every day. I promise. I promise you.”

  A crescent of blue light shone upon a limited, triangular swatch of the alley, illuminating the outline of a rat running along the top of an opened dumpster. The blue light vanished, and when it lit up the same specific area a second time, the rat had disappeared. Watching the blinking pattern from a spot three steps inside the alley, Ponyboy was vaguely reminded of his promise. It seemed like years ago to him now instead of a few weeks.

  He was using his back as a protective shield against the noise of the Strip, and had his head tilted to the side, his free hand cupped against his ear. But the carrying hum of neon still was too loud. The foot traffic from the walkway behind him was disruptive as fuck. Ponyboy jammed the cellular phone to his ear canal. Through the waves of radiated heat—pulsing from the metal phone into his eardrum, down the side of his face—he heard enough for this to be clear: for the first time since the tryout, his perpetually frustrated girlfriend possessed hope.

  “So the tattoo would jump out from the skin, I guess. I don't know, it seems kind of funky to me. It is crazy. He wanted me to do it, but I don't know. I told him it sounded more like your thing.”

  Ponyboy turned in place, looking into the alley, and let the wall support his weight. He thought about responding and bit his lip. Simultaneously, as if someone had pushed a lever, Cheri switched back into the mood he knew all too well of late: Okay, you tell me, just why the hell is it that every single guy I meet has a ridiculous scheme? And how come when YOU want to exploit ME, everything's hunky fucking dory, party all night sleep all day, whatever I have to do is no problem. But if I learn about a get-rich scheme, you get all—

  Her reference to the tryout stunned him. The way everything had gone down was still prominent, obviously, in each of their minds, and this left Ponyboy especially vulnerable. What Cheri was saying was like a punch to his solar plexus. He had no response, not even a way to respond, he didn't even know how to try. But as for three-dimensional tattoos—well, what did Cheri want him to say? That in all the times he'd gone under the tattoo needle he could come up with a single instance where the ink had accumulated like some sort of fucking laundry pile? That the idea wasn't bizarre? Didn't sound like the kind of shit a twelve-year-old comes up with when he gets stoned for the first time? That tonight, sitting in a junked-out ice cream truck with a bunch of teenagers, Ponyboy hadn't heard plots for world domination, ideas about witchery, and a whole bunch of other garbage, any or each of which hadn't sounded a whole lot more plausible?

  “Baby, it's not a stupid idea,” he said.

  She softened and at the same time became excited, her voice speeding up. “Do you want to talk to the comic guy? He's right here and he's really sweet, he'll explain it lots better.”

  Fumbling sounds were accompanied by a high-pitched electric whine, and a crackling fragment of some song, the Fox's sound system going good and strong. Ponyboy could almost make out an exchange: some guy saying you probably tell all your customers they're sweet; Cheri laughing out her response, answering—But you are—in that paralyzing way of hers, sounding erotic and smart and sexy and cynical, all rolled into a fine line of cocaine.

  “HEY, COMIC BOOK GUY?”

  More fumbling and then the guy's voice was uncertain, a little high-pitched and whiny. “Um, hey—”

  “I want you to listen to me.” Ponyboy didn't wait for a response. “You touch my girlfriend, I will personally hunt you down, got me? First I will find you. Second I will slit your throat. And then my friend, then I will fuck the wound.”

  Tension through the other end of the phone, silence.

  “You understand me?” Ponyboy asked.

  More silence.

  “As long as we're clear on that, mama's little angel. Put Cheri back on.”

  Why did Ponyboy have to be such a cock, Cheri demanded. And where the hell had he been all night? How hard was it to answer a goddamn beeper? Wasn't that the whole purpose of having a beeper, so that you would get in contact with the person trying to reach you?

  “This is me calling you back, babe.”

  The last word wasn't out of his mouth before Cheri wanted to know whose phone he was on. Before Ponyboy could begin to address that, another question piled on top. Ponyboy felt as if his legs were going to buckle beneath their weight. He felt wrung out and worn down, as if he could sleep for a thousand years. For a moment he actually thought of waking up in a new world. Then he realized that what he wanted was his old world back. A world where Cheri wasn't hostile. Or at least where her hostility wasn't directed at him.

  He tried to say something along those lines, only the battery was beginning to go, the connection was getting fuzzy. And down the length of the alley, too, he could see some sort of vague shape, maybe shapes, Ponyboy couldn't tell, he actually wasn't looking that hard. But the shape or shapes were approaching, coming his way, and whatever it was, it was bringing these giggles with it, competing and high pitched and echoing off the casino walls. And different sorts of dragging sounds were coming too, the scrapes of unsteady footsteps, the murmurs of a conversation.

  “I've always thought of myself as romantic,” Cheri was saying. “But maybe romantic is just another word for sucker?”

  Her agitated breathing emanated through the receiver, but was drowned out by a high-pitched cackle—the fat shadow on the alley wall spreading and larger, the shapes nearing the dumpster, moving into the crescent-shaped swatch of light. Soft hues distinguished two separate bodies; Ponyboy zeroed in on the thin, tight figure draped along Danger-Prone Daphney's side. He tasted a kiss from earlier in the night. Its tang. Its ripeness.

  There were only so many ways he could apologize and only so many things he could do, but Ponyboy was willing to do anything for forgiveness from Cheri, anything to make things better.

  If things weren't going to get better, though, he could not help but want to be with someone who trusted him, someone who looked at him and believed he could do no wrong.

  He slid down the wall, into a crouch, and kept staring down the alley, listening to Cheri talk about the plan for three-dimensional tattoos—how they hadn't done them yet but there was big money to be made.

  Momentarily, Ponyboy had to shut his eyes, he had to lose himself in the oncoming laughter, the whimsy of teenage girls.

  His mouth felt parched, his tongue heavy and thick. He tilted his head backward, looked to the sky, swallowed. “Okay,” he told Cheri. “I might have something. For this plan. I don't know but—”

  And now a shriek of high-pitched recognition. Heavy hurried steps coming his way. Ponyboy heard his name and before he could fully straighten, stringy arms were wrapping around him, embracing him, and these were followed by a light weight, colliding with, flopping onto him. Lips that were feathery and sloppy and perfect pressed against his cheek. The girl with the shaved head fell into his arms. She tipped her lips to his ear, breathless and joyful, slurring and melodic: “Hey there, beautiful.”

  ——

  And then his tongue was swirling in her throat and a molten sensation was flowing through the gi
rl with the shaved head, this concentrated sense of warmth, building in momentum, thickening, accumulating its own density. And the practice sessions she'd performed on her stuffed animals would never be recalled the same way, for now there was the comparison of this kiss. That time in the fourth grade when she had chased the towheaded boy around the swing set; the birthday party games in which the girl with the shaved head had nervously participated—heading into a darkened closet with some boy she barely knew, surviving the first awkward seconds, then struggling to find the proper approach angle (clicking her front teeth against his) . . . ; these, as well as the day when between third and fourth period, in the far right stall of the girls lav, she and Francesca had been dared for ten dollars to French for thirty seconds; plus the fumbling make-out sessions that had distracted her through so many empty afternoons: Duff, T.J., T-Bone, Mohammed, Javier, then Duff again. Every experience, fulfilling or not, in one way or another had contributed to her idea of what a kiss should be. From this point forward, she would see them only through the tinted lens of this kiss.

  Beads of perspiration had formed on her forehead and were gaining enough mass to run down the side of her face, but she did not feel their trickle. She was vaguely aware of a warm wind whipping onto her upper back and neck, a breeze that bordered on hot, but that provided relief anyway. She possessed the knowledge that she was in motion, that the ice cream truck was moving and she was inside the truck once again, although how she'd physically gotten back inside the truck, the girl did not know. Nor was she aware where the truck was going. The girl discovered that she could not remember how to get her body to move in such a manner as to get Ponyboy's hand off of her knee. And, almost instinctively, she was okay with her limitations. Her disconnect felt unique to her, it felt delicious and pleasing. Somehow, she understood that the nebulous sounds and sensations were caused by Ponyboy's kisses. She knew that the gap between what was going on in her head and what was going on in the truck had been forged on the strength of Ponyboy's kisses. Ponyboy's kisses overloaded power grids throughout the South-west and were the guiding light through the blackouts they'd caused. His kisses parched rivers until they were dry beds, and they were the water that would save her from the thirst of his kisses as she wandered through the desert that also was his kisses. And if the girl with the shaved head wanted to survive, she needed to be kissing Ponyboy, she needed to be kissing Ponyboy more.