Pink Smog (15 page)

At first this place just looks like a gate and then it looks like a park without swing sets or anything fun and then she sees the plaques in the ground and realizes what it really is. And she starts to cry
.

“Why did you bring me here?”

It is worse than the mama elephant sinking into tar
.

He picks her up, apologizing, but he won't leave. He wants to show her something
.

“See,” he says. “This is her grave. People from all over the world come to worship her. See the roses? See the kisses?”

Weetzie wants more than a cold stone with roses and kisses. She wants Marilyn Monroe to be alive, like she is alive, like her mom, like her dad. She tells him that
.

“She's more alive than I am,” says her father
.

“Marilyn,” I said, kissing the marble even though my lip gloss was too light to make much of a mark, more of a gloppy pale-pink smudge.

Among all the little notes tucked along the edges, there was an envelope taped to the stone and I recognized it right away. It was silver and had my name written on it. Inside there was glitter but no note. Just a plane ticket to New York City.

“You're never coming back, Louise!” my mom said, clinking the ice in her glass. I had told her I wanted to visit my dad in New York.

“Mom, my name is not Louise.” I spoke softly, the way you would to a child.

She swiped at a tear from her eye like a cat catching a spider. “I'm a terrible mother.”

“No you're not. Stop that. Just call me by my name.”

“You're never coming back.”

“I promise I will,” I told her. “It's just for a few weeks. I'll call you every day.”

Just then Monroe, as if on cue, jumped up onto her lap and began licking her face. My mom pretended to be annoyed, “Get that dog off,” but her posture softened and she held Monroe's body gently in both hands, close to her bosom, almost like you would hold a baby.

“She's excited to be spending special time with Grandma, right, Monroe? Right, little starlet?”

“Don't leave us alone too long, my Weetzie,” my mother said, and I knew that was her way of giving me her blessing.

She never called me Louise again after that.

He met me at LaGuardia in a short-sleeved white shirt and black trousers. His back was wet with sweat when he hugged me.

“So you found the ticket?”

“The notes were all from you?”

“Merrily the feast I'll make/Today I'll brew, tomorrow bake/Merrily I'll dance and sing for next day will a stranger bring/Little does my lady dream/Charlie Bat is my name.”

“What the heck?”

“From ‘Rumpelstiltskin.'”

“You are crazy, you know that? No wonder I'm so crazy. How'd you get them to me?”

He smiled and pulled me close to him. He smelled bitter, like cigarettes and coffee, but the smell was warm and comforted me because it brought back all of his embraces, since the day I was born. “I had a little help? There are guardian angels everywhere. Even a few living in the Starlight.”

“Guardian angels?” I said. “Do you mean Winter?”

“Winter, spring, summer, fall. It's just a figure of speech, love.” He winked at me. “But you do have some nice neighbors.”

“And a few creepy ones,” I said. “Or at least we did.”

“There's always some creepy ones.”

“But why did you write the notes at all?”

“I thought it might be good for you in some way, help you grow a little since I couldn't be there to take you places. I thought it might be fun.”

“Freaky mimes and evil Tomato Heads aren't fun. And you could have just given me the plane ticket instead of making me wait all those months.”

He kissed my cheek. “I guess I needed to get ready for you, too.”

The air never cooled for the entire time I was there. It hung over us so thickly, stinking of garbage. The heat seemed to effect the sound levels, making every construction site and honking horn and subway train louder as noise bounced off the wall of humidity.

Still, I loved being with Charlie. We rested in his tiny brownstone apartment during the day and at night when the heat seemed romantic instead of wicked, we walked everywhere. We had gnocchi and ravioli, Indian curries and samosas, pork buns and chow mein. We visited the museum that felt strange and magical at night, like a fairy palace, chamber music drifting through the great hall from some unseen source. We visited the elegant shops and the small boutiques and my dad showed me where the beat poets used to gather and where the new music scene was coming alive at Max's Kansas City and CBGB. I stayed for two weeks but I missed Monroe and my city and my mom and so even though I was sad to leave Charlie I was ready. I had started counting off the time until my return on the second day when the garbage smells rose up like monsters while we went to buy oranges, milk, and cornflakes at the corner market. My father's apartment felt cramped and hot and I longed for Los Angeles with its smog and flowers. I just wished he'd come there, too.

I didn't ask my dad about Annabelle and Hypatia—not once. I didn't want to hear what he had to say. Maybe it wasn't true anyway, I thought. Annabelle was crazy and could have made up anything. Maybe she was some kind of demon, some manifestation of the angry, lost part of myself. Now my business was forgetting. And imagining.

I imagined that when I got back to school in the fall I would have new friends, really cool friends like Skye and Karma Grier, but ones who would never leave me. I closed my eyes and saw a tall, dark, handsome boy who looked scary but was really quite shy and gentle and a cute blonde surfer boy with a funny, snorty laugh and the easiest shoulders. I imagined a boy with dreadlocks and a girl with hair like flowers. And I thought of a boy in a fedora hat and a trench coat, like a funny detective, like a secret agent man, with green eyes that were full of mystery and familiarity at the same time. I saw us all sitting around eating lunch together and laughing. Maybe we would be friends forever. Maybe we would all live together someday, in a sunny cottage like the one I lived in when I was born.

When I got back to L.A. and started school again, none of my imaginary friends showed up. I felt even more sharply that Lily and Bobby and Winter were gone and that they wouldn't be coming back.

But I was a kid and I had already lost pretty much everything so I decided to just go on as if I hadn't, as if everything was okay. That's what kids can do.

One good thing: Annabelle was gone. Also I still had my mom and Monroe and I had my dad every so often. He visited and took me out to dinner and told me he loved me and I got to visit him in the summer. That was better than some kids had. I had a new sewing machine from Charlie for Christmas and roller skates to take me where I wanted to go. I had this city and I decided that I had better fall in love with her again because she wasn't going anywhere and neither was I.

The black pavement, dark to hide the dirt, sparkled with diamond chips in the burning sun. Poisonous but gorgeous flowers bloomed in white, coral, magenta, and red. The sunsets in L.A. were pink with smog. At night the lethal freeways became the Milky Way.

No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive.

T
hanks to Charlotte Zolotow and Joanna Cotler for publishing
Weetzie Bat
, my editor Tara Weikum, and everyone at Harper.

O
nce upon a time in a land called Shangri-L.A., a bleach-blonde punk pixie named Weetzie Bat lived a life of surf and slam until three wishes changed her life forever…

T
he reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood. They didn't even realize where they were living. They didn't care that Marilyn's prints were practically in their backyard at Graumann's; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic palm tree wallets at Farmer's Market, and the wildest, cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetsonstyle Tiny Naylor's; that there was a fountain that turned tropical soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter's, and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals, even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of the surfers. There was no one who cared. Until Dirk.

Dirk was the best-looking guy at school. He wore his hair in a shoe-polish-black Mohawk and he drove a red '55 Pontiac. All the girls were infatuated with Dirk; he wouldn't pay any attention to them. But on the first day of the semester, Dirk saw Weetzie in his art class. She was a skinny girl with a bleach-blonde flat-top. Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses, strawberry lipstick, earrings dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eye shadow she was really almost beautiful. Sometimes she wore Levi's with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties' taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids' sheets printed with pink piglets or Disney characters.

“That's a great outfit,” Dirk said. Weetzie was wearing her feathered headdress and her moccasins and a pink fringed mini dress.

“Thanks. I made it,” she said, snapping her strawberry bubble gum. “I'm into Indians,” she said. “They were here first and we treated them like shit.”

“Yeah,” Dirk said, touching his Mohawk. He smiled. “You want to go to a movie tonight? There's a Jayne Mansfield film festival.
The Girl Can't Help It
.”

“Oh, I love that movie!” Weetzie said in her scratchiest voice.

Weetzie and Dirk saw
The Girl Can't Help It
, and Weetzie practiced walking like Jayne Mansfield and making siren noises all the way to the car.

“This really is the most slinkster-cool car I have ever seen!” she said.

“His name's Jerry,” Dirk said, beaming. “Because he reminds me of Jerry Lewis. I think Jerry likes you. Let's go out in him again.”

Weetzie and Dirk went to shows at the Starwood, the Whiskey, the Vex, and Cathay de Grande. They drank beers or bright-colored canned Club drinks in Jerry and told each other how cool they were. Then they went into the clubs dressed to kill in sunglasses and leather, jewels and skeletons, rosaries and fur and silver. They held on like waltzers and plunged in slamming around the pit below the stage. Weetzie spat on any skinhead who was too rough, but she always got away with it by batting her eyelashes and blowing a bubble with her gum. Sometimes Dirk dove offstage into the crowd. Weetzie hated that, but of course everyone always caught him because, with his black leather and Mohawk and armloads of chain and his dark-smudged eyes, Dirk was the coolest. After the shows, sweaty and shaky, they went to Oki Dogs for a burrito.

In the daytime, they went to matinees on Hollywood Boulevard, had strawberry sundaes with marshmallow topping at Schwab's, or went to the beach. Dirk taught Weetzie to surf. It was her lifelong dream to surf—along with playing the drums in front of a stadium of adoring fans while wearing gorgeous pajamas. Dirk and Weetzie got tan and ate cheese-and-avocado sandwiches on whole-wheat bread and slept on the beach. Sometimes they skated on the boardwalk. Slinkster Dog went with them wherever they went.

When they were tired or needed comforting, Dirk and Weetzie and Slinkster Dog went to Dirk's Grandma Fifi's cottage, where Dirk had lived since his parents died. Grandma Fifi was a sweet, powdery old lady who baked tiny, white, sugar-coated pastries for them, played them tunes on a music box with a little dancing monkey on top, had two canaries she sang to, and had hair Weetzie envied—perfect white hair that sometimes had lovely blue or pink tints. Grandma Fifi had Dirk and Weetzie bring her groceries, show her their new clothes, and answer the same questions over and over again. They felt very safe and close in Fifi's cottage.

“You're my best friend in the whole world,” Dirk said to Weetzie one night. They were sitting in Jerry drinking Club coladas with Slinkster Dog curled up between them.

“You're my best friend in the whole world,” Weetzie said to Dirk.

Slinkster Dog's stomach gurgled with pleasure. He was very happy, because Weetzie was so happy now and her new friend Dirk let him ride in Jerry as long as he didn't pee, and they gave him pizza pie for dinner instead of that weird meat that Weetzie's mom, Brandy-Lynn, tried to dish out when he was left at home.

One night, Weetzie and Dirk and Slinkster Dog were driving down Sunset in Jerry on their way to the Odyssey. Weetzie was leaning out the window holding Rubber Chicken by his long, red toe. The breeze was filling Rubber Chicken so that he blew up like a fat, pocked balloon.

At the stoplight, a long, black limo pulled up next to Jerry. The driver leaned out and looked at Rubber Chicken.

“That is one bald-looking chicken!”

The driver threw something into the car and it landed on Weetzie's lap. She screamed.

“What is it?” Dirk exclaimed.

A hairy, black thing was perched on Weetzie's knees.

“It's a hairpiece for that bald eagle you've got there. Belonged to Burt Reynolds,” the driver said, and he drove off.

Weetzie put the toupee on Rubber Chicken. Really, it looked quite nice. It made Rubber Chicken look just like the lead singer of a heavy-metal band. Dirk and Weetzie wondered how they could have let him go bald for so long.

“Weetzie, I have something to tell you,” Dirk said.

“What?”

“I have to wait till we get to the Odyssey.”

At the Odyssey, Weetzie and Dirk bought a pack of cigarettes and two Cokes. Dirk poured rum from the little bottle he kept in his jacket pocket into the Cokes. They sat next to the d.j. booth watching the Lanka girls in spandy-wear dancing around.