Dangerous Angels (13 page)

Witch Baby jammed her hand into her mouth and began gnawing on her nails. Cherokee looked over at Angel Juan. He was very handsome with his crown of horns and he was smiling.

Maybe it would be okay just this once, Cherokee thought. We could play one show with the horns. Angel Juan would feel so good. And maybe the horns are really
magical. Maybe something magical will happen.

Angel Juan was still showing Raphael the horns. He looked over at Witch Baby. “That niña bruja got them for me. Pretty good job, hey?” He grinned.

Cherokee sighed. “Listen, Witch,” she whispered. “We’ll play one gig with the horns and then we’ll tell Angel Juan that Coyote has to have them back. We’ll get him another present. But we can’t keep them.”

Witch Baby didn’t say anything. It was time to go on.

If the crowd had loved The Goat Guys before, had loved the Rasta boy with animal legs, the drummer witch with wings and the dancing blur of blonde and fringe and beads that was Cherokee, then tonight they loved the angel with horns.

Angel Juan’s horns glowed above everything, pulsing with ivory light. His body moved as if he were the music he played. When he slid to his knees and lifted his bass high, the veins in his arms and hands were full.

We are a heart, Cherokee thought.

After the set, she watched Angel Juan pick Witch Baby up in his arms and swing her around. Cherokee had never seen either of them look so happy. She hated to think about taking the horns back to Coyote.

But Angel Juan has the confidence he needs now even without the horns, she told herself. We all do.

So at dawn the next morning, Cherokee untangled herself from Raphael, crawled out of the tepee and tiptoed across the wet lawn to the garden shed. She saw Witch
Baby and Angel Juan lying together on the floor, their dark hair and limbs merged so that she could not tell them apart. Only when they moved slightly could she see both faces, but even then they wore the same dreamy smile, so it was hard to tell the difference. Then Cherokee saw the horns gleaming in a corner of the shed. She lifted them carefully, wrapped them in a sheet and carried them away with her.

Cherokee got on Raphael’s bicycle and started to ride to Coyote’s shack. But at the foot of Coyote’s hill Cherokee stopped. She took the horns from the basket on the front of the bicycle and stroked them, feeling the weight, the smooth planes, the rough ridges, the sharp tips. She thought of last night on stage, the audience gazing up at The Goat Guys, hundreds of faces like frenzied lovers. It had never been like that before. She thought of the witch and angel twins, wrapped deep in the same dream on the floor of the garden shed.

Cherokee did not ride up the hill to Coyote’s shack. Goat Guys, she whispered, turning the bike around. Beatles, Doors, Pistols, Goat Guys.

When Cherokee got home, the horns weighing heavy in the basket on the front of Raphael’s bicycle, the sun had started to burn through the gray. Some flies were buzzing around the trash cans no one had remembered to take in.

Cherokee felt sweat pouring down the sides of her body and the sound of Raphael’s guitar pounded in her head as she walked up the path.

Witch Baby was waiting in the living room eating Fig Newtons. She glared at Cherokee. “Where are they?”

Cherokee handed over the horns. Then she turned and went to her tepee, pulled the blanket over her head and fell asleep.

The wind blew a storm of feathers into her mouth, up her nostrils. Goats came trampling over the earth, stirring up clouds of dust. Horns of white flame sprang from their heads. And in the waves of a dark dream-sea floated chunks of bone, odd-shaped pieces with clefts in them like hooves.

At the next Goat Guy show, the band came on stage with their wings, their haunches, their horns. The audience swooned at their feet.

Cherokee spun and spun until she was dizzy, until she was not sure anymore if she or the stage was in motion.

Afterward two girls in lingerie and over-the-knee leather boots offered a joint to Raphael and Angel Juan. All four of them were smoking backstage when Cherokee and Witch Baby came through the door.

Witch Baby went and wriggled onto Angel Juan’s lap. He was wearing the horns and massaging his temples. His face looked constricted with pain until he inhaled the smoke from the joint.

“Are you okay?” Witch Baby asked.

“My head’s killing me.”

Angel Juan offered the burning paper to Witch Baby.
She inhaled, coughed and gave it to Raphael, who also took a hit.

“Want a hit, Kee?” he asked.

The girls in boots looked at each other, their lips curling back over their teeth.

“No thanks,” Cherokee said. She went and stood next to Raphael and began playing with his hair.

The girls in boots crossed and uncrossed their legs, then stood up.

“We’ll see you guys later,” said one, looking straight at Raphael. The other smiled her snarl at Angel Juan. Then they left.

“Ick! Nasty!” Witch Baby hissed after them.

“I saw that one girl in some video at The Vamp,” said Raphael. “She had cow’s blood all over her. It was pretty sick.” He took another hit from the joint and gave it back to Angel Juan.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cherokee said, wrinkling her nose at the burned smell in the air.

But the next time Raphael offered her a joint, she smoked it with him. The fire in her throat sent smoke signals to her brain in the shapes of birds and flowers. She leaned back against his chest and watched the windows glow.

“Square moons,” she murmured. “New moons. Get it? New-shaped moon.”

Later, in the dark kitchen, lit only by the luminous
refrigerator frost, they ate chocolate chip ice cream out of the carton and each other’s mouths.

But in the morning Cherokee’s throat burned and her chest ached, dry. There were no more birds or flowers or window-moons, and when she tried to kiss Raphael he turned away from her.

The band played more and more shows. Cherokee’s skull was full of music, even when it was quiet. Smoke made her chest heave when she tried to run. She remembered drinks and matches and eyes and mouths and breasts coming at her out of the darkness. She remembered brushing against Witch Baby’s wings, feeling the stage shake as Raphael galloped across it; she remembered the shadow of horns on the wall behind them and Angel Juan massaging his temples. When she woke in the morning, she felt as if she had been dancing through her sleep, as if she had been awake in the minds of an audience whose dreams would not let her rest. And she did not want any of it to stop.

Some days, Angel Juan would drive Cherokee, Raphael and Witch Baby to school and then go to work. But more and more often they all just stayed home, piled in Weetzie’s bed, watching soap operas and rented movies, eating tortilla chips and talking about ideas for new songs. At night they came to life, lighting up the house with red bulbs, listening to music, drinking beers, taking hot tubs on the deck by candlelight, dressing for the shows. At night they were vibrant—perfectly played instruments.

Sometimes Cherokee wanted to write to her family or visit Coyote, but she decided she was too tired, she would do it later, her head ached now. They would be out of school soon anyway, so what did it matter if they missed a few extra days, she told herself, running her hands over Raphael’s thigh in the haunch pants. And they were doing something important. Lulu from The Vamp had told Raphael that she thought they could be the next hot new band.

Angel Juan and Witch Baby were kissing on the carpet. Through the open windows, the evening smelled like summer. It would be night soon. There would be feathers, fur and bone.

Summer came and the canyon where Cherokee lived smelled of fires. Sometimes, when she stood on the roof looking over the trees and smog and listening to the sirens, she saw ash in the air like torn gray flesh. She wondered what Coyote was thinking as the hills burned around him. If lines had formed in his face when he had discovered that the horns were gone. Lines like scars. She had not spoken to him in weeks.

That summer there was dry fragile earth and burning weeds, buzzing electric wires, parched horns and the thought of Coyote’s anger-scars. There was Cherokee’s reflection in the mirror—powder-pale, her body narrow in the tight dresses she had started to wear. And there were the shows almost every night.

The shows were the only things that seemed to matter now. More and more people came, and when Cherokee whirled for them she forgot the heat that had kept her in a stupor all day, forgot the nightmares she had been having, the charred smell in the air and what Coyote was thinking.
People were watching her, moving with her, hypnotized. And she was rippling and flashing above them. On stage she was the fire.

And then one night, after a show, The Goat Guys came home and saw the package at the front door.

“It says ‘For Cherokee.’”

Witch Baby handed over the tall box and Cherokee took it in her arms. At first she thought it was from her family. They were thinking of her. But then she saw the unfamiliar scrawl and she hesitated.

“Open it!” said Angel Juan.

“You have a fan, I guess,” said Raphael.

Cherokee did not want to open the box. She sat staring at it.

“Go on!”

Finally, she tore at the tape with her nails, opened the flaps, and removed the brown packing paper. Inside was another box. And inside that were the hooves.

They were boots, really. But the toes were curved, with clefts running down the front, and the platform heels were sharp wedges chiseled into the shape of animal hooves. They were made of something fibrous and tough. They looked almost too real.

“Now Cherokee will look like a Goat Guy too!” Angel Juan said.

“Totally cool!” Raphael picked up one of the boots. “I wish I had some like this!”

Cherokee sniffed. The hooves smelled like an animal. They bristled with tiny hairs.

“Put them on!”

She took off her moccasins and slid her feet into the boots. They made her tall; her legs were long like the legs of lean, muscled models who came to see The Goat Guys play. She walked around the room, balancing on the hooves.

“They are hot!” Raphael said, watching her.

They were fire. She was fire. She was thunderbird. Red hawk. Yellow dandelion. Storming the stage on long legs, on the feet of a horse child, wild deer, goat girl…

“Cherokee! Cherokee!”

They were calling her but she wasn’t really listening. She was dancing, thrusting. Her voice was bells. Her tambourine sent off sparks. The Vamp audience reached for her, there at the bottom of the stage, there, beneath her hooves.

She spun and spun. She had imagined she was the color of red flame but she was whiter than ever, like the hottest part of the fire before it burns itself out.

Later, someone was reaching down her shirt. She called for Raphael but he was not there. Witch Baby came and pulled her away. Feathers were flying in a whirlwind. Her feet were blistering inside the hoof boots.

Then they were back at the house. Raphael had invited Lulu over and he, Lulu and Angel Juan were on the couch sharing a joint. Candles were burning. Raphael touched Lulu’s smooth, dark cheek with the back of his hand. Or
had Cherokee imagined that? Her feet hurt so much and in the candlelight she could have been mistaken.

“Help me take these off,” she said to Witch Baby. “Please. They hurt.”

Witch Baby pulled at one boot. Every part of her body strained, even the tendons in her neck. Finally she fell backward and Cherokee’s foot was free, throbbing with pain. Witch Baby pulled on the other boot until it came off too.

“It cut me! Nasty thing!”

“What?”

“Your boot cut me.” There was blood on Witch Baby’s hand.

“Let’s wash it off.”

They went into the bathroom and Cherokee held on to the claw-footed tub for balance. She felt as if she were going to be sick and took a deep breath. Then she helped clean the cut that ran across Witch Baby’s palm like a red lifeline.

“I want to stop, Witch Baby,” she whispered.

Witch Baby stood at the sink, her wings drooping with sweat and filth, her eyes glazed, blood from her hand dripping into the basin. “Tell that to our boyfriends out there on the couch,” she said. “Tell that to Angel Juan’s horns.”

But what did Angel Juan’s horns tell Angel Juan?

The next night The Goat Guys smoked and drank tequila before the show. On stage they were all in a frenzy. Cherokee, burning with tequila, could not stop whirling,
although her toes were screaming, smashed into the hooves. Witch Baby was playing so hard that the wings seemed to be flapping by themselves, ready to fly away with her. Raphael leaped up and down as if the fur pants were scalding him. Finally, he leaped into the audience and the people held him up, grabbing at matted fur, at his long dreadlocks, at his skin slippery with sweat.

While Raphael was thrashing around in the audience trying not to lose hold of his microphone, Angel Juan pumped his bass, charging forward with his whole body like a bull in a ring. He swung his head back and forth as if it were very heavy, crammed full of pain and sound. He slid to his knees. Something flashed in his hand. Cherokee thought she could hear the audience salivating as they yelled. They saw the knife before she did. They saw Angel Juan make the slash marks across his bare chest like a warrior painting himself before the fight. They reached out, hoping to feel his blood splash on them.

It was only surface cuts; The Goat Guys saw that later when they were at home cleaning him. But Cherokee’s hands were trembling and her stomach felt as if she had eaten a live thing. She took the horns off Angel Juan’s head.

He sat in a chair, his eyes half closed. Witch Baby was kneeling at his feet with a reddened washcloth in her hands. Raphael stood by himself, smoking a cigarette. They all watched Cherokee as she put the horns on the floor and backed away from them.

“We have to give them back to Coyote,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“The horns. They don’t belong to us. Coyote was here while we were out.” Cherokee reached into her pocket and held out three glossy feathers she had found tied to the front door. “We have to give back the horns.”

“You can’t do that now,” Witch Baby said. “Tomorrow night we’ll have at least two record companies at our house! We need the horns!”

“Yeah, Cherokee, cool out,” Angel Juan said. “You’re just uptight about tomorrow.”

“Look at you!” She pointed to his chest.

“He’s all right. Lots of rock stars get carried away and do stuff like that. And we won’t drink anything tomorrow,” Raphael promised her.

She wanted him to hold her but lately they almost never touched. After the shows they were always too exhausted to make love and collapsed together, chilled from their sweat and smelling of cigarettes, when they got back.

“And we’re not even playing at a club. It’ll be like my birthday party,” Witch Baby said.

“Better! We’re so much hotter now. Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Elvis.”

“I’m not doing any more shows ’til we give back the horns,” Cherokee said. “Don’t you see? We have to stop!”

“Don’t worry,” Raphael said. “Coyote gave us the horns. Why are you so afraid?”

Witch Baby began gnawing her cuticles, her eyes darting from Cherokee to Raphael. When Cherokee saw her,
she just shook her head silently at Raphael. She couldn’t tell him and Angel Juan the truth about the horns because she was afraid they wouldn’t be able to forgive her and Witch Baby for what they had done.

When she fell asleep that night, Cherokee dreamed she was in a cage. It was littered with bones.

The night of the party, the house was crammed with people. They wore black leather and fur and drank tall, fluorescent-colored drinks. Some were in the bedrooms snorting piles of cocaine off mirrors. They were playing with the film equipment, pretending to surf on the surfboards, trying on beaded dresses and top hats, undressing the Barbie dolls and twisting the Mexican skeleton dolls’ limbs together. There were some six-foot-tall models with bare breasts and necklaces made of teeth. Men with tattooed chests and scarred arms. The air was hot with bodies and smoke.

Before The Goat Guys played live, Raphael put on their tape—his own loping, reggae rap, Angel Juan’s salsa-influenced bass, Witch Baby’s rock-and-roll-slam drums, Cherokee’s shimmery tambourine and backup vocals. A few people were dancing, doing the “goat.” They rocked and hip-hopped in circles, butting each other with imaginary horns.

Cherokee was drinking from a bottle of whiskey someone had handed her when she saw Lulu go over to Raphael. Lulu was wearing a very short, low-cut black
dress, and she leaned forward as she spoke to him. Cherokee could not hear what they were saying, but she saw Raphael staring down Lulu’s dress, saw Lulu take his hand and lead him away. On the stereo, Raphael’s voice was singing.

“White Dawn,” Raphael sang. It was a song he had written when the band first started, a name he never used anymore.

Cherokee followed Raphael and Lulu into Weetzie’s bedroom. She watched Lulu bend her head, as if she were admiring her reflection in a lake, and inhale the white powder off a mirror. She watched Raphael stand and flex his bare muscles. Lulu put her hands on Raphael’s hips.

That was when Cherokee turned and ran out of the room.

First, she found Raphael’s haunches lying in her closet. The hot, heavy fur scratched her arms when she lifted the pants. Next, she found Angel Juan’s horns and Witch Baby’s wings strewn on the floor of the living room among the bottles and cigarette butts, dolls, surf equipment and cannisters of film. Cherokee was already wearing the hooves.

She took the armload of fur and bone into the bathroom, pulled off her clothes, and stared at her reflection—a weak, pale girl, the shadows of her ribs showing bluish through her skin like an X ray.

I am getting whiter and whiter, she thought. Maybe I’ll fade all the way.

But the hooves and haunches and horns and wings were not fragile. Everything about them was dark and full, even the fragrance that rose from them like the ghosts of the animals to whom they had once belonged. Cherokee had seen her friends transformed by these things, one at a time. She had seen Witch Baby soar, Raphael charge, Angel Juan glow. She had felt the wild pull of the hooves on her feet and legs. But what would it be like to wear all this power at once, Cherokee wondered. What creature could she become? What music would come from her, from her little white-girl body, when that body was something entirely different? How would they look at her then, all of them, those faces below her? How would Raphael look at her, how would his eyes shine, mirrors for her alone? He would look at her.

Cherokee stepped into the haunches. They made her legs feel heavy, dense with strength. Her feet in the boots stuck out from the bottom of the hairy pants as if both hooves and haunches were really part of her body. She fastened Witch Baby’s wings to her shoulders and moved her shoulder blades together so that the wings stirred. Then she attached Angel Juan’s horns to her head. In the mirror she saw a wild creature, a myth-beast, a sphinx. She shut her eyes, threw back her head and licked her lips.

I can do anything now, Cherokee thought, leaving the bathroom, passing among the people who had taken over the house so that she hardly recognized it anymore. Angel Juan was on the couch, surrounded by girls, their limbs
flailing, but Cherokee didn’t see Witch Baby anywhere.

Then Cherokee passed the room where Raphael and Lulu were sitting on the bed, staring at each other. Raphael did not take his eyes off Lulu as Cherokee walked by.

I don’t need Raphael or Weetzie or Coyote or anybody, Cherokee told herself. She kept her eyes focused straight ahead of her and paraded like a runway model.

Cherokee climbed up the narrow staircase and out onto the roof deck, into the night. She could see the city below, shimmering beyond the dark canyon. Each of those lights was someone’s window, each an eye that would see her someday and fill with desire and awe. Maybe tonight. Maybe tonight each of those people would gaze up at her, at this creature she had become, and applaud. And she wouldn’t have to feel alone. Even without her family and Coyote. Even without the rest of The Goat Guys. Even without Raphael. She would fly above them on the wings she had made.

Cherokee swayed at the edge of the roof, gazing into the buoyant darkness. She felt the boots blistering her feet, the haunches scratching her legs, the horns pressing against her temples; but the wings, quivering with a slight breeze, would lift her away from all that, from anything that hurt. The way they had lifted Witch Baby from the mud.

Cherokee spread out her arms, poised.

And that was when she felt flight. But it was not the flight she had imagined.

Something had swept her away but it was not the wings carrying her into air. Something warm and steady and strong had swept her to itself. Something with a heartbeat and a scent of sage smoke. She was greeted, but not by an audience of anonymous lights, voices echoing her name. She recognized the voice that drew her close. It was Coyote’s voice.

“Cherokee, my little one,” Coyote wept. They were not the tears of silver—moons and stars—she had once imagined, but wet and salt as they fell from his eyes onto her face.