forehead. My whole body is pounding with fever-fear.
Charlie’s light is doing the nerve-jig so I keep following him through the maze and into a room made of mirrors. And there in the mirror, jiggling like a puppet made of light, like the plastic charm-bracelet skeletons, like a life-sized Day of the Dead doll, is Charlie. He waves his hands all excited, his face scrunched with worry, and I figure out he wants me to press on one of the mirror panels and it opens. Out ofthe mirror he turns into a light again and we go down a staircase. At the bottom is a metal chamber room. It’s so small and crowded with naked mannequins that I feel like I can’t breathe, like the mannequins are hogging up all the air. A mannequin falls against me, hitting me with its jointed plastic arm and I look at its face and I see that it is Angel Juan. He’s bald but it’s him. I try not to scream but I jump back and bump into another mannequin and that one is Angel Juan too. I start slamming around and they’re all falling on me and every single one has Angel’s face. This is a room full of Angel Juans. What does this Cake want? What is happening here?
Then I notice the Charlie glow lighting up a corner of the room.
I touch the silvery angel that sleeps in the hollow part of my neck.
A boy is slumped against a wall with the mannequins all around him and a guitar with the Virgin Mary in a wreath of roses painted on it leaning against his chest. His hair is long and falling in his face and he looks like he hasn’t eaten much in a while but even though he’s changed a lot I know rightaway who he is. And it’s like I understand stuff all of a sudden.
Dear Angel Juan,
Do you know when they say soul-mates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. “Soul-mate wanted.” It doesn’t mean too much now. But soul-mates—think about it. When your soul—whatever that is anyway—something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape—when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to—even if you can’t be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul’s wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. It must be like all the weddings in the world—gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets, showers of roses. And after that happens you know—that’s it, this is it. But sometimes you have tolet that person go. When you’re little, people, movies and fairy tales all tell you that one day you’re going to meet this person. So you keep waiting and it’s a lot harder than they make it sound. Then you meet and you think, okay, now we can just get on with it but you find out that sometimes your soul brother partner lover has other ideas about that. They want to go to New York and write their own songs or whatever. They feel like you don’t really love them but the idea of them, the dream you’ve had since you were a kid about a panther boy to carry you out of the forest of your fear or an angel to make love and celestial music with in the clouds or a genie twin to sleep with you inside a lamp. Which doesn’t mean they’re not the one. It just means you’ve got to do whatever you have to do for you alone. You’ve got to believe in your magic and face right up to the mean nasty part of yourself that wants to keep the one you love locked up in a place in you where no one else can touch them or even see them. Just the way when somebody you love dies you don’t stop loving them but you don’t lock up their souls inside you. You turn that love into something else, give it to somebody else. And sometimes in a weird way when you do thatyou get closer than ever to the
Charlie’s light is doing the nerve-jig so I keep following him through the maze and into a room made of mirrors. And there in the mirror, jiggling like a puppet made of light, like the plastic charm-bracelet skeletons, like a life-sized Day of the Dead doll, is Charlie. He waves his hands all excited, his face scrunched with worry, and I figure out he wants me to press on one of the mirror panels and it opens. Out ofthe mirror he turns into a light again and we go down a staircase. At the bottom is a metal chamber room. It’s so small and crowded with naked mannequins that I feel like I can’t breathe, like the mannequins are hogging up all the air. A mannequin falls against me, hitting me with its jointed plastic arm and I look at its face and I see that it is Angel Juan. He’s bald but it’s him. I try not to scream but I jump back and bump into another mannequin and that one is Angel Juan too. I start slamming around and they’re all falling on me and every single one has Angel’s face. This is a room full of Angel Juans. What does this Cake want? What is happening here?
Then I notice the Charlie glow lighting up a corner of the room.
I touch the silvery angel that sleeps in the hollow part of my neck.
A boy is slumped against a wall with the mannequins all around him and a guitar with the Virgin Mary in a wreath of roses painted on it leaning against his chest. His hair is long and falling in his face and he looks like he hasn’t eaten much in a while but even though he’s changed a lot I know rightaway who he is. And it’s like I understand stuff all of a sudden.
Dear Angel Juan,
Do you know when they say soul-mates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. “Soul-mate wanted.” It doesn’t mean too much now. But soul-mates—think about it. When your soul—whatever that is anyway—something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape—when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to—even if you can’t be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul’s wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. It must be like all the weddings in the world—gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets, showers of roses. And after that happens you know—that’s it, this is it. But sometimes you have tolet that person go. When you’re little, people, movies and fairy tales all tell you that one day you’re going to meet this person. So you keep waiting and it’s a lot harder than they make it sound. Then you meet and you think, okay, now we can just get on with it but you find out that sometimes your soul brother partner lover has other ideas about that. They want to go to New York and write their own songs or whatever. They feel like you don’t really love them but the idea of them, the dream you’ve had since you were a kid about a panther boy to carry you out of the forest of your fear or an angel to make love and celestial music with in the clouds or a genie twin to sleep with you inside a lamp. Which doesn’t mean they’re not the one. It just means you’ve got to do whatever you have to do for you alone. You’ve got to believe in your magic and face right up to the mean nasty part of yourself that wants to keep the one you love locked up in a place in you where no one else can touch them or even see them. Just the way when somebody you love dies you don’t stop loving them but you don’t lock up their souls inside you. You turn that love into something else, give it to somebody else. And sometimes in a weird way when you do thatyou get closer than ever to the
Similar Books
