Chapter Fourteen
Chapter
Fourteen
When Danny was five, his whole world was as big as The Wizard of Oz.
Every afternoon, when his mom started dinner, Danny would lie on his bean bag in the basement and watch Dorothy and her friends skip down the Yellow Brick Road.
He had his favorite parts of the movie, each one paired with little rituals.
During the twister scene when the Gale farmhouse was lifted into the sky, Danny would run in circles around his dad’s recliner, collapsing in a dizzied heap on the rug.
When Dorothy and her friends found themselves in a giant poppy field, Danny would bury his face in the bouquet of silk flowers that his mom kept on the coffee table and pretend like they were making him fall into an enchanted sleep.
And, of course, there were the costumes—his Easter basket became a prop, the knitted brown sofa arm cover transformed into Dorothy’s hair, and his stuffed animals rotated as different versions of Toto.
Danny had found one of his father’s old blue cop shirts and, with a shoelace cinched around his waist, fashioned Dorothy’s blue gingham dress for his journey to the Emerald City.
But one thing was always missing—the most important costume piece of them all.
For no matter how many times he clicked his Velcro sneakers, they never transported him anywhere but the South Shore.
So one evening while his parents were downstairs watching news footage of Michael Jackson’s hair catching fire during a Pepsi commercial shoot, Danny padded into their bedroom with one thing on his mind—the shoes in his mother’s closet.
He’d seen them for the first time that weekend when his Nonni came over to babysit and his mom had worn her spicy perfume and the new green dress and, to Danny’s quiet amazement, a pair of ruby slippers.
They were a little different from Dorothy’s—the heels were much higher and skinnier, and they were made of a slicker material—but Danny was certain that they still held magic.
He found them in the closet, still in the shoebox, under a tissue paper blanket, as smooth and brilliant as a Christmas tree bauble.
Danny slipped his tiny feet into the heels and stood in front of his parents’ mirror, admiring himself and his Dorothy costume, his transformation now complete.
Then he closed his eyes and clicked his heels together and made a wish to be transported to a magical place—a place with flying monkeys and trees that could talk and throw apples, where lions walked on two feet and beautiful women traveled by bubble—a place where you were greeted with songs and giant lollipops, where people wondered why you’d never visited before and prayed that you’d never leave.
Danny was yanked out of Oz by his father’s hand jerking his arm and lifting him out of his ruby slippers, his Technicolor dream world dissolving back into a bedroom on the South Shore. His father grabbed his chin and pulled it in close to his face, his dark fiery eyes glaring at his son in disgust.
“Don’t you ever let me catch you doing that shit again.”
“Open your eyes,” Christian said, holding Danny’s chin in his hand, lifting the mirror up to his face.
When Danny opened his eyes, it was like a meteor shower had shot across the living room of Nina’s Upper West Side apartment.
Christian had glued a constellation of tiny silver stars, starting at the corners of his eyes and cascading out to the edges of his face, disappearing into his black curls like the ends of a galaxy.
The elastic band from the rubber pig nose had been tossed out and instead, Christian had brushed the edges with a caustic-smelling goo called spirit gum and plastered it right to Danny’s face.
Danny marveled at his reflection, a hopeless contradiction, beautiful and ridiculous, masculine and feminine.
He could only laugh, which made the skin pull at the corners of his rubber nose.
“Careful! It’s not totally dry yet,” Christian swatted. “But honestly…what do you think?”
“It’s so good!” Danny laughed. “You’re a genius, Christian.”
“Seriously,” Nina sighed through her smudged waxy lips. “I should’ve let you do mine.”
“Now hurry up and get the rest of your outfit on. We gotta get down to the Limelight by nine so I can get ready backstage.”
Nina had the apartment to herself that evening.
Her father was in Westhampton Beach with his new girlfriend, Trish.
Nina had sworn up and down to keep the place spotless and spend the weekend studying for a chemistry test, but now found herself host to a gaggle of friends, taking swigs of DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker (which Danny passed on, of course) and scraping together club looks in preparation for Christian’s big debut.
Danny changed into his outfit in Nina’s bedroom, slipping on the cop shirt and hopping into a pair of skinny black jeans.
Nina’s mirror was decorated with photo booth strips and show logos that had been cut from the covers of a million Playbills.
Danny stared at his reflection, hardly recognizing the person looking back at him.
He wondered if this was what Clark Kent must have felt like, squeezing into his Lycra jumpsuit, or Peter Parker pulling down his red Spider-Man mask for the first time.
Underneath Danny’s clothes and his star-stickered face, he knew he was still just a boy from Staten Island who slept on an air mattress in a flophouse on the North Shore.
But even without the platform creeper boots, he could feel himself standing just a little bit taller.
“Holy crap, you look good,” Nina blurted as Danny emerged from the bedroom. “Like David Bowie meets RoboCop meets Babe.”
Nina sat curled up in a nest on a red leather papasan chair, her white mink coat wrapped around her like a polar bear skin. “But you need a Club Kid name.”
“She’s right,” Astoria said, before slurping up the last green drops of candy liquid from the bottom of the Pucker bottle. “Something catchy, like Richie Rich or Jenny Talia.”
“Or Nina Colada,” Nina added, hugging the collar of her mink coat around her face. “Which is mine, natch.”
“I vote Staten Island Fairy,” Christian called from across the living room as he packed up his makeup kit on the kitchen island. “Fairy with an a, not an e. Like Tinkerbell. I came up with that the first day we met, remember, tough guy?”
“But he’s not gay,” Nina said, rolling her eyes. “It really only works if he likes to kiss boys.”
Danny could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips.
“What about Dan the Policeman?” Nina offered. “It’s simple and to the point, plus it rhymes.”
“No way,” Astoria said. “He’s anti-police.”
“Danny Spray Can?” Nina said, shrugging.
“That’s closer,” Christian said, folding his garment bag over his arm.
“The Isle of Dan?” Astoria suggested.
“It’s the Limelight, not geography class.”
FLASH.
Everyone turned to Orion, who pulled out the photo and gave it a quick flapflapflap.
From his suit jacket, he retrieved his famous Sharpie, uncapped it, and scribbled a name on the Polaroid’s border.
He walked over to Danny and handed him the photo, the image of a dazed boy just beginning to develop in his hands.
“ ‘Daniel Lionheart,’ ” Danny read.
“What?” Nina said. “Is that supposed to be his Club Kid name? What the hell does that even mean?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Orion, that’s terrible,” Astoria said, one foot on the goatskin coffee table, lacing up her Doc Martens. “It doesn’t even rhyme.”
Danny stared down at Orion’s words, his mind flashing with a forgotten memory—an uncomfortable desk, a classroom at St. Pete’s, his chin resting heavy on his folded arms, his eyes devouring an illustration from his Religion textbook, a bare-chested man surrounded by a pack of hungry-looking lions.
The man’s hands were clasped together and he was staring up at a hole in the ceiling, a beam of light shining down on his contorted face.
The voice of his teacher, creepy old Father Herrick, echoed in his ears, weaving through the rows of desks.
“And God sent an angel to close the lions’ mouths because Daniel’s heart was found blameless before him.”
Danny stared hard at the drawing of the man who shared his name, at his helpless face and his naked chest and his muscular legs and his lap, which was just barely covered by a tiny swath of white fabric.
Thwap!
Father Herrick’s hand swiped the back of Danny’s head.
“Don’t slouch, Daniel!”
“I love it,” Danny said, repeating it under his breath. “Daniel Lionheart.”
“Seriously?” Astoria graveled. “I mean, it’s your name, I guess.”
Superhero costumes have a way of deflecting bullets, even when those bullets come from the eyes of fellow subway passengers.
Something about a used shirt and a face full of stars made the once-invisible Danny feel invincible as they rode the 1 train down to Twenty-Third Street.
He laughed and cheered as Christian, ever the performer, swung from subway poles like a circus act—until a bump near Forty-Second sent him crashing into a family of tourists.
Tonight, Danny wasn’t Danny Victorio, some schmuck with a drawer of folded polos and a curfew of eight p.m. He was Daniel Lionheart, a City kid who wore makeup, who screamed Rent lyrics at the top of his lungs, whose night didn’t begin until ten o’clock.
At the corner of Twenty-Third and Seventh, they hailed a cab even though the Limelight was just a few blocks away. Christian had decided it would seem more legit if they arrived in style, pulling up in front of the line of waiting guests.
“Now remember,” Christian called from the back seat. “I promised Wintergreen that you’re all famous Club Kids, so try and act like it, okay?”