Chapter Fourteen #3
Danny’s first instinct was to say “No thanks.” To remind her that he didn’t drink, never drank.
That his father would kick the shit outta him if he ever caught him with booze, which now that he thought about it, was pretty rich.
Danny looked down at the ice cubes bobbing in the syrupy brown liquid, the Limelight Communion sacrament.
If his eternal soul was already damned, why not go out in a blaze of glory?
“To hell with it,” Danny said, taking the cup and pressing the plastic to his lips.
The drink was cloyingly sweet, like a flat Dr Pepper, but with a sour jolt that burned his throat as he swallowed.
“Looks like people are heading to the stage,” Astoria said. “Come on!”
Danny followed his friends, squeezing his way to the stage, trying his best not to spill his Staten Island iced tea down the front of his shirt. The thump-y metal drone shifted into a synth-y organ theme as smoke spewed from cannons at the base of the stage, like a spaceship preparing for liftoff.
Sip.
Danny, Nina, Astoria, and Orion smushed up against the lip of the stage, while behind them a mass of cheering people pressed into their backs.
Sip.
Danny hugged in his arms tight as the girls and Orion jumped and howled, the flashing lights fading to blackness.
Another sip.
“Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between,” a voice boomed from the rafters in a deep baritone, shaking the walls like a commandment from a high mountaintop. “Please welcome to the stage, Angela Mercy!”
Angela Mercy? Danny thought. Wasn’t Christian supposed to be the first one up?
From out of the darkness, a bright white spotlight shot down from the ceiling, carving a cone of light through the smoke and haze.
The silhouette of a woman appeared in the smoldering fog, tall and statuesque, hands planted firmly on her hips.
A crown adorned a head of cascading black curls, and sprouting from out of the figure’s back were two giant eagle’s wings.
From the speakers, a woman’s voice began to sing, calling down from the heavens, igniting a congregation of joyous screams.
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, heaven is a place on earth.
Danny recognized the song immediately. It was one of Ma’s favorites, from Belinda Carlisle, but he’d never heard it accompanied by the hysterical hollers of a crowd who’d been served one too many Staten Island iced teas.
The lights snapped on with a burst of Mylar confetti, and the spotlight woman charged downstage.
She wore a lace leotard with jewel-encrusted fishnets and a long white cape that streamed behind her like a contrail.
Her face was truly something to behold, every feature lithe and angular: a button nose, a cherry chin, and wide eyes rimmed with Bambi eyelashes—and, when she opened her mouth to sing, one unmistakable chipped front tooth.
“Holy shit,” Danny said as the angelic figure locked eyes with him, throwing him a wink that ricocheted through his chest, forcing his hands up to the ceiling in exultation, iced tea dripping down his arm.
“WOO-HOO! GO, CHRISTIAN!”
Danny couldn’t believe his eyes. Christian, his short, boyish friend, now stood before him like an warrior queen.
Angela Mercy strutted across the stage, her wings flapping behind her with every heel flick.
She kicked her legs and whipped her arms and shook out her curls like she was the star of her own shampoo commercial.
It wasn’t just Danny and his friends who were going wild—the entire crowd looked like they were auditioning to play contestants on The Price Is Right. Every time Angela Mercy pirouetted or cartwheeled, every voice moaned in ecstasy, watching this heavenly being walk on mortal ground.
“Christian is killing it!” Nina cheered, pogoing up and down in her white fur coat.
“He’s amazing!” Astoria yelled, her mouth whorling into an O and hollering to the moon.
Angela Mercy leapt across the stage and stretched her leg behind her in a perfect arabesque that would have made even Madame Chernyshevsky jealous.
All those barre routines and after-school ballet classes culminating in this single, triumphant moment.
Angela jumped into the air, shooting into the sky like a firework before crashing down to earth and landing with a thud in the splits.
During the bridge of the song, something else wild happened—arms began thrusting themselves toward the stage, each fist clutching a wrinkled dollar bill, singles and fives and tens and even twenties.
Angela gathered a few of the bills in a single sweeping motion, but couldn’t reach everyone, so the crowd began balling up the bills and hurling them at her feet, ridding themselves of all their worldly possessions.
As the final chorus hit, so did the switch to a dozen electric fans at the front of the stage. Air whooshed through Angela’s hair and cape and feathered wings as her expressive face acted out every lyric with pure unbridled emotion.
But as when any winged creature flies too close to the sun, eventually gravity came along, pulling her back to earth.
Just as Angela was completing a tricky combination involving what Danny could now recognize as a grand battement, she kicked so hard that the knee of her fishnets got caught in the jewels of her crown.
Her leg whizzed to the ground, yanking with it the tinsel halo and the brown curly wig, secured with one too few bobby pins.
The crowd gasped as Angela Mercy stood before them, now a mortal Christian Geronimo, with a messy black haircut and a mouth that hung open like a nutcracker.
But before anyone could say “Bless her soul,” Christian’s mouth twisted into a euphoric grin.
He picked up the wig and tossed it into the crowd and took a running split leap across the stage, and by the time his thighs smacked the ground, the crowd was back to cheering, hollering even louder than before.
With their encouragement, Christian kicked harder and spun faster and breathed life into every lyric until, at last, he collapsed on his knees, throwing his arms up into the firmament.
The crowd erupted. Danny let out a shout so raucous that he’d feel it scratch in his throat for the next three days. Christian picked himself up from his kneeled position on the stage and took a moment, looking out at the sea of admirers chanting his name.
“AN-GE-LA! AN-GE-LA! AN-GE-LA!”
Who was this unworldly being, who, at sixteen, already seemed to know exactly what he was made to do?
Who could enter the room as a nobody and in under four minutes have everybody praising his name?
Who was fearless onstage, or on a subway, or in a park, and didn’t care if people looked at him funny because it meant that they were looking?
Who was…Danny searched for the word…who was not just beautiful—no—beautiful was a flower or a sunset or a rainbow in an oil puddle.
Christian Geronimo was dazzling.
Danny marveled at his friend’s face, swearing that he even saw a line of happy tears creep along the lower lids of Angela’s giant eyelashes. But before he could be sure, the lights snapped out and Angela Mercy vanished into the darkness.
When the show ended, Danny waited for Christian at the bar while Astoria and Nina joined the epic line for the bathroom.
“You want another, hon?” asked the bartender, an aggressively tan and shirtless man wearing only gym shorts and clipped suspenders conveniently covering his nipples.
“Oh,” Danny said, looking down at his cup, then at his empty wrist where no pink bracelet was.
He looked up at the bartender, clearly distracted, who was now pouring out a row of tequila shots.
“Uh, sure,” Danny said. “Could I get a Staten Island iced tea?”
“With an accent like that, I’ll make it a double,” the bartender said, winking. He passed the shots over Danny’s head to a trio of girls behind him dressed as, what Danny believed to be, none other than the Keebler Elves.
Danny sucked down the Staten Island iced tea in what had to be only three gulps, and before he knew it, the empty cup was replaced with a fresh one.
He downed that one, too, looking around for Orion or the girls, but only finding another fresh cocktail.
Danny wasn’t sure who was paying, but he wasn’t here to ask questions.
With every sip, his body seemed to feel lighter and lighter, and the memory of his midnight curfew seemed to fade dimmer and dimmer until he reached the ice at the bottom of cup number four.
And then from a dark corner in the back of the club, a door opened with a burst of white light, and from out of the glow stepped the angel, Christian, dressed once again in his mortal clothes.
Danny threw down his cup and raced over to his friend, throwing his arms around his neck and pulling him in close.
“You were incredible!” Danny crowed into Christian’s ear. “That was fucking unreal!”
“Ha! Thanks, tough guy,” Christian said, laughing, seeming surprised by his friend’s touch and slowly letting his own hands drift up to find the small of Danny’s back. “Looks like you’ve been partying a little bit, too, huh?”
“I maaaay have had a couple-a drinks,” Danny wheezed, releasing Christian and reaching up to rub his eye, forgetting that it had been painted, and then laughing through his pig nose as he stared down at his palm, smeared with black eyeshadow and glitter.
“Where are the others?” Christian asked, looking around the room.
“Oh!” Danny blurted. “Nina and Astoria are waiting in line for the bathroom, which I guess is like a million miles long, and I don’t actually know what happened to Orion.”
“Well, should we wait for them here—”
But Danny didn’t let Christian finish. He reached down and grabbed his hand.
“Come on, I wanna dance!”
“What?” Christian giggled. “You wanna dance?”
“Ye-ees!” Danny slurred. “This is a dance club, isn’t it?!”