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He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just . . . nothing.”
“No, tell me,” Cruz insisted.
“Okay, the thing is, that word. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. Gorgeous.” He shuddered.
“And . . . ?”
“You know I’m a person, right?” Armo asked. “I know what I look like, but you know, I’m not just, you know . . . I mean, I have ideas and stuff. I have plans. Well, I used to. I’m just saying, I do have a brain and all. I’m not just nice pecs.”
“And a washboard stomach,” Cruz added, but when Armo didn’t smile, she said, “Oh. Okay. I get it. And Armo, for the record, I know you’re not just your looks.”
In fact, she added, silently chiding herself, if there’s anyone on earth who ought to know better than to judge a person on their looks, it’s a trans girl who can look like anyone. She de-morphed out of her CHP shape and became Cruz again.
“Yeah?” Armo prodded.
It came to Cruz that he was actually fishing for compliments. Six foot four inches of movie-star looks and the kind of body a Ryan Reynolds could only envy, and he was fishing for compliments. From her. The thought amazed her. He was . . . well, he was . . . Armo.
“Well, Armo, you are gorgeous, there’s no better word for it. But you’re also kind. And thoughtful. And you treat people with respect.”
Armo nodded and with stiff dignity said, “Thanks.”
“Everyone in the gang likes you.”
He shrugged, but he was enjoying it.
“Dekka likes you a lot and she doesn’t like all that many people,” Cruz said. “In fact, I’m not a hundred percent sure she likes anyone but you.”
He grinned, displaying perfect teeth. “I love Dekka.” Then he frowned and added, “Not that way. I mean, she’s into chicks. Women, I mean. How about you?”
Cruz nearly swallowed her own tongue and tripped. Armo caught her arm. His hand was so big his fingers completely encircled her bicep.
“Me?” Cruz asked in a way that was intended to sound nonchalant but that came out as an anxious squeak.
“Yeah, I mean, you know.” He made a vague sort of hand gesture that sort of seemed to encompass Cruz’s body and then swept outward to take in the crowds streaming behind them, now following at a discreet distance, cell-phone cameras held high.
“Oh, well,” Cruz said. “I’m, you know.” Now she was stammering like he had. She drew a deep breath and in an overly loud exhale said, “Boys. I like boys.”
“Huh,” Armo said, and Cruz had no opportunity to parse that monosyllable because they had both just heard the sound of shattering glass.
“I think we’re there,” Cruz said.
“There” turned out to be a Rite Aid with the front glass destroyed so thoroughly that they could both see right into the store. Surrounded by destruction in the form of shampoo bottles, tampons, hair coloring, and laxatives all scattered around, stood a massive beast.
It was as big as a rhinoceros, and its armored flesh was gray. It had four stout legs and no arms or hands. But beyond those superficial similarities it was not a rhino. Its head was human, albeit a human head blown up to three times normal size. And rather than a single rhino horn it had stubby antlers, three horns on each side, two of them evidently broken.
The face was that of an old man, African American, distorted, stretched horribly, but still recognizably an old man, with now-oversized, yellowing eyes and a mouth with great gaps between isolated teeth.
“I used to only see things like this in movies or nightmares,” Cruz said.
How has my life come to the point where I’m nonchalant about a mutant beast with a human face?
A crowd of maybe two hundred occupied the other three corners where Fredrick Douglass Boulevard met 117th Street. An Italian restaurant with a closed-down outdoor cafe had waiters on the street selling coffee and bottled water. Police cars had blockaded the streets in every direction. In all, a dozen police officers crouched behind squad-car doors with weapons at the ready.
The beast, the old man, moaned in a loud, heartrending cry of pain and confusion.
“Does anyone know this man?” Cruz yelled.
No answer.
