Beyond the Pale Motel
3/5
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About this ebook
Maternal, sexy Catt and her beautiful, daring best friend Bree are hairdressers at an L.A. salon called Head Hunter, and work out at a gym called Body Farm. They have over a decade of sobriety behind them and are getting close to living the lives they've always wanted.
But when Catt's husband, Dash, leaves her, and then her neighbor is brutally murdered, possibly by a man being called the Hollywood Serial Killer, Catt's world begins to come crashing down. The murdered victims all seem to bear a chilling resemblance to Bree. Catt suspects that Bree is the next target of the Hollywood Serial Killer...is she losing touch with reality or simply coming to terms with the truth?
In Beyond the Pale Motel, a terrifying and intensely erotic novel, Francesca Lia Block explores the dangers of modern living, loving and dying with lyrical edge and sensational attitude.
Francesca Lia Block
Francesca Lia Block, winner of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling books, including Weetzie Bat; the book collections Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books and Roses and Bones: Myths, Tales, and Secrets; the illustrated novella House of Dolls; the vampire romance novel Pretty Dead; and the gothic werewolf novel The Frenzy. Her work is published around the world.
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Reviews for Beyond the Pale Motel
19 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Catt and Bree are hairdressers in LA. They've been friends for a long time and been through alcoholism, recovery, and over a decade of sobriety together. Catt's husband Dash suddenly leaves her for a rich, young starlet. This along with the Hollywood Serial Killer murders that seem to be closer and closer to her are shattering her world. She seeks comfort in many men, but all of them turn out to be using her. She sees a pattern to the murders and thinks Bree might be next, but is she right or is she becoming unhinged from reality?Beyond the Pale Motel is Francesca Lia Block's newest adult novel. It's a bit more sexy and dark than her teen work, but just as lyrically written. I loved how the horror theme extended to unexpected areas of the story. Catt's salon is called Head Hunter and her gym is called Body Farm. Her blog is called Love Monsters and she has monster labels (vampire, manticore, zombie, or goblin) for the types of men there are. The story centers around Catt who has it together. She's been going to AA for years and her relationship with her husband is solid as can be. Her family consists of those she has chosen: Dash, Bree, and her son Skyler. Everything is idyllic and happy right up until it all falls apart. It was hard to read Catt's life just disintegrate. She is a sensitive person who needs people desperately and wants to be a mother above all else. Her need for people translates into hypersexuality after her husband leaves her and she invites man after man into her bed to fill the emotional void. This doesn't work out since they turn out to be scumbags. These encounters don't help her initial pain from her breakup, create more pain, and send her spiraling out of control, ending her sobriety. She also consistently had a horrible view of herself, thinking she was unworthy, ugly, fat, etc. This is unfortunately confirmed in one way or another by virtually all those around her. Her journey from solid to shattered was well written, but heartbreaking and hypnotic to read.I have a lot of problems with the book that infuriated me. First, the way Catt's "friends" treated her when she was down. She made one mistake and her best friend just completely cuts off all contact and removes her from her life after over a decade of friendship. One mistake. Really? That is a sucky and unsupportive friend. I also couldn't believe how she was treated by her AA sponsors. They either weren't available for her to talk to during a crisis or wouldn't even "waste time on her" if she didn't redo some of the steps of the program. They along with the entire book were super judgmental about her sexual activity. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in sex as long as it's consensual. It didn't turn out to be good for her at all, but it's a better way to cope than turning to drinking or drug use. There was no understanding from anyone really. The horror element didn't figure as largely as I would have liked. It was really an afterthought to all the stuff that was going on in Catt's life. That element came into play during the last few pages and ended very abruptly. It just wasn't satisfying and just rubbed salt in the wounds.Beyond the Pale Motel is well written and evocative, but the horror element isn't major enough and the people populating Catt's life are awful, selfish, judgy people. The writing kept me interested, but my grievances outweighed the good things about the novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the first book I've read by Francesca Lia Block. I wasn't sure what to expect, but she was a highly recommended author so I decided to try her out. I'm glad I did. Beyond the Pale Motel is dark, frank, and realistic in the storytelling. The characters were well developed and very relatable. While the subject matter and tone of the book aren't for everyone, if you are considering reading this book I highly recommend it. I'm looking forward to reading more by this author.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5intolerable characters, weird sex (unfortunately, weird awkward not weird hot), and a thirtysomething recovering alcoholic structuring her entire life around trying to procreate with bodybuilder, peewee baseball coaches, and dude in band. also something about a murder mystery? this book confuses and disappoints me. I'm going to curl up in a ball and re-read weetzie bat.
Book preview
Beyond the Pale Motel - Francesca Lia Block
#1
At Head Hunter we massaged the scalps of our clients as if they were our lovers; we swept their snipped hair up off the shiny black floor (A mirror for the Peeping Toms,
my best friend, Bree, joked); we sterilized the combs and brushes in blue liquid-poison Barbicide, in glass jars; we basked in the light of pale pink glass chandeliers and blasted nineties music. The Crystal Method, Marilyn Manson, Nirvana, the stuff we loved when we were young and fucked-up, going to raves and grunge shows. Our development had probably been arrested back then, which was why no other music affected us as much. They say addicts tend to get stuck at the age they started using.
Bree and I got sober with the help of the same AA sponsor, Shana, a hot lesbian documentary-film producer, and the black coffee that we drank all day like we used to guzzle Jack. Which was better than shooting Barbicide; we knew a boy who had killed himself with it and we both got clean the day after his funeral.
Another thing had changed for Bree and me in the last eleven years—the birth of her son, Skylar, whose school picture smiled at me from the corner of my mirror so I could look at him all day long. The green and darker-green-ringed eyes gazed up from under the thatch of brown hair, pouring energy into my arms and wrists when they tired, soothing the ache in my temples when the hairspray fumes got to me at the end of the day.
Sky-Sky asked me if you could take him to his baseball tryouts in two weeks?
Bree said over the sound of the blow-dryer as I styled her hair.
I sometimes wondered why Skylar wanted me, not his mom, to take him to things like this. Maybe he was less worried about having to impress me. Bree wasn’t demanding of Skylar, but she was such a perfectionist herself that he couldn’t help but feel some pressure.
That is, if you’re still here after Dash eats you alive,
she added.
I’d come back from the dead to take Skylar to baseball,
I told her. But I hope I get eaten a little at least.
My husband, Dash, was arriving home from a gig in San Francisco that night.
The way you look right now, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.
My bob was freshly dyed jet-black, my foundation minimal enough to reveal the freckles on my pale skin, but my brown eyes were heavily lined. I wore high-heeled suede boots and a red silk kimono wrap dress printed with pink peonies and white cherry blossoms. Even though the fabric was soft, it made my skin itch; I was most comfortable in dark vintage dresses, or dark denim jeans, but I was trying to get my husband to devour me again. Like when we met. Back then, when he wasn’t touching me, he was staring at me with eyes hotter than his hands. Six feet two inches with a shaved head and tatted biceps, he convulsed on the stage at Outer Space. I’d never been with anyone like that. My nipples tingled, I was always wet, a permanent state of arousal. Please let me have your baby,
I would beg, the words orgasming out of my mouth before I could stop them. He would kiss me shut. Over a decade later I was thirty-six and the clock was ticking so loudly it would keep me awake all night while he snored next to me.
I wanted Dash’s baby, I told myself, because of how much I loved Dash. Now I wonder if maybe I just wanted to hold on to him. And to make a child who would never leave me.
But I had left my own mother, ultimately, trying to get back at her for abandoning me so many times. At least I had Dash and Skylar and Bree. No matter what, I had them.
So hot, Catt,
Bree promised, checking out my push-up-bra-enhanced cleavage in the mirror. Not me, but Bree is hot. Always. I had dyed her hair pale pink this time. Most people over the age of nineteen couldn’t easily get away with pink hair unless they were rock stars, but Bree could, even at our age. And a bit of a rock star she was, at least at Head Hunter. She had on a white lace dress and pink slip she had designed and made, along with over-the-knee platform boots of black Spanish leather, her pale eyes always slightly askew as if she were looking through the air at something better than you will ever see.
Thanks, baby blue. I tried to channel you today.
She turned her head, reached up, and kissed me on the lips, hers like a MAC ad. Ample Pink gloss that costs $20 for a tiny tube. I bought some once but put it in the back pocket of my jeans and it slid out and into the toilet bowl. I will never be Bree. Sometimes her full-frontal kisses made me have to squeeze my thighs together even though I could never sleep with her again—not sober; I’d compare our bodies the whole time and it would ruin the experience. (She is tall and lithe, while I was shorter and curvy. Voluptuous,
Bree said, but that wasn’t always the word I thought of when I saw my reflection.) More important, Bree was family and I didn’t want to risk losing her if something went wrong. She had pretty much expressed the same sentiment after the third time she and I slept together, in a threesome with Baby Daddy, and she conceived Skylar.
The first time Bree and I slept together was the night we met—just teenagers at a party in the Hollywood Hills. I don’t know how I got there. But I remember that it was the Fourth of July because you could see the Hollywood Bowl fireworks from the balcony, and I remember every detail about Bree. She was wearing a white satin 1920s nightgown with a big silver zipper inserted down the front and combat boots. Half of her head was shaved. Nine Inch Nails was playing and she was singing along.
I went up to her and said, We’re going to be friends forever.
She said, How do you know?
I said, I just do.
Then I said, I like your hair.
I told her I wanted to be a stylist because you could make people feel good every day.
And make ourselves feel good by partying every night,
Bree added.
We went out on the balcony under the fireworks and snorted some coke and drank some more. I marveled at her firework-illuminated beauty even in that high and drunken state. Somehow we were in bed together. She smelled like white roses and felt as satiny and fragile as her dress. A man Bree knew—a fairly well-known actor from a TV show—came into the room and got under the covers with us but I mostly ignored him. He touched her breasts and my ass and jerked off while we kissed and put our fingers inside each other, as if we were petting the shyest animals, until we fell asleep. She woke later, feeling sick, and I walked her to the bathroom and held her forehead and her tiny, heaving torso while we knelt on the black-and-white tile floor. Afterward I wiped her face with a wet washcloth and found a clean pack of toothbrushes in a drawer for her to use.
In the morning I saw that the room we’d slept in had dark wood furniture and very white curtains and sheets. The sun shone through cathedral-style windows, making my hangover worse, and in the distance I could see the palm-treed hills hazed with smog. Bree and the man and some other people and I went out to breakfast. We ate pancakes—Bree’s stomach was better by then—and wore our sunglasses and smoked cigarettes on the patio. Bree had a black Mercedes SUV that her parents had bought her when she turned sixteen and she blasted the music so loud it rumbled in my chest.
You’re right,
she said, when she dropped me off at my house later that afternoon.
About what?
We’re going to love each other forever.
It hadn’t been forever yet, but it had been eighteen years.
What did you do this weekend?
I asked grown-up, sober Bree, spritzing the last bit of hairspray on her bubble-gum-colored locks.
Baby Daddy had Skylar so I went on another FU Cupid date.
I scowled at her in the mirror.
I know. I have no idea why I go.
Bree told me she kept her profile up for the hell of it, an ego boost after pandering to female egos all day. That part I understood, although one of the female egos I pandered to was hers. I loved her enough to keep doing it no matter what, and it had gotten easier after I met Dash.
This guy was fine, though,
she said. A dermatologist, if you can believe it. Black Irish. Free Botox.
I didn’t think she needed to get the botulinum toxin injected into her muscles to freeze them, but she said it was preventative. And he wrote to me like one hundred and fifty times before I responded.
Honestly, in spite of the fact that I knew a few people who had gotten married to someone they’d met on the Internet, I wasn’t sure how safe it was. But Bree said that was part of the thrill and that she could take care of herself. At least she never invited them over when Skylar was around.
Which monster?
I asked, though I could already guess.
She shrugged and eyed her reflection. A bit of a Vampire.
Since we were in our twenties, Bree and I had come up with names for all the guys we met. Vampires were elegant, refined, and sensual. Dash was a Zombie, which sounded like a bad thing but was actually hot according to our system. Zombies were big and brawny, a little clumsy, but ravenous sexually. They wanted to come back to life and you could give them that, which was empowering. Goblins were the businessmen we never dated. Ghouls were trouble—junkies and alcoholics, the ones that trickled in and out of my meetings but couldn’t stay sober. Manticores, with their three rows of proverbial teeth, could look like anything but would devour you whole. Woman-eaters. We had taken to writing about all of them in our blog, Love Monster, in which we collected the things in life that made it tolerable after alcohol had been removed from the equation. Although I had become the main contributor, the idea for Love Monster had been Bree’s. She thought it was important to keep track of our distractions and fascinations.
What did you do?
I asked Bree. With Dr. Vampire.
"Aloo gobi at Lotus Eater, and then we went to Sound to see some Swedish band. My ears are still ringing. I’m too old for this. What’s up with that sound system?"
He’s really a dermatologist?
Yes. But he should do porn. Serious. His dick is like James Deen’s.
She stopped as the door jingled open and our first customer came in, Stu, a TV producer who lived in the Valley but slummed in Silver Lake to have his cut buzzed weekly by Bree, probably just so he could stare at her in the mirror. So I didn’t get to find out more about the Vampire’s penis. I didn’t mind; I was thinking about resurrecting Dash. How he would rip off the itchy red dress and pump me full of life. Maybe I can get him to lose the condom tonight, I thought.
Check that out,
Stu said, nodding at the TV and flexing his hands as Bree tied the black nylon apron around his thick neck.
The sound was off but a selfie of a pretty young woman smiled from the screen. Under the image were the words HOLLYWOOD SERIAL KILLER STRIKES AGAIN?
Stu hit the volume button on the remote and scrutinized the TV. His eyes were such a pale color the pupils looked like spots of black ink. He rubbed his fingers over his slightly receding chin. They found this one in the hills like the first. Her name’s Adrienne something. Banks, I think. Model/actress, same as before. He cut off this one’s legs. Brutal shit.
The girl before, Mandy Merrill, was found by hikers, not far from the Hollywood sign. Her arms had been cut off, severed precisely at the shoulder joints.
Bree and I looked at each other. There were instant tears in both our eyes. She took the remote from Stu and shut off the TV.
Arms, legs. It’s like he’s collecting,
said Stu. "I wonder if someone is going to rip it off for a series or something. I might have to get on that. Oh, snap, did I just say rip it off? Bad pun, Stu, bad."
Bree and I exchanged another glance; we played monster dating games, but neither of us had much tolerance for the real thing.
When I was a teenager, they caught Jeffrey Dahmer and I was haunted by his pale, bloated face—the petulant lips and dead blue predator eyes. How he had lured all those young men, killed them, violated their corpses, cut them into pieces which he stored in his refrigerator. Sometimes he consumed parts of the bodies. I’d read somewhere that he wanted a dead lover because that was the perfect kind—they didn’t move or speak. He’d even tried drilling into some of their skulls while they were still alive and injecting acid into their brains to animate them. Looking back on it, I wondered if the metaphor of dismemberment, brutality, and monster-making reflected my own confused and agonized teenage state of mind. I thought I’d transcended all that as an adult, a sober, married woman, but with the mention of the Hollywood Serial Killer the obsessive fear came back like a needle to my