One Last Stop, page 24
The curtains look ancient and a little moth-eaten, but they shimmer when the first queen throws them open and strides out into the spotlight. She’s tiny but towering on eight-inch platform boots, wrapped in skintight green leather and sporting a pastel green wig laced with ivy.
“Hello, hello, good evening, Delilah’s!” she shouts into the mic, waving at the roaring audience. “My name is Mary Poppers, and I am here tonight representing Arbor Day, make some noise for the trees!” The crowd cheers louder. “Yes, that’s right, thank you, our planet is dying! But we are living tonight, darlings, because it is Christmas in July and these queens are ready to stuff your stockings, light your menorahs, hide your eggs, trick your treats, and do whatever the fuck it is that people do for Labor Day. Are you ready, Brooklyn?”
It starts off fast and keeps going—a “Party in the U.S.A.,” a queen named Marie Antwatnette doing a Bastille Day–themed voguing routine to “Lady Marmalade” that ends in frisbeeing French macarons into the crowd. Another queen comes out full-on New Year’s Baby in a rhinestoned diaper and sash and brings the house down with “Always Be My Baby” and some well-timed sparklers.
Second to last in the lineup is a queen introduced as Bomb Bumboclaat, and she stomps out in thigh-high boots, a saxophone thrown around her neck, and a red fur-trimmed dress with a matching cape. Her beard shimmers with silver glitter.
It’s not until the memory of Winfield’s one-man-band business cards swims into focus that August realizes who it is, and she screams on impulse as the number starts up—that ridiculous live Springsteen version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
“Hey, band!” Bomb Bumboclaat lip-syncs in Bruce Springsteen’s voice.
Mary Poppers sticks her head back out from the curtain. “Yeah! Hey, babe!”
“You guys know what time of year it is?”
“Yeah!”
“What time, huh? What?”
This time, the crowd shouts: “Christmastime!”
She puts her hand up to her ear dramatically. “What?”
“Christmastime!”
“Oh, Christmastime!”
Bomb Bumboclaat is pure comedy, all subtle hand gestures that have everyone screaming with laughter and throwing bills onstage and movements of her face that look impossible. She’s the first one to do a Christmas number at Christmas in July, and the crowd has been waiting. When she absolutely shreds the saxophone solo, the rafters shake.
By the time she’s done, the stage is littered in ones, fives, tens, twenties. Mary Poppers comes out with a push broom to get it all off the stage before the next number.
“Delilah’s! You’ve been amazing. We got one more for ya. Y’all ready to witness a legend?” Everyone screams. Myla snaps her fingers in the air. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, just what the doctor ordered—Annie Depressant!”
The curtains fly apart, and there’s Annie in her signature pink—pink Lucite platform heels, pink thigh highs topped with red bows, pastel pink hair cascading down the front of her pink chiffon robe and pinned up on one side with a glittering, heart-shaped fascinator. She’s absolutely stunning.
She preens in the spotlight, soaking in the screams and claps and finger snaps, flourishing her rose-colored latex gloves through the air. She’s never seemed anything but confident since August first watched her sip a milkshake at Billy’s, but seeing her on stage, hearing the way the crowd shrieks itself hoarse for her, August thinks about what Annie said about being the pride of Brooklyn. It wasn’t quite the joke she played it off as.
The music starts welling up with soft strings and twinkly synth triangle, a few drum beats, and then Annie snaps her eyes forward to the crowd and mouths, “Give it to me.”
It’s “Candy” by Mandy Moore, and the crowd has about one second to react before she throws her robe off to reveal a bra and miniskirt made entirely out of candy hearts.
“Oh my God,” Wes says, lost in the wail of the crowd.
Annie winks and launches into her routine, writhing down the catwalk that splits the audience, leaning in to drag her gloved finger down the length of an awestruck guy’s jaw on begging you to come out and play. August has always seen Annie and Isaiah as two sides of the same person, but the way she soaks in the light, the way her eyes drip honey—that’s a different person entirely from the accountant who moved August’s desk up six flights of stairs.
She spins gracefully back down the catwalk, beaming, glowing, burning at five hundred degrees—and the music drops out. Annie’s own dubbed voice comes in.
“Actually,” she says, “fuck this.”
In an instant, the stage lights switch to pink, and when Annie throws out her right hand, a flood of rain starts pouring down from the ceiling above the stage.
The music comes back funky and loud and ballsy—Chaka Khan this time, “Like Sugar”—and two things become clear very quickly. The first, as water splatters from the stage and into their drinks: this is why Isaiah suggested they might need ponchos. The second: Annie made her outfit out of something that dissolves in water.
Within the first thirty seconds, her miniskirt and bra have melted, and with a twirl, she whips the last sugary wisps across the stage, leaving behind ornate red latex lingerie. Backup dancers come sashaying out from backstage and hoist her onto their shoulders, spinning her under the falling water, the crowd damp and transported and screaming themselves hoarse. August grew up a short drive from Bourbon Street, but she has never, ever seen anything quite like this.
She thinks of the last text Jane sent: a picture of fireworks from the Manhattan Bridge, Give the queens my love.
It’s hazy, but she remembers Jane telling her about drag shows she used to go to in the ’70s, the balls, how queens would go hungry for weeks to buy gowns, the shimmering nightclubs that sometimes felt like the only safe places. She lets Jane’s memories transpose over here, now, like double-exposed film, two different generations of messy, loud, brave and scared and brave again people stomping their feet and waving hands with bitten nails, all the things they share and all the things they don’t, the things she has that people like Jane smashed windows and spat blood for.
Annie twirls across the stage, and August can’t stop thinking how much Jane would love to be here. Jane deserves to be here. She deserves to see it, to feel the bass in her chest and know it’s the result of her work, to have a beer in her hand and a twenty between her teeth. She’d be free, lit up by stage lights, dug up from underground and dancing until she can’t breathe, loving it. Living.
Jane would love this.
Jane would love this. It keeps coming back and back and back, Jane tossing her head and laughing up at the disco ball, pulling August into a dark corner and kissing her dizzy. She’d love this, specifically, slotted right into place in August’s family of moody misfits, tucked against August’s side.
The second August lets herself really picture it is the second she can’t pretend any longer—she wants Jane to stay.
She wants to solve the case and get Jane out from underground because she wants Jane to stay here with her.
She’d promised herself—she’d promised Jane—she was doing this to get Jane back where she belonged. But it’s as blazing and unforgiving as the spotlight on the stage, nothing left in August’s sloshy drunk brain to hold it back. She wants to keep Jane. She wants to take her home and buy her a new record collection and wake up next to her every stupid morning. She wants Jane here in full-on, split-the-pizza-bill-five-ways, new-toothbrush-holder, violate-the-terms-of-the-lease permanence.
And not a single part of her is prepared to handle any other outcome.
She turns to her right, and Wes is standing there watching the show, mouth agape. The grip on his cup has gone slack, and his drink is slowly dribbling down the front of his shirt.
August gets it. He’s in love. August is in love too.
11
[ariana voice] yuh @chelssss_
UMMMM on the Q this morning this little kid was getting picked on by two older kids and before i could do anything this hot butch girl jumped in and the bullies SCATTERED hello 911 how am i supposed to work now that i’ve seen an angel irl????
7:42 AM · 8 Nov 2018
Myla’s hair smells like Cajun fries.
August’s nose is buried in it, upside down behind Myla’s ear, sucking curls into her nostrils.
There’s something wrapped around her, something too warm and slightly itchy and, if her stomach doesn’t subside soon, in imminent peril of being puked on.
She tries to pull her arm free, but Wes has a freaky death grip on her wrist as he white-knuckles through REMs. There’s something lumpy with weird corners crushed between August’s arm and one of Niko’s shoulder blades. She cracks one eye open—a Popeyes box. Which churns up: one, a hazy memory of Niko putting on his soberest face at the Popeyes register downstairs, and two, the too-many apple cider margaritas in her stomach.
As far as August can tell, the four of them collapsed into a pile on the couch as soon as they stumbled through the door last night. Niko and Myla are on one side, tangled up in each other, Myla’s jean jacket thrown over their bodies like a blanket. Wes has spilled halfway off the couch, his shoulders digging into the floor where one of the rugs should be.
The rug that’s … wrapped around her?
Noodles trots over and starts cheerfully licking Myla’s face.
“Wes,” August croaks. She nudges one of Wes’s knees with her foot. He must have liberated himself of his pants at some point before they passed out. “Wes.”
“No,” Wes grunts. He doesn’t relinquish her wrist.
“Wes,” she says. “I’m gonna throw up on you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I literally am,” she says. “My mouth tastes like hot ass.”
“Sounds like a you problem,” he says. He cracks one eye halfway open, smacks his dry lips. “Where are my pants?”
“Wes—”
“I’m wearing a shirt and no pants,” he says. “I’m Winnie the Pooh-ing it.”
“Your pants are in the window by the TV,” says a voice, much too clear and much too loud for the hangover bog. August looks up, and there’s Lucie, glitter lingering around her eyes, glowering into the cabinets. “You said, ‘They need to get some air.’”
“Why,” August says. “Here. Why are you. Here?”
“You really don’t remember inviting me to Popeyes,” Lucie says flatly. “You are lucky Isaiah knows about the service elevator. Would have left you there.”
“Yikes.”
“Anyway,” she says. “Winfield helped me get you home.”
“Yes, but.” August finally manages to dislodge her arm from Wes’s and gingerly begins to de-crumple herself into an upright position she immediately regrets. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you leave with him?”
“Because,” she says, emerging triumphant with a skillet, “it was funny. I love to watch people with hangovers. Half the reason to stay at Billy’s.” She points the pan at August. “Slept in your room.”
She turns to the fridge and withdraws a carton of eggs, and August remembers her first week at Billy’s, when Lucie made sure she’d eaten. There’s another pinched smile in the corner of her mouth, like the one she saw last night.
“Making breakfast,” Lucie says. “Thankless job, being your boss, but someone has to do it.”
Another memory comes back at that: Wes, three drinks deep, lipstick marks on his cheek, Isaiah in his full Annie glory, wig and all, saving him from slipping in a puddle of vodka on the bar floor, and Lucie laughing. It was supposed to be Niko’s birthday thing but ended up a five-drinks-and-where’s-my-pants thing. Apparently only Lucie made it through intact.
At least August’s stomach has stopped threatening an Exorcist live show. She rolls onto the floor, and Myla and Niko start to stir.
She runs through everything she can remember: Lucie’s fur shrug, eggnog, water falling from the ceiling, being in love with Jane, Myla’s lipstick, Niko’s bandana—
She’s in love with Jane.
Shit, no, it’s worse than that. She’s in love with Jane, and she wants Jane to stay, and what she thought was her emergency emotional escape hatch for when Jane goes merrily back to the 1970s is just a trick door into more feelings.
Niko’s voice echoes in the back of her head from the first time she kissed Jane, Oh, you fucked up.
She fucked up. She fucked up bad.
She feels around inside her chest like it’s the bottom of her jeans pocket, grasping for anything less life-ruining than this. The harsh light of a sober morning should dull it, turn it back into a crush.
It doesn’t.
It was never a crush, if she’s being honest, not since she started planning her mornings around a girl she didn’t even know. Her last shred of self-preservation was pretending it was enough to have Jane temporarily, and she shoved that like a twenty-dollar bill down Annie Depressant’s tits last night.
“I wish I were never born,” August moans into the floor.
“Retweet,” Wes says solemnly.
It takes twenty minutes, but eventually they extricate themselves from the couch. Myla, who slithered across the floor to the bathroom and threw up twice before army crawling back out, looks half-dead and altogether unlikely to partake in the scrambled eggs. Niko has already chugged a full bottle of kombucha in an impressive show of faith in his intestines to work things out on their own. And Wes has dislodged his pants from the window.
August manages to smile blearily at Lucie as she dumps eggs out of the frying pan and onto a plate before throwing a handful of forks down.
“Family style,” she says, and man. Everything is a disaster, but August does love her.
“Thank you,” August says. “Don’t you have a morning shift?”
Lucie pulls a face. She’s wearing one of August’s T-shirts. “Billy is reducing my hours. Told me yesterday.”
“What? He can’t do that; you’re basically the only person keeping that place together.”
“Yes,” she says with a grim nod. “Most expensive person on the payroll.”
“Wait,” says Myla’s voice, muffled by the floor. She drags her head up and squints. “What’s going on with Billy’s?”
August sighs. “The landlord is doubling the rent at the end of the year, so it’s probably gonna shut down and become a Cheesecake Factory or something.”
With what looks like a Herculean effort, Myla pulls herself up onto her knees and says, “That is unacceptable.”
“Billy needs another hundred grand to buy the unit, and he can’t get the loan.”
“Okay, so.” She does an alarming closed-mouth burp, shakes it off, and presses on. “Let’s get the money.”
“We’re all broke,” Lucie says. “Why you think we work in food service?”
“Right,” Myla counters. “But we can find it.”
August tries to think, but it’s hard when her brain feels like a garbage bag full of wet socks and the socks are wet because they’re soaked in grain alcohol. Myla and Niko were right about Christmas in July—it’s the type of night you’ll never forget, if you can remember it. There must have been way more than the fire code max capacity in there—
Oh.
“Wait,” August says. “What if we did … a charity drag show.”
Myla perks up slightly. “Like, donate the tips?”
“No, what if we charged a cover? Sold drink tickets? We could use your pull at Delilah’s and get them to let us use the space, and we donate everything we make that night to saving Billy’s.”
“Winfield would perform,” Lucie offers.
“Isaiah too,” Wes chimes in.
“Oh, we could do a whole breakfast food theme!” Myla says. “Winfield and Isaiah can get their friends on the lineup.”
“I could probably get Slinky’s to donate some liquor,” Niko adds.
The five of them exchange unsteady eye contact, buzzing with possibility.
Lucie deigns to give them a smile. “I like this idea.”
* * *
The first week of July brings the transformation of apartment 6F into the Save Billy’s campaign headquarters.
Niko brings a whiteboard home from the pawn shop by Miss Ivy’s, and Myla starts making double portions of stir-fry, and they spend late nights circled up in the living room: Lucie and Winfield, Myla and Niko, Wes, Isaiah, the odd handful of servers, and August. Lucie’s the de facto leader, burdened with the combination of hating extracurricular activities and large groups of friendly people while also loving Billy’s and knowing Billy’s-related logistics. She’s taken to wearing a silver whistle around her neck like a sullen camp counselor just to keep them in line while she’s reading spreadsheets aloud.
“How soon are we doing this?” Niko asks, shoveling an enormous piece of tofu into his mouth. “Not to be a buzzkill, but Mercury is in retrograde for another week, which is … not optimal.”
“That’s okay,” August tells him. She glances at Lucie, who is poring over permit requirements on the kitchen floor. “We’re gonna need more time to set this up anyway. Plus, we have to advertise it, drum up publicity—that’s at least a month, right?”
Lucie nods. “Probably.”
August turns to the whiteboard and makes a note. They’ll plan on mid-August. Two weeks before the Q shuts down.
“So, what you’re telling me is, you’re gonna rally a bunch of queers to save Billy’s with pancakes and a drag show?” Jane says when August catches her up. She’s sun-warmed in the window of the train. August is trying not to think, In love, in love, I’m in terrible dumbass love.
“Yeah,” August says, “basically.”
“That’s so fucking hot,” Jane says, and she grabs August by the chin and kisses her hard and brilliant, an openmouthed exhale, shotgunning summer sunshine.
Terrible dumbass love, August thinks.
It comes together piece by piece. Isaiah and Winfield are down to headline, and after asking around, they get three more Brooklyn queens on board. Myla sweet-talks the manager of Delilah’s into donating the space, Isaiah calculates the costs, and Wes even convinces some of the artists at his shop to set up a booth for flash tattoos in exchange for donations. It helps that so many of them have an in with so many tiny Brooklyn businesses—no one wants to see Billy’s turned into an overpriced gourmet juice bar when they could be next.
