Fishy Queen (Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Book 2)

by Malachite Splinters

  He pulled back and we looked at each other again. One heartbeat went by, and then another. I wasn’t thinking. I just closed my eyes and all I wanted was to touch him again like that.

  Our lips met again and I tightened my arms around him and he drew my head down further to his level and his tongue ran over my lips, teasing me to open my mouth, and when I did, he pulled me harder against him with his hand on the back of my head and stroked his tongue across the roof of my mouth.

  I groaned and the noise set off a chain reaction that sent shivers cascading down my spine, he spun around in my arms to face me, I held him to me, one of my arms around his lower back, the other on the back of his head as I kissed his plump mouth.

  He moaned and wrapped his arms tighter around my neck as I plunged my tongue into his mouth, tilting my head to the side and pressing him as close as I could as he kissed me back.

  And then he was gone.

  One moment my arms were full. The next, he had torn himself away and was wriggling through the crowd. It only took a second and I couldn’t see him any more.

  I found my way to a couch where there was a small space between two couples, a man and a woman and two men.

  I sat there and tried to take deep breaths and figure out what just happened, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried to breathe deeply, my breath hitched and I just took another breath instead.

  My heart was pounding, I was hot all over as if my skin had been heated to sizzling point, my lips were tingling, the tender spot inside me had expanded to fill my entire chest cavity while the lower half of my body throbbed in time with my heartbeat. My whole being ached for Anthony to come back and touch me again, it thrilled at the thought.

  After a few minutes had gone by, I took out my phone because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I couldn’t seem to marshal my thoughts to make sense of the night. To make sense of what had just happened between me and Anthony.

  Duane Tyrone: Luka’s foot is broken

  My heart leapt in alarm in my chest and if it had been racing before, apparently that was just half-speed as it picked up into a gallop now.

  I stood up and started fighting my way through the dense crowd while trying to type a reply.

  Machyl: Which hospital

  I skirted around two white women, one with long blonde hair, the other with long, curly brown hair, who were kissing passionately. I squeezed past a straight Latino couple who were grinding. I passed a young bear couple who were slow dancing while one stroked the other’s bushy sideburns.

  When I finally broke free of the crowd, I went straight to the big staircase leading back down to the ground floor and went down as fast as I could. I wasn’t about to go and check on Clarion Call and my erstwhile date. Or try to find Anthony, for that matter.

  DT sent me a location pin for the hospital as I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Machyl: I’m on my way there

  “Machyl,” Luka reached out a hand to me as the nurse pushed back the curtain around the hospital bed to reveal him, Harley and DT. He was pale but still smiling as he took my hand and squeezed it.

  Anthony kissed me.

  “You okay?” I asked him, and he smiled and nodded, his blue eyes less bright than usual.

  Anthony kissed me twice.

  “What did they say it was, Harl?” Luka turned to him.

  Harley, who was turned away, talking into his phone, turned back around again and put his hand on Luka’s shoulder protectively. “Hairline fracture to the fifth metatarsal.” He huffed and squared his jaw. “I’m going to sue those chorus-line hoofers for every last red cent.”

  My breath stopped in my chest as fear started to expand in my chest like a balloon being inflated. And still I felt Anthony’s lips on mine.

  “My lawyer is on it as we speak,” Harley addressed DT and me. “Don’t worry. They’re not going to get away with this.”

  “Oh, Harl,” Luka looked slightly embarrassed and patted his hand. “I was just being silly. It’s all my fault.”

  “Don’t say that, Monkey.” Harl reached down and kissed Luka’s forehead. “They put you at risk, that means all of your friends were at risk, too.”

  “But Machyl told me to use the mats and I…” Luka looked at his lap. “I didn’t listen.” His big blue eyes filled with tears, which fell onto the pale blue knitted hospital blanket.

  “Monkey…” Harley sat down on the edge of the bed and put his arms around Luka, and kissed him. And not just a little peck, either.

  “Harl…” Luka murmured, wrapping his arms around Harley’s back.

  DT raised his eyebrows at me and pointed at the gap in the curtains. I went out and he drew the curtain closed behind him.

  “Let’s go outside,” DT said. “I hate hospitals.”

  I hated hospitals too, and I didn’t usually have a stomachful of acidic guilt slowly burning its way out of my body. That wasn’t exactly making the experience more pleasant for me.

  And still I felt Anthony’s arms around my neck, I felt his shoulders and ribcage under my hands, I felt the electric texture of his tongue against mine.

  “I don’t know if we should be standing here,” I said as we went through the doors to the arrivals bay and an ambulance pulled up, its lights flashing.

  My stomach, guilty as it was, still re-enacted the wild swoop it had performed when Anthony pulled me down and bought my lips to touch his for the first time.

  “I’m looking for a bench to sit on,” DT said irritably.

  “Let’s go inside the café,” I suggested.

  DT agreed, but it took so long to get him there since his back was hurting that I wanted to just grab one of the wheelchairs standing folded against the wall and plunk him in it.

  It took even longer to get him into the café, sitting down, buy coffee and cookies and wait for him to finish stirring in the sugar with the little plastic stirring stick, so long that I wanted to scream again, except I didn’t, because I was too ashamed of myself to seek that much attention.

  If people were looking at me, they might figure out all of the terrible things I had done and realize what a terrible person I was and the cops would show up, just shrugging.

  I felt so bad, right now, that I was sure I would put the cuffs on myself if they let me, and go willingly into the back of the car, explaining to everyone that I really did deserve this. Or if they jumped on me and pressed the life out of me as a fat one sat on my chest, maybe I would die thinking that it was only what I deserved.

  And through all of this, Anthony’s kisses repeated in my mind in a relentless loop that forced me to re-live ever single touch, every movement, every word, every single thing that had happened from the moment he had said, Dance with me, to the moan I felt vibrate through my lips as he pulled me closer and kissed me deeper the second before he ripped away and left me standing there alone on the dance floor.

  “You were right,” DT said after sipping his coffee and putting it down again. The brown liquid had seeped from under the plastic lid, rolled down the side of the paper cup and formed a ring on the white tabletop.

  “Right?” I asked. I was so caught up in the thoughts whirling around my head that I had no idea what he could be talking about.

  “The show doesn’t work,” DT said.

  He was agreeing with me?

  The slightest ray of hope broke through the thunderheads crowding my internal skies. I sighed in relief. “Thank you,” I said. “If we just make some small adjustments to the costuming, like I suggested on Sunday— Brooklyn can probably do it in a day—”

  “It’s not the costuming,” DT said. “It’s the dancing.”

  “What do you mean?” I was confused.

  “Why do they have to dance?” DT asked.

  I frowned. “Uh. I don’t understand…”

  “You want them to dance because that’s what you do,” DT said. “All this choreography, that’s you.”

  I nodded. “Yes…” I said, feeling a slight stab of ala
rm in my midriff. “That’s why I started doing the programming,” I pointed out. “That’s why you wanted me to do it.”

  DT folded his arms. “You convinced me it would be good for the club,” he said.

  “It has been,” I protested. “The dance wasn't professional before—”

  “Professional dance is not us,” DT said. “We’re drag queens. Some dance, yes, but most don’t.”

  I didn’t understand what he was getting at. “If you don’t have an experienced dance professional,” I said. “You’re not going to get professional results.”

  “And I'm telling you,” DT said, his eyes widening as he looked at me. “You’re missing the point. You want these girls to change their outfits to fit into your thing. And I’m saying, that’s inside out. I listened to you and let you have your way cause I thought you might be able to turn things around, make a difference. But it didn’t work, so we’re not doing it your way any more.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t work?” I said. The bottom had dropped out of my stomach and that wasn't a good feeling what with the acid and the Anthony and everything else swirling around in there.

  But I thought I knew what he was getting at.

  “The show should fit around each queen’s personality, not the other way round,” DT said with finality. “Your group dance numbers are going to look bug wild with their costumes. I’m not a comedy club. You and Tata will do those numbers together. Then you will do your signature numbers, and the same for Clarion Call. I would say the same for Lucky Penny but, again, it looks like we’re down an artist.”

  “What about Brooklyn?” I asked. “So he’ll join in with me and Anthony? He can’t carry the Calendar Girls routine on his own. But maybe he won’t be there. He hasn't responded to my texts all week.”

  “Brooklyn,” DT responded, fixing me with a death glare. “Has been too scared to come back to the club ever since last Monday.”

  I frowned. “Too scared?”

  DT was about to take a bite of a chocolate chip cookie, then put it down on a napkin and leaned across the table at me. “He wouldn’t talk to me. Ravind speaks for him now. Said there was too much drama and it scared the britches off Brooklyn and he doesn’t want to be in such a toxic environment.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Is he quitting?”

  “He ain’t quit yet,” DT said. “But it doesn’t look good.”

  I shook my head. “I know he’s sensitive, but…”

  “No, Giltie Conshens,” DT said, making a fist and rapping on the table three times, loudly, and startling me. “You better have a damn good explanation of what happened to my club.”

  I felt the blood drain away from my face.

  He was suspicious of me?

  “You know the consequences of a judgment of plotting, don’t you, Giltie Conshens?”

  If the suspicion was a slap in the face, the accusation was a punch in the gut.

  Or a stab in the back.

  I made myself smaller in the chair not because I was intimidated, but because a show of meekness would appease Duane Tyrone.

  “Plotting,” I said, drawing down the corners of my mouth and making my eyes bigger.

  If he thought that he could coerce me with empty threats, he had another thing coming. I was going to lie with everything I had, mark my words on that.

  I had worked too long, and too hard, given too much of myself, to just lie down and let him throw me under the bus now.

  “What do you mean, mama? You—you think I—” I gulped audibly. “You think this is my fault?”

  I knew the threat was empty because Duane couldn’t afford to lose me. I was all he had left.

  But I also couldn’t call his bluff, because that would weaken my case of blamelessness in what I had done.

  “Did you, or did you not,” Duane Tyrone said slowly. “Plot to oust La Tata from House of Ellegrandé?”

  As I tried to steel myself to play this game and come out on top, all of the plans I had made over the last months and weeks, which I had been so proud of, seemed to me revealed as house of cards, and although the structure was still strong, the cards were made of some poisonous substance, Asbestos or plutonium.

  And I felt as if I had just found out I was suffering from some terrible wasting disease, my hair and teeth falling out, and I had just found out that house of cards inside me, that I had built so carefully, was the cause of it all.

  I had prepared for this situation. I had put together a very carefully prepared defense which I had developed over the long months of my planning.

  And a week ago, I would have said these words with relish and tasted victory sweet and glorious.

  I knew that was not how they would taste now.

  But if I didn’t say them, I had no defense. Nothing to fall back on, to cover my tracks.

  “I don’t like,” I said slowly and clearly, “Anthony Alcantara.”

  It felt like pushing out dry pieces of fragile cardboard that kept crumbling into dust, clogging up my mouth and getting down my throat and making me gag.

  Duane stared back at me, stuck his fingers in the corners of his eyes and huffed a huge sigh.

  Not liking someone was not a political act and it was not strategy or insubordination. It was personal. And personal matters between drag artists were for a drag mother to sort out. That was housekeeping and a good mother kept her house clean.

  Basically, I couldn’t be held responsible for not liking Anthony. It was DT’s responsibility to settle disputes and make sure that everyone found a way to work together.

  And I highly doubted DT was going to be able to make a convincing case to the drag mothers that he had tried to make my relationship with Anthony work. His strategy for dealing with Anthony was ignoring him.

  All of this had given me so much delight a week ago.

  Now it made me feel so bad, I wanted to run out of the room and keep running for an hour or more, just trying to outrun the feeling, which had never worked.

  I remembered another little speech I had prepared for DT, if he complained that we had lost Anthony and where were we going to find another queen so fishy?

  DT had always prized Anthony for his looks in private, though he would never say it to Anthony’s face. I had imagined he would complain to me, saying that looks weren’t nothing, they had their place alongside talent.

  I planned to say to him, You’re right. It’s not nothing when those looks are attached to a helpless baby that can’t dance, can’t lip-synch, can’t do a thing for himself and needs to be rescued every five minutes. That’s not nothing, it’s a burden on all of us and it’s nothing that we need to be dealing with, we all have a lot of other work to be getting on with.

  And thinking about that now made me want to reach for Anthony, sit him down on my lap and call him baby in his ear and ask him what he wanted me to do for him. I put my hand on my chest, which was hurting, again, but so much worse than before.

  It hurt so bad and now I knew what caused it. It was the toxic house of cards I had built myself, that I had fully created on my own, that were my responsibility. I had built my life out of them and made myself sick and sad and wrong.

  Duane took his fingers out of his eye sockets, sat up, lifted a finger and pointed it at me.

  “You think you can run game on me, you got another thing coming, young man. Make no mistake. I’m Ellegrandé, and this is my house,” he stabbed his index finger hard into the top of the hospital café table. “I been here over thirty years, and I didn’t make it this far by taking shit from upstart queens.”

  He paused to wipe his forehead. I could hear his labored breathing.

  “Don’t think I believe for one second that Tata was fully to blame for what happened,” he growled. “What, do you think I’m soft in the head?”

  “I know how deep this goes,” he said, the white of his eyes flashing. “I know you had a hand in Tata’s fraternization, and Damaris’ leaving.”

  I opened my mouth to p
rotest, hot outrage pumping through my veins, but he kept talking.

  “The minute I tell the other mothers exactly what you did, they will take that decision out of my hands, to make sure I’m not blinded by my emotional attachment. They will step in and take you out of the picture. And it will be bye, bye, New York drag. You’ll never tuck in this town again.”

  I had been with Duane for seven years. I had sweated and worked until I dropped from exhaustion. I had given everything to House Ellegrandé, through college and internships, a master’s degree and now into my career, I had given nights and weekends and summer holidays.

  But none of that would matter if I was found guilty of plotting or any other type of manipulation. Attempting to influence your drag sisters in any way that your mother didn’t approve could not be tolerated. It threatened the total authority of the drag mothers.

  I knew that. I had always known that.

  While I had worked at the club, I hadn’t just learned how to perform. I had also learned as much as I could about the drag mothers. And I had learned how to cover my tracks so that they could never pin me down. And Duane Tyrone wasn’t going to pin me down, no matter what he thought he knew.

  Or, so I thought. So I had believed.

  Well, maybe they couldn’t pin me down, but maybe they didn’t need to.

  Even in the shock of DT’s outburst, my brain was squirreling away the information DT had inadvertently given away. We had always suspected that the other mothers had some kind of veto power over each other, but there wasn’t much hard evidence. Artists who had been ousted didn’t seem to want to talk.

  It was all information I would share with the others online, those of us who followed drag and tried to learn its secrets, its inner workings, pull back the curtain to see who was operating the machinery behind.

  It came as cold comfort to me now, though.

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked as calmly as I could.

  “No more rehearsing in that studio,” DT said. “You practice in the club, in the green room, like I told you. No more group practices, you don’t need them since those girls are not doing the dance numbers you came up with. You want to do those on your own with Tata—”