And if Damaris was right, there was no future for House Ellegrandé anyway.
I stood in the wings and watched Clarion Call. I had already done my first number.
The wings were very small and you had to be careful to only stand in the two-square-foot right in front of the green room door to avoid being visible to the audience.
Right then the door opened behind me and poked me in the silicone-padded butt. I pressed myself against the wall and the door opened, still with only a few inches’ clearance, and who should emerge but La Tata.
My heart leapt into my throat and I wished I could sink back into the bare brick wall at my back as panic started to pound through me.
I couldn’t help but notice that she looked unusually beautiful tonight, with a very long wig in chestnut brown and a one-shoulder lace gown in deep coral pink with cut-outs on the midriff. I hadn’t seen the gown before and wondered where it had come from.
“Move,” she hissed, waving her hand at me with a fresh new manicure to match the dress. I shuffled to the side so she could get out.
But she couldn’t close the door behind her, and when I looked it turned out that the dress had a very long train and it wasn’t going to fit in this small area with that door closed.
She pursed her painted lips and folded her arms and didn’t look at me.
“Why are you here?” She whispered after a minute.
“I want to watch,” I whispered.
She tossed the long, gleaming strands of her wig which flowed down her back and ignored me.
The sheets DT had put up listing the running order showed Anthony as having his own number. Two things about this had made me curious.
One, the list didn’t say La Tata. It said, Anthony Alcantara.
Two, neither Anthony nor La Tata had any numbers that I was aware of.
The ensemble numbers I had spent last week training everyone how to do had been dropped as unceremoniously as a horse lifting its tail. And the coaching sessions we had talked so much about had never taken place.
And I had told myself I didn’t care what Anthony did, but after seeing the program sheet, I gave up that lie.
I was intrigued. Oh, I was definitely intrigued.
Clarion Call’s music faded and I saw her leave the stage and then she was piling into the tiny wing area with us, hissing, “Why is it so crowded back here?”
Unfortunately, letting Clarion Call past meant that Anthony had to gather in the entire train to the small floor space and squish close to me against the brick wall, which he did with not a little ill grace, scoffing and tsking and turning to look behind him, as if worried the material would snag on the exposed brick.
“I’ll help you with your train,” I whispered when Clarion Call was finally through, because I could see that Anthony was on the verge of missing his cue.
“Go,” I said, taking the pile of material out of his hands and letting it out as he started to walk, then trotted a little on his heels as he heard the music start.
I bent down on the floor and straightened the train out as it flowed behind him, its full length now following him onto the stage. I walked forward to the furthest point where I knew I could stand without being visible to the audience and watched.
The lights went up on him and he stood there as the music swelled. It was a ballad, a grand and epic ballad, the exact kind of thing Clarion Call had refused to play straight in rehearsals the other night.
And he stood there like a statue, a beautiful statue, and didn’t move a muscle.
It began with a woman’s voice speaking softly and sadly. And Anthony started to lip sync to it, looking out and gesturing at the audience as if he was addressing them.
I watched his plump, rosy pink lips closely. It was crisp, and it was accurate, and I couldn’t fault it.
I never thought love would pass me by
But now these years have all gone by
I know it will never return again…
And then the woman’s voice started singing. The expression in Anthony’s face as he mouthed the lyrics was exquisite, like his heart was about to break
Wasted hearts
The wind carried away
Scattered parts
Can’t be found today
I had never heard this song in a drag bar before and now that I heard it, I couldn't understand why. It was perfect.
I’ll learn to live without them
There’s not much time left anyway
The parts of my heart
My lovers took away
As the song rose to its grand climax, my nose started to ache and I realized I was welling up. I still had another number to do, and no tissues anywhere in reach. I tried to brush the tears off as soon as they fell and hoped nothing was running or spreading.
I had become so caught up in the song and the beauty of the performance, I had forgotten I was supposed to be evaluating it.
Anthony’s delivery was stunning, totally convincing. I was well aware that the biggest irony was that I had always taunted Anthony that he was capable of nothing more than pulling cabbage, and that was exactly what he had done, but he had made it… glorious.
Roses started to fall from above all around him, roses and rose petals as the crowd went totally wild.
I had never heard anything like it at House of Ellegrandé before, and I had been here for seven years.
Not even when Damaris performed.
And no-one had ever had roses fall on them before. How the hell had he done that?
He exited the stage and as he came back into the wings, the desire to take his arms, wrap them around me and kiss him was so strong, I didn’t care that he was in drag, that we were both in drag, the desire was so strong it felt like a powerful magnet inside me, pulling me toward him.
I suddenly became so overwhelmed with anxiety that I lost my nerve and couldn’t say, Good job or anything like that. All I did was bend down and help him gather up the train so it wouldn't risk snagging on something.
He took the armful of material from me, but he didn’t look at me and he didn't say anything as he went back into the green room.
It was my second number now, a very old one which I had tweaked and perfected over the years. It was one of the first numbers I learned when I first started doing drag.
It was upbeat and normally I had background dancers, such as Bone China and Shanghai Li’l, which worked great. But it was fine without them, too.
No-one was coming to clean up the roses. It wasn’t like we had stage hands or anything. So I picked them up as I came on, improvising and making a bouquet.
When I got to the front of the stage, I started doing the steps, modified so I could throw the roses out into the audience one by one, which got a great response.
When I first went on, I had been shocked by the turn out. It was a full house, and crammed full at that.
That almost never happened.
I backed up to my mark, which I knew without even looking, I had done this so many times, and when the lyrics started my body went into the performance automatically, it knew it so well.
I wasn’t on autopilot, though. The energy of the crowd was giving me life, it added fuel to my fire and joy crackled through me and powered my body, powering up the familiar moves and making me feel in control.
This one required a costume change into a short skirt to give me the freedom to move. I always included some voguing in this one to break up repetitive choreography.
And they were eating it up tonight. I had never gotten this response. It just made me work harder and I broke into a sweat. I couldn’t smile because I was lip syncing to a tricky part which was almost spoken word and very fast, but inside I was laughing my head off.
And then I registered something unusual, even before I could figure out what was going on, an internal alarm went off, alerting me. A figure walked in out of the wings and onto the stage toward me.
It was Harrie Debby, swishing her skirts and making a beeline for me. Her characte
r was a mid-century housewife who was always dishing out folksy, factually ludicrous sexual advice. She was dressed immaculately in a full-skirted, belted dress with a contrasting white collar, pearls, white gloves and kitten heels, her wig an elaborate, glossy updo.
I was a pro, so I just kept on going with my dance. There must be an explanation for why she would walk out into the middle of my number like this.
The moment she came onstage, a huge cry went up from the audience and I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a surge go through the crowd as people jostled to get closer to the stage. The front row was already pressed right up against it, not two feet away from where I was dancing.
When I heard that, I understood. She must have informed her followers on social media that she was making a rare appearance tonight, and we had ourselves a club full of Harrie Debby fans.
Not that I was complaining. I hoped she would do something like that, but I hadn’t even dared to ask. Not after Luka got injured.
But Harrie Debby just kept coming toward me and I wasn't sure what on earth she was supposed to be doing. I met her eyes and she gave me a bulldog look, baring her teeth and widening her eyes, and then she faced the audience and started copying my dance.
What on earth?
I kept going, and she imitated. But because she didn’t know the steps, it looked terrible, a flailing, sloppy impression of what I was doing.
Then people started laughing, and I realized she was doing it on purpose. She was mocking me. And then I caught her facial expressions as I dropped down into a duck walk and she followed suit.
She was ridiculing me, alright. And she was making it look like she didn’t know how to do a duck walk, which was very different from not being able to do a duck walk. She wobbled and nearly lost her balance, but I could tell she was in complete control.
She was good. She was a seasoned pro, and it showed.
I just couldn’t believe I was sharing a stage with Harrie Debby. I couldn’t believe I had the honor. I never realized she had a penchant for improv, but I was going to roll with it.
Gales of laughter were going up from the audience and then cheers and whoops as she stopped mocking me and just started straight dancing alongside me, imitating my moves perfectly.
I couldn’t believe it. We had this huge turn out, the crowd was loving it, Anthony had done so well, it made my heart swell with pride, and now I was dancing with Harrie Debby.
The night was defying all my expectations.
As the song ended, I grinned and glanced at her so we could curtsy together.
But she was looking at me weird.
The track ended. Her number was up next. From what I had seen on the running order, she and Lucky Penny had some kind of duet planned.
We had been standing there looking at each other for about two seconds, and that was almost long enough, in a live show, to start giving the impression that something was going wrong.
I dipped a curtsy, turned and walked away decisively so she could start her set. As I went, Lucky Penny came out of the wings, hobbling because her left foot was in a boot.
As I predicted, Harrie Debby was not about to let her partner go out on stage looking ridiculous, especially not if they were together.
So Lucky Penny was not a drum majorette today. She was a co-ed in a poodle skirt, twin-set, saddle shoe and ankle sock on her good foot.
She looked… nervous. Terrified, even. I felt for the poor girl. I would have thought with the gymnastics, she would have gotten over the stage fright years ago.
“Now, now, Miss Giltie Conshens—”
I froze at the sound of Harrie Debby calling my name. I turned around. She held a mic in her hand. Where had she gotten that? I hadn’t seen her come on with it.
“Don’t go, honey,” Harrie Debby said.
I turned around gamely and went back toward her.
The most important thing when you were on stage was to mask any uncertainty from the audience, because they would pick up on it immediately. Act decisively, even if you were doing it just for the sake of taking an action.
I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but I was up for a little improv. It wasn’t something we usually did here, but I had been trying to mix things up for a while.
While I walked over, I made some shapes in the air around me, imagining I was pulling and repulsing the molecules that we were all breathing in and out. I was known for my distinctive arms style.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Harrie Debby addressed the audience. “Some of you know Giltie Conshens.” She indicated me.
I dropped to the stage and shimmied back up into a duck walk, worked my arms briefly but eloquently and stood up straight again like nothing had happened.
The crowd cheered and I smiled a big, winning smile at them, the kind of smile I almost never smiled in real life. Except I had been smiling and laughing an awful lot with Anthony, before.
Before.
“And—my beautiful daughter, Lucky Penny,” Harrie Debby indicated her, brought her closer and put her arm around her shoulder. Lucky waved shyly. With her big blue eyes and rosy apple cheeks, she suited the character.
“She’s a college girl now,” Harrie Debby waved an imaginary flag. “Rock ’em sock ’em, Pro State!”
A rumble of laughter from the crowd.
“And a mother can’t help noticing… she’s gotten so big lately,” Harrie Debby told the audience, sounding confused while reaching her hands down and squeezing Lucky’s breasts over the pale pink angora sweater. She shook her head, feigning puzzlement while kneading them thoroughly.
“They were small at first. I thought they were bug bites so I spread honey on them to stop the itching and sent her to bed early.”
The audience laughed.
“Well, I went to say goodnight before I went to bed and I found the paper boy under the covers with her, licking it off. Her excuse? He worked better than the honey!”
The laughter increased.
“Now, hush. They only got bigger after that. I thought she had a bad case of the mumps that had migrated, so I wrapped them in molasses and wax paper and sent her to bed.”
The audience laughed and booed.
“Well, did that work?” Harrie Debby talked over them.
“No!” Someone shouted from the audience.
“Didn’t your mother teach you not to talk back?” Harrie Debby demanded.
“You’re my mother!” Someone else replied.
“Well, I went to say goodnight before I went to bed and I found the editor of the campus review with molasses all over his face. She said the molasses did nothing for her aching mumps!”
The laughter swelled to a roar.
“They’re boobs!” Someone shouted from the audience.
“Whatever they are, they kept on getting bigger and bigger, no matter what mother did,” Harrie Debby said. “Then… I had a revelation. Fruit salad. Oh, yes, I just read a delicious recipe for fruit salad in my Housewife’s Monthly. So I dressed her juicy oranges with whipped cream and a cherry on top and I left it at that.”
I could see a black girl with long braids in the front row of the audience, not far away from where I was standing, who was crying with laughter, tears flowing from underneath her small rimless glasses.
“Well, I went to say goodnight before I went to bed,” Harrie Debby said, and paused, waiting.
A chorus of jostling shouts got louder and louder and she stood there, grinning at them, and still not saying anything, until they started chanting, “Harrie! Harrie! Harrie!”
She laughed and turned to Lucky Penny, touching her face affectionately, and leaned down and planted a big smacker on her lips. The crowd burst into wild cheering and applause while Lucky Penny and Harrie Debby made out smack dab in the middle of House Ellegrandé.
I hoped someone had the smelling salts ready to revive DT.
I had been standing there just enjoying the performance, but I didn’t want to stare at the two of them kissing, so I turned awa
y a little and looked somewhere else.
That turned out to be back into the wings, where from this angle I could see Clarion Call and Anthony Alcantara watching the show as well.
Anthony’s eyes met mine.
I wanted to tell him—
I wanted to…
“My husband, ladies and gentlemen,” Harrie Debby announced, grinning broadly at her adoring audience, who cheered even louder.
I thought about it. Luka had said they had been married for almost two years. And Harrie Debby had retired just about two years ago. I doubted it was a coincidence. Anyway, it seemed the marriage was still exciting to her fans.
“Now,” she said, and pointed at Lucky Penny’s booted foot. “As you can see, my sweetness has been injured.”
The crowd let out a low booing sound.
I felt nervous all of a sudden, but tried to calm my fears with logic.
Harrie Debby pointed at me. “Giltie Conshens here can tell you all about it,” she said, letting go of Lucky and coming toward me, holding out the mic. “Go on, Giltie. Tell these good people what happened to my husband.”
I felt like someone had been waiting above the stage with a bucket of acid and they had just tipped it all over my head.
All of the terrible paranoid thoughts that had been cycling through my mind for the last few days reared up, suddenly as real as dragons and serpents and just as dangerous.
I took the mic, what else could I do?
“Miss Lucky Penny,” I said, fighting the panic churning inside me. And then the words stopped. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
A wall of panic was expanding inside me, getting bigger, stronger, more overwhelming, until it was a tsunami crushing me and filling my mouth and eyes with mud.
Harrie Debby grabbed the mic away from me and my fears were all coming true.
“She had us all rehearsing at a dance studio, all the drag artists in this house,” she informed the audience. “My Luka, Luka Pennworth, my husband,” she marched back to his side, “is an accomplished gymnast. And he broke his foot coming off a perfect dismount in this so-called dance studio.”
She was so mad, she was on the verge of breaking character. I could see her cracking. The lawyer was coming out.
Fishy Queen (Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Book 2) Page 36