Sara and Rani screamed and sprang at me like animals, but Bethany was wrong—I might have been alone, but I wasn’t helpless. I jumped for the nearest table, snatched up a plate of gingerbread snowflakes, and flung them at the girls in a shower of whirling, sugar-frosted fury. The damage was negligible—I mean, they were just cookies—but Rani got one stuck in her hair, Sara took another in the cleavage, and while they slowed down to brush out the crumbs, I turned tail and ran deeper into the Lumber Yard.
“Cleo, after him!” Bethany ordered. I risked a glance back and saw her third minion gliding after me, still grinning horribly. I quickened my pace. Chewed to death by monstrous predators in the guise of high school girls was not how I pictured myself leaving this mortal coil. I needed a plan—and help. I raced past hockey players who might have cheerfully body-checked my pursuers, but none of them even looked up. I needed people who understood what was going on, at least a little. I needed Matthew and Aidan.
But the cookie toss was already vacant and I could only pause to pelt Cleo with a handful of pfeffernusse before racing on and looping back up the other side of the bar. Bethany’s voice rang through the Lumber Yard. “You’re not going to get away, Derby! You’re never going to spoil my plans again!”
“I do what I have to for the good of everyone!” I yelled back as I ran.
“Well, now your ass is mine!”
“My ass belongs to the world!” I winced as the words left my mouth. “Wait, I mean—”
“Too late!” cackled Bethany. “I’m already tweeting it!”
I cursed—but ahead of me, Matt and Aidan stood at another table under a sign that read spritz for speed. “Harder. Harder!” I heard Matt say. “Squeeze it!”
“I’m trying!” Aidan said. “I think it’s just too stiff to get out!”
“Matthew! Aidan!” I called and they sprang apart just as the cookie press in Aidan’s hand finally oozed out its buttery dough. Aidan looked bewildered, but Matthew saw more clearly. He snatched the loaded cookie press from Aidan and hurled it past me with the practice of years spent throwing tantrums.
It struck Cleo right between the eyes and sent her staggering. I slid to a stop beside Matt, who glared at me accusingly. “I knew there was going to be a scene!”
“There was always going to be a scene,” said Bethany as she stepped around the end of the bar. Sara and Rani were with her and they moved to cut us off from the side. Cleo had recovered from her blow. She drifted in from behind. We were surrounded. Even Aidan looked scared now. My mind raced as I tried to find a way out of this.
Matt, clinging to Aidan, gave me the answer. “You bitch,” he spat at Bethany. “Someday, someone is going to give you the spanking you deserve!”
Bethany laughed her silvery laugh. “Oh, my little blue angel. Yes, I’m a bad, bad girl—but who’s going to punish me after you three are gone?”
Inspiration struck me like light on a disco ball. “Now you’re looking at the small picture, Bethany,” I said. I stepped forward and raised my voice. “I call the Yule punisher! I call the dark goat, the black claw, the one who comes in winter darkness! On your night, O Krampus, hear and witness!” I pointed at Bethany. “She’s been a naughty girl!”
It was an invocation of pure desperation, but I heard a tearing sound like the air itself was ripping apart behind me, followed by a yelp of alarm. The lights dimmed and the smell of green birch and black coal washed over me. I heard Sara’s hiss, Rani’s growl, and Cleo’s dry rasp. Even Bethany looked startled. I turned around.
Krampus had come—in spirit at least. And a spirit needed a body. Personally, I would have chosen Aidan, but the blond bomb had collapsed into the nearest chair. Little Matthew Plumper stood as the vessel of Krampus. Curving black horns and shaggy black hair sprouted from his head. His eyes were red and his tongue lolled from his mouth, thick and mobile as a snake. His hands were huge and clawed and he’d grown at least three times his usual size, his clothes doing an Incredible Hulk shred—maybe more so because at least the Hulk’s pants stayed on. If Matt hadn’t been wearing an apparently very stretchy jockstrap, his tongue wouldn’t have been the only thing lolling. Even so, I don’t think anyone was ever going to call him “little Plumper” again.
Bethany recovered quickly. “Take him!” she shrieked and her harpies attacked. But Krampus was just as quick and fierce as them. He grabbed Rani as she pounced and stuffed her into a shadowy basket that appeared at his side. Sara swayed sinuously away from his grasping hand, but a hoofed foot swept her legs from under her and he popped her into the basket, too. Their snarls and hisses faded as if they were falling down a long, long hole. Cleo moved more cautiously, darting and weaving with quick feints. Krampus matched her moves, then, when she struck, lashed out with rattling chains that manifested suddenly in his hand. They wrapped around her and, with a heave and a snap, Krampus sent her tumbling into the basket as well. Cleo finally broke her silence in a terrible wail that echoed from the basket as she fell.
Krampus turned to Bethany but her hand snapped up, fingers spread wide in a gesture of warding. “You shall not touch me!” she said, voice ringing with power. “Not with claws or hands or chains!”
But I was already one step ahead of her. I leaped across the bar and grabbed a bottle of vodka and the long lighter that the bartender uses to ignite his signature cocktail, the Screaming Flamer. “Krampus! Catch!” I called and tossed both to him. He caught them, one in each hand, instantly chugging the vodka and sparking a flame on the lighter.
“Not with claws, not with hands, not with chains!” I shouted at Bethany. Her eyes went wide as she realized her mistake. Krampus dropped the bottle—
—turned around, bent over, and looked at Bethany through his legs. “Bitch,” he said in Matt’s voice—and stuck the lighter between his jockstrapped butt cheeks.
I’ve always said it would take an angel to stop Bethany. That wasn’t what I had in mind.
※
In hindsight, I should have realized that Krampus incarnate was as much Matthew as he was ancient spirit. I’d thought he might spit a gout of flame at Bethany, but she’d goaded Matt on, so in a way it was her own fault. And to be fair, Matt had now redeemed himself for the previous blue angel incident. When Bethany returned—and I had no doubt that she eventually would—she was going to have a particularly ignominious defeat to live down.
But she was gone for now and Krampus, looking very satisfied, along with her. The only evidence of Bethany’s visit to the Lumber Yard was a particularly greasy spot on the already stained floor. The last evidence of Krampus were Matt’s thoroughly shredded clothes and his lingering amnesia. “Derby?” he asked “What happened? Where are my clothes?” He belched and alcohol all but condensed on his breath “Was I drinking? Why does my ass burn?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said and patted him on his now-back-to-normal-size head. “But you did good, Matthew.”
Without Bethany’s influence, the hockey players swiftly returned to their senses, lost their pants, and the auction was back on, although there was a good deal of confusion about the strange proliferation of baked goods. Fortunately, I was ready with a suggestion and the first Gay Hockey League Jockstrap Auction and Bake Sale was a smashing success. In fact, it was their most profitable fundraiser ever—everyone went home with something to chew on.
Sometimes it’s good to be naughty.
Pride is a wonderful time of year. A time to celebrate who you are, who you want to be, or just who you want to do. Personally though, I especially like Pride because it almost never coincides with those ancient dates of power that complicate other holidays for me. Christmas, Hanukkah, Halloween, Groundhog Day: I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to deal with otherworldly forces when everyone else is tucking into a turkey dinner. Still, one has a duty to answer the call when it comes, although it would be nice if every once in a while that call was jus
t for cocktails.
But as I stood at the corner of the Pride Festival’s Second Stage, looking out over the crowd of happy fags and dykes partying in the street, I had a chill foreboding. Something was in the air and it wasn’t just the usual complaints about the porta-potties.
A few weeks before, my good friend Aaron Silverman had burst into my apartment. “They’ve booked me, Derby! Miss Mitzy Knish will be playing the Saturday Night Special on the Pride Second Stage!”
My first thought, as ever when Aaron announces a performance, was to check the date against the moon phase. Aaron isn’t just the talented and fabulous Mitzy Knish, he is possibly the world’s only drag queen werewolf, a combination that has caused difficulties before. But the full moon would pass well before Pride, so I had thrown my arms around Aaron and congratulated him. Everyone wants a chance to shine, but there are only so many spotlights to go around.
Still, I had to ask him, “The Second Stage, Mitzy?” Typically the crème de la queen play the Main Stage for the big crowd, while the Second Stage hosts distinctly B-list acts. For someone whose Hanukkah special “Gelt in Showers” packed the bar at the Lumber Yard and whose smash comedy showcase “Spit Roast” is still the talk of the leather men at Squeal, it seemed like a comedown.
Aaron had waved my concerns away. “This year the Second Stage, next year the Main Stage, the year after that . . .” He’d shivered and held out his hands. “I want you backstage with me, Derby Cavendish. A girl needs her support.”
I’d protested—Aaron needed my support like Olive Oyl needed a bra—but he’d worn me down with tales of after-parties with open bars, wall-to-wall go-go boys, and private back rooms. I’m not made of stone.
Except now that the night had arrived, I was as unsettled as a power bottom after curried lentils. I shouldn’t have been. The Saturday Night Special was in full swing and Mitzy had already performed her first number, a mash-up of “River Deep, Mountain High” and “Proud Mary” that she called “Hi Mary,” to great acclaim. Reining in my brooding unease, I returned backstage.
The bill for the evening was a veritable salad bar of acts from folk duo Jay and Wren, the smell of weed hanging in a fug around them; to Petal Marconi, a comedian who had probably emerged from the womb angry; to local piano-bar fixture Ricky Ivory, spoken word artiste Elsa Shush, and interpretive dancer Xabi. The organizers had dug up group acts, too: a trio of J-pop girls who called themselves, in letters and numbers, “CU2 Baby Baby,” and an emo boy band, whose name might have been “Regret” or “Sad Puppies” or “Mom, the Cable’s Out.”
But if the bill was a salad bar, Mitzy was the bacon bits—even if she was still in her Tina Turner shock wig and fringed dress. “Shouldn’t you be changing for your next number?” I asked her.
“Someone’s hogging the dressing room,” she said tersely, the muscles of her arm bunching in a way that was more Beast than Beauty. Mitzy had tight control over the wolf inside, but stress and anger could bring out her inner bitch. I glanced at the curtained-off tent that passed for a dressing room.
“I’ll deal with this,” I told her, but she grabbed my hand and hissed, “Derby, no!” in the same moment as the stage manager, a harried volunteer named Shirley, called, “You’re up, Hermione!”
A pair of sun-bronzed young men in tailcoats and thongs emerged from the tent and drew back the curtains over the door. The woman who stepped out was tall to start with and black stiletto heels added to her height. Silk stockings caressed long legs and lace garters played peek-a-boo beneath a maid’s frilly skirt and apron. A corset pushed plump breasts into smooth curves nestled amid more frills. Her hair was pulled back in a bun except for two precise curls on either side of her dark, flashing eyes. Her lips, painted into a vibrant red rosebud, parted.
“I am ready,” she said in a breathy French accent.
One of the J-Pop girls whimpered. The tall woman just swept past, although it did seem to me that she threw a disdainful glance at Mitzy. Her boys fell in behind her, one carrying a feather duster and the other a tastefully decorated spanking paddle. As they disappeared up the stairs onto the stage, the theme from Downton Abbey began to play—only to turn into the distinctive opening vocals of “Any Way You Want It.”
The spell of her presence backstage shattered. Petal gasped and groped for a cigarette. Mitzy grabbed me by the shirtfront and hauled me in close. “She has backing dancers, Derby! Dancers!” She let me drop. “I need a drag king, stat! Get me a lesbian, stuff some socks down her pants, and I’ll take it from there!”
“Easy, Mitz!” I urged her. “Who is that?”
“Hermione Frisson,” said Mitzy. “The hottest thing to happen to burlesque since champagne showers.”
“Well, get changed before she comes back.” I hurried her into the dressing room. “Don’t let her rattle you—your act is tighter than your tuck. Remember, she has to take her clothes off to get a rise out of the crowd.”
The words weren’t out of my mouth before a colossal cheer erupted outside. Mitzy’s lips pressed together. “It’s a one-note act,” I told her helpfully—at the same moment that the speakers echoed with the sound of a paddle slapping flesh. The crowd cheered again. I pressed my lips together. “What’s your next number?”
“‘Carwash,’” Mitzy said miserably. She held up a body suit with stringy rag mops sewn over the sleeves.
“Make it sexy,” I told her and went outside to stand guard over the tent door. Hermione’s music transitioned to “American Woman.” The other performers also looked uneasy. Elsa Shush and Xabi both kept glancing at the stage. Petal lit cigarette after cigarette. Ricky Ivory flinched with each thwack of the spanking paddle. Only the folksingers Jay and Wren, up next on the bill, seemed calm, but I suspect that was mostly due to a surreptitious toke.
“American Woman” screeched to an end and Hermione Frisson left the stage to wild applause. She’d shed her maid’s costume to reveal a star-spangled g-string and pasties with red-white-and-blue tassels. Petal nearly swallowed her cigarette. Hermione strode to the dressing room as if the other performers weren’t even there, but I stood my ground.
“Sorry,” I said. “There’s a lady inside.”
Hermione’s plucked eyebrows arched high and that rosebud mouth curved in a sneer. “There may be a queen, but there is no woman, much less a lady.”
Her dancing boys, ass cheeks now paddled bright red, chuckled and high-fived each other. I drew myself up. “Among queens, Mitzy will always be a lady. Among ladies, you will always be a five-dollar lap dancer with sloppy choreography!”
Hermione’s eyes burned and she flicked her feather duster at me, dislodging a puff of sparkling green dust. “Wait until the end of the night,” she said. “We’ll see who has sloppy choreography.”
The dressing room door fluttered aside. “Pull in your claws, girls,” said Mitzy. She stepped through the doorway, resplendent in rag mops and a blond shag-do. “Hermione, the dressing room is yours.”
Hermione stuck her nose in the air and walked inside. She and Mitzy passed each other like society matrons who had discovered they were both fucking the same pool boy. I fell in beside Mitzy. “Nobly done,” I whispered.
“Did you see her tits?” Mitzy whispered back. “Holy shit, Derby, how am I supposed to compete with those?”
“You’ve got great boobs, too, Mitz.”
“Yes, but mine came in a box and I leave them in a dish rack to dry!”
My attempts to reassure her were interrupted by a curse. “Jesus Christ, those fucking potheads!” snapped Shirley. She dashed onto the stage along with the sound technician. I was suddenly aware that the mellow songs of Jay and Wren had fallen silent. I craned my neck to get a look and saw the folk duo leaning up against each other—stoned into slumber. They barely even stirred as they were manhandled off the stage.
The audience was already heckling the delay. Shirley pointed to
Elsa Shush. “Get out there!”
The spoken word artiste jumped for the stage and the sound technician swiftly cued up her background music. Tinkling chimes and throbbing bongo drums swelled from the speakers.
“I stood on the roof,” Elsa declaimed, “and watch-ed the sun’s setting cast indigo shadows across soulless condos where once . . .” She faltered and cleared her throat. “Where once bushes grew and sisters . . .”
Her voice faltered again and for several long seconds, there was nothing but chimes and bongos. The stage manager looked up with fear in her eyes, but then Elsa’s performance resumed—sort of. It sounded like she was fighting every word that came out of her mouth.
“A lad lay with his beau by the fire,
Then succumbed to his lover’s desire.
He moaned, ‘That’s a sin,
But now that’s in,
Could you shove it a few inches higher?’”
You could have heard a testicle drop—then the audience broke into a mixture of howling laughter and outraged boos. “What the hell?” gasped Shirley, but Elsa was already fleeing the stage, wailing in shame.
My foreboding was back. I might not have appreciated Jay and Wren or Elsa, but they were seasoned performers and to fail so spectacularly felt downright unnatural. “Xabi!” called Shirley desperately. Chimes and bongos were replaced by wailing jazz horns. I took Mitzy’s hand and drew her over to the side of the stage to watch.
Xabi burst out like a panther unchained, flinging off his shirt to reveal a tightly muscled torso. The audience cheered in appreciation and settled down, getting into the performance. The dancer’s loose pants slipped to the ground. Clad in clinging trunks, he leaped in celebration of freedom and sexuality. The audience applauded and I joined in. Whatever had happened to the other performers, nothing was wrong here! Xabi’s hands caressed his body as he moved, cupping his hard ass, tweaking his nipples, straying into his trunks. . . .
Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight: The Derby Cavendish Stories Page 4