“Hey,” said Justin.
Luis looked up. “Hey. What’s up?”
Justin perched on the arm of the couch. “Okay,” he said. “So, I thought I should let you know…” He couldn’t help teasing. Drawing it out. There was something about Luis that made Justin want to savor anything that made him happy.
“Know what? That sounds serious.”
“It is,” said Justin. “Extremely heavy shit. And it’s something only you would understand.”
Luis sat up, his back against the chair. “Oh my God,” he said. “Definitive proof that Elvis was taken by aliens?”
“No, although that would be rad.”
“It would. Totally.”
“What it is,” said Justin. “Is that I’ve kind of said…yes to the dress, if you catch my meaning.”
“Lust?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna get in drag.”
Luis jumped up, yanking his ankle bracelet from the socket. “It’s okay,” he said, when he saw Justin looking. “I can finish up in a minute. It was almost a full charge anyway.” He snatched up the tape measure and pounced, so thrilled to be put to work that Justin knew he’d made the right decision. “Oh my God, this is going to be amazing. I’m thinking Jean Harlow. Low back, cowl neck. Cleavage and ass, which you’re going to have to pad. No offence, but you have a serious case of Caucasian booty.”
“I know. It’s flat. Everyone says so.”
“Well, we can’t all be blessed with donk like Helena,” said Luis, scribbling down Justin’s waist measurement. “How’d a white chick from Montana end up with an ass like that?”
“I don’t know. She put on some weight, I guess.”
“It looks good. Maybe she’s one of those people who gets fatter when they’re happy and skinny when they’re miserable. I don’t. Whenever I was sad I’d go round to my grandmother’s house and eat milanesas. You ever have that? It’s like a schnitzel, I guess. Or chicken fried steak. You take the meat and pound it flat, then bread it, fry it and sometimes you put a fried egg on top, although someone once told me that wasn’t a Mexican thing, more South American. Guess Abuela must have got it from her mom, who was from Argentina, by way of Italy. Did you know I’m part Italian? Arms out – that’s it. Am I talking too much?”
“Nah. You’re cool.”
“I can’t help it. I’m excited. I get to do my thing.”
Justin nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I get that. You gotta do your thing, right? I gotta mix drinks, Helena’s gotta do card tricks, Bunny’s gotta tell poop jokes and you…”
“Gotta sew,” said Luis, rolling up the tape measure.
“Yeah. Like, that’s your thing, right?”
Luis grinned. His teeth were white, the canines too sharp for perfection. “It was the coolest thing in the world to me,” he said. “Watching my abuela cut out those pieces for a gown – prom dresses, quinceanera gowns. Those flat pieces of fabric looked like nothing, but then she’d make them fit together to make something three-dimensional. And beautiful. Something that would make you look like a princess. You know that scene from Sleeping Beauty when the fairies try to make a birthday cake and a dress for Briar Rose? And they fuck it up so bad they reach for their wands?”
Justin nodded. “Yeah. Before they get into whether it should be pink or blue?”
“Yes!”
“And the dress just sews itself in midair?”
“That’s it,” said Luis, eyes shining. “That’s how magical it was to me. All I ever wanted was to learn how to sew.”
“And she taught you?”
The light in Luis’s eyes turned watery. “Yeah.” Poor kid. He’d barely had time to put his grandmother in the ground before getting hauled off to prison.
“You miss her?”
“Every day.”
“I’m sorry,” said Justin. “It’s rough, I know. My nana’s been going through some shit lately and I can’t fucking imagine…” He screwed up his nose. He didn’t like to say the word out loud. It sounded like bad luck. “Cancer.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Bladder,” he said. “It’s not as bad as some. Like, your bladder is basically a bag, and it stretches again over time. So you can cut bits out and stitch it back together, up to a point, I guess. She’s got one of those piss bags at the moment, but hey, at least they think they got it out. And doesn’t need chemo, which is the main thing.”
“Sure.”
“She said she’d rather die than do chemo, which I can get, even if I don’t like it. She’s eighty-two, so…”
“Yeah. I think I’d check out rather than go through that shitshow at that age,” said Luis. “I’ve heard it’s worse than the fucking cancer.”
“It is. My Mom had it about five years back. Breast cancer.”
“Oh. Is she…?”
“No, she’s still around. Officially in remission.” Justin smiled. “Kicked its fuckin’ ass. Pretty much crawled to Heinz Field because she wasn’t gonna let chemotherapy keep her from a Steelers game. They hadn’t even had time to adjust her anti-puke meds yet, but she loaded up on vomit bags and went just the same.”
“That’s awesome.”
“Yeah,” said Justin. “She sideeyes the drag thing a bit, though. Like, she knows I’m gay and she’s okay with that, but she’s still kinda weird about the whole ‘dressing up as women’ thing.”
“I get it. You think she’d be pissed if you got in drag?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’d be proud.”
Luis shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, mine’s not exactly pumped about me doing drag either. Not that she’s in a position to object, because she’s doing fifteen years for heroin possession, so…” He looked down at the ankle monitor and sighed. “I’d better finish charging this fucker. It’s always running out. I could swear the battery’s shot.”
“Maybe. Or it’s on purpose. Another way to keep you in one place.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me,” said Luis, plugging back in. “Still, there are worse places to be than here, right?”
8
There was no time to lose. There were less than three days to Christmas and Justin needed to be measured, fitted and gowned by the twenty-sixth. To say nothing of make-up design and wigs. If Stephen hadn’t known any better, he’d have sworn Venus was trolling the lot of them.
“I wonder what it’s like,” said Adam, while they all sat sewing away like something from a sweatshop. “To be organized and have your shit together.”
“Yeah, I don’t think there’s any danger of that happening to you, hon,” said Stephen.
“No, I know that. I’m just curious as to what that must feel like. You know, purely as an experience I’ve never had.” Adam carefully snipped the thread he was using. He was sewing dozens of little silver cord scrolls to a long sleeved top, which – matched with a full length chiffon skirt – added up to a pretty good red and black version of the gown from Mommie Dearest, from the scene where Joanie gets shitcanned from MGM and goes postal on the garden with an ax.
“I think by now Ryan was expecting me to have done my shopping and for us to be drinking eggnog in matching Christmas sweaters under the tree. All that happy, Bing Crosby, gentile horseshit,” he said. “But I have a feeling I’m letting him down, because I’m a Jew in the middle of a drag emergency. Like, what do you even serve for Christmas dinner?”
Luis, who was working on the front of Justin’s gown, looked up. “You don’t do Christmas dinner?”
“No. We get Chinese food and watch a bad movie.”
“Why do Jewish people eat Chinese food on Christmas?” asked Luis. “Oh, wait – can I ask that? Is that cool?”
“It’s cool,” said Adam. “And it’s because they’re open. I think that’s how it started. We eat Chinese food because they’re open, and watch bad movies because Christmas movies are terrible.”
“They are not,” said Stephen.
“They fucking a
re, Helena. Name me one Christmas movie that doesn’t suck. And It’s A Wonderful Life doesn’t count, because you know how I feel about Bedford fucking Falls.”
“The Nightmare Before Christmas,” said Luis.
Stephen grinned. “Yes. Get down with your baby goth self, Miss Rose. That is a good one. See, Bunny?”
“Meh.”
“Muppet Christmas Carol,” said Stephen. “You’re dead inside if you don’t love the Muppet Christmas Carol.”
“Die Hard,” said a voice behind him. He looked up. Hu was standing behind the couch.
“I always forget that’s a Christmas movie,” said Stephen, tilting his head back. “Where did you come from?”
“Bedroom.”
“Watch him,” said Adam, waving the scissors at Hu. “He’s learning your ways. He’ll be popping up out of nowhere when you least expect it.”
“Hu, do you eat Chinese food at Christmas?” asked Luis.
“Luis, stop. You can’t ask that.”
Hu laughed. “It’s fine. Actually my dad loves American Christmas food. We always have a glazed ham and a gingerbread house. Buckets of eggnog. Even that inexplicable cheese thing where you smush a bunch of cheese together with mayonnaise and then refrigerate it until it forms a sort of boulder. And then you try and shove crackers into it, and break them.”
“Cheese ball,” said Stephen. “The trick is to take it out and let it sit at room temperature for an hour first.”
Adam giggled. “Spoken like a true Midwesterner.”
“Oh, fuck you, Miss New York. There’s no mid about Montana. It’s the west.”
“It’s still full of cows.”
Stephen tried to think of a retort and couldn’t. “Okay, you’ve got me on that one.”
“Aha,” said Adam. “So you do know how to make a cheese ball?”
“Never saw the appeal myself,” said Hu, leaning on his elbows on the back of the couch. “Personally I prefer something a little more spicy.”
“Yeah, because you have like, two taste buds: hot and hotter.”
He laughed again and peered down at Stephen. “Okay, that is officially the whitest thing I have ever heard you say.”
“Shut up. On our first date I got chili burn from kissing you.”
Hu leaned down and kissed Stephen. “You love it.”
“I do.” His cheek was warm against Stephen’s hand. “My hot little pepper.” His eyes looked tired: he’d been working on his laptop in the bedroom, but tonight there was no question that he’d be the one who got to knock off early. There was still so much work to do. Once he had this neckline finished and handed off to Luis there was a nightgown to finish trimming, and a sleep mask to customize.
“Maybe we should just order Chinese food,” said Adam.
Stephen lowered his head, his hand still on Hu’s neck. “What? Now? With your heartburn?”
“No, dope. For Christmas dinner. We could have a big fuck-off Chinese banquet down in the bar. Get your aunt round here, too, Hu.”
“She would love that,” said Hu. “Although I can’t guarantee she won’t tell you really dark, fucked up stories about the Cultural Revolution.”
“Yeah, she does that,” said Stephen. “It’s fascinating, but like he says…dark.”
Adam shook his head. “Dark is fine. It’s the relentless candy cane cheerfulness of Christmas that I have a problem with. But this’ll be great – we two cultures for the price of one.”
“Um, what do the Christians get?” said Luis.
“Christmas, bitch!” said Adam. “It’s your fucking holiday. Holy shit. This is why nobody likes you.”
Luis glowered. “Plenty of people like us,” he said, appealing to Stephen. “Right?”
“Oh, don’t look at me. I’m an atheist.”
Luis snorted. “Godless Protestants.”
Adam gave an evil laugh. “Ah, religion. Even the people who agree on which God they’re worshipping can’t stop beating the shit out of each other.”
“Well, they’re doing it wrong,” said Luis.
Stephen threw up his hands in surrender. “I’m not doing it at all.”
“You see,” said Hu. “This is why you should never discuss religion or politics.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Oh, Hu. That’s just something boring people say.”
“Or people who want to avoid open warfare at the dinner table.”
“Like I said, boring people.”
“War is not fun,” said Hu. “Are you going method with this Wrath thing or something?”
“Going?” said Stephen.
Bunny cackled and waved the scissors again, this time in Stephen’s direction. “This bitch. Shadier than a goddamn rainforest.”
Hu bent down and stole another kiss. “I gotta get back to work,” he said. “You want anything from the kitchen?”
“Nah. I’m good, thanks.”
Stephen watched him go, drinking in every detail of him – the sharp angles of his shoulders under his maroon sweater, his perfect bare feet, the way his black hair – no matter how he had it cut – always grew into a point at the nape of his neck.
“Helena?”
“Hmm?”
“What did you used to do for Christmas?” asked Luis.
“Oh,” said Stephen, returning his attention to his sewing. “The usual. Gifts. Gluttony. Formaldehyde. We always had to order extra embalming fluid, on account of the rush.”
“The rush?” said Adam, his face a sudden study in ‘what the fuck?’
“Yeah. I don’t know what it is, but people die a lot over the holidays. If they’re old or terminal then they seem to hang on for that one last Christmas and then…pfft. Turn their toes up right after. That period between Christmas and New Year – there were always so many extra bodies. Really weird.” Neither Adam nor Luis looked remotely comfortable talking about this, so Stephen quickly changed the subject. “What about you? What did you used to do for Christmas?”
Luis smiled. “Oh, just about anything I could get my hands on. Coke, weed, speed…”
Bunny deployed an industrial strength sideeye. “Slow your roll, Miss Rose. That’s how you ended up electronically tagged in the first place, remember?”
Rose giggled. “I’m kidding,” she said, and settled deeper into the armchair, feet hanging over the arm. The LED light from the tag winked through the loose knit of a sock. “I was always on my best behavior at Christmas. My Abuelita…” There was a pause, barely perceptible. One of those tiny stop motion flashes that came whenever someone was papering over a crack in the world. “She had the most beautiful crib. Every Christmas I used to look forward to her taking it out of the packaging and setting it all up. There was a silver star above the stable roof. And all the figures were hand painted. They’d come from Spain, she said.” Justin slipped into the room, but Rose didn’t turn to look. She was elsewhere, lost in the memory. “The kings all had real gold on their crowns and the edges of their robes, and the Virgin was so beautiful. I remember Abuelita explaining the colors of her robes to me – white for purity, red for strength and blue because it was the color of grace, and royalty, because she was the Queen of Heaven. And there was the tiniest baby Jesus, barely an inch long, but so perfectly made. A little work of art. I remember whenever I watched her set him down in the manger – between finger and thumb, so careful – I used to get this feeling, this fizz, like excitement, because I knew that meant Christmas was nearly here.” This time the pause lingered, and Rose’s eyes shone.
“Oh, baby,” said Bunny, reaching out.
“I’m okay,” said Rose, fanning tears. “I just wish I could get to church. For her. I’m not really into it all that much, but I know she’d want me to light a candle.”
“You remember her. And that’s what matters.”
Rose swallowed and sniffed. “Yeah. Fuck, I said I wouldn’t cry.” She handed over the red satin. “Here. Take this, before I get water stains on it.”
Bunny passed the dress back
to Helena, who – spotting an opportunity for a quick fitting – beckoned to Justin.
He frowned, but stood still as Helena advanced on him with the back and front pieces of the gown. It was all about getting the drape of the neckline just right, and Helena wanted to check that back and front were matching up at the shoulder seams.
“What are you doing?” said Justin, when the pins came out.
“Hold still.”
“Are you going to stick that in me?”
Adam sniggered. “And how many times have you uttered those exact words in your life, Justin?”
“Hold still,” said Helena, and pinned the shoulders into place. “What do you think? How’s it hanging at the front?”
“Impossible to tell,” said Bunny. “He’s got no tits.”
“Point.” Helena picked up a couple of apples from the fruit bowl and held them over Justin’s nipples, under the front of the dress. He had the same expression as a dog when you make it wear clothes for photographs.
“Remind me,” he said. “Why did I say I would do this?”
“Because you’re gorgeous,” said Bunny. “Pinch the outside edge of that seam a little, Helena. That’s it, that’s perfect.”
“Do you think the neck needs to come down?”
“Uh uh,” said Rose. “That drape is gonna look sick. Turn around. Let me see the back…oh yeah. That’s exactly how I pictured it in my head.”
“I need to do your nails at some point,” Helena told Justin, unpinning the pieces. There wasn’t much to work with: Justin was a nail biter. “You’re going to need acrylics.”
“False ones?” he said, with a flash of alarm.
“Will you relax? It’s just a manicure. It’s not a threat to your masculinity.”
“Do I have to?”
Bunny groaned. “For God’s sake, Justin. This is drag scripture.”
“If you’re not wearing nails, you’re not doing drag,” said Rose, who knew her catechism.
“Okay, but will they come off afterwards?”
“Yes,” said Helena, inspecting the goods. Awful cuticles, but at least his nail beds were nice and deep. “I can soak them off the same day. You’ve got really delicate little hands for a boy, actually.”
Seven Deadly Queens (The FuBar Book 3) Page 11