Stephen sniffed. “Oh yeah. I’m sure the law will see it that way.”
“Wait, what?” said Luis, looking up from his phone. “Is she pressing charges?”
“I don’t know, honey. I…I haven’t got up the nerve to look at my social media yet. Is it bad?”
Luis screwed up his nose as he considered his reply. “Um…it’s not…good.”
“Oh God.”
“She has, like, minions. Flying monkeys. Brown-nose assholes who do her fucking bidding.”
“Ugh,” said Stephen. “And they’re currently all over my Instagram and calling me fat, right?”
“And psycho,” said Luis. “Fat. Jealous. Psycho. Brick-jaw—”
“—hey,” said Bunny, taking a swing at his head. “Enough.”
Stephen sighed and held up his bandages. “Talk about a brick-jaw. They should see what their queen’s mug did to my knuckles. God, that Draco Malfoy chin is pointy. And hard.” He ran the fingers of his good hand through his hair. “It would serve me right if this put a crimp in my card tricks.”
Hu gave him a reproachful look. “Hey, what did we say about wallowing?”
“Sorry, baby.”
“Look, it’s not all bad,” Hu said, setting down his phone on the bar. “There are also a lot of people on Instagram saying Venus has had this coming forever. And providing helpful examples of other times Venus has been low-key racist. We can use that, if we can find a way to control the narrative.”
“Control the narrative?” said Adam, wondering when he’d stumbled into an episode of The West Wing. Apparently Helena had even more of a geek kink that he’d previously suspected, because she was all goo-goo eyes over Hu.
“Meet my part time social media manager,” Stephen said, winding an arm around Hu’s waist. He nibbled Hu’s ear. “And full time lover.”
Adam and Luis watched in astonishment as Hu – shy, polite, reserved Hu Lin Chen – half-turned and attempted to eat Helena’s face for breakfast. It went on way past the point of awkward, threatening to step over the line into straight up Minnelli/Gest wedding territory. Adam loudly cleared his throat, and the lovebirds reluctantly released one another’s tongues.
“Is there any way we can get our hands on that phone?” Adam said. “The one Venus was talking on when Helena smacked her?”
Hu adjusted his steamed-up glasses. “Uh…possibly. Although why would she record her own phone call?”
“Have you met Venus?” said Adam. “I’m surprised she doesn’t Instagram her bowel movements.”
“She did,” said Stephen. “That time she was in Phuket on that detox retreat, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” That had been fun. One of those Thai detoxes where you ate macrobiotic food, got bitten by sand flies and squirted multiple Americanos past your balloon knot in the interests of ‘cleansing your colon.’ “I can’t believe I forgot that. That half digested blue Crayola she allegedly ate when she was six.”
“Sitting in what can only be described as a poop stained pasta strainer,” said Stephen, with a shudder.
“It was the only filter she ever had, honey,” said Adam. “But Hu has a point. How hard can it be to get some kind of racist dirt on a human being who Instagrams literally everything?”
“Tess was doing stories when it went down,” said Luis, and pressed play. Adam and Hu leaned in to look. Helena watched from between her fingers, but there was nothing to see. Tess had been on the long side of the L-shape that formed the bar, while Venus had been sitting on the short end near the old jukebox and the door to the back room and bathrooms.
“Why did she post that?” asked Adam. “It doesn’t prove anything.”
“Who? Tess? I don’t know. She says she can hear Venus talking, but she must have really good ears or something. I can’t hear it. The audio’s not great.”
“Except for the punch,” said Adam, wincing at the memory. “I heard the part where your fist lands in her face. I’m surprised you didn’t break her fucking jaw.”
“She lost a couple of teeth, I heard,” said Luis.
Stephen covered his mouth with his hand. “Oh my God. I can’t…”
“Hey. Wallowing,” said Hu.
“Hu, I’m sorry, but what am I supposed to do? I’m so ashamed of myself. I know Venus is an asshole, but she’s still a person. I committed violence against another human being. And the worst thing? For a brief moment? I enjoyed it.”
“You were protecting your family,” said Adam.
“Exactly,” said Hu, with a hot flash of a look that said he was into the whole protective boyfriend thing. Adam couldn’t blame him. He still remembered the bittersweet moment when Ryan had come bursting out of the closet by dipping Justin back in a full Scarlett and Rhett smooch. And how jealous he’d been that he hadn’t been the reason Ryan had raised the rainbow flag.
Still, Hu had a point about wallowing. Time to see if nail polish remover worked on spray paint.
“Don’t threaten Venus on Instagram,” Adam told Luis, who was angrily banging away at his phone.
“I wasn’t,” said Luis, who was not most convincing liar in the world.
“You were. I know what angry texting looks like. Keep your shit together, Miss Rose. You’re on probation.”
“So what? I can’t call someone a fucking liar?”
“Rose.”
Rose snarled. “This is bullshit. Can’t drink, can’t smoke, can’t leave the building. Can’t even call some bitch out on Instagram. The only thing left to me is fucking, and I can’t do that, either.”
“Yeah, it’s a hard knock life, honey,” said Adam, pressing a kiss against the top of the kid’s head on his way out the door.
He went downstairs to the old meat locker, where Justin was hoovering beneath the vanity tables. “Hey, you don’t have to do that. I’m not such a diva that I can’t clean my own dressing room.”
Justin switched off the vacuum cleaner. “Yeah, I know. But you were busy with the dog poo.”
“The dog poo. God, there’s no business like show business, is there?”
He didn’t answer. Just looked vaguely sad, which was not like him at all. Maybe it was some kind of post-drag tristesse or something. After all, there was something depressing about seeing your drab boy self in the mirror after you’d seen yourself in drag. Bunny had always thought that the very term ‘queen’ came from the way it could make you feel. Imperial. Beautiful. Untouchable. Some creature from a fantasy, who rode around on dragons and wore diamonds in the bathtub. Going back to being a regular boy was always going to be a comedown.
“Are you okay, baby?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
Justin chewed on the corner of his lower lip for a moment. Then he said something surprising. “Can I have a hug?”
Adam put his arms around Justin, who clung to him like he was a life preserver. Hard body. Skinny hips. His breath was ragged in Adam’s ear, and Adam felt an unexpected rush of lust. Or maybe it was just sympathy, because it was pouring off poor Justin like fumes. Had he ever gone this long without getting fucked before?
“How horny are you right now?” Adam asked.
Justin moaned in his ear. “It’s not even funny any more,” he said, and his hips moved reflexively, pushing his hard little cock against Adam’s thigh.
“Hey, no grinding. You’ve come this far.”
Justin relaxed his grip and sighed, his fingers still in Adam’s hair. “Bunny, please don’t use the word come. Or grinding.”
Adam laughed. “It’s less than a week. You can do this. Think of the money.”
Justin extricated himself with a long sigh. He looked hot and bothered and utterly fuckable, and this time Adam knew the lust was all his own. His blood rushed south at the memory of Justin on his back, feet in the air, mouth open, whining softly with pleasure-pain as Adam penetrated him. Justin loved a big dick, and told him so all the time.
“Are we still on?” Justin said.
&nb
sp; “Threesome? God, yes. Hang on in there, honey, because New Year’s Day is going to be a goddamn sexual Mardi Gras.”
Justin groaned. “Okay, definitely don’t use the words sexual Mardi Gras.”
“Never mind. I’ve got something nice and unsexy that will take your mind off it. Come and help me remove graffiti.”
They wrapped up warm and went up the narrow cellar stairs to the street. The acetone worked wonders and they barely had to scrub, but it left a noticeable clean spot on the window. Adam decided to wash it properly, in case some wit saw it, came by and wrote WASH ME in the dirt.
Justin remained unusually quiet, but eventually it came out. “I don’t think I wanna do that again,” he said.
“Drag?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure it’s…me.”
“Well, you’re a boy’s boy, baby,” said Adam. “It’s not for everyone, even if you did look gorgeous.”
Justin wrung out his squeegee and shook his head. “Yeah, but the bitchiness? Fuck that shit.”
There was no way to minimize that, especially not when you’d just finished wiping FAT GELI BITCH off a window.
“I thought drag wasn’t a contact sport,” he said.
Adam blinked. “Ah. So you have been studying scripture?”
“Yeah, except you guys are about as good at following drag scripture as I am at being a Catholic.”
“I know, honey, but sometimes a racist runs really fast into your clenched fist, and it’s just…unavoidable.” Adam reached for the rinse bucket.
“There’s gonna be blowback, right?”
“Oh, undoubtedly. You don’t smack a drama queen like Venus without some sort of consequences. You know what the really disgraceful part is?”
“What?”
“Part of me is fucking delirious that she had to drop out of her New York gig, because she didn’t deserve it in the first place. I’m glad she’s sitting around in Pittsburgh, with two broken teeth and a packet of frozen peas strapped to her jaw. Does that make me a terrible person? And no, don’t answer, because I know it does. If there is a hell, I’m going there.”
“Shut up,” said Justin. “What she said was fucking racist. It’s gonna come out, Adam. All of it. She’s got a history of doing that shit. People know. And Tess got it on tape.”
“Yeah, from the other end of the bar. You can’t hear a thing. What we really need is a recording of Venus in full-on yellowface, doing the ‘me so horny’ bit from Full Metal Jacket. We need…we need the Grab Them By The Pussy Tape of drag queen racism.”
“And look how well that worked out. Look who’s the president.”
Adam sighed. His breath came out in a cloud. “Pussy Grabber in Chief,” he said. “God, when did reality get so horrible?”
“I think it always was,” said Justin. “Like plagues. War. Like Hu’s aunt and all her stories, about how they had to try and thicken broth with shredded paper—”
“—because Chairman Mao had caused a famine.” Adam looked up at the darkening sky. “I guess you’re right. Jesus, Justin – that’s fucking depressing.”
“Yep.” Justin turned his head. Ryan was coming down the street. “Take my advice. Find someone you love to snuggle at night, and never let them go.”
“Well, this took a dark turn. Are you sure you’re okay, Justin?”
“Hey, Hot Stuff,” said Ryan, as he approached. Justin grunted a response and took the buckets down to the basement.
“What’s up with him?” Ryan asked, handing Adam a much needed hot green tea.
“I don’t know. He’s in an odd mood. Bleak.”
“Bleak? Justin? He doesn’t have a bleak bone in his body.”
“Maybe this awful world finally broke him.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” said Ryan. “If this world can break Justin, what hope do the rest of us have?” He frowned down at the bottle next to the bucket. “Is that nail polish remover? Are you manicuring your windows now?”
Adam laughed and buried his nose in the warm fur of Ryan’s collar. “Acetone,” he said. “Today I learned that it’s great for removing spray paint from glass.”
“Spray paint?”
“Yep. I told you there would be blowback, and there was. One of Venus’s Instaminions went nuts with a spray can. I’d say we were looking for a suspect who can’t fucking spell, but that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”
“What did it say?”
“Fat jelly bitch. Jelly spelled G-E-L-I.”
Ryan winced. Adam had guessed that part was going to be rough on his inner schoolmarm. “How do you even get it that wrong?” Ryan said. “Is it some kind of GIF/JIF situation?”
“Oh, who knows. Let’s get out of the cold.”
“You know she emailed me?” said Ryan, as they went in through the side entrance. He said it like someone who had spent half the morning trying to figure out how to drop that particular bombshell, and had finally arrived at ‘just casually throw it out there.’ It didn’t work.
“Venus?”
“Mmhm. Not happy about me firing her as a client.”
Adam peeled off his rubber gloves and stuffed his hands under his armpits to warm them. “So you fired her?”
“Of course I fucking fired her. She made racist jokes about a friend of mine.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Ryan turned defensive. “What? Now what did I do?”
“So that’s your line in the sand, is it? Racism?”
“Yes. I think it’s a pretty good line, as lines go.”
“Right. So she can call your boyfriend a cunt all over town, but you’re not actually going to fire her unless she steps up and spray paints KAUF NICHT BEI JUDEN on the window of my bar?”
Ryan blew out a long breath. “Addy, we’ve been through this. I was using her. Now I’m not, because if you use racists you get some of their stank on you. Why are you being like this?”
Adam sighed and crossed the room to hug him. “Ugh. Ignore me. Maybe I’m a little bit…jelly.” He snuggled in to Ryan’s broad chest. “Helena’s protective boyfriend act is ringing Hu’s bells so hard it’s like Notre Dame in there. Rose said she had to wear earplugs last night.”
“Oh, I see,” said Ryan, with a soft, rumbly laugh. “So it’s protection you want? Is green tea and gossip not enough for you, Miss High Maintenance?”
“No, it’s perfect, and I adore you.” Adam kissed him. “And there’s gossip? Give.”
“The email. She insists I have her phone.”
“Do you?”
“Nope,” said Ryan.
“Aw.”
“No, but this is interesting. It means she’s missing one.”
“One? How many does she have?”
“A few. She has one for her Instagram, another for Twitter, another for Facebook…”
Adam held up a hand. “Okay, that sounds like some kind of disorder.”
“Maybe it is. I don’t know. All I know is she says she needs separate phones for separate social media apps because otherwise she gets overwhelmed by the sheer size of her own social media fame and has to go lie down with a ice pack on her forehead.”
Adam took a careful swallow of his tea. “Do you ever get the feeling,” he said. “That there’s just not enough vomit in the universe?”
*
Justin usually looked forward to admiring drag queen pictures, but not so much this time. When Sheila showed up that afternoon he was tempted to scuttle off down into the cellar and lurk between the kegs, like some kind of heavily traumatized frat boy.
“Thanks for blowing up my spot, bitches,” said Sheila. “All anyone’s talking about is the face punching incident, so thanks for that, Helena.”
Helena cringed. “Honey, I am so sorry.”
Sheila shook his head. “Nah. I’m joking. She was pressing everyone’s buttons all day. Do you know she had the nerve to try and school me on my own ethnicity?”
“She did what?” said Bunny.
“Apparently I’m not allo
wed to call myself Asian,” said Sheila. “Although the last I heard, India was part of Asia. I mean, fuck it, I’m actually from Guildford, but tell that to Miss Piss. I identify as a British-Asian, and I don’t give a shit if it confuses Americans. Let’s face it, most of you exist in a permanent state of confusion anyway. No offence.”
Bunny smothered a grin. “And how goes the Brexit, dear?”
Sheila sighed. “Yeah, almost as well as the Trump presidency. Let’s face it – our countries should be fitted for a pair of mother/daughter dunce caps right now. Anyway, where’s Rose?”
“Here,” said Rose, coming out of the bathroom. The pigtails had made a return, and she had glittery pink lips and sharp-tailed eyebrows. “Ooh, are those the photos?”
“They are. Gather round, kittens.”
There wasn’t really room at the bar, which suited Justin fine. Instead he busied himself with filling the fridge, and listened to them talk.
“Okay…we have Bunny,” said Sheila.
“Oh my God. That’s terrifying.”
“Tim Burton does Mommie Dearest. I love it. Love those contact lenses.”
“You know Venus read me for them? Oh yeah – she were ‘knock-off Sharon Needles.’”
“That’s rich. So much for her fake Yinzer pride thing. She’s all ‘Steelers rule!’ on one hand and then she’s dragging the Queen of Pittsburgh.”
Rose laughed. “Helena, look at your ass.”
Justin stirred. His poor, leashed libido wasn’t going to let him miss out on that ass. He’d been having fever dreams about Helena’s custom panties, a slither of translucent fabric that revealed a tantalizing glimpse of crack, before giving way to hand-stitched ruffles of pale pink organza. Helena lay face down on the fainting couch in the throes of a serious nap. Her pink glossed mouth was open in a way that suggested she was about her start drooling, her cheek mashed against a satin pillow. There was another pillow under her hips, so that her round frilly ass stuck up in the air, equal parts hot and hilarious.
“Did I ever tell you how sexy you are lately?” said Bunny.
Helena giggled. “Bunny, I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“You know what I mean. Something happened with you. I’m not sure when, but sometime over the summer you stopped worrying about looking pretty all the time and allowed yourself to be stupid. And playful.”
Seven Deadly Queens (The FuBar Book 3) Page 17