Chapter 3
Patrick followed Audra from the foyer of the Grand Hotel onto the street, where their driver Mo waited. The Grand was a beautiful place to stay at first, but even after a couple of days, it was hard not to feel like zoo animals with very enriched enclosures. Sometimes you just had to give in to the call of the wild.
As they climbed into the backseat, Mo asked, “Where to?”
Patrick was slamming the door behind him when from outside, they heard a faint “Hold up!”
He rolled down the window to find Hector on the sidewalk outside the hotel. It was maybe the first time he’d ever seen him wearing something other than fitted gym gear; the buttons of a crisp Ralph Lauren shirt strained to conceal his sculpted chest.
“I heard y’all were going out,” Hector said.
“Where did you hear that, exactly?” Audra asked, her eyes narrowing. Patrick felt a vicarious chill as her gaze passed him on its way to Hector. I bet even her teachers in high school were terrified of her, he thought.
“My bad!” Corey gamboled into view. “So I may have told Hector that we were going dancing.”
“Who told you?” Audra demanded. The studio was able to keep every single thing that happened on a Wonderverse set secret from the rest of the world, but inside the bubble, it was a different matter entirely. Gossip traveled faster than light when you had nothing else to do all day.
“And I figured,” Hector said to Patrick, “that if you’re hitting the town, risking being late for tomorrow’s workout—”
“Don’t forget the macros,” Corey interjected.
“Not to mention throwing off your macros and intermittent fasting,” Hector continued, “then I should probably come along to make sure you don’t irreparably undo all of that progress we’ve made on Captain Kismet’s physique.”
Patrick felt a pang of guilt. His body, he had to remember, didn’t exactly belong to him. At least, not for as long as they were filming. The shooting schedule, not to mention both Hector and Corey’s livelihoods, depended on his ability to stay disciplined and consistent.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I should go back upstairs.” He’d been Mr. Sensible for the last six months of training. What was one more night? A dozen more nights?
“No fucking way,” Audra barked, at the same time that Hector said, more measuredly, “Well, there’s no need to be too restrictive…”
He stared intently at Patrick, as if even glancing at Audra would turn him to stone, and it clicked. The poor man, Patrick realized, was down bad.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Audra huffed. “If you guys wanted to come along, all you had to do was ask.” Patrick opened the door, and Hector and Corey piled into the SUV.
“And you don’t have to worry,” Patrick added. “I’m not planning on drinking tonight.”
“Loser,” Audra remarked, then threw her head back and crowed like a bird, prompting much whooping and woo-hooing from her compatriots in the backseat, until Mo asked them again for their destination, and they realized they had no idea where to go.
“Downtown?” Corey ventured.
“Dancing,” Audra asserted. “Take us to the dancing.”
“You got it,” said Mo, and they were on their way. Just ten minutes later—Patrick would never get over what passed for “traffic” in this town!—they pulled up somewhere called Broad Street.
“I don’t believe it,” Audra said, pointing out the window at the glittering signage of Coyote Ugly. “That was my favorite movie as a kid. We have got to go in.”
“I’m not so sure,” Patrick countered, reaching over and adjusting Audra’s head slightly, so that she was now looking at the two women attempting to scalp each other on the pavement outside.
“OK, fine.” Audra huffed as Mo performed a U-turn. “What about that place?” They all looked to the right, where, through the open doors of Popworld, Robyn demanded somebody show her love. Patrick was about to concede when a woman was forcibly ejected from the very same doors by a bouncer, vomit visible on her shirt.
“It’s eight thirty,” Corey said in something akin to wonder.
“This city is a horror show,” Audra finally agreed. “Excuse me, sir? Is there anywhere else you could take us? You know, that’s less…this?”
“One moment,” Mo said, and with patience that bordered on the saintly, he parked in a lay-by and took out his phone. Several minutes later, after consulting with his younger cousin over WhatsApp, he restarted the engine and they were on their way again.
“This is grody as shit,” Audra muttered, taking in the chipped paint of the building that Mo deposited them outside. “The Village Inn? It’s giving Wicker Man.” The uncertainty on her face looked like it might teeter over into outright disgust, but then the unmistakable opening melody of “We Found Love” issued like a clarion call from inside.
“Rihanna!” Audra squealed, and before Patrick could protest, she had grabbed his hand and started pulling him into the bar after her. “It’s a sign,” she said. “Let’s go, boys.”
As he crossed the threshold, Patrick registered the rainbow flag over the door, by which time it was too late to object. Neither Hector nor Corey seemed to have a problem being in a gay bar, and Audra had already taken to their new environs with zest.
“Gays love me,” she informed them. “Can you blame them?”
Patrick could not claim the same ease, and so while Audra sauntered to the front of the line at the bar, he stuck to the wall, practically hiding behind Corey and Hector to avoid anyone recognizing him. It didn’t take long for him to see the flaw in his strategy: People kept looking over anyway because while Corey and Hector weren’t technically famous, being tall, muscular, and conventionally handsome in a gay bar was tantamount to the same thing.
Maybe he was just being paranoid. The simple act of being physically inside a gay bar didn’t mean anything. He was here with Audra and Hector and Corey, after all. He was, arguably, playing wingman to his trainer, whose crush on the actress had become painfully obvious. And his companions seemed to be having a great time, swigging beers, not bothered at all by what their presence here might mean. In fact, Audra seemed to be very much enjoying the attention she was getting from a group of young men who were “just obsessed” with her last film, in which she had played an exotic dancer who vows to solve the murder of her best friend while battling an opioid addiction.
“You were phenomenal,” one of them told her.
“Iconic,” said another.
“So raw and real,” added their friend.
Audra grinned. “My tits looked insane, right?”
“Oh my god, so good!” the first replied. “Did you—”
“I’m bored!” Audra interrupted. “Let’s dance!” And like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, she led the three men over to the cramped dance floor.
Corey waggled his empty beer bottle. “Another?”
“I’ll take another water,” replied Patrick.
“Careful now,” said Corey. “You wouldn’t want to accidentally enjoy yourself.”
“You know what? I’ll take a sparkling water.”
“You’re crazy,” said Hector, throwing one arm around Patrick’s shoulder. “Corey, mine’s a tequila soda.”
“Ah, screw it,” said Patrick. “I’ll have a beer.”
Corey pumped his fist in the air, as if Patrick’s acquiescence to hops was a victory for all Australia, and lumbered toward the bar. Before Patrick knew it, one beer turned to two, and then a third, and it was occurring to him just how long it had been since he’d allowed himself to let loose when Audra returned, without her new companions, and pulled in all three of them with her back toward the dance floor, singing along word-perfectly to Dua Lipa.
“How do you know all the words?” Patrick asked, marveling.
Audra looked at him, stunned. “How do you not?”
Patrick was not intimately familiar with the song currently playing. He didn’t even think he liked the song. But god, to be three beers deep with your closest friends! Or, at least, the closest things you had to friends when you spent your life traveling from set to set.
“I love you guys!” he yelled. Audra laughed, and replied, “Of course you do, you precious thing,” while Corey nearly crushed him in a headlock. “We should do this every night,” Patrick said, at the same time as Hector bellowed: “Shots!”
Some indeterminate time later, the music stopped. All four of them began to protest—surely it was too early for this place to be closing?—until it became clear the dance floor was getting more crowded, not less. Patrick followed the direction of everyone else’s gaze as a spotlight fell on the raised area that Audra’s twinks had been using as a podium just moments before, and which he now realized was a stage.
“Theydies and gentlethems,” uttered a voice over the sound system, “please welcome to the stage your hostess for the night, the beast from the East, she of the gaysian persuasion, the wanker from Sri Lanka, Birmingham’s very own messy Desi…Tamil Nitrate!”
A vision in red and gold took to the stage, spinning and waving so enthusiastically that it took Patrick a moment to notice her full, lush dark beard.
“Yes!” Audra squealed next to him. “Fucking yes! I love drag queens!”
“And we love you right back,” the queen responded via her mic, pointing in Audra’s direction. “Hello, lovely lushes of the Village, my name is Tamil Nitrate, but you can call me Tammy. How are we all doing tonight?” When met with assorted shrieks and hoots in response, Tammy nodded her approval. She spoke with the same voice that’d come through the speakers a moment ago, and Patrick found it somehow all the more charming that Tammy had been announcing herself.
“Now,” she said, “we have got a fantastic show for you tonight, and some amazing queens lined up. But before we begin…I have a little tradition that I like to start each show with.”
She patted herself down in an exaggeratedly lewd manner, eventually retrieving a tiny bottle from her hairy cleavage. “It’s poppers o’clock!” she proclaimed, waving the vial triumphantly in the air.
“Poppers o’clock!” chanted the crowd, clearly composed of regulars. “Poppers o’clock! Poppers o’clock!”
“What are poppers?” asked Hector. Patrick didn’t dare look him in the eye.
“You all know the drill by now,” Tammy continued. “I’m in need of a strapping young volunteer!”
Patrick felt rather than saw the audience’s eyes all turn on him, Hector, and Corey.
“We’re strapping,” Corey beamed, reveling in the attention and—Jesus, had Patrick had too much to drink or did Corey just make his pecs dance under his shirt?
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…” the queen sang, pointing at each of the men in turn. “Catch a himbo by his toe…Once he comes, let him go, eeny, meeny, miny…moe!” Her smoky stare settled on Patrick and turned hungry.
“Yes, you.” She grinned. “Come on up!”
“Oh my god,” said Audra. “I am so jealous.”
“I think she likes you,” Hector snickered in his ear.
“I’m waiting!” The queen tapped an imaginary watch.
“Oh, just do it,” said Audra, pushing him forward. “I dare you!”
After a moment’s hesitation, Patrick moved through the crowd and stepped up onto the stage to join the queen, who was holding the mic out to him.
“Um,” he said. “Hi.”
“Hmm.” She looked him up and down. “I think I prefer when it doesn’t speak.” A murmur of laughter drifted up from the crowd.
“Wait a minute,” the queen said, examining him further. “Hold the bloody phone just one second.”
Here it comes, Patrick thought, and he adopted the aw-gee-shucks smile that he kept in his back pocket at all times, like a condom or an EpiPen.
“You’re him! Off of those films!”
“Yeah,” he said, turning his smile toward the audience, who were now beginning to coo in recognition.
“Well I never.” Tammy leaned forward, as if she had been physically winded by this new knowledge. She jolted upright a second later, and Patrick could see the devil in her eyes. “You know, folks,” she said, “I don’t think we’ve ever had a celebrity join us for poppers o’clock. Unless you count Joe Lycett, and I don’t, because he’s always bloody in here.”
“I’m happy to be here,” said Patrick, uncertainly. And there was the devil again.
“I’m glad to hear you say that.” Tammy sidled closer, unscrewing the bottle as she did so. “Here we go then, just like jumping in a pool. Deeeep breath!” She closed a finger over one of his nostrils and placed the bottle under the other. And Patrick didn’t know if it was the disorienting lights in his face, or the beers, or the fact that tonight was the most fun he’d had in weeks, but for a single second he forgot about every single rule that went into maintaining his perfectly crafted image and breathed in.
“Wahey!” Tammy cheered, and the crowd cheered with her. “He’s off the deep end, boys and girls! Now watch as I dive in!” She sniffed the bottle with practiced ease, and as the music started again, the entire club began to swim.
“You’re a good sport,” Tammy whispered in his ear, holding his hand so he could step back down off the stage.
“I am?” Patrick giggled as his cheeks flushed, and a half-remembered giddiness rushed in. “I am!”
“Hey, buddy.” He felt Corey take him by the arm. “I think it’s time to go.” Patrick looked around and saw Hector folded protectively around Audra while more people surged onto the tiny dancing area, shouting her name. Shouting his name. Shit, Patrick thought, his mind clearing a little. This was what he’d been worried would happen when they came out tonight. Well, not specifically this—he hadn’t exactly predicted getting just lit enough to do poppers onstage like an absolute idiot (Simone was going to kill him).
“Hey, man,” Corey yelped after an overenthusiastic stranger cupped his bottom with both hands. “Listen, I’m an ally, but that is not cool.”
“All right, that’s enough,” came a new voice from somewhere above Patrick’s right shoulder. He turned and looked up into a pair of dazzling green eyes, winged with black eyeliner and framed by a red wig.
“Come this way,” the queen told Patrick, sweeping the others along with a wave of her arm. She led them through the chaos to the DJ booth at the side of the stage, and then through a door behind it. Once they were all ensconced in the tiny passageway, she closed the door before opening another one leading out onto the side street behind the bar.
Patrick staggered as he departed the venue, his warm face tingling in the cool night air.
“What’s in poppers again?” he asked, eyes closed, savoring the breeze.
“They’re a muscle relaxant, bab,” their rescuer said. “And you’re not short in that regard, but I reckon you’ll be fine in a minute.”
Mo’s SUV squeezed into the alleyway from around the corner, presumably summoned by one of the others, and Patrick felt the tension between his shoulders detract a little. He took a few deep, greedy lungfuls of air, then said, “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Oh, it’s no bother. And besides, I think your friend probably needs to go home.” The queen nodded toward Audra, who was doing a clumsy two-step on the pavement, clutching her purse in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. “I don’t even know where she got that,” she added. “The nearest pizza place is all the way up the street.”
“I’m not done dancing,” Audra protested around a mouthful of cheese. “Let’s go back inside!”
“You can go back inside,” the queen said, “if you can tell me where your shoes are right now.”
Audra looked down at her bare feet, took another bite of pizza, and, with a shrug of defeat, allowed Hector to direct her toward the car.
“Thank you,” Patrick said, turning back to his unlikely savior.
“All in a night’s work for your friendly neighborhood drag queen,” she said, dipping into some curious mix of bow and curtsy.
“I’m sorry I won’t get to see you perform.”
The queen laughed. “You ain’t missing much, love!”
“Well. Thanks anyway.” Patrick gave a corny wave and headed toward the car. At the last moment, he turned back and asked: “What’s your name?”
“Grace.” She put a hand on her hip and drew herself up to her not-inconsiderable full height. “Grace Anatomy.”
Patrick grinned. “That is superb.”
“I know,” she said. “Now fly, my pretties! Fly!”