Chapter 36
DRAGMAIDS
Declan
“Oh my goddess, you really brought her!” My brother’s in full drag makeup, hot pink wig poofed higher than heaven, and a white slip, and he’s ushering us backstage to the dressing room half an hour before the show.
He bypasses me to hug Ginny to his breastplate, his normal voice replaced by his drag voice, already leaning into his Cherry Slapstick drag persona.
“I thought he was tormenting me the way those dumb jocks love to do. Look at you! Your hair is fire, darling. And that dress brings out your personality so well.”
Ginny changed into the blue-and-green dress that highlights her eyes during the ten minutes that we were back at the winery and has her hair pulled up in a messy bun now. And her stomach did half of the talking for her once we rolled into the city.
The woman’s hungry.
“My hair?” Ginny says while I head to the takeout containers waiting for us on a side table in the dressing room. “Look at your hair.”
“Ugh, she’s misbehaving so badly.” Zander rolls his eyes up toward his hairline. “Aren’t you, Fuchsia Fallenout?”
“I’m not the problem, you are,” the wig replies with moving lips and all.
Ginny retreats with a gasp.
“Isn’t she marvelous?” Zander says, patting his wig. “She just learned to talk last week.”
“I forgot you could do that.” Ginny’s hand is still over her heart, and she’s gulping air like a fish out of water.
Zander hooks a thumb in my direction. “Goddess knows you couldn’t trust this guy to remind you either. He’s such a dude.”
“Not all of us can be divas,” I say while I pile chicken strips and fries onto a plate for Ginny.
Oatmeal walnut chocolate chip cookies might be her favorite comfort food, but she’s a sucker for chicken strips and fries after she’s been sick.
“And thank fuck for that,” Zander agrees. “I couldn’t handle you if you were a diva.”
I pass the plate to Ginny, whose eyes go a little shiny before she smiles brilliantly at me, and then I finally get a hug from my brother as well.
A kiss on the cheek too. “It’s good to see you, you oaf,” Zander says.
I clap him on the back. “Good to see you too, you drama queen.”
He grins, then turns his attention half to Ginny, half to doing touchups on his makeup.
“Tell me everything,” he says to Ginny. “How’s life? How’s your love life? Your boobs are fabulous. Definitely don’t let any puckboys touch them unless they earn it. And what’s this about a glittering hairball and a stowaway cat?”
“My boobs are unblemished since the last time I saw you,” Ginny replies. “Life is good. My love life is entirely too much to put on you before a show. I’ll email you about the cat when I’m emotionally ready. Is Fuchsia Fallenout your first talking wig?”
“Second, darling. My poor Ruby Regina had a run-in with a robot vacuum and had to be put down. I cried for weeks after her funeral.”
“Can confirm,” I say.
“Confirm but not feel endless guilt and shame for turning that robot vacuum on in the first place?”
“Nope. No guilt. If I’d had a wig like Ruby Regina, I never would’ve left her on the floor of my brother’s apartment while he was on a road trip.”
Zander smirks. “He’s just jealous because he knows why it was on the floor.”
“Still don’t know why it had to be in my apartment. My dog was there, dude.” I take a seat on a stool in front of a mirror, dig deeper into the takeout containers for steak tips, and then watch as Ginny and Zander chat easily as he changes into a dress and she eats her dinner.
Lou, his best friend and co-performer for the show, joins us, mostly dressed and in full makeup but not yet in his wig, and the two queens fuss over Ginny until Zander suddenly shrieks that it’s almost showtime and kicks us out.
Me first.
Then Ginny.
“I should’ve been paying attention to the time,” Ginny whispers to me when she joins me in the front row under the cover of dimmed lights.
Not that I’m worried that anyone here would leak pictures of us together.
Drag queens and their fans are loyal and accepting to a fault.
I love that my brother’s found so much success in a community he loves and feels safe in.
“Cherry would’ve started her show late anyway,” I tell Ginny. “It’s a thing with queens.”
“Ooh. Right. The dramatic entrance.”
Ginny puts a hand on my thigh.
I go from chill friend at my brother’s show to full mast in a millisecond.
“Thank you for still bringing me,” she whispers in the waiting darkness. “Fluffy being a menace aside, I’m having a great time. And thank you for remembering my chicken strips.”
I put my hand over hers and squeeze, not trusting myself with words.
There’s a drumroll, and then the first chords of Cherry Slapstick’s signature opening number.
She struts out in her sparkling silver evening gown and sky-high talking wig and glittering eight-inch heels—swear she’s gonna break an ankle one day—singing in her baritone with a lift about the troubles of being a cherry with all of the sass and sarcasm that’s made her famous, her wig taking turns in a tenor, and I soak in the sounds of Ginny’s laughter as she catches on to all of the lyrics, both those that Cherry sings and those that Fuchsia Fallenout sings.
As the final notes of the song are drawing close, Peppermint Sinbin, Cherry’s best friend both on and offstage, joins her in a green-and-yellow knee-length velvet atrocity that looks like something a Christmas elf trying to be a bumblebee would wear, and she yells in her higher-pitched voice to stop the music.
“What are you doing?” Peppermint says to Cherry. “Why are you acting like this is a normal show?”
Cherry pops a fist onto her hip and draws her shoulders back. “It is a normal show.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Not when there’s a celebrity in the audience.”
A murmur goes through the crowd.
Ginny sucks in a breath.
“Trust them,” I murmur, squeezing her hand tighter, knowing full well she’s safe but I’m not. “It’s okay.”
Cherry and Peppermint have a stare down that ends when Peppermint rolls her eyes higher than her platinum blond wig. “Just because you don’t like that he’s more famous than you doesn’t mean you can say he’s not a celebrity.”
Cherry gasps in that way only a drag queen on a roll can gasp as Ginny’s entire body sags beside me.
“Oh, thank the stars,” she whispers.
“Has he been on Naked and Queened?” Cherry snips. “No. Then he’s not a celebrity.”
“Is that a real show?” Ginny whispers to me.
“Are you serious? Do you know nothing about pop culture?” I whisper back. “It’s drag queens doing Naked and Afraid.”
She snorts.
I fucking love that snort.
Peppermint looks directly at me. “Foxy, would you like to be on Naked and Queened?”
And here we go.
Not the first time, won’t be the last.
Because it’s fun as hell.
“How high would my wig be?” I call back, using my outside voice.
“How tall are you in real life?” she replies.
“Six three.”
More murmurs go through the crowd while Peppermint taps her lip. “At least a foot,” she declares. “In fact…I think I have just the wig for you.”
Cherry stomps a foot. “Can we do this later?”
“Darling, no. He won’t be here later.” Peppermint wiggles her brows. “No matter how much I’d like him to.” She blows me a kiss and winks. “You still have my number, big boy.”
Ginny laughs so hard that I’m momentarily worried about her chicken strips.
“Stop flirting with my brother,” Cherry snaps, and the crowd roars.
“That’s not flirting, and you know it,” Peppermint sasses back. She blows me another kiss, this time shaking her ass at me too. “You come on up here, Foxy, and I’ll show you real flirting.”
“Oh. My. Goddess.” Cherry huffs. “We might as well all go home now. Clearly there won’t be a show.”
“You go home,” Fuchsia Fallenout says. “Foxy, get up here and make your brother uncomfortable.”
“Sister,” Cherry snaps back at her wig. “I’m his sister when I’m—never mind. Assholes.”
“What do you all think?” Peppermint asks the crowd. “Do you want our usual show, or do you want…improv?”
They don’t have a usual show.
They have standard songs they’ll perform, but everything between those half dozen numbers—it’s all improv.
“I can’t sing improv and you know it, you backstabbing knave,” Cherry says.
“I can,” Fuchsia Fallenout pipes up.
Usually, this is the point when the crowd starts chanting improv, improv, improv.
But there’s a new chant going up that makes my cheeks unusually hot.
Foxy! Foxy! Foxy!
I slip my phone out of my pocket. “You comfortable recording someone else?” I murmur to Ginny.
“Oh my stars, are you really going up there?” she whispers.
“Wouldn’t be the first time Foxy Goes There on a drag stage.”
She gapes at me, and then she throws her head back and laughs in a way that I have no business watching if I’m getting on that stage in thirty seconds.
“Asking permission, darling?” Peppermint drawls at me. “It’s fine. I’m not intimidated by some floozy with better lips than I have. And she can’t do”—Peppermint twirls and does a quick tap dance number that ends in a shimmy-shake of her drag boobs—“this.”
“I’m not participating in this,” Cherry declares.
“I am!” Fuchsia Fallenout replies. “You be quiet. I’m working on a number about glittery hairballs.”
Ginny legit chokes as she laughs harder, eyes bright and happy, everything about her absolutely shining.
Peppermint pulls an ew face that goes from just in her lips to some of her tongue sticking out too, like she’s trying to wipe away the idea of a glittery hairball. “Foxy, please get your tight tushy up here before that wig starts singing something none of us can unhear.”
Ginny’s wheezing, but she takes my phone as I rise.
Thunderous applause explodes around me unlike anything I’ve heard before outside of a skating rink, and even then, it was rarely just for me.
“Oh, wow,” Peppermint says. “Do you do a podcast or something? I want to do a podcast. But it would be a…bod cast.”
She shimmies her boobs again, and Cherry makes a gagging noise. “Are we not done with that joke yet?”
“Shut up, you old hag,” her wig says. “You’re sitting this out. Peppermint and I are gonna make this man a star.”
“You’re not seriously going up there, are you?” Ginny says as I head toward the stage.
I don’t answer her.
Because it’s far more fun to give her a night out that she’ll never forget.