chapter 9

Izzy and thefour other competing members of Velveteen Crush—Sarah, Arabella, Tock, and Axel—stood in the foyer of the Lynnwood Terrace. A burgundy carpet and dim sconces gave the old apartment a speakeasy feel. They hadn’t had a chance to move in. They’d been instructed to go straight to the basement underneath the soundstage for hair and makeup, then to the get-together with the other contestants. Now the producer stood in front of them, checking their names on his tablet like they were kids on a field trip. Izzy could barely follow. Lillian was here. On the show. A ballerina who didn’t want to know Izzy except that after Lillian had clearly stated that fact, they’d fallen into an easy banter. Izzy tried to focus.

“Arabella,” Bryant said.

If Velveteen Crush were a boy band, Arabella would be the Dangerous One. Vampire seductress of the dark web meets none of us really knows what you do, and we like to keep it that way.

Arabella raised one painted eyebrow. “Here.”

“Tock,” Bryant said.

“Yes,” Tock said crisply, as though he were at work responding to the summons of a senator. He’d be the Preppy One.

“Sarah.”

“Here.” Sarah giggled, her Shirley Temple curls bouncing.

“Isadora.”

“Blue,” Izzy corrected.

“And Axel.”

Axel gave an enthusiastic “Yes, sir,” then added, “present because I am a gift.” Axel shimmied his massive shoulders. He was a gift to the world, a drag performer by night, a physical trainer for assisted living facilities during the day, a true believer in “fitness is for everyone.”

Arabella looked out from beneath tarantula-sized lashes.

“It’s Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.”

Ordinarily Izzy would tease Arabella for knowing the saying. Arabella’s ethos said, I’ve come to drag you to the land of the undead, not The present is a gift. But Izzy’s thoughts were pinging inside her brain like nervous Ping-Pong balls. Lillian was here!

“Well, I am a gift to the world,” Axel said crossing his muscular arms.

“Welcome to The Great American Talent Show, where America’s best performers compete for the prize of one million dollars. The Lynnwood Terrace will be your home away from home for the duration of the show,” Bryant recited, heading down the hall and up a flight of stairs. “You can store your costumes and props for the Signature Act in the soundstage basement. After that, you’ll be assigned costumers who will handle everything.” He stopped in front of units 201 and 203. “You’ve been assigned one two-bedroom unit. Men.” He pointed to unit 201. “And one three-bedroom. Women.” He pointed to 203. “Don’t trade rooms. It almost always works out better if we keep the men and women separate.”

“No a priori justification for that,” Tock said, like the legislative aide he was.

“Where do I go?” Axel asked.

“With Tock.” Bryant looked confused. That was fair. Out of drag, Axel looked like he should win Sexiest Male Trainer.

From a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, Bryant took out five bulging envelopes. “Here’s your welcome package. Keys. Here’s my number if you need anything. And your forwarded mail.” He handed around junk mail, discreetly looking away as he handed Izzy hers. The theater’s electric bill with PAST DUE stamped on the front. Izzy tried to shove it into her back pocket, forgetting she was wearing a suit of shiny, skintight latex.

“Fan mail? Another woman throwing herself at your feet?” Arabella asked as they stepped into their apartment.

“Don’t pretend you don’t have fans,” Izzy said.

“I’m a scion on the dark web.” Arabella’s dark bangs swept across her bloodred eyeliner. “I have supplicants.”

“And we don’t know if you’re kidding,” Izzy said.

Arabella went into one of the rooms, then exclaimed, with a momentary lack of macabre irony, “Ooh, look, it’s got its own bathroom.”

They all did, plus a common bathroom, kitchen, sitting room, and fully stocked fridge and bar. Izzy stood in the center of her room, staring at her suitcases, which some crew members had carried in. She wriggled out of her suit and dug around in her suitcase for sweatpants and her Comic-Con sweatshirt.

Outside her room, she heard someone open the apartment door, then Arabella called across the hallway, “Bloodless Mingo is playing on Burnside. It’s about satanic dolls that kill miners in West Virginia. Who’s in?”

A moment later, Izzy heard Tock say, “Rotten Tomatoes says it’s a ‘horror show you can’t unsee.’” Tock wouldn’t embark on anything without research. “I’m in!”

Not that doing research always led to good decisions.

Axel said, “Heck yeah!”

“Blue?” Arabella poked her head into Izzy’s room. “Satanic horror show?”

“Trying to cut back.”

“Sarah?” Arabella turned back to the living room.

“I’m going to stay here,” Sarah said. “I’m going to practice my lash work for the salon.”

Izzy walked to the bedroom window, half listening to her friends in the other room. Was Lillian across the courtyard in the room with the flicking television? Was she practicing a routine? No wonder she’d been so strong. Lillian had caught her when she stumbled. Why had that felt so good? It was nothing.

After her friends left for the movie, the apartment fell silent. Izzy stared at her reflection in the window. In her burlesque costumes she was divine. No one could deny it no matter what ordinary beauty standards might say. But in everyday clothes? At the end of a long day? Bone-structure-wise, she wasn’t that pretty. Arabella was gorgeous (on the rare occasion anyone saw it beneath her goth makeup), and Sarah had a classic silent film star face. Izzy’s face was a little too hard to be girl-next-door pretty and a little too round to be handsome. Lillian had met her in a jacked-up outfit: jeans she’d gained too much weight to wear gracefully, a blazer she’d bought as a prop for an Addams Family–themed show, a Comic-Con sweatshirt. Yeah, she’d had a corset under that, but only because she couldn’t find a clean bra. Had Izzy even been wearing deodorant that night? It’d been a twelve-hour day, and she’d gone to the Neptune to finish working so she wouldn’t give in to the temptation to fall asleep in front of the TV. Strange that Lillian had still noticed her. She must have exuded enough of Blue’s confidence to make up for her outfit.

“Hey.”

Izzy turned at the sound of Sarah’s voice.

“Where are you, Blue?” Sarah stood in the doorway.

“What? Here.”

“Who was that woman?”

“What woman?”

Sarah put her hands on her hips, giving Izzy a disbelieving look.

“The beautiful Black woman. In the white suit. Who pulled you into some dark corner because…? And you haven’t said a word since then.”

“I have.”

“You’ve been a million miles away. You turned down satanic dolls at a movie theater that serves microbrew.”

“You make that sound hard.”

Izzy did like indie theaters, and Portland required that everyone in the city limits like microbrew.

“Come help me put eyelashes on Judy.” In the kitchen, Sarah pulled her mannequin head out of its carrying case and plopped it on the table, but she didn’t open the case of fake lashes. “What was up with that woman? She looked pissed.”

Izzy remembered Lillian’s perfume: warm, soft, sunny, like walking through a lemon orchard. (Not that Izzy had ever walked through a lemon orchard, but she had a lemon tree in a pot, and it smelled divine.) Lillian looked like she’d wear something sharp and expensive, a classic, like Chanel No. 5, but she smelled like sipping tea in a summer field.

“She’s Lillian, of the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company.”

Sarah waited.

Lillian had asked Izzy not to mention their night together. Totally reasonable. It hadn’t meant anything. Why had Lillian’s demand still stung?

“Promise to keep it on the DL?” Izzy asked.

“Sure.”

“I mean for real. It’s a respect thing.”

“Of course.” Sarah looked curious and serious.

“You won’t believe this. We hooked up a while back. It was the night of the first-round auditions. She must have been in Portland for those.”

“You didn’t tell me about her.”

“I don’t talk about my hookups. It’s disrespectful.”

“You don’t give me a tour of their labia, but you tell me something. She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman you forget in the morning.”

No. She wasn’t. Lillian had floated in and out of Izzy’s mind since the night at the Neptune.

“I had no idea I’d see her again. And we were on the same page about hookups.”

Just strangers coming together for one night, their bodies part of a human whole, their life stories their own secrets. That was what hookups were supposed to be.

“It was nothing. We just… don’t want to make a big deal out of it because of the show.”

“Are you interested in her?”

“No!” Izzy said too loudly. “We had fun though. We danced. She was easy to be around.” It was important to tell Sarah something true about her feelings; Sarah would stay in therapist mode until Izzy did. “It was easy to be… real around her.” She felt Lillian bumping into her as they both tried to kiss each other against the wall. She smiled at the memory.

“Your energy feels unfinished…” Sarah left the sentence open.

“Hmm.” Izzy touched a finger to her lips in exaggerated contemplation. “Nope. It pretty much finished the way I wanted.”

She could have stayed another hour. But the gold flecks sparkling in Lillian’s eyes… a person could fall for that smart, sharp, friendly light.

“Are you downplaying your emotional experience?”

“Always.” Denying it would inspire Sarah to ask more empathetic questions. Agreeing would also spawn an outpouring of empathy. Best to joke and agree. “Isn’t that why you’re always sending me links to therapists?”

Hopefully, Sarah wouldn’t start in on the whole there’s nothing wrong with safe consensual hookups if that’s really what you want, but you don’t act like they make you happy anymore lecture.

“There’s nothing wrong with safe, consensual hookups if that’s really what you want, but you don’t act like they make you happy anymore,” Sarah said.

“You know, there was unfinished business. She was wearing white. She had mud on her cuffs.” Why had she noticed that while she was sliding the pants off a woman with the body of a Greek statue? “If she got those pants dry-cleaned, it would’ve set the stain. You have to use club soda first.”

Sarah frowned.

“You care about her dry cleaning?”

“Not deeply, but linen is so temperamental.”

“Izzy, are you sure you’re in a good emotional place with this?”

“I’m not interested in her.” How could anyone meet Lillian and not be interested? “Not like that. Not like relationship material. If I get in a relationship, it’ll be with a nice social worker with two diabetic cats.”

Izzy reached across the table and opened the lash kit. She turned Judy around and tweezed a single lash extension onto Judy’s eyelid, skewering her in the eye instead. She didn’t fall for modest women with diabetic cats. She fell for her mother in hot queer woman form every time. Charismatic? Check. A brilliant performer? Check. Likelihood of sticking around? Minus ten percent. Check.

Izzy tried to put another lash on Judy.

“A relationship could be a good thing for you,” Sarah said. “But you said to tell you when I saw you going for that kind of woman again. You said, Don’t let me date unattainable women because I’m still chasing my mother’s love.”

“You said I was chasing my mother’s love. I said it was hard to find the right balance between attractive and not an asshole.”

But Sarah was right.

The opera singer from San Francisco. The injured WNBA player.

Sarah made sympathetic eye contact.

“Don’t worry.” Izzy stuck another eyelash in the vicinity of Judy’s eye. “We’re going to crush Lillian’s company in the competition, and then we’ll never see each other again.” It felt like saying she’d never see the Milky Way again. “I’m not going to fall for her.”

It’d been a couple of years since she threw herself at a brilliant, talented woman who eventually ended it with either I need to focus on my career or I’m exploring my options. The thing that hurt the most was her girlfriends’ timing. The breakup always came after Izzy had gotten the flu or had to pull an all-nighter for work. She’d emerge from her office with greasy hair and dark circles under her eyes. There was always a moment when they looked at her and their eyes registered, Oh, you’re not Blue Lenox.