by Rob Rosen
I circled my face with the flat of my hand. “Strike a pose.”
“There’s nothing to it.”
I nodded and smiled. “Exactly.” I looked at the guy behind the lights. “Not you tonight up there?”
He shook his head. “Last night was a special occasion.”
Tell me about it. “Okay then, wish me luck.”
“Who needs luck when you have so much talent?” he yelled my way as I ran to the stage door. I knocked. Luna let me in. Eventually.
I grinned as I made my way to the side of the stage. I’d have to find a way to pay Ray back for his lavish and unmerited praise. I figured that something on my knees should do the trick. “You’re on after me,” I said to Luna, who was standing by my side.
“They save the best for last.”
I smiled. “Uh huh. Pearls before swine.”
She poked me with her elbow. “I think I might like you.”
“When will you know for sure?”
She shrugged. “When you stop performing here. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
I thought of something bitchier in response, but Maureen was heading our way. “Knock ‘em dead,” she told me.
Luna chuckled. “They should be so lucky after this show.” She pointed at me. “You I mean.”
I patted her shoulder. “Got it.” I leaned down and gave her an air-kiss. “You can go home now, sweetie; the dead don’t tip.” I glanced back her way. “Not that you get those from the living either, but still.”
She started to reply, but the din of the crowd drowned her out. Oh, and laughter isn’t the best medicine; applause is. I’ll take two hands clapping over an aspirin any day. And so out I went, into the spotlight. It was warm, all-enveloping, bright. This is why flowers and trees and grass grew in the sun.
Madonna hit my ears as the light hit my eyes. Life. This was life itself, condensed into five minutes and seventeen seconds. Concentrated stuff. I stared out as my lips synced. I could see the first two rows of men, then mostly just shadows beyond. The music was loud, the speakers blaring from both sides of the stage. I was being bathed in sound, in light. Not even my tight dress could contain me. WHOOSH! Off I went.
Now, to be fair, though Vogue was an oldie, it was still a classic. That said, I knew it backward and forward, had sung it to the radio, to my CD, to Spotify, countless times. Who knew how handy it would come in? Fate again? Sure, we’ll go with that. Plus, I actually knew how to vogue. I’d bought an instructional video at a yard sale. It’d cost me a dollar. Talk about a buck well spent. And while So You Think You Can Dance was so not in the cards for me, I was still no slouch. Then again, in that dress, slouching was also so not in the cards. Heck, the dress didn’t even have pockets, and I was already hiding a camera in my wig, so where would the deck even go?
In any case, all this is to say, I was killing it. A murder warrant was being issued even as I sang—or, well, lipped. And though the music was, as I said, loud, the cheering and screaming and shouting from beyond my line of vision was nonetheless deafening. This was out and out proof of a soul because mine was soaring. Eagles were besieged with resentment at my soul’s friggin’ soaring.
It was then that I noticed the line, down and off to my right, men waving bills my way. AT ME! And so, I vogued my way right, hands and feet as in sync as my lips and the music. I smiled down at the men, who, in turn, smiled up at me—dare I say, adoringly. I wondered, if I felt this way, tingling all over, what Madonna felt like singing this live. I took the bills, my hand over theirs, a brief meeting of flesh upon flesh, which was both erotic and exhilarating. Madonna had a barricade, guards. This had to be better. Fuck the billions of dollars. Fuck being best friends with Sandra Bernhard.
The song continued. I continued. The line continued. Money was being tossed at the stage. Five minutes felt like a heavenly eternity. The song ended. I bowed. Or tried to. I think I made it three inches. I turned my face in profile as I lipped the last, “Vogue, vogue, vogue.” The crowd erupted. I departed, however reluctantly.
“Wow,” said Lucy as she greeted me, as Luna rushed past, on her way to her own brand of soardome.
“Was it, you know, okay?” I managed, out of breath from the exertion, from the exhilaration.
“Okay?” she hollered above the new strains of music. “You’re incredible!”
I blushed. Or at least I felt like I blushed. I mean, the pounds of makeup felt hot on my skin. “I need a drink.”
She nodded. “There’s a break between sets. We have another thirty minutes before we do it again.”
“Again?” Did you die and go to heaven twice? Was that even possible? And what song would I do next? What would I tell Ray to cue? My mind was racing, but on the second lap around its track, it remembered that I was there to do a job. Fame was icing on the cake, but you still had to bake the friggin’ cake. Meaning…“Let’s go.” I clutched the thick stack of cash in my grip. “On me.”
She smiled and nodded. “Then we’ll go with the good shit.”
We were at the bar a moment later. Ray was already pouring. “Nice work tonight, ladies!”
My blush returned. I’d have to learn how to take complements blanchier. “I hear there’s a second set.”
He winked. My cock throbbed. Stardom was an aphrodisiac. Then again, the wind blew, and I thickened, so, yeah, there was that. “Already cued. You okay with ‘Holiday’?”
I nodded. He hadn’t done me wrong yet. “You must be my lucky star, Ray.”
“Cute,” he said with a well-placed wink. “You, I mean.” Winks are hard to pull off. One wrong move, and it looks like you’re having a stroke. His was divine.
In any case, my blush went molten. I sipped my scotch. I was suddenly a Madonna impersonator who drank whiskey. I felt my yang pull away from my yin. I also felt my yang—the other one, the one lower down a bit—throb as he again shot me a wink. Ray’s winks, it seemed, were Pavlovian. Pavlov threw his dog a bone; Ray threw me a boner.
I raised my glass his way. I raised my glass Lucy’s way. “Thank you again,” I said. “For, you know, everything.” I pointed at the stage with my free hand, at Luna, who was finishing up her number. Kate Bush. “Running Up That Hill.” Seems we were both kicking it old school, but I vogued while Luna ran. I leaned in to Lucy and quietly whispered, “I’m sorry about last night.” I knew her husband couldn’t hear me, not above the music, the din of the crowd. “The kiss, I mean. I got caught up in the excitement.”
She shrugged. “Think nothing of it,” she said in my ear. “You didn’t know.” Which was ironic, because I did indeed know. But, to be fair, most of that kiss was indeed a test, to see if she would cheat, and the rest really was due to the exuberance of the moment, getting caught up in the excitement. The other half percent was me being horny and him being stunning. And, okay, we’ll go with three percent, but I did feel bad about it afterward. I mean, I might get hard when the wind gusts, but that didn’t mean I was a homewrecker.
“How long?” I asked. “I mean, how long have you been married?” I turned my face her way, the camera her way. I didn’t know if Arthur could hear us now, since the bar had gotten even louder, but maybe he could read lips. Or maybe we could hire an interpreter later. Lord knew he could afford one.
“Not long,” she replied. “But long enough.” She sounded neither sad not happy about it. The remark could’ve been taken either way.
And so “Happily?” I asked. I’d also asked it the night before, but not with a cam on, and so I asked it again, loud enough, I hoped, for my client to hear.
“I love my husband. I’d never cheat.” She had fake lenses in. She had fake everything in. And so, her face was unreadable. Meaning, the question hadn’t really been answered. Still, Arthur had at least one more bit of proof.
“Does he come here?” I asked. “To watch you perform?”
She shook her head, earrings swaying back and forth. “Doesn’t like to see me in drag.”
“Shame,” I sa
id. “He’s missing out.”
Lucy’s smile returned. The sadness seemed barely masked. Or perhaps I was projecting. I’d learned that a good detective never gets involved in a case, never gets too close to his clients, to his prey. But now I was suddenly close. Icarus flew too close to the sun. Icarus fell to the ocean, to his death. I didn’t have wings made of wax and feathers, but my ability to soar was due to something no less fake. It was a good analogy. It wasn’t a good place to be in.
Meaning, I needed to have this case closed.
“Men hit on you here,” I said, pointing around the bar, to the endless array of men, most of them young, inebriated, horny. Present company included. “Must be hard.”
She shrugged. “I love my husband. I love our life together.” She was staring right at me. If she had been reading cue cards, she couldn’t have been saying better lines. “They hit on me; I politely decline. They offer me tips, drinks; I take them. It’s a fine line, but I walk it in my Manolo’s.” She sounded practiced now, as if these questions had been asked of her before.
“So you’re not complaining.”
She shook her head and downed her drink. “Not even a grumble.”
The smile had vanished, flown south for the winter. I wasn’t sure I believed her. Still, I had the proof I was asked to get. Or at least a modicum of proof. I mean, why would she lie to me? What did she have to gain?
She turned from me, from the cam. She stared wistfully at the stage. I stared just as wistfully. I wondered if we were staring for the same reason. I also wondered where all that sadness came from and, if the case was now closed, would I ever find out.
Chapter 3
“Well?” I said, my second act done, dress off, makeup nothing but a smudged memory. I was back at home, naked in a tub, cellphone to my ear. I felt strangely alone, as if the adulation was a severed limb, the phantom ache pulsing just above the bubble-line. “I asked. He answered. Could you hear?”
“I heard,” Arthur replied. “He says the same to me. It means nothing. Actions speak louder than words. And guess what?”
“You’re not getting any action.” My hand swirled in the warm water.
“Nope,” he replied. “Blue balls. Blue balls is what I got. That and mascara stains on my high-thread-count sheets.”
“Maybe he’s got low testosterone. Maybe you need a doctor, not a detective.”
He sighed. “He’s cheating, Barry. A husband knows.”
“So why not just confront him?”
The sigh repeated. “Because I love him. And if I confront him and I’m wrong, I lose him.”
My sigh echoed his. Seemed like we’d hit a wall. “What do you suggest we do then? He already told me he wasn’t cheating, that he loves you. I’ve followed him for a while now and seen no evidence of cheating. Apart from standing in front of him naked with an erection and seeing if he pounces, I don’t know what else to do.” Nice as that naked erection thing sounded.
“Would you do that? The naked thing?”
I would. Though not with his husband. Not with anyone’s husband. “Nope. Next idea, please.”
“Infiltrate,” he replied. “Judging by what I saw on the cam, you’ve already got an in at the club. So, stay at the club, work at the club, ask around with the other girls, the other employees there. Someone must know something, must’ve seen something. Loose lips, sinking ships, all that bullshit.”
“But I already have a job, sir.”
“And you still will. You’ll simply be working undercover. In disguise.” I thought to object when he sweetened the pot. “Disguises that I’ll pay for.”
Arthur, it seemed, didn’t play fair.
“A week,” I said. “One week, the cam on. I’ll ask around. You watch, listen. You pay for the dresses and shoes and the pretty baubles and beads. Then, either way, proof or no proof, the case is closed. Deal?”
He sighed. He wheezed. Camel was missing a great spokesperson. “Deal.” He hung up. My dick-head poked through the water-line. “Okay, Google,” I said, the Google Home device perched on my toilet bowl tank, “please access Ace Database.” Ace Database was my online school’s database. You got one year free after graduation, then it was a yearly payment of a couple of hundred. The database culled accessible online information in one place, even stuff you normally had to pay for, like LinkedIn Premium. A couple of Benjamin’s was a steel. “Search Chad McAdams. Age twenty-three. Currently residing in California. Looking for college and or colleges attended, known degrees.”
“One match,” Google droned back. “Chad McAdams. Twenty-three. Resides in California. No college degrees. Attended DeVry University. No date of completion recorded.”
I smiled even as my belly clenched. Chad had lied to Arthur, who had told me that Chad went to a good college. DeVry was not a good college. DeVry was a McCollege, just like Chad was a McAdams. I wondered about this when Arthur had told me but had only thought to ask Google about it as I relaxed in the tub. Arthur probably could never find this out on his own. Me, I kind of wished I hadn’t found out either. I liked Chad. I liked Chad because Chad was nice and handsome and talented. Still, nice, handsome, talented people frequently made the best thieves.
“Okay, Google, arrests records for same Chad McAdams?” I hadn’t looked before. Mainly because before I was simply seeing if Chad was cheating on his husband. It was easy undercover work. It didn’t require a background check. Arthur wasn’t asking me if his husband was a liar or thief, just a cheat.
“Chad McAdams,” Google replied. “Arrest records start at the age of fifteen.”
I coughed. “What the fuck?” Google didn’t reply. You had to say, “Okay, Google.” “What the fuck, Google” didn’t cut the mustard, not even with a Ginsu knife. “Okay, Google, what crimes was Chad McAdams arrested for?”
“Chad McAdams has been arrested, in order of arrest records, for shoplifting, vandalism, drug possession, shoplifting, theft, disturbing the peace, shoplifting, drug dealing, prostitution, shoplifting, prostitution, identity theft, solicitation, and theft.”
My mind was swimming in far deeper waters than my body currently was. Chad was a nice guy. Chad was talented and handsome. Period. He was also, it seemed, a good actor, though not, it seemed, a good shoplifter, considering his arrest record. I wondered why Arthur hadn’t found this out. This stuff was easy to come by. He didn’t even need a private dick for it. All this shit was public record. If I had been Arthur, and a handsome young guy was about to marry me, this was the first thing I’d go looking for. I mean, he’d hired me, so he clearly didn’t trust Chad, so why not go full throttle and do a simple background check. Made no sense.
And fifteen? Where were his parents? “Okay, Google, information on Chad McAdams’s parents.”
“Deceased. Car accident; 1998.”
My heart momentarily stopped beating. Chad was barely out of diapers by then. Awful. Just awful. But back to work. “Okay, Google, criminal background check on Arthur Slade.” I gave Google his age and address. Google came up blank. “Previous marriages?” Also blank. I asked Google a bunch of things related to my client, but my client seemed squeaky clean. Of course, that meant nothing; smart people used soap, so to speak. Meaning, smart people knew how to cover their tracks. Meaning, Chad was handsome and talented; smart didn’t make the short list. And Arthur? Well, him I wasn’t so sure about. At least not yet.
All that is to say, I didn’t trust either one of them.
And still I cashed Arthur’s checks. Smart people knew how to do that, too.
* * * *
“Hi, Ray.”
It was the next day, mid-afternoon. The bar was sparse, oddly quiet, brighter. Sunlight hit the bartender along the side of his face, one eye a shimmering of blue, the other a smoldering shadowed gray. He glanced up at me and nodded. “What can I do for you?”
If he only knew. I smiled. I was dressed like a boy. Chad wouldn’t be there, so I was safe. As for Ray, he clearly didn’t recognize me. I held my hand fla
t, at the horizontal, and circled my face with it. “Beauty’s where you find it.”
He paused and squinted at me. “Mary?” He chuckled, tingles shooting down my spine before going kerplewie in my crotch. “Mary, is that you?”
I nodded. I held out my hand. “Barry, but yes.” Three-two-one contact. Flesh met flesh as his hand grabbed mine. Kapow replaced kerplewie, my cock suddenly throbbing to life.
His smile widened, as did the tenting in my jeans. “You clean up nicely.”
I brushed my fingers across my cheek. “Takes even longer to scrub it off than to shellac it on. Who knew?”
The chuckle returned. His face moved to the right, the light bathing him in full, both eyes now sparkling like sapphires. He reached across the bar and mimicked my gesture, his hand stroking my cheek. “But with amazing results.” My cock nearly exploded. I blinked, fireworks exploding behind my eyelids. I blinked again. Business, Barry. You’re on a case! I screamed inside my head. Hop the bar and jump him! Shouted my prick from far lower down. I weighed both cases. I sided with my brain, mainly because, if I jumped the bar, I would surely fracture my stiff-as-a-crowbar dick. “You know, you look like…ooh, what’s his name?…867-5309.”
I grinned. “That’s Tommy Tutone.”
He shook his head. “Who?” Then he snapped his fingers. “‘Jessie’s Girl’.”
I nodded. “Rick Springfield. Yes, I think I’ve heard that before.”
The snap returned. “That’s it!” Again, he squinted at me. “You look nothing like yourself, out of a dress and a wig, I mean.”
“And twenty pounds of makeup.”
His nodding amped up. “Your own mother wouldn’t know you in drag.”
I started to tell him that my own mother was the one who originally slathered on the twenty pounds, but then thought the better of it. Besides, I wasn’t there to discuss my doppelganger, and certainly not my mom, and so I got down to business—much as I would’ve preferred going down on him. “I was wondering,” I said. “You think I could work here?” I pointed at the empty, dark stage. “Up there, I mean.” My belly butterflies returned as I asked it. I had a feeling I was at a crossroads here, like something momentous was about to occur. My head, like my spine before it, tingled, fingers, too.
