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They pulled up to Centenary Square with twenty whole seconds to spare, and Will shoved a tenner in Umar’s general direction before unspooling himself and his skirt from the vehicle and trotting across the plaza to the Library of Birmingham.
“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” he exclaimed as he entered the building and caught the eye of Annie (or was it Amy?), the library staffer who helped them organize the story hours. “I’m late, I know, feel free to flog me later,” he continued. “How angry are the parents? Scrap that, how angry is Faye?”
“Everything’s fine!” said Annie or Amy, beckoning him to follow her to the Rainbow Room. “I mean, honestly, we were all just so surprised—”
“That a drag queen didn’t show up on time? It’s a sorry fact of life, darling,” said Will. “Death, taxes, and men in frocks barreling through the door fashionably late.”
“No, not that,” said the admin, who Will remembered now was actually called Allie. “The surprise guest. The kids were all so excited. So were the parents. I mean, we all are!”
“Surprise guest?” Will paused for a second, then resumed his pace to keep up with Allie. Blessedly, she led him to the lift, having encountered the story hour queens enough times to know that they didn’t do exceptionally well on stairs.
“He’s a huge hit,” Allie said. “I’ve been hearing the kids cheering from across the building for the last ten minutes.”
“He?”
The lift doors opened, and a moment later Will was entering the Rainbow Room, where he saw the usual semicircles of young children sitting cross-legged, on tiny stools, or in their parents’ laps. And seated before them, reading with impressive projection and enunciation from The Little Prince, was Patrick.
Or, rather, Captain Kismet. Patrick wore the famous blue bodysuit, red boots, aviator goggles pushed up over his forehead, pushing his hair out of place every which way so that Will’s hand twitched at his side with the impulse to smooth it.
“What the…”
Faye spotted him and silently glided to the back of the room to join him, her reproachful glare heightened by her evil-queen regalia.
“I see you finally made it,” she whispered.
“Sorry,” said Will.
“I need to be able to count on you, Gracie,” she continued. “This isn’t performing for gays who are so off their faces they don’t know what time it is.” She nodded toward the children, who were all still rapt under Patrick’s spell. “They’re our most precious audience. And days like this are precarious enough as it is.”
She was right. Will knew she was right. The story hour was about opening up the world to kids, showing them the pure magic of imagination. And even more than any birthday clown or costume-shop Elsa, queens were the embodiment of that imagination: living proof that you could grow up to be whoever and whatever you wanted to be. Children’s books were full of orphans and neglected waifs who discovered magic. Faye and Grace—and Patrick, it seemed—held the keys to that world. If Will were more prone to sentimentality, he would call it one of the great privileges of his art.
The children and parents all applauded, signaling the end of Patrick’s story. Acknowledging the presence of Captain Kismet for the first time, Faye said: “I suppose I can’t be too miffed, given your stand-in. Watch your back, girl, you could be looking at your replacement. He does better voices than you and he was on time.” She widened her eyes dramatically, and then turned back to the room, jumping back into the character of empress emcee as though Will had just flicked a switch on the back of her dress, effortlessly corralling the families into a queue so that the children could have a picture with their favorite superhero.
Wildly, Will didn’t think half the grown-ups in the room even understood that this was really Patrick Lake, the movie star; they just saw a guy in a costume and were grateful that it made their child happy.
Allie sidled up to him. “He’s good with kids, isn’t he?” she said, seemingly for want of anything else to say. Then: “I kind of want to get in line for a photo, too. But oh god, I don’t know. Would that be loser behavior? I kind of think it’s almost cooler not to ask, don’t you?”
“Hmm,” said Will, noncommittally.
“I’ve got to ask,” she said. “How on earth did you book Patrick Lake for this? How did you even get in touch with him?”
Will tilted his head sideways in Allie’s direction, like he was about to share a secret with her. She leaned in expectantly. He allowed his voice to fall to its deepest and said: “We go to the same barber.”
“Oh. Oh!” She laughed, and before she could ask for a serious answer, Patrick approached them both.
“Hi,” he said, cheeks flushed, voice slightly hoarse from projecting. Will got a sudden flash of the earnest, enthusiastic theater major Patrick must have been once, the kind of person who was always surrounded by queers and queens before life took him on a different trajectory, and felt a tightness in his chest.
“This is Allie,” he blurted.
“Hi, Allie,” said Patrick, reaching out and shaking her hand, a smile breaking out on his face as if she were exactly the person he had been hoping to run into at exactly this moment. He’s so good at that, Will thought.
“Allie is too shy to ask herself, but I think she’d really like a picture,” he added, and he felt her feign mortification next to him.
“Of course!” Patrick handed the book he’d been reading from to Will, and Allie excitedly pulled out her phone to take a selfie.
“Thank you!” she trilled. “OK, I have to get back to the front desk. Thank you!” She scurried away, already frantically tapping at the screen, no doubt disseminating the photo through every group chat in her phone.
“What’s going on?” Will finally asked, turning to Patrick. “What are you doing here?”
