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“Tell him what kind.”
There’s a heavy pause in which she can practically hear Wes’s teeth grinding.
“Orange cardamom with a maple chai drizzle,” he bites out with all the fury in his tiny body.
“Oh shit, that’s what my sister’s bringing,” Isaiah says.
Wes looks stricken. “Really?”
“No, dumbass, she’s gonna show up with a bunch of Doritos and a ziplock bag of weed like she always does,” Isaiah says with a happy laugh, and Wes turns delightfully pink.
“Praise it and blaze it,” Myla comments, flopping onto the couch.
When the first members of Isaiah’s drag family start to show—Sara Tonin in dewy daytime drag and a handful of twenty-somethings with flashy manicures and thick-framed glasses to hide their shaved-off brows—the music cranks up and the lights crank down. August is quickly realizing that it’s only a brunch in the absolute loosest definition of the word: there is brunch food, yes, and Isaiah introduces her to a Montreal queen hot off a touring gig with a fistful of cash and a Nalgene full of mimosas. But, mostly, it’s a party.
Apartment 6F isn’t the the only group outside of Isaiah’s drag family to warrant an invitation. There’s the morning shift guy from the bodega, the owner of one of the jerk chicken joints, stoners from the park. There’s Isaiah’s sister, fresh off the train from Philly with purple box braids down to her waist and a Wawa bag over her shoulder. Every employee from the Popeyes downstairs ends up there the second they’ve clocked out, passing around boxes of spicy dark. August recognizes the guy who always lets them on the service elevator, still wearing a nametag that says GREGORY, half the letters rubbed off so it reads REG RY.
The party fills and fills, and August huddles in the kitchen between Isaiah and Wes, the former trying to greet every person who stumbles through the door while the latter pretends he’s not watching him do it.
“Wait, oh my God,” Isaiah says suddenly, goggling at the door. “Is that—Jade, Jade, is that Vera Harry? Oh my God, I’ve never seen her out of drag, you were right, bitch!” He turns to them, gesturing across the room at an incredibly hot and stubbly guy who’s walked in. He looks like he fell out of a CW show and into Isaiah’s living room. Wes is instantly glaring. “That is a new queen, moved from LA last month, everybody’s been talking about her. She’s this crazy stunt queen, but then, out of drag? Trade. Best thing to ever happen to Thursday nights.”
“Sucks for Thursday nights,” Wes mutters, but Isaiah has already vanished into the crowd.
“Oof,” August says, “you’re jealous.”
“Wow, holy shit, you figured it out. You’re gonna win a Peabody Award for reporting,” Wes deadpans. “Where’s the keg? I was told there would be a keg.”
Noisy minutes lurch by in a mess of shiny eyelids and Isaiah’s curated playlist—it’s just shifted from “Your Own Personal Jesus” to “Faith” by George Michael—and August is snatching a biscuit from the tray she brought when someone sets a platter of bun-and-cheese down beside it and says, “Shit, I almost brought the same thing. That would have been awkward.”
August looks up, and there’s Winfield in a silk shirt covered in cartoon fish, his braids bundled up on top of his head. Beside him is Lucie who, when she’s not in her Billy’s uniform, apparently favors extremely tiny black dresses and lace-up boots. She looks more like a girl in an assassin movie than the manager of a pancake joint. August stares.
“You— What are you doing here? Y’all know Isaiah?”
“I know Annie,” Winfield says. “She didn’t put me in drag my first time, but she sat at my counter enough to convince me I should try it.”
What?
“You’re—you do drag? But you’ve never mentioned—and you’re not—” August fumbles with half a dozen ways to end that sentence before landing eloquently on, “You have a beard?”
“What, you never met a bearded pansexual drag queen?” He laughs, and it’s then that August notices: Winfield and Lucie are holding hands. What in the world goes on at drag family Easter brunch?
“I—you—y’all are—?”
“Mm-hmm,” Winfield hums happily.
“As fun as it is to break your brain,” Lucie says, “nobody at work knows. Tell them and I break your arm.”
“Oh my God. Okay. You’re…” August’s head is going to explode. She looks at Winfield and gasps, “Oh fuck, that’s why you know so much Czech.”
Winfield laughs, and they disappear as quickly as they appeared, and it is… nice, August thinks. The two of them together. Like Isaiah and Wes or Myla and Niko, it makes a strange sense. And Lucie—she looked happy, affectionate even, which is incredible, since August kind of assumed she was made from what they use at Billy’s to scrub out the floor drains. Emotional steel wool.
By the punch bowl, the conversation has shifted to everyone’s Easter family traditions. August refills her cup as Isaiah asks Myla, “What about you?”
“My parents are, like, hippie agnostics, so we never celebrated. I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing Niko’s parents don’t like about me, my heathen upbringing,” she says, rolling her eyes as Niko laughs and throws an arm over her shoulders. “Our big April holiday growing up was Tomb Sweeping Day, but my grandparents and great-grandparents keep refusing to die, so we just burn a paper Ferrari every year for my great-uncle who was in love with his car.”
“My parents always made us go to Sábado de Gloria,” Niko chimes in. “The Catholic church taught me everything I know about drama. And candles.”
“Oh, no shit?” Isaiah says appreciatively. “My pops is a pastor. Mom leads the choir. Our parents should get together with the blood of Christ sometime. Except mine are Methodist, so it’s grape juice.”
