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“Cut the shit, kid.”
“Okay, fine,” August says. Once her mother wants an answer, she won’t stop until she gets it. “There’s a girl I met, um, on the subway. That I’ve kind of been seeing. But I don’t think she wants anything serious. She’s not exactly… available.”
“I see,” her mom says. “Well, you know what my policy is.”
“Never go to a second location with someone unless you’ve checked their trunk for weapons first,” August monotones.
“You can mock it all you want, but I’ve never been murdered.”
August could explain that Jane can’t even leave the subway, but instead, she shifts and asks, “What about Detective Primeaux? Is he still a shit?”
“Oh, let me tell you what that smarmy fuck said to me last time I called,” she says, and she’s off.
August switches her phone to speaker, letting her mom’s voice blur into white noise. She goes over the timeline as her mom talks about a lead she’s tracked down, that Augie could have passed through Little Rock in 1974, and she thinks about Jane’s name. Su Biyu. Biyu Su.
“Anyway,” her mom says, “there’s an answer out there somewhere. I’ve been thinking about him so much lately, you know?”
August looks at her bedroom wall, at the photos pinned up with the exact brand of pushpin her mom once used to poke holes in their living room. She thinks about her mom, consumed by this person who can’t ever come back, living and dying by this mystery that doesn’t have a solution. Orienting her entire life around a ghost.
“Yeah,” August says.
Thank God she’s nothing like that.
“Does my lipstick look okay?” Myla says, turning sideways to blink at August. Her elbow knocks Wes’s phone out of his hands, and he grumbles as he retrieves it from the subway floor.
“Hang on,” Jane says, leaning across to fix a smudge of bright blue lipstick with the edge of her thumb. “There. Now you’re perfect.”
“She’s always perfect,” Niko says.
“Gross,” Wes groans. “You’re lucky it’s your birthday.”
“It’s my birthdaaaay,” Niko singsongs happily.
“The ripe old age of twenty-five,” Myla says. She kisses him on the cheek, effectively smudging her lipstick again.
Niko straightens the red bandana around his neck like a cowboy sauntering out of a saloon. He’s wearing denim on denim, a thrifted jean jacket from which he ripped an American flag patch to stitch on a Puerto Rican flag in its place. A Boricua Springsteen on the Fourth of July. It is, in fact, the Fourth of July.
“So what exactly is Christmas in July?” August asks, tugging at the hideous Valentine’s Day T-shirt she picked up from Goodwill. It has a picture of Garfield surrounded by cartoon hearts and says I’LL BE YOUR LASAGNA. It took two tries to explain it to Jane. “And why is it Niko’s birthday tradition?”
“Christmas in July,” Myla says grandly, with a broad gesture that knocks Wes’s phone back to the floor, “is an annual Fourth of July tradition at Delilah’s in which we celebrate the birthday of this great nation”—she does a jerk-off gesture and Niko boos—“with themed beverages and an all-star lineup of drag royalty doing holiday-themed performances.”
“It’s not just Christmas, though,” Niko notes.
“Right,” Myla adds. “They still call it Christmas in July, but it’s evolved to include all holidays. Last year, Isaiah did a Thanksgiving dessert burlesque number to ‘My Goodies’ and wore sweet potato titty tassels and an apple pie g-string. It was amazing. Wes just, like, walked out of the building and sprinted ten blocks.”
“That is not what happened,” Wes says. “I went out for a smoke.”
“Sure.”
“It’s also how Myla and I met,” Niko adds.
“Really?” Jane asks.
“You never mentioned that,” August says.
“Yeah, I used go to Delilah’s all the time when I was still living with my parents,” Niko says. “Everyone there has always been really cool about whatever you are or want to be or think you might be. Good energy.”
“And I was dating one of the bartenders,” Myla finishes.
