Chapter One
There comes a time in every young woman's life when the road of desperation looks very attractive. One such time is when said woman is looking at a twenty-five sculpted out of candle wax on her birthday cake while still living in her mother's house. The only friend she had to invite to the very pathetic party was her high-school-sweetie-turned-drag-queen, Billie. Making things worse, her father had brought his new flavor of the month along which meant Mom was doing her best to keep things cheery by sugar-coating some very biting remarks.
Leaving home by any means possible looked very attractive right now. So when Andria was told to make a wish before blowing out the two candles in the shape of a two and a five, her only thought was of a good job that would get her the hell out of there. She paused after the room went dark for something to happen to signify a change, but when the lights came on, the only thing that had changed was that Dad was nibbling on the ditzy blonde's neck (Her name was Muffin or Candy or Bubbles or some stupid damn thing. Andria had no intention of ever inviting her to tea and so saw no reason to remember it. It wasn't like she was going to stick around, anyway. Dad took 'flavor of the month' very literally.) Seeing them, Mom sucked in her breath but managed not to say anything or slap anyone. She just sat down again, hard, and the only indication that she was affected at all was a slight tremor in her hand as she picked up her glass of wine. Her sixth glass of wine.
'Damn,' Andria thought bleakly. 'Still here.'
Billie, his face heavily painted and wearing what could only be termed as the ultimate in summer fashion for street-walkers, cleared his throat and pushed a garishly-wrapped box at her. "Time to open presents!" he sang.
Smiling at her friend for trying, she started to rip at the paper. A moment of destruction to help ease some of the frustration eating at her. Or, at least it would've been if her parents didn't start a fight over every little thing.
"Honey, don't tear such pretty paper," Mom chided. "Carefully open it and save it."
"Debra, she doesn't need to save the damn paper. The whole point is to make a celebratory mess for others to clean up," Dad snapped.
"You'd know a great deal about that, wouldn't you, Rod?" Mom said, tooth-decayingly sweet. "But you never seem to think about the fact that I'm the one cleaning up."
Pushing the still-wrapped gift aside, Andria looked at the cake thoughtfully. "Do you suppose you can drown in frosting?"
"Oh, please, spare me the poor-little-Debbie speech. The judge may have bought that bullshit, but I know better. I was the one that had to be there for Andy. You were too busy trying to find your charka and fucking your therapist," Dad shouted, pointing a finger at Mom.
"It would be horribly caloric, girlfriend," Billie tapped at Andria's forearm with his manicured fingertips, ignoring the fight. Since they happened so often around the Johnson home, one learned to go on with one's life and fade it into the background. As Andria's only friend to survive grade school, Billie had become the world champion of not hearing raised angry voices. If only it was an Olympic event.
"You call dragging her off to share your hair-brained stunts once a year 'being there' for Andy? Grow up, Rod! And he was a spiritualist, not a therapist." Mom glanced at the blonde. "Oh, and I never brought him home to emotionally scar our daughter. Or are you trying to get on the Springer Show?"
"Wow, a new vibrator!" Andria said loudly, staring down at the digital camera nestled in tissue at the center of the box. "Thanks, Billie! I'll just go use it right now."
"And what show would that be, Deb? Women who fuck spiritualists and the men who pay for them to do it? God, I must have been out of my mind to ever marry you in the first place. When I met you, you still thought cocks were just another way to apply lip gloss!"
"Yeah, well, back then, you could still put out enough to keep me fresh-faced once in a while."
"And you'd know a lot about putting out, wouldn't you?"
Then again, there were days when ignoring the fights just used up too much energy. Fed up, Andria stood. "You know, when I was a kid, you at least had the decency to take your fights to another room. Come on, Billie, maybe we can still get to the Spot before Ladies Hour is up. I need a drink."
"Now you're talking," cheered the queen and jumped to his high-heeled feet.
"Now look what you've done," Dad hissed.
"Me?!" Mom put a hand to her throat, her eyes wide with offended outrage. "You were the one who--"
And they were off again.
The blonde only blinked at the room with a blissfully placid expression. "Is the party over?" she chirped.
Once out in the car, Andria let out a scream of frustration and pulled at her platinum hair. It felt good, so she did it again. She would've screamed for a third time except she caught a glance of her neighbor waving at her. Biting back the resentment of being stopped by the gossipmonger, she rolled down her window and plastered on a good-humored expression of friendly interest.
"Parents at it again, are they?" the neighbor guessed, breezing on by.
Andria smiled and nodded, grumbling under her breath, "Go screw your inflatable girlfriend, you limp-dicked bastard," at his retreating back.
Billie laughed. "Be hard to do with a limp who-ha."
"Yeah, probably, but there are enough freaks in the world that someone would pay good money to see him try." She grinned honestly at him and started up the car, feeling a little better. Billie could do that to her and that had to be the highest sign of a good friend. Even though his coming out was incredibly hard on her heart and on some base level his going around in skirts really bugged her, she tried to repay him by being the greatest friend he could have.
"Oh, gross! Not me, girl." Billie smoothed out his mini-skirt and shifted his fake breasts so they were more even, which looked unnatural. "My perversions run to the more mmmm, mundane and delicious."
"What, you're a lesbian in a man's body?" she quipped as she drove.
He gaped at her for a second before peeling out a deep hoot, one of his un-modified laughs before he gave it a feminine touch. "If you said that in front of the girls down at the club, you'd be lynched," he giggled, dabbing at his eyes. "Some of us actually are, you know. Deidre is actually getting the Operation because her girlfriend can't stand the Little Man."
Feeling more relaxed, Andria eased back in the driver's seat. "How is that new job working out?"
Billie waved a hand at her in practiced ease and his trimmed eyebrows bobbed up and down as he spoke. "I love it. I always knew I was meant for the stage and being a show girl is wonderful. One of the girls, Geneva, and I are thinking of getting our own apartment together. Some place closer to the club and in a much nicer neighborhood. Just because we dress in drag doesn't mean we have to live with the crack heads and hookers."
"I wouldn't have thought there was much of a demand for drag queens singing show tunes in the heart of Seattle," she mused.
He rolled his eyes and sighed in frustration. "There isn't. We'll all be out of work in three weeks."
Andria glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Then how can you afford this better apartment?"
Looking out the window, he didn't face her.
A sinking sensation dropped in her belly. "Billie?"
"Oh, girl, I didn't want to tell you on your birthday." He waved his face with his hand and frowned at her in concern. "Can't it wait until tomorrow?"
'There went relaxing,' she thought. "It's already ruined, William," she said using his given name and feeling an irrational urge to cry.
"Oh dear, you're using that man name on me. Here," he pointed at a hole-in-the-wall diner, his nail tapping the glass. "Stop here and we'll talk."
Andria pulled over and parked. The place was empty and the waitress raised a brow at Billie, but didn't say anything as she brought them menus. When they both had their coffee and the waitress had disappeared somewhere in back looking to see if they had a gardenburger, Billie took her hand across the table.
"Here's the thing," he said. He was using his 'Don't Break Andria' voice, the same one he'd used the night he told her he was sorry, but he was gay. "Trixie has a cousin who just bought a club and is planning to turn it into a dinner theatre. We're all going to work there as show girls or waitresses and things. It's in an area where people like us aren't looked at like trash as much as we are here. We'll get better wages and a healthier emotional environment."
She bit her lip as her palms began to sweat in his hands. "Where?"
Tears welled up in his eyes and he waved a hand as if shooing away the importance of the question. "Oh...San Francisco."
Hunching over, she stared at their clasped hands. She'd known Billie since the fourth grade, when he was still being called William. She'd had her first crush on him, the captain of the wrestling team. They'd started dating their sophomore year of high school. The night before prom, he'd come on heavy and she'd thought it was the night she was going to lose her virginity. It was going to be beautiful and perfect, since it was with the man she loved. Instead, he'd pulled away at the last minute and confessed he was a homosexual. His sudden need to have her was only a last ditch attempt at convincing himself he wasn't.
Needless to say, they hadn't gone to the prom together. In fact, he disappeared from sight.
It seemed like she'd spent the rest of the year crying, sure down to her toes that she had turned him gay. It wasn't until college that they'd met up again and by then, William had turned into the flamboyant Billie. She'd spent another three months sobbing because she hadn't just turned him gay, she'd actually turned him into a drag queen.
But he was still the same nice guy. He still had that frank and off-hand openness that could always draw her emotions out to the surface no matter how hard she tried to bottle them up. He could still make her laugh even when she was crying. He still had that magical ability to show up at her door with a bottle of wine and a bucket of her favorite fried chicken just when she was at her lowest. And he was still her friend. By graduation, she'd reconciled her love for him into something less painful and more honest for both of them and moved on. Or, at least, she'd always thought she'd moved on. But if she really had...should it still hurt this much to think of losing him?
"Are you mad at me?" Billie asked, his massacre running down his cheeks.
Shaking her head, she swallowed the lump in her throat. "No. You do what you have to do to be happy and I'll be happy, too." and thought, 'Oh, what a load of crap that is.'
But his face lit up, relieved and cheerful in a blink of the eye, and he set about repairing his makeup with a napkin and the reflective surface of the grimy diner window. "Let's talk about something else, then. Oh, tell me about your boyfriend. When are you going to bring him home to meet Mommy?"
She wanted to shrivel up and die. "I'm not."
She did not want to talk about Fred. She never wanted to talk about Fred. There was really nothing to talk about. It always kind of surprised her that she'd stayed with him as long as she did. She'd met him her third week of college. She had been pulling out of her parking spot at the same time he had and they'd bumped fenders. He had been nice enough then. Charming and sweet, always attentive, in essence the prefect boyfriend. A month later she'd run into Billie again, had cried all over again, her heart had cracked just little more. So when Fred had next made subtle noises about, you know, a hotel, she'd taken him up on it.
And after that, she just didn't seem to have the energy to get rid of him, but God, if wishes ever came true, and she only got one of them, she'd trade peace at home in order to wish that no one ever brought him up again.
It was a wish only partially-fulfilled. The only person in the world who knew she even had a boyfriend was Billie. For some strange unknown reason, she insisted several months ago on being taken to the club where Billie sang when she and Fred had their date-night. It was the one and only time she'd ever asked to go anywhere. Fred had been all for a sexy showgirl-strewn night out, right up he realized exactly what "girls" that particular establishment hired. Then he'd fought her, like he thought the entertainment was going to leap on him and drag him off-stage to be recruited into the Land of Lavender, but she'd put her foot down and in the end he capitulated.
Billie had, of course, noticed them and come out to sit at their table for bit. The conversation had been polite enough, if awkward, but Fred had been so scared by the experience that he had practically dragged Andria out to the parking lot as soon as Billie left the table. Once back at the car, he'd thrown Andria into his back seat and screwed her. Fred never made love. Mostly, he just screwed. 'Screwing' was the perfect term; it embodied all the hurt and embarrassment that seemed to go along with Fred's sexual whims. And that was if Fred was feeling delicately towards her. After the 'Drag-Nite' date, he'd been upset enough about the injury his masculinity had suffered by being forced to share air with 'those' people, that he'd foregone screwing altogether and gone straight to fucking. Some of the things he'd wanted her to do...and she'd done them, just to keep what little peace he felt like giving her. And for what, really? It had become evident from virtually the first time that he didn't need her to want sex as long as she opened her legs and did what he said
No. Fred was not the sort of boyfriend that Andria could take home. In fact, she'd never even told anyone about him. Without actually swearing him to secrecy, she swore Billie to secrecy. Giving some lame excuse about not wanting to be fuel for more arguments between her parents, she had pleaded with him not to ever bring Fred up around people who knew her.
And Billie, sweet, loving Billie who was always there for her, never brought him up at all unless he was floundering for conversation. As he seemed to be now, since the utter lack of inflection in her voice hadn't told him she didn't want to talk about Fred.
He stopped fixing his face and looked at her in the window. "Why not?"
It was Andria's turn to try and wave away the importance of the question. "Because he's engaged to marry someone else."
Billie turned around to face her. He didn't look surprised as much as very, very solemn. "Oh girl. When did you find this out?"
Taking a sip of her coffee, she lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "This morning. His fiancée called me. She found my number in his black book along with a hotel receipt. She put two and two together."
Scandalized, his mouth dropped. "A hotel?"
Wincing, she couldn't quite meet his eyes. "Yeah."
"Oh, girl," he said, disappointed.
"I know, I know." She sighed and set her mug down with a thud, thinking about that first time. "He's been the biggest, longest mistake of my life. I can't understand what all the poets and songs are so gung-ho about. It was messy even with a rubber, it hurt, and he slobbered all over my neck. I kept thinking he needed a bib and he hasn't gotten any better with practice. I could almost feel sorry for his fiancée."
"I don't believe this." He slapped his hand on the table. "I'm so angry right now, I want to dig out my old wrestling uniform, hunt that nozzle down, and teach him a thing or two about how to treat a lady."
"You tell it, honey," the waitress called from behind the counter.
Andria and Billie both did a double take, and then giggled into their coffee.
His smile fading, he took her hand again. "I'm so sorry. Your first time shouldn't have been like that. Well, no time should be like that, but your first time especially."
Grinning slightly, she tucked her chin on the palm of her free hand and said dryly, "Technically, my first time was with you and it shouldn't have been like that, either."
He blushed, and glanced nervously at the waitress, who was trying very hard not to look like she was eavesdropping. "We didn't do anything."
"Close enough. I know that I shouldn't compare, but of the two firsts, I think I prefer yours. At least I was having a good time before you came out of the closet." Shaking her head, she idly brushed back a wild curl with the back of her hand as she said almost clinically, "And don't give me that crap that it only hurts the first time because I was a virgin, because that's exactly what it is: crap. It hurts every time we...get together."
Scowling at her, he sipped at his coffee. "So, what are you going to do? Boil him in oil? You say the word and I'll round up the girls. I think Alisha's brother can get us some tar."
Frowning into her cup, she poured in some cream and watched the black liquid turn milky brown. "I'll probably go home and suffocate myself with my birthday cake."
His face fell. "This really has been a rotten birthday for you, hasn't it?"
Shaking her head, she smiled at him. "Not even a close second. The worst birthday I ever had was when I was twelve. Dad chose that day to serve Mom with the divorce papers and she spent the rest of the day telling me what a jerk he was and why. Including all of their problems in bed."
Billie turned a very becoming shade of green. "Ew."
"The second worst birthday was my sweet sixteen."
He frowned, his brows lowering in confusion. "Your dad took you to Australia for that one, didn't he? How was that horrible? I thought you like those horrible nature kind of things."
She leaned across the table. "Do you know how hot it is down there? I was miserable. I was more than miserable, I was sick the entire trip and, because I was sick, the survivalist tour group that Dad scheduled us on wouldn't let me go. I spent the week in the hotel room praying to the porcelain god while Dad held my hair. And the really horrible part about it was I really wanted to go on that tour. I love going on trips like that with Dad."
"Yes, I always did think that was really strange," he said, tapping a finger against his chin. "I thought your parents were divorced before you were twelve."
She shook her head, stirring her coffee. "They separated when I was six and the only reason that birthday isn't on my list of worsts is because I didn't understand then that he wasn't coming back."
"Are you two going to order?" the waitress asked as she came by to fill their cups. "We don't have any gardenburgers."
Billie and Andria looked at each other, and then shook their heads at the waitress. "No, we'll just pay for our coffees and go. I could really use something numbing," Andria said, standing.
Billie rose to his feet and patted her shoulder as she put several dollars on the table. "As the saying goes, once you hit rock bottom, there's no way but up."
"Sure there is," she returned. "There are at least eight different directions of sideways."
"Amen," the waitress said.
It was as they were leaving the diner that Andria's eyes caught sight of the announcement board where several pieces of paper were tacked up. Free puppies. Babysitter wanted. Tractor for sale. Oo, a bull for stud. Well, she was a single girl now. Oh, and one more, on a sky-blue flyer that said: WANTED: Mail Order Brides for a trip through time to 1897 willing to make the perilous two to three month journey to the Yukon. You must be physically fit and up to date on all vaccinations. You will be paid for your time and receive benefits. US citizens preferred. Please bring a photo ID, proof of address, and proof of vaccinations with you to the address below. Exceptional character required.
Her first reaction was to laugh and she turned to her friend to share what she thought was a joke with him.
He was rummaging through his purse and said, "I'm sorry, girlfriend, but I forgot my license. If you want to drink, you'll have to do it at home where you don't have to drive afterwards."
Home. Her parents were probably still arguing and would continue to argue late into the night and probably into the next morning. At which point, Dad would fly off with his blonde flavor of the month back to his new home in Montana and Mom would break out Mr. Jack Daniels so she could cry with company into her pillow. Assuming, of course, that she didn't want to rant at someone about what a horrible man Dad was and since there wouldn't be anyone else around, Andria would be drafted.
Looking at the flyer again, the road of desperation opened up for her. Two glorious months without the drama that was her parents' lives. A trip that would be worth remembering and something nice to write Billie about after he'd gone. She wouldn't even have to be around to watch him drive out of her life, which was both a plus and a minus.
She ripped the paper from the board and tucked it into her pocket.
