Gossip and Wig Boxes
“Alright, honey, check the tags and
make sure the wigs match the styles you want ‘cause we are not having a repeat
of the pick-a-peppa show,” Angel declared as he did a mental count of the boxes
to make certain none had gotten left under a chair or beside a mannequin.
“You just had to go there, didn’t
you,” Cha Cha Bella grumbled as she adjusted her everyday wig, “Always with the
pick-a-peppa disaster, you are never going to let that go, are you?”
“Oh, I will, if you ever top it,
which I hope you won’t,” Angel replied. “And I don’t always mention the
pick-a-peppa debacle. Sometimes I mention Karaoke-gate, or the Great Drag
Cruise Fiasco.”
Groaning, Bella scrubbed a hand over
her face and raised one perfectly arched eyebrow at him. Where most drag
performers stripped off their personality at the end of the night, Cha Cha
Bella simply drifted from exaggerated and flamboyant, to comfortably unique.
“Is it really necessary to give every
disaster a name like they’re fuckin’ hurricanes?”
“If I did that, they’d only have a
first name, not a title,” Angel pointed out, “and yes, I really must title them
for the sake of my memoirs and any opportunity that arises to share my wildly
captivating tales of your misadventures.”
“Wildly embellished is more like it,”
Bella said as she crossed the room to check the labels on the wig boxes. “You
know, I think I’m going to go with your suggestion about braiding the lime and
lavender ombre wig and having you do the cherry-pie beehive with the blond.”
“Thank you!” Angel said, making the
adjustment in the notepad app on his phone, “The red streaks and the woven in
cherries will really pop against the blond. I was terrified of you going
through with the beehive in the lavender and lime, too Bride of Frankenstein.”
When Bella started sputtering, Angel
looked up from his notes to see a look that was part outrage, part what the
fuck, and part oh my fuckin’ god why didn’t I think of that. Angel just grinned
and made a second note, this one about modifications to the classic conical
hairstyle and its prominent skunk stripe. For almost a minute, the only sound
in the room was Bella putting the lids back on the hat boxes and snaping the
latches in place. Angel marked them off the checklist while Bella loaded them
on the collapsible utility cart with her makeup cases and hanging wardrobe
bags.
Best find ever, though technically,
it had been considered two finds before Billy had gotten ahold of it and welded
the collapsable hanging bar to the collapsable cart to give them a mini version
of the bellman’s carts that easily fit into the trunk of Bella’s sporty yellow
Volkswagen Golf. Angel turned away to take one last look around Bella’s area,
aware that they were the last ones left in the backstage area tonight.
First, Bella huffed, then Angel heard
the tink, tink, ting of the tips of her nails against the metal. “Okay, fine,
you have just given me my theme for the Halloween show.”
“I know, and you’re welcome.”
“How do you always do that?”
“I don’t, we do it together.”
“Meh, that’s bullshit but thank you
for saying it. I don’t know where I’d be as a performer if you hadn’t come into
my life,” Bella said as she draped an arm over her shoulder.
With her out of her platform shoes
and wig, they were damn near the same height, with Angel having a half inch
edge as he stared at their reflections in the mirror.
“I believe you’ve got that backward,”
Angel pointed out as he turned into her embrace. “You were the one who fell
into my life, remember, though it was more like my chair when you came bursting
into the shop like your ass was on fire. All these years and you’ve still never
told me what your backup plan was if my client had showed up for her
appointment.”
“I didn’t have one.”
Angel felt himself poof up a bit as
he pulled back to cock his head and shoot her a side-eye. “Oh, so you just
figured I wouldn’t be booked in the first place so you could just show up
whenever and I’d be able to a work miracle for you.”
“Now to be fair, you did work more
than one miracle that day, so keep the story straight and don’t go downplaying
the credit you richly deserve. Not only did you take care of my hair and get
Corrine over to help with my makeup, but you found me the best pair of thigh
high boots I’ve ever owned.”
“Just call me a full-service stylist,”
Angel said.
“You were truly my guardian angel
that day, but I knew you would be,” Bella admitted. “I’d seen you backstage at
Bare Minimums the week before, helping Ajay get ready for his set.”
“Wait, you never told me that.”
“I know.”
A Daddy for Summer: Angel can be preordered here!
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