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"Really?"
"Really. Billie has a remarkable way with a crowd. Well, you saw it tonight when he was doing the emceeing. First time I met him and I remarked on his build, he batted his lashes and told me he'd been born in Belhaven." Des affected Billie's tone and cocked a hip as he propped against the rack of dresses. His deep voice and complete inability to emulate a woman made Julie giggle.
"'Honey-chile, let me tell you something about being gender queer in rural North Carolina, particularly around a bunch of the brothers. White people may have their hang-ups about it, but they're all rainbow flags and 'woohoo to diversity' compared to how most black men react to it.' He said he started pumping iron and learning how to fight as soon as he could lift a barbell and form a fist. 'Which is dreadful for a manicure, by the by.'"
Des sobered. "When his mother kept catching him trying on her dresses and wearing bras under his clothes to school, she bought him a burial plot. He was fourteen years old. He said she didn't know what to do with him and figured it was the only way she could show her love."
"Wow. He didn't try to hide it much, even then."
"Yeah. It's kind of a miracle he survived, and survived to be as cool of a guy as he is. Or woman. Or both."
"You should stay away from a drag queen career, by the way," Julie advised. "You couldn't do female if you tried."
"Well, I am a roofer. Not a lot of room to explore my feminine side around the guys at the job sites."
Her lips curved, but she was thinking about Billie's mom, and Des's. "Do you ever feel sad about your mom? Lonely, from not having a family in the traditional sense?"
He left the rack of dresses and sat on the edge of the stage, swinging his feet. He was back in his jeans and one of his quirky T-shirts. King Kong held a voluptuous Jessica Lange in his palm while he screamed his rage from the Empire State building. She noticed Des hadn't tied the laces of his thick-soled work shoes.
"I guess I was sad at the beginning," he said. "But I think it's harder to be a kid who knew his family and lost them, rather than one who never had them at all. It's easier to make your own family as you grow up. I'm fairly tight with some of the guys on my crews, and the rigger and BDSM communities are close knit, if you fall in with the right group. Come Christmas or Thanksgiving, I've never lacked an invitation to join someone at their table."
He fell silent, watching her with those brown eyes that contained so many things she wanted to know as much as they scared her. He knew it, too. She felt it, in a waiting, coiled energy from him. It was a different version of a wolf patiently stalking a rabbit, but not one he planned to kill. He simply intended to catch it and never let it go. At least that was what she hoped--and feared--in that perverse conflict she had inside her.
"Did you have girlfriends as a kid? Before you went on your dating dry spell?"
"Some." He left the stage and straddled the crate, picking up her foot to put it in his lap and massage her stockinged toes. She barely swallowed a moan of bliss. "What are you after, love?"
"Loneliness, I guess. It's a powerful word, and I think it affects some people more than others. Maybe becomes an obsession."
"Or a pit they can't climb out of," he said bluntly. "They keep waiting for someone to reach in and pull them out. Yeah, I went there a couple times, before I had a get-over-myself moment. You have to crawl out of that pit yourself. When you do, you realize there are six billion people wandering around, six billion chances to form connections, friendships, shared experiences."
He shrugged. "If you shut yourself away from everyone and say 'I'm lonely', it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, when the rest of the world is waiting outside that door. It doesn't happen instantly, those connections. You've got to be patient, work for them. And that's just normal friendships and family relationships. It's been my experience the soulmate stuff happens when you're not looking for one, when you finally get comfortable with where you're at. When you're a whole person rather than a puzzle piece looking for a matching lock."
He swept his hand around himself, gesturing to the theater. "I know you've been in that pit, but this looks like you're one of the ones who clawed out and found something that works for you."
She lifted her other foot off the floor, twitching it left and right in invitation. He let it replace the one in his lap so he could massage it too.
"Brat."
She didn't deny it. "Is there any time loneliness isn't selfishness? Wanting that one bright line of connection that belongs to you alone? You really think that's just romanticism gone amuck?"
"No, not necessarily. But I think it has the irony of putting blinders on you. Such that when that person's right in front of you, you might miss that they're there because you have this perfect picture in your head of what he or she is supposed to be."
Another silence ensued. As it drew out, it began to have weight. She felt his eyes on her, and shifted. She wanted to tell him to stop looking at her like that, but she didn't really want him to stop. So she straightened, putting her feet on the floor, and gestured to the rack of clothes. "What's that?"
"Glad you asked." He rose from the crate and came to her. When she lifted her face, he bent and slid his arms beneath her, picking her up off the seat. Not expecting to be carried, she caught his shoulders with a little yelp.
"What are you doing?"
"I had a sudden craving to carry you. You're a nice armful."
He carried her up the side steps and let her feet down in front of the rack, her back to the stage curtain. The dresses were in shades of ivory or white. The full skirts and beaded bodices told her they were all wedding dresses.
"I picked these out at secondhand shops. They're in your size, more or less, so they should have a reasonable fit." He gestured. "Show me the dress you'd want to be married in, if these were the choices you
had."
She'd had a lot of unexpected experiences with eccentric people. This one took her by surprise, followed by a pressing sense of dismay.
