Page 99 of Born to be Wilder

“Damn it, Doris! I’m teaching her to text after this!”

We continued moving around, calling Doris as the minutes ticked by, seemingly speeding up like my heart rate. How would we ever find Doris in this mess?

“Do you think she went back to Bertha?” Sylvie asked.

“Do you think she could find Bertha?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“No,” Sylvie and Marge answered in unison.

“This is hopeless!” Sylvie called down over the music that grew louder as we passed a small street band. “We’re never going to find her!”

“I’m making you all get implanted with dog GPS tags!” Marge grumbled. “I don’t care if it’s illegal. We’re doing it so I can track you if some bastard takes you!”

“Well, she answered her phone, so she hasn’t been kidnapped,” Sylvie said rationally. Then her face lit up. “Wait! GPS! I think I have the Find My on there for her after we lost her phone a few months ago in that snowbank after playing with Emma. We added her to my list so we could always find it!”

Marge looked up at her. “Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place! Go! Do it! Locate our lost soldier!”

Sylvie typed away on her phone. Then her face exploded in a smile. “I got her! She’s at least five blocks away already. Go! That way!”

Marge spun and marched in the direction Sylvie pointed, and I hurried to stay with them as she pushed and cut her way through the crowd, Sylvie guiding her every step.

“Left! No, the other left! Straight… straight! No! She turned. She’s going the other way!”

“Cripes! How many cocktails has she had? She’s running around like a drunken monkey!”

We followed Doris’s moving dot until it finally stopped moving.

“She seems to have found somewhere to stop,” Sylvie said.

“Hopefully of her own volition!” Marge barked back. “Because if she’s being held against her will when we find her, I’m gonna rip the arms off anyone holding her captive and beat them to death with their own fists!”

It took us almost ten minutes to cut through the crowds and find our way around blocked streets to get to her unmoving beacon.

Suddenly, Sylvie screamed. “There! I see her! I see her!”

Marge took off at a jog with Sylvie bouncing on her shoulders like a bobblehead.

We pushed past stilt walkers and drunk frat boys until we reached a gated courtyard filled with enormous floats in various states of readiness arranged in a long line that disappeared around the corner. Generators humming. Crew members in yellow vests moving with purpose. Music pulsing from somewhere ahead.

And there, near the second float, sitting on a folding chair with a Hurricane in one hand and a pink boa around her neck, was Doris.

And she was surrounded by drag queens.

Six of them, in Mardi Gras costuming that was so spectacular it required a moment simply to absorb—feathers and sequins and headdresses that added two feet to their already considerable heights, faces painted with the precision of artists who took their craft seriously and the joyfulness of people who loved every second of it.

“Just hold this drink and hand me that needle and thread. I’ll sew it for you, sweetie.” Doris stuck out her drink, and the six-foot-four drag queen in a blinding rhinestone-encrusted showgirl outfit took it from her.

We stopped, watching silently for a moment as she spun around and stuck out her ass, and Doris went to work sewing a tear in her costume.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Marge grumbled. “We’re in a panic thinking she’s been kidnapped and she’s over here having cocktails with queens.”

“Doris!” Sylvie cried out.

Doris looked up from her work, her face exploding in a smile when she saw us.

“Oh, I knew you’d find me! I knew it!” She waved big and wild like a little kid greeting their parents picking them up from summer camp. “See, Diamond! I told you they’d find me!”

We hurried over to her, and I grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. “You scared us, Doris. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”