“You’re welcome?” He felt Joanna’s hand where the stranger’s had just been.
“That,” she said, “may be the briefest love affair I’ve seen.”
Alex snorted, trying to clear his head with a shake. “What are you talking about?”
She purred at him while tickling his chin. “Your cluelessness is far too endearing.”
“Are you two coming?”
By the time they walked into the theatre, an excited audience had filled most every available seat. At last, Vicente spied three vacant spots on the edge of the fifth row. It wasn’t an ideal angle for the screen, but the people-watching more than made up for it. Three or four colourful wigs stood out over the assembled crowd. Their wearers strutted up and down the aisle on oversized heels and masculine legs, tossing grapes into the crowd. Their cries of “Feliz queer nuevo!” made little sense to Alex or those few paying enough attention to catch the grapes. It was high summer, after all.
Spying his frown, Joanna explained. “It’s an English pun. Like Feliz año nuevo, but in English, ‘year’ rhymes with—”
“Hence the grapes. Got it.” Alex remembered his first New Year in Madrid and a valiant attempt to stuff all twelve grapes into his mouth for luck before the bells stopped tolling midnight. It had been the first year he’d failed, but it had also been his first year trying to do it with cava being poured down his throat. “Are they English?”
“I don’t think so, darling.”
Vicente grunted. “So, the theatre won’t allow popcorn, but grapes mashed into the carpet are okay?”
Joanna turned to Vicente and squeezed his hand. “Corazon, I love you, but stop sulking.”
One of the drag queens rounded the row and dropped into the seat in front of Joanna, who tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but your wig?”
With a dismissive sniff, the queen lifted the towering follicle construct off her head in one clean movement, revealing a smooth head of dark, slicked-back hair.
Joanna leaned into Vicente. “Amor, I still can’t see. Can we change places?”
With a shrug, Vicente changed seats with Joanna and settled into the centre seat behind the drag queen, whose height posed him no challenge. Alex thought he caught a knowing glance from Joanna, but he couldn’t be sure. She seemed to be nodding at something over his left shoulder. He turned to see a number of people surrounding a man with a frizzy shock of thick, dark hair who looked to be thanking them through obvious nerves. Just behind him, sat Plaid Shirt, who caught Alex’s eye and smiled.
The lights dimmed. The crowd’s enthusiasm rose into a deafening thunder of cheers and applause as the man Bardothad been trying to chat up, took the stage. He invited up the man with the frizzy hairdo, introducing him as the director, then a couple of other cast members—not including the White Rabbit—before they ceded the stage to someone called Alaska, who also appeared in the film. She powered through several numbers with a Siouxie Sioux look and a Patti Smith confidence Alex admired.
Onscreen, they later watched Alaska urinate on her co-star and love interest while Carmen Maura—who Alex had seen in several movies and who must have been quite a get for the young director—watched with excitement like she’d found the spring of Lourdes. When they came to the White Rabbit’s promised phallic debut, he felt Vicente’s fingers brush the edge of his hand. He glanced over to see Joanna leaning against Vicente’s chest with his arm wrapped around her. But Vicente’s other hand remained next to his. Something in him jolted as Vicente slid a little finger around his and left it there. Vicente grinned at the screen as the camera followed Maura and an emcee played by the director down a line of stiffies. In what the screenplay called a ‘General Erection,’ Maura measured the length and girth of each before declaring a winner.
Alex had missed the White Rabbit entirely.
He made a haphazard attempt to follow the rest of the plot; something about a housewife who’d spurned the affections of Alaska’s punk-rocker in favour of an abusive… he’d decided early in the film not to overanalyse it. Every so often, he would feel the brush of Vicente’s finger against his, and less often, a glance from Plaid Shirt, whose face he would catch across the aisle as the screen filled with light.
As Pepi—Maura—led Bom—Alaska—to a presumably happy ending without the complication of noncommittal, masochistichousewife lovers, the crowd erupted in raucous cheers. Joanna and Vicente leapt to their feet and joined them. Meanwhile, Alex tracked the departure of Plaid Shirt, who looked back with a mischievous smile before disappearing into the lobby.
The director returned to the stage for bows, along with Alaska and the actor who’d played the housewife. After what felt like more than five minutes of applause, the crowd was on the move again, some meandering to the exit half-drunk, others mobbing the director and stars with praise.
“Come on, let’s say hello!” Joanna said, nodding at the director and hauling Vicente into the aisle.
“Wait, you know him?” Vicente asked.
“Does that matter?” She turned to Alex. “Are you coming?”
Alex shook his head. The growing crowd around the director was the last thing he felt like dealing with. “Congratulate him for me?”
He watched Joanna and Vicente join the growing throng before following the stragglers out into the warm night. For whatever hellish heat Madrid endured through each of its August days, there was something magical about it after dark—not just because Plaid Shirt now stood there smoking on the pavement, giving Alex a shy smile as he approached.
“Wild movie, huh? The critics will hate it.”
“Probably,” Alex agreed, refusing his offer of a cigarette. “Do you think the guy who made it cares?”
Plaid Shirt smiled again. “I’ve his band, so I don’t think he does.”
“He has a band too?” Alex stepped out of the way of a six-foot five transvestite who tottered by on precarious heels.
