Page 6

Houston chuckled nervously, then gestured for us to join him at the table. He eyed the lip of his beer anxiously, the condensation on the bottle matching the sweat forming on his forehead. I couldn’t take it. This was so fucking cute. I took a second to glare at the side of Morrow’s face. Why couldn’t he be more like Houston?

Xtra Xtra was a passably pretty, if suspiciously large drag queen. Houston would blow his top if he saw her out of drag. Xavi Ximenez was a hunk and a half, something I would never tell him to his face, but something that was undeniably true.

“So how long have the two of you been dating?” Houston asked.

I was taking a sip of my cocktail at the time. Half a mouthful of it was now sprayed across the top of our table. Morrow’s cocktail, meanwhile, went down the wrong pipe. He coughed and sputtered as Houston clapped him on the back.

I forced the words out. “We’re not — ”

“ — dating,” Morrow finished.

“Oh. Sorry for assuming. I just — you’d make a cute couple, you know?”

Houston shot us another one of those gooey grins, half his mouth curling into a smile. Xtra Xtra was going to love this guy. And Xavi Ximenez was going to suck this cowboy dry.

I downed what was left of my drink. Morrow did the same, easily dodging the question, simultaneously avoiding my gaze.

“Hey,” I blurted out. “Looks like we’re all out of drinks. I’ll grab some more. Same thing for you, Houston? And for you, Morrow?”

“Um, sure,” Morrow said. “We’ve got a running tab. Just make sure to put it on — ”

“The Occultech credit card. Got it. Be right back.”

Houston’s eyes flitted meaningfully between the two of us as I stumbled off my bar stool. Damn it. He knew, naturally, from the way I tangled my feet and probably turned bright red even under the flicker of Debussy’s lights. I threw him a warning glare over my shoulder, telling him with my eyes to shut it. He nudged his head toward Morrow, then winked.

I clenched my teeth. It’d be too weird to turn around now and demand that Morrow go fetch our drinks instead, just so I could sit down and give Houston a piece of my mind. I’d just have to believe that Houston was enough of a bro not to broach the subject.

Maybe I could bribe him with even more beer. On Occultech’s tab, of course. Except I was surprised to find that Yoanna Hangover had finished work for the night. Anita Cocktail was tending bar now, her nails painted with a stylized drip to resemble molten gold, matching golden tinsel threaded through the braids spilling from her enormous wig. She smirked as I approached the bar.

“A beer for the gentleman?” she asked, a disappointed “Tsk” already locked and loaded on her lips. Beer sales were good for the bar, of course, but she much preferred the challenge of crafting a good cocktail. They didn’t call her Anita Cocktail for — well, you get the picture.

I chuckled nervously. “Yes, ma’am. Two beers, and a dirty martini for Morrow.”

She peered over my shoulder at our table, then wrinkled her nose at me. “You hitting that? Actually, don’t answer. You aren’t. Xtra Xtra tells me you have terrible game.”

I threw my hands up. “Is that what you all gossip about in the dressing room? My nonexistent sex life? And stop it, already. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t swing that way.”

Anita Cocktail scoffed. “Won’t know until you ask. You got a mouth, don’t you? Use it, one way or the other.”

As if I hadn’t already tried. Something always got in the way somehow, either some stupid, pressing matter that distracted him, or his own oblivious nature suddenly plunging his IQ below sea level whenever it seemed convenient.

I pressed my lips tightly together, deciding it wasn’t worth arguing with the lady who could withhold all our drinks if I got too mouthy. She popped open the beers — nice and frosty — slid them across the counter, then started on Morrow’s martini.

She shook her shaker, and there it was again — that glazed look on her face, the Happy Links trance. Her gold-smeared lips parted slightly as her eyes went distant, her hands still automatically preparing the drink, as if muscle memory had taken over.

The little charms tinkled on her bracelet as she shook the cocktail shaker: the tiny burlap bag of money, the tiny martini glass, the palm tree. Without even looking at what she was doing, staring over my shoulder at absolutely nothing, Anita Cocktail still pulled off the perfect pour, spearing a single olive with a tiny plastic sword and dropping it expertly into the glass.

“Your drinks,” she said, as dispassionate as a robot, nudging the beers and martini across the countertop. “I’ll put them on your card.”

“Um, sure,” I said. “Thanks a lot, Anita.”

Unblinking, unseeing, she answered, “I am always happy to serve.”

A shiver ran down my spine, and I knew it wasn’t from handling all the icy drinks, either. What just happened back there? One minute she was the same chill and very intimidating drag queen-bartender she always was, and the next, she was Ambrose from the sidewalk outside Happy Links, suspended in a dreamy trance.

I brought the boys their drinks. Houston accepted his with a drawled, “Much obliged,” followed by another wink. I barely knew the man, but something in my gut told me this was a different wink, one that said, “Your secret’s safe with me.” Good. Great. Unless it was all my imagination. Whatever. There were more pressing matters just now.

“Listen,” I told Morrow. “It happened again. Anita Cocktail, remember when we saw her earlier, out on the street? She was doing that hypnotized thing when she was making your drink. How’s it taste, anyway?”