13
THE LAST STOP
Dorian.Now.
This is it. We’ve come to the last stop of the night.
This very strange, very long, veryperfectnight.
The six of us manage to squeeze into a single cab. It’s a tight fit, and Princess sits on Ophelia’s lap, the two of them cackling, while Dove takes mine. Carver squeezes in between them and Phantom takes shotgun. Phantom has gone quiet, his gaze trained out the window.
Dove wants me to come home with her. It’s hard not to think about that with her body slotted perfectly against mine. She smells like sweat and shampoo and I wind my arm around her middle and breathe her in greedily.
My lips tingle where she kissed them, and I imagine I won’t be able to shake the ghost sensation until I have her mouth back on mine where it belongs.
The Carousel Bar takes us back towards Dumbo. The ride isn’t long, and the girls pile out while Phantom beats me to paying the fare. When I get out, everyone is crowdedtogether outside a bar. The window is stripped with yellow, red and orange so you can’t see inside and there’s a similar circus color scheme on the lights that make up a sign hanging above that read: THE CAROUSEL BAR.
But they’ve stalled, and I stand beside Dove, waiting.
“Okay,” Ophelia says to her friends, “before we go in…I just want to say…thank you. Seriously. For coming out. All of you. I know it’s a pain in the ass because it’s so close to Christmas, and we’ve been bouncing around all night, and you’re all sweaty and tired and ready to go to bed?—”
Princess yawns loudly. “Don’t remind me! I should’ve kept my pillow!”
There’s a round of chuckles before Ophelia starts up again: “It just…it’s been a rough year. Rougher for some of us than others.” Her eyes connect with Dove’s, and I feel the connection the two women have. Dove’s eyes get wet, and the two women share a small, touching smile. “But you all have always been there for me,” Ophelia continues. “No matter what. I guess what I’m saying is…” she sniffs, wipes her hand under her eyes. She’s drunk, that’s clear. But she also means every word she’s saying,and that’s equally clear. “I love you bitches. Even you, Dorian.”
“Love you too, Ophelia,” I reply.
“Happy fucking birthday, bitch!” Dove shouts, her words echoing down the street. We all whoop, shout a round of “happy birthday,” and Ophelia lights up. She laughs—this wonderful, deep-throated sound—and I can see why she and Dove have such a deep bond.
They feel everything. Deeply. It’s beautiful.
Dove scoops her friend in a hug and they give each other a long, tight squeeze. Then they break and Ophelia leaves her arm around Dove.
“Alright,” Ophelia says, “Let’s make thirty-five the best year yet!”
She gets another round of cheers, and all of us are in a good mood, everyone feeling as if it wereourbirthdays, too. We enter the bar on a high, and I’ve seen so much strangeness tonight, that the strangeness in here doesn’t even phase me.
It’s another toasty bar, but for good reason. The whole bar is done up to look like the inside of a circus tent, complete with yellow and red fabric streaming at a point from the ceiling. The bartenders are dressed like circus clowns and there are dancers on poles on small stages around the bar. Men and women alike, all in various circus outfits—leotards, burlesque dresses.
We attract some attention ourselves—not because we look anything like the circus crowd, but because we come in shouting and cheering, a chorus of laughter.
But then I nearly collide with Ophelia. I stop short, resting my hand on her shoulder to keep myself from smacking into her.
She’s come to a sudden stop. The smile has dropped completely from her face, and she’s gone as still as a rabbit staring down the jaws of a wolf.
I follow the line of her gaze to a pair at the bar.
A bald, tan man with a sleeve of tattoos is kissing a tiger woman. I saytiger womanbecause she’s dressed in a striped one-piece with long, black “claws.” Her painted-on tiger nose has left a charcoal-smear across his cheek as they tangle tongues.
“What,” Ophelia says, “thefuck.”
The man’s eyes fly open. He extracts his tongue from the tiger woman and leaps up so quickly, she falls from his lap with a yowl that sounds not unlike a cat with its tail caught underfoot.
“Ophelia,” he says.
“Brody,” she replies.
“Brody?” I clarify.
