Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
“Can you read minds by any chance?” Edgar asked, then shook his head. “Just kidding. Yeah, I’m here with my friends.”
“Not generally, but I think I can read yours right now,” Jamie said. Their voice was half flirtation, half amusement. They put fingers to their temples and closed their eyes, in the pose of a performative fortune teller. Their soft lashes fluttered in the dim light. “You’re wondering if it’s weird to be talking to someone you’re about to see almost naked onstage. Then that makes you picture me naked, and you feel bad about that. But you realize I choose to do it, so you’re wondering if it’s shitty to feel awkward because that kind of implies that I don’t have agency. Am I close?”
Edgar blinked, narrowing his eyes to make sure there was no discernible glimmer or mirage in the air between them. He contemplated whether there was any socially acceptable way to touch Jamie and make sure they were real.
“Is that what everyone thinks?” he asked.
Jamie shook their head. “Most people stop at the picturing me naked part.”
The bartender finally slid Edgar’s drink across the bar to him.
“So, um.” But Edgar couldn’t think of anything to say.
Jamie gave him a small smile and gestured to his drink. “May I?”
Edgar handed it to them, holding his breath against the moment their fingers would touch. When they did, Edgar nearly let out a sigh of relief at the brush of warm, rough fingertips. A fine frisson ran through him, more delicate and complicated than the vertiginous slide of ice down his spine.
Jamie’s full lips lingered on the rim of the glass, and they signaled to the bartender, who poured them a whiskey.
They seemed utterly at ease. Edgar took a deep breath and squared his shoulders in an attempt to find a similar self-confidence but ended up nervously scanning the club again. When he refocused on Jamie, they were watching him curiously.
“So what is your act like?” Edgar finally managed.
Jamie threw back the whiskey, squeezed their eyes tight against the burn, and then grinned. “You’re just gonna have to stick around and find out, Edgar.”
They winked and disappeared into the crowd in a swish of silk and curls.
Edgar gaped. He supposed he had until the end of the show to come up with something more impressive to say.
2
Jamie
There was always a moment, about two minutes after Jamie Wendon-Dale took the stage, when performance shifted to embodiment. When the audience fell under their thrall and changed from observers to participants in creation. It was the moment they waited for every time they performed.
In stark contrast, the dressing room where they prepared was always pure chaos—a minefield of curling irons and stiletto heels, cobwebbed with stockings and wigs, the entire thing dusted in glitter so fine it clung to clothes and hair for days.
“Who’s the guy?” asked Deon, handing them a shot of tequila.
“What guy?” Jamie asked, wanting to keep the frisson of attraction they’d felt for the handsome stranger for a little while longer.
Deon, understanding, simply clinked her glass to Jamie’s, and they both drank.
But Marie, midway through donning her towering Marie Antoinette wig, chimed in. “The hottie who looked like he was gonna cry. Ugh, can you help me, please?”
Jamie, who had just started slicking back their hair, held up hands covered in gel and considered that description. Deon sprang up and held the wig straight so Marie could pin it in place.
“I just met him,” Jamie said casually.
They wouldn’t have described Edgar that way, but there had been something that drew Jamie to him. A vulnerability that made Jamie want to crowd him against the wall and soothe and interrogate him in equal measure.
Jamie looked at their reflection in the mirror as they lined their eyes with kohl. Was there a sparkle in them that wasn’t usually there? They reapplied deodorant, adjusted the straps and buckles of their costume, and absolutely, positively did not wonder what the handsome stranger from the bar would think of their act.
***
“Now, put your hands together for The Count!” the announcer said as Jamie stood in the wings.
Whoops came from the audience, and a flurry of hands patted Jamie’s back as the music began. The lights hit first, and that rush of time speeding up, tugging at their every motion. But the difference between a good performer and a great one was their response to being hurried. Great performers treated time like it was infinite, like they’d never leave the stage, believed the audience would be happy to watch their slightest movements forever.
Jamie aspired to it.
They’d started doing burlesque at the behest of a friend and quickly realized that burlesque functioned just like their day job: designing haunted houses. Both used concealment to draw an audience in and the promise of revelation to lead them exactly where Jamie wanted them.