“Yes.”
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“Hey!”
“No, seriously,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “What the hell were you thinking? Playing with someone like that. You’re not a cruel person, Sandy. I know you’re not. But now I see this in front of me and I don’t know what the hell to think.”
“I didn’t play with anyone. He knew what this was before anything happened.”
“Only because you blurted it out to him. You agreed to it beforehand without his consent. Why would you even agree to do this?”
“Because,” I said. “It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about Darren. It was about the bar. Okay? It was about this place. Yeah, maybe we went about this the wrong way. But I would do anything for Jack It. This place belonged to Vaguyna and now it’s mine, and she would have done the same.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But Vaguyna wasn’t always the nicest person, Sandy. You never really got to see that. She could be mean when she wanted to. Never to you, of course. You were her baby and she wanted to impart as much of herself on you as she could. But I saw it. She could cut people down with that knife she called a mouth. She didn’t care who she stepped on to get where she did. I loved her. Understand that. I don’t know if anyone loved her more than I did, aside from maybe you. But even I could admit she wasn’t a very nice person. And I don’t want that for you.”
Charlie very rarely ever talked about Vaguyna, and when he did, it was usually done in a vague sort of way. And I wondered at them. These pseudo-parents. I thought maybe I could ask. “Did you…?”
He waited.
“You and Vaguyna. Were you…?”
He shrugged. “Most of the time. She thought I should find someone my own age. Someone less flighty. ‘You’ll be happier that way, Charlie,’ she used to say. ‘I’m a queen, no man can tame me. It’s useless to even try.’ But I didn’t want to tame her. I just wanted to be by her side. Be happy with her. And have her be happy with me.”
“Were you?” I asked hoarsely. “The both of you?”
“Most of the time,” he said again and that hurt, a little. To know that maybe some of the times they weren’t happy together. And that I was so caught up in myself that I never noticed. “But that’s not what’s important right now. What’s important is that you are in a very precarious position.”
“I’m handling it just fine.”
Charlie snorted out a laugh. “Are you?”
“Darren knows what this is.”
“Do you?”
I took a step back. “I know it’s not real.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Apparently I don’t.”
“So you’re asking me to enlighten you,” he said.
And no, I really wasn’t. In fact, Toronto was starting to sound really good right now. I looked around surreptitiously for something to throw at him, not wanting it to be too heavy, because he was older and I didn’t want to break a bone. Just needed something to distract him so I could become Canadian.
“You throw something at me and I’ll tan your hide,” he warned.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
“I’ve been around queens for thirty years, Sandy. I know how you all think.”
“That’s kind of sweet, in a creepy sort of—”
“You like him,” he said bluntly.
“That’s stupid. Of course I don’t.”
“Boy, you can’t bullshit me any more than Vaguyna could. I don’t know why you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. You know that makes you stupider than you obviously think I am.”