‘Lip Parade’ by Emma Winter

There were two of them. Sat together in matching red raincoats, eyes blinking up at Cal. Dark, curled hair and dark eyes. He looked at them, blinking himself. Glitter rimmed his lids making them dazzling, making everything dazzling. There was a rip in his tights, he could feel it. A gaping hole where the air con brushed against his thigh. He pulled an eyelash off.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Where did you two come from?’

They shrugged in unison. He reckoned they couldn’t be more than six or seven. Small faces, feline features. The girl rubbed her eye, her head was on her brother’s shoulder.

‘Stay here, okay?’ They nodded and Cal turned his back on them. He poked his head around the door, undoing the straps on the silver heels on his feet.

‘Frank!’ he shouted, hoping his manager would poke his ruddy face out.

‘Yeah?’ Frank replied. Frank wheeled the chair across his office and out into the corridor.

‘You know anything about these two kids I’ve got in my room?’

‘They’re for you sweetie, they came about an hour ago.’

Cal wandered further into the hall towards Frank. ‘For me? Why? Who brought them here?’

‘Not sure, they were outside and the boy had a note in his hand. It was addressed to you.’

‘Did you open it?’ Cal pressed his body against the wall. The tights were beginning to itch, as they always did. He closed his eyes.

‘No, it’s on your dresser.’

Cal counted to five and walked back down the hallway. He rested his head on the doorframe, staring at the two children again. He heard Frank wheel his chair back into his office.

‘Hi,’ he mouthed, moving his fingers into a wave, his eyes glancing for the note. It sat square and creamy amongst his blushers. Cal sat down beside them, crossing his legs awkwardly as he reached for the envelope. Goosebumps rose on his wrists.

‘What does it say?’ The boy’s voice was reedy, small.

Cal didn’t reply. His fingertips brushed the black ink.

Take care of them for me.

He looked up. The girl had her eyes closed, thumb in her mouth, but the boy was staring at him. His dark eyes were pooling and Cal wondered if he was going to cry. He put the letter back on the dresser and uncrossed his legs. Cal flexed his arches and was suddenly aware of his wig, shrugging it off. He scratched his head and unclipped the pins.

‘I’m Calisto,’ Cal said. ‘Mum said … she said that you’re going to stay with me for a little while.’

‘Why? We don’t know you.’ The boy was scornful.

‘I know your mum, we are very old friends, she must have said?’

The boy nodded. Then shook his head. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Well, you know your mum wouldn’t have left you here unless she was absolutely sure.’

The boy nodded again. He was so small. Birdlike, perched on the stool. Birdlike, like Cal. Cal who looked a like a pelican, with his long neck and face.

‘Okay,’ Cal smiled. His jaw was aching, his lipstick smeared. ‘I’m going to change and then we can go. Are you hungry?’

‘A bit.’ said the boy.

‘Okay,’ Cal breathed. He had no idea what children ate. ‘Okay.’

*

They were asleep on the floor, on cushions curled into one another. On the balcony, Cal felt the breeze from the beach. The door was propped open so he could hear them. Small breaths, tiny sighs. They had eaten a lot, shovelling noodles into their mouths quickly. Teeth crunching, pink tongues licking lips. None of them had said a lot, spread round the circular table in his lounge. He didn’t know how to speak to them.

He rubbed his eyes. They reminded him of his mother. Tiny, incomplete versions of her.

He’d pulled the ironing board out as soon as they had gone to sleep, before he’d taken the pitcher of margarita onto the balcony, and lined up Eddie’s shirts and the red dress that had been in the ironing pile for weeks. It made him feel old to wear it. He’d pulled it off the rail as soon as he’d left home. It was the very first dress he owned. He remembered pulling it over his shoulders and staring into the mirror, eighteen, his parents’ faces staring back. He had shorn his hair down soon after, looking like a bald Sade. So much like his mother. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn it, so he didn’t iron it and instead left it crumpled on the chair.

He traced the lines on his palm, his veins across his knuckles.

Chad, his drag mother, had called just after they’d gone to sleep. Cal had been in the kitchen, mixing his drink less noisily than he was used to.

‘Hello, mama.’ He knew he sounded tired. ‘You okay?’

‘You sound stressed, honey?’

Cal had sat on the floor and closed the door to the kitchen. The dregs of a margarita sat in a dirty glass beside him and he swirled it with his finger.

‘I’m just tired.’ Cal sighed.

‘Busy night?’

‘Mmm,’ he yawned.

‘You’re not telling me something, Calisto.’

The silence hung between them.

‘I have two kids,’ Cal said softly.

‘Kids?’

‘Kalel and Kyra. Twins. On my doorstep tonight just after the show. Just a letter explaining who they are.’

‘Kids?’ Chad repeated. ‘I’m confused. With a woman? A woman dropped your kids off and now they’re in your apartment?’

‘Correct.’

It was getting colder, now, on the balcony, the sea smelt of brine and Cal picked up the pitcher to go in – his mind on the twins, on Chad, on the wig he needed to brush out. When Eddie got home, he would take them to the beach. He closed the screen door and switched out the light.

*

Blue-eyed Eddie was the first person Cal met in the city.

‘Hello, stranger. You look lonely.’ Eddie had slid into the seat beside him. The diner lights were unwelcome and the apple pie was sitting sweet and acidic in Cal’s stomach.

He’d driven from one end of the country to the other. Away from everything. His heart had burst to leave but he hadn’t turned back.

Cal smiled but he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He toyed with the cream in his bowl, it was curdling.

‘I’m Eddie.’

Cal stayed silent.

‘Not a talker?’

‘Cal,’ his voice cracked finally. ‘Calisto.’

‘Most beautiful,’ Eddie said, the dimples in his cheeks breaking into a smile.

‘Sorry?’

‘Greek mythology. It means “most beautiful”. She was a nymph, set amongst the stars,’ he clarified.

Later, their fingers had brushed. Eddie had walked him down the street, towards Cal’s hotel.

‘See. Calisto.’ He pointed above them, into the inky sky, the moonlight on his head and their shadows casting long across the other side of the street. ‘Above us. Stay awhile. Give us a chance.’

*

He found out that Eddie rode rodeos. Hard, fast. His body was a picture book of scars and scrapes. His arm had plates and pins up to his shoulder. He had wings tattooed on his back. Cal had drawn his fingertips over them, feeling the ink that was no longer raised on his skin. He had kissed the thick, fleshy track on his knee. And he had stayed, a few months and then a year. Eddie had planted him in his apartment. It was in Eddie where he made his home. It was Eddie who had encouraged him when he brought home Chad’s card and it was Eddie who unfailingly stood at the back of the club when he was home, the nights Cal performed. Cal had met all of Eddie’s sisters. He’d opened every part of himself and Cal had soaked it up. But Eddie hadn’t met anyone close to Cal.

*

When Cal’s brother had gotten sick for the first time and come to the city, Cal planned it so Eddie was working. Agostinho was a hollowed out version of himself. He smelt like nectarines – sweet, close to the point of being overripe. Cal didn’t like the overripe ones, preferring them just out of the fridge cold on his teeth nearly swallowing the stone. He liked sucking the stone, feeling the grooves on his tongue. He’d almost choked in the car once, gasping breaths and clutching for his brother’s arm who’d alerted their parents, in a screech unlike his normal voice. His mother had been driving so Cal felt his father’s long, tan arm stretch as if pulled out of its shoulder socket and slap Cal, hard, twice on his back. The stone had shot out, flying underneath the seat and his father had hoovered it up a few days later. His mother swore at him in a mix of Portuguese and American, her accent still strong, still hard. He watched his father touch her arm lightly, as if to say calm down, amor, he’s only a child. Cal’s breathing had been laboured, gulping the air back into his starved lungs as his brother clutched his hand back, interlinking their fingers. It hadn’t put Cal off eating them - but he never forgot the choking sensation, the thirty seconds when he couldn’t breathe. Now, he filled his and Eddie’s fridge with nectarines when they were in season. Punnets that reminded him of home, of them, of her.

They had gotten crepes and walked up the biggest hill in the city but his brother had put his in the bin saying it tasted like ash. They sat together, at the top, for a few hours. Both brothers flexed their feet, a habit from their mother. Cal had squeezed his brother’s fingers and his brother had said I love you.

*

In the morning, the light came through the curtain and Cal remembered the twins. His sleep had been broken, distracted. A face kept appearing in his dreams. A face that resembled his father and then switched to Eddie – both dying. Both bleeding from their chests.

He checked the twins who were still curled up, in a little nest on the floor. He had the urge to make sure they were breathing, softly hovering his ear over their noses, but he saw their legs twitch simultaneously. He threw on a tracksuit and unlocked the door. Stepping into the hall and catching his breath, he locked them in. Outside, he walked down the street, down and down and down until he reached the curve of the bay’s water. He dipped his hands in and shook off his trainers, lowering his feet in too. The water was freezing. He realised, for the first time in hours, that his heart had slowed down. His chest inflated normally, not balloon-like, not ready to pop. Ten minutes more, he said to himself. Ten minutes more and then I’ll go home. Go get them.

He moved his feet, feeling his thighs tighten.

*

She was a dancer, his mother. A ballerina. His childhood had been filled with her standing beside the oven, her legs arched. They told her it had ruined her career having him; she’d been offstage for over a year and when she returned, she tore the ligaments in her leg and nothing was ever the same. His brother hadn’t been so troublesome, hadn’t been cut out of her womb in a panic. She taught after that, turning thousands of tiny children into elegant birds who flew through the air. Cal was never sure if she was sorry about having him. He’d catch her sometimes sitting, folded in on herself, staring at nothing. Sometimes, she would stop eating. It was like a test each time, to see what they would do. The worst thing they could do was ignore her. Cal’s brother did, easily, but Cal found it difficult. He would make sure she had food in the fridge before he left for school in the morning. He left little notes on top of the plates encouraging her to eat. She flew, onstage, again just once. Her face pressed into his and his father’s afterwards, kissing their foreheads. He hadn’t spoken to her in ten years.

*

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. It thrummed against his thigh but he didn’t answer it. He wanted to take it out and throw it into the water but he didn’t. He stretched and stood, walked back to his apartment – coffee, for him, and juice for the twins in his hands. But the door was unlocked when he got in, his heart raced, and his arms burned.

‘Kalel? Kyra?’ His voice went up a register. He rounded the corner to the living room quickly, coffee scalding his knuckles. Eddie stood, lifting himself off the sofa.

‘They’re outside,’ he said.

‘Ed?’ Cal smiled. His heart slowed. Eddie didn’t smile.

‘What on earth, Cal? Where the fuck have you been?’ His voice was a sharp whisper.

Eddie went to the window. Cal slipped his arms round his waist and kissed his neck.

‘I went out for five minutes to get coffee and juice.’

‘It wasn’t five minutes. I called you. They are six-year-olds!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So,’ Eddie paused and rubbed his eyebrow. ‘I assume they’re yours?’ Cal wondered if Eddie had read the letter in the bedroom from their mother, or whether Eddie could see the resemblance. His voice was softer. He turned and squeezed Cal’s arm, sitting back on the sofa. Cal nodded.

‘It’s a long story,’ he said, his voice quiet. Cal shook his head. ‘They are mine.’ He felt tears well on the bottom of his lids.

‘We’ve got time. Please Cal.’ Eddie’s voice was barely audible. ‘Talk to me.’

‘They’re Caity’s, they were Caity’s … they’re mine.’ The ‘mine’ felt real and whole between his teeth.

‘And you never knew?’ Eddie’s eyes were large. He squeezed Cal’s knee, as if knowing not to press and to wait for Cal to continue. ‘I mean in all that time, Caity, she never called you?’ Cal shook his head. ‘Never. It was just after Danny. I don’t know why … we were grieving.’

Cal remembered the smell of Caity’s skin (vanilla and coal tar), the smell of tears on her cheeks. She had kissed him first, in the hospital after the nurse came out and told them that there was nothing they could do. An undiagnosed heart condition – it had been there since birth waiting to take Danny away from those who loved him the most. Cal who loved him the most. A few days later he had gone home with the stench of Caity still on him, and washed himself, slowly, singing quietly and crying. His brother had caught him coming out of the bathroom and Agostinho knew then. After Cal packed the car up later in the evening, he sat in the seat for an hour. His brother’s car that he was now taking, with his cigarettes on the dashboard and cassette in the player that Cal knew he wouldn’t listen to. His head rested on the steering wheel and when he looked up, the car finally in gear, his mother’s face was at the living room window and her hand was on the glass. But she turned away and closed the curtain. He sped out of the driveway, away forever. ‘And we loved each other, I suppose. And we missed him. They’re mine but I think she wished they were his.’

*

Later, the four of them went for ice cream. The kids warmed to Eddie. Kyra sat on his knee licking her hazelnut cone. Eddie knew what to say, how to speak to them. Cal found his words got stuck in his throat. Tight in his chest. He could only breathe when he was alone that evening. When he was pencilling his eyebrows and contouring his cheeks. He had his record player on loudly; no-one had disturbed him since he got in. Not even Frank. He’d kissed Eddie awkwardly in the kitchen, not in front of the twins. Eddie brushed Cal’s little finger with his mouth and Cal left.

*

As he slicked on his favourite shade of lipstick, his throat tightened and he suddenly wondered if everything would be okay. If it would become easier, if he could be a dad. Eddie had squeezed his hand in the ice cream shop, tightly, firmly. A firmness that said, I’ll take care of you. A firmness that had been there since they’d met.

Cal stood just offstage, listening to his introduction. He flexed his arms, glitter tumbling from his wig. He loved his song, he’d chosen it because it reminded him of his brother. He felt like the queen of the world. He always wished that his mother could see him. Just the once. See how he flew, just as she had.

From issue #3: autumn/winter 2016

About the Author
Emma Winter studied American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia with a year spent at San Francisco State University. Emma has written short stories and poetry and is currently working on a novel. She lives in South London and works in publishing.