Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 4.1: 1994, George

Chapter 4.1: 1994, George

 

"Wow, look at these records, eh? Gosh, they're all 45's. Nat King Cole, Mado Robin, Maria Callas, Edith Piaf. Dios mio, Rina Ketty? Wow the sleeve is all in German," the young Spanish drag queen in my apartment squealed to herself.

I just stared on, unsure what to do. Who was she, and why did she know who I was? She had to be no more than twenty. I thought everyone who knew who I was had to be dead by now. Who was she? Who else knew who I was? Where I was? Maybe she was the child of someone I had known. This thought disturbed me. What if...the people I had known had told their children about me and now there was a new generation... I couldn't control my fear.

The tea kettle started to scream and with it I jumped near out of my seat. I put a hand over my heart to calm its racing. The young drag queen looked over into my kitchenette, smiling. I rose out of my red armchair, but she rose a hand to me at the same time from across the room. "I'll get it, Mrs. George, don't you move a muscle!" she chirped, grinning like a clown as she had been doing ever since I first saw her thirty minutes ago.

I had to find out who she was in order to figure out how she could possibly know who I was. Had been.

"Tell me more about yourself, Louise," I said as calmly as I could as she poured the boiling chamomile tea into two of my Staffordshire bone china tea cups.

"Oh, its Ruiz, Mrs. George. Roo-eez," she beamed, bringing the cups over on my medium sized silver platter. "Oh my, do you have any cookies or anything? This would go so well with cookies. It would be like having tea with the Queen."

I couldn't figure out what was making her so happy. 

"No, I don't have any cookies. I don't take sugar well," I informed her, staring at her as she sat down opposite me on the floral patterned couch and put my silver service on the coffee table between us. 

Her hands swept over the old threads of the floral pattern, and she sighed, looked at it. "Roses," she whispered to herself in awe, "pink roses..." She brightened ever more and my eyes narrowed automatically even though I hadn't intended to. "You like pink, Mrs. George? Lots of things pink in your house."

"This is not a house, its an apartment," I corrected her in a snappish tone which I hadn't intended either. My uncomfortableness with this situation was spreading and out were coming bad habits.

Her eyes widened at this, but she never faltered. "I know, but it still feel like home, right? Its your house."

I wondered if English was her first language. 'House' does not mean 'home'. I decided to ignore this and go on with my earlier question. "Tell me more about yourself, Ruiz," I sighed, putting emphasis on the correct pronunciation of her name to show her I understood.

Her eyes looked unsure, but her smile stayed the same. Forced. Of course it was. Just like Charlie's. Maybe she was just friends with Charlie? I considered this, but I couldn't relax. I didn't know if that was the truth.

"Well, I live with my Mama. She a nurse. She works real hard. I'm a dish washer by day, over at McCrory's Pub. They don't want me bussing, I don't know why. But anyway, at night I'm a drag queen. Well, sometimes," she explained, fingering the lace over the arm of my couch when she got to the last part. She was studying it, looking nervous. "Over at Club Her Majesty, I'm a regular there. Me and my friend Ambrose, his drag name is Ambrozia deVelour, we been dressing up ever since I could remember. Just costume stuff, you know. Big fake pearls and tiara crowns." She was smiling largely again, lost in her reverie. "When we grew up, we got real into fashion type stuff. Chanel, Dior, people like that. Its only natural we grew up into dressing in drag." She giggled to herself. She didn't seem like she was directly talking to me anymore. It was a bit odd.