ugly face anymore.”
“We’re not going,” Zoe told him. “Really.”
He shook his head. “Stupid bitch,” he said.
The man in the wig raised his hands and waggled his fingers. “Be gone,” he said. “You have no power here.”
And Nick or Ted was gone, whispering insults, scattering them like little poison roses.
“You made the right choice, girls,” the man in the wig said. “Believe me.”
Zoe was filled with gratitude and fear, a slippery respect. She’d seen drag queens in the bar before but it had never occurred to her that she was visible to them.
“My name is Trancas,” Trancas said eagerly, “and this is my friend Zoe. What’s your name?” Trancas wanted to live a bar life, to know all the drag queens by their names.
“Cassandra,” the man said. “Charmed, I’m sure.” Now that Nick or Ted had gone, Cassandra appeared to have lost interest. He glanced around, preparing to leave. He glittered in the heavy air like a school of fish.
“I like your earrings,” Zoe said. One of Cassandra’s earrings was a silver rocket ship, the other a copper moon with an irritable, unsettled face.
Trancas said, “Yeah, they’re great.”
Cassandra touched his earrings. “Oh, the rocket and the moon,” he said. “Fabulous, aren’t they? You want ‘em?”
“Oh, no,” Zoe said.
“I insist.” Cassandra pulled the moon out of his ear. Its tiny copper face darkened in the bar light.
“No, really, please,” Zoe said. “I couldn’t.”
“Is it a question of sanitation?” Cassandra asked.
“No. I just—”
“Let’s split them,” he said. “You take the moon, I’ll keep the rocket.” He dangled the moon, the size of a penny, before her face.
“Really?” Zoe said. “I mean, you don’t know me.”
“Honey,” Cassandra told her, “I am a Christmas tree. I drop a little tinsel here, a little there. There is always, always more stuff. Trust me. It’s a great big world and it is just made of stuff. Besides, I stole this trash, I can always steal more.”
Zoe reached for the earring. Trancas helped her run the post through her earlobe. “This is a great little thing,” Trancas said. “This is a treasure, here.”
“Now we’re earring sisters,” Cassandra said. “Bound together for life.”
“Thank you,” Zoe said.
“You’re welcome,” Cassandra said. “Now excuse me, will you, girls?” He walked away, expert in his heels. His platinum wig sizzled with artificial light.
“Wow,” Trancas said. “Now that’s a character.”
“I wonder if he saved our lives,” Zoe said.
“Probably. He’s our fairy fucking godmother, is what he is.”
Trancas and Zoe went back to smoking dope on the sofa, but now only less could happen. They finished the joint and left the bar. They went to a few other places, smoked another joint, danced together and watched the men. When they got back to Trancas’s apartment they found her mother snoring in front of the television. Zoe checked for the first stirrings of fire. Trancas put her finger to her mother’s sleeping head. She said, “Bang.” Her mother smiled over a dream, and did not awaken.
Momma said, “I wish you’d stay home this weekend. What’s so endlessly fascinating about New York?”
“Trancas is lonely up there,” Zoe said. “She needs me to come.”
Momma wore red tennis shoes. She put her shadow over the tiny beans and lettuces, the darker, more confident unfurling of the squash. Momma stood in a swarm of little hungers. When the beans were ready she’d pull them off the vines, toss them in boiling water.
“Trancas,” she said, “can probably manage on her own for a weekend or two.”
“I miss her,” Zoe said. “I’m lonely here, too.”
She wore Cassandra’s copper moon in her ear. She wore the clothes of her household life, patched jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. She squatted among the labeled rows, pulling weeds. The dirt threw up its own shade, something cool and slumbering it pulled from deep inside.
“Let her go, Mary,” Poppa said. He carried a flat of marigolds so bright it seemed they must put out heat. Poppa himself had a hot brightness, a sorrow keen as fire.
“I just think it’s getting to be a bit much,” Momma said. “Every single weekend.”
Poppa came and stood beside Zoe. He touched her hair. When they were in the garden together, he defended her right to do everything she wanted. Outside the garden, he lost track of her. His love still held but he couldn’t hold on to the idea of her without a language of roots and topsoil; the shared, legible ambition to encourage growth.
“This is her best friend,” he said. “And hey, it ain’t like there’s much happening here on