Part One - Chapter Three

Chapter Three

1

“Well, what have we here!” Vincent exclaimed, so loudly that some of the other customers heard him and looked up. Standing in the doorway, clad in a white, navy-trimmed sailor suit with gold epaulets and a crisp pleated skirt, a sailor’s cap cocked to one side, white gloves, and majorette boots, was the most fantastic-looking drag queen Vincent had ever seen. She strode up to the bar beneath the enormous “Night Watch,” its trick eyes following her as she went, and stood, arms akimbo. Nikolai was right there to take her order. The other customers looked on agape.

Meanwhile Trevor, the cook, was wheeling out a linen-draped cart laden with steaming chafing dishes from the kitchen. He, too, took note of the newcomer and laughed.

* * *

“Now this is nice!” Jane mused, taking a sip of her Singapore Sling as she glanced round the room. She’d never had a Singapore Sling before—she normally stuck to her Jack and Diet—but figured now was a good a time to try one, seeing that she was now safely put in at her exotic port of call. “Now that guy looks interesting,” she mused, gazing over at Vincent as she reached up to adjust her sailor’s cap. She was trying to locate a suitable place to sit down and decided to sit over near him. She just loved his cool baggy outfit, and he was handsome, too. “He can’t be gay,” she was thinking.

* * *

“She can’t be real,” Vincent mused. She appeared to be moving his way; if she got close enough, Vincent could tell for sure. Meanwhile the growsers were getting frisky; first the music had got them going, and now the smell of food was wafting through the lounge. (It was getting to be their dinner time.) Presently they were playing tag down in Vincent’s overalls. Even though he wasn’t really ticklish, it always made Vincent smile when they did.

* * *

“See, he’s smiling at me,” Jane mused, swinging a big straw bag as she slowly made her way around the bar, thrusting her hips out to the side as she went. It was her coolest walk—her After-Five Strut—though she rarely had the occasion to use it. But there was something about this guy. She preferred older men anyway; they were usually more settled-down and took better care of themselves, as well they had to.

* * *

“She’s too much!” Vincent was thinking, marveling as she swaggered his way, not missing one heave of her hips. Maybe she recognized him, too, and was looking for a lounge job. Well, that could be arranged!

* * *

Jane took a seat two stools down from Vincent and set her drink on the bar. She then reached into her bag and withdrew a large compact and a lipstick. She opened the compact and examined herself closely in the mirror. Her sailor’s cap had slipped a bit—one more thrust of her hips and it would surely have fallen off—so she carefully replaced it. Then she applied a fresh coat of lipstick, a sultry shade called “Island Maroon”—she’d bought it on board the ship.

Next she peeled off her gloves and tossed them into her bag along with the compact and lipstick, and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. She then lit one up and took a sip of her drink, drawing daintily through the plastic stirrer.

* * *

Vincent couldn’t tell whether she was “real” or not. Her bosoms looked real, but then so did those of a lot of other drag queens. Besides, hers were covered up beneath the fancy jacket and blouse. She didn’t have much of an Adam’s apple, he noticed, nor did she have much of a brow, even though most of that was covered up by her straight, black bangs. Vincent just couldn’t make a call. Meanwhile, the growsers had calmed down and were at last coming to rest, still warmly concealed in Vincent’s overalls, in the vicinity of Vincent’s lap.

* * *

“Will you get a load of that,” Jane was thinking. She wasn’t what you would call a “crotch-watcher” but, out of the corner of her eye, she couldn’t help but notice the movement in the guy’s pants. Then again, the room was pretty dark and the pants were awfully baggy. She took another dainty sip of her drink, now watching intently but still askance. No, it was definitely moving, and it was a big one.

“He likes me!” she mused, then deliberately turned her head in Vincent’s direction and slowly raised her eyes. He was looking right at her, grinning. She smiled back and then lowered her eyes to the bulge in his pants. It was quivering, twitching. Wow! She’d never seen anything like that before, at least not that she could recall. Not even when Jamal was on Viagra, God rest his soul. But wait, she was thinking, still looking but trying—well—hard not to be obvious, and she was usually as cool as—well—a cucumber. Sure, the drink was strong—and she’d never had one of those before—but was she really seeing double, or what?!

2

“Poor old guy probably doesn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of,” Graham Hammond was thinking, looking over at Vincent. “Some starving artist, no doubt.” As a financial planner, Graham enjoyed picking the “losers” out in a crowd, those who hadn’t properly financially-planned their lives. He was already looking at retirement himself, and he was only forty-six. But now that his retirement was approaching, he was beginning to wonder what he was going to do with all that time on his hands. He hadn’t really thought much about it all the while he was doing his own financial planning. His goal in life had been simply to accumulate enough funds to be able to retire comfortably at a relatively early age, preferably before his friends, who would then envy him (and how he loved to incite envy!). Wasn’t that the dream back in the States? To make loads of money and then retire? But to retire and do what? He wasn’t into causes. He wasn’t into politics. (He voted his own pocketbook, of course.) He was presently at somewhat of a loss.

Well, he enjoyed traveling and he could afford to do plenty of that. But what would he do at home, around the house? More remodeling? He'd already remodeled the baths and the kitchen -- twice -- in the five years since he'd been there. He was tired of living in the constant mess. Still, he wasn't all that pleased with the shade of granite he'd chosen for his kitchen countertops -- it was a tad too dark -- nor with the double-bullnose edge. Damn! He should have gone with the double-ogee. Oh well. It still beat the God-awful green Corian. Two months and he was over that. What a mistake!

Graham took a big swig of his dry Ketel One martini and looked around the bar. “Gawd! This place looks like a museum,” he thought, making a sour face. He hadn’t visited Kings World since they redecorated the Twisted Tulip. And he wasn’t at all sure he liked it.

3

Vincent unzipped his pants and Randy and Sandy came scampering out. The drag queen in the sailor suit screamed and sprang from her seat like a jack-in-the-box, nearly toppling her heavy wooden stool. Vincent roared with laughter. He couldn’t resist a good practical joke, especially that one. (And, when he’d had a cocktail or two, he performed it fairly often.) Meanwhile, the other customers looked on, wide-eyed.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Vincent said, looking over at Jane. “It was only a little joke.” The growsers meanwhile had hopped up onto the bar and begun preening themselves.

“A little joke!” Jane said, gasping for air. “Don’t do that to me!”

“I’m really sorry,” Vincent said, making an effort to act serious. “Welcome to Kings World. Here, I’ll buy you a drink. What’s your name?” He then extended his hand to her.

“Princess Janeva Brown,” she said, primly shaking Vincent’s hand, “but please call me Jane. Just Jane. And yours?”

Meanwhile the young fellow who had “spotted” Vincent, along with the fellow sitting next to him, were now standing and leaning almost precariously in Vincent’s direction, clutching the edge of the bar, hanging on every word. Vincent noticed them out of the corner of his eye. He took a generous swig of his vodka. “What the hell,” he thought.

“Well, Princess—Jane. I’m Vincent, the King!” He then called out to Nikolai, loud enough that the whole bar could hear: “Buy the whole bar a round! Tell ‘em it’s on me, Vincent the King!” With that, he downed the last of his drink.

* * *

Graham Hammond looked up and pissed in his pants, then went running out of the lounge, leaving what was left of his dry Ketel One martini.

* * *

“Well,” Jane said, taking a big drag off her cigarette and exhaling it slowly. She was beginning to simmer down. “Pardon the expression,” she said. “So you’re ‘the king of the fags’?”

“I’m afraid so,” Vincent said, tipping his empty glass to her. He’d been called a lot worse, he reckoned, and to think he’d started out in gay life as Skinny Vinny, the size queen—one among many. Then raising his glass, he called out to all the customers: “Just don’t tell anyone you saw me in here! Cheers!”

4

Nikolai went around the bar, making fresh drinks for the customers who were near empty and handing out free-drink tokens to those who still had a way to go. Vincent, meanwhile, still couldn’t figure out who—or rather what—this Jane character was. “Yes, I’m the king here,” he said, looking back over at Jane. “And what do you do for a living?”

“I work in a law firm back in the States,” she said. “Fingal Gumball Hiney Ashlock Cashwist & Cicerovitz, to be exact.”

“That’s quite something. I’m impressed,” said Vincent.

“Oh, do you know the firm?” Jane said, cocking her head.

“Sorry, no,” Vincent said. “I meant I was impressed that you could rattle it all off so fast.” Like the General, before him, Vincent bore no great fondness for lawyers, although his best friend, the Prime Minister, was a lawyer, or had been. Nikolai meanwhile had made Vincent another vodka and tonic and was bringing it over, along with a token for Jane. Usually two drinks was Vincent’s limit, but apparently Nikolai was allowing him one more. “Are you an attorney?” Vincent asked.

“Secretary, for a partner in the probate department,” she said, looking down at the ashtray as she snuffed out her cigarette. “Let’s just say, it pays the bills. And the work can be pretty interesting at times.”

Well, that was all fine and dandy, Vincent thought, but it didn’t tell him what he was dying to know. Most legal secretaries were female, so most likely she was one, but couldn’t a male do the job equally as well? he wondered. And a fag at that.

“But I like to do my writing on the side,” Jane said, looking back up at him. “I’ve got a Bachelor’s in English.”

Even better, Vincent thought, but that didn’t tell him a whole lot either. Finally he just had to ask her: “I’m sorry, Jane, but are you a man or a woman?”

Jane’s jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide. She was momentarily at a loss for words. “Well, I never!” she finally replied. “Chil’, what do you think?”

“I really don’t know,” Vincent said. “That’s why I was asking. I don’t mean to be rude. Are you gay?”
“I ain’t no Lesbian, if that’s what you think!”

No, he didn’t. “Are you a man then?” he asked.

“A what?! Excuse me!”

“Are you a drag queen?”

“Hell no!” Jane said, lighting up another cigarette. “Do I look like one?”

Vincent hesitated for a moment. Well, he had his answer. Of course he could have told her yes, but he didn’t want to rile the woman any further. She was, after all, a paying customer and she fit right in at Kings World. Vincent thought she was fabulous. “No,” he said at last. “But around here, you just never know.”

“Well, I answered your question then,” Jane replied, composing herself once again and drawing a sip from her lavishly decorated drink as she looked around the bar. She was still glad she’d gone and sat by Vincent. What a sense of humor, she was thinking. And here he turned out to be the king! The Big Poo-Bah, the Grand Panjandrum (how she loved those words). Boy did she have a story to tell the girls when she got back to the States. “Do you mind if I take your picture?” she asked.

Vincent noticed she’d been reaching into her big purse for something, and for a moment he became somewhat alarmed, despite the fact his bodyguard was sitting at a table directly behind him, watching every move. “No, go right ahead,” he said, relieved to know it was only a camera, even as camera-shy as Vincent was.

5

Randy and Sandy meanwhile were standing up on their hind legs on top of the bar, sniffing the air. The lids
were off the chafing dishes now —customers were up helping themselves to the steaming-hot food.

Momentarily Nikolai returned with three steaming plates and set them down atop the bar—one for Jane, one for Vincent, and one for Randy and Sandy. He then reached into the front of his apron and withdrew two sets of silverware rolled up in paper napkins.

“Why, thank you,” Jane said, taking her silverware and sliding the little plate in front of her. “So what have we here?”

“I think we’ve got some crêpes of chitter fricassee in ink, with guacamole,” Vincent replied, unwrapping his knife and fork.

“Sounds interesting!” Jane said, taking a whiff of her plate. “So tell me,. what’s a chitter?”

Vincent meanwhile had begun cutting up the crêpes on Randy and Sandy’s plate. Randy and Sandy stood by, on all fours now, watching closely. They would wait till it cooled down a bit before they dined.

“Well, do you really want to know?” said Vincent, now slicing into the crêpes on his own plate.

“Don’t tell me this is another joke!” Jane replied, tucking her napkin into her blouse. She wasn’t about to soil the new white sailor suit which she’d bought for her vacation, and the food looked—well—indelible, if not exactly inedible.

“A joke? No, not at all,” Vincent replied, taking a bite of crêpe. “Let’s just say it’s a local critter,” he said. “Go ahead, try it. The way Trevor here makes it, you can hardly even taste it.”

Jane looked puzzled for a second. “Well, in that case, then,” she said, slicing off a piece of crêpe and dipping it into some guacamole, “I’ll give it a try.”

Randy and Sandy meanwhile were sitting on their haunches beside their own plate, nibbling gingerly at the sections of crêpe they held in their front paws. There was no guacamole for them, however—they found it way too sour for their palate.

“Not bad!” Jane said after she had swallowed her forkful. “Not bad at all!” Soon enough she had cleaned her plate, as had Vincent. “You know,” she said, removing her makeshift bib and setting it aside, “so far I have only one complaint.”

“And what is that?” said Vincent, wiping his mouth before taking a sip of vodka, leaving a large plum-colored stain on his napkin.

“Well, it has to do with your Air Traffic Control,” Jane said, withdrawing the compact and lipstick from her big straw bag, along with a sheaf of papers. “Not that it’s that much better back where I come from, mind you.”
Suddenly Vincent felt a slight pang of indigestion.

“I mean, we have near misses in the sky, and on the ground, too,” Jane said, examining her face in the mirror. Here she thought she’d have to reapply her lipstick, but her lips were now even more maroon than they’d been before she’d eaten. After adjusting her cap, she put the compact and lipstick away.

“But honey,” she continued. “Whatever problems we may have, we don’t have no planes crashing into no boats out in the middle of the open ocean.”

The growsers meanwhile had finished off their plate and were busy washing their tiny purple paws.

“Point well taken,” Vincent said, notwithstanding Jane’s hyperbole. He reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes; he had to go through three pockets before he found them. Finally he lit one up and went on to tell her about the leaflet-dropping forays from the States.

“Well, that explains this,” Jane said, reaching over to her wad of papers and taking a sheet off the top, then handing it over to Vincent. “I found this on the deck before we docked. There was a whole bunch of them blowing around up there.”

Vincent reached into another pocket for his reading glasses and put them on, setting his tinted glasses aside.
“God loves Fags but hates Faggotry!” the sheet read, in large bold print. “Go strait [sic] before it’s too late! Reserve a place in Heaven with Jesus!!!!” was printed in smaller italics below. Vincent sighed and removed his glasses.

“You know, I was raised as a Christian myself,” Jane said, momentarily lighting up a cigarette. “One of my grandfathers was a minister.”

“One of my great-grandfathers was a minister, too,” said Vincent.

“Well, whaddaya know!” said Jane. “And, by the way, I can spell.”

“Yeah, me too,” Vincent said wryly.

“Anyway, this persecution of the gays—and that’s what it is, persecution. Well, Jesus would never do that—that’s not Christian, not the way I was raised—even when they say God loves you. That’s just some kind of lip service.”

Vincent nodded in agreement.

“They can mince words as much as they want to. They’re still attacking you. They’re saying you’re not supposed to be who you are, that God doesn’t accept you for who you are. Well, Jesus accepted everybody for who they were.”

“Yeah,” Vincent said, taking a drag off his cigarette. “They’re bullying us.”

“Yeah, in the name of religion. And meanwhile putting other people’s lives in danger,” Jane said sternly. “So, King, what are you gonna to do about it?”