"Oh Kevin, how many times do I have to tell you – red and green should never be seen," said Jade, dropping her carrier bags on the floor.
She watched as Kevin, who had been lounging in an armchair, his legs propped up on the coffee table and his knuckles grazing the floor like a gorilla, jumped to his feet.
"Didn't hear you come in," he said, pulling at the hem of his dress, a guilty look on his face. "I just thought that this dark green and these tights, they're plum rather than red, I just thought … they looked rather good together."
Jade flung her umbrella, dripping wet, beside the bags and pulled off her coat. "You just thought! I told you to wait for me before you started dressing." She walked over and flung herself on the couch. "Where did you get it?"
"At a charity shop." Kevin beamed. "It was only five pounds."
"Well, that's five pounds down the drain. Please go and take it off, and while you're at it maybe you could wipe that foundation off your face, it's far too dark."
Jade shook her head. Unbelievable, what that boy thought passed for an outfit. Kevin had been her flat mate for six months now. When he'd come to see about the room Jade had taken one look at him—at his jeans and flannel shirt, scuffed boots, fair hair tied back in a ponytail—and thought, this can't possibly work, he's not got a camp gene in his body. But when Kevin had sat through the interview, making no move to leave despite the fact that Jade was wearing matching beige flares and an A-line tunic, her wrists dripping with gold chains, complete with bobbed wig and frosted lipstick—when she had finally said, exasperated, look, you do know I'm a man, Kevin had simply nodded.
It had been the end of a long day and Jade had seen scores of prospective tenants. Some had visibly baulked when they'd seen her in her get-up. Kevin had been the last person to turn up, and Jade had made a snap decision to give him the room, based on nothing more than the fact that he'd had the deposit on him in cash. As she tucked the notes inside her bra she'd reckoned that because he worked nights at a press cuttings agency they'd probably just spend their lives living side by side, not running into each other much.
What Jade had omitted to mention at the time was that she was also a prostitute. Well, she didn't exactly think of herself as one. The service she provided was too friendly to be thought of simply as a monetary exchange. She had come to London from Leeds four years ago with big dreams of making her name as an artist, but when that had failed to pay the bills she had been forced to find a sideline. She saw couples, mostly.
One afternoon when Kevin had wandered groggily into her bedroom—mistaking it for the bathroom, he explained later—to find Jade busy in between the legs of an architect's wife while the architect looked on, Jade had rather expected Kevin to act a little shocked. But when Jade had come clean to him later he'd simply replied, "Live and let live, that's my motto." After Kevin's accidental stumble into her other life, something shifted imperceptibly between them, and Kevin started to cook her dinner, with fancy plates, sometimes with candles. Always a sucker for romantic gestures, one evening Jade had fallen into bed with him. Kevin had not gone to work that night.
Kevin came back into the room, wearing a bathrobe, his face scrubbed clean of makeup and went over to the fireplace. Over it was propped one of Kevin's efforts. Kevin had recently declared that he too, was going to try his hand as an artist, and the first result of this ambition was a sorry affair, drips of Plaster of Paris, set into peaks and smeared with multicolored crayon. Jade certainly had no need to feel threatened, she thought, glancing at the sculptural monstrosity that threatened to teeter off the mantelpiece, but she couldn't help wondering where all this was going; first the art stuff and now, after much pestering, Kevin was to accompany Jade to a party dressed head to toe as a woman. Jade loved blind adoration as much as the next person, but sometimes she wondered if Kevin wasn't a little too eager to meld his own personality into hers.
"Have you thought of a name for yourself?" Everyone knew Jade simply as Jade, whether she was in or out—as she was today—of drag, but if Kevin was going to make his debut he needed a name for his other self.
"I thought, maybe, Kitty?" he said, pouring two brandies and walking towards her.
"Yes, that will do I suppose," said Jade, hooking one leg, clad in velvet trousers, behind the other in a ladylike fashion. Kevin passed one glass to Jade, who sipped at it. "Thanks, I'm absolutely frozen. I don't know what I was thinking, shopping for presents on Christmas Eve. Oxford Street was a complete nightmare." She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "I see you got the fire working." It was nice having a man about the house. She'd never been able to get the fire to light before and now it danced merrily in the grate.
"Lovely," she said, downing the last of the brandy and feeling the hot liquid flow through her and begin to thaw her freezing fingers.
"Sure you don't want anything else? I've got some coke left …"
"No, I've got to keep my head if I'm to get you looking presentable." She set down the brandy glass on the coffee table. "You'll just about get into one of my dresses I suppose, but as for shoes, mine'll never fit. I hope you've thought to buy some—"
"Oh yes!" said Kevin, disappearing and coming back with some silver high heels. He held them up excitedly. "What do you think?"
"Oh dear," said Jade, pulling her mobile phone from her bag and running her hand agitatedly through her short plum colored hair. "This isn't going to be easy. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to come as Kevin?"
"No!" Kevin pouted. "You promised this would be my big night."
"I suppose I did." She punched in a number. "Hello, Dillon? We'll be over in an hour. Hang on." She turned to Kevin who was holding the silver shoes out in front of him, mesmerized by the way the fire's reflection made them sparkle. "Please tell me you've shaved your legs."
"What?"
"Never mind," she said, catching sight of his hairy calves. She turned back to the phone. "Make that an hour and a half. We'll be round with a taxi at eleven to pick you up."
* * *
When the taxi eventually rolled up outside Dillon's front door it was almost midnight.
"Shall I go?" said Kitty from beneath the black wig. Jade had done the natural look on her, which had required trowels full of makeup and all her artistic ingenuity to achieve. The result, Jade thought, was a passing resemblance to Isabella Rosselini in Blue Velvet if one looked hard enough. Kitty leaned back in the seat, her legs spread wide in a characteristic male stance and Jade eyed her disapprovingly.
"No, you'll probably break a leg on those heels. Keep your legs together will you. Please try and remember."
As she clambered out of the taxi and stepped into an icy puddle she cursed under her breath. She had gone the whole hog as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and now her kitten heels were soaked. She negotiated a pile of gray slush that was heaped up on the sidewalk and, as the freezing wind almost whipped her coat from her back, she drew it close around her.
At the top of the steps she rang Dillon's bell, jumping from foot to foot to keep warm. She hoped that Dillon was ready. She was always worrying about him—she'd known him since he was a scrawny kid at school—especially whether he was eating enough. He was terribly thin. Although Dillon was twenty-five and only a few years younger than Jade, she still felt rather protective.
Eventually a delicate hand, clad in a white leather glove reached around the door.
