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WEDNESDAY-TWO HOURS EARLIER
It was a Wednesday night, hence the title of the chapter, and, like every Wednesday night, Misty Divine was working at Lady's Bar, the glittering and opulent cabaret club on Old Compton Street in the heart of Soho. Later, she wouldn't be able to say precisely when she knew something was wrong, but there was something in the air, something Misty could feel in the pit of her stomach.
Misty was one of the bar's regulars, drag daughter and mentee of the owner, Lady Lady, and widely known as one of the best singers on the circuit. She had performed first, opening the show with three exuberant jazz numbers that ended with rapturous applause as she bowed, curtsied, and accepted a red rose from a table of gay men in the front row. She was tall and beautiful, and she knew it-a six-foot-one drag queen with bouffant blond hair, long legs, and exquisite makeup. Tonight, she was all in red: a red off-the-shoulder minidress with a sweeping neckline and hems so high she was more leg than skirt, red crystal jewelry that dripped from each ear and across her chest, and sequined scarlet heels so tall they were known affectionately in the business as "ankle breakers." Thankfully, Misty's ankles were still intact, despite stiletto-related injuries in the drag business seemingly at an all-time high.
After her performance she retreated to the bar at the back of the auditorium, choosing a high stool at the end of the counter from which she could survey the entire room. Lady's Bar was a stunning venue. A vast underground cabaret room decorated with velvet and gold leaf, it was the place to go to see the very best of the London drag scene, and all of it was hosted by Lady Lady herself, the sensation and living legend. There were a hundred cabaret tables, each one polished to perfection and adorned with a flickering candle and a vase of white flowers. Patrons dressed up for the occasion, and from the bar Misty could see customers in fabulous outfits ranging from black tie to rhinestoned tracksuits, served by waiters in bow ties and burgundy aprons as performer after performer took to the stage.
Was something off with one of the customers? Is that what had set her on edge? She looked from table to table as tonight's lip-syncer, Plimberley, brought the house down with a performance of acrobatic genius as she flipped and dipped and flicked her hair. But, no, there didn't seem to be anyone doing anything out of the ordinary in the audience, nobody who particularly stood out as problematic.
Maybe it's just a spot of anxiety, she told herself. I'm imagining things.
But still, she couldn't shake it.
When Lady Lady came back out onstage after Plimberley's lip sync, she looked sublime. She was dressed in a perfectly fitted bronze-and-gold gown, with a heavy crystal-encrusted train that dragged along the floor behind her, and her hair was the lavender purple she had worn for twenty years. Misty knew that up close, her hair smelled of lavender too. Drag should be a delight for all the senses, Lady Lady always said. She'd been known to ban drag queens from performing at the club if they showed up in stinking tights, which frankly, happened more often than Misty liked to admit. Drag could be a down and dirty business, and dirty tights were par for the course when you were gigging six nights a week.
In between each act Lady Lady would do a little stand-up comedy or sing a number or perform a lip sync, whatever she had prepared for the occasion. And every time, every night, she was faultless. Perfection. The finest cabaret host London had seen since Danny La Rue. Lady Lady was a tiny powerhouse. At five feet tall she was shorter than most of the other drag performers, but her stage presence was enormous.
"And let's hear a huge round of applause for . . . er . . . erm . . ."
"Plimberley!" shouted Plimberley from the side of the stage.
"Plimberley! Plimberley, of course!" laughed Lady Lady.
Misty stood up.
In the five years that Misty had worked with Lady Lady she had never, not once, heard Lady Lady "erm" or "aah" into the microphone. She prided herself on being an impeccable public speaker. And the fact that she had forgotten Plimberley's name was, quite simply, shocking.
Misty studied Lady Lady from the back of the room, the way she moved, the way she laughed. She was tense tonight, not as comfortable as she normally looked. Her shoulders were slightly raised, her teeth slightly more bared than usual, like an elderly Yorkshire terrier snarling at an unsatisfactory dog treat. Lady Lady had owned Lady's Bar for twenty years, and she hosted six nights a week. She was never tense. For most people present, it wouldn't have even been something they'd notice. A slip of the mind, a memory blip from a hostess who was otherwise dazzling. But to Misty it was serious. It meant that there was definitely something amiss.
The next act was Moneypenny, a stand-up comedian who told the stupidest jokes.
"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?!" cheered the audience in unison.
"Ivana!"
"Ivana who?!"
"Ivana let you taste my Battenberg, if you know what I mean."
Apparently, the audience did know what Moneypenny meant, because they rolled in the aisles with laughter. Misty didn't think it was very funny, but she smiled along.
Lady Lady stood at the side of the stage and laughed in all the right places, clapped with the audience, and smiled broadly at the crowd. But Misty watched her carefully. The laughs felt forced, like she was laughing slightly too hard, slightly too often. And the smile looked pained; it stretched all the way to her bejeweled earlobes and seemed hard and cold. She hadn't been like this during the first half of the show, had she? Misty tried to think back to before the interval, to whether Lady Lady had seemed off at the start of the night, but she didn't think so. No, this was something new. Misty was worried, concerned for her friend and mentor. This behavior was out of character for Lady Lady, who was usually confident and self-assured, hosting with an ease that was unmatched by other performers. Misty wanted to rush up, hold Lady Lady's hand, ask her what was wrong, and tell her that everything was going to be all right.
Maybe something's happened backstage. That must be it. It was rare, but not unheard of, to hear of a drag performer row in a dressing room. Drag performers were a feisty bunch: Personalities like pythons, that's what Lady Lady used to say. Misty sat back down, keeping her eyes on her drag mother, unable to look away as she crossed her long legs. She knew they looked glossy and elegant like Jessica Rabbit's, but the reality was they were sweaty and hot under three layers of tights and foam padding.
Misty tried to put her thoughts aside and enjoy the remaining performances, gasping along with the audience when drag queen Amour threaded a condom through her nostrils, and throwing her head back laughing at Len and Den, who tonight were playing bearded impersonations of Conservative British Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Theresa May in a hilarious and ridiculous set they had entitled Primed Potatoes. Misty had known Den for a long time, for years, since before she even put on a wig for the first time. It had in fact been Den who had encouraged Misty to get started in drag, during a long and serious conversation about their unfulfilling day jobs. She admired everything about him, especially his performance skills. And tonight, as he skipped across the stage in a blue suit, Misty reveled in his comedy talents.
When Lady Lady called all of the night's performers to the stage, Misty wound her way through the cabaret tables and stepped up, took an elegant bow, and enjoyed the applause. This was always her favorite moment of the night. Adulation. Was there any better feeling than adulation? Probably not. Everybody in the audience rose from their seats, a full standing ovation. This was usual, of course. At Lady's Bar there was a standing ovation every night.
Later, Misty handed the bearded barman, Jan, a drink token in exchange for a gin and tonic, sipping it as she watched Lady Lady work the crowd. It was customary, and expected by Lady Lady, that the performers would stay in drag and have a drink with the remaining audience after the show, but Lady Lady's shoulders were tight, and she wasn't stopping to chat to as many people as usual. Normally Lady Lady would have congratulated each of the performers individually, always piling heaps of praise onto Misty, her protégé. This delighted Misty every time, giving her a powerful feeling of pride and achievement. But tonight there was none of that as Lady Lady hurried through the crowd like she had shit on her shoe and needed to get out fast. She did stop to have her photograph taken with a woman whom Misty recognized as a soap actor-Emma something-and the expensive-looking dress sparkled in the flash of the camera.
The more Misty looked at Lady Lady's dress, the more it seemed Lady Lady was uncomfortable in it. And it wasn't quite her usual style. Lady Lady normally had her pieces made by Florentina, one of London's most popular designers for drag artists, but this dress tonight, this bronze-and-gold feast for the eyes, looked like vintage. And it looked like it must have cost an absolute fortune, the sheer amount of crystals of all shapes and sizes. Lady Lady pulled at the sleeve as she had her photo taken, as though she wanted to take the dress off immediately, like it was too tight or digging in somewhere. Misty knew the feeling well. Drag wasn't an art famed for its high levels of comfort.
After the show, Misty was in the Queens’ Room sitting at a makeup station next to Amour. The dressing rooms at Lady’s Bar were a stingy affair. There were three: the Queens’ Room, the Kings’ Room, and the Lady Lady’s Room. Her room was bigger than the other two put together. She even had a fridge-freezer in there and freestanding rails of costumes that glided on wheels across the floor whenever she was deciding what to wear. Luxurious.
It was time for them all to de-drag, to end the individual fantasies that had been created, and to become their regular day-to-day selves. Everybody has their own process for this, what products they use, which part of the face they attack first, and Misty always began by taking the lashes off, even before the wig. But today, she didn't want to. She wanted to keep it on as long as possible, to stay Misty for a few extra moments before becoming Joe again, a hotel accounts assistant who spent their empty evenings binge-watching noughties crime shows with their boyfriend Miles.
Don't think about it now, she told herself. Don't think about the day job.
The job at the hotel was as bleak as a picnic in a graveyard. And as much as Joe loved curling up with Miles on the sofa to plow through six episodes of CSI: Miami, they loved something else more: drag.
Drag, to Misty, was freedom. Freedom to wear whatever she wanted, to perform whatever she wanted, to be whoever she wanted. It was a superpower. She felt like one of the older drag queens on the scene, at the ripe old age of thirty-four. Like sprinters or figure skaters, a lot of London drag performers retire before the age of thirty. Then they might abandon the capital and move to Margate or some other queer-friendly seaside resort, where they get jobs in marketing and adopt Hungarian rescue dogs. Only a few stick around, and fewer still continue performing until the ripe old age of forty. A rare treasure indeed is the successful middle-aged drag queen or king. Youth, in the drag business at least, is a prized commodity.
But with age comes experience, and with experience comes higher performance fees and the confidence to host a room and control a crowd. Misty knew that while some of the younger performers might dismiss her as being past her prime, she was on a path to success, thanks to Lady Lady's guiding hand. She'd started drag five years earlier, at the age of twenty-nine, out of a desire to change something, to burst through the dirge and repetition of their daily work. And ever since she'd started working with Lady Lady, she'd been more inspired than ever to rise through the ranks of the London drag scene and become a performing star, just like Lady Lady herself. She had seen potential in Misty and had helped her discover a life outside of the nine-to-five that was exciting and magical. Her thoughts drifted again from Lady Lady to the next day, to going to the windowless hotel office and processing invoices all day. No, not yet. She pushed down the thoughts of her non-drag work life and focused instead on Lady's Bar: the beautiful place she called her second home.
Moneypenny and Plimberley were on the other side of the room gossiping, so Misty turned to face them, procrastinating. She desperately wanted to talk to Lady Lady, to ask her what was the matter, why she had been behaving so strangely during tonight's show, but Lady Lady didn't like to be disturbed in her dressing room right after a performance. Misty studied Moneypenny instead, watching as she sipped a drink and chatted with Plim, waiting for the right moment to talk to her mentor. Under the gray wig and grandma makeup Moneypenny was nerdy-looking with a handsome face and a strong jaw. Misty knew Moneypenny was extremely intelligent, and if Misty had been single, and ten years younger, she would have probably been her type.
"Did you see the guy with the diamond Rolex?" shouted Plimberley. "Bought me three gins."
"Three gins?" replied Moneypenny. "There's no way that was a Rolex, Plimberley, don't mean to burst your bubble."
"It was from Argos, Plim!" shouted Len from the Kings' Room across the corridor.
"He wishes he could afford Argos," snarked Moneypenny.
"All right, all right," laughed Plimberley, "maybe it wasn't a Rolex, but he was nice, you know."
"Three gins kinda nice," said Misty. "Not bad, Plim, not bad."
Plimberley grinned, her glossed lips reaching upward to reveal a set of teeth that were bright white. She was young. Twenty-two. And Misty knew she had a difficult life: unsupportive family, not much money, no stable accommodation. Moneypenny had taken Plimberley on like a sister and was helping her out a lot, but Misty felt sorry for her. She had, on a few occasions when the fallings-out with her family had been serious, slept on Misty's sofa, and Misty had listened to Plimberley crying late into the night about her viciously homophobic father.
Copyright © 2025 by Holly Stars. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
