“Ruuuuuuuuuuuuun!” he screamed.
You peered out the window. “Fuck! It’s Nolan! What is he doing?! We have to get him.” I put my hand on your chest. Something was about to happen.
“WAAAAAKE UUUUP! RUUUUUUN! EVERYBODY RUUUUUUUUN!”
Fanny scooped Sedgewick into her arms. “What happened to Nolan!?” Sedgewick barked. “Somebody has to go get him.”
“Do not go outside, Fanny!” I said. Fanny ran to another window to get a better view of Nolan.
From the horizon an armoured truck slowly wheeled itself along Church Street until it was twenty feet away from Nolan. I held my breath. I remember you squeezing my hand. We watched Nolan try to hobble away faster, just as a Boot aimed his gun and shot Nolan in the throat. His screams were only gurgles. Another shot to Nolan’s head.
Chaos.
We watched silently as seven more armoured trucks made their way along Church Street. The Boots began crashing the butts of their guns into each store window. Broken glass. Fire. Screams. A line of people with their hands above their heads solemnly walked to the orders of a Boot. They were made to kneel in front of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop. One was shot. Screams. The others were put into another truck and driven away. One tried to run, but a bullet sent her head snapping back and her body collapsed on the pavement. I shut the window.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?! SHIT! WHAT DO WE DO?” Fanny was pacing the hallway.
“Fanny. You gotta come with us,” I pleaded.
“I can’t!”
“Leave the dog and run! Come on!”
“I can’t! I can’t leave Sedgewick. I have to hide here.”
I gave Fanny a hug that I wished lasted longer. You and I did as we had planned: we grabbed our small backpacks, got dressed and headed to the staircase. You grabbed my arm.
“Kay. You ready?”
“Yes.”
“You remember the plan?”
“You’ll find your way to Parkdale, get your mom, then find me.”
“You remember the address, Kay?”
“Yes.”
We kissed. We kissed. We kissed one last time. I watched you run into a back alley and disappear. Then I ran in the other direction down another back alley, thinking, 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood. 72 Homewood.
8
We march with Beck and Liv towards a clearing in the woods. Slung over Beck’s shoulder is a hockey bag, which he places carefully by a picnic table. Liv gestures for me and Bahadur to sit. Beck opens the bag and places two handguns on the table in front of us like he is serving us dinner. Bahadur looks back at the cottage where Firuzeh is still resting and takes a deep breath. A reminder of why we are doing this. Beck reaches into the bag again and places boxes of ammunition on the table. I remember Fanny opening her costume bag and placing various tools from her arsenal before me.
Razors. Bottles. Brushes. Liquids. Creams. I had begged her, as a fellow Black queen, to show me how to do my makeup. Wearing a pink velour jumpsuit and holding a cup of coffee, she told me to sit down. Fanny took one more sip of her coffee, then said, “First we shave.”
“These are Glock 40s.” Beck encourages us to pick them up. “Go on. Feel it in your hand.” I take one in my hand. It is heavier than I thought it would be. I have never held a real gun before. The closest I ever got to purchasing a gun was in the toy aisle at the dollar store when Nolan wanted us to dress as Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween. My fake pistol was made of purple plastic and came with a spinning wheel of caps that made an ear-piercing snap with each pull of the trigger. Beck takes the weapon from me and shows us a firm grip. “When you hold it, don’t be afraid. Hold it confidently.”
“Drag isn’t just about looking like any lady heading to her accounting job on Bay Street. It’s about fantasy,” Fanny said, both of us crowding her vanity mirror, both of our eyebrows glued over. “Even our contouring game isn’t natural. But who wants to be natural? We are supernatural, darling.” A base colour was applied, this time perfectly matched with my skin. Using a large palette of nude tones, a perfect science of light and dark illusion played on my cheekbones. Fanny assured me that in time, it would take only an hour to put my makeup on rather than three. “Now press that powder on. Don’t brush. Press.”
“What you’re going to do is press the bullets into the magazine like this.” Liv shows us how to load the bullets into the compartment. She hands the magazine to Bahadur, and they accidentally drop a bullet onto the pea gravel. They nervously apologize and pick it up. They try again.
“Now, I’ve seen your numbers.” Fanny taught me in her bedroom. It was like drag queen university, only the school was a three-by-three-foot clearing in her room where there were no shoes or clothes. “I mean . . . one thing you’ve got going is your lip-synch is bang on. Bang fucking on. But . . .” Fanny picked up a round hairbrush and placed it in my hands. “It’s so much more than lip-synching. Any closeted gay boy from the suburbs can lip-synch. This is drag, remember? Fantasy.” She struck a pose, her eyes full of wonder. “Where are you right now? Are you in Fanny’s bedroom? Wrong. When you come out onstage, I want you to imagine a five-hundred-seat theatre complete with a lighting rig, dry ice and a fucking trap door. You have to imagine it for the audience even though they’re all just sitting in some nasty-ass dive of a bar with five sticky tables.”
Beck leaves us for a few minutes and returns with two wooden posts and supplies. Using a metal fence-post driver, he positions the posts upright and three feet apart. He then nails a large piece of cardboard to join the two posts and draws the outline of a head and torso.
Liv instructs me to slap the magazine in and pull the slide. I can barely hear her with my shooting earmuffs on. “Now your gun is loaded.” I can feel it. I can feel the power of every bullet in my hand. “Watch your finger. Always think of your finger discipline.” She shows me how to keep my right pointer finger straight to avoid a misfire. She corrects my grasp of the gun so that my hands are hugging the weapon; my thumbs lie, one above the other, in a snug embrace.
“Look at your feet.” I looked down at my feet doing a clumsy step-touch to the tune of Paula Abdul. “Girl, you have gorgeous legs, but you need to be aware of how your body takes up space. Women learn from a young age to be small. But now we all have the freedom to play with that smallness and make it large. Pull your feet together and cock your hip. Now lean on the wall. Lean on things. Press into them. Play with your space.” I press into the wall and trace my knee along the surface coyly. “Yes, bitch. Yes. There you go. You’re almost there.”
“Widen your stance. Good.” I do as I am told. Beck shows me how to aim by aligning my front and rear sights. I thought the sight would look like a cross, but instead it looks like I have to line up a point in the front end of my gun with an open square on the back end of my gun. I line it up and can see the drawn-on shape of a person about twenty feet away. “Now, the trick is to press the fingers of your right hand into the palm of your left hand to create tension. That will help with the kickback. Now exhale and slowly pull the trigger.” I shoot. A thunderbolt of energy rushes through my body. A lightning current creates a ripple through the muscles from my forearm to my deltoids. A deafening crack. I hear a muffled cheer. Beck gestures to me to point my gun down and be mindful of my finger discipline. He walks to the target and points proudly to where I shot the target right in the head. “You okay?” Liv asks. I realize that I’m shaking.