Corey is a bag of dirt sinking to the bottom of her full-size Ikea mattress. She lies, her arms tossed to either side, her legs spread, her chest barely moving with scant, listless breaths. She’s covered again in that tar of worthlessness, which three consecutive showers couldn’t scrub off. She presses her cheek into her long, damp hair that’s sure to dry misshapen. The beating sun spurs the hammer in her head to pound harder. Suddenly, a loud buzz drills through the apartment. Corey remains inert without so much as a shift in breath. It sounds again. She peels her back off the mattress, throws on a tee shirt and boxer shorts and drifts downstairs.

At her door is a fat stranger with sallow skin and long, dark lashes. He’s holding a package with both hands. Corey, keeping the door cracked no more than a few inches, looks leerily from his cratered face to the box.

The gentleman cocks his head half-indignantly in response. “Your package was mistakenly delivered to my house.” He states in a nasally lilt, crisply separating each syllable.

“Oh,” Corey says. She takes the box and looks at it. A package from Lululemon. “It’s my roommate’s.” She drops the box inside.

Corey and the stranger stare at each other, deciding whether they’re finished. “You’re welcome,” the man says. He runs a hand through his matted hair and turns to leave. Corey observes his thin, pink lips, watches his feminine hips and his graceful but calculated movements. Not wanting him to leave yet, she asks, “Why aren’t you at work?”

“I don’t work.”

“What are you doing then?”

“Watching TV… Taking care of some things around the house.”

“Our internet’s down. Can I go over?”

The man regards this doe-eyed, knobby-kneed girl who’s too young to look so broken. He decides there’s something appealingly tragic about her and answers, “Sure.”

“One sec.” Corey runs up and grabs keys, leaving her roommate’s box downstairs. She returns, and the pair walks a few hundred meters west to the man’s house.

—

There is nothing unique about his one-story lodgings. It’s messy, dated, and smells of weed. Corey sits on the upholstered floral couch arm as the man finds where he had left off in Orange Is the New Black.

“Do you watch this show?”

“I don’t really watch TV.” She kicks her heels impatiently against the couch.

The man sits, creating a sinkhole, and picks up a half-finished bowl of marijuana. He smokes it then passes it to Corey, who declines with a wave of hand. She grabs the stack of mail from his table and looks through it. Envelopes addressed to Bradley Panagakos: bills from T-Mobile, Time Warner, multiple letters from the State of California.

“Are you on unemployment?”

“I’m on disability.”

Corey looks at Brad, and he tries not to notice her inspecting him. She finally nods, unable to pin his exact disability but content to find it plausible that he has one.

“How’d you get this house?”

“It was my mom’s.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

“Have you lived here all your life?”

Bradley pauses the show, yielding to the fact they’re going to have an actual conversation. “I lived in New York for seventeen years, doing drag, before returning to LA.”

“What happened? Why’d you come back?”

“Heartbreak, Darling. It’s always heartbreak.”

Corey looks down, playing with the ends of her hair. “You were in love?”

“Yes.” Brad tells in a maternal falsetto, “His name was Ricky Mendoza. He was dark, stylish, and hung like a horse. He came to every one of my shows, and he’d take me out afterwards. We spent every night together for seven years. Then he married Marta, who was introduced to him by his parents. They have two boys in high school and three little girls.”

“So you came all the way back because of some guy,” Corey says with a bit of contempt.

“That, and I lost every last penny to a meth addiction. How about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

She thinks for a moment. “There’s this guy, Tommy. I have sex with him sometimes.”

Brad coyly draws in a shoulder, “How’d you meet?” 

“We used to work together, at the Walgreens on Sunset and Vine. But he got fired for stealing from the pharmacy.”

“He’s trouble.”

“He’s an idiot,” Corey states. “And he’s lazy. I always have to go to him,” she adds with mellow sourness.

“You know, you’re very pretty,” Brad observes. “You have that damaged fairy look. You could probably make it easily as a clothing model for websites around here.”

“Wouldn’t that require looking up agencies and going to appointments and stuff?”

“Well, yes, it does take a little effort,” Brad retorts sardonically. A unfavorable comment about millennials surfaces his mind, but he decides against voicing it.

Corey looks at him with forlorn saucer eyes. “It’s not that I’m apathetic or careless,” she says. “I just get sad a lot…”

What a charming little thing, Brad concludes. He smiles warmly. “Would you like anything non-alcoholic to drink?”

“Coffee, please?”

Corey watches Bradley move elegantly through the kitchen, raising an arm to open the cabinet, bending at the waist to retrieve milk from the fridge. Every motion, no matter how robust, closes in a soft, albeit inorganic, pose. Corey leans forward, propping her elbows on the counter and her chin in her palms.

“What was your name?” she asks.

Brad sets a mug for her on the table. “My stage name? Ophelia.”

The girl smiles, simmering in the image of a crazed noblewoman adorned with wildflowers, dead at the bottom of a brook. “I like it.”

“You would. You’re a twisted one.”

“Do you have photos? I want to see.”

Bradley rolls his eyes at the lengths this child is making him go. From the back of his closet, he pulls out a crooked box filled with sequined fabric and fake hair. He digs to its bottom and presents a stack of photos whose white backs are starting to yellow. Corey flips through them. Ophelia has wild black hair, savage eyes, ivory skin, and a strong, hawk nose. She keeps with varied company: leggy gypsies, busty blondes, feline geishas, and mighty Amazonians. Ophelia is in love. Ricky has buzzed hair and wears a leather jacket and corduroy pants. He stands erect, facing the camera straight-on and puffing his chest. Ophelia, two heads taller than her man, poses with one leg crossed behind the other in a curtsy and both hands perched daintily on his arm.

The last photo is Ophelia on stage. She is a lioness. Her hands are propped on her brick wall hips. Her broad, straight shoulders are angled almost perpendicularly to her bottom half, making her waist the size of a pinhead. The curls of her thick black mane frame an irresistible serpentine mien: chin down, eyes electric, mouth popped.

“You’re beautiful,” Corey exclaims quietly.

“Thank you.”

She mulls something over. “When was the last time you performed?”

Brad laughs. “Oh probably twelve or thirteen years ago.”

Corey looks at him with round and guileless eyes. “Can you teach me?”

—

Bradley applies thick white paste and many layers of powder to Corey’s straight brows until they disappear and steep, jet-black peaks are drawn in their place. Her supple, young skin is hidden under oil foundation. Her small nose is aggressively contoured, and her eyes are hooded with brush bristle lashes. She wears a heaping black wig and white lace gown, which, despite the generous addition of breast and hip pads, still hangs much too loosely off her tiny frame. She looks in the mirror, raising both arms overhead and popping her hip.

“What’s your name?”

Corey answers, “Nastasya Filipovna.”

Brad guides her to the middle of the room and moves the couch. “Let’s see you walk!” he orders, like a young girl playing school teacher.

Nastasya shuffles down their makeshift runway, stepping one foot directly in front of the other and flinging her arms. She stops before Brad and turns with her hand on her hip. She bends at the knees and sticks out her butt. Bradley raises his eyebrows, and Corey’s posture crumbles. She laughs, turning pink.

“I don’t know. Show me.”

Ophelia struts with strong, flexed legs and pointed feet. Each sway of her hips is drastic and intentional–feminine, but neither fluttery nor delicate. Her arms snake, as anacondas, back and forth, and her fingers remain curled at the tips. She poses from every part of her: the reach of her neck, the bend in her elbow, the tension in her upper lip, the opera of her breath. Corey watches Ophelia, and she longs to breathe like her.

Ophelia turns to the girl. “Take your time. Think: who is Nastasya?”

Corey meditates for a moment, wide-eyed, staring intently at Brad’s laminate wood flooring. She inhales deeply from the pit of her stomach, like she’d learned once in a free yoga class. Slowly raising her head, Nastasya lengthens her neck and cocks her chin. She moves ghostlike, bending deeply at the knee and languidly drawing one leg before the other. Her arms are gangly, twisting in all directions, her wrists are bent, and her fingers are curled. Nastasya’s countenance is comprised of mighty jaw, closed lips, poised and icy eyes that never break contact. For her final pose, she thrusts back her head and slams down on one knee, dangling her arms. Her chest, facing the sky, heaves heavily up and down.

Brad remarks, “Not exactly drag… But you got it!” He applauds hardily.

An authentically girlish smile breaks across Corey’s face.

—

The setting sun draws a close to this atypical communion, and Corey leaves as barefaced as she’d been coming in. She gives Brad a tight hug.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Honey.”

They linger on either side of the door.

“I live just down the street…”

“Of course. My home is always open.”

Corey smiles. “I’ll see you, Ophelia.”

“Until next time, Nastasya.”

The expired man closes his door and reassumes his worn position before the TV as the lost girl wanders back to her current residence, both half-believing in their empty promises to each other.

—

Corey is in her room again, and she sprawls out on her bed. The air feels fresher. She takes as many breaths as possible, while it lasts.