“Amazing work, everybody! You looked stunning, courtesy me…”

“Oh, pat yourself on the back later.” Tina Spirit grinned across the room at River. She slid her wig off and grabbed makeup wipes.

“I will,” River grinned. “But you sounded great, too. So take the fucking compliment.”

“Consider it taken!” called Glam Ritz, one of his closest friends. She was leaning back in her chair, tugging off one high-heeled boot at a time. “What a show.”

River blew out a sigh. That was an understatement. They deserved to celebrate pulling this one off.

It wasn’t a bad performance, by any means. Just the front of the house got a little rough and rowdy, and security weren’t able to step in without breaking up the mood.

So it had been up to the queens to do it, and being the professional performers they all were—even though nearly all of them were amateurs, since there was no money in drag outside the top echelon—they handled it fine.

“That reminds me, though,” River frowned. “How are we going to handle that if it comes up in Ginny’s? Or Vegas?”

About half the girls in this one-off show were also in the upcoming tour they were doing, spending two nights in L.A. before driving to Vegas for eight performances over ten days at several different bars.

“We’ll handle it however we can. Let Glam throw them out the door if we have to.”

Glam flexed a bicep and unzipped her dress. “I won’t even break a nail, honey. But we should think about security.”

“A man we can trust to take on the road with us?”

“No, a man we can trust each other not to take on the road…” Candy spoke up. Also known as RB, Candy was one of River’s closest friends in the scene, and in general.

Guffaws and titters swept the room.

“Where do you find an ugly bouncer? A straight bar?”

They were all laughing now.

Across the room, Jizzie Bell shrugged. “I dunno. I haven’t been to one in years, honey. I doubt if any of us have! Anyone?”

“Actually…” River hummed, an idea popping into his head.

RB nearly fell off his stool as he tugged his jeans up. “Shit. You’re switching teams and you didn’t even tell me?”

“No, no, no,” River snorted with laughter. Of all the ladies and gentlemen here, he was among the least likely to enter a straight bar without serious bribery. “But I know someone.”

“Someone ugly? Oh, baby, we don’t need any of your sloppy seconds around.”

River flipped off the speaker and went on. “An MMA fighter I know. But I don’t know if he’d be up for it.”

“Lordy.” RB grinned at him. “Now you have my attention again. All of it.”

“Can we bribe him? Or pay him? What’s the going rate for—you never said if he was ugly. We should establish this first,” Jizzie piped up.

River laughed. “He isn’t, okay?”

“He isn’t ugly?”

River threw up his hands. “Don’t you want to know if he’s a good fighter? Lord almighty, your priorities.” But he couldn’t stop laughing, even as he said it.

“Show us.”

“His fights?”

“No, his Facebook. Do we know him?” Three or four of them swarmed River. It didn’t take much poking and prompting before he groaned and dragged out his phone to call up Zeph’s minimalist Facebook profile.

“Ohhhh. He’s gorgeous. Come on, call him up. Ask him.”

“See what rate he wants, and we’ll see what we can do. What’s the going rate for a trick? Between all of us…” RB trailed off.

River elbowed RB and called him. “Jesus, pipe down, then.” He held out his hand and lowered it, the universal backstage signal for volume down.

Everyone obeyed, although some were still giggling to each other quietly.

The phone went to voicemail. Damn it.

But that was just as well. Trying to hold a business conversation—or something like it—with all of his friends around? Nearly impossible, he was sure.

“Hey, Zeph.”

He heard the whispers of Zeph’s name between each other as they checked their memories to see who might know him. Luckily, nobody looked suddenly interested or stunned. Didn’t mean someone hadn’t forgotten his name, but it was a weird, memorable one, at least. Not like James, or Ben, or something like that. The “one degree of separation” rule among gay men was more like two or three in L.A., thank God.

“It’s River. Good seeing you the other day. I have a business proposition for you. Call me back when you have a minute and maybe we can work something out. Okay, bye.” River always pitched up his voice on the phone, and he drawled out the last syllable before he hung up.

“Ooooh. Someone’s flirting.”

River pointed his phone at Glam. “You’re flirting. With everyone in that crowd. The guy you gave the lap dance to? He was wrapped around your pinky. Good lord, woman. You have a perfectly functional boyfriend—as far as I’m aware…”

“Oh, but he’s getting boring,” Glam sighed dramatically, shrugging on her little denim jacket. “Or bored of me, more to the point. I think I’ll have to upgrade.”

That turned the attention onto her—sympathies, people offering to slap her boyfriend or set her up with someone they knew, etc—and off River, thankfully. River wasn’t quite sure he knew how to answer them if they insisted on finding out how they knew each other.

Zeph was the perfect guy for the job. Of anyone they knew, he was most likely to accept drag wages, or some form of payment in lieu of money. And he was smart, strong, protective, well-trained… he wouldn’t disrupt the crowd needlessly.

Despite dating him for just a week and a half five years ago, River had gotten to know him well enough to trust him in a bad situation.

Throughout drinks with his friends, and on the way home afterward, River kept his phone in his hand so he didn’t miss the return call. And when he settled down to sleep, he plugged it in and set it next to his pillow.

Just for old time’s sake, it would be nice to see Zeph again for longer than a couple of minutes.

Really, really nice.