"Wow, look at these records, eh? Gosh, they're all 45's. Nat King Cole, Mado Robin, Maria Callas, Edith Piaf. Dios mio, Rina Ketty? Wow the sleeve is all in German," the young Spanish drag queen in my apartment squealed to herself.

I just stared on, unsure what to do. Who was she, and why did she know who I was? She had to be no more than twenty. I thought everyone who knew who I was had to be dead by now. Who was she? Who else knew who I was? Where I was? Maybe she was the child of someone I had known. This thought disturbed me. What if...the people I had known had told their children about me and now there was a new generation... I couldn't control my fear.

The tea kettle started to scream and with it I jumped near out of my seat. I put a hand over my heart to calm its racing. The young drag queen looked over into my kitchenette, smiling. I rose out of my red armchair, but she rose a hand to me at the same time from across the room. "I'll get it, Mrs. George, don't you move a muscle!" she chirped, grinning like a clown as she had been doing ever since I first saw her thirty minutes ago.

I had to find out who she was in order to figure out how she could possibly know who I was. Had been.

"Tell me more about yourself, Louise," I said as calmly as I could as she poured the boiling chamomile tea into two of my Staffordshire bone china tea cups.

"Oh, it's Ruiz, Mrs. George. Roo-eez," she beamed, bringing the cups over on my medium sized silver platter. "Oh my, do you have any cookies or anything? This would go so well with cookies. It would be like having tea with the Queen."

I couldn't figure out what was making her so happy.

"No, I don't have any cookies. I don't take sugar well," I informed her, staring at her as she sat down opposite me on the floral patterned couch and put my silver service on the coffee table between us.

Her hands swept over the old threads of the floral pattern, and she sighed, looked at it. "Roses," she whispered to herself in awe, "pink roses..." She brightened ever more and my eyes narrowed automatically even though I hadn't intended to. "You like pink, Mrs. George? Lots of things pink in your house."

"This is not a house, it's an apartment," I corrected her in a snappish tone which I hadn't intended either. My uncomfortableness with this situation was spreading and out were coming bad habits.

Her eyes widened at this, but she never faltered. "I know, but it still feel like home, right? It's your house."

I wondered if English was her first language. 'House' does not mean 'home'. I decided to ignore this and go on with my earlier question. "Tell me more about yourself, Ruiz," I sighed, putting emphasis on the correct pronunciation of her name to show her I understood.

Her eyes looked unsure, but her smile stayed the same. Forced. Of course it was. Just like Charlie's. Maybe she was just friends with Charlie? I considered this, but I couldn't relax. I didn't know if that was the truth.

"Well, I live with my Mama. She a nurse. She works real hard. I'm a dish washer by day, over at McCrory's Pub. They don't want me bussing, I don't know why. But anyway, at night I'm a drag queen. Well, sometimes," she explained, fingering the lace over the arm of my couch when she got to the last part. She was studying it, looking nervous. "Over at Club Her Majesty, I'm a regular there. Me and my friend Ambrose, his drag name is Ambrozia deVelour, we been dressing up ever since I could remember. Just costume stuff, you know. Big fake pearls and tiara crowns." She was smiling largely again, lost in her reverie. "When we grew up, we got real into fashion type stuff. Chanel, Dior, people like that. It's only natural we grew up into dressing in drag." She giggled to herself. She didn't seem like she was directly talking to me anymore. It was a bit odd.

Then she looked at me, and I felt a small blush rise to my cheeks. I hoped she didn't see it, maybe since the light was coming in by the window behind me, she wouldn't see? This blush was another old habit, when people looked directly at me, taking me by surprise.

"But you know, Mrs. George, I heard about you six years ago. At my first pageant? Ambrose's drag mother was an old friend of yours, I heard. Her name was Paula. You know her? Precious Paula? She used to gush about you, so admirable. Oh, her face when she talked about you. She looked like a girl in love," Ruiz sighed, beginning to stir her tea with a small spoon.

Paula. Oh god, Paulie. My precious, precious Paulie. My body began to soften from the inside. But then I felt dizzy when I realized how Ruiz had spoken about him. Was. Used to. A sinking feeling began in my stomach, and I slowly turned to look at Ruiz again. She was looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something about my precious friend. My dear friend, whom she had known, too. Incredibly.

"You knew him?" I asked, "you knew Paulie? From when?"

"Paulie? That was her real name? Ay dios mio. Wait until I tell Ambrose."

I wanted her to tell me everything. Everything. I didn't care what I looked like to her anymore. My dear friend. She knew him. I hadn't heard from him in thirty years. Now this child knew about him, too. How was it possible? But how she spoke about him...the "was", the "used to"...

"Tell me about how Paulie died," I whispered, suddenly overcome with emotion, a creeping twisting thing deep inside, like a hook connected to a thread, pulling me downwards.

"Drink the tea, it's gonna get cold. I'll tell you," she smiled gently, her face softening, too, as she clearly was remembering things about him. My heart filled with a strange feeling as I looked at her young face remembering, a yearning, a longing, something between those which did not have a name as I picked up my tea cup and blew on the liquid to cool it off just so.

She sighed, putting two fingers between her eyebrows. This was clearly hard for her, and I felt sorry. She gave a small smile, which was quickly becoming familiar to me. A smile with no joy behind it.