"Vogue! Come on, Vogue!" Ambrose yelled at the audience, moving his arms fiercely in a box formation around his face, then turning around and moving his arms in elegant waves above his head and at the base of his back. I did the same, smiling my brightest as we spun together to face the audience and popped open our fans above our heads.

As we chanted the famous lines with them and waved our fans with each word ("Greta Garbo, and Monroe, Deitrich and DiMaggio, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean") a beer was making its way up from the audience and Ambrose winked at me. In his majestic black gothic Marie Antoinette dress and so gracefully there was no danger of his towering powdered and pearled Rococo wig toppling over as he bent down, he grabbed the can of beer from the audience and held it up as they went crazy, cheering, screaming, and laughing.

He yanked open the can and the beer exploded everywhere, frothing and bubbling. "SHIT!" Ambrose yelled over the music, holding it away from himself. The audience went up in cheers and shrieks of laughter. Ambrose started laughing, too, though his eyes looked pretty pissed to me. He licked the top of the can seductively, then took a long drink, making sure to press his red lips to the can as he did so in order to leave a good mark. I watched him drink the whole thing in one go once again as I laughed along with the audience. His neck arched beautifully as he finished, then he looked at the audience and grinned, throwing the can at them with a vengeance, making me I know he was still pissed at them. Someone caught the can and the people around the guy went up in cheers.

"Vogue!" we yelled with the crowd, striking a last pose like Charlie's Angels.

"You guys sure know how to speak to my alcoholic heart, don't you? How'd you know all drag queens are alcoholics?" Ambrose shouted at them.

"We love you, Ambrozia!" some of them shouted back, pretty drunk themselves.

"Yeah, you'd better," he whispered to me angrily as we quickly gathered our tips from the stage. "Almost ruining my dress. Assholes."

"Maybe they didn't know it was shook up?" I suggested, descending from the stage and walking with him towards the bar.

"They knew," he said bitterly.

I took his hand and squeezed it apologetically and we sat down together at the bar.

"Give me a Manhattan," he ordered the bartender as the bartender walked past us.

"All out of cherries," he informed Ambrose.

"Fuck, I don't need a cherry, goddammit," Ambrose growled at him. I patted his back and left my hand between his shoulder blades. This seemed to calm him just some. I was glad by it. Because of this, I began to rub his back gently and his shoulders dipped elegantly as he rested his elbows on the bar, sighing deeply. He put his face in his hands. "Sometimes being a drag queen sucks, Ruiz," he sighed again.

"Well, none of the beer got on your dress, right? You're lucky. That's cause for a toast?" I asked, trying to make him feel better.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. God, though. Fuck, I'm so glad none of that got on my dress. It took me so long to make this."

"What drink do you want, Audrey?" the female bartender asked me. The other one was busy making Ambrose's cherry-less Manhattan at the other end of the bar. I thought for a moment.

"Appletini," I said brightly to her.

Ambrose started chuckling behind his hands.

"What?" I asked, as the female bartender walked away to make my drink.

"You always order those," he laughed.

"What's wrong with them?" I giggled.

"That's a girl's drink," he said, finally smiling and looking at me.

"Well, I hate to break it to you, but you're dressed as a girl, too," I giggled, tapping his nose with my white gloved finger.

"Wow, you always know how to make me feel better. Or maybe it's the beer," he smiled, looking like a happy little boy,

"Glad to hear it, Ambrose," I said, picking up the appletini that had just arrived in front of me on the bar. He picked up his Manhattan and grinned at me.

"A toast, may no beer get on either of our dresses," he announced, holding up his drink to me.

"May the audience behave," I said, raising my glass to his.

He winked at me again as he drank his cocktail. I felt joy in my heart, seeing him happy.

"Born free! As far as the wind blows, as far as GRASS GROWS!" we shout sang as we held hands walking towards Ambrose's shared apartment. We started laughing and he spun me like we were dancing.

"Oh, enchanté," I breathed, giggling.

"How classy of you," he giggled back.

He took my hand again as we walked up the stairs to his apartment, making sure I couldn't fall due to my platform heels. Swinging open the door, we were met with Ambrose's drag mother walking across the hallway at the same time.

"Good lord, you scared me," Miss Cha Cha gasped, putting a hand over her heart. "Need a late dinner? There's some Chinese food in the fridge."

"Oh hell yes," Ambrose said, pulling me towards the kitchen. I waved to Miss Cha Cha as Ambrose pulled me away and Miss Cha Cha waved back as she went on her way down the hall.

I sat down at the table and began taking off my platform heels, unbuckling them and feeling the tightness being released from my tired feet. Ambrose leaned over in the fridge, taking out little white boxes with pictures of red Chinese pagodas on them. He got out some plates and some glasses and I let my heels thud on the floor under the table and breathed a sigh of relief.

"We made some good money tonight," he said to me, pouring Coke into my glass and then into his.

"Not nearly enough," I sighed.

"We'll have other chances this month. There's the contest at Club Her Majesty this Friday, too. Maybe one of us will win again," he suggested.

"Maybe," I said, serving him some chicken lo mein.

"Hm," he said, looking thoughtful. I looked at him, expectant. "How did your meeting with Miss Georgina go? You saw her on Sunday, right? You never told me."

"Oh, dios, that," I sighed again, twirling some lo mein with my fork, then stopping and thinking.

"It didn't go well?" Ambrose asked, looking sorry.

"To say the least," I said, looking at him with an equally sorry look.

"Miss Paula would be displeased," he said, putting a piece of chicken into his mouth.

"She would. But Georgina was...I can't even begin to describe her. If you could have seen her, Ambrose. My god. She was so, so different from her pictures." But then I remembered something. "Oh yeah, picture! Oh my god, Ambrose, she showed me all these pictures of Paula from when she was young!"

Ambrose nearly choked on his chicken and looked at me wide eyed.

"Paula used to do Dorothy drag, can you believe it? She had a Toto basket and everything! I saw her dressed as a guy, too! I wish you could have seen her!"

Ambrose started laughing. "Oh my, wow," he giggled, "I'd have thought that was beneath her! What changed?"

"Haha, I don't know," I laughed with him.

"I should have gone with you. I knew it. I would have died if I had seen those pictures!" he exclaimed.

The image of Mrs. George's dead eyes flashed in my brain and my smile was gone. I shook my head and looked down at my plate. "No, it was kind of better you didn't go with me. She was kind of...well...she was kind of scared of me, to be honest. I don't know why. She was really different than what Paula told us. Like, really different. It was scary, Ambrose."

Ambrose's mouth opened slightly and he looked at me, knowing when I wasn't smiling it was serious. He waited for me to go on.

I did. "I was so nervous, I couldn't keep still. It was embarrassing. She kept staring at me, and her eyes were like...there was just no life in them. I don't know why. Like, why would they be like that? In the pictures we've seen of her from Paula, you know what I mean, she always had this sassy way about her, I loved that about her but now...I don't know what happened to her. I feel so sorry for her. When I was there I kept getting sad and I never want to feel that way again. It was like...a feeling that I would never be happy again. To think, maybe Georgina feels that way all the time? I couldn't bear it. I'm so sad Georgina is like that. Miss Paula would have been so upset if she had known."

Ambrose was quiet, just looking at me. As we didn't talk, all we could hear was the kitchen clock over the doorway ticking away. Slowly, he began rubbing my back to comfort me, as I had done for him.

I heaved a long sigh again, but then I remembered something else. The remembrance startled me, and I gasped. Ambrose looked surprised.

"What?" he asked quietly, somberly.

"This picture. I didn't have time to give Georgina back her picture because she yelled at me to leave. I felt so horrible, Ambrose. I spilled all this tea all over her photo book. She had one just like Miss Paula's collection. Gosh...do you think...would it be possible for you to part with some of your pictures from them? I know Miss Paula willed all of her photo books to you. I want to try to replace Georgina's...I feel so awful."

"Of course, I could," Ambrose nodded, still rubbing my back.

"Oh thank goodness. I hope she accepts those pictures. But this picture I took from her...you've got to see it," I said, getting up from my chair and going to the counter to retrieve my purse. I picked it up and sat back down next to Ambrose, rifling through it to find the special slim pocket on the side of my purse where I usually stored my emergency make-up.

Finally, I located it and zipped open the zipper, then gently picked up the picture held in its little Ziploc bag.

Ambrose put his hand over his mouth when he saw it. I knew exactly his feeling.

"What is this, who is this mystery man?" he asked, taking the picture in the bag carefully and admiring it.

"I don't know, but he must have been pretty important to Georgina. Look how happy they are? She got really defensive over that picture and that's why the tea went all over her book. I think he meant a lot to her and she didn't want me to touch it. But isn't it weird that we've never seen him before? In all those pictures Paula showed us, he's not in one of them. But he looks so important to Georgina. Isn't that weird?"

Our Chinese food was completely ignored now as we examined the black and white photo.

"God, he's handsome. He looks just like Luke Brower from Growing Pains," Ambrose sighed. "Georgina was so lucky."

"Oh my god, you hit it on the nose. I was wondering who he reminded me of," I sighed, too.

We sighed together like two Disney Princesses hoping for their Princes.

"You're right, though. Why wasn't he in any of Paula's pictures?" he wondered. Then he got a sneaky look in his eye. "Think she was jealous? He's so cute."

"Miss Paula, jealous? That's beneath her," I chuckled.

"You're totally right. Weird, weird."

We took one last long look at the photo, then I put it away in my purse, far far away from our Cokes, and we resumed our late dinner.

Afterwards, Ambrose took me to his room and we looked through Paula's photo album, choosing pictures with Georgina in them, even finding ones of the "Carl" Georgina had pointed out to me. But we triple checked, and there definitely were no pictures of the Luke Brower look-a-like.

"This is so weird. But...maybe if you can talk to Georgina again you can find out who he is?" Ambrose thought aloud.

"I don't know if she'd let me back. She was really angry, devastated. I apologized to her over and over but she was so mad at me. But I'll try. I have to get these pictures to her anyway and give back the one I took," I said, putting the pictures we had chosen into a large Ziploc and putting them carefully in my purse.

Ambrose was looking at the photo album, quiet now.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I just realized there's no pictures of Miss Paula in here either," he said. "In all of the other albums, there's pictures of Paula, you know, the later albums. But in this one...this is so strange."

What? I joined him in looking at the album. I could have sworn there were pictures of her in there. We flipped through Miss Paula's photo album and it was surreal. Like looking into an alternate universe.

"Why are Paula and that Luke Brower guy missing in all of these? What the hell is going on here?" I asked.

"I don't know, but I kind of want you to find out," Ambrose breathed, turning page after page as we gaped at the book in disbelief.