Chapter 18
Malice showed up at 7 A.M. and woke Neal and Dewalt from a deep sleep. He stood at the end of the bed, yanking on Neal’s foot until he came alive.
“She’s arrived to do her magic, so up up up my darling,” Malice said. “I didn’t know She had a man-friend?”
A well-manicured, middle-aged visual artist, Malice (real name Michael) was committed to calling all of the male population ‘she’. The pronoun game (she’s a mess, did you see her hair?) was an occasional bit of camp most gay men engaged in at one point or another, but Malice had made it a way of life. He did it without reservation, and no one was safe, be they gay, straight or otherwise. Somehow, he always got away with it. Neal roused, while Dewalt yanked the covers back over his head. Malice was done up for the shoot: whi
