"Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Tarawa..."
He trailed off, unable to continue, and took another sip of rum. The bottle was almost empty.
"Seventy isn't so bad," he said aloud. His voice was thin in the narrow confines of the utility closet that Tarawa called his dressing room. "Seventy isn't bad at all," he repeated, just to see what it sounded like.
It sounded terrible.
Seventy years old. "Oh, Dah-ling," he said to his reflection, "I tell you, it's a tragedy. An honest-to-God tragedy." He looked around the room, and for a moment his tired eyes rested on the mementos of a career: a few yellowed placards, a couple of plaques so tarnished that he couldn't even begin to read them, a plastic-encased red rose from the one time he'd appeared on stage at Radio City. A few movie stills and some old issues of TV Guide were stacked on a shelf. Above his mirror, a thirty-year-old movie poster proclaimed: "See NYLON: Starring the incomparable Tarawa Beachhead!"
Someone knocked at his door and shouted, "You're on in fifteen minutes." He swallowed the last of the rum and belched. At least no one else in the station knew it was his birthday. He couldn't bear it if they found out, simply could not bear it.
Seventy years of life--and what did he have to show for it? He hadn't dared to step on a scale for years; the two hundred seventy pounds it showed then had probably increased. His movie career was long gone, his money lost by a broker who had since vanished to South America ... at a stage in life when other men were enjoying their retirement, Tarawa was reduced to doing dinner shows on the space station circuit. What a disgraceful fate for a self-respecting drag queen.
He sighed and threw on his wig with a practiced flip of the wrist. Five shows a week, and the crew here on Space Station Three gave him food and lodging as well as his own dressing room. In just thirteen minutes he would step out on stage, sing a couple of songs, do Talullah and Bette and Liza and Joan, make a few jokes, then exit stage right. Same old songs, same old jokes. Same old show.
Same old life.
)
A ramshackle space station, a washed-up drag queen, a little girl, and the ghost of Carmen Miranda come together in a tale of loneliness, heroism, and hope.
