Character Sketches
for The Family Jewels by Iory Allison

1. Gyles Chilton is a Gay man from a prominent Boston family. At the time of this story he is in his young thirties, tall and slim with curly black hair and a trimmed mustache. He has just opened an antique gallery with his sister, Cornelia, on fashionable Newbury Street. Gyles projects a conservative appearance in keeping with his intent as a serious antiquarian, dealing in important European furniture and objets d'art. He is focused on antiques and fine art and otherwise apt to be absent-minded. His preoccupation with his profession masks a romantic and sensual nature while protecting him from the painful memory of his first lover's death from AIDS. Although steeped in the staid world of Back Bay Brahmins Gyles' sensibilities are not snobbish or exclusive. After a false start when suspicion cools his initial ardor, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to Val who is from a radically different world. Gyles' purely sexual attraction to Val develops, over time, into a sincere and intense love. Their relationship is however threatened by the manipulations of Wisner Chilton, Gyles' aged gay uncle.
   
2. Cornelia Chilton is a chic lipstick dyke much to the chagrin of some of her more ardent sisters in BLAB, Bicycling Lesbians Around Boston. She is the design partner in Chilton Antiques and Interior Design, the new business she has created with her brother Gyles. Cornelia is a highly educated and experienced designer, Harvard Design School and China Trade Interiors, whose career is centered on high end residential and office interiors. The new venture is her first solo effort in the field and she is anxious to succeed. She conceals her apprehensions behind a breezy manner which is a pose that springs naturally from her ebullient and sophisticated personality. Although petite with refined features and a pert figure she is a resilient, strong- willed character tempered by an affectionate nature. Cornelia is securely attached to her lover Rita although their relationship can be testy due to the contrast in their characters.
   
3. Wisner Chilton is an "Eleganza Queen" and unabashed snob. Small of stature but inflated by self aggrandizement he claims all the privileges of his Brahmin heritage as a deserved birthright. Paradoxically he is also a big fan of the drag performer Lilly Linda LeStrange and takes great delight in introducing her to his nephew Gyles at the Dynasty Ball. Wisner's advanced age, late seventies, has inspired a web of schemes that he believes will lead him toward a glorious immortality. As the story unfolds we discover that these delusions of transcendence were inspired by his patron and Aunt, the autocratic Norma Chilton. There are other distant relatives whom Wisner refuses to recognize as family but needs as allies. They entwine their greed in his web of fantastic ambition with questionable results. Wisner minces along without concern from his Beacon Hill town house to the exclusive Union Club, The Boston Athenaeum and The Church of the Advent with clandestine late night visits to the Lord Nelson Pub, a classic older men's Gay bar in Bay Village, where he encounters something more than he bargained for.



4. Great Aunt Norma Chilton although dead and gone at the time of our story, Norma Chilton casts a long shadow well into the present. She was a grand dame of Boston in the period of the Belle Époque and an important art collector and patron of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She focused specifically on ancient Egyptian art, funding archeological digs in Egypt throughout the first decades of the twentieth century. She had a reputation of being a difficult patron who wanted to control and retain the artifacts that were collected by her archaeologists. Norma mysteriously lost most of her fortune during the stock market crash in 1929 and lived out the remainder of her days at the family home at 283 Commonwealth Avenue with her sister Florence.
   
5. Great Aunt Florence Chilton was the beloved aunt of Cornelia and Gyles. She brought up the two young children who were left orphaned when their fashionable and racy parents plunged off the Haute-Corniche above Nice on the Riviera. Aunt Florence was a sweet caring soul who had lived at her family home her entire life keeping everything just as it had always been. This was sometimes a stretch on her limited "spend thrift" trust. She took in her sister Norma after the latter's financial troubles in 1929 and quietly endured the domineering Norma until her death in the 1930s. Aunt Florence was a petite woman with masses of pure white hair worn in a loose bun on the crown of her head. Otherwise she was of unassuming appearance except for her remarkable pretty blue eyes which Cornelia has inherited. Florence looked for the best in everybody and as a result she was well loved and respected. 
   
6. Nagib Iskander was a handsome Mameluke Pasha from Ottoman Egypt. He always appeared in a formal frock coat and scarlet fez above his immaculately trimmed gray beard. After the demise of the Ottoman Empire, he became the intimate companion and collaborator of Norma Chilton with whom he shared many interests and veiled histories. Initially he was involved in the assembling and study of Norma's collection of antiquities. Here in Boston Norma used an ancient wharf belonging to the Chilton family to receive and store her artifacts coming from Egypt. A suspicious fire consumed the ancient structure presumably destroying the entire horde which was waiting to be transported to the museum. After this loss Nagib went his own way and founded the Greenbrier Funeral Home of Watertown 
   which catered to Boston's first families.
   
7. Nagib Iskander II, the grandson of old Nagib, lives beneath the shadow of a purple birthmark that cruelly disfigures his otherwise handsome face. He is a tall powerful man who projects a zealous and menacing intensity. At an early age he was groomed by his grandfather to run the family business at the Greenbrier Funeral Home in Watertown. But his covetous ambitions have far exceeded simply burying his clients, he also plots to acquire their fortunes and shed the social stigma of his profession.



8. Val, whose incongruous full name is Percival, is also called Mona or Vallisha depending on which of his friends he is speaking to. Val has a shady past and an uncertain future. When he meets Gyles an electric attraction sparks between them but this flirtation is not as innocent as it seems. Powerful forces have positioned the two men to meet and these intended manipulations complicate and threaten the real growing affection between them. In The Family Jewels Val is in his young twenties but life on the streets has made him wiser than his years with a penetrating insight into the passions of men. He is tall and apt to slouch leaning his weight on one leg, and he has the habit of tossing his silken blond hair off his forehead like a proud stallion. He is most often seen in tight jeans, a clinging white T-shirt, and a well worn black leather motorcycle jacket. He also favors short shorts that accentuate his provocative bubble butt. 
   
9. Rita Rosenstein is Cornelia's lover. She is a CPA by profession and a no nonsense kind of gal. Although their relationship is one of long standing they do not live together. Each woman owns and lives primarily at her own condominium. Rita is a loyal but jealous partner who is apt to be fiercely protective and therefore explosive. She is proud of Cornelia's business success but suspicious of the frivolous aspects of interior design. Rita has no interest in the "old family" status of Cornelia's heritage. Nor is she enthusiastic about Cornelia's friendships with the more outrageous Gay characters. Rita is a nondescript dresser tending towards Birkenstock sandals and pant suits. 
   
10. Lilly Linda LeStrange is a law unto herself. Larger than life, both figuratively and literally, she is a blinding star in the galaxy of super diva drag queens. Lilly is also Val's adoptive "mother" and she calls him "my daughter Vallisha" or simply "you divine lump". This latter endearment she also lavishes on one and all indiscriminately, most especially her legion of adoring fans. Madame LeStrange gives gender-bending an expanded definition. Her outfits, and she is always decked out to kill, have a kind of astounding theatricality that have won countless standing ovations. In short, an appearance by La Diva is likely to cause riot and mayhem. On stage she outperforms all competitors. Picture Cirque du Soleil and Dolly Parton rolled into one ball of fire and you begin to picture her act. Because of Lilly Linda's hefty proportions and assailing height she literally towers over the majority ordinary humans and she surveys the general population with a myopic squint when called upon to interact.
    
11. Betty the Bounder is Lilly's dresser and general side kick which, quite literally, she is likely to receive in order to be kept in line. Betty's day job has been manning(?) the perfume counter at Filene's Basement. From said emporium she has filched gallons of questionable scent over the years which she distributes to Lilly and a mini horde of other subscribers. Betty often sports a bushy red beard which she adorns with cherry red glitter on festive occasions. When in a penitent mood she can also appear clean shaven but these misgivings are rare and short lived. Either way her drag tends toward 60's retro leaning heavily on pill box hats and minny skirts above her knobby knees. Inexplicably she often dons roller blades which she has never mastered. Betty is a habitual inebriate with a well stocked purse bulging with cheap hooch. Her general condition and wobbling roller blades frequently lead her to collapse in a thrashing heap, a dreary routine that has lasted the better part of a decade.
    
    
12. Monique Lafarge is a show girl of statuesque glamour but limited repertoire. She is, however, a stunner. Like all showgirls, she has an artificial beauty, a mask of the night that is calculated to dazzle. Her scarlet lips, so delicately shaped against blue-white skin and glistening porcelain teeth, are held in a perpetual smile, as if she had just been handed the Miss America crown. A cascade of auburn hair swings about her head in heavy waves when she moves, and above her high cheekbones dark eyes brazenly scrutinize the world as if it were all a slightly contemptible joke. Monique is chauffeured around town in her polished 1939 Packard limousine from which she springs like the ice queen of the Artic, freezing all gawkers with astonishment.
    
13. Butch is Monique's Chauffeur and body guard. His claim to her attentions and affections sometimes escapes the preoccupied beauty. Undaunted, however, he hasn't the least compunction to remind Monique of his proprietary interest in her slightest gesture. Butch dresses in classic Chauffeur's uniform of dove gray double breasted jacket, matching jodhpurs, and black leather knee boots. His Herculean physique is barely contained beneath his skin tight uniform accentuating a brawn any gym bunny would be envious of. 
    
14. Tatiana Sarkisian is a dusky exotic beauty all decked out in designer originals and a glistening sable fur coat. She claims to be descended from White Russians who settled in Egypt after the Russian revolution and that her father had been the furrier to King Farouk. Her Egyptian husband, Farag Sarkisian, started his career working with her father but now the couple lives in New York city where amongst other interests Farag owns Sarkisian Furs on Madison Avenue. The Sarkisians are in the process of moving to Boston to open a branch of Farag's business on Newbury Street. Tatiana lures Cornelia into an intrigue, ostensively to decorate her new apartment at the Heritage Building but her real agenda is far from pretty decorating schemes. Tatiana's true identity is much closer to home than reported and her motivations and ambitions are ruthless and caustic to a dangerous degree.
    
15. Eben Chichester is Gyles and Cornelia's cousin and the family trust lawyer. He also serves the same function for Wisner and the rest of the family. As a powerful and influential force in Boston, Eben smoothes over all irregularities that might plague the Chilton, Chichester clans. One would expect his acquaintance with Nagib Iskander to be limited to the services of the Greenbrier Funeral Home, dispatching various Brahmin worthies to their eternal rest at Mount Auburn Cemetery. But there is more of a connection between the two men than the dictates of social position would classically allow.
    
16. Lucy Ann is the warm heart of Florence Chilton's home and the loving friend of Gyles and Cornelia. She is a handsome statuesque woman in her mid seventies with a beautiful clear completion of a café au laît color and gray woolly hair which she wears in a bun at the back of her head. Her position as housekeeper to Florence was much expanded when she took on the major responsibility of raising the two young orphaned children. She added an abundant and vocal affection to an environment which, without her, would have been stiff and formal. Lucy Ann's history with the Chilton family goes back to her own childhood when the imperious Norma plucked her away from her home in South Carolina to become her indentured servant and personal maid. But sometimes fate has rewards for the righteous and Lucy Ann's future is radically changed by the revelations of skeletons that refuse to be still.
    
17. Mr. Charley is Lucy Ann's gentleman caller. He drives a Checker Cab but in the old days he was Norma Chilton's chauffeur. Mr. Charley drives Lucy Ann out on her errands and in return she cooks fried shrimp in Creole sauce for him. It was Mr. Charley who taught Lucy Ann to shoot the revolver which he bought for her because he was concerned for her safety.
    
18. Urna Flamanté is in a box of ashes when Betty the Bounder fetches her from the funeral home. Betty, bereft and bereaved of her one time seminary buddy Joey, AKA Urna, was elected to collect the remains. But with her inevitable aplomb Betty loses her grip on Urna who is left in the back seat of a cab much to everybody's annoyance. Urna Flamanté or flaming urn is the ubiquitous funeral device found marking many graves in New England cemeteries. The symbol refers to the eternal light of resurrection and this old queen, Urna, will do just that in my next novel Naughty Astronautess. 
    
19. Wally St. John pronounced in the British manner "Sin Gin" is the costumer to the Queens. His zany designs can, and often do incorporate the flotsam and jetsam found in flea markets and thrift stores as well as dumpsters and trash bins. But the results of his labors are nothing like trash. One of Wally's gowns, created for Madame LeStrange, was described in Myrna Frump's column in Gay Windows thusly, "She had been sewn into a silver lamé gown entirely covered with rhinestones. The effect was as if the Hope Diamond had gone cancerous and threatened to expand beyond the continent. 
    
20. Sister Scena Finale is the requisite jester for all gay functions, the nun with the bushy beard. This superior sister had abbreviated her habit to miniskirt length, preserving her modesty by a densely layered collection of black lace petticoats flouncing over scrawny legs that were immodestly clad in black net stockings. Her altered habit was intended to resemble the wide swing skirts of country western square dance styling. Completing this image the demipenitent also wore high-heeled shit-kicking cowboy boots. Scena is a free lance choreographer who, along with Urna Flamanté, will crop up in future stories. Scena finale is an Italian opera term meaning, of course, final scene and as such she is soon gone but not forgotten.