by Casey Plett
Walking back home, she saw that Sophie and Lila had posted a breakfast picture together on Facebook, at 2:34. They were at Sal’s. They both looked happy. Wendy posted a heart.
Wendy’d always been afraid of something like this happening when she was a hooker. She’d had angry guys, threatening guys, plenty of disrespectful assholes, in addition to all the timewasters and fuckboys chasing freebies, but never anyone who actually laid hands on her. Or kept her against her will or anything. She’d quit sex work for a few reasons (she’d finished her laser, and her neighbours were threatening to call the cops, to name a couple) but also she figured it’d just be a matter of time until her number for something bad came up.
Wendy posted another heart.
This time Sophie liked it. Then she got a text from her:
Hey I’m okay. Like, I’m not. But I’m okay.
She sipped her coffee then typed back: I get it. Can I come by later?
Thanks but I probably need to just sleep for a long time. Lila and I stayed up all night last night.
I love you, she said. Gunna check in with you later can I do that?
Sure.
Then Wendy texted Raina: around tonight?
Genevieve is getting back from her parents and will need to see me I think.
Wendy threw the phone at her pillow.
Though. If Wendy’d ever actually planned to kill herself, that wasn’t how she’d do it. Jump off the fucking roof. Three storeys. How stupid would that be. She had a smarter plan. She’d wait for one of those sunny minus-forty days in winter, then rent a car and drive to the States and get a bottle of Everclear. Then she’d drive back up and get a bottle of whisky. Then go somewhere isolated, near Lake Winnipeg or Lake Manitoba—somewhere eternal, quiet—and drink the whisky in the car. Then walk out in her hoodie with the Everclear and drink it fast and hard by the lake until she fell down. That was her plan, and it comforted her. She never made any action to go through with it. But it comforted her. It was hard to explain. She had her plan, and because she didn’t start going through with the plan, then that meant she wasn’t actually going to die. As long as she didn’t start the plan, she would live, even if she didn’t want to. It was a clear task for her not to do. It would start with renting the car—so don’t rent the car.
Sophie had talked about an old high school friend of hers who’d kept a bottle of Everclear on her nightstand. It’s my security blanket, the friend had said.
This story was where Wendy’d got the Everclear idea from. Sophie and the friend had stopped speaking years ago. She was still alive, though. Sophie’d checked into that.
The next night after leaving the store, Ben texted: Hey let’s get beer. Sophie wasn’t answering her texts. Raina was at a work function. Maybe don’t go home till you’re ready to sleep, Wendy thought.
“Rickshaws shaping up great,” said her dad. “All the parts are on their way, the boys got a good deal. Next time this year, you wait, kid. Shit, I need you to sign those papers for your half.” He fumbled in his bag. “I forgot ’em, shit. That’s why I called you in the first place! Hey, you should come over to the house next week.”
Sometimes Wendy was so relieved about her father’s ability to talk and talk. “Sure,” she said. “Hey, what kind of parts are in a rickshaw?”
Hours later, Ben mentioned that his brother was easing off the will-contesting thing. “We had a nice phone call the other night. I said to him, ‘Hey, we’re blood. We both got smacked by the same father, we don’t gotta do this, I wanna work this out. Tell me how we work it out.’ I think he got it. We’re talking again next week.”
“Your dad hit you?!” Wendy said. She had never imagined this, not once.
“Of course!” said Ben. “Mennonites hit their kids like everybody in my generation. My dad wasn’t sadistic about it, but sure, he beat us. Specially me, being the little shit disturber I was. I dunno if he hit us more than most parents. Maybe a bit. I dunno. He definitely didn’t take pleasure in it. But he did hit us a lot.”
He put a bite of poutine in his mouth and read the look on Wendy’s face. “Hey,” he pointed a fork at her. “Don’t let that change your memory of him. He was a good dad. He genuinely thought it was the right thing to do. He thought that’s how you raised a family.” He chewed and thought. “But I will say, because of how he hit me is why I resolved to never do that to you.”
Wendy touched her hair. “But you did hit me.”
“I spanked you exactly five times. I never beat you. When you got to grade one, I vowed to never hit you again. I felt bad about that, you know.” His voice went fragile. “I saw what I was doing. How afraid of me you were. I never wanted you to be afraid of me. And I’ve never hit you since.” He drifted off. “I do have those regrets. I wish I hadn’t spanked you.”
Wendy was silent. “I don’t feel raw about that,” she said.
“But,” he said, lifting a finger, as if he hadn’t heard her speak, “you did scream like a little bitch about it.” She had.
14
The next day, she had to work early, cranky hungover in a baggy thin shirt and ripped tights and her hair down. Her manager took one look at her and put her on phone calls for holiday orders. “You got it,” she said gratefully.
She was mindlessly dialling and daydreaming when someone put a hand on her back.
“Wha!” Wendy wheeled around.
“Aike!” said the woman who’d touched her.
“I’m sorry,” Wendy recovered instantly. “I’m easily … well anyway, my fault. Can I help you?”
“No—I don’t think—” the woman said, still flustered, waving her hands. “No.” She walked away.
Wendy shook her head, her hair curtains on her face, and continued with her calls.
Then the woman came back. She was a prototypical customer—middle-aged, white, sensible coat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You just startled me because from behind I thought you were a girl.”
Wendy blinked.
“I am a girl, ma’am,” she said.
The woman tilted her head slightly. She raised her eyebrows and smirked.
“I am a girl.”
The woman stayed for another five seconds, smirking, then turned and walked away.
Most days, Wendy felt that eight years after transition, she had made her peace with trans stuff. Whatever she hadn’t made peace with, she’d made peace with the fact there’d never be peace, so to speak.
Wendy knew how to deal with looking cis and she knew how to deal with looking trans, but she would never, ever figure out how to be both. How the world could treat her so differently—within days or hours. Sophie’d say, You can’t play their game. You never win by playing the cis game. You can win on so much, but you will never win that. And Raina’d say, I hate that they make me choose. I hate it like I hate almost nothing else.
What more was there to it?
On this you will never win. There could be comfort giving in to that, in a certain light.
Five minutes later, she felt a tap on her shoulder. “What,” she snarled.
“Whoa, turbo,” her manager raised his hands. “It’s just me.”
“Oh. Hey,” she said breathlessly. “Sorry, I—I thought you were someone else.”
“Can I talk to you?” he said. He looked uncomfortable.
Her heart sank. It had been years, but … she’d seen this look before. “What’s going on,” she said bluntly.
“I just need to talk to you,” he said calmly.
Wendy followed him into his office, her fists balling and unballing. She closed the door. Sat down. Smoothed her skirt, then put her hands flat on the desk.
“I know,” she leaned in pointedly. “You think I’m great. It’s not you. Right?”
“Of course I think you’re great,” said the manager.
“Right.” Her voice shuddered. She massaged her head. “Look, just fuckin’ tell me.”
“Hey, settle down. Just calm down, okay? Ju
st calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to settle down.”
“Jesus!” he said. “Do you even know what you’re on about? The store’s closing.”
Wendy lifted her head up. “Huh?”
“They sold it,” he said. “To a company in Calgary.”
“What!?”
“Yeah. Speculator. Something or other. Don’t even know what they’re doing yet,” he said. “But they’re going to rip it all out and—do something. They bought next door too. I had no choice in this. I think Tammy wanted to get out of the business anyway, to tell you the truth.”
“Jesus.” Wendy shook her head.
He gave her a moment. “We have to close right after Christmas.”
“Right, of course. Jesus,” said Wendy. “Well, shit. What are you going to do?”
He waved his hand. “I get a severance, I’ll be fine.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said darkly. “You kids are the ones getting the short end here.”
Wendy’s brain sank a little further. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll write you any letter of reference, you know that, right?”
“Hey, I appreciate that.”
“No problem.” He spun ninety degrees and looked at the wall, then back at her. “So. I called you in here. Because if you’re interested—I need you to help me liquidate. Would you be into that?”
“Probably. What would I do?”
“You help me close up the store and keep it running till the last day. You’ll get forty hours up till just before New Year’s. And I can raise your pay fifty cents. Not much, but it’s something.”
Wendy put her palms up in an of-course gesture. “Shit. Well, yeah, I’m not gonna turn that down, now am I?”
“Everyone else is getting hours cut right away,” he said grimly. “Next schedule. We are not in what you’d call a position of strength. We’ve been overstaffed anyway.”
“Don’t they usually hire outside people to liquidate?”
“Like Tammy’s gonna shell out for that! Anyway, that’s big store stuff.” He let out a pathetic blast of air. “What are we, we’re—we’re a middle-of-the-road gift store in a strip mall outside the real mall.”
Wendy stared at the window. “I need to get another job soon then.”
He coughed and nodded. For a second she felt a stabbing, unbridled hatred for him. Understanding the difference between them in how their days were about to go. And then, quick as it came, she was calm again.
“How long you known about this, Michael?” Wendy said.
“Since yesterday evening,” he said solemnly.
“Damn.”
“Yeah.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “You need a minute to think? You want to chill out in the office? Meditate? Go outside and smoke a fatty?”
She laughed. “You nerd. I’m fine.”
“You got any questions for me? Anything I can clear up about the whole thing?”
“No.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” he said. “I need to tell the others. This week you’ll have your regular schedule, but starting next week you’ll be at forty. You watch the register? I’m telling everybody here, then I’m making phone calls.”
Wendy got up. Suddenly, on impulse, she shook his hand. “Appreciate you asking me to finish out with you,” she said.
He shook back firmly. “It’s always been a pleasure, Wendy. How long you been here, two years?”
“Two years.”
“Always been a pleasure.”
Wendy sat at the register while Michael guided the other three employees into his office. Kids, all younger than Wendy. Getting to be a hell of a winter, she thought.
Wendy barely slept that night. She watched TV with Raina and Genevieve, who were drinking wine (Wendy didn’t tell them anything), then went to bed and stared into nothing. She did the same math equations over and over again in her head, cycling through employed friends who might hook her up, returning to a mental image of her thin, scattershot resumé blinking and loaded on her computer. Making copies of it the first week of January.
She was not filled with despair. She went through her whisky, arms on each side of the bedspread, spinning and thinking. She got up for the bathroom every half hour. Eventually, Wendy watched an old Buffy episode—the one where she gets telepathy. It looks quiet down there.
Wendy did drift off at five a.m. She dreamed that she woke up, and the sun was gone. It was noon but dark outside. She made coffee in her housecoat and bumped into furniture. Outside, everyone was driving and walking, but the sun never came up. And it wasn’t the focus of the dream either—the pressing issue was being on time to work to get a tattoo; if she missed her appointment, she’d have to make too many espressos while she planned her next tattoo.
She only registered there’d been no sun in the dream when she woke up for real, and it was light out.
That evening, Wendy bought a pack of cigarettes, searched her e-mail, and found a phone number.
She cracked her desk window, took out her ponytail, and lit a smoke as it rang.
“Holly!” said a deep voice on the other line.
“Hey there!” said Wendy, inhaling, brushing her hair back from her face. “How you doing?”
“Good, very good to hear from you! Been a while!”
“Hasn’t it,” Wendy chuckled. “I know it’s out of the blue. But I have a question for you.”
“Shoot!”
“Well. You still doing photography?”
“Oh!” he laughed nervously. “Not as much these days. Not as much these days. Work’s just been so crazy, it’s hard to, it’s hard to find the time. It’s a shame. God, just hearing from you, I remember how good you looked in those shoots, but … No time.”
Shit. “Sorry to hear that,” Wendy said, turning on her old phone voice, a precise edge of sultry and cockiness added to her usual rasp. “I was kinda hoping you might want to take some new photos of me.”
“Oh, I would. Believe me, I always thought you were very beautiful, and I liked our work we did together,” he stammered, whispering, “it’s just hard for—hold on a second, my wife just came home.”
“Sure,” she said. She sat on her chair, smoking deeply.
Could she still blow smoke rings?
She could.
“Okay, I’m back. I’m in my den now,” he said. “So yes, anyway, I’m sorry to turn you down. It is nice to hear from you.”
“It’s nice to talk to you,” Wendy said, exhaling smoke through her nose. “Sad we can’t get together again.”
“Yes, yes, if only there was …” he said, sounding helpless.
“Tell me this. What if I waived my fee this time?”
“You’d do that?” he said, shocked.
“Yeah,” she said, pretending to think about it. “Yeah. If you could get ’em done soon. I’d do that. And any time of day or night.”
He tittered and spoke in a different tone. “You must need some photos bad then.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I do.”
“It’s still a time thing, unfortunately,” he said. “I would love to see you, and I can in a bit probably, it’s just now …”
“Would you,” Wendy said. “I am in kind of a spot. I’m sorry, hon. I just thought you might be able to help me. You were always so nice to me.”
She could’ve just taken iPhone photos. But she’d always thought that if she ever went back, there’d be no compromises. She would do it one-hundred percent right, as professional as she could, and work every day and take every client and make money. Real money. Lots of it. Like, lots of it. Maybe it was silly to start now, but January doldrums were around the corner, and who knew how the whole post-op thing would shake out with clients. And she’d rarely done outcalls before. Also, she was never good at waiting.
So.
“I’ve got a friend with a video studio in the Exchange,” he’d said when he called her back the next day. “In the ba
sement. Cool building. You around tonight?” Wendy arrived at eleven o’clock, every part of her body freshly shaved and her usual flyaways ironed into shiny black sheets, wearing new thigh-highs and an old merry widow under her coat, with a couple changes of new lingerie in her bag and an empty, empty bank account. They set up, shot, and tore down in two hours. Wendy wondered if he was expecting more—but no, he just shot the pictures, and true to his word, sent her a file two days later.
“It was so much fun seeing u again!” he emailed. “U got such nice hair and nice long legs. Hope we can see each other again soon. U are a blast to hang out with. Maybe we could have a drink when my work is less crazy …?”
The pictures were good. Her hair shimmering down the side of a couch, her lingerie raised just enough to show a smidge of ass, her smile real and full and no circles under her eyes. She built profiles that night on Backpage and Shemale Canada and was done by one a.m. She pointed her mouse to the “Post Ad” button—
She saved everything and closed the browser.
Take a bit, she thought. Who knows how long before you get to not be a ho again.
She took the last cigarette out of her pack, changed into one of her new pieces of lingerie, and mixed an actual drink—an amaretto sour. She put on a Rainer Maria album and smoked and drank and looked out her barely cracked window.
Slivers of air blew in and over her bare shoulders, pure and cold. The kids across the lane on the second floor were silhouetted in yellow through a curtain. Above them, a sitting man washed in the blue light of a TV, the light filling the room.
Wendy remembered walking at night in the dark of winter as a kid, alone, seeing whole buildings lit up that way. Blue in almost every window down the street, whole blocks of black and white and blue.
Wendy’d never truly despised ho-ing—but she had hoped to never do it again. Oh well.