by Casey Plett
The next morning, Wendy woke up aching in every hungover and sexed sense with all of her body. Aileen was fast asleep beside her. It was noon. Sophie is dead.
Her phone had a babe u free today? inquiry from a repeat client and a text from Raina: Wendy-burger. Are you okay?
I’m fine. I’m at Action House.
Oh my. Scrub yourself before you come home please.
You’re hilarious.
Wendy grabbed clothes that weren’t hers off the floor and wobbled to the bathroom that had three different colours of gunk between the walls and toilet and sink. When she came out, she saw a cheerful boy doing laundry.
“Wendy!?” he said.
“Yeah. What’s your name?”
“Travis. We’ve met before.”
“Oh. Sorry. Well, nice meeting you again.”
“You stayed over last night! You with, ah, what’s her name—Aileen?”
“Yeah, Aileen. We met last night.”
“Hey,” he said solemnly. “I heard about Sophie. I’m so fucking sorry, lady. That’s just. I don’t know what to say. She was amazing. She was so amazing. I’m going to miss her.”
“You knew her? Did you know her well?”
“We weren’t close exactly. But I saw her around at a couple things, and she always seemed so cool, I always wanted to, like, get to know her better but—”
“I’m going in here before I throw up on you.”
“You know there’s a washroom right behind you! Please don’t throw up in our—”
*click*
Wendy spent the first hour awake in bed. Aileen’s lips were open and wheezing onto the pillow. Wendy sat with her knees to her chest, her long soft fatty arms tucked around her legs. Brilliant light came through the window above them. The shkkkt shkkkt of windshield scrapers and muffled creaks of boots on snow. There was a space heater in the room, and they weren’t cold. Wendy tilted her head and looked at Aileen’s body moving and up down with her breath.
Around one, Aileen was still sleeping. Wendy threw her clothes together and scrubbed off her crusty makeup. She went upstairs and asked Travis if he’d be around while she got coffee.
By three, Aileen was still sleeping. Wendy sat dressed on the floor with an empty coffee cup, feeling stupid. The repeat client really wanted to see her. It’d been over a week since she’d seen a client—well, since Sophie died.
She checked herself out in the mirror. She looked okay. She even had condoms and lube in her bag. She put her hands on Aileen’s side and rubbed. “Hey, I’m getting out of here.”
Aileen made a deep-sleep snorting sound and smacked her lips and rolled over.
“Come on,” Wendy said louder, “I want to say goodbye to you, what the hell.” Aileen bodily pushed Wendy back from the bed. Wendy stared at her, then went out the door and called a cab. On the way, she put her ads back up, then found Aileen on Facebook and sent a hope-I-see-you-again message. Okay, there. Jesus. The sunlight was starting to fade.
Right after her call, waiting for a cab in the dusk, her phone buzzed. “Bring back the dick parade, boys,” Wendy said, reaching into her bag. But it was her dad. Busy tonight? I wanna celebrate! I worked all my shit out with my brothers! Lemme take you to dinner.
“So you got it worked out, huh?” Wendy said, pulling out her chair at the Toad.
“Yeah! They all figured it out. I drove out to the old country last night, and we all shook on it and made up.”
“That’s great!”
“Fuckin’ A it is!” Ben said. “So I got back into town today, and I thought, hey, haven’t seen you in a while, what kind of father am I? Hey, I got ya a beer.”
The waitress came over with Kokanees. Wendy knew her from the music store on Portage. They said pleasant hellos.
“So what’s been going on, huh?” Ben said. “You good with your work and everything, you got Christmas season coming up.”
“Yeah, it’s all fine,” she waved a hand. “Everything’s great. So your rickshaw thing’s rolling along then, eh?”
“Oh, naw, forget about me! What’s up with your life, kid? I’ve always got my own shit. You’re always like, ‘Oh, everything’s fine, it’s all fine!’ Talk to me. You can’t be all be rose-coloured piss.”
My best friend is dead. My best friend killed herself. I’m getting laid off and I’m doing tricks again and I’m scared a thing that happened to my friend is going to happen to me. But I’m making money. I’m almost certainly making more money than you. A man did something to me in an alley weeks ago, and I’m burying it because too much else has happened. Your father might’ve been a woman, but I can never tell you that, ever, ever. I don’t want to kill myself, but I don’t know if I want to live either. I’m taking new hormones and I like my boobs better and it’s made me calmer and less angry, and they might also kill me faster. Maybe. No one really knows. My best friend is dead. Every man I like and am attracted to would never love me, ever. Every man who thinks they like me is either an awful creep or is paying for the privilege and sometimes both. More and more, I feel like life is something that’s just happening to me. My choices don’t feel like choices at all. It’s like they’re things that have been decided and I just react to them the way anybody would. The older I get, the more life feels like a blank, gauzy haze where every direction is just the same thing. It seems like other people have this way of pushing back against things in their life they don’t like, and I just don’t have that. Doing tricks the second time is harder. I think sex work is work like anything else, but there isn’t agency the way the smiley ones say there is. I feel like it was all predetermined and inevitable and it was silly to think I could ever stop. I feel that way like I feel about the fact your grandpa had to be a farmer and your dad had to be a man. I could never tell you this, nor could I tell you that I’m safer than you think, being white and working indoors. I don’t mind I could never tell you any of this. Could I get a different job? I don’t know. Jobs never worked out for me, except for the one I’m about to get laid off from. I’m always either too much of a goon or they don’t like that I’m trans. What would my life be like if only one of those things were true? I can’t tell you any of this. I know I can’t. But I don’t think my life is bad. It’s funny—does all this stuff seem dark to you? Even though you’re no stranger to hardship. I don’t feel like my life is bad. I have friends I can trust; I have a good house; if I feel weird about a trick, I don’t have to take it. Yet. I feel hopeless and powerless, but I’m genuinely grateful. That’s a true thing. I don’t know if you’d understand that. Maybe you would. What can I tell you about my life? Last night at my friend’s funeral, I hooked up with a girl for the first time in years. It was hot and sweet, it was so nice. But you know what, Dad, I barely remember it. I only remember patches, bits and pieces, I got so fucking dru—
“Sometimes I think I’m an alcoholic,” she blurted.
“Fuck off, don’t talk like that.”
She was silent. “Sorry.”
“Your uncle,” Ben said instantly, “when he was in rehab, he met a guy who every morning would get up, go out, and bring back to bed a sixty-ounce of vodka and a bucket to throw up in. That’s being an alcoholic.”
His eyes softened. “You don’t drink that much, I don’t think.”
“I don’t know,” said Wendy, but her first thought’d been I have the money to drink that much now. I could if I wanted, and it wouldn’t matter. She lifted her glass and tried to look at her father, but her eyes wouldn’t focus on him.
“Are you drinking like how my brother used to?”
“No.” But I can’t remember the last night I wasn’t drunk.
“Even close to that?”
“I don’t think so …” She drank about a mickey a day. Sometimes more. Usually a mickey a day or equivalent thereof. She knew this.
“Kid,” said her dad, folding his hands in front of himself. “If you’re worried about it, count your drinks. If you count your drinks, you’ll know a number
for when you’re in trouble. And if it turns out you can’t count your drinks? Then yeah, maybe you want to take it easy for a bit. Look: I don’t think you got much to worry about. If you do? Count your drinks. Try it. It’s a thing you can do.”
“That’s good advice, Father.” Wendy was genuinely surprised. She lifted her beer bottle and set it back down. “Number one. Geez, that was easy.”
“See?”
Ben reached over with a kindly look and squeezed his daughter’s shoulder, and the warmth of it almost made Wendy cry.
“See? There you go.”
“I fuckin’ love you, Father,” Wendy choked.
“I love you too, kid!”
December
20
In Wendy’s dreams some nights later, a man had gotten into her. She was clothed, wearing jeans and a plain shirt, but a man was in her. She pulled him out, and he was like a long string of beans coming out through her fly. She shrieked and pulled and pulled, but he was laughing. A woman tonelessly told her that certain things happened with celebrities. She was screaming—
Wendy shocked awake, sweating under the blankets with her bladder pulsing. Sophie is dead.
Later, getting ready for work, her phone rang. She ran to it with adrenaline and dread—
Anna.
Wendy watched the phone ring in her hand until it went silent. She took a nip of rye before moving back to the washroom where she heard the ding of a voicemail.
She went to work, putting up displays and doing markdowns. Business was steady with the holidays, and she had mindless work eight hours a day, five days a week. Between this and boys in the night time, her distractions were many. She was grateful for this. Wasn’t sleeping much but building a pretty decent nest egg for when January rolled around.
An hour before her break, she went in the back to box up damage claims. “Wendy, how you hanging,” said a voice behind her.
“Shit!” She threw her hands up.
“Hey!” Michael started. “I didn’t mean—” He put a hand on her shoulder and Wendy hit it away like a bug.
“Sorry, sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Wendy said, already recovered. “I’m sorry. Shit. I—I was startled.”
“Nice reflexes,” Michael said, massaging his hand. “So, how are you holding up? Are you okay?”
Wendy glared at him. She turned back to her box.
Michael chuckled. “Yeah, I know, Captain Asshole over here. Sorry. Look, here’s a real question: You wanna get drunk before we head out of this place?”
Her manager’s face was hopeful. “I can pick you up,” he added.
She didn’t want to fuck him. But that was the face she made. “Yeah,” she nodded slyly. She had put on her phone voice too, without intention. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
“Cool. You give me a day.”
She smirked. “Give me a day, bossman.”
“Bossman.” He put the back of his hand to his forehead. “Who are you? Let’s go next Friday. You have a closing shift Saturday, and I have it off.”
“Done.”
He walked off. She ignored the sinking feeling in her chest. Whatever! Do you have to fuck him? Just milk him for some fucking free booze and leave!
“Hello! Yes. Message for Wendy. This is Anna Penner. Wanted to. Offer condolences again. I am very sorry. For the loss of your friend. That pain. Never eases. You can only be thankful they are with the Lord. If you. Believe they are of course but well. Don’t mean to. Bless me. Well.”
Anna coughed a few times. “Pardon me!” she said. Wendy grimaced, smoking her cigarette, and went to delete the message but accidentally dropped her phone on the sidewalk with a quiet clattering on the ice.
She bent down and heard: “… my prayers every night since you informed me on my answering machine, dearest Wendy. I have been thinking about you. And wishing God’s angels may surround you and bless you. I know you are loved, Wendy. You are welcome in my home at any time …”
Wendy stayed kneeling on the sidewalk, staring at her phone, wind blowing her scarf around, the horizontal sun lighting her against the snow bank by the parking lot.
“You have yourself a good day. ’Bye now.” There was a long, scuffling click.
She got home and listened to Anna’s message again.
Then she got a call from a guy she’d never seen before. He sounded real.
Out by St. Mary’s Road, a short bald white man with tattoos and dense muscle was waiting for her outside a garage, wearing a blue T-shirt and khaki shorts. He showed her into the garage. “It’s kinda messy.”
There were tools and a couch piled with crap on one side and lawn chairs and an armchair around a table on another. There were beer cans all over the floor, a fridge at one end, and a big stereo behind the table with the radio on.
“You okay with drugs?” he said.
“I’m fine with drugs.”
He flicked a baggie of powder. “Want any?”
“No thanks.”
“Mind if I do some?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
He fucked her as she sat in a lawn chair. It was more comfortable than she thought it’d be.
“You want a beer?” he said after he came.
“I would love a beer.” She put her feet on the table.
“You don’t have to sit naked,” he said by the fridge. “I’m not going to.” He put his shorts back on and wordlessly she put on her lingerie.
“That was fun,” he said. “Your pussy’s good. It’s good. Shit, can it ever get wet on its own? It’s just amazing what they can do, like—take something out, put something else in. I see girls all the time. You’re one of the good ones, I can tell. I work up in White River, Ontario. Putting in a hydro dam. It’s brutal. I work twenty-one days on, ten off. I’m a carpenter. I used to be married. I didn’t have a good marriage. One of the girls I saw fell in love with me, eh? It was trouble, she really liked me. My wife found out, started calling her—it wasn’t good. See these tattoos on my arm here? Those are my girlfriends. Just kidding, they’re my kids. They’re good kids. Two of ’em—Ashley and Robert—they’re out in Vancouver right now. I don’t see ’em often. Whatever, I’m not gonna fight. They’ll come find me when they wanna find me. I don’t worry about it. I like to go to bars. I like dancing. I like to go to the Lincoln, go to the Sherbrook. My friends don’t like to go there, eh? Guys I work with too, big guys. I grew up in Norwood. When it was bad. You’d be walking around at night, all the gangs would be out, these guys would be like tryin’ to steal my hat and coat, and I’d be like, ‘We go to school together! Fuck!’ One of them ended up my friend. I work with him now. Guy gets into fights all the fuckin’ time. He’s on the run from the cops now, actually. I went out last night, picked him up out of a ditch in Assiniboia Downs. A fuckin’ ditch. Not fuckin’ days ago, we’re on our way back from White River and we go to a strip club in Thunder Bay and the guy gets into a fight before I even get to see a stripper. And he’s a huge guy, like, arms twenty-eight-inches-around big, like the bouncer doesn’t want to mess with him. And, you know I’m not a big guy, but I go put an arm around him like this and the other around him like this, and I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s get the fuck out of here.’ The bouncer’s looking at me like, ‘You gonna be okay?’ I said, ‘Hey. He ain’t gonna hit me, and if he does, it won’t be that bad.’ I’ve been hit hard. You don’t wanna do it again for free do you? No? Even though I’m a nice guy? Okay. Okay. Want me to walk you out?”
“Hello, Anna?”
“Yes. Oh, is this Wendy?”