by Casey Plett
He drove off, and the cabbie moved east. The meter was already over ten dollars.
“Nobody stopped for me,” Wendy said. “Nobody cared.”
“Miss! You going crazy, that’s why people don’t stop for you.”
“People should stop! They didn’t stop!”
“Miss, please! Calm down.”
“Stop telling me to calm down!”
“Miss. I need you to relax. No one can do anything for you if you don’t relax!”
“Augggh!” Wendy howled. “Theydidn’tnobodycaresnobod—”
The cabbie stopped the car right there on Wilkes, his hazards flashing. “You want me to keep going?”
Wendy imagined her arms reaching in front of her and crushing the cabbie’s neck.
“Yes,” the word forced its way out of her mouth.
“Then you be quiet. You want to get home?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You understand then?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now pay me up front. One hundred dollars.”
“What?”
“One hundred dollars, I need the money upfront.”
“No one ever needs … It doesn’t take a hundred dollars to get downtown. You fucking know that! Do you think I’m stupid?”
“You need to pay me. Pay me or I don’t go. Cash or card, I don’t care.”
The cabbie got out, breath spiralling from his body in clouds. He opened the side door and a dingdingdingdingdingding echoed out into the dark and the flashing lights. “You feel that? It’s fucking cold out,” he snapped.
He looked like every endlessly angry adult who had dealt with her as a surly child. “You gonna be smart?”
Wendy wanted to fucking knock out his teeth. She wanted to fucking kill him. The rage demanding she hurt him enveloped her like a mass of fucking insects.
Wendy gave him the hundred. The exact amount of cash she had on her. Then she calmly engaged him in conversation on the way back until he was chatting with her like a normal guy. Passing Grant on Kenaston, she asked if she could charge her phone with his cable. He let her. She had always been smart.
The little apple flicked on at five percent as the cab turned off Route 90.
Aileen: 4:16 a.m.
Jesus goddammit tell me your okay I’m
getting cab in 20 if I don’t hear from …
(204) 612-1989 4:01 a.m.
can I fuck ur ass still
(204) 822-9532 2:36 a.m.
wd u do an outcall to morden! I got
100 plus party treats for u babe n im …
It was 4:19 exactly. Cop car lights flashed again, stopping her heart then washing her in red and blue as they went past. She looked out at the silent, frozen grounds of Polo. They were right by the store. Like them, the cop car was heading east.
“Hello,” Aileen answered cautiously.
“Hi!” Wendy organized her thoughts. “My phone died. I’m in a cab.”
“Oh, thank fucking God son of a cunt, I was about to run over there with a bat, I swear to fuck like I just put my coat on—”
“It was fine. Actually it’s not. Nothing is fine. I mean,” Wendy’s voice cracked. “I’m not in danger. Um, are you like, busy?”
“I have my fucking coat on, love. Tell me what you need from me.”
Wendy swallowed. “Can I come over?”
“Of course,” Aileen’s voice soothed. “I’ll have a beer ready. Get over here.”
“Sir, I’m sorry,” Wendy said after hanging up. “I need you to take me somewhere else. It’s not much farther. I’m very sorry about this.”
In front of Action House, she asked for her change. The meter was at sixty dollars. He gave her exactly forty back. Decent of him, she thought.
“Sir?” she said outside in the freezer-burn cold, reaching a gloved hand back through the door, holding out a tip.
He turned around. She snatched it away. “Rot in hell!” she shrieked and slammed the door in a whirl of snow.
22
Aileen was in a housecoat and holding a bottle. She kissed Wendy on the lips in the doorway and pinpricks of snow from Wendy’s coat melted into the girl’s robe.
You are so beautiful. Wendy shucked off her boots and lipped her coat over the others on the rack. You are so goddamn unfairly fucking beautiful.
“You don’t have to talk,” Aileen said. “But if you want to talk, I’m listening.”
“It’s cold out there,” Wendy said dumbly.
The two women sat on opposite ends of the living room couch with their legs stretched and touching under the same blanket.
“I saw this boy,” said Wendy, fighting her way through the fog in her head. “But he wasn’t. A boy. He was one of us.”
“Damn. Right.”
“I just … He was this ex-soldier or something. Doing a bunch of coke. I hate coke,” she shivered. “And he, he just …”
Aileen waited attentively. Wendy could almost focus her eyes on her. She felt something rise and clear in her chest.
“When I transitioned,” she said, “I didn’t think things would get better for trans people. I thought it’d be the way it was forever. And now. So much has happened that’s good. In the last few years. I—I have a pussy. I’m out at my job. I know. But there’s still. Girls like her. Are still … I don’t. Why can’t …” She moved her arms. “She has so much, but she still. Like I don’t … I’m saying, like, my heart breaks for this girl, you know …”
Sophie said her brain and she pressed hands to her makeup-smeared face and started to cry. Aileen scooched over, put her arms around Wendy’s huge, heaving body, and said, “I know. I know, love.”
Wendy cried into Aileen’s chest for a good minute.
Then slowly, mush-brained, she gathered herself and took a long open-throated drink from Aileen’s bottle. “Do you get what I’m saying?” sniffed Wendy.
Aileen looked grim. She appeared to think, then said, “I met a girl a few months ago. She’d just come out. Seemed like she had friends, had her hormones, no big disruptions. Quiet girl, been in the hardcore scene most her life. Forty years old. I liked her heaps. And I sort of had it in my head that things were right for her. Fuckin’ stupid, right. Next time we’re out, I ask her more about her past, said she had a thing for hurting herself at shows, that she kept doing stupid fucked-up shit hoping she’d die because she hated her body so much. Said she’d eat glass on stage.” Aileen swigged from the bottle.
They shared a long silence after that, then Wendy said, “Did you have any girls around? When you were coming out.”
“Of course not.” said Aileen. “Not where I’m from. When I moved to Dublin, I first met gay people period. Then I was a gay boy for a while. Had some fucked boyfriends. There’s more trans girls now in town, though. Deffo more weirdo lezzas like me than I ever expected, and Christ, I only crossed over four years ago. Why, what about you?”
“No. God, no, no. There was a support group.” There was a beat, then Wendy laughed. “Support groups—like they’re not people,” she laughed again. “There was this woman named Dex,” she added. “I miss her. I met Lila through her, actually.”
“Yeah?”
“This was about five years ago …”
She got up for another beer but her legs buckled and she crashed to the floor.
“Fuckin’ hell, you alright?”
“I trip—” but Wendy felt her brain commencing shutdown just from lying on the wood for a few seconds.
“Shit, I’m tired, Aileen.” She’d been exhausted and drunk even before the call. Then three hours and a magnum later, out in the cold, her melting brain had animalistically forced her to stay conscious so she wouldn’t fall over and die in the snow. And now.
The remaining deflated bubbles on her hands throbbed very lightly as she pulled herself up. “I’ve. Had. A very. Long. Day.” Wendy crawled back up on the couch then softly kissed Aileen, stroked her freckled face. “Can I stay here tonight,” she whispered. “
Would that be okay?”
Aileen’s eyes were amused glee. “Yes love, you may.”
They kissed more, in an instantly familiar way, familiar and old even though they’d only fucked once, and even that just patches in Wendy’s memory. That’d only been a few days ago—but already it seemed so far in the past! And their bodies easily clicked into place, turning the same pages in an old book, following a progression both already knew, one both women had known the first time they touched each other: Here, here is my skin that feels like your skin, my muscles and frailties that feel like yours, the lift of your flesh something I intuitively know from my own body, inner maps that, for most of my life, I thought were purely shameful and mine alone. And here, with you, with me, for minutes, for hours, if nothing else—a line from a book Wendy couldn’t remember appeared to her in a slippery ripple of memory—If I loved you, this is how I would love you.
“Okay, then,” Wendy said, guiding her hand up. “Let’s go to bed.”
“You’d rather not sleep up here?” Aileen said.
“No. No I would not. I would like to sleep on your bed. What, did you lose your bed?”
“Raina’s sleeping there.”
“Raina?”
“Ah. Bugger. She didn’t tell you, then.”
Wendy dropped back on the couch. Jesus, this day. “You fucked Raina?”
“I thought she told you.”
“Figured she was at her girlfriend’s.”
“Not unless she meant me. And I hope she didn’t. I’m leaving town soon. Though I heard you’re getting the boot from your house, eh? That’s shit.”
For fuck’s sake. That too. “I didn’t even know she was poly …” Wendy whimpered. “Wait. Of course she’s poly. Of fucking course she’s poly, how would I ever imagine that Raina would not be poly.”
“Said she’s got two sweeties at the moment.”
“Who—oh my God, trans dykes.”
“Yes?”
Wendy laughed her long, deep-throated guttural laugh. She kissed Aileen suddenly and ferociously. “How good. Goodnight!” she said. “Go downstairs and fuck my roommate.”
“I’m not going to do that, Wendy.”
“That was a joke.” Wendy threaded out of her bra.
“Right.” Silently, Aileen got up and retrieved pillows from a closet.
“Raina and I slept together too, you know,” Wendy blurted. “Years ago. When she first moved here.”
She didn’t know why she said things like this.
“Was she the last girl you had sex with?” said Aileen.
“I—yes. Years ago. Now that you mention it, yes.”
“She said you two used to be intimate—but you generally went for the men now.”
“Did she.”
“Funny world.”
Wendy’s exhausted brain was overpowering her again. “Thanks, lady. I’ll be out of here in just a few hours.
“You don’t have to be …”
“You’re sweet,” Wendy balled up under the blankets. “I’m sorry I’m a mess. Have a good morning.”
Aileen didn’t leave the room. She stayed by the couch with her hand on Wendy’s hair until she went to sleep. Sang something low and melodic that Wendy couldn’t understand. In the dark. She had a beautiful voice.
In her dream that night, she was in a room playing in a band with guy friends from junior high. They were all laughing while the old, bearded man John grumbled that Wendy wasn’t being quiet. She’d get it from him eventually, but the guy friends and Wendy were having a good time. They sat on couches in a long room. The old man John exploded and followed Wendy to the other rooms, and Wendy knew she’d get punished and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
The house ended and the rooms stopped. She turned around, and old man John stood fully clothed in a button-down and khakis, looking furious, with his long penis out. Wendy woke up flailing on the couch sweating and jumpy in the crisp-cool house air. It was almost eight o’clock. That idiot Travis was puttering around the kitchen. Her clothes and bag were in a pile beside the couch. She had her underwear on.
She hated waking up alone like this. With these dreams. She was still kind of drunk. Sophie is dead.
“Hello?” Wendy knocked on Aileen’s door in the basement.
“Hey,” she knocked again. “It’s Wendy. I have to go.”
Silence.
Quietly, she turned the knob and peeked inside. Raina was alone and motionless.
Raina’s raven-coloured hair rose up and down with her breathing. Most of what Wendy could see of Raina was hair, her small body covered in blankets.
She leaned over and kissed the sleeping girl on the head.
“Muhhh.”
“Aw, shit. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Raina’s eyes flew open, but she didn’t move. “Wendy?!”
“Good morning, roomie.”
“You must truly miss it when I’m not home.”
“Heh,” Wendy said. “I do, but that’s not—well. Long story.”
“Are you alright?
“I’m going to see Anna today.”
“Anna?”
“The woman who has the letters about my grandpa being trans. Or gay. Or whatever the fuck. I don’t know. I don’t even want to fucking go anymore. I guess I can’t stand up an old lady, though.”
“Goodness.” Raina closed her eyes. “I hope the best for you. And her. Are you home tonight?”
“Yeah, it’s my weekend.”
“Aileen and I thought all of us should go to Cousin’s. She leaves Sunday. We could bring Lila.”
“Let’s do that.”
“Excellent. Wendy, I’m afraid I’m going back to sleep.”
Wendy leaned over and kissed her forehead. Raina blushed.
“Goodnight, lady,” Wendy said. “I’ll see you in the evening, then.”
Aileen was in the kitchen with a grocery bag as Wendy walked up the stairs. “Sunshine!” she said.
“Beg pardon?”
“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine!”
“I—have you slept?”
“Nope!”
Wendy’s phone rang. It was Lila. “Hey!” she said frantically. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
Aw, shit. She’d never checked in. “Yeah, all’s good,” said Wendy. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I just had a weird night.”
“God damn it, you fucking scared me!” said Lila. “I just woke up to your texts! Like right now! I thought maybe you were—”
“Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lila said rapidly. “I’m fucking glad you’re alright, just please remember to check in! Please! I thought you were maybe—I don’t fucking know, you know?!”
“I promise, okay!”
Lila sniffled. There was the light sound of a Kleenex pulled from a box.
Wendy kept forgetting how close Lila’d been to Sophie too.
“I should know better,” Wendy said. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you still using my car today?”
“Yes. Please.”
It was true. Wendy didn’t want to see Anna anymore; it was an obligation now. Go keep an old woman company. She was curious to read the letters, kind of. But the sporadic mental energy it took her to care just didn’t currently exist. Oh, well. In six hours it’ll be over.
“I’m off. I’m getting Lila’s car. Have to drive her to work.”
“You like company on the way?” said Aileen. “I ain’t sleeping.”
“I’d have to come back here to drop you off.”
“If you’d like the company!” said Aileen rapidly.
“I—no, girl, it’s really not on the way.” Jesus, what was her deal?
“We’re going out tonight, yeah? All of us?”
“You bet,” Wendy said, doing up her coat.
As Wendy opened the door, Aileen came up and kissed her and said, “See you tonight.” Like a wife seeing her off to work.
She walked to Lila’s hou
se. They got into Lila’s car and stopped at the McDonald’s on Pembina where Wendy got them both breakfast. Lila had some new office job out by U of M that she hated, but it paid a few bucks above minimum. “I shoulda done the social work thing like my mom,” she said.
“Sophie told me this funny theory she saw online once,” said Wendy. “That there’s, like, a square of trans-girl careers, and it’s anchored by four corners, and everyone fits somewhere on the square.”
“Oh yeah?” Lila said, her voice tight.
“It was like, one corner is social work, another corner is sex work, another corner is, like, arts and academia, and the other corner is tech.”
Lila lit a cigarette and cracked open the window. “I don’t do any of that.” She exhaled. “I do hang around a lot of hookers.”
“What exactly is your new job again?”
“Driver coordinator for Skip the Dishes. They just moved out of downtown.”
“I woulda thought the Internet did all that,” said Wendy. “Coordinate drivers.”
Lila sipped her coffee. “Someone’s gotta yell at those fuckers.”
Wendy snorted. “So last night,” she said, lighting a smoke and juggling her food. “I did this call, hey? And there was this guy. Coked out of his mind. Nothing bad happened. But, like …”
Wendy told Lila the whole thing, down to the Yum video and the koala bear and Kaitlyn’s open, eager ass. She left out the part about getting lost and the cab.
“Damn,” said Lila.
“I’m feeling kinda messed up about it,” muttered Wendy.
Lila was silent for a moment. “Why’s it so fucking hard for us to stay alive, man?”
“Oh, I don’t think this girl’s gonna kill herself.”
Lila flicked her butt and rolled up her window.
They got to the building, a bland grey block right on Pembina. Wendy invited her out for the evening with the rest.
“Hell yes, girl,” Lila said. “You can buy me a drink for using my car.”
“Sure.”
“Alright, fine, two drinks.”
“… sure.”