The song ends and the applause goes way up from when I was introduced. Now they see I’m not the usual drunk girl here to make an ass of herself. “Thanks,” I say. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Now here’s one of my personal favorites.”
About halfway through my performance, I notice someone in the back of the bar. Not some drunk college kid who wants me to take off my clothes. It’s much better than that. Dr. Macintosh leans against the back wall. He smiles at me and nods his head in time to the music. I stop looking at the rest of the audience and just focus on him, to watch his reactions. He must love it, as he applauds and even whistles at me.
I remember the last time I was up here, how I thought of Dr. Macintosh kissing me backstage. That thought had scared the hell out of me, which had prompted me to run away and get into this whole mess. This time I’d like nothing better than for that fantasy to come true.
By the time I finish, my face is covered in sweat and I feel like I’ve run two marathons back-to-back. Not that the audience cares. They of course want an encore. I’m off to the side of the stage, chugging a bottle of water, when the emcee asks if I’ll do an encore. I nod to him. When I can talk, I say, “But it’s not in your machine, so I’ll do it unaccompanied.”
“Sure, why not?” he says.
Before he can go back out, I whisper in his ear, “And I think I deserve a big fucking raise.” I let him digest that and then walk back to the center of the stage. It takes a minute for the applause to die down. I hate how young my voice sounds when I say, “Hi everyone!”
I take a deep breath and then focus on Dr. Macintosh. He stares back at me with anticipation. I’m not about to disappoint him. “This next song was written by a good friend of mine. He’s a really bright young songwriter with a great future ahead of him.”
It’s too dark in the bar and the stage lights too bright for me to see Dr. Macintosh’s reaction. I close my eyes then and bob my head as I hear the intro in my mind. “Stacey, you brighten my days—”
Book 3: Last Chance
(Chances Are #3)
Part 1
The Good Life
Chapter 1
As someone who grew up in the early ‘70s, I used to make fun of the kids who listened to Bob Dylan and James Taylor and all that hippie folk shit. Then were the “feminists” with their Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez and all that stuff that prompted girls to burn their bras. I didn’t care about any of that; I was a rock n roller. My idols were Creedence, the Stones, and Zeppelin.
So it’s funny that forty years later I lie in bed with an acoustic guitar in my lap while I strum the chords idly. The me from back in the ‘70s would laugh at the little Chinese girl with her big guitar and tiny voice. He would say, “That’s not real music!”
And to be honest I don’t like the acoustic guitar. I took a whole class on how to play it, but I can still only play a couple of chords. While an electric guitar might feel a little more natural to me, I can’t bring an amplifier to bed. So I make do with the acoustic while I scribble in a notebook.
“Hey babe,” I call out, “what’s a word that rhymes with orange?”
Mac sticks his head out of the bathroom door. “Orange,” he says.
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“Nothing rhymes with orange except orange.”
“Oh. Shit.” I cross out the line I’ve just written.
I stare at the notebook for a long time and think. I barely passed my songwriting class in college and that was only because I cheated. I paid Mac’s nephew a hundred bucks to write a song for me. He can write songs pretty much in his sleep while I struggle to get two lines down.
Mac only wears a towel as he crosses the bedroom. He leans down to kiss the top of my head. “You’re trying too hard,” he says.
I put the guitar down. “I’m supposed to be a musician,” I say. “What kind of musician can’t play an instrument or write her own songs?”
“You’re a singer,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I want to be more,” I insist.
Mac sits on the edge of the bed. In that level tone he uses with patients he asks, “Why do you think you need to be more than a singer?”
“I guess I want people to think I’m an artist, not just some girl with a cute voice.”
Unlike his patients, he gives me a kiss on the cheek. “That’s an admirable goal, but there’s no reason you can’t be an artist with only your voice. That throat of yours is an instrument too, just like the guitar. You can use it to interpret songs however you want.”
“You think so?”
“I know you can. You’re my little songbird.” He gives me a longer kiss, this one on the lips. I try to pull him down onto the bed with me, but he resists. He pulls back from me and gives me a smile. “I’d like to, but I have to go.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say and pout.
“Are you free for dinner tonight?”
“I might have to move some things around, but sure,” I say with a grin. I don’t really have any plans except to sit on the couch with Tess; we’ll watch Grey’s Anatomy and pig out on ice cream while I mope about what a shitty songwriter I am.
“Great. I was thinking Lorenzo’s at eight.”
“That’s pretty swanky,” I say.
“There’s something I think we need to talk about. Something important.”
“Oh. I see. We can’t talk about it now?”
He kisses my cheek again. “I’d like to, but I have to get moving.”
“I should probably get going too,” I say. “If someone left me any hot water.”
“There should be plenty if you don’t take too long.”
“Me? Never.” I dart into the bathroom and shut the door before Mac can say anything. I lean against the door and sigh. I know what Mac wants to talk about. Tonight he’ll finally ask me to be Mrs. Robert Macintosh.
***
On the train the old lady across from me gives me a dirty look. Before long she’ll probably ask why I’m not in school. That happens at least once a month.
It’s an easy mistake to make. I’m dressed in a white blouse and short plaid skirt. I’ve got my bright red hair—dyed to match the red of my glasses—put up in cute pigtails. Add to it that I’m only a smidge over five feet tall and it’s easy to see why most people think I’m fourteen or fifteen, not twenty-three.
I’m not really twenty-three either; that’s just what my state ID says. My body is only about twenty-one. My head is a lot older than that, more like fifty-five years old. It gets really complicated around my birthday to decide how many candles we’re supposed to put on the cake.
Before the old lady can say anything, my stop comes up. I get off in the garment district and as is customary, I stop to buy a copy of The District Discourse. I wouldn’t usually touch a rag like that, except for the article on page 3A about a counterfeit subway token ring broken up by the police; the byline for the article says, “Madison Griffith.” The article is short enough that I can read it in two minutes in the subway station. Then I go up to street level.
It’s not a long walk to Second Chances Boutique. The ‘Boutique’ part is a pretty fanciful description since it’s just a rundown little hole of a shop stuffed with old clothes no one else wanted. But it’s my rundown little hole of a shop, at least for now. If my singing career ever takes off and I have to do world tours with the Rolling Stones, then that might change.
The front door is already unlocked. I see Maddy at the counter with her iPad. She looks up at me and gives me a stern look. “You’re late,” she says.
“The boss is never late,” I say. I hold up the newspaper so she can see it. “They gave you the front page of the metro section, huh?”
She snorts at this. “Yeah and then they cut it down to like two hundred words so they could stuff a few more ads in there.” She shakes her head. “For an indie paper they’re pretty corporate.”
“It’s a job, right?”
“Yeah,
beats the Krappy Koffee,” she says. The Kozee Koffee is a couple of doors away; Maddy worked as a barista there for five years, until she lost her job after she went missing for six months. Six months we spent as a couple of little Chinese sisters, me ten and Maddy five. She might have been able to get her job back, but then she saw a flier for the Discourse, which was new and in dire need of anyone with real journalism chops.
“What’s next for Lois Lane?” I ask.
“I’m doing a retrospective on this Uwe Vollmer guy.”
“Who’s that?” I ask, though I already know the answer. I was the one to slap the cuffs on Vollmer and send him up the river. But there’s no way a cute little girl like me would know anything about him.
“He was this serial killer, they called him the Skinhead Strangler.”
“He killed skinheads?”
“No, he was a skinhead. He strangled a bunch of people around here and in Chinatown. They were all minorities. That was his thing; he was trying to purify the city or something.”
“But they caught him, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, my dad and Grandpa Jake caught him. He’s still in prison, but it’s been twenty-five years, so we’re doing this whole series about the case. Real true crime stuff.” Maddy sighs. “They’ll probably cut it down to a hundred words so they can put in a half-page ad for some cell phone store.”
“I’m sure they won’t do that.”
“Anyway, I was going to ask Grandpa Jake about the case later.”
I could give her all the material she needs, but I haven’t ever told Maddy about my former life as Detective Steve Fischer. We weren’t on the best terms before I “died” and was reborn as cute little Stacey Chance thanks to a shot of a drug called FY-1978. Mac says at some point I’ll have to do it, but I’ve continued to put that off.
“I’m sure he’ll give you whatever he can,” I say instead.
“But hey, tonight we can have a family dinner, just like old times, except I won’t have to sit on a booster seat.”
“That sounds great, but Mac and I are going out tonight. To Lorenzo’s.”
“That’s a pretty classy place. Is it your anniversary or something?”
“No.” I can’t contain my excitement anymore. “I think he’s going to pop the question.”
We squeal like a couple of schoolgirls. Maddy grabs me and crushes me in a hug. When she became an adult again she weighed two hundred fifty pounds. She’s lost a hundred of that, so she’s still a bit heavy, especially with someone like me who only weighs a hundred. “Oh my God!” she says. “I can’t believe it!”
I feel my face turn warm. I sit down on the stool behind the counter. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure yet. But it makes sense. He said he wanted to talk about something important and I mean we’re pretty much living together, so what else could it be?”
“Wow, that is so awesome,” Maddy says. “Little Stacey is getting married. To a doctor, even.”
“A psychologist,” I amend.
“I never thought you would be the one to marry a shrink first.”
Right on cue Maddy’s shrink comes down the stairs. Grace is already dressed and made up for her shift at the Windover Rehabilitation Clinic. “What’s going on down here?” she asks.
“Stacey’s getting married!” Maddy blurts out before I can.
Grace’s reaction is a lot more subdued. She hugs me, not nearly as bone-crushingly tight as Maddy. “Congratulations,” she says. “Dr. Macintosh finally asked you?”
“Not yet, but he’s taking me to Lorenzo’s and said he wants to talk about something important, so you know—”
“That’s so wonderful,” Grace says. “You deserve it.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Grace checks her watch. “I have to run. We’ll have to talk about it later.”
She gives Maddy a kiss before she leaves, but I note how brief and chaste that kiss is, not like their usual goodbye kisses. Then Grace is out the door.
***
The good thing about managing a clothes store, especially one like the Second Chances Boutique, is it makes clothes shopping easier. Most of the time the only problem I have is to find stuff small enough to fit me. When Grace ran the place she avoided taking kid’s clothes, but I rescinded that policy if only because teen sizes are the ones better suited for me.
I browse the formal wear, to look for something classy enough to wear to Lorenzo’s. I want to have something really nice for this special occasion, an occasion I’ll remember for the rest of my life. As I browse, I run a hand along one red pigtail. “You think I’ll have time to dye this back?” I ask Maddy, who’s still on her iPad.
“What?” She looks up from the computer, startled.
“My hair. You think I could get it dyed back before tonight?”
“Your hair is cute. It goes really well with the glasses.”
“I just mean if we’re going to a fancy restaurant, it might be nice to look normal.”
“Lots of people have red hair.”
“Not this red.”
“Whatever.”
“Some help you are,” I grumble. Maddy’s probably not the best one to ask on that subject. When I first met her as Stacey, she had pink hair. She’s let it go natural since then, back to the light brown she got from her mom’s side of the family.
“Does it really make that much difference what color your hair is?”
“It matters to me. I want this to be perfect.”
“Then you probably shouldn’t have dyed it in the first place.”
“You’re the one who thought I should do it.”
“So? You didn’t have to do it.”
“Fine, whatever,” I say, to give her a taste of her own medicine. “Maybe I’ll wear a holey T-shirt and some acid-washed jeans.”
“Do whatever you want. It’s your life.”
“What’s your problem?”
“Maybe that I’m trying to work and you keep pestering me.”
“This is my store. I can pester whoever I want.”
“Fine, I’ll go upstairs.”
“You do that.”
Maddy slips her iPad into her bag, which she slings over one shoulder. She stomps up the stairs to the apartment she and Grace have shared for about nine years. They’ve considered moving, but it’s hard to find a decent place in their price range in this city.
I continue to browse the racks for a few minutes. When I can’t find anything good enough, I go into the backroom. There are always a couple of boxes there for stuff I haven’t sorted yet. As I sift through the clothes, I find a black dress at the bottom that’s in my size. I pull it out so I can examine it for any holes or weird smells. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.
Just to make sure, I try it on in the dressing room. I take the rubber bands out of my hair so it can flow freely to about the middle of my back. I do a little turn in the mirror. It looks pretty good. Not as perfect as I’d like. If I had the money, I’d go downtown to one of the upscale stores and buy something that costs a couple thousand. Maybe when I’m Mrs. Macintosh I’ll be able to afford that. For now I have to make do.
I change out of the dress, satisfied it’ll work for my big night. It does need ironed, though, to get out some wrinkles from being stuck at the bottom of a box for weeks. I put a sign on the door to tell anyone who happens by—which isn’t often—that I’ll be back in five minutes. Then I lock the door and go upstairs.
I expect to find Maddy in the living room, but she’s not there. “Maddy?” I call out. I don’t get an answer back. It’s always possible she used the fire escape as she often does.
There’s an easier explanation: Maddy’s in the bedroom. I can hear her crying through the door. “Maddy? Are you all right?”
“Leave me alone,” she says.
I ignore this and open the door. She’s curled up on the bed; she clutches a pink bunny she named Mrs. Hoppy during that brief time she was my little sister. Her face is turned away
from me, but I can still hear her cry.
I sit down on the bed and put one hand on her thigh. “I’m sorry about downstairs,” I say.
“It’s not that,” she mumbles.
“Then what is it?” I ask. Maddy doesn’t say anything. “Come on, you can tell your big sister.”
“I don’t wanna.” Despite being an adult for the last four years, Maddy still sometimes slips back into a toddler when she gets upset. Mac calls it a defense mechanism that she should eventually outgrow.
I try to use the calm, level voice Mac uses with his patients, which included Maddy when she was little. “Madison, please, don’t shut me out. Whatever’s wrong, we can talk about it.”
“No. I don’t wanna,” she says again, her voice muffled by Mrs. Hoppy.
“Madison, look at me. You’re a big girl now, remember?”
She looks up from the bunny. Her eyes are puffy and her mascara runs. “I remember,” she says. “I just don’t wanna talk.”
“What’s this about? You were fine earlier.” Now that I think about it, she was fine until Grace came downstairs. I remember how evasive Grace acted, how quickly she left and how chaste her kiss with Maddy was. “Are you and Grace having problems?”
Maddy squeezes the bunny until I expect its stuffing to come out. “It’s not fair. You’re going to get married.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you would be happy for me.”
“I am. It’s just not fair. I mean, Grace and I have been together almost nine years and she still doesn’t want to marry me. I thought once they made it legal she’d want to, but she doesn’t. She says we don’t need to get some piece of paper.”
“That’s true,” I say. “All that really matters is you love each other.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why you’re so excited about Dr. Mac asking you.”
I can’t argue with her. Love is good, but there’s something special about being able to call Mac my husband. Maybe I’m just too old-fashioned. “I guess you’re right.”
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 59