by J D Lasica
When she turned twelve, she decided to conduct a little social experiment. That January she began emphasizing her feminine side a little more, applying a hint of eyeliner, a touch of lip gloss, a bit of blush. She began wearing hats on her way to and from school. Then, the next month, she would do the opposite. On boy days, Kaden would decide on a different hairstyle and wear gender-neutral clothes. It went on like that for a long time. One month more girly, one month more boyish.
Facebook contributed to her dawning self-awareness. One day her world opened up when they began to let you choose from dozens of different gender options. That blew her away. When she read through the list, she started to cry because her life suddenly made sense.
She hadn’t heard of most of these terms. Was she gender fluid? She read more about it and decided, no, her gender identity didn’t vary over time, even if she switched up her looks every once in a while.
Was she gender nonconforming? She certainly felt that way, lying there in bed in her suburban Denver home right above her parents’ bedroom, trying hard to fall asleep in the darkness, never able to shut out the day’s insults and wounding words. Lying there, trying to understand the impulses racing through her body, trying to figure out who she was and where she fit in.
On Facebook, she came to a defining decision. For her gender, she chose nonbinary. She read about nonbinary people in online forums and began picking up on the lingo. At school and at home, she began asking people to use gender-neutral pronouns, to use “Kaden” and “they” and “their” instead of “she” and “her.”
Kaden decided to begin educating people. There was a hell of a lot of confusion out there. Like practically everyone confusing nonbinary with bisexual. No, girls just didn’t do it for her, she liked boys.
Kaden got some business-type cards printed up. The card contained only a single line on the white side: “Sex is between our legs.” On the black reverse side: “Gender identity is between our ears.” Sometimes Kaden would hand the card to a classmate who asked a stupid question about Kaden’s gender or sexuality. Often, a scuffle or fight would settle matters.
Why didn’t people just accept her for who she was? Why see the world as black and white when the world was so much richer than that?
After a time, weary of the warfare and aware that almost no one was honoring her rules, Kaden decided to forgo the gender-neutral pronouns. It was pushing people away, at least in her case. If you wanted to be frank about it, she didn’t have time to explain biology and hand out her cards to every person on the planet. But she always respected the pronouns others chose.
She decided to make a pact with the world. Don’t screw with me, don’t impose your values or preconceptions on me, and I’ll do the same. Let’s declare gender détente and go home. It was not a surrender so much as a stalemate. Break the truce—say that I’m confused or suffering from gender identity disorder—and all bets are off. I’ll mess you up.
One day, she discovered her parents broke the truce. For weeks they’d been forcing her to take a pill every night. Supplements, they told her. But she did some poking around and found out they were estrogen pills, part of hormone therapy to make her more “girly.” That was the last straw. That was unforgivable. Days and days of door slammings, pills flushed down toilets, cursing at her parents, screaming matches with her doctor—it turned out he wasn’t even a family doctor but an endocrinologist, whatever that was. Another lie! In the end, her parents gave up and she won the battle. But the scars never healed.
Her whole childhood was like that, a series of betrayals and confrontations. All the drama involving her overbearing fake parents in the Denver suburbs. All the fights with classmates. All the trust issues after she was attacked when hiking alone at age sixteen on a remote mountain trail.
The week she turned eighteen, she was more than ready for her ten months of “pure hell” at Lost Camp. The more suffering, the better. She’d never forget her hard-ass instructor who reminded the grunts every mile on their ruck marches: “Eyes wide open!” Danger could come from any direction at any time .
So that’s what she did for the entirety of her twenty-mile hike in Brooklyn, eyes sweeping left to the East River and right to Greenpoint. The weight started to dig into her back as she passed her favorite rifle range in Woodhaven before she reached Ozone Park. Finally, she doubled back along Broadway, all the while doing her best not to buckle under the heavy load.
She now regretted the St. Peter’s job and the heist of the blood-stained cuffs from Lincoln’s doctor and the other odd covert assignments she’d been on. She wondered what her real mother would say about her thirst for thrills and her need to put herself in harm’s way. And how did my mom die, anyway? Assuming she’s really dead.
She kept thinking about this strange bird, Randolph Blackburn, and what else he might have orchestrated behind the scenes. She memorized the questions she wanted to ask him this afternoon.
All this played in her mind throughout the twenty miles. During the hike she never cast a downward look. Eyes wide open! There were certain traits, no matter how she’d gotten them, that were part of her now. She was a trained soldier. A soldier in an army of one.
It was time to face Randolph Blackburn.
24
Chicago, mid-August
J amie handed her fake driver’s license to the desk clerk of the Raphael Hotel in Chicago. The Raphael was a boutique hotel, not too pricey and not too seedy, right off the L and not far from the Chicago Stock Exchange. With any luck, she or Lisa might even get lucky with a high roller.
She turned seventeen just last week but usually had no problem passing for eighteen, like it said on her fake ID.
“How will you be paying for this today, Miss?” the clerk asked, probably not fooled by her ID but willing to accept the $150 security deposit and $250 room fare in advance. She handed him four Benjamins from her wallet. She and Lisa had reserved two adjoining rooms, and Lisa was already checked in.
“Room 312.” The clerk handed her two keycards. “Please enjoy your stay.”
Jamie tossed her cute oversize canvas shopping bag on the bed and logged into the hotel’s Wi-Fi to text her first client when her smartphone rang. “Yeah? ”
“It’s me,” Lisa said. “It’s not taking my password.”
She and Lisa would be texting all day and all night. They had their routine down to an art, improving it little by little in different hotels around town, maybe a dozen times this year. It sure beat hustling on the streets. After some of the strange dudes she met that way, safety was her number one priority.
“The password is case sensitive. It’s lame,” she said.
“Oh, got it.” A few seconds later Lisa’s text came through: u get this?
Jamie texted back with her signal for the day, an animated emoji hurling green goo. During each session, she would text Lisa her emoji du jour as soon as she met the guy and then every fifteen minutes to indicate all was good. Lisa would do the same, and sure enough she just texted an emoji of a talking pile of poo that was lit on fire. If something went wrong, they both agreed to use a scary-looking zombie emoji.
She began putting out the items she’d brought—a small portable music player, two vanilla candles, and a bottle of massage oil—when a loud knock came at the door. He can’t be here already, can he? She texted her room number to her first appointment just a few minutes ago.
She opened the door and looked him over, a barrel-chested, swarthy, thirtyish guy with a pinched nose, broad forehead, and tangle of brown hair. He looked a little rough around the edges but pretty much in line with how he described himself on their brief call.
“Come on in.”
He entered without saying anything and put his jacket on the wall hook.
“You have the fee?”
He nodded.
“It goes on the table.” She watched him place four bills on the dresser. “You know how this works? ”
He looked at her with his intense brown eyes bu
t said nothing.
“Forty-five minutes max. No kissing on the mouth. Rubdowns are fine, I massage you or the other way around. I get you off with my hand. Oral is extra. Sex is double. No anal. There’s a robe in the closet if you want.” She usually didn’t say this, but something about him was a little off, so she added, “I have to text my bodyguard every fifteen minutes. It’s a rule.”
He scanned the room and eyed the bed. “Not a problem. I’ll give you a massage.”
“Sure.” It was a frequent request, and she didn’t mind at all. A quick shower after they were done and she’d be ready for appointment number two at the top of the hour.
She brushed his arm with her forefinger, gave her best innocent girl smile, and took off her top. She lit the vanilla candles and texted Lisa with her vomiting emoji all-okay signal and added a second emoji hurl for good measure. She turned up the music player halfway, figuring the guy didn’t look like much of a talker.
“This music okay?” She swayed her hips and ran her fingers through her long straight chestnut hair in the frail light.
“I don’t care. Lie down.”
Wow, what a charmer .
She smoothed a bath towel on the bed, then took off her jeans, leaving only a tiny pink lace bikini bottom. She was proud of her tanned, petite body and made sure he got a good look at her best asset, her breasts. Then she showed him she was shaved down there—the guys always liked that.
She lay down, ready for her massage. The scents of honey and lavender filled her senses as he began to pour the massage oil onto her back. The lotion was cold, and she jumped a little and laughed. His hands were powerful and a little rough, but she didn’t want to say anything and lose a possible tip.
“Do you like my tat?” she asked. She wiggled her behind, proud of her tasteful pink and blue unicorn tattoo right where her lower back met her right butt cheek.
Again, he didn’t say anything. But he moved his hands lower on her back, pressing into her muscles, teasing her bikini bottom lower, working past her tattoo and massaging her butt cheeks.
Jamie had met many men like this loser in the past two years and even began a list on her phone, tracking every ad she’d placed online along with the kinds of johns the ad attracted and how much she made for the day. She would keep tweaking the ads to maximize her payday and to cut down on the creeps—
That’s when she felt it. A quick stabbing pinprick at the back of her neck. She reached her hand around to feel what was happening. But before she could even do that, he pinned down her hands, pressed his knee into her back, and covered her mouth with his left hand. She writhed and tried to scream or wrestle free, but he had her pinned. She couldn’t move.
If I could just reach my phone!
She lay there, terrified, for another thirty seconds before blacking out.
25
Dallas, August 23
S haron Sullivan liked to tell people she was the second most famous person to hail from the little town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. The most famous native was Taylor Swift.
The second most famous? Everybody else in town.
Much like Ms. Taylor Swift, Sullivan outgrew her small-town roots though not her small-town charm. That down-to-earth authenticity and personal magnetism served her well with major clients during the scorched-earth advertising wars of Madison Avenue.
At thirty-five, Sullivan knew she was still attractive, with her high cheekbones, winsome smile, bright-colored skirts, and smart tailored pantsuits that revealed just enough. She drove a classic Alpine Sunbeam, like the sporty two-seater Grace Kelly drove along the Riviera in “To Catch a Thief,” and she invited comparisons by wearing her hair in a similar coif, though she stopped short of dying her cinnamon hair blonde. She favored silk Hermes scarfs, like today, and always wore high heels or boots to the office, even at five-foot-ten.
She was a woman who believed in sure things: 401(k) plans, Ralph Lauren sweaters, and Botox. She did not believe in flying saucers, crystal power, or sappy love songs. She was in love once, with a man who left her for a younger woman. When Sterling Waterhouse recruited her to come aboard as Chief Marketing Officer and Creative Chief, she was reluctant at first to trade Manhattan for Dallas. But the money, stock shares, and market opportunity proved to be too good to pass up. When Waterhouse persisted and insisted that her take-no-prisoners mindset was just what his company was after, she agreed to come aboard three months ago.
She was having doubts about that decision, but she was in no position to flee back to the Big Apple, tail between her legs. So she persevered.
Today could be a landmark day, she thought—the beginning of a new public persona for Birthrights Unlimited, if this meeting of the minds panned out. She had persuaded the leading candidate to fly out for a face-to-face meeting.
Sullivan stepped out of the elevator into the atrium of Birthrights Unlimited and spotted Valerie Ramirez in the Visitor Empathy Lounge.
“Ms. Ramirez.” Extending her hand. “Thank you so much for flying all the way out here.”
“Oh, it’s just a short hop from Miami.”
“We’re excited you’re here.”
“I’m excited, too.”
“Before we get down to business, shall we take a little tour? Would you like some champagne? That’s one of the benefits of using a surrogate, after all.”
“No thanks, I’m good with my water.” Ramirez held up her water bottle .
They stepped into the elevator and took it to the open-air top floor of Birthrights Tower.
“Drumroll! Welcome to the Rooftop Garden.”
Sullivan strode across the terraced rooftop past the elevated cedar hot tubs and lap pool where she loved to go swimming at night after a hard day of work. She escorted Ramirez into The Retreat, the high-class respite reserved for the company’s high rollers and preferred clients. The private area sported twenty sun chairs circling the pool, all with electronic deck umbrellas that sprouted out of the ground at the push of a button. At the far end of the pool was a self-serve robotic bar. A treetop sculpture garden surrounded The Retreat on three sides, complementing the pretty Dallas skyline in the distance.
Sullivan approached the low-slung plexiglass barrier—complete with robotic window washer to keep the glass spotless—at the tower’s edge, which prevented guests who’d imbibed too much from plummeting to a grisly death. Sullivan never touched a drop. Her own guilty pleasure was chewing gum, and she scolded herself even as she popped a Wrigley’s Spearmint into her mouth.
“From here you can see the entire campus.” Sullivan swooped her hand across the compound. “There’s the cafeteria. There’s the beach volleyball and tennis courts. That set of buildings is the Data Zone—we love our data geeks! And right across the way is the Fertility Clinic and Birthing Center. We’ll head there next. And if you want to wander around after we’re done, you can hop on one of the electric scooters for a self-guided tour.”
“What are those buildings?” Valerie Ramirez pointed to the buildings clustered around the main Genomics Lab.
Sullivan tried to suppress a micro-frown. The Research Lab Zone was off-limits to everyone but Waterhouse, Henry Lee, and the lab coats. Here she was, a senior vice president and the company’s Storyteller in Chief, and a major part of the Birthrights Unlimited story was off limits to her .
This cannot stand . She would bring it up again tomorrow with Sterling Waterhouse.
“Oh, that’s the complex where they’re doing cutting-edge gene research. Off-limits to visitors, I’m afraid.”
Ramirez nodded, took out her smartphone, and began recording a video of the panoramic view from atop the tower. “It’s for my son.”
“Oh, are things that far along?” Sullivan asked.
“No. I mean, maybe. I guess I’ll find out later today. Is it okay to take videos?”
“Sure, it’s fine. We’re open about everything we do.”
That was not yet true, not by a long shot, but part of the CMO’s job responsibilities
—a condition of her accepting the post—was to “evolve the corporate culture” to become more transparent, less ultra-secretive, more responsive to media requests, and more welcoming to outsiders. After all, every visitor had friends or relatives who could become potential clients.
Ramirez recorded more footage of the surrounding campus, then asked Sullivan to sit down on a sun lounge in the middle of The Retreat.
“I’d love to hear your thoughts about Birthrights Unlimited from a woman’s point of view.” Ramirez angled her smartphone to capture Sullivan, cinnamon hair aflame in the late afternoon sun.
Sullivan sheepishly removed her wad of chewing gum and stashed it in a folded napkin.
“In a nutshell,” she began, “we’re empowering women to take charge of their genetic destiny and decide—on their own or with their loved one—what kind of baby girl or boy they want to bring into the world.”
She locked eyes with her interviewer. “People from every background and walk of life come to us for different reasons, and I’ll be honest, it gets real personal real fast. Gay couples who want their own biological child. Straight couples who can’t conceive or adopt. Women with a long family history of breast cancer who say, enough is enough!”
She gave a little reassuring nod and bit her bottom lip for effect. “Everyone’s story is different, and every life we help bring into the world is precious. And Valerie’s baby, we hope you and your mommy have a long and happy life together.”
She leaned back and Ramirez smiled and put her smartphone away. “Thank you.”
They stood up. Sullivan asked, “Shall we go to the Fertility Clinic?”