A Kind of Justice (15 page)

As she glides away after the service, my worldly problems come back to me. Men on the sidewalk crane to watch her as she passes. I'm envious. She will get laid tonight, if she wants to, while I am getting screwed, whether I want to or not. You have to admire the irony.

*    *    *

T
HURSDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
18

In the twenty-four hours since my conversation with Cecelia I have reached a new pinnacle of success: I have an attorney on retainer. This, along with the mortgage on my brownstone and the colossal debt on my business are supposed to be signals to the world that this ugly, outsized transsexual woman has arrived.

It feels a lot more like I'm being buried.

The only good thing is, business isn't getting worse. It's not getting better either, but we're hanging in there. Our demos and shilling at El stations and office buildings seem to be helping. We're getting some new people each week and they seem to leave happy.

The dark cloud over everything is the stalking reality of Detective Wilkins and my financial vulnerability to even a hint of scandal. Not to mention the sheer terror of contemplating a life in jail. This aching worry has had all the repercussions on my personal life you would expect. I sleep poorly, I struggle to concentrate on anything other than
hair, I seldom smile or laugh. It's had some unforeseen repercussions, too. In my idle moments today I thought about hocking next month's rent for another tryst with Jose, just to get laid while I still can.

Before I could work up the will to call him, Betsy called and asked if she and Robbie could stay with me tonight. I scuttled all thoughts of a fling and made a list of things to pick up on my way home. It occurs to me now as I carry my grocery bags into the kitchen that someday Betsy is going to stop by unannounced and find me with a man. Or a woman. It will be awkward, but we'll get over it.

Betsy arrives red-faced and straining. Robbie is tired and crabby. Betsy has their overnight things in a backpack. Between the pack and the child, she is carrying thirty or forty extra pounds after a hard week of work and parenting. The exhaustion shows on her face.

I pluck Robbie from her arms at the door and sweep the child into my kitchen, inviting her to help me cook and serve dinner. This delights Robbie. I give her a glass of wine to take to her mother as her first chore, asking if she can do that without spilling. She is sure she can. She's almost right. Aunt Bobbi chokes back the reflexive curse and we have fun wiping up the red drops together. I tell Betsy to relax and unwind while we get dinner. She collapses on the couch, gets up a moment later to feed music into the CD player, then collapses again.

Dinner is quieter than usual, just Robbie and I carrying on. Betsy is eerily silent. Something is wrong. After dinner, Robbie and I pack the dishwasher, then engage Betsy in a game of hide-and-seek. Though I have shed many of my inhibitions about being a large transwoman, this game reawakens my self-consciousness. As I crouch behind a chair, I feel like a hippopotamus trying to hide behind a flower. Of course, we're not trying to hide, really, so it's okay.

When Robbie has had her bath and three bedtime stories, Betsy staggers into the living room, flops on the couch, and curls into a ball. She looks at me, her soft brown eyes forlorn with sadness.

“What is it?” I ask.

She cries for several minutes. I hold her silently. Some things have to come in their own good time.

At length she sits up and faces me. “My boss has been making passes at me all week. Not just flirty stuff. He touches.” She swallows, takes a breath. “He talks dirty. I try to ignore it, but he just keeps coming on.”

I will myself to silence. My suspicions about her boss are coming true. He's a nasty little brute who gets off on dominating people. Somewhere deep inside my body my Y chromosomes are demanding that this cretin's knees be broken with a baseball bat. My gentler nature tries to ignore the chorus.

“Tonight he felt me up and tried to run his hand up my skirt. I slapped his hand and he laughed. He told me he wanted to . . .” Her voice stops for a moment. She can't say the word but she doesn't have to. I nod that I understand what she's trying to say and she continues. “I told him to stop and he just laughed more. He said I know I'd love it.”

Her face grows taut as she relives the horror. Then her horror turns to anger. “I can't believe it! In this day and age? He thinks he can get away with that?”

She goes on for a while, expressing her outrage and her disgust for men. She feels dirty. She feels violated. And she feels impotent. There were no witnesses. It's just the new employee's word against that of a rising young star in the company.

I have some personal experience with these feelings. The people who raped me did it to put me in my place and to express their contempt for me. I felt what Betsy is feeling. Humiliated. Dehumanized. My anger rises to a simmering boil. If her boss were in the room right now, I would do my best to dismember him.

I try to collect my emotions so I can be there for Betsy. I put my anger in a compartment in my mind and close the door. I focus on
Betsy. I listen to every word. I murmur my understanding of how she feels. I confirm that she has every right to feel that way.

I ask if she's thought about taking this to the human resources people. “That would just get me fired,” she snaps. She wants distance again. I shut up and listen, the good wife.

*    *    *

F
RIDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
19

“She's a real b-i-t-c-h if you ask me,” says Wilkins' dining companion between mouthfuls of eggs and pancakes. As if spelling the word made her seem more feminine. As if anything could.

“She's very hoity-toity. Like she's better than everyone else.” The falsetto voice comes from an obese, middle-aged transwoman about five-nine and well over 250 pounds. Her lipstick is smeared. She wears a bad wig and too much makeup. Her dining style is primitive truck driver.

Wilkins keeps his revulsion hidden. He has become good at that from doing all the interviews. Some of the transwomen have been likeable, and some were okay, and some were like this slob who he wouldn't have liked even if she were presenting as a straight man. No matter. This one has issues with Bobbi Logan. If she knows anything useful, she'll share it. All for the price of a breakfast at Gay-HOP on Friday morning.

“Who are her friends?” Wilkins asks. He pops two more breath mints, just to make sure. Experience has taught him that his breath can be off-putting for some in the close confines of the Gay-HOP booths.

The woman chews and thinks. She rattles off the names of Cecelia and a couple of people at TransRising. “And anyone who pays her to do their hair,” she adds with a malicious smile.

“Who does she date?”

More chewing and thinking. “I don't know,” she says, finally. “I know she's hot for that cop who used to have this beat.”

“Phil Pavlik?”

“Yeah. Officer Phil. Of course a lot of the girls were hot for him.”

“Do you think they . . .” Wilkins wiggles his fingers, implying a tryst.

The woman snorts. “I sincerely doubt it. That man could have any woman he wants. I can't imagine him finding that cow attractive.”

Wilkins produces a photo from his folder. “Did you ever see her with this man?”

As she looks at the photo, her eyes widen. “John Strand!” She looks up at Wilkins. “You think she—?”

Wilkins cuts her off. “I can't talk about an investigation in progress, ma'am.” Next to free food, calling transwomen by feminine nouns or pronouns was the fastest way to rapport, he had found.

“Right now, all we're trying to do is see if they knew each other, and who else Strand knew in the trans community.”

She chews and thinks. “They were both at a party at Cecelia's place once. I remember. It was after Mandy was murdered and Cecelia thought Strand did it. She was pissed that the police weren't checking him out so she invited Strand and Officer Phil to her afternoon tea.

“Phil didn't take the bait, but there were some interesting side plots. One was Bobbi Logan flashing her big tits in Officer Phil's face, not that he was interested. And I remember seeing Strand follow her out the door when she left. I thought it was strange because they barely talked at the party.”

“What happened then?”

“He came back a few minutes later, so I don't really know.”

“Anything else?”

“Not that I saw. I heard he went to her for a haircut once, and one
of the girls saw her get in a car with someone who might have been Strand after a meeting.”

“Was the haircut at her salon?”

She nods yes.

“Do you remember who saw her getting in a car?”

She chews and thinks. “No. But I'll keep thinking about it. If I come up with it, I'll give you a call.”

Wilkins nods and smiles. Over coffee he asks if she ever saw Strand and Mandy together. She hadn't, but she says the rumor in the community was that Strand was the sugar daddy who paid for Mandy's gender surgery and her nice apartment.

Outside, he thanks her and asks if there is anyone else he should talk to about who knew Strand back then. She gives him some names, no guarantees.

T
UESDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
23

B
ETSY IS VENTING
on the other end of the line.

This is becoming a nightly ritual. She holds it together all day, getting up at five thirty and getting herself and Robbie ready, dealing with an increasingly tense office situation at work, dashing home by way of the day-care center, putting together a meal, chatting up her exhausted daughter, reading bedtime stories, and the final goodnight kiss. She holds it inside for another five minutes to make sure Robbie falls asleep, then she calls me and as soon as I say hello, she starts to unload.

“I'm getting so much attitude from the other women.” Her voice is tense. “They think I'm sleeping with that weasel.”

She is referring to her boss and using an animal reference I haven't heard in a decade or two. I think of him as a bastard, or when I'm really angry, a shithead. Betsy always did have more class than me. Still, I keep thinking this might be a situation for unleashed testosterone. I keep thinking that society would be very well served by this guy getting his genitals pounded by an angry boyfriend or husband of one of his victims.

Or sister.

“Would you like me to have someone deliver a message to this bastard?” I ask. It slips out before I can squelch the thought.

“What are you suggesting?” Her voice is angry.

“He would be easier to work with if someone put the fear of God in him,” I say. I'm upset, too, but not at her.

“Bobbi, keep out of this. This isn't your problem. It's mine and I'll handle it. I can't believe you'd say such a thing.” Hostile, almost belittling. I know it's the frustration from her workplace getting directed at me. Because I'm safe. I won't fight back. We fall silent.

I ask her how her projects are coming and the mood lightens up a little bit. She loves the science of marketing, and she's one of the rare people who can apply the science creatively to the practice. I find it hard to believe her genius isn't appreciated by at least some of those around her, but then corporate environments can be snake pits and her department is defined by the depravity of her boss.

She is silent again. She is thinking about something and whether or not she wants to say it out loud.

“Bobbi,” she says, “I'm losing the house.”

“Already?” I thought those things took time.

“I work like a dog for fifteen hours a day to take care of us and keep my shitty job and the fact is, I don't make enough to pay the mortgage on this house, let alone the other expenses.”

“Can't you draw it out for a while?”

“I don't want to live like that. I have to do something positive, get started again.”

Betsy finally gives in to tears. “What am I going to do, Bobbi? I'm behind on the car payments, too. I have the worst job in the world and pretty soon I won't be able to get to it. I'm going to have to move in with my parents. Shit!”

“Move in with me, Betsy.” All my vows to keep silent explode in a surge of anxiety at the thought of her wicked parents getting their venomous claws into Betsy and Robbie.

“Your parents would drive you crazy, Robbie, too. And they live in
the middle of nowhere. Move in with me and you don't need a car. You can quit that shitty job and take your time looking for a better one. I can help with Robbie.”

“I can't do that,” she says. Her voice is firm. Resolute. To argue the point would be like trying to push a boulder up hill.

“Why?” I ask anyway. For transsexuals, pushing boulders uphill is part of an average day.

“Because I'm a mom. I'm supposed to take care of these things.”

“You're moving in with your parents, for goodness' sake. How is that better than moving in with me?”

“They're family.” Her voice is riddled with exasperation.

I swallow and try to recover. This hurts. I am far more loving and nurturing than those old turds ever were.

“I'm sorry, Bobbi. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.” She's sorry, but she's not taking it back, either.

“I don't believe that's the real reason,” I say, finally.

“What do you think the reason is?” A challenge, like I couldn't possibly know.

“I don't know, Betsy. But we need to talk through it before you do something destructive.”

“Moving in with my parents is destructive?” She's snippy, but I don't think it's because I've insulted her parents.

“You know it is. You trade your career for being a full-time fifties sitcom daughter and Robbie starts grooming for the life of a Stepford Wife.” I let her hear a little edge in my voice, too.