A Kind of Justice (3 page)

But when I began my tortured transition, I discovered a different dimension to Cecelia, a deeply compassionate side that she keeps mostly hidden. She shared that part of herself with me during my transition, when I was hit by a tidal wave of societal waste that stripped away my self-esteem and left me alone in the world. She gave me hope and courage and a role model for the parts of transitioning I was worst at. She got things from me, too. I gave her a different friendship than she had with others. I needed her but didn't take her crap and she liked having an equal. And we both found in the other someone who had similar intellect and came from the white-collar business world. She has counseled me through this whole acquisition scenario, especially holding my hand as I fussed about all the debt and responsibility.

“Here's the funny thing,” she says, nudging me playfully with one elbow. “When it's all done and you're walking around with a debt bigger than the sky, after you learn to live with the fear of failure, you start to feel powerful. Special. How many people are successful enough to carry that kind of debt?”

I can't picture the power trip she describes. All I can see is the sheer horror of coming up short, losing everything, seeing my colleagues have to scramble for new jobs. Destroying Roger's retirement.

The conversation ends as we pick up the pace to an aerobic level and focus on the burn. Twenty minutes later, we shift to a cool-down pace. As my pulse and breathing return to normal, I look Cecelia in the eye and blurt out a question that's been on my mind for five years.

“Cecelia, where were you the night Strand was murdered?”

She stops cold and stares at me. Her eyes are blue, her brows rounded in surprise. Shock maybe. This is something we don't talk about.

“I was with you until eleven or so.”

As if I could forget. The worst, longest night of my life started with a beat-down Bobbi group therapy session with three of my best friends and my transition psychologist. Afterward, my friends insisted I have a drink with them. I have never so desperately wanted to be alone as I did then. I had a rendezvous with Strand planned for that night and I was so wracked with tension about it I could barely make conversation.

“Where did you go after that?” I shouldn't ask, but I can't stop wondering. My nightmare is, she admits to being the one who slashed John Strand's throat and later the police try to coerce that information from me by offering me a deal I can't refuse. Give up my best friend, or give up the rest of my life. You'd like to think you'd never do that, but who knows until you face the reality of it?

“Where did
you
go after that, Bobbi?” Cecelia's voice is sharp. We stare at each other in silence for several long beats. She isn't asking a question. She's making a statement.

“I heard that detective is back on the case,” she says. “If he asks me, I'll tell him I went home after I left you. But, Bobbi, none of us wants to know where the others were that night. We all went home after we left the bar. What if someone told you they killed Strand? What would you do with that information? If you talk about it with anyone, you could ruin that person's reputation. If you tell the police, you could get that person arrested. If you just eat it, what's the point? Nothing good can come of it.”

My thoughts exactly. Sometimes I just forget myself and blurt things out. Like when I asked Strand if he murdered my friend Mandy. A stupid thing to do. It told him point-blank what I was up to. Of course, it also produced my first glimpse of the malice that boiled just below his amiable facade. Up to that moment he had been seductively charming, but as the question rolled from my lips, a shadow passed over his face, and I could see the demons of hell in his eyes. Just for a
moment. I wish now I had given more credence to my instincts that night and just walked away from the whole thing—Strand, the murder investigation, everything. Strand would still be alive and terrorizing people, but I would have avoided a horrific conflict, and I'd still be able to sleep like the innocent today.

“Do you understand what I'm saying, Bobbi?” Cecelia knows I zone out sometimes. She wants to make sure I'm in the here and now for this message.

“Yes, Cecelia.” I nod my head in the affirmative. But my question dangles unanswered in my consciousness like an itch you can't scratch. Might I someday be locked away in a place worse than death for something she did? Would I be able to live with that?

*    *    *

F
RIDAY
, J
UNE
20

Don Richards stands and smiles as Betsy shows me into his home office. He is a decent guy. He's good to Betsy, almost everything I would want in a man for the woman I have loved both as a husband and a sister. He's not quite tender, but he's considerate. And kind. And reliable. He will always be there for her, and for my niece, little Robbie.

He had already won my respect when he and Betsy married, but he cemented it when Betsy miscarried the first child they conceived. Betsy was devastated, not only from the loss but also from feelings of guilt that she must have done something wrong. Don felt the loss, too, I could see it in him, but he put his pain in the background and invested himself in nursing Betsy's shattered soul back to health. To me, that's courage, love, and decency—most of the good things I can say about anyone.

The other thing about Don is that he has allowed Betsy and me to
continue our relationship. We who were once man and wife became sister and sister. Betsy was the prime mover in our reunification. We had drifted apart after the divorce, mainly because I was ashamed of who I was. I felt that I'd betrayed her, not being the man she thought she had married. She reconnected with me when I started my transition and insisted we do things together. We shopped, had coffee, I did her hair, she and Don had me over for dinner.

Don went along with all that, even when most men wouldn't, even when it probably gave him the creeps, seeing his wife's ex-husband as a transsexual woman. Because of all that, I can forgive him for being a Republican. And for having to pretend that he likes me instead of actually liking me.

Don is a pleasant-looking man. Neat, well kept, a hint of middle-age spread. More scholarly than athletic. Serious. I can't imagine him telling a joke. The computer screen behind him is filled with spreadsheet data, glowing like a beacon in a dark room where the only other light is a curved-arm desk lamp with its beam focused on a neat stack of papers and a neat stack of files on the desk.

The desk is cleaner than an operating room. More organized than a Japanese factory.

We shake hands. He manages not to recoil at my dainty fingertip offering. He's not comfortable with me being a woman. He tries to hide it, but I recognize it in him just as clearly as I feel ill at ease in such an unnaturally tidy room.

We sit down, the desk between us, and he straightens the papers in front of him. He has been doing due diligence for me on the salon's books. He passes me the written report and starts on the verbal. “Roger's books are in order, his annual audits are thorough, and the business looks to be in good shape,” says Don. “Cash flow is excellent, receivables are small, bills get paid on time. The net profit isn't going to make anyone sell their Google stock, but it's solid and consistent,
and from what I've been able to glean, has a good margin for a retail beauty salon.”

He continues on for another ten minutes with only a few pauses. The bottom line: the business is in great shape and probably worth more than I'm paying for it. Don doesn't see any obvious places to expand sales, though he hastily adds that he doesn't know the salon business at all.

I'm not feeling all that knowledgeable myself.

“You like to have an idea when you buy a business like this about how you can grow it or cut costs to pay for it,” says Don. He painstakingly takes me through the byzantine logic of how company selling prices are based on multiples of gross profit, and how bigger companies command higher multiples than small ones.

For me, the multiple I pay will be an estimate for how many years it will take to pay off the business. I can reduce that number by increasing profits, either through organic growth or higher margins on existing business, or both.

I comprehend the concept but find the weight of it oppressive. The closer we get to the closing, the more I just want to do hair. In fact, as Don goes on, my mind is filled with the image of a beautiful up-do, my hands can remember how the hair looked and felt when I worked it. Its color is deeply dimensional, a mesh of tones and shades that invite the eye inside its density, like a cavern of beautiful colors that streak and blend and lead you ever deeper into the mystery below.

Don asks if I have questions.

“Is this a good investment for me?” I ask.

He grimaces. “That's better answered by Cecelia. What I can tell you is, it's a well-run business and its paper value seems to be higher than what he's asking. If there are hidden debts or problems we don't know about, that could change everything. But from what you've said about Roger, those things aren't likely.”

We adjourn to the kitchen. Robbie rushes to greet us. She is a merry cherub, three years old and taking full pleasure in a world that sees her as sweet and cute and denies her nothing. I help Betsy carry dishes to the dining table, trying to quell my inner panic. My acquisition of Salon L'Elégance is down to one last step: a sober session with the lawyers, at the end of which I will take on a debt that is worth many times more than my life.

*    *    *

F
RIDAY
, J
UNE
27

Being a transsexual woman is like living in a four-season climate: your environment is constantly changing. The difference is, for the transwoman—for oversized ones like me, anyway—the changes come fast and furious and not in any natural order.

I'm bathing in a springtime moment as we leave the law offices of Roger's attorney. I have just closed on the purchase of Salon L'Elégance. It's Roger, Cecelia, me, and my attorney, but it might as well just be me. I am the nominal owner of one of Chicago's most prestigious salons. I'm swimming in a bottomless sea of debt and I have just taken on an inhuman degree of responsibility, but as Cecelia predicted, part of me is giddy with the realization of how far I've come in the world.

When we step out onto the street, my springtime moment gives way to a winter storm.

As we take the LaSalle Street Bridge over the Chicago River, I see Wilkins on the other side of the street. He's leaning against the bridge structure, staring at us. I can see the sneer on his face from here and I feel the menace of his thick body.

I point him out to my attorney and convey to him in a private voice
a brief history of my run-ins with Wilkins, including the restraining order the city put on him five years ago.

“Can I bring charges against him for this?” I ask quietly. “I'd like to get him off my back.”

“I doubt it.” The lawyer says it regretfully. “I doubt the order is still good, but even if it is, he has a right to be in a public place. Truthfully, I doubt they'd arrest him unless he physically assaulted you. There are just too many hard-core criminals and too little jail space.”

“So I just have to suck on it?” I ask. Probably not a good analogy for a transwoman to use. Especially not one as perpetually unfulfilled sexually as me.

The attorney nods.

But I'm not in a mood to be bullied by a rogue cop or take a contract attorney's word for what my rights are. My mind drifts back to the last time I was being followed by someone who was a threat to me. That ended in a flash of violence that left a nasty thug permanently retired from the intimidation business. Wilkins isn't a thug, but he's a hateful bigot and a threat to my freedom. We'll see what the DA's LGBT advocate has to say about his lurking return to my life.

M
ONDAY
, J
ULY
7

I
BREEZE INTO
the cozy café in Logan Square like I own the place. It's a queer-friendly neighborhood, but I still draw a few glances. Fewer if I pay no attention.

That's easy to do tonight. It has been a brutally long day that followed a short, stress-filled night of little sleep. I'm tired. I'm ravenously hungry. I want a glass of wine so bad I could burst. But more than any of these things, my pulse is pounding in anticipation of meeting the man who invited me to dinner tonight.

Officer Phil's call came in the middle of the usual salon mayhem, like a perfect rainbow arching from my most delicious fantasy into the reality of today.

Phil used to be a beat cop in Boystown and an envoy to the Chicago queer community. He picked me out as a contact in the transgender world. His goal was to reach every segment of the gay, lesbian, and trans communities with the message that the Chicago Police Department cared about them and could be trusted. He did his job very well, though I never bought the proposition that the huge Chicago PD had much institutional interest in the welfare of transgenders. Phil did, though. On top of which, he was a very sexy man. He was the talk of the gay male community and just as alluring to transwomen, at least the ones who were attracted to men.

Since he got promoted to a cushy job downtown in community relations a while ago, I haven't seen him much except for his monthly haircut. Then today, like a bolt out of the blue, he calls me at the salon. Can I make dinner tonight? Catch up on things?

Do bears love honey?

Officer Phil is seated at a small table, a quiet spot perfectly chosen. A bottle of wine graces the tabletop, two glasses of red at the ready. Even at a distance he still makes my heart beat a little faster.

He stands as I approach and steps forward to kiss my cheek and exchange hugs. He is tall, an inch taller than I am in two-inch heels. He's dressed casually, khaki slacks, polo shirt, loafers. His hair is fashionably short, perfectly groomed. A speck or two of pepper gray is visible, and there are a few faint lines on his handsome face. He's in his forties now, and the signs of age make him even more attractive.