A Kind of Justice

by Renee James

  We went back and forth on the rooming arrangements. I insisted she take the master bedroom because it wasn’t practical for her or Robbie to sleep in the room I use for a hair studio, and because she would suffocate in that cramped room after all the nights she’s spent in her Northbrook castle. I won the argument, but we are sharing the closet in the master bedroom. It was strange at first, hearing other noises, other voices in the flat, having to wait for the bathroom sometimes, planning a daily menu in advance. But I like it. I like all of it. I love feeling like I’m a part of something. When I lived here alone I seldom closed doors, but when I did, the sound of the closing door echoed through the apartment like a lonely song. The sounds of closing doors now are the sounds of life and love. I feel like an actual person with an actual family.

  I have to remind myself constantly that this is just temporary, that Betsy and Robbie will be moving on in a few months. That I shouldn’t get too attached.

  * * *

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22

  Wilkins sits in the corner of the lounge, reading a newspaper like several others, looking up now and then to take in the scenery.

  He has shadowed Logan to her gym several times, catching glimpses of her workouts, peeking through the window to watch her self-defense class. Her workouts are impressive. A reminder that he should be doing something. She lifts weights, does stretching and balance, runs. Some of her exercises make his body ache just watching. The running makes him breathe hard. He’s not sure he can run a block anymore, so many days and nights of sitting, bad food, coffee. He has a physical coming up. It won’t be pretty. They’ve been on him to get a regular doctor and dentist for years.

  He shivers. He’s been shot at, beaten, bitten by rats and dogs, he’s walked into whitey bars, the only black guy in the place, he’s corralled psychopaths, you name it, he’s stood up to it, but doctors and dentists scare the shit out of him. Especially dentists. The sound of that drill goes right up and down his spine. Absolute torture. His dad used to whack him for whining and crying, but the sound of that drill made him whimper like a bitch and sweat like a pig. He ran out one day and never came back. Never made another appointment.

  Logan comes out of the self-defense class and crosses the lounge, heading for the room with weights and aerobic machines. She’s done this before. She goes in the workout room for a few minutes and comes back out, goes to the locker room, showers, and leaves. She isn’t going in there to work out. It’s something else. He gets up and stands at the threshold of the room to watch her. She’s waiting at the edge of the free-weight area. A burly power lifter finishes a set of dead lifts, then walks over to her, big smile on his face. Hers, too.

  Wilkins finds a row of plastic chairs and sits down. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but they have a lot of affection for each other. They touch several times, smile constantly. Logan gestures a lot as she talks, uninhibited. They hug. Wilkins makes for the lounge again so Logan won’t pass directly in front of him on her way out. She breezes through on her way to the locker room, and he goes back in the workout room. He watches her burly friend lift. The man is superhumanly strong. Others in the area are deferential to him.

  An attendant at the service counter checks people in and out. Wilkins approaches him, explains he’s looking for a new personal trainer, asks if the burly guy over there is a personal trainer.

  “Thomas?” says the kid. “Naw. Believe it or not, Thomas is a nurse. He just works out here.”

  “No kidding,” says Wilkins. “Where does he work?” Like he’s so amazed that a strong man would be a nurse.

  “Memorial Hospital,” says the kid. “They love him in the psych ward.”

  “I’ll bet.” Wilkins is thinking that Thomas could have easily busted up the hapless thug in the alley or handled Strand.

  “I noticed he was talking to that tall girl when I came in. I was thinking of introducing myself to her, but if they’re an item . . .” Wilkins lets his voice trail off in a question mark.

  The kid laughs. “Naw. They’re friends. Thomas has a partner.”

  It takes a moment, but Wilkins gets it. The scary looking ogre guy is gay. Jesus Christ, he thinks. Is anything in this world straight?

  Wilkins says he wants to look around some more and leaves the workout area, then the building. He heads for the precinct, gets on a computer, looks up Memorial Hospital. It takes a while, but he finds Thomas’ picture and bio. EMT credentials. Works emergency, psych, surgery. Experience in pediatrics.

  Strong enough to break a bad man’s bones. Smart enough to know drugs and how to get them.

  He calls a friend in the Department of Motor Vehicles, has him run Thomas’ name through the car registration database. It takes a while, but the man gets back to him. Thomas owned a1998 Nissan Maxima in 2003. Probably used it as a city beater, his friend said. It was black. Cecelia Swenson was driving a new Seville back then, also black.

  Wilkins looks at a photo of the Maxima on line. It looked more like a BMW than a Seville, but it wouldn’t be hard to mistake either of them for a BMW if you were hysterical, scared out of your mind, running for your life on a dim-lit street. It could have been a Maxima or a Seville. It could have been a BMW. Or a lot of other cars.

  15

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

  WHEN I WAS transitioning, Marilee used to tell me that my adolescent urges to dress like a slut and constantly examine my body and fantasize about lovers just reflected the fact that as a female, my emotional development was that of a teenage girl even though I was well into my thirties as a human being.

  This is one of those times where I think I haven’t come very far. I’m doing hair in the SuperGlam stand at the Chicago Beauty Extravaganza. I have poured my muscular, oversized body into a tiny pink dress, stiletto heels, and fishnet stockings. One of the other hairdressers gave me a big sexy up-do, and I’m wearing heavy black eye makeup with false lashes big enough to squash flies. Most street walkers would consider my presentation too outlandish for humanity’s oldest profession. It’s especially gauche for a woman in her forties. I’d never dress like this in my personal life, not even in the edgy atmosphere of the salon. But it’s the SuperGlam uniform of the day, and I’m luxuriating in complying with company policy.

  I’m having a great time. I love doing hair in front of an audience, I love the theater of the show. People stop and gawk. I hear the occasional nasty remark and cruel laugh, but mostly I get silent appreciation and serious questions about my technique. I’m doing formal hair, and I’m worth watching.

  The crowds on the display floor start to evaporate in the late afternoon as people head for a special show in the main theater. It’s a welcome break. My feet and lower back are aching from wearing heels all day, two days in a row. We take a break. The models fade away to the other exhibits or watch the big show. The SuperGlam staffers do the same. I kick off my heels and enjoy the cloudlike sensation of walking on my bare feet.

  I head for the exhibitor lounge where it’s okay for me to sit down. I’m looking forward to getting off my feet, having a long cold glass of water, and maybe reading the paper or chatting with other show people. I am still deep in thought when someone overtakes me from behind and slides an arm through mine. As I look to my side to see who it is, she gives my arm a playful hug.

  “Hi, cutie.” It’s Jen. My first lover as Bobbi. We met at a hair show when I was transitioning and had a torrid affair for a year or so. It was a long-distance relationship, and that was hard. She lived in Indianapolis, me in Chicago. After the novelty wore off, we sort of drifted into a friendship, then a distant friendship.

  “Hi, gorgeous.” I smile. Our familiar old greetings. I loved being called “cute” because I’m so self-conscious about my size and masculine features, and Jen loved to make me feel good about myself. She liked being called “gorgeous,” too, because she knew I meant it, though when she presented in a butch outfit, I called her “handsome” with the same results.

  Jen is in her thirt
ies. She has a sultry face. Bedroom eyes, puffy cheeks, full lips. She has a cute figure, maybe a trifle overweight, but on her it’s sexy. Large soft bosoms, curvy hips, graceful hands with beautiful long nails.

  “You keep getting more beautiful, Jen.” I gush like a groupie, but it’s true.

  “Not me, you. Bobbi, you look stunning.” She smiles and hugs my arm again. I glow the way a cat purrs when you pet it. Jen examines my cleavage without a hint of inhibition. “My, my, Bobbi, the girls look very healthy.” She adds a flirtatious smile.

  I blush. Not so much because of what she said as what it makes me think of. She still turns me on. I’ll feel guilty about that later, but right now I’m busy being aroused.

  “I was wondering if you’d be here,” I say. “I kept looking at the crowd but I didn’t see you. I thought you might be home having babies by now.”

  “No. That didn’t work out.” Jen keeps smiling her seductress smile. This isn’t a chance meeting. “I like men, but I don’t want to make a habit of one.” She laughs gaily. “How about you?”

  “I don’t have enough callers to limit myself to one gender.”

  The attendant in the lounge lets Jen come in as my guest. We sit in a private corner. I confess that my most memorable experience with a man involved a prostitute. Jen claps her hands in approval, her face lit up with humor. She believes in a life well lived and disdains societal norms that would drench sexual urges with buckets of shame.

  “Unfortunately, right after that I bought my salon and became a capitalist pig and now I can’t afford to pee in a pay toilet much less hire a stud to service me.”

  Jen laughs hysterically. She always loved my humor, just like I always loved her free spirit. We were good for each other.

  I switch the conversation to her. She’s not seeing anyone right now. The thing with the guy was fun for a while. The sex was good, but the rest of it got increasingly tense as time went on. “He was uptight about everything,” she says. “But especially about me finding women just as sexy as he did. It made him sick to think about me making it with another woman. I couldn’t ever talk about my girlfriends, even regular girlfriends that were just friends. He’d get jealous. He told me I was perverted. He wanted me to get cured.”

  There’s an off note in her voice when she says this. She’s trying to say it dismissively, but it hurts. It would hurt anyone.

  “Like I’m supposed to wish I’d never made love with a woman when I could spend all my time with some jerk who farts and belches and smells like dirty underwear? I especially liked it when he breathed in my face after drinking beer and smoking cigars. The longer I stayed with him, the more I thought about how nice it was to make love with a woman.”

  Indeed. Even when I thought I was a straight man, I knew where she’s coming from. I never really understood why most women are attracted to men. I still don’t get it, even though I’m a woman and even though I find myself attracted to some men.

  The time flies. We bounce to lighter topics, laughing and smiling, touching each other sometimes. When I have to get back to the SuperGlam stand, Jen pops the question.

  “I brought a tuxedo. I was hoping you’d be my date for dinner tomorrow night.” For our first date, Jen dressed butch in a really hot tuxedo, and I went all girly in an evening dress and up-do. It was one of the sexiest nights of my life.

  “Oh, Jen, I’d love to,” I sigh. I reach out and touch her. It’s electric for me, always, touching her. “My situation is a little, uh, complicated right now.”

  “You’re with someone?” she asks.

  “Not that way. My ex-wife and her daughter are living with me. They just moved in.” I explain about Betsy’s recent losses. “I’m trying to be there for her, you know?”

  “Are you two . . .” Jen makes a hand gesture. She’s asking if we’re lovers.

  “No.”

  “Why would she be upset about us going out?”

  I’m asking myself the same question. I don’t know the answer, but I’m pretty sure Betsy would feel vulnerable and abandoned. “Tell you what, Jen, let me see what Betsy’s schedule is like and get back to you.”

  “Okay,” she says. She scribbles her hotel information on a scrap of paper and hands it to me. As I glance at it, a lascivious smile plays at her lips, and she runs her fingertips up my arm. I get goosebumps.

  “A girl’s gotta live a little, you know?” She’s trying to seduce me and I’m eager to give in. The story of my life.

  * * *

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

  The dentist sits back and tells Wilkins he can relax. He’s wearing a mask. His eyes and forehead are wrinkled in an expression somewhere between concern and revulsion.

  “Mr. Wilkins, your condition is way past my scope. You need to see an oral surgeon and you need to do it soon.” He’s a young man, white, imperious.

  “What?” An electric chill passes through Wilkins’ body. “It’s just a few rotten teeth, some bad breath issues.”

  “Who told you that?” The dentist moves his stool back another foot or two and takes off his mask.

  “The department doc.” Anger creeps into Wilkins’ voice, driven by fear.

  “The one who made you see a dentist? For the first time in, let’s see . . .” the dentist consults his notes . . . “maybe twenty-five years? That doctor?”

  “Yes.” Wilkins can feel the dentist’s condemnation. “I just have this fear of dentists. Since I was a kid.”

  “I can see how anxious you are.”

  “I take care of myself. I don’t smoke. I hardly ever drink.”

  The dentist writes a note in the file, not looking at Wilkins. “You don’t take care of your teeth, sir. By avoiding regular dental exams all those years, small problems have become big ones. I hope I’m wrong, but I think you have oral cancer.”

  Wilkins blinks. “Jesus Christ! Is it life-threatening?”

  “It can be, Mr. Wilkins. It can be very serious. I’m sending you to a specialist. You need to get past your phobias and get this diagnosed. It’s time to be brave.”

  The dentist’s attitude finally gets to Wilkins. “Don’t sneer at me about phobias, you arrogant little pissant. I’ve been keeping twits like you safe for thirty years and I haven’t missed a single day of work in all that time. I’ve gone hand-to-hand with the worst scum in civilization and never shirked my duty. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll do what I have to do. Just give me the name and get the hell out of my way.”

  The dentist stares at Wilkins in stunned silence. “My apologies,” he says, finally. “No disrespect intended. And I hope I’m wrong about the cancer.”

  * * *

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

  Betsy’s face tenses up when I tell her about Jen. I ask her why this distresses her and she says it doesn’t, that it’s fine, that I should have a life.

  “I do have a life,” I say. “I have a life with you and Robbie. You’re the center of my life. I also have friends. If it’s going to be hard on you for me to go out with Jen, I won’t go.”

  “No. No.” She shakes her head. We’re silent for a long while.

  “You were lovers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be sleeping together?”

  I wish I could lie. I wish I could say we were just friends, because Betsy is clearly troubled by the thought of me having a lover. We haven’t talked about this part of our relationship yet. How do you start that conversation? But here we are, and I’m not going to lie. If Jen and I go out, we will probably end up in bed. “If it would bother you, I’ll make sure we don’t,” I say finally.

  She recoils slightly, crosses her arms, bites her lip. I move to her side and try to put my arms around her. She shakes me away. I feel like the husband again, unable to stem the sorrows of my beloved. I put one hand on her shoulder, slide it to her back, a half-hug.

  “I’ll call and decline,” I whisper. This has been a pattern in our brief time together. Betsy has good days where she is her effervescen
t, self-assured self, and bad days when her mind and spirit sag under the full weight of her tragedy. I try to understand the swings and provide empathy wherever she is in the cycle.

  As I start to get up, Betsy grabs my arm. “No! No, don’t. I have to get over this. I have no hold on you.”

  “But you do, Betsy. I love you first, most, and always. I’m here for you as long as you need me.”

  She puts one hand to her lips and turns away. “I’m crazy, Bobbi. In my mind I keep seeing you fall in love and move to Indiana.”

  “I would never do that,” I say softly.

  “I know, but that’s how I’m feeling. It’s hard to see your ex . . .” She stops for a moment, not quite sure what to call me.

  “Husband,” I finish for her. “I was your husband. I’m a woman now. I passed inspection, remember?” I shouldn’t use humor at a time like this, but I can’t help myself.

  “I feel like I wasn’t woman enough for you. I feel like if I had been, you’d still be a man.” She looks at me with bloodshot eyes. “And even now, I keep seeing you go in a bedroom with another woman because I’m not attractive to you.”

  “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” Even as I say the words I’m thinking they sound empty. I just don’t know how else to say what’s true. “I’ve always been attracted to you and I always will be. But, Betsy, you’re not a lesbian. If we tried to be lovers, we’d lose each other. You need me as a sister, and I need you that way, too.”

  We hold each other for a long time, Betsy brokenhearted and lost, me guilty and inept. At moments like this I’m overwhelmed by how much it sometimes hurts to have people you love in your life.

  * * *

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25

  Wilkins sits on a park bench where he can see the playground. He followed the three of them here as he has several times, Logan, the woman, the child. It’s not part of the investigation. More trying to understand Logan, how she thinks, what motivates her. Catch an insight that leads to an insight that explains why she would murder John Strand. Hang him up by his hands and slit his throat. A ritual murder, gory, premeditated, and then some. Professional. A clean crime scene. Nothing out of place, no telltale clues.