Winter Flower

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  “No way,” I muttered.

  “Excuse me?” he said, sounding offended.

  I scanned down the checklist.

  Filth and garbage under the cookline.

  Ready-to-eat food incorrect temperature.

  Uncooked food incorrect temperature.

  Incorrect hand washing.

  It went on and on.

  “You’re friends with the mayor, huh?” I was on the verge of losing my temper, and I couldn’t do that.

  He sneered. “Who I’m friends with, and who I ain’t, ain’t none of yer business, son. You just get your restaurant up to snuff.”

  He turned and walked away as I stood there, openmouthed. I couldn’t get my mind around what had just happened. I looked at the inspection report again. The score was a forty-three. That was impossible. Nobody got a forty-three on a health inspection, even the dirtiest of restaurants. Which this wasn’t. This was nothing but retribution.

  The more I thought about it, the more I felt the rage threatening to bubble over. They weren’t just threatening me. They were threatening my family, my livelihood. I was shaken far beyond my expectations.

  “Boss, you okay?” Wanda stood there looking deeply concerned.

  “Yeah,” I said. I looked around. The lunch rush was over, and the restaurant had mostly emptied out except for the old guys who sat at the counter. They looked pleased with the turn of events … a little bit of drama to liven up their day, I guess. I needed to clean up from the lunch rush and I had a lot to do. But first I needed to make the phone call.

  Performance on health inspections was a basic requirement of my job. The company had 1,400 restaurants spread across the Southern states, and when a restaurant failed health inspection everyone in the company heard about it. It had only happened once since I’d started, about three weeks into my training. One of the restaurants in Mississippi had gotten a sixty-nine.

  The manager of that restaurant had been yanked from his position and put back as a manager trainee.

  I dreaded making the phone call. “I gotta call Brian,” I told Wanda. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I walked right past my office and out the back door of the restaurant, dialing Brian’s number as I walked. He answered on the second ring and said, “How did it go?”

  “Brian, this was set up.” I hated that my voice shook as I spoke.

  “I know that. Your inspector—Nick Corcoran is his name—he and Mayor Prichard are poker buddies. How bad was it?”

  “We got a forty-three, Brian. It was utter bullshit. He failed us on equipment that was working perfectly. I saw the temperatures. I can’t believe—”

  Brian’s voice went dangerously quiet when he interrupted me. “Did you just say a forty-three?”

  I was out of words and explanations. “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.” He hung up the phone without waiting for a response. I felt shell-shocked. I stumbled back into the restaurant and began cleaning up from the lunch rush, trying not to think about the possibility that I might lose my job by the end of the day.

  Sam

  I was starting to panic.

  I had tried to reach Hayley all morning long, via text message, Instagram, Snapchat. She didn’t respond anywhere. It wasn’t like her, and I was worried that wherever she was, she didn’t have her phone, or something even worse.

  I wanted to do something. I thought I could get in the car and go search for her or stop by her house, but I knew she wasn’t at home anymore. Where was she?

  I sent her one last message on Snapchat. It was a picture of the two of us laughing together that she had taken two weeks ago. For the caption I wrote, “Worried about you.”

  It was about one in the afternoon when Dad called. “Listen, Sam, my bosses are calling a meeting for four o’clock this afternoon. I don’t know when I’ll be home, but it’s likely to be after six. If you want to order a pizza, or go out and get something, there’s a twenty on my bedside stand.”

  I knew about the twenty. Occasionally he had to work late—sometimes very late—and when it happened it was usually without warning. Since Mom left, he had left the money there for me in case he wasn’t home, cautioning me not to use it unless he gave permission.

  He sounded really bummed out. “Is everything okay?”

  There was a long pause, as if he were trying to decide how to answer. Finally he said, “It’s been a really rough day here.”

  Man. Sometimes Dad seemed really remote—his dispirited tone worried me. I thought for a second about driving up there and keeping him company while he did his afternoon stuff, but I rethought that. If his bosses were coming, and he was in trouble yesterday, he wouldn’t thank me for being there.

  I didn’t know how to approach this. If it were Hayley, I’d tell her I wish she felt better, or that things were going better for her, or I would give her a hug. It felt like a tectonic shift, as if the very structure of my relationship with my dad had suddenly morphed. I finally said, “I hope things go better for you, Dad. I’ll save you some pizza, and I’ll straighten up the kitchen so you won’t have to mess with it when you get home.”

  Dad responded in a warm tone. “Thanks, Sam.”

  That meant I had four or five hours to kill. I thought about my box with the too–small dress that Brenna had bought me. I really needed to replace it. For half a second I had the crazy thought of going to Target with the money and buying something new. But I couldn’t do that. There wouldn’t be any pizza at home when Dad got home and that would be impossible to explain.

  The money was in Mom and Dad’s room … and there was a closet full of Mom’s clothes.

  The thought was stunning. Mom wouldn’t be home for days, possibly weeks. I felt emboldened. Somehow the tears I cried with Mrs. Mullins that morning left me feeling both raw but also courageous. I couldn’t believe I had actually told someone … and that they had accepted me.

  I got up, shaking. As I walked toward my parents’ room, I thought about it only being two years before I’d be eighteen. Maybe I could get a job now and use that to pay for the hormones.

  How could I ever pay to actually transition? Dad’s health insurance certainly wouldn’t cover it, and I’d read that the procedures could cost tens of thousands of dollars. For a second, despair threatened to well over, but I pushed it away. I opened the door to Mom and Dad’s room, and slid open her closet.

  I sucked in a deep breath.

  I reverently began to slide the hangers. Here was a pale blue sundress she wore in the summer. A formal evening gown that felt like silk, black with lace at the edges. There was a red sleeveless dress with a short skirt that I didn’t think I had ever seen her wear. Simple skirts and sweaters. I wanted to try all of them on.

  Part of me wanted to start with the gown and the heels, to make myself beautiful. But not today … I wanted to be comfortable. I wanted to feel like I was home on a normal day, in normal clothes, for once being myself. I took down a short-sleeved baby blue button-down shirt and one of her ankle length skirts. I took the clothes out of the closet like they were spun of gold. I knew I was taking a terrible risk—if my dad came home right now, there’s no way he would ever understand.

  At this point, I couldn’t be deterred.

  I found a pair of her sandals, flats, that looked like they would fit. I didn’t know her shoe size, but my feet were small. I took the clothes back to my own room, undressed, unceremoniously dumping my own clothes to the floor. I began to dress.

  The skirt fit okay, despite my lack of hips. The blouse fit, though it was a little tight across the shoulders. But it looked all wrong. I dug into my closet, pulling out the box where I had my own things hidden. I squeezed into the bra that Brenna had bought me, despite the fact that it was painfully tight. I stuffed the bra with socks, wishing with everything I had that I could one day get the hormone treatments that would make it real. With the shirt back on, I looked better.

  I carefully brushed my hair, smoothing it
out as much as I could. Then ever so carefully, I began to apply my makeup. I didn’t care about the risk anymore. I didn’t care how long it was going to take, or whether or not Dad came home. For once, just once, I wanted to feel like me. I wanted to feel like a real person, not some shell that satisfied everyone else’s expectations but my own.

  Foundation and blush, eyeshadow and eyeliner and mascara. Brenna had taught me long ago that less was more when it came to makeup. And I had watched plenty of YouTube tutorials that made the same point.

  Finally finished, I slid my feet into the gold strapped sandals and stood in front of the mirror mounted on my door.

  Immediately I had to struggle to hold back tears, which would have laid waste to my mascara. But my breath caught as I looked.

  What I saw in the mirror wasn’t a gangly, nerdy teenage boy. What I saw was what I had always wanted to see… a pretty, self-possessed girl. A beautiful girl.

  I saw me.

  Again, I had to fight back tears.

  I wanted to see Brenna, and I wanted her to see me.

  Maybe it was time to stop keeping secrets. Maybe I could tell Hayley. Or Dad or Mom. I was so sick and tired of pretending to be someone else.

  I sat down at my desk, knowing that one of the few places I felt really comfortable as myself was online. I started Second Life and waited for my world to load up on my computer screen. My avatar appeared, and I thought maybe I should go shop and pick clothes similar to what I was actually wearing. As the sim finished loading, a note card popped up, labeled, “A note from Gunstock.”

  I instantly double-clicked on it and began to read.

  Dearest Tamara,

  I hope I don’t have to tell you just how much I love the time we spend together. Last night was magical, and I hope you will give me the opportunity to take you out again sometime soon.

  For a second I closed my eyes in happiness. It really had been wonderful. After Dad had gone to bed last night, I had signed on and immediately been greeted by Gunstock. The Twilight were hosting a rare sim-wide formal ball. To anyone watching, it probably would seem silly … seventy or more people spread across the globe manipulating electronic avatars who were dancing and talking with each other in an imaginary world. But it was real enough to me. These were people I spent a lot of time with, people I cared about. Of course none of them except Gemini knew about my real-life situation, but that was fine. They knew me as a woman. They knew me as I really was, not as the exterior shell I had to carry around and show to everyone else.

  Gunstock and I had danced for a long time, as we chatted about everything under the sun. I had finally collapsed into bed at three a.m., glowing like a coal inside.

  Gunstock’s note continued, I would like to propose that we have a date off-sim soon. I know a lovely place where we can dance and voice chat. I would very much like to do that with you. Faithfully yours, Gunstock Valor.

  Voice chat. No. That couldn’t happen. Not now, not ever. Not just because I would sound weird. My voice wasn’t nearly as deep as most of the other boys in my class—thanks to the puberty-blocking hormones I had taken for a long time—but my voice would also attract attention from my father, late at night, something I didn’t need or want. Nothing could ever come of a relationship in real life anyway.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the ping of an incoming chat. It was Gemini.

  Gemini: Does Gunstock know that you are a boy? And that you aren’t even old enough to be playing in the sim?

  I felt my chest spasm. I typed: What are you talking about?

  Gemini: You gave me enough information to go on. I’m sorry about your sister. But you know that you have to be eighteen years old to play in Erie. You’re breaking the rules, and you’re lying to Gunstock.

  The pain in my chest and throat was so bad, and I was so focused on it, that I didn’t even hear the noise at my window. Frantically, I typed: You don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Gemini: Of course I do, Sam Roberts.

  I couldn’t stop the tears that suddenly ran down my face. No no no no no no no no no. I typed: You can’t tell anyone. What did I ever do to you?

  Gemini: You’re constantly getting into other people’s business, Sam. You think everything revolves around you. Everybody in the sim heard you and Gunstock last night at the ball. Why do guys pretend to be girls online? I don’t get it. But you’re not going to keep it up. I already sent notes to Gunstock and the GMs.

  I gasped. I was panicking, but there was nothing I could do. If she was telling the truth, and she had notified the GMs, then I would be banned from Erie permanently.

  I typed: Please don’t do this.

  As I typed the words, I sobbed. And that was when the noise at the window finally caught my attention. I jerked around and gasped.

  Billy Townsend was standing at the window. And he had his phone out. Oh my God. Had he taken a picture of me? He turned and ran.

  I jumped to my feet and ran to the window. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do. In less than one minute everything that was left of my world had just blown up.

  But it was too late. Billy was gone.

  Twenty-Five

  Cole

  The restaurant was quiet when my phone rang at two thirty. First shift was over, and my second shift had come in to prepare for the next day. We typically didn’t get any business in the afternoon … that was when I pulled the next day’s food and worked on wrapping up my own day. Today, though, was different. Not long after the health inspection results had come in, Brian called me back again. He would be coming later than he originally said, and he wouldn’t be alone — he was riding with David Johnson, our area vice president.

  Like a lot of the senior management of the company, David was a graduate of Georgia Tech. He’d been fast-tracked—one year as a unit manager, one year as a district manager, two as a division, and now he had an area and reported directly to Jeremiah.

  I didn’t like David, although there was nothing really wrong with him. He rubbed me the wrong way because he was only in his twenties and he was smug about how fast and high he had risen. He rubbed me the wrong way because he reminded me of me and some of my worst traits.

  I’d been smug too. I’d risen far and fast in my own career, and because I hadn’t finished college, I’d credited it all to my own hard work, smarts, and my superior abilities. It never crossed my mind to consider the fact that I was lucky enough to fall into the right place at the right time with the right skills at the very birth of a brand-new industry. In the mid-1990s in Northern Virginia, we were hiring car mechanics and air-conditioning technicians and training them from scratch because it was so difficult to find skilled systems engineers. Starting salaries for system administrators with no experience at all were getting to seventy thousand dollars a year because the demand had so far outstripped the supply.

  On the other hand, it was the same Georgia Tech good-old-boys network that had gotten me this job in the first place. After all, it was my college roommate, a senior vice president, who had gotten me this job.

  I had a dull dread forming in my stomach, the kind of anxiety I never experienced when I was young. Not until the affair and the damage it did to my marriage, not until Brenna was lost, not until I’d destroyed my career with a felony conviction.

  Was getting a forty-three on a health inspection a firing offense? It might well be. And if I lost this job, I didn’t know what I would do. Would I end up as a cook for minimum wage somewhere? We could barely afford what was left of our bills now.

  I tried to clear my head and focus on what I needed to get done. I still had to finish pulling supplies for the next day then do my closeout paperwork and head to the bank, and I needed to have it all done by four when Brian and David would arrive.

  I checked my list again. There were only a few supply items left: to-go cups, dish soap, and paper towels. I tossed them on the cart and rolled it out front. “I’m leaving this here for you guys to put away,” I said to Bubba,
my second shift cook. Bubba’s real name was Eugene Clarence Reynolds, but he insisted we just call him Bubba.

  “Brian and David are going to be here at four and I need to get to the bank before then.”

  Bubba nodded. “No problem, I got it.”

  My phone rang as I was headed toward the back room again.

  It was Jeremiah.

  “I hear you had some problems with the health inspector out there,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  The second the phone rang I felt an immediate pressure release. “It was a setup,” I said. “The guy didn’t even look at his thermometers, he just started randomly checking stuff off the list and failing me on it.”

  “What the hell did you do to piss him off?” Jeremiah asked.

  For the second time that day, I went out the back door of the restaurant so I could pace while I talked. I told Jeremiah the story of the mayor and Dakota the other night, Brian’s insistence that I apologize to the mayor, and being sent home yesterday.

  “Are you serious? He sent you home because you wouldn’t apologize? I always knew he was a weasel motherfucker.”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. David’s coming out here with Brian at four o’clock to meet with me. Be honest with me, Jeremiah—what are the odds I’m going to get fired?”

  Jeremiah cleared his throat, then said, “You remember the part in your training where we said the company doesn’t tolerate sexual and racial harassment and whatnot? Believe it or not, they take that shit seriously at corporate. If we let that kind of harassment continue, it’s a hostile work environment. Believe me: it’s not just the right thing to do—it also protects the company from lawsuits. We don’t need to be making any million-dollar settlements. You did the right thing, Cole.”

  I took a deep breath. “So what do you recommend I do when Brian and David get here?”

  “Stand your ground, my friend. I’m not sure what we’ll do about the inspection and the mayor—I’m going to talk to Jimmy Junior about that and get his thoughts. But frankly, I’m kind of pissed that Brian and David didn’t tell me the whole story. They reported the health inspection results but not the background.”