Castle Danger--Woman on Ice

by Anthony Neil Smith

  She apologized.

  I gritted my teeth. I kept my voice as calm as I could, meaning I lost my cool a few times. It took so long … I should’ve expected it. But in my mind, it was going to be a quick cry and a hug. Not an hour of circles and dead-ends, retreats and new arguments. I kept my knees together. I had never felt more exposed.

  All the while, Joel and Robin were in the kitchen, drinking coffee but really making each other suck the nozzle of the whipped cream can. Filling their mouths with it, then kissing up an unholy mess. I heard them smacking and laughing as I tried to hurry ‘the talk’ along.

  “We’ll have time, Mom, I swear, we’ll have plenty of time, and I’ll tell Dad, and I’ll let Marcia know she can talk to you about it, all in time, but I don’t have time now. I don’t. I just need help.”

  She squeezed my hands. “Me? How can I help? What can I do? I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know how to—”

  “It’s okay,” I said, and then I cooed it again and again until she calmed down and rubbed her watery eyes with the heels of her hands.

  I told her, “I need help being the best woman I can be.”

  “Yes!” She reached in for a hug. “Of course. Everything I’ve ever learned, I will gladly pass on to you.”

  As she rubbed my back and rocked me, I said, “Not just any woman. A very specific one.”

  “I’ll call your sister.”

  Meanwhile, Joel and Robin had made some excuse to head to the guest bathroom and, well, the shower was running for a long time, there was a lot of moaning and grunting, and afterwards, all the decorative soaps looked like they’d had a very busy morning.

  Like mad rabbits, those two.

  I had the photos of Hannah on my phone. I showed them to Mom and Marcia and said, “This. I need to dress like her. I need as close a match as I can.”

  They hemmed and hawed. “You’ll be really cold.”

  “She was colder.”

  “Why again? What are you trying to do?”

  “I need some people to think they’ve seen a ghost, so I need to resemble her as much as possible.”

  Marcia pointed to the helmet. “Will you be wearing that, too?”

  I described the wig — blondish-white pageboy, almost a pink glow to it. But the rest was pretty obvious: long black leather jacket, black miniskirt, fishnets, thin t-shirt.

  “What about the ski boots?”

  “No, I’m not wearing ski boots. Just, you know, black leather zip-ups. Not so tall a heel, please.”

  A smile from my sister. “You’ll have to learn to walk in heels eventually.”

  While Mom and Marcia went off to the mall to buy what I needed, and hopefully to talk about me as much as they needed to, I took over the guest bathroom, which smelled of sex and steam and fancy soaps, to do something I’d only done once or twice before, and only when I was a teenager trying to hide it.

  I shaved.

  Everything.

  I couldn’t help but choke up as I did it, not because of what I was losing — hair and shaving cream down the drain — but for what I was gaining. What was it when I was a kid, realizing there were more ‘shades’ to my feelings that what real guys were supposed to show the world? When did it happen? When did I shut it down? Did I?

  Left leg.

  Watching Marcia grow, develop, date boys, buy a vibrator, get drunk, and make out with the sons of our guests behind our parents’ backs.

  Right leg.

  Wishing I could feel what she was feeling. But I knew there were limits. Boys who acted like girls, at school we were merciless to them. We might not have known a lot about sex until fourth grade, when the ‘bad boy’ in class read us the description of intercourse from the encyclopedia, but we knew how to bludgeon a kid with insults about him being a sissy or a fag until we got him to cry or tell the teacher. Most of the time, the teacher couldn’t give a shit. Imagine having that parent-teacher conference: your boy is getting called a fag by his classmates.

  Left armpit.

  So I hid it. I called them fags, too. Later, I liked looking at the Playboys that made the rounds, maybe because I had wanted to be those models, rather than fuck them. I stumbled across porn on the internet — a purposeful stumble, as we all must admit — where it became even easier to see the blurring of the lines between what men and women were supposed to be.

  Right armpit.

  Go on. Go on. I learned quickly. I experimented. My sister found out and didn’t rat me to the ‘rents. She told me to be careful. She helped me push deeper … okay, that didn’t sound right.

  Chest. Very little on the chest, but still …

  There came a time when, for some reason, a girl took interest in me. A bit of an aggressive girl. It would have to be, because I was shy, man. Shy, shy, shy. She was a year younger than me, but much more experienced, and, well, it was easier to go with the flow. Much easier. My parents liked her. Marcia was skeptical, but played nice. See, it took a while to see what it was that attracted me to her — and to Whitney a couple of years later — the first girl was a tomboy. Good ol’ Chuck Taylors and jeans sort of girl. She liked to wear a Twins cap. She liked to talk dirty.

  There, the last hair I needed to lose. The small patch that had survived the fire, the skin grafts, and the scars. I didn’t like to look down there, the reminder of my own stupidity, feeling more and more pressure from Whitney — not a tomboy but still very strong-willed — to get engaged, but all I’d ever felt about that was scared.

  Look at me. Look at what I did to myself.

  An act of desperation just to prove I wasn’t my cock, that it didn’t define me. I shouldn’t have been born with one. And I didn’t want it anymore.

  And there, one more swipe and the hair was gone, if not the organ itself, withered, drawn up, a painful punchline to a bad joke. Can you make it a pussy?

  I washed the remains of the shaving cream and hair away and stood in the hot stream, letting the water spill off my head and flow all around me. One day, I would feel comfortable in this skin. One day. Hormone treatments? An operation? I couldn’t think about that right now. Right now, the hair would grow out again. It already was at the microscopic level. My voice would stay a little deeper. I would feel embarrassed and liberated at the same time, an awkward dance that would trip me up more than once, I was pretty sure.

  So what? Keep dancing. You’ll get better at it.

  I climbed out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. Pale, skinny, afraid, but how about that? A stupid little grin.

  Yeah, how about that?

  Joel pounded on the door. “How long you going to be? I’ve got to drop a big one.”

  Mom and Marcia brought the outfits. I tried them on in the guest bedroom.

  Look at me. Goddamn, look at me.

  Feel me, the fishnets rolling on. Scratchy at first, but then, something soothing.

  The miniskirt. Exposure. I looked at my ass in the mirror, over my shoulder. This wasn’t the fantasy, alone in an apartment with hardcore videos and a realistic dildo, lingerie and an active imagination.

  A bra, stuffed with tissues. I slipped it on and … who was that staring back at me?

  I could even work the clasps, as if I hadn’t practiced before.

  The wig. Bangs fell past my eyebrows. The rest brushed my neck and shoulders.

  I looked a lot more like Hannah than I had expected to, just twenty years younger. Probably the way Hans wished he could have looked for all those years.

  And it felt … okay.

  Out in the hallway, Robin and Joel argued.

  She whispered to him, “Look, I helped break into someone’s house for you. I assaulted a tranny for you. Not for him, but for you. But this, this is crazy.”

  “I thought you said he was a she?”

  “That’s ridiculous. Look at him. Look at all of those freaks. I’m just saying, why should you have to give up everything for him?”

  Joel said nothing.

  Robin p
ushed him harder. “Idiot, are you listening? I’m only here because of you. I only care about you. We can stop this now before it gets all of us killed or in jail or, or, or …”

  Joel said nothing.

  “Jesus!” Hissing now. “Are you listening? If he wants to play dress up, fine! Once he gets a couple dicks in his mouth, maybe he won’t be so hot to chase killers. Let’s go try to get him laid and back the fuck off, alright?”

  Joel said nothing.

  But as Robin opened up to rail on him again, Joel said, “Shut up.” Silence. “He’s my partner.”

  I opened the door, startled them. Me, making sure the clothes fit. Still shirtless, in a miniskirt, one leg of the fishnets, and a wig. “Damn right.”

  Robin turned away, crossed her arms.

  Joel nodded, but twisted his lips. “I’m not going to get used to this.”

  I winked. “Easy as riding a bike.”

  Mom volunteered her bed for me and the guest room for Robin and Joel. We needed to sleep. Badly.

  In most cases, the “badly” part would mean “a lot”, but for me it wasn’t that easy. It was “badly” as in seeing faces behind my eyelids I didn’t want to see — both Chiefs, Sergeant Urbaniak, Abe Skovgaard, my dad. I sweated through the sheets. It was a sour odor that only made me more restless. We were stuck in the apartment until later in the evening. Mom’s blackout curtains confused me. I lost track of the time of day, of how long I passed out between panic attacks. The longer we waited, the more I felt sick. I threw up in the en suite bathroom three times, nothing really down there but coffee and junk food. And bile. It tore my throat to shreds, but I gulped some water from the sink and fell back into bed.

  This time, finally, into deep dreams. Shivering. Floating on a cold river. But I was looking into a clear night sky, one where I could even see the nebulas straight on, not just from the corner of my eye. It was peace. Even my dreams wanted me to find some rest, at last.

  Then the knock on my door. My mom. A wedge of light in the pitch dark room.

  “It’s time.” She waited.

  I sat up, stretched, yawned. The sickness was gone. I felt like Dr. Frank N. Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

  She sat down on the bed. Wiped my forehead with her hand. “My poor boy.”

  A mother’s touch. A panacea, no matter how old the child may be.

  She said, “Should’ve said my poor girl? I’m so sorry. You have to give me time.”

  “Mom, believe me. I need to give myself time.”

  She moved her palm to my cheek, and there it stayed. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Will you be safe?”

  “Just a night on the town, momma dear. That’s all.”

  7

  I walked into the club hyper-aware. The noise, the glow of the ambient lights cutting through the dark. Chill music, not really for dancing. The building housed several law firms, and judging by the décor, it had been kept old on purpose to feel like a speakeasy. Like partying on Wall Street during the Great Depression. Fiddle away while all around you the world went down in flames.

  Was anyone looking at me? Was anyone drinking me in? Not that I could see. I was still getting used to what it meant to pull this off — how to walk, how to speak, how to smile. Hannah must’ve had a lot more time to practice than I did. I was freezing. I was terrified. But I couldn’t let the seams show. I was Hannah, goddamnit. I was also a Marquette. I owned this town.

  The quiet vibe, definitely a place to nurse cocktails, rather than burn up the dance floor. It took some Googling for Robin and Marcia to find the establishments most likely to help me find Paula. Upscale, not after publicity, quietly welcoming. Then again, some of them weren’t ‘special’ at all. Some were hotel bars that you wouldn’t know were servicing two separate clienteles. I’d already been to a couple of those, a little nervous, and even though nothing happened and no one seemed to be shocked by my appearance, the nervous feeling didn’t leave me. I mean, I wanted them to notice me. That was the whole plan, making the right people notice me. So why didn’t they?

  Robin didn’t repeat her ‘freaks’ comment. Didn’t apologize, but didn’t shy away from me either. The way she’d gone after Jelly, the way she’d helped me pull off some convincing details with my make-up and outfit, I’d have thought she was an ally, one hundred percent.

  I’d need to keep an eye on her. And I didn’t mean the way Joel did.

  Two further trendy hotel bars, two further strikeouts. I’d asked for Paula, left a message, but the bartenders at both places had no idea, I could read it in their eyes.

  At the second place — The W — the manager eventually came over to my seat by the fireplace in the center of the room, shook my hand, and told me, “Perhaps you’d like to find another place to drink tonight? I can give you some great recommendations.”

  Each time, I texted back to Marcia, Strike.

  But this one … the place smelled like a humidor, even though there wasn’t any smoke or the acrid burn of cigars. Just the essence, I supposed. It was a narrow space, but long and slick and nearly empty, except around the faintly lit bar.

  Men and women in quiet conversations. Transmen? Transwomen? I couldn’t tell in this gloom. Any other time I would say it didn’t matter, but that night, it mattered more than I could ever have imagined.

  They sure as hell watched me, though.

  Subtle head turns. Darting eyes. Startled breaths.

  Oh. My. God.

  I milked it. I sure did. I milked the walk to the far end of the bar as if I was ignoring every last one of those rich bitches.

  Would Hannah have thought of them that way?

  Abso-fucking-lutely. And how did that old saying go? Play the role to become the role. But I’ll happily admit that I thought of them that way, anyway.

  The bartender, an African man with a shaved head and sparkly eye make-up, his accent lilting above the music, was mid-conversation with a huddled threesome of suits. I was pretty sure I was the topic of their conspiratorial chat.

  At first, I wondered if I was going to get any service at all. I stood, afraid to sit. Frozen again. I had to get over that. Hannah didn’t freeze … except in her final moments.

  And what would she drink here? Anything as tasteless as that last pun? Maybe a whiskey on the rocks? Wasn’t that what she was drinking as Hans, when Paula met him?

  But what sort of whiskey?

  The bartender laughed, his customers laughed, and now he was headed my way.

  What do you know about Hans? What do you know about Hannah? Was there any clue in what Paula had said? In what I had seen?

  Was Hans’s whole life a game? Bought at birth, but told he was born a Marquette. Born as two genders, forced to become one although he felt he should’ve been the other. A political message-shaper. An enforcer for his older brother, who could not say what he would truly like to in real life.

  So if Hannah was the real deal, Hans was striving to be the best man he could be.

  Who was striving to make the best whiskies in the world, trying to compete with the Scottish, the Irish, the Kentuckians?

  There he was. The bartender, practically glowing in the green lighting, his make-up reflecting like something astronomical, his lip gloss a quasar. The realization was slow, but not that slow. This was a transman. Just … amazing.

  “Can I help you?”

  My order: “The Yamazaki single malt. On the rocks.”

  I had spied four Japanese bottles behind the bar, in a row, and took a wild guess at the pronunciation.

  The bartender crossed his arms, looked mean. “The twelve year or the eighteen?”

  Shit!

  What was Japanese for “Shit”?

  But I thought about what I knew about whisky … not a lot … and about Hannah … and answered, “The twelve, of course, so I can afford to buy you one, too.”

  He smirked and went to pour my drink.

  More looks, less guarded and longer now. I was sure that once they got p
ast the outfit, they would realize I was not who they had expected. But then, who was I, and why did I dare wear this outfit into their bar? I was sure I had their attention just the way I wanted it.

  The bartender slammed two tumblers in front of me. I picked up one, he the other. I said, “Cheers, and may all your dreams come true.”

  Clink!

  We drank. A hearty gulp, too, no dainty sip. It’s extremely hard to fake being used to whisky when you are very much not used to it. The challenge: to swallow without dying. To take the burn with grace. To not fall off the stool.

  And to order another.

  Two more later, the bartender matching me drink for drink as if it was water, the whole bar seemed to be waiting for me to do or say something to explain this strange masquerade.

  Several people got up to leave, while others called the bartender over for some quiet words, unhappy ones, and he shushed them when the volume rose on “How dare—” or “She can’t do that—”. Distilled aversion.

  Well … shit. Again. In Japanese.

  He finally sauntered back to me and leaned on the bar, shaking his head. “You got the drink wrong.”

  “Aw, really?”

  “I could see you calculating. It was a good guess.”

  “Okay then. But next time?”

  He leaned in, clearly pissed off now. “Next time, you want whatever your little heart desires, as long as you’re not playing some sick fucking joke.”

  It occurred to me how many of these people must have been Hannah’s friends, or at least drinking buddies, and now this obvious imposter walks in without as much as a hello to them. Worse, I had overplayed my hand. Seriously. Of course they knew I wasn’t Hannah. I’d been amped up on adrenaline and caffeine and … of course this was ridiculous. I looked and sounded nothing like Hannah.

  All right. Time to lob my best grenade: “I need to see Paula.”

  “You do, do you?”

  “Paula, yes. It’s urgent.”

  “Shit, if you can’t fool a bar full of queers in the dark, how do you think—”

  “Hannah’s dead. I’m Hannah now. Get used to it. I need to see Paula. So make the call, and then fill my glass with what I’m supposed to be drinking.”