Widow's Row

by Lala Corriere

  “I’m up to handling Dad’s affairs down here.”

  “That’s why I’m calling you, Breecie, since you haven’t bothered to ask. About your dad’s estate...”

  “...What did you find out?”

  “Unfortunately, nothing. The old man doesn’t even have a Living Will.”

  “That can’t be. You said it yourself. He’s a damn lawyer.” So much for the guests inside not hearing me, since I was screaming.

  “So what? He made his bed. Let him lie in it. Put him in a damn nursing home and come home where you belong.”

  I hated my dad for what appeared to be years of deceit, but Adam’s crass remark hurt. My dad had been good to him. Damn good.

  “I’ll know more in the next couple of days. That’s about all I can say, Adam.”

  I hung up and walked in to The Lost Cat. Kate met me with a snifter of warmed brandy, begging me to come join her and her guests in the parlor. I spied Jennie, the lady I met earlier that morning, and three other women all looked up at me.

  “Thanks, but I need to pass tonight,” I offered to the full room. “It’s been a rough one.”

  “Don’t you worry. You’re among new friends, Breecie Lemay, and we’ll be here if you need us,” Kate cooed with what I found to be surprising sincerity. “On the house,” she said, forcing the snifter into my hands. “Good night.”

  Chapter Six

  This One’s a Virgin

  Comatose at midnight, I found myself an insomniac by three. I didn’t exactly leap out of bed, but by four a.m. I sat at the small desk and checked email. It was six in D.C. My law partners would be taking their morning showers, sipping their decaf non-fat lattes, and kissing their perfect families goodbye for the day. More likely, ladder climbers that we all were, they were already at their desks.

  Rather than interrupt them, and the excuse was reasonable, I emailed them with my plans to extend my absence, at least for a couple more weeks.

  At seven, right on schedule, I could hear Rosa setting out her breakfast. I slipped on some sweats and running shoes, and headed down the spiral stairs.

  “Good morning, Ms. Lemay. I have fresh pancakes. We need to fatten you up,” Rosa chimed.

  “Rosa, I’m in a bit of a quandary,” I said.

  “My English is good. Not that good,” she shrugged.

  “Quandary. Dilemma.”

  Rosa looked at me blankly. “A problem.”

  I smiled.

  “Oh, no problemo here. What you need?”

  “I need to stay on here in Trinidad longer than I anticipated. I know Kate did me a favor by squeezing me in.”

  “Yes, Senorita. We fill back up again, always. Let me look.” Rosa strode over to the foyer’s front-desk like a proud mama, typing on her keyboard faster than a lawyer could lie. “We have you down for three more days. Uh oh. Sorry, Ms. Lemay. We can keep you here six days, then I’m sorry we have long standing reservations. How much longer you thinking of?” Rosa asked. Her coal eyes sparkled from the inside out.

  Six days seemed like an eternity to me, but I knew it wasn’t going to be long enough. “I wish I knew,” I said.

  Journey, the jumbo cat, jumped up on the reservation desk, quick to nestle against the mahogany platform and begin licking her engorged belly. I noticed the different work styles. Rosa worked with a clean desk. Kate operated from behind a havoc of mounding paperwork.

  “The thing is, if you want to stay longer my man works on cattle ranch.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I don’t think so. I’m not the cattle ranch type.”

  “It’s nearby, and the most beautiful setting in all Trinidad, and the ranch house is villa, you know—a mansion.” Rosa searched my face for a response.

  I twisted my head in a polite ‘no’.

  “I know you would like this house. The owner’s on hard times, and looks for renter. Maybe he’d take you on in between, you know, week to week, ‘til he finds someone more permanent.”

  I thought about my dad. His health. The two matching sets of idyllic love letters. And the portentous Russian revolver hidden away in the staircase.

  I thought about Adam. And the case I had just finished at my law firm that soured my heart and caused me to question our entire American legal system.

  “Book me for the six days, Rosa. And will you double check with this man?” I asked. “In the meantime, I’ll try and pinpoint how much longer I’ll be staying on.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Rosa said. “Now go eat.”

  Clutching my stomach, I didn’t feel like I could eat much. I took a small sampling of fruits, intent on returning to my room with the plate.

  “You can’t keep avoiding us forever, sweetheart,” Jennie called from the dining room, now filled with four guests.

  “I didn’t expect anyone to be up this early,” I confessed, wishing I’d have spent more time making up my face. Jennie looked like a cover girl. She wore a bright and flouncy skirt with a sexy spaghetti-strap top. Any cloud of pain I’d seen earlier was diffused by an aura of beauty.

  “Breecie, meet Ann, and Beth, and that’s J.C. over there in the corner,” Jennie offered. “We’re usually up early on Tuesdays. Tuesday is physical therapy day for just about all of us.”

  Before I could mask my confusion, my shoulders raised in a shrug.

  “Oh, my stars, Jennie, this one’s a virgin,” the lady in the corner roared.

  “You never mind her,” Jennie said, patting the seat next to her. “Come sit down.”

  I tried weighing the evidence, like I would in any courtroom, but I was too weary for the game and slid into the chair next to Jennie like a trained dog. J.C. removed herself, saying something about it being time for her session, anyway.

  “You don’t have a clue, do you?” Jennie whispered. “Doesn’t something seem a little odd around here, honey?”

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m here under a great deal of stress. Call me a fool, but I’m not up for a mystery.” My fork went down on the table. I was through with breakfast.

  “Honey, if there are any fools in this room, it’s all of your housemates here,” Jennie said.

  I looked up at her, still clueless as to what she was jabbering about. I pushed my plate away, but before I could rise from the table, Jennie laid a firm hand on my arm.

  “Take me. Eighteen months ago my name was John.”

  Ann spoke up, “And my name was Dan. Tried to keep the name change simple.”

  “The Lost Cat is our home away from home as we undergo our surgeries and therapies. Do you understand?” Jennie asked, her voice purring, almost like Journey’s did when she was licking that furry belly.

  The front door slammed open and the man I had seen the day before reappeared, dressed again in white, and carrying his black satchel.

  I looked across at Jennie, then the others. “You’re transex…”

  “…More commonly called transgenders these days. Or, folks around here just call us the trannies. We’re all here to undergo GRS.”

  “I see.” I picked up my fork again and started playing with the food on my plate.

  “Gender Reassignment Surgery,” Ann, a.k.a. Dan, said. “Kate’s a dear, putting up with us the way she does.” She winked, and gifted me a cup of fresh coffee. The corners of her mouth lifted to a warm smile, and suddenly I was sure I was the resident fool.

  I took the saucer and sipped the steaming Kona coffee. “You know, Washington D.C. is a ghost town compared to the excitement I’ve seen around here in the last few days.”

  Jennie broke into laughter. “Oh, shoot! That reminds me. Kate would kill me if I forgot. She wanted me to give you something.”

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Same as where she is every morning, darling,” Janet said. “Passed out in bed ‘til noon, at best. We love her...” The sentence broke.

  Jennie left the table to rummage through the hall closet, returning with two large sacks.

  “Now, this here’s a loaner fro
m Kate,” she said, as I pulled out a huge black felt cowboy hat with a band of burgundy and gold feathers. I laughed. It was bodacious and beautiful.

  “And these boots, well she got them in town, on approval,” Jennie said.

  “Stuart Weitzman cowboy boots?” I gasped.

  “Hey, this is Trinidad, honey. Not purgatory.”

  Chapter Seven

  Like a Rabid Dog

  I walked down the hospital’s linoleum hallway, conscious of the abrasive lighting, and the dreary faces, and the stale notion that malodorous Petri dishes served up experiments behind nearby closed doors.

  The doctor made a brief visit, rambling off all these convoluted ideas as to how to proceed with my dad’s course of treatment: oral chelation, Botox to stimulate muscles, even some kind of viper extract. All promising new courses of medicine.

  His final words were a stern warning that suicide was a risk in a high percentage of stroke victims. Then he rechecked my dad’s records and discounted the notion.

  Way to go, Doc. Damn. Look at the man. He can’t pee on his own. How the hell is he going to kill himself?

  Dad sat upright in his hospital bed, still hooked up to his soup-du-jour seeping through an I.V. tube. His once vital eyes provided nothing but an obsidian stare, with no light of recognition when I spoke his name. Once I was certain we were alone, I switched my approach.

  “I think you’re a sonuva bitch, Daddy. You and your Mistress Erin. Both of you. Scum ball sluts,” I ranted.

  Nothing.

  “I don’t get it. I don’t get you. I didn’t have sex until I was twenty-five years old, mostly because I was afraid you would find out. You accused me of it when I was fifteen, you remember? And do you remember, it broke my heart that you would think so little of me, and be so mad at me for something I didn’t even do?

  “Don’t you get it, Daddy? I was the last virgin in my class because, once again, I didn’t want to disappoint the almighty, high-principled James Lemay.” My pulse raced. I could feel the flush taking up residence across my face while my dad’s remained ashen gray and lifeless.

  The nurse came in to check his vitals, never looking up at me. She rambled off a stale report in case I cared, and added that so far they’d been unable to force-feed any solids and my father better get with the program. When she darted out of the room following a page, I resumed my soliloquy.

  “I despised law school. You knew I didn’t want to practice law, but you insisted. You said I owed my very life to you. And you told me it would break my mother’s heart if I didn’t obey your wishes.

  “That’s ironic, isn’t it Daddy? Seems to me, you might have been the one breaking her heart all along. Right?”

  I clutched my purse close to my body, bent over and kissed my father on his cold cheek. Nothing.

  “I’m not leaving Trinidad until I get to the bottom of this,” I whispered in his shriveled ear. “A lawyer ‘ain’t nothing without a set of honed detective skills’, right Daddy? Isn’t that what you’ve preached to me all these years?”

  And I prayed I was wrong about everything my gut told me was true.

  George Baird shuffled heavy legs back and forth across the wood floor of his penthouse office on Seventeenth Street, overlooking the sweeping view of Denver’s mountainous western skyline. He took no notice of the spectacular panorama.

  The dull swath across the highly polished oak bore proof to his old nervous pacing habit. Still, in spite of obesity and failing health, Baird exuded power the way a rabid dog foamed at the mouth. Constant. Natural.

  “Your offer’s a damn fine one. Now, double it,” his burly voice boomed into the remote headset that barely wrapped around his square bald head. He held both arms tight across his gut as he continued pacing. Moments later he dropped the call and buzzed his secretary.

  “Get me the next flight out of here, to St. Petersburg.” “Yes, your honor, I’ll call...”

  “...Damn it, Helen, how many times do I have to tell you I’m retired. I don’t want to hear that damn title.”

  “Yes, Mr. Baird. Will I be reserving for Mrs. Baird, as well? And shall I book your favorite suite at the Don CeSar?”

  “Jesus, Helen, this ain’t no vacation. I’m talking St. Petersburg, Russia.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Raging Bovine

  I returned to The Lost Cat shortly after five, with even more questions than answers. I found the two written messages slipped under my door, which seemed unusual since everyone called on my cell.

  Rosa had her husband check with the owner of the ranch he worked at and confirmed the owner would consider leasing to me on a short-term basis. And Kate left me cryptic directions to The Raging Bovine, with a demand to come right away. Too numb to put up a fight and desperate for any diversion, I tossed on my jeans, a white spandex top, and the perfect fitting Weitzman boots. The hat was a different story, especially for a D.C. girl. I felt ridiculous, like I was wearing a sombrero in Finland. But, when in Rome...

  Tacky neon lights announced the entrance to The Raging Bovine, an old red barn on the outskirts of town that had been converted into a honky-tonk dance hall long before anyone could remember. Kate told me they served steaks and ribs upstairs, but to look for her at a row of barstools nearest the lower-level dance floor. She should have just told me to look for the woman surrounded by a circle of admirers all wearing cowboy hats.

  “Holy shit! You look terrific!” Kate squealed. “Come on and order up. Happy Hour’s almost over.” She helped the waitress load two empty glasses onto the tray and ordered another round for herself. I asked for a glass of cabernet.

  “No twofers on wine,” the waitress said.

  “That will be fine.”

  “Then we’ve got two flavors. Red or white.”

  “A glass of red, please.”

  Kate furrowed her brow. “I can see I’m have my work cut out with you, Ms. Fancy Pants.” She patted the stool next to her. “Come on. Sit down. Just don’t try to sanitize the seat first.”

  A couple of the men left to head for the bar, and Kate introduced me to two others.

  “Kate here tells me she’s making a cowgirl out of you,” one said. “Seems I recognize that hat you’re wearing as one that’s found its way to the foot of my bed on more than one occasion.”

  “Don’t kiss and tell,” Kate scolded, and pulled her stool closer toward me. “Don’t listen to the creep,” she said. “But I must say, damn girl, you do look like a regular.”

  “I’m surprised myself. How’d you manage to pick out boots my size?”

  “Guess I used a master key to your room,” Kate said. “No harm intended. A friend owns the best dry goods shop in town. You can return them, or you’ll have to pay for them, of course.”

  I thought about the garbage bag sitting on the floor of the closet. Had Kate seen it? Did she snoop and find the two boxes inside?

  “Actually, I’m going to need to pick up a few more things,” I said.

  “Yeah, Rosa mentioned you were thinking about staying on longer. Any reason?”

  “Thinking of a sabbatical. I want to crank out the next great American novel while I knock around waiting for my dad to get better.”

  Country music blared and the air grew thick with a wicked combination of tobacco, not allowed but wholly ignored, and the grease smoke emanating off the steaks and ribs cooking in the kitchen. A string of men approached Kate, one after another, but I couldn’t hear any words exchanged until one man with a deep voice yelled out, “You can’t sit down here on the row and not dance, little missy.”

  Kate fired me a broad smile as she plopped off the bar seat and out onto the dance floor. Another man appeared out of the shadows from across the room and asked me to dance. The brittle silence, accompanied by my stiffened spine, gave him his answer before I could get my lips to move.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t dance.” I don’t frigging a-bubba cowboy dance.

  “Then you might rethink your seat,” he said, in
a half-serious warning.

  “What’s up with this place?” I asked Kate just as soon as she sat back down.

  “You’ll get the hang of it. I can teach you to two-step in five minutes,” she said, slugging down another scotch and water. She hollered at the waitress to squeeze her in one more order of twofers before it was too late, which it already was, but it was clear Kate had some clout and they would be forthcoming.