Widow's Row Read online

  “That’s not what I mean, but for the record I hope the two-step is a super simplified twelve-step program,” I grinned, looking back at the eight barstools lined up in a row, two other women down on the far end. “What is it here? About these seats?”

  “Oh, that. Well, forever we’ve called this here Widow’s Row. You know, this being a small town and all, the widow ladies like to come here, knowing they can have a dancehall, knowing they can dance all night, and there’s no strings attached. You know, you have your safe sex. This here is safe and harmless honky-tonk.”

  Yeah. Like the reason your hat has spent so many evenings on the foot of someone’s bed you just referred to as a creep.

  “Well, Kate, you make for one happy widow,” I teased.

  “Well, I guess sometimes that’s just exactly what I am.”

  I’d forgotten. Lawyer inserts mouth in foot once again.

  The tapping on my door turned to a hard pounding, but not as hard as the pounding doing a break dance in my head.

  I grabbed my robe on the way to the door. “Sheesh. I’m coming. You’re going to wake everyone up.”

  “Everyone’s already up.”

  “Adam!”

  “Holy fuck, woman. What happened to you?” He stood back inspecting the sight of me, which I’m sure was diva-dire.

  “Shhhh. No need to scream.” I grasped the sides of my head. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to rescue you on my white horse, but it looks like I might be too late.”

  I hadn’t even taken off my makeup or brushed my teeth when I dragged myself to bed the night before. I’d left Kate, still kicking up her heels, when I realized I couldn’t even feel mine anymore.

  “Just got indoctrinated into some of the local color,” I said.

  “Looks like it was black and blue,” Adam said, pulling off his Burberry scarf and unbuttoning his overcoat. “I thought you had work to do down here?” The edge in his voice underscored his disapproval, and that was way before he spied the cowboy hat and boots flopped on the corner chair.

  “Look, give me a few minutes. Why don’t you go downstairs and get us some coffee?”

  “Because it’s almost noon, honey. There’s no sign of any coffee. For that matter, there’s no sign of any humans. Do they always just leave this place wide open?”

  I was in no mood to argue, shoving the hotel’s complimentary newspaper in his hands and shrinking away into the bathroom to work miracles.

  “I can’t leave here for a while, Adam,” I said through the door, pouring eye drops into two seas of red veins.

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  “Dad’s not ready to be moved anywhere.”

  “So, leave him in the hospital until he’s discharged. You can’t just stay on indefinitely.”

  “You said yourself he hasn’t left any legal provisions with the firm. I need some time here to get his affairs in order.”

  I made myself up and was as presentable as I was going to get. Pretty good, considering it felt like a family of green frogs had taken up practicing gymnastics inside my stomach.

  I unlocked the bathroom door and entered back into the room. “Adam!”

  Unpredictability was one of Adam’s most redeeming qualities. He filled two flutes with the Krug champagne, and tins of Ossetra caviar and duck foie gras from Petrossian decorated the bed. Predictably, Adam was clearly naked under the covers.

  “You’re the greatest,” I said. He can’t know I’m about to throw up!

  “I figured you’d be homesick for some decent food.”

  Sick, all right. “Actually, I had oysters last night,” I said.

  “Around here?”

  “Sure did. Rocky Mountain Oysters. Maybe they harvest them in salt tanks, or something,” I said.

  Adam’s velvet hands slid the lid off the tin of foie gras. He looked up from his own baguette toast and knitted his brows with distinct sarcastic amusement.

  “What?” I asked, resenting the look.

  “Never mind. Come here.” He offered me the toast from his compelling position on the bed.

  I tossed off my robe and crawled under the bedcovers next to him, accepting both the foie gras and the flute of champagne. Hair of the dog, I thought. I hadn’t had a hangover since my college days.

  “You’re right. I’ve missed civilization,” I said. I pretended the bubbly champagne was Alka-Seltzer at work, and it went down smooth. Nibbling at the food was another story.

  “You can’t stay down here, Breecie. All your friends are back east,” Adam said.

  “All my friends are lawyers. That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”

  The stern scowl left Adam’s face, replaced by a fever from the passions of his loins. I knew the look well. He knocked my champagne to the floor as he climbed on top of me and awakened my own flames of fire deep inside. Even the disagreeable green frogs abated under his magical touch.

  In moments, his body began rolling in undulations on top of mine. His eyes traced over my body, one inch at a time, and his hands roamed freely, seeking out every fold of what I was. Ecstasy flooded me and forgetting my surroundings, I cried out, consumed in my own fulfillment. Adam followed right behind.

  Curling up spoon-style, I collapsed against his downy chest.

  “Oh, Breecie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re in cattle country down here. Rocky Mountain Oysters are nothing but bull testicles.”

  Chapter Nine

  Camelot Disappears

  An afternoon later, and after enduring ruthless teasing about the noises coming out of room number six, we said goodbye to the ladies of The Lost Cat and Adam and I headed over to the hospital.

  I didn’t explain away those ladies to him, and he didn’t ask any questions. I figured if he knew people ate bull balls and got away with calling them oysters, then he knew men could, and were, becoming women. This is one strange world.

  Adam took a call on his cell phone at the main door of the hospital, waving me on in since the devices had to be turned off once inside.

  I found Dad propped up in his chair again—lifeless, sour and dour.

  “Good morning, Daddy,” I said, pushing the CD into the disc player. “Guess I better pick you up a broader assortment of listening choices.”

  Nothing.

  “It’s a beautiful morning. Sun is out. Supposed to get into the sixties.”

  Zilch reaction.

  I’d reach for one. “Any idea where I can find your Erin McGinnis?”

  I reeled around, scrutinizing his face for any twitch or tightening of a muscle. No reaction.

  Adam slipped into the room. He must have heard me from the hall.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Just someone Dad had some mail for.” It was the truth.

  “Hey, Mr. Lemay, esquire et. al,” Adam chided Dad. “Whatcha doing in this hellhole of a place?”

  “You’re not going to get anything out of him. There’s just nothing there,” I said.

  Adam adjusted Dad’s body in the chair so he appeared to be sitting up straighter.

  “Keep fighting, old man,” he whispered into his ear, then Adam stood up, erect, firing his gaze my way. “There’s no sense in us just standing around here. I have to get back, anyway.”

  The voice was scratchy and barely audible. “A... Ada...”

  “Christ!” I cried. “Daddy?”

  “There you go, old man,” Adam said. “I knew you were in there. You’re too damn stubborn to just slip away quietly.”

  I fell to my knees in front of my dad’s wheelchair. Adam turned to the window, looking out across the parking lot.

  “Adam,” Dad managed fully.

  “Yes, James. It’s Adam. I’m here.” Adam slowly turned around to look at my father. “I’m going to see that you get yourself better, then I’ll get you the hell out of here.”

  I could see the faint glimmer of life in my dad’s eyes, but if it was recognition
, it by-passed me completely. “That’s just great,” I said, spitting the words right into my dad’s face. His inability to acknowledge me stung as if I was hugging an artichoke.

  “Lay off him, Breecie. Who knows what the hell it takes to bring these guys back from the living dead,” Adam said. “Just a fluke he knows I’m here. That’s all.”

  Adam had to return to D.C. the next morning. He was gearing up for a meeting with the Speaker of The House, the Vice President of the United States, and the Ambassador to Russia. It was all part of a systematic plan to win the senatorial election the following fall.

  After waving goodbye, I walked back into the The Lost Cat. The parlor was glistening in sunshine. Jennie was sitting against the sun’s prism of rays, reading.

  I must have stood there looking at her longer than I realized. She looked up at said, “Good morning, Breecie.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. You just look so stunning there in the sunlight. It’s like it’s streaming little diamonds onto your hair.”

  “You’re curious about me, aren’t you?” Jennie asked.

  Embarrassed, I said, “Yes. I suppose I am.”

  “Come in”, Jennie said, setting the book on her lap. “Sit and enjoy the morning with me. Tell me what you would like to know.”

  I moved toward a wingback chair next to her. “I’m not sure what to ask.”

  “You mean I have a tongue-tied lawyer sitting with me?”

  I grinned. “It doesn’t happen often.”

  “Let me help you. You want to know what it was like for me to grow up as a boy and somehow decide I’m a girl. You want to know exactly how that transition took place, and how I intend to jump back into life as a woman. Is that close?

  “Very.”

  “I’m an open book,” Jennie said, “but my story is long. Do you have time to hear the pivotal points?”

  I nodded. “If you feel like sharing.”

  “I was only four, maybe five, when I began to realize I was different.”

  “That early?”

  “If you think about it, that’s about the first time children experience community outside of their family. I can remember when my kindergarten teacher had us all line up on sides of the room to play a game. She had the boys on one side, the girls on the other. She had me go with the boys. I didn’t understand. I wanted to line up with all the girls.

  “The next several years, the developmental ones, if you will, brought me sheer confusion. I didn’t have the verbal skills to try to express what I was feeling and it was inexplicable to me, anyway.

  “Did you have many friends?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure, but before puberty it was easy enough to play with both the boys and the girls and not think much about it. In my teenage years every doubt and fear I had became a nagging confirmation. And those became hidden secrets. I began sneaking into my sisters bedroom and trying on her dresses. I’d swirl around in front of the mirror, and when I’d slip her high heels on I felt like I was wearing glass slippers.”

  “Did anyone know what you were going through?”

  “Oh, god, no. It was agony. One minute I’d feel like Daddy’s little princess and the next, overwhelming guilt consumed me. For a while I fooled everyone, including myself, by overcompensating. I made the baseball team and led them to three state-division titles. I even considered joining the army.”

  It was hard for me to comprehend. The woman sitting next to me was feminine. Beautiful. Even delicate.

  “I dated, as expected of me. And yes, I did have sex with the girls. Dad would punch my shoulder and tell me, ‘That’s my boy. Just don’t knock them up’.”

  “When did you decide to go through ...” I stumbled for the right words.

  “Some call it sexual reassignment surgery but it really isn’t about sex. Some patients go on to be gay. Now it’s more commonly known as gender reassignment. And to answer your question, going away to college resolved privacy issues for me. I had a full-ride scholarship but still worked, and I wasn’t saving money for a car.”

  “The cost of the surgery?” I asked.

  “Exactly. Several procedures, starting with a couple of years of psychiatric evaluation. Then the hormones. Then, assuming everyone is on board, the surgeries begin. It’s an amazing surgery. They actually use the male genitalia to sculpt the vagina.

  “Next up is my ultimate challenge. Returning home.”

  I studied her for a moment. “Why not start someplace new?”

  “I’m still the same person inside. I’m not going to deny thirty years of my life. I have my mom and friends back east. They know where I am and what I’m doing. I can only hope they’ll accept me when I get home. The jury’s still out.”

  My phone rang. Kate had arranged for me to see the ranch.

  “Before I go,” I said to Jennie, “I want to thank you for talking to me. They say prejudice is born of ignorance.”

  “Maybe you’ll help me write a book some day,” Jennie said.

  Maybe I will.

  Kate rode out with me to see the ranch. Along the way, she finally confessed to having gone to bed with the owner, Ari Christenson.

  “Only a couple of times when I must have drank him pretty,” she laughed. “His wife left him a few years ago, along with the house and a wad of her family money, but he blew it all up his nose. Now he’s into all these crazy business deals.” She shuffled in the seat, her short leather skirt scrunching up on the leather of my rented Jeep. “He’s raising Santa Gertrudis here on the ranch. No one has a fix on how he has the capacity to do such a thing. And you’ll see, he’s just gone into the chinchilla business. But when it comes right down to it, he can’t afford to maintain this place without the help of renters,” Kate explained.

  When we pulled onto the grounds, just a few miles northwest of town at the base of Spanish Peaks, I was sure I could see the flags of Camelot beckoning me from above a bank of windows gracing the huge villa.

  Rosa’s husband, Rudy, came running out to greet us. His English wasn’t as good as Rosa’s. Although I picked up most of it, Kate demonstrated another hidden talent, interpreting his Spanish into English.

  “He says he has heard all about you, and the ranch is the perfect place for you to stay during this difficult time,” Kate said. “He added, on my behalf of course, only because you can’t stay at The Lost Cat.”

  I smiled at the nearly toothless man wearing weather ravaged skin, shrunken shoulders, and the tenderness of a newly bloomed gardenia. He led—almost pranced, us over to the main entrance.

  “He says he has permission to show you the house,” Kate continued, but this lower level is occupied by another tenant and it’s off limits, except for the laundry room.”

  The lower level was more of a walkout garden, none of it below ground, magnifying the illusion of grandeur to the already enormous estate.

  “The pool and patios are for everyone’s use,” Kate continued to interpret, “as is the entire main level.” We toured a capacious great room brimming with ornately carved Besarel antique tables juxtaposed between huge leather sofas and club chairs. The library boasted shelves of leather-bound books, intricate tapestries, and the rich, pungent smell that accompanied both. The gourmet kitchen offered Viking stainless steel appliances, granite counters, and a Brass Menagerie of pots, pans, and cooking utensils suspended in air from a huge circular rack.

  The dining room repeated the Italian elegance with a Besarel table surrounded by eight leather chairs. The glass menagerie was in the form of a wall lined with Baccarat crystal stemware and vases.

  “You ready to move on with our tour?” Kate asked, already crossing toward the staircase where Rudy waited patiently.

  “Except for the main level, each floor is private. This second level belongs to Ari. You’ll take the staircase on up to the third,” Kate said. Rudy led the way.

  “Better than buying a stair-stepper,” I laughed, observing the closed double doors that comprised all of what I would
ever see of the second floor.

  Rudy unlocked the door leading into the third floor suite. The tiny hall was a turn-off, but once we rounded the corner captivation set in.

  An intimate sitting area furnished with four plump upholstered chairs greeted us, separated from the space beyond by a see-through gas fireplace and a small central cooking-island consisting of two burners, an under-cabinet refrigeration unit, a dishwasher, and a triple compartment sink fancier than my D.C. apartment.