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  “I gave you two. I thought—”

  “That I’d come with someone?”

  “Yes. Or call. Something.”

  “I should have,” she said.

  His face was red. “I never dreamed . . In an instant Scotti saw his eyes soften, saw that he was stunned and dazzled by this woman.

  “I’m very late, too,” Nell Slack said. “I’m sorry, Mario.” She put her basket on a chair, grinning up at him. He was shuffling his feet and looking everywhere but into her eyes.

  “This is Scotti House,” he said again.

  Then Nell Slack understood that he’d brought Scotti there.

  “Oh, dear,” she said to him. And oddly, stepped back and snapped another picture of him.

  “Look,” he said, his composure coming back weakly. “Let’s the three of us enjoy ourselves.”

  “I can’t stay, really,” she said. “I just popped in to say hi!”

  “Did you drive yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “But have a drink with us,” Mario insisted.

  Scotti excused herself and went back to the ladies’ room, by the bar.

  She combed her hair and washed her hands, stalling while she thought of what she should do. Leave. Obviously she was in the way.

  She took her time and when she went back, Nell Slack was gone.

  Mario threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I screwed that one up, all right.”

  “Is she someone you’re interested in, Mario? You can tell me. We’re just two writers out on the town, no strings.”

  “Thanks.” But his face was crestfallen, eyes sad.

  Scotti realized she’d left her bag back on the sink. Even after all these years wearing female attire, she still often forgot her bag. She went to retrieve it, and when she emerged this time she saw Nell Slack again. Nell was down at the other end of the bar, in a corner. A tall, black-haired fellow was helping her into a brown suede coat. He led her toward the door, his arm firmly around her waist.

  Scotti watched them leave and then returned to Mario.

  “Did your friend say she came alone?”

  “No, but I’m sure she did.”

  “I like her looks, Mario.”

  “So do I.”

  From where Mario and Scotti stood there was no view of the bar or the door.

  Fast worker, Scotti thought, but didn’t really believe Nell Slack had just met someone there. And what was all the picture taking about?

  “She hires my van sometimes when she’s traveling. She’s a product demonstrator in department stores,” Mario said. “I think there’s some kind of spark there. Maybe I imagined it.” He chuckled.

  “She did go out of her way to take your picture.”

  “That she did. That she did.”

  Scotti relaxed and began to enjoy herself. She could use a friend, and that was what he was going to be.

  EIGHT

  Later, when he drove her home, they listened to music on the radio. A golden oldies station. Suddenly the Village People were singing an old disco number from Scotti’s teens: “YMCA.”

  Scotti could almost smell the dirty-socks aroma of poppers, and see the boys in flannel shirts and tight, ripped jeans, their faces joyful and sweaty, bodies gyrating, everyone singing along under the dancing beams of light on the crowded floor.

  Scott had lived in those clubs as a teenager, lying about his age, telling no one, all the while feeling that it was the one place where he felt free. It was never sex he was searching for.

  Years later, after he met Jessica, who was one of his students before they became close friends, he told her about it. She claimed that was proof Scott wasn’t gay, that both she and Scott were just undersexed. When Scott would complain that he hated his body, Jessica would say, so did she hate hers. She’d say, “Forget our bodies! They make us miserable!”

  Thanks to his friendship with Jessica, his age, and the advent of AIDS, Scott began avoiding the discos, leather bars, and the uptown “bird circuit,” where all the gay bars were named after birds.

  He spent most of his time with Jessica, and finally gave in to her wish to get married and have a child.

  After Emma was born, Scott accepted a position as headmaster at Regis School for Boys. Students and faculty both were buzzing about a professor in the science department named Virgil Loeper. A father of three, married for fifteen years, with a PhD, he was in the process of becoming Virginia Loeper—Ginny.

  In his letter, “To All Concerned,” he spoke of the Allen Institute, where he belonged to the Metamorphs.

  Scott would see Loeper around campus: this dowdy, bespectacled, fiftyish “female” who dressed in severe dark women’s suits, with gray hair pulled back in a bun, carrying her briefcase, calling back greetings to students in her deep voice.

  Without speaking to Loeper about it, Scott soon made an appointment with Dr. Marvin Rush, who headed the institute. Jessica pleaded with Scott not to go ahead with it, accusing him of self-hatred, imploring him to just accept what he was without becoming “a freak.”

  “I’m already about as freaky as anyone can get.”

  “You have a responsibility to Emma.”

  “I have a responsibility to let Emma know no matter what any of us become, we’ll always love each other. That’s what family is all about.”

  Then Scott entered the Gender Identity Program, and for the first time encountered others like him. He was amazed to find there were few young men in the program, and most of the ones his age and older were not handsome or even slighdy effeminate; more often they were large, burly fellows whose secret no one would guess.

  Before he was accepted for gender reassignment, Dr. Rush guided Scott, exploring his stability, clearing up any misconceptions or extravagant expectations. For two years, once he began taking hormones, the only time he did not dress as a woman was when he visited Emma. The headmaster at the Regis School made some crack about Scott “catching it” from Ginny Loeper, but he did not fire him. He simply wouldn’t renew Scott’s contract. Scott began depilatory treatments, the estrogen he’d taken softening the beard enough to make the electrolysis less painful. He continued twice-weekly sessions with Rush, supporting himself by editing textbooks.

  “You could stop now, Scotti,” Rush said when nearly everything was done but the genital surgery. “For some it’s enough just to be living life as a female, or a male. There are pre-ops who have no intention of becoming post-ops,”

  “You mean the campy Chicks With Dicks?”

  “I’ve heard of them. I don’t mean them, Scotti.”

  “I’m going to take all the steps. I’m not a transvestite.”

  Dr. Rush said, “It’s odd that some transsexuals look down on the transvestites, the transvestites look down on the transsexuals, the homosexuals figure they’re a peg above both of you, and the heterosexuals think all of you are freaks.”

  “I don’t look down on anyone,” said Scotti, “and right now I’m not any of those. I’m half-and-half.”

  Rush passed Scott an envelope. “Always carry this letter from me, in case you’re ever in an accident or a situation requiring sex verification. You’ll need it until you’re a post-op. But start now to establish your new identity. A driver’s license, charge cards, that sort of thing.”

  The letter announced that Scotti House was a member of the Allen Institute Metamorphism Program for Gender Reassignment. She was becoming a female.

  It was the beginning of the end of Scott.

  The genital surgery could have followed a year later. But three more years had passed and Scotti was still in debt from the breast-implant surgery, the work on her face and neck, and the expense of her wardrobe. Ernest Leogrande, MD, of Trinidad, Colorado, was the best surgeon, the only one Scotti wanted to operate. He had given Max the two requisite mastectomies, and the penis Max was so proud of.

  Until Scotti could afford Leogrande she would pay off her credit cards, live with her mother, work at the library, and edit
textbooks. She might even finish her memoir.

  When the song finished playing over the radio in Mario’s van, Scotti said, “I haven’t heard that one in a long, long time.”

  “‘YMCA.’ That was the fag anthem,” Mario said. “Sometimes some of them would come to The Magic C for our Sunday afternoon buffets. That was one song they always liked. That and Irene Cara singing ‘Fame,’ with that line: ‘We’re going to live forever’ . . . ironic, seeing what happened to so many of diem.”

  Finally, they were at her mother’s house. Mario climbed down from the van and rushed around to the passenger side to help Scotti out.

  On the doorstep he grinned down at her. “I can’t imagine you ever hanging out in discos.”

  “I’ve changed.”

  “I hope I have, too. Do you want to have drinks or dinner occasionally? Winters are deadly out here.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  She wouldn’t have encouraged him if she’d thought he was even remotely interested, or vice versa.

  She didn’t want a romantic relationship until after Step One: the surgery.

  Step Two was meeting someone you knew you would be taking Step Three with, sooner or later. Step Three was what Metamorphs called “outing” yourself.

  Jessica had wanted to try living with Scotti for as long as possible. They had never been very active sexually, so that would not be missed. But Scotti felt it would be too hard for Emma to accept. Scotti just hadn’t imagined, ever, that their daughter wouldn’t even want to talk on the telephone with her.

  Transsexuals who married seemed to be happiest when they’d known their partners before the reconstructive surgery. Usually their partners supported them through the ordeal, wanted it for them as much as they wanted it for themselves.

  Max Bernstein, for example. He’d met his wife, Helen, at Smith College, fallen in love with her, and agreed with her they did not want to live as lesbians. Max swore he could only be happy as a male, and Helen just wanted Max, whatever he was. Courts in New York State did not recognize sex-changed individuals as legal marriage partners.

  But the Bernsteins were happy as clams, except for two major flaws Max said Helen had.

  The first was her aversion to opera, which Max adored. Particularly Wagner, who Max suspected had cross-dressed. Max had presented a paper on Wagner’s famous “Letters to a Seamstress” at Metamorphs. It was about Wagner’s legendary fondness for costumes, satins, and silks.

  Helen Bernstein’s other imperfection was the reason Max had gotten so bombed with Scotti on Thanksgiving. Helen was a terrible cook. Even something as uncomplicated as turkey was a disaster in Helen’s hands.

  NINE

  It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve and the Thacker Quartet was playing at the library. But that wasn’t the real reason for the crowd that was gathering near three o’clock. Jack Burlingame was reading from his latest thriller, You’ll Die at Christmas, Carolyn. Burlingame was not a local, so this was a special occasion. More people arrived than had been expected. Most of the librarians were rushing around finding extra chairs.

  Scotti was left alone at the front desk, checking out books beyond the time she was required to. A line had formed, and at the end of it, there he stood—the man who’d brought her home from Hampton Bays on Thanksgiving night.

  She remembered very little about that ride. If he had told her his name, she did not remember it. But who could forget the size of him, the beaky nose, and the fire color of his hair? At the end of Thanksgiving evening, after Scotti and Max had left the Bernsteins’ to have a drink at By The Bay, they’d noticed him standing at the bar.

  “Look at the schnoz on that guy,” Max had remarked. “Remember my old nose?”

  “All I remember is your boobs.” Scotti had laughed. “I’d have killed for them!”

  Max was the only post-op still in the program. The Metamorphs liked to tease Max about using the support group solely to bitch about his wife’s cooking. Helen simply did not have a talent for it. The reason Scotti and Max had left the Bernsteins’ was the argument that had ensued after Helen served the guests a turkey that bled when Max carved it. Max was furious. He had muttered to Helen (but everyone there had heard), “After all I’ve gone through for you, you could at least learn to cook! ”

  Like most FTM Metamorphs, the change made Max look younger than thirty-six. He looked so much like a kid, the bartender had carded him.

  It had been eons since Scotti had had that much to drink, and that little to eat. Not only was the turkey inedible, but the sweet potatoes were rock hard, the creamed onions were burned, and the salad was soggy from being overdressed.

  The next day, Scotti had her first blackout in years. She had awakened on her bed, fully clothed, hungover, her Saturn, she found out after making a few phone calls, still in the parking lot in Hampton Bays.

  All Max could tell her about the evening was that he had the fight with Helen, a great time in the bar with Scotti, and at the end they had waved good-bye as Scotti got into her Saturn. Max didn’t remember seeing the redhead with the big nose in the parking lot.

  The keys to her Saturn were in her coat pocket. She took a taxi to By The Bay, and saw that she must have hit a post there. She got into her car and drove back to East Hampton, trying hard to remember anything about the man.

  She only remembered having to urinate, being unable to get down from the Jeep, then his exclamation: “Oh, my God!”

  She had another blurry recollection of stumbling toward her mother’s house, grateful that her mother was at Jessica’s.

  Had he put her out of the car? Or had she summoned forth the good sense not to let him see where she lived?

  Then he was standing in front of her, at the library desk.

  “Well, hel-lo,” he said.

  “Hello.”

  He put down a Ruth Rendell book, and pushed an old copy of Edith’s Diary toward her. A Patricia Highsmith that was oddly without a murder in it. On top of the book, he placed the plastic library tag, saying, “This is one of the few books of hers I don’t own.” Then softly, searching her eyes before she could look away, “And how are you today?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  The computer produced the name Len Lasher.

  She looked up at him. “This isn’t yours.”

  “I work for Mr. Lasher. I’m his manager.”

  “Usually Mario Rome checks out books for him.”

  “Usually. My name is Delroy Davenport, if you remember.”

  “I don’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport.”

  “I never figured you for a librarian.”

  As the date registered on the book slip, he said, “I thought you might be in show business.”

  “We’ve never met, Mr. Davenport.”

  “I know. It didn’t happen . . . but it did.”

  “You’ve made a mistake. I’m so sorry.” She smiled briefly at him.

  He shrugged, a smile tipping his lips. “I wondered if we’d meet again.”

  Scotti could feel the rush of blood from her neck to her face.

  “Have you read Edith’s Diary?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “There’s a line in it I like. It won’t take me long to find it. It might appeal to you, too. I’ll try to locate it.” He began turning pages.

  “Not now, please. We’re very rushed now. The desk is closed, too.” The Thacker Quartet was playing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” “I’d like to stay for the Christmas program,” he said, “but I’m expected back at Le Reve.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Did you have a Thanksgiving program, too?”

  A stranger like old times.

  That hadn’t happened to Scott very often. He had never hunted for a male partner, for any partner.

  But there were occasions when he had drunk too much and given in to an insistent sexual suitor.

  It always shamed him.

  It was after one such encounter that he had agr
eed with Jessica: they should get married.

  TEN

  “You know I don’t like pink!” Myrna House whined. “I never wear it.” “I didn’t know you didn’t like it, Mother.”

  “When did you ever see me wear pink? It’s an old ladies’ color.”

  “I’ll return it, Mother.”

  Scotti bent over and tried to take the cardigan. Her mother snatched it back. “Never mind. I’ll wear it.”

  “If you don’t like the color, it’s easy for me to take it back.”

  “Then I’ll have to hear about how you had to take it back. I’d rather break my rule about never wearing pink.”

  “I didn’t know you had a rule about never wearing pink.”

  “Scott would have remembered it. Scott listened to me.”

  Mrs. House reached for a cigarette. They had gone through the obligatory Christmas Eve gift-opening, and the wrapping and ribbons were strewn about the floor. The television was turned low, a church service on the screen with priests officiating at an altar.

  Scotti had received a note saying she was subscribing to Readers Digest. There was also a bottle of’92 Vosne-Romanee burgundy (bless her mother’s heart!) which Scotti knew Amagansett Wines & Liquors had recommended.

  Besides the sweater, Scotti had bought her mother a bag from Coach, to replace the shabby Kmart one she always carried, and a new L.L. Bean parka, so Myrna House wouldn’t have to wear her long dress coat on walks,

  Mrs. House blew out some smoke and turned up the sound on the TV, before beginning her commentary on Christmas.

  “This will be my last one, for sure. I won’t be around next year. I hope you’ll take the trouble to find a good home for Baba. I know you won’t take him.”

  “I can’t take care of a dog and work all day.”

  ‘‘I just wonder who you’ll give him to. Not a lot of people want old dogs. The caretaker at the cemetery today said he loved bulldogs, Baba in particular, but he’s on his last legs, too. Oh, and he told me something else. That grave I mentioned that’s being prepared? It’s for Len Lasher. Lasher Communications. You know who that is?”

  “Of course. But he’s not dying.”

  “It’s hush-hush, Scott. There’s a whole half acre with room for his family when they go. It’s all beautifully landscaped. They’ve dug the grave in case the weather gets so cold the ground freezes, and they’ve covered it over.”