A Kind of Justice Read online

  Sam’s remark brings murmured assent. The girls may be taking some comfort from having an oversized transwoman in the place. I’d rather be five-five and 120 pounds, but this morning, it was nice to be six feet tall, 160 pounds, with enough leverage and heft to drop a piece of bad news in his tracks.

  My mind notes the fact that Sugar Ray Robinson was six feet tall and 160. Dad’s favorite fighter. But Dad wouldn’t see much similarity between his son-turned-daughter and the great Sugar Ray. Even before he got to my white skin, he’d blanch at my plump breasts and my almost-feminine butt. And Dad would puke.

  My father was homophobic when I thought I was gay. He would have been transphobic, too, but he died before I got to this part of my life. Whatever. I’ve come to realize that, with or without a dick, I’m a better person than he ever was.

  As I modestly proclaim mine a lucky punch, Roger unlocks the front door and enters. He is the owner of the shop and one of the finest human beings I’ve ever known. He stuck by me in my transition, even when customers and stylists alike were making his life miserable. And he wants me to own this shop with the kind of passion a patriarch might have for keeping the business in the family.

  Roger walks directly to me. He is a smallish, slim man whose walk and mannerisms are more effeminate than mine, even though I work at it and he doesn’t. His movements are fast, like there is a fire burning behind him. His face is stressed. He stands on his tiptoes and throws his arms around me and we hug like siblings who haven’t seen each other for years.

  “Are you okay now?” he asks as we break the clinch. He is almost shaking with pent-up anxiety. He doesn’t wait for an answer but moves among the others, asking the same question, hugging each one, apologizing that his salon was the scene of such a violent event. He can be a very tough boss and a hard-nosed businessman, but deep down inside he’s as mushy and sentimental as any of us.

  As the staff starts trickling out into the night, Roger and I retreat to his tiny office. When I’m in here with him, the ghosts of my transition always lurk on the edges of my consciousness. This is where Roger didn’t fire me for coming in as a woman, out of the blue—yesterday a man, today the worst sort of queer—a transsexual woman. This is where he told me to quit apologizing for who I was and just get to making women beautiful. And this is where he introduced me to the SuperGlam people and recommended me for their hair show staff, the start of my platform career, which led to me becoming what Roger calls a rock-star hairdresser.

  Even though there is no one left in the shop, Roger closes the office door before sitting at his desk. I’m in a hard plastic chair facing him, with just enough room to cross my legs.

  Roger clears his throat, looks at me, drops his gaze, clears his throat, looks at me. On the third cycle he bursts into tears like a broken-hearted child. This is not hair salon histrionics. This is pure grief. I rise and come around the desk and throw my arms around him. He stands and we hug, me stooping so our bodies match up.

  He sobs for a long time, until his torrential grief subsides to a throbbing ache. I know what that’s like and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

  “He’s not going to make it, Bobbi,” Roger says as I sit down again. He’s referring to his cancer-stricken partner, Robert. They have been a dedicated, loving couple for decades. They had dreamed of someday getting legally married, but Illinois is still wrestling with the twin bigotries of homophobia and religious hatred. How they manage to face each day upbeat and cheerful in the face of such injustice is beyond me, but they do. At least, until now.

  “They’re saying three months, maybe less. I asked him what he wanted to do with the rest of his life . . .” Roger tries to smile but sobs. He is in such pain I want to give him my tears to cry.

  “He wants to finish his days watching the sun rise and set in Florida.”

  Roger and Robert have both done very well in business and bought a beautiful home in Key West. I haven’t been there, but several of the hairdressers have and they rave about it.

  “I need you to buy the business right now, Bobbi. No more dawdling. I need to get Robert to Florida, and you need to own this salon. Believe me, Bobbi, you will make it even better and owning this place will help fulfill you. You’re made for it. These people look up to you . . .” Roger pauses a beat as I raise my eyebrows in surprise. I’m an unlikely icon for leadership in the beauty business. “No, they do. They admire you, Bobbi. You’re smart and fair and you are one of the greatest hairdressers in the city. They’ll stay if you take over. You’ll all do well.”

  “I’m worried about the economy, Roger.” I am. The financial crash ushered in a recession. We’ve always been able to handle them, but this one is ominous. Economists keep forecasting a recovery, but it keeps getting worse, like a wound you can’t stop from bleeding.

  “You’re getting a fabulous price on this business,” says Roger. “Believe me, I could get more from other sources. I want you to have it. If things get really bad, we can redo my part of the deal.” Roger owns a high percentage of the business. The bank’s share isn’t much more than a line of credit, which is why I can make this purchase without putting up much in the way of cash or assets.

  I nod but don’t say anything. He’s not done yet.

  “I need you to do this fast, Bobbi. I have another offer, and I’ll have to take it if you aren’t ready to move.”

  I shouldn’t be so intimidated about taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I worked in the corporate world as a marketing type, so I’ve been involved in mergers and acquisitions, some on a grand scale, but none involving my money.

  Words don’t come to me. I want to tell Roger that I’m thinking about it, but it scares me. He’s heard it before.

  “Bobbi, I’ve wanted you to have this salon ever since I saw you standing out in front of buildings freezing your ass off in the dead of winter handing out leaflets for your services. I’ve never ever met anyone who wanted to be a hairdresser so much and who was such a good person. I love you. Robert loves you. Do this!”

  Roger’s timing is impeccable. The adrenaline rush from taking down that junkie has wakened my inner warrior, and Roger’s words have caressed my heart.

  “I love you both, too, Roger.” I want to say how heartbroken I am. For both of them. But the words seem too trite to say out loud and so I stare at him and let my tears come. Roger regards me with the greatest sadness, powered by his loss and also by my grief.

  “Okay, Roger,” I say finally. “I’ll have my attorney contact yours.”

  So ends months of procrastination, me trying to reason the whole thing out, not able to rationalize making the move, plunging ahead now on an emotional whim. I’m not going to think about it anymore. No second-guessing, no buyer’s remorse. I said yes and now I’ll see it through. I’m scared, but the truth is, Roger is right. I can make this work, maybe better than anyone else. And if I fail, I’ll be brave and I’ll start over.

  Roger and I hug again, a long embrace baptized with tears. When we finally leave the shop, we blow kisses to each other on the sidewalk and go into the night in different directions.

  * * *

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18

  “Of course I will,” says Cecelia. She glances at me, a wry smile playing at her lips, as if my question was silly. She has just agreed to come to the closing on the salon with me.

  We are puffing and sweating along the Chicago lakefront, engaged in our weekly Wednesday power walk together. Cecelia is a retired investment banker. She was at the top of that pyramid back in the day, back when she was an alpha male. Now she’s a leader in the Chicago transgender community and my best friend. She’s big and loud and defiantly transsexual, unwilling to countenance bullshit from anyone about it. We met when I was first beginning to explore my hidden transgender reality. My first impression of her was unkind. I thought she was a loudmouthed jerk.

  But when I began my tortured transition, I discovered a different dimension to Cecelia, a deeply compassionate side that
she keeps mostly hidden. She shared that part of herself with me during my transition, when I was hit by a tidal wave of societal waste that stripped away my self-esteem and left me alone in the world. She gave me hope and courage and a role model for the parts of transitioning I was worst at. She got things from me, too. I gave her a different friendship than she had with others. I needed her but didn’t take her crap and she liked having an equal. And we both found in the other someone who had similar intellect and came from the white-collar business world. She has counseled me through this whole acquisition scenario, especially holding my hand as I fussed about all the debt and responsibility.

  “Here’s the funny thing,” she says, nudging me playfully with one elbow. “When it’s all done and you’re walking around with a debt bigger than the sky, after you learn to live with the fear of failure, you start to feel powerful. Special. How many people are successful enough to carry that kind of debt?”

  I can’t picture the power trip she describes. All I can see is the sheer horror of coming up short, losing everything, seeing my colleagues have to scramble for new jobs. Destroying Roger’s retirement.

  The conversation ends as we pick up the pace to an aerobic level and focus on the burn. Twenty minutes later, we shift to a cool-down pace. As my pulse and breathing return to normal, I look Cecelia in the eye and blurt out a question that’s been on my mind for five years.

  “Cecelia, where were you the night Strand was murdered?”

  She stops cold and stares at me. Her eyes are blue, her brows rounded in surprise. Shock maybe. This is something we don’t talk about.

  “I was with you until eleven or so.”

  As if I could forget. The worst, longest night of my life started with a beat-down Bobbi group therapy session with three of my best friends and my transition psychologist. Afterward, my friends insisted I have a drink with them. I have never so desperately wanted to be alone as I did then. I had a rendezvous with Strand planned for that night and I was so wracked with tension about it I could barely make conversation.

  “Where did you go after that?” I shouldn’t ask, but I can’t stop wondering. My nightmare is, she admits to being the one who slashed John Strand’s throat and later the police try to coerce that information from me by offering me a deal I can’t refuse. Give up my best friend, or give up the rest of my life. You’d like to think you’d never do that, but who knows until you face the reality of it?

  “Where did you go after that, Bobbi?” Cecelia’s voice is sharp. We stare at each other in silence for several long beats. She isn’t asking a question. She’s making a statement.

  “I heard that detective is back on the case,” she says. “If he asks me, I’ll tell him I went home after I left you. But, Bobbi, none of us wants to know where the others were that night. We all went home after we left the bar. What if someone told you they killed Strand? What would you do with that information? If you talk about it with anyone, you could ruin that person’s reputation. If you tell the police, you could get that person arrested. If you just eat it, what’s the point? Nothing good can come of it.”

  My thoughts exactly. Sometimes I just forget myself and blurt things out. Like when I asked Strand if he murdered my friend Mandy. A stupid thing to do. It told him point-blank what I was up to. Of course, it also produced my first glimpse of the malice that boiled just below his amiable facade. Up to that moment he had been seductively charming, but as the question rolled from my lips, a shadow passed over his face, and I could see the demons of hell in his eyes. Just for a moment. I wish now I had given more credence to my instincts that night and just walked away from the whole thing—Strand, the murder investigation, everything. Strand would still be alive and terrorizing people, but I would have avoided a horrific conflict, and I’d still be able to sleep like the innocent today.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Bobbi?” Cecelia knows I zone out sometimes. She wants to make sure I’m in the here and now for this message.

  “Yes, Cecelia.” I nod my head in the affirmative. But my question dangles unanswered in my consciousness like an itch you can’t scratch. Might I someday be locked away in a place worse than death for something she did? Would I be able to live with that?

  * * *

  FRIDAY, JUNE 20

  Don Richards stands and smiles as Betsy shows me into his home office. He is a decent guy. He’s good to Betsy, almost everything I would want in a man for the woman I have loved both as a husband and a sister. He’s not quite tender, but he’s considerate. And kind. And reliable. He will always be there for her, and for my niece, little Robbie.

  He had already won my respect when he and Betsy married, but he cemented it when Betsy miscarried the first child they conceived. Betsy was devastated, not only from the loss but also from feelings of guilt that she must have done something wrong. Don felt the loss, too, I could see it in him, but he put his pain in the background and invested himself in nursing Betsy’s shattered soul back to health. To me, that’s courage, love, and decency—most of the good things I can say about anyone.

  The other thing about Don is that he has allowed Betsy and me to continue our relationship. We who were once man and wife became sister and sister. Betsy was the prime mover in our reunification. We had drifted apart after the divorce, mainly because I was ashamed of who I was. I felt that I’d betrayed her, not being the man she thought she had married. She reconnected with me when I started my transition and insisted we do things together. We shopped, had coffee, I did her hair, she and Don had me over for dinner.

  Don went along with all that, even when most men wouldn’t, even when it probably gave him the creeps, seeing his wife’s ex-husband as a transsexual woman. Because of all that, I can forgive him for being a Republican. And for having to pretend that he likes me instead of actually liking me.

  Don is a pleasant-looking man. Neat, well kept, a hint of middle-age spread. More scholarly than athletic. Serious. I can’t imagine him telling a joke. The computer screen behind him is filled with spreadsheet data, glowing like a beacon in a dark room where the only other light is a curved-arm desk lamp with its beam focused on a neat stack of papers and a neat stack of files on the desk.

  The desk is cleaner than an operating room. More organized than a Japanese factory.

  We shake hands. He manages not to recoil at my dainty fingertip offering. He’s not comfortable with me being a woman. He tries to hide it, but I recognize it in him just as clearly as I feel ill at ease in such an unnaturally tidy room.

  We sit down, the desk between us, and he straightens the papers in front of him. He has been doing due diligence for me on the salon’s books. He passes me the written report and starts on the verbal. “Roger’s books are in order, his annual audits are thorough, and the business looks to be in good shape,” says Don. “Cash flow is excellent, receivables are small, bills get paid on time. The net profit isn’t going to make anyone sell their Google stock, but it’s solid and consistent, and from what I’ve been able to glean, has a good margin for a retail beauty salon.”

  He continues on for another ten minutes with only a few pauses. The bottom line: the business is in great shape and probably worth more than I’m paying for it. Don doesn’t see any obvious places to expand sales, though he hastily adds that he doesn’t know the salon business at all.

  I’m not feeling all that knowledgeable myself.

  “You like to have an idea when you buy a business like this about how you can grow it or cut costs to pay for it,” says Don. He painstakingly takes me through the byzantine logic of how company selling prices are based on multiples of gross profit, and how bigger companies command higher multiples than small ones.

  For me, the multiple I pay will be an estimate for how many years it will take to pay off the business. I can reduce that number by increasing profits, either through organic growth or higher margins on existing business, or both.

  I comprehend the concept but find the weight of it oppressive. The c
loser we get to the closing, the more I just want to do hair. In fact, as Don goes on, my mind is filled with the image of a beautiful up-do, my hands can remember how the hair looked and felt when I worked it. Its color is deeply dimensional, a mesh of tones and shades that invite the eye inside its density, like a cavern of beautiful colors that streak and blend and lead you ever deeper into the mystery below.

  Don asks if I have questions.

  “Is this a good investment for me?” I ask.

  He grimaces. “That’s better answered by Cecelia. What I can tell you is, it’s a well-run business and its paper value seems to be higher than what he’s asking. If there are hidden debts or problems we don’t know about, that could change everything. But from what you’ve said about Roger, those things aren’t likely.”

  We adjourn to the kitchen. Robbie rushes to greet us. She is a merry cherub, three years old and taking full pleasure in a world that sees her as sweet and cute and denies her nothing. I help Betsy carry dishes to the dining table, trying to quell my inner panic. My acquisition of Salon L’Elégance is down to one last step: a sober session with the lawyers, at the end of which I will take on a debt that is worth many times more than my life.

  * * *

  FRIDAY, JUNE 27

  Being a transsexual woman is like living in a four-season climate: your environment is constantly changing. The difference is, for the transwoman—for oversized ones like me, anyway—the changes come fast and furious and not in any natural order.

  I’m bathing in a springtime moment as we leave the law offices of Roger’s attorney. I have just closed on the purchase of Salon L’Elégance. It’s Roger, Cecelia, me, and my attorney, but it might as well just be me. I am the nominal owner of one of Chicago’s most prestigious salons. I’m swimming in a bottomless sea of debt and I have just taken on an inhuman degree of responsibility, but as Cecelia predicted, part of me is giddy with the realization of how far I’ve come in the world.