---

 
Dr. Morgan’s office was on Pinckney Street in Beacon Hill, amid sleek men driving European cars and sleeker women carrying Hermes purses. I had to park a few blocks away, and walked in the bright spring sunshine.

For the visit to Dr. Morgan’s I’d dressed in the same kind of gender-neutral wear I’d always favored, black jeans and a blue t-shirt, but I’d also worn a lightly padded bra, and a pair of strappy sandals. After maintaining the routine with my eyebrows and hair I’d come to the realization that people were going to perceive me as female no matter what I did, unless I had a flat chest, which just made them confused. Since I’d become so used to wearing a bra now it seemed like the path of least resistance.

All the same I was insanely nervous as I walked in, and I stammered slightly as I introduced myself to the receptionist. I never stammered in my life until then but I had a fear of doctors in general, and a fear of the procedures Arun had suggested in particular. I’d never been under anesthetic before, never been cut by a surgeon for anything, had in fact never seen a doctor — psychiatrists excepted — for anything more substantial than the flu. Now here I was, looking definitely more female than male, in the offices of a plastic surgeon.

The reception room seemed more like that of a well-to-do lawyer than a surgeon. It was well decorated, in that kind of overdone Architectural Digest manner. What particularly caught my attention, though, were a few small bronzes in cabinets and two marble busts on stands in corners of the room. If they weren’t originals they were very, very good reproductions. With my rudimentary knowledge of Art from things I’d learned from Susan, I guessed they were originals. Dr. Morgan was a collector of antiquities. The receptionist gave me some forms to fill out, but I had enough time waiting that I was able to study the art very thoroughly. I wished Susan was there – she’d probably have known whether or not they were original. Thinking about Susan made me guilty, though. She didn’t know I was seeing Dr. Morgan.

When I finally saw him Dr. Morgan was very reassuring. Yes, I would need anesthetic, but I’d only be in hospital for three nights at most – possibly even only two. It would take between one to six weeks to recover, depending upon the procedures. He asked whether I had determined the extent of what I wanted.

At that point I wasn’t sure how to respond. Arun had been clear with us that we couldn’t talk about the real reasons why we wanted the surgery. There had to be other reasons than wanting to disguise ourselves.

So I talked generally about wanting to ‘refine’ my appearance. That was the word Arun had decided I should use. Alice had agreed. It seemed like a good way to guarantee subtle changes without anything major being evident. Dan had joked that he wanted to ‘unrefine’ his appearance, but Dan was built like a cross between Buddha and Arnold Schwarzenegger so it was hard to see how that was possible. I had mentioned to the gang that maybe we should ask for specifics like bigger noses and such like, but that had made Alice nervous, and Arun had said that getting too specific was probably not such a great idea, as it would limit the surgeons in what they changed, and it might even make them suspicious. Nobody ever asked for a bigger nose.

All the same, I wasn’t sure I wanted my features ‘refined,’ especially given all the problems I’d been having with sexual identity since using contacts, the incident in Louisiana, and the responses I’d been getting from Pete. In fact I’d had a long talk with Alice about it: what if I asked Dr. Morgan to try to make me look less feminine? We’d both determined it was probably only going to make me look odd.

And there was the fact that I was presenting to Dr. Morgan as a woman.

So I explained to Dr. Morgan that I still wanted to look more or less like me, but with a few of the rough edges rounded out. He seemed to find that intriguing. Eventually I got him to understand that I was trying to change the proportions of my face, so that I looked more classically attractive. Perhaps a little less Asian? I’d studied some art history, and based on the busts out in reception I figured he’d understand what I was aiming for. A Roman nose. A stronger countenance. I couldn’t really say something like that out loud – for one thing I would have laughed while saying it. But we talked briefly about the classic ideal of beauty, and I complimented him on his artworks, and gradually I began to feel like I was connecting with him. More classically attractive – that was it.

When I saw him a few minutes later we went through some formalities as he reviewed my chart. He asked me for some basic medical history. “Any previous surgeries?”

“None,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

“And you’re not on any medication?”

“No.”

“No contraception?”

For a moment I thought he was asking about condoms. Then I realized he hadn’t read the file as thoroughly as I thought he had. “Uh, Dr. Morgan. Have you … Um …”

He noticed my confusion and looked once again at the questionnaire I’d filled out in the waiting room. Then he looked back up at me, confused. “Alex, you’ve ticked “male” on this form. Alex is short for …”

“Alexander. Yes sir.”

“I see. I don’t usually agree to see patients of your, uh, persuasion.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t operate on transsexuals. I don’t know who referred you to me. I have no moral or ethical problems with the syndrome, it’s just that they’re not always good at paying their accounts.”

I was about to launch into invective about how I wasn’t transsexual, but I reflected it probably wouldn’t do any good. I tried a different tack. “I’ll be paying cash. In actual cash if you want it that way. Or a cashier’s check. Your choice.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Morgan said. “That was insensitive of me.” He looked embarrassed. “You must think me a bigot. I must say you are by far the most feminine uh, transsexual, I have ever met.”

I was still feeling snarky. “There are probably a lot you’ve met and haven’t realized.”

“Touché,” he said. “My apologies. I’d like to get off to a better start. Can we keep talking about what it is you’re looking for?”

My consultation with Dr. Morgan lasted for at least 45 minutes. It turned out that quite a few Asians want to look less Asian and more Caucasian, and Dr. Morgan seemed to grasp the concept quite easily. By the end of our session we had discussed a range of surgeries, and he’d suggested some surgeries he’d reassured me would be “very subtle”. I made him reassure me again and again. They included changing the distance between my top lip and my nose, minor rhinoplasty, and some changes to my chin – possibly a small implant. I was worried about this – would I look like Michael Jackson?

Dr. Morgan reassured me yet again. “Very subtle,” he repeated.

“Your eyes are your strongest feature,” he said to me. “I wouldn’t want to make any changes there. You have a North Asian epicanthal fold. Somewhat horizontal, but it’s more pronounced than usual in size, slightly closer to Caucasian norms.”

“My dad’s Jewish. My Mom’s Japanese. My maternal grandmother was half-French,” I said.

“That would explain it. Well, you have very attractive eyes.”

I thought the conversation was going in an odd direction.

“How many patients do you see in a week?” I asked him, to change the subject. I was also worried about his workload, and his attention to detail.

“About twenty consultations in a week, and about twelve cases in surgery,” he answered. Later, I was to regret not asking him for more detail on what those cases were but at the time it seemed like he was neither overworked nor under-appreciated. I felt as comfortable as anyone would feel, if they were going to have their identity altered, and if they were a guy presenting as a woman. We agreed I would be scheduled for surgery within two weeks. I made a point of writing a two thousand dollar check for a deposit while I was still in his office, and he looked suitably embarrassed when I promised him it would clear.

I went home with mixed emotions. I knew Arun was right, we couldn’t go on as we were, but I also knew somehow that it was going to lead to disaster. I felt like I was on a runaway train.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Back at home Pete was wildly excited about the new finance for his business. He and Vassily had courted several other financiers before a serious offer from Command Dynamics, the defense contractor, which was now entering the final phases of due diligence to acquire a forty percent stake. Pete was knee deep in meetings with his earlier backers, and advisors, and with the suits from Command Dynamics, but he seemed to be in his element.

I was genuinely excited for him. Pete was one of those guys whose enthusiasm was contagious. I guess that was what made him a good entrepreneur, and also, by all accounts, a good CEO. He was passionate, and he made you feel his passion, through sheer energy on his part. Even at the depths of our most cynical grumbling about the world when we were drinking at Grendel's, there was always something about Pete that was grounded, real, and endowed with the kind of confidence that comes with having been well over six feet tall since you were fourteen. Since about the fourth week after I had met him, that night at the record hospital, I knew that Pete would be the kind of guy I could always rely on. He was a rock. Not a flashy diamond — he was too quiet for that. He was more like granite.

If the deal went through, he was going to be financially solid, too. His share of the transaction would amount to well over ten million dollars. He'd have to work for at least two years before the stock part of the transaction vested, but that was to be expected in the type of deal he was negotiating.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Alice and I had coffee later in the week, to share our concerns about the whole plastic surgery scheme. I hadn’t had the nerve to mention it to Susan, or to Pete, or any of my other friends, because I was pretty sure I knew what their response would be. I had almost told Pete, but he was so wrapped up in his deal it seemed difficult. With Susan I thought I already knew what the answer would be. So Alice was the only person I could bounce my feelings off.

None of the others on the team seemed as concerned as Alice. Dan’s original opposition seemed to have faded since he found out he could get his acne scarring reduced with some kind of laser treatment. Lucy was enthusiastic, and seemed to see it as her opportunity to be remade as the kind of woman she’d always wanted to look like. Bob seemed to be driven entirely by the desire to keep making the kind of money he’d become used to. Or maybe he needed it for payments on the house he’d bought. I wasn’t close enough to him to ask.

I was still somewhat in love with Alice — even though it still seemed to be unrequited as far as I could tell — but I wasn't sure still I wanted to sleep with her. Perhaps what I had with Alice was similar to what I had with Pete — what Susan had called “a crush.“

Crush or not, I respected Alice's opinion. We’d become closer the more time we spent together, even though there were still so many things I didn't know about her.

As we discussed things over coffee at her apartment I could sense she was worried about Dr. Morgan. We were the only people on the team who had been sent to him. Dan had been sent to someone in New York, Lucy to someone in Los Angeles of all places, and Eliza to someone in New York that Arun was also seeing. Neither Alice nor I knew who Bob was scheduled with.

Alice wasn’t worried about Dr. Morgan’s experience, but about his results. “I saw the photographs he showed of his patients,” she said.

I hadn’t even thought to ask about that when I saw him.

“And?” I asked

“They’re all rich white women,” Alice said. “When I asked him if he’d ever operated on an Asian woman before he said yes. But he couldn’t show me any before and after photographs of Asian women, just white girls.”

“Were the results bad?” I asked.

“No, they were good. Really good,” Alice said.

“So …”

“Well …” Alice began. “Look, I’m not worried about looking like a white girl. As if!” She smiled.

“What are you worried about?” I think I knew the answer. She was afraid of the same thing I was.

“I’m just not sure I want to look like someone else.”

That was my fear, too. I might not have been that happy about the way I looked, but at least I looked like, well … me.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “You remember the other night, when we were talking? I thought seriously about telling him I wanted to look more masculine, but …”

“But you didn’t?”

I hung my head slightly. “No, I didn’t. I’m not entirely sure why. In fact he thinks I’m transsexual. It’s completely screwed up. All my life it’s bothered me that people have mistaken me for female. Now I have the chance to do something about it. And I’m not … I should …”

“But?” Alice asked.

“The last year …” I started. I really didn’t know where to begin to say this. I hadn’t really thought it through myself. And there was my relationship with Alice. I knew, by then, that we were never going to be lovers. I didn’t know who her mystery lover was, but I knew it was never going to be me. And yet, we’d become good friends. Apart from Pete, and Susan, she was my closest confidant. Since I’d begun living more and more as a woman, there were things I really didn’t share with Pete any more, but I could share them with Alice.

“Yes?”

I thought once again of my Daruma goal. “This last year I’ve, you know, enjoyed a lot of things … A lot of things that I never could have imagined. I mean, if I could look like Brad Pitt, maybe I’d feel differently. But there are some things you’ve really helped me with, Alice.”

“I’m glad, Alex. I … Um … I really enjoy our friendship.” Alice seemed genuinely touched. I had never seen her be less than articulate before.

“So, you know, I wonder, if I wasn’t this kind of Alex, if I was the old Alex, would we still spend as much time together?”

She touched my hand. “You’ll always be my friend.”

“I know. Thanks.”

“Are you saying …” she paused, and squeezed my hand gently. “Are you saying you’d like to be this Alex the whole time?”

“I don’t know, Alice. It feels good, but I really don’t know. I mean, what does it say that I’m still on the team, working as a woman? Doesn’t that seem fucked up?”

“As Arun said, it makes more sense.”

“Yeah, but I could have dropped out for a few weeks, grown my eyebrows out, got a different haircut.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

She held my hand firmly in hers. “What does that tell you?”

“I don’t know. I mean … like I said, I’ve actually really enjoyed this year. Once I got over the double takes from people when I was in boy mode. And once I learned how to deal with the guys …”

Alice laughed “When you think you’ve got that completely figured out, let me know. I sure could use the help.”

I blushed. “I meant fending off unwanted advances.”

“I knew what you meant, I was just teasing you. So, you’ve been having a good time. What’s so terrible then?”

“I always feel like, you know, I’m failing somehow.”

“Failing?”

“Failing at being a guy.”

“I honestly don’t understand what you’re talking about, Alex. How can you fail at being you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but does it matter whether you’re good at ‘being a guy,’ whatever that means?”

“Don’t you ever wonder whether you’re … “ I was about to say “whether you’re feminine enough” when I realized what a stupid question it was. Alice was femininity personified. No wonder she had no gender confusion at all. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just, you remember that thing I said, that time we had dinner after Lake Charles, and I said it was hard for guys when their masculinity was impugned?”

“Yes. I thought it was pretty dumb then. People are who they are, and there’s a very broad spectrum between Bruce Willis and Winona Ryder.”

“You make it sound so easy to work out, Alice. It’s not that simple.”

“I’m sympathetic, Alex. Really. But you just need to be you. You don’t have to make any choices you don’t want to.”

She jumped up from her seat suddenly. “Oh. I just remembered! I made this for you.“ She went to the sideboard and picked up a floppy disk. She held it out to me. “I made you a kind of college project thing, part of my dissertation. I wanted to let you see some of my work.“

I took the disc. I was touched. “Thanks.“ I meant it. Alice hardly ever talked about her study. “So, uh, what's on it?“

“A music program that sorts what you like and then matches it with other stuff you might like but mightn't know yet. I figured since you listen to so much stuff nobody's ever heard of, you would be an ideal candidate to look at it for me and see how well it matches on someone who has outlier tastes.“

“Wow. I'm impressed, Alice. That's a very cool idea.“

“It’s not completely original,“ Alice said. “Other people at MIT did one last year that wasn't very good. I just worked on some of the algorithms for matching, and I think this is better. One of my research partners did most of the code.“

“Well, I'm honored you've chosen me for your guinea pig. Thank you.“

“You want more coffee?“ She indicated my empty cup.

“No thanks, I'm good.“

She sat back down and we had a few moments of silence. Soul Coughing was playing in the background on WHRB, and the unmistakable strains of Circles filled the space between us.

“We still have to make a choice about this surgery.“

“We do.“

We both sat for a moment, together on her couch, not saying anything. Alice always made sense to me, but I wasn’t always sure she had all the information she needed. For that matter, neither did I.

“We could just walk away,” Alice said.

“We could.”

We both looked at one another. I looked away first, draining my coffee.

Alice sat up straighter, as though she was resolved. “I don’t need the money,” she said. “Neither do you.”

“Well …”

“Seriously, Alex, you could stop now. You didn’t earn much as a sysadmin, but you got by. You’ve got a big future in front of you, if you go to grad school. Would it kill you to stop?”

“No, but …”

“But what?”

“Well, you have more to lose than me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You … You’re already beautiful. Things could only get worse if you let someone operate on you.” I was so nervous. Alice was beautiful, but I’d never said anything like that to her before.

“That’s very sweet of you,” Alice said softly. “But what about you? It’s not like you’re ugly yourself.”

“I’m not exactly the manliest man.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Plastic surgery isn’t going to change that.” Alice said. “You’re good looking, Alex. Take it from me, it’s true.”

“You’re right, there’s nothing a competent surgeon could do that would make me more or less attractive. What’s wrong with me isn’t my face, it’s my physique. So I suppose that reduces my risk, really. It’s not like he can make me more feminine – people already think I’m a woman almost all the time.”

“I was trying to talk you out of this, not into it.” Alice said.

I stood up from the table. “We’ve been making a lot of money,” I said. “Just one more year.”

“I’m going to pull out.” Alice said firmly. “You should, too.”

 

~o~O~o~
 

Back at home I ran the program on Alice's floppy disk. It required me to grant it privileges on my system in order to run, so I looked at what I could understand of the compiled code briefly and it seemed relatively safe, if poorly written. I didn't know Java well, but it looked like Alice's research collaborator didn't sign his code properly. That was sloppy, but hardly unforgivable back in 1998, especially for an art project.

The program itself was interesting to fool around with, but I soon stumped it by asking it to come up with a match for someone who liked both Sun Ra and Green Day. The best the program could do was suggest Rancid, which told me, immediately, that neither Alice nor her collaborators knew or liked anything about more experimental music. Rancid was sort of a match for Green Day (in a casual way), but it didn't belong anywhere near Sun Ra in any ontology of likes and dislikes.

Mentally I wished Alice and her collaborators well with the project, but I didn't use the program again. I stuck the install disk on my bookshelf and forgot about it.

 

~o~O~o~
 

The days were warmer and longer, and my mood was less dour than it had been. Every morning I looked at the Daruma as soon as I woke, and remembered my promise to it, and to myself, and strangely even though I had made the promise because I thought I owed more to other people, I seemed to feel better about myself. I was feeling more confident. Gender was still bothering me, especially now the warmer weather was here and I was becoming so conscious of my body. But I was feeling as though I was getting my life back on the rails. Throughout my early twenties I'd had a kind of roller coaster ride through ups and downs, and this was an up period. I hoped it lasted.

Earlier on in this story I referenced a pretty big event in my life — a breakdown I had in my sophomore year — and if you're at all attentive you might have been wondering why I haven't talked about it at all.

Maybe the reason for my reticence is that the reasons for the breakdown don’t reflect too well on me, and like most things to be ashamed of, I don’t often talk about it. But there's no good way to address what comes next in this story without telling you about the flaw in my character that I keep telling myself I grew out of. To wit, that I was startlingly immature and uncertain, and didn't understand what being 'growed up,' as Talia had called it once, was all about.

When I first came to Boston I was only 18, so young I barely knew anything about myself. I knew lots about mathematics and history and chemistry and all the things I'd taken AP classes in at school, but I knew almost nothing about how to cook, or how to choose tomatoes at the market, or how to do laundry without making all my white clothes gray. It seemed to me that these things should all be easy, and yet I failed at them, miserably. I had to fall back on Susan time and again.

That was only part of the problem. The bigger part is I sucked with money, and I sucked at responsibility. I was, by any meaningful definition of the word, a child. And a depressed child, at that. Left to my own devices, it could take me up to four hours to get out of the house every day. I would wake at 7am, and then not be able to drag myself from bed until close to 9. Then, inexplicably, it would take me two hours to shower, find some clothes, check my email, have some breakfast and leave the house.

Mornings after a shift at the record hospital were even worse. I had a shift on Tuesday night, which wasn't the worst (Mondays were the bottom rung), but which meant I didn't get to sleep until 6am. Most Wednesdays I didn't make it to classes at all.

The more I failed at living like I imagined adults lived, the more depressed I got, and the more depressed I got, the harder and harder it was for me to get out of the house.

I beat myself up for this, terribly. I knew, intellectually, that I should just will myself to pull out of my funk. And yet I could not.

Underlying all of it was a deep sense that I was unlovable, that somehow I was a fraud. I had gone from being an unpopular but brilliant young kid in Lincoln to being an unknown and average student in Cambridge, and I felt like I must have obtained my scholarship by accident. When a professor rebuked me for a glib response to a thoughtful question by another student, I took it as a sign that I was not made for Harvard.

It was only Pete that got me through. As I mentioned earlier, the guy was just … solid. He was reliable. I could talk to him and he wasn't judgmental, but on the other hand he didn't suffer bullshit. “You're smart, Alex,“ he said. “You're smarter than me. I know you're depressed, but you just need to do the day at a time thing. Don’t think of the task as this enormous, baffling thing. Just do each day. Be the best person you can be, each day.“

“You want me to join the Army?“ I joked, and he smiled. I didn't know the meaning of that smile until much later. Eventually I understood it meant he knew his advice had been received, but not fully accepted.

Finally, though, Pete wasn't enough. I would compare myself to him, and note that he was everything I could not be: handsome, tall, self-assured and yet humble. He was a great guy. I was a failed guy.

When I actually had the breakdown it wasn't anything dramatic. I didn't try to kill myself or anything. It was just that something broke in me, suddenly, one day after class while I was walking home. I kept walking. About seven hours later a woman in suburban Needham noticed me stumbling, exhausted, down her street, having walked continuously from Harvard, and asked me whether I was alright. And I answered, remarkably truthfully, “I don’t know.“ I didn't know who I was, or where I was. It took a few days for me to come around.

Afterward, of course, I felt even more like a failure. But I buried my thoughts because I knew the doctors would never let me out of the hospital if they knew the truth. Afterward, with Pete and Susan's help, I got myself more or less back on track, and although I missed the rest of the semester and lost my scholarship I didn't lose everything. Grandma Rousselot gave me some money, and my Uncle Ari helped out too. Fraud or not, I recognized the difference between the opportunity to graduate from Harvard versus a life washing cars.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Pete and I went drinking one more time. I didn't tell Pete about the impending surgery, but of course it was on my mind as we sat at Grendel's. I had never had any surgery before, so there was the uncertainty that went with that. And in the back of my mind I think I knew it was crazy to even be thinking about going ahead with it. But there was something still in me — some strange dysfunctional self-loathing perhaps — that made me feel like it was curiously predetermined, while at the same time I felt that if I told Pete, or Susan, or anyone more sensible than me, they would talk me out of it.

So I didn't tell them. I kept Alice as my counselor, but while Pete and I were out drinking, I never said a word about Doctor Morgan and what lay ahead.

While we were out that night we mostly talked about Pete's work, and about science fiction, and whether or not The Truman Show, which we had seen a week earlier, was a good film. I said yes about Truman, Pete said no.

Pete's business was expanding, and things were looking rosy. My own life was a strange and uncertain thing, but I was pleased to help Pete celebrate his.

Late in the evening we saw Dan, who came in late with Bob, and the four of us drank and argued some more about Orson Scott Card and Ender's Game and the notion — which Pete and I fervently believed and Bob did not — that the series goes to hell after the second book. I'm sure none of us made any sense, but we had a good night.

As we stumbled out of Grendel's Pete put his arm around my shoulder. He'd done that once or twice before, when we were still in college, but now, dressed the way I was, and confused as I was, it took on an extra significance.

I liked it. My Pete crush was definitely stepping up a notch. What a pity, I thought as I went to sleep alone that night, that there wasn't more to it than just a crush.

 

~o~O~o~
 

The next morning, hungover but more or less functional, I got a mild surprise in Watertown. I had dropped my car to be serviced at Boston VW, and was walking along North Beacon Street to head for the bus stop, when I noticed Arun coming out of a florist on the other side of the street. Immediately behind him was Alice, followed by an older Asian man I didn’t know. He was maybe fifty, short but solid, well dressed but not polished-looking. I thought he might be Japanese, or maybe Korean. I was about to call across the traffic to get Alice’s attention, but then I saw her turn to him and say something. He nodded, and the three of them walked a few paces and then all got in a large silver Mercedes.

I kept walking to the bus stop. I didn’t mind taking the bus back home. I had nothing planned for the day, and although I had lots of money now I didn’t feel like blowing it on a cab. Sitting on the bus as I rode along Soldier’s Field Road I wondered who the man was. I wondered why the three of them were together. Was Alice telling Arun she was going to pull out? Did Arun have to consult the older man about the team? Who was that guy, anyway?

I realized then, that even though I was treasurer, there was a great deal about the operations of the team I didn’t know. Arun kept a lot of secrets.

 

~o~O~o~
 

When Alice and I caught up for dinner the next evening, I waited for a while before considering asking her about the older man she’d met with Arun. Before I questioned her about that, I wanted to understand, first, whether or not she’d done what she had said she would do, which was pull out of the team.

She said no, she hadn't pulled out yet, she was waiting for the right time to talk to Arun. So then I intended asking her why she hadn't, but she diverted the conversation to talking about me, my prospects, and how I should look to an alternative career. Since my surgery was scheduled only two days from then, we talked some more about the risks, and once again she told me she was pulling out, and I reaffirmed that I was going to continue.

Between that, and some gossip about a woman who had been in Alice's drama class at Harvard who was transitioning to become a man, the entire dinner got hijacked, and I never did press her for more answers that night.

 

~o~O~o~
 

I came to after the surgery with the mother of all headaches. Everything hurt. Everything. On top of the hurt, whatever residual drugs were in my system from the anesthetic made my arms and legs feel like they were weighted down. I opened my eyes, squinting against the light, and tried to turn my head to look away. Through half-closed lids I was aware of someone sitting next to the bed. I started to try to say something, but I couldn’t open my mouth.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” It was Alice. I was so glad to hear her voice. I tried once again to speak, but could only grunt.

“Don’t try to speak. They’ve got your jaw taped.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. I heard her press the buzzer to summon a nurse.

The nurse came in, and fussed around, and pressed a remote control device into my hand. “You push on this if the pain gets too bad,” she said. I pushed, and a few moments later the pain didn’t feel bad at all.

On the second day when visiting hours started Alice brought someone I hadn’t expected. It was Susan. I’ll never know exactly what I looked like on that second day, but it must have been pretty horrific. “What have they done to you?!” she cried, as soon as she came into the room.

I, of course, could only grunt.

Once her shock had subsided, Susan was unbelievably angry at me for having gone through with the surgery. “You’re such a fool, Alex,” she said to me.

For some reason I had harbored a delusion she would be sympathetic once it was all done, but she gave me serious grief instead. “You deserve whatever happens now,” she said.

I could only grunt in response. Susan grimaced every time I tried to speak, as though she was feeling the same pain I was. What I didn’t consider at the time was that she was looking at me, through my bandages, whereas I was looking out at a world that didn’t seem much different. Plus I had the benefit of Patient Controlled Administration – the magic morphine machine.

Over the course of the next two days Susan and Alice came to see me every day, sometimes together and sometimes separately. Over time, Susan’s attitude softened slightly, to one that was a mixture of concern that matched Alice’s, plus disgust at my behavior. Softening or no, I could tell she was still plenty steamed up.

On the third day a nurse unwrapped my bandages and replaced them with a simpler arrangement that made me feel less like a mummy, and I was allowed to leave. The plan had been for me to go stay with Alice, but Susan was insistent that I should stay with her instead, and I suppose family won out, because I went back to Susan’s.

On the sixth day after the surgery I went back to the hospital, for the bandages to be taken off. As the nurse unwrapped me I demanded a mirror. Apart from any other considerations, I wanted to see what I looked like before Susan and Alice did.

It was hard to tell what I looked like: there was so much bruising and swelling that I looked more like a miniature Asian Jake La Motta than anything else, although it was even hard to tell I was Asian with all the swelling around my eyes and nose. Even though they removed most of the bandages from my nose there was still some packing inside, and tape across the bridge. I wasn’t in as much pain, but I certainly wasn’t comfortable.

Back at Susan’s I had to endure more scorn from her, for what she kept referring to as “your mutilation”. I was finding it pretty hard to take. But despite continuing to criticize me she seemed determined to take good care of me, and refused all my offers of help around the house. To tell the truth I still hurt too much to be very energetic, and I was very tired most of the time. I guess my body was taking all the energy it could find and directing it toward healing.

On the eighth day after the surgery I caught a cab to Dr. Morgan's rooms because Susan had to go back to work. I had the last of the packing and tape removed, and some stitches in my hairline snipped. Dr. Morgan saw me after the nurse had finished removing and cleaning everything, and pronounced himself very pleased with the results. “Once the swelling goes down, it will settle in very nicely,” he said. “I am pleased.” He looked at me expectantly. “Are you pleased?”

I looked at myself in the mirror. It was still hard to ignore all the swelling, and there was still a lot of bruising, although that was more yellow than the black and blue of the previous week. In the mirror the face was still recognizably … Susan’s?

 

~o~O~o~
 

Back at Susan’s apartment I compared my image in the bathroom mirror with a photograph of Susan I’d taken from the bookshelf in her entry hall. If put our faces side by side you could see we weren’t exactly the same. I mean, there was still a lot of swelling. And also, I still had shorter hair. Mine was just below my jaw, now. Susan's was halfway down her back. But Dr. Morgan’s adjustments to my face, far from diminishing my chances of being taken for a woman, had pushed me firmly over the edge, to the point where there was no chance I could ever be mistaken for a man again. He had shortened the distance between my nose and my top lip, turned that top lip up slightly, made my nose smaller, my forehead somehow more curved, and my jaw slightly narrower. All of the changes were subtle, but they weren’t minor. The overall effect made my cheekbones and mouth slightly more pronounced. I suspected when the swelling subsided my eyes would look slightly bigger, too.

Notwithstanding bruising, swelling, scars etc., it was clear that the minor changes Dr. Morgan had made, on the recommendation of Arun and Wei Cheng and whoever had determined what was measured by that infernal software, made me look more like my sister than ever before. I could wear Buddy Holly glasses, and there was no way I’d look like anything other than a chick with Buddy Holly glasses.

I called Alice. Five words into the conversation I broke down in tears. She promised to come right over, but it took her about forty minutes. By the time she got there I had consumed three glasses of some Scotch I found in the kitchen, and I had stopped crying. I opened the door, and Alice looked at me in surprise, and then she hugged me and we both just stood, in the open doorway, hugging one another for dear life, not knowing what either could say to the other.

After another drink, which Alice actually poured for me, with one for herself, we considered my options.

“Surely there’s a surgeon who can reverse this,” I said hopefully.

“I think there are two problems with that,” Alice said quietly. “I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think they’ll do any more surgery on you for a while until this is completely healed.”

I nodded. I’d had the same thought in the forty minutes spent waiting for Alice.

“And secondly, what would you get them to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said to Alice. “I mean, I guess there’s the risk if I had more surgery, I’d wind up looking like Michael Jackson or something. But aren’t there women who become men? What do they do?”

Back in those days the Web was still in relative infancy. There was no Google. There was AltaVista, which for those of you who mightn’t remember it was a barrel of crap. And there was Yahoo!, yes, with the exclamation mark, although nobody except Yahoo! used that. In those days, before Google became a verb, companies were more afraid of trademark infringement than they were eager to become a household word.

But I digress. We did a little searching on Yahoo with the exclamation mark for information on male to female transsexuals, but there was very little available. Basically, it seemed like if you were a girl who wanted to look more like a guy, you took testosterone, and voila, you got whatever testosterone gave you. The two photographs we saw of women who had become men showed short, bearded guys who obviously worked out and had good muscles, but also still had small noses, and foreheads they’d covered up with baseball caps. I guess the beards and muscles were enough to make them look like men. The only surgery they’d had was mastectomy.

“I can’t grow a beard, Alice,” I said glumly. “What happens if I take extra testosterone?”

We investigated further. Both of us were aware of a female-to-male transsexual who had been in our graduating class at Harvard, Rachel who had become Benjamin. Benjamin had been in Alice's drama class. Alice offered to call him, to ask about the various therapies involved in going from female to male, but I vetoed the idea on he grounds it was creepy. I didn't really know the poor guy. Even Alice didn't know him that well. I tried to imagine how I would feel if someone from my physics class phoned me up to ask me about plastic surgery. Ewww.

So we went back to web research. The prognosis wasn’t good. It seemed likely that if I tried to supplement my naturally occurring supply of testosterone, I’d experience the same problems body builders did when they took steroids: rage, acne, potential kidney damage, and atrophy of the testicles and probably eventual sterility. It was even possible, according to links from Yahoo!, that if a guy took too much testosterone, that their body would start converting it to estrogen anyway. In such cases a bodybuilder could grow breasts.

But there weren’t any obvious surgical fixes. Beyond, you know, taking too much testosterone and then having a mastectomy. Even I wasn’t that insane.

Plus, there was the way things had changed between Pete and me. And despite my terror at having options closed off by Dr. Morgan, there was the fact that I'd considered becoming more feminine with hormones not long before.

But my feeling of being committed was terrifying, and all through the discussion with Alice, I kept on about the possibility of reversing what had been done. I think part of me still held some hope that perhaps Alice saw something masculine in me. Although, as I thought more about it, I realized that over the previous months I’d become less interested in Alice sexually. We were good friends, best friends. If I had the chance, would I still want to sleep with her? I was pretty sure Yahoo! would be silent on that score (When I asked it, in a fit of depression a month later, “can Alice and I still be friends” it referred me to an Internet dating site. No wonder Google won the battle of search).

I wasn’t so sure, any more, about anything. I had fewer answers than Yahoo!. I was upset about looking like Susan, but I wasn’t entirely upset about looking more feminine. Pete had said, before all this, that he thought I was beautiful. What would he say now? Would he like me more, or less?

Alice did her best to try to cheer me up, but she didn’t have a lot to work with. She tried distracting me, instead, with her plans for graduate school. At first that depressed me more, because I realized that – had I taken her advice and made plans to go back to study – I wouldn’t be in this mess. But I made myself suck it up. It was my fault, mine alone. And I was pleased that Alice was looking forward to something challenging. She was going back to MIT to do more work in Artificial Intelligence. On the plus side, it meant she’d be staying in Boston.

“So, now that this is … you know,” Alice indicated my face. “Now that you’ve gone to all this trouble, I guess you’re going to keep playing cards?”

“I guess so,” I said. “I better help pay it off, for one thing. For another, it would seem, you know, exceptionally stupid to do this and then not get any dividend from it, don’t you think?”

And then Alice surprised me. Really surprised me. “I'm scheduled for tomorrow,“ she said. “With Dr. Morgan. I'm pleased to see he seems to know a thing or two about beauty.“

“Wait, what? You're going to have the surgery?“ this was about the most bizarre news I'd ever had. “You're going to stay on the team? What was all that about your PhD?“

“Yes. I know I said I wasn't going to do it, but I've changed my mind.“

“Alice, why? I thought you were going back to school?“

“I can still go to school. Blackjack only takes up the weekends. And this is our last chance to set ourselves up for life.“

I hugged her, then pushed myself away and held her at arms' length to look at her more clearly. “You sure about this? You did a pretty good job of arguing me out of doing it.“

“Not good enough,“ She smiled, with what I thought was a trace of sadness. “Yes, I'm sure. Plus, how could I let you go through this alone?“

 

~o~O~o~
 

Alice had gone by the time Susan came home, which was just as well, because Susan was hugely pissed at me, and I mean huge in the sense an iceberg is huge, because her anger was enormous, but I could sense I was only seeing about one-tenth of it.

“Well, you’ve really fucked it up now,” she said, bitterly. “You know, when I was younger, I thought having a little sister would be cool. I didn’t expect to lose my brother to get one.”

That stung. She could see she’d hit her target, but she didn’t relent.

“So what now? You go back to this stupid gambling scheme, and wait until they catch you again and maybe try to kill you?”

“I don’t think they actually murder anyone,” I mumbled. It was the wrong response.

“Oh, getting beaten to a pulp like your friend Henry is something to look forward to, then.”

“Come on, Susan.”

“Don’t fucking ‘come on Susan’ me,” she said. “Jesus, Alex. Does anything I say ever reach into your head? Do you ever actually think about the consequences of what you’re doing? What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and then the tears came. “I don’t know.”

And then we both said some things we’d later regret, things dredged up from our teenage years when we’d been so close to one another and learned things about each other we’d never told even our best friends. She reminded me of my mistreatment of my friend Hal, and I reminded her of her abortion. The two of us tore strips off one another for about five solid minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but is a very long time indeed if you’re deploying all the heavy emotional artillery you can find.

Finally, exhausted, I sat in her living room, crying, but she didn’t give me any comfort. She went to her room, changed, and went into the kitchen without speaking to me again. After about thirty minutes in which I understood there really wasn’t anything I could say to her without making her angrier, I packed the few clothes I had there, took the sheets off the convertible bed and put them in the laundry basket in the bathroom, and then silently let myself out of her apartment.

I drove back to Somerville, hoping that Pete would be out when I arrived. He was. It felt like the first thing that had gone right for me since the surgery.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Pete was out, but Talia was in. She nodded at me as I walked through the living room, but didn’t say anything, but I could see the shock register on her face. I hadn’t mentioned the facial surgery to her.

Despite what Talia had said to me about my shift to looking female, I had been getting a vibe from her — even before the surgery — that she wasn’t completely comfortable with me. Neither Pete nor I had seen much more of her than usual over the past six months, but when I did see her she kept giving me strange looks. I almost felt a little like she was undressing me with her eyes. Except I don’t think she was in any way sexually interested in me. Whatever she felt, she didn’t say much to me, although that wasn’t anything new.

Of course her offer to try to find me another job never came to anything. That didn’t bother me. But it was uncomfortable to have to share an apartment with someone who looked at me like I was a curiosity. The fact that she didn’t even make a comment about the state of my face, didn’t even ask what had happened, said more to me than anything she might have actually said.

I think her behavior bothered me most because it was an outlier. It wasn't like Cambridge didn't already have its share of gender shifters — as I said earlier, Alice had known Rachel who had become Benjamin, and in our sophomore year at Harvard someone called Richard had transitioned to become Rebecca, and nobody blinked. Almost everyone else had accepted my gradual transition, and Talia had said she did, but she seemed to have some residual issues. Susan, of course, had gone off at me big time over the surgery, but that was different. I was pretty sure I was going to be okay with Susan.

With Talia? I wasn’t so sure.

 

~o~O~o~
 

The next morning I had to go out to get milk and coffee, because we were completely out, and as she heard me coming down the stairs Beverly stuck her head out the door to say hello. To say she recoiled from the sight of me would be overstating it, but she was definitely shocked. “Alex?“ she said.

I sighed. “Hi, Beverly.“

“What happened?“

“A lot of stuff. I've got to go get coffee and milk. You want to come with?“

“Are you … Are you okay to drive?“

I smiled. “It’s okay, Beverly. It only hurts when I laugh.“

Beverly grabbed Samantha and we headed over to Whole Foods. Beverly was momentarily distracted when we first entered the store because she'd never been to a Whole Foods before.

“Ever?“ I asked, incredulous.

“Ever,“ she said. “I think this is a little granola for the East Bronx.“

I got a lot of stares in the Wholefoods but we spent a little longer than I had planned there, in part because Beverly was fascinated by the place (“People pay this much for cereal?“ was one of her questions), and also because it was good to be out and about, stares or no.

And it was good to spend time with Beverly and Samantha. Samantha was still at that useless baby age, where all they're good for is drooling and smiling, and I have to admit it’s still not my favorite age. I liked it a lot better a few years later, when she got around to talking, and we could play the “But why?“ game. In case you're wondering, the perfect answer to “But why“ from a 3 year old is to answer in French, “Pourquoi pas?“. Kids think it’s hilarious when you say things in what they regard as gibberish. Well, Samantha did.

But I digress again. The thing I was getting to there was the smile. I had never spent much time around babies before. And man, that smile is something. We could solve all war, if we just had more of those smiles. I even managed to forget, for a while, how much Susan was angry with me.

Spending an hour or so out shopping, and then another couple of hours with Beverly and Samantha just talking and drinking coffee and eating some donuts we had bought to offset the healthy food, was a real restorative. I didn't know how much I needed it until Beverly and Samantha gave it to me.

 

~o~O~o~
 

I got to sleep later that night without seeing Pete, and dreamed odd dreams again, dreams of high school, of being on the softball field, for some reason in a dress, and somehow not being able to speak to anyone else on the field. When I was woken by my cellphone, it took a few moments to register that it was a cellphone in 1997, not a cellphone in my dreams of high school, when they were the size of bricks and had standard ringtones.

I scrambled around on my bedside table to find the phone, answered, and it was Lucy.

“Dan’s dead.”

“What?” I still wasn’t sure I was awake.

“Bob called me. Dan’s dead.” I was awake now, to realize she was crying.

“Luce … fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“He was run over, in Charlestown. Hit and run.”

“What the fuck was Dan doing in Charlestown? I thought he was in New York?”

“Beats me. I guess he came back.”

I could tell she wasn’t up to talking, but right then I needed a voice.

“Luce.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be alright.” I knew that wasn’t true, but I had nothing in me to give back. But words needed to be said.

“He was a good guy, Luce.”

“He was, Alex. He was. He was an idiot sometimes, but he was a good idiot.”

“He was. Fuck. Dan. I don’t know … that’s just … Bob called you? … You want company?”

“No. I just wanted to let you know.”

“Thanks Lucy.”

“Alex?” She was tentative. She wasn’t ready to say the next words.

“Yes?” There was a long, long pause. A very long pause. Maybe 30 seconds, before I broke it. “Lucy?”

“Yes.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I’m okay, Alex.” I could hear her intake of breath, and then it all came tumbling out. “Alex … Alex. Bob says it wasn’t an accident.”

 

~o~O~o~
 

The day of Dan's funeral was a beautiful and sunlit and all the things you don’t associate with death. It seemed completely unfair.

I was wearing oversized sunglasses, before they were fashionable, and a black floppy hat to try to hide some of the bruising on my face. It’s not considered good form at a Korean funeral to wear too much makeup, so I had applied it to look as natural as I could while still hiding some of the damage to my face.

As I came into the greeting room for the ceremony I lit the incense stick next to Dan's photograph, and gave the customary bows in front of it. I placed the envelope of cash I had brought as my gift to his family, then bowed my head and spoke to Dan's parents and sister. “I went to college with Dan. He was a very, very fine young man,“ I said. Dan's father thanked me, and then I walked from the greeting room into the funeral hall. I noticed Lucy hiding down the back off to the right, and I immediately settled next to her. She nodded a hello without saying anything.

Lucy's jaw was quite swollen. Much more than mine. I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been trying to see what was different, but since I was, it was obvious, and I wondered whether or not she would be able to eat properly. That's not a non sequitur — Korean funerals usually involve a dinner afterward.

Like me, Lucy was also wearing sunglasses, but there was some bruising visible beneath the bottoms of the frames. It looked like she'd had a nose job, and likely more.

A dozen or so other people arrived, and the last to enter were Alice and Arun, who seemed to have arrived together. Arun nodded to Lucy and me, but the only places available to stand were close to the entrance, so they remained a distance away from us. I could see both of them were also bruised, but it wasn't easy to work out what they'd had done. Arun's bruising and swelling looked more obvious above the black suit and white dress shirt he was wearing. I think Alice had hid a lot of hers with makeup.

Dan's family was obviously distraught, but despite that I could see that his sister Sunhee was looking at all of us from the team and wondering what the hell was going on with the way we looked. I guessed Dan had never told her about his surgery. He may never have told her or the rest of the family what he did for a living.

The ceremony was fairly brief, and conducted in Korean, so obviously I didn't understand a word of it. I was thinking only of Dan throughout, and the time we had spent together, first in Matthews, then on the team. It seemed improbable that such a large man, with such a huge, generous personality, could ever have left my life.

Lucy, Alice and I stayed for the dinner, out of respect. I didn't see Arun there. I noticed that Alice's bruising seemed minimal, basically just shadows under her eyes. From the pattern of the shadows and what looked like a minor change in her profile I suspected she'd had a nose job and little else, and wondered whether that was enough to fool the software. She still looked as beautiful as ever. Dr. Morgan had certainly kept his promises to her in that regard.

As Alice, Lucy and I were leaving Sunhee Koh approached us. It looked like she wanted to say something, but something in the way she glanced at Alice and Lucy made me think she was afraid of talking plainly. I wasn't sure why she'd want to talk to me alone, but I told Alice and Lucy I'd catch up with them at my car, which was parked around the corner. I gave Alice the keys to unlock it.

“You were in college with Dan?“

“Yes, we all were.“

“But you were closer.“ it was more of a statement. Sunhee was crying.

“We weren't absolute best friends, or anything, but …“ I started to cry too. “I could have been a better friend, Sunhee.“

“He mentioned you to me.“

“Dan mentioned me?“

“Didn't you, um, used to be …“

Now I was embarrassed. At least it was enough to make my tears stop. “Yes. When did he tell you that?“

“Dan told me almost everything about his life,“ she said. “He liked you. He admired you.“

“He admired me?“ I couldn't imagine why he would admire me.

“He thought you were brave, and smart.“

“So was he.“

“You all seem like you were in some kind of accident.“

“Ah.“ I wasn't sure whether I should enlighten her about the plastic surgery. Dan clearly hadn't shared everything in his life. “Um. It’s a very long story. Maybe we could meet some time to discuss it. And Dan?“

“I would like that. So, your name is Alexandra, yes?“

“Call me Alex.“

“Alex, you know this wasn't an accident.“

“I had heard.“

“I need to find who did this.“

“Sunhee. You're young, you have your life. Let the police —“

“I need this, Alex. Will you help me?“

I stood for a long time, looking at this tiny Korean girl, shorter than me, and every bit as slight. She had cried so many tears her face was puffy, but there was no doubting the resolve on her face.

“I'm not as brave as Dan —“ I began, but she interrupted me.

“Alex, I will find these people with or without you. But if you cared for Dan, I really hope you will help me.“

How could I say no?

 

~o~O~o~
 

After Dan’s funeral, I hibernated in my room for five days, not doing anything much at all. The heat was oppressive, and my bedroom had very poor ventilation, but I couldn’t bring myself to get out and be with people at all. Between what I’d done to myself, and what someone else had done to Dan, I couldn’t cope. I kept thinking of Sunhee and her plea for help, and I felt utterly powerless and worthless. How could I even begin to help with something like that? I should have refused. I should have said no, but it’s impossible to refuse a grieving 21 year old sister on the day of her brother's funeral. I just couldn't turn her down.

So I avoided the issue. The issues. I avoided everything. I could hear Pete in the mornings and sometimes in the evenings, but I only ventured out to the bathroom or the kitchen when I was sure he and Talia weren't at home. I ignored the phone, let my cellphone run flat, and ignored the three people who came to knock on the door. I lived on ramen noodles, some plums and oranges that were past their “best before” dates, and a bottle of whiskey I found in the kitchen. It was, I reflected bitterly, a lot like my days as a student, except for my fear of being seen by anyone. I avoided mirrors, stayed away from my computer entirely, and worked my way through War and Peace. I don’t know why I selected that particular book, other than that it seemed like something that would keep me going for a long time, at least long enough to avoid people without being bored. I read, slept a lot, then read some more.

There’s nothing like reading Tolstoy to get you simultaneously depressed and inspired. As the title suggests, War and Peace is not the most lighthearted read you’ll ever get into, but Natasha Rostova is easily Tolstoy’s most inspiring female character. She’s charming, vivacious, beautiful, and utterly naive. In fact she’s quite the fool, at least in her younger days. The only thing that really redeems her is her sincerity, and the fact that she wises up in time. I could take or leave the religious guff, but that kind of goes with Tolstoy.

It was the fifth day of my hibernation by the time I finished reading. For a while I just lay there, taking it all in. And then – lying there in my dim, blue bedroom, I realized it was time to get my shit together. I sincerely doubt that when Tolstoy wrote the book he intended it as a self-help novel, but in an odd way, that’s what it was. When you’ve just read through hundreds of pages of Russian angst mixed with religious fervor, Cambridge angst seems almost like small beans. Those Russians had it going on.

Having put the book down, for the first time in a couple of days I actually looked in the mirror. The swelling in my face had almost entirely subsided, but I had neglected myself so badly that my hair looked like a large, badly-tended shrub. There were very small visible scars around my hairline, that I should have been applying cream to but had neglected, and with my hair sticking up and out in all directions they were quite noticeable.

Depressed though I was, I acknowledged that a shower was in order, so late in the afternoon I roused myself from my increasingly rank sheets and took a long, soothing shower. I washed my hair, which I noticed was beginning to get longer again and could use a trim once more. I was almost plunged into another round of self-pity about that, but I had a newfound resolve. That which hadn’t killed me would make me stronger. If it meant being a stronger guy who looked like a girl, so be it. I was going to at least try to be an adult about my life and take responsibility for it. Susan was right. So, for that matter, was Tolstoy.

I looked at the Daruma on my bookshelf, mocking me for having paid insufficient attention to my goal.

No more self pity. Reach out to be a better friend.

I dried my hair properly, sweeping my bangs across my forehead to hide the scars from the stitches. Since I’d washed they weren’t very noticeable. With my hair vaguely styled I was reminded again how much like Susan’s twin I had become. I pushed that thought to one side, finished dressing in a plain cotton skirt and singlet top over a lightly padded bra with some small silicon inserts, and applied a little perfume. For reasons that still didn’t make complete sense to me, being clean, and smelling good, actually made me feel a lot better.

Then I got stuck into the housework. I’d been away for a long time, and then subsequently in hibernation, and it was clear that Pete and Talia, left to their own devices, were no Martha Stewarts. The house was a total catastrophe. Talia never did housework, except for taking out the trash and occasionally doing some dishes, and she certainly hadn’t done any recently. And maybe Pete hadn’t known I was at home, so hadn’t bothered tidying up, because he was usually not totally awful on the domestic front. For whatever reason, the kitchen was filthy and the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned for at least a month. To clean the shower I had to strip off my clothes again, but it was such a warm early summer’s day I didn’t mind that at all, and I took another shower after that to clean my sweat off at the end of my cleaning spree. Then I washed my sheets.

Back in the kitchen I took an inventory of the food situation: dire. Either I would have to go out to the market, or it would be pizza or Chinese delivered. We were, it turned out, even out of ramen. I was debating the pros and cons of going shopping when the doorbell rang. What the hell. My days as a recluse needed to come to an end. I opened the door without checking the little security peephole.

It was Susan.

“What the fuck, Alex,” was the first thing she said.

“Nice to see you too.”

“I called, and called. I was worried.”

“Sorry.” I opened the door wider. “Want to come in?”

The fact that I wasn’t offering excuses or arguing with her seemed to put her off balance. She came in, but circled around me, studying me from all sides. I gestured to the living room and we both went in there.

“You seem to be healing up okay,” she said, finally.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So why weren’t you answering the phone? I called your cell like fifty times.”

“I was suffering from an extreme case of self pity. I think I’m over it now …” I shrugged. “Sorry, I’d offer you coffee or something, but while I was incommunicado none of us did anything about putting anything in the house. I guess I've become the designated shopper around here. I was just about to head to get some food when you arrived.”

Susan volunteered to come with me. At the store the two of us loaded up with almost everything that seemed appealing, on the principle it almost certainly wouldn’t be in the fridge or cupboards back in Somerville, and that, as Susan reminded me, I had lost even more weight and, in her words, “gone from waif-like to heroin-chic.”

Apart from that, though, she didn’t make any more comments on the way I looked, which I appreciated. And at least while we were shopping neither of us mentioned her outburst five days earlier. Back at the apartment she helped me unpack everything.

 

~o~O~o~