She grinned. “He called you ‘miss,’ I didn’t want to confuse him.”

“You’re confusing me,” I said.

Part 1 - Melrose

Chapter 3 - Salad

We moved along the sidewalk, hand in hand. Marjorie still wearing her blue walking shorts, flat-heeled shoes and bright yellow blouse. And me in my yardwork costume of long pants, long sleeves and big girly-looking hat. I wanted to leave the hat in the car but somehow she talked me out of it.

I think she kissed me again.

“Hungry?” she asked, moving away and forcing me to follow.

“Um,” I said, non-committal because I had not been able to get my head around what seemed to be happening. The valet had treated me like a girl but was that because he’d thought I was a girl or because he thought I was—what was the word?—presenting as a girl? Did that make a difference?

And getting kissed—that did seem to make a difference. If I wasn’t vibrating like a tuning fork, at least I wasn’t half-scared out of my wits any more. I wondered if I smelled sweaty; if not from the yardwork then from my near panic at my situation. It probably wouldn’t look good if I tried to smell my armpit. Bad enough what I was wearing, a pink-and-yellow-crowned sparrow in a flock of parrots.

Melrose Avenue is a freaky place, anyway. There’s almost one of every kind of shop you could think of and people from every country on Earth, and elsewhere. There are some who put the fascist back in fashionista, and then some who appear to be sleepwalking…. But there wasn’t anyone wearing a getup anything like mine.

“Let’s eat here,” Marjorie said, steering me out of the flow and through a gate in a railing around a bunch of small tables. The place was called Bistro du Jardin according to the sign and it came complete with a snooty host who put us on a list for an outside table under the name ‘Kissy.’ And yes, Marjorie and the host both pronounced it that way.

We stood in a little waiting area and I felt even more out of place. Some of these people wore enough bling to finance a South American revolution and all of them were more fashionable than me. Heck, even Marjorie was dressed down for this crowd.

I realized I was looking at a posted menu when Marjorie pulled me away. “Don’t read that,” she said. “I know what we’re having.”

I nodded, feeling a bit relieved. The bill of fare appeared to be in French and there were no listed prices. My high school Spanish and smattering of household French (Mom’s parents were French-Canadian), not to mention my wallet, were not up to navigating that menu.

While we waited, Marjorie pulled a phone out of her tiny purse and began texting. “I’m just making some appointments for us this afternoon. Hmm?”

“Appointments?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, multi-tasking away as she poked virtual buttons on her high-end machine. “You’re not dressed for an evening of clubbing.” She glanced at me over the phone. “The hat is nice but you’ll have to have more than that to wear.”

My mouth opened but nothing came out. The image her last remark conjured was arresting, or at least, arrestable. I’d been hoping to get rid of the hat but that would be worse. Much, much worse.

The host arrived to lead us to a table right on the edge of the railed-in area with the sidewalk traffic beside us and other oddly matched couples at neighboring tables. A burly man who looked like Brutus from the Popeye cartoons come to life quirked a burly eyebrow at me when he saw my face under the damn hat.

I’m certain I blushed. The man’s companion, a skinny brunette with a long neck and a too-round face mouthed something as she sneered at me. My own eyebrows went up when I realized I could read her lips like I had the goof in the GTO. “Bitch,” she’d said.

What the hell? Had I fallen down a rabbit hole? And as a superpower, reading lips was basically worse than useless. I’d been able to do it for years, but it usually only meant I learned embarrassing things I shouldn’t have had the burden of knowing.

Marjorie ordered for us, something that sounded like ‘salad of comfy turkey’ but probably wasn’t. She also ordered two glasses of wine.

“I’m underage,” I whispered after the waiter had left.

“Not here, you’re not,” she said, reaching across the table to take my hands in hers. “Let’s roll your sleeves up.” She did so quickly, pinning them at my elbows with large golden safety pins she produced from somewhere. “You have such lovely skin,” she remarked.

“Marjorie,” I began but I really had nowhere to go with that. She was tickling the palm of my hand with her nails and I couldn’t think. I was in danger of sitting there opening and closing my mouth with nothing coming out, like a fish on a Sunday morning talk show.

She smiled at me, dimples flashing, then pulled the flat stone bracelet from her left wrist and slipped it over mine. “You need this,” she said.

I gave her a wobbly nod. The bracelet wasn’t uber-girly or anything like that. It was made up of flat-cut multicolor polished stones linked together by gold chains. It looked nice actually and probably had cost more than Mom’s car payment. I didn’t know whether to say thanks, so I did.

The wine came, a delicate pink color in short, stemmed glasses. I took a sip and decided I had never tasted anything like it. The only wine I had had before was a half-glass of red with a meal of spaghetti and meat balls at home with my mom. That had been fruity and insistent, this was delicately sweet, almost like some sort of citrus flower and maybe a bit of vanilla spice.

“Good,” I decided, saying it out loud.

Marjorie laughed. “Glad you approve. It’s a California rosé that’s great with a light meal.” She took a larger sip than I had done and seemed to savor it before swallowing. “Not too sweet, I like that,” she commented.

I nodded again, though I would have liked a glass of water after a morning of thirsty work. You have to ask for water in California restaurants—when the waiter brought the food I’d make the request. “Is this how you live?” I asked Marjorie. “Driving around in your beautiful car and eating in fancy restaurants?”

She laughed again. “Pretty much,” she admitted. “I had a job, with the Bureau of Prisons believe it or not. But I quit and I’m kind of between interests right now.”

Prisons? I found it hard to believe, but she did have a degree in Psych. “What did you do and why did you quit?” I asked because it really was an interesting question.

“Intake interviews,” she explained. “It was boring and horrifying at the same time.” She shook her head. “The lives of some of those people were so far outside my experience that they frightened me, I guess.”

“Didn’t you study this sort of thing in school?”

“Reading about whether twins raised apart develop the same neuroses is a lot different than talking to a woman about why she slipped a knife into the armpit of her sleeping husband.”

That reply kind of shut down conversation for a bit. I made a noise that might have been a startled giggle. It wasn’t at all funny but what kind of appropriate response could there be? I took another sip of wine. Speaking of different life experiences, Marjorie’s were nothing like mine.

The food came, a large bowl of chopped salad decorated with pieces of glistening dark meat turkey. I asked for a glass of water and the waiter replied, “Of course, miss. Would you like a slice of lemon in that?”

“She would,” said Marjorie. “And I’d like a glass, too.” The waiter beamed at us and set off immediately.

I stared at Marjorie, reflecting that my life was getting weirder by the minute. “You called me she,” I pointed out.

She grinned. “He called you ‘miss,’ I didn’t want to confuse him.”

“You’re confusing me,” I said. “With this hat and the bracelet, I guess he didn’t know I’m not a girl. But you do.”

“Mmm,” she said around a morsel of turkey, ignoring me. “This is delicious.”

I took a bite. She was right. The veggies were crisp and sharply flavored, the turkey tender, moist and unlike almost anything else I’d ever had in my mouth, the dressing a light coating of sweet and sour in perfect proportion. Despite my worry about the gender confusion, my next question was about the food. “How do they make this? The turkey….”

“It’s confit,” she said, though I heard the word as ‘comfy’ at first. “It’s made by preserving meat in oil.”

That made no sense to me either, but I didn’t watch a lot of Food Network shows.

Before I could get more explanation, a flamboyantly dressed dark-skinned man made a beeline for Marjorie from where he was being seated at another table. “Dearest!” he greeted her then grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a juicy air-kiss. “So you’re back from your retreat to the wilds of Oregon?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re looking good, Marjorie,” he added before turning to me. “And who is your lovely baby butch?” he asked. “Introduce me to her, sweetie. Rrrrraowr!” The last was a growl from deep in his throat.

As alarming as that was, Marjorie just laughed. “Arno Pink, this is my new protegé, Kissy Davis. Kissy, meet the famous Arno Pink.”

Famous? I’d never heard of him, but found myself incapable of making an intelligent reply. Or even an audible one. Protegé? Kissy Davis!!?

Arno grabbed my hand where it lay on the table, brought it to his lips, and kissed my fingers. “Enchanté, ma petite belle,” he cooed. Then to Marjorie, “She’s darling! Bring her to the club—the queens will eat her up!”

He still had hold of my hand. I pulled on it but he didn’t let go, smiling sweetly at me. What the ever-loving fuck had I gotten myself into?