“Wow,” she said. “Look at you. The big cheese.”
Eve chuckled dismissively, but she appreciated the phrase. She was the big cheese in this little pond, and she was glad that Margo had a chance to observe her in her natural habitat.
“That’s right,” she said. “I’m not just a part-time community college student. I’m also a mid-level municipal bureaucrat.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Amanda said. “Eve’s a great director. Everyone loves her.”
It was a pro forma compliment—an employee sucking up to her boss—but Eve felt a blush coming on anyway. Her relationship with Amanda was still a little unsettled, every interaction colored by the memory of that misguided after-dinner kiss and the awkwardness that had followed. Amanda had been nothing but gracious about it—mostly, she acted as if it had never even happened—but Eve had been unable to banish it from her mind, or find a way to behave normally in Amanda’s presence.
“I’m not surprised,” Margo said. “Eve’s a sweetheart.”
“Okay, okay,” Eve murmured. “Enough already.”
She was about to suggest that they head over to the lecture room, but Margo had shifted her attention to Amanda’s outfit—a black-and-white polka-dot dress over lime-green tights.
“I love your dress.” She stroked Amanda’s sleeve, getting a feel for the fabric. They were a striking pair—Margo tall and angular in a conservative navy suit, a colorful silk scarf knotted around her throat; Amanda short and voluptuous, deeply feminine, despite her aggressive tattoos and lace-up Doc Martens. “Where’d you get it?”
“Thrift store,” Amanda replied, with the smugness of the successful bargain hunter. The dress was adorable, with a Peter Pan collar and big white buttons down the front. “Fourteen dollars.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. A little shop called Unicyle. Best-kept secret in Haddington.”
“I need some fun clothes,” Margo said, a little wistfully. “I just hate shopping alone. Sometimes it’s nice to have a second opinion.”
“I’ll take you,” Amanda said. “Anytime you want.”
“Watch out,” Margo laughed. “I might take you up on that.”
Eve was happy to see them getting along so well. It was always gratifying when friends from different parts of your life hit it off, a reflection of your own good taste. She just hoped she’d be included if they ever did go on a shopping adventure. She hadn’t done anything like that in a long time, a group of friends wandering through the mall or checking out the shops in a quaint suburban town, stepping out of changing rooms with dubious or hopeful expressions. Then they’d stop at Starbucks or a wine bar for a postmortem, shopping bags resting by their tired feet. It was such an appealing fantasy, exactly the sort of innocent female camaraderie Eve needed in her life. But it was hard to reconcile with the guilt she was feeling toward both of the women in her office, the suspicion that she was unworthy of their friendship.
Her offense against Amanda was clear-cut, easy to define: it was sexual harassment, as much as it pained her to use the term—a violation of trust, a misuse of authority, the kind of thing you could rightfully lose a job over. With Margo, the betrayal was a bit murkier, more private and indirect and possibly more forgivable, though it didn’t actually feel that way at the moment, probably because the transgression was so fresh in her mind.
It had happened the night before, right after she’d come home from class. All she’d done was google the phrase “transgender woman.” She’d told herself she was acting out of simple curiosity—a perfectly reasonable impulse—except that she didn’t end up clicking on the sober informational links that would have led her to helpful articles on hormone therapy, Adam’s apple surgery, antidiscrimination laws, or anything else decent and aboveboard. Oh, no. She’d gone straight to the smut, as usual, to the Hot Brazilian Trannies and the Slutty Thai Ladyboys and the Dirty Chicks with Dicks, insisting to herself the whole time that she was disgusted by what she saw—the exploitation of vulnerable people, the reductive sexualization of something that went way beyond sex—though not so disgusted that it stopped her from sampling several videos, and then watching an eight-minute clip called Tranny Seduces MILF three times in a row, despite the fact that the characters were speaking Portuguese with no subtitles, though in Eve’s defense, they weren’t saying much besides Oy! and Deus!
It was pretty hot, she had to admit, though in a very uncomfortable way. A true jolt to her system, one of those mind-expanding moments when you found yourself aroused by something that had never even been on your erotic radar. A beautiful dark-haired woman with an erect penis speaking a mysterious foreign language. There was something almost mythological about it.
On a moral level, Eve was pretty sure that she hadn’t done anything truly wrong. She was just a human being watching other human beings do what humans sometimes did. She’d wanted to know, and now she did. Oy! It was nothing personal. Deus! It had nothing to do with Margo, and nothing to do with herself.
And yet, at the same time, she knew it did. Tranny and MILF. MILF and Tranny. They were just labels, a shorthand to organize the chaos of the world. But the labels have a funny way of becoming our names, whether we agree with them or not. Margo and Eve. Me and you. She must have looked puzzled or upset, because she was suddenly aware of a strange silence in the room. She looked up and saw both of the friends she’d wronged staring at her with concerned expressions.
“Eve?” Amanda said. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Eve mustered a businesslike smile and clapped her hands once, softly. “Guess we better get this show on the road.”
*
Julian was worried. November always felt like a setback, what with the clock change and the sudden onset of darkness, the bitter wind and that ominous sense of falling behind. It reminded him too much of last year, the paralyzing sadness that had set in with the cold weather, day after day when he saw no reason to get out of bed, not even to take a shower. That was rock bottom, flopping around like a hooked fish in the tangled sheets, smelling his own sour stink and not caring enough to do anything about it. He didn’t think it was going to happen again, not with these new meds, but you never knew. That was the scary part. You never knew.