Cross Dressing (34 page)

Dan put his hands on Josie’s shoulders and made her look at him. “Josie,” he said, “let’s skip this part and get to the kicker, shall we?”

Josie hoped Peg would forgive her, but she had to say it. “She was a working girl.”

Dan narrowed his eyes in confusion. Josie waited to see if it would clear up on its own, but Dan’s face remained completely blank. Josie halfway rolled her eyes. “You know, a hooker.” She might as well have said Peg was a spider monkey.

“A hooker.” Dan’s tone was flat as a communion wafer. “A hooker,” he repeated, nodding his head slowly. “I see.” Though he didn’t. He couldn’t. It was too far-fetched, but at the same time it sort of explained the tattoo. Josie launched into Peg’s story. Her father’s death, the abusive stepfather, the move to Hollywood, the money problems, and her eventual foray into
prostitution. Dan listened patiently. When she finished, Dan felt Josie had left a few pertinent details unexplained. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the nun-hooker connection still escapes me.”

“Oh, that.” Josie noticed part of her T-shirt had come untucked, so she pulled the rest of it out. “This was, what, about five or six years ago, I guess. I was maybe sixteen and pretty new to it all, had no idea what I was doing. Anyway, I’m out there one night all depressed and I’m thinking about killing myself or something when I see this nun coming down the sidewalk. Now, I’d heard about this place called the Care Center, all the girls had heard about it, you know, a place to get off the street and whatever. So when I saw this nun, I asked if she was the sister from the Care Center. So it’s Sister Peg, right? She just laughed and said she had a john with a nun thing. He liked her to dress up and spank him with a ruler, stuff like that, you know. So, anyway, I was all, ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and I started crying and I didn’t know what to do.”

Josie looked down and didn’t like the way her T-shirt looked, so she started tucking it back in as she talked. “At first Peg thought I was tryin’ to scam her with the crying and everything, but then she could tell I was really losing it. Peg’s all, ‘I’ll take you home.’ And I’m all, ‘No, Donnie’ll kill me if I go back to the apartment.’ ” Josie looked up. “Donnie was my pimp. Peg knew who Donnie was and knew he’d beat me half to death if I quit working, so she drove me out to the Care Center, you know? It was kinda late, but this old nun answered the door.” Josie smiled as she remembered this part. “She had the sweetest face. I’m pretty sure she knew Peg wasn’t really a nun, but she never said anything. She just took me in and gave me a room, no questions asked. Peg came out to help with stuff for the next few days. Sometimes she brought food, other times she worked in the kitchen. A few weeks later, the older nun died.

“Peg stuck around a few more days, just helping out, waitin’ ‘til another nun showed up or something, but nobody else came. All the people there were depending on her, so she just moved in, just gave up tricks and never took off the habit. Pretty soon everybody called her Sister Peg.” Josie looked at Dan, all serious. “Are you going to turn her in?”

“Nah, I’m a priest,” he said. “Your confession’s confidential.” Dan sat on the edge of the bed and tried to gauge his feelings about this revelation. Given his own deceit, Dan wasn’t in a position to be angry about being duped. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. He certainly didn’t have anything against bighearted hookers, but it did feel a little odd suddenly to discover that he was in love with one. Especially in light of the fact that he thought he was in love with a nun, which was weird enough in sort of the opposite way.

“It’ll kill her if they close the Care Center,” Josie said.

“I know.” Dan stood and headed for the door. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t plan to let them close us down,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.” He exited to the hallway and headed for the elevator, suddenly thinking about Mary Magdalene. He punched the down button.
What idea?
he thought.
I got shit for ideas.

T
he Bradley. Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport services airlines from more than forty countries. Fourteen million foreign travelers pass between its smoky glass walls every year. On any given day you can hear the phrase “they lost my damn luggage” in at least seventy different languages. It’s a regular Tower of Babel.

Deplaning at the Bradley Terminal, the Third World Man is still wearing the clericals he stole in Addis Ababa. He likes the way people treat him when he’s dressed this way. “Thank you, Father.” The Customs officer waves him through with his luggage.

On the other side of Customs a man wearing casual clothes waits for his Third World friend. This man was from Africa too, originally, but lives in Los Angeles now. He says he is in the import-export business.

“Have you found the priest?” the Third World Man asks.

The import-export man shakes his head no. “But I know where to look.”

“Good.” The two men walk in silence to the parking structure across from the Bradley Terminal. They reach the car that belongs to the import-export man. The Third World Man gets in and looks at his friend, who points at the glove compartment. The Third World Man opens the latch and finds a .45. “Let’s go see my priest,” he says.

W
th Peg still in the hospital, Dan was in charge. Eviction was six days off and there were boxes all over the Care Center waiting to be packed. For the moment, however, Dan had stopped packing them. Instead, he was holding his mother’s head steady at arm’s length. “Open your mouth,” he said, tilting her head back slightly. “Let me look under your tongue.” Ruth tried to pull her head away, but Dan had a good grip. “I just want to make sure you swallowed your pill.” He poked an index finger at her tightly pursed lips.

After a couple of pokes, Ruth shooed Dan’s hand away and opened her mouth wide. She lifted her tongue and wiggled it about like a suddenly unearthed bait worm. “Being a priest wasn’t enough,” she said. “You have to pretend you’re a doctor now.”

“No, I’m pretending I care,” Dan said, his voice lowered slightly.

“Don’t give me that.” Ruth grabbed Dan’s head just like he had hers. “You care,” she said, shaking his head side to side. “You’ve always cared.”

“Mom, let go of my head.” Ruth let go and sat at the kitchen table, where she was sewing Alissa’s doll back together. “Thank you for taking your medicine,” Dan said. He sat down at the table and screwed the top back onto the bottle of pills.

Ruth tied a tiny knot with the thread, then checked to see that the doll’s head was secure. She bit through the thread, then held the doll up for inspection. “You know what I don’t understand?” she asked. “I don’t understand why Michael ran off to help the rest of the world instead of helping his own family.”

Dan thought she sounded more puzzled about it than angry. “I guess he figured I could do it. Besides, he came back to take care of you. He didn’t know he was going to die.”

Ruth shrugged. “I suppose.”

Dan shook the orange prescription bottle and counted the pills. Eight left. No refills. He wondered how he’d pay for the medicine after the Care Center closed and his brief career as a priest came to an end. What would happen to Alissa and Ruben and Captain Boone and Mrs. Gerbracht and Mr. Saltzman and all the others? Most of all he wondered about Peg. Since she wasn’t a real nun, she wouldn’t be taken care of by her order. Maybe she’d join one. It was a better option than returning to her previous line of work. But if she entered a convent, where would that leave Dan? In love with a real nun. Great.

Maybe the answer lay in telling Peg the truth. Maybe if she knew he wasn’t really a priest … then what? Then they’d be laypeople living on the street. Terrific. Dan pushed away from the table and looked at the partially packed boxes. Where would they take all this stuff? How the hell would they move it all? “Let me ask you,” Dan said. “How is it that we have nothing to speak of yet we’re going to need a large truck to move it all? How is that possible? No one here has more than a suitcase of belongings.” Dan shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

Ruth put her needle and thread aside. “Son, what would you say if I told you that for the past twenty years I’d been putting little bits of money in the stock market?”

Dan froze. Was this possible? Had his mother accidentally invested at the best time in the history of Wall Street? Had she used some of the money he had given her as an allowance? It was possible. He remembered hearing a story about a poor black woman in Mississippi who saved money from her job as a domestic. She invested in the market and one day, out of the blue, she donated several million dollars to a state university. Dan turned to his mother. “You own stocks?”

“Mutual funds,” she said. “About a million dollars worth.”

Dan nearly keeled over. “A million dollars?” He stood there, his mouth agape. As impossible as it seemed, he wanted desperately to believe it was true.

Ruth began to laugh. “Dan, I’m kidding. You think I’d be living like this if I had a million bucks? It was a joke.”

Dan’s jaw tightened. He was unable to locate his sense of humor. He walked over to his mother and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t do that,” he said. “That’s not funny.”

“Lighten up,” she said. “You’ll figure something out. I got faith.”

I
t happened every day at work. Scott would end up in a trance, mesmerized by the deluge of images coming from the wall of televisions and the forty sets of speakers that stood before him like an electronic hypnotist. Once the images of the vast wasteland had arrested Scott’s eyes, his mind was free to wander, but it didn’t stray far.

As he stood lost in his bewitchment, Scott weighed the pros and cons of his quest. He eventually came to the ugly realization that he was in a no-win situation. If he never found
Dan, Scott was doomed. If he killed Dan and got away with it, no one would ever know that Scott had been the real genius behind the “More Is More” campaign. If he killed Dan and got caught, severe punishment loomed, but at least there was an upside. If he were put on trial for murdering Dan, Scott would at least be able to tell the world that the “More Is More” campaign was his idea. Such a revelation probably wouldn’t do him any good in the prison yard, but at least his father would know that his son had accomplished something.

R
uben was looking through the want ads. There were several listings for entry-level positions as animators and graphic artists, but he wasn’t sure he was qualified. He didn’t really know what a graphic artist was, but it was the only job with the word
art
in it, so it was the only one that seemed to match what Ruben thought of as his only marketable skill. The jobs required several years of experience and proficiency with various computer programs, the names of which Ruben had never heard. Still, all he had to do was send a résumé. Unfortunately, Ruben didn’t have a typewriter, and even if he did, Ruben didn’t have the slightest idea how to make a résumé. He knew there were résumé services, but he figured they cost more than he had.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his thin wallet. Inside were his last four bucks, not enough to do much of anything, certainly not enough to get a résumé. Ruben decided to do the only sensible thing. He folded the paper and headed for the convenience store. He figured the odds of someone like him winning the lottery were better than the odds of winning a job. He took his time filling out the form. He used all his best numbers—his mothers birthday, the anniversary of his brother’s death, the street address of the Care Center—numbers that were sure to win. He kissed the ticket
and put it in his pocket. On the way back he stopped at Holy Family Church to light a candle and say a prayer. He promised to share the winnings.

The drawing was at seven. The jackpot was eight million dollars, enough to solve everyone’s problems. Ruben waited patiently in front of the television; he had done all he could. Finally the machine whirred to life and the numbered balls began flying around the Plexiglas sphere like tiny, round angels. Ruben knew the key was to get the first number. If he didn’t get that one, it was all over, he couldn’t win. Ruben directed his prayers at the screen as the first ball was selected. It was one of Ruben’s numbers. At that instant, everything was still possible. For the brief moment between the selection of the first number and the second, the future was bright as a star in the east. Ruben bought a big house for everyone to live in and a new Suburban and lots of food and a new television and then the second number was selected and the dream ended. The best that could happen was a second prize in the thousand-dollar range and then the third number was selected and even that hope was dashed.

C
aptain Boone smiled politely when Mrs. Gerbracht shuffled past his room, but his heart wasn’t in it. In truth, he didn’t feel so good. Was it melancholy or was he ill? He didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but whatever it was, he didn’t like it. Other than the sound of Mrs. Gerbracht shuffling sadly down the hall, the big old house was quiet. It was more despairing than peaceful. It was the quiet desperation of the disenfranchised.

Captain Boone had been sitting by the phone for three hours. He had to find a new place to live. He didn’t want to burden anyone, but since he didn’t have money to get his own place, he’d have to impose on someone.
I don’t need much
,
he’d say, if he could just think of someone to call.
Just a place to sleep and a little food—hell, I probably won’t be around for much longer anyway, right?
He’d say this with a little laugh. All he wanted was a decent place to die.

He picked up his Purple Heart and looked at it. He felt an emptiness and, as he sat alone in his room, he took stock of his life. He came to grasp the significance of not having any family left, of being alone in the world, of not being able to care for himself. All his friends were either dead, in nursing homes, or dying with their own children. The VA still couldn’t find his records. Captain Boone knew that lots of veterans lived on the streets. He just never thought he’d be one of them.