Kathleen looked astonished at her husband. “Then she could call me and talk with me about it! I know a lot of good things to cook! And she’s cooking for someone else, too! What do they like to eat?
* * *
Simi led Harry by the hand toward the bedroom.
* * *
Fulton did his best: “Maybe she went shopping for a vibrator—”
“Not the kind that use triple As,” Kathleen said. “Not enough power.”
* * *
Oceanna drove her mother’s car into her mother’s driveway and got out.
The neighbor, Stephen, was standing out front, again, using an umbrella as a parasol against the blistering sun, spot-watering his lawn.
“Hello, Stephen,” Oceanna said.
“Hi,” Stephen said back to her. “Thank you for bringing my trashcans back in.”
“I didn’t, this week,” Oceanna said. “I was on a trip to San Francisco, to the Pride festival there. Musta been someone else.”
Stephen looked at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Trans Pride. Gay Pride. Three hundred bikes all together at the head of the parade?”
No response from Stephen.
“The big Pride parade?”
“Pride in what?” Stephen finally said.
“Taking pride in yourself, for being who you are: gay, bisexual, trans-of-some-kind, or any kind of human being, even straight-arrow heterosexual, if you want.” Oceanna smiled at him.
His nod seemed to acknowledge her, but that was all. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, squirted himself briefly in the chest with his water hose, and went back to watering his yard.
* * *
Mason, Derie and Jason walked together through the park where the 4th of July celebration would be on Friday evening. Even though many things were in place, people bustled around doing more.
“Nice,” Mason said.
The stage was set up. The lights were hoisted overhead, four rows of them. Rented.
They walked up on the stage.
“Hey! There he is! The Mason-man. Encore!”
“Please, no begging,” Mason joked with the man.
Mason walked up to the mikes and took the tarp off them, sat one of them center stage and began singing into it: “Oh I’m a good singer—”
Derie laughed at him.
Mason continued to sing, making up words and tune: “—and my wife likes it—”
“Daddy!”
Mason smiled at the invisible audience. “—and so does my son!”
“Boooo!” the man in the ‘audience’ teased.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mason teased back.
Mason picked his son up and tossed him into the air, catching him easily, turning around, making his son laugh.
“You want to sing into the mike?” He asked Jason.
“Yes!”
Mason held Jason up to the microphone. “Say ‘hello,’ Jason. Say: ‘Hello.’”
Jason spoke into it: “Hello!”
“That’s it!” Mason said. “That was great!”
* * *
Oceanna sat in her mother’s house, alone, doors locked, air conditioner on, eating a dinner of spaghetti in front of the T.V.
CHAPTER
21
The next morning, Oceanna left the house early and caught Jed letting the air out of her tires. Dullard Frank was standing watch. There was a bag on the driveway next to them.
“Jed!?”
“Now,” Jed said to Frank.
Frank held up his telephone and began videoing.
“I was just wonderin’ if the air in your tires was, maybe a little pink and also a little blue at the same time!” Jed was aggressive.
Oceanna maneuvered between Jed and her mother’s car. “What the hell are you doing here? It’s air, Jed—”
Jed looked at Frank and smiled.
“Stop videoing me!” Oceanna said.
Jed stuck his finger in Oceanna’s chest. “You’re sick, and you’re a pervert. Most of us agree: We don’t want you here. Get out of Kingman, faggot. That’s what I’m doing here.”
“You’re interfering with my Mom’s care! I saw you following me!”
“You’re messing with my friend, Mason,” Jed said.
“You’re not acting like a friend to him now.”
“I’m saving him from the likes of you!”
“Too late! He’s already human!”
“What am I? Chopped liver?”
Oceanna nodded clearly for the mentally impaired. “You’re acting like it.”
“Just one second.” Jed held up one finger to both Oceanna and the camera. He bent over, opened the bag and drew some things out. “I got something for you, ‘Osh.’ ‘Osh’? Is that what you like to be called?”
Jed took a paper plate and squirted some whipped cream on it. “A little going away present, ‘Osh,’ or George or whatever your name really is.”
Oceanna started to turn away but Jed squished the plate of whipped cream onto Oceanna’s face and turned it, smearing it in.
Oceanna was in shock.
Jed and Frank laughed hysterically.
Oceanna flicked the paper plate off her face, which landed on the driveway. Some whipped cream got on her mom’s car, more on her clothes. She raked more off her face with her fingers.
Jed grabbed the back of Oceanna’s head with his right hand, and with his left, he drew lines in the whipped cream, over her eyes and mouth, simulating an un-happy face.
He turned her toward Frank’s camera and held her there in arms twice as strong as hers and licked his finger clean.
Oceanna lowered her head.
“Look at that camera!”
Oceanna did not look, lowered her head even more.
Jed grabbed her hair with his right hand and pulled back, raising her face to the camera.
“Are you stupid, or don’t you get it?” Jed demanded. “One way or another, you’re gonna look at that camera.”
Oceanna struggled against his grasp, but she couldn’t move. She began to cry.
“Let this be a warning to you, ‘George.’ This whole town wants you the hell out of here,” Jed said in sinister tone, two inches from her face. “But they’re afraid to say so because it’s not P.C. It’s that P.C., goody two-shoes, social control crap again. You’re sick, George, and you dress funny! We don’t want you here around our children, tryin’ to make them sick, too. You’re a man, and you should act like it. This is a decent town full of good folks. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Jed slammed Oceanna down onto the driveway.
Frank backed up to get the whole scene in frame.
CHAPTER
22
Everyone in the bar laughed. The monitor bolted high in the corner played the scene off YouTube.
“Let this be a warning to you, George!” Jed said on the monitor.
Jed smiled at the camera, and the video ended.
“Heeeeeey!” went the cheer around the bar.
“All hail Jed, the great fixer—”
“Doer of good deeds!”
“We don’t need to put up with that Freaky-town kind of thing around here. Let them all go back to where-ever they came from!”
“Free beers for Jed and Frank!”
* * *
Oceanna sat on the edge of her mom’s bathtub, half dressed, a towel on the floor beside her with blood and whipped cream stains on it. Her hair was a mess, partially covered in the crème. Her right cheek and upper lip were swollen. Her lip and nose were still bleeding a little.
She was crying into the phone to a friend in Los Angeles. “I just— I just wanted to call—”
“What’s the matter, Osh?” Regina Isler was a social leader of the transgender paradigm in Los Angeles, psychotherapist and professor of psychology. She and Oceanna had been friends for years, sometimes working on events together.
Oceanna’s reply was weak. “Nothin
g.”
“So you thought you’d call—hurt and crying—because nothing’s up? You sound clogged up, honey!”
Oceanna cried softly into the phone, letting it out, but saying nothing. Her nose dripped another drop of blood onto the tile floor. Oceanna ripped some toilet paper off a roll and held it to her nose.
“Osh! What’s going on?”
Oceanna shook her head no. She lowered here head and cried more, but kept the phone to her ear.
“I just wanted to hear you,” she said.
“I’m here, love,” Regina said. “I’m here, and I’ll stay here.”
The phone was quiet for a while.
Regina finally spoke gently to her. “Life can be hard for us anywhere, and over there, I don’t know—”
Oceanna stopped crying and stared blankly at the floor.
“Honey, are you alright?” Regina asked.
“Yes— No! I haven’t been alright for decades in this place, and I’ve only been here for a year!”
“Did someone hurt you? Did something happen?”
Oceanna nodded to the bathroom and reflexively looked around to see if it was safe. “A little. God, I was so scared. I didn’t know what they were going to do.”
* * *
In the feed store, Derie stood behind the counter and slammed the phone down into the cradle. “Mason!”
Mason was on the dog aisle with a customer, whose dog lead the way in a famous olfactory method of selecting dinner.
Mason’s head popped up. “What?”
“Get over here! Come see this!”
Mason looked at the customer in a query and acceded to his wife’s demand. His boots clumped on the hard wood flooring on his way to the front.
The customer trailed behind him.
Two other customers in the store heard and followed as well.
“Look at this.” Derie had pulled a bluetoothed keyboard in front of herself and was typing rapidly. Images flashed on the monitor beside the cash register. “Here it is.”
Derie hit “return” on her keyboard, and the video began to play.
The five of them watched in astonishment.
“For cryin’ out loud,” a customer said.
“I’m going over there,” Mason said.
Derie yanked her apron off. “Not without me.”
They ran out the door without closing the place.
While Mason drove their pickup, Derie was on the phone. “Kathleen! I can’t reach Simi or Hila right now—must be at work. But look on YouTube.” Pause. “What’s your email? I’ll send you the link.”
Mason walked into Oceanna’s house. “Osh! Osh! It’s me— It’s us! Derie and Mason! Your door wasn’t even shut! Are you here?”
Oceanna wrapped a towel around herself before they walked into her bathroom.
“Oshie! You’re a mess! Your face!” Derie bent over Oceanna to begin helping her. “You’re bleeding! And a horrible bruise!”
Oceanna squirmed a little, but Derie’s touch was nurturing.
“Honey, your teeth? Are they alright?” Derie tried to look into Oceanna’s mouth as if she were a horse, but Oceanna squirmed.
“It’s alright,” Oceanna said.
Derie dampened a clean towel and dabbed at Oceanna’s face a little, then showed Mason outside. “Get out of here!” she said. “I’ve got this.”
Mason withdrew to the living room.
“I was going to shower this stuff off—” Oceanna said.
“Right now, you need some stitches on your upper lip,” Derie said. “And your nose may be broken.” She started to help Oceanna get into a bathrobe, but stopped short and called out of the room. “Mason! Can you find me a clean top of some kind, maybe in a closet?” She turned back to Oceanna. “We’ll get you to an emergency room.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Oceanna said, standing to look at herself in the mirror. “I’ll go to my own doctor, here. That’s all.” Oceanna looked at her mouth more closely. An upper right incisor was loose.”
In the lobby of Oceanna’s doctor’s office, Mason’s phone rang.
Derie pulled it out of Mason’s pants pocket. It was Hila.
“Hila! Hello. This is Derie, Mason’s wife. I feel like I already know you.”
* * *
Jed and Frank walked into a gas station to get some 5-Hour Energies, hyped as two rooster champions at a cock fight, laughing with each other.
“Larry!” Jed said to the clerk behind the counter. “Did you see?”
Frank held out his phone and started the video.
CHAPTER
23
Regina sat in her office at the university, pondering Oceanna. After a bit, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and pressed a few icons.
“Hi Paula, Regina.” Pause. “Oh, fine, fine. But I just got a call from Osh—in a way that was very unlike her.”
* * *
Hila was in her office in AT&T Park, the Giant’s stadium, San Francisco. People could been seen on the field, below, grooming.
She listened to her phone through a Bluetooth earpiece. Her face was ashen. She reached for the T.V. remote and held it up, pressed a button to turn on a monitor on the wall.
“One sec, Derie. What do I google?”
* * *
Larry watched Frank and Jed pull away from the gas station.
He looked at his co-worker, briefly, and picked up his phone.
* * *
A nurse walked Oceanna out of the exam room, back to the lobby, where Mason and Derie waited.
“Osh! How are you doing?” Derie asked.
“She’s fine,” the nurse said. “Well— She’ll heal.”
“I’m okay,” Oceanna said.
“Don’t look fine to me,” Mason said. “Look like you’ve been in a car accident.”
Oceanna turned away, looked ashamed.
“Not from me, you don’t,” Derie said to Oceanna, gently turning her face back toward them. “We’re friends, here, Osh.”
* * *
“Right,” Regina said into her cell phone. “I don’t have the facts yet. She was messed up, but I’ll get her back.”
Regina’s phone indicated an incoming call. It was Hila. She thought about it for only one second before incorporating Hila into the call, making it a three-way.
“Hila, this is Regina. Hi.” Pause. “Paula, this is Hila, on the line with us now. She’s a mover up in San Francisco—”
* * *
“What? Hi, Mom,” Simi spoke into her cell phone. “No, Harry’s not home right now, but soon—”
Simi listened, got a worried look on her face, listening harder. Absentmindedly, she looked around the apartment and ran her fingers through her hair with her free hand, held the back part up into a ponytail. The look on her face went from shock to anger.
* * *
Roy Smith had been a police officer in Kingman for sixteen years. There wasn’t much he couldn’t handle, he was sure.
He sat in his cruiser and watched both Jed and Frank walking out the front of the Walmart toward Jed’s old Chevy pickup in the parking lot.
Roy picked his radio mike off his left shoulder with his right hand and spoke into it. “I got ‘em.” He hooked the mike back on his shirt.
Turning to his partner behind the wheel, he finished. “Wait ‘till I call you, this time. Got it?”
“Yeah, sure,” Roy’s partner said, struggling with the idea.
Roy got out of his cruiser and walked over to Jed and Frank, casually.
“Jed! How you doing?” he called. “Frank, hi.”
The two men looked at the officer. “Roy! Howdy,” Jed said. “Boy have I got some crap to show you.” Jed pulled out his cell phone yet again.
“Yeah? Like what?” Roy said, smiling, friendly.
Jed began to laugh. “Oh, you know that queen who’s been scumming up the place for the last year? Nobody likes him around here, and I think I finally got the message through that thick skull—”
r /> Frank tapped Jed on the shoulder, so Jed corrected. “Okay: We finally got the message through—”
Roy watched the video on Jed’s phone. “You shoot this?” he asked Frank, who smiled proudly as if he just got a gold star in school.
“Now, that is good work—” Roy said.
Jed and Frank smiled.
Roy continued. “—if this were the K.K.K., but it’s not.”
Roy slapped one set of handcuffs on both of them faster than they could see what happened. He held onto the link between them with one hand and waved to his partner with the other.
The cruiser’s lights began to flip.
“What ‘re you doin’?” Jed asked.
Frank was aghast. “Jed?”
Roy fingered his partner over and pointed to the ground beside his right foot.
The cruiser pulled forward and sat like a trained puppy.
Some people in the parking lot noticed, and one cell phone came out to video.
Roy noticed.
“What the hell you doin’?” Jed asked again.
Roy’s partner got out of the cruiser to help.
Roy smiled to everyone and went through his you’re-under-arrest speech as pretty as a Broadway play, complete with the reading of Miranda rights off a little card from his breast pocket.
Jed started to fight. “You can’t do this!” He jerked his hand up and down and pulled, finally attempting to strike the officer with his free hand.
Roy didn’t even flinch. Six years practice in aikido, and he moved almost casually to one side, grabbing Jed’s striking wrist with one hand and leading it over the hood of his cruiser.
Jed slammed onto the hood of the car with a bang.
Roy bent the wrist outward with one hand into a hold.
Jed screamed. “For the drag queen, Oceanna!?”
Roy was calm, smiling. “No, no. Not actually. For yourself, the two of you. You and Frank.”
“I told her to leave town!” Jed screamed. I told him before, but he wouldn’t leave, so I had to make it clear!” Jed let off enough foul language to please a hoard of drunken sailors on shore leave in New Jersey.