Schwartzie was so hot Les just couldn’t help himself. Now his heart ached with despair and a kind of narcissistic rage. Just the sight of her sad little figure, standing there so disconsolately, illuminated by the pale yellow glimmer of the overhead lights. As she turned and moved towards the door of the building, Les drove away seething inside. It was an indescribable mixture of love, hate, anger, shame, and pity. Les would always remember her like that, standing there like an idol in some deserted temple, brooding in the rain.
Yes; he felt a tug of something at his heartstrings, an acknowledgement that they could have really had something. Something special. In some other time, in some other place. In some other world. Maybe in some other existence.
The evening began well enough. It was a surprising revelation to Les, these feelings of affection that he felt for Schwartzie. Les was the perfect gentleman, kind, considerate and thoughtful. He felt incredibly, horribly protective towards her.
For some reason it hurt inside. The way he really cared about her, and she always took him for a lecher.
Why me?
Oh, Lord, why me?
There was no doubt the attraction was sexual, but what Schwartzie had never, ever understood, right from the beginning, was that she was special. She was the one—all that was gone now. Les instinctively understood that he was ruined for other women now.
Deep in the pit of his stomach, he wondered if he would be alone for the rest of his life. That possibility loomed very large and very real to him now.
Les could see his mistake. It was staking everything on the one main chance.
She walked into the newsroom. His first day on the new job. It was love at first sight. He just couldn’t help it. And now this! She shouldn’t have told him. He raged inwardly at the thought that she…well, surely she had rejected his advances, no doubt about it, but why hadn’t Schwartzie—that’s the way he would always think of her—why hadn’t Mackenzie told him?
Why hadn’t she told him that she was a man? A man only part-way through the long and involved surgical sex-change process.
While Les understood that women like to be pursued, seduced, why hadn’t he, she or it told him? It would have saved them both a lot of grief in the end. The terrible thing to Les is that he still loved her—he, she, it—but he just couldn’t do it. If he married Schwartzie he would be…he knew he would be impotent for the rest of his life.
There was no blame or fault. Schwartzie really hadn’t done anything wrong. Born a semi-functional hermaphrodite, Schwartzie had a vagina and a uterus. It was the vestigial penis that had to go. She could have babies and everything. She was everything he’d always wanted in a woman. It was just too weird. But she was raised as a boy. She was a strong, intelligent, independent, powerful woman who just happened to have the weirdest-looking sex organs Les could ever imagine. She hadn’t actually shown him, but it was easy enough to recall something from a Hustler mag. She assured him, that after several more operations, it would be perfectly normal except for a couple of little scars, all but invisible under her pubic hair.
The two talked long into the night. Perhaps imagination was worse than reality, but the truth was he just really, really didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know.
That’s why Purvis was driving around in circles, all over town, all night long so far.
Sooner or later someone would find out. Sooner or later the truth would come out.
This was a small town. Southern Ontario was a surprisingly small place sometimes.
He couldn’t bear the thought of the talk…all the talk.
His folks would freak out.
The lit windows of the neighbourhoods attested to something; the fact that everyone was busy with their own little lives. But they had time to look outwards once in a while, and gossip was rampant in this town. Just as it surely must be in all others.
He wanted Schwartzie more than anything he had ever wanted in his entire life.
He just couldn’t do it. Les hated himself. She was terribly hurt. He knew that much. If only she didn’t actually like him! If only she could have remained steadfast.
But the flesh was weak; even as her spirit was strong.
God! He thought in a bizarre flash of hysteria. For some reason the urge to laugh insanely was quite strong at this moment.
If only she hadn’t told me…God, if only she hadn’t told me.
Chapter Fifty
Brubaker was not a happy camper first thing in the morning…