While circumstances may not have been the norm, the emotions of grief were universal — that longing to connect with others who had shared the now-dead. Once the service was concluded and the mourners turned toward home, he approached them, and their gazes ranged from guarded to inimical.
“Oh, look,” said one of the trio. Long blond hair, full red mouth, mascaraed eyes; male origins betrayed by a squarish jaw. “I bet I know who this is.”
The tallest of the three nodded. Dark hair cropped close, sparse stubble on the jaw. The hands were delicate, though, this one traveling the opposite road of change. “You’re Gary, aren’t you?” The voice fell between alto and tenor, a vocal netherland.
He said that he was, and while there was little warmth, the introductions were civil. The blond was Alexis, the short-haired one Gabriel. The third of their group — small and pale, hostile eyes red from weeping — was Megan. Ringlets of brown hair fell into her blotchy face, and she pushed them back with incongruently large hands, veined and knotty.
“Let me guess,” said Gabriel, appearing less accusatory than analytical. “You’re feeling guilty because you dumped her, and you think that’s why she did it.”
Gary frowned. “How do you know what went on between us?” This was either scary insight, or an unerringly accurate guess. “Lana did it … immediately.”
Gabriel shrugged, stared at the dead sky. “I’ve seen it happen before.”
“I’m sorry,” Gary said, and hated how lame it sounded. “I never meant to hurt her.”
“No, of course not,” Megan said. “
Gary stared her down until she closed her angry mouth. “I didn’t come here for a debate.” Then, to all three: “I can’t say I was perfect, but I never intended anything like this to happen. I did care for her.”
Alexis nodded. “But you didn’t truly understand her world. Did you?”
“The best I could.”
“No.” Gabriel shook his head. “If you’d really wanted to, you would’ve already met us. We didn’t see much of Lana the past few months. Those belonged to you. She subjugated herself for you. All so you wouldn’t be hit with too much at once, and go running.”
Gary took a step back from the rawness of the implication, that he was ignorant of the real Lana, as opposed to the Lana she had chosen to reveal. He’d thought all along she simply preferred being alone with him.
“I should go,” he whispered, and took another step.
“Why not join us tonight?” Gabriel said. “At the Fringe. You know that much about Lana, don’t you? How much she liked that place?”
“I know of it.”
“Then join us, why don’t you? Have a drink to her memory with the people who knew her better than you did.” Gabriel looked distastefully about the cemetery, all spires and vaults and crumbled beauty. “I think you owe her that much.”
“At least,” he said softly, and thought for a moment, then told them he would be there.
*
He carried the stares of Lana’s friends throughout the rest of the afternoon and into evening along a gauntlet of French Quarter bars, smoothing down the roughest edges of remorse and responsibility.
Mardi Gras was over by two months, but revelers still choked the Quarter’s streets, furiously bent on good times. The South had always seemed so fundamentally more sensual than New England, its passions ignited by a crueler sun, and allowed to boil out and flow and cool like sweat. Here the food was rich and spicy, full of delicious venoms that the heart embraced. Here Dixieland rubbed amiable shoulders with punk. Here an empty glass was intolerable.
Gary had lied, of course; had no intention of meeting them at the Fringe. To promise otherwise was simply the best way to save face, avoid conflict, for he felt low enough as it was. Sitting there baring his head and soul for them to whack on would do no one any good. He’d get along better on his own, never prone to crumbling into tears and begging strangers to listen to his woes. Let the drinks settle inside, then, and glaze him over with silent brooding.
The French Quarter, and Rue Bourbon. Strip shows and jazz bands and karaoke. He watched from the shadows while slow numbness crept in, absently scratching his chest, fighting that persistent itch. It took deliberate effort to stop and realize just how long he’d been at it — enough to make it second nature.
He rubbed again, probing with tender fingers.
Swelling. There was swelling going on under his shirt.
Gary rose to tread the churning sea into a bathroom that may have last been clean back when Louis Armstrong played. He stood before the cracked mirror and parted his shirt—
—and stared at the two feminine nipples jutting from his chest. Protuberant and erect, their areolae as large as silver dollars.
His reflection, staring. Cracked in the middle, two jagged halves misaligned at their juncture.
“She was contagious,” he muttered in cold shock.
And quickly reconsidered this afternoon’s lie.
*
Through a spitting rain, he found it an hour later, twice stopping street locals to point him in the proper direction. The Fringe had been built in a renovated warehouse downriver from the French Quarter. Night seemed deeper here, the air ancient. Few would ever come here by mistake.
Although Lana had spoken of the Fringe several times, he’d never accompanied her here. He supposed that she alone had been enough to sate his curiosity about her kind, so until tonight he’d had no real need of this haven for gender-benders, and those who sought their company.
Within its dark and hallowed walls Gary found a world of alternatives: music, clothing, anatomy. A maze of multiple levels in architecture, as Lana had described, each was dimly lit and an enclave unto itself. There was supposed to be some sort of garden atop the roof, where ephemeral couples might retreat for whatever liaisons their bodies, lacerated or not, would allow.
Gary bought a bottle of wine at the main bar, weaved through the open center where dancers writhed beneath black light and strobes to music that sounded like the roar of an industrialized armageddon. The volume could peel skin.
Here he was groped endlessly and let it happen, reeling with an intoxicated pleasure in so many sliding hands, so much sensory delight despite the known world of his own flesh turning strange on him. Here, at least, pretensions were few, the common denominator belonging to rhythm and movement and surrender. The real effort lay in pulling back, pushing on, remembering why he was here.
He found them near the uppermost levels, Gabriel and Alexis and Megan tucked into a secluded booth. One noticed him, then all watched as he approached their table and slammed down the wine bottle.
“Finally.” Gabriel looked pleased.
“We’re mourning the way Lana would’ve wanted us to,” said Alexis, the blonde, tipping a highball toward a forest of bottles and glasses, hours’ worth of bereavement. “Sit, sit.”
He glared down at them while fumbling with his shirt buttons.
Megan perked up, brushed ringlets of hair from her face. “I
“Megan,” chided Alexis. “Don’t be a bitch.”
Gary sat beside Gabriel, tense as a coiled spring. He left his shirt unbuttoned but draped shut, feeling steam build inside.
“After what he put Lana through?” Megan went on. “Whose side are you on? Lana was fragile.”
Alexis reached across the table, intimately touching Gary’s arm. “Lana was like a … a goddess to our little family. She was the first to get the go-ahead for her final surgery.”
Megan wiped her eyes, smearing mascara. “It should’ve been me. But no, my therapist says I’m not stable
