Chapter 42
I fell onto him, burying my face into the crook of his neck, breathing deep the smell of slightly sweaty Zach, a scent that had long since come to mean home
Later, legs tangled together on the couch and a cold beer in my hand, I thought of the things I had told my family, hard though they had been for me to say, hard though they had been for my family to hear. I reached for Zach’s hand and said, “I think I’m just about ready to give the clinic a call.” No need for me to say which clinic; we’ve been talking for an age, it seems, about this, about my starting the procedures that will reshape my body—which changes are the most important to me (and to him, too, though Zach swears he would be content if I never even set foot in the clinic, darling that he is).
Zach smiled and squeezed my hand. “You know I’m with you, whatever you want to do.”
“I know.” I doknow, which is why I was only a littleterrified when I continued, “I might let my birth certificate stand, though…I mean…At least for right now, it’d be a lot easier for us to get married if I’m still legally a woman.”Good Karma by Lynn Townsend
I tore the ticket off my windshield with a muttered curse.
“What does that bastard do,” I muttered, “lie in wait?”
I checked my watch. I had been in the butcher’s shop for barely an hour, according to my time-stamped receipt. And that was enough to ticket me. Three freaking minutes?
It was one of those old-fashioned shops, where you took a number to be served and waited around, looking at pre-cut racks of lamb or five pound parcels of paper-wrapped ground beef. Listening to the foodies and the yuppies feel smug about themselves and their organic, grain-fed, free-range veal. None of them had ever seen a cow in their entire lives, not a real, live, up-close cow.
I only went there because they sold eggs for eighty cents for a dozen and ground beef for less than two dollars a pound.
I spun in a slow circle. That asshole police officer had given me two tickets already this month. This would be my third. It wasn’t that much, really. Ten dollars a pop. But ten dollars to a single parent with a part-time job, a generous sister who did the babysitting for free, and no health insurance? Ten dollars was another meal of ramen noodles this month. Ten dollars was the flu shot I couldn’t get. Ten dollars was having to share my daughter’s generic, strawberry-scented shampoo. I smelled like cheap car air-freshener. Ten dollars was playing the game of which bill can I stiff this month and not have them turn off the power or my phone or the gas or water.
I put my purchases on the floor in the back and crawled into the stiflingly hot driver’s seat. There was no air-conditioning. Of course not, I could never afford that. Four-fifty AC, that was my car—four windows rolled down, fifty miles an hour.
There was no one to see me here; the urban soccer moms with their perfectly coiffed hair and their expensive shoes would never notice me, not in my rusty Toyota. I leaned my head against the steering wheel, letting the tears fall.
Someone knocked on the window.
“Yeah, I’m moving, I’m moving,” I said, catching a glimpse of uniform. I hastily wiped my eyes and put my steamed-up glasses back on.
It wasn’t the cop. The butcher’s assistant stood there, holding one of the brown-paper packages, a big one. She wore her hair pulled back in an atrocious scrape and I never saw her with makeup on, but she smiled at me every time I came in and I knew that sometimes she light-weighed my meat, giving me an extra quarter pound without marking it up.
“Sorry,” I said. I waved the ticket at her. “It’s been a bad day already.”
Her mega-watt smile dimmed a bit. “Yeah, I saw him out here. I feel badly. If the woman before you hadn’t been so persnickety, we’d have had you out of the shop before he rolled by.”
“He’s just doing his job,” I said.
“Give some people a smidge of power and they come down on you like a ton of bricks.” She snorted. “You’re one of our best customers. Like completely not bitchy, and your kids are so adorable! So I talked to the owner and we have something for you.”
She handed me the package. Her neat, crisp, familiar handwriting decorated the outside of the packet.
2 lbs filet mignon
1 lb bacon
1 lb sirloin burger
12 apple & pork sausage
Happy Father’s Day to our favorite Dad
I stared at the package. This was more food, better food, than I’d seen in one place in the last three months put together.