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Show Motherlunge a novel 176 "Tough day at the office?" I asked. "Nan," she laughed. "But busy. And I didn't hear from Neil, which is weird." Neil was Cassandra's favorite client. He was a soft-spoken man, ostensibly mid-thirties, supposedly in the middle of a long sex-change process-post-hormones, pre-surgery. He called the phone-sex service several times a week on a schedule so he'd get Cassandra, and they'd talk about clothes. "The last time we talked he wanted to pretend he was a bride. I was helping him get dressed for the ceremony." "How does that work? I mean, how do you do that over the phone?" I asked. Cassandra twisted her hair up on the back of her head, then let it fall again against her long smooth neck. "I describe how he washes his hair and his body-lots of shaving, in his case-and I talk about the fragrances of the shampoo and soap. I told him the stockings we'd chosen, and all about his makeup, and all about his dress. His dress was really, really beautiful." Cassandra sighed, looking past me. She pointed. "It had all these tiny pearl buttons up the back." I looked where she was pointing; threads of black smoke were rising from the toaster. I pulled up the handle. "Yeah. But you know, schedules change. Things come up." She smiled slowly and disingenuously. "I'm not going to take Neil's silence personally." I nodded and began scraping the charcoal off the toast with the back of my spoon. "Hey," Cassandra said suddenly, "How's your beautiful sister and that beautiful baby?" "Baby's fine," I said. I handed her a piece of worked-over toast. |