Линн Коуди - Best Canadian Stories 2020

Hazel turned to look at her. What a normal conversation , she thought. What a normal conversation for a daughter and a mother to be having . Her mother shut the door behind her, and Hazel stared at the towel hanging on a hook, her feet shifting in the fluff of the rug.

The guy had a steaming tea in front of him when she sat down and he invited her to get a coffee or something.

That was the most disappointing part. Not even dinner? she thought.

He didn’t get her, but he was smart, turned out to run an after-school arts program, and by the end of the night she’d started to like him. “I did a workshop in the country,” he said. “Seventh-day Adventists, right? And they asked me if I was an atheist, and I said yes. And then they had this look of shock on their faces. And they said to me—I swear—they said: ‘Do you live in Osborne Village?’” Hazel laughed.

It was eleven o’clock when he revealed he had a wife. And a kid at home. They were opening up their relationship after thirteen years. “She’s cool with us being here,” he stressed, as if this would soothe her. When he drove her home, he joked about making out in the car and she got out the second he parked.

Then a Facebook message half an hour later: I wish I had kissed you. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to. I’m not always totally sensitive to— blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

“How was your date?!” her mom asked the next evening.

Hazel savoured the excited look on her mother’s face, letting its image settle and take root in her mind. “He had a wife and kids.”

“Ew!” her mom said instantly.

“I know.”

“Ugh! I. Well. You deserve better, I suppose that’s all I’ll say. You deserve better then someone expecting you to—slink around.”

Hazel didn’t tell her she wouldn’t have had to slink around, that that was the thing that pissed her off, the burning phrase in her head: “She’s cool with us being here.” I don’t care how goddamn cool your wife is . Was that progress, that the wife now gave the other woman her blessing? Why wouldn’t Marina have mentioned this? (Would she have done so with a cis girl?) Was it really so weird she wanted to see what Christopher was up to these days?

Months later, after the new year, she was restless. Her mom was spending more time at her boyfriend’s. She’d filed some job applications for real, but her heart wasn’t in it. Plus, having firmly committed herself to alcoholism and sex work for much of her twenties didn’t do much for her resume.

The nascent sex workers’ rights organization was plugging along, though. It had grown to ten members and consisted of two factions: white academics/camgirls and twinky Métis social workers. The latter were starting to get their way after a disastrous public event led by the former.

Hazel was cheered by this, though she didn’t say much in the meetings. When she’d joined she’d hoped to just do boring legwork, but once it became clear the group was in infancy—and the others discovered her to not only be the sole transsexual but also the sole person who’d sucked dick for money—suddenly everyone wanted her opinion on things, and a decade of Facebook and queer culture had made Hazel very tired of needing to have opinions.

So when Festival du Voyageur came along, Hazel went and she went alone. She wanted to be in a crowd and watch people get stupid. She put on her old faux-fur coat and vamped up with thick makeup and a purple toque and caught the 29 up Route 70 and then the 10 over to St. Boniface and began to feel alive and did not want to drink, not one iota. Hazel felt good about it. Those two things had been connected for a long time.

Drinking socially was never her problem anyway. Passing the LC after dark, being alone and sleepless ten blocks from the late-night vendor—that was hard. But now? Going to watch idiots instead of being the idiot? That sounded fun.

She had her last thirty dollars for the month in her pocket and paid fifteen to go in and watch Radio Radio thrill a crowd in a tent. Wandering outside in a cold chill of French and English and pretty young people in spacesuit coats, she saw a stand advertising “Giant Perogy Poutine with Bacon—$10” and barked: “Ha!” to no one. Throw in some bannock to soak up the gravy and you’d have the peak Manitoba food , she thought. Then she bought one. Twenty minutes later she was walking back from vomiting in the Porta-Potties, but even that didn’t feel horrible—who knew the last time she’d thrown up from something besides drinking? It felt innocent in its own way.

It was while drinking water in front of the main tent that she spotted red hair in a circle of snowsuits, and right then Hazel knew.

She lingered on the periphery of their circle. An alpha type with a ballcap who looked so much like Christopher’s old buddy Matthew was talking. The whole circle, actually, looked like those guys from years ago.

Christopher glanced at her with a second’s blankness, then went back to listening to the ballcap.

Hazel thought: He still looks so young. He looks so unbelievably young .

Tall—a couple inches taller than Hazel. She’d forgotten. Freckles all over his face. His mother’s Irish red hair grown just over his ears. Thick, loose black jeans, blue mitts, and a grey toque sticking up like a chef’s hat. And blue eyes with a ring of gold inside them. She was that close to him.

And he’d looked through her at first, as if she was any other girl. A specific kind of joy came to her in that, a joy she would always treasure in not being noticed.

The boys left to go back inside, and she said: “Christopher?”

He stopped, confused. “Yeah?”

“It’s Hazel,” she said.

“Hazel?”

At first he didn’t get it, and she waited for him to at best laugh or go lifeless—but then it was beautiful, old Hollywood in the finest way, and Hazel would never forget this scene for as long as she lived. A dawn of recognition traveled across Christopher’s body. She said, “Hazel Cameron,” and took off her toque and shook out her hair, letting it spill down her fake-fur coat, and added: “From Pilot Mound.”

His face spread and cracked, like sunlight coming out of an egg.

“We used to know each other,” she said, smiling. “A long time ago.”

“HOLY SHIT! HAZEL!” And without another word (they came later: “You look amazing!” “I’ve thought about you for years!”), he hugged her. He hugged her and lifted her off the ground, her boots kicking and her nose buried in the back of his hair. It all really happened exactly like this.

On the first call (he called ), she made it clear: “Do you want to go have dinner with me?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “Yes, I do.”

“Like a date,” Hazel said, unwilling to entertain any maybe-fantasies anymore. “You realize this, right, what I’m asking you is to go on a date?”

I sound like I’m his boss , she thought, leaning against the kitchen cabinets while her mom’s dinner burned.

“Yes,” he said again. “Yes. I want to go on a date with you, too.”

They went to Paradise, that Italian place by Gordon Bell with the tinted windows. It was almost empty, with a sweet, apologetic, middle-aged waiter and menus with two-word items and no descriptions and prices that, if Christopher didn’t offer to pay, were just low enough for Hazel to still make it to the next month. “Well, fuck, I dunno, you were in Toronto then?” he said to her. Christopher was wearing a hoodie and blank T-shirt, and Hazel wore a tank top and a pencil skirt.