Michael groaned. “Do we really have to have playa names?”
“No . . . but it’s fun, Uncle Grumpy. Being someone else for a while. Flying our freak flag. No one I know takes it too seriously.”
“What’s yours, then?”
“My playa name?” Oh shit, he would ask that. On her last Burn she had dubbed herself Loosey Goosey while slinging Cosmos at Celestial Bodies, but that would not work for an insemination. She needed something grounded and classic, something she could conceivably—so to speak—share with her child someday.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she told Michael.
He scrunched up his brow with sober professorial interest. She remembered him using that expression when she was seven years old and brought him riotous finger paintings from the Presidio Hill School. It proved that he cared.
“What do you want the name to convey?” he asked.
And there was her opening.
She shrugged. “The theme of Burning Man, I guess. Fertility 2.0.”
“What’s that mean? 2.0?”
“I know—right? Confusing as all fuck. They had one before, apparently. This is the second one.”
“So—just Fertility, then.”
“Yes.”
He mused briefly. “Tillie T.”
She rolled her eyes. “Cute. But that’s a waitress in a diner.”
“Okay, then . . . Fecundity.”
“Fecundity?” She swatted him with a throw pillow. “That makes me sound like a swamp!”
“Are you pregnant?” he asked, instantly scuttling their game.
She shook her head. “I wanna be, though. You know that.”
He nodded with a beneficent smile. She had suggested as much a month or so earlier when the royalties started coming in from the book, when she could finally lay a claim to adult responsibility. Michael had told her he wanted no part of raising a kid, but he wouldn’t mind having one nearby. He wouldn’t mind that at all.
“And the clock is sort of ticking, you know.”
“C’mon. Twenty-nine is not old.”
She shook her head. “I meant Anna. I want it to happen while she’s still with us.” She avoided Michael’s eyes by fidgeting with her skirt. “I dreamed last night that we were at Barbary Lane. Only it looked like it was when I was little, before those dot-commers made it look like a five-star B and B. But it was now present-day . . . because you and Ben were there . . . and Anna was there, too, but she looked really young and . . . you know . . . fresh . . . younger than I can remember even. And she was touching my belly. And when I woke up, I knew it was time to get pregnant.”
Michael smiled sleepily.
“The thing is,” she added, “I want it to happen at Burning Man.”
The smile curdled noticeably. He was obviously thrown, but trying not to show it. “Well . . . I’m sure you’ll find plenty of takers.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, Michael, not that way.”
“Oh, you mean . . .” Mysteriously, he pressed his fingers to his thumb as if he were operating the mouth of a hand puppet.
“What the hell is that?”
“Turkey baster.”
“Oh, right . . . exactly. Bingo.”
The relief bloomed on his face. “Thank God. I was picturing some grotesque variation on speed dating. With me and Ben in the tent next door.”
She chuckled.
“You know it’s an eight-hour drive, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well . . . that stuff doesn’t travel very well. You’ll need one of those super coolers—”
“Michael—”
“Oh . . . right. You have a supplier there.”
She nodded. “A possible one. A sweet guy from my Conscious Dance workshop. He has no interest in being a father, thank god, but he’s totally fine with . . . you know, giving it up for me. I’ve checked him out. No schizophrenic parents or anything. Clean and sober even. He’s got a hammock over at Chakralicious—”
“I have no idea what that is, Shawna.”
“Just another camp. Not far from ours. Sharon, this friend who works at Zynga, has offered to be the runner.”
“The cum runner.”
It was less of a question than a not-so-funny joke, but she confirmed it with a nod. “He’s a decent guy, but I don’t feel close enough to him to . . . you know, have him in the tent while it’s happening.” It sounded odd to put that into words, but it was exactly what she meant. It was important to be clear from here on out.
“So Sharon is gonna—”
“—run it, yeah . . . from Chakralicious.”
Michael took that in for a moment. “You know,” he said, “if you were a guy, you’d know it’s not all that easy to jerk off in a hammock.”
She laughed. “I’ll leave it to him to figure that out. Assuming, of course—” She cut herself off.
“Assuming what?”
Another excruciating silence. “The thing is . . .” She realized that this was the second time she had said The Thing Is in the last minute. She was not the sort of girl who touched her throat and said The Thing Is. As a rule, she said just what she wanted without batting her eyes in supplication.
“—you and Ben are my family.”
“I know that, sweetie.”
“I mean, Dad too, of course . . . but now that he and Wren are settling in New Mexico—”
“They are?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
Michael shook his head, frowning. “I guess he was waiting until he saw me in person.”
“But . . . anyway . . . Caleb will be perfectly fine for this—”
“Caleb?”
“The guy from Chakralicious.”
“Oh—right.”
“—but you would have been my first choice.”
“Your first choice for . . .” It took him a moment, but he got it. “Oh, Shawna, honey . . .”
“Am I weirding you out?”
“Just a little, yeah.” His flashing stoplight of a face confirmed this.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know that . . . I would have been thrilled for my baby to have something of you. Something of your sweetness and wit and your . . . huge capacity for love. I know it can’t happen, since you’re HIV-positive, but I want you to know that I would have asked you, everything else being equal. I would have, Michael, in a fucking heartbeat. So there—I said it. Shoot me.”
For a moment she couldn’t tell if he was deeply touched or just grossed out. Then, when he reached for her hand, she saw the tears shellacking his cheek.
“No one’s gonna shoot you, honey.”
“But shut up, right?”
“Yes, please. Immediately.”
“It’s not like we’re related.”
“But it is, sorta.” He quickly swiped at his cheek. “It is sorta like that. Even if I weren’t positive, it wouldn’t be appropriate. We’re different generations.”
She shrugged. “You and Ben are different generations.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“David Crosby did it for Melissa Etheridge, and he was like a hundred and eight.”
He gave her a crooked smile as she squeezed her hand. “Believe me, the invitation means infinitely more than the dance.”
She squeezed back. “Good. That makes me feel better.” She exhaled. “It depressed me for a while, you know. Knowing it wasn’t possible.”
“Oh, frevvinsakes.”
“I know, right? But then I saw how silly I was being. Fuck HIV. And fuck some guy I barely know from Chakralicious. We’re family, so this baby should be about us. All of us. And it still can be, Michael! About you and Ben even!”
Michael’s mouth was agape. “How can it be about that?”
“Okay,??
? she said, her heart struggling in her chest like a small bird stuck in a chimney. “This is what I called about. I thought you and I should talk first.”
His face revealed that they were finally on the same page, though it might have been an obituary page, or a notice of imminent nuclear annihilation.
“Do you think Ben would be up for it?” she asked.
Chapter 8
THE ART CAR
“Do you think she’ll be up for it?” Jake asked the visitors.
They were standing in a derelict warehouse in Emoryville, a place chosen for its wide-open spaces and ready access to the freeway. Jake’s upstairs neighbors, Selina and Marguerite—both transfolk—had just arrived on a trans-bay BART train from San Francisco. Kinda funny, thought Jake, since Trans Bay was the name of his camp in Black Rock City, but Selina and Marguerite were way too ladylike for a Burn.
They were here to see if the art car passed muster.
“It does look comfy,” said Marguerite, craning her neck, “but how on earth would you get her all the way up there?” A math teacher at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, she was prone to asking questions. And since she was as short and waddly as a pigeon, practically everything she encountered in life struck her as too-high-up.
Jake was prepared. “There’s a detachable ramp, see? We can roll her up there, if we have to. And once she’s in place—wa-la!—all she has to do is sit there and watch the world go by!”
Marguerite frowned. “But, surely, when it’s out on the highway . . .”
Selina Khan, a tall and deeply practical Canadian who advised people about their investments, shot a weary glance at her flatmate. “You don’t seriously think this thing is going out on the highway, do you?”
“Well . . .” Marguerite screwed her face into a pout. “It has wheels, Selina. It looks very strong to me . . . with all that metal and . . . welding.”
Jake tried to soothe Marguerite’s feelings. “A natural mistake. “It is a vehicle . . . technically. It’s already registered in the Mutant Vehicles Parade.”
“It’s a giant tricycle,” Selina said flatly. “So what do you do between here and the desert? Disassemble it or something?”
“There ya go!” Jake fired his forefinger at Selina as if she had just picked the right answer on Millionaire. He knew he had to placate both of them if this was ever going to happen. As members of Anna’s caregiver circle, these ladies had a serious say in the matter. “We’re packing the parts onto a flatbed truck,” he said, “and reassembling it on the playa. Anna won’t even see it until we’re there.”
“She won’t have to pedal it, will she?” Marguerite again, with her questions.
“Nope. These three pods are the only ones that have pedals.”
Selina grabbed one of the pods and shook it, apparently testing its sturdiness. “And three people—just pedaling—can make this thing move?”
Stop calling it a thing, thought Jake. This is my baby—the Monarch. It took nine whole months to make, in fact, so have some respect.
“Want a demonstration?” He tried to say it without defiance, but wasn’t sure that he’d succeeded. “It’s really simple.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Selina.
Three of the other guys from Trans Bay, including Jake’s boyfriend Amos, were huddled in a circle on the other side of the room, possibly smoking weed. Jake weighed the pros and cons of summoning them, then stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Yo, bitches! Magic Time.” Within seconds they had all come running, scrambling into their pods like firemen mounting a hook-and-ladder.
“Oh my,” said Marguerite, pressing her hand to her chest as soon as the art car began to rumble across the concrete floor. “Should we get out of the way?”
“You’re fine,” said Jake. “They’ve got it under control.”
A section of plastic tubing fell off Amos’s pod and clattered noisily to the floor, making Marguerite jump back several feet.
“That’s just decorative,” Jake hastened to explain. “We’re not finished with that part yet. The hardscape is totally solid.”
“It’s quite something,” murmured Marguerite, obviously trying to say something supportive. “It’s like an old-timey carousel.”
Selina arched an eyebrow at her. “Pray tell, Marguerite. How is it like an old-timey carousel?”
“Well, it goes up and down as much as it goes around and around.”
“It’s not supposed to go around and around. It’s supposed to transport her from one place to another.”
“You know what I mean, Selina. There’s all this wonderful . . . movement, in all directions. It’s extraordinary, Jake. A real accomplishment.”
Jake felt himself blush with pride. He was tempted to show them how the wings worked, but the silk panels had yet to be installed, so the superstructure would still be visible. Without the softscape in place it would come off more like a pterodactyl than a monarch butterfly. He showed them Amos’s sketch instead.
“This is how it’ll look,” he said, offering the blueprint to Selina. “It’s all about—you know—transformation.”
“What’s that writing on the front?” asked Selina.
Marguerite tilted her reading glasses and read aloud: “ ‘Anna Madrigal—World’s Oldest Transgender Activist.’ ”
“That’s lovely,” she said.
“Really?” grumbled Selina. “What if it said, ‘Marguerite McGillicuddy—World’s Oldest Math Teacher.’ Would you want to ride around town in that?”
Marguerite cocked her head in silent concession to Selina, then turned back to Jake. “You might want to go with something like . . . ‘Transgender Pioneer Anna Madrigal.’ ”
“Sure,” he said. “Cool. Fine.” At this point there was everything to gain by compromise. He was just glad they had moved away from safety issues and onto more mundane considerations. It was starting to feel like a done deal. He signaled for the guys to come down, since they were following this exchange too intently.
“Does she know about this?” asked Marguerite.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Why not?” asked Selina.
Jake explained that first he had to be sure he could create something worthy of Anna’s iconic stature in the LGBT community. He wanted every last piece in place, he said, before unveiling the finished product. And naturally that meant the support and approval of Selina and Marguerite, Anna’s most trusted confidantes in the community and, needless to say, icons in their own right. He had his tongue so far up their asses, it was a wonder he could talk at all.
“How do you know she would even do it?” asked Selina.
Jake shrugged. “We’re honoring her. Don’t people like to go places where they’re being honored?”
“The Hyatt Regency, maybe. Not Black Dog City.”
“Rock,” said Jake.
“What?”
“Black Rock City. It’s named for the desert.”
“It’s in a desert?”
Jake shrugged. “An alkali flat, actually.”
Marguerite gazed hopefully at Jake. “Is that better than a desert?”
Jake decided not to answer that directly. “I’m gonna rent an SUV with AC. We can come late and leave early and . . . you know, totally avoid the crowds. We’ll have a great time, I’ll be with her every minute, she’ll feel the love . . . we’ll have a photo op and get the hell out of Dodge the next day. Easy peasy Japanesy.”
It was just a stupid expression his mom used all the time back in Tulsa, but it tumbled out of him as if he’d coined the phrase himself. Selina made a face like he’d just spilled a glass of Two-Buck Chuck on her nice white couch.
“What?” he said. “You’re Korean. Gimme a break.” He looked to Marguerite for support. “Doesn’t this seem cool to you?”
Marguerite took her time a
nswering, probably because she had to keep peace in the flat. She and Selina were not a couple couple, but they had shared that space for years, so they squabbled about everything in private. Jake had lived there with them, in fact, until he escaped downstairs into the low-stress Eden of Anna’s flat.
“It does seem very cool,” Marguerite replied. “But there are other considerations. Cool isn’t always enough, Jake.”
Oh great, he thought, now the good cop was turning on him. “Why are you making me sound like some sort of flake? I may not be as old as you two—”
“Easy,” warned Selina.
“—but I am middle-aged, and—”
“You are not middle-aged,” gasped Marguerite, sounding like a maiden aunt who suddenly wondered where the time had gone.
“I will be,” said Jake. “In a few years.”
Selina gripped Marguerite’s arm in an act of sisterly consolation. “It’s so unfair, isn’t it? Age is so much kinder to the rougher sex.”
Marguerite wrenched her arm free and returned to the subject, addressing Jake in an even tone: “I know how much you want to celebrate Anna’s life, and I think that’s just beautiful—but she’s very frail now. No one knows that better than you, Jake. There are blinding dust storms at this place and cruel, debilitating heat—”
“It’s not that bad,” said Jake.
“Yes, it is. I’ve been on YouTube. Don’t bullshit me, Jake.”
The Clint Eastwood approach was not typical of Marguerite, so it knocked Jake back for a moment. He imagined her unleashing that tone on her students at the Harvey Milk Academy, having judiciously saved it for just the right moment.
“And here’s what you must know,” Marguerite went on. “If you ask Anna to do this, she will do it. There’s no doubt about that. She will say yes, because she won’t want to disappoint you. We know what she’s like—all three of us—and it’s why we love her like we do. So here’s what you have to ask yourself, Jake—”
Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?
She didn’t say that, of course, but it’s what she meant. Did he want to take sole responsibility if Anna died for an avoidable reason? The answer was no fucking way, which was why he’d hoped for a different response from the Ladies Upstairs, and why he felt, at this very moment, both pissed off and relieved.