Chapter Nine

Ethan stared at his personnel file on Chelsea’s office desk. His name was upside down; the sharp consonants turned into one of the cryptic bumper stickers on the ubiquitous red cars which always seemed to follow him around when he worked for Jacob. Chelsea tapped on her computer with her long, red-painted nails. Her auburn hair was tinged with gray and looked washed out under the office lights.

“You’ve taken a lot of sick days, Ethan. From what I can tell, there have been seven in the past three weeks.” She looked up from her screen, locking her gaze on his. Her face was hard and impassive, difficult to read. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m fine. Now, at least. So I came into work.”

Ethan tried to make his voice sound rough, but also confident. Chelsea and the threat of being fired didn’t concern him. He’d come in for this shift, though, since Francesca had all but threatened him. You’re never here, and I never talk to you, she’d texted. Come in, or I will bust down your door. He believed her, so he’d crawled out of bed, though exhaustion still lingered in his bones, and it seemed as if he hadn’t seen the mundane world in years.

He’d completely fallen into the magic circle of Jacob’s supernatural reach. Since he not only had to bring in shipments but also kill time across the border so the trips seemed to have a purpose, it made far more sense to view smuggling as his only job. He’d take a book with him in the shitty Mazda 3, grab whatever he needed from a bus station, buy a coffee or a dinner, which Jacob would comp him for, and wait it out. Sometimes he and Jacob had long discussions over the phone, bickering with each other playfully over small details simply because they could. Even when they went on shorter runs, like carrying live vampires in bat form across the border (so they wouldn’t have to pay proper taxes while still benefiting from free health care—and free blood) with a team of other people, Ethan still met up with Jacob afterward to hang out. Time slipped away. Sometimes, the two of them would do afternoon or morning runs so Ethan could salvage the chance of a shift at his other job, but he was always so tired—and so excited by his new purpose, that staring at the harsh light of the duty-free shop or haggling over cheap cigarettes seemed far more unappealing than usual.

Ethan also liked skipping out. It was the one irresponsible thing he’d done since he was a kid, and he’d gone too far by himself in the ocean.

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Chelsea said, her tone unreadable. “But I have a feeling this is turning into a trend.”

“And?”

“And…” When Chelsea flipped open his file to read it in front of him, Ethan quietly seethed. He hated it when doctors did this, and even more when his boss did. He considered quitting before she lectured him but discarded the option. The money he was making from Jacob was good, but since he missed work, it filled in a gap and made sure he didn’t go broke. He wasn’t saving nearly as much as he wanted. If he walked away from this job, there’d be absolutely no security. At least if Chelsea fired him right now, there was a chance at a severance. He balled his fists and waited on the edge of his seat.

After she’d finished reading out each missed absence and explaining the shift nightmare it created in his wake, she placed the file down and folded her hands. “Right now, this trend is proving to be irresponsible and costly. But we don’t want to punish you if you’re having a family emergency. You can talk to us. We can move your work schedule around. Give you part time instead of full. But we can’t help you at all if you don’t give us something to work with and instead spring a random illness on us so we can’t cover your shift in time. Okay? Okay.” Chelsea nodded, her voice the harshest it had been all meeting.

“Maybe…maybe part time would be better temporarily. I’ve been visiting a relative in the States because she’s sick.”

Chelsea wrote something down. The scratching of the pen irked Ethan under his skin. “I’ll make a note. We’ll have to keep you on night shift, but maybe we can only have you four days a week for six hours. Would that help?”

“Actually,” Ethan said. “Three days, but eight—or ten hours—is better. I need the time for travelling.”

Chelsea clucked her tongue but nodded. “Good. I’m glad we can have this open conversation. I can’t give you extra hours tonight, but I hope that’s sufficient. I’ve also blocked off the rest of your week, so you can also put your affairs in order to prepare for this change.”

“Oh. Um. Yeah, that’s fine.”

He didn’t have anything lined up with Jacob for the rest of the week. Jacob insisted there was always something going around, like a vampire run, but those were not as profitable. The vampire runs simply needed more people for the nature of the transportation required—but Ethan wondered how many of them were special like he was. They had the wrist marks, but from what he could tell from stray glimpses on their necks as they loaded the bat cages in and out of several vans, none of them were vessels. Did this mean Ethan was a better asset? If so, he could be paid like an asset too. Though Damien and Mary were also vessels, they had not been part of the vampire run. Other than the images on Jacob’s phone, there was no record of them anywhere.

“Great. Again, thanks for coming in tonight, Ethan.”

When Chelsea rose to see Ethan outside, he extended his hand. She examined it oddly, and for a moment he wondered if she saw the faint line on his wrist. When she shook his hand weakly, he realized she may still think of him as a woman—but was too professional to connote otherwise. Ethan tried not to let the stray thought bother him.

He grabbed a cigarette from the back of the store, texting Jacob about work in between shipments. Francesca found him before he could ash his cigarette.

“You. Are you fired?”

“I’m not fired. They can’t fire me.”

“Oh, why not?”

“I have a sick relative in the US, and it would look bad. Not to mention they’re probably too cheap to ever pay out severance. But I am part time now.”

Francesca folded her arms across her chest, making her cleavage rise. “You’re going to leave me to man the crazies all on my own? All for your drug smuggler?”

Ethan shushed her with the touch of his tongue against teeth. “You have any idea how dangerous that is to say here?”

“Oh, please. Not like it isn’t obvious. You come in late when you’re here, drunk all the time, and you’re texting constantly. You’re acting squirrelly too. Chelsea probably does believe the sick relative nonsense but might think you’re tracking in opioids instead of cocaine. Or something.”

Ethan didn’t bother to respond. It didn’t actually matter what Chelsea or Francesca thought at all in terms of drugs; none of it was true. And people only believe what they want to believe, whether it’s opioids or dragon eggs or anything else. Ethan was surprised at how much her words about his drunkenness bothered him though. He hadn’t been drinking all that much lately. When he was in the States, he wanted to stay alert with the shipment. At Jacob’s, there was never enough for both of them to drink, so Ethan abstained. He’d had sips of drinks here and there at his place, but he wasn’t even bringing his travel mug filled with Bailey’s into work anymore. There was no need—and there were definitely no drugs either; he’d even been late to receive his testosterone, sleeping through his first appointment and working through the next available time.

Francesca sighed when the silence between them grew too much. “Look, I’m sorry. I just worry about you because I’m actually worried about me. My therapist says no problem exists by itself, you know? So when I’m scared about you getting fired, I’m really worried about me being alone.”

“Yeah, I know. We have the same therapist, after all. Pretty sure she’s said the same thing to me. It’s all part of the same process,” Ethan stated with thinly veiled sarcasm.

No matter when he would end up receiving his final surgery, he needed a letter verifying his “gender condition”—hence Nadine Black. When the Ontario gender clinic at CAMH had fallen through, Francesca had directed him toward the petite woman with long dark hair who was quiet, succinct, and quite direct. Nadine made a point to tell Ethan at nearly every visit that his gender transition would always be different from that of trans women. They are taking something away, you are adding and subtracting. Adding will always make you feel like you’re catching up, running late. So your fears are running fears. You don’t fear being exposed like trans women may be, but you are worried you will be left behind. You will wonder when the last piece of yourself will fall into place, but I assure you, it is out there. It’s merely a long process. Her words were always a crock to him. But after six weeks of therapy, she signed a letter verifying his condition. Whenever he would need it, he could receive surgery, so he’d stopped going while apparently Francesca still saw validation in Nadine’s methods.

Ethan tried to articulate his lack of faith in therapy to Francesca, but soon gave up.

“Whatever ends up happening with your boy,” Francesca said, “you and I are still in this together. We have to be. I support you doing what you gotta, even if that means you’re not here until next week. And I take a back seat to Scarface.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Sorry. But you have to admit it’s kind of appropriate, right? Drug dealer with a marked-up face. Almost cinematic.”

“Nothing here is cinematic. Nothing is what you think it’s like.”

“Yeah, yeah. And the trans people you see on TV are never like us either.” Francesca rolled her eyes while Ethan merely ashed his cigarette in silence. Rustling by the shipment dock distracted him and provided Francesca an easy exit point. Ethan unloaded CK Jeans from a surly guy with a gut hanging over his waist. Fifty years old, maybe a little less; an exact replica of the border guards straddling the line between the US and Canada. For a moment, Ethan wondered if he would look the same way when he was fifty, as if each middle-aged man who appeared by his side were a procession of his future self. With each upcoming supernatural job, each punch card of the duty-free shop, and each passing day, he was getting closer and closer toward his membership into the fifty-something dude club. The mundane nature of masculinity that had once appealed to him so much now became too fraught. The jagged edges of his double life, now doubled with supernatural involvement, made him dizzy. He was still thousands of dollars away from his surgery, and yet, he’d never felt so close to his own ending in his life—an ending which was truly a great beginning.

Ethan traced his fingers over Jacob’s number on his phone, still without any new text messages. When one message from his sister came in, he didn’t have time to hit ignore.

Dad’s dead. Sorry to break it this way, but I left you phone messages you didn’t return. And now it’s too late. I’m sorry, but you’re impossible to get a hold of. Call when/if you can. Love, Leslie.