Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(60)
She gets onto her bike; it’s dinged up pretty bad and starting to rust, practically ready for the scrap heap, and she heads away from the condo. The building’s mostly intact, has almost all of its windows, just a few missing here and there like knocked-out teeth. She heads up Bay Street, across Wellesley, and rides around Queen’s Park, not through it. It’s still daylight out, but the park’s not a good place any time of day. The long-since burned-out shell of parliament quietly looms over it in the south, and she’s always glad to get some distance between her bike and that wretched place.
When she gets in, past two sets of doors, five sets of locks, down the long dark hall in the basement filled with debris that hides the door to their little apartment from possible burglars, she finds Johnny on the floor again. Must’ve been another bad day. Sarah puts down her satchel near the door carefully, so she doesn’t mush the eggplant, and sits on the floor next to him.
“Hey, baby,” she says in her client voice. Stops herself, readjusts. Regular voice: “What’s going on? You okay?”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound. Doesn’t take a breath for a good long while, and then exhales slowly and says plainly, “It’s just loud again today.” Johnny sits up, and he’s got that look on his face that used to just break her heart. But you can only get your heart broke so much until you’re numb to it. “Maybe we should move to the country. Get away from all the city noise.”
“Yeah, maybe some day.” Sarah stands up then. Their little daily drama, his dreams of fleeing the city. “But there’s no work out there. Not for me.”
? ?
It didn’t change too much for Sarah after The Crash. Sure, it was better before with the Internet and video games and her dates gave her cash she could spend however she wanted, but, when you already live on the fringe of society, it doesn’t make a big difference when society just stops functioning. So now she trades favours for canned food and “fresh” produce.
But, really, the only thing she misses. The thing that keeps her up at night. The thing that dominates her thoughts any time she passes a mirror. The only thing she can think about when she thinks about the future. Hormones. Now, she’s pretty lucky because before The Crash, Sarah got her bits nipped and tucked permanently, so it’s not like she has to worry about her damned body flooding her with testosterone each and every passing day. Not enough to make her hair fall out. But she misses the little blue estrogen pills that made her breasts perky and her skin so much softer.
Right when it was all going down, five years ago, her first thought: Get to a f*cking pharmacy, bitch. The looting had already begun, but, luckily, no one was really on the lookout for estrogen pills. Each pharmacy was cleared out of every kind of pain medication, and most of the important antibiotics and medications, but without fail, there they’d be. Bottles of estrogen. Estrace the synthetic, and Premarin the natural made from pregnant mare urine. She briefly considered trying to raise a horse, but couldn’t quite put together how that would lead her to a wellspring of estrogen without, like, having to drink glasses of horse piss – and she knew enough about science to think that probably wouldn’t be terribly effective.
But those sources long since dried up. She’s not the only transsexual in town, and there are, of course, post-menopausal women and all the little drug dealers who think they can charge a ransom for any pill they find.
But without hormones her body betrays her, as it’s done her whole damn life. She’s tired all the time, and maybe someday her bones will become brittle and snap, or cancer might eat her up. And she’s got to keep her girlish figure for clients and sweet, broken Johnny, which is what brings her to Jetta’s loft near the Distillery.
Sarah parks her bike, locks it to a pipe, and goes up the three flights of dark stairs to Jetta’s. Outside the door, one of Jetta’s boyfriends, all muscle, shaved head, stands watch with a couple of candles going. He looks Sarah up and down, and she rolls her eyes because he’s seen her a dozen times before. When he moves aside, she slides the stupid-heavy metal door open.
Inside it’s all twinkling lights, candles and oil lamps everywhere because the sun’s starting to set. Racks of clothes line the apartment, and at the other end is a well-stocked kitchen with just about every stainless steel kitchen gadget you could imagine, and tiny Jetta back there chopping carrots.
“Mija!” she calls out, turning to see Sarah come in. “How are you, mami?”
“I’m good, honey. I’m good,” Sarah smiles. Sure, she’s Jetta’s client, but she always makes her feel like this is home.
“I’m making carrot tonight! A big carrot for all my boys!” Jetta finishes chopping and puts it aside. “You want to stay for soup?”
“No, I’m good. Really.” Because everything comes at a price and you only want to owe Jetta so much. “You got time to give me a little booster shot in my boy pockets?”
It takes her a few minutes to set up over by the medical exam table stolen from some hospital. First, Jetta sterilizes the needles. Now, Sarah is not stupid. She knows that you aren’t ever really going to get those needles sterile. But there isn’t much choice. Then Jetta goes off to another corner of her loft, opens a great big safe – another item lifted from elsewhere – and comes back with a plastic bottle. There’s a picture of a smiling woman and the most beautiful ass you’ve ever seen in the world, with the words “SILICONA – COLOMBIA” in a circle around the picture.