“Maybe I mean communication, too,” Annie added. “It’s not a social construct and it’s not some innate magic thing. Gender’s just a way of getting something across. It’s a way of telling the world what you need. What you want. What you can’t handle. And the world responds accordingly. The world may be fucked up about it, but that’s what’s happening.”

Vera thought this was crap. “Okay, then if no one fucking recognizes we’re women, why bother being women?”

“When a cis man chooses to wear a suit, he is communicating something to himself and to the world,” said Lucy. “When you take your spiro, it’s the same thing. Without gender, there is no way to want something from yourself or other people. Gender is language. That’s all gender is.”

“You sound like one of those bullshit professors that’s never actually met a trans person,” Vera said sourly. In the back of her head: I never used to talk like this.

“Look,” Annie said. “We’re all women. Of course. But if you had never met a woman, you wouldn’t know you were one.”

The bar had filled. A score of party gays needed Vera’s attention. One wasn’t shy. “Excuse me!”

“All you’d know is that something was wrong,” Lucy added. She drained her beer. “In some fashion or another.”

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” said Vera. (What if Iris had been a different person? That too.)

That night, still no word from Leah. In a sudden bolt of viciousness, Vera deleted her number and blocked her, too. Then she riffled through her Facebook in a fugue and unfriended almost everyone from her old life. When she was finished, she crumpled into her chair as if she’d collapsed into a subway seat after a long day.

She messaged Zoe a single heart. I’m so glad I have you to listen. It’s been a while since that’s happened. Don’t forget, you need a couch or you wanna try the bar, give me a call. Thank you again. For everything.

ROSE CITY, CITY OF ROSES

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Sue,

It’s Nicole. I dreamed about you last night. What happened in the dream, I don’t remember. There was you, a pool table, a sea of empty two-litre soda bottles, and a framed portrait of an old hookup of mine, a sweet guy with a scratchy beard and a diaper fetish who I wish I’d treated better. It was one of those random dreams that felt sensible and relaxing. And in it, you were alive as ever.

So when I woke up, and remembered you were gone, I felt real despair. I stayed in bed for some time. It’s only been two months since you died, Sue, yet I hadn’t thought about you for a few days there, until last night, when you were in my dream.

You died young, of a disease you had fought for a long time, in a moment when the world was falling apart around you. And the people who loved you, disparate and far-flung as they are, could not gather. I have my own superstitions about how this affects people who are gone, and I hope for your sake I’m wrong about them.