He insisted she didn’t care, that their relationship had absolutely no restrictions, that they let each other be exactly who they were at any given minute. He always said that, any given minute, as if after sixty seconds you became someone else, wanted something different. I wished that were true. I only kept wanting him.

He liked to quote Ralph Ellison: “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”

He wore nothing under his dresses, it turned out. Up they came, so easily, in the handicap bathroom stall, the coatroom, the walk-in. Petra and I got pregnant the same month.

A robust month for my spermatozoa, he said. He loved it. He saw nothing wrong. My abortion made him sad, but he didn’t argue and paid half.

In early April she came into the restaurant before we opened for lunch. She was only there a minute, handing him a set of car keys, but it was a warm day and I saw the curve of her belly below the belt of her wrap dress. I put down the tray of salt and pepper shakers and walked out. I called my brother, stuffed my crap into Hefty bags, and drove up to Burlington.

A week before Saskia’s wedding, Wes and I made plans to go to the movies. I had a night off and Mandy was visiting her sister in Rutland. I met him at the bar he went to after work. He was in the corner, playing pitch with Stu, his work buddy, and Ron, the one who was always going into the hospital for his heart, and Lyle, who’d just gotten out of jail for a drug transport gone wrong at the Canadian border. I sat and waited for him to play out his hand. There was another guy at the table I didn’t recognize. He was young, probably still in college. He and Wes were both chewing on toothpicks.

Wes won the trick with the jack of clubs.

“That’s bull crap, Wesley Piehole,” Ron said.

They all called him Wesley. He never told them his first name was Westminster. He got up to pay the tab.

“So how do you know Wesley?” the kid with the toothpick asked me.

“He’s my brother.”

The kid laughed.

Across the room Wes nodded toward the door and I followed him out.

A few days later he asked if I remembered the young guy from the bar. I pretended I didn’t.

“College kid,” he said, as if he’d never been one. “Lots of hair. He said he didn’t believe you were my sister.”

“I told him I was.”

Wes smiled. “So you do remember him. He thought you were joking. About being my sister. I had to bet him a hundred bucks.”

“Wes.”

“All you have to do is come by the bar and show him your driver’s license. When’s your next night off?”