“I feel like I haven’t had time to think all week,” Minna said, looking up at the sky.

A few seconds later, Nadine added: I promise I’m not as mad as I sounded earlier

“I know what you mean,” I said.

She smiled one of her totally disarming smiles. “When will it end,” she said. “I should probably, like, figure out the window.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go on a walk, I think,” I said.

“See ya.”

The coffee shop Nadine had gone to was designed from the same template as the one I worked at in Williamsburg, all white tile and imposing, well-cared-for tropical plants next to the big windows. Nadine was sitting at a table on the patio with someone I didn’t recognize, a woman about our age wearing a big t-shirt dress and chunky plastic sunglasses. I sat down in the available third chair.

“Hi Leonora,” Nadine said, not really looking at me. “Have you two met?”

Her companion was lighting a cigarette. She looked up at me disinterestedly and we both shook our heads politely at each other.

This was way back before I knew any other trans women. I knew that New York was full of them, but somehow they had all avoided me up until this point. When she spoke I realized, belatedly, that I had finally found one.

“I’m Violet,” she said.

“I’m Leonora,” I said.

“That’s a beautiful name,” Violet said.

“Thank you.”

“Do you know the writer Leonora Carrington?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, well, never mind. I was just thinking that it would be cool to meet someone who named herself after Leonora Carrington.”

“Sorry,” I said.

I probably didn’t think of anything better because I was surprised that she acknowledged that I’m trans (people usually ignored it) in a way that really foregrounded something else — namely, that I wasn’t as sophisticated as her. Another person whose life was different enough from mine that our universes of small talk were totally incompatible. The longer it had been since college, the more my life was filling up with these people.

“Violet is one of my good exes,” Nadine said.

“I don’t know if I’m good,” Violet said. There was a hint of a laugh in her voice.

“You’re better,” Nadine said.

“Low bar,” Violet said.

This sounds so lame, but at that point I wanted to get up and leave. Violet, I was gleaning, was miles ahead of me. I felt ashamed to even be sitting at the table with her. I had only been on estrogen for a few months, but I had no idea that this was what I could have been aiming for. Watching her flirt with Nadine made me feel like I had been crazily undervaluing the potential my future life had. Like, fuck, at minimum I needed a haircut and some new clothes —