I had no doubt Abraham would think the same as I did when I had heard Rosie’s account, if only due to the terminology of the allegation. Rosie could not have been raped because he wasn’t a female. Rape was a crime against women, and though Rosie wanted to be a girl, wanting didn’t sprout him a vagina. It was crass, but it was the truth. At best, Rosie could accuse Abe’s new companion of sodomizing him, but it would be a tough sell considering the illicit line of work in which Rosie participated. Though Cal believed Rosie’s situation was a gray area, I assured him it was his rose-colored lenses making it so. Worse than the ethical implications of our discussion was the potential fallout for each of us. Getting on Abraham’s bad side would most likely result in Cal and Rosie being forced out of The Studio, and I could not imagine him taking kindly to the allegation. From what I understood of Cal’s moonshine manufacturing, it was a small endeavor, not lucrative enough to pay for a room elsewhere and as much as I would have liked to, I could not offer him a place to stay. Rosie would no doubt face prejudice in an apartment search, and it was unlikely he would find a place to take him in. The best they would be able to do was get in line behind the hundreds of people waiting for shelter beds. What had happened to Rosie was awful. Even considering the violation sent chills down my spine, but that didn’t mean I was impulsive enough to threaten stability when the city around me was breathing erratically. It wasn’t the time to cross our fingers and hope for the best. We needed to be thankful for what we had and not bite the hand that kept us fed.

Somehow, Cal didn’t worry about the logistics of life. He was feather-light, swept across the grass by the wind. Over the years it had become increasingly obvious that Cal hadn’t had the misfortune of coping with poverty. His parents’ farm was lucrative, and though he didn’t live off their tit, his charismatic attitude and good looks had kept him in the black while other men, men like me, would have been seeing red. Money didn’t need to be important to someone who had always found a way to have it, but Cal didn’t know an economy like the one we were contending with. None of us did.

“This isn’t about money,” Cal retorted as we continued to delve deep into the same discussion we had been having for over a month. “This is about right and wrong, dignity, some sort of justice for Rosie.”