Chapter 16
Sixteen
“You, Eli Goldstein, are a hard man to find.”
I’m halfway out of my chair in the cash room before I can wrangle my central nervous system into acknowledging that Stanley
Pham is not a threat. I may not know much about him beyond his water flask, but I know he’s not a threat. I also know I’m
not remotely hard to find.
I go where the schedule says. Stanley was in and out of the barn all day with his tour groups, and he must’ve seen me working
the gift shop. It’s only now, fifteen minutes after closing, that I’m in the cash room under Ford’s orders and paranoid eyes.
“You found me.” Specifically, Stanley found me toying with stray rubber bands while Ford checks my till.
“Do you need her for something?” Ford asks, charming as usual.
“Yes, actually,” Stanley replies. “Anya has a question about his time sheet.”
Ford runs a bundle through the bill counter. “Anya didn’t mention anything.”
“She didn’t want to interrupt you during cash-out.”
It’s a plausible explanation, credibly delivered. So why does it feel like it doesn’t add up?
“So Eli’s good to go upstairs? Thanks, man.” Stanley pats Ford on the shoulder, a parody of the hardcore backslapping only
cis men do. “Ready, Eli?”
I am more than ready to leave this room. After covertly slipping a rubber band around my wrist, I leave without performing
any customary social pleasantries.
The temperature drops ten degrees in the lobby. As my sweat cools, my skin goes clammy. I swallow down my baseless, irrational
fear. “Does Anya really want to talk to me, or was that a cover story?”
Stanley holds the stairwell door open for me and the door thuds shut behind us before he says, “I’d call it an escape hatch.”
I should thank him, but all the words that come to mind sound either inaccurate or inadequate. I should also start climbing
the stairs, but I already feel like I’m losing a war against gravity. “But you were looking for me.”
“Lola was waiting for you in the break room. I said I’d check around on my way out.”
“You’re not heading out.” In fact, he seems quite comfortable leaning against the stairwell wall.
Meanwhile, I’m a fire hazard.
“No,” Stanley agrees, amiable. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Will your friends mind if you’re late?”
If I’d nicked a penny from the cash room, I’d be able to hear it drop. But I didn’t steal a penny, so I snap the rubber band
again. My wrist is already red, halfway to raw. “I’d text them to meet me by the car, but we’re blocking the exit path.”
“You’re right. This isn’t the best place to talk.”
I wonder, nonsensically, if this is the part where I’m supposed to invite him to coffee, except this isn’t the prelude-to-union-recruitment
kind of talk. I look around the stairwell, all too aware that anyone could step in from either floor at any moment—until I
remember there’s a third door.
Fire hazard, meet fire exit.
I push outside, blinking at the bright blue sky. This late in June, the six o’clock sun can light up a solar grid. The fire
exit spits us out at the back end of the barn, near the dumpsters and the perpetually deserted picnic tables. I shoot off
a quick text to the group chat.
At a shaded picnic table, I take the bench across from Stanley, grateful for my up-to-date TDAP vaccine because this thing
could only charitably be described as rustic, all cracked paint and rusted nails. “What did you want to talk about?”
I’d guess he’s wearing an inscrutable expression, but I can’t bring myself to check.
Then Stanley says, “My wife is transgender.”
I blink and blink, again and again. He keeps talking—it’s not a secret, he’s sorry for the cloak and dagger, he’s been meaning
to tell me for a while now—but I am processing. Stanley’s wife is transgender. I don’t know what I was expecting.
Then again, I don’t know what I was expecting from Stanley, point blank.
I don’t understand why this fiftysomething guy, who has worked here since opening day, is still rank-and-file floor staff.
He knows the museum and the show. Guests are always grinning and laughing after his tours.
I know Stanley is kind. A little kooky, maybe—see: water flask—but he’s the type of kind that can’t be faked, raw sincerity that makes me cringe and compels me to look away. I’ve known it since he introduced Efraín
and me to Dagny. I saw it ten minutes ago with Ford.
I admit, when I started at NSX, I had preconceptions about who would understand my gender. The past three years have taught
me that, as a rule, the older someone is, the less likely they are to get it. Combining that with other cultural and socioeconomic factors, I can usually make an educated guess—or that’s what I tell
myself.
Maybe I looked at Stanley and thought, sure, he’s kind, but he’s over the hill of standard distribution for people who understand.
What if I’d tweaked my formula? Stanley has worked at NSX for twenty years, interacting with people from all over the world. He lives in Sonoma County, in a congressional district that breaks reliably D+55. Why wouldn’t I give him the benefit of the doubt?
Lo and behold, Stanley’s wife is transgender.
“I didn’t know that,” I croak.
“I know. I’m telling you.”
When I turn this news on its side, the surprising part isn’t that Stanley has a transgender wife; it’s that somewhere within
commuting distance, there is a trans woman old enough to be Stanley’s wife.
I don’t know any trans adults in Egan’s Creek. I know Lola and I aren’t the only trans people; it may be a small town, but
national demographic statistics dictate that there should be multiple trans kids and a handful of trans adults. They must
be stealth or hermits or—
“I’d be surprised if you knew her,” Stanley says. “Kim works in Santa Rosa. She’s a librarian, and—”
“Egan’s Creek doesn’t have a county library branch, and our school librarians are part-time.”
“True, but it’s a little more than that. She prefers staying closer to the city. That’s where her community is—where she feels
safest.” His tight smile stretches the definition of smile. “What I’m trying to say is, I know I don’t know what it feels like, but I’ve seen the toll it takes.”
I shiver, even though it’s as warm as ever.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. You put up a good front, pretending it doesn’t bother you.”
My first instinct is to insist that it doesn’t bother me, but that’s demonstrably false. “I’m the one having temper tantrums and emailing HR over pronouns—”
“Hey, no, Eli—”
“It’s just so stupid. There are so many real problems. It shouldn’t bother me. I shouldn’t feel anything if Ford misgenders me. I should just be”—I yank at the rubber band on my wrist—“stronger.”
The rubber band snaps.
“Hey.” Stanley pats my hand. “This isn’t a question of strong or not. It’s—” His gaze has gone distant behind his glasses.
“I can’t tell Kim’s stories for her. I’m just a supporting character, but that’s the thing, okay? I’m a supporting character. If you asked Kim, she’d tell you that support is what gets her through the minutiae. Not just me. Her friends,
siblings, and coworkers. Her queer book club and her trans support group.
“It’s a given, I think, that we’re here for the big things. It’s easy to see allyship in grand gestures, but life isn’t lived
in broad strokes. We don’t exist in a still life. Life happens frame by frame, twenty-four per second, faster than we can
consciously comprehend. And what happens in each frame matters as much as the supercut.
“When we talk about allyship, it’s easy to forget how important it is to support someone through the little things, too.
It’s nothing anyone would make a biopic about, but it’s about being there when Kim comes home from a long day at work, listening to her story about the transphobic joke that no one shut down, or calling the insurance company for her when they deny her estradiol prescription, or—”
“Or offering an escape hatch when someone is stuck in a five-by-five room with a transphobic supervisor,” I add, desperate
to understand.
“Or that,” Stanley agrees. “All I’m saying is, your strength isn’t in question. How you react to a world that keeps beating
you down is less telling than how everyone else reacts each and every time the world beats you down. Because every little thing matters, and every chance any of us has to do something, it’s imperative
that we do what we can.”
“I don’t know if I can believe that.”
“You don’t have to. Tell me, of course, if I ever overstep, but you can also tell me if you want me to do more, whether that
means confronting Ford or being there if you want to talk to Anya about him, or—”
“No. Thank you, but no.” I can’t describe the knot of feelings in my chest. “Today’s escape hatch was more than I could’ve
asked for.”
“That’s the thing, Eli. I want you to know that you can ask. Hopefully, your life is teeming with supporting characters you can ask to help with little things and big things alike.
And I’m just telling you that I’m here.”
I’m not convinced I’m here. Because who says that? In real life. Who offers their friendship so freely?
Stanley’s smiling, ineffably gentle. “Believe it or not, that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about today.”
“You said you’d been meaning to tell me—”
“About Kim, yes, but I wasn’t planning on making a production of it. Just, after Ford—”
“I get it.” I don’t, not really. “But if it wasn’t that . . . ?”
“You should know I overheard a lot of conversations today, between Naomi and TJ, Lola and Jaime. Sound carries in the barn,
you know?”
To my absolute horror, I realize, then, that no one understands the importance of conducting a one-on-one in private.
“Thankfully, nobody else was paying attention, but I know what you and your friends are trying to do.”
Pure, high-octane fear burns through me. “I don’t—”
“Please, no pretenses. I’ve been a member of a few ‘collective bargaining organizations’ over my decades in the labor force.”
“Did Efraín talk to you?”
“Was he supposed to?”
“To recruit you?” I whisper.
“Really?” Stanley chuckles. “Not yet. No need, though. I’m talking to you. And recruiting myself, I suppose. Someone needs
to make sure you kids only burn down the place metaphorically.”
Honestly, that seems like a reasonable concern, knowing Efraín.
Still, the arson talk and the fire door remind me the museum has surveillance cameras in all public areas. “We shouldn’t be
talking about this here.”
“We’re having a perfectly nice chat about my wife. If anyone asks, you can say I told you about the first time she read Heather Has Two Mommies during the children’s reading hour.”
Now I really want to hear the story.
“You already know,” Stanley says, somber, “that I’ve worked here since the beginning. I moved here because of Nuclear Seasons. I was tired of being the butt of every joke in Hollywood writers’ rooms, and after the subpar sitcom I’d been working on
got canceled mid-season, I ran away to the setting of my favorite TV show, with Kane’s own Hollywood self-exile story in mind.
“I love this museum, truly, and it has been a pleasure to meet so many like-minded people. But I’ve seen what this place does
to true believers. The more you love the job, the more it hurts when the job doesn’t love you back. I see it every season—they
hire kids full of passion, ideas, naive joie de vivre, then they grind you down. And when the summer ends, I watch those same
kids leave without the light in their eyes.”
Stanley’s eyes seek out mine, and for once, I let myself be found. I stare back, unblinking, unsure what measure of passion he sees left in me.
“We’re not going to change the system in one summer. I think you know that. But I believe in doing what I can, where and when
I’m able. So if this is the summer a ragtag gang of seasonal workers wants to make a little good trouble around this place,
I’m in. Put me to work.”