Chapter 8 Redheaded Woodpecker #5
“Let’s go for breakfast,” Archangel said. She had just started working double shifts, short-term, to sock away what she described
as her “do-over” stash, money she would use to move to Ireland for a couple of years, see if she could give up the crazy life.
She now ate one massive meal on a working day, a predawn breakfast and dinner combined, and nothing but apples and coffee
after that. Her appetite was so prodigious that her stomach would protrude during her dances if she ate all that she was capable
of eating.
Walking with her into The Eggs-Ham-iner (the sign featured a picture of a newspaper with a giant plate of sunny-side-ups)
was quite an experience. The whole joint, which was packed, paused, forks held aloft in hand. Six-two, in full stripper makeup,
a crop top, and miniskirt, topped by a fuzzy white fur jacket, which I could tell was not faux fur, she must have attracted
those kinds of stares no matter where she went.
Archangel confided, “People think I’m trans. I don’t care if they think I’m trans of course. But I’m not. Born this way.”
Only her hair, which she freed from the tight topknot she wore onstage, looked the way it would look in the wild.
Cascades of blond twists falling past her shoulders, she then looked like a big raw girl, perhaps off a farm, at least off a farm a generation ago, the kind of long-legged, strong-limbed, big-shouldered girl who might have been an athlete.
That was exactly what she had been, a track star who could hurl a discus and a javelin like paper plates and vault over a pole as if it were a backyard croquet wicket, all through high school and a single semester of college.
Then she wrecked her shoulder, and the scholarship collapsed along with generations of hope for Archangel Kolowitz, for her and for all her very tall family, and she slipped into a netherworld of not having planned what else she wanted to do besides pray for the next Olympic trials.
It broke her heart.
For a while, she drank and drugged, but that brought her no relief; it didn’t come naturally to someone who’d spent her life
in training since she was ten. Now, she was studying sports medicine, with the hope of helping other promising little girl
athletes avoid those kinds of career-ending injuries.
“But you don’t want to hear about the drama of waking up one day as an over-the-hill twenty-two-year-old former almost-Olympian,
do you?” she said, opening the menu. “You don’t want to hear about good girls gone bad. You want to hear about bad girls gone
worse. Escorts in jail. What a colorful life I lead.”
I, meanwhile, was studying the menu, one of those menus that seems to feature every kind of short-order entrée ever created—and
a few more. The omelets alone took up a full page—Southwestern, Veggie-licious, Mushroom, Greek, Spanish, Irish, Hawaiian,
Tex-Mex, Denver, Philly, Margherita, Grilled Hashbrown, Brie and Bacon, Kale and Cheese, Rosemary and Prosciutto, Salmon and
Cream Cheese.
“What’s a Mère Poulard omelet?” I asked Archangel.
“Puffy, with crème fra?che,” she said. “It’s quite good here. I’ve had them all. The food is actually really good here.”
In keeping with that, she ordered what seemed to be the whole left side of the menu: avocado eggs Benedict, French toast with
strawberries, oatmeal with currants and brown sugar, extra wheat toast, and a scone. She must have seen the look on my face,
because she said, “I’m a vegetarian,” and then burst out laughing. “I don’t gain weight. I have an insane metabolism and I’m
always dancing or practicing or running or lifting or something.”
“Could I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Is yours a chosen name?” This was, I knew and she knew, the polite way of asking if her name was fake, if she’d been born Suzanne or Kathleen. She grinned. She had a startlingly sweet smile; it looked new, as if she’d just discovered how.
“You mean Kolowitz?” Again came the throaty, slightly raunchy laugh. “No, I know what you mean. It was chosen, yes, by my
mother,” she said. “My mother was a nun. I mean, she wasn’t a nun when I was born, it wasn’t that big a drama, but before
that. She’s still very religious. My whole family is.” She studied my face again. “My brother is named Saint Joseph Kolowitz,
though he goes by Joe. My mom knows what my job is. She doesn’t think that I’ll be cast down into hell for it, in case you’re
wondering, and neither does my father or my grandfather.” This was curious to me, because I wasn’t sure what my own mother,
who wasn’t religious, would think.
As we ate, Archangel told me that most people at the club were speechless when Felicity was arrested. Felicity was not crafty
or violent. Felicity was not greedy or cruel. It had to be a mistake. “Dovey said she was the one more likely to kill somebody
than Felicity. Nobody believed it for one second. And then when they found out who the guys were? People said, no way, not
possible.”
It was at the club that Felicity met Emil Gardener. He was a regular who showed up every Thursday night, heat wave, blizzard,
or thunderstorm. A nice man, a shy man, who drank a single beer and ate a sandwich. If he had a second beer, the girls teased
him. Cary Church was another matter.
“How?”
“He was kind of a show-off. He threw a lot of money around. He was always giving everybody investment advice and bragging about his big . . .” She laughed at my expression.
“His big portfolio! He was going to take early retirement in his fifties and have a full pension and buy a house in Hawaii.” She sighed.
“So much for that. I don’t think he was a bad man.
Just one of those guys who knows it all.
You could see the way he watched Felicity, as if the two of them were on a date and he was just bored and having to put up with all the other men there. ”
“And how did she react to that?”
“She gave him some special attention. She smiled and winked. She acted sort of shiny around him.” Archangel said, “If I had
to guess, I would guess that he gave her things. Like stocks. Or he paid her mortgage. Did you ever see that place?” I shook
my head. Archangel gave a low, skillful whistle. The other diners tried not to stare and failed: They really did think she
was a trans woman. “That place! The building is just two stories, but her place is the whole second floor. And the rooftop.
Three bedrooms. Everything is white or blue or gray except the plants and pictures. Even the dishes were gray. All understated
but really comfortable, you know? And her pool, it was tiled in blue glass. Like a wave pattern. Those shaped evergreen trees . . .”
“Topiaries?”
“Yes, shaped like birds. A heron, maybe? A hawk. A swan. She had those trees in pots all around the pool. It was like Architectural Digest. It’s just exquisite.” She reached into her bag. “Wait. I have a picture.”
And suddenly, in front of my eyes, there was Felicity, barefoot in jeans and a white men’s button-down shirt many sizes too
large. In a picture taken from just above her, she was leaning forward, in the act of pouring tea from a ceramic pot, her
neutral, pleasant expression one I recognized: It meant she was annoyed but too polite to say so. Behind her on the blue-gray
wall were mounted two rows of skulls, masks painted cobalt and lime and bright gold, Day of the Dead masks. El Día de los
Muertos, November 2, Felicity’s birthday.
“So you have to wonder, why was she dancing at a strip club?”
“There are all kinds of theories but no one can be sure,” Archangel said.
The others, she said, didn’t know Felicity well enough to be invited to dinner at her place. Archangel was the only one. Felicity
was reserved, all business. When she danced, it was almost balletically, to songs like “Bolero” or “Swan Lake.” She never stripped down to almost nothing and she used her boas and scarves strategically. The costumes were
her own, specially made, like a cape in the shape and colors of a peacock’s fan. Her modesty had an ironically erotic effect
on the customers, who spoke to each other about her “class” and “femininity.”
Archangel continued, “She was in the book club, and got us to read Crime and Punishment. I think it was the first time most of the girls read the Russians.” She regarded me again, this time ruefully. “What, are
you surprised we can read? Do you think we’re all middle school dropouts?”
“Not in the least. But you would have to admit it’s not the first thing that springs to mind, the Ophelia Gentleman’s Club
Book Group. It’s like the Harley-Davidson Baking Society.”
“Now that’s funny,” Archangel said. “I’ll have to remember that one and tell Lily.” She hastily assured me that not all the
strippers were Rhodes Scholars either. Some of them had come from abuse. Some were runaways or had babies when they were fifteen
or lost a battle with drugs or had indeed dropped out of ninth grade. Not many of them had a background like Archangel or
Felicity. Every one of them was a striver, though. Every one of them wanted a better life. Not every one of them was doing
something about it.
Felicity was.
She didn’t drink. She didn’t smoke. She ate abstemiously and only healthy food, which she brought from home.
She didn’t put any of her money up her nose.
Her street clothes were clothes she wore repeatedly, simple but stylish, clearly vintage, faded but well-tailored jeans, gray flannel pants, a sleeveless silk shirt, a pumpkin-colored designer sweater, a black wool blazer (and here, a wash of tears ambushed me again, as I thought of that homecoming dress and the cape she twirled—my work here is done—and of my own clothing forays, inspired, I realized now, as much by my friend’s example as by my own lean means). She wasn’t
spending money on cheap and current clothes. She had other plans for the money that she made and she didn’t dress to lure,
but instead to look like anyone else. A grad student. A librarian.