Shame

revenge cloud your thinking,” she said. “I could call the police and tell them Elizabeth has disappeared and where we’re headed.”
    “No. I don’t want to send him into hiding. I want it to end tonight.”
    “So does he. And he knows a hell of a lot more about you than you do about him. He’s controlling how the two of you will meet, and he’s prepared his playing field.”
    “I’m used to uneven playing fields.”
    “Maybe it doesn’t have to be so uneven. Maybe we can do something to distract him.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe we can scare him somehow.”
    “Maybe you could do one of your stage numbers. That ought to distract him.” A moment later, Caleb said, “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be. I know just the one I’d like to do. ‘Staying Alive.’ At the club we always bring out the bubble machine for that one. And I wave a lot of big feathers. Bee Gees music always needs lots of feathers. And my six-inch platform shoes, of course. Sometimes I segue into Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Were Made for Walking.’”
    She sang the chorus from the song but then found her voice wavering. She had this premonition that the boots were walking over a grave.
    “My stomach hasn’t felt like this in a long, long time,” Lola admitted. “It feels like we’re going to war. Not the kind of war with uniforms and marching, but a more personal kind of war, like when I used to go to high school and I’d know I was going to get beat up, even though I could never be sure when and where the attack was coming.”
    Caleb didn’t say anything, but Lola knew he had similar memories.
    “Back then I used to drink Pepto-Bismol for breakfast,” she said. “I tried to wear the right clothes, men’s clothes, but that didn’t help. The clothes couldn’t hide how different I was. I wasn’t the bad boys’ only target, though. There were other kids who didn’t fit in. I remember praying that today would be their turn and not mine.
    “I’d like to think I have changed since then, that I got stronger when I started putting on dresses, but I don’t know if that’s true. I’m still afraid that all it would take is someone looking at me wrong and there I’d be, begging those bullies to go pick on someone else instead of me. I wonder if we ever really change.”
    “We do change,” Caleb said. “We have to.” He fervently wanted to believe what he was saying.
    “Or is it that as we get older we just try to find ways to avoid conflict, ways that allow us to pretend that we’ve grown stronger? I remember the first time I went out in public in women’s clothing. I was sure everyone was looking at me. And I was sure they were all thinking, ‘There goes the freak.’ And gradually it dawned on me that few, if any, people were taking notice of me. Mostly it’s still that way. When I go out I don’t know whether I’m being bold or whether I’m passing for a woman or whether the world’s unobservant or whether people just don’t care.”
    “It may be a little bit of each,” Caleb said.
    “I’ve never been brave, you know. Sometimes I do a very un–Frank Sinatra version of ‘My Way.’ But I didn’t really do it myway at all. Wearing women’s clothing really wasn’t a choice for me. It was as necessary as breathing.”
    “If you weren’t courageous, you wouldn’t be helping me now.”
    “Don’t pin a badge on me,” Lola said. “Truth is, the only reason I haven’t jumped out of the car is because I’m afraid of how much analysis it would take to make me feel right about myself again.”
    “Fear,” Caleb said. “Everyone’s great motivator.”
    Lola heard the echo in his pronouncement. His own fears talking. She could tell he was thinking about his family again.
    “Your kids were playing in a pool,” she said. “He wouldn’t have had the opportunity to snatch them in front of other people.”
    “He knows where they are. That’s all that matters now.”
    “If something happens, I’ll call the Sheriff’s Department. Elizabeth said they were keeping tabs on your family. They’ll be able to protect them.”
    “Thanks.” His gratitude sounded raw and exposed and desperate.
    “I always wanted kids myself,” said Lola. “I had this fantasy that I would meet a man with little children, a widower, and that I’d be their mother. Silly, huh? I’m one of those fools for love, and what’s even dumber is that I keep setting myself up for failure. The kind of man I want is