“Let’s play a game.” Zeke hulked in the drivers’ seat across from Dolly. Val sat with sprightly Simon in the back of the van.  The big man had driven them from Denver to a prison town in the middle of the Nevada desert. “We paint this house in three days,” Zeke continued, “we win.”

            “What if we lose?” Dolly had to repeat herself twice to make her voice heard over the steady wind that had come across the cracked plain at sunset.

            “We don’t lose,” said a voice from the back. “Ever.” Dolly wasn’t sure if the voice belonged to Simon or Val. Probably Val. While Val spoke with bluster and bite, Simon stayed coy and curt.

            “We’ll be fine.” Zeke spoke with the stolid weight of his tall, burly body, and lilted the spaces between his words with an easy authority.  “Three days, done, no problem – just so long as you slobs don’t sleep half the day.” Dry and dour, he turned towards the back.

            Simon and Val clambered from the folded mattress in back and perched on the short bench immediately behind the drivers’ seat. Dolly turned to face them, listening as they spoke:

            “Stay outta my way and we’ll get it done in two,” “I’ll tape and tarp, you wash,” “What the hell’d you do with my tile cutter?” “Just don’t forget to get new batteries for the stereo, ‘cuz there’s not going to be any power in this place ‘til we’re done.”

            By the end of the conversation, Dolly was shaking with desert cold, bare beneath her coveralls, but Zeke had merely flipped up the canvas collar of the fatigue jacket he wore over a leather vest and sparse chest hair. Cloaked in a sheep-skin coat, Val draped both legs across Simon’s thighs, her left hand rubbing his back under a button-up shirt.

            On the first day out from Denver, Dolly decided that Val had muscles like metamorphic rocks, and wanted to catalog them, but Simon took a little longer to figure. When he gestured towards the house porch, balconies, and windows, his knobbly hands hitched and caught on twists and turns, as if broken bones had latticed off a memory that his wrists and fingers dodged and dropped to escape.

            The peeling Victorian three-story in front of their van was the only house on the entire block of vacant lots and boarded stores. It looked big enough to paint forever, which, she thought, might make us good money, but won’t help me find a place to live.

            “We’re not going to sleep in here tonight, are we?” Simon nudged Val off his lap and slid the side door open. “Tell me you got a key, Zeke. I don’t care if they have lights or not, I just don’t want to smell all you crusty butts again tonight.”

             “Smelling butts is not part of the plan,” Val said. Following Simon, she grabbed his shoulders and hopped on his back, bare legs wrapped around his waist, his hands under her knees. “By the time we get to the beach,” she said, “y’all gotta get outta my sight. I don’t wanna see a piece of ya, come next week.”

            “You sure you don’t want to come, Dolly?” Simon walked backwards, dropping Val.            Zeke slapped Simon’s ass. “Santa Barbara not big enough for ya, Si? You want this Doll to join your harem?”

            “Shut up, Zeke,” said Val. She hooked four fingers in a back pocket and hitch-stepped towards the house. Gravel crunched in the circular driveway.

            Dolly hurried to follow. “Winnemucca’s good enough for me,” she said.

            “Is that what they call this place?” Zeke rolled his head towards the bundle of stucco facades near the freeway. “I thought I saw a sign that said The Seventh Level.”

            “Don’t listen to them,” Simon said, his husky voice close by Dolly’s right side.

            She leaned closer to him. “Everything okay?”

            “Everything’s fine,” he said.

            “Is it all right with you that I’m along for the ride?”

            “You’re fine, you’re fine.” He nodded, amused. “We’re just here to raise money for our little vacation, and then we’ve got a workshop to run. These jokers like to pretend that they’ve forgotten about the Project, but that-”

            “Someone slap me!” Val folded her arms across her chest and leaned into Simon, her face a wild mask of distress. “I’ve forgotten the Sexy Ladies’ Action Project—who am I, where am I?” Her voice trailed off into the tremolo of a grand dame. “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers...”

            In unison, Simon and Zeke said, “And they don’t get much stranger than you.”

            “Thank you for the compliment,” Val said. Patting herself down and twisting her head from side to side, she became briskly officious, eyes screwed up in a forlorn imitation of a billionaire. “What was it you peons were speaking of? Oh, yes, merely the piddling self-defense workshop and measly advocacy training series for those godforsaken queers, that’s right.” She dropped the lilting lingo. “Dolly? You in? Whore College?”

            “I might be wrong,” Dolly said, “but I think I’m supposed to go to San Francisco.”

            “Suit yourself,” said Zeke, stomping up the porch stairs. “We’ll take you as far as you wanna go.”

            “Sacramento should be fine. You all are really too kind.”

            “Don’t give me that polite crap,” Val gruffed. “You’ll pay your way. We’ve got eight rooms to paint.” With one hand, she gestured at the house; with the other, she grabbed Dolly’s hand and led her up the front steps.

            Zeke unlocked the front door.  “This’ll be a good job,” he said, pointing out the cans of paint under the staircase. “Quick cash. I’ve worked with Amos before, and he’ll pay up good, no problem.”

            Val led them upstairs. “Who is Amos? He’s not some Peckerwood or Klanner, is he? I don’t need another white boy flipping out when he sees my face.”

            “Amos is just a guy I know,” said Zeke. He flicked the hall light switches. They worked. “He’s not affiliated with any white supremacists, so far as I know. He’s seen some color before.”

            “Doesn’t matter if he’s seen it,” Val said. She strode to the stairway banister, tugged the main post. “What matters is if he’s going to sneer and spit, then shoot me in the night. Remember Atlanta?”

            “Atlanta was a weird time,” Zeke said. “They’d just had that drought, and they still hadn’t turned the water back on.” He was looking at Val with his eyes, but by turning his head he’d faced Dolly and directed his words towards her. “Lots of folks had packed up to leave, and the water company set up those barricades to keep them in, fucking ‘breach of contract.’  You know this isn’t normal-behavior time.”

            “I know all that shit,” Val said. “And I’m not talking about just people, I’m talking about racist crackers who can’t stand to think that they don’t own the world.” She spun from the banister post and circled in between Dolly and Zeke, who dangled from a doorframe.  “Don’t try to distract me with your corporate-oppressor talk.” She slapped his chest and pushed. He swung. “God, you’re such an idiot sometimes,” she said, walking away from him, “I don’t know how I stand you.”

            “Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. He dropped and followed her down the hall.

            Dolly trailed behind. Where was Simon?

            “You’re right,” Zeke continued. “I was wrong in Atlanta, I shouldn’t have taken that job, and I was wrong just now. You don’t need to hear me defend people who tried to kill you.”

            “Damn right I don’t, cocksucker,” Val said. She stopped on the second stair down, hand on her crotch. “And don’t try to tell me what I need and don’t need. I’m the one who knew where the keys were when the motel caught fire.”

            He didn’t say anything. Val’s footsteps clattered. She disappeared.

            Simon coughed. “Good,” he said. He emerged from the stairway shadows, carrying a gallon can of paint in each hand. “Now that we’ve got racial relations solved for the next century, how about we bed down for the night?”

            “Find your own fucking place to sleep,” Val shouted from the first floor. “I’m done with you punks.” She slammed the front door.

            The house shook, settled. Dust drifted from the hallway chandelier. Dolly asked, “Is she okay?”

            “She’s fine, I just fucked up,” Zeke said.

            “Don’t worry too much about it, Z.” Simon swung his arm out and nudged the big man’s elbow with a loose fist. “She’ll get over it. She always does.”

            Dolly stood still in the hallway. “Does this happen often?”

            “No, Mister Ezekial is not always such a jerk.” Simon snorted, glanced at Zeke’s scowl, and sobered. “No,” he said, softer than Dolly had yet heard him speak. “Val doesn’t always tell us where she’s going to go. She’s usually back the next day.”

            Zeke turned away from the darkness of the stairwell. “That woman can sleep any place she takes a mind to.” Behind his waist, his hands clenched and released the door frame as he leaned back, flexed his arms, and sprung off. “Don’t worry about her. What we should worry about is, will she take off with the van?”

            “No, that’s not all we have to worry about, my man.” Simon crossed the hall, talking loudly as he walked into the larger room. “But if I have to explain it to you, you’ll never know. Sometimes, I swear, I start to wonder if you can ever guess what it’s like for another person to be trans.” He waved for Dolly to follow him. She did.

            “Don’t start blaming me,” Zeke shouted.

            “I’m not blaming you.” In his normal speaking voice, Simon told Dolly, “If you’re thinking about following her, don’t. She’s not one of those T-girls you see on the soap operas, who gets beat up every time she steps out doors. She can pass well enough, and if someone thinks she doesn’t, she kicks ass.”

            Behind them, Zeke’s hands thudded on the bedroom door. “This is bullshit,” he bellowed. “Nobody’s a victim here. It’s just all fucked up.”

            “Uhh...” Dolly raised her hand in an attempt at humor. “Can I get my blankets out of the van?”

            “Whose blankets?” Zeke’s face flashed from his half crouch. He was suddenly much bigger, much louder, and standing in front of her.

            “Sorry,” she said. “They’re your blankets, right? I’ll be fine, I promise, I just need to get some sleep tonight and then I’ll work tomorrow-”

            “Don’t worry about it.” Simon patted Zeke’s chest with one hand and rubbed Dolly’s forearm with the other. “Val’s probably gonna be gone for an hour or two,” he said to Dolly, “and then she’ll come back to sleep in the van. You should be fine in there, though. There’s no reason for her to be mad at you.”

            “Good,” she said. “I got a headache. Gonna go play dead for a bit.”

            The spot on her arm where his hand had touched stayed warm as she eased herself downstairs.

            Zeke’s voice followed her. “Val doesn’t need a reason to be mad.” He was speaking to Simon, she thought; he wouldn’t want her to hear that pout in his voice.

            “Man, don’t start,” Simon said. He sounded annoyed. “Just let it go.”
           
            Good, Dolly thought. He can do the dirty work, keep the dust from piling up. We’re making an excavation, but we’re building something, too. What?

            She stepped outside; wind wisped at their voices, faded. Winter on the way. Better find one place to stay. San Francisco or no.