Double Cross - 5. Chapter 5

The East Side Room was situated in the southwest side corner of the building. Sunny and spacious, light spilled through the tall windows and across the seating area decorated in a traditional 1920s style. The tables were sparsely occupied, parties of two or four were seated at a handful of the cozy tables. Impressive gilded mirrors adorned the walls. Jamie couldn’t help but admire his reflection as Dee escorted him across the room. The low waist dress and his short hair with its wispy curls at the ends fit in with the décor. Dee seated him at a table near two tall, glass paned doors that opened to a veranda.

His legs slid against each other luxuriously in their silk stockings. He pressed them together demurely as Dee slid his chair in. In his peripheral vision, he saw her beckon to a male couple out on the patio. He thought perhaps they had been kissing, certainly they were standing intimately close. One of them was dressed in an atrocious suit jacket with a drab olive and bright orange houndstooth print.

He smothered a chuckle. Blaine certainly was not shy about standing out. The transman started towards their table, his companion following.

“Dee! We weren’t expecting the two of you so soon.” Blaine was all smiles as he sat himself opposite Jamie. “You look marvelous. That hairstyle is exquisite. The make-up is perfect. Beautiful. And I’m not just being nice.”

“You’re kind to say so,” Cheeks warm, Jamie couldn’t help simpering out the response. He felt pretty. The mirrors told him that maybe he actually was pretty in this magical place. He looked down at his hand, folded primly in his lap. He moved them aside and Dee took the cloth napkin from his place setting and dropped it in his lap. Blaine’s new companion took the seat to his right.

He raised his head to greet this new person and found himself looking into the Trisha’s unblinking eyes, that startlingly deep cherry wood brown that he’d fallen in love with when they first met. Panic had him pushing up, away from the table, some part of him hoping he could escape before he was recognized.

“Stay, Jamie. Please.” Trisha placed a firm hand on his arm, urging him to stay seated. He thought he might hyperventilate, the anxiety had swamped him so unexpectedly.

“I’m not angry,’ she said.

He took some steadying breaths, trying to make sense of his wife’s presence at the table. Of course she was here. She’d been the one to send Blaine for him earlier. She wasn’t angry and she looked...

As his breathing calmed, he was able to take in the person, the woman he’d married, seated next to him. Different. She looked incredibly different. Possibly as different as he, himself, looked. Jamie’s heartbeat, having just returned to normal, picked up again.

Her longish hair was gone, cut now in a short boyish cap around her head. She was attired in a dapper 1920s suit, a men’s suit. She sat back now, straightening one cuff with a certain panache, a certain confidence in her manner yet slanting a shy smile in his direction.

“I shouldn’t have worn this.” Jamie’s limbic brain hadn’t caught up with the higher functioning parts that were telling him that his wife was bent on exploring changes as dramatic as his own. I know you don’t like seeing me dressed like this.”

“I do like it, Jamie. On you.” Trisha glanced at Blaine who gave a reassuring nod. She looked back at Jamie. “You look very nice. The dress, your hair. You look amazing, truly.”

Jamie felt Dee behind him still, her hand resting on his shoulder almost protectively. Blaine was watching both he and Trisha, inscrutable and curious. This unorthodox meeting between he and his wife had clearly been engineered by Blaine and Dee. Relaxing slightly, Jaime gave Trisha a small smile. “Thank you.”

“You clean up well, Sport. Very smart outfit.” Dee offered this compliment to Trish as she seated herself to Jamie’s left.

Trisha demurely acknowledged the compliment while Blain stared expectantly at Dee. “What’s this? No compliments for me?”

“You look like a spiv, Blaine.” Dee didn’t even glance in his direction.

Blaine threw back his head and laughed. A waiter arrived with a variety of sandwiches and pastries. The plates of the foursome were soon filled. Blain and Dee led the conversation in the beginning, Jamie and Trisha willing to soak in the atomosphere and enjoy the chance to live in their crossed gender roles.

Dee shared how the spa had come to be a place where gender norms are flouted. “I started it as a women’s resort initially, a place for lesbians. Almost from the beginning we were hosting women couples where one of the partners was embarking on transition. Like Blaine, they were in some stage of their female to male process. We decided to cater to that experience, be a place where you could come and explore living fully in a new gender. Word spread, largely without our even advertising. Soon we had guests who were headed in the other direction, male-to-female.

I have to say, though, that most of our guests who come here for the cross-gender experience, have no intention of making any permanent changes. They’re here for a vacation, for a week or two of role playing, of living outside gender norms. That’s when we started to cater to more specialized experiences.”

“Like my hockey game today?” Trisha was downing ice tea through a straw, condensation dripping down the tall glass.

“Exactly like that.” Dee refilled Jamie’s glass from a pitcher on the table and then her own. “We were lucky to be able to put that together on short notice, but we’re slow right now, not many guests. Plus, events like that are very popular with the staff. I venture to say most of them were happy for the unexpected break in the day.”

“This looks like a huge complex. I saw at least a half dozen buildings on as we came in from the field.”

“We’re the largest employer on the island.” Dee shared this with some pride. “The guest houses are mostly under renovation which is part of the reason we’re so slow.”

“And the reason Silas and I are booked at the B&B.” Blain had finished his meal and scooted his chair around, hooking an arm possessively over the back of Trisha’s chair. Jamie was reminded of how close the two were standing on the patio when he and Dee had first arrived.

Even with the obvious attentiveness to Trisha, Blain had continued to favor Jamie with warmly admiring looks as they talked. Dee had covered his hand frequently as she spoke leaving no doubt to anyone watch that Jamie was still in her possession. Trisha, even, had courteously offered her jacket when she noticed Jamie shivering under the breeze of the ceiling fan.

Dee had ordered the fan off to solve that problem. As the afternoon progressed, the tea offerings were removed and a waiter appeared with an offer of cocktails. Dee was decisive here as well.

“In keeping with the theme of the room, I think we’ll have Manhattans here,” she indicated Trisha, Blain and herself. “And a sherry for the lady.”

Jamie couldn’t help noticing that the women at the nearby tables were casting glances in their direction. Dee, Blaine and his own wife, Trish, were the recipients of several flirtatious overtures. He seemed to be at the receiving end looks that were either envious or jealous. That Jamie was the object of the gentlemanly overtures by the three of the most desirable men in the room hadn’t gone unnoticed.

He felt a flush rise again on his cheeks. By the time his second sherry was complete, the flush was accompanied by a fatuous grin. Dee called the waiter to refill his glass, but he quickly covered it with his hand. “Really, I’ve had enough.”

Dee chuckled. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as being such a lightweight.”

“Jamie!” A voice squealed his name from across the room. He turned to find Maia and Daisy making a beeline for their table. They descended, enveloping him in hugs and the scent of Chanel No. 5. “You’re exquisite. I knew it! Stand up. Can we see the dress on you?’

Jamie looked apologetically at the rest of the table, but all three were watching the scene with some indulgent amusement. Daisy pulled his chair back and he stood, smoothing the dress down over his legs.

“Perfect, perfect! You couldn’t have picked out anything better.”

“But, you lipstick needs touching up.” Daisy linked an arm. “C’mon. We’ll get you freshened up.”

He glanced back at his companions and Dee waved him away. “Go on. We’re finishing up here anyway.”

Maia grabbed the slender clutch he’d laid on the table and led the way off to, he presumed, the ladies’ waiting room.

When he emerged, freshly made up and in his own cloud of Chanel, Dee was waiting outside. She offered her arm and Jamie took her elbow as she walked them to a nearby exit. Stepping outside, he saw that it was already twilight, the island sky was beginning its display of deep oranges, rose and purple.

Dee led them onto a path through the islands lush foliage. Several other couples were also meandering along the paths. He saw Blaine and Trisha some way ahead of them, walking hand-in-hand.

“How are you enjoying your day here?”

“Maybe the best day of my life. I don’t want it to end.”

“I have a couple more experiences lined up. We’re far from the end of your day at the spa.” Dee unlinked her arm and gave Jamie’s back a light caress then ran her hand down until it rested just where his hip curved.

Amazing how naked one feels under a skirt, he thought. He was achingly aware of how easily, how quickly she could flip his skirt up, expose him, if she were so inclined.

She wasn’t, however, led to do anything so vulgar and instead they continued in companiable silence along the path. They were, he thought, heading closer to the island’s main waterway, a river that twisted and looped its way throughout the complex, its origin the tall mountain at the other end of the island.

Around a curve in the path, they caught up to Blaine and Trisha who had stopped in the relative privacy of a stand of tall rocks for another amorous embrace. Dee cleared her throat.

Blaine broke off, turning to face the two of them with no evidence of embarrassment. “We were just waiting for you two. Dee, I’m hoping you have your usual vantage point secured for RiverGlow*.”

“Of course, we haven’t far to go.’

The four of them continued together and Jamie found himself walking next to Trisha. The thin flats he wore did not have the best soles even for the relatively well groomed dirt path the followed.

“Careful, dear.” Trisha caught him around the waist as his footing slipped and then kept her arm firmly around him to lend support as needed. Her sturdy body, always so solid, capable, felt even more so as she walked alongside him in her fine suit and sturdy shoes. Her fingers caressed his waist lightly, absently. “These dresses look so good on you Jamie. They float. Or you float in them. It’s embarrassing in a way, that you look better in these than I do.”

“You’ve always looked good in dresses Trisha” Jamie felt Trisha trying to say something. Maybe feeling her way toward it. The silence of the island jungle enveloped them. Dee and Blain’s low murmurs far ahead on the path. He wondered how to keep Trisha talking.

“How do you feel about the way you’re dressed now?” he asked.

“I love it.” She squeezed him. “They asked me here, this morning, to describe a time when I felt really happy, powerful. I told them about playing hockey in college. From there I told them about all the sports I use to do as a kid. How much I liked being a tomboy and hated growing out of that.”

“I fell in love with you watching you play hockey. You’re amazing on the field. Commanding. Confident.”

She said nothing, just squeezed his waist again.

“I certainly wouldn’t mind if you kept dressing just as you are right now. I like it, and the short hair.”

“I understand that now. Jamie,” she took a deep breath “When I came home a few months ago an saw you dressed in all those frilly women’s things. You were so turned on, more than I could remember you being for a very long time.”

“I am sorry about that…”

“No. No more apologies. What I’m saying here is that I misunderstood, badly, what that was all about. I thought, somehow, that you wanted me to dress that way. I’ve tried so hard, since we’ve been married, to that poised and polished sort of wife. But I don’t like frills and when I saw you in the frill and so turned on – instinctively I just resented it. Resented you for liking something I would never want to wear. I somehow felt, because I don’t wear that girly type of stuff, that I wasn’t attractive to you.”

“Trisha, that’s not at all what I was thinking.”

“I know. It’s not like I really processed all of this. I mean the whole scene was a surprise. I just know that primarily what I felt was…inadequate…like I’d failed at feminity and you were throwing it in my face.”

“And all I was really doing was exploring my own feminity. I like feeling girlish sometimes.”

“I get that now. Just like I like feeling boyish, or at least tomboyish, sometimes. Anyway, I want you to know I’m not angry.”

Jamie laughed, happier than he’d been in ages, maybe since Trisha had agreed to marry him all those years ago. “This is truly an amazing place.”

“The best place.”

They almost walked into Blaine and Dee who had stopped on the trail ahead of them. It was almost completely dark. Beyond them, Jamie could see what looked like bonfires burning along the river.

"What is that?“

"RiverGlow is starting,” Blaine answered. "It's magical. Dee has the best spot along the river to watch. Come along, you two."