“It’s bad enough you lied to your dad about how you ended up here working as a ‘personal assistant’ to a couple of songwriters. I barely escaped being shot by him for ‘abducting’ you. Now, how the hell are you gonna explain being a Hank’s Honey, wearing a dress and prancing around on stage in front of thousands? At the very least, we could all be arrested for transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes!”

Everyone in the subway car whipped their heads around to look at us. I couldn’t shrink myself small enough to evade their stares. And I was sitting next to Bobby, hanging onto his arm, so I couldn’t act like he wasn’t talking to me. In a very low tone, I tried to reason with him.

“There’s nothing immoral about singing backup and dancing on stage. Even if I do it badly. Which I won’t, I promise! This is so exciting. And I’m getting paid a hundred smackers a week! I’m making more than Dad makes. How can he complain?”

“Well, I don’t think he ever envisioned you wearing a dress in front of an audience…”

“Would he rather I be naked instead?” At that, an older woman sitting across from us clucked her tongue. Bobby got out of his seat and leaned against one of the exit doors, his face turned away from me. I dramatically rolled my eyes and mouthed to the clucking woman, “Men!” She shook her head and smiled in return.

Bobby had originally wanted to see “Stagecoach” at the Rivoli tonight but his whole mood soured after Billy and Hank offered me the job as the newest Hank’s Honey. He decided to just take me home and then wander off into the night, I supposed. But I had developed a ravenous hunger and was not looking forward to spooning out cottage cheese from a solitary carton in my sister’s refrigerator.

As we walked out of the Christopher Street station, I grabbed his arm and he turned to me with a hangdog look on his face. “I’m really hungry. Let’s find a place close by to eat.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll walk you to your building and say goodnight.” I pulled him in the opposite direction.

“There’s loads of spots down this way. Connie and Lauren told me about this place called Caffe Reggio on McDougal and West 3rd.” Bobby didn’t budge, a petulant frown his only reply. “Listen, it’s my treat. I’ve still got the ten bucks Connie gave me for the bus home. And I’m getting paid tomorrow. They make really great burgers…” That got Bobby moving. He put my hand in his and we walked briskly downtown toward McDougal Street.

We were able to get a table next to the window. The café was not a large space, so it was fortunate for us that the early dinner crowd was sparse that night. I remarked to Bobby that the place wasn’t anything like any Italian restaurant I’d ever been in, with its walls filled with paintings by Renaissance artists (the menu provided a historical blurb about the café), pride of place being occupied by a canvas from the school of Caravaggio. Against the back wall sat what is claimed to be the first espresso machine to be used in New York City when the café opened in 1927. The menu blurb also claimed Caffe Reggio introduced cappuccino to the city as well. When I told Bobby I might want to try that after dinner, he shrugged and said he’d never had it himself.

The waitress perfunctorily took Bobby’s order of a burger and fries but was chatty when I asked her what she would recommend. While Bobby stared out the window listlessly, I finally decided on the Orecchiette alla Pugliese, which the waitress told me was the most famous dish from the owner’s home region of Puglia, located in the heel of Italy’s boot. It had lots of broccoli in it, which is a vegetable I like. I was under the legal drinking age of 18 so Bobby and I just had water. When she walked away from our table, I took full notice of how she was dressed: black capri pants, a black and white striped Breton T-shirt, and black ballet flats. Beatnik fashion from another decade. The only thing missing was a beret, but she did have her hair up in a high ponytail. That old song, “Sugar Shack,” spun on the turntable in my head.

We were served in less time than it took for me to coax Bobby into some dinner conversation.

“I thought you’d be happy for me. I mean how much more validation do you need when they pick you to be a Honey? They obviously are convinced I’m what I am. Which is a girl.”

“Two months on the road as a girl? Shuggie, you’re not going to get away with it. We’ll all be in trouble if you’re found out. Maybe even legally. I don’t know. And your father will disown you and shoot me. Whichever comes first.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“I know he’s got that 30-06 Springfield he goes deer-hunting with. My dad went and bought the same rifle.”

“No, I mean he wouldn’t disown me.”

“Well, that’s nice for you, I guess. Listen, it’s a bad idea, Shuggie. Just turn it down and go back home after Gerry and Carole go to LA at the end of the month.”

My eyes started to well up with tears and my voice got scratchy. “You really don’t want me around? We’ve always done everything together. I thought you…you and I were best friends. Like forever.” Bobby handed me his napkin to dab away my tears.

“We are. We are. It’s complicated. Everyone isn’t as understanding of your ‘situation’ as I am. They wouldn’t be accepting of…of—”

“Who I really am? But I can’t help it. It’s how I am, Bobby. I told you when I was 6 and you were 7.”

The waitress stopped at our table, concern in her voice. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. Can we see a dessert menu?” Bobby nodded and the waitress went to retrieve the menus.

“I think we should try the espresso and the tiramisu. It’s ladyfingers soaked in coffee.”

“Kind of redundant, no? Anyway, you’re paying. Have a field day. I’ll just have a regular coffee. No dessert for me.”

When we emerged from the café onto McDougal Street, Bobby looked down the block and saw people coming in and out of the coffee house on the corner. The sign on the awning above the doors read Café Wha. Music leaked out from inside whenever the doors swung open.

“Hey, I’ve heard the guys talking about that place. A couple of them dropped in over the weekend and said the group playing there was really good. I’ll walk you home and circle back, catch the show. I’m too keyed up to go to sleep this early.”

“Let’s go in now. I’m not sleepy either and there’s nothing on TV.”

“Okay, but there’s a cover charge and a two-drink minimum. I can get you in since I’m the adult accompanying you, little girl. You can order a Shirley Temple.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s non-alcoholic. Ginger ale with a splash of grenadine.”

“Does it taste good?”

“You’ll tell me. I’ve never had it.” Again, he took my hand and we walked quickly to our new destination.

Inside, we found a small table against the back wall and Bobby ordered a beer and I ordered my Shirley Temple. As I was sipping my drink—it wasn’t that bad—the band that was on stage finished their last number and shuffled off. An emcee of sorts came out to introduce a group named Jimmy James and The Blue Flames. Bobby turned to me and said these were the guys he’d heard about. They looked kind of nondescript to me. One of them looked like he was 15. Not even peach fuzz on his cheeks. The leader was a tall, lean black man with a bushy head of hair. Rather intense looking. He carried his guitar with a loose confidence that bespoke the audience was in for quite a show. He would introduce each song with a terse but joking sentence or two. They were quite good. But they didn’t really sound like anything on Top 40 radio. Bobby mentioned the leader’s real name was Jimi Hendrix, spelled strangely that way. I nodded indifferently and sat back to take in the rest of their set. I didn’t notice when Bobby left the table. I assumed he’d gone to the men’s room. When he returned, he gave me a Cheshire Cat smile. I leaned in to ask him why he was smiling when Jimmy James announced they were playing a request from the audience. It was “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch.”

We were in the doorway of Connie’s building when I turned to say good night. Bobby bent down and, steadying myself, I closed my eyes, anticipating his kiss. It would be tender. It might last longer than a few seconds. I would melt with the touch of his supple lips upon mine. On the walk home from Café Wha, Bobby had capitulated. He finally acknowledged that he’d be more than okay with me going on tour, spending two months together, seeing the USA in a Chevrolet…well, a tour bus. I don’t know if Chevrolet makes buses.

Instead, Bobby gave me a quick brotherly hug and tousled my hair. Which I didn’t appreciate since I’d spent a lot of time getting my wig to sit on my head just right. I really should go with Connie to the salon she frequents and see if they can give me something like a pixie cut or a page boy do like Jean Seberg.

“Good night, Shuggie. I’ve got to catch the crosstown bus to St. Mark’s Place. They don’t run as often as they do during the day.” He turned quickly and started to trot to the bus stop two blocks away. I would’ve whistled all the way up the stairs to Connie’s apartment but, as you know, I can’t. So, I didn’t.

Friday morning, I stood outside Gerry and Carole’s office, waiting for them to show up at their usual time of 10AM. I don’t know why but I ‘borrowed’ Connie’s Jackie Kennedy Chanel knock-off jacket and skirt combo. I guess a pillbox hat would’ve been too much. They were surprised to see me. Gerry looked at his $200 Rolex Submariner watch (worn by James Bond in all the movies), unlocked the door, and ushered Carole and me into the office.

“You look dressed to kill, Shuggie. Is there something going on?” Gerry asked.

I was halfway through explaining how I had been selected to be the fourth Honey by Hank and Billy when Billy Schechter himself entered the office.

“I assume Shuggie has told you the good news?”

“Billy, there’s something important you should know—”

“Carole—,” I pleaded before Billy held his hand up and shook his head.

“That Shuggie’s actually a boy?” We were all shocked by his matter-of-fact tone. Especially me.

“Who…who told you? Was it Bobby? I’ll kill him!”

“Bobby? No, he left the studio with you and didn’t say a word. I knew from the first time I met you here in the lobby.”

“So, am I fired before I’m even hired?”

“Nah, Hank would rip me a new one if I didn’t go through with hiring you. He…ah…has taken a keen interest in you. Your musical career, that is.” Billy smiled at me. Gerry placed his hand on Billy’s shoulder.

“Look, Billy, this could be very dangerous for Shuggie. If Hank finds out she’s really a he, who knows what he might do. Shuggie, have you really thought this through? If Billy could see through you…”

“Did you and Carole?”

“Well, no, but she is very convincing. We didn’t know until her mother paid us a visit and explained the whole thing,” Carole said.

“Right now, she looks like a teenage Jackie Kennedy. She’s the best drag act I’ve seen in all my years in this business—”

“I’m not a drag…a drag act! I’m a girl! Why can’t everyone see that?” Carole put her arm around me and we sat down on the piano bench together.

“Shuggie, if you want to go with Billy, I’m sure he’ll look after you. He’s a mensch. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you. But are you sure you can carry this off for two months on the road, in front of hundreds and thousands of people?”

“And your father. How are you going to hide this from him for the whole summer?” Gerry asked.

I looked at the three of them. Gathering myself, I tried to explain why I felt I needed to do this, in spite of all the inherent danger. I would risk everything to do it.

“You wouldn’t know what it’s like to be someone like me. To not have your outside match what your inside is. To know you’re a girl through and through and have everyone, even your own father, insist that you’re a boy. That you always were and always will be a boy. I have a chance to be a girl, to be seen and accepted as a girl for a whole summer. To go everywhere, be everywhere, with everyone and just be seen as a girl. If I have to go back to being a boy after this, so be it. I’ll at least have had these two months of living as who I really am inside.”

Billy took my hand, stood me up and led me to the door. He turned to address Carole and Gerry. “Let me know what you owe her for these two weeks and I’ll pay her myself. Least I can do for inconveniencing you two. Taking your assistant away. Shuggie, we need to get you fitted for your snazzy Honeys costumes.”

How am I going to keep the wardrobe mistress from discovering I’m a boy?

We walked over to 1650 Broadway and took the elevator up to the floor where the band would be rehearsing in a couple of hours. Billy led me into a cubbyhole of a room that had been converted into a temporary office. Bare walls, a desk, a couple of chairs, a telephone, and a Dansette Bermuda portable record player that stood on its four slender wooden legs.

“Our wardrobe girl won’t be in for another half-hour or so. Have a seat. Want some coffee. I always bring my own thermos. The coffee around here is awful. There used to be a Chock’s on 48th and Broadway. Closed last year.” After he poured some coffee into a cup with a slightly chipped rim and handed it to me, he used the thermos cup himself. “I like my coffee strong and black. Okay for you?” I nodded and sipped the hot liquid. It tasted like battery acid. Of course, I’ve never drunk battery acid.

“So how did you know I was really a boy? Nobody else seemed to catch on.”

“Well, like I said, I’ve seen my share of drag…er…cross-dressers in and out of the music industry over the years. Although, I have to say, you do look very natural. You’re lucky. You’re too pretty to be taken for a boy.”

“I’m not either of those things. I really believe I should be a girl. It was some kind of cosmic mistake that I was born a boy. My mother says that all the time.”

“Hey, that’s what they all say. They’re really women. We’ve all got things we’d rather be. Even me.”

“You…you want to be a girl?”

“No, no. I mean doing other things. Things I’m really interested in. I like the stuff I’m producing okay, and Hank’s got a really good sound. Real commercial. It’ll get lots of radio airplay. But I’m kinda bored making what Phil Spector calls ‘opera for kiddies’.”

“What would you rather be producing?” I decided not to drink any more of the coffee. Was there a potted plant I could pour the rest of this into? He walked over to the record player and took a 45 out of its sleeve. After blowing some dust off its grooves, he placed it on the turntable and dropped the needle.

“Musical theater. Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Lerner & Lowe, the classic stuff. Listen to this. It’s from “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.” Act 2. “Come Back to Me.” Goulet hits all the notes!”

“Impressive. So do you write like songs for musicals?”

“I’ve been working on a book for a musical with a writer friend. I’ve got maybe a dozen songs already written for it. I can’t see myself doing what I’m doing right now for much longer. The business is changing. Less call for the boy genius producer these days. Groups are writing their own songs, wanting to produce their own records.” He laughed. “They think they’re Lennon & McCartney all of a sudden.”

To make conversation, I told him about all the movie musicals Mom and I would watch together on TV. Her favorites were “Oklahoma,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The King and I,” and “West Side Story.” My favorite was “The Wizard of Oz.” At that point, we heard music coming from down the hall.

“Oh, that’s Bailey, our wardrobe mistress. Let’s get you fitted.”

After Billy introduced me to Bailey Tate, the wardrobe mistress for the tour, he left, saying he had a meeting across town before rehearsals started that afternoon. Bailey Tate was a petite black woman in her early twenties who told me right off she was from Jamaica (the island not the section of Queens). She had moved to New York with her parents when she was 15 and had recently graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, aka F.I.T. Sitting at her sewing machine, her glasses perched almost on the tip of her nose, she was dwarfed by the racks of suits, dresses, and other apparel surrounding her in this small room. She lowered the volume on the portable record player she had placed on a folding chair. She told me she was playing a record by someone named Hopeton Lewis, a ‘rock steady’ song entitled “Take It Easy” that was all the rage in Jamaica at the moment. Standing close by, dancing to the languid beat of the song, was Bailey’s 18-year-old cousin Brianna.

“Before we start, I guess I should tell you something about me.”

“You mean that you’re really a boy?” she asked, her voice showing only a trace of a Jamaican accent.

“Does everyone know?”

“No, don’t worry. Billy told me last night. He thought it was kind of important that I know, eh? Only Billy, me and Brianna know.”

“Mi wouldn't wa fi be yuh wen Hank finds out believe mi gyal” Brianna said in a thick Jamaican patois, laughing.

“What did she say? I only understood every other word, if that.”

“Well, that’s just as well, isn’t it? Even if she blurted out your secret, who’d know what she was saying.” We all laughed at that.

“So, you aren’t taken aback by me? I’m sure you don’t deal with people like me very often.”

“On the contrary. I’ve a lot of experience with men who dress up as women. One of my first jobs, even before I graduated F.I.T., was wardrobe assistant at The Apollo Theater in Harlem. They had these regular shows called The Jewel Box Revue. “25 Men and 1 Girl” was the slogan. Best drag queens in the country. They even toured internationally.”

“I’m not a drag queen! I’m not doing this as an act. I’m just born in the wrong body.”

“Just mek sure Hank nuh get too close tuh yuh bady or yuh inna nuff chrent,” Brianna warned in her impenetrable patois.

“Don’t ask. Just steer clear of Hank and some of them other horn dogs. Now, let’s get your measurements, such as they are. You’ve only got 10 days to learn all them songs and dance steps. Meanwhile I’ve got to make sure your dress is perfect for your appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.”

“Ed Sullivan Show?”

“Oh, Billy hasn’t told the band yet. But you guys are on Sullivan the Sunday after next. Last show of the season. And it’s live. Aren’t you the lucky girl? First week in the business and you’re on TV!”

“I stayed home that night, Itsuki-chan. Nobody told me you were on TV. Your parents went over to Bobby’s parents’ house to watch TV that night. They didn’t mention anything about seeing you.” My grandmother yawned. She had barely touched the hospital’s notion of a delicious dinner and I could tell she was tired. I should go home and let her rest. I got up and kissed her cheek. She smiled.

“I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow when I come after school.”

“I’ll be here, koneko. And bring me some rice balls. Have your mother make them the way I taught her.”