The Cloud of Unknowing by Mimi Lipson

said.
    â€œIs it coming from your driveway?”
    â€œBelieve it or not, it’s a bird—a mockingbird, I think. It showed up in the peppercorn tree a few weeks ago. Which, you know, doesn’t bother me as much as a real car alarm would. You kind of have to admire the damn thing.”
    Janice sat on the couch while Kitty went in the other room and rummaged through the pile of shoes on the floor of her closet, trying to find something she would like.
    â€œIs this your family?” Janice called out.
    â€œOn the end table? The guy with the moustache and the two little kids?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThat’s me and my brother and our dad. They’re both back in Cambridge.”
    â€œWhat does he do?”
    â€œMy dad? He teaches college.”
    â€œYou-all get along?”
    Kitty had talked to her father that morning. She missed him terribly, and her brother, too. He was planning to come out after his semester ended. She looked forward to showing him all the things she’d discovered out here already. Alpine Village, Eaton Canyon, the Western Exterminator sign on Temple, the terrazzo sidewalks downtown, the old cafeteria that was decorated with redwood murals and dusty taxidermy.
    â€œHe’s okay,” she said.
    Most of her shoes were plain and utilitarian: sneakers, work boots, job-interview loafers; none of these would do. She had a pair of strappy heels in here somewhere that she’d bought for the office Christmas party. And then she remembered that, of course, none of her shoes were going to fit, because Janice was a man, with man-sized feet. She found a pair of sandals and adjusted the buckles as far as they would go.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, offering them to Janice. “These are kind of ugly, but see if you can get them on.”
    Janice wedged a sandal onto her right foot. When she stood up, her heel hung off the end.
    Kitty’s phone beeped inside her pocket. She dug it out and saw she’d missed a call from Anton. She’d forgotten all about him. Watching Janice straighten her wig and check her lipstick in the mirror by the door, Kitty thought of the journey she’d made that evening: over the Cahuenga Pass and down into East Hollywood, where the beautiful Shalimar had met her doom on a streetlit sidewalk.
    Janice hesitated outside the bar, suddenly embarrassed about her shoes.
    â€œSee how crowded it is?” Kitty said, opening the door a little so she could peek inside. “No one’s going to notice your feet.”
    The room was packed now. A haze of cigarette smoke hung over the bar. The music was louder, and the voices competing with it had multiplied in the last hour. Scanning the room for familiar faces, Kitty spotted Anton, who had staked out a table in the corner next to the jukebox. He stood up when they came over and caught Kitty off-guard with a cheek-grazing double kiss. Donna Summer moaned orgasmically.
    â€œAnton, this is Janice,” yelled Kitty, “Janice, Anton.”
    He took Janice’s hand and kissed it. Kitty saw that the seam under her right arm had split a little.
    â€œWill you excuse me?” Janice said, “I have to go to the ladies’.”
    â€œYour friend is a vision,” Anton said when she’d gone. His eyes twinkled. “Did you pick her up on the Boulevard?”
    â€œShe’s from Van Nuys,” Kitty said, but he wasn’t listening.
    â€œWhat do you think of the Searchlite?” He gestured magnanimously across the room, as though the scene were something he had invented for her delight.
    â€œI think we’re tourists,” she said, realizing her mistake. She considered her options. She didn’t want to abandon Janice, but then she wasn’t sure she was needed, or even relevant. “Will you excuse me? I have to go to the ladies’, too.”
    Just as she turned away from him, the front door banged open. For a moment nothing else changed: