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Kim sits in the light of a half-open window, skin bare, body golden. Hair trails up his midriff and down his legs. It thins out when it reaches his ankles. He is distant, out of place in a place like this. Harry is on the edge of the bed and watches him with eyes half-asleep. The lieutenant’s breasts are dappled with scars. He makes no gesture to cover them.
“Staring is impolite.”
Harry swallows dryly and focuses on the dirty sheets rustling between his fingers. They are off-white. He has no idea if they came that way, or if they’re just that filthy. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”
He laughs and shakes his head. What a mess. It’s a lazy day for the two of them, one that will most likely be spent in leisure. Kim wants to go get coffee. Harry is blowing hair out of his face and thinking about feeding pigeons.
“Kim—”
“Detective..”
“No, sorry, you go first.”
“It’s alright, what were you going to say?”
A few more moments of this back and forth occurs. Harry joins him by the window, sticking to the hardwood floor. He is butt-naked and radiating warmth. “Do you ever feel robbed, Kim?”
He takes his glasses and sets them on the windowsill. The world becomes an indistinct amoeba of colour and shapes. “Of what?”
“I don’t know. Man stuff. Your childhood? What was it like for you?” Harry is somber now. The search dog in him kneels to the curious cat. He picks at a scab on his leg and admires Kim’s lithe figure in the light. Blisters cover the flat space under his armpit. Dark red, baby pink, dried blood brown. They are hidden by the width of the lieutenant’s arm as he leans back against the wall. Kim glances at him and he continues: “Was it hard, finding out you wanted to be a boy?”
He shrugs and shuffles his socked feet around. “I didn’t really ‘ find out ’ anything. As a child, I had bigger problems to worry about than my gender.”
For a moment, he turns his gaze to the dim morning sky, a smooth canvas of grey-blue. Somber pupils scan the vast expanse of it, like he’s searching for something. But no planes pass by, and none will for a very long time. He is sorry about it, but what can he do? Harry is silent. Most of the room is.
“But no, not really. I didn’t know there was a name for what I was, not until I was older. And by then I was beyond anyone who could judge me. It’s still a bit of a secret, though. Documents changed and passport photos were retaken. Like I was destroying evidence. Like…”
“Murder.”
“In a way, I suppose.” Kim’s eyes shift to look at Harry in that strange way of his, expression betraying nothing. He is so beautifully enigmatic. “Murder.”
Harry hums.
“Would you have changed it, if you could’ve?”
He blinks. “No, of course not. Well… maybe. I often felt like I was masquerading as a male. It felt stiff and awkward at times. Then I grew up, met good people, smoked good things. I realized that I was more of a man than anyone because I had to fight for it.”
“Wow, that’s really cool…”
“Cool? I find it mostly a tedious story. It’s long behind me now. But I think even if I choose to ignore my past, it still exists in a very lonely part of me, caged up in a glass box waiting for someone to let it out.” He clears his throat, taps the windowsill with his fingers. A bird warbles somewhere in the distance. “This body is mine. I’ll be here until I die, so I try to make it a nice place.” He gives Harry a grin like he’s just said something very clever.
"I think... I think I questioned my gender too, at one point. Before Martinaise."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. I liked dressing up and stuff. I remember asking Dora about make-up, I remember asking Jean about dresses.. It's all very confusing to me. I don't understand."
Kim raises an eyebrow, but he doesn't judge. He's curious. "Liking those things doesn't necessarily make you a woman, Harry."
"I know! Sorry--I know. It's just.. I would've made such a good girl, you know? Probably would've kicked so much ass, just as much ass as I do now. Wouldn't I kick so much ass?!"
The lieutenant stifles a laugh, fingers pressed over his mouth. He looks momentarily out of the apartment window and looks down at the sidewalk below. "Yes. You would have kicked so much ass."
He stands, nodding along. His warm skin presses against Kim’s back, head perched on his shoulder. The detective is thinking. Something is being turned over in his mind, folding in on itself.
“How about we go for a run? Before the traffic starts. I know a spot.”
“Yes, you seem to know many.” He is talking about last week, or maybe the week before. They had wandered out to a dim alleyway that just happened to be a book street. Stalls and paper lanterns illuminated little pulp fictions, spread out on a table like gutted fish for sale.
“Not all who wander are lost.” Harry tries his best to maintain a serious demeanor, but he quickly cracks, giggling. Kim kisses him on the cheek. His beard is scratchy against the lieutenant’s face. He holds himself up by bracing on Harry’s biceps. A boyish smile is on his face, and a couple years fade out of his features. “So how about that run?”
“It’s too early for that.” Kim stretches and the smooth bush of his pelvis is revealed, ribs flaring, muscles straining. The floor creaks under the movement. He is proud, almost, of the curves and indents of his body. His scars as testaments to his survival. Resilience, captured in the freeze-frames of worn flesh.
Harry is enraptured. The lieutenant is glowing. His lungs fill with a shaky breath, he says, “You’re beautiful, Kim.”
Kim looks down, considers his flesh and the sinewy angles of his everything. The wind seeps under the window and wraps its arms around his waist. His shoulders rise, fall. “I know, detective. Let’s get dressed.”