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There was a knock at the door and Daphne—no, wait, Jerry … it had been hard remembering to switch back—looked up.
“Who is it?” he (she?) said in a higher voice than was ‘natural’ but that seemed to be the first port of call these days completely by instinct, and then frowned and cleared his throat. “You can come in.”
Sugar poked her head around the door and smiled.
“Hi, honey!” she said and skipped in like a schoolgirl, closing the door behind her, and Daphne smiled.
“Hey, Shug,” Jerry said, trying to remember that he was a boy and that Sugar was very specifically Joe’s girl, for all that hanging out with Sugar felt just like what he assumed being a girl giggling with your best friend was like sometimes, now that he’d given up on chasing her himself. “What brings you over to my neck of the yacht? The menfolk having another argument about whether or not you can call a sax a horn when it’s a woodwind instrument?”
“No, not exactly,” Sugar said, pushing a curl back behind her ear when it came loose from shaking her head. “But it is a little bit about … well, Joe calls you Jerry and ‘him’ and Osgood calls you Daphne and ‘her’ and I’ve been getting a little confused. Which is it?”
“Oh,” Daphne—Jerry!—said. “Oh, I see. I guess I thought it was obvious, but … well, I’m … well, you see, me and Joe were both—and, um, I suppose that maybe Osgood hasn’t gotten used to Jerry, since he met Daphne first, and Joe met Jerry years before Daphne was even a gleam in my eye, so … whichever you prefer, I guess? If it’s confusing.”
“No, no, not that,” Sugar said, pouting a little. “I’m dumb, but I’m not stupid. What I mean is, you seem to like being Daphne much more than Joe liked being Josephine. It doesn’t seem like it was just … what do you want me to call you? You’ve been such a dear, good friend to me and it would be just awful for me to not even know your name after all that.”
Something in Jerry-Daphne’s heart cracked and they welled up a little.
“Oh, honey!” All at once, Sugar’s arms were around them. “There, there, sweetie, let it out. I didn’t mean to make you cry, darling.”
She pressed a chaste little kiss against the side of Daphne’s temple and hugged her tight against her enviable bosom. Enviable? That was new. Or … was it?
“It’s okay, Sugar,” Jerry said, clearing his throat. “I’m a big boy, I don’t need you to make a fuss of me. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over … ha. Well, anyway. I’m fine.”
Daphne cleared her throat again and looked down sheepishly.
“So … Jerry?” Sugar said and then frowned immediately. “Oh, that doesn’t feel right at all. I’m sorry, that’s rude, I shouldn’t … I’ll get used to it.”
“No, it’s … you’re right,” Daphne said, sighing. “It’s not quite right, is it? But I’m not sure what is right. Not anymore, anyway, if I ever did before. I suppose it never really … I didn’t have the chance to think about it much until recently, and now I don’t know what to think.”
Sugar sat down next to her and put her arm around her.
“Well, that’s all right,” she said, giving Daphne a squeeze. “We all like you no matter who you are.”
“Ha, yes,” Daphne said. “I’m Joe’s future best man, Osgood’s future wife, and your … well, I don’t know, really. Former bass player?”
“How about best girlfriend?” Sugar said, bumping their shoulders together. “I ran off to join a women’s band for a reason, you know. Part of it was practical, sure—I figured if I ran off with a saxophone player in a women’s band then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, but I guess that shows what I know—but I wanted to have more girlfriends in my life too, even if they didn’t play the saxophone.”
Jerry looked down and laughed again, trying not to feel like a fraud even though Sugar knew the score now. Everyone who mattered did and they all seemed to want to do right by him, even if they didn’t all seem to agree on what that was.
Joe would try to make him feel like one of the boys again, reassure him that he was still his best friend and that nothing had changed, even after everything had. Osgood would kiss her hand and call her beautiful whether she was bothering to wear a wig or put makeup on or not. Sugar … Sugar just wanted to know, apparently, right from the horse’s mouth how to do right by her and didn’t want to leave it up to guessing.
“You are a good pal,” Daphne said, sniffing a little and leaning back into her friend for a second. “Thanks for … checking in on this. I wish I could give you a better answer, but I’m just … I don’t know, really. I’m still figuring it all out. And everything feels so in-between, being out at sea, so I’m honestly not sure who’s going to walk off this yacht, or how I can be … whoever that is once we’re back on dry land.”
“It’s okay not to know yet,” Sugar said. “I had three stage names before I picked Kane and I went back to Kowalczyk a few times in between. I was Sugar Cookie for a whole year before I realized how dumb that was.”
“It’s not dumb,” Daphne said. “A little seasonal, sure, but it’s cute. You could be Sugar Cookie for Christmas gigs, maybe.”
“Hmm, maybe,” Sugar said, tilting her head to one side. “And I suppose if I get married to Joe he might want me to take his name too, so maybe it will change again.”
“Oh, hang Joe,” Daphne said. “Whatever name you’re signing on cheques at the grocery store has nothing to do with the name the M.C. announces you as. You don’t have to perform under Joe’s name just for his sake.”
Sugar laughed and buried her face in her shoulder.
“Well, you don’t have to be Jerry for his sake either,” Sugar said, poking Daphne gently in the ribs. “You can be whoever ends up stepping off this boat and he’ll still love you either way.”
Jerry looked down again and sighed.
“I wonder sometimes if I am Jerry with him, though, but not with … not with other people? Or not all the time,” he said. “Is that strange? Being a man, or at least in that neighborhood, with one person, but being a … not being a man when you’re with other people? It doesn’t seem like that sort of thing should shift around like that just because of relationships. But I guess I don’t really know how this works.”
“I don’t know how it works either.” Sugar shrugged. “But I’m still Sugar Kowalczyk when I call my Babcia back home, so I don’t think it sounds all that strange.”
“You’re a very understanding girl, Sugar,” Daphne said with a laugh.
“I don’t know about that.” Sugar laughed back and tapped the side of her head. “All full of marshmallow fluff up there! I know I’m not very bright and I’m not embarrassed about it, but there’s a lot I don’t understand. But I guess that means that I know I should listen to what you have to say about this instead of thinking I know what the right name and the right … everything else is without asking, and Joe and Osgood haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Men, right?” Daphne said. “Always gotta be the expert, don’t they?”
“They’re all right,” Sugar said, giving her a slanted smile. “But it’s nice to have a girlfriend.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon together talking and laughing, until Osgood and Joe went looking for them and stumbled onto Sugar teaching Daphne how to make her eyes look bigger with makeup without stabbing herself in the eye with the eyeliner pencil.
“What are you girls up to?” Osgood asked and Joe rolled his eyes.
“Joe, show a little respect,” Daphne said, reaching out to nudge him in a ticklish spot on his waist. “You are in the presence of ladies.”
Joe blinked as he looked at her, raising his eyebrows.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked.
“Eh,” Jerry said. “Kind of. It’s still a work in progress. But, you know, getting there.”
“Fair enough … Daph,” Joe said, shrugging.
Yeah, that sounded weird from him.
It was hard to tell if that was because he was still Jerry when he was being one half of Jerry-and-Joe, or if it was because he didn’t know how to be a woman, or something like that, around Joe when Joe was still a man. Maybe that would get easier with practice.
But maybe there’d always be a Jerry-and-Joe even if the latest Mrs. Osgood Fielding III entered the scene. Or if Daphne stuck around, with or without Osgood.
Or maybe someday Joe’s best friend would be a girl, or kind of a girl, and that wouldn’t feel weird for either of them.
You couldn’t predict the future though. Maybe the stock market really would crash and the Dodgers would leave Brooklyn. Maybe Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford weren’t as rock solid as they seemed. But … whatever happened, Daphne was glad she wouldn’t be facing it alone.