Looking for Hope

By: Dawn DeWinter

 

 

Chapter 12 – The Mock Girl’s Story

Duchess dropped her eggs. "Dawn, bless your soul, is it really y’all? We thought y’all were drowned. Y’all cannot comprehend how ecstatic I am to see y’all again, you dear old thing!" said Duchess, as she wrapped her arms affectionately around Dawn.

Dawn was thrilled to see Duchess alive and well, yet peeved to see her so far from Hope. "What happened to you?" she asked. "Are you alone here? Where’s everybody else? Did they go onto Hope?"

"No, everybody’s staying with the Marsh Heiress. She’s a very important person, shuga, very sophisticated, and very wealthy," said Duchess. "She is honored to be my friend. And she’s become enamored (a great word!) with Bill and Freda, bless their souls."

"You’ve stayed here because of a March airhead? And who’s Freda? What’s she to Bill? What happened to Frodo and the others? Are they in Yokum’s Patch? And if so, what’s their excuse for not pressing on to Hope?"

"They’ve all stayed here because they’re all in love. Oh, ‘tis love, ‘tis love, that makes the world rotate on its orbit."

"Somebody said," Dawn replied with asperity, "that the world does best when everybody keeps their mind on business. How could you all abandon the search for Hope?"

"Ah, well! We’ve been keeping our mind on pleasure, which is almost the same thing. By surrendering to our senses, we’ve been behaving with utmost morality. Y’all being unfair to chide us. If y’all was to see Mortimer and Ches, or Frodo, Bill and Gloria – she’s the Marsh Heiress – or Suzie, the hat lady, and me, you’d realize that the moral of this road trip has always been, "Go for the sex, and the plot will take care of itself."

"How convenient a moral she’s found for herself," Dawn thought to herself.

Duchess pulled away. "I dare say you’re wondering why I no longer have my arm around your waist," she said after a pause; "the reason is that I’m doubtful about your temper." She whimpered, "It’s not my fault we stayed here. No one wanted to leave. We’re all birds of a feather, I guess, and here we flocked together. We’ve all started nesting. There’s nothing immoral in that."

"But Duchess, you’re the natural leader when Jim and I are absent. It was up to you to keep everyone moving forward." She gave Duchess a look as biting as hot mustard.

Duchess switched to the offensive. "And where have y’all been all this time, Dawn, bless your soul? Going for a river cruise with Jim on a love boat? If I know you, you could have gotten back to us faster if you hadn’t stopped to pick up them –" She waved a hand in the direction of Whitt and the Queen.

"Which one is yours, Dawn? I wager it’s the rabbity-looking one. And what’s the moral of your road trip, shuga? Is it that y’all should be the only one to get laid while the rest of us watch?"

Duchess had been overheard. Both Whitt and the Queen decided to check her out. They arrived just as Duchess, full of herself, pronounced the Queen "not much of a man. In that outfit, he’s as likely to interest a woman as a pig is to fly."

Her voice then died away. Her arm around Dawn began to tremble. Dawn looked up, and there stood the Queen in front of them, with his arms folded, his face as angry as a thunderstorm.

"And WHO are YOU?" asked the Queen, his eyebrows arched.

"I’m a friend of Dawn’s," the Duchess began in a low, weak voice.

"Then I suggest you stop insulting her newfound friends who’ve done more, it would appear, than you have to help her look for Hope. The tire iron and the flat tire need to be stowed in the trunk of my limousine. I expect you to put them away if you want us to give you a lift. Now head off and do it!"

"Why I never …" started Duchess, yet she did as she was told. She was gone in a moment.

"As soon as that hag has finished with the tire, we’ll pick up your friends and go on with this tiresome trek," the Queen said to Dawn.

Once they were in the limousine on their way to the mansion of the Marsh Heiress, the Queen remained in a foul mood, quarreling with everyone in the car while occasionally shouting at Whitt to head off anyone trying to beat the limo to a crossroads. By the end of half an hour, he’d denounced Dawn and Duchess for being "fag hags" and Whitt for being "pussy-whipped." Jim alone still found favor with her queenly patron.

By the time they reached the Marsh mansion, the Queen was slumped in the back seat of his limousine, quite out of breath, and quite hoarse from barking orders. He had, however, a smile on his face because he expected to be on the road within an hour. He’d ordered Duchess, Dawn and Jim to collect whoever was still interested in going on to Hope. The rest they were to leave behind. "Love ‘em and leave ‘em," the Queen had decreed.

To the Queen’s surprise (although he’d never had admitted to surprise at anything), everyone agreed to join the cavalcade of Hope – not just the people Dawn had picked up along the road, but Suzie and Gloria as well.

"I’ll miss you too much to stay, I confess. You are my most beloved Duchess," said Suzie the hat lady. "Wherever you go, I go. Sweet, my love, thou art, and ne’er will we part."

She snuggled up to Duchess in the front seat of the Lincoln, while Pepe and Kermesse played leapfrog in the back. Ever since Pepe and Kermesse had given their virginity to each other, they’d worn matching tee shirts, sneakers and shorts – and underneath, matching cloth diapers. These they did not wear out of a stubborn resistance to growing up, but rather out of a growing fetishism. They liked to unpin each other.

Bill and Freda drove the white Rabbit. Dawn and Jim were amazed by Frodo’s transformation. In the calico dress she’d sewn, Freda looked more feminine than Dawn and Jim ever had. She’d found a way to attach her breasts with spruce gum. "I’m only going to wear them until I get real breasts," she said. "That won’t take very long because Gloria knows all the folk remedies of the Patch. I’m taking gobs and gobs of herbs that are making me grow up here and shrink down there." Her index finger pointed to her chest, and then to her genitals. Though Dawn and Jim occasionally stumbled over Freda’s name they quickly accepted her right to be all the woman she could be.

Jim, a fresh cucumber awesome in her jeans, chauffeured the Queen’s limousine while Whitt and Dawn drove Jim’s jeep and trailer, and Mortimer begged for attention from Ches who was piloting his own pick-up truck. Boreman slept in the locked trailer.

All five vehicles reached President Bill Clinton’s birthplace without further incident. As they milled around a plaque erected in his honor, Dawn realized that she had no idea of how to find either Hope or Allan even in a small town.

"No," she answered Jim. "I’m not sure that Hope’s a white person. After all, many of the people who’ve given the United States the most hope have been black like you. Think of Martin Luther King, Ralph Bunche, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Hope might be an African-American like Condy Rice or Colin Powell. Who’s to know for sure?"

The Queen suggested they split up. "Each one of you take a street. Go door to door, and we’ll know within an hour whether Hope lives in this town or not. Somehow, though, I can’t see a town this small tolerating a cross-dressing boy. Can you imagine Bill Clinton wearing a dress?"

"Yeh, why not," said Dawn, "if that were the only way he could persuade a sweet young thing to take it off." After they’d all tittered politely, they went their separate ways. Some called out Allan’s name; others, the name of Hope.

As Dawn and the Queen walked down one of the two commercial streets, they came upon a young woman lying fast asleep in the sun. She looked like a tramp, a hobo, a denizen of the streets. No more than twenty, she would have been beautiful had she not been so tattered and dirty. Dawn thought to herself, "here’s a young girl without hope."

"Up, lazy thing," said the Queen, "and take this young woman (young? well, he was being extra friendly to Dawn that day) to find her friend Hope. In the meantime, I shall get some beauty sleep in the back of my expensively tasteful limousine."

The Queen pranced off, leaving Dawn alone with the woman. Dawn didn’t like the look of her, but decided to stay as almost anyone was more pleasing company than the Queen. The girl rubbed her eyes, then watched the Queen till he was out of sight. "What fun!" she said, half to herself, and half to Dawn.

"What’s the fun?" asked Dawn.

"Why, that QUEEN of course. I’ve never seen a man as fancy as him in Arkansas before. Well, come on! My name is Gryphia and I’ll see if I can find Hope for you. Heaven knows I’ve seen precious little of her myself."

Dawn followed, while muttering to herself about the girl’s abruptness. "Whatever happened to Southern hospitality?" she wondered. She then decided it was something that improved with age. They had not gone far before they saw a pretty young girl in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a city bench. As they came nearer, Dawn could hear her sighing as if her heart were as broken as the town’s sidewalks.

Dawn pitied her deeply: "I wonder what it’s like to be both beautiful and forlorn? I wouldn’t know, for I have never been forlorn. Lovelorn yes, but never forlorn. I don’t even know what that means!"

"What’s her sorrow," she asked Gryphia, who answered, "It’s nothing. She’s just lacking hope. Come on!"

So they went up to the tearful young girl, who used her eyelashes like windshield wipers to spread apart the torrent of tears.

"This here old lady," said Gryphia, "she wants to know your story. She’s one of them nosey outsiders who’ll pay – right? – if you’se tell it miserably enough."

"I’ll tell it to ‘er," said the beautiful girl in a hollow, lilting tone. "Sit down, both of you, and don’t interrupt until I’m done."

So they sat down and nobody spoke for several minutes. Dawn thought to herself, "I don’t see how she’s ever going to FINISH her story, if she never begins." Dawn pointedly stared at the place where her pawned wristwatch used to be, while she waited impatiently.

"Once," said the girl, with a deep sigh, "I was a real boy. I wasn’t always a mock girl."

These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by the occasional hacking cough from Gryphia, and the heavy sobbing of the mock girl. Dawn, while intrigued, believed she should continue her search for Hope. She was about to thank the mock girl for her "interesting story" and move on, when the girl suddenly said, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, "When I was little, I went to school in Arkadelphia. The schoolmaster was an ornery old man. He was suspicious of everyone. He’d built such a thick shell around his emotions that we kids used to call him Tortoise."

"But he wasn’t really a tortoise, was he?" Dawn asked. "Of course not," said the mock girl angrily. "Really you Yankees are very dull!"

"You otta be ashamed of yourself for asking such a dumb question," added Gryphia. Then she and the mock girl sat silent and looked condescendingly at Dawn, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last, Gryphia urged the mock girl to finish her story.

"Yes, we had a teacher nicknamed Tortoise, though he wasn’t one really," continued the mock girl, shooting a glance at Dawn to see if she’d interrupt. Dawn looked away. She didn’t even want her eyes to be questioning.

The mock girl went on. "I had the best of educations. In fact, I went to school every day."

"That may be a big deal in Arkansas," blurted out Dawn, "but New Jersey requires every child to go to school every day, unless there’s a school shooting, a bomb scare, or a gang fight."

"But did your school teach Genderfucking?" asked the mock girl a little anxiously.

"Certainly not!" said Dawn indignantly. "The teachers would have nothing to do with that "F" word. They left it to us students to learn by ourselves. Well, mostly by ourselves. Sometimes the head of the Theater program helped out."

"Then yours was not a really good school," said the mock girl with relief. OURS taught French, music, Aramaic and Genderfucking."

"There’s that F-word again," said Dawn. "I can’t imagine that many students were interested in learning it, whatever it might be."

"Not many were," admitted the mock girl. "Indeed, I was the only one. You see I was a virgin, and I hoped that its instructor – she was the notorious head of the English Department – would live down to her reputation and teach me to genderf… well, you know the rest of the word."

"Well, did she?" asked Dawn, who had definitely become curious.

"Yes and no. I discovered too late that she was a dominatrix, always looking for young boys to prettify and control. She was teaching a course in femdom. After two semesters, I was so filled with female fantasies and hormones that I’d become a she-male. In the third semester, I’d lost what little maleness I had left, without – for lack of money – an adequate replacement. Now, I’m nothing more than a mock girl," she sobbed.

"What’s THAT like?" asked Dawn, who had been contemplating a snip and a tuck of her own.

"Well, I’m not going to show you, and Gryphia can’t either, for she never had the operation. She was born a genetic girl. So she wouldn’t have a problem in the whole wide world if she didn’t live penniless on the streets."

"I had no need of a course in Genderfucking," said Gryphia. "I was already stacked like a girl. But sometimes I wish, just as this mock girl does, that I was a wealthy male instead. Mens have all the breaks."

"Aint it true," sighed the mock girl, who hid her face in her hands.

"That's enough about school," Gryphia interrupted. "Tell the Yankee woman your name. She’ll be wanting to gossip about you."

"It’s Sissy," the mock girl wailed. "That’s the name the English teacher gave me, and that’s the name that stuck." She began laughing with grief.

"Sissy, you poor thing. You must join our expedition of Hope. I won’t be able to turn you back into a boy, but I am sure you’ll find someone in our little band who’ll make you exceedingly pleased to be a girl, even a mock one. How old are you sweetheart?"

"Eighteen," the mock girl sobbed.

"Ah, nice and legal, er grown-up. Well, Sissy, you definitely should come along with me. I’ll give you some additional lessons in genderf … transitioning that will convince you that the only thing to mock is the boy you left behind. What do you say? Are you willing to take some lessons in femininity from Dawn?"

"From you? How is that possible?" sneered Gryphia.

This girl was going to be trouble unless she was asked to come along too. So Dawn asked: "Gryphia, you don’t have much to keep you here in Arkansas. Why don’t you accompany us while we look for my Internet friend? Her name was Hope. She’s gone missing since the eleventh."

"Well," Gryphia hesitated. She was clearly suspicious of Dawn’s motives. "I’m not a lesbian you know. And if I were, I’d want to do it with a younger woman. I’m not into gerontology."

"Never you fear. There won’t be any ancient broads hitting on you," Dawn said soothingly. "And if you ever do decide to make love to a woman, you may want to do it with Sissy, because she’s going to be all-woman when she’s finished her education with me."

Both Sissy and Gryphia blushed. Thanks to Dawn, they’d just nibbled on the forbidden fruit; soon enough, they’d be nibbling on each other.

Yet it wouldn’t be in Hope, Arkansas. Everyone agreed that the town was quite hopeless. "I don’t why you expected Allan ever to be here," Jim complained to Dawn. "If he’s a cross-dresser, he’d be caught dead in a town this small. We should really be looking for Hope in a big city, the bigger the better. That’s where she’s most likely to be found."

After some debate, they decided to head down Interstate 30 to Dallas-Fort Worth. Its Metroplex was populous enough, they decided, to contain at least two cross-dressers, one of whom was bound to be Hope. How so? Well, Dawn had decided that Hope was probably a Texan, given her love of country and western music, and her enthusiasm for Dawn’s tall tales.

As for Dallas-Fort Worth, it had in DFW one of the busiest airports in the country, and Hope had on several different occasions complained about airport delays. And there was one final reason to believe that Hope might be in Dallas. It was something that she’d written in an e-mail to Dawn about JFK. He was, she’d written, the president most filled with hope, and every time she went to the airport she speculated on what might have been had he not been shot.

"Isn’t Dealey Plaza on the route between downtown Dallas and DFW airport?" asked Ches, who’d been kept for a few months by a data-processing multi-millionaire with a high squeaky voice and a giant ego who lived in one of the exclusive "Park Cities" just north of Dallas.

Yes, it was. Dealey Plaza, the scene of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was to be the next overnight stop of the little band of travelers, now sixteen strong, on their voyage of Hope.

 

CHAPTER 13 – THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS

They were deep in Dealey Plaza. Not a soul was around. If Hope were really in Dallas, she was not easily to be found. Sissy sighed deeply. She looked at Dawn, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked her voice. With tears running down her cheeks, she said, "You’ve never even been introduced to Hope – no more than I. So you can have no idea of where she’s at."

"You’re right, hon," said Gyrphia. "Dawn’s got the brains of a lobster, a creature so dumb it doesn’t even know when it’s getting boiled. We’re all on a fool’s errand, and that’s the fool –" she pointed accusingly at Dawn, who was lost in thought trying to figure out whether Lee Harvey Oswald had been tall enough to have fired a handgun over the top of the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.

"Oswald was real short," she recollected. "I don’t think he could have seen anything over that fence. That proves he couldn’t have shot Kennedy."

She puffed up her breasts with pride. It had taken her no time at all to dispose of the findings of the Warren Commission. Yet her friends resisted the truth: "Monsieur Oswald, he shot ze gun from ze Texas School Suppository, is zat not so?" asked Kermesse.

"No, shuga, he supposedly did it from the Texas School Book Repository over yonder," corrected Duchess.

"I thought that the killer was in a manhole in the street?" said Whitt.

"No, it was Dawn who was in the manhole," said Freda.

"She wishes!" laughed Ches.

Mortimer was trying to keep Hope alive. Quietly he spoke: "We’re standing on a monument where America almost lost hope in 1963. I’m old enough to remember the trauma of President Kennedy’s assassination."

"And so, your point is?" Gryphia challenged.

Mortimer flinched, but replied, "So many of us then were in total despair – especially the black folk. And yet, the 1960s turned out to be one of the best decades in American History. Oh, I know, we were at war. But it wasn’t the only thing going on. We made more progress in civil rights in three or four years than during the previous hundred years. We were so rich we could afford to do a lot to help the poor – food stamps, Medicaid, job training, social security supplements, and the Peace Corps. And we went to the moon. It was the start of feminism and gay liberation. Most of you would have been arrested in 1960 for the way you now look or act. But here you are, tramping on hallowed ground without fear of arrest or harassment. These days Texas is filled with hope, even if Hope herself lives somewhere else."

It was a powerful speech, the little band of travelers agreed. They looked around for Dawn for advice on where to search for Hope in the sprawling Metroplex. But she was nowhere to be seen. Whatever had happened to Dawn?

As usual, she’d drunk far too much coffee. As a result, she had scurried down Commerce Street looking for clues to the assassination ‘conspiracy’ – either bullet fragments or chipped concrete. Distracted, she’d hurried past the overpass into a bad part of town. There she saw a woman standing by the curb trying to solicit a ride. Dawn noted approvingly that her red leather miniskirt showed off her upper thighs and a petite triangle of panty.

"I’ve got to find out where she bought that skirt," Dawn decided; "it’s the perfect length for me."

She also envied the girl her sparkling gold halter-top since it lifted her breasts while exposing two-thirds of them for the world to admire. Dawn hoped to go around topless once she got her breast implants. This courageous girl was proving that a woman didn’t have to hide much in Texas. And yet, she wasn’t very practical. "If she’s going to hitchhike," Dawn said to herself, "she shouldn’t wear four-inch spikes. She should have been sensible and worn flats."

Dawn decided Texans didn’t deserve their reputation for politeness because none of the cars that slowed down to converse with the girl in the mini-skirt ended up giving her a ride. "She’s a beautiful girl," Dawn said to herself. "You’d expect that one of the young gallants would pick her up, especially when she seems to be offering to defray their fuel costs." The girl had a yellowish brown complexion. "She might be Mexican-American, a chicane," Dawn decided.

The girl’s complexion reminded Dawn of her favorite Texas song. Well, actually it was the only Texas song she knew:

 

There's a yellow rose of Texas
That I am going to see,
No other fellow knows her,
No other, only me …

She's the sweetest rose of color
A fellow ever screwed!

That last word wasn’t right, Dawn knew full well. But it amused her sometimes to talk dirty. She hadn’t realized she was doing it loudly enough to be overheard by the girl in the mini-skirt, who trilled back, "It’s like to break my heart" if you leave me. I don’t usually do it with chicas, but business has been lento – slow -- since they opened an iglesia, a storefront church, across the street. Its padre doesn’t even tip. Let’s you and I "sing the song together," and I’ll play your ‘banjo gaily’ if you like. Everything, todo, will be to your gusto – just like you want it, sen… senorita. I am called Conchita. I hope you find my name to your liking."

Dawn hesitated: "I do best with virgins and this girl’s no virgin. Yet she’s definitely turned on by me. I can feel Conchita’s heat from here. What do I have to lose? I’ve always wanted to have sex with a yellow rose, even one with female parts, and I don’t see any thorns on this one. My friends will just have to wait a while for me in the West End while I tend to my Texas garden."

Normally Dawn would have refused outright to part with $80. That was a lot of coffee. But she’d found the money in Sammy’s old coat, and it gave her the creeps to carry it around. So when Conchita asked for money, Dawn was willing to help her out with taxi fare; after all, Dawn had an assured ride in any one of five motor vehicles. And she now had several wealthy friends. As Dawn handed over the money, she winked at Conchita and said, "I hope that gives you as good a ride home as I’m going to give you."

Conchita came near, as though to kiss. As Dawn leant forward, Conchita grabbed her arms, yanked them backwards, and slapped on the handcuffs. "You’re busted, honey, for criminal solicitation. I’m police officer Carlos Miranda and I am placing you under arrest for trying to buy sex from me. "I bet you didn’t know that I was a male undercover cop." He laughed, then read Dawn her Miranda rights.

Dawn was furious that she’d been busted before they’d actually had any sex. "Never mind the money," she told Carlos. "I’m willing to have sex with you free, especially now that I know that you’re a cute young GUY!"

"Lady, don’ you comprehend? I’m arrestin’ you. You’re in mucho trouble."

"Carlos, I’m not resisting arrest. But you’d be surprised how much practice I’ve had making love in handcuffs. Let’s not rush off to the police station. Let’s have some fun first." She bent over at the waist and, with a quick upward thrust, began lifting Carlos’s hem with her head. Carlos wasn’t resisting – even when her tongue started licking his panties. She was about to pull them down with her teeth when they heard the car approach. Dawn would have kept going – she liked an audience – but Carlos quickly pushed her away, as the squad car arrived to haul Dawn off to jail. Carlos felt her up enough to learn her true gender as he pushed her into the backseat. To Dawn’s surprise, he looked more intrigued than appalled by the revelation.

Dawn feared the worst when she got to the station – a strip search, followed by a great hubbub, and a sleepless, painful night spent with five brutes who’d been told by the desk-sergeant to have some "fun" with the cross-dresser. But it wasn’t like that at all. Instead the sergeant, a woman, said that Officer Carlos Miranda had phoned to advise central booking that Dawn was a transvestite who should be segregated for her own protection.

She could have made bail that evening had she bothered to tell anyone where she was going or whom she was going to do. Not until 4 a.m. did Duchess think to phone the police, and to learn that Dawn’s case would be heard – perfunctorily, the police said – the next morning. "She’s a strange sort of a John," the policeman said; "She’s almost a Joan. But whichever she is, the court will fine her and suggest, since she’s a tourist, that she git out of town by sunset." He chuckled: "That’s a joke. She’ll have twenty-four hours in which to git."

The next morning Dawn felt like a movie star. Everyone in the court was there for her! Her fifteen friends, the marshal, the bailiff, the prosecutor, the judge and Carlos the cop – were the audience for her star turn. Carlos was so darkly handsome in his police uniform, and his pants so tight at crotch, that Dawn thought, "I wish they’d get the trial done, so I can make another pass at him."

Dawn had never been in a Texas court before, but she had lots of experience with the justice system elsewhere. She was pleased to find that it looked just like those in Iowa, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Guam.

"Silence in the court!" shouted the bailiff. He then put on his spectacles and read the charge. Before the judge could ask, Dawn jumped up to declare that she’d be conducting her own defense. When the judge started to give her that old bromide – she’d certainly heard it before – about anyone who handled her own defense having a fool for a client, Dawn assured him in her most lawyerly manner, "Don’t fret, your holiness, I know what I’m doing. I’m innocent as sin and eager to prove that I have an airtight alibi."

"I take it you plead not guilty to the charge?" the judge asked.

"Guilty? Not!" said Dawn with a smile.

The judge frowned, then asked the prosecutor to call his first and only witness. It was Carlos! Dawn thought she’d swoon. Indeed, she scarcely heard a word of the policeman’s testimony as she daydreamed about the sex they’d have once she got handcuffs on Carlos. Had she been listening, she’d have heard Carlos explain that he might have been mistaken about Dawn’s intentions. "She gave me her last $80," he said, "out of the kindness of her heart. And then she said, according to my notes, that she hoped she and I both had a good ride home. I guess she had a car waiting for her."

The prosecutor was shocked. He tried several times to get Carlos to change his testimony, but the police officer failed to say anything to inculpate Dawn. After ten minutes of futility, the prosecutor threw up his hands in defeat, the bailiff in disbelief, the judge in disgust, Dawn’s friends in delight. Almost everyone thought the case against Dawn was finished; indeed, the judge had already considered his verdict, and was about to bang his gavel and apologize to Miss DeWinter for her night in jail.

Almost everyone thought the case was finished, but not Dawn. To the amazement of all, she insisted on cross-examining Carlos. "Do you think I’m cute?" she asked.

"I object," roared the prosecutor. "On what grounds?" asked the judge. "On the grounds that the defendant has no right to ask such a personal question."

"Overruled," said the judge. He wanted to see what Dawn would do next. "Answer the question," he told Officer Miranda.

Carlos thought for a second. Dawn looked a lot better in the dark. Even so, he thought he could say without too much injustice to the truth, "Yes, I think you’re cute."

Dawn whooped and ran over to high-five Mortimer, who didn’t react in time to avoid being slapped on the top of his head.

"Miss DeWinter, I insist that you behave with more decorum. I have no idea what that mousy-looking man did to anger you, but you must not hit him again. I will not have assault and battery in my courtroom! Do you have any further questions of this witness?"

"Do I ever! Officer Miranda, I’m asking you, and remember you’re under oath, whether you’d be willing to have sex with me for free."

"Do I have to answer that question, your honor?"

"Yes, you must," replied the judge, still eager to see what Dawn would ask next.

"I’ve never paid for sex," Carlos responded to Dawn. "So there’s no way I’d pay you for sex. Frankly, it’s completely loco."

Dawn looked triumphant. "So you admit that you never thought that I was a prostitute?"

Carlos answered that he found that most prostitutes in Dallas were younger – a lot younger – than Dawn. "So I never figured you for a hooker."

Dawn turned to the judge and declared, "I’m finished with this witness. ("For now," she whispered to Carlos with a wink.) As you can see, your holiness, he has offered no credible proof whatsoever that I asked him for money. Should we go on with the case? Have I not proven myself innocent?"

"Oh, you’re an innocent, sure enough," said the judge. "But I’d like to hear your interrogation of another witness. Do you have one to call?" he asked hopefully.

"Yes, I’d like to call fifteen character witnesses," Dawn replied.

"Why don’t you start with just one? We’ll see how it goes," replied the judge, who looked at the prosecutor, who gave his bemused assent.

"I’d like to call Duchess," roared Dawn judiciously.

"Duchess, who?" asked the bailiff. "Her full name please."

"It’s Duchess Sharon, your honorific," said Duchess.

"Your last name, please!" said the bailiff angrily.

"Sharon’s my last name, and Duchess my first," she replied. Everyone still looked confused, so she added, "I’m Jewish. That’s why my surname is Sharon."

"And why Duchess?" inquired the judge.

"My parents were afraid I’d become a Jewish princess," your honor, "so they called me Duchess with the hope that I’d grow up with some humility. However, I have defied all such hopes. When one has an intellect as RADIANT as mine, it’s well nigh impossible to hide one’s light under a bushel basket. So I am no more humble than a genius has a right to be."

"Please! Can we start?" said Dawn, glaring at the judge. She wanted her freedom. This was no time for idle chitchat.

"Duchess, you’re my witness," said Dawn with an imperious tone. "That means I want you to answer simplistically my one simple question: Am I the sort of person who’d sell or purchase sex?"

Duchess looked thoughtful. She then turned to the judge to ask, "Your honorific, does it constitute (a good word!) perjury to avoid answering that question in its entirety?"

"Ms. Sharon, you must testify in full," said the judge, who wondered which part of Dawn’s question – the relevant or the irrelevant – challenged Duchess the most.

"Well, your honorific, if truth be told, I’m sure that Dawn has sold her body. Certainly, she’s sold everything else she owns. But look at her – is it likely that she’s sold her body recently?"

Dawn found the answer insulting. "I’ll have you know that several of the people in this courtroom have recently paid me for sex. After all, I’ve been traveling across the country without a penny in my purse! Who do you think has been paying for my meals and hotel rooms?"

There was an audible, collective gasp. Then Dawn’s friends fled from the courtroom. "When the tough get going, the going gets tough," Dawn shouted after them as they scurried out. "I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone! I’ll do it my way! I will survive!"

But Dawn did need Duchess, who was, after all, her star witness. So Dawn asked with a treacly sweet voice, "My good Duchess, can you even imagine my having to PAY for sex?"

"With that handsome police officer? Frankly, yes. But I don’t believe you had $80 to offer him. You haven’t been on the streets of Dallas long enough to have found that much money."

"There, your holiness, I’m vindicated! I was going to call additional witnesses, but they all seem to have gone out for coffee. So there’s no rest to the defense."

"Does that mean the defense rests?" the judge inquired.

"Isn’t that what I just said?" asked Dawn. She was genuinely shocked at the foolishness of his question. Until now, she’d assumed that all judges were as smart as Judge Judy on television. But live and learn!

"Do you want to cross-examine this witness?" giggled the judge to the prosecutor.

"I have just one question of the witness," said the prosecutor. "It’s this: if the defendant had somehow earned $80 by working the streets of Dallas, as unlikely as that might be, is it possible that she would have offered it to Officer Miranda to have sex with her?"

"I object, your holiness! The question is out of order. It’s heresy!"

"Overruled! Ms. Sharon, please answer the question. I’m dying to know your answer."

"Well, your honorific, the police officer is definitely her type. Indeed, she’s been drooling over him ever since this trial began. But … inasmuch as he was wearing a dress last night, and Dawn doesn’t like her men to wear dresses I sincerely doubt she offered him money she couldn’t possibly have earned."

"I object, your holiness! I do like men in dresses. I even think you’re sexy in that black dress." She exaggeratedly moistened her lips, pursed them, and blew him a kiss.

"Your honor, I object! The defendant is trying to vamp you!" said the prosecutor.

"Quite unsuccessfully, I assure you," the judge said. "However, I have seen more than enough to rule that Miss DeWinter has such a tenuous hold on reality that she is far more likely to be trying to sell rather than to buy sex. Officer Miranda, you clearly brought the wrong charge. Therefore, the charge of trying to procure the services of a prostitute is dismissed."

"But Miss DeWinter," the judge added in his severest voice, "I do suggest that you get out of Dallas before sundown ‘cause we don’t cotton to your type of woman in this here town." (To the bailiff the judge whispered with a chuckle, "I’ve always wanted to say that, and has there ever been a better opportunity?")

From Dawn’s perspective, the trial hadn’t gone well. Sure, she was free and clear, but at what cost to her reputation? It was so unfair. She’d never been ordered to leave a town as big as Dallas before. She was still sulking, alone in the hallway, when Carlos came up to her with a big smile.

"I’m glad you were acquitted," he said. "I was hopin’ you’d get off." He placed his hand on Dawn’s arm.

Dawn was about to give him heat, but melted instead. "Gosh, he’s gorgeous," she thought. "So he arrested me? Big deal! I can’t stay angry at anyone that cute."

"I’m going for coffee," she said. "Would you like to join me? Oh, I guess you’re still on duty."

"No, this is the first day of my annual vacation. I have a whole month. I was supposed to spend it with my (he lowered his voice to a whisper) lover, but that maricon fell in love with a boy, and I have lots of time to kill."

"Then you must join our journey of Hope," Dawn said. Over two pots of coffee (and a hot chocolate for Carlos), she told him, as both her feet groped his crotch under the table about her Internet buddy and the friends she’d acquired during her road trip. Carlos was definitely interested, especially after she switched to using her hands (having thought better of using her feet after falling off the bench).

Carlos was on the point of orgasm when he agreed not only to join Dawn’s trek but also to bring his "street-walking" clothes with him. After two months of hustling men while wearing tight mini-skirts, Carlos was wondering what it would be like for Conchita actually to have sex with one of them. He hoped it would be more satisfying than his coffee date with Dawn, who’d become distracted by a placard on a passing bus. She removed her hand from his pants at a crucial moment to point to the advertisement.

"Do you see the sign on the bus? It’s advertising a resort hotel in Las Vegas! Why didn’t I think of Vegas before now? Isn’t sin city the ultimate lure for the hopeful? That city is chockfull of people hoping to get lucky at the tables, of hoping to marry a starlet after their quickie divorce, of people hoping that their whirlwind courtship will end in bliss, and of people hoping that the water will last as long as their investments in desert land."

"Are you saying that you want to look for Hope in Las Vegas?" Carlos asked.

"Of course! Hope can’t be here in Dallas or the judge wouldn’t have ordered me to leave town. He was advising me to look elsewhere for Hope. I just know we’ll find her in the desert!"

 

 

CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 14 – THROUGH THE REARVIEW MIRROR

 

 

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