Dairy Boy
by Lulu Martine
Fat. Phillip DeEarly was fat. At only five-foot-five, the nineteen-year-old college student weighed over three hundred pounds. How much over, he didn't really want to know but that's as high up as most home scales go.
His measurements were grotesque. A fifty-inch chest, plus man-boobs that added about six or eight more inches, a fifty-six-inch waist and the biggest indignity perhaps, a sixty-four-inch ass. Another inch and he'd be as big around as he was tall.
Of course, all these numbers were in his medical charts, metrically expressed, in the research office of the biomedical department at the university he attended. Including his accurate weight. How much was 167 kilograms in American? He didn't want to know.
Before joining the research program at the college, he'd tried everything to lose weight. Diets did nothing but make him sick, disrupting his endocrine systems and even circulation in his extremities. That's how he'd lost both his little toes.
They'd even proposed surgery to reduce the size of his stomach and intestines so he wouldn't be able to eat or digest as much. But other doctors vetoed this. Liposuction was also contra-indicated. It wasn't how many calories he took in, it was what his body did with them.
His personal doctor had put it succinctly, back when Phillip was still in high school. "Your metabolism is all screwy." Doctor Bluett went on. "You know what your average body temperature is? Ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit. That's a degree and a half lower than almost everyone else's. All of your lab numbers are like that. Out of whack."
Phillip had always been heavy for his age and height but he'd really started ballooning up when he was twelve. He'd gained thirty to forty pounds every year since. "About a pound every ten days," Dr. Bluett said. It was depressing news. Phillip wasn't a genius at math but even he could see that in ten years, at that rate, he would double his current weight or more.
"Unless something can be done, I don't think you're going to make it to thirty, Phillip," the doctor had put it bluntly. His mom had had to hold his head while he wept right there in the doctor's office. She'd glared at the medico but later admitted that they had needed to know that.
It made it easier to commit to joining the research program when the offer came in from the university. And the insurance company almost insisted. Usually, insurance companies were dead set against experimental treatments but they whole-heartedly backed the proposed protocols.
Part of the problem was that Phillip's body seemed to make and store fat in preference to other metabolic activity. As he'd grown, this had resulted in him having several times as many fat cells in his body as normal people. Hungry fat cells that demanded most of his intake of calories.
And such a super-abundance of fat tissue had other metabolic consequences. For one, such cells produce estrogen. Enough that by age fifteen, excess female hormones had completely short-circuited Phillip's puberty. He'd stopped growing taller, his hips had widened, he'd grown breasts, his voice didn't change, he had no beard and almost no body hair.
Plus his male genitals had actually shriveled, testicles like raisins and a penis less than two inches long. He didn't get erections, either. He had almost no libido, which was fortunate since there didn't seem to be any girls anywhere that were interested in him.
A gay friend confided to him, though, that he might be very popular in some parts of the gay community. Phillip didn't know what to think of that but at any rate, he wasn't interested.
The research doctors were eager to get Phillip as a study subject. A lot of them were sort of nerdishly intense, not relating to the boy as a person but more as a series of fascinating numbers. But Dr. Amalie Isla de Pescaleone brought some humanity into the interactions.
"You see," she said in her charming accent, "there are three types of fat in human bodies. That's keeping it simple but it is a good start for discussion. The first type is white fat cells, they store lipids, fat, against the body's future need for energy. You've got too many of these and they don't release energy like they should, demanding more than they give out."
She made a cute Italiana face. "The second type is brown fat. Its job is to burn lipids up to keep the body warm. You have way too few of these which is why you are so uncomfortable when it's cold. You have to shiver to stay warm. It's as if your house had no furnace and instead you had to run around banging on the walls to keep the pipes from freezing."
Phillip smiled. He liked Dr. Isla de Pescaleone. She could be funny at times.
"The third major kind of fat cell in the body is pink fat." She waved a hand. "There are also tan fats, gray fats, beige fats, and blue fats, but nobody has very many of those kinds. But pink fats are usually only found in the breasts of pregnant and nursing women. They actually produce the milk that is secreted by other structures in mammary tissue."
"Is that..." he started to ask.
She nodded. "You have pink fat in your mammary glands which are over-developed for anyone who is not pregnant or nursing. Which is why there is sometimes a milky discharge."
Phillip nodded. He hated that he frequently soaked his bedding or even his clothes in the daytime with what seemed to be milk from his overly-endowed chest. It was never very much, a few ounces at most, but now he had an explanation. A very embarrassing one but an explanation.
"It's unusual but there are similar things in some of the literature," the lady doctor was saying.
He felt grateful to her for trying to minimize it. "Is there anything that can be done about it?" he asked.
She sighed. "Nothing that looks hopeful at the moment. Perhaps surgery eventually. Still, your other metabolic problems need to be solved first because they might actually be life-threatening. The production of a bit of milk might actually be helping to slow down your weight gain."
She went on. "We haven't been able to reduce your caloric intake much below about 2200 without bad effects on your circulation, enzymes and other systems. And at that level, your body is storing about 20% as fat. Which works out to a weight gain of a pound every ten days."
Phillip nodded.
"The milk production is probably another 100 calories a day, which means your body is functioning on what is left over, about 1100 to 1200 calories. That's astonishing. You have an amazingly efficient metabolism. That's pretty much a crash-diet level of nutrition."
Phillip felt his hopes sink. Was he doomed to be a 700 pound freak and die before his thirtieth birthday?
"Exercise seems to just increase your body's base demand, So if you exercise enough to burn 400 more calories a day, this simply increases your caloric demand by about the same amount. It's probably still worth doing but it isn't a solution."
Dr. Isla de Pescaleone took his hands in hers. "Brown fat may be the key. The different kinds of fat can change into each other. The difference is which organelles are active inside the cells. In brown fat, energy-producing mitochondria are switched on and the energy so produced is turned into heat by the cell. The mitochondria get larger and give the fat its brown color."
Interesting but Phillip felt like the doctor was about to give him information more relevant to a solution to his problem. "We've found a drug that seems to help turn white fat into brown fat. If we could produce more brown fat turning calories into body heat, we might at least reduce your weight gain."
Phillip readily agreed to a program of increased exercise and the drug that encouraged brown fat. After six weeks, he had still gained about a kilogram, or two pounds. So, he wasn't getting fat as fast as before but he'd still double his weight in fifteen years.
Back to the research clinic. Doctor Wilfort Parmenter looked like a gamer geek more than a doctor. He had long greasy hair and a pimply face, a slight overbite and thick glasses. He talked through his nose and he smelled of Pepsi and pizza.
"The key is going to be the pink fat," he whined. "We don't even need to give you drugs to encourage milk production, stimulation of the breasts will do it. Though there are drugs"
"M-m-milk production?" Phillip bleated.
"Ye-es-ss," said Dr. Parmenter, sounding satisfied. "I calculate that with frequent mechanical breast pumping, we can get your current production of about 100-150 ml a day up to 600-900 ml in only a few weeks." He peered at the boy like an owl examining a plump mouse. "That's about as much as a mother produces for a baby."
Parmenter beeped and booped on his tablet while Phillip absorbed the information. "Let's say we do bilateral pumping at two-hour intervals," Parmenter resumed talking, "if we can get 60 to 90 ml per pumping, we could make that goal. That's about how much a breastfeeding child consumes. Women lactating at that rate typically increase their calorie intake a bit but still lose weight at a kilogram or two a month."
He did the owl thing at Phillip again. "Would you like to lose weight instead of gain it, Mr. DeEarly?"
"Y-y-yes," said Phillip.
The doctor beamed at him. "Actually, that amount of caloric subtraction would just about balance your current weight gain. But its a goal we may be able to expand upon." He briefly glanced at his tablet and poked in a few more numbers. "To keep you from expanding," he added with a strangely high-pitched titter.
"O-okay," Phillip agreed.
"Let's do this here in the lab," said Parmenter. "We'll set you up with an apartment here, bed, bath and breakfast table," another titter, "and someone will be here to help you with the pumpings, day and night."
*
Phillip's parents, Nathan and Yvette, readily agreed, too. And so young Mr DeEarly took up residence in the lab. It was the summer and he had no classes he had to attend but enrolled electronically in a few he could do from his new living quarters.
At first it was quite strange but his little apartment had a separate entrance from a garden that he could enjoy. His parents and friends could visit without bothering the doctors and he could go for long walks around the entire hospital complex if he wanted. Or go into town with his folks, though he had to be back in the lab at specified times for pumping.
They settled on a schedule of every 2.5 hours at night and every 2 hours in the daytime, making for eleven pumpings a day. It meant sleep interrupted about three times per night but this turned out to be tolerable. Phillip would sleep for two hours or so; get up; deal with the pumping for about twenty minutes and go right back to sleep.
At first, they were getting only about 30 ml per pumping but after only three weeks, this had expanded to 90 ml per session, making just over a quart a day. By Dr Parmenter's calculations, this was a caloric subtraction of almost 2000 calories. With other factors, including the necessity to increase Phillips intake a bit to balance nutrition, Parmenter calculated that young Mr DeEarly should be losing weight at the rate of a kilogram every two to three weeks.
Success? In those very same three weeks, Phillip had, indeed, lost weight. Slightly more than a pound, in fact. That might just be normal fluctuation, they needed to run the experiment for even longer. Phillip's milk production still seemed to be increasing, too, which could only lead to greater success, right.
In three more weeks, it could not be denied, Phillip had lost three whole kilos, or seven pounds since the experiment began. And his milk production was up to 160 ml per pumping, almost two quarts a day!
"That's--that's a lot of milk," Phillip commented. "What are you doing with all of it?"
Some of it was being used for testing but there was still a lot left over. Some of it they gave to other labs but there was more than anyone needed for reasonable experimentation. One of the outcomes of all the testing was that they now knew that Phillip's milk was normal breast milk with measures like nutritional value within or exceeding established norms. It was, in fact, high-quality stuff.
So, they were giving the excess away to Milk Bank charities in the city that provided breast milk for infants whose mothers could not furnish them enough.
"Huh," said Phillip. "I don't mind but shouldn't you have asked me? It's my milk. You're giving it away, but is it actually worth anything?" It turns out that human breast milk sells retail for as much as $130 a quart. Wholesalers would pay $30 to $50 a quart, usually expressed in ounces as $1 to $1.30 an ounce.
"Holy Mother of God," said Nathan, Phillip's father. The insurance company found out somehow and wanted the milk sold to offset the costs of Phillip's treatment. "What treatment?" asked Nathan. "Hooking up a milking machine eleven times a day? The boy does that himself, now."
"Well, his apartment," said the hospital. "And he's got cable TV in there."
"We've got cable TV at home," said the elder Mr DeEarly. "Plus Netflix and Amazon Prime."
The fallout was that Phillip was discharged from the hospital, with his treatment being self-administered from home, pumping his breasts eleven times a day. He'd go to the clinic for a weekly checkup and weigh-in and it was arranged that one of the milk wholesalers would pick up his product in a refrigerated truck that came by every twelve hours.
"Really? Twice a day?" Phillip marveled. Freshness is paramount, the wholesaler assured him. One quarter of the milk would be donated to charity, and the rest sold to the wholesaler at $1 an ounce. And they were willing to buy as much as Phillip could produce.
Which turned out to be quite a lot! By week ten, Phillip was pumping milk at the rate of 240 ml each session or 88 ounces a day. Almost enough for three average size infants. And although his calorie intake had again increased, he was still losing weight. Sixteen pounds in ten weeks. And an income of $66 a day, more than he could have made working part-time in the fast food industry.
"Pump we must," said his father. "This money goes into your college fund," he told Phillip.
"Moo," said the boy.
*
Just a whole lot more to love...
Home on the Range
by Lulu Martine
In two more months, just nine weeks, production was up to 110 ounces a day, about a pint short of a gallon or five ounces from each breast at each pumping. "Is there a record for this sort of thing?" Phillip asked during one of his checkups at the clinic.
"Yes," said Dr Parmenter. "You've easily got the record for milk production by a male human, but you're not that close for record female production."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Nope," said the supergeek. "The record is 7.88 liters. Set by a Russian grandmother who had been producing milk continuously for more than thirty years."
"That's--two gallons ten ounces!" said Phillip, who was quite used to such conversions now.
"Approximately," agreed Dr. Parmenter. "Perhaps when you've been doing this for thirty or forty years, you will break her record."
"Thirty...years?" Phillip was gobsmacked. It had not occurred to him that he was likely, perhaps even required by his medical condition, to continue getting milked every day for the rest of his life.
"But congratulations!" said Dr Isla de Pescaleone, who was glad for the boy even though her proposal had not contributed much to his treatment. "You lost twenty pounds in the last month and fourteen the month before that. Twelve more pounds and you'll be below 300! Are you going to celebrate?"
"I think so," said Phillip. "I'll turn twenty next month and I'm going to get new clothes."
"Good, good," said the doctor. "I'm sure you will enjoy shopping for them."
Dr Parmenter snorted. "Perhaps you should buy some bras," he said with his typical bluntness. "Your breasts now are almost all pink fat and they look bigger than before--the only part of you that's getting larger instead of smaller. Wearing a bra might be a smart idea. You're going to get pretty saggy if you don't."
Phillip stared at the socially clueless medico. That was another blow to his ego, though his masculinity was in tatters already from being treated as a milch cow. He left the clinic quickly, so no one could see him cry.
The worst of it may have been that he secretly enjoyed being milked. While it was going on, he felt calm pleasure with occasional spikes of something that was almost joy. Of course, he couldn't tell anyone that, it was so unmanly.
Back home, after his four pm milking (delightful as usual), Phillip considered his wardrobe. So far during his weight loss he had been simply retracing his steps through his advancing weight but he was mightily tired of shapeless jeans and balloon-like shirts. They didn't really fit anyway.
The truth was, while he had lost almost 20% of his peak weight, he had lost much more dimension in his belly than his hips or chest. He intended to order clothes from online so he would need his sizes. In about five months he had gone from gargantuan to merely huge. But his shape had changed as well as mass shrinking.
He measured around the largest part of his chest. Fifty-five inches, down from fifty-seven. He sighed. That didn't seem like a lot. His waist had been fifty six and was now...forty eight? That was better. But around his hips was only down to sixty-one from sixty-four. His neck size had shrunk almost that much, from twenty-six to twenty-four.
He had been measuring over his clothes. Now he did something he hadn't done since he left the clinic. He stripped off all his clothes and stood in front of his largest mirror naked. Being honest with himself, he did not see a fat man standing there. He saw a fat woman.
Large breasts and massive hips separated by a slightly smaller waist gave a womanly impression, along with his general hairlessness. And the only real evidence of his membership in the male half of the human race did not show, hidden by his fat. He spread his legs apart and tried to bring his member forward. Had it shrunk even more?
He'd given up more than a year before trying to piss while standing, it just wasn't worth the effort and cleanup he invariably had to do. He gave milk, he pissed sitting down, he had an ass like a hippo. What defined him as a man? A nubbin of flesh no one could see?
Weeping, he fell across his bed and almost broke it. He lay there sniffling and feeling sorry for himself. He hadn't gone out and around much in more than two years. He didn't have any friends. He hardly even remembered anyone from high school because he had already been a blimp and stayed by himself.
He glared at the clock. More than an hour before his next milking, which always brought relief from his depressions. He wanted desperately to massage his breasts manually, but that always caused premature leakage and feelings of guilt for wasting his milk.
Maybe he would have been better off just to eat himself to death. It was probably one of the more pleasant ways to go, he supposed. Now what did he have to look forward to? Feeling good while being milked? Thirty or forty years as a one-man dairy, probably alone? Who would have him? He was a freak. He even cried like a woman, he accused himself.
Someone at his door. He reached over and pulled the coverlet over himself just as his mother walked in. "Ma," he protested. It was quite obvious that he was naked under the cover but he didn't point that out.
*
"You've been crying," his mother said. She plopped herself down as close to his face as she could get. "Wanna tell me about it?"
He shook his head. Yvette reached out a hand to brush hair away from his face. "You're going to need a haircut. If we're going to celebrate you breaking 300, you want to go the barber. A new style to go with your new clothes?"
Phillip sniffed. "Dr Parboiler said I should get a bra. Otherwise my tits will be hanging on the floor."
His mother stopped brushing his hair. "He said that?"
"Well, not the last part," Phillip admitted. "But it was implied."
"Okay then," she said. "Still, he shouldn't have said the first part either." She paused then said. "Parboiler." They both snickered.
Phillip sighed again. He could see the clock from where he was lying and he had another hour before he could hook up to the twin pumps again. His nipples ached, but they did so most of the time now. "Ma," he said, "do they look bigger than they did before?"
"Uh," Yvette hesitated. "Well, they get bigger and smaller all day long. Maybe not bigger but--fuller. Rounder. It...it's something that happens when you're lactating, giving milk."
"To women," said Phil. He lifted a foot and kicked at the wall.
"Stop that," said his mother. Then, "Do you want to try on a bra?"
He made a noise. "None of yours are going to fit me."
She agreed. His mother wasn't petite or anything, in fact, Yvette approached statuesque for someone who stood only five-foot-four. But she wasn't massive like Phillip. "You're unlikely to find anything to fit in stores, either. We'll have to order online."
"Hah. No bras for cows like me in stores?" Being rude and crude about his situation helped somehow. Anger had more energy than depression, at least.
"Don't put yourself down like that, honey," said his mom. “You're going to keep losing weight and...." She stopped. It had occurred to her too.
"And I'm going to keep getting more girly-looking. My boobs are going to maybe get even bigger and my waist is getting smaller while my ass stays enormous." He broke off in sobs. Even anger had failed to defend him.
"Girls don't call them boobs unless they are trying to be funny," she said absently while she resumed stroking Phillip's hair.
"I don't care," said Phillip. "I should just stop this--this milking--and let myself die." A stab of anticipated loss struck him in the heart. He knew he wouldn't be able to do that but the muscles around his nipples had contracted and he now had two growing wet spots on his chest, concealed by the duvet which was too thick to get soaked through.
"No, you shouldn't do that, honey!" his mom said, alarmed. "I--I--" She couldn't think of anything to say.
"Guys clothes are never going to fit me anymore," Phillip complained. "I'm turning into a girl. Even if I dressed as a guy, people would think I was a girl with these BOOBS and ass." That had already happened he realized.
People at the hospital who didn't know him had been calling him 'miss' for weeks. And the one time his parents couldn't drive him over to the clinic, and he'd taken an Uber, the driver had been flirting with him. He hadn't taken it that way at the time, but it was obvious thinking about it now.
An Uber driver with a fat girl fetish? So what?
And the worst thing might be that he never contradicted anyone when they did that. It always sent a tingle through him of equal parts pure embarrassment and embarrassed pleasure. I'm disgusting, he thought, morosely.
His mother asked, "You still have your, uh, little mister?"
"Lot of good he is." Phillip realized he was whining but didn't care. "Not much bigger than my little toe these days."
Yvette didn't point out that he no longer had his little toes, not since the circulation crisis precipitated by that crash diet four years ago. She made a decision. "Would it be horrible if you were a girl?"
"Ma!" he yelped turning to face her. But another frisson squeezed his nipples and a thrill went to his heart. He grabbed a pillow to hold in front of him, in case of a fire hose release of milk.
Yvette sat up, then stood, looking down at him. "You said yourself that if you kept losing weight, you'd just keep getting girlier. Uh--? The obvious result of that is you're going to end up looking like me. Same blonde hair, same blue eyes, same bubble butt." She glanced at his chest. "But maybe with, uh, bigger--boobs." She grinned.
He sniffed. "I duwanna," he lied, knowing he was lying.
"You don't want to--what? I hadn't suggested anything yet."
"You're going to suggest that I dress as a girl to see if I like it. I don't like it. That idea stinks." And everything smells like milk, he thought.
She tried to jolly him. "You even pout like me," she said. "Your dad always claimed I had the cutest pout outside of Angelina Jolie."
"Who?" he asked.
"Never mind," Yvette said. "Get up, let's go online and order you some clothes to try on."
"Ma," he said. "I'm naked here." He knew milk was running down his chest under the duvet, he couldn't let her see.
She rolled her eyes. "Like I haven't seen you naked."
"Ma!" It came out as a squeal and Yvette had to retreat to keep from bursting into laughter. She stepped into the hallway and closed the door, tempted to pop it back open and catch her son in the altogether but she didn't want to piss him off. He needed to work with her, and he'd have to be in a good mood for that. At least she had gotten him off a depressed zero.
"Just throw on your bathrobe," she called through the door.
"Uh huh," she heard him grunt.
Eventually he called out to her. "C'mon in."
She entered and found him dressed, sitting at the computer. He'd called up Amazon already and even had a page open on women's sizes. She walked up and looked over his shoulder. In a smaller window, he had the measurements he'd already taken. Wow, she thought, and this is after months of shrinking.
"According to this chart," he said in a flat voice. "I'm a 3x in tops and a 5x in pants." He was right, according to the chart.
"You want to wear pants?" she asked.
"Ma, I'm a guy. Guys wear pants."
"We could probably find guy pants that would fit you. Maybe even in stores. But this isn't about that, is it?"
He sighed.
"This is about whether you're going to wear a bra." She laid it out there.
He nodded. "I don't know..how to find a size?"
She grabbed up the measuring tape he had used. "We'll need another couple of numbers. Stand up, turn around."
He groaned as he did so. As Yvette retook all his measurements she realized that they stood eye-to-eye. He was barefoot and she had on shoes with a one-inch heel. "We're nearly the same height," she commented.
He wasn't looking at her. "I quit growing up five years ago, Ma."
"Hold your arms up, I need to get the tape inside. There. Now let me sit at the computer and you sit on the bed."
"It's my computer," he said mildly but did as she asked.
Yvette added some new numbers to the little window.
"What's 46J?” he asked.
"That's your bra size," she explained. "You have a 45 chest and a 55 bust measurement, that's ten inches. So that's the J. And bras come in even band sizes, so 46 instead of 45."
"Oh."
"You're going to need a nursing bra," she observed, typing, "nursing bra 46J” into Amazon's search window.
"Fuh," he said when the screen filled up with women wearing colorful bras.
She ignored that, checking the sizes on likely looking bras. Amazon search was much more like throwing horseshoes than shooting basketball. She found two that actually went up to size 46J. One wired and one wireless. She considered and decided to get one of each.
"You got a preference on color?" she asked.
"Ugh," he grunted. "Not pink or black."
"Nude?"
"Nude!?"
"As a color, skin color."
"Yeah, that. Maybe no one will notice I have it on."
Fat chance, thought Yvette. She added one of each style to the cart.
"What's it mean, nursing bra, anyway?" he asked.
"It means you can get to your nipple without taking the bra off."
"Oh."
"Now we need to get you some nursing tops. Unless you want a nursing dress."
"No dresses," he said.
At least, not yet, she thought. Yvette didn't look but she was sure he was blushing. She did a new search for nursing tops. "Long sleeve, short sleeve or sleeveless?" she asked.
"Uh?" He thought about it. "Short sleeve, I guess."
She picked three of the plainer styles and let him pick non-flowery, non-pink colors. Into the order box they went.
"Now pants," she said. "Men's or women's."
He sighed. "Men's pants are never going to fit in the waist and the hips at the same time. So..." He trailed off.
She searched for women's pull-on pants in 5x. They ordered two pair, one in jeans-look stretch denim, the other black. "You want any shorts?"
"No. Not...just no."
She paused to look at him. "Underwear is going to have the same fit problem as pants."
He nodded, not even looking up. She ordered a multipack in assorted colors. She glanced in the corner where lay a shapeless pair of deck shoes. Phillip wouldn't be able to wear nice shoes until he got some more weight off his feet, so skip it. She hit the order button. "Most of it will be here tomorrow."
"I don't know about this," he whined.
"It's all pretty plain and not feminine," she pointed out.
"Except the bras," he grumbled.
"Which you need," she said.
"I guess." But he did look like he had more interest in living now than he had earlier. Maybe she should look into getting him some counseling. Of course she should, she chided herself.
She got up and sat beside him on the bed to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "It'll be okay, honey," she said. "I've been wearing girl's clothes all my life and I think they're great."
"Ha," he said. But he smiled.
*
by Lulu Martine
They came for me during sixth-period Geometry and led me out of class in handcuffs. It was so embarrassing, but it could have been worse.
Mrs Beale asked what I was being charged with, but the officers refused to say. So there was that. I didn't know what the charge would be, but I did know what crime I had committed.
They had me in a jail cell in the local lockup before they even called my Mom. She didn't rush right down to get me out because she had to feed my sisters, and then she had to go to her second job. She was going to miss the extra money I had been bringing in.
I don't know when they had the trial; maybe I slept through it. It might have been more boring than Geometry. I stood in front of the judge, waiting to be sentenced, in chains. Ankles and knees chained together, and wrists locked to a belt chain. They weren't taking any chances.
The judge looked at me sternly over her glasses. "Fifty years!" she pronounced. I don't know, that still seems excessive just for wearing panties to school, even if I am a boy.
*
I woke up when Mrs Beale slapped the test down on my desk. She glared at me before walking on to the next student but didn't say anything about my sleeping. We both knew why.
I signed my name at the top of the test, Oliver King, turned it face down, then held my hand up for permission to go to the restroom. Mrs Beale, back at her desk by then, had already filled out the hall pass for me and held it up along with the yardstick with the pass in the little plastic pocket.
I went up and got the stick. There were some snickers, and Lou Fowlett smirked at me as I passed him. "Queenie has to go tinkle," he whispered. Damn that Arrow TV show. Mrs Beale ignored that and the extra snickers it provoked. A couple of the girls looked at me sympathetically, but I didn't meet their eyes. Best to ignore everyone.
I trudged slowly, swinging the yard-long hall pass. Nothing said I had to go to the closest bathroom, so I headed clear across campus to the non-gendered bathroom next to the nurse's station. The nurse, due to budget cuts, had already left for the day. No one had to know I was using the only one-student bathroom with a lock on the door in the whole school.
I went in and locked the door then sat on the stool to do my business. After, I took the soiled panties off and stuck them in the opaque plastic zip bag with the others, after checking; sometimes I got a bonus if they were extra nasty.
I put on a new pair from my backpack. I usually go through two packages of panties a day. That's eight or ten of them, just while I'm in school. It keeps getting harder (no pun) to do this. I'm not sure I can keep it up (no pun) all through high school, I'm only a freshman now.
I trudge back to class and turn in my blank test. Part of my deal with the vice (no pun) principal is that I'm guaranteed at least a D in all my classes, so I don't even try in the ones I hate. I can always use the sleep since I get up every two hours all night long to change panties even when I'm home.
Seventh-period is gym. The deal is I take roll call, then I'm done for the day. I suspect coach of being a customer on PantyBay. I wonder if he's ever actually bought any of mine?
It's too soon to change undies again, so I wander into the library and use the free wifi and a virtual terminal to visit a porn site. I don't know why; it never does a thing for me. I drink some juice from the stash in my backpack. Juice helps. Time, friction, juice, and imagination are what get me through the day.
I make another bathroom run and head to the office twenty minutes before the buses start loading. I slip the plastic bag through the secure package delivery slot; it'll be picked up tonight, and once a week, I get paid into a debit card account with an offshore bank. The finance fees come to 9% for this sort of business, but you have to pay for privacy.
My panties bring in $5 to $30, wholesale, and go for three to five times that much, market retail. That's where the real money is, but I'm too young to open my own shop.
I walk out to the buses before anyone else gets there and take my usual seat, right behind the driver. When Lou Fowlett gets on, he sits next to me, and I slip him $5 for being my bodyguard. It's a protection racket, but it's a cheap one. Lou thinks I'm gay, but I don't care.
A couple of girls give me pity as they climb aboard, but I don't look at them. I wonder how much their panties would bring on the market. Not as much as mine, and they'd have to wear them longer, probably.
It's Wednesday, so there will be a package from Amazon on the porch. My sisters walk to school, so they get home before I do, and they'll have dragged it inside without opening it. I wonder what dainties my buyers have sent me this time. I really don't care about that either; silk brings a higher price, but cotton is more comfortable. Some people have a kink for microfiber, I guess. Takes all kinds.
I'm tired. I'm always tired. I yawn, and Lou looks at me. It's a long ride home. He takes out a pack of gum. "Want a piece?" he offers.
I take it, unwrap it, and put it in my mouth, moving as slowly as I do when I'm going back to class after my job. Lou can't take his eyes off me. I chew slowly, too. "Thanks," I say, smiling at him. He thinks I'm gay, and this makes him squirm. I'm paying him, so he doesn't say anything — one of life's little victories.
I yawn again, wrap the gum neatly in its own paper and give it back to Lou, who puts it into an empty juice box to dispose of later, eco-friendly junior thug that he is. Then I fall asleep for the last twenty minutes, my head on Lou's shoulder.
I wake up when Lou pokes me. "Queenie, you're home," he says. I yawn and stretch. Lou and I do the little dance where I try to step on his feet as I climb over him. I take his cap and put it on, then give it back to him before I get off the bus. He's grinning at me, and I wave as the bus pulls away.
I think Lou is gay and doesn't know what to do about it. Maybe he doesn't know himself.
My sisters are on the porch, bouncing up and down like eight-year-olds because, well, they are eight years old. "Ollie's home, Ollie's home," they chant.
"What's for dinner?" I ask.
"We don't know cause you haven't made it yet," Melisandre is the sassy one. Alexandra just giggles.
"Oh, that's right. I forgot," I say.
"You didn't forget." Melisandre won't let me get away with anything. "You're just stupid on purpose."
"You're probably right," I agree. "I'm ornery like that."
Alexandra can't stand this. She spins in place to make herself dizzy, so she has a better excuse to giggle. I catch her when she falls over, and we have a three-way tickle fight with Growch the pittie-mix kibitzing and play-nipping all of us. I lose as usual, and we rest in a heap on the floor until I can recover.
I don't have the strength or energy to change panties before cooking dinner, and Mom will be home at six. I struggle up, tell the kids to do their homework, and start boiling water for pasta. I had put the frozen veggie meatballs in the refrigerator to thaw before I left for school. I take them out now, brown them in a little olive oil and add marinara to simmer and thicken.
It doesn't take long to make a salad, and when the water boils, I dump in the noodles and set a timer. I have a few minutes to relax. I wonder what Lou is doing — playing video games, probably.
I'm bringing in $50,000 a year, after taxes. Most of that goes into three college funds, and the rest keeps Mom from having to take that second job. She lists my income as "Sales of crafts" on her filing. What I'm doing is only illegal because I'm underage.
I think the law makes it harder (no pun) than it needs to be for a young entrepreneur to thrive.
Bonnie has a strange talent. She can sing any song she's ever heard, even though she can't talk normally. But now she's being—possessed is not quite the right word—haunted by a ghost from the future. And he's heard lots of songs that haven't even been written yet.
Girl Singer
1. Dead Wrong
Lulu Martine
I woke up, shivering, the room still dark. Searching around for my covers in the darkness did no good. I wondered what had happened to my nightlight. Since I turned seventy, I had found my night vision fading and very little help during my frequent trips to the restroom.
Cussing a little under my breath, I groped for the bedside lamp and fell off the bed because the little table also seemed to be missing.
I banged my head against the floor startling a yelp out of me. The noise seemed curiously high pitched.
I felt confused and panicked; at my age, a fall could be dangerous.
Had I taken up drinking again? I hadn't woken up from an alcoholic blackout in nearly forty years, not since I had joined AA six months after the accident that had wiped out my young family.
Something drifted down over my face, cobwebs I thought. I didn't fight them off, trying to lie still and figure out where I might be.
Then I remembered.
I had been drinking again. I'd taken my last full prescription for narcotic pain pills, bought a fifth of cheap bourbon and checked into a downtown fleabag hotel with the intention of taking all my pills at once and drinking myself to death.
"I'm d-d-dead," I said to myself. My voice sounded strange, besides the stutter, but I really hadn't expected to wake up. I didn't believe in an afterlife; despite years of trusting my sobriety to a higher power, I didn't really believe in God.
But other than a headache, a queasy stomach, a stiff neck and the slight bump on the head I'd got falling out of bed, I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so good. The pain in my back, cancer, that I had lived with for more than two years was gone.
I didn't really hurt anywhere but maybe it would be a good idea to find the bathroom since the upset stomach seemed ready to turn into something even more unpleasant.
Had I just gotten drunk and never taken the pills? Surely fourteen strong opiate pills and a fifth of whiskey would have ended my problems, I must have failed to follow through. Drank the booze and forgot the pills? No, I had intended to take the pills first and wash them down with the whiskey. Maybe fourteen wasn't enough?
I stopped worrying because when I sat up I felt the bounce of something on my chest. This didn't feel like the old-man-boobs I had developed in my seniorage. And without thinking about it, I had sat up without bracing an arm behind me; it had been more than two years since I had been able to do that.
My hands went to my chest and felt them—taught, bouncy, girl tits. Ones like I hadn't felt since the last time I had enough libido to hire a prostitute, maybe a couple of decades—and they felt huge, more than handfuls.
“D-d-dreamin’,” I said aloud. My voice sounded funny, it even tasted funny in my mouth. I licked my lips; soft, smooth and plump with no trace of whiskery stubble and certainly not the thin, dry, crusty lips of an old man.
They felt—bruised? I raised a hand and explored my face. Soft plump lips, cheeks smooth, round and not sunken—the face of a child, or a woman.
“I-I’m d-d-drea-,” I said aloud. The stutter stopped me. I tried again. “I-I-ah-I-uh….” It was worse the second time. Now I didn’t remember exactly what I had meant to say. I frowned, annoyed and a bit frightened.
What had happened to me? I was a salesman most of my working life, talking was my business. But I didn’t seem to be the me I had known. I must be dreaming.
I touched the breasts, the hair, the wide spread of round bottom I sat on. A very strange dream, perhaps a delirium brought on by my Last Cocktail of booze and pills.
I could taste alcohol but not the whiskey I had planned on drinking, something more malty, beer?
In the darkness, I felt of my face, again. Soft, smooth cheeks, a buttonish nose and big hoops in my ears—and the "cobwebs" turned out to be long strands of very abundant hair. What little head hair had survived my turning sixty had been eradicated by the chemotherapy.
“I-I-I’m d-d-d-uh,” I said, tugging on one earring, frustrated with my inability to finish the sentence. Or the thought, had I meant to say ‘dreaming’ or ‘dead’? Either made sense but logic had nothing to do with it—and certainly nothing to do with what I felt and experienced.
Because I didn't feel as if I were dreaming. Or dead. I felt very much alive, despite a headache and nausea, I felt good, I felt strong I felt — young.
I dropped a hand from my face to my breasts to my groin. It didn't surprise me not to feel a penis there, the tits had been a clue. And to be honest, a dick would have felt wrong. Why, I wondered?
“S-s-some d-d-dr-uh," I muttered.
I tried to stand up and managed it with a combination of strength, flexibility, and awkwardness that seemed very bizarre. No struggle, though. A day before I would have had trouble standing at all and would have managed it only with an effort that left me gasping.
Am I dead? I asked myself, not trying to speak out loud. Or am I just dreaming that I'm dead? Why would I dream that I’m a woman? I ran my hands over the female body I seemed to have — inherited? Why did I think that?
I stumbled a bit in the dark and the bathroom door did not seem to be where I thought it should be but a dim light from high up in the wall, a window, gave me enough light to see the sink, the toilet, and a dark and sinister darkness that might be an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub. Nothing looked at all familiar but I began to wonder if this were the same hotel room as the one I had checked into for my planned suicide.
If I were in a different body, why not a different hotel room. Heck, even a different hotel, a different city, country — language? Was I even thinking in English?
I smiled in the dark. How would I know? My stuttering had sounded like English but that didn’t prove anything.
I didn't remember having smiled since the rictus of pleasant pain I'd felt after taking my first drink in many more years than I felt like counting.
I stood in front of the toilet for a moment before the thought occurred to me that I had better sit down and do my business. “W-w-wouldn’t….” Wouldn’t want to have an accident, I finished the thought without speaking.
For some reason, this struck me as funny and I sat there giggling and making tinkling noises into the bowl. Afterward, I found the toilet paper and cleaned myself up. The feel of things down there wasn't exactly a surprise, I hadn't been a monk, but it did feel different to have female equipment of my own.
I didn't linger though but wandered back into the dark bedroom. I still hadn't turned on any lights. I debated with myself just crawling back into bed and waiting to see if next time I woke up as dead as I had expected to be.
More giggles. Damn it, I felt absurdly good. It had been so long since I felt good. Years, if not decades. But what I was experiencing had to be a delusion; no one takes a massive overdose of pills and booze and wakes up in a new body.
What did I look like, I wondered. Why hadn't I turned on the light to see?
But I knew why. I didn't want to see my old, gross, dead body lying in the bed.
*
I knew he must be there, I could smell him.
A fat, stinky old man, dead on purpose, dead of booze and pills. Lying in the other half of the bed where I woke up in this new, young, female body.
How had this happened?
Magic?
I didn't believe in magic.
A miracle?
I didn't believe in miracles, either.
Which only left insanity. “I-I-I’m c-c-crazy?" I said aloud.
Other than the stutter, I liked the sound of my new voice. I lifted my chin and sang, "La, la, la-a-a!" No stutter on the nonsense syllables, high and pure, a child's voice, or at least a soprano, a woman. In the darkness, I hugged myself, pleased to be the new me.
But what would it be like to live a new life as a woman? I didn't know but a hundred imaginings occurred to me. If I didn’t stutter when singing, maybe I could make my living doing that? My new brain seemed quick with thoughts, not like the still-life old male brain I had been trying to kill.
Had killed.
I couldn't make sense of it but I stood there in the dark, convinced that a dead man was in the room with me. A dead man who used to be me.
I needed a light but I felt afraid of turning one on and seeing my own corpse. The only illumination in the hotel room came from the dim square of the high window in the bathroom.
There should be a light switch in there, I could retreat to the bathroom and turn on the light and sneak up on my dead man, not have to see him all at once.
I crept backward into the bathroom and felt around for a light switch but no joy. It wasn't on either side of the door, high or low. In the dimness, I saw a line of shadow on the wall beside the mirror. I remembered old-fashioned pull strings from when I was a kid. I reached for the string and yanked.
A small bare light bulb in a socket next to the mirror came on. It probably wasn't more than forty watts but it blinded me because I had looked directly at it. I blinked, my eyes tearing up.
In a moment I could see, more or less. A young woman, a girl, looked back at me from the mirror. Her face seemed absurdly young, pretty but sort of vapid. She wore the remains of quite a lot of makeup, dark stains around her eyes, a smear of bright red around her mouth.
She had light brown hair and eyes that were either hazel or gray, a straight nose, a wide mouth and the sort of clear complexion, under the makeup, that makes one think of Ireland or Scandinavia.
I forgot about the dead man in the next room and made faces at myself in the mirror. I smiled, I winked, I preened, I frowned. I almost laughed out loud to see the new me.
“N-n-name?" I asked myself, but I didn't know the answer. My old male name would certainly not work. Did this girl have an identity that I would have to take over?
That stopped me for a moment. If I had killed myself and taken this girl's body, her life—what had happened to her?
I stepped back to get a better look at myself. The tiny bathroom held a toilet, a sink, an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub with a shower attachment and a rag rug. I pulled the door around to see behind it, a freestanding cabinet probably held towels and supplies but on the back of the door was something more interesting, a 3/4 length mirror.
I stared. “W-w-wow," I said. The face might be only attractive but my new body had the large breasts, lush curves and long legs of an old-fashioned pin-up girl. “W-w-wow," I said again. “N-n-n--." Naked.
Well, I'd known that. I managed not to laugh at myself and ran my hands over my softness. It all felt strange and familiar at the same time. This felt like my body without feeling at all like my old body. I touched a nipple and felt and saw the crinkly response; it kind of tickled.
I checked out the groin area. "Oh," I said. I stifled another giggle. I had a bush, soft and curly hair grew around a damp slit with fleshy lips. I chickened out on exploring that more, at least, not yet.
Further down, my legs were softly furred as well, with some hair in the pits. Was I not American? European?
I noticed my earrings, gold hoops with itty-bitty chip-like red stones set in them. My nails were polished but not painted and a little ragged--as if I had chewed on them sometime recently.
But something else caught my eye. Were those bruises around my throat? The purple marks looked fresh and finger-shaped. I touched them, they hurt a bit if pressed. I tried to swallow and that hurt a bit more. Had someone tried to choke the pretty girl I saw in the mirror?
I turned and looked out into the bedroom. In the light from the bathroom door, I could just barely make out the lumpy shape under the bed covers.
I screamed, then stuffed a hand in my mouth to shut myself up. How could I have forgotten about the dead man in the bed?
*
I tried to stop the whim-whamming of my heart and rationally consider the situation. Yes, there was a corpse-like lump under the covers in the broken-down bed of my hotel room.
But how could it be my old body? I had taken pills and drank cheap booze in an attempt to off myself but there had been no young woman in the room with me when I did that. No naked young woman with a body like the one I now had, for sure.
And yet, even before I turned on the light, I had known he was there. Well, was he really dead? I hadn’t checked yet but the hotel room certainly smelled like someone had died in it.
I saw an old-fashioned table lamp on a dresser near the bed. I crept up on it, hunched over as if I expected to have to run from some sort of retaliation. The switch on the lamp was another pull chain but I hesitated.
Up this close, I had no doubt the man was dead. He wasn’t moving and he smelled of shit and vomit, stale sweat and old cologne. Cologne? I —the I from before— did not wear cologne. I’d even given up on deodorant because I no longer cared.
He was lying on his back. As fat as he seemed to be, I should be able to hear him breathing. If he had been breathing. My hand on the light switch trembled and I yanked it away, almost knocking the lamp over.
Fat? I hadn’t been fat at the end. The chemotherapy had caused me to lose over sixty pounds in only six months. But it didn’t relieve my mind to realize that this corpse could not be mine.
I opened my mouth to scream again but the noise of a key in a lock stopped me.
I stared around the room, looking for a door which suddenly opened before I had located it. Dim light from a hallway outside came in through a crack that swiftly closed after a shape squeezed through.
“Jesus Christ,” said a male voice. “It smells like death in here.”
“Eep!” I said.
“Bonnie?” the voice asked.
Bonnie? Was that her name, my name, now?
“I-I-uh-I-.” No use, I realized. I might as well not be able to talk at all. “M-m-me?” I said, making it a question.
“Don’t try to talk, dummy,” the man said cruelly. “Ain’t there a light in here?” He found a switch by the door and flicked it on, holding an arm over his eyes against the sudden glare.
Almost blinded, I remembered I was naked and tried to run toward the bathroom, my breasts swaying and jiggling with the movement.
“Stop!” the man commanded and I did, collapsing into a heap on the floor. Am I crying? I wondered. Shit yes, I was weeping like a little kid who got nothing but coal in his stocking on Christmas. Her stocking.
“Bonnie Mae, stop that blubbering,” the man ordered.
I looked up and through tears saw that he was standing by the bed, staring at the corpse there.
From my angle near the floor, I couldn’t see the face and I didn’t want to, turning my head away. My insides felt shattered and it took me a moment to recognize the feeling as fear. I was terrified.
The man standing by the bed turned to glare at me. “You done killed another one, you stupid cunt,” he accused.
*
Girl Singer
2. Too Much Lovin'
Lulu Martine
My breath came in great racking sobs. The terror had seized my insides, and I lurched into movement on all fours, crawling toward the bathroom, trying to reach the toilet where I could throw up or shit or whatever seemed necessary.
The man overtook me and pulled me to my feet by one arm. “Bonnie, Bonnie,” he said tensely. “Don’t scream. Don’t scream.”
I nodded. He was hurting me with his grip on my elbow. Not badly, but his grip was tight, and I knew I couldn’t get away. I squirmed and made noises, but I didn’t scream. The man seemed huge, he towered over me and his strength seemed enormous. I didn’t struggle against his grip for fear he might strike me.
He shoved me toward the bathroom, letting me go. I almost fell but caught myself on the doorframe.
“Go in there,” he ordered me. “Wash your face. I’ll fetch your clothes so you can get dressed.” He looked back over at the bed. “Jesus, Bonnie, we gonna have to leave town—again! You gotta quit fucking these johns to death.”
I cried and gabbled something, putting my hands to my throat. I knew he was mad at me because the man was dead, and I wanted to show him that someone had tried to choke me. I was still afraid of him, but I wanted him to know that if this Bonnie had killed someone, maybe she had a reason?
He snorted, then made a motion like a lunge at me. I squeaked and got inside the bathroom, and he yanked the door closed behind me. “Stay in there, you stupid whore,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to come out.”
I stared at the girl in the mirrors. She looked as scared as I felt. I got the ring on the toilet seat up before I threw up. I caught water in my hand and rinsed out my mouth. I stared at my new face in the mirror.
I tried to think about my situation. My name is Bonnie Mae, and I’m a whore? And I’ve killed another one? One of my johns…? Too much sex….
I threw up in the sink this time and had to try to wash it down the little drain, but it was mostly just bile. I drank several handfuls of the cold liquid, and it helped me calm down.
The man outside must be my pimp. I’m a whore, and I have a pimp. My hands trembled, and I grabbed one in the other and tried to stop the shakes. The brain I had been admiring earlier for seeming to be quicker than the one my older male self used didn’t seem to be working at all now.
What had happened to me? I had tried to end my life, and now I had a new life, but… I’m a woman and a whore, and I just killed one of my johns….
“G-g-guh-!” I couldn’t speak, either. The man had called me a dummy, and it was true. Maybe I had brain damage….
My mind spiraled out of control. Was I lying in some hospital bed on life support while my brain died from the effects of the poison I had consumed?
Or was the life I thought I had had just some delusion? A lot of prostitutes are addicts on some pretty nasty drugs. What was I on?
I used the water to try to clean up my face. There was only the one tap, no hot water, and cold water was not going to remove my makeup. I found a washcloth and touched it to a big bar of white soap beside the tap. I used that to clean around my mouth and cheeks and carefully beneath my eyes, but I would need something else to get rid of the eye makeup entirely.
I’d had a wife, a mother, sisters. I knew I needed cold cream or makeup pads or something similar — nothing like that in the bathroom.
*
The door suddenly opening scared a squeak out of me, but it was only my pimp, throwing some clothing at me. “Get dressed, don’t take too long, we’ve got to get out of here.” He shut the door again.
I picked up the clothing. A pair of silk panties with lace. A clumsy-looking brassiere. A silk dress, black with figured flowers that looked as if they had been painted on. Hosiery, silk again, with a seam. Silk? If I’m a whore, I’m apparently an expensive one. Why the hell am I in such a dump of a hotel?
I used the washcloth between my legs where I had discovered some stickiness I didn’t want to think about, then I pulled up my panties and settled them in place. The bra was harder to figure out; I was more familiar with taking one off someone else than putting one on myself.
It also fit, after I discovered how to lift my breasts and settle them into the cups. I felt some relief too from the wobbling and swaying and pulling of my skin from unsupported breasts. My girls seemed more abundant than average, but maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to them being attached to me.
“Bonnie Mae,” said the man, “you better be dressed when I open the door.”
I made gargling noises. He frightened me so badly. I pulled the dress over my head and down past my breasts, so it settled around my hips as the door opened.
He smiled at me. “Good girl,” he said. “Don’t bother with your stockings. Here’s your puhss and shoes, put them on, and let’s get out of here.”
Puhss? Oh, purse. It was the first time I had really noticed his accent. Tennessee? Georgia?
There was another garment sticking out of the purse, a garter belt? I pushed it down and folded the stockings and put them inside too. The shoes had buckles and looked like the sort of footwear dancers wore on stage, with a wide, clunky heel of two or more inches. Could I walk in those?
I put them on, and they fit, and I stumbled only a little, staggering out of the bathroom. The man caught me. “Shit, Bonnie,” he said. “Don’t take on so. He was a piece of crap and good riddance.”
He actually gave me a quick hug and patted my hair, cooing to me. “I know it warn’t your fault he died, honeypie. He was old and fat, and you were just too much lovin’.”
He brushed his lips against my forehead, and I realized I had been kissed. It did a lot to ease my fear of the man. Maybe he’d been mean to me because he was scared, too?
I was still sniffling a bit. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair was a rat’s nest, and I still had raccoon eyes. What did it matter? I knew I must be pretty, and it bothered me to see my face all puffy and smeared. I didn’t think too much about why it bothered me, though.
He pushed me ahead of him. “Go on, sweetcakes. I paid the desk man not to call the cops for an hour. We’ll go out the backstairs and be on the way to Kansas City before they quit settin’ on their hands.”
He seemed almost a different person than the one who had called me a cunt, but he slapped me on the ass hard enough to sting through my thin dress, and I must have jumped a foot with a startled, “Guk!” sound. He laughed.
I could feel the warmth of his handprint on my butt cheek. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I wondered if he would do it again.
*
My brain still wasn’t working, and I allowed him to push me ahead of him, out the door and down a hallway. He opened another door and went first down a narrow flight of stairs, towing me behind him this time. “Don’t trip on the stairs, honeypie,” he warned me. I managed, despite the heels, to stay upright.
Two more flights, another door, and we came out in an alley beside a loading platform. It felt like a clammy early morning of a summer in someplace where the day will be hot and humid. My dress clung to my thighs, and I kept using my free hand to pull it loose so it would hang. This was important to me for some reason.
He seemed in a much more cheerful mood, and I wondered why. He was even humming something under his breath. I recognized the tune: “When You Wish Upon a Star,” a Disney song I used to hear as a child. I opened my mouth to sing along, but he made a shushing motion with his hand.
He looked both ways, up and down the alley, then he seized me and pulled me close. “Babydoll,” he said. He pulled me up on my toes and bent his head to kiss me, right on the lips this time. His tongue insisted on getting inside my mouth, and I was so surprised, I let him.
The kiss went through me like electricity. He had one hand on my ass where he had slapped me, and he clenched that. I wanted to squeal; the feelings were so intense. My lips had already felt bruised, and they were very sensitive.
I felt warmth in my—my nipples, my crotch, even my nose and ears. My body was enjoying what he was doing, and my brain was just a spectator. I could feel his excitement, too. One piece of evidence hard and warm against my thigh.
Oh, gross, I managed to think, but my body wanted to rub against it. I heard myself giggle as he broke off the kiss.
“What was that for, Alvin, I hear you ask?” he said. He laughed. Squeezed me tight, gave me another peck on the lips, and took off down the alley, again towing me behind him.
I felt giddy and dizzy, my hair falling in my face, and I kept pulling at my dress to keep it from clinging. I stumbled, and he caught me, set me on my feet again, and we went at a more reasonable pace. He was singing again, quietly. This time it was harder to place the tune.
Between giggles—I couldn’t seem to stop them—I tried humming along. Finally, I had it. “We’re in the money,” I sang, feeling happy that I had figured it out. “We’ve got a lot of what—.” I wasn’t having any trouble at all with the words, and I didn’t seem to think that was strange.
His hand going over my mouth stopped me. “Sh, sh,” he said. He shook his head. “Bonnie Mae, sometimes I forget you ain’t completely right in the head.” He laughed softly and uncovered my mouth to kiss me again. My body wanted to kiss back and wiggle in his arms, but I resisted that.
I’m really a guy, I told myself. I can’t be enjoying myself kissing other men. But I was feeling good again; still a little scared but sort of roller-coaster scared. As long as Alvin, if that was his name, had an arm around me, I felt—safe? He still seemed large and powerful but no longer scary.
We turned the corner onto a street at the end of the alley and walked along, arm and arm. I looked up at his face, my eyes were about level with his shoulder, and he grinned down at me, then put his other hand to his mouth, a finger on his lips in a shushing gesture.
I heard myself giggle, but I was still mystified as to what had changed his mood. And mine.
He treats me like a moron, I thought. Maybe I am. But even that bit of depressing reverie did not quash the occasional tingle of excitement. I didn’t know where we were going, but Alvin was happy, so…Bonnie Mae was delighted. And I was Bonnie Mae.
*
I wasn’t in charge, and we went where Alvin wanted to, and I couldn’t resist looking at him frequently. Like I had to check his mood if it changed or something. But I did have time to look around and what I saw mystified me.
It was as if we had wandered onto a movie set. The cars and clothes all reminded me of old black-and-white movies, things that would star tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and Bugsy Siegel. No, wait, Bugsy Siegel was a real tough guy, not an actor. But like that.
There weren’t many people on the streets or cars moving, but they all had a look. The cars had bulbous outlines, and almost all of them were black. I remembered cars like that from when I was a kid, but those were old then, and these were new, now.
The women all wore dresses that were at least mid-calf, like the one I wore, or even longer. Most of the men had on double-breasted suits or rough work clothes that still looked old-fashioned. Almost everyone had a hat, men and women.
A lot of people I saw were black, and they were all dressed in work clothes, not one of them in a suit or a nice dress. On one corner we passed, a black teenager offered to shine our shoes. Across the street, another black man unloaded bales of papers from a truck in front of a genuine newsstand like I didn’t remember having seen in twenty years.
It seemed I had not only changed body but changed times too. I’d been born in 1941 myself, five months before Pearl Harbor, exactly. I suddenly wanted to ask Alvin the date but knew I would never be able to get a coherent question out.
We passed the newsstand, and I made another awful discovery. I couldn’t read. Oh, I recognized some of the letters in the big headlines on the newspapers, A, B, and C mostly, and a few others, but there was not one word that made sense to me. Maybe A, I suppose.
I made a strangled noise, and Alvin looked down at me. “You okay, honeypie?” he asked.
“N-n-no,” I managed to say. “I-I-uh-I-.”
He shook his head and tapped me on the nose with a fingertip. “Sh, sh, sh,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Not your fault his heart couldn’t take your good lovin’. You too much woman for him, but I’m sure he went out with a smile…well, no, he didn’t, hmm.”
He grinned at me. “To tell the truth, from his expression, it must have hurt like a sumbitch….”
That hadn’t been what I was trying to tell him, but now I was weeping again. My emotional buttons seemed too easily pushed. “Sh, sh, sh,” said Alvin.
Some guy in work clothes stopped right in front of us. “She gonna be all right, mister?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Alvin. “She’s upset—she’s just upset because her cat died.”
My cat died? My brain was off the rails for sure now. I wailed and put my face against Alvin’s chest, bawling for a cat I was pretty sure didn’t even exist. Poor Fluffy.
*
Next thing I knew, Alvin was loading me into the front seat of a car. “Bonnie,” he was saying, “Get your hands and feet inside so I can close the door.”
I snatched my limbs in and looked up at him with my mouth hanging open. “Good girl,” he said and closed the door then ran around to the other side to climb in behind the wheel. He laughed. “Bonnie, you are something else, honeypie.” He shook his head. “Scoot over here,” he patted the seat beside him.
It was a big old bench-style seat covered in worn cloth and faded leather. I scooted over, and he hugged me up close then kissed me again.
I wanted to turn my face away from his kisses, but instead, I kept leaning into them. Despite myself, they made me feel good. Sooner or later, I would have to stop trying to think of myself as a man. My crinkled up nipples and the warmth I felt between my legs were certainly evidence against the theory.
He started the engine with a key and a foot pedal. It coughed into life, and he leaned out the driver’s side window to look behind us before easing the clutch and merging with the still sparse traffic. When he went to change gears, the shift lever was on the steering column, and he had to use the clutch.
“We’ll run by our doss, grab out stuff and go, okay, baby?”
I had no idea, so I nodded. Doss? It was a word I hadn’t heard since the hippie era.
He laughed, and I giggled.
“You can sing now,” he said.
I looked at him blankly.
“We’re in the money…” he began, and I took over. I didn’t even know that I knew all the words. It was a song about the Depression ending and having enough money to pay the rent and even loan a bit to a friend. It was a happy tune, and I discovered I was dancing in place, tapping my feet and swinging my shoulders to the rhythm. I hit all the notes, too.
He shook his head when I finished. “How come you never, ever stutter when you’re singing?” he asked.
“Ada-ada-ada?” I gabbled. Damn. That didn’t even sound like what I had tried to say.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “You’re beautiful, you sing like a bird, and you fuck like a catamount. But that’s the second old fart in six months died on you.” He laughed. “That witch in the swamp sold you to me wasn’t lying when she said you were too much lovin’ for some men.”
Witch? Sold me!? My toes curled up, and a flash of heat went through me. I giggled and wiggled against him. Something inside me liked the idea of being sold. I am so fucked, I thought. Well, yeah, another part of me remarked, that’s your line of work now.
He squeezed me. “You’re my meal ticket, honeypie.” He kissed me on the forehead again. “You know how much that old fart had in his wallet? Seven hundred dollars. Even after giving the deskman a double sawbuck, we’ve got enough to buy a new car, and a better one than this piece-of-shit Dodge.”
We were definitely not in 2020 anymore. I laughed out loud. My pimp had ripped off the corpse of the man I had fucked to death, and now we had to get out of the city before the cops found me. I laughed again before bursting into tears.
*
Girl Singer
3. Nobody's Baby Now
Lulu Martine
Alvin got me quieted down again by holding me and rubbing my back after we had parked in front of a place that looked like a boarding house run by Norman Bates. He kissed me on the eyelids, and I giggled at the absurdity.
I was beginning to have trouble telling my own reactions apart from those of my body. What difference did it make? I'm Bonnie Mae—I'm an illiterate, functionally mute prostitute on the run from the law. I've got the attention span of a sparrow and the emotional control of an infant. I sighed as Alvin got out of the car.
"Stay here," he told me. "I'll go in and get our stuff."
I whimpered. He was leaving me alone! I was devastated, and that scared me all over again.
"No," he said firmly. "You can't come in. You get near a bed, and you'll wanna fuck, and we just don't have the time." He smiled when he said that, but I wasn't sure he was kidding. What if he wasn't?
Oh, great, I'm a nymphomaniac, too. I squirmed. Some part of me enjoyed the idea that I couldn't control myself.
"We get to Kaycee, we'll stay in a nice hotel, buy a whole box of rubbers, and you can try to fuck my brains out, okay? I promise, honeypie."
Well, I said to myself as he walked away, except for the rubbers, that does sound nice. I was trying to be ironic, but I felt a thrill when I thought of it. My place of business, the one I sat on, felt warm and damp. I thought, son-of-a-bitch, I'm a horny little twat, ain't I?
I sat there for maybe a minute, trying to think my way through my situation. My mind had capabilities my brain did not seem to have room for. Plus, I was alone, and that scared me. I'm not supposed to be alone some voice inside me insisted. I was near panic in a very short time.
Is this going to be my life from now on? Meal ticket for a pimp who steals from dead guys. I quivered. I knew I would start crying again in a moment, and I wouldn't be able to stop until Alvin came back and hugged me, or kissed me, or… or spanked me!
That's what I needed, a good spanking. I squirmed thinking about his hand slapping my ass earlier. Now, I had the giggles. There's a word for girls like you, I scolded myself. Slut. Or maybe bimbo. Not sure I have the intellectual qualifications. Maybe I'm not smart enough for a bimbo; slut is more my speed.
The more I dissed myself internally, the hotter I got. You're a sick, sick girl, I told myself. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," I sang, "that's the way I like it. I like it." And then I sang the whole song, another that I didn't know I knew the words to. Even though I changed one line to "Tell me you're my lovin' man," I hit all the notes and had the rhythm perfect, dancing on my round new butt on the car seat.
I didn't feel nearly so lonely and scared while singing.
I'm a human jukebox, I thought. Why don't I stutter when I sing? "Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon," I sang, finishing up with "Money, money, money," instead of "Music, music, music." When I started a song, I needed to sing it all the way through, apparently, but I could alter it.
What the hell?
If a new car costs only 700 dollars, neither of those songs has been written yet. Was I going to sing another? Uh-huh.
"Let's do the time warp again!" I sang. "It's just a step to the left, then a jump to the right!" All the way through, no mistakes that I could see or hear.
This was kind of cool.
*
By the time Alvin got back, I had sung another five or ten songs. I'd lost count. So sue me, I'm not a mathematician. Alvin was carrying several suitcases as he came down the walk, one in each hand and one under his arm. Three. I could count that high.
The Dodge had no backseat, just a cargo area behind the bench. He put the suitcases down and opened the driver's side door. I sang at him, "I got chills, they're multiplying," and he stood there while I did the whole song: "You're the one that I want!" complete with oo-oo-oos.
When I finished, I bit my tongue to keep from starting another song.
"Where the hell did you hear that one?" he asked. I just shrugged. How could I tell him? And he probably wouldn't believe it if I did.
He shook his head, laughing, while he put the suitcases away. "What kinda music is that? Some new kinda hot jazz?"
I had no way to answer his questions, so I just sat there wiggling in excitement. Would he get the idea I'd thought of while he was gone? He didn't have to sell my pussy if he could sell my voice.
*
He climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine up, watching me thoughtfully.
I noted that after all that singing I had done, I felt charged up still, but not—not as horny as I had been feeling. Well, good—singing was another outlet for all the sexual energy I seemed so full of.
"Scoot over here," he said, and I snuggled up against him. "Put your feet under you, like you usually do."
"Sh-sh-shoes?" I managed to ask. I was already doing it, lifting up to sit on my feet, but I couldn't just kick the shoes off, they were buckled-on dancing shoes, the kind Ginger Rogers probably wore in Hollywood.
"Your shoes are okay," he said. "We'll junk this fucker when we get to Kaycee." He pulled me even tighter to him. "So…so, I'm the one that you want?"
"Oo-oo-oo," I sang then giggled. Did I want him? Well, my body sure did, and I was sort of along for the ride. It was so weird that thinking about fucking a man was not freaking me out.
He laughed. He pulled me up to where I sort of stood on my knees so he could kiss me on the lips without looking away from the road for more than a few seconds. Then he let me sit on my heels again. I had my arms around his neck. It felt—nice.
It occurred to me that I was making a mess of my dress, all wadded up under me. It couldn't be good for the silk. But I didn't want to move.
He glanced at me sideways. "Can you sing something else?"
I nodded eagerly. This was the idea I was trying to get across.
"Do you know, 'Nobody's Baby Now'?"
I hadn't heard that song in probably sixty years, but yes, I did know it. It must have been a popular tune in the time we were in, whatever time that was. I sang, "I'm nobody's baby, I wonder why?" and all the rest of it, to the end.
He looked astonished. "That's …that's different! I never heard anyone sing it like that! It's great, but…did you just make that up? How to sing it like that?"
I shook my head. I must have heard a later version of the song, probably post-war.
Oh, fuck! The war!
I looked around. Cars rolling along, there was more traffic now but still not a lot. No military vehicles in sight. No young men in uniform but plenty of them about. Didn't the war change all that?
And I couldn't ask any questions that were more than one word long! I'm an idiot-savant, I can remember the words to any song I've ever heard, but I can't carry on an ordinary conversation. In the words of a famous fellow countryman of the future, Doh!
Judging by the weather, it must be summer, so Pearl Harbor was at least months away. And this might not be 1941 but some earlier year. I frowned. Numbers were slippery. The harder I tried to think about them, the murkier my thinking got. Oh, yeah, I'm an idiot.
Thinking about the problem another way, am I a time traveler? Can I alter the future? Do I know the future, or do I only think I know the future? And, as we already know, thinking is not what I'm good at. In fact, I'm pretty sure thinking this hard is not in my job description as an idiot.
*
I sighed and came back to being aware of riding in a car snuggled up next to Alvin. He was stroking my hair, petting me like a cat with one hand, while he drove with the other.
It occurred to me that there were no seatbelts in this car. Or probably in any others on the streets. These big heavy things were rolling death traps. I sighed again—nothing I could do about that either.
I had a strange thought. The idea of getting hurt scared me, but the thought of getting killed didn't. I'd been dead before. But a chill went down my spine and raised goosebumps on my arms, despite the heat. I wiggled against Alvin, seeking a bit of comfort.
His expression didn't change. Was he ignoring me? My arms were no longer around his neck, one of them stretched along the arm he was using to pet me, the other lying in my lap. Maybe I was too easy to ignore? I moved a bit to rub my breast up against his arm….
What the hell am I doing!? I gasped. It kept happening, my body had a mind of its own, and sometimes my mind and the other one didn't mesh.
Alvin turned toward me without taking his eyes off the road. "You say something, babycakes?" he asked.
That's pretty funny, ask the dummy if she said anything. I giggled and he smiled. "G-g-guh-go?" I said. I meant to ask where were we going, but he took it the wrong way.
"You need to go?" he asked.
I thought about that. Now that he'd mentioned it, I had drunk all that water in the bathroom. I nodded. All of my worries about time travel and world wars had evaporated when Alvin asked me a question.
"We'll stop and get some breakfast, honeypie, just lemme get outside the center of St Louie." He turned his attention back to driving.
Food sounded good, too. I knew for a fact that my stomach was empty. And just to confirm it, my middle made a noise like a kitten attacking a shoe.
Alvin glanced at me again, smiling. "Ten minutes," he promised.
I smiled at him, but a new worry surfaced a moment later. I'm losing my mind, I thought. I actually wondered for a moment whether ten minutes was longer or shorter than an hour. The longer I was in this body, and I may be in it for a long time, the easier it was to think of myself as Bonnie Mae.
And the easier it was to think like Bonnie Mae, the cheerful, sexy moron. Already the idea of ever having been anyone else seemed stupid. If I had been someone else, wouldn't that person have had a name? And I couldn't think of any names except Bonnie Mae and Alvin.
Well, maybe names in a song.
About that time, Alvin asked me. "Can you sing us another, honeypie?"
I nodded and right away started in on, "Bill Bailey." Which had a name right in the title, didn't it? I bounced and wiggled as I sang and put one hand on my hip like I was being sassy.
When I finished, he was laughing, and I giggled too, because if he thought something was funny, it must be so. Right?
"You messed up the lyrics on that last chorus, honeypie," he said. "You sang Al Porter instead of Bill Bailey. That's my name!"
It was? I hadn't known his last name or that he sometimes went by Al, had I? But, Bonnie Mae did…. Before I could think about how weird that was, he asked for another song.
So I gave him "Blueberry Hill," maybe because I thought it had something to do with St. Louis. He seemed to know it, so it must be an older song than I remembered. Or had Bonnie Mae picked it?
"Pancakes," he said. "You want some blueberry pancakes?" He turned off the street.
I nodded. That sounded great.
*
We pulled to a stop next to a diner, and he helped me out on his side. Then he reached behind the seat and pulled out the smallest suitcase. "This has got your stuff in it. You wanna go in the bathroom and fix yourself up?"
Would I know how? I wasn't sure, but maybe I could find something to take off my eye makeup and a comb for my hair. I nodded. He retrieved my purse too and handed that to me while he carried the suitcase. And he held the door for me. I realized I had been expecting him to.
The place was packed with men in work clothes. Booths along two walls, tables in a small open space, and a counter with stools. Three waitresses in white starched dresses. Alvin spoke to one of them, then led me through the crowd.
All of the people eating or waiting were men, and they were staring at me. My ass got patted and pinched as we made our way to the bathroom. I was excited by the attention I was getting. Bonnie Mae liked it, but I tried to be annoyed by the touching, at least. I knew that wasn't working by my giggles, and the little extra ass-twitch I worked into my walk.
*
There was only the one bathroom. Alvin helped me inside and propped the suitcase on the toilet seat before leaving. "I'll order us breakfast at the counter. Pancakes, scrambled and bacon, right?"
That was exactly what I wanted! I wiggled all over, he kissed me, and I giggled, then he left. He'd opened the case for me, too.
There was only one small mirror over the sink. I found the cold cream and removed the rest of my makeup with tissues. I decided not to risk trusting my ability to summon Bonnie Mae's memories of how to reapply and just got out a comb and brush and tried to repair my hair.
I had such a lot of it, wavy light brown locks, almost blond, down past the middle of my back. The tangles were fierce, but Bonnie's hands knew what to do, teasing them out with the comb, then building volume and curl back with the brush.
I put things away, the stockings and garter belt from my purse back in the suitcase along with the cold cream, tightly closed. I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. The light here was much better than at the hotel in the middle of the night.
Daylight came in from a small, high, frosted window as well as a light bulb over the mirror. I looked at Bonnie Mae and told myself, this is you now. Because if it isn't, then you're dead of drugs and drink in a cheap hotel in Oakland. I shrugged off a question of where the hell was Oakland and considered my reflection.
Bonnie's best features may have been her mouth, hair, and eyes. Her lips were full and bow-shaped, her teeth regular and white. Her hair, after being combed and brushed, looked deep golden blond in the sunlight from the tiny window. Her eyes were clear—gray with enough gold and green flecks that they could be called hazel just as well. Her lashes were long and bright gold. Her brows were shaped but needing some pencil to darken them.
How did I know that? Sighing, I got a pencil out of a pocket in the purse and expertly colored in my too-light brows. Maybe I could handle putting on some makeup, after breakfast.
While putting the pencil away, a lipstick tube fell into my hand. I applied it quickly, blotted with a tissue, and reapplied. Realizing I'd just have to put it on again after breakfast, I shrugged and put the lipstick away. I do know how to do this, I marveled.
But I wouldn't be able to do anything about my pugged little button nose, my high forehead, chubby cheeks, or round little chin. In the face, I was pretty and cute, but not beautiful. Part of that was my too-dumb-to-live expression. I looked like a walking dumb-blonde joke, and I wasn't even really blond.
I gave up on trying to look smarter. In the body—I was something else. I looked down at myself, running my hands down my sides to straighten my dress. Generous breasts, wide soft hips, and a domed belly but a narrow waist when considered with my lush curves. Long legs, tiny hands, and feet. I looked like a pin-up girl.
I wondered how tall I was. Alvin must be nearly a giant since he towered over me, but pushing through the crowd, I noticed that with my two-inch heels, I was almost as tall as some of the men. Maybe taller than a few.
I tried to pick up the suitcase, the damn thing was heavy, and I only managed to move it to the floor, which was needed. I did some business sitting on the stool and finished drying things off down there, readjusting my dress when Alvin popped the door open.
"Food's ready, sugarbun," he said. He grabbed the case, and I took his other arm for him to lead me out to breakfast. Giggling, I turned my face up so he could kiss me. Bonnie, you are such a slut, I told myself, but that just made me giggle again.
*
We ate at the counter, and breakfast was yummy. Yummy? Yummy. I'm a girl, and I can say yummy. Alvin scolded me for holding my fork like a little kid but I adjusted my grip like he wanted and he was happy. "I keep having to show you this," he sighed. But he touched me on the nose and smiled.
I ate everything on the plate and drank a cup of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Alvin had ham and eggs over-easy with grits and biscuits and gravy. He ate 'most all of it, then ordered a small glass of orange juice which he let me sip. I didn't like it, it tasted like sour metal, but he drank all of it. I knew I had had better orange juice, but I couldn't remember where.
He left money by the plate, a bill and some change. I wondered how much it came to, but it occurred to me that it wasn't important. We had money and Alvin was in charge of it, so no need for me to worry. I never had to worry about money ever again—it wasn't my job now. I giggled, thinking of it that way made me feel giddy.
The sun was above the rooftops when we stepped outside, and the morning promised a hot, steamy day ahead. Alvin got us back into the car with the suitcase stowed away behind the seat, me curled up beside him, and the road open in front.
I felt safe and content, despite the lack of seatbelts and air conditioning. I snuggled up against Alvin, wondering vaguely how long it would take to get to Kaycee, and if anyone there would like to hear me sing. But I soon fell asleep to the rumbling music of stiff tires on rough pavement.
*
Girl Singer
4. You're Making Me Crazy
Lulu Martine
I dreamed.
In my dreams, I checked into a dingy motel in Oakland with my prescription for fentanyl and half a fifth of cheap house-brand whiskey. I swallowed pills and liquor until I passed out and died.
But I didn't stay dead.
I found myself wandering around the halls of the motel, climbing Escher-style stairs sometimes, and falling from balconies others. Finally, I stumbled into a cheap hotel room where a plump little prostitute was being choked into unconsciousness by her john.
I didn't feel anything while I watched. I might just as well have been a film editor, looking for the signals in the corners of the frame for where to cut the scenes apart.
The girl passed out, motionless. Then the guy got on top of her, riding her until something in his face changed, and he toppled sideways, soiling himself at the same time as a greenish fluid ran from his mouth and his nose.
After a bit, the girl roused, pushing him off of her. Then she lay there panting, getting her breath back, staring into the darkness…
…gray, gold, and green eyes looking directly into my watery blue ones….
I felt a sucking sensation, like my whole being was caught in the updraft of a tornado. Then I was looking out of the gray eyes at darkness.
*
I woke up when the engine noise changed. We were stopping for gas. I yawned and stretched while Alvin got out to pay for the fuel. The kid wiping the windows with a red rag peered in at me, and I looked to see if all my buttons were done up. They were so I undid a couple of them, just to watch his eyes pop out.
He left pronto when Alvin came back and slid beneath the wheel. "You need to do anything?" he asked.
I shook my head.
He noticed my open top and the blushing kid and grinned. "Amusing yourself?" he asked.
I nodded, giggling.
We sat there while the other station guy pumped gas, however much Alvin had paid for.
"Open two more buttons," he told me.
Squirming, I did so.
The kid had seen. He turned to make his escape, tripped on a bucket of suds, and almost ran headlong into the station building. The older pump jockey came with some change, but Alvin refused it. "Buy yourself a Hershey bar and one for the kid," he said.
"Thank you, sir," the man said, but he was looking at my chest. I took a deep breath and arched my back. He backed away, bouncing off a pillar as Alvin started up the engine and got us back on the highway.
"How far down do those buttons go?" Alvin asked.
I pointed at my middle, where the line of buttons stopped. I should probably wear a belt with this dress, I thought. It would look nice and more complete.
"Undo all your buttons," Alvin ordered.
I caught my breath and began unbuttoning myself. Alvin was only watching in brief glances. I stopped when I ran out of buttons, the wind from the open window on Alvin's side making the loose top of my dress flap open and closed.
"Pull your dress off your shoulders and take off your bra," he said.
I gasped. My nipples, already semi-erect, got hard and stayed hard as I did what he said, the top of my dress pooled around my waist. I was naked from the waist up now, and oncoming traffic had a good view. There were scary sounds as some drivers swerved or stood on their brakes.
Alvin was grinning. "Pull your dress up before there's an accident. Button yourself back up but leave the top three undone."
My breath came in pants as I did what he told me to do. I was sitting on my legs, and I felt something hot and wet against my calves.
"Are you wearing knickers?" he asked.
I frowned. "Kni-ni-ni?" Did I not know what knickers were? That seemed unlikely. I mean Bonnie--did Bonnie not know what the word meant?
"Panties," said Alvin. "You're wearing panties, right?"
I squirmed, nodding.
"Turn around and sit with your feet on the floorboards," he told me.
I did, pretty sure I knew what was next. I heard myself moan. I mean, Bonnie moaned. Maybe we both moaned, even though there's only one of us.
He still wasn't looking at me steady, but for a bit, his glances got more frequent. I moaned again, squirming, rubbing my thighs together.
"Pull your dress up, reach under and pull your knickers, your panties, down to your knees," he said, staring straight ahead.
I made some kind of noise.
"Now pull your dress down, but keep one hand under it and stroke your honeypie."
"Awa-awa-awa!" I gabbled.
"Sh, sh," he commanded. "Hush, no trying to talk. You can't talk, you're a dummy, remember?"
I gasped and moaned, wordlessly. I squirmed and flinched, stroking myself.
After a pause, Alvin said. "Put your other hand inside the top of your dress, find a nipple and pinch and pull on it."
I did that, nearly losing my mind in sensation.
Alvin was talking, but I almost couldn't hear him over the sound of blood rushing through my ears. "Put two fingers in your puss, move them in and out, fast."
Could I do that? Yes, yes, I could.
Then, "Pull and twist on your nipple, almost till it hurts."
This was torture but pleasure, too. So much.
"You wanna cum," said Alvin. "But you can't. Not until I tell you to."
Oh. Oh. The bastard. I moved my fingers and pulled my nipple. I felt hot wet pussy juice on my hand, under me, soaking into the back of my dress. Muscles I couldn't control, that I hadn't known that I had, twitched and jerked.
"Don't move," Alvin commanded. "Stay still. You can't move at all until you cum, but you can't cum until I say."
I froze, muscles stiffening, hardening like wood. I couldn't breathe, couldn't gasp for air. If I couldn't cum, I would pass out—or die. The pleasure went beyond joy to terror, approaching ecstasy.
The road noise crescendoed, or maybe that was just the blood in my brain. I could no longer see, and I wondered if my eyes were closed or if I had gone blind.
"Cum," said Alvin, and the world ended in a scream.
*
When I came back to awareness, I was lying, nearly full-length along the bench seat, both doors of the car open. Alvin stood a little way away, looking down the blacktop as if waiting for someone else to arrive. We were parked on the side of the road, near the crest of a hill.
Had I only imagined a scene that had all taken place while we drove down the highway? Had I finger-fucked myself silly because Alvin told me to? Yeah, I think I had. I certainly felt damp and sticky in the right places. I sniffed of my fingers. Uh-huh. Clam juice.
I squirmed, wondering if maybe Alvin would order me to lick my fingers clean. I didn't want to do that, but I did want him to tell me to do it. My head is so weird.
I shook off a feeling of lethargy, sitting up and looking toward Alvin. He was smoking a cigarette, which I didn't remember seeing him do. Nor did I remember smelling smoke on him. I made a face, and he laughed.
"I know you don't like me to smoke," he said. He shook his head. "You something else, Bonnie Mae Carroll, you really are." He sighed. "C' mere."
I scooted across the bench, under the steering wheel, and stood up beside the car, realizing as I did so that my panties were still down around my knees and that I wasn't wearing a bra. My nipples got hard thinking about it, including the poor boob I had pinched and pulled on. Remembering how that had hurt only seemed to excite me.
I stretched my arms out toward Alvin, knowing that if I took a step, my panties would fall down and trip me. I made a noise, half-grunt, half-sigh.
"Oh, lord," said Alvin. "You ready to go again, ain'tcha?"
I smiled, nodding. I tried to shuffle forward, keeping my panties from falling by clenching my knees together, which made it impossible to walk. My arms still stretched out, I worked my fingers in grasping motions.
I'd been sweating, the back of my dress was damp and stuck to my thighs. Standing there in a soiled dress with my own cum on my legs made me feel deliciously slutty, kind of like a smushed cream pie.
Alvin chuckled. "I can't get over how you'll do anything I tell you to, if you can. And you like it. You have to like it, don't you? Just let them panties fall and kick them off." He took a drag on his cigarette. "Panties ain't no use to you anyways."
He watched as I stood first on one leg then the other, kicking my panties away from me. He put out an arm, and I walked over to snuggle in under it. I could feel my braless breasts jiggle and sway. I liked that feeling. I even liked the drawing sensation of my skin being pulled by the weight on my chest.
"You got to wear a bra most times," he said, grabbing a handful of softness and squeezing. "Otherwise, your titties will be down to your knees, someday. But there ain't no reason for you to wear knickers unless you're having your monthlies. Hmm?"
I giggled when he said knickers. Knickers was a funny word.
He flicked his cigarette away onto the highway in front of a big truck. "So don't wear them anymore. That'll make both of us happy." He bent to kiss me, but I caught a whiff of cigarette breath and turned my face away.
He laughed. "You don't want to kiss me because I've been smoking?"
I nodded. Well, I didn't want to kiss him at all, any time. No sir, I'm a guy in here. Bonnie had other opinions, but she and I happened to agree at the moment. Cigarette breath is nasty.
He laughed again. "You sweet dumb little cunt," he said. "You'd kiss me if I told you to. You'd let me put my tongue down your throat, or anything else in there, if I told you to."
My breathing got a bit ragged. I knew he was right. It was exciting to know that—that if he told me to, I'd kiss him right on his nasty mouth. I'd suck on his tongue if he said to. I'd kiss him and be glad because it was disgusting and he could make me do it.
"That witch woman put some hex on you, didn't she?" he said. "You have to do whatever I tell you to do, and you have to like it. It makes you hot." He took his pack of smokes out of his shirt pocket and looked at it. "I could make you smoke one of these, and then you wouldn't be able to taste it when I kissed you."
I stared at the cigarettes. The damndest thing was that I sure did not want to smoke a cigarette, being from when and where I was from, I knew way too much about smoking. But still, now he had put the idea in my head, I wanted him to make me smoke one because it would make me hot. Horny. Well, hornier.
He took the pack and threw it into the highway in front of another big truck. I stared then looked up at him. "You see?" he said. "You can make me do things, too."
*
We were soon back in the car and on our way again. I cuddled next to Alvin, feeling a bit grimy and soiled. I wondered if I smelled bad. I suspected that I did. I sniffed of my fingers again. Yup.
Some part of me hoped that I had not ruined my dress. I was a woman now, and in this time and place, I would have to wear dresses. They might as well be ones as nice and pretty as this figured silk.
Then again, leaning against my man while I wore a dirty dress made me feel slutty and cheap. And I liked that. I sighed, contented.
"How about a song for us?" Alvin suggested.
I sat up, putting my feet together on the floor. You can't sing right lying down.
Not wearing panties or a bra and having my top dress buttons undone made me feel almost naked. And wearing my soiled dress added to that. I felt nasty. What kind of nasty song could I sing?
I thought of one. Not the version from Roger Rabbit or even Peggy Lee's version. Instead, I imagined Queen Latifah singing, "Why Don't You Do Right?" Then I gave it to him. It was a song from this era. He might have heard it before. But not with me rubbing a silken tit against his arm.
"Holy shit," he said when I finished.
I wanted to giggle, but I suppressed it. Thinking of Queen Latifah, I moved on to her song from the musical Chicago, "When You're Good to Mama." Only I did it Ethel Merman-style, with volume and vibrato. The tit worked well with that one, too.
"Oh, baby," he said.
I moved right along to, "I Wanna Be Loved by You," complete with Boop-Boop-ee-Doops, only in a little girl voice that would have gotten Marilyn arrested. I'd heard a version like that somewhere, and again, I pressed myself against him, soft and sexy.
"Christ, babycakes," he said. "I'm gonna have to pull over and jack-off again, you keep singing like that."
I looked at him with my head tilted sideways, then gestured with my open hands, like, here I am. Bonnie Mae wanted him, and I was Bonnie Mae. Right at that moment, I wanted him, too. I blame the songs.
"We ain't got no rubbers, sweetheart. It wouldn't be smart."
I sat back on my heels suddenly, staring at him. Was he afraid he'd catch something from me? When he sometimes called me a stupid cunt and a whore, he wasn't using endearments. Damnit. I was beginning to like him.
Wait. I still liked him, and I liked that he called me a cunt and a whore. I loved being a cheap slut. What I didn't like was that he wasn't going to fuck me.
I moved away, scooting back on the bench seat, then turning around with my feet on the floorboards again. I hugged myself and pouted at him. I'm a guy in here, I told myself. I didn't really want to fuck him anyway.
"I'm thinking," said Alvin. "I ain't never liked you selling it. I mean, you're sort of a natural cause you enjoy. But, it ain't right, nohow."
I nodded. Maybe he had got the idea I had been trying to push? He had, and he came right out with it.
"But you're good at singin', too. What we need, what we need, is a way you can get paid for singin'?"
I clapped my hands together and beamed at him. I forgave him for not wanting to stick his dick in my nasty cunt.
"I ain't never heard anyone can sing as good as you, honeypie. And you sing songs I ain't never heard before."
I nodded. I cupped a hand behind my ear then tapped my forehead.
His head was going back and forth, trying to watch me and the road at the same time. "If you hear it, you remember it?" he said.
I nodded, and Bonnie Mae added a kissy face at him. I squirmed a bit.
He laughed. "Since when have you been playing charades?" he asked.
I shrugged. That was sort of encouraging. I felt pretty dumb, but maybe I was smarter than the original Bonnie Mae Carroll?
"We need to hook up with someone like that Benny Goodman fellow. I can be your manager, get work for you, take care of you." He smiled. "We'll see doctors for both of us. They've got shots now can take care of most things."
Antibiotics? They had antibiotics in the war, and maybe before it? That would be good. I nodded and scooted across the seat a little closer to him.
"If you ain't having to sleep with strange men no more…then we could sleep together. Maybe, maybe get married? Would you like that?"
I stared at him. Married? Married? The part of me that came from Bonnie Mae was almost over the moon with the idea. The rest of me wasn't so sure.
Married? To a guy? Well, I didn't feel like throwing up, so maybe it wasn't totally disgusting. And this hex I'm under where I have to do whatever he tells me. That was sort of fun when he made me sex myself right in front of him. I felt my nipples crinkle up.
So, I don't have a choice, do I? I nodded slowly, smiling but maybe not like I was sure about it. I scooted a little closer.
"C' mere," he said. He held his arm out, and I snuggled in under it. "You belong to me," he said. "It was a deal I made with that old lady witch. Granny Carroll, she was your grandma, you know? 'Member her?"
I shook my head. Maybe I would remember more of what Bonnie Mae had known. It could happen. I remembered Alvin's last name was Porter, but I hadn't remembered my own name until he told me. I'm a mess.
He sighed. "The deal was that you had to do whatever I told you, but I had to take care of you? I don't think I been doing that good a job. But you, you been doing a terrific job." He squeezed me close.
I took his hand and put it on my breast. He laughed and gave it a gentle squeeze. "So we find you work as a girl singer with one of these bands, it should be a good living, at least, huh? And we got money to last a while so we can look for a good position for you."
He squeezed again, and I squirmed and giggled. "I'm going to take care of Mama," he said, "and you're gonna take care of me, huh?"
I nodded against his chest. I'm a mess, and I need someone to take care of me. And somebody I can take care of too.
Girl Singer
5. Bonnie Mae Goode
Lulu Martine
On the way to Kansas City, between songs, I tried to do some thinking, knowing how poorly equipped for that I was. I wanted to know more about the girl I had become. Wouldn’t her memories be somewhere in the brain I was now using?
Even though it seemed that brain might have been damaged somewhere, it was the only one I had. I tried to remember, had Bonnie always been like this?
But that wasn’t working, it just made me sleepy to try.
“What’re you pouting about, honeypie?” Alvin asked.
I looked at him. How to communicate the problem without being able to talk? And he didn’t even know that the person inside his—wait a minute? Am I Alvin’s girlfriend—or—or what? I belong to him and I have to do what he tells me to do. That sounds like I’m a slave.
Which made me squirm. Damnit, no one is supposed to like and get turned on by the idea of being a slave. But I was.
Alvin laughed. “Horny, huh? I swear, Bonnie, no one could possibly keep up with you. And we ain’t gonna stop somewhere to buy rubbers and find a bed, so you can wear me out and make me not fit to drive.”
I looked at him all big-eyed. It sounded like a wonderful plan.
“Bonnie, no,” he said. “It’s hours still before we get to Kaycee. You should just take a nap. We’ll stop for lunch in a couple hours, I’ll wake you then.”
Even though nothing he said was an order, I knew what he wanted me to do. Which apparently counts. I yawned.
“Go to sleep, honeypie,” he said. Now that was an order, and I felt myself drifting off already. “Have nice dreams,” he added.
Oh, good, that was an order, too. I snuggled up beside him, laying my head on his thigh. I was already asleep and hardly knew it.
*
I dreamed of being a little girl, growing up in a forest with my grandad and my granny to keep me safe and hold me when I got scared.
I didn’t talk at all but no one scolded me for that. I understood when people spoke to me and I could make noises that sometimes were understood, even if they weren’t exactly words.
One grunt for ‘yes’, two for ‘no’, and a bunch for ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t care’ or ‘I’m confused’. A whistling noise for ‘I’m thirsty’ and a smacking noise for ‘I’m hungry’. One word I could say, “poopy,” which had an obvious meaning but was also what I used to mean I was upset or annoyed or scared.
I didn’t like wearing clothes and in nice weather, I would take them off and run around like the bunny rabbits and puppy dogs. “Poopy, poopy, poopy,” I said when my Grandad would catch me and put my dress back on. They’d long ago given up on trying to keep panties on me.
“Why does she do that?” Grandad would ask Granny.
“I reckon she just likes being naked,” Granny would say.
“Well, she can’t keep doing that. Pretty soon, she’s going to have to start school.”
Granny scoffed. “You think there’s any point in sending her to school? She can’t talk. We been trying to teach her her ABC’s with letter blocks but she still don’t know more than about six of ‘em.”
“Buh, buh, buh,” I said.
“Yes, honey,” said Granny. “Bonnie starts with a B.”
I had no idea what school was or what “starting with a B” meant, but “Buh” became another word I used, if you can call it a word. Buh for Bonnie. Buh for one of the letter blocks I recognized, the one with the capital B on it. I couldn’t tell the little ‘b’ from a ‘d’ or a ‘g’ or a ‘p’ or a ‘q’ or a capital ‘P’ or “6” or “9” for that matter, and none of them were Buh because I got told so often that I was wrong.
Buh also meant, “Look at me!” If I did something I thought was notable, like drinking from a cup without spilling it, or escaping from Grandad when he wanted to put clothes on me.
“I swear,” Granny would say, “can’t no one keep that girl in a dress if the sun is shining and it’s warm.” This while she watched Grandad pursue me around the garden patch. He’d make a nab for me and I would shout, “Buh!” if I got away, and “Poopy!” if I got caught.
Either way, I laughed because it was funny.
My cousins thought it was hilarious. But these are supposed to be nice dreams so we’ll leave Ryan and George and Davis out of them.
*
Alvin woke me in early afternoon for a bit of a late lunch. He’d parked outside a diner right along the highway in some middle size town. “I’m gonna go inside and bring us out something to eat, I didn’t think you’d want to go in somewhere until we get a chance to take baths, huh? But I didn’t want you to be sleeping out here by yourself.”
I yawned, nodding that I understood. I made the smacking noise and rubbed my tummy while trying to look famished.
He laughed. “Burger and a coke?” he offered.
I nodded and grunted once. “Now, don’t be scared,” he told me. “I’ll be right back.”
I nodded happily because I knew I wouldn’t be scared to be alone. “Buh,” I said, and he laughed again and hurried off after a kiss
I’m going to have to train him to understand me, I thought. I wondered why Bonnie had quit using her signals and tried to actually talk with such a horrible stutter? Probably some misguided do-gooder trying to educate her.
One thing the dream taught me, Bonnie could function quite well with a little help from people who cared. But anything like learning to read was going to be a major undertaking. I might have an advantage over the original Bonnie since I had actually learned to read once before. In a different body, with a different brain, but still, there might be some carry-through.
“Buh,” I said and pointed at my chest. Much easier and less strain than trying to say Bonnie with a brain broken in the syllable assembly module.
I wasn’t feeling the panic I’d felt when left alone before. I realized it was because Alvin had told me not to be scared. He didn’t want me to be scared because he loved me, I decided. Well, maybe. Better not to think too hard about that.
I looked around. This was a nice little town with wide streets, big green trees and grassy spaces. There were signs all over, too, and I had great fun looking at them and picking out the letters I recognized. Especially the B’s. If the signs were very far away, the Bs had to be pretty big. Maybe I needed glasses.
I’d finally worked out the difference between something that pointed up and something that pointed down, apparently, but telling a ‘b’ from a ‘d’ seemed to still be somewhat beyond my ability. There was a word for this kind of handicap but save me if I could think of what it might be. It didn’t matter anyway.
After a runaway case of the giggles when I spotted a sign that had more Bs on it than I could count, I lost interest in the game. I kept looking at the door where Alvin had disappeared and even practiced a little puppy dog whining just for fun.
About then I realized I had an audience.
*
It being a hot humid day in the middle of Missouri, Alvin had parked the car in the shade under a big old oak tree with the windows all rolled down. So I was sitting in the middle of the bench seat, bopping and being silly, (I’d actually segued into singing “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,”) when three guys showed up, two on my side and a third on Alvin’s side of the car.
“Forget about the doggy,” said one of them. “How much is the pussy in this window?” His buddy laughed like a jackass. I mean, really, “Hee, Haw, Hee, Haw.” It was disturbing.
The other idiot leaned in. “Hey, girlie, you waitin’ on your man?” He did a theatrical gesture. “Well, here I am!” Silent cartoons have better dialog than these guys had.
Scared, I cut off the tail of the doggy song, and that’s not easy because songs are like all one chunk for me. I almost let out a scream, but instead, what came out was — Sink the Bismark.
“In May of 1941,” I sang, “the war had just begun….” Maybe it had, I didn’t know the real date when and where I was, but I started with all the volume I had. The guys were so startled, they just stood there, their eyes getting bigger and their mouths hanging open. Just the reaction I was hoping for.
I did the whole song—God bless Johnny Horton—complete with, “Poom! Poom! Poom!” artillery sounds when I would shake my shoulders so my boobies would bounce. Then I got to the last chorus and waved at the boys that they should sing along. They did, getting into it, though they hardly took their eyes off my chest. For them, the poom-pooms were the best parts.
Past the two guys on my side of the car, in the middle of the chorus, I could see Alvin coming out of the diner carrying two sacks. He looked confused but he hurried toward me.
I added another chorus to give him time to get there, holding my hands out and pushing down on the volume so we ended with a fadeout. My audience had grown, there were several more young men listening now, and a few women, so Alvin had to push his way through.
“Hey! That’s my car! Hey! That’s my girl!” he said several times. I pointed at myself, then at him, nodding and clapping to show we were together. The crowd took it up, clapping and hoo-hah-ing like it was a real show.
Alvin reached through the window to put his two bags on the seat, then struggled against the crowd to get his door open. I was bouncing up and down in excitement, completely forgetting the show I was putting on. Every time I got to the top of a bounce, my braless breasts would almost come out of my partly unbuttoned dress.
I could smell the food and let out a squeal. The bigger, brown paper bag had grease stains on it and the aroma of hamburgers and French fries filled the car. The other bag clinked when Alvin moved it aside to sit behind the driver’s wheel; it had the cokes in it.
The crowd kept talking after the applause died down. “Who’s he?” someone asked but the most common thing I heard was someone asking, “Is she gonna sing again?”
Alvin asked me, “What the hell, Bonnie?” but all I could do to answer was shrug. Which got him to say, “Do up a button or two, Jesus, you’re falling out.” But Jesus didn’t button my dress so I had to do it. Just one button, though, the crowd loved to get a glimpse of my titties and I loved the crowd.
I so wanted a hamburger out of that sack! But somewhere in little Bonnie’s past, she’d been taught not to just grab food but wait for someone to give it to her, so I sat there giggling and laughing and probably drooling. Bonnie is such a little kid sometimes and that’s part of why it is so much fun to be her.
*
After listening to the crowd for a moment or two, Alvin stuck his head out of the driver’s side window and tried to get people’s attention. “Hey, listen everyone,” he called out. “Bonnie’s going to take a break to eat lunch, then she’ll sing another song. Or two?”
“More,” someone shouted.
“Okay, maybe more,” Alvin agreed. “But let her have time to eat, she’s hungry.”
That got laughter and applause and a few people came up with questions but Alvin jollied them into going away so we could eat.
I still had the giggles, so excited that I almost dropped it when he handed me a hamburger. I made my smacking noise several times while I unwrapped my burger. It was hot and mouth-watering with pickle and ketchup only, just the way I like them.
Wait. That’s the way Bonnie likes her burgers. I think in my other life I wanted lettuce, tomato, cheese and grilled onion. No sauce. That’s how I always got them at—the place with the palm trees on their cups?
I couldn’t remember their name. I could see their sign in my mind’s eye but I couldn’t read it because—I’m Bonnie now and Bonnie can’t read. I sang their jingle instead. “In-N-Out. In-N-Out. That’s what a hamburger’s all about.” I took a bite and it was so good, I moaned.
Alvin laughed. “Hamburgers make you horny now?”
I shook my head, giggling.
He passed me some fries on a piece of waxed paper. “So you were singing for the crowd?” I nodded. “Hmm?” He looked thoughtful. “You had about thirty people listening. I think the population of this burg is only maybe five or six hundred.”
I shrugged. Numbers don’t mean much to me anymore. I know six hundred is more than thirty but I’ve got no feel for how much bigger. I must have given him one of my blank looks because he chuckled and assured me, “That’s pretty good. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to charge them to listen.”
I had no clue. I pursed my lips and blew out like I was trying to whistle while looking at the bag of cokes. Alvin got the hint and pulled out a bottle, opening it with the bottle opener hanging by a string from the dashboard. It was all bright orange and bubbly, my favorite kind of coke.
Alvin had two little curvy bottles of coke and two cheeseburgers and most of the fries but I had plenty for me. I still had some of my drink left when Alvin finished his and asked. “Are you ready to sing?”
I glanced down at my chest then at him. He laughed. “I think three buttons undone is plenty. Do you know what you’re going to sing?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t even been thinking about it. My eyes probably got real big. Planning things had never been something Bonnie did or had to do and it just didn’t occur to me.
Alvin sighed, climbed out of the car, retrieved his hat from the shelf under the rear window, and made a noise to get everyone’s attention. “Hi folks! Hi! Ever’one who wants to hear, gather up closer, we ain’t got a platform ‘r a microphone,”
People did get closer, some of them close enough to the car to look in and see me. I waved at them.
“Bonnie will be out to sing in a bit, but we can’t stay long so maybe only two or three songs. We got to get to Kansas City, we’re going to try out for the show at the Schubert. Hanh? What do they call it now?”
“The Folly,” someone called out.
“Yeah, well,” said Alvin. “It is pretty foolish but I think my girl can sing better’n almost anyone.” That got some applause from people who had already heard me sing, including the three jerky boys. Alvin nodded. “Yeah, I surely do.”
He went on, pulling his hat off and setting it on the fender of the car, open side up. “So, we been traveling and that costs money and it might be awhile afore Bonnie gets a job, and funny enough, I eat more than she does.” He got a laugh.
“What I’m saying is that if you want to put any money in the hat, it will be appreciated.” That just got a lot of stares. “Okay, I’ll stop talking. Here’s Bonnie and she’s going to do some singing. She’s real good at it.”
“No music?” someone asked. No one answered.
Alvin reached into the car and pulled me out on his side. I handed him my coke, then he picked me up, and set me on top of the hood. I hadn’t expected that so I squealed and got the giggles. “More people will be able to hear you,” he said.
I nodded, looking around. You could see a lot further from on top of the car and I liked that.
“What are you gonna sing for us, honey?” asked a woman standing right in front of the headlights.
A man behind her commented, “You can almost see through that dress.”
I looked at Alvin. He shrugged. “Sing, Bonnie,” he said.
I turned back to the crowd and stamped my foot to get their attention. Then I sang:
Down in Alabama near the Georgia side
I started right out, as loud as I could and a few people were startled.
Way back in the woods where the possums hide
Why did I sing that? Possums are cute but ugly. It made me grin.
Stands a little shanty made of earth and wood
Where lives a country gal called Bonnie Mae Goode
I pointed at myself with both hands and all my fingers.
She’s never gonna learn to read or write so well
I shrugged and kept grinning.
But she can sing a song just like ringing a bell
I made a hand motion like ringing a bell then I danced through the chorus, one foot mostly in one place while I stomped and shook and shimmied around it.
Go, go, go Bonnie,
Go, go, go Bonnie,
Go, go, go Bonnie,
Bonnie Mae Goode
I got down, leaning over for the beginning of the second verse, like I was gonna tell them a secret.
She allus brings her lunch in a paper sack
I pointed at the sack Alvin had in one hand
Then she’ll dance ‘neath the tree by the railroad track
The tree was right there and the track just down the street
Yeah, you oughta see her dancin’ in the shade
Boppin’ to the rhythm that the trains have made
I made chugging motions with my arms.
People pass by, and if they stop by chance
I waved at the crowd
They’ll say, sure, that little country gal can dance
I did a spin, holding my dress out to swirl and almost falling off the car. Then I gave them two choruses, encouraging them to sing along. They sang a third chorus, just the crowd, while I danced on the hood. They loved me and I loved them right back.
While still dancing, I saw Alvin, and he was standing there with his mouth hanging open. I laughed so hard, pointing at him, that I did fall off the Dodge and he had to catch me.
Girl Singer
6. An Endless Skyway
Lulu Martine
Singin’ don’t hardly take nothin’ outen me but dancin’ is somepin’ differ’nt. My hair ’n’ dress were all limp and soaked, I guess, from me sweatin’ in the heat.
When I fell offen the hood of the Dodge, Alvin cotched me, ’n’ I th’owed my arms ‘roun’ his neck ’n’ give him a big ol’ kiss ’n’ a wiggle. He ‘most nearly dropped me.
“Buh!” I said, right in his ear, ’n’ I giggled too. What I meant was, “Didja see me? Did I do good?” He set me down on my feet ’n’ gived me my kiss back.
“Bonnie! Bonnie!” Alvin was sayin’, all laughin’. I was so excited, I was bouncin’ up ’n’ down while Alvin had his hands on my middle, keepin’ me f’um gettin’ knocked down by all the folk crowdin’ in on us.
Singing didn’t seem to take much effort or energy, but dancing was different. My hair and dress were all limp and soaked, from me sweating in the heat, even though I’d mostly been in the shade.
When I fell off the Dodge, Alvin caught me and I threw my arms around his neck. I gave him a big kiss and a wiggle, too, and he almost dropped me. Right at that moment, I felt a lot more like Bonnie and hardly at all like whoever I used to be.
“Buh!” I said into Alvin’s ear, by which Bonnie meant, “Did you see me? Did I do good?” Alvin laughed, set me down on my feet and gave me my kiss back.
“Bonnie! Bonnie!” Alvin was saying in the middle of laughing. I was so excited, I was bouncing up and down while Alvin kept his hands on my waist, keeping me from being knocked down by the people crowding around us.
“Bonnie! Bonnie! Bonnie Mae!” Some of them were screaming my name. I shook off a feeling of having been right where I was once before. I was just beginning to realize what kind of magic I had accomplished up there on the hood of that old Dodge.
Alvin sort of pushed our way through the crowd, got the driver’s side door open and I slid inside. The windows were all down and the people crowded around them, trying to talk to me, ask me questions. All I could do was laugh and squeal. It felt so good to know that they loved what I had done.
Good old Chuck Berry, I thought. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d just stolen his most famous song before he even wrote it! And the man was probably alive right now, a boy learning to play guitar, somewhere back among the evergreens.
I sat there with my mouth hanging open, still sweating from my efforts. Alvin gave me a few quick glances and looked concerned. “Poopy,” I said, Bonnie’s only curse word. I probably looked every inch the idiot I sometimes felt like.
Had I changed the future? Or would my performance just disappear in a chaotic time stream, allowing Mr. Berry to pursue his own destiny?
Alvin was trying to talk to a man in a business suit but the crowd was too noisy. They shouted at each other while I sat there numbly trying to assess what my knowledge of the future and Bonnie’s talent had done.
I couldn’t sing or dance like that, I felt pretty sure. Not in my previous life and not if I were in sole control of this body, either. And Bonnie couldn’t have performed a song she had never heard. Also, I knew, somehow, that Bonnie could only sing a song exactly the way she had heard it done.
She had an amazing gift, a true idiot-savant power. But she and I together were something else. I’d always loved music, and listened to all kinds, my whole life. But the best I’d ever done, back in my own future, was pick out a few melodies on a piano.
But I’d seen a lot of performers, live and on video. And Bonnie seemed to be able to channel that too, if it had music to it.
Alvin got in on the driver’s side and told me. “Scoot over here, sugarbun.”
I did but he fended me off when I tried to snuggle. “Buh?” I asked him, not sure myself what I meant by that. Then I squealed in surprise when the door behind me opened and the man in the suit climbed in.
“How do you do, Miss Goode?” he said politely. “I’m Herman van Kloot,” he smiled when he said it but he was right there, a big heavy man who made me think of the body I’d found in the bed with me that morning.
Had Alvin just sold me to this guy? Or rented me out? I tried to climb into Alvin’s lap but the steering wheel was in the way and Alvin fended me off.
“Calm down, Bonnie,” he said several times.
It helped, but my body was ready to have sex. Horrified, I realized that my nipples were already hard, and not all the damp I felt between my thighs was from sweat. I looked back at Herman and licked my lips. Bonnie was used to this and quite willing to fuck the guy!
On top of that, we had an audience. There were still people outside the car, laughing and talking and watching us. My brain, Bonnie’s brain, was overheating. She liked the idea of doing it with people watching.
“Buh!” I said to Herman. Meaning, “Am I pretty? Do you like what you see?” I reached up to start unbuttoning my dress. I closed my eyes, the only thing I seemed able to do on my own initiative.
Alvin grabbed my hands. “Stop, Bonnie. No. No. Behave. Herman’s just here to talk. He owns a theater, I think that’s what you said, Mr. Van Kloot?”
I opened my eyes. “Uh,“ said the man, staring at me. “Yes. The Concordian. It’s right on the other side of the square.”
I leaned back on Alvin. Bonnie was disappointed but I was relieved, or tried to convince myself I was. Apparently, I wasn’t going to have to fuck the guy. Or be allowed to either.
“Are you okay, Miss Goode?” Herman asked.
“Buh,” I said. I’m fine, thanks for asking.
Alvin sighed. “Bonnie doesn’t speak, Mr van Kloot. She can sing any song she’s ever heard. She even makes up new ones. But she can’t talk.”
“I—” Herman looked astonished. “Is that right?” he asked me.
I grinned at him, tapped my forehead with a finger and said, “Poopy.” Meaning shit-for-brains, that’s me.
“She’s also, pretty—uninhibited? I have to watch her.”
I craned my neck to look up and back at him and stuck out my tongue.
Alvin laughed. “So this theater?” he asked, looking at Herman.
They talked over my head and I listened. I felt more in control but I couldn’t focus completely and I missed some of what they said. When they talked numbers, I could feel my eyes turning glassy.
But the theater was too big for the town. It had been built as an opera house back when little Concordia was thought to be developing into a metropolis. Now, it had more than enough seats for half the town.
It stayed afloat on showing movies, occasional vaudeville nights and the fact that none of the small burgs around it had any theater at all. Mr. Van Kloot wanted me to do my act there, at least twice this weekend.
That woke me up. I sat up straight with a little bounce and threw my arms wide, singing in my best Ethel Merman, “There’s no business like show business, like no business I know! Everything—”
Alvin clamped his hand over my mouth. “Bonnie, we’re trying to talk here.”
“Mph, mff, mffl,” I kept singing against Alvin’s palm. Stopping a song once I’ve started it is difficult. I tried to pull his hand away but I didn’t have any force to do it with.
“What—what was that?” Herman asked.
“I told you she makes up songs sometimes. Like the one she sang about herself. Though her last name is Carroll, not Goode.”
I manage to stifle Ethel and Alvin let me go.
“Why did you sing Goode instead of Carroll?” Herman asked me.
I tapped my lips twice and put a hand behind one ear then the other.
“Very good, Bonnie,” said Alvin. “It rhymed,” he told Herman.
I giggled, nodding, and they both laughed.
“Well, it can be your stage name,” Herman suggested. “Because, pumpkin, you are good.” He gestured at the crowd outside who had now begun to gather around a hay wagon on top of which a group of musicians were setting up.
That looked exciting and I pointed toward them. “Oo-oo-oo!” I sang.
Alvin looked at me, “That’s…that’s what you want?”
I nodded. “Buh!” I said and I pushed on Alvin to get out of my way.
He shook his head. “Not just yet, Bonnie. Mr. Van Kloot and I aren’t done talking. Sit. We’ll be done in a bit.”
I sat but I pouted. The guys on the flatbed wagon had guitars and a fiddle and a big bass and a horn. It would be a lot of fun to sing and dance with them. And looking at the fiddle made my hands itch in an odd way.
“Those guys are pretty good,” Herman was saying. “They call themselves The Hayriders. They’re from Alabama, too.”
“Oh.” Alvin looked embarrassed and I giggled. “We’re not from Alabama, that’s just her song again. I’m from Tennessee and she’s from Georgia.”
Herman grinned at me, shaking his head. “But you don’t have music,” he said looking at Alvin.
“Hmm,” said Alvin, looking out as the band began tuning up to play after setting up an awning on the hay wagon. “Think you could work with these guys, Bonnie?” he asked me.
I nodded a lot.
“We promised the crowd another song or two. Let’s go see if they’re willing to let you sing with them,” said Alvin. Then he added, “And if they’re good enough to play for you.”
He scooted out and I followed him and Herman got out on the other side. Most of the crowd had wandered off, but a few stood close and I heard some of them talking.
“Good lord,” one large, fleshy woman said. “You can almost see through that dress.”
Her horse-faced friend commented. “She’s a shantoozy and no better than she ought to be, most like.” I took her to mean chanteuse but I recognized the backhanded countrified insult, too, with both halves of my mind. I started to make a gesture at them.
Alvin captured my hand and towed me along beside him so I had to settle for sticking my tongue out at the two ladies. It made me giggle, and Alvin, who had seen and heard what I had, ordered me to behave.
“Poopy,” I said which made him laugh, too.
The band had finished tuning up and getting set and looked ready to play when Herman attracted their attention. “You boys still for hire?” he asked.
“You betcha, Mr. Van Kloot,” said the tall guy with the neat mustache. “That’s why we’re setting up here to play after the little lady there drew a crowd for us.” He nodded at me. “We’re hoping somebody needs a band for a hoedown or a weddin’ or somethin’.”
“Or something,” Herman agreed. “This here is Al Porter,” he continued, motioning to Alvin, “he’s the manager of the girl singer who got such a crowd gathered without even having any music behind her. Come say, ‘Hi,’ Bonnie.”
I stepped up closer to the men, but not closer than Alvin. I suddenly felt oddly shy. “Buh,” I said and giggled.
“Heigh-do,” said the man, “I’m Bill to my friends. I play gee-tar and do some singing and yodeling. Pleased to meet you, Miss Goode.” He tipped his hat instead of offering to shake hands with me, but bent down to offer his hand to Alvin.
“Bonnie doesn’t say much,” Alvin explained. “She lets her singing do her talking for her.”
“Yup,” agreed Bill. “She can sing mighty fine.” He looked back at his band. “We’ve got a girl singer, too, but she ain’t here right now.”
They began to talk business, and damned if I didn’t tune it out almost completely. I tried to pay attention but Bonnie was more interested in getting up on the wagon and closer to that fiddle. I could almost feel the instrument singing in my hands, though in my previous life I knew I had never touched a violin.
At one point, Bill noticed me and called to the big guy with the bass fiddle, “Shook, why’nt you help Miss Bonnie aboard the wagon, she’s gonna sing a couple of tunes with us.”
That made me happy and I let out a squeal and clapped my hands, and all the men laughed. Then with Shook offering a hand from above and Alvin lifting me from below, I got up to the flat bed of the hay wagon. “Knock their socks off, Bonnie,” Alvin said to me as he pushed on my round butt. I giggled and nodded.
I headed straight for the fiddle player when I got on my feet. I held my hands out to him and said, “Buh!”
Oscar was the fiddle player’s name and he seemed reluctant to surrender his instrument. “Can you play the fiddle, Missy?” he asked.
“Buh!” I shouted at him. Everyone looked at Alvin.
He nodded, “I’ve yet to see an instrument she can’t play, but she’s best at fiddle and loves it most.”
Wow? I am? I do? I nodded at Alvin and then at Oscar and he handed the fiddle to me. “You be careful, miss,” he said. “It’s old and likes to be loved and talked sweet to.”
I nodded again. I plucked a few strings and looked the bow over then drew a few notes from the fiddle. Somehow I knew that it was tuned a whole note lower than most usual for a country fiddle, something someone might do to an old instrument to reduce what strain it was under.
I nodded at Oscar, put the fiddle under my chin and blasted out the first few notes of The Star Spangled Banner, then stopped and looked at the other musicians expectantly. They grabbed for their tools and off we went, Bill coming in with the vocals. He had a fine clear tenor and did a passable job of singing the patriotic tune.
I knew I could do better but you can’t sing while playing the fiddle. When we got to the end, I saw Alvin was holding something up toward me. A guitar like the one I had at home! Well, that Bonnie had at home. I handed the fiddle back to Oscar and took the three-quarter-size guitar Alvin must have borrowed from someone.
I checked the tuning, I have no idea how I knew how to do that, then off I went. Staying with the patriotic theme, I did Cohan’s “Grand Old Flag,” singing and playing, and the Hayriders stepped in at the end of the first line, they knew that one too. They were all grinning by now. We went through that twice, with me motioning the crowd to sing along.
“What else you got for us Bonnie?” Bill asked.
I pointed at him with the neck of the guitar. Then I played and sang,
“This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York Islands
From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.”
The tune for the verse is the same as for the chorus so they were right there with me when I sang,
“As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me the golden valley
This land was made for you and me.”
I gave them two more verses, then the chorus twice with the crowd singing along the second time. Then I motioned the Hayriders to be quiet while I played and sang the verses I hadn’t heard since Arlo sang them at a concert I went to in college—the one about hunger and the one about private property being a lie.
Then I pointed at Oscar to come back in with the fiddle, just him, and I sang:
“Nobody living better try to stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can make me turn back
Cause this land was made for you and me.”
Then I brought the band back and we sang the chorus three times with the crowd right along with us.
“Never heard those words to ’The World is Burning’ before,” commented one of the Hayriders when we ended it. I shrugged, it wasn’t quite the same tune, just the first two bars of each stanza. Woody Guthrie was alive somewhere and might be writing the song while I was performing it.
We all took a break then, I passed the borrowed guitar down to Alvin and after he handed it off to Herman, I leaped into his arms.
“Jesus, Bonnie, give me a heart attack,” he complained. I pretended to listen to his chest then shook my head and giggled. He set me down, then took the guitar back from Herman and handed it to me. “I bought this off that girl over there,” he pointed. “It’s yours now, Bonnie.”
I squealed, grabbed the guitar then ran to the lady he had pointed at and hugged her and the guitar at the same time. “He gimme fifty dollars for it, sugar,” she said. “I had to sell it.”
So I ran and hugged Alvin, too.
“You knocked their socks off, honeypie,” Alvin whispered to me. “We’re gonna do five shows at the theater this weekend.”
I bounced up and down a couple of times and kissed him. It did not seem at all odd to be doing that. I’m almost all Bonnie right after I sing, I thought.
“Hey,” Bill called from the wagon. “Can she get up here and do another number? The crowd don’t want to hear us, no more.”
So I climbed back up on the hay wagon and gave them, “Sink the Bismark” again, this time with a band backing me. The Hayriders were good, I only had to do the first verse and part of the chorus by myself.
Then I borrowed Oscar’s fiddle, pointed at Bill and began on “The Battle of New Orleans”. They knew different lyrics than I did but Bonnie knew where they were going and we got through five verses.
My dress and hair were sodden with sweat. Someone passed me up a bottle and I took a drink before I realized it was beer instead of coke. I made a face but drank it down, I needed some kind of fluid.
The Hayriders played something without me while I caught my breath. I’d given his fiddle back to Oscar but he kept looking from me to his instrument and back, even while he was playing. I am good with a fiddle, I thought proudly.
The Hayriders had reached the end of “Sweet Betsy from Pike” but the crowd wouldn’t let them begin a new tune. I could hear them shouting, “Bonnie Mae Goode” and Bill was looking at me with pleading in his eyes.
I nodded, picked up my guitar and walked back out in front of the band. A woman I didn’t know, dressed in cowgirl chic, had joined us on the wagon with a five-string banjo. She glared at me and I shrugged.
I wondered for a moment if there were any electric guitars yet, and if Bonnie would know what to do with one. I listened to the crowd screaming my name, before I finally motioned that they should be quiet. It took them awhile but they mostly did. Then I put another nail in Chuck Berry’s coffin.
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
by Lulu Martine
The week after I turned sixteen my life got turned upside down by the kind of mistake that would make a good comedy movie.
Several months before, I got hit by a car while biking across town to see a movie with my friends. I don’t actually remember anything about the accident or for a couple of days before or after. Someone ran a stop light and hit me inside the crosswalk. I'd gotten off the bike to walk it across, they told me later.
I woke up in the hospital with a concussion, a broken right arm, a cracked left femur, cuts and contusions all over and some heavy bruising around my hips. I went home in a wheelchair. It took a while for the leg to heal but I was back walking soon. Things seemed okay until I started having other problems.
The doctors decided that I had a hernia that needed surgical repair so I checked into the hospital in the middle of the summer before my junior year in high school for a minor operation.
My name was Martin Gordon Lewis and honest, no one had noticed the stupid name thing, it was just my name. Most everyone called me Marty, anyway. Marty Lewis. No one called me Lulu, yet.
I didn't know it but someone with almost the same name as me also checked into the hospital less than fifteen minutes after I did. Louis Martán Gordon danced in an all-boy drag revue under the name Lulu Martine but the hospital had insisted on using his real name. Except, they got it wrong and so before the day was over the hospital had two people registered as Martin Gordon Lewis in the same surgical wing, rooms 324 and 342, just around the corner of one of those twisty hospital corridors from each other.
Add to the fact that both of us stood about five-nine, weighed around 130 pounds, had light brown shaggy hair and eyes that were either gray or blue–I called mine gray but he called his blue -– Louis and Martin could almost be twins and could easily pass for brothers, or siblings anyway. Louis was seven years older but we were superficially nearly identical.
Except one of us had a routine hernia repair scheduled, said hernia caused by traumatic injury and covered under insurance, and the other person was scheduled for a complete sex change operation paid for by a wealthy admirer. Other than minor facts like that, you can understand the hospital's confusion.
One of us died on the operating table, victim of a previously undiagnosed cerebral aneurysm, and the other woke up in room 342, the survivor of a highly successful sex change. I know which one I am, but I'm still not always sure of which one I would prefer to be.
As mistakes go this one was, pardon the expression, a lulu. And so was I.
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 2
I only laugh when it hurts
by Lulu Martine
When I first woke up I flashed back on that previous hospital awakening after the accident back in the fall. I hurt all over, just like before, but the pain was distant and dull, just like before, because of medication. My chest hurt, my face hurt, even my feet hurt but mostly, my groin hurt.
It was a front-to-back, deep-set pain, like getting kicked there but it didn't get worse or better, it just stayed the same. The hernia, I thought, although that could get bad, then worse, then worst. Maybe this was how it hurt after they fixed it.
I could move but that hurt, too. I could move my hands and arms and those did not hurt. Wait a minute, I thought, isn't my arm supposed to be broken, too? My eyes opened.
"You're awake," someone said in a mellow but concerned voice. I moved my head to see a heavy-faced blonde woman I didn't know sitting right next to the bed in one of those padded sleeper chairs hospitals have for visitors who are going to stay in them all night.
I opened my mouth but she said, "Ah. Don't try to talk yet. They said you shouldn't try to talk for a few weeks."
Weeks? They? Who they? And why shouldn't I talk, I wondered. So I tried anyway. "Ah. Tah?" I whispered. That hurt, a lot, even my lips hurt, feeling stiff and bruised. I brought my hand up to my throat and felt a bandage there.
The woman beside my bed reached out a rather large hand and put it over my mouth, not pressing, just holding it there. "I'm serious, no talking for at least two weeks? Remember what the doctor said?"
I stared up at her, noting the heavy brows, the coarse skin, the voice that seemed lower than alto and the too blonde hair. I shook my head, just a bit, suddenly frightened of this strange person in my hospital room.
"You don't want to damage your new voice, honey," she said. "No talking, okay?"
This time I nodded and she took her hand away from my mouth.
"I'll call the nurse to see if you can sit up, I've got a detachable keyboard here and a laptop you can use to talk with but it's hard to do that lying down. Huh?" She smiled at me. "Your face is all bandaged but I can't wait to see how pretty you're going to be." She turned away to use the call signal.
I checked my face out with my fingers. I had bandages all over, my nose, my forehead, my chin, my mouth. In fact, I had only small openings at mouth, nose and eyes.
Once again, trauma or anesthesia had removed memories. I did remember talking about the surgery with my parents but I didn't remember checking into the hospital. Had something else happened? Had I been in another accident? How long ago were my most recent memories? I didn't know.
A nurse came in, a pretty woman wearing cross trainers and a shapeless green tunic and pants . "Sure, she can sit up. I'll crank the bed for her," she said when the big blonde asked.
Her?
The bed cranked up to a sitting angle revealed more pains, I gasped, or I would have if I could have but my voice reduced the noise to a whine.
"Is that better, Miss Lewis?" the nurse asked.
"Martine," said the blonde.
"Miss Martine," said the nurse. "Is that better?"
I stared at them. Miss? Martine? I started to open my mouth but they both put fingers to their lips, so I just shrugged. Maybe, I decided, I hadn't really woke up yet and this would all be very funny when I did.
And maybe it wouldn't.
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 3
Shaken, Not Stirred
by Lulu Martine
The big blonde put a small keyboard into my lap and angled the screen of a fancy laptop sitting on the bedside table to where we both could see it.
The nurse picked up a clipboard from some holder on the end of the bed and asked, "Which name does she prefer to go by now?"
I stared past the lumpiness of my chest under the hospital gown to the keyboard. "She? She who?" I typed.
"Lulu Martine," said the blonde and spelled it.
"Lulu, that's cute," said the nurse, writing something on the clipboard.
"My name is Marthy," I typed, saw the error and backspaced to retype.
The blonde smiled at me.
The nurse put the clipboard down and said, "We'll have a nice protein shake for you in an hour or two, Miss Martine. Then the doctors will remove some bandages later tonight and you can probably go home tomorrow. Remember to take small sips so you don’t get strangled.”
“say what?” I typed.
"Thank you, nurse”, said the blonde. "Isn't she a sweetie?"
"Yes, she is," agreed the nurse on the way out.
"she who?" I typed. "you mean the nurse?”
"I did," said the blonde. "But you're a sweetie, too."
"who are you?" I typed.
She laughed. "I'm Alice, of course. Are you being silly?"
I typed, "dunno whats going on?" Already typing was beginning to wear me out.
"Anesthesia," she said, nodding. "Always left me confused too. You'll be okay soon, honey. Oh, the girls are coming to say hello."
"the girls?" I typed. "who?"
"Dixie, Sugar, Tiffany, Bobbi-Sue, LeeAnne, whoever else they can find to come along, I guess. Everyone is so happy for you."
"don't know them do i?” I typed.
She grinned. "Okay, they are all jealous as hell. Some of the real queens won't come, of course; they think you're nuts. But all the t-girls are happy for you and jealous, too, I guess."
"none of that make sense" I typed. I felt tired. I wanted to type a question about what had happened to my chest but I didn't have the energy.
She took the keyboard back. "Why don't you nap for a bit? I'll wake you when the girls get here or the nurse will when she brings your shake."
I didn't want a shake. And a protein shake sounded awful. I wanted to wake up and have the confusion be only a dream. So I nodded and closed my eyes.
"Want me to crank the bed down again?" she asked.
I didn't even nod, too near to sleep already to care about it.
I slept and I dreamed. Very disturbing dreams about a mistake the hospital made. They cut out my testicles, turned my penis inside out to make a vagina, put in breast and butt implants, reshaped my larynx and my face and even did something to my feet.
While I was out–in the dream?–I heard a doctor say, "Hey, this kid has a hernia."
Someone else said, "Well, fix that, too, long as we're in here."
Oh, good, I thought. At least, I won't have to worry about that anymore.
Lulu
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 4 - Girls, Girls, Girls
by Lulu Martine
When I woke up the room seemed full of women. Tall women, mostly blonde, wearing too much makeup and talking in voices that were either too deep or strangely shrill. Mostly it was just noise because none of them were talking to me, just to each other.
The big blonde from before, Alice(?), had yielded her place at my bedside to a slinky, black woman who nevertheless had blonde hair and blue-green eyes. She looked at me, saw I was awake and whispered, "Wishes really do come true, don't they, honey?"
I started to speak but remembered that I wasn't supposed to talk and pointed at the keyboard. She handed it to me. One of the other girls, t-girls(?), noticed and exclaimed, "Hey, she's awake."
This provoked a chorus of people calling out, "Lulu!" and "How do you feel?" and "Congratulations, new girl, you!" and Alice saying, "She can't talk yet, she has to use the keyboard."
I tried to type but all that came out was garble. I couldn't get my thoughts straight. Something had happened that I didn't understand. Who were all these people, why did they keep calling me Lulu and she? Why were they so congratulatory?
What the hell had happened to my life? Where were my parents? I wanted to ask for a cellphone, even if I couldn’t talk, I could message my folks. Or someone. But I couldn’t make my fingers hit the right keys.
I didn't realize I had started crying until Alice confirmed it. "Why the tears, cupcake?" she asked.
The room got quieter. I made strangled sobbing noises that hurt my throat.
Alice said, "Maybe you guys better leave, doctor says she can come home tomorrow. We can have a big party by the pool."
"Yeah, okay," someone said. "Don't cry, birfday girl," someone else said. "We'll see you tomorrow, Lulu," and, "Goodnight, baby girl."
Were these people crazy? I wondered.
Alice walked everyone out then came back and sat by my bed. "Too much?" she asked.
I nodded. She handed me tissue from the little box on the tray table and I wiped my eyes. One hand wandered down to my chest and I felt the shape under the gown. Breasts. I had breasts?
I lifted the top edge of the gown and looked under it. Yes, I had two large breasts on my chest. There seemed to be bandages under them and in my armpits but there they were, breasts.
"I'm a boy," I siad in a squeaky whisper, not caring that I wasn't supposed to talk. It hurt and I touched the bandages on my throat.
"Don't talk," Alice warned, handing me the keyboard again.
"y tits?" I typed. I forgot about asking for a cellphone for the moment.
She blinked after reading it. "Well, you got breast implants, honey. You...." She stared at me. "Are you that confused?"
I don't know exactly what happened then. I sort of remembered the dream I'd had and maybe I realized just what had happened. That the hospital had given me a sex change intended for someone else. That Alice thought I was this person who had wanted a sex change.
I went into shock and hysterics or I fainted or something. A nurse came in and gave me a shot and I went to sleep again.
I remember thinking just before the sedative hit that I hoped I didn’t dream about the operation again. Maybe part of me hoped I would not have to wake up at all.
Lulu
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 5 - B.arf M.e O.ut!
by Lulu Martine
Alice told me later that there had been a real parade of doctors through my room while I was asleep. Two or three came in at once and looked at my chart and one of them examined me, right there in the bed while I was unconscious.
Then they all left, looking worried but they wouldn’t tell her what they what was going on.
I didn’t know anything about it.
Instead I dreamed of going home, looking like the bride of Frankenstein, all covered in bandages. My brothers made comments about my tits and my little sister was afraid of me. Mom wanted to take me shopping and Dad wanted to lock me in my room.
“Y?” I asked him.
“B-coz u cant trust boyz,” he said. We all talked in text in the dream.
They gave me a new bike, a girl’s bike. It had a basket with pink flowers on it on the front.
The basket was full of Ken dolls dressed in Barbie’s clothes and they all talked like Valley Girls. “4 sure,” and “o rly!” and “bmo 4 reals!” They disappeared from the dream pretty quickly, if I’d had to put up with much of that, I think I would have woken up.
But I peddled my bike to school and no one recognized me. Scott Winters walked past me giving me a look but I wasn’t sure what for. I didn’t think he liked me but he didn’t seem to know me. And the look was strange.
Mr. Daysmith, the drama teacher, motioned to me and then whispered something I couldn’t understand. I’d always thought he was gay, did he like me better this way?
Some of the girls grabbed me then. April Locke, Taylor Grimes and Heather Something. “Girlfriend,” one of them said, “You’re scary!”
“Barf me out!” another said and they all laughed.
“Fokker seagulls,” said the other.
I went with them because I felt like I needed to. We went into the bathroom, the girl’s bathroom. They primped their hair and did makeup, like in the movies. I didn’t know how to do that stuff so I just went into a stall. Maybe they could show me later.
I felt a little sick, anyway. I took out my cellphone to call my folks so maybe I could go home early.
I thought the girls were being friendly but they locked me in. I dropped my cellphone in the toilet. I had to use my bandages as toilet paper. My foot came unraveled.
I wanted to cry and I kept telling myself it would be okay to cry if I were a girl now. But instead, I woke up and Alice was looking at my ankle, prying up at the bandages there. She stared up at me. I blinked.
She came up beside the head of the bed. “Sit up,” she said. I did. She sounded spooked instead of friendly.
She pulled the stupid hospital gown away from my shoulder. “Your tattoos are gone,” she said. “You had a tattoo of two butterflies right here – and a flower on your ankle. And since when do you have freckles?”
I shook my head. I remembered I couldn’t speak but maybe she had forgotten.
She sat down on the big padded chair and stared at me. I motioned for the keyboard and she handed it to me. “Who are you?” she said.
“I’m marty lewis,” I typed.
“You’re not Lulu?”
I shook my head again.
“Oh,” she said. “This is so fucked up.” She stood and paced around the room, chewing on her lip, using her hand to push it back into her mouth when it escaped. “What the fuck is Prince going to say?” she asked.
I didn’t have any idea since I didn’t know who Prince was. “Who?” I typed.
She stared at me then suddenly turned and headed out of the room.
I tried to make enough noise to get her to stop but I couldn’t speak and I had nothing to bang on. It wasn’t until then that I remembered I hadn’t asked her for a cellphone.
But now that Alice knew I wasn’t this Lulu person, she would tell the doctors and someone would call my folks and I could go home. Couldn’t I?
I remembered the basket of Ken dolls from the dream. Ken dolls don’t have anything between their legs. Would that be what I would be like now? Crying seemed like a good idea again.
I’d forgotten about the pain. Sitting up suddenly and leaning forward so Alice could see my back had not been a good plan. Something blunt and hard and about two feet wide pushed upward into my middle. It felt like a chestburster but lower down.
I thought if I even opened my mouth I would puke and that seemed like a very bad idea.
I reached for the button to call the nurse with tears running down my face.
Lulu
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 6 - Cream of Broccoli
by Lulu Martine
The nurse came and gave me a shot for the pain and helped me take some tiny little pills. I went to sleep and didn’t wake up until they brought in the evening meal tray. I wasn’t hungry.
Alice was back in the big padded chair next to my hospital bed. She smiled at me. “Everything is going to be okay, honey,” she said. She helped me put sugar in my tea and butter a small piece of bread. My throat still hurt and I didn’t want to eat that much.
Alice said, “I talked to Prince and he’s going to make sure that you’re you’re all right, first. He knows how to do things, you know?”
I didn’t know, of course. Who was Prince? I looked for the keyboard and laptop but I didn’t see them. I made typing motions but Alice didn’t seem to notice.
I mouthed, “Who’s Prince?” But Alice just smiled. It looked like the friendly smiles she had given me before but it didn’t feel like it.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s still gonna make you his princess. Do you want this soup? Cream of broccoli, I think.”
I shook my head. “I’m not a girl,” I mouthed at her.
She shrugged, not getting it. “For hospital food,” she said, tasting the soup, “this isn’t bad.”
“Fuck the soup!” I mouthed. “I’m not Lulu! I’m not a girl.” I hissed and gasped, unable to make intelligible noises.
But if I really understood what had happened, I was a girl. Or as physically much a girl as surgery could make me. The thought of what had been done to me made me sick at my stomach. I could sometimes feel something up inside me, in a place that didn’t seem as if it should be where it was.
I glanced at my chest and the swellings under the sheet. I had breasts. I touched my face, I couldn’t imagine what they might have done there, narrow my nose perhaps, reshape my brows and cheeks and chin?
I had bandages on my ass. I thought I had read somewhere about butt implants, like breast implants. How much had they done there?
My voice – they had changed my voice and I couldn’t use it until it healed. But I didn’t have a deep voice anyway, it had hardly begun to change.
“I’m only sixteen,” I mouthed at Alice. “You can’t do this to a kid.”
She shook her head. “Stop trying to talk, honey, you’re going to hurt yourself. It’s going to be all right. Prince will fix everything, you’ll see, sweetie. You’re going to have the most amazing life.”
“I’m not Lulu,” I mouthed at her.
She got that. “Oh, yes, you are. You’re Lulu, now. You have to be Lulu, for all of us.” And she began to cry.
I didn’t know why she was crying but I cried, too, and it hurt my throat. It’s hard to cry without making any noise at all.
“Don’t you see?” she whispered through her tears. “You have to be Lulu now or she’s just dead. And all she ever wanted was to be beautiful. You can be beautiful for her, can’t you?”
I didn’t think so and Alice’s little ramble freaked me out a bit.
Another pain distracted me. I mouthed another question. “What did you do to my feet?” I repeated part of it. “Feet?” I said and I pointed at mine, under the hospital sheet.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You can have pretty feet, too.”
Lulu
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 7 - Fatso and the Blonde
by Lulu Martine
I gave up trying to figure it all out. The insanity of the situation seemed to weigh me down, I couldn’t have thought my way out of an elevator without someone else to push the buttons.
And I stopped getting much co-operation. No laptop, no cellphone and when my attempts at mime and charades got annoying, Alice turned on the TV. Daytime soap operas are druglike enough but the nurse came in every two or three hours with some real drugs.
No one said anything more about going home tomorrow. The nurse put an IV in my other arm and strapped both of them down to boards where I effectively could not use them at all.
Two doctors came in and started talking to Alice, though they all glanced at me now and then. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, Alice put the television headphones on me and I felt as if I had fallen again into a dream.
It was even worse when the TV channel got stuck on a Spanish language station. I couldn’t understand more than one word in five though I could sort of follow the stories in a broad way. I lost track of what was happening in the room. The drugs, the sounds I could not understand and a feeling of isolation made it easy to slip into a sort of trance.
There was one show, a kind of comedy variety slapstick thing, the title translated as “Fatso and the Blonde”, I think. It was obvious which of the characters was which. The fat guy looked sort of like every fat Mexican stereotype you’ve ever seen and the blonde was more of the same, sexy and ditzy in tight clothes and flashy jewelry.
She was really overbuilt, too, with her bosom on display and frequent turning away from the camera to waggle her butt. A laugh track, or maybe a studio audience, cued me in to which parts were supposed to be funny but really, if it would not have hurt my throat.
A peculiar thing began to happen. I started to identify with the blonde. I imagined how it would be to have everyone stare at my tits. And be able to distract guys like Fatso with just a hip wiggle and a smile. He kept running into doors and stepping on rakes when he turned to look at her.
Would I look like that when the bandages came off? All curves and smiles and winks, Lili, that was her name, acted like an empty-headed bimbo but she seemed to be enjoying herself.
And that got me to thinking. Would I be able to live and be happy with what had happened to me? I didn’t think anyone could change me back and that would involve more operations and pain and would I want to go through this again? Just to be an imitation of a man?
Another show came on, a news program. I recognized some of the news stories continuing from English language broadcasts I had seen before but some of the others were just noise. All but one of the newswomen on the show was blonde. Again, I found myself identifying with them instead of the guys.
Pretty women, all of them. Alice had said that Lulu wanted to be beautiful. Would I be beautiful? Would that matter? Would it be easier to adapt to being a girl if I could be a beautiful one?
Or was that just a crazy thought?
Lulu
A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity
Chapter 8 - Princess or Frog?
by Lulu Martine
The limo drove up into the Hills and stopped in the circular driveway of an immense mansion. We seemed to be miles above the city, above the smog even. Almost a fairytale castle, the huge house had towers and a gate with a little bridge over a stream. I thought I had imagined that but later I checked and yes, it was real. Or as real as anything else in my life.
“You’re home, princess,” Alice whispered to me. I didn’t feel like a princess, even with tits. I felt more like a frog, an experimental frog in biology lab. Any moment now, someone would make the incision and take out my brain to put with the other parts of me that had disappeared.
And this wasn’t my home. I lived in a dusty old ranch-style out in the Valley with my parents and my brothers and my little sister. I made texting motions with one hand at Alice but she didn’t get it. If I could just get hold of a cellphone I could call my parents.
What did they think had happened to me? Why hadn’t they come for me? Why hadn’t anyone missed me and come to take me home? I started crying and Alice said, “Yes, it’s so beautiful, it makes you cry.”
I shook my head but I didn’t even try to speak. I knew my parents must think that I was dead or someone would have figured all this out by now and come to take me home. I tried to say cellphone but Alice shushed me then wiped my eyes with tissue and helped me blow my nose.
There were three girls in the car with Alice and I, and five or six more following behind. More girls poured out of the mansion as the limo stopped at the front door. Almost all of them tall and a little unreal looking in one way or another, like bad CGI animation.
They babbled and giggled and several of them bent to kiss me on the cheek or forehead. They called me Lulu or princess or baby or darling. When they had wheeled me into the entry, they offered to let me get out of the wheelchair and walk. My groin hurt and my feet, too, so I whimpered and settled back into the chair.
"She wants to ride," laughed one of the girls. Betti-Sue, I think.
"Don't blame her," said another, the tall black girl with the blonde hair and blue eyes. "Get all the TLC you can and ride when you can't walk."
I had realized that all of the girls, every one of them, had started life as men. Had they all gone through something like what had happened to me? Only, did they want it to happen? They sure acted like they thought I'd won the lottery or something. I tried to hate them for their joy in my misfortune but the sedative or something kept me from working up any real emotion more than a sniffle of self-pity.
Alice helped me settle back into the chair, cautioning me again not to speak. "You don't need to talk, honey," she said. "We'll take good care of you and we can baby you all you want for a couple more weeks. The doctor says you shouldn't walk on your new feet until at least then."
What had they done to my feet? I wondered. I couldn't talk, I couldn't walk, people expected me to stick things up inside me in places where I shouldn't have places. I started to cry and everyone gathered around me to tell me things would be okay.
"You're going to be beautiful, baby girl," Alice whispered to me. "Just like you've always dreamed of."
I tried to tell her I didn't want to be a girl or beautiful. I just wanted someone to call my folks or let me text them so I could go home, but she put a finger to my lips and reminded me that I wasn't supposed to talk yet. Who wants to hear a frog croaking, anyway?
I let the tears run down my face. She wiped them away and kissed me on the cheek and the forehead and called me princess. But even she didn’t sound completely sure of it.
Rio is a boy, just ask and she'll tell you it's true
Rio's Bargain
by Lulu Martine
Rio's androgynous beauty complicates his life. His friends think he'd be better off accepting the role of a girl that keeps being thrust on him. Then someone offers to solve most of his other problems....
Rio's Bargain
1. Another Conquest
by Lulu Martine
"Thank you, miss," said the beaky, dark-skinned fellow.
I'd just handed him his large caramel French-roast, and I'd already seen his change go into the tip-jar, so I smiled and said, "Thank you, sir." If he thought I was a girl, it didn't do me any harm. I got that a lot working the counter at SvensKafe, and my co-workers teased me about it.
"Another conquest, Rio," said Julie, the shift manager. "He's still watching you."
I didn't look to check, that only seemed to encourage them. "Crap," I said.
Davey, the other peon on the evening shift, laughed. "You make good tips for us, guy, with your hair and eyes and perky smile."
"Crap," I said again. I have unusual coloring, and I needed a haircut. Very fair skin, golden curls to my collar, and bright blue eyes that some say are almost turquoise. I'm short and skinny, too, at five-three and only 92 pounds. My voice is no help; because of illness in my early teens, I basically missed out on puberty.
"This one looks rich," Julie commented. "That's probably a two thousand dollar suit he's wearing. If you flirt a little, maybe he'll ask you out."
"Gah," I said, but I laughed, and so did the other two. It was kind of funny. My big round glasses were not at all masculine-looking either, but I found them in a thrift shop for next-to-nothing, and they were almost exactly my prescription.
I'm a senior in high school, but having had to take the eighth grade twice because of my health problems, I'll be nineteen in January--and yet, I look and sound like a middle-schooler. So, too cute to live by most measures. I'm kind of used to it.
I think I scooted under the radar of most bullies in high school since I didn't have to take P.E.--again because of my health problems. Getting hot and sweaty causes me to break out in a bloody rash for one. And the bullies may have thought I was a girl, some of my teachers did.
I did get asked out on dates, but I turned them all down, boys and girls. I had no interest in dating, another consequence of having missed puberty: very low to non-existent libido.
Some people had left a mess in one of the booths, and I grabbed spray and towels to go clean it up. Davey usually bussed tables, but he had gone on break.
I had to pass by the middle-eastern-looking guy on the way, and he spoke to me. "Miss Ree-orr-dahn, is that how you pronounce your name?" He'd read my name tag.
I wished for a moment I had used the nickname most people who knew me used, Rio. "It's Riordan, Rearden." I picked up trash off the table and carried it to the container by the door then returned to the messy booth.
"That is a beautiful name," the man said, beaming at me.
I smiled back, "Thank you," I said.
"My name is Nader Rustami. I am of Persian ancestry. Where is your name from, Miss Rearden?"
The 'misses' were getting a little thick, and I could hear Julie chuckling behind the counter. "Ireland, originally," I said. I tried to make quick work of the job, but they had spilled stuff on the seats, too. It being one of the wide booths, I had to climb in to reach the far corners.
"Ireland," he said as if pronouncing the name of a magical place. "I've been to Dublin and Belfast on business. Have you ever seen the country? You are of Irish ancestry?"
I nodded, but I had my back to him, so I said, "Irish, Scots and English, and no, I've never been out of the States."
"Ah. Would you like to see the very green land of your ancestors, Miss Riordan?"
I looked back at him as I moved to the other bench. He was smiling, but with his dark countenance, it wasn't very reassuring. "Are you a travel agent, Mr. Rustami?"
He laughed. "No, no. I'm an agent, yes, and I do occasionally arrange travel for my employers, but my chief task is the acquisition of looked-for items."
"Huh?" I said, finishing up cleaning the booth. When I turned around, I got the feeling Mr. Rustami had been looking at my butt. Now that bothered me. I'm sensitive about the shape of my ass; it's almost the only part of me that has any extra flesh on it.
He made a hand motion I couldn't decipher. "You are wasted in such a menial position, Miss Riordan."
"I don't know about that!" I objected. "I'm lucky to have this job." Not too many places want to hire someone who looks as underage as I do. Julie's little sister, Monica, was a friend of mine from school and had got me the job when she quit to spend more Friday evenings with her boyfriend.
Mr. Rustami produced a business card and scribbled on it, but I just went back to my station behind the counter and put away the cleaning supplies. To be honest, I hid in the supply room to avoid him. It was almost time for my break, anyway.
I'd forgotten about Davey, sitting at the break table in the corner. When he spoke up, I made a squeaking noise.
"I'd ask you for a date," he said, "but you insist on being a boy."
"Yeah, well," I said. "I guess I'm just stubborn that way." I glanced at him. "I don't date women, either."
"Huh," he said. "No joy either way?"
I shrugged. "I guess I'm asexual if that's the term these days."
He laughed. "These days? What are you? Forty?" He stood up, "I'll go see if he's gone. Take a load off, and I'll come back and tell you when it's safe to rejoin the fray." He made as if to tousle my hair as he passed, but didn't actually touch me. He chuckled.
There were stale crullers in the breakroom snack box, so I heated half of one in the microwave and nibbled on it. I wasn't afraid or upset about what had happened, not even annoyed. I just wanted to avoid a situation.
*
When my shift ended at 10 pm, Julie handed me the card Mr. Rustami had left. "He wanted to be sure I gave this to you," she said.
"Mmm," I said, putting it away in my back pocket. "Oh, Davey. Can I get a ride from you? Mom's jalopy is in the shop."
"Jalopy, huh? You sure you're a teenager? Yeah, sure, Miss Riordan, I'd be happy to take you home."
"Knock it off," I warned him. "But, thanks."
Julie gave him a glare. "She could file a harassment complaint on you, Davey." I gave her a look, and Davey laughed.
"What?" she asked.
I just rolled my eyes, hung up my apron, and grabbed my coat from the back room. Early November can be cold in North Hollywood, and I'm kind of sensitive to temperatures at either end of the scale. The coat was brown corduroy with a fleece collar, most people would think it too warm for the weather, but it suited me.
The midnight shift guys were coming in, Paul and Geraldo, and Davey traded daps with his homeys. I just held up my hands in surrender. "I don't do that stuff," I said. "A poyson could get hoyt." I knew how, but Paul, in particular, tended to overdo the enthusiasm.
Dave's car was by the fence, but it wasn't a long walk. Before we got there, he beeped the doors open with his keyfob, but then he led the way and opened the passenger door for me. "It's heavy," he explained, "you always struggle with it."
I sighed, climbed in, and let him close it behind me. I couldn't deny it, my arms and legs are like twigs, and I've never been able to put on any muscle.
Dave dashed around to his side and climbed in, and we were soon taking the entrance north on the Hollywood Freeway. Mom, my sisters, and I lived in some dreary apartments near the Golden State, but Dave would have to come back this way because he lived on the edge of Burbank.
"I appreciate this," I said. "An Uber would cost me too much money, and the buses aren't running late enough on this route."
"No problem," he said. "Not even ten minutes out of the way."
It was more than that, but I let it slide.
"Is that how you're getting to work? You must have to change buses. How long does it take you? Half an hour?"
I nodded. "About that, if I hit the connection right. So I always leave early."
"Buses suck."
"Got that right," I agreed.
"Full of creeps, too."
I didn't dispute the observation. If there actually were a bus I could ride home after ten p.m., I probably wouldn't.
"Gangstas, prostitutes, homeless, drunks; drunk homeless gangsta prostitutes." He grinned across at me.
I made a noise to show appreciation for his wordplay.
He took the exit, went through a parking lot, and down an alleyway, to stop at the back gate to the complex.
"Want me to walk you to your door?" he offered.
"No-oo," I said, trying to get the door open.
"It sticks," he said. He shut off the engine, climbed out, and came around. The problem really was that he had parked on an incline with the right side of the car higher than the left, so I had to push the weight of the door uphill. I folded my arms and waited for him to open it.
At the last minute, I remembered to undo the seat belt. It was still uphill to climb out of his car, but I managed. Dave let the hand he'd offered drop. "Might as well walk to the door with you, now," he said.
"Thanks," I agreed. We skirted the dinky pool, closed at this time of year, even in Southern California. Mom, Colleen, Gabriela, and I lived on the second floor, near the front, but there was a shadow moving under the concrete and steel stairs.
"Rio," said my downstairs neighbor, out enjoying a smoke, which he wasn't supposed to do in the courtyard.
"Jenks," I said. Dave followed me up the stairs.
"Thank you," I said again, putting my key in the lock.
"I had a great time, baby," he said loudly. Then the asshole kissed his arm with a loud smack. "I'll call you, I promise," he said, winking.
"Clown," I muttered, but a giggle escaped, too. He was playing it so broadly.
I got inside, closed the door, and put the deadbolt on. I could hear him going down the stairs and Jenks asking him, "She your girlfriend?"
"Nah," said Dave. "She won't put out."
I rolled my eyes and decided that I no longer owed the idiot anything for the ride. He'd had his entertainment.
*
Mom, wearing a thrift-store robe, came out of her bedroom, which she actually shared with my two sisters. I slept in a corner of the living room, separated off from the rest by two painted screens we had liberated from someone's refuse.
"Who was that at the door?" she asked.
"Just Davey from work, clowning around. He gave me a ride," I explained. I went into the kitchen, and she followed. This was not normal. She had something she needed to tell me.
"Is he a nice boy?" she asked, and I took that to be a continuation of the sort of teasing Dave had been doing. "What I mean to say is," she went on, "does he have $473 he could give us?" She sat down heavily in one of the chrome and plastic chairs we'd found in the apartment when we moved in.
I pulled out a cheap packet of lemonade mix and the water pitcher from the refrigerator door. While I mixed up a drink for us, she told me the story.
"First," she said, "is the starter motor. $473 parts and labor they want, and that's not for a new motor but a rebuild."
"Seems like a lot," I said.
"Uh, huh," she agreed. "We might be able to scratch that up, or borrow it."
"There's more?" I spun a teaspoon through the water and drink mix.
She nodded. "The car needs a transmission rebuild, sooner rather than later. $1758."
"I don't think... I don't think the car is worth that much, Mom." I said.
While I poured lemonade into two glasses for us, Mom got up to put the water pitcher back in the door, then scooped up what must have been a few grains of the mix on the table with her hand, which she then dusted off over the sink.
"It wasn't worth that much when we got it," she said as she sat back down.
We sipped quietly. "Uncle Frank?" I asked. Really, my sisters' uncle, their father's brother.
She shook her head. "I called. Carina spent ten minutes telling me in detail why they couldn't 'bail us out again.'"
"Dad?" I suggested. The man who had abandoned us when I was a toddler wasn't a likely source, but suggesting him made Mom smile and snort.
"If I knew where he was, do you think he'd have any money?"
"No," I agreed. Dad was a charming nincompoop, full of get-rich schemes when he wasn't full of cheap tequila. I loved him because he was my Dad, but he was useless as a resource. "What then?" I asked.
"I can get an advance on my pay for a down, and we buy a working car from a used car lot."
I winced. The financing on some deal like that would be murderous. And she'd basically be short a paycheck, setting it up. Mom ran a crew of cleaners for a guy who was the next thing to a slumlord, except he owned motels and offices instead of homes. The cleaners were all immigrants without papers, and Mom's Spanish made her job possible.
"I get paid Friday," I said. Two weeks' worth of my part-time hours would come to less than $300.
"That'll help," she agreed. "We'll make it, Rio, honey," she said. "We always do."
*
Later, after she went back to bed to get up at 3:30 so she could catch a ride with one of her crew, I assembled my sleeping pad in the corner. A futon, some blankets, and a pillow were luxury compared to places I'd had to sleep in.
I got undressed and removed things from my pockets by pure habit. That's when I found the business card Mr. Rustami had left for me. I dug out my glasses so I could read it. On one side, it identified him by name as being a "Logistics Coordinator" for "Pearl East Import Export" with an address on Figueroa and a downtown phone number.
On the other side, a handwritten message read,
Miss Riordan,
If you would like a job that pays $1000 per week, call this number and leave a message where you can be reached.
Nader
No mention of what kind of job. But the word week was crowded in over another word that had been crossed out: night.
Rio is a boy, just ask and she'll tell you it's true
Rio's Bargain
2. Muppet Homeroom
by Lulu Martine
I finished getting ready for bed, taking a trip to the bathroom to wash-up, unwrapping and rewrapping my chest while I was at it. A little medical miscalculation during an attempt to restart my puberty had left me with small but definitely girly breasts. Seems my body produces an excess of something called aromatase, which turns male hormones into female ones.
They discontinued the treatment when the blood tests showed what was happening, but that took ten weeks, and I kind of started through girl puberty instead. Fortunately, that stopped when they stopped giving me injections. Except, lately, it seemed something was happening there.
I wrap them to avoid having pointy nipples poking my shirt, I do not need that, but I have to unwrap them to wash. And I rewrap to sleep; otherwise, they itch like crazy. They seemed especially tender this week.
I washed my groin, too. I don't have any hair down there, or anywhere else below my neck, but I still have a penis. It's small with a funny bend in it, but it qualifies me as a boy. I've got testicles, too, all shriveled up, not really working, and hard to find. At least, I think they're still there.
Compared to my sensitivity to direct sunlight, eye problems, general enervation, and diet restrictions, my genital oddities are not even nuisance-level worries. I have no sex drive worth mentioning, so if it doesn't matter to me, why should it concern anyone else?
I crawled between clean sheets--an everyday necessity, not a luxury for me--and lay awake for some time, wondering what kind of job could pay as much as a thousand dollars a night. I could only think of a few.
Of course, my dreaming self imagined me cleaning block-long warehouses, delousing giants, and killing snakes using only one of those little cocktail swords.
*
Anyone seeing my sisters and I together for the first time could be forgiven for not realizing we were related. They had their father's coloring, and my step-dad, Art Jimenez, had been a very dark Latino from El Salvador.
Colleen was eight, as feisty and ready to make trouble as any eight-year-old could be who had not already been strangled. She reminded me of Mom. It didn't surprise me to be woken up with Colleen's knee in my middle.
"No sleeping!" she announced. "Time to get up." She emphasized her point by shifting her weight enough to provoke grunts from me and very nearly an accident when she pressed on my bladder. I made it to the bathroom after a tussle. It's embarrassing when your little sister can kick your ass.
Gabriela was more like her dad, Art, quiet and smiling. She'd started kindergarten this year, and going to school still filled her with giggles. So did seeing her sister bully me.
Mom had left for work in the middle of the night, so I made breakfast for the girls, got them into school clothes, packed their lunches, and walked them to their bus. Mom would get off work in time to pick Gaby up after her half-day, but I wasn't sure how she was going to do that without a car.
I debated skipping school myself, but I'm a senior, if I show up for homeroom, nobody cares if I ditch the rest of the day. I was already dressed, munching the other half of the banana I'd cut up into the girl's cereal, waiting for my own bus when Olivio Banderas pulled up at the curb.
The window on his old Cadillac went down, and he leaned across the seat toward me to ask, "You need a ride, chica?"
I bent my head sideways so I could see him. "I'm going to school," I said. "And, you're stopped in the bus lane."
He waved that away. "Focking bus take you half an hour to get to school-- get in."
It wasn't the first time he'd given me a ride. I managed to get the big door open and slide inside, but I couldn't pull it closed. "It's stuck," I said.
He goosed the accelerator, the big car jumped forward, and the door slammed itself shut. "Eep!" I looked at him, astonished that he'd done that.
He laughed. "Don't be scared, querida," he said. "I made sure your hands and feet were inside."
"You still scared the snot out of me," I complained, getting myself buckled in.
He just grinned. "Ah, I would never do anything to hurt mi novia."
"I'm not...." It was no use--Olivio had to know I wasn't a girl. He just said stuff to annoy me. Novia means girlfriend.
*
Olivio dropped me off in front of the school then drove off to find a berth for his land yacht. Monica, the sister of Julie from work, called me over to join a group of her other friends.
"Rio," she said. "You ditching?"
I shrugged.
"You didn't bring your backpack, and you're not wearing your glasses, I gotta assume you're planning to ditch." She and the other girls laughed. None of them had their backpacks, either, but I'd taken my glasses off, so I didn't have to see how Olivio was driving. I pulled them out of my jacket pocket and put them back on.
"I declare this day to be an official, unofficial ditch day," Gwen, one of the other girls, announced. "Let's meet here after homeroom, Naomi has her mom's van, we can get brunch somewhere fine and hit the malls after."
I didn't say anything, but everyone else seemed down with the plan and headed off toward their various homerooms. Gwen and I walked together since we shared the same homeroom and first period.
"I don't have any money I can spend," I said.
She shrugged. "You never do. You don't eat much--you can save me from some french fries." Gwen had a bit of a weight problem, but the opposite of mine.
It was a gray morning that would probably turn into a bright afternoon, and I was already squinting. I realized my dark glasses were in the backpack I had left at home. Maybe I could borrow a pair of sunglasses, otherwise, I would have a headache in about two hours.
Gwen cocked her head to look at me, sort of sideways. "Your face looks thinner, are you losing weight?"
"God, I hope not," I said with feeling. "There's not a lot of me to begin with."
She made a face. "What did you have for breakfast?" We made it to homeroom and found our seats.
I tried to think. "Half a banana?" I couldn't remember anything else. I often forget to eat because I just don't get hungry.
She scowled at me again. "You skinny girls make me sick."
"I'm not..." I started to say, but the bell starting homeroom rang. Gwen had to know I was a boy, didn't she?
We had a substitute today. Mrs. Phipps was back in Texas taking care of her mother and might not be back before end-of-term, so we'd had a lot of substitutes, but this guy was a new one. He ended up calling my name three times before I realized, "Rye-Organ" was supposed to be me.
"Here," I finally piped up.
He looked over his glasses, and his eyebrows went up. "Nice of you to let us know, Miss Russell," he said but not in a sarcastic way, just trying to be funny. The class did laugh, and I giggled. But, 'Rye-Organ?' Where did the 'g' come from?
"It's Rearden, sir," I said, kind of squeaky-like because speaking up in class to correct teachers is not something I do. "Not how you said it."
"Mm-hmm," he said, still looking over his glasses and smiling. "Stand up."
I stood, wondering why he wanted me to. "I didn't recognize it as my name, the way you said it," I ventured.
"Mm-hmm," he said again and went back to calling the role. I started to sit back down, but he looked at me and shook his head, so I stayed standing up, mystified. Gwen was sitting right in front of me, half-turned around with her hand stuffed in her mouth to stop her from laughing.
When he finished the roll, Mr. Substitute turned back to me. If I knew his name, I'd forgotten it. "Miss Russell?" he said.
I didn't know whether to answer or not! "Most people call me 'Rio,' sir," I said, dodging the gender trap. "It's easier to say."
"Mm-hmm," he said. "Rio? That means 'river' in Spanish."
"Yes, sir."
"You're not big enough to be a river, do you think? Perhaps you're more of a Brooke?" That got a general laugh, and I giggled in embarrassment. Short jokes never go out of style, apparently. Why was he doing this?
"Can I sit down? Sir?" I asked.
"Probably, but I haven't given you permission yet."
More laughs. Cute. Third-grade humor and I mean that in the quality sense, not the educational one. I sighed.
The bell rang for the end of the ten minute homeroom period. A few students who had scheduled classes elsewhere for first period got up to leave. Gwen and I were stuck with this guy, normally for World History, but he seemed to have a different course outline in mind: Torment Rio Russell.
He went to his desk and shuffled papers for a while. Whispered conversations broke out all over the room. It was warm in the classroom after the gloomy skies outside, and I started to take off my coat. Some moron in the back corner started a rhythm, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da, d-da-da, da-da-da.
There couldn't be a less sexy garment to be removed than a corduroy coat! I got it off quick and hung it on the back of my desk chair, which meant turning my back on the teacher. When I turned back around, it was obvious where he had been looking.
I'm skinny, okay, but I have this little round butt that I'm kind of sensitive about. The girls in Gwen's group actually took everyone's measurements on one of our goofier get-togethers. Mine are 26-22-29. That's about a size 8 or 10 in boys' sizes, which is where I have to shop, except I'm too tall for most boy's clothes. Yes, five-three would be very tall for a 9-year-old boy.
My mind was wandering everywhere while Mr. Substitute went back to looking through his papers. I wanted to sit down, mostly, so I didn't keep feeling like everyone was watching me. At least the kid making the stripper music had stopped.
I decided to try to stealth a sit-down move, but in the middle of it, the teacher looked up and said. "Miss Russell, I'm terrified I'll never remember how to pronounce your name. How about if tomorrow, I just call you Brooke?"
I closed my eyes, unbelieving that this was happening. Titters, giggles, snickers, and chuckles traveled around the room. "You could call me Rio? Like I said?"
"I'm afraid that Rio sounds to me like a boy's name, and it just doesn't seem right. But if you'll agree to answer to 'Brooke' in this class, you can sit down."
I sat down as quickly as I could, conceding the name thing because what did it matter?
"Very well, Brooke," he said. "Now, I have some homework papers that have been graded to hand back." He started calling people to come up and get their papers, and I knew what was going to happen when he got to 'R.'
"Brooke Russell?" he called when he got to me. I went up to collect my paper, expecting to hear more laughter, but this time there was only one embarrassed giggle, which seemed to be coming from me.
"Eighty-eight is a B-plus, Brooke, very nice," he said. "You actually knew what countries made up the old Yugoslavia and who Marshall Tito was. I ought to give you extra credit."
He took the paper back, scribbled out the 88-B+ and wrote in 96-A. Then he handed it to me. "One for each country you named and one for Tito. Good work, Brooke," he said.
I couldn't believe it. Was I being rewarded for letting him torture me in front of the class? "Thank you, sir," I said.
When I got back to my seat, Gwen turned around and asked, "What'd you get, Brooke? I got a seventy-three."
"Uh, ninety-six," I said.
"Well, sure," she sniffed. "You're clearly teacher's pet. Mr. Hinson likes you, and he did the grading."
Hinson? That was his name? Well, he'd sure made me feel like a muppet.
*
We all met at the quad gate after first period. Turned out, Naomi had been waiting for us. "Where were you guys?" she complained.
"We had first-period class in homeroom," Gwen explained. "And Brooke here got promoted to Teacher's Pet."
I groaned.
"Brooke?" asked Monica. "Is that what Riordan means?"
"No, it means poet-king," I said, glaring at Gwen, who was doing her impression of one of those giggling coffeemakers we had at SvensKafe.
"I didn't stay for first-period," Naomi was still complaining. "I came here right after homeroom--like we said."
She waved her phone around with one hand, accusingly. She'd probably left messages on everyone's phone but, of course, being in class, they couldn't answer. You weren't even supposed to have your phone out on school grounds at all, so she was technically violating that rule by being just inside the gate.
"Well, you had P.E. First period, so you just walked away," Monica pointed out. She put her phone away, probably seeing that the messages she had were all from Naomi. "The rest of us were all in class and couldn't leave. Oh, by the way, shotgun!"
"I already called it," said Jennifer, the fifth member of our group. She was the tallest and always wanted to sit shotgun. She was also the only other driver in the group since Monica, Gwen, and I did not have licenses yet. She still had her phone out and was looking and poking at it while she walked.
"It doesn't count if no one heard you," said Monica. "Did anyone hear Jenny call shotgun?"
No one spoke up, but Jennifer said, "Naomi heard. I was the first one back after her, and I said 'Shotgun' first."
Monica asked Naomi, "Did you hear her call shotgun?"
"Who cares?" grumped Naomi. "You guys wasted like a whole fucking hour, getting back." She dumped her phone into her purse without even looking.
By this time, we were outside the gate where the security guard nodded at us, saying, "Have a good time ditching, girls," which made us all laugh and put Naomi in a better mood.
We headed toward the parking lot. Seniors are allowed to use the closest one if there are any spaces left after teachers and admin park. Naomi actually apologized to Jennifer. "I'm sorry, Jenny, I was so mad about everyone being late getting back that I didn't hear anything anyone said."
Gwen was the only one who hadn't pulled out her phone. Well, me, I didn't have one. "We weren't late," she protested. "Brooke and I were in class."
I knew she was calling me that on purpose, so I stuck out my tongue at her.
"Brooke? Who's Brooke?" asked Naomi. The other girls all pointed at me. Naomi laughed. "Cute. Hi, Brooke!"
I rolled my eyes.
"Shotgun disputes are settled by Roshambo!" announced Monica.
"I'm not going to ching with you!" Jennifer protested. "You cheat!"
"How can you cheat at Rock-Paper-Scissors?" asked Gwen.
"She's a mind reader!" Jennifer accused. "She always knows what I'm going to do!"
Monica did not deny this but just smiled. "Shotgun rules say disputes must be settled with RPS. There's no alternative. Isn't that right, Brooke?"
"Me!? Leave me out of this." She was right, though, but I was not going to confirm. Then I realized I had just answered to Brooke and I knew I was doomed.
Rio is a boy, just ask and she'll tell you it's true
Rio's Bargain
3. Roshambo, Mon Amour
by Lulu Martine
We finally found Naomi's van. She hadn't parked it in the near lot after all. Monica and Jennifer played Roshambo for who got shotgun, and Monica won, of course. She always wins that game. It's like she really can read minds or something.
Jennifer got in the back with Gwen and me, the two shorties, but she took the very back seat and sat sideways, pouting a bit. Still annoyed at losing the shotgun seat, I guessed. She pulled out her phone again, and from the sound of it was playing some bubble-bursting game on it.
Naomi maneuvered the van through the student lot, where people mostly parked wherever instead of there being lines drawn. Part of it wasn't even paved, but it wasn't raining, at least. "Why is it called Roshambo?" she asked. "Rock-Paper-Scissors makes sense as a name."
"It's from some old Japanese movie, 'Roshambo, Mon Amour.' It's about these two French guys on a desert island, and they have to decide who gets to eat who by playing the game," Monica told her. She had her phone out, too, but wasn't looking at it.
"Huh," said Naomi. "I never knew that."
"You still don't," I said.
"Shut up, Brooke," said Monica, then we all laughed, but I wasn't sure why I was.
"What's with 'Brooke?" Jennifer asked from the back seat. "I thought your nickname was Rio?"
"It is," I said, but Gwen talked over me.
"Rio means river in Spanish," she said, "and Mr. Finson--"
"Hinson," I said.
"--Mr. Hinson says she's not big enough to be a river--she'll have to be a Brooke."
More laughter.
"Ha, ha," I said.
"And she's got him, like, twisted around her fingers, cause he, like, changed her grade to give her an A on the assignment."
I couldn't deny that--well, the pronoun part, I could. But instead, I said, "He made me stand up for almost half the period, and he called me Miss Russell cause he can't say Riordan--which isn't hard to say, it's just hard to spell. And he's a pig cause I caught him staring at my ass!"
"Well, Brooke," said Monica, as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to say. "You don't have any tits to stare at." And she used her phone to point at my chest.
"Argh!" I said while they all laughed again. I did have little boobies all wrapped up in a stretch bandage, but only my Mom and my doctors knew about those.
"You are pretty flat-chested, Brooke," said Jennifer. "Just saying--it ain't no bad thing."
"I'm a guy!" I protested. "Everybody keeps forgetting that." More laughs, like that might have been the funniest thing I had said all day.
But Jenny looked puzzled, and I remembered she was a late addition to our group and hadn't been with us all semester, so maybe she didn't know I was a boy. I poked Gwen, "Tell Jennifer I'm a guy," I said.
"Oh," said Gwen. "Brooke is totally a guy--I've seen her dong. It's like, huge!" Naomi stopped the van, she was laughing so hard.
"Argh!" I said again.
When they all stopped laughing, Monica put in, "No, my sister works with her at the Swedish coffee place. She really is a guy," she reached back over the seat and slapped me on the knee. "Aren't you, Brooksie?"
I nodded, then shook my head. Brooksie?
"Which is it?" asked Jennifer. "Are you one of those transboys, a girl who wants to be a guy?"
"No," I said. "I'm a boy, I just... It's not easy to explain."
"So you pee standing up? Hey, I've seen you in the girls' restroom."
Well, I didn't pee standing up--that would get messy because of my penis being short and kind of odd-shaped with pee coming out of it backward. But I wasn't going to mention that either.
"Look at her," said Gwen. "If she went into a boys' bathroom, what do you think would happen?"
Jenny answered right away. "They'd throw HER out or beat HIM up."
I'd actually been thrown out of more boys' bathrooms than I'd ever used at high school. I sighed. But I hadn't been beaten up even once. They laughed at me when I tried to tell them I was a boy and that hurt.
"Well, it's confusing, you guys keep saying 'she' and 'her,' and I'm not sure someone isn't pulling my leg," Jenny protested.
"It's just easier," said Naomi. "We don't want the guys to know she's not a girl."
"None of the guys know?" Jennifer asked.
She got four shrugs, including one from me, in answer.
Naomi had reached the street and was looking both ways. "Hey guys, where do we wanna go eat? I'm hungry."
"Uh," I said. "Can we go by my place? I need my dark glasses, and I left them in my backpack."
"C'mon, Brooke," said Monica. "You know you don't have enough food in your house to feed all five of us."
"I've got a pair of sunglasses you can borrow," said Jenny. "But, uh, you know you're wearing girls' glasses now?"
"They were practically free. Some charity keeps bins of them and an optician to sort them by prescription, so they gave me these for like, three dollars."
"They probably thought you were a girl, too," said Gwen.
"I guess," I admitted.
"So, Perky's okay with everyone?" Naomi asked. No one objected, and since Jenny was handing me a pair of dark glasses, I didn't really need to go by my house. Naomi pulled out and headed away from the freeway.
I took off my prescription glasses and put on the sunglasses Jenny offered. "Thanks," I said. "I get terrible headaches from the sun, even behind clouds." Now everything looked slightly blurry, but I felt safer. The glasses were cat's-eye shape with hot pink frames, but I refused to cringe. I put my other glasses in my coat pocket.
"They might get broken there," Jenny noted. "You ought to put them in your purse." She looked around. "Where is it?"
"I don't have a purse," I explained.
"You don't carry a purse? Why not?"
"I'm a guy, remember?"
"That's...ridiculous." She threw up her hands. "I give up."
*
Perky's is an all-day breakfast place and serves lunch stuff at breakfast, too. So everybody could get whatever they wanted. All I ordered was water, thinking about Mom having to buy a car, but it turned out I was the only one who had had any breakfast at all, even if it was only half a banana.
Everyone else ordered big meals, and when the food came, I ended up with a spare plate loaded with an odd assortment of things--some french fries, an onion ring, a slice of tomato, and a wedge of french toast. I wasn't sure I could eat all of it, but it smelled good, and I wanted to try.
Perky's onion rings are huge--six inches across and almost two inches thick, an order is only three of them--and they are best when they're hot, so I started on that first.
"How many people at school know Brooke's secret?" Jenny asked. Four shrugs, again including me. She sighed. "I can't believe I've been hanging with you guys for two months and did not know this."
"You're convinced now?" asked Gwen. We were in one of the big booths, Jenny and Naomi on one side and us three shorties on the other, me in the middle.
"I guess," Jenny admitted, looking at me.
"Aw," said Monica in a fake hillbilly accent. "We was just funnin' you."
We all laughed so hard the manager stared at us for a minute before deciding we were harmless. I waved at him, and he smiled at me.
Gwen poked me. "Look at her," she said to the others. "She just charmed that stuffed shirt over there with a smile. He must be forty."
Monica poked me on the other side. "Hey, leave some guys for us to flirt with, why don't you?"
"Stoppit, stoppit!" I said. "I'm ticklish!"
"We know," said Monica, but they only poked me once more each.
It took me a moment to catch my breath.
"So, look," said Jenny. "This is stupid."
Gwen nodded as if she understood what Jenny meant.
"I mean, look at yourself, Brooke," Jenny went on. "No one thinks you're a guy. I bet you get hit on as much as any of us. More because you really are pretty. And those eyes. You're a girl. You were obviously meant to be a girl."
"Huh?" I said with a piece of tomato in my mouth. I'd eaten half of the French toast wedge with syrup and wanted to get the sweetness out of my mouth.
"It doesn't seem to bother you most of the time. Everyone calls you 'she' and 'her' and 'Miss Russell' and now you've got a real girl's name--Brooke."
"Not my idea," I pointed out. The fries looked good, but I was kind of feeling full.
"I know, but you're not throwing a fit about it," she said. "You're not screaming at people or telling them you hate them for treating you like a girl."
"Huh?" I said. "Why would I do that?"
"Brooksie isn't like that at all," said Monica. "She's a sweet girl."
"Argh," I said, rolling my eyes. "Monica, you're not even trying to help."
"Help with what?" she countered.
"Look," said Jenny. "I'm just saying is all. I can't look at you and not see a girl."
"I'm wearing boy's clothes," I pointed out.
"I get that. I think I even get that you don't really want to be a girl, but I think that ship sailed."
I shrugged.
Gwen looked thoughtful. "Part of Brooke's problem is that she doesn't think she could afford to be a girl."
I looked at her suspiciously.
"She'd need a whole new wardrobe and everything."
"Hey! It's not like I don't know how to shop. If I wanted to be a girl, I could make it happen. But why? What one thing would I gain by being a girl?"
Jenny opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"You've already got awesome friends," Monica pointed out.
"A boyfriend? I mean...." Jenny trailed off.
"Ppff! How many of you have boyfriends?" I asked.
"Well, I'm sure none of us have boyfriends because you are a much better flirt than any of us. And since you ain't available--you turn everyone down--they get discouraged and go away," Gwen explained it all.
"It's true, Brooke. You're a hell of a flirt," said Monica, looking around me at Gwen, apparently admiring a nice bit of snark.
I moved my head from one to the other--they were on either side of me. "I am not! I don't flirt, I just smile. That's not flirting.... Is it?"
Naomi started to laugh, and pretty soon, we had all broken up over the idea.
*
Of course, we went to the mall right after eating. Some of the stores were just opening up. It was barely eleven, so we had the whole place almost to ourselves. The wide tiled halls had a neat echo that made the place feel even emptier. I switched back to my own glasses, once we were inside, putting the dark ones Jenny had loaned me into a pocket.
The phones had all come out again, except Gwen still wasn't using hers, and she hadn't while we were eating either. It wasn't like her, mostly she acted like the thing was attached to her hand, so maybe she had forgotten it at home? I didn't ask, but I wondered. I hadn't heard it ring in her purse either.
We passed several shops and the girls admired things like mini-dresses, jewelry and shoes but we didn't go in anywhere, and no one seemed in a hurry to find something to buy. Maybe they were all broke too, but lunch had cost them twelve bucks each, since they split it evenly four ways, letting me freeload. I tried not to feel bad about that.
"I still don't have any money I can spend," I mentioned. "Mom has to buy a car, and we need groceries. I made my sisters butter-and-pickle sandwiches for their lunch bags today 'cause that is, like, almost the last food we have in the house."
Monica rubbed her thumb and index finger together close to her ear.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "You guys didn't need to hear that. It just gets me down sometimes."
Jennifer angled over and hugged me around my shoulders. "You're so short!" she said. Jenny is like five-nine or ten.
"What's...what's that got to do with anything?"
"You're like one of my little sisters," Jenny said. "So cute!"
"Argh!"
"You should meet her little sister," said Monica. "She's like ten and as big as Brooke."
"Colleen's eight, and no, she's not as big as me."
"You said she was stronger."
"Well, she is that," I admitted. "She's a bully, too."
They all laughed.
"Seriously?" asked Jenny. "You get beat up by an eight-year-old?"
I put out my arm, made a fist and flexed. It made absolutely no difference. Giggling, everyone else copied my move. It turned out, only Naomi could make any real muscle.
"Jeez," she complained. "Now I'm like all self-conscious. Thanks a lot, guys!"
After we laughed at that, we stopped at a kiosk and looked at cheap jewelry. No one bought anything, but some of it was pretty cute.
"I've got an idea," said Jenny.
"Uh, oh," said Gwen. "Jenny's thinking again."
"We still haven't got the stains out from last time," said Monica.
"We should make it easier for Brooke to decide to be a girl," said Jenny ignoring them.
"Huh?" I said, realizing she was talking about me.
"She never has any money, so she really can't afford to change her wardrobe or buy cosmetics or jewelry."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Wait, wait...."
"I see where you're going with this," said Gwen. "But we ain't rich either."
"It doesn't have to be much. Each of us just spent twelve on lunch. Keep it to no more than that, huh?"
"No," I said. "I hate the idea."
"I could start it," offered Jenny. "Beginner's earrings with free piercing are on sale here for only nine dollars, and half price for a second set...someone else could go in...."
My hands flew to my earlobes. "No! Just no!"
They all laughed. Jenny shrugged. "Eh, it was just an idea. You'd look so cute with a pair of those red, heart-shaped studs."
"I'm too cute already," I complained. That got more laughs.
"Speaking of studs," said Naomi, indicating with a head tilt what direction she meant. "Take a look at the two shoe salesmen."
We all did. They were nice-looking guys, tall with wide shoulders, lean faces, and nice haircuts. They were well-dressed, too — California business casual, broadcloth shirts, and sweater vests. But guys or girls did nothing for me, so I just shrugged.
Monica and Jennifer made noises back in their throats, though, and headed that direction. "Let's look at some shoes," said Naomi, smirking and following the other two.
"We're going to look at shoes," said Gwen, taking my arm.
"Okay," I agreed. Why not? "I'm still broke, though."
"Eh," said Gwen. "Looking costs, like, nothing."
The two men--boys really, they might have been a year or two older than us, though I was the oldest in our group--the two sales guys were all smiles and greetings and calling us ladies and complimenting us on our looks or fashion sense.
"They're trying too hard," I remarked to Gwen. I was wearing baggy jeans, rundown sneakers, and my corduroy coat, hardly a fashion plate. Gwen nodded and sidestepped around them. We browsed along one wall where they had a lot of athletic shoes laid out.
I glanced down at my feet. My old sneaks were almost to the falling apart stage, one of them actually had a piece of duct tape holding two halves of the sole together. I usually had to shop in the boy's department for shoes, adult sizes of men's shoes not being small enough. Heck, I shopped there for almost everything.
But this was a women's shoe store. No men's or boy's shoes at all. Still, some of the athletic shoes looked like they might be small enough to fit, and not all the styles were super girly or even very girly at all. But they were still out of my reach, price-wise.
"Hey, Brooke," said Gwen. "Look at these." She had stopped at a display of suede hi-top sneakers, kind of handsomely clunky-looking, in several different colors from black, brown, and gray to red, blue, and green.
I shrugged. "Cute?" I suggested.
"They've got hidden wedge heels inside," she held a pair so I could see. "They add four inches to your height, and no one sees your wearing heels."
I gasped. I took one of the shoes to examine. It was a well-made shoe, and you could not tell it had a built-in high-heel. "Four inches taller!"
"You wanna try them on?" she asked. "What size do you wear?"
"Uh, a two or three in kids' sizes," I admitted.
"I think that's a four or five in women's shoes," she said. "The sales guy would know." She waved to attract one of them. "Hey, and they come in this bright aqua-blue, like your eyes."
"Gwen," I protested weakly. "They're fifty-five dollars a pair."
She pointed at the lower half of the sign. "Marked down to thirty-seven. If we all chipped in ten like Jenny was talking about, we could buy them for you."
The salesman came over. "Ladies? You want to try on some shoes?" He grinned at us.
"Brooke wants to know, do you have these in a four-and-a-half or five? The blue?"
"I believe so," he said, moving to the wall to look over the boxes.
I hadn't said anything because I couldn't talk without air. I wanted those shoes.
Rio is a boy, just ask and she'll tell you it's true
Rio's Bargain
4. Blue Suede Shoes
by Lulu Martine
"Try them on," Gwen urged when the salesman returned with two boxes.
"We do have those shoes in 4-1/2 and 5, in blue, miss," he said, smiling. He gestured that I should sit down, and I landed with a thump in one of the chrome and leather chairs while he pulled over one of the shoe-shop style stools. "I'm Tomas, and you're Brooke?" he added.
I shrugged. "My name is Rio," I said. It felt like a losing battle.
He looked up at me from opening boxes and grinned. "Oh, I get it. Rio is a river, and a Brooke is a small river. Cute."
I could hear Gwen telling the other girls that I'd found a pair of shoes I liked. I felt a bit numb, weirdly. I couldn't afford these shoes, why was I trying them on?
Tomas pulled off my ratty old sneaks. "These are a bit big," he noted, "what size are they?"
"Three, boys' sizes," I said.
"Mm. That's a 4-1/2 Women's, and this style doesn't come any smaller." He put the lid back on the box of 5s and glanced around the store. "In fact, hardly anything here comes any smaller. We can order some, maybe."
He wiped my right foot off with a rag and slipped a pair of sheer nylon socks on it. "Maybe you'll grow into a larger size," he suggested while he laced the shoes. The laces had come in a plastic bag instead of already being laced into the shoes. They were blue, too, and if they had never been used, no one else had ever tried these shoes on.
"I'm nineteen," I said. Well, I would be in two months.
"Really?" He chuckled. "Not gonna happen, huh?"
I shrugged.
Tomas slipped my right foot into the shoe, "How does that feel?" He tied the leather laces firmly. I smelled new leather and whatever product Tomas wore on his wavy, very black hair.
The girls had gathered around to watch. "Those are cute," said Naomi. "I mean, really cute."
Jenny had her phone out and took a picture of my foot in the bright blue shoe. "Blue suede shoes," she murmured.
"Don't you step on my—" Monica growled and Gwen giggled.
I wiggled my toes and put my foot down on the floor. I felt the hidden high heel wedge. I could feel my own grin, too. "Can I try walking in the pair?" I asked. But inside, I was beating myself up for wanting them. Not only were they girl's shoes, I couldn't afford any shoes, not even a pair of Walmart $2 thongs.
I pushed my glasses back up on my nose while Tomas took off my other sneaker, the one patched with duct tape, wiped my foot, put on the nylon sock and slipped my foot into the shoe. It tickled when he touched me, and my foot wiggled in reaction, making him laugh.
"This foot is more ticklish than the other one," he remarked, smiling up at me as he tied the laces in a wide bow.
I smiled back and saw his brown eyes get bigger.
"Oh, sh—, she's done it again," I heard Naomi say behind me.
"She's going for the free shoes," Monica put in, and I felt myself turning red.
Tomas laughed, looking around, "All the ladies think they can get free shoes by flirting with me. And it would work if I didn't need this job." He glanced back at me and winked. "Take a walk in them. See what you think."
I stood up, but when I put my weight on my heels, I almost pitched forward. "Oof?" I said. Tomas had caught me with his hands on my wrists. I looked up into those brown eyes again and forgot all about the shoes for a moment.
The collective, "Aww!" from the girls did not help.
"Careful," he said. "Remember the built-in heels."
I nodded. He led me out from the seating area into an open spot where I could walk around.
I looked down at Gwen and giggled. Normally, she's most of an inch taller than me, and often wears heels herself. Today, she was in flats. "Hey, shorty," I said.
"We've created a monster," said Monica.
Gwen laughed. "You okay up there?" she joked.
"Uh, huh," I said. "This is cool." It really wasn't hard to walk in the heels, they were wide and stable, not like stilettos or something.
But I still couldn't afford them.
Something in my expression must have clued Jenny into what I was thinking. "You're worried about how you can afford them?" she asked.
I nodded, and my misery must have been clear on my face.
"Those are seriously cute shoes," Naomi commented. "And they really suit you, Rio."
"Brooke," Monica corrected her.
"Brooke," she agreed with a giggle.
I didn't even glare at them. Naomi was not usually a giggler, but even that incongruity did not get a reaction from me. I felt numb. Why did I want those shoes so much? Just for the height they gave me?
"How much are the shoes?" Jenny asked.
Martin, the other salesman, punched some buttons on his tablet, "With tax, it's forty dollars, or near enough."
Tomas nodded. "They're one-third off right now. A real bargain."
I wanted to tell him to shut up, but I didn't. "I can't afford them," I said, heading back to the chairs to take them off, telling myself I was not going to cry about a pair of shoes.
Jenny opened her purse. "I'm in for ten," she said. "Just, Brooke, you've got to quit telling people you're a boy." Everyone laughed or giggled except me. Even the two salesmen laughed, but they probably thought I was really a girl, and it was just a running gag among a bunch of friends.
Gwen spoke up. "I'll put in ten, too." She paused. "If you keep answering to Brooke when you're wearing the shoes." I must have made a face because everyone laughed again.
"I've got ten I was just gonna spend on food I don't need," said Naomi. "But Brooksie, can you give me some lessons in flirting?" More laughter.
Monica frowned. "I could put in ten, I guess." Her features looked darker than usual. "But—I gave up my job for you and that rat Robbie Fuentes is dating Nina Pascal now." She had quit at SvensKafé so she could date on Friday nights, and now she didn't have a boyfriend.
"I—" I thought of the business card from Mr. Rustami. "I might have the offer of another job," I said.
She nodded. "Whatever, I'm in." She pulled out her billfold.
"Wait a minute," I protested. "I didn't ask anyone to buy me anything?"
"We know," said Gwen. "But we want to do this. You didn't see your face when you tried on those shoes." She held up her ten and took one from Jenny.
Naomi passed over another. "But I am serious about the flirting lessons. Maybe you can't teach me how, cause it's like magic, but you must have a clue."
Jenny put in her money and a comment, "I'm serious about the not-claiming-to-be-a-boy thing, too. It's ridiculous, and no one believes you anyway." Even I giggled, the way she said that.
Monica scowled and handed over her ten. "Get that other job if you can," she said.
Gwen handed me the cash. "We good, Brooke?" she asked.
I took the money, sniffling a bit. "You guys," I complained. But the shoes were going to be mine.
"No need to change back," Tomas assured me. "You can just wear the ones you have on. In fact, do you want me to toss these?" He held up the box now containing my ratty old sneakers.
"Uh," I said.
"Toss 'em," said Monica. "Be serious, Brooke, where would you wear those if you had these blue suede shoes in your closet?"
My head moved, so I must have nodded. The old shoes made a noise as they landed in the trash bin, a final sounding ka-chud.
Tomas smiled at me as I handed him the money at the register. "Are you sure you're nineteen?" he asked.
Confused, I nodded again. "I will be in January," I said.
"Good," he said. "I would have guessed no more than fifteen." He grinned, handing me three pennies with the receipt.
I blinked because he had managed to drag a finger down the back of my hand while doing that. Shivers went up and down my arms and my back. I stared at what I had in my hand. The receipt had a scribbled 'Tomas' and a phone number on it. I looked back up at his face. He smiled, and I felt myself smiling too.
I couldn't stop smiling.
Naomi was talking. "Did you see that? She dresses like a boy, and the guys are still stepping on their tongues. Did you give him your number, girl?" she asked.
"I don't have a phone," I said.
"I gotta learn how to do that shit," she complained.
We seemed to be heading out of the mall, maybe back to the van, but first, we had to pass the jewelry kiosk. "Wait. Wait." Jenny held up her arms to stop us when we were twenty feet away. "We're going to get Brooke's ears pierced, huh? Am I right?"
I whimpered.
"No excuses and especially not the lame one that you're a boy. You promised not to use that one again." She glared at me accusingly.
"Will it hurt?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah," said Monica. "Hurts like a bitch."
"Shut up," said Gwen. "It hurts a little, not much."
I shrugged. "Okay," I said.
Jenny haggled with the ladies in the booth and got a deal, three sets of piercings for $16. They made suggestions which they let me approve—a blue star, pink heart, and white pearl in each ear. It did hurt, but it was over fast.
"Why are you letting us do this now?" Gwen asked.
"That new job?" I said. "They want to hire a girl."
*
We didn't leave immediately but ended up in the food court where someone bought a couple of those huge soft pretzels and a cup of cheese sauce. We shared, tearing apart the pretzels in our hands while enjoying the smell of hot bread and that special plastic cheese they serve in those places. I even had a couple bites of the pretzel but no cheese. After eating, we bought a gigantic Diet Mountain Dew with five straws and shared that too.
"Lemme see those shoes again, Brooke," Monica said.
I stuck my feet out where everyone could see.
"And the earrings," she demanded.
I turned my head, holding my curls back.
"Damn," she said. "You look good, you spoiled, stuck-up brat."
Everyone laughed, and I blushed, smiling.
"Guys at three o'clock," said Naomi, and everyone looked in a different direction. "I mean, three guys by the clock," she corrected herself.
"Oh," we all said. I didn't look—I'd already seen them. I didn't want to be looking at guys, because.... Something was different.
"Anybody got a phone I can borrow?" I asked.
Gwen dug out hers and passed it over.
"I hadn't seen you using it today, thought maybe you'd forgotten it," I commented, noting that it was turned off.
"I'm trying not to use it so much," she admitted.
"You should get an unlimited plan," suggested Naomi.
"That one guy, the one with a beard, he's trying to look so gnarly," said Monica.
"Uh, huh," said Jenny. "Look where he's looking." They both turned to me.
"I have an unlimited plan, that's the problem," said Gwen. She took the phone back from me to punch in her security code to turn it on.
"What?" I said, realizing that Jenny, Monica and Naomi were glaring at me.
"She does it without even knowing she's doing it," Naomi complained.
"Who're you calling?" Monica asked. "Tow-maas? Wanna see when he gets off work?"
"What? No. He doesn't get off till six."
"How do you know that?" Naomi asked me then Jenny, "How does she know that?" Then to Gwen, "I didn't hear her ask him, how does she know?"
I'd found the business card Mr. Rustami had given me in my coat pocket instead of my jeans. I was beginning to think I hadn't brought it with me after all. I got up and moved away from the chatter.
Gwen explained to Naomi. "The store opened at eleven and closes at six. It was on a sign."
"He might get off early," Monica suggested.
"Probably not," said Jenny. "They want two people there all day. And on a Thursday, it wouldn't make sense to have someone came in for a short shift."
I walked to the railing above the courtyard in the middle. I started to punch in the number, but I realized all three of the guys near the clock were watching me. The new shoes and the earrings made me feel different about being watched. I realized I kind of liked it.
I looked through my hair at them, then turned my back and finished making my connection.
Someone answered on the first ring. "Pearl East. May I direct your call?"
"May I speak with Mr. Rustami. Nader Rustami, please?" I said.
"One moment."
A voice I recognized came on in less than half a minute. "Yes? This is Nader." Same Middle Eastern flavor with the slight over-careful pronunciation of someone who learned English in school.
"Mr. Rustami, this is Riordan. From the coffee shop."
"Miss Riordan!" He sounded pleased. "What synchronicity. I was just saying to my employers that I had someone for them to consider for a future opening when our need became immediate. And now you call."
"I—I want to know more about the job," I said.
"It is hosting at company affairs. Mostly looking pretty and pouring coffee," he said. "Both things you do excellently well, Miss Riordan," he chuckled.
"Um, th-that's all?"
"But of course," he said. "That is all that is required of you. It pays $200 per occasion, more if it goes more than four hours. We need you tonight. Do you have an evening gown?"
"Ah, no," I said.
"I'm sorry, a cocktail dress will do?"
"Not one of those either, Mr. Rustami." I'm giggling, why am I giggling?
"Mmm. What are your sizes? No, never mind. Can you be here by four p.m.?"
I turned around and looked at the clock. It showed ten minutes to three. "I think so," I said. "Six-oh-one Figueroa? Downtown LA?"
"Yes, there is shopping nearby. I'll have my secretary take you out to find something suitable."
"Mr. Rustami? I don't have money...."
"Don't worry." He laughed. "And please, call me Nader. Everyone in the office does."
"Um," I said. "M-my friends call me Brooke," I said. Well, it was true, but I had no idea why I said it.
"Brooke Riordan," he said. "It is a lovely name. Do you need a car to come pick you up? Can I send an Uber? What's the address?"
"Ah. I'm at the Panorama Mall on Van Nuys. West, west entrance."
I heard him repeat that to someone with instructions to send an Uber Black. A limo? I blinked.
"They say ten to twenty minutes, dear," Nader told me when he came back on. "It will be a black Infiniti QX80, the driver's name is Rodolfo. I'm sending that to your phone."
I got a beep of an incoming message and almost panicked because this was Gwen's phone. How did he know the number? Oh, yeah, caller ID.
"Copy the message into your Uber app, and you can track the car," he said. "You should be here in fifty minutes or less. Traffic can be horrible, so just relax."
"I have the job?" I squeaked.
"Of course!" he said. "I knew you were perfect when I saw you in the coffee shop. And your smile." He laughed. "Two to four evenings a week, sometimes a meeting in the afternoon. Six hundred to a thousand a week, and sometimes a trip out of town for double or treble pay. Eh?"
"Thank you," I said. I felt tears in my eyes. Mom would be able to afford a car now.
"I have to go now, Brooke, sweetie. The girl you're replacing tonight was in an accident, and I want to visit her in the hospital."
"I—what? An accident?"
"Nothing too serious, but she broke her ankle. She'll be out for weeks. I'll see you after your shopping trip with Sharon. The meeting is at eight, in the Intercontinental across the street, so you should have time for shopping and dinner first."
'Uh...."
"Goodbye, Brooke, honey." He hung up.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. What had I got myself into? I looked down at my cute blue suede shoes and wiggled my toes inside them. "I just wanted to be taller," I whimpered.
Rio may be a boy, but she's not saying
Rio's Bargain
5. Uber Black
by Lulu Martine
I held the phone out to Gwen who was just walking up beside me at the railing. She looked me in the face, "You okay?" she asked.
I nodded. "I got the job," I said. "They need me tonight, so they're sending a limo to pick me up."
"A limo?" she repeated, looking around. The other girls had drifted nearer, and Monica overheard.
"You got the job? Who sends a limo to pick up a new hire? For that matter, who hires someone over the phone?" Monica wanted to know.
"I need you to go to work for me tonight. I'm on 4:45 to 10:30," I told her. "Call your sister and tell her."
Monica got her phone out. "Wow, if I catch her before she leaves, she can come pick me up." She dialed quickly. "Is this working for that asshole was hitting on you last night? Julie told me about him."
I didn't answer her because suddenly everyone was talking at me.
Jenny: "Good thing you got your new shoes. Are you going to be on your feet a lot?"
Naomi: "A limo? How cool is that! What the heck are you going to be doing?"
Gwen: "Why don't you keep the phone? Then I'll stay off it, and you can get it back to me, but you'll have a phone where we can get in touch?"
Me: "They're like high-end caterers, yeah, I'll be on my feet a lot. They have a dress code, but they'll loan me some money to get clothes, and probably shoes. I'm going in early so one of the office girls can take me shopping. And thanks, Gwen, I appreciate the loan of the phone."
Jenny and Naomi squealed, a startling thing since Naomi is a big girl, and Jenny is tall. Monica put a finger in her ear and moved away from the group, scowling.
Gwen just nodded at me with a murmured, "Uh, huh," and a grin.
"I've got to get to the west entrance where the Uber is coming," I said, putting the phone in a coat pocket, and heading for the escalator. We all started down with lots of chatter, but I wasn't paying much attention anymore. It felt like my stomach was filling up with spiders, chills ran down my arm and legs, and my face went numb.
"Hey, guys!" Monica squealed when she realized we had left the Food Court balcony without her. She caught up with us at the big doors to the parking lot, grabbing my arm. "Julie says the guy seemed sketchy to her, huh? She wants you to be careful."
I nodded. Because I'm small and don't look my age, my friends are all protective of me. It can be annoying, but mostly I appreciated their concern. Naomi and Jenny pushed the doors open, and a wind that seemed to have come off a frozen mountain somewhere grabbed at us.
"Whoa," Jenny said. "Someone tie Brooke down, so she doesn't blow away."
"How did it get so cold in the middle of the afternoon?" Naomi complained.
The clouds had thickened, but I still needed my borrowed sunglasses since we were facing west, and the hidden sun made a bright patch in the overcast. "Can I get these back to you tomorrow?" I asked Jenny.
"Yeah, sure," she agreed with a wave. "Does it look like it might rain to you?"
"Maybe, but it almost never rains in LA before Thanksgiving," Gwen said.
"Especially not in the middle of the Valley," added Monica. "But it's almost never this cold in early November either."
Everyone took their phones out to check the weather. No rain forecast and several sites reported the temperature as sixty-five degrees. "Sure feels colder than that," said Naomi with a scowl at her phone.
I had my borrowed one out, looking for the Uber app. "Okay if I download Uber on your phone?" I asked Gwen.
"Sure," she nodded. "Gonna check to see when the limo arrives?"
"Uh, huh," I said. My hands didn't look as if they were shaking, but my fingers felt like Jello noodles. We all huddled against the wall where the wind only hit us in gusts.
"They always measure the temperature at the airport or the city hall, someplace where no one lives," complained Monica. She didn't even have a sweater on, just a long-sleeve t-shirt.
I opened my coat wide, it was way too big for me, anyway. "Get in here," I said. "We can keep each other warm." Holding the phone in my left hand, I pulled my right arm out of the jacket sleeve, so Monica could have more of it.
Giggling, and Monica was usually another non-giggler, she snuggled in, wrapping the corduroy around her. "Cozy," she said, her face right next to mine.
The app was still downloading. I felt a little unreal. I was taking a job where my boss thought I was a girl and apparently expected me to dress like one. Had my life always been so strange?
Monica leaned even closer and rubbed her cheek against mine. "You are a girl, y'know. You've got like no whiskers, Brooksie."
"I know," I sighed. Her comment matched my own thinking. Maybe she was a mind reader.
I opened the app and started creating an account. I'd never used Uber before, so I set the new account name to Brooke Riordan. That be would be the name I intended to use at the new job.
Monica could see what I had typed and gave me a squeeze. "Welcome to the pink side," she whispered.
I rolled my eyes and giggled. Pasting the info from Nader's message into the Uber app showed that the car would arrive in less than ten minutes.
"If we don't freeze to death first," Monica complained when the wind came around the corner and tried to get into the corduroy coat with us.
With my new shoes on, I didn't need to stretch to kiss her behind the ear.
"Jeez!" she squealed. "Like I'm not cold enough, you did that on purpose just to give me chills."
"Yup," I said.
*
I called Mom while we waited. She was in the middle of wrangling my sisters and her crews; we couldn't talk long. I said I was going to be working a new job that probably paid better, but that I'd get my check from SvenKafé to her in the morning, and maybe we could figure a down payment.
"How late you going to be getting home?" she asked.
"I don't know yet," I told her. "Probably after eleven."
"School tomorrow," she mentioned.
I snorted, and she laughed. We both knew I already had enough credits to graduate. If I passed all my exams in December, I could get my diploma at the end of January.
"Gotta go," she warned me before hanging up.
I didn't tell her I was going to be working as a girl.
*
The big, black car arrived three minutes early. We had decided to wait for it just inside the mall doors, out of the wind, but the app beeped at me to let me know. "Driver's name is Rodolfo," it said, which agreed with what Nader had told me.
"It's here, guys," I said. I could see it pulling into the loading zone just outside the bollards around the mall entrance. I got kissed and hugged four times and given more advice but only Jenny and Gwen went with me outside. Naomi and Monica went back to chatting up the boys who had followed us down from the food court, eventually.
"Oh, em, gee," said Jenny. "Lookit the driver."
A large man in a California-style business suit got out of the car. His pants were black, his shirt creamy gold, and his jacket electric blue. No hat or tie. He had curly black hair styled in a blocky razor cut, and more of the same curls showed at the neck of his shirt. He looked like Antonio Banderas's kid brother, the one that works out a lot.
"Miss Riordan?" he asked, smiling at us.
I nodded, holding my hand up.
'I'm Rodolfo," he said. "It's probably going to take us half an hour to get back downtown. So we best get on our way." He had, not an accent, but a bit of a Latin flavor to his speech.
Jenny gave my arm a squeeze then pushed me forward.
Gwen made a noise and grabbed my hand, adding, "I've got an odd feeling about this job."
"So do I," I confessed.
"Do you want to sit up front or in the back, Miss Riordan," Rodolfo asked. "There's an entertainment center and a refreshment bar in back, though you can have refreshments up front, too. Just not alcohol."
"I'll sit up front," I said. The wind had died down a bit, but it was still cold.
He beamed at me and started around the car. I followed, still holding Gwen's hand I discovered. Jenny took up the rear, commenting, "Some car, it must take an hour to get it shining like that."
Rodolfo turned to smile at her. "It does," he agreed. "Most of an hour." Then he opened the front door for me, holding out his arm if I needed help balancing.
Gwen gave me a peck on the cheek then I imitated what I had seen my friends do so often getting into a tall car, step up, sit down, then bring both feet inside at once. Rodolfo's arm turned out to be handy; it was a higher step than it had looked.
After closing the door, he rushed around to the driver's side, sort of shooing Jenny and Gwen in front of him to get out of the way. But he was smiling. Maybe he said something because they laughed. He opened the driver's side door and slid into his seat. "This your first day working for Pearl East?" he asked.
I nodded, waving goodbye to my friends, just as Monica and Naomi came out of the mall to join Gwen and Jenny in waving back. "Yeah," I said, realizing he might not have seen me nod. "Do you work for them, too?"
"No, I'm a contract driver for Uber," he said. "But they pay me to be on call in the afternoons, so they know they will have a limo."
"Oh," I said. I wasn't sure how that would work. "Do you, uh, do you pick up, um, other girls to take them to work? At Pearl East?" Other girls? I suppressed a cringe.
"Sometimes," he agreed. "Or to the airport, the beach, the marina—wherever they need to go." He smiled, showing a surprising dimple in his cheek. "I do have one question for you, though," he said. "How old are you?"
"Oh," I said. "I get that a lot, I'll be nineteen in January."
He nodded, but I could tell he had a doubt. "This January? In two months?" He pulled out of the parking lot, taking Van Nuys back toward the freeway.
I laughed. "Six or seven weeks, actually."
"You look about fifteen, maybe...." He let that trail off.
"Maybe twelve?" I suggested.
"I'm sorry," He apologized. "When someone sits up front with me, I tend to get a bit nosy."
"I know what I look like," I told him. I glanced down at my chest. "Maybe I should pad my bra? Except I'm not wearing one." A giggle escaped. I really am flirting with this guy, I decided. Practice?
He turned as red as someone with his dark complexion can.
I decided I better stop teasing him. "How long have you been doing this job?" I asked.
"Driving for Uber? For Pearl East? Or just driving for a living?"
"Um? All of the above?"
"For Uber, about a year. For Pearl East, almost as long, ten or eleven months. But I've driven cabs, limos, or trucks almost since I got out of high school." He glanced at me sideways. "Do you drive, Miss Riordan?"
I shook my head. "Lessons aren't free, but if this job works out, maybe I'll learn."
"Oh," he said. "It's curious, but almost none of the Pearl East girls drive. I get to play chauffeur a lot."
I laughed again, and he chuckled. "I like driving," he said. "I especially like driving pretty girls around."
Yeah, I thought, now he's flirting with me.
*
After half an hour of thick traffic in the Cahuenga Pass, we pulled into a parking garage under the building on Figueroa and up to a sort of underground lobby entrance. A guy in a business suit stepped up to the car and opened the door for me.
"Take care, Miss Riordan," Rodolfo said, smiling.
"You too," I told him. "And thanks." I almost felt we had become friends. I smiled back at him, and he winked. I shook my head and laughed.
The valet, doorman, or concierge, whatever, offered me a hand to help me down, and I took it. The limo was really an SUV and a bit high off the ground for someone as short as me, even with my new shoes. Once on my feet, I looked around, but it was pretty unremarkable. It could have been any hotel or office building with an underground entrance.
"Is this your first time here, miss?" the man asked. I saw his name tag read Jacob and that he wore a wireless earbud-type phone.
"Yes, it is," I said. "Jacob," I added and smiled at him.
"Pearl East Reception is on the sixth floor," he said with his own smile. "They have that whole floor and the one above." He motioned that I should follow him toward a set of automatic doors. "Just take the elevator up, and you'll see the desk to the right as soon as you get out of the lift."
"Thank you," I said. "I guess you know where I'm going because of arriving in Rodolfo's limo?"
"Yes, miss," he said as we went through the electric doors. "But I always send pretty girls up to Pearl East, anyway." He grinned. "Besides, they called down to tell me to watch for you." He tapped his earphone.
I laughed but hurried toward the elevators because it was the second time in less than half an hour someone had called me a pretty girl. I know I look like a girl, but I'd be more likely to be considered scruffy than pretty, I thought.
The impressive lobby of the building had a multi-story atrium, marble floors and gleamed everywhere with metal and glass. I didn't spend time gawking though, but hurried through, feeling horribly underdressed in my school clothes.
*
I rode the lift to the sixth floor, trying not to feel nervous about what I was doing. I hadn't had any time alone to think about it. What if they found out I was really a boy? I'd probably lose out on the job, but I didn't see where anything terrible would happen. Judging from Jenny's reactions, and Nader's last night, I could pass for a girl without even trying.
Sort of depressing if I spent much time thinking about it, but also funny. Unlike a lot of males, I didn't have that macho ego thing. I knew I was never going to be a manly sort, and that didn't really bother me. But could I do this job? What had Nader said: pour coffee and look pretty?
I knew I could pour coffee, and apparently I looked pretty enough for him to offer me a job. Makeup would probably help, and Nader had asked me if I had a dress then offered to have his office girl take me shopping when I said I didn't. It would be weird to wear a dress, but my friends had teased me often enough about getting me into one that I did feel curious.
It occurred to me just before the elevator door opened that no one of them —Gwen, Jennifer, Monica, or Naomi— had tried to talk me out of this. Thanks a lot, guys, for keeping me from doing something stupid, I said to myself.
So, I was already smiling when I stepped out of the elevator and turned to my right. Sure enough, there was an entryway there with tall wooden doors, and out in front of them, a slender pretty woman with lots of curly blonde hair stood at a skimpy desk.
She wore an earbud phone, too, like Jacob downstairs, and had a tablet in her hands. Her skirt was business-like, short, black and slim. Her sleeveless blouse was frilly and pink, and cut low enough to show a tasteful amount of cleavage. Long earrings, multiple rings, necklaces, and bracelets showed an abundance of bling, but I didn't see any tattoos or odd piercings.
She smiled back at me, taking a step forward. "Hi," she said in a cowgirl drawl. "I'm Lou Ellen Briggs, and you must be Brooke Riordan."
"I am," I agreed. "Or a reasonable approximation, at least," hedging a bit since Brooke really wasn't my name.
She laughed a delighted giggle. "Aren't you just the cutest thing?" She actually said 'thang,' but I'm not going to try to spell her accent. We both put out our hands and touched fingertips; we didn't know each other well enough to hug. I was glad I remembered that girls almost never actually shake hands.
"Mmm, hmm," said Lou Ellen, looking me over. "It's going to be fun shopping for you."
"You mean it's going to be a challenge?" I suggested.
She laughed again then wrinkled her nose. "What I mean is, I like your shoes, but that corduroy jacket has got to go."
I opened the coat and looked at it. "This old thing?" I said, just as if she had complimented me on my sense of fashion.
A Switcher Tale...
by Lulu Martine
Tony, an older man, finds himself in the body of Margaret, a troubled teenage girl, whose complicated life threatens to overwhelm his sense of himself. Can Tony adjust and perhaps solve Margaret's problems?
A Switcher Tale...
1. Reasonably Terrified
by Lulu Martine
I came out of the UCLA Student Financial Services building in my wheelchair and saw the girl throwing up on the sidewalk. I started toward her without really stopping to think. She looked like she needed help.
Closer up, I realized she was younger than I had thought. Barely five-feet tall, in platform high-heel sandals that made her look taller, and a bomber jacket that gave her some bulk—she might be as young as eleven, and most likely not much older.
So, probably not a university student. She wore long, straight, dark hair, and cheap jewelry, with her skinny legs in a miniskirt. It's not that cold in LA in November, but she must have been freezing with the wind coming off the mountains above the city.
"Miss?" I called out. "Miss, do you need help? Should I call someone for you?" I had my phone in my lap, using both hands to maneuver my chair.
A police car pulled to the curb, and an officer got out. "Do we need medical transport here?" he asked.
"I don't know?" I said. I moved closer to the girl, but I didn't want to get splattered with what she was spewing. It looked nasty.
She still hadn't said anything, but that changed when she suddenly straightened up, screamed, and collapsed onto the pavement, lying in her own vomit. The policeman and I reached her about the same time, he being more agile on his feet than I with my wheels, but me with a closer starting point.
I don't remember if I said anything. She opened her eyes and reached toward me, and I stuck out my hand. The next thing I knew, the world had exploded in light, sound, and pain. My muscles convulsed, and I felt myself being cast into some sort of abyss.
*
When I came to—I didn't feel I'd been out long—the cop was standing over me, smiling—with a gun in his hand. "Get up," he said, holding out his other hand.
I didn't realize I had fallen to the pavement, but that's where I was. I tried to explain that I had a bone disease that had collapsed my spine, and my legs were too weak to hold me up. He simply reached down and pulled me to my feet, and I was standing for the first time in more than a decade.
I looked down at myself,--but first I realized there was a third person in our tableau: a familiar-looking old man in a wheelchair who seemed to be just waking up. "Wha-wha-wha?" he said.
The policeman pointed the gun at me. "Run," he said. "Run, 'cause if they catch you, they'll put you in a cage and never let you out."
I stared at him, knowing I could not run. I was disabled, a cripple, in a wheelchair—but no, I wasn't. I looked down at myself and recognized a bomber jacket, a black miniskirt, and skinny legs wearing high-heel sandals.
"Run!" screamed the cop. Then he turned the gun and shot the old man—who might have been me—through the head. The noise, so close, was incredible, and I felt sure I had been splattered with bits of bone and brain and blood.
I ran. I stumbled several times, but I did not fall down, though I did bounce off a light pole and a tree before I heard another gunshot and the whhhp!-crack! of a bullet passing over my head.
"Run," the cop shouted. "Run, cause when they catch you, they'll cut you apart to try to find out how I did this!"
Completely panicked now, I ran, seemingly pursued by the cop's laughter. I don't know how far I ran or even what direction. Just away from the financial services building where I had worked for more than twenty years.
*
After I exhausted myself running, I hid in some bushes in someone's yard. I breathed in huge gulps of air and coughed out bile and snot. My heart thuttered against my chest, my lungs and throat burned, and my side and legs cramped. Everything farther than a few feet away looked blurry and doubled. I blinked several times and rubbed my face with the sleeve of my jacket.
It didn't help because the sleeve was spattered with…. I didn't want to think about it. I smelled like vomit, and I wasn't sure I hadn't shit and pissed on myself, too. I was rank. I lay under the bushes for some time, sobbing. What had happened to me?
I'm a methodical person, basically an accountant, so I tried to take an inventory of my situation. No one seemed to be chasing me, though somewhere a dog was barking. I was in a residential neighborhood, presumably somewhere near the university, lying under a pyracantha bush in a wide green yard in front of a two-story house.
I looked at my hands. Small and slender, the nails were painted black but partially worn off and broken. My nails? The hands certainly felt like they belonged to me, and one nail, in particular, ached and burned, a split hangnail. I used my teeth to pull the broken part free and squealed with the pain.
"Jesus," I heard myself say in a thin, impossibly high-pitched voice, "what the hell did I do that for?" I sucked on the finger. It tasted of dirt and blood and I discovered that I had something else in my mouth besides teeth and tongue. A little exploration made me think I might have a tongue piercing. "Fuck," I said.
I checked my ears. I had several piercings in each one, including a pair of long, dangling ones that almost reached my shoulders. I also discovered my straight, dark-brown hair well past my shoulders. "I'm that girl," I thought wonderingly. I was wearing the bomber jacket. The miniskirt had ridden up during my running and bunched around my waist.
I tried to pull it down, but it wasn't budging in my position under the thornbush. How the hell had I gotten into the little depression near the trunks of the hedge without getting stabbed a dozen times? Could I get back out?
I waggled my ankles and saw my feet at the end of my too-skinny legs, still wearing the platform, high-heel, buckle-on sandals. I'd been running in those? But I had been running….
I hadn't been able to run in more than twenty years. Just like I hadn't been able to quit my job in all those years and forego the rather generous insurance I had through the university.
Well, that problem seemed to be solved, I thought, distracted from my plight by a brief internal leap of joy that I never again had to sort through applications for financial aid or write another letter of denial.
Anthony Garibaldi, TonyGaryUCLA online, had quit his job and run away, leaving his wheelchair behind him. A sudden image of the cop putting a gun to the head of an old man, and pulling the trigger brought another retching sensation, and a taste of bile to the back of my mouth.
If...
If I was now the girl.... And the cop had shot the old me.... Then?
Then some of the mess on the sleeves of the jacket….
There were impossibilities I didn't want to think about, my brain skittering away from them like a spider that has fallen onto a hot griddle.
Dead. I'm dead….
But there I lay in the dirt, smelling loam and vomit and.... Damn, I did shit on myself, didn't I? "I was scared," I said out loud.
Damn right, I was scared. Some monster cures me of paralysis, shoots me in the head while I watch, threatens me with some mysterious 'they,' takes shots at me to force me to run.... And now I faced life as a teenager in a miniskirt? Terror was the only reasonable response.
*
I discovered that it was as easy to get out from under the thornbush as it had been to get in due to one fact. I'm so damn skinny that just by flattening myself against the earth, I only had to worry about my head as I slithered like a snake out of danger with only a few strands of my hair caught on twigs and thorns.
That was bad enough, though. It took me some minutes, crouched there, saying, "Ow, ouch, oh, damn it all," and "fuck me" to get my hair untangled.
I had suffered only one wound, on the upper left side of my butt, which itched like hell. I resisted rubbing it. "You don't know where it's been," I told myself, trying for a quantum of humor.
Freed from my fettering hair, I was finally able to stand up and pull my skirt down to cover my ass, which was the only part of me with real substance — not my head, which was entirely unhinged by the thought that I was wearing a skirt.
Not my shoulders, either, those were lost inside the bomber jacket. I sighed, shrugging to keep the jacket from slipping off my skinny inconsequence. And I tried not to think about the consequences of being a teenage girl now. Those worries could wait.
I could only marvel that no one seemed to be noticing me. It was what? Mid-morning? I'd been leaving work to make a ten a.m. doctor's appointment. It couldn't be as late as eleven yet, could it? I crossed the street and sat down on a service box of some type, probably phone or cable TV. Time to finish my inventory.
There were no pockets in my skirt, but the jacket had several, most of which had zippers, so this did take a while. I did find a phone which wouldn't turn on, but I found several other things as well — fourteen dollars in cash, some change, and several cards.
Perhaps because of some blurring, with the card held almost at the end of my nose, I struggled to read an expired CA ID in the name of Margaret Hoa Robert with a picture of a pretty young woman with long dark hair, amber eyes, and vaguely Asian features. The home address was in Fountain Valley, miles away from West LA, down in Orange County.
Me? Must be. A business card seemed to be for a nail salon in Westminster and didn't tell me much, so I looked at the ID card again.
The birth date listed would make me.... I did the math. I did it again because I didn't like the answer I'd gotten. "Fuck me!" I said. Margaret (My name is Margaret?) wouldn't be sixteen until January 6, next year? Which was only about eight weeks away, but still.
Another card in that little packet was a worn-looking prepaid debit card for Margaret H Robert. The sort of thing you give to a student, so they have access to money, but you control how much they can spend by preloading the card. Almost useless without the PIN, and did it have any money on it in any case?
I investigated more pockets. Lipstick, mascara, a compact, and other makeup supplies. No clue what to do with those. When I opened the compact, it turned out to have six different shades of eyeshadow in it—but I could get a glimpse of my new face in the tiny mirror.
A worried, starved-looking face, so very disheartening to look at. I could see fear in my amber eyes. I put the compact away, my hands shaking a little, and looked through more pockets.
Most of them contained the assorted junk you might expect of some teenage girl who used her jacket as a purse. One was a slender white tube: a tampon. I hoped I wouldn't have to use it. I knew what one did with such a thing, but not the precise how of the task. Yeesh. The implications were disturbing.
Several combs, hair barrettes, bobby pins, a pack of tissue, another of panty liners (!), a fingernail clipper; I used the last to neaten up the nail I had torn, making little ouchie noises as I did so. Then I dragged a wide-tooth comb through my hair with more ouches getting rid of tangles.
I had tons of thick heavy hair, down to my waist, so it took some time to comb. The balding old man inside me was vaguely amused at having so much hair now. The act of combing it seemed to soothe my nerves, so I stayed with it until I had all the tangles out.
I felt better. Amazing what a little attention paid to oneself does for one's sense of well-being. I dug out the compact again and took another look at my face. My mascara had run, which I hadn't noticed before, but it left black streaks down my face. "Dammit," I said in my squeaky new voice.
I got a tissue out of the packet, wet it with spit, and scrubbed away some of the black marks left by my terror and confusion. A better clean-up would have to wait for more resources and repair to my makeup—my makeup!—might be beyond my expertise. It had been many years since my involvement in community theater, and that kind of makeup is not at all the same.
I went back to taking inventory. Nothing else useful in that pocket. But in the next, I did find a depleted pack of menthol cigarettes with a Bic lighter. Oh, joy. As Tony, I had never picked up the habit. I could only hope Margaret wasn't a tobacco addict. Or any other kind, for that matter. I blinked, another worry I didn't have time to worry about.
I resolved to toss the cancer sticks as soon as I found a trash bin, but the lighter might be useful — last pocket, inside the jacket: six foil-wrapped rubbers in two different sizes. I would have said, "Fuck me," out loud again, but it seemed too damn likely that someone had been doing just that.
I rubbed my head in frustration. What the hell had this girl been doing with her life? A girl gets a tongue stud for basically just one reason…. But it's all impossible anyway, I told myself. What did I know about being a teenage girl? Clearly, not much. Was I stuck like this? Well, there was no going back to being Anthony, that body was dead.
My hands wouldn't shake so much if I were really dead, I told myself as I put everything back into the same pockets it had come out of. Maybe I needed a nicotine fix, but I wasn't going to do that. Maybe I needed some other drug, but the less thinking about that, the better.
And I hadn't found a charge cable for the damn phone—not that I had a place to charge it.
A Switcher Tale...
2. Margaret Agonistes
by Lulu Martine
I still had trouble dealing with what had happened to me. I'd been switched into the body of a teenage girl and seen my old, male, middle-aged, crippled body brutally killed. After running in panic away from the murderous monster who had done this, I'd finally regained some equilibrium.
I needed a lot of coping skills, and I seemed to be failing to find them. Taking inventory of what items my new self carried in her jacket had felt like a good idea, and maybe it did help.
Maybe not. My hands didn't stop shaking even after I made sure all my tiny treasures were safely back in my pockets. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I zipped up the front for lack of something better to do. Or maybe the heavy leather felt like armor.
The mood-boost I'd gotten earlier from combing my hair seemed to have dissipated, and the enormity of what had happened threatened me with terror and panic again. I tried some yoga breathing exercises I had learned for when the pain in my back wasn't responding to the morphine pump I wore.
Tony's back. Had worn. I tried to dodge that thought but it persisted. Tony is dead and all his health, job and personal problems are dead with him. Margaret can't possibly have as much baggage as the old man was dragging around, she's too young. I'm too young. And healthy. Okay, maybe I'm a bit crazy, and I may be a drug addict, a prostitute, or a street kid, or all of the above….
I did more yoga until I felt some calmer. My emotions were on a hair-trigger, it seemed, with panic being already locked and loaded. I needed to stay calmer, consider problems one at a time, and not let the enormity of what had happened overwhelm me. Maybe being young and female now had something to do with my emotionality.
Maybe. Otherwise, being a girl seemed like a problem I could worry about later. First, I'm filthy, I thought, I need to clean up. Wherever I went, if I needed to interact with other people, they'd notice. I knew I smelled terrible; people weren't going to want to be around me. I needed at least a public bathroom.
I sat on the Telco utility box beside the sidewalk, sobbing for several minutes. I fisted tears out of my eyes, repeatedly, but more sobs caught in my throat. I wept as silently as I could. This isn't helping, I thought. But curiously, it did. I cried for at least two minutes, maybe twice that long, then I felt enormously better. The resilience of youth, maybe?
I wiped my eyes with the heels of my palms. So, I'm a teenage girl now, apparently on the run and maybe living on the street. But I'm young; I have the use of my legs, I'm in LA where I won't freeze to death. Could be worse. "Could be raining," I said aloud to finish the quote.
Snickering—well, more of a high-pitched tittering—I surveyed the neighborhood I found myself in. I thought I had run east, through the parking lot and a screen of trees. The homes I saw would fit in that rather upscale area. I didn't know the layout personally, but there wasn't a single straight line curb in sight, all the streets here curved.
There was nothing but expensive houses, not a convenience store or fast food place visible. Where could I go to get a bath, or at least access to a sink and some paper towels? And maybe a change of underwear? Ick. In terror and panic, I'd had an accident—it was part of why I knew I smelled bad.
I didn't want to knock on doors. Someone would call the cops, and right at the moment, I was afraid of cops. One of them…. I veered away from that mental image, wrapping my arms around my new physical self.
Focus, Margaret, focus, I told myself—deliberately trying to think of myself as the teenage girl I now was. I'd learned her name from papers in her pockets. I needed an identity, and hers would be useful. But where am I? What do I do now?
The campus stretched out west of me, I felt pretty sure, but in the middle of an overcast day, I had no idea which way was west. An odd feeling that—I'd always had a pretty strong sense of direction but, I realized, I may have left that behind with my male brain.
Another odd impossible thought. It wasn't like I'd had time to pack any mental equipment I thought I might need. No-oo. It'd been like one of those old cartoons with the sheriff at the door with an eviction notice. I squeezed my lips closed on the probably hysterical giggles trying to get out. I tapped the side of my head with a knuckle. You're not a blonde, Margaret, don't be a ditz, I told myself.
Breathe in, two, three, four. Breathe out, two, three, four. Repeat.
Which direction had I been running when I went to ground under the hedge? No clue of that, either. I tried to get a glimpse of the tall buildings on campus over the roofs of houses but no luck. Everything that far away was all blurry and sometimes doubled. I did a lot of squinting, but I didn't see anything that might be big buildings. Sighing, I picked a direction at random and started walking.
Five minutes later, I spotted what I took for the UCLA Medical Center and figured out that I was heading south. The outline was distinctive despite it being seen through the persistent blurring. Why hadn't I found any glasses in my pockets? Maybe I'd been wearing contacts that I'd lost while crying in panic. But wouldn't I have had… I didn't know, and I couldn't know.
Back to the present reality, Margaret, I scolded myself. Oh, God, am I a ditz or a moron? A slightly hysterical-sounding giggle appalled me as evidence that I just might be one or the other or both. Nervously, I unzipped my jacket, zipped it back up, and then down again.
Focus, Margaret, focus, I reminded myself, and a giggle at the pun escaped. I kept calling myself Margaret as a matter of policy. Tony was dead, and it was best not to think about him.
West is that way. I pointed toward where I had seen the Medical Center roofline. Just south and west of the MC would be Westwood Village: shops, fast food, theaters, groceries, and a Target. I tried to pick turns at intersections to angle off in the direction I wanted to go. I got lost, wandered around, found the tops of the MC again, and finally emerged on streets I recognized, only two blocks from Target.
Being lost had been a scary feeling, and I had to wipe tears of relief out of my eyes when I emerged from the residential wilderness. I put my arms inside my jacket and hugged myself. It did feel weird, but it was also some sort of comfort. Tits, I thought inanely, I've got tits. Small ones, but still….
*
I felt conspicuous as hell as I made my way to and inside the discount department store. But no one paid me the slightest bit of attention — just another skinny girl, presumably a student. Skinny and short, I noted. Even with the platform heels, I didn't make it up to what seemed to be average height for the women I saw.
Five-foot-nothing, probably, I mused. Before my spine collapsed, I had topped six feet by an inch or two. Big change—I'd reached five feet back in middle school, I thought but wasn't sure. No wonder I'm wearing high heels. It seemed astonishing that I had no trouble walking in them, but maybe body memory could account for that.
I knew enough about brains to know that movement, especially practiced movements that have become almost automatic, are handled in the cerebellum. And whatever had happened to me had likely not touched that part of my brain, or I wouldn't be able to move at all, probably.
But I didn't waste time wondering about just how consciousness of myself had been displaced into another body. I didn't know, I couldn't know, and according to the monster who had done this to me, somebody was willing to carve me up to try to find out. I clamped my jaw on a surge of fear, then had to clamp unfamiliar internal muscles on a fierce need to piss.
Just that little bit of thinking had scared me so bad that I sort of shuffle-ran, looking for the signs for the restrooms. I barely made it, remembering at the last moment to go into the women's room. It was empty, so I picked a stall, got inside, pulled up my skirt and down with some grotty underwear before remembering to turn around and sit.
After finding some relief, I dabbed around the dampness down there before kicking off the filthy panties I'd been wearing. Mildly freaking out, I left the stall and barely glanced at the mirrors before taking some paper towels, several of them dampened under the faucet, back with me into the same stall. I really wanted to get cleaned up.
First thing, I cleaned up my jacket, trying not to think about what some of the bloody mess might be. I took it off and hung it on a hook. Underneath, I wore a simple pink tank-top with some words on it that I didn't pause to figure out. No bra, but I hardly needed one.
Looking inside my shirt, I decided I wasn't much more than an A-cup. Real breasts though, not the cookie-and-gumdrop confections of a girl barely into puberty. I didn't have time to be fascinated or repulsed. They looked weird being on my chest, skinny, bony, and narrow though that chest was.
Did I have an ounce of extra flesh on me anywhere? Well, my ass seemed plump enough for two girls my size. How embarrassing to realize that I probably got more looks walking away than I did from in front.
After the jacket, I cleaned my face, hands, and arms, then my skirt, including inside it, using up paper towels at a crazy rate. Like the jacket, the skirt was a well-made item, real leather, very black, lined with soft, candy-striped cloth. It was super tight across my bottom and fit closely at the waist with a bit of a flare where it covered the top few inches of my skinny legs. Stylish? I had no fucking clue.
I even undid my buckles, took off my shoes, and washed my feet. Cute shoes, too. Cute? Yeah, cute was the right word. It was obvious from my clothing that I was not a street kid. I had a home somewhere, well, Margaret did, and people who cared enough about me/her to buy good quality clothes. Unless I had bought them myself.
Me, myself. I was deliberately thinking of this girl as being me. Well, I'd always been the practical sort. I'm stuck being Margaret, and the sooner I adjust to the impossible fact of my own existence, the better I can see what needs doing.
Like what to do about the part of me covered by my skirt--I was naked under there now, having discarded my soiled panties. I didn't even want to wash them out in the sink. The fabric had been stiffening up between my legs and feeling really gross, if teenagers still use that word. But what if I had to do more running, and my skirt rode up to my waist again?
I blushed to think of that. But it wasn't likely to happen unless I ran off in panic again. Still, messing around with the intimate parts of a young girl just didn't feel right. "I'm only fifteen," I said out loud in my new tiny voice. Forty-three years of living gone in an instant, but the attitudes and inhibitions created remained.
There were things I didn't want to think about regarding Margaret's situation. I pressed the tongue stud I'd discovered earlier against the roof of my mouth. "I'm jailbait," I muttered, and someone somewhere probably should go to jail. But that would mean dealing with the cops, and right now, I didn't want to do that. Even good results would likely end with me locked up in juvenile detention.
I had to clean up down there, though. I got clean paper towels again, including dampened ones. It was every bit as weird and embarrassing as I had imagined. I seemed to have all the requisite feminine parts and none of the masculine ones. I hadn't had much use out of those for years, so why did I feel their loss so particularly agonizing?
I started sniffling again. "Oh, grow up, Margaret," I told myself. Trying to wrap my head around my new identity was painful in an entirely different way, and I used it more or less as a distraction.
I finished up, discarding most of the paper towels and the soiled undies in the trash receptacles in two different stalls. Not the toilet bowl a real fifteen-year-old might have thoughtlessly used.
I did feel much better. Being grimy and nasty had been hard on my psyche. I paused now in front of the mirrors and dug out my comb and brush — time to deal with my hair more thoroughly when I could see what I was doing.
Before beginning, though, I stuck out my tongue and looked at the silver ball sitting there. Thankfully, I hadn't discovered any other body piercings, and no tattoos, thank god. How does a teenager get such a thing done? Weren't such piercings for children illegal without parental consent? There were probably ways to do things if you were a rebellious teen.
And…worry about that later.
I sighed and went to work on my hair. It was gorgeous stuff, actually, and the rich brown seemed to be its natural shade. Long, thick, healthy, shining--I could do shampoo commercials. I wondered, this being LA, if Margaret had done such work. Too bad, I couldn't ask her.
I stopped suddenly. Panic loomed again. Where was the real Margaret? Her mind? Because it seemed probable that the monster who had stolen my body and then that of the policeman had taken hers first. Where was she? And who was she now?
A Switcher Tale...
3. Like, Totally Dead
by Lulu Martine
I got control of myself before I ran out of the bathroom and went screaming down the aisles. Since I didn't have any undies on, if my skirt rode up again, I would be giving a free floor show. Not that I thought of that at the moment. I wasn't used to thinking about skirts at all.
If I ran, where would I go? Where should I go? Not back to my apartment, Tony's apartment, the cops would be there now or soon: Tony was a murder victim. I needed to stay away from the authorities.
When my heart stopped pounding, and I stopped clenching my teeth and rolling my eyes, I wondered what was wrong with me?. I must have ridden the roller coaster from terror to depression two or three times already. Women are supposed to be more emotional, but this was ridiculous.
Then again, I had been through some really—bizarre!—experiences in only a few hours. I thought about that. It might have been less than two hours. At most three hours ago, I had been Anthony, thinking about my doctor's appointment. Now Anthony was dead…. Stop it!
I needed something else to think about, quick — my phone! You're not quite alive any more without your phone — not the right way to say that. If I can get my phone charged, then maybe I could call those numbers on that business card for the nail salon in Orange County. Better.
With enough presence of mind recovered, I yoga-breathed myself into coherence.
But what would I tell them? They'd be complete strangers to me. And me a stranger to them, but they wouldn't know that. They might really be strangers. I was only assuming they were relatives, and that just because it was a nail salon, a business dominated by Vietnamese immigrants, and Margaret had a Vietnamese middle name.
I could tell them my story, but they wouldn't believe me. I had trouble believing it myself. Maybe I could play sullen teenager long enough to figure out who was who.
Oh shit! I'm fifteen, and it's the week before Thanksgiving—I'm supposed to be in school! I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity. I clamped my teeth on the laughter; I didn't need hysterics any more than I needed panic.
Distraction. Something. What have I got in my hand? A brush…. Oh, yeah. I'd been standing there, staring at the mirror with a brush in my hand. Take a deep breath, brush hair…. Brush. Brush. A hundred strokes seemed excessive, but wasn't that the folk wisdom? Too bad, I forgot to start counting.
Eventually, I'd done about all I could with my hair and felt much calmer. Odd how soothing taking care of your hair is, even if it's hair you didn't have a few hours ago.
I put the comb and brush away. My long, dark hair was lovely (lovely?), and I looked cute (cute!) with it hanging down my back. I made a face at the mirror. Did I want to be cute? I might get it cut, but somehow, I already doubted that. It would be a pain to have to take care of it, but being in a wheelchair for ten years had taught me a few things.
You have to find something about yourself to love, or just doing the daily routines of living gets tedious. And I loved my new hair. It may have helped that Tony had started going bald years ago. But it was also useful as a mood lifter, apparently. I moved my head from side to side, feeling it swish against my neck. I smiled, and the girl in the mirror smiled, too.
That's me, I told myself. That has to be me, because the other me is dead. Shut up. I'm a cute, tiny half-Asian girl named Margaret Robert. No 's' on the last name. I rolled my eyes at my image. I'd probably had to tell a thousand or more people how to spell my name. Margaret had. I had. Margaret is me.
When I'd been washing up, I'd discovered that the gold chain I had around my neck had a cross pendant hanging down my back. I didn't know if it had gotten turned around during my panic, but I now had it hanging in front. It was a fairly sizable cross, too, though I wasn't confident on judging sizes in my new body.
As Tony, I'd never been very religious, but Dad was Catholic, and Mom was Lutheran, so they had compromised and attended Episcopalian services, Christmas and Easter. Dad was gone now and Mom lived in a retirement home in Arizona. She didn't remember why I was in a wheelchair the last time I visited her. She wouldn't know me at all if I showed up now.
If Margaret was wearing a cross, she was probably a Catholic. Lots of Vietnamese were. If she had hidden it down her back, she might be conflicted about her faith. I sighed, closing one of my tiny new hands around the cross. I actually felt some comfort from doing that, and I realized Margaret had probably done the same when she was scared and lonely.
Damn. I was more scared and lonelier than Anthony could have imagined.
*
Leaving the bathroom, finally, I wandered the aisles in Target for a while. I needed underwear and a charger, and I only had fourteen dollars. I checked the chargers first. The cheapest cable I found was $9, and the cheapest wall-wart was $5. I probably didn't have enough change for the tax. I felt discouraged until I noticed the in-store Starbucks cafe.
What I'd thought of might not work here, but there was a real Starbucks in the Village only a few blocks away. I'd have to try there, and it would probably work. College kids are helpful to each other, and I was tiny and cute. Someone would loan me a charging cable.
I thought about going back to the mirrors to practice looking cute and helpless, but the idea was too embarrassing. I kept blushing when I remembered that the other thing I needed was clean panties.
I wandered until I found the women's underwear tables. I steeled myself to buy something like what Margaret had been wearing: silky, lacy and black. The pair I had thrown away had been marked XS so I did know my size. But I hadn't realized there are like eight different styles.
I picked something called a boy-short, for the irony, but also, it looked most like the pair I remembered. One nice, lacy boy-short in something called micro-fiber cost $5. That would put buying a charger even further out of reach, but the draft I kept feeling was making me crazy. I had breezes touching me in places I hadn't had places before.
Besides, I had another idea. Before I went up to the register, I pulled out my ID card and the business card and memorized all the numbers on them. Reading the cards wasn't easy, working with what an extremely poor-sighted friend of mine had once called 'nose-braille.' Where were my damn glasses?
I settled on Margaret's birthday as being most likely, 0106, and approached the checkout with the debit card in hand as well as my purchase. I figured I could make two tries at guessing the PIN and if that failed, I could pay cash. I didn't want to fail three times in a row, that might lock the card.
The bored clerk hardly looked at me. I put the card in the reader and punched my first guess into the numbers. No joy. I tried 0601, and that didn't work either. The clerk said, "Forgot your PIN number?"
"Uh, huh," I said. I didn't need to fake a whimper. Also, I didn't need to mention that the N in PIN stands for number, but it amused me enough the whimper didn't turn into tears. I smiled at her, trying out a cute and helpless look.
"You got an ID with the same name as the card?" she asked.
I blinked but pulled out my ID. She glanced at it, not looking long enough to see that it had expired last January. "I can try running your card as a credit card," she offered.
And that worked! Lordy, it's not supposed to for prepaid cards, but some banks are sloppy about the rules. Such a tiny victory and I felt over the moon about it. Calm down, Margaret, calm down. "Thank you very much!" I gushed.
The clerk winked at me, saying in a lowered voice. "Going commando because you had an accident? Been there, done that."
Blushing, I headed back to the bathrooms. I hadn't heard the phrase "going commando" since Tony's college days, and I heard myself giggling. Then I almost went into the wrong bathroom.
*
The undies went on as soon as I got into a stall. They fit, and their silky softness felt nice on my nether bits. I could have bought a cheaper pair, but all of Margaret's things were good quality, even expensive. The jacket alone might have cost hundreds of dollars, real leather with a lining, six pockets, and a zip-in hoodie.
I left the bathroom feeling a bit more confident. Funny how underwear affects you that way. "Going commando" was not my style. Not even Margaret's apparently, despite the tongue stud.
I wandered some more. I couldn't think of anything else I needed besides a charging cable, and I didn't have enough money. I could pull the credit card thing again, but it might not work, and besides, I had a cheaper option.
I headed for the in-store cafe but didn't see the kind of crowd I thought might work with what I had in mind. Also, they didn't have a charging station with USB plugs, so I'd have to borrow not only a cord but a wall-wart. If they even had standard electric plugs, which I didn't see either.
I wandered on out to the parking lot because one middle-aged guy kept looking at me funny. Like I was a snack. Creepy. I wondered how much of that I was going to get. I knew what I looked like: attractive, even pretty, but no raving beauty.
Two blocks over was a real Starbucks, so I headed that way. Everyone on the street seemed larger than me, even the women. I had five inches of extra height with my platform sandals, but even so, I was looking girls and women right in the mouth or nose. I revised my estimate of my own height at five-foot-nothing down an inch or so. This might be as hard to get used to as being female.
And I was getting looks. Mostly smiles. Women, in particular, smiled at me, and older men. Young guys smiled too, but often it was a beat or so delayed. While they checked me out, I supposed. I need a sign, I decided. Big letters. JAIL BAIT. That made me giggle, and I collected even more smiles.
I noticed something. If I smiled at people, they always smiled back. Always, if they noticed me. I'm like a ray of sunshine, I told myself and heard another of my giggles. I must be cute as hell, I thought. This is going to work.
*
I'd been in amateur theatricals before, during, and after college. So, I constructed a character I could play. Little Margaret is sweet and sassy, a charmer, but doesn't take herself too serious. She's worried because her phone is dead; she thinks her family may have been trying to call her.
I could fill in more later. I reached for the door to Starbucks, but someone inside pushed it open for me. "Thank you," I said as I passed the guy. I smiled and he smiled. Hey! That was kind of cool in a way I hadn't expected.
I stopped out of the way of the door and looked around the room while I dealt with a new complication. That guy—I glanced back at him, and yup, he was still looking at me—that guy smiling at me had been different. I enjoyed his smile. Why was that? I closed my eyes and tried not to think about it.
Time for my act. I took my phone out of my pocket and held it up. "Has anyone got a phone charger I could use? I need to call home, and my phone is, like, totally dead." Maybe I was a little too far into character with that stupid "like," but with my squeaky voice, it probably added some authenticity.
It worked. Three guys and a gal offered me a cable. One of the guys was the one who had opened the door for me and whose smile had caused a reaction in me. I took the gal's offer. "Thank you very much," I gushed. "I'm Margaret," I added.
"I'm Joan," she said. "There's a charging box beside the condiments, so all you need is a cable. Yours isn't an iPhone, is it?" She held out a wire with a standard phone connection.
"Uh, no, thanks." I took the cable and went to plug it in, telling Joan as I did so. "Don't forget this if you leave before I do. Just take it, someone else will loan me a cord if I'm not finished."
"Uh, huh," she agreed, going back to the books she had spread out in front of her.
Two other phones were being charged, but Starbucks had four USB plugs on each end of the condiment table. I checked to be sure mine was charging; it was, but it still wouldn't come up yet. If it were totally dead, it might take several minutes to boot.
A clock above the order counter showed the time as 1:35, the numbers large enough for me to read at a distance if I squinted. More than three hours since I had left my office and had my life turned inside out. That didn't seem right unless I had been just wandering aimlessly for a time before I came back to myself under the thorn bush. Could be, I admitted. Panic is like that.
The guy by the door was still sending me glances, and I realized that I was still glancing at him. My God! Am I flirting with him? I looked away.
A Switcher Tale...
4. Anything I Need...
by Lulu Martine
The chairs closest to the charging station were occupied, but I couldn’t just stand around, being in the way of people who wanted to add cinnamon to their cappuccino. I could afford a drink myself, I decided. The menu might as well have been invisible, but I had been in this very Starbucks as Tony many times.
At the counter, I ordered a short coffee, a size that is not listed on the menu, anyway, but at eight ounces, it’s plenty, and you can drink it before it gets cold.
Damned if when I turned around, I didn’t look at Door Guy and see him smiling back at me. Was I smiling? Yeah, dammit. He moved some books off a chair and nodded at me that I should take a seat. Why am I doing this, I wondered as I moved to sit down. It was the closest empty chair to the condiment table. Still.
“I’m Nathan—Nate,” he said as I sat. “Nice jacket.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s got lots of pockets, that’s what I like about it.” Okay, I’m being friendly, but did I have to giggle?
I took a sip of my coffee and almost spit it out. Strong, bitter, and so hot, it was almost chewy. What the hell? I glared in the direction of the serving counter, had they given me something instead of regular coffee? Espresso maybe? No, not for the $1.65 I’d paid for a short.
“You drink your coffee black?” Nate asked.
I looked down at the steaming cup in my hand. Anthony drank his coffee black for simplicity, avoiding having to reach up from his chair to get at stuff on an elevated table. I’d even come to prefer it that way. But what fifteen-year-old girl drinks black coffee?
“That’s what’s wrong!” I said. “Excuse me.” I got up, careful not to spill any, and went to the condiment table to add sweetener and a dash of skim milk. I tasted again and added a packet of real sugar. Better.
Nate was chuckling at my ditziness. I was annoyed. It made me look like I was so interested in him that I forgot to doctor my drink. I checked my phone, nose against the screen, 2% charge. I left it there and went back to sit across from Nate.
“I don’t usually drink coffee,” I said, making my excuse as lame as possible by giggling again.
“Coffee is good when it’s cold out,” he said as if agreeing with me. “Are you a student at the U?”
I shook my head. “University High, I’m a sophomore.” Letting him know I was underage. I probably didn’t attend Uni-Hi, if my family lived in OC, but it was nearby and made a convenient lie.
“Uh, huh,” he said. He glanced at the clock. “You out early?”
“Uh.” I tossed my head. “Long story,” I said. “Stayed all night with a girlfriend and we overslept and… like I said, long story.”
He nodded. “I didn’t hear your name?” he asked.
Margaret sounded too formal and too familiar at the same time, and all the nicknames I could think of for Margaret were, like, gag me. Thinking that made me giggle. “It’s Hoa,” I said.
“Wha?”
“Hoa,” I said, giggling one more time. Oh, Jeez! “It means…” —did I know what it meant? Yes, I did, some student applying for aid had told Tony!—“flower, it means flower.”
He smiled back, and something punched me in the heart. What the fuck was going on here? I took a sip of coffee, but it went down wrong, and I coughed. I put the coffee down quickly before I spilled it and coughed again.
“Careful,” he said. “You, okay?”
I nodded. “‘Scuse me,” I said and headed for the bathrooms. Starbucks had two bathrooms, both unisex, so I hid in one while I got the coughing under control.
I tried to explain things to myself. Sitting across from the guy…. Like three feet away…. And I’ve been scared and lonely…. His smile felt like a lifeline. That was it. But why giggle?
No way was I attracted to his muscles, his three-day beard, his long eyelashes, his surf-colored eyes, that smile…. Fuck. I’m a fifteen-year-old girl, and my hormones are out of control. And I’m thinking with a female brain. I’m probably as boy-crazy as…. I didn’t want to finish that thought.
“Going to have to deal with this,” I told myself out loud. And the sound of my tiny, girlish voice reinforced the truth. I would have to deal with boys and men, as a teenage girl with hormones that made her crazy. Me crazy. I said that aloud too. “Me crazy,” I told the girl in the mirror. She nodded.
Eventually, I had to go back out to the dining room; my coffee was getting cold. But first I went and checked on my phone, 6% charge. I stared at that number for a while. It was booting up—I could probably make calls. I chickened out, went to ask Joan, “We still good?”
She nodded. “You chatting with Nate?” she asked, grinning.
“Yeah, well,” I said. “He seems nice, and there was an open chair and….”
“Uh, huh,” she said. “He is nice. How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” I said. We both looked over at Nate, and he grinned at us. I felt myself blush and hoped my skin was dark enough it didn’t show.
It probably did because Joan laughed. “He’s okay,” she said. “I don’t have any classes with him, but I see him around.” She nodded. “If he was a predator, I’d probably have heard.” She nodded again, this time indicating the chair holding her books. “You want to sit here instead?”
“No,” I said. “Thanks. And my phone is still charging. I’d like to get it to 20% or more.”
“Uh, huh,” she said. “I’m going to be here,” she looked at her own phone, lying beside her books, “another 20 minutes or so.”
“Okay,” I said. I went back to where I had been sitting and took a sip of coffee. Still warm, so I took a bigger sip, being careful it went down the right way.
“Hey,” said Nate, looking up from his books. “Phone got enough charge to make calls now?”
I nodded.
He looked toward the phone. I squirmed a bit. “You wanted to make calls?”
“Uh, huh,” I said. “But….” A reason to delay occurred to me. “I’m pretty sure someone is going to want to chew me out.” It did seem likely. Here I was, a high school kid, wandering around a college campus in the middle of the day. I frowned. What the heck was I doing here?
Then something else occurred to me, and I felt a cold chill. Why was no one talking about the shooting that had happened three hours ago, less than a mile away? A cop shot a guy in a wheelchair…it would be national news, wouldn’t it?
What had caused me to think of the shooting was looking out the window at a University Police patrol car turning at the corner. Not a city police car, it looked just like the one the cop this morning had gotten out of. The cop that had shot my old body in the head and then shot at me—Margaret me—as I ran away.
What had the cop said when he threatened me? “Run, ‘cause if they catch you, they’ll put you in a cage and never let you out. They’ll cut you apart, trying to find out how I did this.”
“They” were whoever had the means and a motive to cover up a shooting on campus. And that had to include the cops. No one was talking about the shooting of a wheelchair-bound old man because the cops had not reported it….
They must be looking for me. That fact wasn’t really evident, did they actually know about me? I had run from the murdering policeman but…. But nothing made sense anyway—impossibilities piled on impossibilities…
I had to get away. And I had to do it quick because I could feel myself teetering on the edge of the sort of fear, terror, and panic that had already gripped me more than once.
I’m a coward, I thought. A physical coward—when I’m afraid, I do stupid shit. Well, I’m small and weak and female, it’s not completely irrational…and I’m in an irrational situation.
While my mind buzzed, I drank the rest of my coffee, grabbed my phone, put the charging cable down in front of Joan, and waved a very nervous goodbye to her and Nate. “Gotta run, just ‘membered….” Then I hit the door and almost fell on my ass. When did they start making doors that weighed a ton?
Nate was up and had the door opened for me before I could brace myself to try again. He was smiling at me.
I smiled back, stuttering, “Th-thanks.”
He replied with a string of numbers. What the hell? I paused, panic mysteriously on hold for a moment, to recite the numbers back to him, and he nodded. “Call me if you need anything,” he said.
My mouth dropped open. Then I ran. I recited the numbers as I ran, but I was in the wind. Ten digits, it was a phone number. If I need anything…. Anything?
I need my head examined, I thought. But then I remembered that there were people out there that wanted to do just that…with a saw and a set of dental picks, probably. “310-555-6873,” I said, over and over and over.
Anything I need…? I kept running.
*
Running was not my best idea because it triggered my panic into full terror. I didn’t stop running until I was completely out of gas, gasping and panting and horking up some of the coffee I had drunk. I didn’t get any on me this time, at least.
I had to stop because the alternative was face-planting on the pavement. I slowed down, stumbled, caught myself by grabbing a fence, then sank to bend over a hand-width of grass on this side of the barrier. I trembled in every limb—my knees and ankles could not sustain my posture, and I ended up squatting down on my heels.
I looked around. At least I knew where I was this time. I’d run north from Starbucks, past the Village Theater, and apparently made a left turn I didn’t remember to go down an alley behind In-N-Out Burger. It was a disappointingly short distance for me to be so exhausted from running it.
The drive-thru and by-pass lanes were right there beside me, and several of the patrons were peering out of their cars at my ass. Well, not literally, I was sitting on that part. But they seemed keenly interested in me. I saw a window go down and a guy leaned out of the passenger side window.
“Hey, chickie,” he called, “you want a burger?”
I shook my head. I had to get out of there, too. I just threw up, and he thinks I want to put a burger in my mouth? I looked away, hoping he would ignore me for being rude.
I was drawing too much attention, and I was positive the cops were looking for me. Somebody might be on a phone reporting the suspicious young woman in the leather jacket to the authorities. I clambered to my feet, feeling exhausted but determined.
The little area of grass I had crouched beside had been fenced off for some unknown reason. Perhaps just to keep people from parking on it, which they surely would have done. I walked on down the driveway toward the street, turning north again. At least, I thought it was north.
My internal map of the campus village seemed a bit tattered and worn, but I did not want to go the other direction because it would lead back to where I had seen the police car like the one that had been present when this whole disaster began.
I needed to get out of the area quickly. And I needed somewhere I could sit down and use my phone. Up ahead, I saw two buses standing at the same bus stop. Just like cop cars, they came in both city and university markings, one of each.
I hurried and managed to climb aboard the city bus before it started moving. I paid my fare and moved to the middle seats, though the bus was not crowded. The driver was an older woman who had only nodded when I fed a bill into the fare meter, and the other passengers were an assortment of urban and university types. No one was paying the slightest bit of attention to me.
I sat down and pulled out my phone. Only 11% charge. Dammit. I’d have to be careful. First thing though, I entered the number Nate had given me, hesitating only over the last digit, had it been a two or a three? I made an ‘oo’ and an ‘ee’ with my mouth and decided it had been a three.
I marked the number as belonging to Nate and meant to save it but instead hit dial. Understandable, since I was working with the phone right up in my face. But…. Should I let it ring through?
Nate answered. “Hello?”
“Um, just checking I remembered the number right,” I squeaked. A giggle escaped.
“Hoa?” he asked.
I thought he had started to say ‘what’ and hesitated before answering. But Hoa was the name I had given him. “Uh, huh,” I said, a little late. “I gotta go, but thanks….”
“Wait,” he began, but I had already hit close, just as I started to giggle again. Fuck. Now he had my number, I realized.
He’s way too old for you, Margaret, I told myself which was absurd enough to get me past overthinking the situation. Another brief giggle and I could focus on my real problems and not worry about teenage angst.
Part of my problem seemed to be that in concentrating on getting myself out of the jam Margaret was in, I was becoming Margaret for real. Already, some of Tony’s life seemed like a movie I had seen.
Tony would never have noticed that Nate was cute. But Margaret sure did. I rolled my eyes when I heard myself giggle.
A Switcher Tale...
5. Phone Home
by Lulu Martine
The bus continued to travel north along the edge of the campus with rows of apartment buildings on the left side, including mine, or rather Tony’s. And sure enough, there were three police cars parked on the street plus a van right out of the CSI television shows.
I shuddered to think I might have gotten into that mess if I had tried to go back to my apartment. Tony was dead, but he was killed over near my office on the other side of the campus. Why were the cops here? Even though I had predicted that very thing, it still shook me up to see it happening.
My hands were shaking again as I tried to distract myself from the fallout of my own murder. I’m just a fifteen-year-old runaway with a nearly dead phone. It’s got nothing to do with me. I’ve got other problems.
We made a turn and continued along a more parklike route for a bit. Trees and grass on one side, lawn and—headstones?—on the other. Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery, I’d forgotten how near it was. I looked away. I didn’t need to see more dead people.
This was a city bus, and I wasn’t familiar with where it might be headed, but I didn’t get off at any of the exits, passively allowing fate to pick a destination for me. I especially didn’t want to get off the bus near the cemetery.
What other numbers did I have in my phone? I hit the Recent button and looked at that list. The two most frequently called numbers were West LA exchange, identified as Garth and Lila’s. I looked at the info page on both. Lila’s had a nearby address and appeared to be a business.
Garth had three phone numbers and two addresses. The frequently called number was identified as mobile, and the other two were home and work, and attached to appropriate addresses. Home was, at a guess, one of the apartment buildings nearby. Work had a University exchange number, and the address would be the School of Theater, Film and Television.
Uh, oh. I puzzled over that for a bit. Was Garth my boyfriend? Did I live with him? Was he a student, an administrator, a faculty member, or just an employee? I didn’t call him, just then, but instead looked to see what other numbers I had under Favorites.
One jumped at me — Mama, with a 714 area code, which would be Orange County. I looked at history. I hadn’t called that number in two months. What kind of daughter doesn’t call her mother for two whole months? Mama had called Margaret a few times, missed calls, but not in several weeks.
I started crying, and I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know this woman, and she might think she knew me, but she really didn’t. Before I thought it through, my agile little thumbs had hit the dial button. I struggled to stop crying, searching in my pockets for the packet of tissues.
A woman answered. “Now you calling?” she snapped. She didn’t have a real accent but a sort of non-native flavor to her voice, and she left out articles and helping words.
“Mama?” I said. Her voice had the strangest effect on me. I knew it, but I didn’t know it.
“You in trouble? That why you call your mama?” Her voice was sharp, angry, but also called up smells I halfway recognized—hot spicy soup, strong chemicals, and clove cigarettes.
“Uh, huh,” I said. What the heck had Margaret done to piss off her mother that she was still mad after two months?
“Good!” she said. “Maybe you learn something. You need money? You run out of six hundred dollars you stole? Your boyfriend kick you out?”
“Um.” This was a strange conversation. I had stolen money from my mother and ran away from home? “I’m sorry, Mama.” My eyes were burning.
“You damn right, you sorry,” she said. Then she unleashed a stream of Vietnamese. I presume it was Vietnamese, full of hisses and tones and the choppy gutturals that make it different sounding than Chinese.
“English, please, Mama,” I said. I sounded whiney, and I was sure I had said something similar many times.
“You never like talk chyeng-wet.” She paused, and I heard a noise like maybe she had blown her nose. I took the empty space to blow my own.
“You not my Margie any more? You run away, and you break my heart. His name, Gordon? What is it? He call you Marla? Take picture of you, make promises. You not even that pretty!”
More Vietnamese. I waited it out. The bus was making a wide turn, I think onto Sunset Ave. Where did it go from here? A few people had gotten on and off at stops as we went through the campus, but it was no more nor less empty than before.
Mama spoke English again since I didn’t answer when she spoke her own language, even though meaning for me seemed just out of reach. “You get enough to eat? You have clothes to wear? Place to sleep?” Her concern came through her anger. “You on drugs?”
I still didn’t answer. I was wearing good clothes, but I didn’t know any other answers, even to her English questions. My face hurt.
“I not call police this time,” she said suddenly. “You tell them lies. You tell them I beat you! Why you busting my balls, con-guy? Ha?” Con-guy was daughter, how did I know that?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, weeping now. Had I tried to get her in trouble with the police? I’m a terrible daughter!
“This your father’s fault,” she said with even more venom. Then another stream of angry Vietnamese.
“I’ll call back,” I said when she paused to make gulping sounds. “My phone is dying.” Anything to get away from this conversation.
“Mep yow con, way nya,” she said. It didn’t sound angry, just hurt.
I didn’t know what that meant, but I could guess. Something like, “I still love you, come home.” I hung up.
*
The bus seemed more empty now, hollow. It took some time to manage to stop crying.
That woman, I didn’t know her name —Mrs. Robert— she was not my mother. Was she? She didn’t know me, but she thought she did. Tony’s mother, Mrs. Garibaldi, in the rest home in Arizona, she didn’t know me anymore, either, even when I was in my old body.
And I’m Margaret now—now and for the rest of my life. Mrs. Robert is my mother, if I even have one. Dammit, I have to stop crying.
A middle-aged woman across the bus aisle, the only other female passenger, watched me with obvious empathy. I turned away to look out the window to avoid seeing her hurt with my pain that I could not justify, even to myself. Was this Margaret’s distress coming through, crowding into my existence?
I hadn’t had time for existential considerations. How in the world could it be that I existed at all? My whole mind and memory, transplanted in a moment into another body? It didn’t seem possible, and I don’t just mean in some mechanical way—it didn’t seem at all consistent with how I thought reality worked.
Not just, what mechanism could operate with a touch to gather memories, thoughts and feelings, identity itself, and move this gestalt whole from one physical body to another—while at the same time moving another such construct the other direction—not just that, but also why? Why would there even be a capability built into reality to make such a thing possible?
It made the next question necessary—is there such a thing as a soul? And if so, what is a soul made of and how does it fit into a universe of subatomic particles and all the rest. I’m no physicist, but I once had a broad education, and I’ve read a lot of science fiction.
The kind of world where what had happened to me could happen at all was not a world of hard science, but rather one of science fantasy. Magic. And the problem with magic is that if magic is real, then what does reality even mean?
And what about the leakage from Margaret’s memories I seem to encounter sometimes? I’m thinking with her brain; it would make sense if some of her remained in odd corners of the gray matter. In fact, that made more sense than what seemed to have actually happened.
Was it comforting or scary that Tony seemed to have overwritten Margaret, and yet—while I thought I was him—I seemed to act and feel more like her.
And where the heck is this bus going? We were pulling into the Brentwood Village Mall parking lot. We stopped, and two people got off, but no one got on and off we went again, heading south this time, if I wasn’t completely turned around. And I might be, I wasn’t thinking with the brain I was used to using.
Existential questions were all well and good, and I’d love to be Tony sitting in a bar somewhere bullshitting about the whichness of what with the guys I went to college with over a few beers—but I wasn’t. I was Margaret, sitting in a bus to nowhere, having heart palpitations.
*
No, wait. That’s my phone, I must have it on vibrate, and I put it back in my coat pocket. I pulled it out and stared at it. Was Mrs. Robert calling me back? I put the phone up close to my face so I could read the name. Garth.
Time to find out who he was. I pressed answer and put the phone to my ear. “Hello,” I said.
“Marla,” he said. “Where the fuck are you?”
“On a bus,” I said. His voice, too, sounded familiar.
“You ain’t back from Wilshire yet?” he asked. “You were gonna meet me at the studio at one.”
“What time is it?” I asked. I didn’t need to know, but it was something to say.
“Almost two. Hey, he sent the money. Come to the apartment. I’ll go by the bank and have something good for you, hanh?” He chuckled.
By the time I had blinked twice and began to say, “I—,” he’d hung up.
I had tons of questions. What had I been doing in Wilshire? That’s almost all tall office buildings, not where you would expect to find a teenage runaway. Also, he who? And what money? And most of all, what should I do now?
The phone made a rude noise, warning me it was running out of power. I quickly shifted to the info page for Garth and memorized the address that looked as if it might be an apartment building. Then I clicked the phone off to save what little battery I had left.
Marla? Did he call me Marla? Hadn’t Mama said something about my boyfriend calling me that? My hands were shaking, and I knew I might be close to panic again. But there’s nowhere to run on a bus.
I wasn’t sure I was doing the smart thing, but I got off the bus at the next big stop, another shopping mall, and decided to wait for one going the other way on the same route. I got a cup of water and a taco from one of the fast-food places, the water to rinse my mouth out, and the taco because I was suddenly starving.
Eating seemed to help the shakes I’d been having, and I remembered the cigarettes I had found in my pockets. I got rid of those. “Don’t say I never saved your life, Margaret,” I told myself.
There were two lonely outside tables near the bus stop, so I sat at one of them and huddled inside my jacket, waiting. My legs got cold when I stopped moving, but the top half of me was warm, and that seemed like enough. The oddest thing was I felt calmer than I had since the terrible things that had happened. I had somewhere to go and someone expecting me, and it was—comforting?
What was Garth going to be like? His voice was the only clue I had. He’d sounded like an adult, but not like a faculty member or even someone who might work in administration, like Tony. Janitor, groundskeeper, what the heck? How had he ever hooked up with Margaret?
With me? I’m Margaret. Could I trust him?
Too many questions and no answers at all.
Suddenly, though it probably happened more gradually and I just noticed, now there were more people around, teenagers. Kids my age, that is. I remembered there was a high school nearby. It must be the end of the day for some of them. Good, I wouldn’t stand out so much.
Two guys took up places at the other outdoor table with bags from the taco place. I became aware that they were watching me. It felt weird. I kept my knees together, consciously, with my feet directly under me, not facing the table but looking out at the bus stop. This felt weirdly comfortable and safe.
I didn’t look at them, and after a bit, I realized they had stopped looking at me. Body language? Maybe. Something to remember.
The bus came, and I paid another dollar to get on, but the driver glared at me. “S’posed to show your student ID,” he growled. I gave him a big-eyed look and felt my lower lip tremble. “Take your seat,” he snapped. When I did, a girl grinned at me and I smiled back.
I wanted to giggle, but I resisted it. Another arrow in my feminine arsenal, I thought.
*
The address I had memorized was a two-block walk off the bus route, and 457 Memorial Way turned out to be a four-story pile of beige blocks with an iron-barred security gate.
Something occurred to me, and I dug in my pockets and found what I was looking for—an utterly nondescript piece of green plastic the size of a credit card with a stylized triangular arrowhead at one end. I put it into the slot of the card reader next to the gate, arrowhead first, and heard the lock snap open.
I pushed my way into the courtyard. Apartment 217 came to mind. But was that Tony’s apartment number, where my dead self had lived? Or was it my boyfriend Garth’s place? I didn’t feel certain either way, but it felt especially odd to contemplate having a boyfriend.
I started up the iron-and-concrete stairs, the green keycard still in my hand.
A Switcher Tale...
6. Unicorn on the Bed
by Lulu Martine
I knocked on the door to 217 then rubbed my knuckles. That had hurt, I had to remember not to knock so hard. I glared at my tiny, soft hands. I looked around, but no one seemed to be in sight.
No answer. I used the keycard to use to rap on the door a second time, with my left hand because the knuckles of my right hand still hurt. I sucked on them, feeling pouty — stupid flimsy girly hand.
Still no answer. I turned around to look out over the courtyard, squinting a bit. The apartment doors were on balconies that surrounded the courtyard with stairwells at the corners and in the middle of the long back side. There were at least two elevators, one near the entrance and one next to the stairwell in the back.
Middle of the afternoon, no one in sight except there might be someone on the fourth-floor balcony in the far back corner smoking a cigarette. Maybe not, my eyes weren’t good enough to be sure. I turned back around, tried the keycard in the slot above the door handle, and heard the lock snap open.
The door, a massive oak and metal thing, swung open easily for which I felt grateful. I stepped inside, closing it behind me. “Garth?” I called out. No answer, not a sound, in fact.
The floor just inside the door was some kind of rough tile, marking an entryway. To the left, a narrow door probably opened on a coat closet. To the right, lay a kitchen with smooth-tiled floors and gleaming counters. The sink and stove were a burnt orange color that reminded me that the building had probably gone up in the 1970s. But someone had replaced the refrigerator with a black and silver modern model with through the door ice and water dispensers.
Straight ahead, a carpeted living room remodeled into a miniature gym held all kinds of exercise equipment, including one of those electronic equivalents of an old Nautilus machine. Racks of free weights sat next to a sixty-inch flat-screen television along an inner wall.
The place had the odor of a gym, too; clean, but smelling of old sweat and disinfectant. Windows and a glass door showed the existence of an outer balcony. I walked over and pushed a drape aside for a glimpse of the building next door and some greenery between. All the apartment buildings on this street had basement parking, I remembered.
I let the drape close and turned back. The extension of the kitchen formed a dining alcove, and a hallway opened off that. I headed that way. The first door was a three-quarter bathroom, with a shower large enough for two people to share. I skipped a closer examination and went down to the next door.
Probably originally a bedroom, this was set up as a home video studio, or maybe a cut or two above that — lots of expensive-looking equipment for both still photography and video. A large bed occupied the middle of the room. I backed out of there in a hurry. There were photos pinned to one wall, and I did not want to look at them.
The last room held an even larger bed that was sort of half made-up after use, the bedclothes pushed down, the pillows looking rumpled. A stuffed unicorn almost as big as me stood on all fours in the middle of the bed. A smaller stuffed tiger cub and a goofy looking kitten sheltered under the unicorn.
The whole room seemed to have a perfumed smell but especially near a large dresser with one of those lighted mirrors above it. It had an assortment of jewelry boxes, make-up tools, and potion bottles on its top surface, while a neighboring chest of drawers was covered in the male equivalent. Another door led to a sybaritic bathroom complete with huge spa.
Closets with mirrored doors covered one wall, and another set of glass doors and windows lead to a balcony on the outer wall. I opened the nearest closet door and saw that it contained mostly men’s clothing. There were three more doors.
The second door seemed devoted to shoes, women’s shoes. Some kind of shoe organizer took up half of the space, every cubby, hook, and pocket full of shoes. All of them I could see had heels—even a pair of shower thongs had three-inch heels. “I’ve got a thing about being short,” I said out loud.
The top half of the shoe corral had scarves and purses on hooks and little plastic hangars with a few jackets and tops at one end. Hats and more shoeboxes sat on a shelf above everything else.
The next closet door revealed another closet organizer with two rows of tops and shorts and a few pants. A longer section on one side had dresses, and I pulled one out, just to see. It was a long, golden thing with big blue and rose flowers that would probably hang to Margaret’s ankles. It felt soft and silky on my hands.
I found the label, and after moving into better light, I confirmed what I suspected, a boutique with a Beverly Hills address. I put the dress back, only slightly curious about what it would look like if I wore it. Margaret appeared to have taste. I’d have to psyche myself up to try on a dress, though.
The last closet was full of swimsuits, ski pants and parkas, and other things that didn’t look like they got worn that often. More shoeboxes covered the floor of this section, and a pair of bright red, thigh-high boots stood in the corner, looking like something out of a movie. I rolled my eyes.
But everything in the apartment agreed, the people who lived here were not afraid to spend money, and they knew how to buy the good stuff. Heck, the yogurt in the refrigerator would probably turn out to come from Gelson’s, the grocery chain for the rich. But if you were rich, why live in an apartment next to the UCLA campus?
I had a key to the place, did I live here? I glanced at the unicorn tableau and toward the closet space. Someone about my size lived here.
I heard the snick sound of the front door unlocking.
*
I went down the hallway far enough to see who came through the front door. The man who entered would have made three or four of me. Six-foot-three or more, probably two hundred and fifty pounds, mostly muscle, he wore his sandy, thinning hair in a brush cut and decorated his upper lip with a cookie duster mustache the same color.
He grinned at me, balancing a paper box from some take-out place in one hand while putting his keycard away with the other. “There’s the little money-maker of this operation,” he said. “I got us sushi and teriyaki to celebrate. Ya wanna grab a couple beers from the fridge?”
He came straight toward the dining table, so I ducked sideways into the kitchen and opened the big silver and black refrigerator. The door held an assortment of IPAs and other craft beers. I picked a Dogfish Light Ale for myself (I’m probably a total wuss beer-wise, I decided) and something a little more robust for him, an Epic IPA.
“You look like you’ve had a hard day, cupcake,” he noted. “Pulling in the big bucks frazzle your nerves?” He started laying out a feast: three bento boxes and a couple of cartons of soup. It smelt heavenly.
But what the heck was he talking about? “I guess,” I hazarded. “I’ve been riding buses all afternoon,” I said. I got a little closer and put the beers down on placemats.
He looked at me and cocked his head sideways. My God, up close, he was huge! His biceps were almost the size of my waist. But he showed real concern in the wrinkles around his watery gray eyes. “Did you think you were being followed?” he asked.
“Uh, huh,” I admitted. “I got real paranoid, like thinking someone was chasing me. I rode a city bus almost to the beach and back.”
He laughed, but not like he was amused, more like he was trying to cheer me up. “You are the oddest mix, baby. Bold as anything when we make plans, and a real chickenshit when you have to face anyone.”
“Hey!” I said. I glared at him. “You said he sent the money? How much?” I had no idea what was going on, but I felt the need to probe a bit.
“All of it,” he said. “One hundred kay, right into the Hermes account. I moved some of it around, sent the boss his cut, and took out five hundred cash. Oh, I put two thousand on your little card.” He separated the food into two servings, pouring soup into bowls, providing chopsticks beside plates.
I tried not to boggle at the money amount, to treat it as if that was only what I had expected. One hundred thousand dollars? And two thousand added to my card? Now I really needed to figure out the PIN. The big man continued getting our meal ready, very nonchalant, even whistling through his teeth, but I needed to sit down.
I guessed that the smaller helping, a quarter as much as the other one, must be for me, and I plopped myself into the chair in front of it. Teriyaki vegetables, a California roll, rice with red beans, the soup, and the beer: I actually wasn’t sure I would be able to eat that much, but I welcomed the distraction.
He leaned over and kissed me right on the mouth before I could even react, then he sat down at the other place he had set. I hadn’t been kissed by a man since my grandfather died when I was eight. I touched my fingers to my lips.
He’s my boyfriend. I’ve got a piercing in my tongue. We share a closet and a bedroom. He called me the money-maker. My stuffed animals are on his bed. We must be involved in something big and probably illegal. I should run away, now.
Panic threatened to bubble up all over again. I took a breath, counting it in and out.
I didn’t want to keep running. I reached for my canned beer and tried to open it, but I couldn’t get the tab to come up. I whimpered and showed him the can.
He laughed. “You never can open these things, you and your flimsy little fingers.” He popped the top and handed it back. The beer can looked tiny in his paw.
I took a sip, a little fruity and sweeter than I expected. “Yeah, well,” I said. “I’ve got other talents, don’t I?” What the hell was I saying!
He already had a slice of tuna rolled around rice and a pepper halfway to his mouth when he laughed even bigger. “That you do,” he said. “Holzmann said when he saw you sitting on the roof of his Mercedes with your feet on the hood, he almost shit bricks.”
I nodded, trying to look smug, exactly as if I knew what he was on about. I nibbled at my California roll. The avocado was so ripe, it was almost as soft as that creme they put inside eclairs. The rice was sticky, sweet and nutty, the fish (it wasn’t crab), totally fresh-tasting with the cucumber bite standing out the way it should. Was there a dab of chipotle mayo?
“This is great,” I said. I moaned as I finished the roll, then I dipped an asparagus spear in sauce and nibbled on that next.
“Toldja I’d bring you something good,” he said. “Japan-I-zation,” the name of the sushi place, “is always good.” I’d eaten there as Tony but always in the fusion restaurant front half—things like tofu enchiladas—but this meal had come from the expensive sushi bar in back.
“Mmm,” I said. It was good, and I’d eaten more than half what he gave me, but I was full. I watched him eat for a bit. He wasn’t just shoveling it down, but he ate with enthusiasm. I took another sip of beer.
He was a huge guy, and he didn’t get any smaller with me sitting there looking at him. Meat and muscle and bone, his clothes kind of stretched onto him. He looked back, too. He had a brow ridge almost as massive as a Neanderthal’s, covered with a forest of dark brown eyebrows.
He stopped chewing, swallowed, and smiled, and his expression reached his eyes too. He had long dark eyelashes that first narrowed his eyes then widened them. I discovered I was smiling back. What was I thinking?
“What are you thinking?” he asked, echoing my own thoughts.
I shook my head. Under the table, his size twelve gym shoes pushed my tiny feet around, trapping them in between. I felt something I had never felt before, my nipples getting hard. I don’t think I’d ever before been aware of any sensation there before.
Well, one girl in college had wanted to suck on them, but I hadn’t liked it. This, this was different. It felt great.
I stood up suddenly and moved away from the table. “Can you put any leftovers away?” I asked. “I want to take a bath. I feel grungy, like maybe I smell bad.” Did I want to take a bath? I’d be naked in the same apartment with this huge guy. A twinge went through my nipples at the thought. I’m only fifteen, I reminded myself.
“I didn’t want to say anything,” he teased. “But, hey, if you get cleaned up, maybe you could wear that red dress, and we could go somewhere to celebrate.”
“Finish my beer?” I said, heading for the hallway to the bedroom and the huge bath there. Where could he take a fifteen-year-old to celebrate?
“‘Course,” he said. “You never drink all of your beer. Damn fruity, soda pop beers,” he complained. “Hey, did you ever get over to see the doctor?” he called down the hallway after me.
I paused at the bedroom door, looking back at him. “Huh?” I said intelligently.
“You know,” he said. “About you throwing up every damn morning for the last week. If it’s what I think it might be, you’ll have to get that taken care of.”
Oh. Shit.
A Switcher Tale...
7. Shards of Memory
by Lulu Martine
I felt my knees turn to jelly, and I sank to the floor. It wasn’t a faint, but it was a near thing, and I ended up kneeling beside the door with my right hand still on the doorknob, almost the only thing keeping me from going all the way down. I heard a roaring noise and the edges of my vision turned dark.
I gasped, and that got Garth to look at me. “Honey?” he said to me. “Are you okay?”
“Huh-uh,” I grunted a negative. “I hadn’t—I didn’t—I’m not?” I tried to pull myself up, but I didn’t have the strength.
Suddenly he was there beside me, lifting me, picking me up — one arm behind my knees and one under my shoulders. “Now,” he said. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.” He somehow opened the bedroom door and carried me inside.
I felt tiny. I put my arms up and around his neck. I’d been so scared earlier, and now, this big hulking guy was holding me, carrying me, like my father had held and carried me when I was five.
“You’re freaking out a little,” he commented as he lay me down on the bed. “Have you been doing this all day?” He handed me my —Margaret’s— stuffed unicorn and wrapped one of my arms around it. “You didn’t go to the clinic because you didn’t want to know?”
I sniffed. “There was another reason,” I said. I thought about where I had first seen the girl throwing-up beside the sidewalk. She could have been heading the same direction I was, to an appointment at the Medical Center, though hers might have been a walk-in. The vomiting might have been significant, too; it had been a few minutes before eleven…
…and Anthony, the man I had been, had had only a minute or so to live.
My body shook, and suddenly I was wailing. Garth sat on the bed and pulled me into his lap, making comforting noises. On some level, Anthony was still rational and checking off boxes on an inventory. Morning sickness, check. Mental fog, check. Emotional rollercoaster, check. After all, I’d had experience with pregnant students for years.
On top of that, witnessing my own murder and being threatened by a monster who claimed to have been responsible for what had happened. I was probably going to be dealing with that trauma for the rest of my life, and…who could I tell?
“There, there,” Garth repeated for what might be the fortieth time. “You’re okay, and we can deal, it will be all right.” He had me wrapped up in his arms now, me sitting in his lap and the unicorn in mine. I rubbed my face on the fuzzy mane but stopped when I felt snot running out of my nose.
“Need tissue,” I said, almost gasping.
He reached a long arm across me to snag a box off the dresser and put it in my hands. I used wads to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. He kissed me on top of my head and then peered around to look into my face. “Better?” he asked.
“Gary,” I began then stopped. Did Margaret call him Gary? How did I know?
“Hmm?” he said. He kissed me above one eye.
“I saw somebody killed today,” I said. How was I going to tell him the rest of this without sounding stark-staring mad?
“You what?” he asked, his face distorted by surprise and the angle I was looking up at him from.
I recast what had happened with myself in Margaret’s role as first-person witness to a murder. “I was on the east side of campus, about eleven,” I told him. “I think I was on my way to the clinic.” Not a lie considering the flat out impossibility of what I was reporting. “I had to throw up, in the grass, next to the campus shuttle stop.”
He gave me a little squeeze, looking concerned. It was comforting, even though I couldn’t work out how I actually felt about being held by a man.
I tried not to cry again. “An old guy in a wheelchair came out of the big building there. A cop car stopped on the corner, and the cop got out.” I swallowed hard. Margaret’s terror and my own almost overwhelmed me again. I made a dry sobbing sound, like a painful hiccough.
“Shh, shh,” he whispered. “You don’t have to tell me if it hurts.”
“It hurts, but I need to tell someone,” I said. “I’ve been—I don’t—It’s not….”
He pulled me in closer and rocked back and forth. I made a sound that had no words, just not doing anything for a moment. Being held like this made me feel…safer?
I had gotten turned sideways in his lap, which made it easier to look up at him. I put a hand up to his chin. While it looked smooth, it felt coarse and stubbly. “Gary?” I said again.
“Mmm, hmm?” he murmured soothingly.
“I blacked out for a moment,” I said. “Then, I mean. The two guys were coming toward me, and they were asking if I was all right. Because…because I was throwing up? Then I woke up on the ground…and…and the cop was standing there with his gun out.” I swallowed hard, remembering. “He made me get up and told me to run, and he pointed his gun at me.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Garth. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not.
“He said the cops would lock me up if I didn’t run away,” I whispered.
Garth moved, shifting me on his lap again to where he could look me in the face.
I blinked at him.
“Did you run?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not at first,” I said. “But then, the guy in the wheelchair, he…he? I think he said something? And the cop just…and the cop just turned his hand with the gun and shot the old guy in the head.”
I buried my face in Garth’s chest. I felt so small, and he was a huge guy, and it seemed to help. I remembered being afraid, being terrified. At the time it happened, in that instant, I hadn’t known who I was or who the old guy was.
“What the fuck?” Garth said.
“The cop was yelling at me,” I said with my face still hidden. “He was waving the gun around and threatening to cut me to pieces if I didn’t run. He pointed the gun at me again. So I ran….”
“Ho. Ly. Hell,” said Garth.
“I think he shot at me or over my head while I ran,” I whispered. “I don’t know. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore and I hid under some bushes.” I grabbed more tissues and wiped my face and blew my nose again.
Garth took the tissues and threw them into the trash can by the vanity table. “Three points,” he said, making crowd noises. “Whu-u-uhh!”
I looked at him and giggled nervously. I still couldn’t tell if he believed me.
He took me off his lap and laid me on the bed with him still sitting there beside me. I still had my shoes on, and that bothered me. Some voice inside told me in a strident voice that I should keep my shoes off the bed. I struggled to sit up, but Garth put a gigantic hand on my stomach.
“Just lie there for a minute, okay?” he said.
“My shoes,” I said, pointing at my feet.
Smiling, Garth pulled the high-heel platform sandals I was wearing off my feet without undoing the buckles on the straps. “You should have called me,” he said. “I was at the studio waiting for Holzmann to call. I didn’t know where you were.”
I still didn’t know who Holzmann was, but I shook my head. “My phone was dead, no charge.”
He glanced at the dresser top where a wireless charging station was plugged into a power strip. “You forgot to charge it last night. Dummy.”
I blinked. He didn’t say that with a mean tone, more like he was teasing me. “I didn’t have a charging cable with me, either.”
“You never do,” he mentioned. “If I didn’t tighten the bolts in your neck every day, your head would fall off.”
I giggled again at his silliness. “You believe me?”
“Huh?” he said. “You didn’t make that all up, did you?”
I shook my head.
“So, what did you do?”
“I wandered around, rode some buses, got scared, did some more running. Got my phone charged.” I swallowed hard. “I was so freaked out, I called Mama.”
“Your mom? Down in OC?”
“Uh-huh,” I said miserably. “That didn’t go well.”
“Your dad wasn’t there, was he?” Garth’s voice sounded hard. I looked up at him, and his expression had hardened too.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “She said something about blaming him for me running away.”
“Yeah, well,” he said. “You shoulda called me. H-man called about two. He’d got the money together and put it into the special coin account. You hadn’t called, so I called you.”
I sighed. That money worried me, but how could I ask? Maybe I should just admit that I’m not Margaret. But I am Margaret, because if I’m not her, I’m not anyone at all. I looked at him. He didn’t seem to have a clue that I wasn’t the same Margaret, or rather Marla, he had said goodbye to this morning.
And where had she gone? I was here, thinking with her brain, and there were little crumbs of her memory left. Sometimes I remembered things Tony could not have known, like calling Garth, Gary. And apparently I moved and spoke like Marla, not like a middle-aged man who had spent a decade in a wheelchair. But where had she gone?
Some of her remained. I almost smiled. As Marla, I thought of Tony as being an old man, but he’d never really gotten old. For a teenager, though, late forties is not just old, it’s ancient.
I guess I’d been staring off into the distance because Gary said, “Earthman to space chick, come in space chick.” He reached out one of those big hands and tapped a finger on my forehead.
I looked at him and smiled shakily. “I guess I did space out, huh?” I said.
He nodded. “I’m used to it, but maybe you had more excuse than usual. This cop that chased you, you haven’t seen him again, have you?”
I shook my head. “I’ve seen a few cops, and they freaked me out, but none of them were him.”
“Were they looking for you?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure, I was real paranoid and—and I think I just reacted like they were. But—but Gary, what we do? Uh—the money—uh, we’re criminals?”
He put a fingertip on the little triangle of hair under his lower lip, same color as his mustache, and rubbed it back and forth. “Technically,” he said, “yeah, I guess. But we’re taking the money off guys who are a lot worse than us, you know? The boss says they deserve it, and that’s good enough for me.”
He made a big gesture like he was taking in the whole apartment. “Besides, we live good, don’t we?”
That did not reassure me. Who was this boss? Another question, I couldn’t figure out how to ask. And did we deserve to live well?
We were sitting on the bed now, side by side facing the mirror. His feet in his big old shoes were flat on the floor, but my bare feet lacked a couple of inches of reaching. I wiggled my toes. The nails were painted red, though the nails on my hand were black and terribly chipped.
Was it some kind of scam? Or maybe a badger game with me as bait? Or a shakedown since I was underage? Some variation on all of the above?
Garth put an arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “Still time to go to the clinic,” he commented.
Oh yeah. And I may be pregnant.
I shivered and wrapped my arms around me. “I’m not going anywhere alone. And the clinic is, like, four blocks from where the cop shot that guy.” Like? Sheesh.
He nodded. “You want a bath? Then I could take you? I got some stuff to do—and maybe I can look on the internet, see if there’s any news.”
“I didn’t hear any when I was in Starbucks,” I said. I frowned. “If cops are going around shooting people, maybe they’re covering it up?”
“Was it a white guy that got shot?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah, old white guy, older than you. Maybe fifty. In a wheelchair.”
He nodded. “They might cover that up, all right.” He grinned at me. “But fifty isn’t old, baby darlin’.” He had a drawl when he wanted to use it.
I pushed at him, hopping down off the bed and putting Yoonie the Unicorn back in the middle of the bed. “Older than you, and you’re old enough to be my dad, ain’t ‘cha?”
He winced. “Barely,” he said. “But I don’t think I would have had the nerve to fuck your mom when I was in high school.”
I laughed at him. Standing there, me barefoot and him sitting on the bed, I was hardly taller. Looking at him, a mountain of muscle with a cuddly-looking mustache, he made me feel funny. But I wasn’t afraid of him at all.
“Go get your bath,” he said. “You smell like wet dogs fucking.”
“I do not!” I protested with absolutely no justification or confidence. I knew I probably reeked.
He waved me away, standing up. “I’m gonna go surf the ‘net, look for this insane cop.”
I felt a chill and nodded.
I started toward the big bathroom, and he headed toward the hallway. “Don’t get your hair wet,” he warned me. “They could solve global warming by the time you got it dry.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Don’t give me a hard time, old man. You’d have a conniption if I ever got it cut off.”
He paused at the door, looked at me and grinned. “Got that right, baby,” he said. “Remember, I promised to paddle you if you ever did.”
I made a face at him. I wasn’t worried. Somehow I knew Garth had never lifted a hand to hit me and never would. I felt safe with him, but there were plenty of other mysteries.
A Switcher Tale...
8. Fear and Trepidation
by Lulu Martine
I went through the bedroom into the big en suite bathroom. Big spa-type tub, separate huge shower stall, too. Water controls like the big hotels in resorts have. That’s one thing I had done as Tony, I traveled and stayed in nice hotels. I didn’t have a wife or family to spend money on, not even a girlfriend, and my major expenses were medical and paid for by my excellent university insurance.
Which was also why I hadn’t quit or looked for another job. I liked my job, helping people get an education, but there were times it was pretty soul-killing. All the paperwork and bullshit that had to be dealt with. And if the administration or government agencies weren’t jerking me around, then the students or the parents were giving me grief.
I had had no one else to spend money on except myself. And that was all gone—that whole life. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared at the bathroom fixtures. I felt very cold. Tony was dead, and there was someone out there who wanted to cut me into pieces. I began shivering, and I couldn’t seem to stop. I turned and ran back to the hallway, wailing, “Gary!”
“In here,” he said from the room with all the camera and electronic gear. I went in there, running on bare feet with my arms wrapped around me, crying.
“I’m scared, I duwanna be alone,” I whimpered, trying to burrow under his arm and into his lap, but he was sitting too close to the computer desk. I had no dignity at all. He was big and safe and strong, and I needed that just then.
“Sh, sh,” he said, pushing the chair back to give me more room. He pulled me into his lap and cuddled me. “I thought you were…. Hmm?” He turned my face up and kissed me gently on my forehead, then my nose, then my lips.
I gasped. This should be disgusting and scary, but it wasn’t. I’m only fifteen. He’s twice my age. This is wrong, I told myself. But I needed someone to hold me. I pulled my face away from his, then just rested my cheek on his chin.
“Hmm?” he murmured. “I thought you were going to be okay.”
“I thought—I did—I mean?” I took a breath. “B-but I got into the b-b-bathroom, and it was cold and all that metal and p-porcelain, and two or three doors between us. I got scared.” Where was this coming from, I wondered? As Tony, I’d never been prone to such frights.
He laughed softly. “Babygirl,” he said and him calling me that sent a shiver through me but not a cold one. “Do you need me to come watch you take a bath?”
“Um?” Put like that, I kind of had to say no. “Not really, but if you were just in the next room?” I knew I must be blushing because my face felt hot enough to fry an egg. “I’m such a coward,” I whimpered.
“Sh, sh,” he said. “No coward would be up to what you’ve been doing with these assholes we’ve been ripping off? Huh? Would a coward have climbed on top of Holzmann’s car where anyone in the world could see you?”
I pulled away so I could stare at him. Just what the heck had Margaret been doing?
“You really did witness a murder, didn’t you?” he asked.
I nodded, biting my lip. I felt myself begin to tremble again.
He lifted a big hand and stroked my cheek. His face was huge, too, and so close to me; the way I was feeling, it should have been scary. But it wasn’t. I felt Margaret’s trust in this man, and it confused me.
“I forget sometimes that you are just a kid,” he said quietly.
“Should I start calling you Daddy?” I asked, making an effort to tease him.
He laughed softly. “Better not,” he said. “I know all your ticklish spots. Besides, if you are pregnant, we know it isn’t mine.”
“Huh?” I said. How would we know that? I’d felt pretty sure that Margaret’s relationship with Gary was sexual. Had I been wrong?
“And you’ve been using condoms with our—uh, clients? Right?”
I swallowed hard. “I—I—,” of course, I didn’t know.
He sighed. “Not every time?”
“I dunno,” I admitted. “I don’t remember.” I felt miserable, like I’d let him down, but I wasn’t sure if it was Margaret feeling guilty or just me being confused. It did begin to look like we were pulling some sort of badger game on guys like Holtzman.
I was still sitting in his lap. He kissed the top of my head and said, “Sh, sh,” again. He picked me up and set me on my feet. “Get your shoes and fuck getting a bath. We’re going to the clinic tonight.”
*
Gary had a monstrous SUV parked in the underground garage, a big black thing that looked new. I stared at it. I’d put those ridiculous platform sandals back on, and they didn’t lend themselves to clambering up such a surface.
But Gary not only opened the passenger side door for me, he picked me up and put me in the seat, which startled a giggle out of me. I’d been wondering how I was going to get up the side of the beast without ropes and pitons.
He laughed at my reaction, then closed the door and quickly ran around to get in on the driver’s side. Seeing him sitting there, I realized why he owned such an oversize vehicle.
“What?” he asked, noticing me staring at him, as he started the engine.
I giggled again. “You’re such a big guy, sometimes I forget how big.”
He grinned. “That’s what she said,” he joked. “Fasten your seatbelt, blondie.”
Blondie? Oh. At first, I wanted to protest that my hair was almost as black as hair can be, but I realized that this was some sort of running joke between us—Margaret and Gary, that is. I could probably expect to get called ‘blondie’ any time I did something stereotypically blonde, like forget to buckle up.
The funniest thing about that, of course, was that Tony had had dark blond hair. Worth a giggle? Okay, I giggled. The relationship between us still amazed me. And did Garth’s remark that we knew any hypothetical pregnancy was not his mean that we weren’t doing the bunny hop together?
Well, so far, the evidence was equivocal, if not downright confusing. I did remember that kiss. There’d been a bit of tongue….
*
We parked at the far end of the parking structure for the UMC, and Garth helped me down from the huge vehicle. I noted that he had a faculty sticker in the window of his beast, so he would not have to pay to park. We could have walked the eight or so blocks, of course, but we were both true Californians—it was our birthright not to have to walk more than a block anywhere.
“I’m not going in with you,” he said when he put me down. “You okay with that?”
I thought about it. I could think of many reasons for him to avoid going in. The lights were on everywhere on campus, but the dark sky outside and the huge buildings made me feel a bit anxious. “W-walk me to the door?” I suggested.
“Sure,” he said.
*
The Women’s Health Center is on the second floor, and I knew it had a separate department for Reproductive Health and Family Planning, so that was where we headed after checking the directory on the ground floor. Garth watched me get in the elevator, and I gave him a babygirl wave as the door closed.
I giggled nervously because I didn’t know why I did that.
I couldn’t remember either of me ever having been on this floor, so it took me a minute to find the right room number. I went inside and found a wide waiting room with wall screens, a couple of lecterns with built-in tablets, and a reception desk behind a glass wall. There were three positions at the counter, and a light above one said, Start Here.
Since I was a new patient, I was given paperwork to fill out and also told to go to one of the lecterns and follow the directions to check-in. There were the usual sorts of questions, and some of them, like Margaret’s medical history, I couldn’t answer. There were others I could skip if I wanted to maintain privacy, so I left a lot of the form blank.
Under name, I wrote Marla Anthony, figuring that I was more likely to answer to the second than the first. I lied about my age, too, saying I was eighteen and giving a birthday in March. I didn’t fill out any ID numbers, checking the box to request privacy instead. Under reason for visit, I put “pregnancy test,” even though part of me wanted to howl in protest at the very idea.
It asked when I’d had my last period, and of course, I didn’t know, but Gary and I had talked about this on the way over. He didn’t remember noticing any signs, or me mentioning one since I’d moved in with him in early September. I put down August with a sinking sensation. I did the math. More than ten weeks without a period was not a good sign in a healthy young woman.
They asked about symptoms, and I marked the boxes for morning sickness, mood swings, and anxiety. Boy, was I anxious.
I turned in the paperwork and took a seat in the waiting area. Half a dozen women were waiting, all but one of them alone. Other women, I guess I should say. I nibbled on the pads of my fingers while I sat there; it must have been a Margaret habit. At least I didn’t chew my nails.
Twenty minutes later, I got called into a small examining room where a blonde Physicians Assistant with a tablet asked more questions, took my vitals, and weighed and measured me. I’m so tiny, just over 4’10” and only 88 pounds, if I did the conversions from metric right: 148 cm and 40 kg.
I was there for another half hour, wearing one of those paper gowns, getting an examination from another PA, having blood tests done, and waiting for results. Finally, a woman whose name tag read Dr. Nablonsky came in and did the most embarrassing examination of all. After she helped me down from the table with the stirrups, she told me to sit down.
I sat. “Why are those things you use to look so cold?” I asked her, stalling.
She laughed softly. “Everyone asks, and I can’t tell you. They’re just room temperature, honest.” She glanced at my chart. “But Miss Anthony, you must suspect what I’m about to tell you.” She didn’t pause. “You’re pregnant, about ten weeks along according to the blood test.”
The earth reached up to the second floor and swallowed me, but I was still sitting in the plastic chair in a paper gown. The doctor was standing over me with a hand on my back, saying, “Lean forward, put your head between your knees.”
When I had more presence of mind, I discovered I was crying. Dr. Nablonsky handed me a wad of tissue as I sat up. “Thank you,” I murmured.
“Not planned,” she said, a comment, not a question. “But you have options. It’s too late for the overnight pill, but it’s early enough that a termination procedure would be very low risk.”
Low risk to me, I thought. I sighed, and for some reason, I groped for the crucifix around my neck. “I’m Catholic,” I said, remembering that Margaret was. Tony was dead. I didn’t have Margaret’s faith, but did I need to respect it?
She nodded. “I don’t know your circumstances, and you don’t have to tell me. But we can find you counseling, perhaps housing if you need it, other resources. Some of these would require you giving up a measure of privacy, but providers are prepared to work with you.”
She talked some more, but I had pretty much stopped listening. One thing seemed forefront in my mind. I’m going to have a baby. I couldn’t figure out how I felt about that unexpected fact. Excited, but in a quiet way, described it best, perhaps. I knew I wasn’t frightened, or angry, or sad—or happy for that matter.
Perhaps every little girl dreams of being a mother, but I hadn’t because I had never been a little girl. I wondered if Margaret had such dreams. I wondered who the father was. Ten weeks ago…where had Margaret been living? With her parents in Orange County? Or just with her mother?
When and why had she gotten involved with Garth, and what seemed to be a very profitable project?
The doctor had stopped talking and simply waited for me to speak. I made some sort of noise.
“You have options,” she repeated. “And perhaps the best one right now is to realize you don’t have to rush into making a choice.”
I think she had said that before, as well, but I hadn’t been listening. I nodded. I tried to imagine myself getting large with a pregnancy. The funny thing was I could picture it as Margaret, but for Tony, it just seemed like a bad joke. Or a bad movie with Arnie Schwarzenegger.
But I knew that having a baby would hurt — a lot. And then I would have to take care of it because I’m the mother and that’s my job. Nursing a baby seemed bizarre. So did changing diapers, staying up nights, watching another person grow. Why was I smiling?
Dr. Nablonsky pulled me out of my strange reverie. “If you know who the father is, you have to decide whether to tell him.” She’d said that before too. She must be repeating herself because she knows I’m not listening, I thought.
But thinking led to scary thoughts. I blinked. Ten weeks back, Margaret had not been living with Garth, so he was right; it wasn’t his. Then whose was it?
A certainty seized me then, frightening in its sudden conviction. The room with its clinical atmosphere and medical professional droning on about vitamins, and exercise, and family situations, and appointments for counseling and ultrasound and other valid options faded away.
They all disappeared into the maw of a devouring truth that both Margaret-me and Anthony-me agreed on — this baby was mine.