A retelling, with permission and differences, of C.D. Rudd's classic webcomic SailorSun.org.
Billy Jones, a film student and extra, gets the offer of some overtime during the shooting of a special effects movie.... Maybe there was something in the contract he missed?
I knew I'd been lucky to get work as an extra on the new "Special FX" movie, but dang, standing around waiting for things to happen bored me like a Texas wildcatter with a diamond drill bit looking for oil in the Permian Basin. As a film student, I understood why, but this was my second dull day on set — hurrying to get into position in the crowd scenes then standing around waiting for direction.
It was sort of good-news, bad-news, but apparently, they would be filming on Friday, too. Even though I'd already had to miss Wednesday and Thursday classes at UCLA, if I could get a third day in, I'd be eligible to apply for my SAG card. Wouldn't that be cool? Certainly worth a bit of boredom. In a few weeks, finals for the spring quarter would mean I couldn't afford to ditch class.
But sure enough, the assistant director in charge of the "background actors," Todd Harrelson, called me over. "Billy, we're going to need you tomorrow, too. We did all the crowd scenes yesterday and today, but we're going to need a few bodies to wander through some hallway and lobby scenes. You interested?"
Yes! "You bet, Mr. Harrelson," I said, beaming. I didn't even mind being called 'Billy' if I got more work. My full name was William Hallelujah Jones, of course. (My dad claimed odd middle names are necessary for people with common first and last names, and mom's maiden name had been 'Hall.') Back home in Oildale, my nickname had been 'Will,' but 'Billy' was certainly fine on set.
"Okay, then," said Harrelson. "Just go see Phyllis at the HR table, she'll get you to sign a new release after she gives you your check for today." Harrelson gave me a friendly squeeze on the shoulder and pointed toward where the other extras were lining up to get their pay.
"Thank you, thank you," I enthused. Good grief, try to act like a professional. I suppressed my grin with a practiced mantra I learned from high school drama, reciting silently, "Dolorous old baboons grope and mope." Imagining making all the rounded vowel sounds helped prevent a mouth-widening smile.
I know it worked because Phyllis Niall told me, "Cheer up," when I reached the head of the pay line. "You're going to be working tomorrow, too, Billy." She handed over my pay packet and a small sheaf of papers, "You have to sign another release, though."
"Thanks!" I said, after checking to see that they had paid the right amount. A hundred-and-eight dollars for two days' work meant a lot on a student budget. "Do I bring it back to you, here, after signing?"
She nodded, already dealing with finding a pay envelope for the next extra, who wanted to know, "Why are some people getting another day of work?"
Phyllis had that answer ready. "Billy and most of the others are film students, so the directors like to give them the added days as kind of a reward for skipping class to be here."
The man snorted, took his pay, and pointedly glared at me, but I just shrugged. "And here I thought Mr. Harrelson just liked my work," I remarked to Phyllis as I handed the signed release back to her.
She giggled, shaking her head. "You didn't have time to read this before signing, did you?"
I shrugged. "It's boilerplate, right out of the SAG/AFTRA book of approved contracts. I've read it before, and we even studied it in our classes at school."
"All right," she agreed, taking the paperwork. "Go see, Mr. Harrelson," she told me, "I think he has something he needs you for."
Nodding, I turned to look for the tall assistant director and spotted him with one of the cameramen near a large, antique-looking green camera housing. Wandering that way, thinking that officially I was off the clock now, but had been paid for eight hours work, while only putting in just less than seven. I guessed I owed the studio a bit of time.
Harrelson waved me on over. "Hey, guy," he said. "We've got some overtime tonight? You want in on it?"
"Huh," I said, as intelligently as possible. "Sure, Mr. Harrelson, is it time-and-a-half?"
"Yeah, yeah," Harrelson agreed. "Ten-thirteen an hour and all that. We're testing out this antique camera I borrowed from the museum. It's what they used to shoot for special effects back in the thirties."
"Huh?" I gave the peculiar contraption another look. The enormous lens stared back at me like a pop-eyed cyclops. Kind of creepy in a weird way, or maybe I'm just remembering it like that.
"Walk back and forth, do some running in place, pretend you're skipping rope, stuff like that," Harrelson ordered. This is called 'direction,' and some people are good at it.
I obeyed and, for the next almost two hours, did gyrations and permutations while the antique camera clattered way. They had to reload the film four times, and I saw that the film stock was oversize, not the usual 35mm but something larger. Odd for a camera almost seventy years old, I thought.
At one point, Ned the gaffer rigged a powerful light to shine on me while another roll of the special film was shot. The lights left me confused and half-blind, and I felt relief when Harrelson announced a wrap. Stumbling around, I tried to orient on the boss-man's voice while colored lights seemed to continue to explode in my face.
"Finis for tonight," said the assistant director. "Crew be here at six-thirty tomorrow, talent at seven. That includes you, extra-person; you've got to be here for make-up and costuming."
I nodded in the multi-colored darkness, blinking and trying to stammer out a question. "M-me, Mr. Harrelson?" But no one answered. When I could see again, the AD was nowhere to be found. The cameraman trundled the big special effects camera away on a motorized dolly, the gaffer stowed the powerful lights with associated cables away in their portable cabinet, and other people rapidly disappeared from the set. But no Harrelson.
For a moment, I felt very odd, as if something fundamental had changed about the world or myself. I tried to shake it off, reminding myself that it was nice to be getting an extra day's work and hoping someone remembered to pay me for two hours of overtime. I headed toward the exit as soon as I could see well enough to be sure I wouldn't step out in front of a golf cart driven by Kevin Bacon or something.
I had to toss my head to clear hair out of my eyes, and the sudden movement made my boobs jiggle on my chest. Yeah, I even took two more steps before realization struck. Since when did I have boobs? Or hair long enough to get in my face, for that matter?
A retelling, with permission and differences, of C.D. Rudd's classic webcomic SailorSun.org.
Billy Jones, a film student and extra, seems to have been exposed —if that's the word— to some sort of special effect.
I couldn’t help it; I grabbed at my chest, feeling two soft mounds there where I knew there had been no such things before. I made a startled sound, rather like a turkey might make when questioning the reality of his existence. Something like “Gawp?” I looked down, my hands moving under the globes I saw, pushing them upward and feeling their weight.
They seemed heavy, huge, and soft as pillows. Okay, yes, I did squeeze them. Almost anyone would have. The sensation was astonishing, especially since I could feel nipples under my shirt; and feel them feeling my hands back, an electric tingle, followed by a crinkling twinge. I made more turkey noises.
The sun had set several minutes ago, and I stood partly in shadows as unnecessary lights around the studio lot were turned out. I moved sideways, finally turning to dash into the shadows. No one seemed to have noticed my reaction, though I felt awkward with my hands still on my chest. Otherwise, the bouncing and jiggling made me feel like I was losing my mind.
I squeezed gently, both sides, twice. It felt weird but kind of… exciting? I gave up making inarticulate noises and asked myself, aloud, “What’s happened? Did I get hit in the head by a falling light or a mike boom?” I could feel nipples under my thin t-shirt getting hard against the palms of my hands. I looked down, turning a bit, so I had better light.
Reddish-blonde hair fell into my face, and my right hand automatically rose to push the wandering locks back. Meanwhile, my left hand tried another honk-honk double squeeze. “Jeez!” I whispered. That felt amazing! So amazing that I jerked my left hand away from my chest as if I had been burned.
I used both hands to push the hair back —so much hair!— in order to look down at myself better. The swellings on my chest looked exactly like what they had felt like — large breasts covered only by the cloth of my shirt. I ran my hands down my sides, finding a narrow waist and the top of a pair of low-riding jeans.
Another double grasp behind me proved that I had two large half globes of jiggly flesh back there, too. “Bubble butt,” I said and heard my voice squeak in a very girlish register. I put my hands over my face for a moment, certain that it resembled a stoplight.
At last, I had to check out the front of my jeans. Completely flat. Suddenly almost frantic, I tried to plunge my hand down inside my pants, but the denim was stretched too tight. Scrabbling over the cloth didn’t reassure me. No male bits were hiding down there. When I clenched muscles in that area, the sensations were like nothing I’d ever felt before.
The world seemed to spin around me, like a tilt-a-whirl ride gone mad. I staggered out of my shadows back into the lights near the studio entrance. Barely catching myself from falling, I plopped down on the in-studio shuttle bench directly under a bright light. The impact squeezed the cushiony butt I seemed to have grown and —jiggled my breasts. Breasts, boobies, hooters, funbags: I had tits! I gasped.
Feeling bewildered and beleaguered, I pulled hair away from my face again and saw the security guard at the gate looking at me. “Oh, God,” I whimpered. “This can’t be happening.” I watched, horrified, unable to imagine what might happen next as the security guard started toward me. “Wake up, wake up,” I told myself. Though I wasn’t convinced that I was dreaming, it seemed hard to imagine that I was awake.
The guard paused before crossing the paved lane between the gate shack and the shuttle stop, then raised his hand to his cap as a car, a late model Lexus, pulled into the space between us and stopped. The right-hand window rolled down electrically. And I could see Mr. Harrelson through the windshield beckoning to me.
“Waiting for a ride, Billy?” the assistant director asked.
I blinked. How could he look right at me and not seem to notice anything wrong? Maybe I was dreaming? Hallucinating? Stark staring bonkers? “I’m…,” I started to say, then stopped. My voice sounded odd. I’d sort of noticed that earlier. I tried again, cringing at the high-pitched, breathy, girly tones. “I-I usually take the bus back to campus, sir,” I stammered.
“What? At this time of night? It’s after eight, and you shouldn’t be riding the bus after dark, sweetie. And we need you here early tomorrow for makeup and costuming, so you need to get home. You live in Westwood? Near the University?”
“Yes, sir,” I heard myself confirm. He was smiling at me. Did he see my old self? Probably not. Most guys don’t smile like that at other guys. Was he hitting on me? He called me ‘sweetie.’ Yikes!
“Hop in,” said Harrelson. “It would probably take you two hours on the bus, and I live in Santa Monica, so it’s hardly out of my way at all.” His hand hit some buttons, and the passenger side door locks clicked open.
“I-you-um?” I explained.
“Get in, sweetie,” Harrelson said. “I’ll run you home. It’s no trouble.” Reaching across the front seat with his long arms, he opened the door, forcing me to step aside to avoid being hit.
He called me ‘sweetie,’ again! I knew my face must have been as red as my old high school sweater.
Harrelson grinned charmingly. “I don’t bite, Billy. And this isn’t some casting-couch-type ploy.” He laughed.
I had a momentary panic attack that must have shown on my face. Hollywood ‘casting couches’ were legendary; I’d always wondered if they were a real thing. I glanced down at myself and wondered if I were now going to find out. Despite him saying it was no such thing, I still felt that he was trying to come on to me.
“Get in,” he ordered me again, still smiling.
I got in. He was my boss, after all. The door seemed awfully heavy as I pulled it closed behind me.
“Buckle up,” he said as he moved the car toward the gate. “Already, you’re saving time by not having to wait for the shuttle to take you to the bus stop.”
“Oh, jeez,” I thought, having my consciousness raised when I noticed where the shoulder belt was going to cross my chest: right between my new accessories. A woman never designed these things, I decided, with a tiny bit of resentment.
The Lexus glided out of the main gate of the studio and turned west on Melrose. “You’re a film student? Right?” Harrelson asked, glancing over at me.
“Y-yes, sir,” I stammered in my new, higher-pitched voice. I looked at Harrelson behind the wheel, then looked away. Had the man always been so big? I knew that the A.D. had been well over six feet tall, seven inches taller than me, but sitting in the car within a couple of feet of the man, I felt tiny like I’d shrunk another half-a-foot or more. At five-ten or so, I hadn’t been exactly tall, but now I felt distinctly short.
Girls are short, I reminded myself, morosely.
“We like to give the students overtime and extra days when we can,” Harrelson was saying. “It can be very valuable when you’re taking classes.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmured. I suddenly remembered that I had spent two hours, more or less, in front of a weird contraption that was supposed to be an antique special effects camera. At the end of that time, I had somehow been turned into a girl.
Something had turned me into a girl! The whole realization hit me again, and I almost reached up to feel of my breasts too, but Harrelson was right there and would probably misunderstand. I know I would have if some girl had started feeling of herself right in front of me.
But hadn’t someone said the A.D. borrowed the strange camera from a museum?
Had I been turned into a girl by being filmed with a weird antique camera? It seemed fantastic, but nothing even half as logical seemed nearly as likely.
Talk about a Special Effect!
A retelling, with permission and differences, of C.D. Rudd's classic webcomic SailorSun.org.
Billy Jones, a film student and extra, seems to have been exposed —if that's the word— to some sort of special effect.
I had no idea what to talk about. Bringing up the subject most on my mind — my having been turned into a girl! — seemed, well, crazy. Getting a picture taken with an antique camera didn’t usually change anyone’s sex. Was I crazy for thinking it had?
I put a hand over my mouth when I realized the slightly hysterical-sounding giggling I heard was coming from me.
Mr. Harrelson, the assistant director, giving me a ride in his Lexus, glanced over, smiling. “Something funny, Billy?” he asked.
I shook my head, afraid to speak.
He laughed. “I’ll guess getting your first paycheck in the industry is pretty exciting?”
I nodded. Well, that was true. Thinking of that, I dug in my back pocket for the envelope with the check in it. The pants I was wearing were so tight, and with the seat belt, it was a struggle. I finally had to undo the belt to manage.
Harrelson chuckled again. “Gotta look at the check to be sure it’s real?”
“Yeah,” I said. But really, I wanted to check on the name. I refastened the belt (no use earning Mr. H. a ticket) before opening the envelope. I’d looked at the amount on the check when I first got it, and that had been correct. Since I wasn’t on payroll, just a dayworker and not yet a union member, there’d been no deductions, and I had the full $108 for sixteen hours.
And the name on the check was William H. Jones. My head spun.
Mr. Harrelson was talking. “How serious are you about making a career of this, Billy? Acting or the movie business in some way?” He glanced at me again, and this time our eyes met, and we both smiled. I don’t know why.
“P-pretty serious,” I stammered. I tried to think about the question, but the pudding I keep between my ears was not up to the job with what was happening to me just then. I’d been turned into a girl, and no one had noticed, but all my paperwork had a boy’s name on it. It didn’t come even close to making sense.
He nodded, glancing sideways at me for about the twentieth time. I noticed that his gaze always flicked to my chest for a moment when he looked my way—checking me out. I wanted to scrub my face with both hands to cover my embarrassment, but I didn’t.
“I think you’ve got something, Billy,” he said.
“Like the flu?” I blurted. Could there be a disease that caused someone to change sex? Anything must be possible, considering the lack of other reasonable explanations. The idea that I had some disease hadn’t occurred to me until then, but I just made him laugh again.
“No, no,” he choked out between chuckles and outright guffaws. “I mean…. Do you know why we decided to keep some of you film students for another day of shooting?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t thought to wonder about that.
“We saw the rushes from yesterday, and then again from this morning,” he said. “And there you were in the crowd scenes, shining like a diamond in a box of Rice Krispies.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve got it, Billy. Whatever it is that the camera is looking for, it finds it in you.” He kept going while I tried to wrap my head around what he was saying. “Call it being photogenic or charismatic or… or beautiful….” He almost stammered on that but trailed off when he saw my reaction.
My eyes and mouth flew open, and I turned, as much as I could with the seatbelt fastened, to stare at him. We were both blushing, I’m sure. I could see him turn red, and my face felt like it was burning up. I pushed my hair out of my eyes again and blinked at him.
“I’m not, uh, I’m not trying to hit on you, Billy, honestly,” he said.
“It—you—he—I?” I confused myself even more. He? He who?
Harrelson laughed and nodded. “Yeah, just like that! I wish I’d had a camera right then!” He looked back at where we were going, thankfully.
I squeezed my eyes shut before opening them again, but the world wouldn’t go away. I tossed hair out of my face and pushed air out between my lips in an exasperated sigh.
He shook his head. “Whatever it is, you’ve got it, Billy. A great big helping of it, too.” He glanced at my chest again, but at least he hadn’t said two big helpings!
I wanted to glare at him, but I didn’t. I’ve dreamed of being in movies since I was a little boy and saw The Great Mouse Detective the first time. Really, I wanted to be a cartoon mouse…. I smiled at that thought, then glanced down at myself. Breasts. I had breasts, not mouse ears. And tons of hair that had fallen in my face again.
But it looked like I might be going to get into movies, just not the way or for the reasons I had dreamed of. Unless there was some way of changing back? I wanted to get a look at that special effects camera.
We were both quiet for a bit, the A.D. negotiating some heavy traffic and me dealing with my weighty thoughts.
“Mr. Harrelson, did you go to UCLA, too?” I asked after we had reached Wilshire Boulevard and headed west. I’d done some thinking and had more questions I wanted to ask him.
The A.D. nodded. “I did. But call me Hank, when we’re not on set.”
Hank? I shook my head. “Nope, nope, nope. I’m not going to call you ‘Hank.’ I’d forget and do it in front of someone else, and people would get the wrong idea.”
He laughed. “You might be right.” He blushed, and I had to suppress a giggle.
I pushed hair out of my face for, like, the fifteenth time since I’d gotten in the car. I wondered vaguely if I could get it cut shorter, or maybe styled so it didn’t cover my eyes so easily. Personally, I liked girls to have long hair. I just never expected to have to put up with it myself.
I got back to the questions I wanted to ask the A.D. “So, that funny camera? It came from the UCLA film museum?”
“That’s right,” he agreed. “The curator is an old friend of mine. Nate Carrell, he let me borrow it, but I have to take it back next week. It shoots on this really wi-ide film and at a higher rate of speed if you need it to, so it’s good for doing in-camera special effects.”
“Uh, huh,” I said. “I’d like to get a closer look at it. Do you think I could?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why not. We’ll be using it again tomorrow. Remind me then.”
“Okay,” I agreed. But that seemed to mean I was going to be stuck as a girl all night. That could be a new worry.
“Do you have an apartment or a dorm?” Harrelson asked.
I realized we were already on Westwood Avenue. “Uh,” I said. “Can you just drop me in the Village near the WaMu Bank? It’s not a long walk for me from there, and I want to get this check deposited.”
“Sure,” he agreed and pulled into the postage-stamp-size parking lot next to the bank.
I thanked him for the ride and got out a little awkwardly, convinced that everyone was watching me. But I really did want to get the check deposited before going to my apartment. And it would give me time to figure out how I was going to deal with Jack, my horndog roomie.
Would he recognize me? Would he think girl-me had been living with him for the last several months? Would he…? Yikes!
A retelling, with permission and differences, of C.D. Rudd's classic webcomic SailorSun.org.
Billy Jones, a film student and extra, seems to have been exposed —if that's the word— to some sort of special effect.
I dithered as to whether to deposit my check via ATM or go in and give it to a teller. On the one hand, if I used the machine, I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone who might notice that my ID didn’t match my appearance. On the other hand, depositing with a human meant the money would be available immediately and I would avoid maybe having to wait until Monday.
On the gripping hand, the bank was closed. Doh!
So the question was, deposit via ATM or wait until tomorrow? WaMu was pretty good about making funds available, even if they hadn’t cleared, as long as you hadn’t over-drafted recently. Which I had been being pretty good about. So, I walked up to one of the ATMs, dug my check out of my pocket and got my card from my wallet to tell the machine who I was. It wouldn’t care that I had tits.
It did care that the check wasn’t endorsed and informed me firmly that I should endorse the check and write “For Electronic Deposit of Funds Only through Washington Mutual” on the back. Eep! I didn’t have a pen.
I looked around. A guy who had been using the next machine had a backpack, so he might have a pen. And he was already looking at me. “Uh?” I said, intelligently. “I need to sign this check—do you have a pen I can borrow?”
He smiled hugely at me. “Soitenly!” he said in a Curly Howard voice. He flourished a ballpoint at me like a magic trick, and I surprised myself by giggling at his antics. Since when did I giggle?
“Thank you,” I said, blushing but taking the pen and quickly writing the required magic formula on the back of the check. The machine beeped at me to say I was taking too long so I hurriedly fed it the check and it masticated thoughtfully while I handed back the pen.
“Thank you,” I said again. With another giggle, damnit.
He took the pen, clicked it once, waggled his eyebrows and suavely asked, “Come here often?”
I was saved from still another giggle by the machine horking up my receipt and my card while playing its “Go away, now,” music. “Uh,” I said, looking at the receipt. Dad’s deposit of my $400 monthly parental support had cleared five days early. “Wow,” I commented then decided I could afford to take some money for the weekend and stuck my card back in the slot.
“Hmm?” asked my casual but helpful acquaintance. “There’s a Starbucks on the next corner? Can I buy you an iced cappuccino?”
I stared at him with my mouth open until the machine booped to get my attention. I moved to hide entering my PIN then asked for Quick Cash, all while trying not to think about being obviously hit on. Does this happen to girls all the time? It’s distracting, especially when trying to enter your PIN for the third time. One more mistake and the machine will eat my card.
“My name is Chad,” the guy was saying. “Chad Fox,” he added. “I’m a film student at UCLA.”
Surprised by that, I admitted to being one myself. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in any of my classes, though,” I added as I took my forty dollars and my card back from the machine. But why would I have noticed him, particularly? He was tall, had dimples and good hair…wavy, brown hair…and crinkly blue eyes. Okay, I hadn’t noticed him before because I was a guy. Now his details seemed more memorable and that worried me.
He grinned. “I know I haven’t seen you. How about that cuppa and maybe a scone? My treat, of course.” He blinked earnestly.
For a moment, I actually considered pointing past him and exclaiming, “What’s that!?” in a fearful way then running the other direction when he turned to look. Right at the moment, he was trying hard not to stare at my chest. I resisted the urge to shrug and wiggle my shoulders, just to see how he would react, but the thought of doing so caused me to giggle again.
“That’s a yes?” he asked, still smiling.
My stomach chose that moment to growl plaintively and I realized I hadn’t had anything since the very good studio luncheon seven hours before. Well, half a package of Hostess Cupcakes and a few Fritos someone shared with me on a break. Had I been a girl then? I didn’t think so but my expression must have been something to see because Chad laughed out loud, thinking I went crosseyed just from sudden hunger, I guess.
“That sounded like a definite yes,” he said. “Something more substantial than a scone perhaps? Dinner?” If he grinned any wider, he could have passed for a South Park Canadian.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’ve got money.”
“Aw,” he said. “It’s not a real date if the girl pays her own way.” Still grinning but I didn’t think he was kidding.
A date? Was I going on a date with a guy?
“Do you like Chinese?” he asked.
“Love it,” I said without considering that that would sound like agreement. My stomach growled again, ready to argue about it.
Chad reached for my hand, asking at the same time. “Wanna go Northern?”
“Uh,” I said. He meant the Northern Cafe, a stereotypical hole-in-the-wall family-run restaurant about three blocks away. Good food but not my favorite style, since I loved me some Szechuan. I watched him take my hand; his paws seemed twice the size of mine. I looked up at him, realizing that I had lost several inches in height. “W-why not?” I stammered.
At least, Northern Cafe would be on the way home to my apartment.
The sensation of a guy holding my hand sent shivers up my arm and down my back. Chad’s hand was not only larger than mine, but harder and his skin felt rougher. It made me feel small and soft and smooth all over. I looked up at him again and realized I was smiling. He smiled back and said something. I didn’t seem to be able to listen and walk at the same time so I just murmured some nothing when he paused.
Maybe I could use this as practice in how to deal with Jack my roommate. Mr. Harrelson had not affected me this way. If Chad was an example of how I was going to react to guys near my own age who weren’t my boss, I was going to be in trouble.
A retelling, with permission and differences, of C.D. Rudd's classic webcomic SailorSun.org.
Billy Jones, a film student and extra, deals with having been exposed —if that's the word— to some sort of special effect.
The walk from the bank to the restaurant turned surreal when I realized that every guy we met coming toward us looked at nothing but my chest. I wasn’t even showing cleavage, still wearing my pullover t-shirt. Oh. No bra. I could feel them there, out there. I must be jiggling like two sumo wrestlers trying to can-can.
I felt like my face was hot enough to fry an egg, but you know what? It was also kind of exciting. I could even see their eyes bounce. I didn’t really know what to think about it.
Chad walked on my left side, nearer the street, and I vaguely realized that this was some etiquette thing he’d probably been taught, much as my Dad had taught me.
He asked me something as I wasted another glare on some meathead staring at my—my breasts. None of them yet had looked me in the face. I realized Chad was waiting for a reply and turned my face toward him to meet his eyes. Wonder of wonders, he was actually looking somewhere besides what everyone else seemed to find so fascinating. Maybe he really was a gentleman.
That thought distracted me in an odd way. “Huh?” I said intelligently.
He laughed. “What’s your name?” he asked again, grinning.
“Billy,” I said. It came out wrong. High pitched and cutesy. Gah! I frowned.
“Billie’s a good name,” he assured me. “Don’t you like it?” He seemed amused.
“Oh!” I said, thinking of something else. “I’m going to have to change it!”
“Um?” he said. “For professional reasons?”
I nodded. “Sort of, yeah, I guess so. One of my professors said that when I join SAG, they’ll suggest I do. W-w-w…. Billy Jones is… already taken. He looked it up, and… most of the variations in spelling, or whatever, are taken too.” He’d said that about William Jones, but I didn’t want to claim the name that was actually on my ID.
He nodded. “I had the same problem. My first name is Michael.” He grinned. “So I’m getting used to going by a version of my middle name. Chad.”
I smiled at his predicament. The same professor had told us that Michael J. Fox had had the same problem, adding a middle initial that wasn’t really his to distinguish his name from several other similar ones.
“I don’t think I want to use my middle name,” I said.
“What is it? Maybe you can use a version of it?”
“It’s Hallelujah.” I blushed again.
He almost missed a step, waving his foot in the air for half a beat before coming down on it a little too flat-footed. I heard someone giggle and realized it was me.
He didn’t laugh, but he did quirk an eyebrow at me. “Hallie Jones?” he suggested. “I like it.”
I put my hand out and waggled it, making a face. He laughed, and I heard another giggle. Damn it.
We reached the restaurant and paused on the sidewalk to look at the menus posted in the window. Then we went inside, and a skinny Asian kid asked if we wanted a booth or a table. Chad looked at me. “B-booth,” I said, I’m not sure why. We sat on the red vinyl on opposite sides of the table while the waiter brought us menus, hot tea, plum sauce and Chinese mustard in little dishes, and a bowl of crispy noodles.
They did have some peppery dishes at Northern, so I ordered the Crispy Spicy Chicken with brown rice and a shared side of sautéed bok choy instead of soup and egg roll. Chad ordered the same chicken dish. I’d forgotten the portion sizes at Northern, and when the food came, it all looked enormous.
We’d already been in an argument about who was going to pay for the food. Chad insisted that he had invited me so he would pay. I was just as insistent that it was not a date (!!!), so I would pay for my own food.
When the server put the platters down in front of us, I pointed out my clincher. “See? Too much food. We shouldn’t have ordered the bok choy. I’ll have to take half of this home, and it’s a cardinal rule that on a date, you don’t take a doggie bag for food you didn’t pay for.”
I’d had this exact same argument with a girl I was dating once, except it was steak and an onion blossom instead of bok choy. Wait! This was a date? Had I just said that?
“There’s no such rule!” he scoffed. There was that giggle again. We were both enjoying the argument way too much. What the hell was the matter with me, and when did I start giggling? Don’t answer that.
We talked about school. Turned out, we did have a class together—fortunately, it was a lecture class in History of Theater with a hundred other students to explain why we hadn’t seen each other. I found myself thinking that I ought to have noticed him, tall, good-looking with a killer smile, then I did a mental double-take.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I waved a hand in front of my face. “Spicier than I remember it being,” I said. It was, too. Oildale may be a hicktown in the middle of a desert, but it has like thirty Chinese restaurants and a Hispanic population that loves spicy food, too. My tastes seemed to have changed along with… with everything else.
I sipped hot tea, and Chad signaled the waiter to bring us water (in California, you have to ask for it). Now I had a good excuse for my face being so red.
Chad was still being a gentleman, keeping his eyes looking into mine. His were blue with laugh lines around them. Mine had been hazel green (Mom called it), appropriate for a redhead. I still had red-blond hair, so I probably still had my green eyes. I hadn’t seen a mirror yet, had I? How could I not remember?
When the water came, I realized we had just been staring at each other, not saying anything. The waiter put down the glasses, full of those flat ice cubes you get in restaurants. I grabbed the glass and took a big gulp, though the burn on my tongue had mostly gone away. Really, I was trying to distract myself….
Of course, right at that moment, Chad chose to lean forward, his blue eyes sparkling and crinkling. He asked, “So, what are you doing Saturday night?”
A retelling, with permission and differences, of C.D. Rudd's classic webcomic SailorSun.org.
Billy Jones, a film student and extra, deals with having been exposed —if that's the word— to some sort of special effect.
“I think I’m working,” I said quickly. Chad, over the spicy fried bok choy, had just asked me what I was doing Saturday night. He was asking me for a date and I had been female for less than five hours!
He quirked an eyebrow at me. I squirmed. “They asked me to come in tomorrow for reshoots,” I said. Why did I have to explain myself?
He nodded. “Something’s up,” he said. “You don’t want to go out with me Saturday, but you’re not out-and-out saying no.”
I think my jaw dropped. “Okay,” I nodded. “Really, I’m just not…. Uh, not going on dates…. Right now.” Yike. I was still male enough to know how that last bit sounded, it was an pure invitation to ask again later.
He smiled slowly and the effect it had on me was astonishing and … educational? I felt heat—in places I’d never had places before—but also like my brains were boiling and ready to come out my ears. The Chinese food was just not that spicy.
“Do you want to give me your phone number?” he asked.
I shook my head, not sure I could speak without revealing my boiled brain.
Still smiling, he asked me to take out my cellphone. I did so without thinking about it. Even though I had a nice device, it was just a clamshell with physical buttons. I opened my phone and looked up at him.
“Three-ten,” he began, giving me his number so I could punch it into my contacts list. I marked it as ‘Chad’ and ‘Mobile’ and saved it. I’d done this with a few girls myself. And not one of them had called me back. Ever.
I sighed. Was I going to be stuck as a girl? It seemed more complicated than being a boy. Maybe I could find that antique camera and get it to change me back? How? No clue. Well, one, maybe, the UCLA film museum.
Chad distracted me from thinking about that by grabbing the check when it came. “Hey!” I protested. We had a discussion. I still insisted on paying my share of dinner because of wanting to take the leftovers home. At least, that was the point that finally persuaded Chad to stop arguing about it.
“Do you live nearby?” he asked.
I nodded, rolling my eyes. “I’m a student. We’re surrounded by blocks of student housing.”
“On campus, or off?” he asked.
I shook my head. “If I’m not going to give you my phone number, I’m sure not giving you my address.”
He looked disappointed. “So…. I guess that means I can’t walk you home, either.”
The waiter brought our change back and I used that as an excuse to avoid answering. He actually ended up adding money to the change to make a decent tip and I let him do that without arguing about it.
I started to stand and Chad was instantly on his feet, moving the chair out of my way, though I didn’t really need his help. It was almost funny and I must have been smiling.
Chad smiled back. “No, means no, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe we’ll see each other Tuesday in the History of Theater lecture?” Jeez, I hope not! What had made me say that?
“I’m going to be looking for you,” he promised but he sat back down. “But I won’t watch which way you leave. I’ll stay in here until I know you must be out of sight.”
“I—.” I couldn’t think of anything to say to that so I grabbed my take-home bag and got out of there. I didn’t look back until I was more than a block away when I stopped at a corner to cross the street at the light.
Nobody following me or peering out of the restaurant to see which way I had gone. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. I sighed.
Then I realized that windows of the bus stopped for the light were full of men, all staring at me. Or at my chest. “Argh!” I said. Even the bus driver was looking. I glared at them but they didn’t notice so I glared at the three or four men on the sidewalk near me, even though, not having window safety glass between them and me, they were being more polite by not staring so—so shamelessly.
A short, somewhat chubby girl standing next to me, grinned and shook her head. “You’re wearing a tight t-shirt and no bra. A blind man would know you wanted to be stared at, Gigi, even if he had to use Braille.”
The light changed and she started moving before I did.
Gigi? Why would she call me Gigi? And what was that crack about Braille even supposed to mean? I took a step off the curb and the jarring impact of my heel on the pavement sent a jiggling tsunami toward my head. I glanced down, realizing that the two “corners” visible in my roundness were actually my nipples.
Oh. Braille, I got it. Jeez, are women that catty to each other?
Mortified, I crossed the street, leaving the business district of Westwood Village and entering North Village, or The Flats as it is sometimes called because of all the apartment buildings. The campus itself was only a block away on my right while ahead and to my left (west), lay a couple of square miles of more or less affordable student housing.
My spot in this mecca was only four blocks north and one west, a place we residents called Lowering Heights, though that wasn’t its actual name. There I shared an apartment with Jack Willoughby, paying only one-third because I got the small bedroom, so small it didn’t have a closet. Or a balcony which the bigger bedroom did have.
Still, I couldn’t have afforded a place so close to campus without Jack. And yet, I could see problems ahead. Jack’s main reason for attending UCLA was not to get an education; Jack was a—how to put this—a horndog. He was also rich, good-looking and charming in a lowlife, bad-boy sort of way.
I’m a girl now, I thought. What’s more, I’m a busty chick who’s not wearing a bra, just a thin t-shirt. I had a feeling I could predict how Jack would react to the new me. My face must have been redder than a stoplight.
I paused when I reached our apartment building. Jack’s classic, red, 5-liter Mustang convertible was at the curb which meant he was home but probably intending to leave soon since he had a space he paid for in the underground parking. Jack had lucked out— there was never any curb parking available in The Flats.
I dithered, procrastinating about going in. Would Jack recognize me like the people at the studio had? They all thought that they knew the female Billy. Had girl-me been Jack’s roommate for the last several months? That seemed unlikely.
If I waited outside long enough, Jack would come down, get in his car and leave. Then I could go up to our room. To do what? The wheels came off my mental trolley. I had no idea what to do next after I got to my apartment.
Down the street three guys who had obviously been checking me out started my way, about as casual as a hyena pack stalking a gazelle. I glared at them but they didn’t seem to notice. Sighing, I started up the painted white steps of Lowering Heights.
Billy has to convince his roommate that she is still he.
I used my key to get into the courtyard then up the stairs to our third floor flat, pausing at the heavy brown door. I still had my keys in one hand, and the bag of leftover Chinese food under my other arm, so it wasn’t too awkward, except…I’d forgotten that the lock sometime stuck. I couldn’t seem to turn the key to unlock the door. Using only one hand
I didn’t normally have this much trouble, even when the lock was being sticky, but I didn’t seem to have the strength in my hand to turn the key. I contemplated putting the bag of food down so I could lift up on the door while twisting the key which had sometimes been necessary. Why hadn’t Jack or I had the apartment handyman fix this stupid lock already?
Suddenly, the door opened, pulling the keys out of my hand hard enough to draw a startled, “Ow!” from me. I stood there, stupidly looking up at Jack.
He had his head cocked sideways in that movement he has that makes him look both amused and a bit of a smart ass at the same time. “Hello,” he said. He glanced at my chest but brought his gaze back up to my eyes. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“I’m Billy,” I said.
He blinked.
I moved to push past him into the apartment, and he automatically got out of the way. A good thing, Jack was a couple of inches over six feet, much bigger than I was now.
He made a noise. “Uh?”
I ignored him, going to the kitchen to put the bag of food in the refrigerator. “I brought home some Chinese leftovers,” I said, pretending nothing was wrong. I stowed the bag next to a six pack of Corona, noticing that while we had plenty of beer and mixers for stronger drink, we were a bit low on real food. I mostly ate out of the freezer and Jack went out to restaurants a lot.
“Um,” he said.
I turned back to look at him. He stared at my chest for a moment then glanced at my face. “I’m Billy,” I repeated. I waved a hand. “This is just a special effect for the movie they’re filming at the studio.”
“Say who?” he asked, looking confused.
I pointed at myself. “Billy. I’m Billy. Jack, it’s me.”
He shook his head and made noises, like a dog about to sneeze. “Wuf?”
I gestured at my chest and hips and all the hair. “It’s a special effect for the filming.”
He stared some more. “Fuck me stupid,” he muttered. Then he asked, “You’re from the studio?”
I nodded. “I’m just getting home. I got a bunch of overtime and they used a special French camera for special effects. That’s why I look like this….”
He grinned slowly. “Wow,” he said. “That’s quite a story, babe. Are you one of Billy’s classmates in the film school? Or just another extra from the studio? I hope he’s paying you for this gag, it’s great.” He laughed, looking me up and down.
“Jerk,” I said. “I’m Billy.” I went to my room, and showing him my key, I unlocked it and went inside.
“Hey!” he said. “That’s Billy’s room.”
“I know,” I called through the door. “It’s my room, I’m Billy.”
“No, you’re not,” he laughed. I heard him go to the front door and went to my window to look out. I saw him come out of our apartment and look both ways down the outside walkway. I could hear him call out, “Billy? Where you hiding, man? This is a great joke.”
I opened the window the two inches allowed by the stop in the slide. “I’m right here, Jack. I’m Billy.” I knew he didn’t believe me, and who could blame him. But I had to come up with some way to convince him. “Ask me something only I would know,” I suggested.
He pointed at me. “You’re cute,” he said, still grinning.
I frowned at him. “Come back inside,” I said and closed the window, then the curtain. I looked around the room, still frowning. “Jeez,” I complained. “I never realized I was such a slob.”
The bed hadn’t really been made, just the cover pulled up over the pillows. Dirty clothes spilled out of the hamper onto the floor. My desk was piled high with books and papers and a few paper plates. I’d apparently left the door of my standalone wardrobe open and the clothes in there looked as if they had been crammed in, rather than being neatly hung up.
They also didn’t look like they had been altered to fit the new me. I glanced down. Only what I’d been wearing at the time had changed. I rolled my eyes as it occurred to me that I really didn’t have a thing to wear except what I had on.
I heard Jack coming back inside and went to the door of my room and opened it to meet him.
He came around the corner of the entryway, still grinning. “Okay, Miss Billy,” he said. “I’ll play the game. What’s my full name?”
“James Urquhart Willoughby the Fourth,” I said. “You really are a Jurq—you’re just spelled funny.”
He frowned. I’d made that same joke the first time he told me his full name. “Where did I go to high school?” he asked.
I snorted. “You got kicked out of four different ones, including some military academy in Virginia.”
He nodded. “Okay. What’s my standard order at Starbucks?”
“Cinnamon Hazelnut Latte. Anybody could know this stuff, ask me something hard. Like what were you and your Aunt Frieda doing in the boathouse on Martha’s Vineyard when you were twelve and she was thirteen?”
He turned red. He’d told me that story when he was pretty drunk and I didn’t think he told it to everyone. They’d gotten naked but never went any further.
“Nothing happened!” he protested.
“But your father didn’t believe you and your grandfather sent Frieda off to school in Europe.”
“Yeah, well,” he grunted. He liked his bad boy reputation and the story didn’t jibe with the image he projected. “Why would Billy tell you this stuff?”
“I’m Billy, Jack. I really am.” The Frieda story should have been a clincher.
He stared at my chest, as if trying to work something out.
I glared at him. “Hey! My eyes are up here,” I said pointing at my own face.
He grinned again. “If you didn’t want me to look at your nipples, you’d be wearing a bra. Billy,” he added, “is it really you behind that rack?”
I looked down at my chest. No wonder everyone stared at me. I’d been aware of my nipples showing but trust Jack to assign me a motive for wearing a tight t-shirt. I sighed. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Unbelievable,” he said. Then he grinned. “I’ve always wanted a roommate like you.” He leered at me.
“I’m going to move as soon as I can,” I told him quickly.
“You can’t afford to,” he pointed out.
He was right, I couldn’t. “I’ll find something,” I said.
“I’ll sweeten the deal,” said Jack. “I’ll pay the whole rent if you stay.”
My glare was obviously not forceful enough since it had not knocked him down. “Jurq,” I said.
"Who am I going to believe?" he said. "My lying eyes or the gorgeous babe who wants to move in with me?"
"Are you convinced?" I asked Jack. I needed him to believe me, that I was Billy Jones. I stood in the door of my room and watched him warily.
"Who am I going to believe?" he said. "My lying eyes or the gorgeous babe who wants to move in with me?" He made a gesture, like surrendering to a higher power. "Besides, you're wearing exactly what Billy wore when he left the flat this morning, complete to ink stain on the left front pocket of those jeans and ragged threads hanging from the right cuff seam."
I looked down. "I never noticed!" I exclaimed. "Jeez! Why didn't you say something? I've got better jeans than these. I look like a ragamuffin!"
"Ah, no." He laughed. "Those jeans are way too tight for anyone to be thinking of 19th-century literature."
"Huh?" He took a step toward me, and I backed up half-a-step into my room, ready to slam the door.
Jack held up his hands to signal he was stopping. "I meant 'Oliver Twist' does not come to mind when watching you walk away like I did a few minutes ago." He shook his head, still smiling. "No, it took me a moment to realize that I'd been thinking, 'Billy has a hell of an ass,'" he went on. "So I knew it was you, man. Babe."
"Well, thanks," I said. "But don't call me b-babe." I pushed my hair out of the way of the glare I sent at him.
"Can't be done," he said, trying to look sad. "The way you fill out those jeans. Your nipples looking at me through that t-shirt. That hair. That face. You are one hella babe, Billy."
I shut the door on his leering face. "D-damn it," I muttered. Maybe it was better that Jack believed me, but he was going to be a problem. I stared at the door, grateful that I had had a lock I could use if necessary installed when I moved in. Some of Jack's girlfriends were a bit skeevy.
I stared at my reflection over my dresser, the ginger-blonde haystack of messy hair, the too-tight t-shirt over the more-than-ample breasts with the nipples showing, the slightly stained and ragged jeans. I frowned. I looked a bit skeevy myself.
Was this the first time I’d really seen my reflection? I looked familiar but not like the self I had known, duh. I was definitely a girl but my face looked a lot like mom’s. Or like my own before puberty hit. I blinked. My eyes were definitely green now, not the hazel-gray mud they had been as boy-Billy.
But my clothes were a definite problem.
I headed for my wardrobe, wondering if I had anything in there that would fit. The cracked, full-length mirror on the inside of the door showed even more of my new hourglass shape. No way would any of my old jeans or slacks fit me, I knew that right away, but I grabbed a pair and held them up just to confirm.
Men's 32" waist jeans would probably measure no larger in the hips, so, no. My sweat pants had enough stretch that maybe they would work, but what would that look like? Why had the magic only altered the clothes I wore at the time, and why had it made my jeans and shirt so tight?
Gah!
I had to find some way to go back to being me!
The first thing would be to find that camera, but I had no idea how I could even start on that before the morning. And right now, I had another problem.
About that time, Jack called through the door, "You okay in there?"
Not thinking about it, I articulated my current situation. "I don't have anything to wear." Jack laughed, and I realized what I sounded like. "Don't say anything!" I warned him.
"Wouldn't think of it," he promised. "Nothing fits? That's the problem with sorcerers today; they don't think these things through."
I snatched the door open and stared at him. "You think…?"
"C'mon, you think this just happened by some technical glitch? Someone's working some powerful magic here." He grinned at me.
"Magic," I sort of breathed the word. "I don't…" I looked down at myself, "I didn't believe in magic." The evidence was right there in front of me, literally. I looked back up at Jack. "If someone could do this to me, what else could they do?"
He waved a hand. "So far, they've turned you into a beautiful girl. It's not all bad."
My eyes started burning, and I realized I was about to cry. "I—you—. Piss on you, Jack!" I tried to snarl, but it came out as a blubber. I turned and ran back into my room and slammed the door before going into a full meltdown.
The tears were hot, and there were a lot of them. I sat on the bed and got myself under control. It took a few minutes and left me feeling drained. Had someone done this to me? Deliberately? What else might they do?
I heard Jack at the door. "Billy?" he called. "I'm sorry. I know I'm a selfish, insensitive jurq, and you can tell me that to my face. Okay?"
"Hmph!" I replied. "Don't think I won't." Jack, the charmer, admitting his faults. Surprising how often that worked for him, like it was working now.
"Okay," he said, sounding relieved. "You know what I think would help your mood? Getting you some clothes that fit and don't make you look like, uh, like you're, um, advertising?"
Yeesh. I rolled my eyes. Jack could be blunt, and yet he often got away with that, too. "Maybe," I admitted. I got up and went to my closet and took out a flannel shirt I hadn't worn in months. It fit around me, though it was much too large in the shoulders. I didn't button it but let it hang over the…ornaments on my chest.
"Yeah?" Jack continued talking through the door. "So, let me take you shopping. I canceled my, uh, plans for the evening. It's still early enough—some things are open. I'll buy you some essentials, things you, uh, need." He paused. "I know this great boutique in Malibu that would just have the perfect clothes for you…."
The flannel was long enough to cover my fat ass, too. Was I a bit shorter than I had been? A few inches, maybe. I pulled my hair out of the collar and distributed it around my face, briefly considering finding something to make a ponytail. Then I opened my door and confronted my roommate and his offer of shopping in Malibu. "Nice try, Jack," I said.
He noted my addition of the flannel shirt and grinned. "It's called La Bodega de la Vida en Playa, Beach Life Boutique…."
"No," I said. "You just… You're trying…. I'm not going to wear a bikini for you, Jack!" But I found myself smiling. He was so ridiculously transparent but he seemed to be able to charm me like he did any other girl. I sighed at that thought
"Okay, then," he said, grinning. “La Bodega wouldn’t be open by the time we got there anyway. Target is nearby and open. Cheap, too. Not too stylish, but I bet you don't know your sizes, huh?"
I blinked. "Uh, no, no, I don't," I admitted. "How would I?"
He handed me a yellow measuring tape. "I'd offer to help you take your measurements, but you might slap me," he said. He waggled his eyebrows. “I’d probably deserve it, too.”
I took the tape. "Got that right in one, Jack. Why do you have this?"
He shrugged, getting out his phone. "I'm a stylish playboy; it's required in the by-laws." He waved the phone at me. "You measure, I'll take notes."
I snorted and retreated to my room again, closing the door. He could listen through it. I wasn’t going to let him watch while I wrapped the tape around me.
I tried to frown at my image, but the expression looked suspiciously like a pout.
Jack directed me on what to measure and how. Waist, hips, bust and chest were the important ones, I suppose, for women’s clothes. I managed to get a close estimate of my height using a pencil mark for the top of my head against the wardrobe.
Five-foot-eleven in my sneakers was about what I had been, but I’d gone from average for a guy to very tall for a girl. The other measurements were more embarrassing. No wonder I attracted attention with a 37.5-24-38 hourglass shape.
“Excellent,” commented Jack. “And according to the math, you should wear a 32DD or 34D bra, probably depending on style.”
“A bra?” I whimpered. But there was no denying it after a glance in the mirror. I needed a bra, not so much for support—my bosom was insanely perky—but my nipples were entirely too…enthusiastic, not to say outgoing. Friendly was Jack’s word.
I tried to frown at my image, but the expression looked suspiciously like a pout.
“Are you about done in there?” Jack called through the door. “I called and canceled my date. Target is open till ten, so we have time, but… you know….” He trailed off as I opened the door. He waggled an eyebrow and commented, “You look like a Robert Palmer song.”
“I what?” I hoped I was frowning at him. “You mean those skinny models with too much makeup?” I looked over my shoulder, tempted to step back into the room to look at my reflection again, but I resisted. Instead, I shook my head at him, “Flattering me is not going to get you anywhere.”
“Ha,” he said like he didn’t believe me. Then he handed me a purse.
“What?” I tried to hand it back. “I don’t need this.”
“Yes, you do. Trust me. You don’t want to be sticking your hands in the pockets on those jeans where guys can see you.”
I blushed. I’d been doing just that all afternoon, practically. I squeezed my eyes shut and winced. Looking the purse over, I found it had a long, thin strap for putting over my shoulder and a simple flap for an opening. It was a burgundy color with golden metal bits. “Where did you get this?” I asked.
“A girlfriend left it here months ago, then went to Hawaii. I took her ID out and her keys, but left her stuff like lipstick, tampons, nail clippers. Stuff you might need,” he explained, moving toward the outer door.
Tampons? Yike!
I put the purse strap over my shoulder and moved toward the door while he held it open for me. “Um, thanks, I guess,” I muttered. On the stairs down, the purse tried to get away by slipping off my shoulder, but I seized it and put it back. “Who would think there was something to learn about how to carry a purse,” I muttered.
Jack laughed and held the gate to the courtyard open for me. We went out to his Mustang, still parked on the street, and again, he opened the door for me and held it. “You don’t have to… I mean, it’s just me, Jack,” I said.
“Get used to it,” he told me. “If you don’t let guys hold doors for you, they’ll think you’re a bitch.”
I nodded, thinking wryly, he’s right. I sighed as I buckled up. “I’ve got to find out how to change back.”
Jack drove a block down and made two right-hand turns to get onto the street back to Target. “Well, I’ll help, but only because you’re a friend. Because, otherwise, well, there just aren’t enough beautiful girls in the world. And if you change back to being a guy, there will be one less.”
I stared at him. Finally, I asked as he pulled into the parking lot at Target, “Does this line of bullshit work on the girls you usually date?”
He laughed. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But no bullshit, Billy. You are gorgeous.” He jumped out of the car, but I didn’t wait for him, getting out on my side all by myself.
He stood there at the front corner of the Mustang watching me. “Your purse,” he said before I closed the car door.
I reached back inside to grab it. “Damnit,” I muttered.
We made our way across the crowded parking lot to the entrance. This was one of the smallest Targets I had ever seen. Lot space is at a premium in the village, I suppose, but there seemed just as many people as any bigger store might want.
“You need everything,” Jack commented as he grabbed one of the bright red shopping carts.
“I’m going to get changed back just as soon as I can,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow, so I don’t want to go nuts.”
He looked doubtful. “Buy enough stuff for a week,” he suggested. “Keep the receipts, and you can bring some of it back if you don’t need it.”
“Eh,” I murmured, not wanting to agree with that logic.
He steered us toward a display of slacks and jeans. “I’m assuming you don’t want dresses or skirts,” said.
“Got that right,” I agreed.
“Uh-huh. But you only have the one pair of jeans that fit, and one shirt. You should get two pairs of pants and four or five tops, at least.”
“I don’t think I need that many,” I protested.
“It won’t hurt to have them,” he countered. “Look, didn’t you say you have more work tomorrow? Acting work?” He paused, stepped back and looked me over. “I think you’re going to continue to have work. Looking like you do, they’d be crazy not to put you in front of a camera as often as possible.”
“That camera,” I began, “that was the problem….”
He interrupted. “You can act, can’t you?”
“Of course I can act,” I said, annoyed.
“I think you probably can,” he said. “But as a girl…?”
Well, that did make me pause to think. But he handed me a pair of jeans, blue with bright pink seams and rhinestones on the pockets. That distracted me. “Jack, I’m not going to wear something like this!” I shook the pants at him.
“Why not?” he asked.
“They’re much too girly!”
“Ah,” he said, looking smug. “So you aren’t that sure you can act, after all?”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jack gave me a lop-sided smile. “Think of it as a challenge. You’ve been cast in the role of a hot, sexy girl. Can you do it?”
“I—that’s—you!” I spluttered.
He pointed at a full-length mirror. I stared at my reflection for a moment, then put the sparkly jeans back on the table and picked out a plainer pair, glaring at jack.
“Ooo,” he said. “Stretch denim. Your ass is going to look so good in that.”
A lady I hadn’t noticed before standing next to me remarked, “You can kill him for that.” She added, “It’s the Texas exemption. ‘Some men need killing.’”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I told her.
Jack just laughed at me and dropped a pair of hot pink stretch slacks in our cart.
“You—I—that!” I squeaked.
“You know where he sleeps, don’t you?” the lady said thoughtfully.
I nodded. “We’re roommates,” I admitted, darkly.
She nodded. “There you go then. I like scissors myself, right under the left shoulder blade.”
Jack and I both stared at her. She cackled like a loon and moved off, calling back, “If he hasn’t put a ring on your finger by the end of the month, you know what to do.”
I glanced down at my chest. “Shouldn’t I have a large?”
After the woman’s comments on what she supposed our relations were, Jack waggled his eyebrows at me, but I chose to ignore him. I had two pair of pants in my cart, and that would do, I headed over to another rack to pick out some tops.
I tried to choose fairly plain ones in quiet colors, but Jack immediately challenged me. “Look,” he said, “if you end up changing back, what tops you pick now don’t matter, you’ve got a closetful of your old clothes.”
“Uh,” I could see where he was going with this.
“But if you don’t change back, or maybe not right away, you need to choose clothes that make the most of the new you. You want them to choose you for the big scenes, right? Even if you are just going to be an extra, it makes a difference.” He picked out a top and showed it to me.
The color was mostly magenta with sort of random swoops and swirls of yellow and white. It didn’t look that bad, actually. “This is a medium,” I pointed out. I glanced down at my chest. “Shouldn’t I have a large?”
“Definitely not,” he said. “In fact, you could get away with a small in most styles. You don’t want it to be baggy in the waist. Tight is okay, baggy sucks.”
“Hmph,” I said. But I picked out four more tops that met his approval.
“You’re getting the idea,” he said. “You don’t have to go to extremes. You’re so good looking, you don’t need to. And I bet the camera loves you.”
“One particular camera, maybe,” I grumped, “a little too much.”
He laughed, the rat. “I think that magic camera did you a favor.”
“Huh?” I glared at him. “Maybe we’ll find a dull knife and do you one?”
He held his hands up in a keep-away gesture but was still smiling. “You told me once that you’ve always known you were going to be a big star someday. I didn’t laugh at you then, but Billy, you didn’t have what it takes. You weren’t big and handsome with a deep manly voice—the most you would ever get would’ve been maybe some handsome guy’s best friend comic relief. That or character roles.”
I sighed. It wasn’t inaccurate.
“But now look at you!” Jack wrung one hand like he’d burned it. “Killer looks, and something else. It’s hard to not look at you.” He grinned. “And harder if you do.”
I gave him another glare, but he didn’t seem to notice. I pushed my hair back out of my eyes for what must have been the fifteenth time.
“Seriously,” he said. “I think you’d be making a mistake to try to change back. You’ve got the potential to be the next blonde bombshell. Uh? You really can act, can’t you?”
“I—I think so….” The situation wasn’t doing a thing for my confidence.
“Okay then,” said Jack, sounding very sure of himself. “That puts you ahead of 98% of the starlets who might have 10% of your looks.” If it were possible to bottle Jack’s nerve….
I felt my lower lip tremble. What the heck? Was I going to cry? In the middle of Target?
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, reaching out for me. “That was all good stuff.”
I dodged away from him. “Leave me alone!” I protested. Turning away from Jack, I ran right into someone else. Someone big and solid. I looked up but was still seeing only chest and chin.
“Is this guy bothering you?” the chest rumbled.
“Uh,” I stammered. “N-n-no, not really. We disagree but….”
“But we’re not disagreeable,” Jack put in, grinning. His charm works on guys, too, just not the same way. “I’m Jack, and she’s Billy. I rent her a room in my apartment. She’s an actress.”
“I’m Gary,” said the big man. He asked me, “Are you a student at the film school?”
“Uh, yes,” I said.
“I work there,” he said. “Technical staff. If this guy does bother you, tell me. I promise I won’t hurt him.” He smiled at me, then at Jack, somehow filling the expression with menace.
I giggled. “Thanks,” I said. “Jack and I are friends,” I explained. “He’s just being pushy about what he thinks I should wear to my new job.”
“Mm-hm,” Gary rumbled. He looked Jack over. “He dresses well, so you should probably listen to what he says. But make up your own mind.” He pointed a forefinger the size of a bratwurst at Jack. “And you let her.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack agreed, still smiling.
The big guy smiled too, showing teeth the size of tombstones and moving off with a last, “See you around,” which might have been taken as a warning. I heard myself giggle again, seeing Jack’s expression.
Somehow, we ended up in what passed for the lingerie department. Without asking, my roommate tossed a package of panties into the cart, then another. “That’ll give you ten pair, enough for a week and laundry time.”
“I’m not going to stay this way that long,” I complained. I puffed a strand of hair out of my face, annoyed by that, too.
He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll decide you like wearing them better and buy your own after you change back.” He grinned at my expression and moved on toward the bras.
I felt a sinking sensation. Only women wore bras because only they needed too. One glance down at myself told me the truth—I needed a bra.
“With your build,” Jack said, “you might consider an underwire bra. The engineering is superior, but some people find them less comfortable.”
“Engineering?” I said blankly.
“Yeah, Howard Hughes improved the design in order to display Jane Russell’s assets better in a movie.” He smirked.
Well, I’d known that, I was a film student, but I thought of it as a publicity stunt, not engineering. Russell hadn’t worn Hughes’s contraption in the film because it was hideously uncomfortable, but the idea had certainly improved the bottom line for a basically pedestrian movie.
I shook my head. “I don’t think I need anything to make me stand out more.”
He chuckled. “You might be out of luck; this is Target, a discount store. They may only have larger cup sizes in underwire styles.”
“Hmph,” I said. But he turned out to be right. This Target, at least, had no 32DD bras in anything but underwire. The 34D size without underwire was available but only in white.
“You want bras in a nude color,” Jack told me. “They’ll show less under your clothes.”
That made sense, so I ended up with four bras to try on and instructions from Jack in how I wanted them to fit. “They really let you try on underwear?” I asked as we moved toward the dressing booths.
“Yeah? They pretty much have to for bras. Only supermarkets and drugstores don’t.” Supermarkets? I’d never seen bras for sale in a supermarket, but then, I hadn’t been looking for them. He went on, “You can’t get a good fit without trying it on. And you want to avoid slippage, which is excess flesh coming out the bottom or sides.”
“Eww,” I said. “That would probably hurt.”
“Yeah, and it looks like ass,” he agreed. “Also, you want to fit the hooks into the last loops on the strap and still have a snug fit, so that, as the bra stretches after washing, you’ll have some adjustments you can make.”
I looked at him from under my haystack of blond hair. “How do you know so much about bras, anyway?”
Jack grinned. “Research. Years of research.”
“You look like a model,” she said. “You should get paid to try things on.”
We found the dressing rooms, with an attendant at a little desk outside “You can only take three items inside at a time,” she told us. “And your boyfriend can’t go inside with you.”
“Aww,” said Jack grinning. I just rolled my eyes at him.
He handed me a sparkly top, the stretchy denim pants, and a nude (it’s a color, damnit) 32DD bra, one with underwire. “Get dressed and come back out so we can see how you look.”
The attendant nodded at the suggestion, too. “You look like a model,” she said. “Target should pay you to try things on.”
Jack winked at me as I scooted inside, blushing.
The booth was small but large enough for one person. I took off the flannel shirt and my t-shirt and stared at—at my tits!—in the mirror. They looked like huge, soft mounds of flesh. The nipples stood up as soon as the air conditioning hit them, and the darker flesh around them crinkled up, too. If I’d seen such a sight only yesterday, I would probably have had an instant hard-on.
Something stirred at the sight of my naked chest, and did I feel myself blush? I didn’t have that much experience looking at tits, but they seemed, well, perkier than you would expect for such large ones. Any legendary pencil tucked into the fold under my mounds would be safe from falling, but they certainly did not sag. Was it a tiny bit of pride in how they looked that I felt?
I wasn’t sure how I felt. Not turned on in the way guy-me would have been, but they were nice, and I certainly felt something when I looked at them. I twitched my shoulders, then bounced on my heels. They moved in delightful ways. “Omigod!” I whispered. Right then, I knew I could have the interest of almost any man I wanted.
Did I want that?
Maybe. It did seem like it could be…advantageous in some circumstances. Jack had mentioned Jane Russel, who had undoubtedly parlayed her assets into a film career, backed up by only minimal acting talent. I hoped I really was a better actor than Jane, but I felt sure my tits were better than hers. Rounder, firmer, if maybe not quite as big.
I blushed at my thoughts, cringing at the evidence of a feminine ego. Still, that realization changed things. I thought back about Mr. Harrelson, and Chad, and Jack. When I was with them, I had nearly all of their attention. They looked at me constantly, talked directly to me, asked questions, offered advice and opinions. They engaged with me. And not just with my chest, with me.
Sure, that had happened sometimes with the old Billy but not with the same intensity and perseverance. The interest anyone had shown boy-Billy had been casual or practical, either unimportant or important only for some task.
But girl-me grabbed them. I felt myself blushing again and realized that I was just standing there, nude from the waist up, staring at the mirror, as if I had myself been grabbed by my image.
“You okay in there?” Jack’s voice called through the doors.
“Yes. Shut up,” I said before he could ask anything else. I picked up the bra and held it up to my chest. Yes, these cups would fit. The wires (actually some sort of stiff plastic) at the bottom of each half-globe gave them shape. I reached behind me, with an end of the bra in each hand, and manipulated the hooks and loops together with only a little difficulty. Snug, but not too tight.
I slipped the straps over my shoulders and adjusted them to the same sort of fit. Something still wasn’t right; I felt lumpy and a little uncomfortable. With my hands inside the bra cups, I lifted my breasts and let them fall, finding their own more comfy positions. The wire understructure acted like a hammock for them. That was lots better, especially after I did it a second time to find the optimum placement for my girls.
I looked in the mirror again, amazed at the sight of the sexy girl in her nude-colored bra. Unexpectedly, I giggled, clapping my hand over my mouth when I did.
Outside the changing room, I heard Jack’s chuckle. “Having fun?” he asked.
“Shut up,” I said again.
I twitched my shoulders and bounced on my heels again, admiring my movement and biting back more giggles. I felt absurdly pleased with myself, but my blushes were probably bright enough to attract moths.
I pulled the sparkly top over my head next, seeing in the mirror something I hadn’t noticed before: the sparkly bits were the scales of a cartoon mermaid lying on a beach under a palm tree, reading a book. Okay. Jack’s sense of humor? The top fit, and for casual, summery sort of clothing, it looked good.
I unlaced and kicked off my sneakers, which now seemed to be made of suede instead of canvas. I stood up and immediately realized I had shrunk several inches. What the hell? I examined the high tops and discovered that they had a hidden high heel. Oh, Damn. I stood and looked at myself in the mirror. Without the heels… I looked shorter. I wasn’t so tall for a girl after all, but I was above average.
Five-foot-seven or eight? Something like that. Nothing for it, though, my feet even felt weird without the heels, like a pulling sensation in the back of my ankle. It looked like I’d be wearing high heels from now on. I shook my head, I definitely needed to get changed back.
I slipped out of my jeans and pulled on the stretchy denim pants Jack had picked out, not the pink ones. They were a tight fit, all over, from ankles to waist. I imagined I could feel the fabric straining to cover my now huge round ass, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw only a good close fit and no sign of strain. “Huh?” I said. My butt did look big, but I decided it was only generous, not extravagant.
The jeans fit, maybe a little too good. I pulled the shoes back on but didn’t tie the laces, the cuff of the jeans covering the top of the suede. My bottom half looked as if it had been dipped in dark blue textured paint. Something was making me smile, though: the idea of Jack looking at the me I saw in the mirror and not being able to look away? Something like that.
It occurred to me that I was enjoying this. Well, every actor is into make-believe, and what goes with that but dress-up? And what guy wouldn’t enjoy having a beautiful girl to put into anything he wanted to see her wearing? Beautiful girl? Well, yeah. I had to admit that, even if it was me I saw in the mirror. “I’m gorgeous,” I whispered.
I must not have been quiet enough. I heard Jack snort. “Told ya. Now come out and let us see.” The salesgirl giggled, Jack had probably charmed the socks off her already.
“Just wait….” I breathed.
“We’ve been waiting,” Jack faked a whine. Then, apparently to the girl, “Why do women always take forever to get dressed?”
I turned back to look at myself in the mirror again. I wondered vaguely what I would look like in a Little Black Dress or an evening gown. Platform sandals with rhinestones? Why was I thinking about dresses and high heels? I peered closer. My pale complexion was flawless, my deep gold eyelashes long and thick, my lips coral and rose, and a hundred other colors of pink. “I’m not wearing makeup,” I whispered, again not quiet enough.
“We can get you some,” Jack offered. “Now, get out here.”
I opened the booth and stepped out, sticking my tongue out a bit, knowing just how sexy Jack thought that expression was. No time to wonder if I wanted to look sexy to Jack, I didn’t really have a choice. It’s showtime, I told myself.
I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and it was true: I did have a cute pout.
I pushed a strand of hair out of my face and smiled at Jack, trying to look sleepy and confident.
"Whoa," he said, grinning. "They must have had a box of new attitude in there."
The sales lady giggled. "I was right," she said. "Target should pay you to wear their clothes."
"You could use a top that's a bit more revealing," Jack suggested, so I glared at him.
"I'm fine," I said. The sparkly top showed plenty of cleavage, leaving no doubt that I was female and a mammal. Jack was just being Jack.
I tried a few more things in the cart on, even the pink stretch pants, which looked like strawberry paint! I didn't have the nerve to wear those out of the changing room—yet. But if I wore them anywhere, I knew men would be looking at me. I wanted to not buy them but, jeez, they were amazing!
I did have Jack put one top back (I would have risked arrest wearing it on the street!). I kept the tags out for my last change back to the blue denim and had the salesgirl ring me up. Jack offered his credit card, and I let him pay. It would have made a good-size dent in my bank account, so why not let him be chivalrous, if that's the word?
We picked up some other things: toiletries like shampoo and conditioner, about which I got a lecture on why my old stuff was no good for the new me, but the big thing was stopping at the makeup counter.
"Just the basics," Jack said. "Lip gloss, mascara, foundation and blush; you'll need lessons to use anything else."
"I duwanna," I whined. I didn't admit it to Jack, but I knew more about cosmetics than he suspected—drama major, right? That didn't mean I wanted to wear makeup for everyday.
My reluctance amused him. "It's not like you need anything to look good," he pointed out, "but makeup for women is a status thing, too."
I repeated my reasoned objection. "I duwanna."
"You're cute when you pout like that," Jack observed.
Glares were wasted on him, so I refrained, but I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and it was true: I did have a cute pout. I pushed hair out of my eyes, again, and made a note to remember that expression. It could be useful in front of the camera.
Thinking of cameras reminded me that I wanted to look for the special effects camera from the film museum, which had evidently been used to cast a magic spell on me. I still found it hard to believe in magic, but no other explanation that didn't involve me being insane seemed possible.
"Shoes," said Jack. "Target's not the best place to pick up shoes, but we should be able to find some sandals or something. And then we'll know your shoe size."
"Okay," I agreed. You can't wear sneakers everywhere, not even high heel ones.
He snorted. "We'll have to get you some heels. You're already tall for a girl, but don't give away your advantages. You'll need to learn to walk in heels, 'cause you don't want to be passed over for a part because you're a klutz. Some short girl in five-inch heels might get a part you wanted and would be perfect for, but you're face down in the ficus cause you didn't train to walk in glamorous shoes? Huh?"
Damn. Jack was talking sense, which automatically made me suspicious, but I grinned at him. "Okay, okay," I grumbled. I was already wearing heels, and Jack hadn't noticed.
He laughed. "We'll compromise, nothing more than three inches and no stilettos. 'Kay?"
I nodded glumly. Things just kept getting girlier and girlier. Maybe when I got back to being male, I could get work as a drag queen.
We picked out two pair of shoes, one of black nearly-flat slippers that Jack assured me were called kitten pumps, and the other pair were beige sandals with straps across the ankle and instep and a three-inch cork wedge heel. They weren't expensive (this was Target), and Jack actually sneered at the prices.
"We'll get you some nice shoes soon enough," he promised. "Legs like yours deserve them."
"You haven't seen my legs," I pointed out.
"I've got an excellent imagination," he said, smiling. "If you have less than a set of fabulous limbs under those pants, I'll eat your pantyhose." Speaking of which, he threw several pairs of cheap hosiery in the cart.
I scoffed, but I couldn't help smiling, too. Jack's reputation with girls had not really prepared me for being the focus of his attentive charm. Now, dammit, I wanted to show him my legs. I'd seen them in mirrors a couple of times, and they were fabulous.
We stopped at the jewelry counter, too. My ears were already pierced. I'd had that done my senior year of high school at the urging of a girlfriend who, frankly, had too many holes in her head. And wonder of wonders, in my new body, my ears were still pierced. Jack picked out an assortment of dangles, bangles, beads, barrettes, rings and things, mostly in gold with flower and butterfly motifs.
"Huh?" I said, glaring at the more delicate imagery.
Jack explained. "You're a big girl, with heels on, nearly six feet. You need some stuff that emphasizes your femininity."
"I—what?" That shifted the glare to him, but he shrugged it off.
"Stinkum," he announced. "You need perfume. And Target does make an effort to have some decent brands." He steered me to the smelliest aisle in the store. "Your rich boyfriend," he waggled his brows, "can buy you something better later, but we are here now."
I still had the glare turned on, but Jack unerringly picked out two scents I could actually imagine myself wearing. One was flowery sunshine on a summer morning, and the other was a dusky, musky night of dancing in a spotlight. That one scared me, but it was something that I knew would have driven boy-Billy crazy.
My hair was in my face again, and I blew a puff of air to get it out of the way. "Too sexy," I complained.
"Says the girl with the double-D chest," Jack scoffed. "I saw your eyes light up when you got a whiff of that. And if you think this flyswatter is something, wait till I take you to Le Minou on Rodeo Drive and introduce you to their bottled violence."
That confused me, and we ended up with bottles of both scents in the basket. "Why both?" I asked.
"Night and day, darlin'," he drawled. "Night and day." He pulled out his credit card and paid for all of it, again.
This made me nervous. Despite his joking, was Jack thinking of himself as my boyfriend? When we got back to the apartment, what was he expecting out of me?
“You act like it’s a hardship being young, beautiful, and talented.”
We got out of Target with only a few more purchases (I duwanna talk about it) and mildly serious damage to my male ego. It was impossible to look at myself in a mirror and see Billy Jones, the guy from Bakersfield who wanted to be an actor. I didn’t look like a guy named Billy, or a guy at all. I could change the spelling, to Billie, or Billi, or Billee, but that wouldn’t solve another problem.
The Screen Actors Guild encourages every member to have a unique name and keeps a register to help avoid duplicates. Chad, the guy I had met at the bank, had suggested that I use a version of my middle name. I made a face; my real middle name was Hallelujah.
Jack saw my expression. “Poo,” he said in a too-cute voice. “What’s bugging Billy?”
“Shut up,” I said, which caused him to laugh. “This is all going to go away when I wake up,” I grumbled.
He looked at me sideways while he negotiated traffic, heading back to Lowering Heights. “You’re a dream girl, but you’re not dreaming.”
I waved my hands. “I must be,” I said. “This just doesn’t happen. People don’t turn into…into this!” I waved my hands again, at myself this time. “People don’t get turned into…” I couldn’t say it. “By some antique French camera?” I sighed.
Jack actually scowled at me. “You act like it’s a hardship being young, beautiful, and talented.”
“I—what?” Talented? But I caught him glancing at my chest, and I wanted to sock him. “You try it then, Jack,” I offered between clenched teeth.
He shrugged. “I’m sure I could make the most of it. I’m a realist. I’d adapt.”
I threw up my hands, “This is the most unreal thing that’s ever happened to me!”
“Billy,” he said earnestly, “you’re not thinking past the immediate problem. You wanted to be a movie star, but you were just another weedy trash digger from West Tulsa with nothing hair, a squeaky voice, and a forgettable face. Now you’re a hot, sexy bombshell with a kitten purr and a spark of charisma; the camera is going to love you.”
“Frigging camera,” I muttered. “Wait—kitten purr? What do I sound like?”
He laughed. “You haven’t heard your new voice, have you?” He shook his head. “You still sound like Billy, but the squeaks are cute instead of annoying, and when you try to sound serious it—uh, it—? It’s just…sexy. Like a teeny-bopper vamping on Marilyn Monroe.”
I rolled my eyes.
Jack turned down the ramp to the underground parking spot he leased along with our apartment. He even paid for one of the primo stalls near the elevators. Jack was rich, I reminded myself.
“I’m from Oildale, not Bakersfield,” I pointed out. “A place that doesn’t need a nickname like West Tulsa. ‘Oildale’ is plenty redneck enough.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he waved a hand as he pulled into his stall. “You’ve said that before.” He turned the engine off and looked over at me. “Maybe I’ll go with you, next time you visit your folks. I’d love to see the looks on the faces of your old homies when they see the new you.”
“I didn’t have any homies,” I muttered. I couldn’t imagine the word applying to the crowd I had hung out with, performers, mostly: actors, singers, musicians, dancers. The group was pretty small in a place like Oildale, frankly.
We got out of the car, retrieved the purchases from the tiny back seat, and then took the elevator up two floors. Jack was carrying most of it, so I got my keycard out to work the lock. Rico Espinoza, another tenant on our floor saw us coming and called out, “Hey, Jack! Moving your girlfriend in?”
I scowled, but Jack just grinned at the fool. “Something like,” he stalled, glancing at me.
“‘Bout time you got rid of that queerbait roommate, he was crimping your style.” Rico was blatantly checking me out, his eyes lingering on my chest.
I’d had enough of that. Rico had never been one of my favorite people, anyway. “Like what you see?” I cooed. Jack almost dropped the stuff he was carrying.
Rico looked up at my face, grinning, and I smiled back. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Hallie Jones, Billy’s cousin. Billy went back to Oildale for a bit, and I’m staying in his room while he’s gone.” I tried to put some menace in my voice, but it sounded more like spite even to my ears. “And if you’re such an expert in queerbait, you can just go bugger yourself.” Damn, I’m too squeaky to be scary.
Annoyed both by Rico and my own voice, I slammed my keycard into the lock and swung the door open. Jack scooted inside, barely containing his laughter.
Rico, the slime, was back to staring at my chest. I gave him a bit of shoulder action, like Charo on those old Johnny Carson clips. His head sort of vibrated. “Up here,” I said, pulling his gaze back to my face with my hands. Then I pointed a finger pistol at him, sighting on his beady eyes. “Bang,” I said. “I’m shooting you down, sleazoid. Go back to your mothership and tell the other alien scum that Hallelujah Jones is in town.”
Okay, I’m an actor, not a writer. But he got the message and skedaddled.
I went into our apartment and found Jack dumping the stuff he had bought for me on my bed. “Boy,” he said, still laughing, “you don’t want to get ol’ Pinkie Pie mad at you.”
“Huh?” I said, falling into his trap.
“I figured out what cartoon character it is that you sound like: the little pink pony from Friendship Is Magic.”
“I do not!” But I heard myself squeak.
Jack just grinned at me, then whipped out his phone, pressed Record or something and held it out to me. “Say something cute,” he said.
“I will not!” I protested. “I never knew you were a Brony, Jack.”
He shrugged. “Guilty pleasures; the show is silly, but my nieces love it.”
“You have nieces?” I asked. He must have mentioned them before. Jack had a hundred funny stories about his rich but clueless relatives.
“Three of them, from my oldest sister. Eleven, eight and five.”
“Weird names,” I said, then I had to try not to giggle at my own joke.
“Perfect!” Jack pushed stop then replay, and I heard the exchange again, but hearing my voice the way everyone else did.
I had to sit down and plopped into the chair at my desk. “Omigod! I do sound like Pinkie!” Not exactly, but close enough! Too cute to live!
Jack nodded, grinning. “I knew you wouldn’t believe it without hearing it.” He punched a few more buttons. “Saved to my server,” he said, then put his phone away.
All I could do was glare at him.
“Jonesie,” I told my reflection, “you’re one hot babe.”
I think I must have been in a coma for a bit, I don’t remember putting the stuff we’d bought at Target away but I came back to myself sitting on my bed and staring at my reflection in the mirror over my dresser. I put both hands up to my generous chest ornaments and hefted the weight of them. “Hallelujah is right,” I muttered.
I put my hands down and stood, taking a step to the 3/4 length mirror on the back of my door. “Jonesie,” I told my reflection, “you’re one hot babe.” I blew out a sigh to get my hair out of my eyes. I did a little shoulder shake and hissed when I saw how my “talent” bounced.
Jack was right. Professionally there wasn’t anything better that could have happened to me than being turned into the bombshell I saw in the mirror.
Hallelujah Jones. I’d register the name with SAG on Monday, along with my choice of alternate, Hallie Jones. And maybe Halle Jones as a third choice.
But could I be Hallelujah Jones? I had the physical package, like the world’s best makeup and appliances. Damnit, I’m an actor, I told myself. Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman didn’t have the advantage I was starting with. Yeah, sure, women in Hollywood made about forty-five cents on the dollar for what men made at the upper levels. But…
But Hallie Jones was more likely to be able to reach those upper levels than Billy was. Forty-five percent of a million a year was more than the sixty to eighty thousand a journeyman character actor could bring down. Hallie had star quality, Billy did not.
I sighed. Hallelujah Jones would be the role of a lifetime, literally.
Someone knocked on the door. I shrugged, it had to be Jack.
“You in there, babe?” Jack called through the door.
“Where else would I be?”
“I—uh…”
I frowned, Jack never stammered.
“You hungry?” he asked abruptly.
“We’ve got leftover Chinese,” I pointed out. “Or I do.”
Jack opened the door and looked at me. I struck a pose and he grinned.
“Lemme take you out to dinner,” he said. “No one who looks like you should be eating leftovers.”
“I—what?” My turn to stammer. “Jack—I….” I stopped and just stared at him.
“Weird situation, huh?”
“Got that right,” I admitted.
He grinned again. He had a smile like that actor that played Cyclops, James Marsden, and his grin made you want to smile back at him. I realized I was. I remembered the pout I had tried in the mirror and used it on him. He laughed, seeming delighted.
I had to spoil the pout to giggle.
He shook his head. “You’re killer, Billie,” he said. “Look, I know a steakhouse in Santa Monica that’ll still be open. We’ve got time to get there and maybe a drive along the ocean? It’s Santa Monica, the beach is across the street so we don’t have to worry about dressing up, cause you don’t have the wardrobe for it.” He paused. “Yet.”
“Jack—I….” Again I didn’t know what to say.
“You already said that,” he pointed out. “Grab your purse and let’s go.”
I glanced around. “My…purse….”
He handed it to me. “C’mon, babe, you’re dressed and you don’t need makeup.” He led me out of the room and I let him.
* * *
Back in the Mustang we headed down Wilshire. “What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?” he asked.
I flinched, I’d honestly forgotten I had work tomorrow. I would be missing another class at UCLA…but could I even go to class looking like I looked now? “Uh—six thirty, no, seven.”
He shook his head. “Can’t stay out too late then. Actors and their early calls.”
Absurdly, that pleased me. I’m an actor, I thought. I’ve got an early call in the morning. Makeup, costume. I felt professional. Weirdly professional.
May in Southern California is cool and I was glad the top was up on the Mustang. The sun had set, it was dark now and the wind off the ocean could get chilly. For all the clothing Jack had bought me at Target, neither of us had thought of a jacket or sweater.
Jack kept looking sideways at me. I pulled hair out of my face for like the ninetieth time and peered back at him. “What?” I asked.
“Profile,” he said mysteriously. “Hey, have you got an agent?” He turned his gaze back onto the street.
I rolled my eyes. “You have to have an agent to get work, so yeah.”
“They any good?” he asked.
“Uh—no,” I said. I was listed with an agency, but they hadn’t really done much for me except act as a switchboard and mail drop. And take their ten percent.
“I’ll ask around,” he said. “We’ll get you with a good agent, cause your career is gonna take off.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Nice to think that.” I pushed hair our of my face—again!
Jack nodded. “Believe me, you’re going places. You don’t have a manager, either, do you?”
“Uh—no.” A manager would take fifteen percent, but that much out of what I’d been making as an extra wouldn’t amount to anything.
“You’ll need one when you start getting parts and making money,” he said. “Agents usually work with managers.” The cost of being an actor, 25% right off the top before taxes and union dues, even!
Traffic on Wilshire was thicker than you would think at nearly eleven on a week night. We were poking along almost bumper to bumper. “Are you sure this place will be open by the time we get there?” I asked. “I’m—I’m really not that hungry….”
He glanced at me. “It’s part of a hotel, they keep the kitchen open till midnight.”
“Ah,” I said. “But we….” We probably wouldn’t have time for a drive by the ocean. “Just….”
“Billie,” he said seriously. “It’s me, Jack. You’re acting all nervous.”
“I am nervous,” I admitted. “You’re treating me too good. Like I’m your g-girlfriend or something.” My hair was back in my face and I puffed air to blow it out of the way.
Jack grinned. “We’ll have to work on that,” he said. “Right now, I’m trying to treat you like a friend, Billie. A good friend. A good friend with an outrageously nice body and a beautiful face.” He looked sideways at me. “I mean, you’re the one with the body and face.” He grinned again.
“Okay,” I said. Jack’s charm was irresistible even when you knew it was all malarkey. I smiled, looking away from him so he wouldn’t see, but then I turned back. “Oh,” I said, “I’ve decided to use my middle name professionally, at least until I can figure out how to change back.”
He shook his head. “It would be a crime against humanity to change you back.” He stopped at the light on Ocean before turning left when he got the green. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Your middle name is something unusual, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Hallelujah. So I’m Hallelujah Jones, now. Call me Hallie, I guess.”
He turned into a driveway for the Hotel Breakers-on-Ocean. “Hallelujah Jones. That’ll work.” A guy in the valet parking kiosk signaled him, so he pulled forward. He took the car out of gear then turned to me and gave me that killer grin again. “Hallelujah and a-men,” he said.
Stay in character, I told myself. You’re the high-maintenance girlfriend enjoying the perks of being beautiful and sexy.
The restaurant was probably still an hour from closing, kept open by its location and overflow from the busy hotel bar, but it wasn’t so full that we needed to wait for seating. The tables were actually on an upper floor with a view of the beach.
We took the stairs up, and I had very little trouble with the heels that Jack had talked me into wearing. A little wobbly, but my feet seemed to like heels and I did enjoy the height. I’d been wearing the hidden heels in my transformed sneakers since I’d been zapped by that special effects camera, after all.
The waiter held the chair for me, but I almost flubbed that by sitting down too quick. Jack grinned at me. “Did you think he was going to snatch it away.”
I made a face and shrugged. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
He grinned wider. “I’m going to order for us. Get used to that too.”
He’d already told the waiter what wine to bring and neither of us had been carded. I sighed. I’d had wine before and a sip or two did not sound at all bad. “Go ahead,” I conceded. “My brain is not up to deciphering menus right now.”
The waiter returned with a small bottle of some kind of red wine and did the ritual of letting Jack taste it before pouring us each a glass. He also brought bread and butter on small plates.
I put a napkin on my lap, remembering to keep my knees together. Stay in character, I told myself. You’re the high-maintenance girlfriend enjoying the perks of being beautiful and sexy. I suppressed a giggle. Gotta work on that, I resolved.
Jack ordered steak medallions for me with a romaine house salad, and asked if I wanted a potato. I shook my head. The meal sounded good but I suspected from earlier that my appetite would be smaller than before and I’d rather eat steak than starch. Something else occurred to me, too. As a starlet, I’d probably have to watch my weight.
“Something painful?” Jack inquired.
He must be referring to my expression and I wondered what I had been doing with my face. If it communicated that well, it would be useful to me as an actor. “Just thinking of all the complications,” I said. I waved a hand airily and almost giggled again.
“Time enough for that later, Hallie,” he suggested. “Relax and enjoy a good meal.”
I smiled, partly at the use of my new name. Even if it turned out to be temporary, I kind of like it. “Thank you, Jack. I didn’t expect this evening and it is nice.”
“De nada, chica,” he said, calling me ‘girl’ in casual Spanish. I didn’t object because a sudden shiver down my back surprised me.
It wasn’t a purely internal shiver—I seemed to be sitting in a draft. turned to look out at palm trees on the beach and the black water beyond. A cold current of air flowed off the windows and I felt a line of goosebumps on my arms. It was just chilly enough to be uncomfortable but it wasn’t actually cold.
“You really do have an expressive face, Hallie,” Jack noted. “You’re cold. Let me go out to the car and I bet I can find a jacket or wrap for you.”
But just then the waiter returned with our salads. After placing them in front of us, he gestured at something he had over one arm. “Miss,” he said, “I have a light shawl you can wear to keep off the chill.”
I boggled a bit. “I…I…thank you.” I meant it too. I leaned a bit forward and he draped the length of lacy periwinkle fabric around my shoulders. The heat of my blush pushed the rest of the cold away and I thanked the man again.
“You’re very welcome,” he assured me, smiling. He was an older man and quite gallant. He’d only given my chest a simple look the first time and kept his gaze away from the view afterwards. “You can leave the shawl here, or at the desk downstairs, or take it with you and bring it back another time.”
Jack expressed his thanks to the man also, and when the waiter retreated said, “Saved me a trip to the car. Hallelujah.” He grinned, probably at his own joke of using my name for its meaning. “I’m sorry that I didn’t think of you getting cold sooner.”
“Um,” I said, still bemused by the unaccustomed solicitousness of a stranger, even one whose job it was to keep people happy. I fingered the fabric and smiled. “Someone must have left this behind, but it’s an expensive item.”
Jack opened his mouth and closed it again. I wondered what he’d been about to say.
He grinned. “Get used to being treated well, Babe.”
“Don’t call me ‘babe,’” I protested.
“Eh,” he said. “Get used to being called ‘babe’ instead of ‘dude”, Sugar.” He grinned.
I know I pouted at that but I couldn’t help myself, and Jack just laughed.
The salad had stalks of romaine lettuce sprinkled with tiny shrimp with a side of tangy dressing, and was delicious enough to distract me from Jack’s annoyances. I concentrated on that and contemplated ways to annoy him.
He kept up a commentary. “Your face, your body, your hair, your eyes, your lips—you’ve got it all, querida mia.”
I sniffed. How much Spanish did he know? Just the endearments? “You’re not Raul Julia, and I am definitely not your darling.”
“Maybe not,” he admitted. “But you’re going to have a lot of men wishing you were theirs.”
Scary thought. Our plates came and I resolved to enjoy the tender, if petite, steaks. A half dozen asparagus spears and an ounce or two of button mushrooms accompanied the plate. It was no effort at all to savor the flavors and I curled my toes in bliss.
I sipped wine, feeling mellow, when I had eaten enough, and I regarded Jack through the hair that kept falling over my left eye. “I know you’re rich, Jack,” I said quietly, “but do you take very many girls out for a dinner like this?”
He grinned. “Only the most beautiful, Hallie, love,” he said. “Dessert?”
“Uh, no,” I said. I had to learn not to blush at his malarkey compliments.
The waiter had other ideas. “A tiny scoop of vanilla bean ice cream is complimentary with the meal,” he offered.
“Uh,” I hesitated.
“Yes, please,” said Jack. “Thank you, Sidney.” The waiter hurried off while Jack extracted a black American Express card from his wallet.
“Sidney?” I murmured. “You know his name?”
Jack just nodded. Knowing people’s names was an art, I considered. Part of Jack’s charm. I resolved to learn the skill, too.
Sidney brought Jack’s card back with the ice cream and we paused to savor the treat. Just enough, though it was not much more than a tablespoon.
“Ready to go, muñequita?” Jack asked when I had finished my bite.
“Uh, huh,” I said, a little dreamily. It had been a very long time since I had enjoyed a meal more. Even Jack calling me ‘little doll’ in Spanish didn’t faze me.
“Sit tight,” Jack commanded. Then he got up from his seat and came around to help me out of mine just as Sidney arrived to pull the chair out of my way.
“Thank you, Sidney,” I murmured. “And thank you for the shawl. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.” I looked at him under my lashes and fluttered them at him. I wasn’t paying the bill so I couldn’t leave him a tip and he deserved something.
He stood up straight, beaming. “No hurry, miss,” he said. “Have a good night.”
Jack put an arm around my waist as we went down the stairs to the lobby and I didn’t even object. The other waiters and the maitre d’ beamed at me and even the hotel deskman smiled. “Everyone is so nice to me,” I said to Jack as the doorman opened the door for us.
“You’re a pretty girl with a smile that lights up a room, mi hermosilla,” said Jack.
My little beauty, huh? I felt a warm glow at the compliment despite the disturbing implications. Could I get used to this? I wondered. Maybe with just enough wine.
I spun around to confront him. “You two were showing us off to each other!”
Jack drove along the beach for a few blocks before making his way back toward the Village. The top was up and the windows closed because the onshore flow held that deep cold that comes off the Pacific, but I could look out at the ocean and enjoy the view. The waves breaking on the shore glowed with phosphorescence.
I caught Jack glancing sideways at me several times. “What?” I asked.
“Just enjoying the view,” he said, causing me to giggle at the echo to my own thoughts.
I gestured. “There’s wide ocean with waves full of shiny stuff out there and you’d rather look at me?” Why had I asked him that?
“Fishing for compliments?” he teased.
I tried to snort but it came out wrong, another giggle, and Jack laughed at me.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, but you do it well,” he said. “You’ll be dangerous once you get to know your new equipment.”
“Hmph,” I made a noise, glancing down at my new, personal horizon—which was where Jack had been looking. “Merde!” I said, just to hear Jack cackle.
“‘That’s French, Tish,” he quoted. “‘You know I love it when you speak French.’”
We both laughed because ‘merde’ is French for poop.
Jack drove us home through the quiet streets of Santa Monica and Westwood, avoiding the busier routes. We didn’t say much more until we approached Lowering Heights.
I felt good and wondered about that. My life had been overturned in the last few hours, but my upset and fear seemed to have evaporated. Did Jack’s charm and a good meal fix my mood? Or was it part of the magic that had transformed me.
We spoke at the same time just as Jack steered into the underground parking below our apartment. I said, “I still need to find that camera,” and Jack remarked, “We’re home,” simultaneously.
The camera that had changed me into a woman and the apartment I shared with Jack the Ladykiller, two topics of worry and concern in my new life.
“Don’t get out,” Jack ordered me as I reached for the door handle.
“Huh?” I said, intelligently.
Jack leaped out on his side and raced around the car to open my door for me.
He just grinned when I said, “Goofus.” He even offered me a hand which turned out to be appreciated because the low-slung car next to the curb left little room for maneuver.
“Why did you do that?” I asked him while he steered me toward the elevator instead of the stairs.
“You need to get used to it,” he said. “I’ve seen how hard it is for anyone, let alone someone wearing heels to get out on the right-hand side here. I love my parking spot, but it’s one of only three in the whole garage that has a curb next to it to trip people up.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, yeah. “But it was nearly as difficult for the old me to get out of the car, too,” I pointed out.
“If you remember back a few months, I warned you it wasn’t easy and offered you a hand once or twice,” said Jack. “You just wouldn’t take it because,” he deepened his voice, “it wouldn’t be manly.”
“Yeah, well.” Why did I giggle? “Well, I appreciated this time, Jack.”
“De nada, chiquissima.” He punched elevator buttons while I snuggled into the wrap the restaurant had loaned me; it was cold in the basement.
We stepped into the little box and the hydraulic lift pushed us up toward the third floor while I puzzled over what Jack had just called me. “That’s n-not a word,” I pointed out just as my teeth began to chatter.
“Sure it is,” he said while offering his arms wide open for a warming embrace. “Chiquissima is the superlative of chiquita, which is the comparative of chica. Or in English, babe, baber, and babest!”
I laughed while he wrapped his arms around me. I felt more warmth from his light hug than physics surely allowed. “Mm?” I murmured in doubt, my face against his shoulder.
“Mm-hm?” he responded. “I’d kiss you but I want to keep my internal organs right where they are. So, I’ll settle for a squeeze.” He did, and I laughed again as the lift bell dinged to announce our arrival. The squeeze did not freak me out and maybe that’s why I laughed.
Then again, it might have been the flash of what I thought was discomfort at the idea of Jack kissing me that made me laugh. Sure. Better not to think about that at all.
The elevator door opened and there stood Rico Espinoza giving off his best Jesus Quintana vibe with this tiny, big-busted Latina on his arm giving him sass. “Yeah,” she oozed the accusation, “Rico no es rico? You want me to lend you money? Hombre, you know who you talking to?”
“Oh, he doesn’t!” I cooed. “I’m sure of it! The world is full of things Rico is ignorant of!” I laughed, Jack laughed, Rico’s girlfriend laughed, and even Rico chuckled, though he looked a little embarrassed.
“I’m Luz Maria de Arroyo y Valdez,” the pocket-size beauty introduced herself as we traded places in the elevator. “I’m this tonto’s bail bond. He already owes me more than his cheapass is worth.” She growled at him but turned her face up for a kiss which he delivered with no shame at what she was saying.
“I’m Hallelujah Jones,” I squeaked at her, cringing because her voice was deeper than mine. “And this is Jurq Willoughby, he’s my landlord.” I had to introduce him, he had his arm around me again.
She collected another kiss from Rico and twiddled her fingers at me while the elevator door closed, so I twiddled mine back. Rico and Jack hadn’t said a thing, but they both looked fatuously pleased with themselves for some reason.
I tried to work out the logic that reason while we walked along the open air hallway and Jack used his keys on our apartment door. I wasn’t making much headway on the problem as Jack let me go in first. Jack hit the lights and I’d gone four steps before I realized he wasn’t following. When I looked back at him, it was obvious he was admiring my ass.
I spun around to confront him. “You two were showing us off to each other!”
Jack made a two-hand gesture like a shrug, smiling without showing his teeth.
“You don’t deny it!” I accused as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“What can I say? Having a beautiful woman insult him is the highlight of any man’s day.”
“I—what?” He came toward me and I retreated around the wall of my room to my own door.
“You called me a jerk while I had my arm around you, and sort of claimed me as yours. Maria did the same sort of thing.”
“I said you were my landlord,” I protested.
“Uh huh, you give me money. Maria gives money to Rico, too.”
“I—you—she?”
He stopped in front of me, put on the puppy dog eyes and said, “I don’t get a kiss after our first date? That pendejo Rico got a kiss.”
I retreated into my room. “¡Comé mierda! Eat shit!” I snarled then I tried to slam the door but it was too light and bounced back at me. Jack stood there and winked as I pushed the door closed and locked it.
“I’ll set an alarm,” he said through the door, “so you won’t be late for work.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Uh—thanks?”
“De nada, muñequita,” he said. It’s nothing, dolly.
“How do you say, you’re an asshole in French?” I asked.
“Je suis un cul,” he answered, laughing.
“Tu es, tu sais,” I said. You are, you know.
“Je suis,” he agreed. “But if you’re going to keep speaking French, open the door.”
“Non!” I said. Damnit, I noted to myself, I still sound like a squeak toy.
“You got an eyeful?” I asked, once I had my door closed behind me.
I pulled the heavy drapes on my window and turned on a lamp, watching myself move in the mirror over my desk. The big-breasted woman I saw there was me, but I couldn’t be completely convinced by a mere reflection.
I took off the borrowed shawl the restaurant had loaned me and hung it over my only chair. These were the clothes Jack had bought for me in Target: the denim stretch pants, the soft gray top with the rhinestones around the neckline, and the sandals with the two-inch heels. I blinked but the girl in the mirror wouldn’t go away.
I had a cheap bracelet around my wrist, too, and I took that off first then reached down to unbuckle the sandals. Stepping out of them, I left them where they were and pulled my top off over my head. My shaggy blond mane poured over my face and shoulders; it had been getting into my eyes ever since my transformation.
“I need to get my hair styled,” I murmured. I walked to my tiny armoire and found a hanger for my top, then more hangers for the other clothes we had bought, finally taking off the stretch jeans and hanging them up, too.
I stood there in bra and panties, caught again by my image in the mirror. I looked like nothing but a woman, no trace of any hypothetical previous manly existence visible.
Reaching behind me, I undid the hooks of the bra then slipped the straps down my arms. My breasts hung heavily on my chest without the support, and I rubbed the underside of them where the wires in the contraption had made slight indents in my flesh. The cool air on my naked flesh caused my nipples to crinkle up.
The sensation wasn’t at all unpleasant. I lifted each breast in turn and let it fall with a jiggle and a bounce, watching in the mirror as I did this. They were stupendous, large and firm but soft as any pillow. I clamped my teeth on a giggle.
Just moving in this body was sensuous pleasure. Wearing nothing but the lacy nude panties Jack had handed me back at the changing booth, I climbed between my sheets and stretched out to flick off my lamp. It took a few moments to find a comfortable position, I couldn’t lie on my stomach and lying on my back caused my breasts to sort of pool in my armpits.
Lying on my left side seemed best but after less than a minute, I ended up using my hand to support my right breast to keep it from falling over my left one and sliding toward my face. “What the hell?” I squeaked. Was I going to have to wear a bra to sleep in? If so, it wasn’t going to be that underwire chicken coop.
I ended up with one pillow behind my back and one under my head, so that I could lean on the pillow at sort of an angle and not worry about suffocating in my own generosity. I had most of me under my light covers with my right foot sticking out but I couldn’t be bothered to find a way to get it covered too.
Sleep claimed me almost the instant I felt reasonably comfortable.
I had vivid but mundane dreams except that in all of them, I was a little girl playing in the sand on a beach. We had never lived on the seashore when I was growing up and, of course, I hadn’t been a girl then, either.
*
I woke up suddenly. Someone was knocking on my door. Jack voice came through the wall, “It’s six a.m. You said you needed to get to the studio by seven. Get your shower quick, and we can pick up coffee-and on the way.”
It took me a while mentally stumbling around in a personal fog to locate the reality in which I had a job starting at seven a.m. Jack was going to drive me to the studio? Save me a bus ride, but when I sat up, the rest of my situation made itself known in the jiggles of my new accessories.
Also, I needed to pee. And there was no back pressure to hold things in. Sometime in the next minute or two, I was going to pee. I hurried, disregarding the fact that I was wearing only a pair of beige panties.
I heard Jack say, “Whoa!” from the kitchen as I passed but I didn’t stop. I made it, just barely, and it didn’t tinkle, it splashed. I patted myself dry then decided I might as well shower while I was here and I could use one of the big bath towels to get back to my room.
“Need anything?” Jack called from the short hallway outside his room just as I started the water running.
“Can’t hear you,” I lied. But I’d forgotten my hair. Did I want to shampoo? A mane like this would take forever to dry. Jack had a hair dryer that I’d never had occasion to use, but could it do the job quick enough.
Shower cap. I’d seen one in the bathroom somewhere.
Jack yelled something from the hallway and this time I really didn’t hear him. “Pardon?” I screamed.
“Shower cap is in the caddy,” Jack yelled back, closer to the door this time.
“Thanks!” How does he do shit like that, I wondered?
The plastic tray hanging from the vent in the shower did indeed contain a cap as well as body wash and a loofah. The shampoo and conditioner I didn’t need. I couldn’t linger on the new equipment which was just as well. I didn’t really want to do much exploration with Jack still in the apartment.
I spent less than four minutes in the shower and emerged from the bathroom with the big towel wrapped around me, covering my assets and endowments. Jack stood just inside the kitchen watching me as I hurried to my own door. I heard myself giggle when he waggled his eyebrows at me.
“You got an eyeful?” I asked, once I had my door closed behind me.
‘I did,” he agreed. “Van Nuys.” That part was a running gag. Van Nuys is a northern suburb of Los Angeles, out in the Valley, and its pronunciation is close to a casual, East Coast-flavored, “Very nice.”
I snorted, noticing that Jack had apparently taken the liberty of laying out clothes from my meager supply for me to wear. The deep pink stretch jeans had teddy-bear appliqués on the pockets, how had I not remembered that? A green blouse with a shawl-like collar complimented the color perfectly but I didn’t remember buying it. Am I really that much of a ditz?
I put on clean panties and struggled with my bra before figuring out to lift my girls and gently drop them, letting them find their own places in the cups. The jeans still fit like paint but the teddy bears looked happy. Beige and green pumps on my feet, I dragged a brush through my hair, remembered to snag my purse and met Jack at the front door at seven nineteen.
“Van Nuys,” he repeated, looking me over. “Coffee and a cruller at Jason’s?”
I nodded. He followed me out the door and locked it behind us. We headed for the stairs and then it hit me.
I was going out on my first real acting job, not just a gig as an extra, and I was going as a woman. Because that’s what I am.
“Helmet?” I said. “Which one is the helmet?”
Unless you’re a musician or a rodeo rider, if you want to make your living as a performer in America, you need to live near either Hollywood or Broadway. Of course, those names are just shorthand for the communities that have grown up around the original industries in those locations.
And to be sure, there are others, like Las Vegas, Nashville, even Branson and Orlando. But for actors, Hollywood and Broadway are definitely where most of it’s at. ‘It’ being regular work at paying jobs.
I was lucky that the studio where I worked was so near to where I lived, and luckier still that Jack was available to give me a ride since it would still be a half our by bus. Jack bought coffee and a cruller in the drive-thru at Jason’s on the way, too.
I sipped Mocha-Java with one sugar and heavy cream while happily munching on a Krusty Kruller, Jason’s specialty, all the way down Wilshire to where we zagged through side streets to end at Melrose Film and Sound Studios front gate.
We’d hardly spoken on the drive over, though Jack had grinned over at me several times without saying anything. Okay, he leered, but in a friendly way. Jack was being Jack, charmingly insufferable.
I was surprised when we drove through the studio gate with only a nod from the gate guard. “You’ve got a studio tag on this car?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said. “Studio head is my ex-quasi-father-in-law. I did a big favor for him and he let me keep the studio parking tag after I broke up with Mellisandra.” He looked pleased with himself, as if he had pulled off a clever con on Mr. Devon Gower.
One thing about actors, no one considers any sort of connection in the industry to be underhanded or cheating. You use whatever mojo you can muster to get a job. You have to treat people decent or face some nastiness, but an inside track with an executive is fair. I glared at him. “You’ve got leverage with the head of the studio and you never mentioned it?”
“It ain’t fungible,” he grinned.
Huh? I’d have to look that one up. I hoped it was spelled the way it sounded. “What did you do for him?”
“I didn’t marry Mel when she proposed,” he said with an even bigger grin. “It’s kind of an embarrassing story, I’ll tell you some time. And I don’t think he knows I still have a studio pass.”
I laughed. Typical Jack explanation, unlikely and frustratingly vague. I shrugged it off, he’d either tell me the truth sometime or an even more entertaining lie. “Fungible, huh?” Had I said it right?
“Non-fungible, actually. Words I learned when I almost got my MBA. Convertible or non-convertible.” He did offer some explanation on that at least. I wouldn’t have to break out the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Edition, after all.
I decided to try out a dumb-blonde line. I looked the part now, why not? “Like your car?” I said innocently in my squeakiest voice.
He was still chuckling when he stopped at Costuming to let me out.
*
“I’m supposed to wear that?” I protested. ’That’ was about a square foot or so of material, kind of like a girl’s one-piece bathing suit. I had trouble imagining what I would look like in it but there would be a lot of skin on display.
Amanda, the wardrobe lady, grinned. “There’s more to the costume than just a leotard: a skirt, hose, heels and a helmet.” She gestured at the other items laid out on a table. “Gloves, too,” she added.
“Helmet?” I said. “Which one is the helmet?”
She pointed at a stiff piece of silvery cloth, something like a futuristic nurse’s cap. “Enough stalling. You act like you’re not going to be in this picture just for your looks.”
“Huh?” I wanted to protest.
She gestured toward the changing alcove. “Put it on and we’ll see how it fits. Don’t forget the boots.”
I made a face at her but she just grinned. I took the ‘costume’, and the boots (a pair of glass-and-stainless platform heels that would probably put my height well over six feet), and went behind the curtain to change.
She commented while I got undressed. “Remember it was a little ol’ fur bikini in a B-grade picture that made Raquel Welch a star.”
“Yabbut,” I said, stalling, “I think her bikini was warmer. This thing has too much metal in it.”
That made her laugh.
I stripped off behind the curtain, even taking off my new underwear. Amanda had provided me with a pair of thong panties that would not show above, below or through the costume bottom that was a sort of demi-bikini with a semi-transparent skirt-like thingie. Yeesh! There was no way to wear the thing without feeling it was trying to crawl up inside me. And it was flesh-colored, too!
And there was no way to wear my bra (did I really think ‘my bra’?) with the attached top either. It took me a bit of struggle to figure out how it was supposed to fit without my tits hanging out in a too-generous underboob situation. Sideboob exposure was almost as bad, I could be not much more than an inch from getting arrested!
No one was going to doubt I was female wearing the outfit, though. Even the ‘helmet’, really a stylized femme take on a baseball cap added to the effect. Most of my midriff and back were bare. The boots were more of the same with four-inch blocky heels, and the gloves, ditto. The parts that didn’t look metal were transparent.
I took a last disbelieving look at myself in the mirror, deciding that I looked like a tinfoil-and-cellophane version of the comic book character Vampirella.
“What the heck is this movie called?” I asked before peeking through the curtain to see who else might be in wardrobe before emerging. Fortunately, only Amanda could see me.
“Get out here, honey, we need to see if it needs any alterations,” she ordered.
“Uh,” I stepped out to the indicated area and did a twirl when she asked.
“You blush all the way down to your navel,” she commented while checking the fit.
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “This is embarrassing. I thought we were just doing some, I dunno, establishing shots?”
“I’m going to use a little glue here,” she said, indicating where she meant, along my side and under the straps.
“That’s cold!” I protested. But good for her thinking of that. I’d been worried about my heifers escaping the corral if I did anything strenuous, like breathing.
“Be glad I’m not having to fill your cups with my silicone boobies, those things are like ice when they come out of the box.” She grinned at me. “You don’t need them, and you don’t have any tan lines I have to cover up. Saves a lot of time this morning.”
I hadn’t really noticed the lack of tan lines, but I was a more or less even warm toast color all over—another special effect from the magical camera that had transformed me. Wait. Did this mean I would have to maintain a tanning schedule to keep from showing lines? That could get either expensive or risky. What I really needed to do was find that camera and get changed back.
Of course, it looked like Hallie Jones was going to have a career. I sighed. “What’s the name of the picture?” I asked again.
“Sit over here, I’ll start your make-up and Julia will finish it when she gets here.”
I sat in the chair indicated. I had worn make-up for the stage and some student films before, but not as my new self, Hallelujah Jones.
“I think it’s just called Space Babe on the schedule,” Amanda said as she started applying a base.
“Huh?”
“The picture,” she said. “I think they’re still trying to raise money to start filming. I don’t even know if they have a script yet, let alone a title.”
I rolled my eyes. Well, I’d be getting paid scale today, at least. Was I supposed to be helping to sell the idea with this skimpy costume? I thought of Jane Fonda in Barbarella and Dorothy Stratton in Galaxina. Hoo boy.
Would I be expected to vamp it up like those two? Could I do that? I had a suspicion that this was not going to be an A-grade movie. How far down the alphabet was it likely to be?
“Are we in Ed Wood territory?” I asked when Amanda had moved away from my mouth.
She laughed. “Well, I hear that Jesse Delgado is one of the investors at the studio today.”
I didn’t groan but I wanted too. Delgado, famous or infamous in his own way, owned a bunch of second and third run theaters out-of-town, and even out-of-state, and probably out of the country, too. In the past, he had bankrolled or produced such gems as Sorority Vampire Party and How to Seduce a Cowboy, just to have cheap movies for his bargain basement screens.
Amanda stepped back to get a view of the whole effect so far. “Hmm. I think you’re going to be able to open ol’ Jesse’s checkbook, honey.” She grinned. “Here comes Julia to do your eyes and lips, and Maria will do your hair.”
I stayed where I was, in the make-up chair. I didn’t know whether to cringe at thinking about working for the King of Sleazy Movies, Ed Wood 2.0, or just squeal in excitement that I was really working in the industry now.
I settled for a nervous, squeaky giggle.
"We need to give her a part in the picture, just to get that name into the credits."
Mr. Todd Harrelson, the assistant director who seemed to be in charge of today's shooting, had me standing on a mark on the street while cameras, lighting and props were readied. The cape that went with my costume was more decoration than warmth, but I pulled it around me in a vain attempt to keep from shivering. The thin spangled cloth did little to keep out a chilling breeze.
I struggled to keep my teeth from chattering. California was the fabled land of warm summer sunshine all year long in other parts of the country, but the truth was different. Sure, you could have a day in the high eighties almost any time of year, but early May was not summer. And wearing a glorified bikini outdoors in a breeze that must be coming straight off the Alaskan current that ran down the coast was just plain cold!
The "street" was the east end of the famous Gower Street at the Melrose Film and Sound Studios. Redressing the set was commonplace, and several renovations had happened over the decades. Every half-block or so of the three blocks had a different character, depending on what story was being told. The west end, of course, was Western-themed with colonial, medieval, European, Victorian, wartime and modern sections as you moved eastward.
I was posed at the east end, the modern section, with shop fronts and signs declaring various offices as seen in movies and television shows beginning in the late thirties. And I was on the south side of the street, where the false fronts and props were slightly larger than life-size. The other side was slightly under-scale, like Main Street at Disneyland. For short leading men, natch.
Hollywood magic — and now I was part of that. I was being photographed on the side that made you look shorter. I had my height to blame for that, but it kind of tickled me. Especially after the special effects camera turned me into a statuesque blonde, who was freezing her butt off in her skimpy costume. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. It couldn't really be cold, could it? This was Southern California. Maybe I'm just more sensitive now?
Meanwhile, Harrelson talked with a short, dark-haired man who might be the famous Jesse Delgado. Delgado, if it was him, kept staring at me while Harrelson repeatedly got in his way. Just as it started to look like he was doing it on purpose, he turned and called me over.
"Billy! Come say 'hi' to one of our most important investors," he enthused.
The cape was a lost cause, anyway. It didn't even go all the way around me, so I let it drop and hang and walked toward the two men. Both of whom were grinning at me. What? I resisted the urge to look behind me for something funny going on. Because I could see where they were looking, they had that caught-in-the-headlights stare I was beginning to get used to. Well, no, but I was starting to expect it. I'm not sure I would ever get used to it.
"Mr. Harrelson," I squeaked as I reached them. Something else I didn't think I would ever get used to—my new baby-girl voice. I'm a grown person! I shouldn't sound like a Saturday morning cartoon character. Heck, I'm over six feet tall in these shoes. But I tried not to let it make me grumpy. Or sound grumpy, anyway. I had this terrible feeling that if I tried to sound annoyed, I'd just come off as petulant.
"Mr. Delgado," Harrelson was saying, "This is Billie Jones, one of our new hires and someone we think would be perfect for your space epic." Turning slightly, he continued to me, "Billie, this is Jesse Delgado, chief of our syndicate of investors."
Syndicate? I'd have to ask Jack what that word meant in this context. "Mr. Harrelson, I wanted to tell you, the Guild says I need to use a more distinctive name, so I'm going to go with my middle name instead of Billy. Hallelujah."
"Hallelujah?" he repeated. I realized he wasn't getting it.
But Mr. Delgado grinned at me. "Hallelujah is your middle name?"
I nodded. "Yes, sir, So as soon as I file my guild applications, I will officially be Hallelujah Jones. Or Hallie Jones as an alternate?" I didn't mean to make that come out as a question, and the mistake caused me to giggle. I'm probably blushing, too, I thought. But I stood there and smiled at the two men, and they smiled back.
"I love it," said Mr. Delgado. "We need to give her a part in the picture, just to get that name into the credits." He laughed out loud, turning to me to share his amusement.
I laughed, too, a little giddily, perhaps. Jesse Delgado was a medium-tall man of about fifty, with olive skin, black hair and dark eyes. I stood an inch or two taller than him in my costume heels, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Hallelujah Jones!" said Harrelson, the assistant director. "It's got a good sound."
They both nodded, and I giggled again because they looked like smiling bobbleheads.
Harrelson motioned the cinematographer over and began going over what shots he wanted to get of me in the movie costume. I kept an eye out for the big green box of the special effects camera that had apparently transformed me yesterday, but it was nowhere in sight.
Mr. Delgado stayed beside me. "Tell me about yourself, Hallie. Have you been acting long?"
I turned my attention toward him. "Since high school," I said. "I'm a film student at UCLA now, my first year. I just qualified for my SAG card this week." I giggled again. Jeez. "Um, I like acting…."
He nodded. "But eventually, you want to direct?"
"Huh? Well, no, probably not? Anyway, not for years. Maybe. I dunno…."
He laughed, and I giggled again. Crap. The giggling was in character for how I looked but still….
"You may be the only actor I've ever met that didn't immediately say they wanted to direct," he said, grinning at me. "Are you not ambitious in that way?"
"Uh? Well, I've always wanted to act, and…and, directing is telling other people how to act. I'm not really sure I'd be any good at that." I'd been asked something similar in some of my classes. I'd even done a bit of directing in school; everyone does. And truth to tell, I didn't like it.
He seemed delighted at my reply, and I wondered why on Earth he would care whether I wanted to direct someday.
"It's a wise girl who knows what makes her happy," he said and winked at me.
So?
I have no idea why I did it, but I winked back! Part of it was him calling me a girl, and I guess I was getting into the role of being —acting in the role of— this Hallelujah Jones person. It seemed like something she would do. That is, wink and maybe flirt with someone with money to invest in a movie she wanted to be in.
I remembered that I wanted to ask Mr. Harreleson what the name of the picture was, and about that time, I realized that the assistant director was calling me. "Earth to Hallie?" he said, sounding amused. "Hallie Jones?"
How many times had he called? I turned quickly in his direction, but I kinda, sorta forgot what I was wearing and what sort of accessories I now had. And how much they weighed. Maybe Amanda should have used stronger glue because as quick as you can say wardrobe malfunction, I had flashed the entire film crew before I could put my arms up to cover my assets.
I probably made it worse by squealing like a guinea pig so that anyone who hadn't been looking in the right direction turned to see.
“Were you glued into this?” I heard Mr. Delgado murmur to me.
I put both hands up to cover the spill over. It wasn’t a reflex I had developed over time, I had to invent it right then and there. I clamped my teeth shut on my squeal, too.
No one laughed. Mr. Delgado shed his coat and stepped close to wrap it around me while Mr. Harrelson, the AD, put himself in the way of any stares, his back to me. He shook his head. I couldn’t see his face but I imagined him smiling, still, he didn’t laugh.
“Somebody find Amanda,” I heard him tell one of the gaffers who had been setting up the bounce shields to catch and reflect the sun. The man glanced and grinned at me but took off in a hurry toward the wardrobe building.
“Were you glued into this?” I heard Mr. Delgado murmur to me.
I nodded. Hair fell across my eye. I shook my head to try to move it because I didn’t want to use my hand. My face must have been technicolor red and I remembered that the wardrobe mistress commented that I blushed all the way down to my navel. Which had been on display even before the malfunction.
“Need stronger glue,” Mr. Delgado commented with maybe just the hint of a chuckle in his voice. “I think this costume was designed for someone a little less generous than you, honey. Or Hallie, I mean.”
In the costume heels, I stood an inch or two taller than the man and I had the oddest impulse to try to shrink myself. He was a big investor, potentially in a movie I had a good chance of being in. Did I want to be in a movie wearing this costume?
Well, yeah, I did. I was in a production of a musical version of Harvey once (adapted by our director) and played the rabbit. (Yeah, I know, the rabbit is not usually cast.) It was almost as embarrassing as the space babe costume since it involved ears, whiskers and a powder puff tail. I did that part almost entirely in mime, a voice, not mine, heard only when not on stage. Lots of mugging and cavorting, maybe the most fun I ever had on stage. And I got to sing. A singing mime. It was that kind of production.
This costume was different (part of it wouldn’t come off!) but acting was acting, and that’s what I wanted to do with my life, so… no problem? No problem.
I thought this all through very quickly. The runner left at speed to fetch the wardrobe mistress, Mr. Delgado and the AD were shielding me from the crowd, most of whom were paying very little attention to what we were doing.
That wasn’t right. I didn’t like it. I glanced around a bit and liked it even less—it wasn’t that people weren’t watching, it was that they deliberately weren’t looking at me. I didn’t like that at all.
I stopped holding Mr. Delgado’s coat against me, letting him hold it up for a moment, before I pushed a bit past him. “Introducing Hallelujah Jones,” I said loudly.
Then I strutted out from between my two protectors, holding my top in place myself. “Dah-dah-da-a, dah-dah-da-aa!” I crooned. I glanced at Mr. Delgado and moved my hand as if I were about to let something show.
Instead I resumed my strut, shaking my shoulders and wiggling my ass. “Dah-dah-daa, dah, dah, daaa.” I turned and winked at Mr. Delgado and he cracked up. “Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-da-da-da-dum!” I opened my hand and almost let go of holding the failed bra closed. He waggled his eyebrows. I kept smiling as a sort of heat seemed to build up somewhere inside me.
Everyone was looking at me now, smiling and laughing. Some of them were blowing kisses! I grinned as wide as I could and sashayed toward a golf cart that had stopped nearby. I guess my intention had been to somehow escape to the wardrobe building where Amanda could repair my malfunction. The golf cart would have helped me get there quicker but someone else had already commandeered it.
But the driver stopped, almost right in my path and indicated the seat beside him. I nodded while keeping up the scat. “Da-da-dee, d-da-da-do!” He held out a hand to help me into the vehicle.
My excitement peaked about then as I switched which hand I was holding my top closed with so I could take the offered help, and this time I really did give just a glimpse of more of me than I had intended too. But I shrugged that off, climbed into the cart with the offered help then turned to give the crowd a little girly-type finger wave. Mr. Delgado was looking right at me, so I blew him a kiss as we accelerated away. I suppressed a squeal by bursting into giggles.
I put my free hand over my face and tried to contain a continuing attack of giggles, looking between my fingers at the driver of my getaway vehicle. I sort of recognized him, a beefy male star of some of Mr. Delgado’s finest productions—Douglas Ragnar. He grinned at me and I grinned back, knowing my face must be red.
But the guy was immense! His biceps were probably bigger than my waist! I giggled even more and felt heat from my face spread throughout my body. It wasn’t unpleasant, kind of like the thrill of being onstage and feeling the audience is with you. But it was unexpected and left me feeling a little giddy.
“You need a trip to wardrobe, am I right?” he rumbled at me. I nodded. My hair had fallen across my right eye again but he was sitting to my left, so I could still see him. If I wanted to look. I wasn’t sure about that, my glance at him before had impressed on me his size and maleness.
His voice did peculiar things to me, too, and I doubted I could speak. What the heck was going on with me? I could guess but I wasn’t sure I wanted to think too much about the implications of that, either.
The electric cart made almost no noise and we motored smoothly toward toward the building labeled Costuming and Wardrobe. My driver kept looking at me sideways, flashing his big grin while I tried to keep one hand on the damaged top part of my costume.
“I’m Doug,” he said. “I think we’re going to be co-stars.” His grin flickered like a strobe light in an old time disco, but he was looking me in the face, not at my chest or the specious condition of my costume top. A gentleman in Hollywood, could it be?
“Um, Hallie,” I said. “I’m Hallie.” I murmured. The whine of the electric cart was quiet enough that he probably heard me but I felt the need to amplify. “Hallelujah Jones. That’s me.”
He laughed, a sound of sure enjoyment. “I heard you introduce yourself earlier, before your little dance.”
“Jeez!” I complained. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“I do,” he said. “You wanted people to look at you.” He pulled into one of the parking stalls outside of Wardrobe. “You want to be a star, and no one ignores a star, even if she’s having costume problems.”
“Huh,” I said. He was right, of course. That was why I did it. And Billy Jones might have been easy to ignore but Hallelujah, I didn’t have to put up with that. I grinned at him while reaching up to push hair out of my face again.
He motioned toward the door. “Welcome to Space Force X, Hallie.”
“What?” He’d confused me. I glanced at the door just as Amanda appeared carrying a sewing kit.
“The name of the movie,” he explained and repeated it. “Space Force X.”
“I thought it was called Space Babe?” I murmured, looking at Amanda for confirmation.
Doug laughed again, enjoying it all. “Well, maybe it will be. You’ve got the right diva attitude to claim it!”
I laughed too, but what the heck? Maybe I could get them to change the name.
Amanda told me, but I had a hard time believing it. “What do you mean theatrical glue won’t stick to my skin? Doesn’t it stick to everyone’s skin?”
She shook her head. “I’ve had this problem before, usually with kids who have really smooth skin. The glue just doesn’t stick.” She showed me how easy it was to peel off a second application of theatrical glue holding my costume in place. “I’ll have to use the glue we use for appliances.”
I knew what she meant, but I was deep into character as Hallie Jones, the ditz. “What am I, a refrigerator?” I waved my hands about, acting that I was just so confused, letting my voice go up into my squeaky register.
From beyond the curtain, I heard Doug snicker. “Maybe you can use magnets?”
“Magnets?” I squeaked.
“You know,” he said. “Like on the refrigerator door?”
I poked my head around the corner and stuck my tongue out at him. Then I giggled. This felt like some of the wilder Improv sessions we used to have back in Drama class. Actually, I was having fun; being Hallie was a hoot.
Amanda rolled her eyes at me as I pulled my head back. “We have had to use magnets for some costumes,” she said. “But the magnets get glued to the skin so a metal costume piece can be held in place.”
“Ohhh!” I said like the light had finally dawned. I iced that with another giggle. Amanda grinned at me, appreciating that I was playing at my characterization.
“We’ll have to use the stronger medical glue, also called prosthetic glue,” she explained. “You need a bit of solvent to get it off completely. It won’t just rub off like rubber cement.”
“What’s it called?” I asked as I sat back down where she could work on me.
“Prosthetic glue. You know, for gluing on prostheses, like wooden legs.”
“I don’t need a wooden leg!” I protested. Being blond-to-the-bone seemed to come naturally to me.
“No—you—,” she stopped trying to explain and settled on a frown. She looked at me over her glasses and sniffed. Maybe my act was wearing thin on her.
I giggled. I used to try to avoid giggling, but it was kind of fun.
“Are you going to be a handful?” she asked severely.
I resisted glancing down and pointing out that I was already several handfuls; that was most of the problem. “No, ma’am,” I said meekly.
She grinned at me and replied, “I think you probably will. But you look terrific in this outfit. We just have to figure out how to keep it on you.”
“Aww,” came the sound of theatrical disappointment from Doug on the other side of the curtain.
“You keep out of it,” I protested, giggling again.
But Amanda soon had me sorted with the flimsy, sparkly top more strongly glued in place. “It itches a bit,” I mentioned.
“Don’t scratch at it,” she warned me. “And if you break out in hives, we’ll have to try something else, so don’t.
I waggled my shoulders back and forth, trying to see if it pinched or pulled. Not too badly, but I was aware of the glue on my skin. It pulled and kind of pinched when my skin stretched. Not wonderfully comfortable, but it should help keep the heifers within range.
“Thanks, hon,” I said, and I don’t know why but I offered her a quick hug, and we swapped squeezes.
“Hey,” Doug complained, apparently having come around the curtain. “I gave you the ride down here; don’t I get a hug?”
“I’m trying to keep my clothes on, Dougie,” I said sweetly. “Not get them ripped off.”
He gave me a hurt look, complete with puppy dog eyes. But he was still chuckling when we got back into the golf cart for the return to where the cameras were set up.
“I’m looking forward to working with you, Hallie,” he commented. “You seem like a lot of fun, and I know it sounds weird, but movie-making can be a grind. A few laughs can make it more bearable.”
The new glue still felt weird, and I wriggled a bit, trying to get comfortable. Then I left that off when Doug almost drove through a flower bed. He looked at me and waggled his eyebrows alternately, first one then the other, and I giggled.
“I didn’t know you could do that!” I said.
He laughed. “It’s not a talent that I get to use much in the action flicks I’m usually working on. But, this is supposed to be a comedy.”
“Huh, yeah,” I agreed. The dumb blonde act must be working because he laughed again.
* * *
Delgado and Harrelson had been joined by Russel Aarons, the principal director for the movie, whose first words when he met me were an aside to Delgado, “I see what you mean.”
Then he turned his ginger charms toward me and enthused, “Miss Jones! I’ve heard a lot about you in the last few minutes.”
“Some of it good, I hope, Mr. Aarons?” I replied with a giggle.
He broke out with that grin that had made him a child star back in the sixties. “Please call me Rusty,” he said, “because I’m certainly going to call you Hallie.” He still had that rubber face, too, and pulled his famous mock frown. “That’s okay, I hope?”
“Oh, sure,” I agreed. Rusty Irons was the gag name of his character in a series of screwball comedies in the eighties before he got behind the camera instead of in front of it, supposedly because he had lost most of his trademark orange curls.
“All right then!” he exclaimed. “One big happy and all that, huh?” Another plug for his old TV show, One Big Happy.
I pretended to roll my eyes and giggled again. Rusty Irons may have come down in the world, directing cheapo flicks for Jesse Delgado, the King of the Zs, but he knew comedy, and I really felt good about the idea of working for him.
Well, heck, I would be working in movies which was something I had wanted to do since I was a little boy. Uh…. I glanced down to make sure I hadn’t fallen out of my costume again since everyone, including my snappy ginger boss, seemed to be unable not to keep glancing at my chest if they weren’t outright staring.
Experimentally, I waggled my shoulders, causing a sigh to ripple through most of the crew. Doug and Rusty grinned at me, acknowledging that they knew what I was doing.
But, did I…?
* * *
The whole thing today was basically about selling the picture to Mr. Delgado. The set was generic, the typical modern city street used in so many cop shows and comedies that it had a name, East Gower Avenue. It hadn’t been redressed as a futuristic setting yet, and I wasn’t sure that it would.
They didn’t have a script yet, so watching Rusty and Todd (might as well call Mr. Harrelson by his first name, too) try to sell a pig-in-a-poke to Jesse Delgado was entertaining in itself.
While I posed in front of various shops and some admittedly futuristic car mock-ups, Delgado pretended to listen to their pitch. I say pretended because it was obvious he was keeping his eye on me.
Doug had driven off in the golf cart at one point and reappeared in a get-up that seemed straight out of a 1940s revue.
I giggled and pointed at him. “You look like the usher for a musical comedy version of War of the Worlds!” I told him.
He grinned, impervious to my snark. “Thanks!”
Which only caused me to giggle more. Can you get drunk just from giggling?
It was sometime after seven on a Saturday evening, maybe they had closed for the weekend? I turned and looked around, trying to see if anyone else were moving anywhere in the complex.
We kept shooting until we started to lose the light, and Rusty called a halt a bit before seven. By then, I wasn’t on so much of a high and being glued into a costume had definitely begun to lose whatever appeal it might seem to have. I needed to get back to Wardrobe and use the solvent to release me from my Space Babe persona.
I didn’t relish a long walk in my high heels but Doug and his convenient golf cart seemed to be nowhere in sight. The Melrose Studio lot is huge and the East Gower set is easily two or three normal city blocks from Wardrobe. The skimpy space bra didn’t provide much more than minimal support, even being glued on, and I’d been literally bouncing around all afternoon. I wasn’t always aware of the movement but the crew sure seemed to notice!
They were beginning to stow away lights, reflectors, booms and such, and I was kind of in the way, so I scooted around the false front on the north side and looked across the expanse of trees and undeveloped scrubland toward the administration and support building complex closer to Santa Monica Boulevard.
I must have looked a bit forlorn because before I could say anything, Jesse (Mr. Delgado), had rustled up another cart and had offered an arm to help me into the seat. I thanked him and gratefully took a seat, wondering vaguely what had happened to Doug, my earlier chauffeur.
“What do you think of Celestia as the name of your character?” Jesse asked as he worked the controls to get us moving. This had been a point of discussion between he, Rusty and Todd all during the test shoot with kibitzing from the crew.
“Well,” I hazarded carefully. “It’s better than ’Space Babe’ or ‘Bimborella,’ (which had been the suggestion from one of the gaffers). It sounds…” I became aware of my cutesy new voice… “Celestial?” I finished a bit lamely, managing with not more than a tiny bit of lisp. Sheesh.
He laughed. “Hmm… Maybe Celestial could be the name of your ship?,” he added after a moment, taking a 90 degree turn at what was probably a higher speed than was safe.
“Eep!” I eeped, grabbing at the hand brace, and feeling my curvy parts jiggle and sway, straining against the glue.
“Sorry,” he apologized, apparently to my chest. “USSFS Celestial?” he asked, almost a non-sequitur.
I giggled. “I’ll never be able to say that! What do the letters mean anyway?”
“United States Space Force Ship, I guess,” he answered.
“I thought I was supposed to be from another galaxy or something? And isn’t there a real Space Force, like a government or military?”
“You’re right,” he noted glancing at me then swerving around a tree in a big concrete planter. “Whoops!”
I clutched the safety bar with one hand and gripped the front of my seat with the other. Who gets killed in a golf cart accident? I wondered.
He didn’t seem at all perturbed. “Star Force then, sounds better anyway,” he decided.
I resisted an attack of hysterical giggling. “What planet am I from?” Wait. Was that what I meant to ask?
Jesse laughed. “Good question,” he said. “So the ship is -uh- United Galaxies Space Force Celestial -uh- and….” He trailed off, thinking.
“Nothing’s written in stone yet,” I noted.
He grinned. “How could it be? We don’t have a script.” He paused, considering. “Not that we haven’t started filming without a script before. “Two Girls and Three Days in Cancun, never did have a script. And that one actually made money.”
“I bet,” I said, though I had never heard of the picture. Some of the Delgado movies only played in small movie houses in the middle of the country, or even only on cable channels available in motels. “But don’t all of your movies make some money? How could you keep making them if they didn’t?”
“It’s a trick of accounting,” he explained. “Or maybe just bookkeeping.”
“Huh?” Aren’t those two the same thing?
“If I’ve got buns in rows,” —what an image— “from Tucson to Halifax, I can sell Jujubes to the rubes and eyeballs to local quacks and shysters and make my money that way. Even if the take at the window is less than it cost to print the fillum.”
I took a moment to realize he meant concessions and onscreen advertising then mentally stumbled on the last word he had used.
“Fillum?” I blinked. He’d definitely lost me there and I began to think it had been deliberate when I realized he was grinning at me. And not watching where he was going!
Some random production assistant had to leap out of the way as Jesse drove us off the apron of concrete surrounding one block of buildings and up over the lip of another. Wump! Bump! Thumpity bang! And we were back on a smooth surface. I’d lost my grip on the safety brace and just managed to stay in my seat, apparently by clenching the muscles in my big round butt!
“Wardrobe,” said Jesse, anticlimactically.
“This is my stop,” I said, and he laughed even though I didn’t see how that was funny at all.
“You are a delight to work with, Miss Jones,” he commented, taking my hand for a moment before letting me go so I could exit the Golf Cart of Doom before it hurtled off on another mission.
He waved at me as he drove down a short flight of steps and across what looked like a rose garden. I held a hand up and twiddled a few fingers at him before realizing I was still in character as Busty Young Ingenue and snatching my hand down.
Shaking my head, I turned and tried the door to Wardrobe. It was locked. I tried again. Still locked. I moved down to the next door, also labeled Wardrobe, and tried that one. Also locked.
“Hey!” I yelled at the door. “I need to get in there!” My regular clothes were inside, plus the bag Jack had given me to carry the stuff I would have in my pockets if I had pockets. My cellphone. “Hey!”
I went back and forth between doors, banging on them. I found another entrance labelled Wardrobe, this a pair of wide double doors. I banged on both of those, too. “Hey!” I squeaked, wondering if anyone could hear me inside, then wondering if there was anyone inside.
It was sometime after seven on a Saturday evening, maybe they had closed for the weekend? I turned and looked around, trying to see if anyone else were moving anywhere in the complex.
Crickets.
This is California so most buildings have covered walkways with doors on the outside instead of corridors on the inside; ramadas they’re called, probably from a Spanish word for mid-price motel. I could see a half-dozen buildings from where I stood and no one moving around any of them.
The sun would be going down in less than an hour, already the western skies showed the red-gold of a post-credits sunset ending. “Hey!” I yelled again, but no one answered.
What was I going to do? If I could find a phone, I could call Jack to come get me. I thought I remembered some pay phones near the Commissary, but had those been real pay phones, a rarity these days, or just more props? And where would I get fifty cents in coins to operate a pay phone?
And which way was the Commissary from where I was? I didn’t really know my way around the studio yet. I could head south to Melrose Avenue but all the shops that would be open late on Saturday were a mile or two east toward downtown.
And I still had my five-inch costume heels on. Ouch, I’d been on my feet for about eight hours already, it was surprising I wasn’t in agony. It would be a shorter walk north to Santa Monica Boulevard but wearing my skimpy costume, I might be mistaken for a working girl there.
And heck, I was glued into this thing. At least the bra part.
I perseverated. It means to repeat one’s actions meaninglessly, without purpose, avoiding making a decision. I dithered around the courtyard between the wardrobe offices and the next building for several minutes before deciding I heard music at one end.
For lack of a better idea, I headed that direction. Music might mean people and maybe someone would have a phone where I could call Jack.
Making movies is sometimes like shooting craps in the dark. You don’t know if you’re winning or losing...
I wandered around the studio lot for some time before I figured that the music I kept hearing came from the row of old television sound stages. Melrose Film and Sound had leased their stages to the networks and some of the large television producers for decades, all while carving out a niche market as the affordable option for small production companies and independent television producers.
Some of the smaller streaming services had their real homes here.
But for someone like me, or rather for someone like the person I used to be, the real attraction was the history. Some great sitcoms were filmed here; Father Goose, Big Mistake, Calico County, and one year of Sanford and Son. Westerns, cop shows, variety shows, soap operas and game shows, too.
I followed the music to one of the old television stages. It seemed to be the only building in the complex where something was happening. The big doors for getting equipment in and out were open, and I could see people moving around inside.
I got closer and began to make out the music. And this was definitely where it came from; there were musicians with their instruments in the part of the interior that really looked like a stage. Cameras, lights, booms for mikes; they were filming something.
It wasn’t a tune I had heard before, though it sounded a bit familiar. I couldn’t make out the words at first, and when I did, they made no sense.
They sang:
Ultradoll, yeah, yeah, yeah
The Babe of Tomorrow, today
Ultradoll
She has it all
She gives it away
Ultra, ultra, Ultradoll
Yeah
Repeat with a new line here and there. I was mystified.
Ultradoll, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mystifying, satisfying
Ultradoll
She gives her all
She’s on her way
Ultra, ultra, Ultradoll
Yeah
As nonsensical as it sounded, the music pulled me in. Besides, there were people, and surely someone had a phone I could use to call Jack.
When I got close enough, the four people outside near the open doors seemed to spot me. “Hey, Doll,” one of them called, waving a hand at me. I almost looked around to see if anybody were following me. I still wasn’t used to people calling me things like Doll, Babe, or Honey. And I wasn’t even sure if I should have to get used to it.
I mean, this is the 21st century, right? I think it must be; time travel storylines are so overdone these days.
I was already giggling when the guys came toward me with comments like, “She’s here!” and “Yeah, you play their theme song, and the stars come out of the woodwork.” And “Now we can get something done!” and “Hey! You’re already in costume!”
I looked down at myself, remembering. “It’s uh, it’s glued on.”
That made them laugh, and I giggled in embarrassment.
One called through the open doors, “Hey, Mr. Director Man! Our star is here. Hey, somebody tap Carlos so he turns around!”
A round little guy near the fake ‘stage’ did turn around, peering at me. “Is that you, Miss Blessing?”
“Huh? No,” I squeaked back at him, realizing that my tiny new voice wasn’t loud enough he could hear me without a mike. “I’m Hallelujah Jones. Uh, Hallie, Hallie Jones.” I was shouting, but I’m sure it sounded like mouse-squeaks at his distance.
One of the guys whispered to me. “Your secret identity is Wilma Blessing.”
“It is? I — what?”
“And that’s the director, Carlos Chung.”
Carlos Chung? Did I know that name? There was an Indie producer, last name Chung. Was this him?
He was laughing as he approached, and the guys with me were sort of leading me to him. He stuck out a hand to me, saying, “I guess in costume, you aren’t Miss Blessing.”
I put my hand out, and he gave it a gentle squeeze, then pulled me into a brief one-armed hug. “You smell nice,” he murmured. “Like camellias.”
That was amazing after the day I’d had.
He tugged on my hand, and I followed him into the soundstage. “We’re filming the nightclub scene tonight,” he confided. “This was the only time we could get a stage and crew.”
“On Saturday night?” I squeaked.
He shrugged, “Making movies is sometimes like shooting craps in the dark. You don’t know if you’re winning or losing, and you’ll never get the mud out of the knees of your pants.”
“Huh!?”
He laughed, “I’m joking. The laundry at the commissary can work wonders.”
“Yeah? Uh—”
“Here’s Mike, our sound man. He’ll wire you up for your song.” Carlos passed me along to a guy with wires and two sets of headphones hanging off him.
‘Hi, Mike,” I said, smiling at the dark-haired man.
“I’m Hassan,” he said. “Carlos always makes that dumb joke.”
“Oh!” I burst into giggles and kept it up long enough that Hassan threatened to clip a microphone to my nose if I didn’t stop.
“How can I get a reading on giggles?” he protested.
“Ok, ok,” I gave in and managed to stifle my mirth.
“There’s not a lot of places on your chest to attach this thing anyway,” he noted.
I looked down. My already skimpy Spacebabe top had a new feature: a wide diamond-shaped opening displaying cleavage galore. I think in the parlance of comic book costumes, it’s called a boob window. “Is that all me?” I gasped.
Hassan snorted.
“Well, the top is glued on,” I tried to explain, “and I’m wondering now if Amanda snuck in some extra… I dunno?”
“You don’t want me to try to find out, do you?” he asked.
“Uh, no, that’s fine. Just clip the mike to the —uh— yeah, right there will do.”
He pulled a set of headphones down over his ears. “Sing something…,” he ordered.
So I sang a bit of Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles, turning sideways and bending my elbows at right angles. Well, you have to do that for that song.
“Sounds fine,” Hassan said, nodding. “I can tweak it later.”
“I didn’t know this was going to be a singing part,” I said. “Come to think of it….” I trailed off, realizing that this whole setup was… kinda skeevy. “Hassan, tell me, what is going on here…. I don’t even remember auditioning or getting hired for something.”
‘You didn’t. You weren’t,” he said. “This isn’t happening.”
“Oh, c’mon!” I waved my arms around. “I’m supposed to be dreaming all this?”
“See,” he said. “You’re Ultradoll.”
I rolled my eyes. “I figured that out from the theme song.”
“Crappy song,” he commented, and I nodded.
“But this is all a jackboot operation.”
I looked at him sideways. “You mean bootleg?” I suggested.
“Yeah, that,” he said. “See, some comic book characters are not getting their chance in the movies. So, there are internet movie makers who are going to fix this.”
“How?” I blinked several times, but it kept right on not making sense.
“We’re students at UCLA, and we’re going to make movies, internet movies about the forgotten characters of Marvel and DC.”
“Yeah, huh?”
“Like the one we’re working on tonight. Dazzler versus Ultradoll!”
I pointed at my cleavage. “I’m Ultradoll!”
“That’s right!” he agreed. “And you’ve come from the future to kill off all the superheroes who don’t get into movies.”
“Uh, huh? Kind of like —uh— Terminator?”
“Yeah, but Arnie won’t wear the suit.” I giggled at the mental image. “We were going to call your character Eliminator, but… that didn’t test well.”
I snorted another giggle. “Who’s Dazzler?”
“A Marvel character. A nightclub singer who’s in the X-Men. She has light and sound powers. We got a Heather Bock look-alike to play her.”
“How am I supposed to kill her?” I asked, intrigued.
“With Karaoke.”
“Oh, of course….” I rolled my eyes. Karaoke was probably her version of kryptonite.
Carlos was calling me. “Miss Blessing? Ultradoll? We’re ready for your closeup now.”
That caused me to giggle like it would any film student. It’s kind of a line from Sunset Boulevard. “I’d better go see what he wants,” I told Hassan.
And pretty soon, I was in front of a camera with a karaoke machine in front of me displaying some altered lyrics to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love.
I sang in my teeny, tiny, but amplified voice:
“The lights are on,
But I’m not home,
My mind is not my own.
My heart sweats, my hands shake,
Another kiss is all I can take….”
That must have been right when the bus stopped and I woke up.
I vaguely remembered I was glued into the skimpy costume. No, wait, had that been only in the dream?
There I sat, almost boneless, when the bus rattled to a halt, the shuddering vibration nearly throwing me to the floor. At first, I had no idea where I was or how I got there, being more concerned about not falling out of the seat. I’d been having a strange dream, very surreal, in which I had played the part of Ultradoll, a super-villainess obsessed with karaoke.
“You okay?” the bus driver asked. “This is Levering and Veterans, about as close as I get to your address.” He got out of his seat and took a step down the center aisle toward me, where I huddled under a heavy leather jacket with wool sleeves.
“I’m…I—” I stammered. “I guess I fell asleep. Where did I get this coat?”
He grinned at me—a big guy with red hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard. “From the RTA labels on it, I’d say that’s my coat. You were shivering by the time we got to Wilshire.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t want to return the coat because my face and legs were cold, and I vaguely remembered I was glued into the skimpy Ultradoll costume. No, wait, had that been only in the dream?
The bus driver started laughing. “You’re an actress, right?”
“Uh, yeah? Oh, you picked me up outside of Melrose Film…. Yeah….” I didn’t tell him that, though. Being an actress was new to me, but I’d been an actor for a long time—an amateur actor but now a professional actress. It’s nice to be recognized for your profession, but actress is kind of an old-fashioned word.
He nodded. “You must be pretty good in comedies,” he offered. “You got the confused-but-cute look down pat.”
I blushed, feeling the heat in my face. I didn’t know how to respond to that.
He peered past me, looking out on the darkened street to a standalone bus kiosk under a greenish street lamp, and I suddenly realized that it was raining out there! It never rains in LA except when it does, and mid-May is one of the times it often does. Especially at night.
I focussed back on the bus driver. His name tag read Dan P., And he was still grinning. “I can’t let you keep the jacket, but it’s raining and—what?—a two or three block walk to your apartment?”
“M-more like six,” I stammered.
A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything about walking in this neighborhood after dark, even with it raining. But things were different since that damned magic camera had transformed me into a busty ingenue.
“Long blocks,” he said, nodding. “Anyway, I’m always ahead of schedule on these dog watch runs, and at two, I’m supposed to take ‘er to the barn.”
I nodded, still confused. “What time is it?”
“About 12:50,” he said. “You oughtn’t to be catching busses this late, miss. Should have had someone come get you.”
“I—c-cooden! My phone g-got locked up in wardrobe!”
He pointed a stern finger and leaned over me. “Plan better next time.”
“Yessir,” I agreed meekly. A big guy, he could have been scary but came across as more of a teddy bear uncle. I giggled, picturing him in such a costume.
He grinned even wider. “I’m serious, but okay,” he stood up straighter. “I can’t let you keep the jacket, but I’ve got a poncho you can wear against the rain. I can lock up the bus and take ten minutes to walk you home. That okay with you?”
“S-sure and the-thanks!” My teeth were beginning to chatter. He would probably never have made such an offer to my former self. Then again, as noted above, if I’d still been a guy, I would probably not have thought a thing about it. Nor would I have been glued into a glorified spandex and spangles swimsuit!
He returned to the driver’s seat to start locking the bus up. “What’s your name, honey?” he asked.
I still wasn’t too sure about the random endearments that came my way now. Everyone seemed to think they were entitled to call me honey, babe, or sweetie. “Hallelujah Jones,” I told him, “but just call me Hallie.”
He laughed. “Seriously, Hallelujah? That’s great!”
“My Dad said anyone named Jones needed an unusual first or middle name. My first name is B-Billie!” Actually, it was William, but I didn’t have to tell anyone that.
Dang, he opened the bus door, and it got even colder inside. How cold was it outside? “Well,” he said, grinning again. “I don’t have that problem. My last name is Puczyrowbelas.”
“P-pooch-a-rolfski?” I tried. “How do you spell that?”
He laughed. “Everybody else spells it W-R-O-N-G.” It took me a moment to realize he had just spelled out ‘wrong.’ I got the giggles again. “Just call me Dan or Pooch. Everyone does.”
“Oh, good,” I laughed. “Cause I’m never going to be able to say, “Poochyaboffly!”
I gave him his wonderfully warm jacket back, immediately shivering in the cold, but he handed me an orange plastic poncho in exchange, and I shrugged my way into that. The diamond-shaped boob window was embarrassing, and I wanted to cover it up.
Dan was sniffing of the jacket. “Smells like flowers,” he commented.
I giggled again, blushing. I sincerely doubted that it smelled like anything more than a girl who had been trapped in a costume for at least nine hours!
“Let’s do this,” he said. He climbed down to the sidewalk and offered an arm to help me down, which I was grateful for since I was still wearing my high heels.
He had an umbrella, too, and held it to keep the rain out of my face as we walked along. I glanced across Veterans Road at the cemetery that looked as spooky as only a graveyard can look after midnight in the rain.
He saw where I was looking and laughed again. “I picked you up at Evergreen Mortuary on Santa Monica and brought you to Soldiers’ Field. I guess you could say it was a grave errand.”
I giggled nervously and clutched at his arm. It was a bit weird, but I’m a girl now, so it’s all right. I think.
“You’ve got an interesting name,” I said, “but I’ll never be able to say it.”
“It’s Lithuanian. It means ’Son of a Beast’ or something like that.”
I laughed. “Are you putting me on?”
He grinned. “Even my Mom just calls me Pooch.”
More giggles; practice makes perfect. “My Mom calls me Billie. That’s my real first name, but I use Hallelujah, or just Hallie, as my—professional—name. Huh?” Still more giggles. Did a professional name have to work harder than an amateur name?
Now I couldn’t stop giggling. Pooch must think I’m the Queen of Ditz! Judging by the width of his grin, he did!
When we reached the steps of Lowering Heights, I realized I didn’t have my key to the front door! “Ay, caramba!” I said. “No key!”
Dan didn’t look perturbed. “Is there a call button for an intercom?” he asked.
“Yeah, but it often doesn’t work, especially if it’s raining.” But I stepped up to the panel of buttons to make the attempt. No joy, just like I figured.
But while I did that, Pooch pulled out his cell phone. “Anybody up there I can call?” he asked.
I gave him Jack’s number, and soon we were talking to my roommate on the handy speaker phone.
“Where the hell are you?” Jack demanded.
And just like that, I burst into tears! Who knew that would happen? “D-downstairs,” I blubbered.
Pooch juggled his phone and the umbrella while getting us out of the direct drizzle that was still going on, and we sheltered in the slight overhang next to the door. His arm went around my waist, and I kinda sorta leaned on his chest.
What am I doing, I wondered. But it felt nice, and I was able to stop crying just as Jack appeared through the glass doors, hurrying down the stairs in his sock feet.
He slammed the door open and drew Pooch and me inside. “Is she all right?” he asked, sounding frantic. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” I said, “just cold and wet.” And crying again! Yikes!
Dan responded, “She’s so exhausted. She’s been acting drunk for the last half hour after falling asleep on my bus. Can you take her upstairs to bed?”
I wasn’t sure I liked how that sounded, and I swear the two guys exchanged a look over my head, like… I dunno, pure shared guyness, I guess.
“Ja-ack!” I whined, like I had more things to be upset about than what was happening right then.
Pooch passed me over, and Jack’s arm went around my waist replacing his. I sniffled and felt my lips trembling. “Take better care of your girlfriend,” Pooch scolded. “I got to get back to my bus.”
I finger-waved goodbye to Pooch as he trotted off into the rain, calling out, “Thank you!”
Jack added his thanks, “Yeah, man. Thanks for rescuing my girlfriend.”
He gave me a squeeze and a grin, the Jerq!
I could have punched him, but I really was cold, wet, tired and miserable.
“Ja-ack!” I whined again.
"Don't give me any of that piffletwat!" I stormed. "You were laughing at me, you jerq!"
We didn't go back up to the apartment via the stairs; Jack would have had to carry me. After stumbling down the hall to the elevators leaning on him, I had barely begun to warm up. I was leaving puddles or would have been if not for the indoor/outdoor carpeting.
"I'm cold and wet," I whimpered. On further thought, I added. "I'm hungry, too." I pushed aside wet hair hanging in my face.
"We'll get you fixed up," Jack promised, tilting me a little to lean me against the wall.
The glass side of the elevator seemed to radiate cold, and the pool and greenery on the ground floor of the courtyard looked hostile and uninviting. I shivered.
Jack punched buttons for the third floor and to close the door.
"Jack," I whined. "I'm cold and wet and hungry." I flapped my arms inside the rain poncho I was still wearing.
He turned toward me, smiling. "I'd give you a hug, but then I'd be cold and wet."
"Not funny," I pouted.
He disagreed. "No, it's hilarious. You come in looking like a drowned kitten. An orange tabby." His smile widened to a grin.
He meant the safety-orange rain gear Pooch had loaned me. I was grateful for it but aware that it made me look like a six-foot-tall traffic cone cause I was still wearing my heels.
"Jack," I whined. "Don't be mean to me." I could feel my chin quivering. Was I going to cry?
Still barefoot, wearing only a tee and some jeans, Jack dipped a toe in the wet spot I was leaving on the carpet. "You must have had some first day at work, baby girl," he commented.
The elevator squawked to a halt with a sound like a CGI beast from Jurassic World. I staggered without moving my feet, almost landing on my ass. I would have fallen, but Jack caught me, laughing. "Well, I was already wet!" he exclaimed.
"What did you call me?" I asked, frowning.
But Jack just steered me down the hall to where he had left the door to our apartment partly open. "Let's get you into a nice hot shower," he said as we navigated through the door and around the furniture. "And I'll make us some sandwiches while you wash and get warmed up."
He directed me through the bathroom door. "I'll fetch you a change of clothes," he promised. "Don't take off that poncho until you're in the stall."
"Jack," I protested.
He closed the door after I got in, but I could hear him talking. "I had a meal catered for eight o'clock to celebrate, you know? Don't worry. It's stuff that stayed cold or can be reheated."
He was banging around in the kitchen, still talking while I got myself into the over-large shower stall. "But you didn't show. I went down to the studio to look for you, but even the gate was closed; it was all dark in there."
I had a fight with the poncho getting it off and shedding a couple liters of rainwater doing so. Then I stepped out of the stall, intending to get my heels off, when I remembered something.
Jack was still talking. "You're gonna love this meal. Sliced beef from a rib roast, potatoes in gruyere sauce, raw veggies with yogurt for dipping, caramel custard dessert, and a glass of that zinfandel you liked."
I could see myself in the full-length mirror in the bathroom, reminding me of my predicament. There I stood, a nearly naked girl wearing high heels, and a skimpy costume, with wet hair hanging in my face. ”Jack!" I squealed.
The bathroom door opened almost instantly. "Did you fall? Are you okay?" he asked. Then he blinked, taking in what I was wearing. "Is that your costume for the movie? Nice boob window, babygirl."
I moaned. "It's glued on!" I tugged at the bodice and the sleeves. "I'm glued into this thing cause..." —I knew I was going to cry!— "…because I kept f-falling out!"
Jack gathered me into a hug, and I let him. I was still cold, though the apartment was pleasantly warm, but somehow, Jack was even warmer.
"It's okay, it's okay," he murmured into my hair. "No, it's not," I whimpered. "I kept falling out, so they had to use theatrical glue to keep my costume on, and, and it wouldn't stick to my skin, so they used prosthetic glue that only comes off with a solvent and then everything got locked up, and everyone left…
"…but I was wondering around, and I found this bunch of college students filming, but that turned out to be a dream, but this…!" I tried to spread my arms to show the costume, but jack was holding me tight. It felt good, and besides, I wasn't sure that the costume I had on now was the one from the dream, which was what I was going to tell him.
And that didn't make any sense at all!
Jack was laughing! I could feel it more than hear it 'cause he had me tight in a hug. "You're laughing at me!" I squealed and pushed at him.
He gave me one last squeeze and let me go, stepping back with his hands spread like he was begging me. "I wasn't laughing at you, babygirl, I was laughing at…at your performance. You're a great comedienne!" He backed out of the bathroom, glancing over his shoulder, so he didn't run into the bookcase divider.
I followed him out, gesturing like a Neapolitan grocer. "Don't give me any of that piffletwat!" I stormed. "You were laughing at me, you jerq!" The storm turned to tears, and I stood there sobbing. "I've had a terrible day, Jack!" I squeaked in my tiniest, cutest voice. Well, not intentionally; it just came out that way.
Jack approached me carefully and took my arm, leading me toward the dining table. "Sit, sit," he said. "Eat! Mangi! You'll feel better with some food in you, babygirl."
I sat, trying to glare at him, which didn't work so well 'cause I was sucking on my bottom lip to keep from crying. "St-top calling me that!" I managed to say around my lip. "Do you know how demeaning that is! I'm a grown…" I glanced down at my chest. "…p-person! I’m n-not a babygirl!”
Jack was dying. He twisted around on one foot to keep from looking at me, His face turned red, and that little Superman curl in his dark brown hair fell in his eyes. He gasped, choked, and managed to chortle instead of guffaw.
"Oh, God!" he panted. "Lucy, look to your laurels!"
"Who?" I went cross-eyed as he suddenly grabbed a fork and scooped something from one of the serving dishes on the table.
He pushed it toward my face. "Open!" he demanded.
I opened my mouth by reflex, and he filled it with a warm, delicious mix of potatoes, butter, garlic and cheese. I felt all my angst and care melt as the flavor became a balm for my soul. I chewed, swallowed and moaned. "This is so-o good!"
I thought he said, "Petty kwondy parody," but it was actually French for "Little Piece of Heaven," the name of the catering restaurant, which he explained while I gobbled down food, including the potato dish, sliced beef with a sweet mustard sauce, raw carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and celery dipped in spiced yogurt, and crusty French bread.
He explained all this while I ate, and he poured wine.
"When you finish dessert," he said. "I've got a couple surprises for you."
"Give them to me now, Jack," I said. "I may die if I eat dessert!"
"Well," he paused theatrically. "I've got you a job tomorrow, modeling at a car show."
"Huh, that's good," I said around a crunchy radish. "What's the other thing?" I pushed some of the wet hair hanging in my face aside, so I could see him better.
He paused again, then hit me with it. "You may not be able to take the job 'cause I think I found your magic camera."
I could go back to being Billy Jones. Did I want to?
I chewed and swallowed again. Such a marvelous meal Jack had had catered. I sighed. I put down the fork, took a sip of wine, and turned so I didn’t have to look at him sideways. I pushed a curtain of hair out of the way. “Did you just say….: I paused to try to think but he was already grinning and nodding at me.
I tried again. “Did you say you found the magic camera that turned me into a girl?”
“I did say that, I did,” he agreed, looking pleased. “But it wasn’t in the film museum….”
I interrupted. “I don’t care where it was! Where is it now?”
“Safe,” he said.
I frowned at him, but he just grinned at me. “Don’t pout,” he said. “I can get to it quickly. But we need to talk.”
I turned back to the food. I was not pouting, and to prove it I was going to eat this incredible meal. But the camera…. I could go back to being Billy Jones.
Did I want to? I took another serving of potatoes and chewed while thinking.
Being Billy Jones was being who I had been my whole life up until a couple of days ago. Billy, who wanted to get into movies, to become an actor. Billy who most people wouldn’t look twice at.
Being Hallelujah Jones was being someone who turned heads, who attracted attention, who got things offered to her. Like a part in a movie.
“You’re thinking,” said Jack. “I can smell insulation burning.”
“Shut up,” I said. “I’m trying to eat here.” But truth to tell, I had taken the edge off my hunger and felt mildly concerned that I wasn’t demanding Jack use the camera to turn me back to Billy immediately.
Jack laughed at me, grinning like a hyena.
“What?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “You look so cute when you’re confused.”
“Hmmp,” I said. Was that a compliment? Just on general principles, I glared at him and stuck out my tongue. He laughed so hard, he almost fell out of the chair.
I had a hard time not giggling at his antics, so I clapped a hand over my mouth and fizzed like a teakettle.
“Ah, babe,” said Jack, after wiping his eyes, “you’re just too good at this stuff. Is there room in the movie industry for a comedienne with a killer body like yours?”
“I hope so,” I managed to say.
He nodded, calmly. “So you’re going to stay Hallie and I can sell the Magic Camera on eBay?”
“Don’t you dare!” I warned him. “That thing is dangerous!”
Jack laughed again. “There are people who would give a lot to have their picture taken with it.”
“Huh?” I said. “People who want….” I stopped. Of course there were. Imagine if Bruce Jenner had been offered such a thing before spending a fortune on transforming into Caitlyn. I frowned. There had to be something wrong with that plan.
Jack watched me, smiling, clearly waiting for something.
I didn’t know what else to do so I started putting the food still in the catering containers into the refrigerator. “You got enough here for two or three days.”
He shrugged. “I ordered a meal for two people, they’re generous with their portions.”
“Yeah, well,” I turned to him after putting the veggies in the crisper. “I need to see the camera, Jack. Make sure it’s the right one.”
He nodded. “It’s the right one,” he assured me. “They’re can’t be two crazy machines that look like antique cameras, but are covered in dials and switches that don’t seem to do anything.”
“Where is it?” The potatoes went on a lower shelf and the meat on a higher one, both still in their catering boxes. The wine I resealed with one of the plastic corks we kept around, and the loaf of bread went into the bread keeper. It was red wine so it didn’t need to be kept cool, and if we didn’t eat the bread tomorrow, it would make good French toast on Monday.
I checked to see if we had eggs and cream. We did.
“You’re taking this awfully calmly,” Jack commented.
“It’s called acting, Jack. Outwardly, I’m all calm and know my lines, but inside I am freaking the fuck out.” I glared at him. “You’re a business major, you wouldn’t understand.”
He snorted, wagging one eyebrow. I wondered if I could learn to do that.
I took a deep breath. “”Where’s the fucking camera, Jack?”
“In the safe in my closet,” he admitted.
“You’ve got a safe in your closet?” I asked as intelligently as such a stupid question could be asked.
He spread his hands in a gesture. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“I don’t even have a closet,” I reminded him. All I had was a freestanding wardrobe in my tiny room.
“Well, it’s safe where it is,” he said. “But you need to decide what we’re going to do about it.”
“Yeah, well….” It shouldn’t be a hard question. I should jump at a chance to go back to being the person I’d been my whole life. But, but, but….
Jack watched different expressions chase across my face, his own smugness an irritant that was unlikely to produce a pearl.
“You kinda like being Hallelujah Jones, don’t you?” He observed.
“I’ve always been Hallelujah Jones,” I retorted. “It is my middle name.” I looked around the kitchen to be sure I had put all the food away.
“But no one was shouting it, were they?” He waved his hands around. “Hallelujah! Hallie-Lu-Yah!”
I sniffed, pushing hair out of my eyes. “That’s the worst Leonard Cohen I’ve ever heard,” I said. I dropped a few utensils into the sink, grabbed some paper towels to wipe the counter down with.
He chuckled. “You’re a gorgeous woman, so good-looking it’s almost scary. And you’ve got that little-girl voice to make you sound vulnerable so that guys will fall over themselves to protect you.”
“Huh?” I stared at him. The counter was as clean as it was going to get and I dropped the wad of paper towels in the trash. “Huh?” I repeated.
He waved away my confusion. “You don’t want to go back to being Billy Same-ol-thang Jones, do you?”
“Huh?” I said again, third times the charm. I’m not always so slow on the uptake. I blew out a puff of air with a lock of blonde attached. I must not have heard him right. “Billy Simoleon?”
He waved that away, too. “I think I made this offer before, but if you stay Hallie,” this time he waved at me. “Stay as Hallie, looking like that. You don’t have to pay rent. And….”
I backed away from him. “Jack, are you just trying to get into my pants?” I squeaked.
“Not ‘just’,” he waved some more. “I want to help you be you. I’ll take on the job of being your manager and agent. So my business and marketing studies will help with that. I already got you one job….” He hiked his ass up and sat on the arm of our big couch.
“The car thing,” I said remembering.
“Car show at Century City, yeah….” He stopped and seemed to be staring at my chest. “From this angle, I can just see a bit of underboob.”
I frowned. I tried to replay the conversation. Had Jack admitted that he was trying to get into my pants. I looked down again. I wasn’t wearing pants.
“That costume is genius, by the way, the boob window is just in the right place,” he said.
I looked down, again, blondeness in the way. Wait…. Which costume was this? I didn’t even know any more. I glared at Jack. “It’s still glued on!” I reminded him.
“Hmm.” He cocked his head to one side. “We need to get it off you by nine in the morning, so you can wear a bikini for the car show!”
“I—what? A bikini!”
“You’ve seen these car shows haven’t you? The models always wear bikinis. No one looks at the cars.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dammit, Jack.” I squirmed. “I wanna…,” but he interrupted me again.
“Does it itch?” he asked.
“Does what itch? … No!” He got another glare. “Jack! This is all distraction….” I yawned suddenly. “What are you doing with a safe in your room big enough to hold an old-time camera?”
“The film canisters come off,” he mentioned.
“It would still be huge!” That last word turned into another yawn. “This is all so confusing. I wanna see the camera!” I pouted at him, but spoiled it with another yawn.
I tried to stand up. “I’m exhausted. And that carby meal is making me so sleepy….” I took a step toward my room. I hoped it was toward my room.
Jack was beside me, half-propping me up. “Are you going to be able to sleep still glued into the costume?”
“I did on the bus,” I remember saying. That struck me as funny and I giggled sleepily.
Then I heard Jack say, “Whoa!” He caught me before I hit the floor.
As something reached up and pulled me into inky darkness, I remember thinking, “I still haven’t decided on whether to change back.”
At least I was going to be able to sleep on it.
Had I only dreamed that Jack had said he found the magic camera?
For all of being a Jerk, jack was a gentleman. He didn’t let me lie on the floor where I had fainted. I was already coming to when he scooped me up.
“I’ve got you, babygirl,” he murmured.
I laughed softly and put my arms around his neck. How much of that wine had I had? I had given him a round of shit for calling me ‘babygirl’ earlier, but at the moment, I kind of appreciated being babied.
He put me down on the couch; it would have been too awkward to take me into my room since the door was closed and locked. When had I started locking the door to my room?
“Jack?” I whispered as he pulled the folded afghan we kept on the back of the couch down to cover me.
“We can talk later,” he said, close to my ear. “You do need to sleep.”
“I—we—?” I tried to muster coherent thought, but it wasn’t happening.
“Shh,” he said. “Couple hours sleep, and you’ll feel like a new woman.”
I laughed again, a hiccupy little giggle. I was new at being a woman, wasn’t I?
He kissed me on the forehead, then the cheek. My eyes were open again, and I still had my arms around his neck. I pulled him down, and our lips touched. Then I let my arms fall, and he straightened up.
“Did you really find the camera?” I asked, sleepiness making my voice sound thick.
“I really did,” he confirmed. “Talk later. Sleep now.” He moved around, switching lights off, leaving only the small bulb above the sink burning, but it did not shine directly on me with the couch back and the screen that separated the dining room from the living room in the way.
It was soon dark and quiet, and I slipped into a much easier sleep than I had managed on my midnight bus ride. I remembered thinking it must be well after two in the morning, but I couldn’t see a clock from where I lay; my eyes were already closed.
If I dreamed, the dreams were unremarkable, not like the vivid adventures of Ultradoll.
*
I became aware of being awake, lying on the couch, covered by the colorful afghan Jack had bought from some shop in Palm Springs. Was Jack still in the room? I didn’t open my eyes to see. I couldn’t smell him, so he must not be in the room.
Did Jack have a smell? Still half asleep, I considered this as an important question. He did, I realized, a smell of clean, healthy, male with some masculine, probably very expensive, added. Musk. Did I like Jack’s scent? Why was I thinking about it?
I came more awake as I asked myself another question. Had I kissed Jack?
I had, I remembered.
Had I enjoyed that? Well, truth to be told, I and of did. That thought made me squirm and squirming made me wake up a bit more.
Yes, I was still lying on the couch, and the light seemed brighter than could be accounted for by the small lamp above the sink I knew Jack had left burning. The obvious conclusion was that morning had arrived. Since none of the windows in the apartment faced directly east because of the upper floor walkway on that side, it had to be later than just daybreak.
Which would be just about 7 at this time of year. Hmm. Still drowsy, I pondered getting up and moving to my own bedroom to get more sleep. Faintly, I heard a buzzing sound somewhere, an annoying and persistent insect noise. An alarm clock, I realized.
Jack’s alarm, I finally realized. And hadn’t he said…something about being up and dressed by 9 for the car show gig?
“Poo,” I said, blowing an errant lock of hair out of my eye. I didn’t want to get up. I was comfortable. I burrowed my face into the crease between the couch back and the seat and pulled the afghan up over my head. Maybe Jack would let me sleep for another half-hour?
What’s the point of being a beautiful girl if you have to get up at the crack of dawn to go to work—especially if work is wearing a bikini so you can be ogled by a bunch of men who are supposed to be looking at the cars?
I could hear Jack moving around somewhere in the apartment, so I used one of the fluffy pillows on the couch to block my ear and snuggled deeper. The couch material was some kind of nubbly fake wool and a bit scratchy on my bare skin, which I had never noticed before. And it slowly dawned on me that I was still glued into the costume from last night.
I felt around to be sure, and yeah, I couldn’t even get a fingertip between me and the costume. And I still had the boob window. But that couldn’t be right. The Celestia—Space Babe—costume didn’t have a diamond-shaped hole showing cleavage, it just had a deep-vee neckline. It was the Ultradoll costume that had the window. Wasn’t it?
But the whole Ultradoll thing had been a dream I had on the bus, hadn’t it? How could I be wearing a costume from a dream I had? Was I still dreaming?
Had I dreamed that Jack had said he found the magic camera?
Had Jack actually found that damn camera?
That thought woke me up finally, and I sat up suddenly, almost falling off the couch and setting up some sympathetic wave action in my bust. I looked down. Yes, the costume I was glued into had the Ultradoll boob window. Impossible, unless I’m still dreaming,
Either that or I’m so much of a ditz I don’t remember what my original costume looked like. Okay, that isn’t impossible, so by logic, that one must be true. “Erggh!” I whined, sounding a bit like a tiny chihuahua trying to kill a large kibble.
“I give up,” I said and tried to stand up, but my extra-large fluffy bottom seemed to weigh me down, and my feet weren’t cooperating either. I looked down, craning my neck to see over my personal horizon and discovered myself to be barefooted, the strappy, costume high heels I had been wearing lying under the coffee table. Jack must have taken my shoes off for me.
I could hear him singing in his private bathroom with the shower running. Something by Billy Joel with Jack’s own lyrics. Had I really kissed him last night? Or early this morning…?
— —
I blushed when I considered that I really had. He’d been nice to me, gave me a peck on the forehead and cheek and…I had pulled his face down and kissed him right on the lips.
I heard myself giggle nervously. Would Jack expect me to kiss him again? I felt sure that he would. Guys are like that.
“I gotta go pee,” I announced to no one, managed to get to my feet and teetered off toward the bathroom, walking almost on tiptoe. I’d worn high heels yesterday for something like fourteen hours and had tramped all over the studio lot. My feet kept trying to cramp up whenever I put my heel down.
But I made it. Reached under my tiny skirt and pulled down my spangled panties before sitting on the throne and releasing a torrent of tinkles into the toilet. I looked at my legs, my thighs were undoubtedly shapely, smooth and slightly tanned.
But hadn’t I been wearing hosiery? Pantyhose from Wardrobe in a slightly darker tan than my own skin? Had Jack removed my hose with my shoes? He would have had to remove my panties and put them back on if he had!
I had been wearing my panties over my hose! (Not recommended by Amanda the wardrobe lady, actually, but how else would anyone ever see my spangles?)
Most sensible girls who were not newbie actresses in costume wore their panties under their hose for ease of doing just what I was doing now. But if Jack had removed my hose, where were they now?
I finished my business, used paper to polish things dry and stood up, despite the foot cramps. I tossed hair out of my face and readjusted my skirt, discovering as I did that there were strings hanging down inside it. Garters? I used my fingers to follow them up, finding that I was wearing something like a girdle or corset with garter strings. Further, the garment I had no memory of putting on seemed to be partly covered by my glued-on costume!
But if I hadn’t been wearing pantyhose, had I been wearing hose held up by garters?
That would have been easier for Jack to remove with my shoes—but it still didn’t explain where the hose had disappeared to!
And Jack would have had to reach under my skirt to undo the garters! Something no gentleman would have done while I was passed out!
I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. I tried to make a face to show I was angry, but it just looked like a cute pout. I’d have to work on that.
Jack’s bedroom door was right across the short hall from my bathroom door. When he opened his, I would hear him and could pop out and accuse him of—what?
Did I want to do that? He hadn’t molested me, just tried to make me more comfortable. I stood on one leg, alternately, to massage my crampy feet.
I heard Jack’s door open and opened mine. What was I going to do, though? Give him a piece of my tiny mind? Could I afford that?
He was right there, smiling at me. Maybe I should kiss him again?
Where the heck had that thought come from?
"It's Saturday, Mom!" I Shouted.
Instead of kissing Jack, I turned and stumbled back into my bedroom. “I’m-a going to bed until the world wakes up and makes sense,” I said to no one. I stumbled to my bed and tumbled into it.
I went under like a submarine in a WWII movie with the skipper shouting, “Dive! Dive!” while he was still on deck. An ocean of unconsciousness dragged me down into the depths of sleep, but when I emerged on a game show set, I wasn’t surprised.
Mike Myers was the host, doing his obnoxious Scot character, and right away, I knew I was dreaming. I mean, no one is going to hire Myers as a game show host, am I right?
But seemingly, I had won a car, a convertible, the only problem being that I could only ride on the hood and only if I wore a bikini. And even I knew that my generous curves were not ideal for being displayed in a skimpy two-piece! Somebody was sure to make mooing sounds.
And, of course, it was Myers himself who went there. Funny man, but he’s always been known as a bit of a jerk.
The car was a candy-flake gold 1957 Pontiac, and so was my bikini….
* * *
A dream transition had me as a little girl with blonde pigtails attending Standard Middle School.
“I never went to Standard Middle,” I protested to my BFF, Amelia Waits.
“Sure you did, Billie,” she countered. “I remember going to school with you. It was only seven years ago. Not like it was forever!” She laughed at me. Her rust-colored pigtails were shorter than mine and stuck out sideways. And she had 673 freckles, each of which had a name, address and grade point average higher than mine.
“But that was Billy! Not me!” I tried to make her understand.
“You are Billie,” she insisted.
“No, I’m not. I’m Hallie!” I countered. I glanced down. Even at twelve, I had twice as much bust as other girls my age. “See?” I said, pointing at my chest.
“I wish I had a neat middle name like Hallelujah,” she complained.
Amelia’s middle name was Frances, and she hated it.
“We could make it like a nickname, huh?” I suggested. “We could start calling you Fancy!”
She blinked. “I kind of like that,” she admitted. Then she asked, “Are you going out for the cheerleading team?”
I thought about it. The cheerleading costumes were really cute….
* * *
But the dreamscape changed again, to high school shop class. Woodshop, where Mr. Bertoldt and I were working on flats for the school production of Arsenic and Old Lace.
“I oontershtand you’re going to be in der play, alzo?” The instructor commented in his German accent as we pulled the canvas tight over the frame.
For some reason, I giggled. “Yeah,” I admitted, pushing blonde hair out of my face. I had been going to play one of the old maids, but ever since I got my picture taken by the magic camera, the director insisted I would have to play Elaine, Mortimer’s love interest. And the handsomest boy in school was playing Mortimer. “I get to kiss Dickie Moller!” I squeaked, embarrassed and thrilled at the same time.
“Ach, zo!” Mr. Bertoldt laughed and shook his hand as if he had burned it. “You like dis boy?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I’ve only kissed him once, so far. I need another sample. We’ll have to see what happens.” More giggles.
“Ja!” he agreed, laughing even harder.
* * *
My giggling woke me up. In the darkness of my room, I felt as if the weather outside had changed. I sat up enough to lift the corner of a curtain and peek out. The walk outside my room was still wet, even puddled in places, but across the courtyard, I saw stars and an inky sky above the other wing of the Lowering Heights apartment complex.
I lay back down and pulled my sheet and thin blanket up to my chin, and sighed. It just might be good bikini weather tomorrow, after all. Then again, the car show was going to be inside, wasn’t it?
“I’m not sure I want to wear a bikini atoll, anyway,” I murmured, falling back into a dream of a radioactive sunrise over the Columbia Records building.
* * *
Jack knocked on my door way too early. “It’s Saturday, Mom!” I shouted.
“No, it’s not,” Jack countered, laughing. “It’s Sunday, and you have a gig in Century City at ten thirty.”
I pushed my eyeballs back in my head with both fists, tangled with the blonde lock of hair that always seemed to be in my face and managed to ask, “What time is it?” In the middle of a yawn. It came out more like, “Wahdai-aimzit?”
“Eight fifteen,” he answered.
“Plennyuhdai-aim,” I said through another yawn, pulling the pillow around my head. Hadn’t I done this already once before?
Jack responded by beating Reveille on the door, eight-to-the-bar, provoking squeaks and splutters from me. “God rot your guts, Jack Urquhart!” I shouted.
My feet hit the floor, and I got traction, headed for my door. “You’d better not be between me and the bathroom, Jerq!” I warned him. I slammed the door open, actually hoping I would hit him, and ran as fast as I could with my thighs held tight together.
That’s hard to do, so I squealed as I ran, hoping it would relieve some pressure. I was distracted, but I distinctly heard shutter clicks as I ran past Jack standing in the arch to the kitchen, fortunately well out of my desperate path.
I made it only because I realized at the last moment that I was naked except for the costume plastron still glued to my chest! I felt sure I’d been wearing panties when I went to bed, but I was so near out of it last night that I couldn’t be certain. Last night? Wasn’t that earlier this morning?
But I had something else to worry about. “Ja-ack!” I wailed. “You took my picture?”
“Yup,” he agreed. “Candid camera, right here on Levering Way.”
“I’m half-naked!” I protested.
“A bit more than that,” he observed. “Yow!”
“You’re looking at the picture! Aren’t you?!”
“I’m looking at the most perfect ass West of the Rockies!”
“You’re a perfect ass!”
“Ho, mama!”
“Dang it, Jack!” I started the process of wiping myself dry. How was I going to get back to my room without giving him another chance to take my picture? “If you show that pic to anyone, I swear, I will feed your t-t-testicles to the g-g-garbage d-d-disposal!” Was I crying? Damn it, I was crying!
“Whoa, whoa, sugar buns!” Jack called out. “I’ll send the pic only to you and erase it from my phone, okay? Don’t cry.”
“How can I trust the biggest jerk west of the Mississippi?” I fumed at him, realizing he must be right outside the bathroom door, probably waiting for another chance to snap my picture.
“Gotta say, the camera loves you, babe. Even just woke up and wearing that Space Amazon breastplate, you’re gorgeous. No shit, sheila.”
I examined myself in the mirror on the back of the door. Yeesh! Blonde bombshell was the only description that came to mind. My bush was even trimmed into a provocative triangle. “Hallelujah,” I said, “That is really me!”
“It sure is,” Jack said on the other side of the door, with a bit of reverence in his tone.
I wondered if I could open the door suddenly, hitting him with it and grab the phone out of his hand. The toilet bowl was handy for disposing of the evidence, but the dang door opened the wrong way.
Something occurred to me. “Jack!” I shouted. “If you’re going to take my picture, use that darn magic camera!”
“But-uh-what if it turns you back into a boy? You’ll miss the car show.”
I bit my lip. Wait a minute. Did I want to change back into a boy? Did I want to miss the car show?
Hallelujah Jones had a career ahead of her already and Billy was just a skinny kid from Oildale? But wasn’t he the real me?
I glanced down at the deep vee neckline of the costume I was still glued into. Didn’t this have a diamond-shaped boob window in it before? “I’m so confused,” I complained out loud.
“That thing isn’t really a camera, you know,” Jack was saying. “I really have no idea what it might do, and neither do you. I’m not even sure how to operate it. It’s got too many dials and buttons and wheels and levers.” He paused as if considering whether to tell me something else.
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the hesitation in his voice. “You know something about that—thing!—that I don’t know,” I accused.
I heard him sigh. “I had it for most of a day yesterday, you know,” he began, then stopped again. I heard him move away from the door.
Something occurred to me. “You used it, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Not intentionally,” he said. “I was just looking at it, and I must have touched something. It went off!”
I opened the door a crack and tried to look at him. I couldn’t see him since the door opened inward, and he was down the hall in the wrong direction. But I was still naked except for the costume piece, and I wasn’t going back into the hall if he still had his phone and camera. “I need some clothes, Jack,” I whined. “Did it turn you into a girl?” I asked, intending it to be sarcastic.
But he answered. “Yes, it did.” We both went quiet while I absorbed that idea.
“Did you use it again to turn back?” I asked. Was that hope in my voice?
“Nope,” he said. “Being a girl was a heck of a mind-flip, but I didn’t touch the damned gadget for about four hours.” He paused again. “Then I just changed back. Without using the device again.”
Something he still wasn’t telling lurked in his voice. “What is it? You were a girl for four hours, and you just changed back?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“I haven’t changed back,” I pointed out.
“I know,” he said flatly.
“Dangit, Jack! You’re not telling me something!” I made a face, but he couldn’t see me, and it was completely wasted on the mirror. “What were you doing when you changed back?”
Another pause before he answered. “I’d rather not say.”
“Jack, you weasel! Tell me!” Silence, but I had an idea what the answer might be.
"Well, —uh— first I got naked..."
“Jack, I will murder you in your sleep if you don’t tell me how you changed back into a boy after using the camera!” I squeaked, which kind of ruined the effect of the death threat. I banged a fist against the door for emphasis but didn’t do that again because it hurt. Besides, it sort of sounded like desperation.
“Are you going to tell me the truth, Jack, or am I going to have to come out there and look for it behind your tonsils?” Jack made noises but didn’t reply. I fumed, especially annoyed because I had a sneaking suspicion of what he had been doing as a new girl alone in the house.
“Well, uh,” he perseverated. I think that’s a word. “I’m—uh—are you sure you want to know, Hallie?”
“Yes! I think I do know, Jack, so just tell me!”
“I —uh— I got myself off….”
He didn’t sound embarrassed, but…what did he sound like? Regretful? I snarled at myself in the mirror, but I needed practice at being fierce. Still, was Jack’s solution all I needed to do to change back? Just…? “Tell me what you did exactly, Jack,” I said, trying not to be angsty about it.
“Well, —uh— first I got naked, no, no first, I played with my tits while still wearing my shirt…then I got naked.”
I rolled my eyes and rested my forehead on the mirror. “Go on. I want details.”
“Haven’t you done this yet?” he asked.
“Well, of course, I haven’t!” I snapped, bumping my head against the cold glass.
“Why not?” Jack sounded astonished.
“I just —I mean—I haven’t had the time!”
“You should make the time,” Jack sounded serious. “It’s really great!”
I didn’t say anything but bumped my head again by rocking back and forth on my bare feet.
Jack went on. “I’d always heard that women had better orgasms than men, and I wondered how anyone could know that. But it’s true!” Now he sounded excited. “It lasts longer, and it’s a deeper feeling, and it’s like all over, not just in one place!”
“You were alone?” I asked, almost strangling on the question.
“Yeah, sure, but I did it in front of the mirror in my bedroom,” Jack said, sounding thoughtful. “I am, by the way, an amazingly good-looking girl. I mean, I don’t have your advantages. I’m shorter with less boobage, and, and, dark brown hair that has, like, red highlights….” He trailed off, then sighed loudly.
Neither of us said anything for three beats, then we both spoke at once.
“If you did it…,” Jack began.
“I want you to shoot me with the camera,” I said, talking over him.
We were both quiet again. I moved away from the mirror and looked at myself up and down. I still had the stupid Space Babe chest piece glued on. “I need to get this thing off,” I said aloud.
“You need to get yourself off,” said Jack.
“You were supposed to get me some solvent for removing this appliance,” I whined.
“I’ve been thinking about other things,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” I pouted at my reflection. Wow, I am good at that, I noted. I’d have to try it on Jack. I pulled my brain back in the direction of thinking.
“What I’ve been thinking about…” Jack began, but I cut him off.
“Don’t be perverse, Jack,” I told him. “Go get the machine, shoot me with it, and… if you insist, I’ll shoot you with it.”
His voice had a grin in it. “I already called the car show guys and asked if they could use one more model for the show.”
“Huh?” I boggled. “You mean you?!”
“The job is standing around and leaning or lying on cars wearing a bikini, Jack!” I pointed out. Maybe his head rattled because I knew he was nodding.
“Yeah,” he said. “If you can do it, I think I can, too.”
Rolling my eyes did not express enough annoyance, so I rolled my whole head on my shoulders. “Go get the machine, and I’ll go back to my room to get some clothes on!”
I heard him move away, though the door to his room was just across the short hallway. I peeked out to make sure he was gone, then hopped to it across the living room to my own room before he got back.
Once in my room, I realized (again!) that I still had on the costume piece. I tried to work a finger under it to see if it had loosened up, but no! It was really stuck on there! If the gun changed me back, would I still be wearing it? It shouldn’t be able to stay on with a flatter masculine chest, should it?
I did have an alternative to the gun, now; I could try Jack’s method for changing back. I felt my face turn red. I sighed. It’s not like I’ve never masturbated…I mean, I was a guy, and sometimes you have to deal with things so your clothes don’t have embarrassing lumps.
But doing it…as a girl…that kind of felt like it would be wrong somehow. Did I have to work out some way of giving myself permission to…hmm? How did girls do that, anyway? Jack never finished his description of the process!
I heard his door close, and I hadn’t really looked for anything else to wear. I had Billy’s ratty old bathrobe as a last resort, so I threw that on. It felt weird because it didn’t fit right, but…it would have to do. I closed my bedroom door behind me and looked toward Jack, standing at the end of the little hall near the kitchen.
He had a big green machine in his hands. Right at the moment, it looked more like a Super Soaker than an antique camera.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “If it turns you back into a guy, you’ll miss out on this modeling gig, which could, you know, lead to a whole career for Hallie Jones.” He looked apologetic about raising such a flimsy rationale.
I twitched in Billy’s blue bathrobe. “Shoot me, Jack!” I demanded.
He lifted the camera and pointed it at me. “Hallie,” he tried again to talk me out of it, “you’re a beautiful woman with a wonderful future ahead of you….”
“Shut up!” I said, knowing that my voice sounded squeaky and cute, not forceful and commanding. “Pull the trigger, Jack!”
He winced. Then the room seemed to explode as a ball of light burst from the camera.
I just had to hope I wasn’t going to move too far down the alphabet.
The light came at me like a scene from a baseball movie where the batter has a fear of the ball. It got bigger and brighter and more solid looking, and there was another universe inside it!
A blonde girl who looked a bit like me but younger (I had never been younger than I was at the moment!) seemed to be bent over something like a laptop, but I didn’t have time to see anything else because a ball of light as big as the moon hit me.
Terrified, I screamed. “My God, it’s going to end me!” And for a moment, I really feared that I was going to die, torn apart by a force I had never thought could exist. I heard someone else screaming, too and realized it must be Jack. The ball of light had gotten so big, he was included in the explosion, too, even though he had been holding the gun!
The energy of the burst filled me, and I got the feeling of being inflated by some cosmic street performer making balloon art. I’d always been fascinated by such shows as a kid, and for a fleeting moment of insanity, I wished that if he were making balloon animals, I could be a unicorn. Then I feared for a moment that I would end up a camel, one of the two-humped kind.
The world continued to explode instantaneously and over a long period at the same time! Nothing had logic or continuity or reason. I felt my body swell then my hair fell in my face, longer and even thicker than before, and I worried if I were going to be able to walk without stepping on it.
The expansive feeling moved to my chest, because of course, it would! I felt my breasts expanding under the glued-on space armor then there was a Ker-TWANG! just as I became aware of the apartment again. The plastron could not resist the new growth of my flesh. It detached itself, flew across the room and assassinated an ugly lamp that Jack had once told me had been a gift from a great-aunt. (“Well,” he’d admitted, “I guess she was an okay aunt.”)
My hands came up, but there was no containing the growth. I’d been a Double-D which should surely have been big enough for anyone. I could see my new expansion in the mirror on the open bathroom door. I just had to hope I wasn’t going to move too far down the alphabet.
I could feel growth behind me, too, and only part of that was more hair. What had been locks a bit past shoulder-length that frequently fell in my face now tickled the expanded cheeks of my bigger, rounder butt!
And almost the worst of it was it felt fantastic! It was like discovering a pony eating the tinsel on Christmas morning. Exhilarating, joyous, and a bit of a worry. Like, yikes, how big was I going to get?
I squealed and realized I was hearing the noise in stereo. There was another girl in the room. Standing where Jack had been was a very curvy brunette with assets that rivaled mine and curly black hair down to her thighs. It had to be Jack, transformed again by the strange not-a-camera-gun! She was several inches shorter than me and considerably smaller than my male roommate had been, and she was rubbing herself in delicate places with a blissful expression on her cute face!
I remembered what Jack had explained about changing back. “Hey! None of that!”
“Huh?” She responded in a breathy voice like Marilyn Monroe, her mouth slightly open and showing a delicate overbite.
I replayed what I had just said and heard an echo of Jack’s (Jacquie’s) seductive whisper.
“I think we’re in trouble here?” It came out sounding like a question.
“Ya think?” Jacquie asked with a giggle. “It blew all our clothes off! We’re naked!”
I looked down. She was right. I rolled my eyes at her, and she burst into more giggles, then pointed. The smoking pile of tubes and wires at my feet must have been what was left of the transformation device.
I moaned, then decided not to do that again—it was way too suggestive! “Are we both stuck now?” I brushed hair out of my face and glared at my reflection down the hall.
“I dunno,” Jacquie admitted. “Could we try to change back—uh—using the method that worked for me before?” She had a hand on one breast as she suggested this.
“No,” I responded immediately.
“Aw, c’mon, Hallie! We’re both super hot!”
“We’ve got to find something to wear!”
“Why?” Jacquie’s eyes had become a little glassy. She looked quite a bit like one of the raunchier depictions of Aphrodite one sees in certain magazines, and I knew I looked much the same, only blonde.
“Snap out of it!” I ordered her.
“Spoilsport!” she pouted a bit but decided on a giggle instead. “I bet I could put something for us to wear together out of some of Jack’s clothes.”
“Huh? I don’t think anything he—you?—had is likely to fit either of us.”
“Sure it will!” She assured me and headed for Jack’s room. “I’ll cut off some pants, and we can wear his big dress shirts as tops. Tied at our waists, they will be so-oo sexy!”
I followed the chain of giggles. “Are you sure he won’t mind?”
She looked at me for a moment. “Trust me, Jack would love to see us in some of his clothes.”
“Uh? Sure?” It made sense if you looked at it right.
“We’ll have to get pictures,” Jacquie commented as she set to work on some of Jack’s pants.
“Not with that camera,” I said, gesturing at the still sizzling remains of the—magic?—contraption that had started this whole mishegas. (I’m in show business, so I have a license to use Yiddish.)
“We have to hurry,” said Jacquie. “We’re due at the mall for our bikini fittings in less than half an hour!”
I was just slithering into a pair of shorts made from Jack’s slacks when what she had just said registered. “Wait? What?”