“Long ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never
forgotten this.”- Anonymous
Bret Reed was not a rich man. He wasn’t particularly poor,
either - which meant that the current Republican
administration in the White House had, in their benevolence,
decided to place the tax burden of the entire country right
on his white, male, aged 18-35 and single shoulders. He
slaved away, day in and day out, to bring home some little
bit to feed his habit - DVD movies - and to offset the credit
card bills which he’d accumulated while he worked his way
through college. But on the first and fifteenth, when the
checks came from GeoTech, the software company where he
worked, the government’s bite made it all that much harder
for Bret to lever himself out of debt and start to enjoy
anything resembling success.
It wasn’t like he was frivolous or anything. A modest
apartment and a modest car, unlike the lavish bachelor pads
and the sports cars that some of his colleagues owned. He
kept his expenses low - only allowing himself two new movies
on DVD every month - and didn’t spend inordinate amounts on
groceries or anything else. He kept to himself and didn’t
spend money on going out or partying, even though he paid the
price with his social life. But his father - a blue-collar
auto worker - had always told him that with a college degree
he could write his own ticket.
His old man had been mistaken. A very nice diploma hung on the
wall, and all it had gotten him was more debt.
Some American dream.
Bret managed to get home through the thick Friday afternoon
traffic in decent time, clawing his way through the throngs
of overdressed people trying to get downtown so they could
blow huge wads of cash on watered-down well drinks and
overpriced Mexican food, make nuisances of themselves in
public and then go home to sleep it off in time to go back
out again on Saturday night.
Bret’s evening was a little more sedate in scope. A frozen
pizza for the oven, a cold Dr. Pepper and his new copy of
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” which had been waiting in
his mailbox from last week’s order.
He kicked his shoes into the closet and changed from his
khakis and button-down shirt into a pair of ratted-out
cutoffs and a t-shirt. He took the pizza out of the oven
after scanning the news for a few minutes, then popped in
his new prize while Slider, the grey-and-white stray tabby
cat who’d adopted him a few years back, curled up in his
lap for a little bit of quality ear-scratching.
The movie had been really good, but the stress of the past
week - GeoTech had done a product release and the developers
had put in a lot of very late nights - soon had him dozing,
dreaming of a place where he didn’t have to worry about
paying his bills, someplace where he might have the money
to go out and drink downtown and pay too much for a plate
of substandard enchiladas, maybe even meet a - gasp - girl
and experience the dizzying world of love, attachment, sex,
frustration and gratitude that relationships birthed.
He hadn’t been involved with anyone since college two years
ago, and although that part of him was well on its way to
atrophy, it certainly did maintain a presence in his thoughts
and desires.
He awoke suddenly with the very nasty feeling like ants were
crawling on his neck. It was a well-known sensation. Slider
had fallen asleep on his chest again, and because the stray
cat had lived through several years of street fights and
malnourishment he’d lost several of his front teeth, which
meant that whenever he slept or purred he couldn’t help but
drool. It was a little disgusting, but in the way that a
baby’s dirty diaper was disgusting. You didn’t like the
thought of cleaning it up, but something about the act made
you love the actor just that much more.
Slider was Bret’s best friend and confidante, the patient
listener to all his hopes and desires. Slider never judged,
never overreacted or took anything the wrong way.
Bret sighed and scratched the cat’s soft head, eliciting a
deep-throated purr and more drooling. The yellow, wise eyes
opened to luminous slits and regarded him with that mixture
of predator and companion that only cats had.
“Hop up, pal. I have to change this shirt you just ruined,”
Bret said fondly, giving the cat’s broad backside a gentle
shove. Slider stood, slowly, stretching out (with a painful
digging of claws into Bret’s chest, just to remind the human
who was the boss of the outfit). Slider hopped down to the
floor, winding around Bret’s feet a few times as the man
slowly stood up and walked heavily into the apartment’s
cramped bedroom.
“Hmm. Ten o’clock. The night is still young. What do you want
to do now, Slide? Dinner and cocktails at the Ritz, maybe,
or we could poke our heads in at the party on Bitsy and
Chad’s yacht. I wasn’t going to go, but Cindy Crawford and
Claudia Schiffer just begged me to come.”
The cat looked at him curiously, almost amused.
“Oh, I know. There’s that little shindig at the Spielberg’s.
I don’t know if I still fit into the Armani, but everyone
who’s anyone is going to be there. We haven’t seen dear
Pamela since she got the implants removed.”
He stripped off his sodden shirt and pulled another,
equally disreputable t-shirt from the pile next to his
bookshelf. “Or how about this, we can collapse on the bed
and read old comic books until we fall asleep.”
Looking down at the depleted pile of ready clothing in the
stack, he rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “Looks
like laundry day tomorrow.”
He sighed and selected an old “Thor” comic from the pile he’d
rescued from his mother’s attempts to convert his old room
into a sewing room. Flopping heavily on the secondhand double
bed, he opened the comic and felt the familiar tug as the
images and story drew him backwards, towards his youth again.
Just before he surrendered to the irresistible draw, he felt
Slider jump onto the bed near his pillow and curl up for
another uneventful night. Bret stroked the cat’s soft fur and
soon had the familiar purr going again.
“You got it made, little man,” he said faintly, rubbing Slider’s
favorite spot behind his grizzled ears and making the yellow
eyes close in delight. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer cat,
even though you’re nothing but a fur-bearing appetite.”
Bret sighed, looking out the window at the parking lot of his
little apartment complex.
“Too bad nobody feels the same way about me,” he said
wistfully. “Y’know what I mean, Slide? I just wish… hell, I
don’t know. I just wish it could be different somehow. I wish
I could figure out a way to be happy with what I have and
quit feeling sorry for myself for all the stuff I don’t. Like
the party crowd at college. Just fun and no worry. That’s the
kind of life I’d like to have.”
He smiled and rolled back over, returning his attention to his
comic book and his purring companion. “But then, that just
wouldn’t be me, would it?”
The cat only looked at him with the half-amused, half-knowing
look of a superior being.
* * *
The sun through the slats of the cheap blinds was very
warm on Bret’s legs, stirring him from a deep and dreamless
sleep of exhaustion and stress. His eyes parted slowly,
letting the light in by increments which didn’t assault
his eyes, running a tongue against sleep-coated teeth.
The lights seemed a little brighter somehow this morning,
the colors just a little bit too saturated and overdone.
Bret fought the urge to roll back into a protective cocoon
of covers and just ignore the daylight, but something inside
him - perhaps that damnable work ethic his parents had
instilled - made him sit blearily, swinging his legs onto
the floor. He rubbed gritty eyes and tried to remember to
return the romance novel he’d fallen asleep reading to the
bookshelf. He’d read them all so many times, he didn’t even
bother to mark his place. He knew most of them off by
heart anyway.
Pulling on a pair of really cute white lace-up shorts which
were sitting on top of the clothes hamper and a blousy pink
t-shirt, he gathered up the laundry into the beaten white
basket, added the fabric softener and detergent and gathered
up some quarters from the mayonnaise jar beside the telephone
for the coin-ops.
He was almost down the stairs when it hit him. Romance novel?
Fabric softener? Clothes hamper? Pink t-shirt? He didn’t own
any of those things and never had! A little panicked, he looked
down at the laundry basket he was carrying. Nothing particularly
out of the ordinary, just the usual assortment of tops, jeans,
shorts, blouses, skirts, panties and bras. The cute little
red satin bustier he’d picked up in the mall a few weeks ago.
The basket almost slipped out of suddenly numb fingers. Dear
God, he thought. What the hell is going on here? Running back
up the stairs, breathing hard, Bret decided against leaving
the apartment (thank God he hadn’t been seen yet in the little
lace-up shorts and the pink tee) until he was sure he knew what
the hell was going on.
He dropped the basket beside the door unceremoniously and ran
into the bathroom. Shoving aside the jewelry box and the
little white tackle-box full of makeup, he splashed cold
water on his face and stared into the mirror. The same
careworn, plain face stared back at him that always did, in
need of a few more hours’ sleep and a shave. The little
scar under his left eye from a fight he’d had in the eighth
grade, the crooked tooth in the bottom row, the limp tangle
of fine brown hair that nearly hung into the eyes.
With a horrified gasp, he looked down at the countertop at
the makeup and jewelry. None of this was his. It couldn’t be.
Somehow he’d woken up in someone else’s apartment, a girl’s
apartment. Maybe he’d eaten something, or somebody had put
something in a drink he’d had. Maybe he was sick - that was
it. Delirious. It was a fever dream or something. He’d
passed out and some kind woman had carried him up the stairs
to sleep it off in her apartment.
But how did that explain Slider, who was turning around in
a tight circle as a prelude to laying down in the center of
the pile which heaped out of the laundry basket by the door?
And the rather extensive collection of DVDs which was on the
little shelf next to the television - his television. But the
rest of the apartment had undergone a total transformation.
His kitchen was far from the typical shambles he’d grown so
used to seeing. Instead of the mismatched, thrift-store dishes
he’d used since college, now all of his stoneware was a matched,
subdued pattern, sitting neatly in a wooden drying rack. All
of the silverware was a nice, matched pattern instead of the
unadorned silver he’d filched from his dorm cafeteria over
the years. Colorful potholders and tea towels hung from the
oven handle and the refrigerator. A dry-erase board with some
phone numbers - one for a girl named Monica and another for a
girl named Kaylee - and a short grocery list were written in
a rounded, bubbly hand with pink marker.
He opened the fridge and found a load of fresh vegetables and
Tupperwared leftovers and a twelve-pack of diet soda. The
freezer was bereft of his customary Red Baron pizzas and the
ever-present Night Hawk frozen dinners, replaced by frozen
vegetables and a whole lot of Lean Cuisine entrées, and a
half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya lemon vodka freezing in
the door with a loaf of wheat bread.
Apparently the woman whose fridge this belonged to was a
stickler for emptying ice trays, as well - the bucket was
full and all the trays stacked neatly and freezing beside
it. Bret never refilled the ice trays until the last cube
was gone.
The front room had undergone a similar transformation.
Instead of his nondescript blue couch with the beach towel
thrown across the back and the battered and worn brown
recliner he’d rescued from the room of a graduating senior
at college, now he had a nice - but not too nice - matching
sofa and love seat in blue-and-tan stripes with several
tasseled throw-pillows and a thick fleece afghan on the
back, and a polished wooden rocking chair, similarly heaped
with pillows.
The movie posters were still on the walls, but instead of
his vintage “Enter the Dragon” and “Braveheart” in the
frames he now had a restored “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and
“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
The door to the bedroom was a huge repro of Marilyn Monroe
standing over the heating vent on the sidewalk, her dress
blowing up all around her, from “Seven Year Itch.” There
was even the new addition of a nice burled walnut coffee
table, across which were strewn several candleholders and
latest issues of Elle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Glamour.
The tiny little dining area, which had formerly been Bret’s
“home office” (read: place to play video games) was now
occupied by a little table and two chairs with a basket
full of flowers in the center. Bills and sundry junk were
stacked on one end and a leather attaché case and one of
the red-and-white plastic Macintosh PowerBook computers
were nearby.
Bret made a beeline for the mail. It was all addressed to
Bret Reed in apartment 1212. Checking outside the door, he
found the matching number.
It was his apartment, no matter that everything in it was
completely wrong.
He walked back into the bedroom. The double bed was the same,
but the plain light blue sheets and quilt were gone, replaced
with pink satin sheets and an enormous pink and white
embroidered duvet. There was even a pink ruffle along the
bottom and about ten times as many pillows as necessary,
also in pink satin. There was even a little stuffed teddy
bear near the white wrought-iron headboard, neither of which
had been present when Bret went to bed.
The nightstand held his old digital clock and his glasses, as
always, but now had a white wrought-iron lamp with a frilly
shade and several tubes of moisturizer. The shelf underneath
contained some more women’s magazines (which were far from
his usual collection of Penthouse which had kept him company
during several lonely nights), another teddy bear (this one
hugging a huge stuffed red satin heart) and a shoebox
containing pictures of last summer’s company picnic on the
beach - all people he knew and recognized - a few snapshots
of people he’d never seen before at some kind of party and
a thick white plastic vibrator that made Bret blush bright
red to find.
It was like sneaking into his sister’s room - he felt like
he shouldn’t be here, even thought it was his apartment.
The mirrored sliding door of the closet revealed a little
walk-in positively stuffed with clothes and shoes. It seemed
to be loosely organized between working clothes - several
nicely tailored-looking business suits with short skirts,
silk blouses, skirts, sweaters and scarves. The next section
appeared to be ‘club clothes’ - all tiny, stretchy and
revealing in bright colors and sequins and patterns. The
rest seemed to be formal wear - was that an old prom dress
in there? - and winter clothes.
The floor was a solid carpet of shoes, in every conceivable
shape and size from flats and sneakers to a pair of
black patent platform shoes that Bret had thought only
strippers could walk in. The top of the closet contained
a quilt and a comforter, a few boxes of Trivial Pursuit,
several hats, a stack of bulky sweaters (which wouldn’t be
of much use in the middle of June, as it was), and a few
more assorted boxes.
The rest of the room contained a little dressing table with
several jewelry boxes on it, a little expanding rack on the
wall which held sunbonnets, ladies’ hats and a few very
small baseball caps. A huge Patrick Nagel print was framed
on the wall, and there were several more snapshots of people
he didn’t recognize taped up around the mirror on the vanity.
The table’s only drawer contained a huge array of barrettes,
hair clips and ‘scrunchies’ in every color, shape and style
Bret had ever seen.
The bookshelf beside the doorway was filled with fantasy
and romance novels, and some strange titles which Bret
couldn’t figure out the reason for being there -
Understanding Communication, the Manager’s Bible, Forming
the Perfect Brand, Getting the Message Out and Driving
Sales through Exposure. Sounded like middle-management crap
to Bret. Next thing he knew he’d be finding a copy of What
Color is Your Parachute? or something equally as horrible.
He hoped that his well-worn copies of all the programming
textbooks from college turned up somewhere. Finding his
clothes and furniture all changed was one thing, but he
needed those books to help him make a living.
The bathroom was utterly unrecognizable. Huge, plush towels -
also in pink - hung from all the racks and over the shower
curtain (which was transparent plastic which huge pink
flowers all over it in appliqué) - a radical departure
from his ordinary one big beach towel that he used to
dry everything.
The countertop was an explosion of cosmetics and lotions -
with a few more jewelry boxes thrown in for good measure.
There was a little basket of potpourri on the back of the
toilet, which was the only horizontal space not covered
with some kind of skin- or hair-care product. The little
cabinet contained more towels, extra rolls of toilet paper
and an enormous economy pack of pantyliners and tampons.
Bret blushed scarlet once again and shut the cabinet quickly.
The shower contained two of the little wire shelving units
Bret had seen in some ladies’ bathrooms, also brimming
with more shampoos, conditioners, body scrubs, exfoliators
and moisturizers than Bret, in his ignorance, knew existed.
Strangely enough, there seemed to be no soap. Whoever heard
of a shower with no soap in it? There were sixteen different
kinds of scented moisturizing body wash, but no damned soap.
Bret pushed aside the bottles of bath oil and salts which
were on the side of the tub and shed his (?) clothes into
a pile on the floor. He tossed the fluffy pink towel on
the closed lid of the toilet and climbed into the
familiar-yet-foreign shower, turning on the water and
closing his eyes as the warm spray cascaded down his face
and body. Maybe he’d open his eyes and everything would be
back to normal somehow.
He rubbed the back of his neck and scratched himself on
the backside - a time-honored male shower tradition - and
was a little surprised to feel his erection bobbing up and
down with the motion. Something about the sights and scents
of the feminine were causing him to become very aroused.
He briefly entertained the notion of ‘letting his fingers
do the walking’ for a minute, but on the off chance that
this was someone else’s place he didn’t want them to catch
him wanking off in their shower.
Instead, he tried to make do by losing himself in the warm
fall of the water against his skin, working kinks from
stressed muscles.
He straightened, putting the little Lady Sensor razor back
in its rack on one of the shelves and looking down at his
handiwork. The legs were smooth and shiny - Nair was a
wonderful thing - and the bikini line trimmed to a slender
little ‘V.’ The pits were shaved and it was almost time for
him to rinse the five-minute conditioner out of his hair.
His skin felt tingly and soft from the exfoliator he’d applied.
Bret gasped in shock. What had he just done? Washing his hair
roughly and scrubbing his face with both hands, he realized
that in his zone-out he’d shaved his armpits, crotch and legs
without even thinking. Was this girl stuff starting to warp
his mind somehow?
He hopped out of the shower quickly and scrubbed his skin
dry - a very uncomfortable process, given the pampering
he’d just given his skin. Red and kind of raw, he kicked
the clothes he’d worn that morning and went into the bedroom
in search of something a little more unisex. His
still-throbbing erection was going to be a bit of a problem.
Rummaging through one of the shelves in the closet, he
groaned. No boxers, no briefs, no nothing. Just row upon
row of lacy, feminine panties. Selecting a pair of pink
cotton hi-rise panties from the stack - they had ‘Blossom’
from the Powerpuff Girls on the ass, but Bret couldn’t see
any others that would make him feel any less ridiculous - he
slid them up his hairless legs (which was a rather pleasant
feeling, some part of him that wasn’t in a blind panic
noticed) and began rummaging around for clothes. He finally
had to settle on a little yellow ‘baby’ tee with the
Playboy Bunny on the front and a baggy pair of ‘London Jean’
overalls which hid his shiny, silky legs.
He shoved his glasses onto his nose only to find that while
the prescription hadn’t changed, they were now tiny little
‘Radar O’Reilly’ glasses with lightweight lenses in a chic,
feminine style.
Hoping he didn’t look like too much of an imbecile, he
fished through the sea of shoes and found a pair of little
black ‘flip-flops’ with a rattan insole which seemed to
fit all right. He had to get out of that place. It was
making him crazy. Maybe things would be all right at work.
He decided to make a dash for the office and hope that
things were normal there.
Grabbing his little black leather purse from beside the
telephone, Bret dashed out the door and towards his car.
Slider, from his nest in the laundry basket, looked on
amusedly before tucking a paw beneath his chin and catching
a much-needed nap.
* * *
Bret must have walked past it and back ten times before he
checked in the purse - he’d actually grabbed a purse on the
way out the door - for the keys. Something was really wrong.
His parking place - slip number 53, where he’d been parking
since he moved into this complex two years ago - where his
dirty blue Chevy Malibu should have been slowly leaking its
oil onto the pavement was instead occupied by a late-model
red Volkswagen Cabrio that was washed and waxed to gleaming
perfection. The grey interior was spotless under the raised
ragtop.
Bret looked at his keys. Gone was the simple ring with the
keys for his car, his mom and dad’s place, his apartment,
the mailbox, the laundry room and his safe-deposit box. Now
he had a thick brass ring on which were threaded other
keyrings, some that contained no keys at all. There was a
rabbits’ foot and a little picture-gazer from a local theme
park, a leather holster containing pepper spray, and -
sure enough - a key to a Volkswagen.
He opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. Oddly
enough, the mirrors, seat and wheel were adjusted perfectly
to him. The new Cabrio was gassed up and only had eleven
thousand miles on it - almost new. Even though it was kind
of a ‘girly’ car (but what in his life wasn’t girly right
now?), Bret had never gotten to ride in a car quite so nice.
He rummaged around, acquainting himself with all the
amenities - particularly the CD player. Although the
selection was not to Bret’s tastes - he didn’t like
Madonna or the Beastie Boys and he certainly didn’t care
for any of the techno groups in the car - he did manage
to find an Indigo Girls CD that he remembered liking back
in college.
Since he couldn’t be sure when he was going to wake up and
all of this was going to be gone, he decided to make the
most of having a decent car while he still could.
He was just lowering the automatic top when Mrs. Kennedy
from upstairs walked by on the sidewalk and made direct eye
contact. No time to hide or pretend that he hadn’t seen
her - Bret set his mind to the instantaneous fabrication
of some explanation as to why he was sitting in a little
red convertible with a tiny little Playboy Bunny tee which
didn’t cover his navel and a pair of ladies’ overalls,
fussing with the Audrey Hepburn cats’-eye prescription
sunglasses he’d found in the console, just as the Indigo
Girls CD started up.
“Uh…” Bret stammered.
“Hi, there, honey? You off to work again?” she asked brightly.
“Uh… yeah. Work,” Bret managed, ever the soul of eloquence.
“You work too hard, sweetie. It’s Saturday. You should be out
having fun.”
Bret managed a stunned smile. Did Mrs. Kennedy not even notice
how ridiculous he looked? “I know, Mrs. Kennedy. But it’s
important.”
The older woman smiled a patient smile. “Of course, dear. Well,
be careful.”
“Thanks.”
The woman continued along the sidewalk as if nothing were out
of the ordinary - she hadn’t even mentioned the new car.
Something was definitely wrong. And it was time to find out
what it was.
* * *
Bret pulled into the first available parking spot he could find
and jogged as quickly as the little platform sandals he’d grabbed
would allow. He dug in the little black purse for his ID and
security badge once he came to the magnetically locked door.
It was amazing how much shit was crammed into that tiny little
purse. There were as many cosmetics in the purse as there were
on the bathroom counter at home, a hairbrush, several
half-consumed packs of gum, at least four mirrors, several
pounds of wadded tissue paper, a ladies’ fold-over
wallet-slash-checkbook, a little plastic sleeve containing
still more photographs of people he had never seen before, a
pack of skinny Capri 120 cigarettes, fifteen or so disposable
lighters, a Palm VI personal digital assistant, some cassette
tapes, one of those Nokia cellphones with the interchangeable
colored covers and finally his security badge.
He clipped it to the front pocket of the overalls after sliding
it through the card reader and opening the door.
The office was still the office, at least - that much hadn’t
changed. He wandered through the maze of cubicles until he
found his own. Except that the nameplate on the wall wasn’t
the customary B. Reed which had adorned that wall for all
the time he’d been there. His pictures from the Big Bend
national park, his college diploma, his little pull-out
poster of Stevie Ray Vaughan, his die-cast model ’65 Mustang
fast-back, all gone.
Instead it was one of those cubes dedicated to the display
of action figures. The nameplate read S. Krishnamurthy.
Sunil? Sunil was sitting here now?
“Hey, Bret, what’s happening?” a familiar voice said from
behind him. Bret whirled, prepared to explain why he was in
women’s clothing, carrying a purse to the best of his
limited ability with untruth.
It was John Coleridge, his oldest friend at the company. He
was in his customary cutoffs with Birkenstock sandals, a
concert tee and baseball cap.
“John! Should’ve expected you to be here on a Saturday,”
Bret said shakily as John gave him the once-over-lightly.
“Listen, uh, about the purse…”
“Looking for Sunil?” John asked, not seeming to notice
Bret’s appearance.
“Uh, I… I don’t…”
“He said he was coming in today but he didn’t say when,”
John said. “You might want to try back this afternoon. He
usually likes to sleep late on Saturdays.”
“Hey, John… do you notice anything unusual about me?” Bret
asked carefully.
John scratched his chin. “Not really. Did you cut your hair
or something?”
Bret smiled, halfway between hysterical relief and genuine
fear. No one seemed to notice what was happening. Which
either meant that it wasn’t really happening - this was all
some kind of sick dream brought on by pepperoni pizza before
bedtime - or that Bret was well over the line between genius
and insanity.
“No,” he said, perplexed. “Forget I said it.”
“Okay,” John said, turning back towards his own cubicle,
opening the soda he’d gotten from the development fridge.
“See you later. I’ll tell Sunil you stopped by.”
“Sure,” Bret said, turning around again. John acted as if
Sunil had always sat here. Which may be true, given the
accumulation of paper and detritus which adorned the shelves
and desktop. But if Sunil was sitting here, then where the
hell did Bret work now? What the hell was going on?
He was walking out of the cube-maze in a daze, trying to
make everything make sense somehow. He turned at the end
of the row, passing by the little offices along the wall
that held the managers and the marketing staff.
Past Dee Dee Carter’s office, the VP of Marketing at the
software company, then the cubicles of the rest of her
marketing and communications staff - Eric Lewis, Ginger
Simmons, Hayley Sparks, Jennifer Traynor and Christina
Cullen - all the ‘marketing bimbos’ at the company who
the developers made fun of to mask the fact that they
desired them so much sexually.
Bret himself had enjoyed several long, informative gazes
at Ginger and Jennifer when they’d been bent over in their
short skirts to get something from the bottom drawers of
their filing cabinets.
He walked past all the offices, ticking the names off in
his head. D. Carter. E. Lewis. G. Simmons. H. Sparks. J.
Traynor. B. Reed. C. Cullen.
He stopped dead. B. Reed? That was where he was working
now? In a cubicle on Bimbo Row? How the hell did that
happen? He went in, looking around carefully. Some of
his things were there - the diploma was on the wall and
the die-cast Mustang and the pictures from Big Bend. But
now there was a little vase full of flowers and another
little teddy bear, plus a couple of Escher prints and some
Far Side cartoons.
The papers collected on the desk were all press releases
and trade show brochures, schedules and lists of phone
numbers of people he didn’t know. The books were all about
technical and persuasive writing, none of his tried-and-true
programming texts which had helped him so many times. Even
the computer was different - none of his development tools
were on the desktop where he’d left them, replaced by things
like Outlook and Word and Excel and PowerPoint and hundreds
of cheesy clip-art libraries.
The desktop wallpaper was a scanned image of Marilyn Monroe,
one of the art prints of her sitting in a convertible and
blowing a kiss to the camera.
Bret sat down heavily, blowing out his breath in a long
exhalation. This was all some horrible dream, he decided.
It had to be. These kinds of things just didn’t spontaneously
happen. Lives didn’t just radically change and spin around
like this in the space of a night. He was sure he was going
to wake up soon.
But until then, it was time to accentuate the positive. At
least he had dreamed himself up a new car. And it was time
to take it out on the road.
* * *
It was about noon by the time Bret decided that his whirlwind
tour of the freeways should come to an end. He decided to
splurge - a hamburger sounded really good to him right now -
and stopped by the ATM to grab a little bit of cash from his
worn-out bank account to treat himself to a McLunch. He
fussed through the little black purse again, pulling out
handfuls of useless junk until he found his ATM card.
Hoping that his PIN number hadn’t magically transmogrified
with the rest of his life, he stuffed the card in the slot
and punched in the numbers, getting out his last 20 dollars
before the next paycheck. He sighed, wondering how he was
going to make the money last another four or five days.
Strange that he still looked forward to payday - even though
he only had the nice balance in his account for a day before
he wrote the immense checks to MasterCard and his old alma
mater, it was still nice to see a couple zeros.
He took the cash, card and receipt from the machine and
stepped back to the car. He gave the receipt a cursory
look-over - an old, old habit - and nearly missed the step
off the curb. Fourteen hundred dollars? There must be some
mistake! He didn’t make that much money with one check, and
he never had more than about $40 in the account once all
his checks cleared the bank.
Checking the receipt number against the number on his ATM
card, they matched. He marched over to the machine again,
re-inserted his card and checked his balances. The machine
still maintained with electronic surety that his checking
account held $1413.77 and that now, his depleted savings
account (which was only there to cover the checks he wrote
that brought him overlimit) was the proud owner of over
three thousand dollars in funds.
Impossible! There wouldn’t have been this much detail - not
even in a dream. Usually his dreams were oriented around the
actions, not the details. He dreamed about Rebecca
Romijn-Stamos with a can of whipped cream, not the
nutritional details on the side of the can! This couldn’t
be a dream, or some whacked-out hallucination. It was real.
He was really wearing women’s clothes, he really did have a
cubicle in the marketing department at work, he really was
driving a red convertible and he really had all that money.
Stunned, his lunch forgotten, he sat numbly in the car again
and steered it for home.
* * *
Slider watched his human with a mixture of curiosity and
feline worry as he sat, dumbstruck, on the new striped couch
staring blankly at the wall. Even his best efforts at
lovability were received with a comatose stare and a
distracted stroke - not even a decent ear-scratching. Losing
patience, Slider hopped from the couch and stood brazenly
on the counter, trying to elicit the wonderful yelling and
chasing and water-pistol firing that jumping to the counter
or sharpening the claws on the couch entailed.
The human didn’t notice. Did other cats have this problem
with their pets?
Slider decided that the only thing left to do was to use the
most powerful weapon in his entire feline arsenal. The
curl-up-and-writhe-adorably-on-the-floor method. Seldom
used in this household - Slider preferred subtlety to the
direct, frontal assault - but evidently necessary to snap
his human out of the stupor he sat in.
Flopping on the carpet, Slider curled his feet and rolled
onto his back, regarding the human with round eyes as he
rubbed the top of his head on the carpet, flattening his ears.
The rolling from one side to the other would come a bit later,
after the bait was taken. There were definite rules governing
such tactics, and Slider was a stickler for rules.
Slider allowed himself a flash of satisfaction. The human
moved, looked down, and noticed how utterly adorable he was
behaving, and the mask slipped. The human did that strange
corners-of-the-mouth expression that bared all the teeth.
“Am I not paying enough attention to you, kid? I’m sorry.”
The human crept onto the floor, legs curled beneath it, and
began to stroke and scratch all the proper spots to elicit
the purr. Slider obliged full-throatedly, rewarding the
human with the roll-from-one-side-to-the-next maneuver.
“It’s been a strange, strange day, Slide,” the human said.
“My whole life is upside down right now. I don’t know what
happened. I mean, last night everything was normal and then
I fell asleep and everything was different. The last thing I
remember was petting your tubby little belly and reading
comics. Right after I said that I wished…”
The stroking stopped. Slider turned right-side-up and looked
at the human strangely.
“I said I wished that things could be different,” Bret said,
realization dawning. “I said I wished I could stop caring
about things, like the party crowd at college. And then I
thought about that party that I went to at the Tri-Delt
sorority my junior year. That was where all the party girls
were. I remember thinking how lucky they had it, with their
parents putting them through school and their easy degree
plans.”
Bret sank his head into his hands. “And now I’m turning out
just like them,” he moaned into his palms. “Be careful what
you wish for, Bret. Be careful what you wish for.”
* * *
Bret sat and wept silently for a little while before he got
his wits collected. Slider was curled up next to him, lending
support of the warm and furry variety. It made Bret feel a
little bit better. Finally, with an effort, he stood. It was
time to figure out something about what the hell was going on
here.
He dropped the forgotten purse next to the telephone and
noticed that the high-end digital telephone (much better
than his Goodwill cordless) was blinking its message light.
Bret pushed it, ignoring the electronic “Q*bert” voice
announcing that he had two new messages.
“Hey, Bret, it’s Kaylee. So are you in or out? Expansion,
tonight, about nine. Everybody’s going to be there. Call me.
Ciao.”
Bret thought for a second. Kaylee was evidently one of his
friends now, and she had invited a group to go to one of the
most upscale and popular dance clubs in town tonight.
Ordinarily, Bret would have been sweating the cover charge,
but not after a peek at the bank balance.
The machine beeped again. “Hey, Bret, it’s Becca. I called
all those people on your list and they said they’ll all be
there next Saturday. I was just going to order a deli plate
or something to feed them. Give me a call later and let me
know what else we need. See ya!”
Okay, no mention of any Becca and Bret hadn’t checked out the
Palm Pilot or a calendar or anything yet, so he didn’t know
what was suddenly going on in his life. It was time to do a
little snooping around.
First was the little box next to the computer on the table,
full of bills and check stubs. How the hell was this possible?
According to the pay stubs, a marketing bimbo was apparently
making more than a developer. But they didn’t do anything, at
least not that Bret could comprehend. They chatted and had
meetings and talked on the phone, but he never saw them actually
do anything. And it turns out that he was making nearly ten
grand a year more than he was actually building the company’s
product? Did the other developers know about this? It would
cause a riot in the cubes.
The computer was a mystery. Lots of text documents and some
scheduling stuff, a few games and the obligatory Marilyn
Monroe desktop wallpaper. Apparently, whoever he was, he wrote
a lot. There were more text files than anything else on the
computer.
The Palm Pilot was a much bigger jackpot. It held all the
phone numbers and contact information for the people who
were suddenly calling. Becca could only be Rebecca York, and
there were about seven numbers after that name - home, work,
cellphone, pager, Rick’s house (whoever the hell Rick was -
probably Becca’s boyfriend).
Scarily enough, this new life Bret had landed in required him
to know every person and phone number in the tri-state area.
The schedule on the Pilot was utterly Byzantine, filled with
cryptic meetings, conference calls and after-work activities.
The next Saturday that the mysterious Becca was talking about
was a ‘reading,’ whatever that was (God, he hoped it wasn’t
some New Age bullshit) at the apartment complex meeting room
at 3.00 in the afternoon. Unable to shake the feeling that
he was an invader in this life and the rightful owner might
walk in at any moment, Bret dutifully entered the information
from Becca into the schedule.
Maybe whoever it was who was supposed to be living this life
would thank him, later, for ‘lifesitting’ so responsibly.
He stepped out onto the apartment’s little balcony to see that
his venerable lawn chair was still in place, but now surrounded
by a lush, green little garden of potted plants. Two
birdfeeders and a dream-catcher hung from the eave. There
was even a little plastic outdoor table next to the lawn
chair with a couple of candle stubs and a coffee can full
of cigarette butts.
Slider walked out onto the balcony behind him, sniffing the
outdoor air with some interest. Bret slumped into the lawn
chair heavily and the cat jumped into his lap, squinting in
the afternoon sun.
“Jesus,” Bret breathed. “I wish I knew what the hell was
going on.”
The cat only purred as Bret dug in the purse, looking for
more clues as to what was going on, who this person was who
left their life behind for him to wake up in. The cellphone
was crammed with as many phone numbers as the Palm Pilot and
seemed to be charged up and ready to go - Bret had noticed
the car charger in the little red Cabrio when he’d driven it.
The wallet was stuffed - a checkbook, literally hundreds of
ATM and credit card receipts - mostly to stores like Rave,
Wet Seal and Charlotte Russe, the stores that sold the more
daring outfits he’d seen in his infrequent jaunts through.
There were also a whole lot of movie ticket stubs, which was
a good thing. There was his drivers’ license and Social
Security card, an insurance card for the Cabrio and his ATM
card.
But now there was a platinum MasterCard which he’d never seen
before. There were also charge cards for Dillard’s and Foley’s
department stores and one for Victoria’s Secret and a Texaco
gasoline card as well. All in his name, even though he’d never
applied for any of them.
The pictures were also a mystery. Lots of people he’d never met
and places he’d never seen - pictures taken at theme parks and
on the beach, some pictures taken in a theater on a large,
lavishly designed set for a play. But there was one picture
with him in it - wearing a cap and gown and holding a college
diploma.
Beside him was a smiling, grey-haired woman and a tall man with
a rounded belly and silver hair. They had arms around him,
hugging him tight, and all three were smiling ear-to-ear,
laughing just for laughing’s sake.
He’d had a similar picture taken on his graduation day, with
his parents.
“Oh, God,” Bret breathed. “Are these my parents now?”
He tried to summon the image of his own father and mother -
his father a foreman at an auto plant and his mother an events
planner at the YWCA - but he couldn’t manage to get any
picture in his mind. The images were hazy and indistinct. But
when he tried to remember events - graduations, birthday
parties and the like - they all sprang into his mind with
perfect clarity, but instead of his balding father with the
huge forearms and his heavyset mother with the curly brown
hair and the librarian glasses, he could only picture the
silver-haired man and the slight little woman from the picture
in the purse.
They smiled a lot, and laughed a lot, like his real parents
had. He remembered a happy childhood, for the most part, and
there weren’t the memories he had about the plant shutdown
and his father’s layoff, the starting work at 15 in a local
bar just to help his mom and dad with the groceries. Working
his ass off just to get into a college, and then having to
work his way through.
He didn’t remember his mother’s hysterectomy and the endless
headaches trying to offset the medical bills. Instead he
remembered getting a car for his sixteenth birthday and
working summers as a lifeguard and a hairstylist at a beauty
salon, going out with friends, going to his junior and senior
proms and cheerleading practices after school for the
championships in Daytona, Florida…
Waitaminnit. Cheerleading practices? Bret had played baseball.
One of the few scholarships he’d gotten was for his work as
an All-Region second baseman. His grades had been okay, but
not nearly enough to get him anything academic.
But then how did he distinctly remember getting straight A’s
and a nice scholarship to the university? And cheering for
the football and basketball teams in college? Those memories
were crystal clear.
Bret decided to take a cue from Slider, who was curled up and
sleeping in his lap, and stop worrying about it for a little
while. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs,
starting a little at the feel of his hairless legs against
the denim.
Now why in the hell had he done that? Shaving his legs was a
real strange thing for him to do. He’d been standing under the
warm water and letting his mind drift, and the next thing he
knew he’d just done it. Kinda like now. The sunshine and the
soft, warm cat in his lap, listening to the birds in the
treetops. It lulled him a little bit.
He snapped back to reality with a little jump, realizing what
he was doing. The cat was gone from his lap, back inside, and
here he sat on the balcony, with a glass of diet soda sitting
beside him, a copy of Vogue open in his lap and one of the
super-skinny and long Capri cigarettes between his lips. He
exhaled and a pale blue streamer of smoke escaped his lips.
Normally he hated smoking - he never really tried but once and
it had left him coughing and choking for nearly an hour
afterwards - but now it seemed to be the most natural thing
in the world to him. It even tasted kind of good.
Bret decided to try another drag, and the bitter acrid smoke
made him almost gag. He tossed the butt into the coffee can,
trying to clear the tears from his eyes, and noticed the bottle
of pink nail polish sitting open next to the ashtray. Looking
himself over, he now noticed that his fingers and toes were
adorned with several coats of pink polish. He was even holding
his hands as if he was waiting for them to dry.
God! He zoned out for half a second and the next thing he knew
he’d done his toes, nails, and had smoked a cigarette and
read Vogue until they dried! What the hell was happening to
him? It seemed like every time he let his mind drift, the
minute he stopped thinking about what was going on, he went
and did something like shave his legs or paint his toenails.
He decided to try and keep his mind focused as sharply as
possible, so that he didn’t have any more lapses. There was
no telling what would happen if he didn’t keep himself sharp.
Maybe a few hours of television, something distracting like
that.
He turned on the tube and flipped channels for a while. He
found ‘A Bridge Too Far’ on cable, a good manly-man war movie
that might be able to drive the girly-ness from his thoughts
and life for a little while. Besides, it was a good film,
just a little long. He tried to remember if he’d ever made
it all the way through - it did kinda drag in the middle,
and sometimes he just kinda dozed - not asleep, but not
fully awake either. He was just reflecting on that when
he felt his eyelids start to get a little heavy.
* * *
He came back to reality in fire-edged darkness, a persistent
buzz in his ears underneath the sounds of the Wallflowers.
He smelled something akin to coffee. His skin was warm - very
warm, hot in fact - and he felt as if he was enclosed somehow.
There were strange tensions on his skin as well, not
uncomfortable, just pulls and tugs where he wasn’t used to
feeling them.
Suddenly the fire at the edge of the darkness faded and the
hum was gone. Moving slowly, Bret pushed away the weight
hovering atop him and felt his face. The darkness was caused
by an opaque pair of what felt like goggles. He stripped them
off and got his bearings.
He was laying in a tanning bed in a little salon room. His
overalls, shoes and shirt were in a pile next to the door as
well as the little black bag which had been hanging on the
doorknob in his bedroom. The strange tugging was due to the
string bikini which stretched across his broad male chest
and the little thong which was nestled in the crack of his
behind, the little red triangle of fabric stretched tight
across his cock.
The coffee smell was obviously the tanning accelerator he
was wearing - the tube laying next to the tanning bed was
called ‘Cappuccino.’
How in the hell did he get here? Oh, yes. Of course. His
concentration had drifted as he’d dozed during the movie on
television and he wound up here. The clock on the wall said
four p.m. - a good two hours had passed. Bret searched his
memories as best he could as he smoothed the cool after-sun
aloe gel on his cooling skin, which was now a very rich,
healthy mocha color.
He noticed that his hands were different, too - his fingernails
now sported acrylic extensions with a sexy French manicure
applied. They were buffed very shiny and glossy, square-cut
and about an inch from cuticle to tip. Bret idly wondered how
he was going to be able to do anything with these claws, no
matter how good they looked.
He remembered getting up and taking his tanning bag from the
door, trotting down the stairs to the car and taking off.
He’d gone to Nails Exotique first, getting the extensions
and the manicure because he remembered deciding that the old
set was no good and not even the polish he’d applied had
been able to save them. He decided on square-cut this time
because she saw them on the Cosmo cover model and thought
they were really cute. The little Vietnamese girl who’d done
her nails had smiled broadly when Bret had tipped her and
gone out to her car to head towards Tropic Tan.
He flashed his pass - a lifetime membership, of course - and
gotten a bed without waiting. He’d stripped to his skin and
put on the little red thong bikini he’d gotten two months ago
out of the Venus Swimwear catalog, rubbed his skin down with
Cappuccino Tanning Accelerator lotion and set the bed for a
twenty-minute bake. He’d put on the new Wallflowers album,
which he’d bought on cassette specifically to play in the
little stereo in the tanning bed, slipped on the headphones
and just relaxed.
No cellphone, no schedule, nobody who even knew where he was.
Tanning was the best. He went four times a week, he remembered,
and it was the time when no one was allowed to intrude on his
life. It was his great solace.
Once he was covered liberally with the soothing aloe gel, he
threw on the little Playboy baby tee and overalls over the
bikini. He slipped into the sandals and stuffed his underwear,
eye goggles and tanning lotions into his tanning bag. He left
the salon quickly, stopping only to wave back at the tan,
shapely girl at the front desk who greeted him by name. Bret
hopped into the little red Cabrio and started the engine,
finding that the Indigo Girls CD had been replaced by
Madonna’s “Immaculate Collection.” Bret fumbled for the stop
button - he really disliked Madonna’s music, even though he
had a very powerful memory of how much he’d liked it in high
school and college. He tried the radio, but the presets were
all tuned to the ‘mix’ and ‘alternative’ stations. Finally, he
manually tuned in his favorite ‘classic rock’ channel and
tried to let the ‘Stones calm him down.
He pulled into traffic and headed back towards the apartment,
this time pausing at the Jack in the Box to pick up something
to eat - his stomach was growling by this point, and he still
had the twenty dollars he’d pulled from the ATM earlier today.
As he pulled into the drive-thru line, a pickup seriously in
need of a muffler blasted by him. Bret distinctly heard a wolf
whistle out the passenger side window as it hit the street in
a chirp of tires.
Great. Now he had cowboy-wannabes whistling at him. He ordered
his usual burger and fries and pulled to the window. The little
pimply-faced teenager on the register gave him a
once-over-not-too-lightly and spoke only to Bret’s chest. Bret
grabbed the food almost violently - tearing the bag a little
with his nail extensions - and slammed the little convertible
into gear, gunning it into traffic without even checking out
how badly the teenager had desecrated his order.
He walked in the apartment to the jangling accompaniment of
a ringing phone. Dropping the sack onto the coffee table and
the waiting nose of a very curious Slider, Bret picked up the
phone and pressed ‘Talk’ with the tip of a carefully-manicured
thumbnail.
“Hello?”
“Hey, baby girl, what’s up?” a very cheerful, bubbly voice
asked him.
“Who is this?” Bret asked.
“It’s only your best friend,” the voice replied. “You know,
Kaylee? God, you are so blonde sometimes. Who did you think
it was?”
Bret cleared his throat. “Uh, I was expecting a call from
Becca. Sorry.”
“So, you coming out tonight? It’s going to be a good time.
Kaitlyn and Ashlea are already here, and Jana and Lori are
on their way.”
Bret closed his eyes, trying to shut out the very clear
pictures of people he’d never seen before that popped into
his head as Kaylee named them off.
“I’m not feeling very good,” Bret attempted. “I think I’m
just going to take a bath and call it a night.”
“Oh my God, you are being such a grandma these days,” Kaylee
chided. “Get your ass up, slap on some makeup, put on that
little sequined dress you bought and get out here.”
“I really don’t think…”
“We’re not leaving without you, Bret,” Kaylee demanded.
There was a long, considering pause before: “Do you need me
to get you anything?”
Bret rubbed a hand through his hair, almost impaling his
scalp with the unfamiliar nails. “No, thanks, I’m okay,”
he said. “I just want to take a bath and go to bed.”
Kaylee’s voice took on a conspirational tone. “I get it.
What’s his name?”
Bret was mystified. “What’s whose name?”
“The guy you have over there. The only way I know that
Bret Reed would miss a night of drinking and dancing is
if there was a big, hunky man involved.”
“There’s no guy,” Bret said, a little annoyed. “I told you,
I don’t feel good.”
Kaylee giggled. “Oh, well, whatever. We’ll be at Expansion
if you change your mind, baby girl. Call me, okay? Ciao.”
Bret couldn’t even answer before the line went dead. God,
what pushy friends this new life had to offer! He set the
phone back in the cradle and took out his meal, clicking on
the television and scanning some channels until he found
something to eat by. He knew that the classic movie channel
was going to be running a Marx Brothers marathon tonight,
so he started in that direction.
He looked down at his half-finished burger. He’d zoned out
again and had managed the meal - Bret didn’t even remember
tasting it - and was watching the ‘Fashion Emergency’ show
on the E! network. He dimly remembered feeling envy for the
models, and expressing strong opinions about some of the
clothes that they showed.
He tried to take another bite of the burger but couldn’t.
The smell of the grease and meat just turned him off. Same
with the fries. He must’ve been hungry for something else.
Putting the burger on a plate and covering it with Saran
Wrap, he saved it for later - never waste food, not on his
salary - and before he knew it he’d lit another of the long,
super-slim Capris and was puffing away contentedly on the
couch, watching the fashion show.
Bret was nearly panicked. He hadn’t even dozed off that time,
or lost focus. He’d just done it because it felt so natural.
He always had a cigarette after dinner, ever since he started
smoking regularly. He vividly remembered sneaking his first
cigarette out behind the girl’s locker room with Cindy Hanson
and Stacey Johnson after junior high cheerleading practice.
They’d almost gotten sick, but it was just so naughty and
sexy-looking and it made them feel so grown-up that they’d
kept at it.
They both slept over at Cindy’s house that next Friday and
had paid Cindy’s big brother to buy them cigarettes and beer.
They’d sat out by Cindy’s parents’ pool and smoked the whole
pack of Marlboro Lights and drank two cans of Miller apiece.
They’d all had headaches the next morning, but they hadn’t
gotten sick or anything. After that, Bret had put his five
dollars in the collection when Cindy’s brother had bought
cigarettes every week after that.
But none of that had ever happened. Bret could dimly remember
that he’d sneaked a cigar with his best friend Anthony Butcher,
but his dad had caught them and given them both a spanking.
He’d never been popular enough to get to know any of the girls
like Cindy Hanson or Stacey Johnson. He’d jerked off while
fantasizing about them, just like all the other boys in his
grade, but he’d never exchanged more than a ‘hi’ with them
for the whole time they were in school together.
Bret looked down. He’d put out the cigarette in an ashtray
on the coffee table and was putting some kind of a moisturizer
on his lips. His lips were always dry after tanning, he knew,
even though there was no way he could know what happened to
his lips after he tanned because he’d only done it for the
first time today.
“What the hell is happening to me, Slide?” he asked.
The cat only wore his ‘wise’ expression and didn’t answer.
* * *
Bret looked up from the computer. He’d put himself to the
task of trying to zone out while still focusing on writing
a short biography, some way to figure out just whose life
this was supposed to be, anyway. The bio wasn’t too long
or involved, just the basics of where and when. Parochial
school until he was thirteen, then junior high at Madison
and on to High School at T.C. Jester. He worked summers
as a lifeguard at the YWCA pool and also helping out as
an apprentice hairstylist at a beauty salon near campus.
He’d gotten an academic and cheerleading scholarship to
the university and had met and fallen in love with Richard
Klein there, dating him for two years until they broke up.
It was Bret’s first real heartbreak. He’d dated a great
deal in high school, but never gotten more serious than
a heavy pet session, and she’d never fallen in love like
that.
He needed nearly a year to recover from Richard and had
sworn off men for a while, concentrating on his
cheerleading and his double major - communications and
film. He’d graduated cum laude with two Bachelor of Arts
degrees and had moved to the city to find a job. He’d
hired on with GeoTech two years ago in marketing and had
just been promoted a few months back to Public Relations
Director. Ginger, Jennifer and Eric all worked for him
now. He was also about to make a move into writing and
directing his first short film, which explained the ‘reading’
next Saturday.
His parents’ names were still Marla and Howard Reed, but
Bret’s mother now worked as a professor of literature at
the local community college and his father was a consultant
for Andersen Consulting, as well as being a Methodist
minister.
Great, thought Bret. Now I’m a preacher’s kid, to boot.
But one thing was made clear in the short little bio.
Whatever part of Bret had written it, whatever ghost
was possessing him, had clearly stated that pledging
and joining the Delta-Delta-Delta sorority at the
university was the best thing that ever happened to him,
and his friends Becca, Kaylee and Monica lived in the
same city and they were still as close as ever.
He deleted the file and closed the laptop with a sigh.
* * *
Slider had long since lost interest in the human’s antics
as he’d gone through every square inch of the apartment,
looking for clues to identity. After pouncing masterfully
on the shoestrings of his human’s sneakers and investigating
all of the boxes, bags and other containers which were being
dragged out of the closet, Slider curled up in the last
square of waning sunlight on the table outside and tried to
catch some much-needed sleep.
After a short and very refreshing nap, Slider began a short
search for his human, hoping for a bite of dinner, perhaps,
or some more scratching behind the ears (ever since the
human had lengthened its claws, the ear-scratching was
heavenly). He found the human sitting on the strange chair
in the water room, head in hands and making strange
noises. Leaping effortlessly onto the counter, he summoned
the human’s notice with a butt of the head against its
shoulder.
“Slider,” the human said miserably. “Will you look at me?
Jesus. I wasn’t thinking and all of a sudden I sat down to
pee. I sat down to pee.”
Slider continued his head-butting onslaught, even going so
far as to add the purr, before the human caught his subtle
suggestion and took up a casual ear-scratching.
“I can’t even remember what my real parents look like,” moaned
the human. “I don’t remember what my first girlfriend looked
like, only that her name was Angie Garver. I’m scared, Slide.
Really fucking scared.”
The human got up and touched the shiny lever that summoned
the loud ‘whooshing’ sound. Slider laid his ears back at the
affront. The human was standing in front of the strange
window where the other human who looked just like him
lived, the one who had a cat who looked exactly like
Slider and they copied one another’s actions perfectly.
Slider’s human was examining his face intently.
“I don’t look different. I don’t feel different. I don’t
understand why everything around me is different. My life
doesn’t fit me anymore. It may have sucked, but at least
it was mine.”
“Or is this life the one that’s mine?” he asked the cat,
scratching the forehead absently with long nails. “When I
stop worrying about it, I live it like it’s the one I’ve
always had. It’s a pretty nice life, from what I’ve seen
of it.”
“So is it my life doesn’t fit me, or I don’t fit my life?”
he asked the mirror once again.
“Everybody sees me as a girl,” he decided. “Mrs. Kennedy,
John Coleridge, nobody seems to notice that I’m a guy
wearing women’s clothes and stuck in a woman’s life. Hell,
that guy at the Jack-in-the-Crack even whistled at me.
So if nobody seems to notice that I’m a guy, why should
I be worrying about it so much. It’s not like I was using
my cock or anything like that when this happened. It’s
not that great a loss.”
He looked at the cat, suddenly. “So whaddaya think, Slide?
Think I should go out dancing? Take this new life for a
spin?”
He ruffled the cat’s fur playfully. “I thought you were
going to say that. Going out it is.”
* * *
Bret managed to find a version of ‘autopilot,’ as he’d
started calling it, where he could still observe and think
and even have some measure of control. The best he could
describe it was putting his mind in the strange, rising
state right before a sneeze, and the ‘other life’ seemed
to take over the habits, movements and provide the basic
knowledge that Bret needed, while leaving him still in
control.
Stepping out of the day’s overalls and t-shirt, Bret went
to the closet and rifled through the racks, trusting his
new instincts to stop him when he came to something
promising.
He finally decided on a little pink sequined tube-dress
with spaghetti straps and a little gauzy see-through pink
jacket with long sleeves. Bret also chose a little
strapless demi-bra and matching thong panties from the
drawer along with a pair of dark pantyhose with a glittery
finish. He slid into the panties and bra (which still
looked admittedly weird on his male body) with the ease
borne of his new instincts. Sitting on the bed, he glided
the pantyhose up his hairless legs - a wonderfully erotic
feeling, he discovered - and managed to get them snug against
his crotch over the panties.
After that, the dress went on over his head and he had to do
a little ‘shimmy’ to get it to slither down over his body.
A little tugging and twisting got it straightened and seated
properly across the nonexistent cleavage. The dress could
hardly be qualified as a body covering. The hem was only a
few inches below his crotch and there was no back to speak
of - his entire upper body and shoulders were bare. The
little gossamer jacket probably wasn’t going to help, but
the instincts told him to leave it on the bed for the time
being.
Bret draped a towel around his neck and went back to the
bathroom. Letting his instincts keep control while he
tweezed his own eyebrows was a real triumph of willpower.
But once all the stray hairs were removed in a thankfully
quick time, Bret found his hands taking up concealer and
sponge and applying strange shapes on his face - just
under the eyes, along the ridge of the nose, under the
chin and eyebrows, on the forehead.
Then a little darker stuff under the cheeks and around the
temples. Bret then found himself attacking the whole thing
with a triangular sponge, blending the whole thing into his
skin to create contours and shading. A little crème
foundation to even things up. After all that paint, Bret
was sure his face would have felt sticky and oily, but the
application was so masterful that he could hardly tell it
was there at all, and most of that was smell.
Next he loaded up a fat, soft brush with purplish-pink
powder and blew off the excess. He applied it to his
temples and cheeks, dusting it lightly across the forehead
and chin as well. It gave him a rosy, healthy glow. Next -
and Bret was sure to stay far away from interfering with
the instincts here - he lined his eyes with a black pencil,
which looked entirely too sharp to his male sensibilities
to hold that close to his eye. He lined the inner parts of
his eyelids with a heavy black line and then used his finger
to smudge the line into his lashes a little bit. Then he
traced a strange contour around his eyes with dark grey
shadow with a little shimmer to it and smudged that as well,
giving his eyes a dramatic, smoky, sultry look that Bret
really found sexy.
He then applied a medieval torture device to his eyelashes
that made them curl and applied a thick coating of black
mascara to his upper and lower lashes.
God, it looked incredible. Even his male face in the mirror
seemed more feminine, softer and infinitely more glamorous.
Bret had always believed that no man could ever pass
successfully for a woman without plastic surgery, but after
the magic he’d worked on his own, male-looking face, he
decided that perhaps he’d spoken in ignorance. Even his male
face looked beautiful. Just for a moment, he wondered what
those who saw his ‘other’ face would see.
Bret finished it all off with a thick application of
pinkish-purple lip pencil - first lining his lips and
then filling in - and a thick application of clear lip
gloss over that. Then he powdered the whole thing with a
huge, soft brush to set it in place. The cosmetics used -
powder, lip color, eye color and mascara, all went into
the little silver sequined clutch purse Bret had selected
to go with the outfit.
Next came the hair. Bret had always worn his short, but the
brushing, combing, spraying and moussing he went through
seemed to belie his short, shorn locks. After a strange
interval of watching his hands work on hair that didn’t
seem to be there, he dug in the jewelry boxes and came out
with several silvery bracelets and two enormous silver
hoops for his ears.
This should be interesting, Bret thought as he watched his
hands reaching up to insert the pierced posts into his
unpierced ears.
But the posts slid through the skin of his ear effortlessly -
as if there was nothing there! Bret took over from the
instincts for a moment and looked carefully at his other ear.
No hole for a piercing in sight. But the other earring slid
through the seemingly whole skin with no resistance and no
pain. Bret was mystified. The same thing happened when he
opened a pair of disposable contact lenses and slipped them
into his eye with a practiced motion, even though he’d never
worn contacts in his life.
Checking his appearance one last time, Bret nodded in
satisfaction and went back into the bedroom. He put on
the little gossamer jacket - which did nothing to cover
or even keep out a chill - and sat on the bed long enough
to strap on some sexy, hot pink platform shoes with the
contoured, ‘go-go’ heel.
Bret sighed. Now he knew that he’d have to let his instincts
run the night. If Bret Reed, man, tried to walk in these
things he’d fall and break his neck. But the ‘other’ Bret
didn’t seem to have the slightest bit of trouble - simply
by rolling his hips a little and taking smaller steps it
was effortless.
Bret threw keys, ID, phone and some cash into the tiny little
purse and scratched Slider a goodbye from his vantage on the
back of the loveseat. Hoping desperately that whatever
instinct guiding Bret knew how to dance, he walked out the
door and downstairs to the car for his first night out with
the ‘girls.’
* * *
He was decidedly lucky to find a parking place downtown at
all, much less one so close to the club. The line was out
the door and extending down the block admirably, full of men
and women dressed to the nines in the hopes of ‘hooking up’
tonight. Bret let his instincts do the driving and walked
along the line, hips swaying and heels clacking on the
sidewalk to the time of the thumping bass coming through the
walls of the club.
He made a beeline for a group of incredibly attractive,
talking girls about three-quarters of the way up to the door.
“Oh my God!” a tall brunette, dressed in a blue-and-yellow
tie-dye tube dress exclaimed when she saw Bret. She rushed
up, arms wide, and gathered Bret into a close hug which
caused her breasts to flatten deliciously against Bret’s
midsection. “I’m so glad you came! I was totally hoping you’d
change your mind.
Foggy recognition dawned on Bret’s mind. Kaylee Mitchell, her
college roommate in the Tri-Delt house. A trust-fund baby, a
business major, on the cheerleading squad and the dance team
with him for four years. Bret’s best friend.
The other girls in the group slowly filtered in through Bret’s
confusion. A smiling, bouncy girl with long brunette hair in a
leopard-print miniskirt and a black leather tube-top was Monica
Cavanaugh. She hugged Bret next, dragging him over into the line
to meet the rest of the group.
Tall, statuesque beauties all - Jana Roberts and Ashlea Cole
were the tall, tanned blue-eyed blondes, Kaitlyn and Lori
Straussmann - fraternal twin sisters, also Tri-Delts - were
willowy brunettes with huge, oblique brown eyes, and the last
girl - a short, pale beauty with a huge curly mound of
reddish-brown hair and sparkling green eyes - was someone
Bret didn’t know.
“Bret, this is Kimberlee. She just started working at the
salon with me last week and doesn’t know anybody,” Monica
explained.
Bret smiled and extended a hand. “Welcome to the Brat Pack,”
she said.
“Hi,” Kimberlee said. “Nice to meet you.”
The girls stood in a knot, chatting loudly, as the line crept
forward slowly. The topics of conversation were all in a
pattern - the clothes the other women were wearing (which seldom
met with approval), the relative merits of the men in the line
and who was going to be singled out for flirtation, the
clothes the other girls in the group were wearing (which always
met with approval), the cute guys who worked at their respective
jobs, and the cheating and horrible ways of Jana’s boyfriend
Derrick.
Bret just listened and tried to follow along, trusting to his
‘instinctual’ memories to answer any questions but not actively
trying to get into any conversations.
“Are you sure you’re feeling up to this, baby girl?” Kaylee
asked quietly as they neared the door. “You’re really quiet
tonight. If you really don’t feel good, you should go home.”
Bret shrugged in what he hoped was a happy-go-lucky way. “I
got all dressed up,” he said. “I might as well have a little
fun.”