Edward Bryant - The Transfer

      Something is not right. 
      My name is Doris Ruth MacKenzie, and I am forty-three years old. When I 
      was a little girl, everyone around me called me Dorrie. I hated that. 
      Nowadays, only a few friends rememberand they still call me thatbut it's 
      all right. 
      And then there's Jim. It's fine for Jim to call me Dorrie. I haven't loved 
      many people, but those I have lovedthey can do anything. 
      Jim? Jim. Where are you? 
      James Gordon MacKenzie has been my husband for twenty-two years. We've 
      known each other only slightly longer than that. He's a tall man, slightly 
      stooped, and kind. Always very kind. And he's wearing a red mask. 
      Something's not right at all. 
      Jim? My wrists are numb. There is so much I can't touch. Behind my eyes, 
      the pain zigzags madly. It feels like there are shards of broken glass 
      grinding in there. I can't see anything, except what I can think of. 
      Jim . . . Where are you? 
      Talk to me, love. 
      Won't anyone speak to me? I'm talking to myself. 
      But I'm not going crazy. I'm not! 
      He wears a scarlet mask. It shines, glistens like What is it I'm not 
      seeing? 
       I can still feel. People always said I had empathy. Even at the 
      beginning, when I first could frame ideas in words, I knew I could feel 
      for others, actually feel others. "Equalizing potentials," my high school 
      physics teacher said, even though he never knew what those two words 
      actually meant to me. He was speaking of something else entirely. It was a 
      metaphor I couldn't phrase, but I knew it fit. 
      "A high-pressure area's generated to the west of the Quad Cities . . ." 
      That's the practical application of my teacher's words. 
      Reading from the wire copy: "The low-pressure system in central Illinois 
      is holding steady." 
      I'd smile again and use my breathy, little-girl voice. 
      "The storm's coming in fast, folks. Bring in your doggies and kitty cats. 
      The Weather Bureau says" 
      We still called it the Weather Bureau back then. It was 1963, I was 
      twenty-three, and I was working at WWHO-TV in Aurora. I hadn't made it 
      into Chicago yetat least professionallybut finally I was past Peoria. 
      I had thought the forecast was still variable. 
      Oh, God. The weather report. The patterns with their smooth whorls. The 
      transfer of energy, sometimes violently. The shapes from the contour maps 
      swirling around me, humming monotonously, distorting all the clear, sharp 
      angles . . . 
      At WWHO they hired me because I was cute. The station manager let me know 
      that right away. I didn't want to go out to dinner with him, but he was 
      very insistent, and I was hungry. 
      Over his medium-rare liver and onions, he said, "We'll get you the 
      numbers. You'll be the sexiest, most watched weathergirl in the Midwest. 
      You'll be able to write your own ticket in New York or L.A., wherever you 
      want." But first, of course, he'd have to punch my ticket in Aurora. 
      The smell of liver and onions and sex made me want to throw up. I said no. 
      But it was close, dangerously so. The compulsion to touch his soul, 
      satisfy his need, to draw near and meld with him, actually be him, perhaps 
      to become even worse than he . . . that frightened me so much that I drew 
      back. 
      I wouldn't have phrased it this way, back then, but I wanted to remain my 
      own person. 
      The next night, there were messages scrawled on my weather board; they 
      were terrible, obscene things. The Chroma-Key didn't pick them up, so only 
      the crew and I could see them. I finished the evening news block, and then 
      I quit. I didn't have many choices, but at least that one I could make. 
      So that's why I ended up in Chicago sooner than I'd expected, on the 
      streets looking for another job; maybe I could be a weathergirl again. I 
      don't think there are many weathergirls now. Every station has its own 
      staff meteorologist and they usually are men. But back then, looks 
      counted. 
      At least for more than they do now. I think. I haven't tried to trade on 
      looks for a long, long time, and that's all to the good. 
      When I finally got a job, it was at an advertising agency on North 
      Michigan. The company was called Martin, Metzger, and Mulcahy, and 
      appearances certainly counted there. The men who ran the agency had a 
      crystalline vision of how we should all look and act, whether we were at 
      the office or not. You always represent the agency, they said. All of us 
      had to measure up to their expectations. 
      It's not easy defining yourself that way, but I tried. I worked hard and 
      did what they wanted for six months, until nearly my twenty-fourth 
      birthday. I was a pretty good secretary. It seemed to workI was in line 
      for a promotion. Then I met Cody. 
      That's blood, isn't it? Blood, all liquid and running downStop it, Dorrie! 
      Think. Remember . . . 
      My parents, my father especially, used to tell me, don't be so 
      impressionable, Dorrie. Use your own head. But how could I do that when I 
      used the heads of others? When I saw through their eyes and felt what they 
      felt. And, and 
      What, Dorrie? I looked back, confronted the child I was then, the person I 
      am now. 
      II became likeNo, I became 
      Please . . . Damn it. Please, no, I'm me. Me, Doris MacKenzie. I am 
      forty-three years old, though I overheard one of my neighbors at the 
      market talking to a woman from across the street and guessing that I was 
      in my fifties. That's as old as Jim, my husband. They didn't know I'd 
      overheard, because there was a pyramid of paper-towel rolls between us. 
      It's not that I mind being that old. No, it's being reminded of him. We 
      were so much alike. My dearest, dearest. His face is so red. And it drips. 
      Oh, Jim. 

      I met Cody Anderssen on my lunch break while I was walking slowly along 
      the lakefront. At first I thought he was just another hippy. There weren't 
      many hippies downstate in Macomb, at least none I'd ever been aware of, 
      and certainly I'd never met one, much less talked to any. If my mother had 
      been along, I'm sure she would have turned and walked twice as fast the 
      other way, maybe shrieking for police at the same time. I was braver. When 
      the freakish-looking man said, "Hi," I just kept on walking in the same 
      measured pace. 
      He followed in step beside me. "You look awful nice," he said. "Will you 
      just stop a minute and talk?" 
      My step faltered and I really looked at him. He was young, perhaps even 
      younger than I. Blue eyesI remember those well. They were the same deep 
      blue I sometimes saw in the winter sky above the lake. He wore a 
      broad-brimmed leather hat and a fringed leather jacket that looked like it 
      had been sewn at home. His goatee and long hair were blond. The hair made 
      me feel uneasy, but the clean shine of it somehow triggered me to speak. 
      "You look like Buffalo Bob" 
      "Bill," he said, correcting me, apparently unamused. 
      I laughed. After a moment, so did he. 
      He told me his name and then spelled "Anderssen." "It's not so remarkable 
      where I come fromnorthern Minnesotabut at least down here the s's and the 
      e make me something different. It's groovy." 
      I blinked. I wanted to ask if Cody really was his first name, but felt too 
      shy. 
       At first Cody made all the conversation. He told me about leaving 
      Minnesota and coming here, of living on the streets for months before 
      finding a job in a pet store and an apartment he could afford. He talked 
      about drugs, a topic that scared me. It was the question of control. "And 
      you?" he finally said. 
      I talked about growing up in Macomb and hardly ever going to the city, and 
      how, when I graduated from high school, I went against my parents and 
      didn't enroll at Western Illinois. The first brave thing I ever did in my 
      life was to take the bus to Peoria, then on toward Chicago. 
      My parents had talked so often of my striking out on my own, I thought 
      that was what they really and truly wanted of me. The conflict made me 
      sick for days. As ever, I stored up the tension like a battery. 
      But I ended up in Aurora as a weathergirl at a tiny TV station, and then 
      immersed myself in the city. 
      "That's great," Cody said, and then laughed. "You oughta be a hippy too. 
      You've got the spirit of freedom in you." 
      No, I didn't, but I didn't say my doubts aloud. 
      "It's late," I said, looking at my watch. "My lunch hour's gone. I've got 
      to go back to the office." 
      "Meet me after work," said Cody. "Please?" 
      I stared at him. I'd never met anyone at all like this. 
      After work, in the mob of rush hour, I found him. The next morning, which 
      was Saturday, I met him again and we went out to the Museum of Science and 
      Industry and toured the coal mine. That night I accompanied him back to 
      his apartment and lost my virginity. 
      And two decades later, I wish I were back in Chicago. In a different bed 
      than where I lie now. 
      Two weeks later I moved into Cody's apartment. My original apartment had 
      been larger, but I was too shy to let him move there. I kept going back to 
      my old apartment for a month to pick up my mail. Finally Cody convinced me 
      to tell my parents I'd moved to a nicer place. I got a post office box and 
      hoped my folks wouldn't come visit Chicago. I told them I would come home 
      for Christmas. 
      I quit my job. I wore the same kind of clothing Cody did. I let my hair 
      grow long and straight. I started learning guitar. I used the same drugs 
      he did. I sold the same things he did. We finished each other's sentences. 
      We got along all right. 
      Cody took real delight in being special, different. It was his name, his 
      clothes, everything. But we were both alike in so many ways now. He 
      noticed it too. 
      "It's so freakin' weird," he said one night. "You and I. It's almost like 
      looking in a mirror, except that a mirror image's reversed. You're me, 
      darlin'." He shook his head. 
      I couldn't contradict him. Only a portion of it was wanting to be what he 
      wished me to be. Part of it too was being him. I didn't know what it 
      meantjust that it had always been so. And it worked both inside and out. 
      Cody had an ulcer. I had an ulcer. 
      "I don't want you to be me," he said. 
      "Don't you?" 
      He shook his head again. "We're all free," Cody said. "It's the time of 
      liberation." 
      I just stared at him. He looked back at me and finally kissed me long and 
      hard. The gaze from his blue eyes fixed me. 
      "I like what I see," said Cody. 
      But a week later he died. I never was sure what all he took. The hardest 
      thing I've ever done was to avoid following Cody into the abyss. It wasn't 
      easy, but I tried to absorb the compulsion within myself. 
      I still had the clothing I'd brought to Chicago. I resumed my colorless, 
      invisible presence. No more beads. No more fringe. The ulcer went away. 

      My name is Dorrie MacKenzie and I'm older than that now. There are songs I 
      can almost remember, images I can nearly recall. The portrait of Jim on my 
      dresser at home swims into focus. But it isn't Jim. It's something I look 
      at in my mind and then discard. Whatever it is, it can't be him. He is a 
      pleasant, attractive man. And this thing on the dresser is, isI don't 
      know. It could be anything. It reminds me of the skinned head of a rabbit. 
      I throw the image away. I will not think of it. 
      The dresser and the picture on it evaporate. Our house in Kansas City 
      dissolves into fragments and then to blackness. 
      I see nothing. But I can listen. What I hear sounds like a man stripping 
      away a stubborn Velcro panel. 
      Probably I think of that because of Jim. There is an inflatable 
      leg-setting sleeve with Velcro seams in his bag. He's a doctor, a GP, and 
      he even still makes occasional house calls. Takes his bag wherever he 
      goes, even on vacation. 
      Vacation . . . see the wild beasts. Don't think about it. Red beasts. 
      Scarlet. Dripping scarlet, shining 
      Wet. 
      I can feel the high-pressure area all through me. My skull wants to 
      explode. Energy flows, deepens, prepares to flood. I have so little 
      control anymore. 
      Storm warning. 
       It was wet, raining heavily, when I met Jim. He never realized the 
      melodramatic circumstances of how it happened. All he knew was that he 
      happened upon a bedraggled woman trudging toward the midway point of a 
      highway bridge over the Chicago River in the middle of a driving 
      rainstorm. He thought I must have had automobile trouble, so he stopped to 
      see if he could help. What he did was save my life, since I'd been 
      planning to jump from the center of the span into the muddy current. I 
      never let him know that. I would have turned down his offer of a ride 
      except for his eyes. They were kind eyes, a deep liquid brown, and 
      intelligent. 
      I got in his car. That was the beginning. I forgot about the attraction of 
      the abyss, of the fatal temptation that had continued to haunt me after 
      Cody's death. 
      It was love, or something similar. At least it was the need, the necessity 
      that always tugged me toward others. 
      It's not that I'm a chameleon. I'm not. Transference and 
      transformationthose are the key words. What they mean is less important 
      than what I feel. In truth, I adapt to my environment. It's the way I 
      survive. 
      Jim and I lived in Chicago for another two years, then went to Cleveland 
      when he was offered a good clinic position. It didn't work out as well as 
      he'd have liked, so then it was back to Chicago. Finally we came to Kansas 
      City, where some of Jim's medical school friends had set up a partnership 
      and invited him in. 
      It was peaceful. For years, the only real conflict was my having to 
      convince Jim that I really couldn't have children. I didn't want to tell 
      him the truththat I didn't want to. That was our only difference, and I 
      think I only had the will to carry it out because he secretly, in his 
      heart of hearts, didn't want to share his life with anyone else. At any 
      rate, my forty-fourth birthday would be in just one more week, on the 
      seventh; procreation was getting to be ever less of a real possibility. 
      For all those years, Jim urged me to be myself. It was only partially 
      successful. I've stored up so much. 
      The forecast . . . Storms? Earthquake? Tidal wave? Apocalypse? I don't 
      really know. All I do know is that my head hurts, as though the skull 
      wants to come apart at the cranial fissures. 
      Jim? Touch me, stroke me, tell me things are all right. If I could just 
      see you again. 
      But I would have to open my eyes. 
      Something I learned to notice with both Cody and Jim: it wasn't just that 
      I came to resemble them in so many important aspects; to whatever degree, 
      to be them as I was defined by each. There was always something a little 
      extra, a lagniappe. 
      As they perceived me, they had what they wanted, and a little bit more. 
      Simple physical proximity was enough to trigger the process, closeness of 
      bodies and souls carried it through. I discovered that sex speeded it. 
      Sharing served as an accelerator. And trauma 
      Because Jim knew many people through his work, we socialized quite a lot, 
      and our friends sometimes remarked that we looked so much like each other. 

      Jim would allow his easy Midwestern chuckle and make a joke about the 
      psychological studies of how so many human beings and their pets come to 
      resemble each other. Transference. 
      And who was who? he'd say. Everyone would laugh. 
      The storm is breaking. 
      And here we are at the Sleepaway Motel in Bishop, California. 
      I will open my eyes; I will. 
      Here we are in a forsaken desert town I've never seen before and hope I 
      never will again. Jim. Dorrie. And the new man in my life. I sound so flip 
      only because it keeps the hysteria at bay. I had enough of trying to 
      scream through the gag. 
      The heat lightning had flashed over the mountains as we checked in. One 
      more long day to San Diego. Our first vacation in years. The Wild Animal 
      Park on my birthdaythat was Jim's promise. 
      We checked into the motel, that damned motel, that motel of the damned, 
      and thenShut up, Dorrie! There is nothing left to do. Only one thing left 
      undone. 

      The knock. 
      Must be the manager, Jim had said. Probably didn't get a clear impression 
      on the credit card or something. 
      When he unlatched the door 
      Don't scream, Dorrie, don't. 
      it burst open, Jim flung aside, the nameless man with the gun, the pistol, 
      the metal dark and shining, the threat and the darkness. 
      It is our vacation. My birthday is in only a few days. These things don't 
      happen to people, not to normal people, good people. 
      Oh, but they do, Dorrie, the man said. I know your name. Your 
      husbandJim?said it before I took care of his tongue. Did you appreciate my 
      giving him the Demerol before I worked on his face? 
       Not to normal people, they don't. I'm not normal. 
      Oh, said the man, you look normal enough to me, as normal as any other 
      woman tied to the bed with her husband's two neckties, an Ace bandage, and 
      a roll of gauze. Taste in ties a little conservative, eh? I figure you'll 
      act normal enough when I get around to you. That's it. Keep your eyes 
      open. 
      I am bound tightly, my shoulders hard against the headboard, my limbs 
      stretched apart, my body open and vulnerable. I have no choice but to face 
      Jim. He is roped upright into the wooden chair at the foot of the bed. 
      The weather, Dorrie. My voice now is solely in my head. The storm is 
      breaking. The smooth contour swirls. The rain and the wind will come. If 
      only they would rush in and cleanse 
      Oh yes, Dorrie, says the man. I'm glad your husband was a doctor. Handy he 
      brought his bag along. Saved me no end of trouble. He holds tip the 
      disposable scalpel in one hand, the mask that Jim wore in the other. No. 
      No, Dorrie. It's not a mask at all. 
      The hemostats, the glittering clamps are set out on the bedspread. The 
      fabric's pattern is designed to hide anything. But I can see the 
      instruments. I look away from Jim to the waldothe long, curved forceps. 
      Beside it are the incision clips, stylized clothespins with teeth. 
      All told, there are three of us in the room, but in every real way, I am 
      now alone. I begin to know with final sureness what will happen. 
      And yet . . . and yet I know I am not the person I was for all my early 
      years. I know that somewhere inside, I do have a core that will not be 
      bent, cannot be warped, and maybe, just perhaps, I can draw upon it. 
      But the forecast is bleak. 
      What I feel is like the pulling back of a nail from the quick of a finger. 
      No, Dorrie, I tell myself, that is too soft, too gentle. It is more like 
      the wrench of my heart being taken away, torn from me. 
      Jim's kiss was always gentle. This man's will be rough. 
      Jim's embrace . . . His touch was kind. The man's will be brutal. 
      When Jim entered me, it was joyfully. This manI cannot imagine his touch. 
      Not yet. It will tear. Burn. Like the lightning, only not clean. 
      The crimson, the sheen, the mask, the blood. I will say goodbye to Jim in 
      my soul and look ahead. The man with the gun and the scalpel. I have read 
      of killers like him and his fellows, though I didn't think people like us 
      ever encountered them. It was always another depressing story on the news, 
      just before the weather. 
      Some people win lotteries. 
      Jim and IForget that, Dorrie. 
      I look forward again. Storm fronts. Equalizing potentials. . . . The man 
      stares down at me, and is that a gentle smile? It is a smile. He holds 
      Jim's mask in his free hand. 
      I think I am ready to give it up. He will possess me here on this soaked 
      bed in the Sleepaway Motel in Bishop, California, before he pulls the 
      trigger or pushes the blade. 
      His lips, shiny, part. I'll want you to wear the mask, he says, for you 
      and me. Just for us, Dorrie. He leans down toward me. 
      That is when I decide. 
      What a surprise for him. He will comprehend the trauma of my 
      transformation. Frankly even I do not know the extent of the power, the 
      energy released by storm fronts colliding. 
      I wonder what he will encounter beyond the mask: something with horns, 
      fangs, scales, fur? Something as bestial as only he can imagine? Or just 
      himself enhanced? Whatever the sum, it will only be the result of his 
      terrifying addition. 
      Goodbye, Jim. Farewell, love. This nameless man in the motel, regardless 
      of how I am transformed, will get no less than he deserves. 
      And probably more.