STEPHEN WOODWORTH

HER

SHE WAS ESPECIALLY anxious that day. I could feel her eyes blinking

and roiling

in the back of my head, sticky corneas scraping against the inside fabric of my

long-haired wig. Sweat dampened her upper lip as her jaws strained against the

duct tape I

had used to seal her mouth.

She knew where we were. She knew my thoughts, just as I knew

her fear.

“Extraordinary,” Dr. Vickers murmured, the circular lenses of his glasses

shining

and opaque as silver dollars. “May I see the….?” He made a euphemistic

gesture with his

hand.

I looked away and said nothing. Taking that as a yes, he stood and moved from

behind

his large mahogany desk to where I sat. Without waiting for me to assist

him, he ran his

long, spindly fingers through the hair at my temples, seeking

the bobby pins which fastened

the false locks to the thatch of real hair that

ran across the top of my head. He peeled

off the hairpiece as if it were a

surgical dressing, and I shut my eyes in sympathy as the

sudden light blinded

her.

Dr. Vickers drew a sharp breath. “Extraordinary!” Leaning close,

he touched her

cheek with one manicured finger, and I fought to keep her still as the

sealed

scream ballooned in her mouth. Though my back was to him, I could see him

through her

eyes — a peering, prodding, white-coated gnome.

He pulled a penlight from his coat pocket,

and flashed it in both of her eyes.

Then I felt his fingernail pick at the tape at one

comer of her mouth. I grabbed

his wrist. “Don’t.”

He shook free of my grasp. “Mr. Harris, if

I’m going to help you, you’ll have to

trust my judgment.”

I swallowed. “Can you get rid of

it?”

His lips parted, then closed again before he answered, and I should have known

right

then that he’d be no more help than the others. “Your…anomaly is, to my

knowledge,

utterly unique. However, I think with sufficient study —”

“Now. I want it gone.” I tensed

as I felt her writhe inside our skull. “I have

money.”

He regarded me with the restrained

impatience of a schoolmaster. “Mr. Harris, if

we attempt such a radical operation without

proper analysis, it would almost

certainly kill you.”

I carefully replaced my hairpiece and

pressed it down. “If that’s what it

takes,” I said. I rose and strode out of his office.

I didn’t see Elle that night. We were supposed to have dinner together at Pizza

Hut, but I

called and told her I didn’t feel good. It wasn’t really a lie.

When I got off the phone, I

went into the bathroom and turned on the tub’s hot

water tap full bore. As the tub filled,

I stripped naked and regarded myself in

the mirror. Not a bad body. An angular chest

fringed with hair, muscular arms, a

little slack in the gut from too much red meat and

chocolate. And the face —

normal, maybe even handsome.

The face of an ordinary man.

I

glanced at the hand mirror which I kept face down beside the sink, the way a

suicide keeps

a loaded gun in the house. I ripped off the wig and snatched up

the hand mirror, angling it

so as to glare at her reflection in the wall mirror.

It’s the only way we can see each

other.

There were similarities between us, a sort of family resemblance. The shape of

the

eyes, the curve of the nose. But this face had a finer bone structure,

smoother,

smaller-pored skin, a delicacy of expression that could only be a

woman’s. And everyone who

had seen it recognized it for what it was.

She saw the hate in my stare and averted her

eyes. I slapped the hand mirror

down on the counter, but still felt the drip trickle down

her cheek. The steam

misting the wall mirror blurred my image to a pink smear.

The water in

the tub stung my foot as I stepped in. I lay back, the heat

pricking my skin with needles

of pain, until everything but my face was

submerged. Like bottled messages, little, frantic

bubbles streamed past my ears

to burst on the surface. I shut my eyes, and waited for them

to stop.

She wouldn’t drown, though. I knew that from experience.

I finally took Elle out a

week later. It went badly. I was late, the restaurant

was slow, the movie was a dog. All

evening, my head throbbed as if the scalp had

shrunk over my cranium, compressing the brain

within.

Afterward, I pulled up in front of the house Elle shared with her roommates, but

let the engine idle a moment to cover my embarrassed silence.

“You look like you hated that

flick even more than I did,” Elle said as I

switched off the ignition. She wore a wry

smirk, and her gray-blue eyes

flickered with either amusement or irritation.

I rubbed my

forehead. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Lee?” She brushed her knuckles along my forearm. “You

okay?”

“Sure.”

I’d seen Dr. Vickers again, let him take X-rays and run some tests. Too

risky,

he concluded. Inoperable. Perhaps with more time…

Just like all the others.

“Would

you like to come in for a while?”

Elle’s voice lilted suggestively. The light from the old

mercury-vapor street

lamp outside frosted her frizzy blond hair, and her baggy flannel

shirt had

slipped open to reveal the shadowed swell of her right breast.

I sighed. “I’d like

to, but…”

She leaned closer until I could smell the crushed-petal scent of her perfume,

feel her breath on my cheek. “But?”

“Ahh…work’s got me twisted.” I figured she’d heard me

bitch enough about life

at the warehouse that she’d let it go at that.

“Maybe you need to

relax.” She planted a kiss on my lips. Her hands clasped my

cheeks, then slid up to stroke

my hair. My twin’s nose twitched beneath Elle’s

fingers, as if trying to suppress a sneeze.

I flinched, bumping my head against the driver’s side window, and brushed her

hands away.

“Elle, I told you —”

She gave an exasperated groan. “Shit, is this the toupee thing again?

Get over

it! In fact…”

She reached, and I had to clutch my wig to keep her from snatching

it away.

“Elle! Stop!”

She drew a sharp breath, then relented. “Okay.” She collected her

purse and

opened the passenger door. “It’s been real, and it’s been fun…”

“…but it

hasn’t been real fun,” I said in chorus. It was her favorite snide

exit line. “I know.

Sorry.”

She smiled one of her equivocal smiles, then gently squeezed my arm. “‘Night.”

I

still felt that tender pressure as I sagged against the steering wheel after

she’d gone. It

was those tiny gestures of warmth that made me see Elle’s face on

my bedroom ceiling at

night.

And I was losing her, one/aux pas at a time.

The following morning, I started

searching for another surgeon.

I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD when I heard her cry for the first

time. Until then, she’d

been merely another appendage, a deformity which my parents made me

keep hidden,

like a wart or a boil.

My friends and I were playing football on the front lawn

of my house. Sid hiked

the ball to me, and I charged forward. A moment later, hands grasped

me from

behind, and I was falling.

“Holy shit!” Tommy backpedaled from where he’d tackled

me, flinging away the

tousled wig in his hand as if it were a dead rat.

“Lee wears a wi-ig!

Lee wears a wi-ig!” John-John, Sid’s little brother,

taunted. He hadn’t seen what Tommy

had.

Pete, Sid, and the others moved to surround me, leaving the forgotten football

on the

ground. She looked up at them with blinking, fearful eyes, and I could

see their

silhouettes eclipse the noontime sun.

“Jesus, what is it?” Pete whispered.

“It’s a face,

stupid, what does it look like?” Sid answered.

“It’s a girl’s face!” John-John pointed,

bouncing on his heels excitedly.

“It’s a girl’s face!”

On his feet again, Tommy had joined

the circle. “He’s a goddamn freak! A faggy

little girl-boy!”

I pushed myself up, and they

all backed off a step. With both pairs of eyes

open, I could see almost a full 360 degrees,

and it made me dizzy. A ring of

faces tightened around me, leering and chanting. “Girl-boy!

Girl-boy! Faggy

little girl-boy!”

I spun left and right, shouting. “Shut up! Shut up!”

Then I

heard her hiccupping sobs.

That really set them off. “Oh, look! She’s crying! Don’t cry,

little girl-boy!

Little sissy! Little faggot!”

I felt tears stream down burning cheeks, and

was furious that I couldn’t stop

them. I wanted to cry myself, but I converted my shame to

anger and shoved Tommy

as hard as I could. “STOP IT!”

He tottered but kept his feet. He

clamped his left hand on my forearm until it

bruised the skin, then thrust his right fist

into my gut. I hunched over,

gasping for breath, and he pushed me down. With the others

cheering around us,

Tommy sat astride my stomach and grabbed hold of my head, grinding my

girl-face

into the ground. Her shrill wail died, and I tasted the grass and dirt on her

tongue.

Yet I felt glad, because she was getting what she deserved for

humiliating us.

Then, all at

once, the jeering stopped. Tommy got off me, and I saw my father

looking down on me, his

face flushed, his pants and shirt still covered with

sawdust from his workshop.

Relieved, I

stood and started to brush off my Tuffskins, expecting him to cuss

out the other boys for

teasing me. Instead, he grabbed the collar of my shirt.

“Come on,” he muttered and yanked

me toward the front door. He didn’t spare a

glance at the others, kept his gaze down as if

afraid of them. I couldn’t see

anything behind me, and realized she must have shut her

eyes.

Once inside the house, Dad seized my shoulders and leaned forward to shout in my

face.

“What the hell were you doing out there? Didn’t I tell you to be careful?”

“Yeah.” I wanted

to tell him that I only played football because it was his

favorite sport, and I really

hated the game. Instead, I just stared down at my

shoes.

“Yeah?” Is that all you have to

say? Do you have any idea —” His breath caught

in his throat, as if a pressure valve had

tightened in his chest. He wiped a

hand over his face, and calmed himself enough to go on.

“We’re gonna have to

move, I hope you know. Daddy’s gonna have to quit his job, we’re gonna

have to

sell the house, and move to some state where no one knows us and start all over

again

—”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Mom asked, her voice barely audible.

She’d

withdrawn to a far comer of the den, where she stood hugging herself. “I

mean, it was just

a bunch of kids —”

He turned on her with the suddenness of a cobra. “And no one’s gonna

believe

them, right? The hell they won’t! We’ll have goddamn TV crews on our doorstep

within

a week. All wanting to see the local freak!”

Mom’s mouth shrank to a tiny oval. “Jim,

don’t…”

“Christ, seven years! Seven years, I managed to keep this under wraps so he

could

live some kind of normal life, and now —” He sliced the air with his arm.

“I don’t know,

Claire, maybe we should just sell him to the circus. Would you

like that, Lee? Dress you in

a little tutu and sit you on an elephant—”

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Mom shrieked. “He’s

still our son!”

Dad gave an arid laugh. “Yeah. My son.” He glowered at me. “Go to your

room.”

I went and buried myself between the Star Wars sheets on my bed. Dad began

shouting

at Mom again.

Then I heard her start to whimper.

I wrapped my pillow around my head and

squeezed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up…”

As Dad promised, we moved within a month, living

in an apartment until escrow

closed on our new house. In our new neighborhood, in my new

school, with my new

friends, I was very, very careful. I did all the normal things the

other boys

did, and even took up football again. The game felt much better with a shiny,

hard helmet on. The locker room could be a problem, but I had a good

shoulder-length wig

and lots of bobby pins. By senior year, I was a starting

half-back and a letterman.

Dad died

of a coronary the year I started college. I didn’t cry at his funeral.

I think he would

have been proud of me.

Of course, I’d dated gifts from the time I was fourteen, got laid by

the time I

was sixteen. It was expected. I warned them about my hairpiece, told them I got

burnt in a fire as a kid and that I was ashamed of my bare, scarred scalp. If,

after the

first month or two, they said they wanted to see anyway, to know me

better, I simply left.

Until Elle.

She lay beside me in the downtown park, the crumpled bag containing the remains

of our Subway sandwiches between us. It was late February, and we basked in the

first real

California-style sunshine of a gray and rainy winter. Elle had cut

two of her Master’s

history classes for the occasion.

“Isn’t this marvelous?” She stretched languidly and

ruffled her hair. The hem of

her T-shirt came untucked from her jeans, revealing a strip of

her tummy. Her

belly button was unique — neither an innie nor an outie, but nearly level

with

the surface of her skin. I fought the temptation to touch it right then. “Days

like

this I wish I could just lie here forever.” She pointed her bare toes like

a ballet dancer,

letting the blades of grass tickle up between them.

“Yeah.” I sat with my elbows on my

knees, twisting the stem of a dandelion in my

fingers, and I strained to think of something

romantic to say, scanning the

vacant blue sky for inspiration.

Suddenly restless, Elle sat

up and peered at the grass around her as if looking

for a lost contact lens. “I remember

coming here as a kid. They used to have

ducks in the pond over there.” She pointed, then

resumed her search. “Mom would

let me bring bread scraps for ‘em—ah!” She plucked a tiny

clover flower and

held it to her ear, threading the stem through her pierced lobe. The

flower

stayed as she pulled her hand away and grinned. “Ta-da!”

I chuckled, and it eased the

tightness in my chest. Still, I didn’t know what to

say, and there was a tension in my

limbs, as if my body knew what I was supposed

to do and wanted to go on without me.

“Wait!

Let’s see if I can still do this…” Elle leapt to her feet and bounded

off to the left

about ten yards. With a running start, she turned cartwheels in

front of me, golden hair

tumbling, and I longed to be like her, to skip and

dance and do handsprings in the sunlight

and not care who was watching or what

they thought.

The last thing I remember doing that

afternoon was taking off my shoes.

I next became aware of a rhythmic clacking sound and the

smell of melting

butter. My vision faded in, and I found myself standing in the kitchen of

my

apartment holding a stainless steel bowl in one hand and a fork in the other. I

watched

as my hand used the fork to beat the eggs in the bowl. Though I willed

it to stop, it

continued on autopilot. Behind me, a woman’s voice hummed a

cheerful tune.

“Elle?” I called,

my tongue sluggish.

The woman’s voice stopped.

At the same time, my hands went slack, as if

they forgot what they were doing,

and the fork and bowl clattered to the floor, spattering

my jeans with raw egg.

“Shit!” I staggered back from the upset bowl, now bleeding yolk onto

the

linoleum. I gaped around in confusion, saw the frying pan over a low flame on

the stove,

the bowls of grated cheese and sliced mushrooms on the counter beside

it.

“Elle!” I checked

the living room and bedroom. I was alone.

A tremor ran through me. I grabbed the back of my

head and felt her bare cheeks,

her soft lips.

The duct tape was gone.

She’d been in control

for hours, I thought, shaking. Seeing with my eyes,

speaking with my voice. I ran to the

phone and dialed Elle’s number, trying to

steady my breathing as I waited for her to

answer. “Hello?”

“Hi. It’s me.” I didn’t know whether to apologize or what, and I feared

she’d

hang up the moment she heard me.

“Hey.” Her voice was warm and inviting, and I could

sense the smile that

accompanied it.

“Look, about this afternoon…”

She giggled. “As I

recall, the hide-and-seek was your idea. I hope I wasn’t too

hard to find.”

I rubbed my

forehead, straining to remember. “Did — did you have a good time?”

“No.” She paused. “I

had a great time. I just wish I didn’t have this mid-term

tomorrow so I could’ve stayed for

dinner. You left me hungry,” she added with a

sensual purr.

“Thanks.” I forced a chuckle,

gnawing at my lower lip.

“Lee? Is something wrong?”

“No. No, I just wanted to tell you what

a great time I had. We should do it

again sometime.” My mouth twisted. “Love you.”

There was

a long pause at the other end, and I thought, Oh, shit, that did it.

“I love you, too.”

My

heart clenched. “Call me tomorrow,” my mouth said. “Let me know how the test

went.”

“Okay.”

She said good-bye, and I hung up, a queasiness in my stomach.

That feeling remained with me

during the following week, the feeling you have in

dreams where you find yourself naked out

in public. I became acutely

self-conscious of all my actions and mannerisms—how I walked,

how I sat, how I

spoke. Whenever I found myself drifting off into daydreams, I flinched and

glanced at my watch to see how much time I’d lost. At night, I slept with my

jaws clenched

shut, the tension giving my mind some concrete sensation to grasp

as my consciousness

slipped away. I often woke with a headache, which also

helped to anchor me in my skull.

For

once, I appreciated the donkey-work of the warehouse. Fetching case after

case of ceramic

tile for the orders we had to fill, listening to the rest of the

crew describe in

pornographic detail the women they’d slept with over the

weekend, I settled into a

comfortable groove of mindless motion.

“So what about you, man?” Scott asked out of the

blue. A spindly bean-pole of a

guy whose arms jutted out of his Lakers jersey like bent

soda straws, he’d just

finished telling us about his fifth conquest in as many weeks.

“Getting anywhere

with La Belle Elle?”

I stood on the penultimate rung of a twenty-foot

ladder, scanning the shelves

for a stock number, so it took me a second to realize he was

talking to me.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, Elle’s fantastic.” I slid a thirty-pound box off a shelf,

bracing my shins against the ladder’s top step as I swayed with the weight. “We

had a wild

time in the park last Thursday,” I added, descending with the box. It

might have been true,

for all I could remember about that day.

“All right! The kid has hisself some nookie!”

Tony, a burly weightlifter with a

spiky black crewcut, clapped and whistled.

Grinning, Scott

took the box from me as I got off the ladder and set it on the

pallet we’d stacked with the

latest order. “About time, too. We were beginning

to wonder about you, boy.”

I glared at

him. “What do you mean?”

“Hey, we’ve all seen you looking at Tony’s ass, okay?” He winked

at Tony. They

both laughed.

“So what are you saying?” I snapped.

Scott saw the expression on

my face, and his shit-eating grin disappeared. “Uh,

nothing.”

“No, come on. Tell me.”

He

shrugged and smiled nervously. “Take it easy, man, it was just a joke…”

“But there must

be something about me to make fun of, right?” My voice quavered

on the point of cracking.

“Tell me what’s so goddamn funny.”

Scott backed off a step and held up his hands. “Nothing.

Just a joke.”

I looked over to see Tony and Carlos glance away, hastily shifting their

attention

to the boxes at their feet.

“Shit,” I muttered, and climbed the ladder again.

I worked in

silence for the rest of the afternoon, sifting my memory to find any

lapses I’d had at work

during the past week. If she’d taken control…if Scott

and the others had seen me when she

was in control…My face burned as I

imagined their contemptuous stares and suppressed

laughter.

I brooded in silence at the dinner table that night. Elle had come over to my

apartment

to cook for me in her latest attempt to convert me to vegetarianism —

lentil soup and

French bread. Though it tasted fine, I stirred the pasty,

greenish soup without an

appetite, staring at the swirls I made.

Elle cast a withering look at me from across the

table. “That good, eh?”

“Hmm? No, no, it’s great.” Guilty, I shoveled a spoonful into my

mouth and

nodded my appreciation.

“Thanks,” she said dubiously. She stared into her own bowl

for a while. “Is it

my breath,” she asked at last, “or my scintillating conversation?”

“What?”

“You! You’re in a funk.”

“I am not! I’m just…thinking.” I took a big bite of bread to

chew on as an

excuse not to talk.

“About…?” With a sarcastic smile, Elle gestured for me

to elaborate. “Let’s

verbalize here.”

Gooseflesh rose on my arms as her jaws strained at

their seal. I shook my head,

both to dismiss Elle’s question and to reassert my control.

“Just…a bad day at

work.”

Elle’s expression softened. “The boss?”

“Nah, it’s the other

guys. They’re all assholes.” I rubbed my forehead.

“Have you thought about getting a better

job? You have a degree…”

“Yeah, and the private sector’s clamoring for art history

majors.”

“That’s not the point. It shows what you can do—”

“Elle, I’d really rather drop

this.”

“Okay, okay.” She eyed me thoughtfully as she took a couple more mouthfuls of

soup,

then waggled her empty spoon at me. “You know what you need—”

She dropped the spoon in her

bowl and rose from her chair. “Stand up.”

“What? I—”

She crossed to my chair. “Come on.

Elle says, ‘Stand up.’”

With a sigh, I abandoned my own soup and did as she commanded.

“Now,

Elle says, ‘Stand over there.’” She pointed to the center of the living

room floor.

I went

to the indicated spot and shrugged.

“Elle says, ‘Take off your shirt.’”

I groaned. “Elle,

I’m not in the mood—”

She gave me a schoolmarmish glare, arms akimbo, tapping her foot. I

chuckled in

spite of myself, unbuttoned my shirt, and slipped it off. “Now what, Mistress?”

I asked, tossing the shirt aside.

She giggled. “On your belly, slave.”

I lay face-down on

the carpet as she came and crouched beside me. “Is this going

to hurt?”

“Just a little.” She

straddled my butt and began to knead the muscles of my back

with her fingers. “Man, you’re

tight. No wonder you’re on edge.”

I winced as she rubbed the taut cords of my shoulders.

Her hands pulled the

tension from my body, and I let out a soft moan. For the first time

that

evening, I forgot about the warehouse, about Scott and Tony, about her, and lost

myself

in the present, in Elle’s firm but tender touch.

“That’s it,” she murmured. “Just let it

all go.”

My chin resting on my hands, I drifted into a light doze. I only awoke when the

gentle rocking motion of the massage abruptly stopped.

“How did you do that?” Elle asked.

Groggy, I scowled and half-opened my eyes. “Do what?”

“Your scalp…moved—”

Before my

sluggish brain understood what she meant, Elle had worked her fingers

up underneath the

padding of my wig.

“No — !” I yelped as the bobby pins were yanked from my hair, and tried

to

wriggle out from under her, but I knew it was too late.

Though she was still behind me, I

could now see her awestruck face, see the wig

in her hand. Elle’s mouth hung open, but the

high-pitched, feminine whimper I

heard stirred in my own throat.

Elle stood and staggered

backward, staring at me in confusion. “What are you?”

I rolled on my back like an

overturned turtle and lurched forward onto my knees.

Elle shrank from me as I stood and

stretched an arm toward her. “Wait! Please—”

“My God…what is it?” Dropping the wig, Elle

stumbled back into the dining room

and sank onto a chair, her hands pressed over her mouth.

“It — it’s just a birth defect. Like a — an extra finger or something.” I

knelt in front

of her and took her hands in mine. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell

you, I was so afraid—”

“Turn

around.” Her voice was hoarse, her face stony and pale.

I squeezed her hands before

releasing them, then did as she said. Quivering, I

shut my own eyes and met Elle’s

tremulous gaze with those other eyes.

Elle reached to touch my twin’s cheek, but her finger

hovered just above the

skin as if repelled by magnetic force. “Does she talk?”

“No.” A

shiver rippled up my spine. “Just some noises. Sometimes she laughs.

Cries.”

Elle stared

into my twin’s eyes, a look of strange, fearful recognition on her

face. “No.”

She pushed

herself to her feet and fumbled for the purse which sat on an

adjacent chair. “I’m — I’ve

got to go.”

I jerked upright and caught hold of her arm as she headed toward the front

door.

“No, don’t leave! I promise, you’ll never have to see it again.”

She tensed, and

refused to look at me. “I can’t — I’m sorry…”

I let go of her, and she hurried out the

door.

I stood there for almost a minute, my fists like matching hammers pressed to my

temples.

Then I reached back and ripped the duct tape off her mouth.

This time I wanted to hear her.

I leaned up against the wall and bowed my head. With a sharp cry, I jerked my

head upright

to crack it against the concrete. When she shrieked, I did it

again. And again, until the

flesh at the back of my skull stung with bruised

tissue. The two of us screamed in harmony.

About twenty minutes later, a heavy-set cop with squarish, wire-rimmed glasses

rang my

doorbell. I answered the door in a bathrobe, skin still clammy from the

shower, my wig

disheveled but in place.

The cop shifted his gaze from my face to peer past me into the

living room.

“Sorry to bother you, Mister…” “Harris.”

“Mister Harris. We received a call

about a possible domestic violence incident

in this apartment complex, and wanted to know

if you’d seen or heard anything.”

I shrugged and shook my head. “Sorry. Can’t help you.”

“Mind if I come in for a sec?”

“Sure.” I stepped aside to let him enter.

“Someone apparently

heard a woman cry out. Said it sounded like it came from in

here.” He made a cursory

inspection of the living room, then ambled toward the

open bedroom door.

“Not here. I live

alone.”

“Have any guests this evening?” He surveyed the dual place-settings of dirty

dishes

on the dining room table.

“My girlfriend. She left some time ago, though.”

“Uh-huh.” He

casually poked his head into the bedroom and bathroom as if

admiring the decor. “Well, it

seems pretty quiet now.” He moved back toward the

front door. “Like I said, sorry to bother

you, but we have to check these things

out.”

“No problem.” Beneath the wig, a trickle of

blood ran from her broken nose, over

her swollen lips and scraped chin to drip down my

back. “You can’t be too

careful.”

I called in sick at work the following morning and spent

most of the day in bed

with the curtains drawn. The telephone didn’t ring. About four

o’clock, I got

up, went to the bathroom in my boxer shorts, and picked up the hand mirror

on

the counter.

Her face hung slack, as if anaesthetized, her eyes shut, her lips slightly

parted. Though I hadn’t replaced the duct tape, she hadn’t made a sound since

last night.

Her nose had stopped bleeding, but was puffy and crooked. Her cheeks

were blotched with

purple. I touched one of the tender spots, but she didn’t

react. I lifted one eyelid, but

the iris beneath seemed clouded, vacant.

An unexpected tremor of fear trilled through me —

the same sort of panic you

feel when you fall asleep on your arm and awake in the middle of

the night to

find that your hand has become a lump of lifeless meat.

I stayed home the next

two days as well, drowning my brain in daytime

television. I risked getting fired, but I

didn’t care. Every evening at eight I

called Elle’s number. Her answering machine always

responded, and each time I

remained silent, leaving an eloquent span of blank tape after

the beep.

I didn’t expect to see her again. I certainly didn’t expect her to pound on my

door after eleven o’clock on Saturday night.

As I inched the door open, she looked at me

over the taut door chain with the

guilty expression of a child who has either done

something bad or is about to.

“Can I come in?”

I rubbed the beard stubble on my cheeks as if

to wipe it off and patted down the

cowlicks in my wig. “Uh…sure.”

I undid the chain and

let her in, shifting my feet as she saw the litter of

Budweiser cans and Doritos bags

surrounding the easy chair in front of my living

room TV. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t

expecting…”

“I know. I should’ve called, but…I wasn’t sure.” She hugged herself. “I

missed

you.”

“I missed you, too.” We fell into an exhausted embrace.

Her lips brushed my ear

as I nuzzled her neck. “I want to see her again,” she

whispered.

This time, it was my turn

to recoil in revulsion. “What? Why on Earth B—”

Her hands fluttered, trying to speak for

her. “I — I can’t explain. There’s

something I have to see.” She drew close again, her

eyes imploring. “Something I

have to know.”

I wilted against her, gripping her to my chest,

figuring that I would lose her

no matter what I did.

We went into the bedroom and knelt on

my futon. Jaw set, I sat with marble

stoicism and let her take off the wig once more. I

felt a perverse relief when I

heard Elle gasp, for the anxiety and uncertainty would

finally be gone. They

would leave with Elle.

Elle lightly prodded one of the bruised cheeks,

and I winced. “My God, what did

you do?”

“We had a little fight.”

“Is she — ?”

“I don’t

know.”

Elle traced a fingertip over the peach-tender skin, her breath coming in ragged

sighs.

“She can’t be.”

A fatalistic sorrow drained the tension from my limbs, and my vision

clouded. I

blinked to clear the mistiness from my sight, and when I looked again,

everything

had snapped into sharp focus and I found Elle’s face hovering

directly in front of me. I

saw again all those qualities in her I had loved and

coveted — her inner strength and

outward tenderness, her sensuality and

sensitivity — and it made me want to weep. The

breeze-soft touch of her fingers

served as a balm to the dull soreness of my wounds.

Elle

peered into my eyes, and again recognition dawned on her face. “It was

you,” she breathed.

“In the park — you had that same look…”

My mouth opened, but I couldn’t find my voice.

Perhaps I was afraid to hear it.

Then Elle pressed her lips to mine, and I no longer needed

to speak.

Our mouths and tongues moved in perfect counterpoise, now giving now receiving,

gently enough so that the sting of my grazed skin became only a tingle. I kissed

her neck,

and Elle unbuttoned her blouse.

As I bent to lick at the breasts she offered to me, though,

my backward body

lost its balance and almost tipped over, my misdirected arms flailing out

behind

me, groping for something to hold onto. Elle steadied me, laughing. I giggled in

return.

Peeling off her clothes, Elle nudged me into a prone position, my body

belly-down on the

mattress, my frontward face smothered in a pillow, inert and

immobile as a discarded mask.

Elle crawled over me, letting me make love to each

part of her in turn. Sitting up, she

arched her thighs over my face and dipped

her pubic mound onto my waiting mouth, shuddering

as I explored inside her with

my tongue.

We lay beside each other for a long time after it

was over, communicating only

with our eyes. Though I wanted to watch her placid sleeping

form all night, I

eventually drifted off.

I awoke later as if jarred by a sudden sound. The

room was still dark.

Instinctively, my hand went to my jaw, where I felt my bristly,

unshaven skin. I

peered out once more from behind my male face and frowned, wondering if

I’d only

dreamt the last few hours.

“Love me,” a soft voice croaked.

I turned toward Elle.

“What?”

But I could tell by the measured rise and fall of Elle’s chest that she was

asleep.

“Love me,” the voice pleaded again. A laryngitic rasp, weak with disuse.

“Please.”

I

trembled. She’d never spoken to me before. Or perhaps I just hadn’t listened

until now.

I

stroked her cheek, my fingers running across the damp track of a tear. “Yes,”

I repeated,

“love me.”

We didn’t speak again that night, for we knew our thoughts were the same.

Table of Contents

Start