Precarious

by Al Riske

  “I had a boyfriend in college who used to wear my clothes,” she said.

  “What was that like?”

  “It freaked me out at first, and I never liked the fact that his legs were prettier than mine, but wearing my things made him feel sexy and that was good for me.”

  “He wasn’t gay?”

  “Oh, God, no.”

  She smiled to herself and laughed.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “I like a man who’s able to show his softer side.”

  “Your husband like that?”

  “Donald? No. He’s too repressed to ever experiment that way.”

  So, in the end, I let her dress me up. What the hell? I could be experimental.

  She showed up at my place with a suitcase full of cosmetics and clothing, including the dress from Bloomingdale’s, and over the next hour or two, I felt as if I were being initiated into a secret society of illusionists. In a weird way, I felt empowered.

  When I looked in the mirror, I saw someone else. She looked beautiful but scared and vulnerable.

  “What shall we call you?” Brenda asked.

  I twisted my body to get a better look at my legs and ass. Brenda was right about the dress. It did look good on me. “‘Sheri’ comes to mind.”

  I don’t know why I said that. I had never known anyone named Sheri. Brenda hugged me and I felt her tears on my shoulder.

  “What?”

  “That was my daughter’s name.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It suits you.

  BIZARRE AS IT sounds, I began to feel comfortable as Sheri and wanted to know her better.

  I found that she was fond of short skirts and baggy sweaters, that she liked to experiment with lipsticks and soon had a whole drawer full of different colors.

  High heels made her feet hurt, but she wore them anyway.

  Her favorite actress was Sarah Jessica Parker, and she couldn’t pass up a rerun of Sex & the City.

  The only thing she could see herself driving was a black Miata with a tan interior, and when she finally found one, she drove it fast, with the top down if at all feasible.

  She didn’t like being out alone after dark. Dark alleys and parking garages—especially parking garages—gave her the creeps.

  Her eyes were blue and quick.

  I liked her a hell of a lot better than I liked myself.

  In a weird way I think I was falling in love with her.

  THE ONLY OTHER people I saw, and not as Sheri, were the Arcuri twins, who regularly checked my eyes and inquired about how I was doing.

  “Any unusual cravings?” Anthony asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “For flavored lipsticks.”

  The brothers both chuckled.

  “Just curious,” Mario said. “There’s some anecdotal evidence in the medical literature that transplant patients may take on certain characteristics of the donor.”

  “No shit?” I said.

  “I was just reading about a woman who received a heart transplant and found herself craving steak and beer, which she’d never liked before,” Anthony added. “Turned out the guy whose heart was now keeping her alive loved steak and beer.”

  Again, I shook my head.

  “We think it may have something to do with muscle memory,” Mario said.

  AFTER THAT I decided to take the next step. From the beginning I never wanted to know who my new eyes came from. I thought it would be too weird to know. Even as my life and dreams had become progressively stranger, I had resisted. Now I had to know who this woman was—and it was a woman.

  A Stanford student named Sheri Sebold.

  She had been raped and murdered.

  I can’t say I was surprised, but reading about it still gave me an ice-water feeling in my stomach.

  I NEVER SAID anything to Brenda, just as she had never said anything to me, though she must have known from our very first meeting. We continued our shopping excursions because they seemed to make both of us feel better somehow. The only difference was that I hugged her more, and I began to notice that, whenever we parted, the smile on her face was always accompanied by the beginnings of a tear in her eye.

  Had that been there all along and I just failed to notice?

  At the same time, I couldn’t help noticing how sexy she was. The swing of her hips when she walked. The bounce of her breasts. The delicate curve of her neck, so achingly beautiful when she wore her hair up. Her pouty lips and the long lashes surrounding her ice-blue eyes.

  Once, when we’d finished lunch and Brenda got up to leave, I had to say, “Not just yet.”

  She sat back down.

  “What’s up?”

  “If I stand up right now,” I whispered, “anyone who cares to look will see that I’m not a woman.”

  At first confused and then amused, she ended up looking quite pleased, I thought, that one extra button of her blouse left inadvertently undone could have such a powerful affect on me. I could see, too, that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with that bit of information.

  Nothing about our situation was simple.

  In fact, it was fucked.

  Here I was, attracted to this beautiful, sad woman, but she was married and I reminded her of her dead daughter and if we were ever going to enjoy the comfort of sex, it would be adultery or incest or both.

  Frankly, I was confused, too, half the time—alternately scared for no reason and glad for no reason. One thing, though: I never contemplated killing myself as I had when I was blind. I was stronger than that now.

  I WAS APPREHENSIVE the first time I visited her house, a two-story bungalow in Menlo Park, but nothing looked familiar except the Crate & Barrel furniture Brenda and I had picked out together. Her husband couldn’t be bothered.

  “How long have you lived here?” I asked.

  “Just as long as we’ve know each other,” she said. “We moved in just before you first wandered into my department.”

  I breathed easier knowing the setting of my dreams was not in this house. She served tea and we pretended to be English.

  “You sound like that woman in Calendar Girls,” I said.

  “Who? Helen Mirren?”

  “Right.”

  “I love her,” she said.

  “And what about me?” Brenda thought for a moment.

  “You, my dear, sound like Kiera Knightly awakened from a deep sleep.”

  That’s when her husband showed up. I was startled and felt shaky. It was strange. I had been doing pretty much everything as Sheri, but at that moment I wished I were wearing pants.

  Brenda said, “Donald, this is my friend, Sheri, the girl who helped me pick out all the furniture you love. Sheri, my husband, Donald.”

  We shook hands.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” he said. “I’m a sucker for English accents.”

  “You certainly are,” Brenda said and laughed.

  Donald was a tall man, heavier than even I used to be, and more muscular. He was handsome, in a way, and I had expected to like him, but I didn’t.

  MY EYES STARTED bothering me again. There was a sharp pain behind them that I had trouble describing.

  Anthony Arcuri gave me a thorough and thoughtful examination, as he always did when I complained of even the slightest pain.

  “Are you getting enough sleep?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  I didn’t mention the nightmares. They were becoming more frequent now, but I didn’t want to talk about them. Anyway, Anthony was a medical doctor, not a psychiatrist.

  “I’ll give you some sleeping pills,” he said. “You need to rest your eyes.”

  NO ONE IN the black-and-yellow ReVision lobby paid any attention to me, even though I was the star patient who had propelled this place to international prominence—not to mention being one of its three “visionary” investors, as we were known in the press. It f
elt odd. Even as a complete unknown, Sheri would draw loads of attention.

  THE NIGHTMARE: DARKNESS. Headlights. An unexpected turn off the expressway.

  “I want to show you something.”

  That was it. But it was enough.

  LATER EYE TRANSPLANTS were less successful, and the Arcuri brothers wanted to figure out why. So did I. For one thing, bad publicity was hurting our stock, and we couldn’t sell—not for several more months yet. There were rules about that kind of thing, I guess.

  They started asking me a lot of questions, most of them routine and boring, but some I wasn’t comfortable answering.

  Some patients, they told me, had experienced disturbing illusions and were having strange dreams.

  “What about you?”

  I shrugged. Shook my head.

  THE THING IS, my father had nightmares, too. They put him in a mental institution when I was twelve. He never came out. No way I was going to let that happen to me.

  I RAN INTO Brenda’s husband at the Stanford Shopping Center. I had been looking at the trees and thinking how it always seemed to be windier there than anywhere else in the south bay, when we bumped shoulders.

  “Hey, fancy meeting you here,” he said. “Sheri, right?”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Shopping.”

  “I can see that.”

  He sounded enthused and actually tried to peek inside the three bags I was carrying. I twisted my wrist and craned my neck to read the tiny face of my wristwatch.

  “Sorry,” I said. “In a bit of a rush.”

  “Too bad.”

  I started to walk away but then turned back (he was still watching me) and said, “Donald, I know what you’ve been doing. Sooner or later you will get caught.”

  Then I really did walk away. Quickly. I had no idea why I had said what I did.

  OVER LUNCH THE next day I told Brenda what I’d done and she just laughed.

  “I don’t have to catch him to know he cheats on me,” she said. “But how do you know?”

  “I don’t know anything, but I think … you should get as far from him as you can.”

  “God, Sheri, I know he’s a bastard. You make him sound like a criminal.”

  “Are you sure he isn’t?”

  “Stop it, now you’re creeping me out.”

  I shifted the straps on my bra. It was one I had fallen in love with in the window of Victoria’s Secret and purchased without Brenda’s help. The fit just wasn’t right.

  “We’ll get your things and you move in with me,” I said.

  “Whoa! Not so fast.”

  “Yes, fast.”

  “Sheri, you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m already scared,” I said.

  Suddenly I was running as fast as I could to the women’s room, where I vomited twice, violently, certain that the whole restaurant could hear me.

  When I returned, Brenda stared at me with her mouth open.

  “What is it? What’s going on with you?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  THE NEXT WEEK, the Mercury News reported that the body of another Stanford student, missing seven months, had been discovered in a field of tall brown grass thirty-five miles from campus.

  My worst fear—Sheri’s worst fear—had been realized.

  I met Brenda for lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. I had no idea whether she’d seen the story and I wasn’t sure I wanted her to.

  “Move in with me,” I said. “Today. Right now.”

  She laughed.

  “Seriously.”

  “We haven’t even had lunch yet.”

  “After lunch then.”

  “I’ll give you this: you’re persistent.”

  “No, really. I want you to.”

  I smiled as best I could but was starting to feel nauseous again. I didn’t have any evidence. I just looked in her eyes.

  Brenda put down her menu.

  “Right,” she said. “Forget lunch. We’ll go right now.”

  WE TOOK BRENDA’S Jetta, backed it into her driveway, opened the trunk, gathered her clothes, and threw them in, still on their hangers. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said.

  Her underwear, cosmetics, and other personal effects went into a suitcase she opened on the bed.

  “You should have done this a long time ago,” I said.

  Brenda looked at me.

  “What do you know that I don’t?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, you know something. What is it?”

  “It’s just a feeling.”

  Brenda walked to the nightstand, opened the top drawer and removed a revolver.

  “My husband’s,” she said. “Should I?”

  I nodded and she tucked it into her case.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  We put the case in the back seat and got in the car. Brenda started the engine, buckled her seatbelt, adjusted the rearview mirror, checked her lipstick, hesitated.

  “Brenda, please.”

  “Alright, alright,” she said. “This feeling of yours better be true.” Two blocks later, we passed Donald going the other way. He smiled, waved, looked confused. We smiled and waved back.

  I GOT BRENDA settled in my guest room and late that night slipped into bed with her.

  I held her and kissed the back of her neck.

  We fell asleep.

  IN THE MORNING, I fixed Brenda a cappuccino and tried to convince her not to go to work. She wouldn’t listen.

  “It’s a public place. What’s he going to do?”

  “He’ll follow you.”

  “Why? He’s probably glad I’m gone.”

  “I don’t want him to know where we are.”

  She said, “You know you’re being paranoid, right?”

  “I know, but I have a really bad feeling about this.”

  WITHOUT BRENDA KNOWING it, I hovered around in Macy’s, never far from her department for long, browsing and brooding for hours that morning, thinking, She’s right. This is crazy. Then Donald showed up. I stayed in the background and tried to listen to what they were saying but they were too far away and Brenda didn’t look overly distraught.

  As he headed down the escalator, I decided to follow him.

  Brenda told me once that he was an investor, so I figured he’d probably just be going back to his office or his home computer or whatever. Make some trades. Maybe lock in some profits or cut his losses. Buy low, sell high, and all that. I had learned that much at least. Instead he went to a place where a machine pitches baseballs at you, not from a pitcher’s mound like you’d expect, but from below. Not an accurate simulation, I thought, but this guy could sure smack the hell out of the ball. Pretty consistently, too.

  Bored with my surveillance, I bought a Coke from a big red vending machine nearby and, feeling oddly unsteady, walked to my car. I was about to get in when I heard a voice.

  “Sheri! Wait up.”

  It was him, still in his sweats. I had thought he would change into his street clothes, had thought I would have more time. Shit.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  I shrugged, smiled, searched my brain.

  “I got lost,” I said. “Had to stop and ask for directions.”

  “Right.”

  I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. It didn’t seem to matter.

  “Listen,” he said. “I understand you’re fucking my wife.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t worry. It’s cool. I never knew she liked chicks. I think you owe it to me, though, to let me watch sometime.”

  I smirked for obvious reasons, though not obvious to Donald.

  “Why?” I asked. “So you can finally figure out what turns her on?”

  It was then that I noticed he still had a baseball bat in his hand. He hefted it casually.

  I flinched.

  He laughed.

  “Well, anyway, I gu
ess now I don’t have to worry about getting caught, do I?”

  He wasn’t fooling me, though, and I think he sensed that. I think in fact that he was about to grab me or hit me or something, but a friend of his drove up and I was able to slip away.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I noticed a silver sedan parked across the street from my house, a man behind the wheel—just a black silhouette, really. I pulled the curtains, went to another room, peeked out. The car started and drove away. It wasn’t Donald’s Lexus, but I figured he had more than one car. I described it to Brenda, but she said, no, his only other car was a mud-brown Jeep.

  TWO WEEKS WENT by and we never saw the car again, or Donald. I was ready to write the whole thing off as a paranoid fantasy. I wanted to. Then one night I pulled into a gas station on my way home. It was a drab and desolate place and gave me the creeps, but my tank had been on empty since the day before, warning light glaring at me. Another car pulled up after me, but I didn’t pay any attention until it was too late. Donald grabbed my arm and it hurt.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Let go.”

  “Not until you tell me what you know.”

  “About what?”

  “Cute. Very cute. You think I’m stupid? Tell me what you know.”

  “I don’t know anything.” “Try again.”

  “Oww, I know you’re hurting me.”

  “And I know how to hurt you a lot more.”

  He had me by both arms now and was staring into my eyes. I pushed back hard and I think he was surprised by my strength. He was even more surprised when my knee quickly collided with his nuts. He doubled over. I brought the other knee up even harder into his face. My leg felt wet and I realized it was blood. Donald slumped to the ground.

  I looked for the attendant. He was gone. Calling the cops or taking a crap? I couldn’t be sure. I kicked Donald in the ribs once for good measure. Then I ran. I should have jumped in my car, I guess, but it was out of gas and Donald’s bulk was blocking my path.

  I looked over my shoulder. Too late now.

  I kicked off my pumps and ran barefoot without thinking about the pain, without stopping for anything. Block after block went by in a blur. I was breathing hard and it burned, but I just kept going. Nothing had ever hurt so good.