The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  In Tennessee I finally met someone who’d taken the same path as I: Alex, slender, sandy-haired, living neither as a male nor a female, shunned by family, working as a teller in an S&L. We were astonishingly similar in our outlooks, in the decision we’d both come to, and both of us longed for that same unimaginably distant thing: a sense of belonging, of being loved and needed and necessary. We came together, in desperation more than want, and made love—as best as two neuters, two neither-nors, could make love. There were no sex organs to stimulate, but in our travels we each had learned much about touching, and caressing, and the sensitivities of the flesh; we could appreciate, as well as anybody, the gentle brush of lips along the nape of a neck, the sensuous massage of fingers kneading buttocks, the lick of a tongue inside the rim of an ear. It was very tender, and very loving, but when it was over …

  When it was over, Alex stroked my cheek and said, almost sadly, “We’re much alike. Aren’t we?”

  I nodded, wordlessly.

  “I always thought when I found someone like myself, I’d be truly happy,” Alex said, in a soft Tennessee drawl.

  “So did I,” I said, quietly.

  Alex held me, then gave an affectionate peck on my cheek. “I’m sorry, Pat.”

  We were alike; too alike. Even our sexual responses were nearly identical. It wasn’t just the lack of orgasm, it was … like making love to yourself; narcissistic, somehow. Patty, the strawberry blonde, would probably have liked it, but I felt only vaguely depressed by it. Both of us knew, instinctively, that the answer to our problem—if there was an answer—lay not in each other, but somewhere else.

  My search, my quest for identity and purpose, was unraveling before my eyes. There was no purpose. There was no identity. I was neither man nor woman, yin nor yang; I was the line, the invisible, impossible-to-measure demarcation between yin and yang, as impossible to define as the smallest possible fraction, as elusive as the value of pi. I was neither, I was no one, I was nothing.

  Not knowing what else to do … I went home.

  * * *

  I’d kept in touch with my parents, over the years; letters, postcards, a phone call on Christmas or Thanksgiving. At first they were furious, even hung up the first time I called; eventually though they forgave me, and lately they’d written of how much they wanted to see me again. They were growing old, and I was afraid that if I didn’t go now, I might never get the chance; so I headed west, to Washington, to Redmond, and home.

  But the closer home I got, the faster my heart raced, the weaker my grip on the steering wheel; finally, somewhere between Bellevue and Kirkland, I lost my nerve and pulled into a motel off 405. It was well past eleven, and after checking in I headed down to the all-night coffee shop in the lobby. Exhausted, hungry, and nervous, I sat at a corner table, ordered a sandwich, and began chatting with a man at an adjoining table; he had the smooth, charming sheen of a salesman, and as he flirted with me, I found myself unconsciously changing the way I sat, the way I crossed my legs, even the way I held my glass of iced tea. I leaned forward, my now very feminine body language belying my androgynous appearance. It all came back so quickly, so easily. Before he could make a proposition, I realized what was happening and hurried off, feigning a stomachache; I hadn’t come this far to lapse back into old patterns.

  I slept badly, and wasted most of the next day window-shopping in a Kirkland mall, putting off the inevitable as long as I could. I was eating lunch when I looked up to find a man staring at me from a table across the room; this time I fought off the reflex that had overtaken me last night and simply glanced away, but when I looked up again the man was standing in front of me, a quizzical look on his face … a face I suddenly recognized.

  “Pat?”

  It was Davy. For a moment I was stunned that anyone here would recognize me, looking as I now did, but of course Davy had always known Pat, not Patty. The embarrassment of that day in the woods came rushing back; I must have looked terrified as I jumped to my feet, spilling coffee all over the table, and started to hurry away, but Davy rushed after. “Pat—wait—”

  Outside he took me by the arm, but it was the gentle look on his face, and the softness of his voice, that brought me to a stop. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to … I mean, that was a long time ago, right?”

  He was only in his twenties, and already his blond hair was thinning, but his eyes were still a bright blue, and now they seemed to be looking straight through me. Part of me wanted to run; thank God, I didn’t. He let go of my arm, smiling apologetically. “Been a while,” he said.

  It took me a moment to collect my thoughts.

  “I’ve been—away,” I said. “Traveling.”

  “Back for a visit, or to stay?”

  I wished I knew. “A visit. I was going to head over to Redmond later and see my parents.”

  We stood there, awkwardly, for several moments, before he said, haltingly, “Look. If you’ve … got an hour to spare, I’d … like to talk with you. Let me call my office, okay?”

  “I really should be getting—”

  “Please?” What was that intensity, that desperation, I read in his eyes? “Just an hour?”

  * * *

  We skirted the edge of Lake Washington in his Jeep, a gray mist obscuring the few sailboats out on this drizzly day. We chatted innocuously for the first half hour, pointing out familiar sights, the snowy caps of nearby mountains, but finally, as we stood at a deserted lookout over the lake, Davy worked up the nerve to say what had been on his mind all afternoon.

  “I’m sorry, Pat,” he said, quietly.

  I looked up at him. “Sorry for what?”

  “For running,” he said, glancing away uneasily. “For cutting you off like that. But I couldn’t handle it. You were the first girl—” He stopped, momentarily panicked that he’d used the wrong word, but when I didn’t react negatively he went on, hesitantly, “—that I was ever really … attracted to. I mean, you have no idea how many times I thought about it, about you, and me … when we were out hiking, or swimming, or in school—”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Really?” I said. “I thought you just thought I was just, you know, one of the guys.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the hell of it. Even though I knew—thought—you were a girl, I couldn’t shake this weird feeling that you were a guy … that being attracted to you was wrong, somehow. So there we are, the perfect situation, and I figure, okay, I’ll prove to myself she’s just like any other girl, that it’s okay for me to want her—”

  “Oh, God,” I said, realizing. “And instead you found—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Talk about gender confusion. I freaked. And for a while, I wasn’t even sure what I was, much less you.” He looked away. “Later, I did a lot of reading, found out about … people like you … and when I was in college, I saw a therapist who helped me out. Then I met Lyn. But all during high school.…”

  I put a hand on his; now it was my turn to feel guilty. “Oh, God, Davy, I’m so sorry. I was so shaken up by it myself, I guess I never gave a thought to what it must’ve been like for you—your first sexual experience and it’s so … so bizarre.…”

  He put his other hand on top of mine, and the warmth of it was familiar and comforting. “It’s okay. I came out of it okay. But I wanted to apologize. For not—” His voice caught. “For not being a friend.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I hugged him, trying to release some of that guilt which had been dogging him all these years; as we stood there the light drizzle became heavier, and when we separated the sky was darker, the ground turning muddy as a gray slanting rain pebbled the surface of the lake. “I’d better get a move on,” I said, glancing at the thunderheads on the horizon.

  “Rotten weather to be driving in. Why don’t you come home and have dinner with Lyn and me?”

  The idea frightened me, I’m not sure why; perhaps it was the warmth of Davy’s body, still with me after our embrace. “No, I be
tter not,” I said, and in my haste to get back to the car I took the muddy embankment a bit too quickly, my foot sliced sideways, I felt a pop in my ankle as I tumbled down the small incline. I yelled, swore, but Davy was right behind me, pulling me up with a strong arm; though the damage, damn it, had already been done. “Take it easy,” he said, helping me hobble up the embankment to the road. The pain in my foot was overshadowed, briefly, by the feel of his arm around my waist, but I thought of the last time something like this had happened, the blind alleys it had led us both to for so many years, and I resolved it would not happen again. “I’m all right,” I protested, his grip loosening as I moved away—but the moment I took a step without his help all my weight fell on my twisted ankle and a stabbing pain shot up through my knee and into my thigh. I buckled, and Davy was there again to catch me.

  “Come on. We’ll fix you up back at my place.”

  I was hardly in a position to argue. We climbed into his Jeep, the rain drumming on its canvas roof as we headed down the road, and I cursed myself, wondering if I hadn’t done this on purpose …

  We were dripping wet, our shoes muddied, when we entered Davy’s tract home in Kirkland, but Davy led me unhesitatingly to a dining room chair, carefully propped my ankle up on a second chair, and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll get some ice,” he said, and as the kitchen door swung shut behind him I saw the flash of headlights outside the dining room window, then heard the hurried slap of footsteps on the wet sidewalk leading to the house. Oh, great, I thought. I looked around for Davy, thinking that this was going to be an awkward introduction at best, but without him here—

  The door opened and, along with a spray of rain, a petite blonde in a damp gray suit entered, at first so intent on closing her umbrella she didn’t notice me. Then she looked up, stopped in mid-stride, and stared at me, her face contorting into an almost comical look of apprehension.

  “Oh, God,” she said, in a fast Eastern cadence. “You’re not a burglar, are you? I left Chicago after the third burglary. Please tell me you’re not a burglar.”

  I had to smile, but before I could say anything Davy entered with the ice pack, introducing me as an old schoolmate; I couldn’t tell from the look on Lyn’s face whether Davy had told her anything more about me, but as soon as she saw my ankle she came over, wincing as she touched my foot, lightly. “Ouch. Hold on, I think we’ve got an Ace bandage in the bathroom.” Within minutes she was wrapping a long, slightly ragged bandage around my ankle, as Davy took off the icepack. “Mud,” she said with a sardonic grin. “There should be mud miners up here, you know, providing the rest of the country with our unending supply. Mud and rain, rain and mud—”

  She finished wrapping, secured the bandage with a butterfly clip, then let Davy wrap the icepack around the ankle again. “There. That should keep the swelling down.” She stood, and for the first time I noticed the disparity in height between her and Davy; she stood on tiptoe, kissed him affectionately on the lips. “Guess what, dear heart,” she said.

  Davy looked apprehensive. “My turn to cook?”

  She nodded. Davy sighed, picked up his raincoat from the chair he’d draped it over, looked at me. “You like Chinese?”

  “Sure.”

  “Back in a flash.” He was out the door and gone in a shot. Lyn turned, grinned. “Never fails. My turn to cook, I feel this obligation to make veal scallopini; his turn to cook, he goes out for Szechwan. Would you like some Tylenol for that foot?”

  “Thanks.”

  With the Tylenol came hot coffee and a dry sweater; we shifted my ankle to the coffee table in front of the sectional sofa, and Lyn and I dried out in front of the gas logs, as we waited for the mu shu pork and kung pao chicken. I asked her what kind of work she did.

  “Loan manager. B of A. You?”

  “Retail sales,” I hedged. “I’ve been on the road for quite a while.”

  “Back to visit your family?”

  “Yes. Right.”

  She took out a pack of Salems, offered me one; and as she lit it for me, over the flame of the lighter I thought I could see her staring at me, oddly, trying to figure me out—not muscular enough for a man, not round enough for a woman. Was I live, or was I Memorex? Or was it just my own paranoia?

  “I actually quit,” she said, taking a deep drag on the cigarette, “back when I thought I was pregnant.” At my puzzled look she explained, “False alarm. Or ‘hysterical pregnancy,’ as they put it. If it happened to men, you know they’d call it something like ‘stress-induced symptomatic replication,’ but women, we’re hysterical, right? Like, ‘Oh, my God, I burned the roast, and—’” She looked down at her stomach in mock-surprise. “‘Whoops! Honey, do I look pregnant to you?’” We laughed, and that led to a general discussion of the peculiarities of men in general … and as I listened to Lyn’s good-natured but very funny catalog of male excesses, not so different from the catalog of female excesses I’d listened to from men, something occurred to me, something crystallized after all these years.

  All my life I’d felt like a member of a different race, human but not-human; similar but separate. And now I realized that this was, to some degree, how men and women viewed each other, at times—like members of a different species entirely. I saw it even more clearly over dinner, because even though Davy and Lyn had a good, loving relationship, there were the inevitable rough edges. Toward the end of the evening they got into a heated argument, as they were showing me around the soon-to-be-renovated basement, over what color tile would be used; Davy kept insisting it would be red, while Lyn said that wasn’t it at all, more like terracotta, and they went on like that for almost a minute before I stepped into the breach with:

  “Uh … Davy? When you say red, you mean like a fire-engine?”

  “No, no, darker than that, more like—like—”

  “Brick?”

  “Yeah! Yeah, like brick.”

  “That’s terra-cotta,” Lyn said, exasperated.

  “Well how the hell am I supposed to know that?”

  After a moment, both Davy and Lyn loosened up and Lyn even suggested I should stick around and interpret while they were redecorating the house. We went upstairs, had some wine, watched a little cable … me stealing glances at Davy and Lyn, snuggled up together … and slowly my mood darkened. I liked them, liked them both; Davy’s steady presence, Lyn’s manic energy. I could fantasize myself falling in love with or marrying either one. Everyone in the world, it seemed, could look forward to that—male, female, gay, lesbian, they could all find a partner. Everyone except me. I was grateful when the movie ended and I could retire, alone, to the sofabed in the living room.

  Lying there under a thick, warm quilt, listening to the tattoo of raindrops on the roof, I drifted asleep … and had a nightmare I hadn’t had in years, the one that had plagued me so often as a child, the one that drove me to my parents’ bedroom years before.

  I looked up to see the ceiling was dropping toward me, as, beneath me, the floor was rushing up. It happened too fast to do anything but shut my eyes against the coming collision; but when I hit, I didn’t hit hard but soft, as though both floor and ceiling had turned to feather-down and were now smothering me between them. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see a thin wedge of light on either side, kept there only by the obstruction of my own body between floor and ceiling; then the wedge shrank to a slit, then a line, then a series of small pinpoints. I fought against the pressure but it was useless, the pinpoints of light vanishing one after another; I tried to take a breathe but couldn’t, my chest in a vise, unable to expand or contract; I was dying, I was defeated, I was—

  “Pat! Pat, wake up!”

  I was in the vise, and I was being held by my shoulders by Davy; my eyes were open, but I was in both places. He shook me, and the vise opened a crack; shook me again, and it fell away. I was in the living room, and I was awake; but I was still terrified. I broke down, as I hadn’t in years—not since that day in the woods—but instead of shame and hum
iliation I felt pain, and loneliness; only the sense of apartness was the same. I held desperately onto Davy, tears running down my cheeks, trying to hold sleep at bay. Davy held me, and stroked my back, and after I’d finished he looked at me, put a hand to my cheek, and said in a soft, sad voice: “I think it’s time I made it up to you,” and then he was kissing me, tenderly. Part of me wanted to stay like that for the rest of my life, pretending to be what he wanted and needed, suspended forever in illusion; but I drew back, shook my head, tried to pull away. “Davy, no—your wife, I can’t—”

  And then there was a hand on my shoulder; a small hand, not very heavy, and I could feel the tips of her fingers on my skin. I turned. Lyn sat in her nightgown on the edge of the bed, looking not at all angry or disturbed; I started to say something, but she just shook her head, said, “Sshh, sshh,” and leaned in, her lips brushing the nape of my neck, her breath moving slowly along the curve of my neck to my face, my mouth …