by Unknown
He heard his mother rising as he scraped off the last of the foam, unthinkingly grateful once again that he was blonde and had a thin beard. Next he combed out and dried his shoulder length hair, pulling it straight back. He wound a headband around his forehead, got it good and tight, and pulled it back to the hairline. The old actress who’d shown him that trick called it “instant facelift” and it went a long way towards feminizing his features. True, his long face didn’t look good with the hair going straight back, but the point wasn’t to look pretty. The point was to look authentic.
Foundation followed, along with light lipstick, a little rouge and eyeshadow. A scarf went around his neck, flight attendant style, concealing his adam’s apple. He squinted at the mirror. Yes, from the neck up he could pass.
His mother knocked on the door. “Leslie? You gonna be long?”
“Just about out, ma.” He wrapped a towel around his waist and left the bathroom. Seeing the makeup, his mother smiled and gave him a little kiss on the cheek.
In the bedroom, Leslie smoothed the covers before putting his suitcase on the bed. Part of it had his “man clothes”—t-shirts and jeans, sneakers and a ratty Braves baseball cap. The rest of it was blouses, skirts, flats and (of course) falsies.
Leslie had, in his life, met a lot of transvestites. Many of them had, in his opinion, caricatured femininity more than they had enacted it. On his female days, Leslie had no desire to be a “tramp” or a “hottie.” Where other TVs dressed for attention, Leslie considered it the highest compliment when he could pass as a she and never be suspected.
When he heard the shower go on, he dropped his boxers to the floor and (with a little sigh) tucked his penis and scrotum back between his legs, reaching for the Ace bandage. Then panties, padded bra, blouse, slacks, stockings, a cardigan and a pair of low-heeled boots. Rings, earrings and a small pendant completed the picture.
He looked in the mirror and concentrated on being a she. Hip cocked slightly to the side, not rolled forward. Ankles and knees together. Hands by the face or the hair, not in the pockets. Looseness in finger joints, the elbows and wrists and shoulders, but tightness in the neck and eyes.
There.
She was ready, not to look, but to be looked at. Hopefully, to be looked over and overlooked.
When Kate came out of the bathroom, wearing a Greenpeace t-shirt that came to her knees, she said, “You look nice, honey” and gave Leslie a kiss on the cheek. Leslie’s hand automatically touched the other woman’s arm and she smiled in return. “Thanks mom,” she said in a soft voice.
* * *
Fred had woken from a nightmare—something about a blonde woman and a heavy machine with a button on the front—and hadn’t fallen asleep again. He wondered what had happened to Seth, and tried to tell himself that it probably wasn’t that bad. After all, when he’d called up the ghost it had sworn up and down that all it wanted to do was protect its little girl. Still, he’d had quite a turn listening to it scream at Seth and watching it take him over. That voice… anyone who heard would know that nothing human made that voice. He’d been mad as hell at Dobbs, but in hindsight he wondered if he hadn’t overreacted.
“Shit,” he muttered. “That weak-think ain’t doing no good now.”
He tossed and turned for a few moments, then got up for a glass of water. As he turned around, he saw pants cuffs peeking from under the bed. He bent over, wincing as he felt his spine pop a little, and pulled out the bundle of clothing. In the dim, midnight light you couldn’t see the bloodstains at all. He supposed he ought to wash them—or better yet, burn them—but another idea came to mind.
Burning them would be the safest, certainly. But the danger the clothes posed also offered him the chance to take a risk. Not just any risk, but a particularly stupid and dangerous risk. Meaning, in his circumstances, a powerful risk.
He’d seen a laundromat not far away—quite near, in fact, to the place he’d ditched the gun. A prickle combining fear and excitement tickled his neck hairs and made him smile in the darkness. He glanced at the clock.
Three A.M. didn’t offer much in the way of witnesses, but anyone who was there would certainly remark on a stranger doing such a tiny load. Not to mention what would happen if someone walked by the washer—right out in the open!—and saw the stains. He didn’t have much of an alibi, since the only people he knew in town could attach him to Dobbs and… oh yes, this was shaping up into a tasty chance indeed. The odds in his favor were quite good, but the stakes were also quite high. After all, he was a convicted felon, and any investigation into Dobbs’ stab wound would likely focus on the jailbird he’d come to town with…
Yes, the safe thing was definitely to skip town and go to ground. Fred immediately decided to stay and do laundry.
As it happened, there was no one in the laundromat, no one even saw him enter or leave: But even as he was leaving the hotel to run across the highway, he felt his squirreled-away store of mojo increase.
This put him in a pretty good mood when he got back, and he was able to sleep several more hours before the alarm went off, awakening him for his date with his not-wife and not-son.
Waiting was not easy, however. His interrupted sleep had left him feeling groggy and dull, and time to think over his past with Leslie and Kate never put him in a good mood. At the diner he bit his nails and ordered coffee and looked at his watch a lot. When they walked in, he stood up and waved, but his smile was pure reflex.
“Hey ladies,” he said, and it felt completely natural. “Breakfast is on me.”
“Big spender,” Kate grinned.
They sat, had coffee, runny eggs, salty hash browns and waffles soaked in syrup. When the waitress left, Fred cracked his knuckles, grimaced and spoke.
“So… where we at, here?”
“You mean in regards to… uh, Joe Kimble?” Kate’s eyes flicked over at Leslie as she spoke.
“Yeah.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Do you really think it’ll do any good to find him?” Leslie asked quietly, not even looking up from her waffles.
“How y’mean?” Fred was working at a piece of sausage gristle that had gotten lodged in a back molar.
“I mean this: I have spent the better part of twenty years—or at least the bigger part—trying to attune myself to the Mystic Hermaphrodite. I was raised to do it and have done little else.” A tiny edge of resentment crept into her voice, but she pushed it back. “I’ve been fairly successful. But look around you. If I had to pick a place in America that was least conducive to either mysticism or sex-crossing, this would be a strong contender. Never mind mixing both together.”
There was quiet for a moment, then Fred replied “Well yeah, but… I mean, he was kind of born to do it. We think, anyhow.”
“And we come back to nature vs. nurture.” Kate gave a short laugh. “What’s the old joke? ‘Either way, it’s mommy’s fault’?”
“Who brought up fault?” Fred asked. “I mean, shit happens. I thought we’d agreed that the switch was, you know, just one of those things. Blowback.”
“Calm down Fred. No one’s blaming anyone. I guess I’m just with Leslie a little bit here. Is it going to do any good to start from scratch?”
Fred squinted. “Somehow, I don’t think you’d have driven all the way out here if you didn’t want to at least see how the ‘big experiment’ turned out. I’m gonna find him with or without you. I hope it’ll be with you.” He turned to Leslie. “You, in particular, could help me a lot when it comes to gauging how far he is on the path.”
“If he’s on it at all,” Kate said in a low voice.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll grant that. Maybe the whole thing’s a screwup and there’s nothing special about him whatsoever.” Despite his agreeable words, his tone made it clear he thought this unlikely.
“Aren’t the two of you overlooking something?” Fred and Kate looked up. “What about Joe himself? Doesn’t he have any say in his fate?”
Th
ere was silence for a moment, then Leslie added, “Sorry to bring it up but, you know, you did raise me to be a moral paragon.”
“Of course Joe has a say in his fate,” Fred said in an aggrieved tone. “It’s not like we can force him to do anything, or lay any claim on him. But—as I believe one of those philosophers you studied would tell you—the only meaningful choice is an informed choice. Joe has to know the truth about his… his position. Hell, he probably won’t even believe it. But he still needs to be told. If he wants to ignore us and live out his life as a small town exterminator, that’s his choice. But I think we owe it to him to tell him. Not to mention, letting him know who his parents really are.”
“Besides,” Kate said “Dobbs might know more than we hope, and might blab it.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” Fred said.
“I know, but it’s possible. The Freak might get wind of him—or worse, the New Inquisition. If that happens, I don’t think they’ll be in the mood to give him a lot of choices and options.
“He’s been safe for twenty-one years,” Fred said. “Why would they notice him now? I mean, other than Dobbs.”
“Who can say? It could just be ‘one of those things,’ like us getting… changed in the first place,” Leslie said.
Fred didn’t have an answer to that. He sucked down the last of his cooling coffee. “Well, in any event, we are agreed that we have to find him, right? We agree on that much? Okay then. We’ll find him and Leslie will check him out. And then we’ll tell him… well, as much as it seems like he can handle. Is that the plan?”
“That sounds okay.”
“All right then. Lessee, Leslie had the waffles…”
“I thought you said breakfast was on you, dad.” The last word slipped out before Leslie thought about it.
“Oh, that’s right. Thanks for reminding me, kiddo. We all know it violates moral precepts to heedlessly disregard promises.” He said it with a smile.
* * *
While the Mundys were finishing their brunch, Carl and Jolene were on a long stretch of two lane highway that had, less than 24 hours earlier, held Seth Dobbs’ car as it barreled north for vengeance. The two of them had endured a busy and exciting morning, but less than halfway into a long drive the boredom was starting to set in. They were driving a small white panel truck. Other than the license plates, it had no identifying marks.
As Carl drove, Jolene worked the radio. Politics, politics, religion, adult contemporary, then country.
“Is this okay? You like country okay?”
Carl shrugged. “Eh. I liked old country more than that new stuff. Shania Twain’s okay though, I guess.”
“All right.”
They listened to two songs.
“Damn, my butt’s falling asleep,” Carl said.
“Yeah, I think I heard it snoring,” Jolene replied. Carl laughed.
They heard another song and an ad for insurance before the station was lost in static.
“Shit. Abel’s a fucking millionaire and he can’t afford to put a CD player in a truck?”
Jolene snorted. “Hell, he can’t afford to fly us in?”
“Well, it’s probably less suspicious and all. Makes us harder to track. Besides, we might get noticed, what with the ordnance and all.”
“What ordinance?” Jolene asked.
“No, ‘ordnance.’ You know, the guns and stuff. Not to mention that freaky thing we got in Iowa.”
“Yeah.” Jolene spared a hard look for the fetus in the glass jar. “That’s not something you can exactly stow in the overhead compartment. What’s it supposed to do again?”
“It’s like a compass, I guess, only instead of north, it points towards avatars. You remember avatars from the class, right?” Neither Carl nor Jolene had experienced the occult before going to work for the New Inquisition. Their talents were more mundane. However, they had been treated to a crash course in practical sorcery by one of their boss’ more mystically with-it instructors.
“Were those the people who survived at sea by cannibalism and got cursed?”
“No! Jesus. Avatars are the people who act in a certain way to get weird powers. Like the guy who acts deliberately stupid because ‘fortune favors the Fool,’ and who gets really lucky as a result? Or, what was the other one. You know, the Tarzan one?”
“Oh yeah, I kind of remember that. Like actors in a play, only the roles come true… was that it?”
“I guess. It may not be all that important. We’re just supposed to use this thing to find Joe Kimble and give him the standard recruitment pitch.”
They were both quiet for a few miles, thinking of how Mordecai and Raven had responded to the “standard recruitment pitch.”
After a few miles of silence, Carl coughed. It wasn’t a polite, “let’s start a conversation” sound but a deep, congested bark. He reached in his pocket for an inhaler and used it.
“Smoker’s cough?” Jolene asked.
“Naw, just asthma.” He shrugged. “I blame all that L.A. smog.”
Jolene fiddled with the radio a little more. Adult contemporary, religious talk, some guy plugging his book, then staticky 70s hard rock.
“So Jolene,” Carl said at last. “What did you do before?”
“Before? You mean, before I got hired by TNI?”
“Yeah.”
She fiddled with her hair. “You sure you want to know? I mean, it could be something pretty rotten, right?”
Carl glanced over to see if she was kidding. “Look Jolene; I know you, like, murdered that Satanist guy, pretty much in cold blood. So I don’t think you’re going to shock me.”
“You go first.”
“What is this? We’re playing doctor now?”
“That’s right. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“All right. Uh… well, I was a cop for a while. Worked on the SWAT team in Los Angeles.”
“Why’d you quit?”
He moved his head around a little, considered lying to her. “Aw… yours had better be pretty bad to make up for this. Okay. I got fired.”
“Because…?”
“Well, I was kind of taking some bribes. Piddly shit—like, fixing tickets and stuff. And I stole some stuff out of the evidence room. Not like drugs or anything. Nothing that would be missed, not even anything from current cases. Just some old stuff that was going to get auctioned off anyhow. So I got caught, and the commissioner was looking for someone to be an example, and my lieutenant didn’t want it to be him. Check this out—he was, I swear, cheating on his wife with, like, a fifteen year old. The lieutenant, I mean.”
“Shit. So you were a dirty cop?”
He shrugged. “After that I got into doing bodyguard work. I was a bodyguard for Kathy Griffin, for a while.”
“Who?”
“You know, from ‘Suddenly Susan’?”
“I thought that was Brooke Shields.”
“She was the other chick on ‘Suddenly Susan’. That didn’t last long though. She didn’t really need much guarding. And after that it was this guy from Vegas who turned out to be a gangster or a smuggler or some fucking thing, ‘cause these three vatos showed up at his place in L.A. one day to kack him. I shot two of ‘em, but the third one got me right through the leg and got to the guy and did him, then drove the other two away. They got caught at a hospital, though. Anyhow, TNI heard I was loyal enough to take a bullet for the man, so they offered me a job.”
“Wow. So you didn’t even need the face surgery?”
“No. Carl’s my original name and everything.”
“You’re lucky,” she said enviously. “I used to be named Laurel. I like that much better than Jolene.”
They both shifted in their seats.
“Okay, so I’m done,” Carl said. “What did you do before you were hired by the New Inquisition?”
Jolene pulled a lock of hair into her mouth and chewed it before answering.
“You really want to know? Okay. I was a deep c
over agent for Soviet military intelligence.”
Carl swiveled his head, stared, then burst out laughing.
“Damn, that’s a good one. You had me going! But seriously, what did you do?”
“I am serious. I worked for the GRU in America. That’s ‘Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie’. ‘Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff.’”
“You’re jerkin’ my chain.”
“Shit Carl, what do I have to do to convince you? Who do you think taught me how to shoot a gun and the right way to strangle somebody?”
Slowly, Carl realized she was serious.
“So you were a… a fuckin’ spy? What did you do?”
“Pretty much the same thing I do for Abel now. Follow people around, find things out about them, blackmail, steal, kill… though I have to say, I’ve nailed a lot more people on Abel’s dime than I ever did for the Soviets. How many people have you offed since you started working for TNI?”
There was a pause before Carl said “Two.”
“See? I’ve done three, myself. For the Reds I only ever did two, and that was in fifteen years of service.”
Carl was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “So, were you, like, a commienist then?”
She shrugged.
“Not really, I guess. I mean, they recruited me when I was just fifteen. They had something on my dad, who didn’t have any good access and so wasn’t much use to them. They pegged him for a rummy even before the Air Force did.” She was looking right out the front windshield and her voice had become bitter. “They tried to indoctrinate me, but when you came down to it, as long as I got results they didn’t give a fuck what I thought. I got the impression that a lot of Russian spies working in the U.S. were only giving lip service to communism anyhow.”
“Damn.” They drove on in silence for a moment, then Carl asked “So, how’d you go from working for the Reds, to working for TNI? I mean, Abel’s about as capitalist as they come.”
“Don’t I know it. Well, after the Soviet Union started falling to shit, I didn’t hear from my controller for a while. Like, for years and years. So I just kept at my job and figured I was retired from the spy game. Then one day I get this call from some smooth-talking guy who wants to invite me into an ‘exciting new employment opportunity.’ The more I talked to him, the clearer it got that this mainly meant ‘staying out of jail.’ I suppose they could have even hanged me. Treason is a capital crime, though this was way before the Patriot Act and all that. Anyhow, I signed on. You want to know what I think happened? I think my old controller sold me to Abel. Like, gave him my dossier and enough info to blackmail me good, then took off.”