by Sharon Shinn
She finishes her inspection of the property and heaves an exaggerated sigh. “Well, it could be worse, I suppose,” she says. “It could be snowing.”
Alonzo takes the grocery bags and the suitcase and leads Celeste inside. She thoughtfully holds the door open so I can trot in behind them. The front door leads directly into the kitchen, a big warm room paneled in honey wood and hung with copper pans and dried herbs. Janet was responsible for the original decorating, but I’ve added a few touches of my own. More flowerpots in the windows, filled with cheery blooms. New curtains with motifs of fruit and blossoms. A new set of ceramic dishes in bright reds and deep ochres. In human form, I crave color; even in the animal shapes that don’t register hue, I like to look at the varying shapes and textures. They remind the person inside that she will be back one day to take possession of these objects again.
“I didn’t know what kinds of scraps you’d been subsisting on since you came out here, so I brought a bunch of goodies,” Celeste tells Alonzo as she begins pulling groceries out of the bag. She knows perfectly well about the two freezers full of Tupperware containers, but it turns out she hasn’t exactly been shopping for staples. So what we have here are chocolate donuts, gooey butter cake, chocolate-covered raisins, five different kinds of chips, three kinds of cheese dip, and a bottle of premixed margaritas.
“You can’t have any of the booze,” she tells him. “But the rest of it’s all yours if you want it. Oh! And I have a cooler in the car. I picked up some barbecue on the edge of town. We can have that for dinner.”
“What kind of barbecue?” he says. Testing her.
She swats him on the head. Love tap. “Chicken for me, pork for you. Did you think I’d forget?”
He ducks his head and doesn’t answer that. But he’s smiling. “I’ll go get it. Anything else in the car?”
“Uh—yeah. What do you think?”
“Movies?”
“About twelve of them! I didn’t know what you’d seen so I checked out, like, half the new releases.”
“Cool,” he says. “I haven’t seen hardly anything.”
I hear Bonnie’s voice in my head. He’ll sit and watch cable all day, movie after movie, but he doesn’t like to go to the theater. At first I thought he just didn’t want to go with us, and then I thought maybe his friends don’t like movies. But then I figured it out. It’s dark. He feels trapped. It triggers all his irrational fears. So we let him rent whatever he wants.
“I haven’t seen anything, either,” she says. “Work work work. That’s all I do. This is like a vacation.” She glances expressively around the kitchen. “Well, the kind of vacation where you go to a dude ranch for the summer and you have to clean out the horse stalls and bale hay or whatever. That kind of vacation. Still. It will make a change.”
Celeste is a freelance writer and editor with a couple of big clients she can work for remotely. She’s said more than once she doesn’t know how shape-shifters ever held down jobs before the advent of the Internet, because being a contract employee who works from home means never having to come face-to-face with your boss or your customers. Of course, her own particular brand of transformation is the best—she can change at will, and she’s always the same animal, a slim bobcat with a golden pelt and unnervingly huge eyes. It would hardly be like having a disability at all to be able to control it so completely. It would almost seem like being normal.
“I fed the dogs this morning, but there’s a lot more to do,” Alonzo tells her. “But I can handle it. You don’t have to help.”
She gives him an incredulous look. “I am the adult here! You are the child! You are the one who is helping me!”
This actually makes him laugh. “Yeah. You keep telling yourself that,” he says and slouches out the door.
Celeste is Alonzo’s favorite person in the world. I’m even more grateful on his behalf than my own that she had the time to come out here this weekend.
The two of them largely ignore me for the rest of the day as they do grinding physical labor around the property. Despite her princess appearance, Celeste is a hard worker; give her a task, no matter how distasteful, and she’ll get it done. Now that there are two of them, they can finish the chores that require four hands, spend a little more quality time with the dogs, and make sure everything is as tidy as a backwoods zoo can be.
Celeste also takes a couple of hours to listen to my voice mail and call back the four or five pet owners who’ve phoned to make appointments for their animals. I don’t have that much retail business anymore—once Janet left, I tried to gently encourage the majority of her clients to switch to one of the vets in town, “So much closer to you in case there’s an emergency.” But there are always people who are too stubborn to make a change—or who develop unreasonable animosities toward certain medical professionals—or who come to the unshakable conclusion that you need their attention, their money, their business, that you are living out here all by yourself and you must surely be lonely, broke, and desperate. Those are the clients who still come to me, and they’ve long ago learned to adjust to my erratic schedule, though they don’t have a clue why I am sometimes available and sometimes not.
“Hi, yes, this is Celeste Saint-Simon, I’m calling on behalf of Dr. Baylor, you left a message? She’s not available right now, but her calendar will open up by next Wednesday if you’d like to make an appointment.”
So many lies in those simple sentences. First of all, I’m not Dr. Baylor. My wildly unpredictable shape-changing patterns made it impossible for me to attend school beyond eighth grade, so I studied with my father and on my own, and I got my GED before I was seventeen. I’ve taken a few online university courses, but naturally I wasn’t able to attend college or vet school; everything I know about animal medicine I learned from Janet before she retired.
Well, before she died—though I allow people to think she’s still alive. Over the years, I’ve paid the fees to renew both Janet’s vet license and the clinic’s facility license so I can continue to buy medical supplies and write prescriptions in her name. I’ve even attended the North American Veterinary Conference as Janet Kassebaum so I could rack up continuing education credits. My clients don’t know this, of course; I let them believe I’ve acquired my degree and passed my boards. It’s just been easier to let them think I’m qualified for the position I’ve gradually assumed.
And, really, I think I know as much about animals as any vet in Quinville. Hell, I’ve been half of those animals at one time or another, which I think gives me peculiar insights into what might be wrong and how it feels. I can’t always fix the animals, but I’ve never failed to make a diagnosis. That’s the real reason some of my customers won’t go anywhere else.
The other lie in Celeste’s statement isn’t so much a falsehood as a guess. She thinks I’ll be back to human state by Monday or Tuesday, but she doesn’t know for sure. And lately I wouldn’t want to be placing any bets on what my body will do next. But I appreciate Celeste’s efforts all the same.
By sundown, she and Alonzo both look tired but a little pleased with themselves, having accomplished everything they set out to do for the day. He flips through her DVD selections, now and then grunting in satisfaction, while she heats up the take-out barbecue, tosses a salad, and opens three bags of chips.
“I know you don’t want to eat the salad, but that’s the price you pay for all the rest of this great stuff, so no complaining,” she tells him when he eyes his plate with disfavor. I think it is a measure of how far Alonzo’s come that he would, even with just an expression, indicate he might not be happy about a food option.
“If I eat the salad, how many donuts can I have?”
“Three.”
“All right.”
She hasn’t forgotten me, either; I have my own plate of barbecue, potato salad, and chipotle cheese dip. They make several trips between the kitchen and the living room, wh
ere tray tables are set up in front of the overstuffed sofa and the DVD player has already been cued up, and finally all of our food has been transferred to the viewing area.
“This is the life,” Celeste says, sinking back against the cushion with a tortilla chip in one hand and a margarita in the other. “Hit play.” She takes a sip and sighs with satisfaction. “Here we go.”
* * *
Over the next forty-eight hours, Celeste and Alonzo watch about ten movies and eat about a hundred pounds of food. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but she does drive into town Sunday evening to load up on more junk, and comes back with three pizzas and a bucket of fried chicken. I don’t know why she isn’t fat. Well, certainly this weekend she’s been working off the calories, but I think she eats like this all the time, and I don’t think she hits the gym more than once or twice a week. It’s a mystery.
Alonzo, of course, could stand to gain a little weight, so I don’t think two days of abysmally bad nutrition will hurt him. Though I also don’t think the few apples and salads Celeste requires him to eat will really negate the fat, salt, cholesterol, and crap he’s put in his body under her supervision.
Monday afternoon I wake up from a catnap to find myself human, lying on my side on a tufted rug on the living room floor. I’m naked. I’m also cold and a little stiff, but mostly I’m really, really happy to be back in my own body. I jump up, grab a decorative blanket to wrap around myself in case I run into Alonzo, and hurry to the kitchen to grab a bagel, because transformation always leaves me ravenous. Then I head to my bedroom, which takes up about a third of the second story. I’ve made the big space more manageable by dividing it into zones. A smallish section is a sitting area composed of two chairs and a small table. A larger section holds the bed, an armoire, and a couple of dressers. There are so many windows that the room is filled with light if the sun is anywhere to be seen, and the view is open and calming—acres of uncultivated land dotted with trees and waving with tall prairie grasses.
Used to be the room Janet shared with Cooper, her boyfriend. After they died, it was a year before I could bring myself to move into it. But it’s such a comfortable, welcoming place that I couldn’t let it go to waste. In this room, I never feel trapped or suffocated. I don’t feel like my options have narrowed down so much that there’s only one place in the world I can live and be safe. Or, I still feel that way, but I don’t mind so much.
My feline alter ego was a pretty finicky creature, but I still feel a need to rinse off the residue of my last incarnation, so I take a shower and wash my hair, reveling in the feel of hot water on my bare skin. Once I step out of the shower into the steaming bathroom, I apply extra moisturizer, scented body cream, just a few touches of makeup. Human luxuries. I don’t bother trying to style my shoulder-length hair, which is a dense, heavy brown that takes three hours to dry on its own; I just pull it back into a ponytail. A red sweater, black jeans, tennis shoes, and I am once again my familiar human self.
I hunt down Celeste and Alonzo and find them playing a game of horse at the battered old basketball hoop. It’s stuck in the ground in front of what used to be a patio and is now a broken and crumbled slab of concrete; clumps of grass and weeds have pushed up between the cracks, and they cause the ball to take odd hops when it bounces against them.
At first, neither one sees me, and I watch them take a few shots. From what I can tell, both players are stuck at O, and it’s not because either is politely holding back so the other person won’t feel bad about missing a bucket. Even when she’s facing off against a teenager, Celeste has a competitive streak, and Alonzo can’t bring himself to deliberately miss a shot. He’s a decent basketball player, and one of the few group activities he’ll participate in is a pickup game in his neighborhood. He’s good enough that the other players always welcome him—good enough that I think he’d get better with a little coaching. But Bonnie says he won’t try out for the school team. Too much pressure, maybe. Too much time naked in the locker room, where other kids might see his scars.
Alonzo sinks a basket from the top of the key—well, the back edge of the concrete—and Celeste misses the same shot. “Shit,” she says. “H-O-R for me.”
“Go, Alonzo!” I call, and they both look my way. Alonzo lifts a hand in a casual wave, while Celeste pushes back some stray hair and gives me a quick appraisal.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in—literally,” she says, and then laughs.
“Gee, thanks. Just the sort of positive reinforcement I need,” I reply.
“I think you look pretty good,” Alonzo says.
By this time I’ve crossed the patio and I’m close enough to give him a hug, which he endures more than enjoys. “Thank you, more sincerely,” I say. “You’ve been a lifesaver these past few days! I really appreciate it.”
Celeste dribbles the ball a couple of times, then bounces it over to Alonzo, who catches it one-handed. “Hey, I’ve been mucking around in dirt and dog poop for the past three days, too.”
“Yes, but you’re not as nice about it.”
She grins. “This is me being nice.”
“So did I miss anything important?”
“Daniel changed and left Sunday night,” Alonzo says. “One of the puppies got out, but we found him after a couple of hours.”
“You have two customers coming out Wednesday afternoon, one on Thursday morning,” Celeste adds. “I wrote everything down in your appointment book. Oh, and I put all the bills in a stack on your desk. I would have paid them but I couldn’t find your checkbook.”
“Yeah, plus I couldn’t tell you how much money I have in my bank account anyway, so just as well,” I say. “Okay, great. Thanks again. Are you guys gonna stay for dinner?”
“I will,” Celeste says. “But Bonnie called this morning and says she wants to come back for Alonzo tonight. She misses him.”
Alonzo drops his head and concentrates on bouncing the ball between his feet, but I think he’s smiling.
“I’ll call her. Maybe she can stay for dinner, too, before she takes him back.” I give Celeste a stern look. “A healthy dinner, for a change.”
“What?” she says. “Don’t we look healthy?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m gonna go check on the animals. See you back at the house.”
I head toward the barns. Behind me I hear the satisfying sound of the ball rattling through the hoop. Alonzo has scored again.
I’m halfway across the open area between the patio and the kennels when Scottie bounds up to me, his whole body quivering with excitement. “Hey, boy,” I say, dropping to my knees to wrap my arms around his neck and let him lick my face. “Did you miss me? Here I am. Yeah, boy. Good to see you, too.”
He accompanies me on my rounds, where I cause much less excitement in my human state. The hawk with the broken wing has made steady progress; I might be releasing him within the week. The injured raccoon is gnawing at the cage and looks determined enough to eat his way through it. Fine, he can go, then. I put on a padded vest and heavy gloves, carry him out of the barn and to the edge of the property, and let him go. He takes a few steps into the thick grass, pauses to look back at me, and then runs off as fast as his little feet will take him.
Be careful, I want to call after him. Stay out of trouble. Come back if you need anything. But I don’t, even though no one is listening.
It’s close to five before I’m back in the house and remember I’m supposed to call Bonnie. I cradle the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I move through the kitchen, checking supplies, pulling out ingredients. Bonnie would love to come for dinner, but Aurelia is working late. “Anything I can bring?” she asks.
“Looks like I’m out of milk. Oh, and some fresh tomatoes would be good. You would not believe the junk Celeste has been feeding Alonzo.”
“As long as he’s eating, I don’t mind.”
“You’d mind if you saw the me
nu.”
My own meal is much healthier—chicken and rice, a salad, fruit, rolls, raspberry sorbet, though I know Alonzo will have another donut for dessert instead. I find myself humming as I mix ingredients and slice strawberries and set the table. The initial disorientation I always feel upon changing states has evaporated, and I feel good. I feel healthy. I have friends around me and meaningful work ahead of me. At times like this I’m able to convince myself that my life is just like everyone else’s.
* * *
As expected, the meal is convivial. Bonnie never drinks if she’s going to get behind a wheel in the next twelve hours, but Celeste and I each have margaritas, and we’re all in pretty mellow moods. Well, for Bonnie, mellow means leaning against the chairback instead of sitting bolt upright, and smiling instead of frowning when someone uses a four-letter word.
Over dessert—which, for Celeste, consists of sorbet sprinkled with the crumpled bits of half a chocolate donut—Celeste points her spoon in Bonnie’s direction. “Here’s something I always forget to ask you. You’re like this legendary ‘friend to shape-shifters,’ but how did that happen? There aren’t that many humans who just suddenly learn about us and want to help us out.”
Bonnie’s eyes rest on Alonzo as she clearly tries to figure out how much detail to give. “My first girlfriend was a shape-shifter,” she says. “Met her in high school.” Her spare features soften as she smiles at a memory. “Beautiful girl. Wilder than you.” She nods in Celeste’s direction.
“How’d you find out she was a shape-shifter?” I ask.
“And was it before or after you were dating?” Celeste adds.
Again, Bonnie’s gaze is on Alonzo. I think this would be a much more revealing conversation if he wasn’t at the table. He appears to be oblivious as he focuses on a chocolate donut and the last of the vanilla ice cream, but my guess is he’s as curious as anyone else.