Read Space and Time Issue 121 Online

Authors: Hildy Silverman

Space and Time Issue 121 (3 page)

BOOK: Space and Time Issue 121
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LOST IN NATALIE

 

by Mercurio D. Rivera & E. C. Myers

 

artwork by Thomas Nackid

 

 

 

 

A blinding flash.

Vertigo.

I’m flat on my back, staring at strings of blue bulbs that dangle from the exposed ceiling ducts. The beat of the techno-music drowns out the grunts and groans around me.

An Asian swapmeater wearing a short red wig and black lipstick straddles me. Blue light haloes her round face, and her small breasts bounce as she grinds against me. She leans over, eyes closed, and whispers, “Who am I?”

The blue lights strobe.

I squint. I’m lightheaded. Drunk. Now I’m on the far side of the room, sitting on the bar counter, a blonde head bobbing between my thighs. I’m mesmerized by the swaying of her silver hoop earrings as she slides her mouth up and down. They look familiar.

“Natalie?” I say.

She doesn’t respond.

A dizzying blue washes across the room.

I’m in a woman’s body, legs wrapped around the waist of a skinny dude branded with Egyptian tattoos. The guy pins me against a wall and thrusts, panting in my ear. A wave of pleasure courses through me, rising and falling, and I consider surrendering to it, but I just can’t do it. I shut my eyes, think of Natalie, and count down the seconds to the next swap.

Vertigo.

I’m back in a man’s body, sprawled on a sofa between a full-lipped brunette and a freckled redhead who are French-kissing over my lap. It takes me a moment to regain my bearings, to shake off the lingering sensations from my last body. I push the women away and stand shakily. I need to get out of the Blue Room. The rapid-fire swapping in here is too much for a newbie like me. And I have to find Natalie before the party ends.

It’s tricky adjusting to this body’s longer stride as I lurch out of the Blue Room and stagger down the hallway, supporting myself with one hand on the wall. I spot my own body in a side room packed with swapmeaters relaxing and reveling in the sensation of different genders, weights, heights. But there’s no sign of Natalie in the crowd. I continue to the front of the loft.

A bouncer guards the entrance, sinewy arms folded over a broad chest–no one leaves the party until after the final swap returns everyone to their own bodies. A few latecomers arrive, passing through the archway that’s mounted over the doorframe. While the device scans for STD’s and records their neural patterns into the buffer, they’re already undressing and stuffing slacks and skirts, wallets and purses, into duffelbags.

I whisper my password to the bouncer, who retrieves a bag from the corresponding cubbyhole and hands it to me. I find my boxers and pull them on; they hang low on my waist. This body is leaner than my own, a swimmer’s maybe. I press my hand against hard abs, the kind I’ve only seen in fitness magazines. I could get used to a body like this.

The digital wall-clock reads 2:45. That leaves me forty-five minutes to find Natalie before the final swap and the end of the party. I return my bag to the bouncer and push my way back through the loft, searching for the kitchen.

I freeze at the threshold.

Natalie.

She’s leaning against a counter stocked with liquor bottles, wearing only a black lace bra and panties. She sips a drink and stares out the grimy window. I fixate on the silver stud piercing her belly button, like a tiny star.

Is this really her, or someone using her body? For a split-second I worry she’ll recognize me, but when I find it unnecessary to suck in my gut I remember my borrowed body and relax.

“Taking a break?” I ask casually.

She studies me through blond bangs and her icy blue eyes drift downward, lingering on my tented boxers.

“It’s more exhausting than I expected.” She swirls her drink, clinking ice cubes.

She gives me her full attention, unlike her usual aloofness at the office, and I realize I’ll have no better chance with her than tonight, at this moment, in this body. I’m a new man–at least for the next forty minutes.

I pour myself a Scotch, neat, spilling some as I correct for this new body’s longer reach. Afraid I’ll drop the glass, I cradle it in both hands.

She nods at the window above the counter. I can barely make out a fire escape through the dirt-streaked glass.

“I was gonna grab some air,” she says. She pulls a joint from her bra and raises her eyebrows meaningfully.

I grin. Party rules specifically prohibit drug use while in another person’s body. Her attitude is all the confirmation I need that I’ve found Natalie at last.

There was so much more to the bookish receptionist than she let on at work. I’d caught a glimpse of her on the Lower East Side late one night, dressed in a red miniskirt with stiletto heels, leaning into the open window of a black Lamborghini to kiss the driver as though she wanted to whole world to see. The driver whispered something and she laughed–a clear and confident laugh. That’s when I understood that Work Natalie was just a façade for the benefit of co-workers and that Real Natalie was just like me, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

Natalie climbs up on the counter and tries to open the window but it doesn’t budge. It’s painted shut. I spot a tattoo above her ass: one of those swirly Celtic designs that’s sexy but doesn’t mean anything.

She turns around and catches me staring.

“Are those muscles just for show?” She smiles. She hops down and pushes her hair away from her flushed face.

I clamber up on the counter, more awkwardly than I’d like, and I feel her eyes on my back as I grab the window sash and lift with all my strength. After a strained moment, paint and wood splinter and the window screeches open. A wave of summer heat slaps my face. I wipe dirt from my hands. Natalie claps.

I peek over my shoulder–no one has spotted us–and I crawl with her out onto the third-story fire escape. My vision takes a moment to adjust to the darkness. The outside air smells of approaching rain.

“So,” she says, lighting the joint. “Is that your real body?” She takes a deep drag.

I squint at her through the cloud of smoke. “Does it matter?” Exhaling, she offers me a toke.

I take a hit and cough, the burning in my throat making me wonder whether this athletic body has ever smoked before. The twinge of guilt I feel evaporates under the relaxing effect of the weed and Natalie’s proximity.

“Just curious,” she says. “So you’re really into this scene?” She waves the joint around.

I shrug. “Who doesn’t want to be someone else once in a while?”

Although I can’t admit it, she’s the only reason I’m here. After hearing too many times that I wasn’t her “type,” I had to do something drastic to prove her wrong. From the way she leans against me, one hand on my forearm, I suspect I’m more her type now.

“Exactly,” she says. “It’s not just about sex.” She blows smoke and pushes her bangs back.

My heart pounds. I place my hand over hers.

“I completely agree, Natalie.”

She arches an eyebrow. To my surprise, she leans closer and kisses me. Her lips are softer than I ever imagined. I run my fingers through her hair and slide my hands down her back. Bliss. The perfect moment I’d dreamt about for months.

A loud crash from inside the apartment startles me. I bend down and poke my head through the window.

“Freeze! Freeze!” a voice barks. “Get on the floor! Now!”

A man shrieks. Naked bodies streak past the kitchen.

“Don’t move! Everyone stay where you are! I said don’t move!” The voices draw closer.

Natalie and I exchange a panicked glance.

Together we lower the fire escape ladder and climb down its rusty rungs to the dark alleyway. When I drop the last six feet, I lose my balance in this taller body and stumble forward, scraping my palms on concrete.

Natalie pulls me up and we bolt past overturned garbage cans. Rats scurry ahead of us and disappear into the shadows.

“Hey! You two!” A gruff voice shouts from above and echoes around us in the narrow passage.

We round the corner, racing away from the flashing red-and-blue lights of the police cars in front of the building.

 

* * *

 

Natalie and I crouch in the back seat of a speeding livery cab.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I say. My boxers cling to my sweaty thighs. My chafed hands sting.

Her hair whips around in the cross-breeze from the open windows. She futilely pulls it away from her face.

“I can’t get into my apartment. I left my swipecard back there.” I slap the car seat. “I left my body back there. It’s probably in custody by now! Shit, if they have my wallet, they know who I am, where I live.”

Natalie hasn’t spoken a word since our escape. I can’t blame her for being in shock.

I stare at the stretch of rundown buildings and abandoned cars, squinting at the dark street signs as they zip past.

“My sister lives near here,” I say. I lean forward and give the address to the impassive driver. Picking up two nearly naked passengers hadn’t fazed the man; he was probably just relieved we weren’t concealing weapons.

Why hadn’t I listened to Lena? My sister had warned me about the increased raids on swapmeats, not to mention the risk of abusing my network privileges to snoop through Natalie’s personal e-mail. But when I found the swapmeat invitation in Natalie’s inbox, I’d downloaded it anyway.

The cab pulls in front of Lena’s building and I punch my pin number into the backseat display to pay the fare. As we scramble out of the car in our underwear, a quartet of drag queens in platinum wigs and fishnet stockings stand in the entranceway and hoot and whistle at us: “Hey, babies. It’s hot, but not that hot.” Their raucous laughter trails us into the foyer.

I ring Lena’s apartment, our special signal: two long, one short. I have to repeat it twice before the door buzzes open and we push into the cool lobby. Natalie wrinkles her nose at the stench of trash and urine in the elevator. Her expression, the shadows on her face in the flickering fluorescent light, make her look like a completely different person.

I pound on the door of 14D.

“It’s late, Drew,” Lena says in a groggy voice. Light shines through the peephole. “Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me. Open up.”

“I don’t know you.”

“It’s Drew!” I lean closer and stage whisper, “I went to the swapmeat.”

The locks clatter and the door partially opens, the chain still fastened.

I speak quickly. “Your favorite color is lime-green. You like mustard on your French fries for sick reasons I’ll never understand. You twisted my arm so hard you dislocated it when I was in fifth grade.”

“Drew? Oh my God, you’re such an idiot.”

The chain slides off and the door opens.

“This is Lena,” I say to Natalie. Her arms are drawn together over her breasts and she’s hunched over as though she’s suddenly become aware that she’s standing in her bra and panties. I guide her into the apartment. “Lena, this is Natalie, from–”

“Tony,” Natalie says. Her eyes flick to me nervously. “Actually, my name is Tony.”

 

* * *

 

I peer over the kitchen counter into the living room. Tony’s on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table while she–he–watches the newscast playing on the wallscreen. Even in Lena’s baggy sweats and plaid shirt, Tony is gorgeous. I think about our moment on the fire escape. It should bother me, I suppose, but even now it’s difficult to consider him anything but a woman.

Lena pours me another shot of Absolut. “So that’s the body of the woman you’ve been stalking?”

“C’mon, Lena. Stalking?”

“Let’s see,” she says. “You hacked her e-mail. Crashed an illegal party. And you brought her body home. I wouldn’t exactly call this the model of a healthy courtship.”

She has a point, I guess; Lena usually does. “I just wanted her to give me a fair chance, to get to know the real me.”

“While you pretended to be someone else?”

“Well... Maybe I didn’t think things through.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing. You went there to fuck her. And you still want to, even though that isn’t Natalie in there. That’s a man, Drew.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re leering at her. Right now.” Lena lets out a long breath. “I am so tired of your drama.”

Lena always could read me better than anyone else. It was both comforting–and annoying as hell–to have someone I could trust to call me on my bullshit.

“Maybe you’re right,” I say.

“Hallelujah.” She lifts her shot glass to me, then downs it. “So where’s your real body?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

Lena had been writing a series of articles on the underground body-swapping scene, which is why I’d thought she’d support my idea to get some inside information on what happens at an actual swapmeat. Instead, when I broached the idea, she’d been dead-set against it.

She sighs. “This is one mess I can’t clean up for you. You are in serious legal trouble. Turn yourself in. The sooner you do, the sooner I get my brother back.”

“I am your brother.”

She pauses, stares into her empty glass, and reaches for the vodka.

BOOK: Space and Time Issue 121
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