Waking Beauty (16 page)

Oops.

“I found these under Allison’s bed!”

I had stashed the goods and promptly forgotten about them. “So?” I attempted to look mystified.

“So, these are my clothes! Clothes that were clean and now are filthy!
Pew!
Clothes that were
stolen
from my room!”

I took a breath. “You think I stole your clothes?” I said it with extraordinary aplomb considering how rattled I usually was in the face of confrontation.

“Maybe borrowed,” said Fraser.

Virginie glared at him. “Well, I don’t think they were running like little mouses across the floor!” Virginie’s English tended to suffer when she was angry. “How else do they go from my room to under Allison’s bed?”

I was reminded of several months earlier when she had accused me of stealing her dental floss. Apparently it had run out sooner than expected, and she concluded that I had been using it regularly. She was wrong. I never flossed back then. Old Allison felt that life was too brutish and short for flossing.
But because I had in fact once plucked off a ten-inch strand to dislodge a popcorn husk from between bicuspid and molar, I had allowed the paranoid cheapskate to rant and bully me for half an hour. I was in no mood for a replay. Maybe it was my new height advantage. I felt less inclined to cower.

“I have no idea why your clothes were under Allison’s bed. Perhaps she borrowed them.”

“Perhaps Allison borrowed my clothes?” she said, smiling.

“Maybe.”

“ALLISON COULDN’T FIT ONE TOE INTO MY CLOTHES
!”

I had an urge to silence her shriek with a fistful of Kerplunk marbles, but instead I just stood there, all cucumber cool. “Look, I told you I don’t know anything about it. You’ll have to take it up with Allison when she gets back.”

“And when will that be?!”

“I have no idea. But as long as I’m her guest in this apartment, I’ll ask you to kindly stay out of my private quarters.”

Virginie gasped as I turned and sashayed—yes, sashayed—toward my room. Just before I shut the door with an indignant flourish, I heard her mutter quietly, but conceivably for my ears: “Right, like Allison could fit her blubber ass into any of my clothes.”

It was, at that moment that I resolved to break up Virginie and Fraser.

But what to do about work? At six-thirty, Old Allison would be expected at the DeSouzas’ place. I couldn’t just not show up. The last thing I wanted was to kindle any suspicions about Allison’s absence. I wondered if I should head down there and feed them the line about the sick father in Los Angeles. Maybe offer to take my own place? Not that I particularly wanted to work, but I hated to leave Isadora, one of the few humans to show me kindness, in a janitorial lurch. Also, I was beyond broke and desperate for income. On the
weekend of the Big Change I had flippantly frittered away more cash than I would typically spend in a month on rent and food. The DeSouzas paid me in hard currency, so I could collect at the end of the week. And maybe Fiona Ferguson would be working late at the Malcolm Anders Agency and I could talk to her about getting those free photos. And maybe I could see Nathan.

I peeled off my constraining upscale-casz outfit, changed into jeans and an Old Allison sweatshirt, and returned to the kitchen. Virginie and Fraser had huffed off, leaving an unfinished Kerplunk game and a fog of cigarette smoke in their wake. I rummaged through the forlorn fridge and cupboards, but there was hardly any food that was mine in the house. A box of saltines. A jar of peanut butter. A blue tomato that resembled a ninety-year-old man with his dentures out. I took the crackers to the living room and crunched my way through half a row, thinking about the incredible meal at Tribe, and the incredibly strange hours that had followed….

“This is, it,” said George as we stepped off an elevator that opened directly into his apartment.

“Jeez,” I said, “what a dump!”

George laughed and tossed his keys into a decorative ceramic bowl.

His digs were snazzier than I’d expected. A corner penthouse loft in a converted brewery owned by his father’s company. It was a vast open space, sparsely furnished with ultra-designed pieces—a severe chrome-and-leather contraption (more sculpture than sofa), two cantilevered chairs of metal tubing with cane seats, an absurdly long dining table with absurdly high-backed chairs. Real paintings hung on the walls—large, tasteful abstractions in muted cocoas, creams, and grays. It was all very handsome and austere.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, getting busy with the hospitality. George used a remote control to turn on music—Norah Jones—and began preparing drinks. In the center of the room, against a thick cement support beam, George had a trolley stocked with liquor bottles and designer glasses and chrome cocktail shakers (one shaped like a rocket ship, another like a penguin). As he carried an ice bucket into the open-concept kitchen, I noticed that the freezer compartment of his stainless-steel refrigerator was located at the bottom.

“Hey,” I said, “your freezer is at the bottom.”

“Yeah,” he said over the din of the automatic ice dispenser. “It’s so much more convenient that way.”

I wondered why that would be but neglected to pursue the matter. I sank onto the soft leather sofa and watched George prepare his “signature after-dinner beverage.” He poured Tia Maria into one cocktail shaker, Baileys Irish Cream into another, Black Sambuca into another. He shook them all until chilled, then started layering thin stripes of each into liqueur glasses. It was easy to imagine him performing this fancy-pants act on every first date, and I noticed that his signature beverage perfectly matched the decor of his apartment.

“Here you are.”

“Thanks. It’s beautiful.” I sipped. “And delicious.” And it did its sticky trick. After two glasses I was horizontal on the sofa thingy with George scrabbling around on top of me.

“You know what I like about you?” he whispered, kneading my breasts.

“What?”

“You’re so unaffected. I mean, you’re incredibly gorgeous, but you seem so…real.”

Real? I had never felt less real. The entire evening had seemed supremely surreal. “Ow,” I said. “You’re on my hair.”

“Sorry.” He shifted an elbow. “Do you want to go upstairs? I mean, we don’t, we can just—”

“Let’s go,” I said.

We climbed a circular staircase to get to the bedroom, an open area that spanned half the length of the room below. There were skylights, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an unenclosed bathroom in the corner-glass shower stall, claw-foot tub, even a toilet right out in the open. George craps in his bedroom, I thought, then tried to banish the image by turning my attention to the bed, which was behemothic, both vertically and horizontally. It was covered in expensive linens and had at least a dozen cushions in tastefully coordinated pillowslips propped against the wooden headboard. It seemed like a grand enough bed in which to lose one’s virginity.

Alas, it was not to be.

Being entirely snockered, I didn’t wait for George to put the moves on; I simply started shedding clothes as quickly as possible. “Do you make your bed every day?” I said, taking off my blouse. “Or just when you think you’ll be bringing someone home?” I hadn’t made my bed in about ten years.

“Every day,” said George, placing his watch on the night table.

I launched myself, naked, onto the duvet, and settled back to watch George undress. By the time he got down to his very nice silk boxers, I could see that he had a great body, all lithe and long, with well-defined muscles and excellent hair placement (nothing too furry or bare). He dimmed the lights slightly, stripped off his shorts, and joined me on the bed.

We began to kiss and grope each other. George whispered how beautiful I was while he caressed and licked my breasts and I squeezed and rubbed his penis. After a minute or two it became clear that we were both getting ready for action, but instead of reaching for a condom or asking if I was on the Pill, or even going down on me like Studly Guy had the previous day, George yanked my hand away and stood up on the bed. He straddled my body just below the knees and started stroking himself, all fast and furious. It was quite the sight,
him towering above me like that with his knees slightly bent, thigh muscles bulging, taut balls jiggling as he pumped his member like a methamphetamine-fueled piston. It was pretty exciting, actually, but I felt a little left out until he said, “Spread those lips, baby. I want to see you touch yourself.”

Um, okay, I thought. I mean, what did I know? I figured it was foreplay. So I did what I was told.

“Yeah,” snarled George. “Let me see you stroke that clit.” Ten and a half seconds later, he was braying and spraying all over me, jerking his cock around for maximum coverage, getting me on the belly, boobs, and a bit in my left eye (semen in the eye is not a good thing—it stings like hell, if you want to know). When he was done, George stood there for a few seconds with a sort of half sneer on his face. Then, as if he was finishing up at a urinal, he proceeded to shake and squeeze the last few droplets onto my thigh. He moved to the edge of the bed, jumped down, and padded to the bathroom area. He took a piss and returned with a box of Kleenex (enclosed in a handsome leather cover).

“God, I’m bagged,” he said, lying down beside me. He took several tissues and started drying me off, tenderly, kissing the damp spots after he had mopped up. It was kind of sweet.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Yeah. You?”

“I’m great. Just kind of tired.”

Ah, too fatigued to fornicate
.

George gathered up the Kleenex, used and otherwise, and took them to the bathroom. He washed his hands again and then started scouring his teeth with an electric toothbrush.

“Um, I guess I should get going?” I said, not really knowing what to do next.

George gestured for me to wait. He spat toothpaste into the sink and rinsed his mouth. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Stay. Sleep over.”

“You sure? Maybe I’d better go….” I had a vision of George waking up beside Old Allison.

“Please stay.” He fished a boxed toothbrush out of a stainless-steel storage cabinet and held it toward me. “Here, you want to wash up?”

“Um…thanks.” I hesitated for a nanosecond and then walked naked to the bathroom. I can’t tell you how fantastic it felt, how liberating it was to strut confidently without clothing across a large room. Prior to the Change I was hardly ever naked. Once in a while I would sleep nude under blankets, but other than that it was only in the shower—drop the robe, step in, step out, wrap myself in a towel. I’m pretty sure I had never walked naked across a room. And I certainly hadn’t been naked in front of another human (except my mom or a pediatrician when I was a toddler). In school it practically killed me every time I had to get changed for phys ed, and that was just stripping to my underwear in front of female classmates. I would always try to show up extremely early or stupidly late to avoid being eyeballed and taunted. I knew that my strategy was obvious, so much so that it had become taunt-worthy itself, but it seemed the lesser of searing embarrassments.

Now here I was nude without shame, brushing my teeth, bending over to drink from the tap, even peeing in the wall-less bathroom while George alternately watched and prepared for slumber. He methodically lowered the blinds on each window, removed the decorative cushions from the bed, and placed them inside a wooden blanket box for the night. Then he slipped under the duvet and waited for me to return before switching off the night-table lamp.

George pulled a black sleep mask out from under a mile-wide feather pillow. “Do you want one?” he asked. “I have extras.”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“All right, then. Good night, Gorgeous.”

“Good night.” I lay there in the near dark staring at George as he drifted into unconsciousness. He seemed far away in the big bed. None of our parts were touching. Still it was lovely to sleep with someone, another first for me, though not the one I was expecting. With his mask on and his mouth falling open a little, George looked like an innocent superhero. Boy Wonder.

I felt like Allison in Wonderland.

For the third morning in a row, I awoke disoriented. I was starting to get used to my new body, but it alarmed me to be roused by the touch of another human. George had traversed the football-field mattress to press himself against me. I could feel his hard-on digging into the small of my back, his breath hot in my ear. I flipped to face him and we began to kiss. Less than a minute later, George flung back the covers, struggled to his feet, and straddled my body just below the knees.

“Show me the pink, baby. Come on…Show it to me!”

I showed it to him. And before you could click your heels ten times and say “I can’t believe he’d rather do this again than have intercourse with me,” George was padding to the bathroom to get the Kleenex.

“Actually,” I said, eyeing the porcelain claw-foot tub, “I think I’ll just take a bath, if you don’t mind.”

“Why would I mind?” said George, all peppy and cheerful. “I’ll run it for you. And how about a coffee, shall I make some coffee?”

“That’d be great.”

“Cappuccino, espresso, Americano, or latte?”

Twenty minutes later I was up to my neck in steaming fragrant water. George had prepared the bath with aromatic oils and sprinkled some fresh freesia petals into the mix. Sunshine streamed in and lit the room yellow and happy. Stephane Grapelli was fiddling sweet from surround-sound
speakers. George placed a fat mug of cappuccino on a shelf that stretched across the width of the tub.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

He moved toward the shower pod and shed his robe. I watched him through the ripply glass, lathering up and rinsing off like the poster boy for Lever 2000. The scent of bath oil mingled with the aroma of strong coffee. I sat up for a sip of brew just as Grapelli started in on something slow and voluptuous.

Well, I thought, sinking back into the tub, I guess it doesn’t get much better than this….

The doorbell rang. I dusted the saltine crumbs off my face and chest and went to answer.