Len felt his new body start to grow numb as he knelt on the pavement, tears streaming down his elfin face. With a supreme effort of will, he attempted to kickstart his brain.

Think, Len! You’ve got to think! You’ll die if you just lie down here. And if the cops come back, it’ll be even worse.

But he knew he’d almost exhausted whatever reserves Margaret Mary’s body had, just crawling up from under the bridge and walking as far as he had. There was no place he could get to under his own power that would be safe. Or even dry.

Despite himself, he chuckled without much humor. Finally got the body of my dreams — sort of! — and I’m not likely to last the night. Don’t it just figure. As Len, he’d had a safe place to be, and even if he didn’t, he had a wallet with cash and credit, and that would open all the doors he’d need. But as Margaret Mary, he had nothing.

Then he gasped. “Nothing but my own memory – bad as it’s always been!”

Not bothering to pull himself upright, he crawled over to where “Len” had left the Benz. Because he’d had a bad habit of misplacing his keys, he’d always kept an emergency spare in a small magnetic box near the rear wheel well on the driver’s side of the car. He hadn’t used it in years, but it was still right where he’d left it.

Len would never have let anyone as bedraggled, dirty, and waterlogged as Margaret Mary sit in the plush leather seats of the car, much less the driver’s seat. But his view of the matter was decidedly different now. He got in, turned the key half-way, and immediately felt the heat begin to radiate from both the seat and the dashboard. “Thank God!”

He was tempted to just stay where he was, recovering a bit, but he knew he couldn’t afford to do that. Officer Kincade might come back, and if he caught “Margaret Mary” in the car, he would be brutal. And, if he came back and found the car missing, he might report it and then all the cops would be looking. Where could I go, that no-one will look?

After a moment of thought – his brain seemed to be very sluggish – he nodded sharply and tried to turn on the engine. For a moment he was confused. What the . . . ?

The brake pedal seemed to have moved.

That’s when he focused on just how much smaller his current body was. He not only had to adjust the seat, he had to fix all the mirrors as well. Only when he’d managed all of that was he able to drive away, going very slowly and carefully.

Half an hour later, struggling to stay awake, he drove by his house, checking for lights. One was on, so . . . maybe she was inside and hadn’t yet gone to sleep. But he couldn’t afford to wait around; he had to rest.

There was a small chance that she might hear the sound of the garage door opening, but it was a risk he felt he had to take. Reaching up to the visor, he pushed the remote control, drove into the attached garage, and closed the door after himself. Heart pounding, he shut the engine off and sat motionless, staring at the door to the house, waiting for someone to emerge. A minute passed, then five. Ten. Still he watched the door to the house.

Exhaustion caught up with him, and despite his hunger and his desire to remain vigilant, he dozed off. When he woke, some hours later, the timer on the dash told him it was 1:30 in the morning.

He was still chilled, though the garage and the car had provided some insulation. And he was famished, and in need of a bathroom. The solutions to all of those problems were just a few feet away . . . if he was willing to risk it.

“I’ve never seen her before in my life.” Margaret Mary’s words, from his mouth. Len’s – at least, to all appearances. He didn’t know why she would have done that. Would she turn him in now? Turn him away from his own house? She of all people had to know just how miserable he was, right now. She’d been seconds from ending her own life!

Shaking his head, he decided that was a mystery he couldn’t solve on his own . . . and certainly not in his current state. The body he was in had needs that absolutely had to be met, one way or another. With a sigh, he opened the door, slipped out, and shut it quietly (something which is, mercifully, easy to do with a Mercedes). Then he retrieved the house key he kept hidden in the garage and let himself in.

Moving as quietly as possible, he went first to the laundry room, which was just to the left of the door into the garage. Here, he knew, he had some whites that he had left in the dryer, including both a couple of bath towels and a calf-length heavy cotton dress he sometimes wore around the house. He stripped and used the towels to get completely dry, including his long hair. It was his first opportunity to get a good look at the body in which he found himself.

Her body wasn’t slender, it was scrawny. The hip-bones were sharp, and she could see her ribs. Her breasts looked child-like, barely pubescent, and her skin appeared sallow. Arms and legs were twiggy. Bug bites and blisters, bruises. What looked like some sort of rash on the left side of the belly.

She’d been pretty, once, he remembered, back before she’d run away from home. When she’d emerged from puberty, her features build had been delicate, and her skin wholly free of blemishes. He remembered smallish breasts and hips that only looked large because her waist had been so narrow. Two years on the street had done a lot of damage.

But I’m a girl. I’m really a girl.

He clung to that realization like a life preserver in an ocean of fear and doubt. If he could overcome the cold and the hunger and the exhaustion, he might have a chance, just a chance, to experience the life that he’d always longed for. So he used the towels in the dryer to chafe his skin, warming it up, then pulled the dress out and slipped it over his head. Naturally, it fit like a tent and came down to his feet, but that didn’t matter. It covered him, he was dry, and it would keep him warm. Fashion was the last thing from his mind.

Food, however, was not. He had no idea how long it had been since Margaret Mary had eaten anything substantial — not because he couldn’t access her memories, but because she herself had forgotten. He padded into the kitchen, moving silently as a cat, then rummaged in the pantry. He retained just enough self-possession to remember that he would vomit everything back up if he ate too much, so he grabbed crackers, some beef jerky, and a liter-bottle of water, then went back to the laundry room.

The jerky made his teeth ache. He ate it anyway.

When he’d eaten and drunk as much as he felt he could get away with, he used the downstairs bathroom, but didn’t flush the toilet for fear of waking Margaret Mary. After that, he had no better options than returning to the laundry room, laying the remainder of the dry white load on the floor, and curling up to sleep. Whatever the morning would bring, he would face it with a bit of fuel in his belly and a few hours of sleep.

~o~O~o~

Six hours later, the sounds and smells of coffee brewing penetrated his unconscious mind. Like Margaret Mary, he found himself groggy and hugely disoriented, and it took a few minutes to remember where he was, and why.

Then, finally, he started to think. He had options, though none were great. He could leave through the garage. Margaret Mary would almost certainly figure out that he’d been there, and when she did he had no idea what she would do. She might call the police, though he doubted it. She didn’t like the police.

Last night had been brutal, and Margaret Mary’s memories showed him that it was a typical day for her. Was he ready for that? Could he handle it?

He thought about his new financial predicament. It was possible that he could find a way to get access to some of his money before she thought to cut him off. He didn’t have any of his credit cards, but he knew all of his important passwords. Find a library, use a computer, and he might be able to work something out.

Even without finding ways to access his money, he was reasonably confident he could manage better than Margaret Mary had. He did understand the world, and knew ways to get from where she’d been to somewhere better. All he had to do was slip out the back door, and be on his way.

Thin as his new body was, and much as it had been abused, it was still young and far more flexible than his own. He stood up, quietly, alert for any sound that might indicate Margaret Mary had heard him, ready to bolt if she had.

Nothing.

His new memories — her memories— were screaming at him to get out. To keep moving, and avoid trouble. To run. Margaret Mary had been in survival mode for so long, she had no other setting. But, though he had her memories, Len was not Margaret Mary. Instead of running, he paused. Took a deep breath.

He thought of her, yards and worlds away, having breakfast, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. She must despise the body she found herself in. Moreover, even if she shared his memories in the same way that he seemed to be sharing hers, he couldn’t imagine how she could navigate such a completely different life, all on her own. She was only nineteen, and she’d never even finished high school!

A sudden urge to help her warred with his overwhelming desire to get out while he could. But what did he owe to Margaret Mary? “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” she’d said. Two could play that game!

“Oh, stop it,” he muttered in disgust. “She might be a kid, but you’re not. Stop acting like one!” Gathering the overlong skirt so he didn’t trip, he made his way to the source of the smell of coffee.

It was like a dream sequence. He saw himself by the coffee machine, right where he would normally be, early in the morning. He was in guy grunge mode, but that wasn’t so unusual as to be remarkable.

Any resemblance to a dream vanished when Margaret Mary turned and spotted him. Her look of panic and terror was well beyond the normal emotional range of Len’s old face, and her shriek was both primal and feminine.

Len reacted instinctively. He held up both hands, palms out – a universal gesture declaring lack of harmful intent. “Shhhh! It’s okay! It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you!”

She backed up until the counter prevented her from retreating further, still clutching her coffee in both hands. “No! You can’t have it back! It’s mine! It’s ALL mine!”

Len took a step back, trying to give her more space while preserving eye contact. Given that she was now taller, larger, and far stronger than the slight and starved body he was in, her fear should have seemed comical, but didn’t. Her response was so vehement that it took a moment for him to process what she had actually said.

When he did, it still made no sense to him. “Have what back? My life? Why would you want it?”

“Get out! Right now! I’ll . . . .” She stumbled just a moment, struggling to come up with a threat. But the reality of what had happened at the cruiser hit home. “I’ll call the cops! They’ll listen to me now!”

“I will leave. I promise. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes. Nothing else, okay?”

“No! You’re just trying to make it all switch back to how it was. I won’t go back! I won’t!”

Len stepped back again, then his back was to a wall. It was all the space he could give her. “I didn’t change us, I don’t know what did, and I wouldn’t know how to change us back if I wanted to.”

She shook her head. “Liar! I don’t believe you!”

“I have your memories,” he said, hoping it would help. “Don’t you have mine?”

She glared at him, but didn’t answer.

She hadn’t denied it, so he pressed on. “If you have my memories, you know I’m not lying. I can’t be lying. All of this is as big a surprise to me as it is to you.”

That made her pause, and Len decided that was good. If he could bypass her amygdala’s fear response and activate the logic centers of the brain . . . .

He could see her reach a decision, and wondered if his face had been that transparent when he’d worn it.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “You want all this back, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“No.” He looked down, strangely embarrassed, but knew he had no secrets in this room. “You already know . . . you know I’ve always wanted to be a woman.”

She snorted. “The clothes? Yeah. That’s weird shit. But maybe a night of the real thing showed you better.”

“Dysphoria doesn’t work like that.”

“You say.”

He threw up his hands. “Yeah, okay. I do say. And I outta know, don’t you think?”

A calculating look crossed her face. “Maybe you want to keep my body – perv! – but you want everything else. The house. The car. The scratch. Well, fuck you. It’s all mine now, and you can’t have it!”

He bit back the blistering retort that was on the tip of his tongue. There was no use pretending his intentions were a hundred percent altruistic. “You know the condition you were in when we got switched. I needed to warm up and get some sleep. Needed it bad. And I got that here. But I stayed this morning just to see if you were okay. To help you, if I could.”

“Help me?” Suspicion and disbelief dripped from every word. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been robbed! God, I’ve got more than forty years on you – years you’ll never get to live. You’re stuck in an old, overweight body that’s already past its ‘best by’ date, and it’s not right! Of course I want to help you!”

She was quiet for a long moment, just looking at him. Thinking. Finally, she said, “you know what I was about to do, just before we switched?”

Briefly, his eyes closed in pain. “Oh, yeah. Of course I do. All your memories.”

“So you know, then. I didn’t want to live any more years. I didn’t want to live another minute. Not like that, anyway.”

He nodded slowly. “I guess I understand that. I mean, I know you’d decided to jump. You were just about to do it. If I hadn’t experienced the wet and the hunger and the exhaustion myself, I don’t think I could have understood it. Not really.”

“So you get it,” she said, in the gravelly voice that had been his. “I was done, and suddenly I’ve got a whole new life. I don’t have to be tired or cold. I don’t have to beg for food, or run from cops. Why would I want to switch back?”

He could just accept her statement and walk out the door, in the kind of body he’d always dreamed of having. He’d be young, female — even pretty, once he got clean and fattened up a bit. No one could blame him.

No-one else, maybe. I’d know better. “Because,” he made himself say, “your life doesn’t have to be like that, even if there was a way for us to switch back. I could take care of you. Set you up. Get you launched.”

“You could,” she agreed. “But why would you? I don’t remember you ever doing anything like that. Soon as we switched, why wouldn’t you just say, ‘fuck you, bitch. Beat it.’”

It stung to have his life dissected like that, and judged so harshly by someone who was intimately acquainted with everything he’d ever done, said, or thought. “I’ve never spoken to anyone like that, ever.” He raised a hand to forestall an argument. “But, yeah. I’ve looked away. Not let myself see other people’s suffering. I’ve just been so caught up in my own problems, it’s like I couldn’t see past them. I can’t help seeing you though. Not now, and not ever again. You deserve better.”

Margaret Mary couldn’t remember anyone telling her she deserved anything. Not anything good, anyhow. The words were suspect, but hearing them come from what looked like her own lips, in her own small voice, felt strangely like an affirmation.

She tried to imagine what her life could be like. Her own life, her own body . . . but with money. Maybe even with some help. Did she want that? Sure, her old body was younger, but it was also weaker. Way weaker. Hard years had taught her the value of pure, physical strength.

And, could she really trust him, anyway? He was just a weird dude who kept to himself and played dress-up when he wasn’t working. To buy time, she said, “If you didn’t switch us, how could you switch us back?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “We weren’t touching each other when it happened. We couldn’t even see each other. So it isn’t that.”

“We were close, though,” she said.

“Yeah . . . but we’re closer now, so that’s not it. Or at least, it’s not just that.”

Suddenly remembering what was in her hands, Margaret Mary took a sip of the coffee, but said nothing.

“Just before we switched,” Len said slowly, “I was thinking about my life.”

“Me too.” She wasn’t sure where he was going.

“I was feeling down. Really down. Depressed.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. That was true, but it didn’t really describe everything that had brought her to the brink. She’d felt . . .

“Trapped.”

They both said it at the same time.

He met her eyes. “That’s when the lightning hit.”

“So, you think . . . ?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I can’t think of anything else. We were in the same place, more or less, and we were each feeling trapped and depressed about our lives. And, well, switching did kind of fix the thing that each of us was feeling the worst about. So . . . maybe?”

“So long as I don’t want to switch back, it won’t happen?”

“It’s all just a guess,” he warned. “But it makes more sense than anything else I can think of.”

She took another sip of coffee. It wasn’t as good as it had been when it was hot, but it was still amazing. Better than anything she’d had for years.

Her mind circled the problem. The way things were, she was in charge. She was stronger, and she had the wallet. She didn’t need to trust anyone, or get their permission or approval. That’s worth a crapload of promises, she thought.

He interrupted her thoughts. “Margaret Mary?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t need to decide anything this instant. Take your time. But . . . do you suppose we could maybe sit down?”

She thought about that. They’d been talking all this time, and they hadn’t switched. “I guess. Just, you know . . . don’t touch me.”

He gave her a little half-smile. “I promise. If you want, I can make us both a bit of breakfast while you think.”

She snorted. “You’re just mooching.”

“You got me,” he agreed, working hard to keep his tone light. Not to let her hear the longing in his voice.

“Fine. Go ahead. Make whatever.” She took her cup to the far side of the table and sat down, keeping him in view.

The space felt alien to him, though he’d lived in it for twenty years. Counters that hadn’t come to his hips now hit waist-high. The top shelves of the cabinets were out of reach, and the eight-foot ceiling now felt ample. Spacious.

After casting a nervous glance in the direction of his “host,” he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a couple eggs and some fresh dill. He had half a tomato in a plastic bag and he grabbed that as well. He wanted the feta but decided it was probably more than his system could take.

Getting a mixing bowl from the upper cabinet was surprisingly difficult, even though it was on a shelf he could reach. He still had to stretch over the counter, and neither his shoulders nor his arms were used to carrying any weight. Somehow, he managed.

At the table, Margaret Mary watched him struggle. She knew the limits of that body, intimately. She could see what a surprise it was to Len to find himself so weak. It was an echo of the shock she’d felt, when she looked in the mirror at the face of an older man. But at least I’m strong, now!

He made breakfast, quietly. Efficiently. The room constantly seemed to be giving him little surprises, but he said nothing.

She sipped her coffee.

His efforts started to produce the types of smells that had haunted her dreams. Toasted bread . . . eggs . . . the sharp herbal tang of dill weed . . . . Even though she’d had a large bowl of cereal, the smells alone were triggering every pleasure center in her brain. Then he went and refreshed her coffee – a unique scent that would never get old.

Len, too, was watching. As he cooked, his downcast eyes would wander to where she sat, and through lashes that were finer and longer than he could have imagined, he caught a range of expressions on the face he’d known so well. Distrust, certainly. Fear. A little curiosity, of course. Oddly – or, at least, it seemed odd to him – he could detect no sign of longing, or regret. Not yet, anyway.

He made himself a cup of coffee too, just as the toast and the eggs were ready, then he plated the food, got silverware, and brought everything to the table.

She looked at the plates, puzzled because the serving he’d given her was probably three times larger, and he’d included a wedge of cheese with it. His own plate held only half a slice of toast and a few spoonfuls of the scrambled eggs. “Why don’t you have more?”

He sat carefully, taking the seat directly across from her, and pulled up one of her memories from about a year before. “Remember that time at the McDonald’s, just before they ran you out?” She’d watched from outside, hiding in the shadows. It was so light inside no-one could see out the windows anyway. When the fat woman had left her food on the table to go wash her hands, Margaret Mary had slipped inside . . . .

She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’ta gone back anyway. Fucking food was so bad I puked all night!”

“That wasn’t the problem,” he explained. “When you’ve been starved for as long as you, eating too much, or the wrong things . . . it’ll just come right back up again.”

“Huh.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, with only the clink of the cutlery breaking the stillness of the morning. The meal seemed amazing to each of them, though in fact it was simple. For Margaret Mary, the taste and smell of decent food was so foreign to her lived experience that it was like being in a five-star restaurant. For Len, being able to quiet the gnawing hunger he’d felt since the switch was both a blessing and a relief. Small as the portion was that he’d taken, he was barely able to finish it.

He leaned back, sipped his coffee, and stretched his legs slightly. The movement caused his right leg to brush against her left.

Both of them froze for an instant, before Len jerked his smooth leg back. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to touch you!”

She’d stopped breathing, and only just started again. “I . . . guess . . . it’s all right. We didn’t . . . you know.”

“Yeah. So we can rule out touch, now, too.”

“I guess.” Impulsively, she reached across the table and grabbed his left wrist.

He flinched . . . and she noticed.

“So maybe you aren’t all fired up to switch back either.” She let go and took up her coffee again.

“I’m not. I told you I wasn’t lying about that.” He took another sip of coffee. “I’d still do it if we knew how, for your sake. I mean, if that’s what you wanted. And I can’t see why you wouldn’t.”

“I’m still thinking it over.” For the first time, Margaret Mary was inclined to believe him. His instinctive flinch when she’d grabbed him gave her more confidence than anything he’d said.

Even if he wasn’t scheming to switch back, though, that didn’t mean he wasn’t after something. “Let’s say I decide I’m not interested. That I like your life better than mine. Will you go away? Leave me alone?”

“Yes,” he said, without any hesitation. “If that’s what you want me to do. But . . . we might be able to help each other first.”

“Uh huh.” It was her turn to lean back. “I figured you had an angle.”

Len could see that denying his own interest would just make her more suspicious, so he didn’t try. “It’s obvious how you could help me – and I won’t pretend I’d rather not live on the street like you did. But I can help you, too. Help you get yourself settled and figure out your new life.”

“How? I already know everything you know.”

“Yes and no,” he said. “If this switch is working the same for both of us, the knowledge is all there – we both have it. But the instincts aren’t, and that’s going to matter. At least for a little bit.”

She gave him a sceptical look. “What do you mean?”

“Like yesterday, when I walked up to you on the street when you were with Officer Kincade. You would never have done that, would you?”

“Fuck, no! Cops are nothing but bad news – every one of ‘em. He’s one of the worst!”

He nodded. “Yeah, I got that . . . I just got it too late.”

“Well, okay, but what’s that got to do with me? I don’t need to worry about cops any more.”

“I’m not talking about cops. I’m talking about knowing how to actually use the information you have, quick enough for it to be helpful.” He saw she was about to argue and gave her a lopsided grin. “How was your driving?”

“My . . . .” She stopped, and the dots lined up for her. “Oh.”

That gave him an opening, and he didn’t waste it. “For a more important example, what’s your plan for Monday?”

“Monday?”

“Remember, you’ve got work Monday morning. And the boss wants to meet with you.”

She thought for a moment, accessing memories. Remembering his last few minutes in the body that was now hers. The thing that had been worrying him. “Really?” she scoffed. “You think that’s hard? That fuckwad Ramsey wants you to retire, and you didn’t want to. But I don’t give a shit about working – you’ve got money coming out your ass!”

He smiled. “Or, to be real clear, you’ve got money coming out your ass. It’s all yours now, honey.”

“Fuckin’ A!”

“Okay, good. You don’t want to keep working. But suppose I told you that, if you played your cards right, you could get them to pay you to retire. Probably a good chunk of money, too. Would that be worth something to you?”

That stopped her. Yeah, she was rich, now. But she’d had nothing not twelve hours before, and the idea that she might have too much money was as foreign to her as Uzbek plov. Carefully, like someone probing for a trap, she said, “Uh . . . sure. I guess.”

“And if they paid you the money, where would you put it?” he pressed.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Here?”

As gently as he could, he said, “It’ll be more money than you want to keep around the house. Listen. Here’s my thought. Let me stay here with you for a week or two. I’ve got an air mattress in the garage; I can sleep in the laundry room. I’ll help you figure out some of this practical stuff. Get you launched on your retirement. And if I can help you get the company to cough up a nice, fat severance check, we split it fifty-fifty. That should be enough to get me off the street, and you’ll still have more money than you have right now.”

Instinctively she said, “You want to rob me.”

“I don’t.”

“You’ll wait ’til I’m asleep and you’ll kill me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know! I just know I’ve got something good, something real, right here, and I don’t want to screw it up somehow!”

“You do know,” he said forcefully. Her doubts were starting to really get under his skin. He wasn’t making any claims to sainthood, but he liked to think he was a decent enough guy. “You know me — the good, the bad, and the butt-ugly-in-a-ballgown. I can’t hide anything I’ve ever done from you. Check those memories — all sixty-three years of them. Find me one time — just one! — that I’ve ever done anything remotely like that!”

“Yeah, but you’ve never been hungry before.”

“Seriously?”

“Or cold. Or poor.”

He lost it. “Dammit, you know I wasn’t born rich. I was never on the street, but I had plenty of lean years. Think about Tucson, when I was twenty. Or Galveston, when I was cleaning dishes and mostly eating Slim Jim’s.”

She wanted to keep arguing with him, but it was becoming increasingly clear to her that she just wasn’t as good at it as he was, even if she did have all his memories.

And, he was right about the Slim Jim’s.

But she wouldn’t have made it as long as she had without a motherlode of stubborn, so she crossed her arms and made one final effort. “Why’re you fighting so hard for this? You said you’d leave.”

He put his hands on the table and looked down at them, trying to think of words that might pierce the Kevlar of her distrust. Delicate hands. Tiny palms and perfectly proportioned fingers. The nails were chipped, broken, and crusted with dirt.

He didn’t care.

“We didn’t ask for this to happen,” he said softly. “We don’t know what we’re doing, either of us. I just thought, if we helped each other, we might both have a chance to make it work.”

Margaret Mary glared at him, but he kept his eyes focused on his hands. The hands that had been hers.

She wanted to be mad, but there were only a couple people she’d ever met that had given her straight talk without a heaping side of bullshit. There was a science teacher, back in middle school. Nielsen. He’d talked like that. It was just harder to accept, when the words were coming from someone who looked like the teenaged scarecrow she’d recently been.

He looked up, and his eyes were even bigger than she remembered. “Please. For both our sake’s.”

Margaret Mary had been begging for two years. Longer, if you counted the pleas she directed at her father. No-one had ever asked her for anything before. She’d never had anything that any other person might need or even want.

It felt . . . good. She wasn’t sure why.

“Okay.” She managed to meet his eyes. “Just a week, though.”

– To be continued.

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