"Uuhh," Dori moaned as Rob's hips began a powerful up and down movement. He was flint to her steel. Dori felt the sparks which were triggering a series of emotional rockets -- fire-breathers that jetted with scorching energy along the million arterial ways of her twenty-two year old body. . . . Suddenly the doorbell chimed. With a mutter of frustration, Rob stopped what he was doing and rolled over. "Keey-rist!" Rob panted. "That's timing for you." Dori gasped for breath as his weight eased back from her chest. "Get rid of them!" she moaned urgently. "I'll just be a minute, doll," Rob promised, rising with a long sigh. He quickly dried his particulars with a tissue, threw on his plaid robe, and then hurried into the living room. In just a minute he was back, carrying a small package in a brown wrapper. "Who was it?" asked Dori. "Nobody. Just a twenty-four hours delivery service." "What did you get? Who sent it?" "There's no return address." Rob sat down at the edge of the bed and started tearing off the wrapping paper. Dori nestled up behind him and rested her chin on his hard shoulder. "Well, well, well," he muttered as he removed the contents of the box. "Cute." Dori frowned. It was some sort of primitive female sculpture, naked except for a strange headdress. No wonder Rob liked it! He always did admire big breasts, she knew. As Rob turned the thing around Dori observed that it was two-faced; a male figure was cast behind the female one. Dori knew immediately which side her man would be setting outward for viewing! He was a horny guy, but he was at least hers! "-- Look, here's a card," Rob said, plucking a piece of paper from the box. "`To Rob with hate. Cassandra.' I never thought I'd hear that name again." "Who's Cassandra?" asked Dori suspiciously. "Nobody. -- She and I used to live together, that's all. It ended badly." "You never mentioned her!" "Why should I? I know what a jealous woman you are." "She was nobody? Just a live-in girlfriend?! Who am I then? Nobody plus one, or two, or three, or five?" "Listen, cute stuff, how do you think I got to be so good in bed if this was strictly amateur hour?" "So you DID have a lot of girls before you met me!" "I've always been popular, so sue me! -- Dori, don't be a pain." "Pain?! I just want some respect." "Baby bottom, you're going nuts over nothing! Settle down." I don't like the idea of old girlfriends sending you gifts! Does it say that she's going to be visiting?" "I told you what it said! For crying out loud, Dori, give me some credit. I've only had eyes for you from the day I set eyes on you!" "You've only known me a month. Who will it be next month?" "Honey!" "I must have been crazy to think that what we had was something special." "It is -- sort of!" "Sort of?! That does it! Let your old girlfriend know there's a vacancy. I'm quitting the fan club!" Dori scrambled from the bed. Rob didn't say anything. There was actually nothing he could say when Dori Elrick was in one of her snits. He watched her pull on her clothes with a speed never seen before. Once dressed in the same peasant blouse and miniskirt that she had worn earlier to the restaurant (a get-up that made her look more like a loafing cocktail waitress than a customer to be served), she started emptying the drawers and stuffing her cheap plastic- over-cardboard suitcases. Rob might have tried sweet-talking her, but he knew that Dori was prone to flare-ups and sudden mood-changes. The best thing for the girl was a little breathing space. After all, he hadn't done anything wrong, except live a life of his own before he had ever met her. The little brunette could walk out of his life if she wanted to, or stay, but, either way, he didn't see any reason to beg. Leaving Dori alone to finish her packing, Rob shuffled out to the kitchen and turned on the radio. It was set to the oldies channel that Dori liked so well and just then they were playing a familiar tune: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. . . ." That was Janis Joplin's "Bobbie McGee," a song that he had always enjoyed. But right now the lyrics depressed him. They were about a great relationship that just couldn't hold together for the long term. It reminded Rob of his own history with women. The next song was Frank Sinatra's "I Could Write a Book." I bet you could, you old Mafiosi, Rob chuckled as he went to the refrigerator and broke open a beer. By the time he finished it, Dori was coming out of the bedroom, loaded down with suitcases and even paper bags full of her wash-and-wear things. As she stormed past him, Rob noticed an article fall from one of her precariously-held bags and plop down on the kitchen floor. "Dori!" he said. She turned angrily. "Don't plead with me to stay, Rob!" "I wouldn't. I think we both need some space, but you dropped --" "Ooh, men! Listen, Rob, I'll give you so much space that you'll never see me again!" With that final pronouncement, Dori stomped out the back door and Rob heard her footsteps on the stairs leading down to the residents' garage where her Toyota was parked. "Women!" he sighed. Well, he consoled himself, she had stayed longer than most. No big deal. Rob could cook better than Dori on her best day, and her sloppy housekeeping always drove him crazy. The young man got up from his chair and plucked the fallen object from the tiles. It was just a skimpy pair of blue denim cut-offs, so small that the lush curves of her lower buttocks were left bare -- a glory to see, he had to admit. Rob shook his head at the memory, then tossed the shorts on the counter top indifferently. Unlike some males, Rob didn't get excited about women's clothes -- unless, that is, they were filled with a woman who could do them justice. The night's fun and games had tired Rob out and he padded sleepily back to the bedroom. The moment he stepped in the door he again noticed the two-faced idol lying on the covers. His curiosity renewed, he picked it up and turned the object about in his hands. The face on either side of it had little gem eyes and he wondered if it was valuable or just some cheap import. There was an inscription on its bottom which looked very much like Indian script. Rob couldn't help wondering why Cassandra had sent him the thing. They shared very few tastes. He had known her when she was a graduate student in anthropology, but Rob was more into sports cars and had never talked to her about her favorite subject -- except on the subject of exotic mating rituals. Their sex had been hot, but her strident feminism eventually turned him off. With one breath Cassandra would be expressing the superiority of woman, and with the next complaining that she hadn't been born a man. He wished he could understand women. Men never went around wishing they were female -- at least the sort of men Rob felt comfortable with didn't. What was the big deal anyway? he wondered. Whatever sex you were dealt, the sensible person accepted it and enjoyed it for all that it was worth. The one thing which Rob had really liked about Dori was the way she seemed to have a hell of a good time with being a girl, the exact opposite from Cassandra. Too bad that her peeves and snits always drove him up the wall. That was the way it was. When something was right with a girl, something else was wrong. I just wish that I could find my perfect match, Rob thought. He was getting more than a little tired of these affairs that never seemed to turn into anything deep or meaningful. Why couldn't he have a relationship like his parents'? Up until the terrible accident that had taken both their lives, they had enjoyed a wonderful partnership. Rob was beginning to think that he had a lousy taste in women. Or was it something in his personality, some quirk in him that attracted women for a little while, but then drove them away? Rob knew he was in a rut -- and not for the first time he found himself wishing that he could get out of it somehow. He shook his head. How could he? He was what he was. It would probably take a miracle to change a quality so fundamental to his character. But he couldn't help but wonder what comprised the happiness that some lucky couples found with one another. Common interests, he thought, trust, sharing, and patience? Kindness, forgiveness, and respect? And he shouldn't leave out friendship. Of all the women he had known, not one real friend stood out among them. That was a sad commentary. It all had seemed so simple when Rob had been a hormonal teenager. Then he had supposed that a lot of high-quality screwing would bring happiness. Well, as a jaded veteran he had learned that the merchandise wasn't bad, but it was no happiness pill either. Sex was only one element of a good relationship, not the bricks and stone. It two people had nothing else going, it was an empty thing. He put the idol on the nightstand with the female-side out, intending to admire it later in the morning light. Then Rob threw off his robe and slipped under the covers. He was dead to the world in a just few minutes. As the young man lay half-asleep, he dreamed he was fondling Dori's breast. It felt larger than he remembered and when he touched Dori's boob, he thought that he could feel his own fingers playing teasingly upon it. When he opened his blurry eyes to the early dawn's light, he saw Dori's breasts, but the odd thing was that he couldn't see Dori at all -- just her breasts. "God, what a dream!" he muttered. His chest started itching as he lay there, but when he scratched himself he felt soft, tender mounds of flesh which were hurt by his nails as if they were his own. He grimaced; he just couldn't seem to get out of that lucid dream about women's breasts. Just then his sleepy fingers went to his groin, which was also itching. Instead of his scrotum, he found there a wooly patch occupying an emptiness where his well-oiled equipment always had parked. What the hell? he wondered. Then he understood. He was dreaming that he was a woman! Kinky, he chuckled. Rob couldn't recall ever having had such a dream before. On impulse, he decided to go look at himself in the dream mirror. Robert Wescott as a woman, he supposed in his sleep-drugged state, should be something to see. The nearly somnambulant Rob staggered to the full-length mirror and he wasn't disappointed. A slim girl with long, soft honey-blond curls gazed back at him from the glass. She looked like a healthy and athletic sort of miss, as if she swam and ran a lot, just like Rob did himself. Her breasts were nicer than Dori's -- not as big Dolly Parton's, of course, but would have done credit to Christie Brinkley. The reflected girl had a nest of light brown pubic hair that almost hid the pursed lips of her pussy. Her waist was narrow, Rob noted, but her hips were becomingly round. Rob touched his buttocks and saw the girl's hands go behind her also, mimicking him perfectly. The girl's derriere felt full and hard, just the sort that he loved most to fondle. The miss in the mirror smiled with pleasure. Both fondling and being fondled felt very good. Intrigued by the heightened sensitivity of his dream-body, Rob reached forward and stroked his dream-pussy lightly. One touch of its sensitive labia sent something like an electric shock coursing through his body, making him shudder. An amazing dream, Rob thought, but one so intriguing that he didn't want it to end just yet. He carefully studied the girl's oval face with its pert little chin. If she looked familiar it was because she looked so much like him. The angles of his cheeks and jaw were softened by her feminine sex, however, and they framed both a prettily turned-up nose and a pair of big robin-egg blue eyes with long blonde lashes. Her lips were so full and sensual that they reminded him of his mother's when she was young. The young man grinned as he sleepily considered the experience. If he had been unfortunate enough to be born a girl, he wondered whether it might not have been quite so intolerable had Mother Nature graced him with the gentle beauty of the girl in the glass. Rob yawned. Standing there so long had made him weak in the legs; he had to lie down or fall. So, forgetting the strange dream, he wobbled over to the bed and plopped down. He was out cold as soon as his face hit the pillow. The seven o'clock alarm bell woke Rob fully. He yawned and rubbed his chest. Then Robert Wescott yelled in horror. # Wrapped tightly in his robe, Rob paced back and forth across the kitchen floor. It hadn't been a dream! He had actually been looking at himself in the mirror. Somehow -- by some incredible somehow -- he had turned into a girl during the night! Things like this only happened in stupid movies, he knew, but not in reality. In fact, he had lately watched a weird video called SYNAPSE -- about a male-to-female brain transplant and a lot of automatic weapons combat. He also remembered that movie that Cassandra had once brought home. It was called SWAT or STITCH, or something like that. It starred Perry King, who God turned into Ellen Barkin for having treated women so shabbily. But Perry's character had had to die before being zapped with a female shape. Rob knew that he was still alive -- or at least, he thought that he was. What had happened? Suddenly he remembered the statuette in the bedroom. Cassandra! Now it all started making sense. When he knew her she had already been getting into primitive fertility magic studies and that Mother Goddess stuff. In fact, she had even done research among those crazy Wicca cultists. Sorcery! That was it! Cassandra had cursed him! She had found a magic idol and cursed him with it. In fact, maybe she had even used it on herself first, considering her silly male-envy. Was there now a man named Cass wandering around? Rob hoped never to run into the bum -- without a gun in his hand, at least! "I've got to see a doctor -- fast!" he -- or rather, she -- muttered to herself. Rob ran back into the bedroom and threw on her much-too-large male pants, shirt, and shoes. The hapless young woman walked right out of her size-twelve loafers at her very first step. Damn! she thought, I can't go outside looking like this. I need women's clothes, at least until I get to the hospital. Maybe Dori left some things behind that'll fit this stupid body! Rob, her heart pounding in her throat, rushed to the closet hoping to find a pair of jeans and a shirt that she could wear without embarrassment. The closet was empty, as were the drawers. Dori didn't leave much of anything behind, just a little cloth purse with nothing in it but lint; it had fallen behind Rob's tennis shoes and been overlooked in her haste. Then the girl got the idea to check the clothes hamper and, as luck would have it, Dori had missed something. Rob found an orange halter top and a pair of panties. The clothes from the bottom of the hamper had a sweaty, musky scent, but Rob wasn't worrying about that as she hastily put them on. She was able to get into the halter fairly easy since Rob had watched lots of girlfriends dressing. But to her annoyance, the halter seemed too snug to be comfortable. Then the young woman realized that she actually had boobs bigger than Dori's! Rob could have gone out barefoot, but didn't want to. Suddenly remembering having seen Dori's sandals under the bed a couple days earlier, she got down on her hands and knees to have another look. Sure enough, they were still there. Rob now had some footgear! But the bikini top and panties weren't enough to clothe her decently. Just then Rob remembered that pair of cut-offs back in the kitchen. Without pausing for breath, she ran to get the denim shorts. With the cut-offs in hand again, she felt a twinge of dismay. They were so skimpily cut! Why did Dori have to be such a bimbo? In her state of mind Rob had forgotten just how much Dori's lack of fashion sense had excited her as male. Realizing that she had no choice, Rob climbed into the cut-offs and found that she had to exhale hard to get the snaps closed. Apparently her remolded hips were a size or two wider than Dori's. If the shorts were tight on their owner, they were less than a second skin on Rob. Though now dressed as well as possible, Rob still felt like she was standing around in underwear -- and girl's underwear at that! Her cleavage was pushed up brazenly by the constraint of the halter and the panties, not designed to be worn with shorts so sparing, showed. Exasperated, Rob stuffed the visible hems up under the tight denim of her cut-offs and then went to get her wallet and keys. As she fumbled them out of the drawer, she realized that the pockets of her shorts were much too tight for her to put anything into them. Women always had a pocket problem, Rob remembered, and they solved it by carrying purses. Resourcefully, Rob seized Dori's forgotten purse and stuffed the wallet and keys inside it. Then, as an afterthought, she put the magic statuette in along with them, hoping that the hospital could have it analyzed and find the antidote. Finally, Rob hurried down to the residents' garage, got into her Dodge Avenger, hastily readjusted the seat forward, and started the engine. # Trembly and preoccupied, Rob almost had an accident in the morning traffic, but she finally managed to get into the hospital parking ramp safely. Without pausing to lock the doors, the distraught girl raced up to the emergency room. "I've got to s-see a doctor!" she stammered to the receptionist. The middle-aged woman regarded the girl's dishabille coolly, asking, "What's the problem?" "I'm under a curse!" "A what?" "A curse! I've been changed!" "What do you mean you've been changed?" "I -- I'd rather explain that to the doctor." "Do you wanted to see our staff psychiatrist?" "I'm not crazy! I want to see the doctor who knows the most about breaking curses!" As distraught as she was, Rob realized that she wasn't making much sense. But who else should she ask for? A gynecologist? "Maybe we should start you out with a family medicine practitioner," the receptionist suggested. "What's your insurance company?" "Metro Group Health," Rob answered, frustrated by the way hospitals did business. She dug deeply into her wallet to find her medical services card. The receptionist took the plastic rectangle from her shaking hand and frowned. "This is a card for a Robert Wescott." Rob thought quickly. "Ah, he's my husband. We have the family plan." "No you don't. This card says `individual only.' Do you have any other means of paying, Miss?" She wanted to scream, to shriek to the world that she was Robert Wescott, but who would believe that a pretty girl wearing an overstuffed halter and a pair of flirtatious cut-offs had a grown man hidden inside her? Anyway, people were watching, listening. Rob didn't want anyone to know who she was. It was just too humiliating. The blonde checked her wallet for cash. She -- then he -- had shown Dori a good time at dinner the night before. There wasn't more than a few dollars left. "I've got a credit card," she gasped in agitation. The receptionist took the card patiently, but again had to frown. "This is your husband's, my dear. We can't accept your card unless you can prove that you're really Mrs. Wescott. Do you have a picture ID?" Rob was so distressed that she wasn't thinking at all well. She fumbled inside her wallet again, saying, "Sure I've got a driver's license!" She pulled out the license and shoved it in front of the woman. The receptionist sighed wearily. "No, Miss, we can't use Mr. Wescott's license. We have to see yours." "I guess -- I guess I forgot it," Rob mumbled hopelessly. Now she was really getting frightened. In another moment they'd be accusing her of having stolen some man's wallet and trying to use his health plan and credit card illegally. If questioned by a policeman, what could she say? "I hope you can get home without being arrested," the receptionist remarked. "What?!" Rob cried out, as if her mind had been picked of its darkest nightmare. "You don't have your own license on you. Drive carefully." Rob shuddered as the horror sank in. She couldn't prove who she was, but still had to get help. If she didn't get a vaccination for this terrible condition soon, it might go too far -- and might even become permanent! "Can't you put me on welfare, then. I -- I'm terribly sick!" The receptionist took another look at the pretty, but naughtily-clad and very messed-up, waif. She suspected that the little blonde was on drugs. Well, that was nothing new. Every year the emergency room got hundreds of cases of people who had put all their money into their arm or up their nose. They were a terrible burden on the system, but they had to be taken take care of, even if the taxpayer had to foot the bill. "All right honey, we'll see what we can do. What's your name?" "Ah -- R-Rob --" "Excuse me?" "Ah, Bobbi! -- Bobbi Wescott." "What is your Social Security number, Bobbi," she asked in a subdued voice, trying not to set off the distraught girl. "I'll find it," Bobbi stammered as she looked for her card. Then she stopped suddenly. It would have the Robert Wescott name on it, too. Showing it would just compound her problems. "Please, I don't need any more questions, Miss. I need help!" She began to sob. # Finally Bobbi got to see a doctor. He suspected drugs and checked for them. While he did so, Bobbi tried to explain her transformation calmly and clearly to him, but only convinced the physician that she was delusional. He prescribed valium and made her an appointment with a hospital psychiatrist. By that time Bobbi had steadied herself enough to appear rational, at least to the untutored eye. Leaving the hospital, Bobbi realized that medical science couldn't help her. Scientists didn't understand magic. She guessed that she would have to see a witch instead. But how did one find a practicing warlock? she wondered. They didn't advertise in the phone book, or did they? There was an occult book store downtown, the girl suddenly remembered. Maybe she could ask the clerks there for a lead. Bobbi drove home without mishap and, used up, emotionally spent, she put her key into the lock. She just wanted to get into bed, to cover up her head and cry herself empty. Much to her surprise, the door only opened a couple inches; the security chain was set. As she shook the door in frustration, Dori peered through the crack. "Dori! You're back!" cried Bobbi. "You're damned right I'm back!" Dori snarled. "Who in hell are you and what are you doing with Rob's key?" "Damn it Dori, I live here!" "What do you mean you live here? That bastard sure didn't waste any time replacing me, did he! Well, I'm going to fight for my man! Take a hike, bitch!" "No, Dori, you don't understand!" Dori was opening the door. "I understand, all right, you little tramp! Rob thinks you're moving in with him! Well, he's got another thing coming! Give me those keys! You'll stay in this apartment over my dead body!" Dori shoved Bobbi hard against the wall and grabbed at her keys. Dori's strength seemed incredible! Being manhandled by a sleek girl like Dori so shocked Bobbi that she defended herself very poorly; she couldn't prevent the keys from being torn from her nerveless grasp. Then Dori stormed back into the apartment, slammed the door shut, and threw the deadbolt. "Let me in, you stupid slut!" Bobbi yelled, beating on the panel with her tender fists. "At least give me back my car keys!" "Your car keys? They've got Rob's name on them and they're for his Dodge! Get out of here, or I'll call the police!" Bobbi slumped back against the wall, overwhelmed. Locked out of her apartment, her car keys lost, having almost no money, barely dressed, she realized now that she didn't even have an identity. The girl suddenly grasped that her problem wasn't just facing life as a woman, it was a matter of basic survival -- food, shelter, clothing! She shuddered. What a heartless revenge Cassandra had taken! Sure, Rob had told her that he had had his fill of her nutty ideas and had ordered her out of his life -- but this was too extreme a retribution. It was like shooting a person in the heart for taking someone's potato chip. Black despair overcame the young woman and a ghastly image flashed before her inner mind -- an image of herself standing on a high bridge ready to jump, hopelessness and horror snatching at her from behind, death and darkness waiting up ahead. I don't want to die, she thought desperately. Jim! He's my best friend. He'll know who I am! He'll help me! # The door to Jim's apartment opened slowly. A face that wasn't Jim's appeared, saying pleasantly, "Well, hello! What can I do for you?" Bobbi recognized Rona Spears. In fact, she knew that this had always been Rona's apartment -- it had been Jim who had moved in with her. "Am I glad that somebody's home!" Bobbi jabbered. " -- Listen, I'm Bobbi, uh, McGee, a friend of Robert Wescott. I wanted to stay with him while I'm visiting the city, but, uh, he's not in town. So I thought about Jim and you. Rob said that you were such good friends of his. Is it okay?" Rona sized up the girl. Yes, she looked just like the type that Rob Wescott would be interested in. In fact, maybe his taste was improving. There was a natural charm to this young miss. The business woman sensed a vulnerability in Bobbi McGee that called out something benign and sisterly from deep inside her. "Any friend of Rob's is a friend of ours," she said with a smile. "I'm afraid that Jim is seeing clients in Sacramento and won't be back until tomorrow night. You can stay here until either he or Rob shows up." "That's great, Rona!" "Don't mention it, Bobbi." Just then Rona caught the scent of her guest's musty clothing and perspiration. "Did you walk all the way here from Rob's?" "Yes, I wanted to save the cab fare." Rona stood aside to let Bobbi enter. "Well, why don't you freshen up with a shower? Do you have an overnight bag?" "Ah, no. It was stolen from the cart at the bus station," Bobbi lied agilely. "Damn this city!" Rona commiserated. # A half hour later found Bobbi resting upon a stuffed chair. Now wearing a pair of Rona's jeans and a shirt, it felt good to be out Dori's mix-and-match bimbo outfit. The shower, too, was restorative, but touching her strange new body while she bathed had been hard for Bobbi. She had kept her eyes closed through the whole process. Rona stepped back into the room wearing a dress suit and a string tie. "Well, Bobbi, I hate to leave, but I have a dinner engagement with an important client." "You'd leave me here alone? A stranger?" "It's obvious that you know Rob very well. Somehow, I don't think anyone with such sad, gentle eyes could be a thief. And, besides, there's something about you that makes me feel like I know you already." "You won't be sorry," Bobbi promised gratefully. Left alone, Bobbi grew a little restless as the afternoon wore on. She got up and paced about the apartment. She took a Diet Coke, made a salami sandwich, and found that just one filled her up. Maybe a smaller body meant a smaller appetite. That's good, she thought -- lower grocery bills. Then she wandered over to the full-length mirror. "Look at you!" Bobbi rebuked her own reflection. "What a sight you are!" She folded her arms over the swollen front of her shirt and cast a troubled glance out the window. "How long am I going to be like this?" she mused. "Forever?" Screwing up her courage, Bobbi regarded her reflection yet again. This time she had to nod grudgingly. "You're good-looking," she sighed, "I'll grant you that!" The young woman's curiosity at last got the better of her and she took off her shirt. Rona's clothes fitted very well, Bobbi had discovered, but, like Dori's, Rona's bra was just too snug. In fact, the discomfort was enough to prompt the new-minted girl to take it off entirely. Now bare to the waist, Bobbi cupped her bra-pinched breasts in her hands and massaged the soreness away. "I really grew a big crop of America's best last night," she chuckled sadly. Were they hers for keeps? Was there any way to break the magic spell? How long did spells last if you didn't do something to break them? She tried to think of all the stories she had read about magic, all the movies she had seen. The Shaggy Dog had to do something brave and heroic to become a boy again, she recalled. The Frog Prince had to get a princess to kiss him. The Beast had to make Beauty love him. Bobbi grinned, enjoying the idea of being kissed by Princess Di and being restored to gorgeous manhood in her arms. But it wasn't a practical solution. The blonde put her hands on her hips and tilted her head from side to side. If I'm stuck as a girl for any time at all, Bobbi thought, I've got to earn a living. How do I do that? I can't even prove I have a high school diploma now. Maybe I could become a model. Bobbi fantasized herself in a bikini and leaning sexily against a red Nissan 240SX, or a glossy black Acura Integra upon the cover of some future issue of SPORTS CAR. Not much hard work in modeling, she thought; wearing a bikini in public would be the roughest part. But then she reconsidered. Fat chance! Those jobs were hard to get. Every model that she had known as Rob had at one time or other complained that she had had to sleep with somebody to get the really worthwhile assignments. Bobbi winced. The idea of sleeping with a man was decidedly unpleasant, even if it meant earning a good living. Now that she was a girl, Bobbi wondered if it meant that she would like boys. For an experiment, she called up a large image of Fabio in her mind's eye and decided that it didn't do a thing for her. But Cindy Crawford -- ahh, now that was a body to set her heart strings strumming! But could Bobbi thrill Cindy in the shape she was now? Maybe, considering some of those tabloid stories about the supermodel. Be that as it may, Bobbi could console herself that plenty of beautiful girls were willing to sleep with other girls. Especially girls like the one in the mirror. I need a drink, she thought, if I'm ever going to sort this thing out. Damn, what if Jim won't believe me? What then? Bobbi went over to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a Scotch and soda. As she consumed the hard liquor, she felt depressed. Rob had worked very hard at building a career in real estate. Now it was lost. As Bobbi she might have to start all over again. Well, there were plenty of female realtors. The women in the business did well on the whole, as long as they applied themselves as vigorously as a man would. In fact, it was at a realtor's convention where Rob had first met Rona, and there discovered that they both lived in the same city. The two of them were friendly from the start, but they had never quite made it into bed together. It was Jim's heart -- or loins -- that Rona had set on fire that time when Rob had introduced them. Rob hadn't really resented the way that things had worked out. He thought that Rona would be good for his friend and, besides, Rob's hands were full just then with a postal worker named Charlotte who liked to lick whipped cream off his bare feet. Bobbi sighed. Those were the good old days. Were they really gone forever? What could she replace them with? The small blonde downed the rest of her drink, and then tackled a second. How strangely and how suddenly her fate had changed! She suddenly became worried that this experience was some sort of punishment -- from Heaven, not just from the weird and vindictive Cassandra. Was it possible that Cassandra might actually have been acting -- unwittingly -- as Heaven's agent? Bobbi decided that it couldn't be. Rob had never hurt women. In fact, he had made more than his share of women very happy -- for a while. At least he had never committed the big faux pas and gotten one of them pregnant. That is, he never knew for certain that any of his girls were pregnant when split-up time arrived. At that point she checked herself, supposing that in another minute she'd be feeling guilty for absolutely nothing. Damn it, birth control was a woman's problem anyway! Birth control. That was a strange thought under the present circumstances. Bobbi had become a woman herself and so she suddenly wondered, with a strangely-melded sense of alarm and amazement, whether this new-edition body of hers could conceive a child. Motherhood. Imagine that! She looked down at herself and touched her small, slightly convex belly. Could it happen? If it could, what should she think? Most women wanted children, but -- Bobbi remembered how the tough gang boss trapped in Kathy Duffy's body in SYNAPSE had finally achieved a happy ending by becoming a loving wife and the proud mother of a little boy. And in Ellen Barkin's movie, too, the character had had a baby. But she had tragically died in childbirth. That was such a sad scene, Bobbi remembered -- and the film was supposed to have been a comedy! Bobbi blew her nose on a napkin. The thought of Ellen's little girl growing up without a mother to love her, and dress her, and feed her, and hug her was so terrible that the young woman had to try as hard as she could not to think about it, lest she break down and cry. She finished her second drink to steady her nerves. The girl then considered whether she needed yet another refill and decided that she did. A little later, staggering drunk, Bobbi wobbled into the bedroom and clumsily stripped off her jeans. She didn't actually mean to shed the panties along with them, but they came off, too. As she fell into bed, Bobbi's forehead struck her purse and it hurt. "Damned idol," she muttered as she rolled over and dug the accursed thing from the handbag. Seeing the statuette again gave Bobbi a sudden idea. If it had changed her sex once just by sleeping near it, maybe it would change her back if she repeated the process. "I'll just put this little doodad beside the bed here," she slurred, "and maybe it'll turn me into a man by morning. Fight magic with magic! What have I got to lose?" As she settled the statuette upon the nightstand, she noticed a bottle of perfume sitting there next to the lamp. Its label read "Magic Midnight." Bobbi had always loved the scent of perfume on beautiful women. With a crooked smile, she fumbled the bottle open to take a whiff. She found its odor wonderfully sensuous but, unfortunately, the girl's quaking fingers dropped the bottle and it spilled on her lap, not much, but several powerfully aromatic droplets had been tossed into her pubic hair and across her bare thighs. Bobbi recapped the bottle hastily, then turned off the lamp and fell into a deep sleep. # Jim Cardwell opened the bedroom door quietly. "Rona? Are you awake?" he whispered. He heard a woman's deep breathing and her wordless murmuring. "No, she's sleeping." The young investment broker sniffed the sweetened air, recognizing his favorite perfume, Magic Midnight. Rona always wore it to make him hot to trot! Grinning with anticipation, he stripped off his clothes. Jim hadn't cheated on Rona since he had known her, though he had been sorely tempted just the night before. The Japanese investors that he had been meeting with had held a party at the Imperial Hotel with all the amenities provided. Jim had let his opportunity to make it with a high-class call girl pass because his old free-and-easy ways had always brought him grief in the past and, besides, he cared about Rona and wanted what they had to work out. But his near miss with infidelity had made him very anxious to get back to Rona. Now that he was in the same room with her, those feelings were rushing back with powerful urgency. He would either have to plunge into a very cold shower or into some very hot action -- and a shower sized up as a very poor second. Jim softly approached the bed. Sitting down beside the one whom he thought was his girlfriend, he touched her and realized that she was sleeping naked on top of the covers. Jim sucked in an excited breath as he stroked Bobbi's breasts. In the dark they felt even larger than he knew them to be. The girl stirred, but didn't wake. Jim, trying not to disturb "Rona's" sleep, checked her for panties and found that she was wearing none. He slipped his own briefs to the floor, kicked them aside, and positioned himself on the bed. He took hold of Bobbi's hips to steady them, then, as he moved his face closer to her love nest, Jim discovered that "Rona" had used the perfume on her pubic hair. The little minx, he thought, had been hoping that he'd find a way to come home early and so had decked herself out like a carnal feast. What a woman! He flicked his tongue against the outer lips of Bobbi's pussy. The sleeper shifted and moaned, but her alcohol-reinforced slumber was a heavy one. Jim chuckled quietly as he next moved his mouth up to her breasts, licking the nipples as if they had been dabbed with honey. Bobbi groaned a bit as the sensation penetrated her deep trance. The young man's cock was now swollen and aching. He knew that there wouldn't be much time for foreplay, so he took the woman passionately in his arms and kissed her hard on the lips. "Whaa --?!" Bobbi mumbled as she finally awoke, feeling her mouth and nose smothered under something warm and wet. "Easy, Rona. It's Jim. I just got back. I need you, baby." "J-Jim?" the girl muttered confusedly. But Jim wasn't listening. He just kept on kissing Bobbi's face and neck, using all the techniques that he had developed over his twenty-six years of living free. He opened his mouth and captured one of her large, erect nipples between his hungry lips. Jim sucked first on one and then on the other. He pressed his face into her smooth, resilient breasts, firm with the golden kiss of youth. "M-My God!" muttered Bobbi. Shifting, Jim now ran his tongue along "Rona's" inner thighs. He came to the thick fleece between her legs and touched his nose to it, inhaling deeply of Midnight Magic and natural woman-scent. Bobbi's hips involuntarily lurched as her bedfellow slipped his eager tongue between her dewy labia, forcing it as far up her love canal as he could. Then he drew it back with teasing slowness. Her heavy gasp and shifting motion encouraged him to run the tip of his tongue all over her pussy while avoiding contact with her small clitoris -- a move which he knew was always slow torture for Rona. He heard the girl's breath catch in her throat and felt her body quiver. He guessed that she was now ready to be brought to an even higher pitch. Equal to the task, Jim put the tip of his probing tongue into direct contact with her nether bud and began flicking it back and forth. That never failed to drive Rona wild. "Oh, Jim! Christ, Jim!" Bobbi moaned as she felt hot blades of excitement shooting through every nerve of her body. Unable to hold himself back, Jim repositioned himself to mount her, guiding his rock-hard organ to her furry aperture. Tiny, pulsing shocks raced through him as he shoved himself as deeply as he could into the unplumbed well of Bobbi's scented maidenhood. "Oh!" Bobbi gasped as the tender walls of her interior expanded to accommodate his penetration. Jim was surprised to find "Rona's" pussy so tight, stretching his foreskin back to the limit, until it almost pained him. Then his breath caught in his throat when her vaginal muscles seemed to contract around his throbbing organ, trapping it in a powerful grip. Ah, yes -- that was his girl Rona! Jim began fucking poor Bobbi in earnest, with quick, hard thrusts. His hips moved like pistons, plunging to the very depths of her maidenly recesses. "Ayiiii! Ayiii!" Bobbi cried, throwing her head back, holding Jim's waist with clawing fingers. Her nails hurt him, but Jim dug his toes into the mattress and pumped for all he was worth, each long stroke making his heart beat faster. After a minute he felt Bobbi's vaginal muscles go into action, not by any will of he own, if Jim had only known it, but by the stern dictates of Mother Nature. Bobbi, her body operating on pure instinct, frantically milked his rigid prick of his clear preliminary secretions, while her silken legs entangled themselves with his in a lock that not even Houdini could have picked. Jim was rapidly approaching climax, but he wanted to be sure that Rona came with him. Delaying his own pleasure with a mighty exertion of will, he deliberately brought himself into contact with her clitoris, subjecting her tight pussy to the relentless friction of his love-making until she was moaning with pleasure. Jim could hear the loud slurping noise of his cock sliding in and out of Bobbi's wet, fleshy vise, while his testicles began to ache with an urgency that begged release. Suddenly Bobbi felt Jim's prick expand within her -- and the first jet of hot viscous nectar splashed against her cervix, igniting a series of explosions deep inside her body. "Aaaaiii!" the girl cried out at the top of her lungs, digging her heels into his thighs and raking her fingernails across his back as an irresistible series of passion-quakes shot through her. Jim's hips went on pumping even after the last drop had been drained from him by Bobbi's hungry, if involuntary, contractions. He could finally bear his herculean exertion no longer and collapsed upon her. He heard the hot rasp of the girl's breath in his ear, felt her velvety arms wrapping themselves tightly around his neck, clinging to him desperately. Bobbi, overwhelmed with drink and the aftermath of her release, didn't hear the sound of the doorknob turning. "Jim! What are you doing!?" The surprise on Jim's face became pure horror when he saw Rona's astonished face. He really didn't know what he had been doing. Or rather he did know -- he just didn't know exactly whom he had been doing it with. Now, for the first time, he looked down at the face of the girl under him, its eyes big and dewy, its lips half-parted with astonishment. Confusion filled those robin-egg eyes, then they glazed over as Bobbi passed out cold. "Who is she?" Jim gasped. "I never saw her before in my life!" "Don't play innocent, Jim!" sobbed Rona. "Can't I even let a friend sleep over without you jumping her?" "So she's a friend of yours!" Jim jabbered as he rolled off of Bobbi and threw a sheet over his nudity. "Honest, Rona, I didn't know. It was dark and I thought she was you. She was wearing your perfume!" "A likely story! I've had it, Jim! I can't trust you anymore! I was such a fool!" Suddenly she spotted Bobbi's cut-offs and halter hanging upon the back of a chair. She snatched them up and threw them into Jim's face. "Here, these are hers! Get your playmate dressed and then both of you get out of here! This is my apartment and I don't ever want to see either one of you in it again!" # Again dressed in the halter, cut-offs, and sandals inherited from Dori, Bobbi was sitting opposite Jim in the booth of a small all-night cafe. Battered by a pounding hangover and fighting hard to control the trauma of what had lately happened, she had been doing her best to explain to her friend who she really was, all to no avail. Jim shook his head. "Miss, that's the nuttiest story I ever heard! Rob put you up to this gag, didn't he?" "You stupid son of a bitch! I'm me! If you won't believe me, nobody else in the world will either!" "Hey, calm down, honey. Don't make a scene." Tears of frustration ran down Bobbi's cheeks. She rested her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. "God, Jim, don't you have any shame? You take my virginity, maybe even knock me up, and now you're calling me a liar!" "Come on -- I'll grant that you look enough like Rob to be his sister, but you can't be Rob, magic or not. Rob would have died before he'd dress up like that. Anyway, don't forget that I've been in bed with you. You're a one hundred percent wild woman -- and Rob Wescott didn't like boys!" "All right," said Bobbi in anger, "if you won't believe me, try sleeping next to this idol I've got here. It'll turn you into a girl too, I bet, and I hope somebody treats you just the way you're treating me!" She realized the instant that she touched her purse that the statuette was gone. "-- Hell, I must have left the damned thing back at Rona's." "I'm too tired for all this crap," Jim sighed. "Look, baby, you're a kook, but well, there's something kind of sweet about you. I'd like to get to know you a lot better. Do you have a place to stay? We can get a room together." Bobbi sprang to her feet and grabbed her purse. "That's enough, Jim! You've been rotten to me! I thought we were friends, but you're out to lunch now that I really need you. I never want to see you again!" Jim leaned back, disappointed. "I'm sorry. We could have started something beautiful." "Oooo!" Bobbi exclaimed as she stalked away from the table, but just then the hopelessness of her situation dawned on her and she stopped in her tracks. "Did you forget something, baby cakes?" asked Jim. "For Pete's sake, Jim, I -- I'm penniless. I can't go home, and the streets aren't safe at night for a -- a woman. I just don't know what to do anymore! I might get raped or killed! My life is over." Jim was starting to feel very uncomfortable, even guilty, but the events of the night had made him cranky and even unsympathetic. "Look, kid, I don't want to see you go away empty-handed. I almost dropped a bundle on a girl in Sacramento last night. You were good in the sack, so you can have it instead. I'd say you earned about a hundred." Jim opened his wallet, took out five crisp twenties, and laid them on the table. Bobbi looked at the money with a face of horror and sickness. "Are you calling me a whore, Jim? Is that it?" She stared into his eyes with a look of hurt and betrayal that made him cringe. "Why, Jim? What did I do to make you think that I was a whore?" Jim saw her weaving and for a second it looked like she might fall over. She caught hold of the back of the chair and began again: "Cassandra did something very cruel to me, but with a little help and some trust I could have bounced back. But I can't bounce back from this, Jim." Her voice cracked. "Not this." Jim shifted in his chair, not knowing what to say. Bobbi McGee just stood there, looking down at the money, her tears moistening it like a warm summer rain. "I'd throw it back in your face," she whispered, "but I need it. God help me, I need it." She hid her face in her hands. Jim dropped his glance, embarrassed. "It's yours -- Miss. I'm sorry. I didn't mean --" The girl straightened. "I know what you meant!" Nonetheless, Bobbi picked up the money as quickly as she could and then fled out the door. Left alone, Jim drank deeply of his coffee, thinking about all the craziness that had blind-sided him that night. This girl, whoever she was, seemed to be a good kid. Something told him that she had deserved something better at his hands. He supposed that somehow he could have handled the situation differently. If only he hadn't been so upset about his quarrel with Rona, and if Bobbi hadn't thrown him for a loop with that crazy story about being Robert Wescott. As mixed-up as Bobbi seemed to be, there was something about her that touched him where he really lived. Her sobbing departure had left him feeling about as bad as a man could. # Jim had never lived through a day like the one which followed his strange encounter with Bobbi McGee. Before it was over, he was frantically driving around the city, anxiously questioning the clerk of every motel located near the cafe where he had last seen her. Finally the clerk at the Balmoral was able to tell him that such a girl had stayed the night, then had checked out. He could only add that she had bought a morning newspaper just before she had left, and had asked him if he had heard about any unskilled labor jobs in the city. Thank God she's planning to stay in the city! Jim thought. He dug through the trash for a copy of the morning edition and spent the next day checking out every job that a girl without a past might apply for. Some businesses remembered seeing the scantily-clad young woman -- in fact very few could forget her -- but none of them would hire a person who didn't even have a library card for identification. Jim exhausted every possibility and for weeks thereafter spent a large part of each day just driving around, looking for Bobbi's face, especially along those streets where poor working class people worked, ate, or shopped. And every day of failure made him hate himself the more for what he had done. But then, one afternoon -- # Working hard carrying soft drinks and burgers to hungry motorists, Bobbi had gradually lost her loathing for her uniform -- the white, hip-hugging short-shorts and the sleeveless, midriff-baring red T-shirt required of all the carhops. Spanky's Root Beer Station didn't pay well, but at least it kept Bobbi from getting drooled on by the homeless at the free shelter, or needing to sell her body. She had just gotten over her first period and still felt ill-humored from the experience. Thankfully, menstruation, as bad as it was, meant that she wasn't carrying Jim's child. That was one of the few good discoveries to come her way since she had turned into a woman. Lost in thought, Bobbi tripped over a teenager who was so preoccupied with her legs that he couldn't keep his feet out of her way. The carhop dropped her tray of waste Styrofoam, smudged napkins, and paper cups on the concrete before she caught herself. The brisk wind threatened to spread the mess far and wide. "S-Sorry, Miss," the youth stammered as he slipped away without offering to help her. Shaking her head, Bobbi bent down to resignedly pick up the litter before it got out of reach. "I'm glad to see that you're all right, Rob!" someone said. Startled to hear her real name spoken, Bobbi stood up, turned, and saw a familiar Ford Taurus. "Jim!" Bobbi cried as she recognized the driver. Then she remembered what had happened the last time they had been together and got angry all over again. "Oh, it's you!" She turned away and stomped back to the serving counter; Jim switched off his ignition, got out of the car, and pursued her plaintively. "Rob, wait!" yelled Jim. "I haven't been able to sleep for worrying about you!" When she refused to slow down or turn, he caught her by the arm. "Will you leave me alone!" Bobbi exclaimed. "If you want a whore, swing down that street!" "Rob, don't. I've been going crazy. I've been watching for your face everywhere, I've been calling your friends, visiting the shelters, checking the hospitals -- reading the obituaries." "Hey, you're calling me Rob! Do you finally believe me?" "I had to believe you -- after I saw Rona." "What do you mean?" "She went to sleep next to that idol that you left in her bedroom -- and she turned into -- a guy." "Oh, no! Poor Rona!" Jim put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "It wasn't so bad. She got used to it really quick. We became great buddies. It turned out that we even liked the same sort of women!" "Rona had to change sex in front of your eyes before you'd believe me?" Bobbi asked sarcastically. "I'm trying to say that I'm sorry for the way I treated you, Rob. Can you ever forgive me?" Bobbi looked him over critically. "What if I don't? Maybe I should keep you on a guilt trip for the rest of your life." "Maybe you should," Jim replied grimly. Bobbi gave him a punch in the shoulder. "Screw that!" she said with a painful, twisted smile. "You're forgiven, you big dumb lug. You're a fourteen carat bastard, but what the hell good does it do me to carry a grudge?" "Great!" cried Jim and, without thinking, he threw his arms around Bobbi, crushing her against his chest. Then, realizing what he was doing, and who he was doing it to, he let go. "Sorry." Bobbi smoothed her hair. "Forget it. I've been needing a hug for a long time." "A hug? I'm so glad to see you that I could kiss you. Get in the car. I'll take you out of here." "Where are we going?" "You can stay with me." "With you and Rona?" "No. Rona's -- she calls herself -- himself -- Ron now -- has taken off. He met this girl whose father owns a chemical plant out East. Actually, they've known each other for years and were best girl friends. But when they got together accidently as a man and a woman, this strange sort of chemistry took over. They dated, they slept together, and finally Ron popped the question. He even admitted to her who he really was. She actually believed him, liked the idea!" Jim shook his head. "I told Ron that he shouldn't jump into a hasty marriage, but --" "Marriage after only one month a man! Jeez, I wish I could adjust that easily -- not that I want to be anyone's wife." "Well, you'll feel much better once you're back among friends." "Friends? What friend did I ever have, except you? Maybe I had acquaintances, colleagues, and even lovers, but not friends." "Make new friends, then! Start small and build, right?" A horn honked; a customer needed service. "I have to get back to work, Jim. Come back for me at seven and I'll go home with you." "Seven? Why?" "I get off then." "Rob!" I can't run out on Spanky's on such a busy day. In fact, I'd better give them a couple days notice so they can find a replacement." "Are you heat-struck? You don't have to give notice to a root beer stand!" "I think I should, Jim. The managers saved my life. When I showed up here I was at my last gasp. The only other job offer I had was from a pimp downtown. I didn't have any identity; the Spanky people thought that I was an illegal alien, but they helped me anyway. I owe them a lot." Jim touched her chin, lifted it, and gazed understandingly into her eyes. "You were always a great guy, Rob Wescott. Now you're a great gal. You just keep getting better and better." "Rob Wescott's had it. You'd better get used to calling me Bobbi McGee," the young woman advised him with a wan smile. # By the end of the weekend, Bobbi's carhop career lay behind her. The last few days had been full of settling in and busy planning. The two friends were now taking a needed break, sitting upon the carpet, a deck of cards and a discard pile between them. Bobbi was wondering whether she should risk her twenty cents on just one pair of kings, or go for an outside straight. That first night at Jim's apartment he had asked her whether she had any plans. She had given him a very serious look. "There's a lot more to this curse than we thought, Jim," Bobbi had said. "I have this compulsion. It's been eating on me and eating on me." She covered her face. "Bobbi?" "I can't fight it any longer. Whatever you think, whatever the world thinks, I just have to give in to it. I hope you'll still be able to respect me." "What do you mean?" asked Jim concernedly. "I have to become a French maid!" "That's good," Jim had replied with a thoughtful nod. "Terrific working conditions, great benefits. And there's lots of jobs out there. In fact, I could use a little French maid myself. I saw this really cute uniform in one of Rona's lingerie catalogs. Lacy panties, short-short skirt, and an itsy-bitsy five-layered petticoat. You'll love it! I'll love it!" "Then wear it yourself, sucker!" Jim had laughed. "I think you're going to be all right, Bobbi." "I'm not going to let this thing beat me, that's for sure," the girl had declared firmly. "Cassandra probably wanted me to commit suicide, or become a drunk, or a druggie or something. Well, she's not going to have the satisfaction! Surviving is the best way I know of to get back at her." "You can do it, and I'm going to help you. As I see it, what you need most right now is a solid identity." "Yeh, I know. How do I get one?" "You can be Rona!" Bobbi had looked up, her brow furrowed. "Rona?!" "She and I talked the idea over, just in case we ever found you. She left all her old documents with me for you to use. She left everything, in fact, except her money." "She'd do that for me?!" "Rona was a little excitable, Bobbi, but a great -- person -- at heart. And she always did like you as Rob." Bobbi had concurred. "She even liked me as Bobbi McGee, until she thought that I'd double-crossed her. But how can I go around as Rona? People knew her." Jim had shaken his head. "She wrote all her friends and told them that she was entering a reclusive religious order in Europe and that she wouldn't be coming back. That took care of one angle. Better yet, she doesn't have any close relatives who'll ever bother to check up on her." Bobbi had considered the possibility carefully. "It could work. Rona and I were both in the realty business and I could apply for a decent job using her resume. But it still might be smart if I moved to a different city." "If you do that," Jim had begun carefully, "would you mind it very much if I came along with you?" Bobbi had looked at him amazed, as if seeing him for the first time. # "Two cards," Jim called suddenly, bringing Bobbi back to the present. She peeled a couple cards off the deck and tossed them to his side. "I'll stay," she told him. Bobbi thought of Rona's hasty marriage. Incredible -- Rona had become a straight guy in a matter of just a couple weeks. But even after a month, Bobbi still didn't know where she stood. She had been fighting what seemed to be an incipient attraction to men more ferociously than Custer ever fought the Indians. These feelings were troubling for a person who had never had a gay bone in his -- her -- body. Even the image of Cindy Crawford didn't do anything for her anymore -- and she was trying hard not to think about Fabio. But perhaps, Bobbi thought, she had to stop thinking left to right and start thinking right to left. Obviously Cassandra's magic could change the body. It had only come out gradually that it could change the emotions, too. Maybe the witch herself hadn't fully understood the power of the idol, that the wound it inflicted actually carried its own healing. Bobbi smiled to herself. That was why Cassandra's revenge would always be a hollow one. Would Bobbi want to be a man again if she could? Yes -- in a minute! It would have been a relief to be able to take refuge once again in what was safe and familiar. Rob had had a routine, a past, he was working toward a future. He had been able to take comfort in the familiar things around him. Now those familiar things were gone and Bobbi suspected that they would never come again. But what lay ahead in this strange new life? That was the question that kept her lying awake at night. Bobbi was pretty sure that she could not recreate the female equivalent of Rob's bon vivant style. It wasn't just the physiological obstacles. Events had changed her heart even more than magic had changed her shape. She had no more taste for the promiscuous adventuring that had defined Rob's social life. Bobbi had kept to her little rented room near Spanky's, drinking the bitter drops of loneliness to their dregs. She had finally grasped the fact that though she had had many lovers as Rob, Rob had had no love to speak of. Why? she had wondered. Was it, possibly, because Rob had failed again and again to truly give of himself? That had to change, the young woman vowed. She couldn't remain a spiritual hermit; she had to be a part of life, even the drab and the risky parts of life. A new body, a new identity, a new job, a new style, even a new sex. This was a good time to make some serious rearrangements. Bobbi looked up at her companion. She had begun to feel very differently about Jim. She had been deeply touched by his efforts to find and to save her. But it was more than just that. Bobbi was starting to enjoy his company -- no, his nearness -- in ways that she never had experienced with a man. The sound of Jim's voice, that cocky expression in his hazel eyes, even the knot in his necktie, stirred her like only the beauty of a girl had before. The young woman watched her comrade as he pored over his cards. Her mind had gone back many times to that night when she and Jim had made love. At first she had recoiled from the memory in horror. But, over the following empty weeks, it had come back to her in a new aspect. The substance of the act remained the same, of course, but she could see it now in a different and brighter guise. But what was she thinking? Her with Jim? That was nuts! They loved one another, truly, and in so many ways, but they never could love one another that way -- could they? Bobbi couldn't forget Rona's experience with her own best friend. Best friends. What a wonderful phrase that was. For some reason the Frank Sinatra song that she had heard on her last night as a man came back as if in answer to her dilemma: "The simple secret of the plot, Is just to tell them that I love you a lot. Then the world discovers as my book ends, How to make two lovers of friends." No! That was crazy! Bobbi thought. It would be much smarter, if she had to get involved with a male, to make it someone -- anyone -- other than Jim. Somebody who didn't know about her past, someone who wouldn't carry around all that baggage of bygone associations, someone who wouldn't have had his ideas about her forged in their former skirt-chasing camaraderie. But Jim and she, Bobbi knew, had so much in common. Sports, politics, music -- as well as that indefinable trust that allowed two friends to tell one another their problems and worries without self- consciousness, without the fear that they were giving a potential rival a secret to use against them. Maybe what the pair of them had had up to now represented a good foundation on which to build something new. But what? To his credit, Jim had been cleaning up his act lately. He had been loyal to one girl while Rob had been going though more than a half dozen. Could Jim be faithful to one person for the very long haul? Could Bobbi? Bobbi had definitely acquired a new respect for loyalty and consistency. She wondered whether the two of them -- Damn! She had to stop thinking that way! Oh, this man-woman business was so confusing! Suddenly Jim passed his hand in front of her eyes. "Earth to Bobbi. This is Houston. Are you reading us, Bobbi?" "Sorry, Jim. I've got a lot to think about." "I guess you do. It must be hard coping. What's it like, being a woman? Bobbi shrugged. "I'm still on the first chapter, buddy. I'll tell you the secret of the plot when I'm deeper into the book." "Maybe you could write a book of your own!" "Maybe I could." But how would the book end? Bobbi wondered. "I wouldn't like reading the part about what we did together. It must have been pretty bad for you, right?" Bobby tossed away her cards. "Don't keep beating yourself up about that, Jim. To tell the truth, I wasn't so drunk that night that I couldn't have said something if I had really wanted to. Even while it was happening I thought that it was -- well, sort of interesting. And I guess I wanted to know how it was going to come out." "I knew it!" crowed Jim, at once happy and relieved. "A man can always tell when the woman is liking it!" "Yeh, I guess we can," nodded Bobbi in automatic agreement. She had for so long been thinking along those lines that old habits were hard to break. "By the way Jim," she suddenly asked, "what did you do with that idol?" "Oh, that. Rona and I tried to use it turn her back into a woman that second night, but when that didn't work, I put it into a safe-deposit box. I hope nobody falls asleep inside the bank vault." "I'd have smashed the thing -- or sent it to a politician that I didn't like!" Then she added with a naughty laugh, "Hey, we could have our first woman president!" "You're not thinking, buddy. That idol might be valuable someday, especially if I can find a rich, frustrated transsexual. In fact, why sell it at all? Just rent it out a night at a time and make a lot of rich people happy. You know, doing well by doing good." "Hey! If you're going into business, I deserve a cut of the action! It's my statue!" "You've got it, Partner!" Jim once more flashed that same grin that had been sending shivers up and down Bobbi's spine these last few days. He extended his hand. "Shake on it?" Bobbi's glance met his enigmatically. "You know," she said tentatively, "in the old days men and women thought it was uncouth to shake hands together." Jim lowered his hand with the trace of a frown. "Yeh? What did they do?" "I could demonstrate." At the moment Bobbi was wearing a pair of old yellow pajamas bought for a dollar at the Salvation Army store. Earlier that evening she had been tempted, if briefly, to try on one of Rona's bustiers or camis. But clothing always sent a powerful message, and Bobbi still hadn't decided what sort of message she should be sending to her old friend Jim. But now the young blonde began to unbutton her pajama tops, very slowly, very deliberately, watching intently for Jim's reaction. Jim sucked in nearly all the air in the room when she flipped her top open with the tips of her fingers. "Oh, Bobbi," Jim said with a dry swallow, "Don't do this to me. I've been going crazy for these last couple days trying to keep my hands off you." She smiled, rather tightly because, despite all, she was a little nervous. "Why don't you just get it out of your system?" Bobbi suggested, still studying him carefully. "I'm not made out of brick. I'm game. But -- but are you sure --? "I don't break easily. I thought I'd proven that much." He still hesitated, which left time for doubt to trouble Bobbi's resolution. "I'm not much of a seductress," she thought vaguely as she looked disapprovingly down at herself. What a dumpy get-up, these old pajamas. They were eyesores. Now she wished that she had instead worn one of Rona's skimpy lounging outfits. Better Victoria's Secret than Goodwill. Bobbi looked up at Jim again. His expression had changed and it suggested a man who would have gladly begun a meal in an expensive restaurant, but was unsure of the table manners expected of him. "What am I doing?" Bobbi asked herself. Where could this nuttiness go? She wondered if she ought to just reach out and embrace him, like Rob would have done in earlier days, to overcome the reluctance of a romantically inexperienced woman. At that moment Jim resolved the problem by reaching out for her, misgivings and desire set deeply into his lightly-tanned features. Bobbi took the hand he offered and squeezed it in hers and, when he shifted himself closer, moved boldly, enfolding his neck with her free arm. It felt good, and since Jim seemed afraid that she'd pull away at the last minute, she seized the initiative, drawing her partner's mouth up against her own, surprising herself with the sandpaper-texture of his chin and upper lip. How strange stubble was, Bobbi McGee thought, at least to one used to kissing the silken faces of girls. But, holding the kiss, she knew that she would have to get used to a lot of new things. The weeks ahead would certainly be a learning process. That was more than a little daunting. But Robert Wescott had always been a quick study. THE END BOBBI McGEE by Christopher Leeson "Uuhh," Dori moaned as Rob's hips began a powerful up and down movement. He was flint to her steel. Dori felt the sparks which were triggering a series of emotional rockets -- fire-breathers that jetted with scorching energy along the million arterial ways of her twenty-two year old body. . . . Suddenly the doorbell chimed. With a mutter of frustration, Rob stopped what he was doing and rolled over. "Keey-rist!" Rob panted. "That's timing for you." Dori gasped for breath as his weight eased back from her chest. "Get rid of them!" she moaned urgently. "I'll just be a minute, doll," Rob promised, rising with a long sigh. He quickly dried his particulars with a tissue, threw on his plaid robe, and then hurried into the living room. In just a minute he was back, carrying a small package in a brown wrapper. "Who was it?" asked Dori. "Nobody. Just a twenty-four hours delivery service." "What did you get? Who sent it?" "There's no return address." Rob sat down at the edge of the bed and started tearing off the wrapping paper. Dori nestled up behind him and rested her chin on his hard shoulder. "Well, well, well," he muttered as he removed the contents of the box. "Cute." Dori frowned. It was some sort of primitive female sculpture, naked except for a strange headdress. No wonder Rob liked it! He always did admire big breasts, she knew. As Rob turned the thing around Dori observed that it was two-faced; a male figure was cast behind the female one. Dori knew immediately which side her man would be setting outward for viewing! He was a horny guy, but he was at least hers! "-- Look, here's a card," Rob said, plucking a piece of paper from the box. "`To Rob with hate. Cassandra.' I never thought I'd hear that name again." "Who's Cassandra?" asked Dori suspiciously. {Page Down} "Nobody. -- She and I used to live together, that's all. It ended badly." "You never mentioned her!" "Why should I? I know what a jealous woman you are." "She was nobody? Just a live-in girlfriend?! Who am I then? Nobody plus one, or two, or three, or five?" "Listen, cute stuff, how do you think I got to be so good in bed if this was strictly amateur hour?" "So you DID have a lot of girls before you met me!" "I've always been popular, so sue me! -- Dori, don't be a pain." "Pain?! I just want some respect." "Baby bottom, you're going nuts over nothing! Settle down." I don't like the idea of old girlfriends sending you gifts! Does it say that she's going to be visiting?" "I told you what it said! For crying out loud, Dori, give me some credit. I've only had eyes for you from the day I set eyes on you!" "You've only known me a month. Who will it be next month?" "Honey!" "I must have been crazy to think that what we had was something special." "It is -- sort of!" "Sort of?! That does it! Let your old girlfriend know there's a vacancy. I'm quitting the fan club!" Dori scrambled from the bed. Rob didn't say anything. There was actually nothing he could say when Dori Elrick was in one of her snits. He watched her pull on her clothes with a speed never seen before. Once dressed in the same peasant blouse and miniskirt that she had worn earlier to the restaurant (a get-up that made her look more like a loafing cocktail waitress than a customer to be served), she started emptying the drawers and stuffing her cheap plastic- over-cardboard suitcases. Rob might have tried sweet-talking her, but he knew that Dori was prone to flare-ups and sudden mood-changes. The best thing for the girl was a little breathing space. After all, he hadn't done anything wrong, except live a life of his own before he had ever met her. The little brunette could walk out of his life if she wanted to, or stay, but, either way, he didn't see any reason to beg. Leaving Dori alone to finish her packing, Rob shuffled out to the kitchen and turned on the radio. It was set to the oldies channel that Dori liked so well and just then they were playing a familiar tune: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. . . ." That was Janis Joplin's "Bobbie McGee," a song that he had always enjoyed. But right now the lyrics depressed him. They were about a great relationship that just couldn't hold together for the long term. It reminded Rob of his own history with women. The next song was Frank Sinatra's "I Could Write a Book." I bet you could, you old Mafiosi, Rob chuckled as he went to the refrigerator and broke open a beer. By the time he finished it, Dori was coming out of the bedroom, loaded down with suitcases and even paper bags full of her wash-and-wear things. As she stormed past him, Rob noticed an article fall from one of her precariously-held bags and plop down on the kitchen floor. "Dori!" he said. She turned angrily. "Don't plead with me to stay, Rob!" "I wouldn't. I think we both need some space, but you dropped --" "Ooh, men! Listen, Rob, I'll give you so much space that you'll never see me again!" With that final pronouncement, Dori stomped out the back door and Rob heard her footsteps on the stairs leading down to the residents' garage where her Toyota was parked. "Women!" he sighed. Well, he consoled himself, she had stayed longer than most. No big deal. Rob could cook better than Dori on her best day, and her sloppy housekeeping always drove him crazy. The young man got up from his chair and plucked the fallen object from the tiles. It was just a skimpy pair of blue denim cut-offs, so small that the lush curves of her lower buttocks were left bare -- a glory to see, he had to admit. Rob shook his head at the memory, then tossed the shorts on the counter top indifferently. Unlike some males, Rob didn't get excited about women's clothes -- unless, that is, they were filled with a woman who could do them justice. The night's fun and games had tired Rob out and he padded sleepily back to the bedroom. The moment he stepped in the door he again noticed the two-faced idol lying on the covers. His curiosity renewed, he picked it up and turned the object about in his hands. The face on either side of it had little gem eyes and he wondered if it was valuable or just some cheap import. There was an inscription on its bottom which looked very much like Indian script. Rob couldn't help wondering why Cassandra had sent him the thing. They shared very few tastes. He had known her when she was a graduate student in anthropology, but Rob was more into sports cars and had never talked to her about her favorite subject -- except on the subject of exotic mating rituals. Their sex had been hot, but her strident feminism eventually turned him off. With one breath Cassandra would be expressing the superiority of woman, and with the next complaining that she hadn't been born a man. He wished he could understand women. Men never went around wishing they were female -- at least the sort of men Rob felt comfortable with didn't. What was the big deal anyway? he wondered. Whatever sex you were dealt, the sensible person accepted it and enjoyed it for all that it was worth. The one thing which Rob had really liked about Dori was the way she seemed to have a hell of a good time with being a girl, the exact opposite from Cassandra. Too bad that her peeves and snits always drove him up the wall. That was the way it was. When something was right with a girl, something else was wrong. I just wish that I could find my perfect match, Rob thought. He was getting more than a little tired of these affairs that never seemed to turn into anything deep or meaningful. Why couldn't he have a relationship like his parents'? Up until the terrible accident that had taken both their lives, they had enjoyed a wonderful partnership. Rob was beginning to think that he had a lousy taste in women. Or was it something in his personality, some quirk in him that attracted women for a little while, but then drove them away? Rob knew he was in a rut -- and not for the first time he found himself wishing that he could get out of it somehow. He shook his head. How could he? He was what he was. It would probably take a miracle to change a quality so fundamental to his character. But he couldn't help but wonder what comprised the happiness that some lucky couples found with one another. Common interests, he thought, trust, sharing, and patience? Kindness, forgiveness, and respect? And he shouldn't leave out friendship. Of all the women he had known, not one real friend stood out among them. That was a sad commentary. It all had seemed so simple when Rob had been a hormonal teenager. Then he had supposed that a lot of high-quality screwing would bring happiness. Well, as a jaded veteran he had learned that the merchandise wasn't bad, but it was no happiness pill either. Sex was only one element of a good relationship, not the bricks and stone. It two people had nothing else going, it was an empty thing. He put the idol on the nightstand with the female-side out, intending to admire it later in the morning light. Then Rob threw off his robe and slipped under the covers. He was dead to the world in a just few minutes. As the young man lay half-asleep, he dreamed he was fondling Dori's breast. It felt larger than he remembered and when he touched Dori's boob, he thought that he could feel his own fingers playing teasingly upon it. When he opened his blurry eyes to the early dawn's light, he saw Dori's breasts, but the odd thing was that he couldn't see Dori at all -- just her breasts. "God, what a dream!" he muttered. His chest started itching as he lay there, but when he scratched himself he felt soft, tender mounds of flesh which were hurt by his nails as if they were his own. He grimaced; he just couldn't seem to get out of that lucid dream about women's breasts. Just then his sleepy fingers went to his groin, which was also itching. Instead of his scrotum, he found there a wooly patch occupying an emptiness where his well-oiled equipment always had parked. What the hell? he wondered. Then he understood. He was dreaming that he was a woman! Kinky, he chuckled. Rob couldn't recall ever having had such a dream before. On impulse, he decided to go look at himself in the dream mirror. Robert Wescott as a woman, he supposed in his sleep-drugged state, should be something to see. The nearly somnambulant Rob staggered to the full-length mirror and he wasn't disappointed. A slim girl with long, soft honey-blond curls gazed back at him from the glass. She looked like a healthy and athletic sort of miss, as if she swam and ran a lot, just like Rob did himself. Her breasts were nicer than Dori's -- not as big Dolly Parton's, of course, but would have done credit to Christie Brinkley. The reflected girl had a nest of light brown pubic hair that almost hid the pursed lips of her pussy. Her waist was narrow, Rob noted, but her hips were becomingly round. Rob touched his buttocks and saw the girl's hands go behind her also, mimicking him perfectly. The girl's derriere felt full and hard, just the sort that he loved most to fondle. The miss in the mirror smiled with pleasure. Both fondling and being fondled felt very good. Intrigued by the heightened sensitivity of his dream-body, Rob reached forward and stroked his dream-pussy lightly. One touch of its sensitive labia sent something like an electric shock coursing through his body, making him shudder. An amazing dream, Rob thought, but one so intriguing that he didn't want it to end just yet. He carefully studied the girl's oval face with its pert little chin. If she looked familiar it was because she looked so much like him. The angles of his cheeks and jaw were softened by her feminine sex, however, and they framed both a prettily turned-up nose and a pair of big robin-egg blue eyes with long blonde lashes. Her lips were so full and sensual that they reminded him of his mother's when she was young. The young man grinned as he sleepily considered the experience. If he had been unfortunate enough to be born a girl, he wondered whether it might not have been quite so intolerable had Mother Nature graced him with the gentle beauty of the girl in the glass. Rob yawned. Standing there so long had made him weak in the legs; he had to lie down or fall. So, forgetting the strange dream, he wobbled over to the bed and plopped down. He was out cold as soon as his face hit the pillow. The seven o'clock alarm bell woke Rob fully. He yawned and rubbed his chest. Then Robert Wescott yelled in horror. # Wrapped tightly in his robe, Rob paced back and forth across the kitchen floor. It hadn't been a dream! He had actually been looking at himself in the mirror. Somehow -- by some incredible somehow -- he had turned into a girl during the night! Things like this only happened in stupid movies, he knew, but not in reality. In fact, he had lately watched a weird video called SYNAPSE -- about a male-to-female brain transplant and a lot of automatic weapons combat. He also remembered that movie that Cassandra had once brought home. It was called SWAT or STITCH, or something like that. It starred Perry King, who God turned into Ellen Barkin for having treated women so shabbily. But Perry's character had had to die before being zapped with a female shape. Rob knew that he was still alive -- or at least, he thought that he was. What had happened? Suddenly he remembered the statuette in the bedroom. Cassandra! Now it all started making sense. When he knew her she had already been getting into primitive fertility magic studies and that Mother Goddess stuff. In fact, she had even done research among those crazy Wicca cultists. Sorcery! That was it! Cassandra had cursed him! She had found a magic idol and cursed him with it. In fact, maybe she had even used it on herself first, considering her silly male-envy. Was there now a man named Cass wandering around? Rob hoped never to run into the bum -- without a gun in his hand, at least! "I've got to see a doctor -- fast!" he -- or rather, she -- muttered to herself. Rob ran back into the bedroom and threw on her much-too-large male pants, shirt, and shoes. The hapless young woman walked right out of her size-twelve loafers at her very first step. Damn! she thought, I can't go outside looking like this. I need women's clothes, at least until I get to the hospital. Maybe Dori left some things behind that'll fit this stupid body! Rob, her heart pounding in her throat, rushed to the closet hoping to find a pair of jeans and a shirt that she could wear without embarrassment. The closet was empty, as were the drawers. Dori didn't leave much of anything behind, just a little cloth purse with nothing in it but lint; it had fallen behind Rob's tennis shoes and been overlooked in her haste. Then the girl got the idea to check the clothes hamper and, as luck would have it, Dori had missed something. Rob found an orange halter top and a pair of panties. The clothes from the bottom of the hamper had a sweaty, musky scent, but Rob wasn't worrying about that as she hastily put them on. She was able to get into the halter fairly easy since Rob had watched lots of girlfriends dressing. But to her annoyance, the halter seemed too snug to be comfortable. Then the young woman realized that she actually had boobs bigger than Dori's! Rob could have gone out barefoot, but didn't want to. Suddenly remembering having seen Dori's sandals under the bed a couple days earlier, she got down on her hands and knees to have another look. Sure enough, they were still there. Rob now had some footgear! But the bikini top and panties weren't enough to clothe her decently. Just then Rob remembered that pair of cut-offs back in the kitchen. Without pausing for breath, she ran to get the denim shorts. With the cut-offs in hand again, she felt a twinge of dismay. They were so skimpily cut! Why did Dori have to be such a bimbo? In her state of mind Rob had forgotten just how much Dori's lack of fashion sense had excited her as male. Realizing that she had no choice, Rob climbed into the cut-offs and found that she had to exhale hard to get the snaps closed. Apparently her remolded hips were a size or two wider than Dori's. If the shorts were tight on their owner, they were less than a second skin on Rob. Though now dressed as well as possible, Rob still felt like she was standing around in underwear -- and girl's underwear at that! Her cleavage was pushed up brazenly by the constraint of the halter and the panties, not designed to be worn with shorts so sparing, showed. Exasperated, Rob stuffed the visible hems up under the tight denim of her cut-offs and then went to get her wallet and keys. As she fumbled them out of the drawer, she realized that the pockets of her shorts were much too tight for her to put anything into them. Women always had a pocket problem, Rob remembered, and they solved it by carrying purses. Resourcefully, Rob seized Dori's forgotten purse and stuffed the wallet and keys inside it. Then, as an afterthought, she put the magic statuette in along with them, hoping that the hospital could have it analyzed and find the antidote. Finally, Rob hurried down to the residents' garage, got into her Dodge Avenger, hastily readjusted the seat forward, and started the engine. # Trembly and preoccupied, Rob almost had an accident in the morning traffic, but she finally managed to get into the hospital parking ramp safely. Without pausing to lock the doors, the distraught girl raced up to the emergency room. "I've got to s-see a doctor!" she stammered to the receptionist. The middle-aged woman regarded the girl's dishabille coolly, asking, "What's the problem?" "I'm under a curse!" "A what?" "A curse! I've been changed!" "What do you mean you've been changed?" "I -- I'd rather explain that to the doctor." "Do you wanted to see our staff psychiatrist?" "I'm not crazy! I want to see the doctor who knows the most about breaking curses!" As distraught as she was, Rob realized that she wasn't making much sense. But who else should she ask for? A gynecologist? "Maybe we should start you out with a family medicine practitioner," the receptionist suggested. "What's your insurance company?" "Metro Group Health," Rob answered, frustrated by the way hospitals did business. She dug deeply into her wallet to find her medical services card. The receptionist took the plastic rectangle from her shaking hand and frowned. "This is a card for a Robert Wescott." Rob thought quickly. "Ah, he's my husband. We have the family plan." "No you don't. This card says `individual only.' Do you have any other means of paying, Miss?" She wanted to scream, to shriek to the world that she was Robert Wescott, but who would believe that a pretty girl wearing an overstuffed halter and a pair of flirtatious cut-offs had a grown man hidden inside her? Anyway, people were watching, listening. Rob didn't want anyone to know who she was. It was just too humiliating. The blonde checked her wallet for cash. She -- then he -- had shown Dori a good time at dinner the night before. There wasn't more than a few dollars left. "I've got a credit card," she gasped in agitation. The receptionist took the card patiently, but again had to frown. "This is your husband's, my dear. We can't accept your card unless you can prove that you're really Mrs. Wescott. Do you have a picture ID?" Rob was so distressed that she wasn't thinking at all well. She fumbled inside her wallet again, saying, "Sure I've got a driver's license!" She pulled out the license and shoved it in front of the woman. The receptionist sighed wearily. "No, Miss, we can't use Mr. Wescott's license. We have to see yours." "I guess -- I guess I forgot it," Rob mumbled hopelessly. Now she was really getting frightened. In another moment they'd be accusing her of having stolen some man's wallet and trying to use his health plan and credit card illegally. If questioned by a policeman, what could she say? "I hope you can get home without being arrested," the receptionist remarked. "What?!" Rob cried out, as if her mind had been picked of its darkest nightmare. "You don't have your own license on you. Drive carefully." Rob shuddered as the horror sank in. She couldn't prove who she was, but still had to get help. If she didn't get a vaccination for this terrible condition soon, it might go too far -- and might even become permanent! "Can't you put me on welfare, then. I -- I'm terribly sick!" The receptionist took another look at the pretty, but naughtily-clad and very messed-up, waif. She suspected that the little blonde was on drugs. Well, that was nothing new. Every year the emergency room got hundreds of cases of people who had put all their money into their arm or up their nose. They were a terrible burden on the system, but they had to be taken take care of, even if the taxpayer had to foot the bill. "All right honey, we'll see what we can do. What's your name?" "Ah -- R-Rob --" "Excuse me?" "Ah, Bobbi! -- Bobbi Wescott." "What is your Social Security number, Bobbi," she asked in a subdued voice, trying not to set off the distraught girl. "I'll find it," Bobbi stammered as she looked for her card. Then she stopped suddenly. It would have the Robert Wescott name on it, too. Showing it would just compound her problems. "Please, I don't need any more questions, Miss. I need help!" She began to sob. # Finally Bobbi got to see a doctor. He suspected drugs and checked for them. While he did so, Bobbi tried to explain her transformation calmly and clearly to him, but only convinced the physician that she was delusional. He prescribed valium and made her an appointment with a hospital psychiatrist. By that time Bobbi had steadied herself enough to appear rational, at least to the untutored eye. Leaving the hospital, Bobbi realized that medical science couldn't help her. Scientists didn't understand magic. She guessed that she would have to see a witch instead. But how did one find a practicing warlock? she wondered. They didn't advertise in the phone book, or did they? There was an occult book store downtown, the girl suddenly remembered. Maybe she could ask the clerks there for a lead. Bobbi drove home without mishap and, used up, emotionally spent, she put her key into the lock. She just wanted to get into bed, to cover up her head and cry herself empty. Much to her surprise, the door only opened a couple inches; the security chain was set. As she shook the door in frustration, Dori peered through the crack. "Dori! You're back!" cried Bobbi. "You're damned right I'm back!" Dori snarled. "Who in hell are you and what are you doing with Rob's key?" "Damn it Dori, I live here!" "What do you mean you live here? That bastard sure didn't waste any time replacing me, did he! Well, I'm going to fight for my man! Take a hike, bitch!" "No, Dori, you don't understand!" Dori was opening the door. "I understand, all right, you little tramp! Rob thinks you're moving in with him! Well, he's got another thing coming! Give me those keys! You'll stay in this apartment over my dead body!" Dori shoved Bobbi hard against the wall and grabbed at her keys. Dori's strength seemed incredible! Being manhandled by a sleek girl like Dori so shocked Bobbi that she defended herself very poorly; she couldn't prevent the keys from being torn from her nerveless grasp. Then Dori stormed back into the apartment, slammed the door shut, and threw the deadbolt. "Let me in, you stupid slut!" Bobbi yelled, beating on the panel with her tender fists. "At least give me back my car keys!" "Your car keys? They've got Rob's name on them and they're for his Dodge! Get out of here, or I'll call the police!" Bobbi slumped back against the wall, overwhelmed. Locked out of her apartment, her car keys lost, having almost no money, barely dressed, she realized now that she didn't even have an identity. The girl suddenly grasped that her problem wasn't just facing life as a woman, it was a matter of basic survival -- food, shelter, clothing! She shuddered. What a heartless revenge Cassandra had taken! Sure, Rob had told her that he had had his fill of her nutty ideas and had ordered her out of his life -- but this was too extreme a retribution. It was like shooting a person in the heart for taking someone's potato chip. Black despair overcame the young woman and a ghastly image flashed before her inner mind -- an image of herself standing on a high bridge ready to jump, hopelessness and horror snatching at her from behind, death and darkness waiting up ahead. I don't want to die, she thought desperately. Jim! He's my best friend. He'll know who I am! He'll help me! # The door to Jim's apartment opened slowly. A face that wasn't Jim's appeared, saying pleasantly, "Well, hello! What can I do for you?" Bobbi recognized Rona Spears. In fact, she knew that this had always been Rona's apartment -- it had been Jim who had moved in with her. "Am I glad that somebody's home!" Bobbi jabbered. " -- Listen, I'm Bobbi, uh, McGee, a friend of Robert Wescott. I wanted to stay with him while I'm visiting the city, but, uh, he's not in town. So I thought about Jim and you. Rob said that you were such good friends of his. Is it okay?" Rona sized up the girl. Yes, she looked just like the type that Rob Wescott would be interested in. In fact, maybe his taste was improving. There was a natural charm to this young miss. The business woman sensed a vulnerability in Bobbi McGee that called out something benign and sisterly from deep inside her. "Any friend of Rob's is a friend of ours," she said with a smile. "I'm afraid that Jim is seeing clients in Sacramento and won't be back until tomorrow night. You can stay here until either he or Rob shows up." "That's great, Rona!" "Don't mention it, Bobbi." Just then Rona caught the scent of her guest's musty clothing and perspiration. "Did you walk all the way here from Rob's?" "Yes, I wanted to save the cab fare." Rona stood aside to let Bobbi enter. "Well, why don't you freshen up with a shower? Do you have an overnight bag?" "Ah, no. It was stolen from the cart at the bus station," Bobbi lied agilely. "Damn this city!" Rona commiserated. # A half hour later found Bobbi resting upon a stuffed chair. Now wearing a pair of Rona's jeans and a shirt, it felt good to be out Dori's mix-and-match bimbo outfit. The shower, too, was restorative, but touching her strange new body while she bathed had been hard for Bobbi. She had kept her eyes closed through the whole process. Rona stepped back into the room wearing a dress suit and a string tie. "Well, Bobbi, I hate to leave, but I have a dinner engagement with an important client." "You'd leave me here alone? A stranger?" "It's obvious that you know Rob very well. Somehow, I don't think anyone with such sad, gentle eyes could be a thief. And, besides, there's something about you that makes me feel like I know you already." "You won't be sorry," Bobbi promised gratefully. Left alone, Bobbi grew a little restless as the afternoon wore on. She got up and paced about the apartment. She took a Diet Coke, made a salami sandwich, and found that just one filled her up. Maybe a smaller body meant a smaller appetite. That's good, she thought -- lower grocery bills. Then she wandered over to the full-length mirror. "Look at you!" Bobbi rebuked her own reflection. "What a sight you are!" She folded her arms over the swollen front of her shirt and cast a troubled glance out the window. "How long am I going to be like this?" she mused. "Forever?" Screwing up her courage, Bobbi regarded her reflection yet again. This time she had to nod grudgingly. "You're good-looking," she sighed, "I'll grant you that!" The young woman's curiosity at last got the better of her and she took off her shirt. Rona's clothes fitted very well, Bobbi had discovered, but, like Dori's, Rona's bra was just too snug. In fact, the discomfort was enough to prompt the new-minted girl to take it off entirely. Now bare to the waist, Bobbi cupped her bra-pinched breasts in her hands and massaged the soreness away. "I really grew a big crop of America's best last night," she chuckled sadly. Were they hers for keeps? Was there any way to break the magic spell? How long did spells last if you didn't do something to break them? She tried to think of all the stories she had read about magic, all the movies she had seen. The Shaggy Dog had to do something brave and heroic to become a boy again, she recalled. The Frog Prince had to get a princess to kiss him. The Beast had to make Beauty love him. Bobbi grinned, enjoying the idea of being kissed by Princess Di and being restored to gorgeous manhood in her arms. But it wasn't a practical solution. The blonde put her hands on her hips and tilted her head from side to side. If I'm stuck as a girl for any time at all, Bobbi thought, I've got to earn a living. How do I do that? I can't even prove I have a high school diploma now. Maybe I could become a model. Bobbi fantasized herself in a bikini and leaning sexily against a red Nissan 240SX, or a glossy black Acura Integra upon the cover of some future issue of SPORTS CAR. Not much hard work in modeling, she thought; wearing a bikini in public would be the roughest part. But then she reconsidered. Fat chance! Those jobs were hard to get. Every model that she had known as Rob had at one time or other complained that she had had to sleep with somebody to get the really worthwhile assignments. Bobbi winced. The idea of sleeping with a man was decidedly unpleasant, even if it meant earning a good living. Now that she was a girl, Bobbi wondered if it meant that she would like boys. For an experiment, she called up a large image of Fabio in her mind's eye and decided that it didn't do a thing for her. But Cindy Crawford -- ahh, now that was a body to set her heart strings strumming! But could Bobbi thrill Cindy in the shape she was now? Maybe, considering some of those tabloid stories about the supermodel. Be that as it may, Bobbi could console herself that plenty of beautiful girls were willing to sleep with other girls. Especially girls like the one in the mirror. I need a drink, she thought, if I'm ever going to sort this thing out. Damn, what if Jim won't believe me? What then? Bobbi went over to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a Scotch and soda. As she consumed the hard liquor, she felt depressed. Rob had worked very hard at building a career in real estate. Now it was lost. As Bobbi she might have to start all over again. Well, there were plenty of female realtors. The women in the business did well on the whole, as long as they applied themselves as vigorously as a man would. In fact, it was at a realtor's convention where Rob had first met Rona, and there discovered that they both lived in the same city. The two of them were friendly from the start, but they had never quite made it into bed together. It was Jim's heart -- or loins -- that Rona had set on fire that time when Rob had introduced them. Rob hadn't really resented the way that things had worked out. He thought that Rona would be good for his friend and, besides, Rob's hands were full just then with a postal worker named Charlotte who liked to lick whipped cream off his bare feet. Bobbi sighed. Those were the good old days. Were they really gone forever? What could she replace them with? The small blonde downed the rest of her drink, and then tackled a second. How strangely and how suddenly her fate had changed! She suddenly became worried that this experience was some sort of punishment -- from Heaven, not just from the weird and vindictive Cassandra. Was it possible that Cassandra might actually have been acting -- unwittingly -- as Heaven's agent? Bobbi decided that it couldn't be. Rob had never hurt women. In fact, he had made more than his share of women very happy -- for a while. At least he had never committed the big faux pas and gotten one of them pregnant. That is, he never knew for certain that any of his girls were pregnant when split-up time arrived. At that point she checked herself, supposing that in another minute she'd be feeling guilty for absolutely nothing. Damn it, birth control was a woman's problem anyway! Birth control. That was a strange thought under the present circumstances. Bobbi had become a woman herself and so she suddenly wondered, with a strangely-melded sense of alarm and amazement, whether this new-edition body of hers could conceive a child. Motherhood. Imagine that! She looked down at herself and touched her small, slightly convex belly. Could it happen? If it could, what should she think? Most women wanted children, but -- Bobbi remembered how the tough gang boss trapped in Kathy Duffy's body in SYNAPSE had finally achieved a happy ending by becoming a loving wife and the proud mother of a little boy. And in Ellen Barkin's movie, too, the character had had a baby. But she had tragically died in childbirth. That was such a sad scene, Bobbi remembered -- and the film was supposed to have been a comedy! Bobbi blew her nose on a napkin. The thought of Ellen's little girl growing up without a mother to love her, and dress her, and feed her, and hug her was so terrible that the young woman had to try as hard as she could not to think about it, lest she break down and cry. She finished her second drink to steady her nerves. The girl then considered whether she needed yet another refill and decided that she did. A little later, staggering drunk, Bobbi wobbled into the bedroom and clumsily stripped off her jeans. She didn't actually mean to shed the panties along with them, but they came off, too. As she fell into bed, Bobbi's forehead struck her purse and it hurt. "Damned idol," she muttered as she rolled over and dug the accursed thing from the handbag. Seeing the statuette again gave Bobbi a sudden idea. If it had changed her sex once just by sleeping near it, maybe it would change her back if she repeated the process. "I'll just put this little doodad beside the bed here," she slurred, "and maybe it'll turn me into a man by morning. Fight magic with magic! What have I got to lose?" As she settled the statuette upon the nightstand, she noticed a bottle of perfume sitting there next to the lamp. Its label read "Magic Midnight." Bobbi had always loved the scent of perfume on beautiful women. With a crooked smile, she fumbled the bottle open to take a whiff. She found its odor wonderfully sensuous but, unfortunately, the girl's quaking fingers dropped the bottle and it spilled on her lap, not much, but several powerfully aromatic droplets had been tossed into her pubic hair and across her bare thighs. Bobbi recapped the bottle hastily, then turned off the lamp and fell into a deep sleep. # Jim Cardwell opened the bedroom door quietly. "Rona? Are you awake?" he whispered. He heard a woman's deep breathing and her wordless murmuring. "No, she's sleeping." The young investment broker sniffed the sweetened air, recognizing his favorite perfume, Magic Midnight. Rona always wore it to make him hot to trot! Grinning with anticipation, he stripped off his clothes. Jim hadn't cheated on Rona since he had known her, though he had been sorely tempted just the night before. The Japanese investors that he had been meeting with had held a party at the Imperial Hotel with all the amenities provided. Jim had let his opportunity to make it with a high-class call girl pass because his old free-and-easy ways had always brought him grief in the past and, besides, he cared about Rona and wanted what they had to work out. But his near miss with infidelity had made him very anxious to get back to Rona. Now that he was in the same room with her, those feelings were rushing back with powerful urgency. He would either have to plunge into a very cold shower or into some very hot action -- and a shower sized up as a very poor second. Jim softly approached the bed. Sitting down beside the one whom he thought was his girlfriend, he touched her and realized that she was sleeping naked on top of the covers. Jim sucked in an excited breath as he stroked Bobbi's breasts. In the dark they felt even larger than he knew them to be. The girl stirred, but didn't wake. Jim, trying not to disturb "Rona's" sleep, checked her for panties and found that she was wearing none. He slipped his own briefs to the floor, kicked them aside, and positioned himself on the bed. He took hold of Bobbi's hips to steady them, then, as he moved his face closer to her love nest, Jim discovered that "Rona" had used the perfume on her pubic hair. The little minx, he thought, had been hoping that he'd find a way to come home early and so had decked herself out like a carnal feast. What a woman! He flicked his tongue against the outer lips of Bobbi's pussy. The sleeper shifted and moaned, but her alcohol-reinforced slumber was a heavy one. Jim chuckled quietly as he next moved his mouth up to her breasts, licking the nipples as if they had been dabbed with honey. Bobbi groaned a bit as the sensation penetrated her deep trance. The young man's cock was now swollen and aching. He knew that there wouldn't be much time for foreplay, so he took the woman passionately in his arms and kissed her hard on the lips. "Whaa --?!" Bobbi mumbled as she finally awoke, feeling her mouth and nose smothered under something warm and wet. "Easy, Rona. It's Jim. I just got back. I need you, baby." "J-Jim?" the girl muttered confusedly. But Jim wasn't listening. He just kept on kissing Bobbi's face and neck, using all the techniques that he had developed over his twenty-six years of living free. He opened his mouth and captured one of her large, erect nipples between his hungry lips. Jim sucked first on one and then on the other. He pressed his face into her smooth, resilient breasts, firm with the golden kiss of youth. "M-My God!" muttered Bobbi. Shifting, Jim now ran his tongue along "Rona's" inner thighs. He came to the thick fleece between her legs and touched his nose to it, inhaling deeply of Midnight Magic and natural woman-scent. Bobbi's hips involuntarily lurched as her bedfellow slipped his eager tongue between her dewy labia, forcing it as far up her love canal as he could. Then he drew it back with teasing slowness. Her heavy gasp and shifting motion encouraged him to run the tip of his tongue all over her pussy while avoiding contact with her small clitoris -- a move which he knew was always slow torture for Rona. He heard the girl's breath catch in her throat and felt her body quiver. He guessed that she was now ready to be brought to an even higher pitch. Equal to the task, Jim put the tip of his probing tongue into direct contact with her nether bud and began flicking it back and forth. That never failed to drive Rona wild. "Oh, Jim! Christ, Jim!" Bobbi moaned as she felt hot blades of excitement shooting through every nerve of her body. Unable to hold himself back, Jim repositioned himself to mount her, guiding his rock-hard organ to her furry aperture. Tiny, pulsing shocks raced through him as he shoved himself as deeply as he could into the unplumbed well of Bobbi's scented maidenhood. "Oh!" Bobbi gasped as the tender walls of her interior expanded to accommodate his penetration. Jim was surprised to find "Rona's" pussy so tight, stretching his foreskin back to the limit, until it almost pained him. Then his breath caught in his throat when her vaginal muscles seemed to contract around his throbbing organ, trapping it in a powerful grip. Ah, yes -- that was his girl Rona! Jim began fucking poor Bobbi in earnest, with quick, hard thrusts. His hips moved like pistons, plunging to the very depths of her maidenly recesses. "Ayiiii! Ayiii!" Bobbi cried, throwing her head back, holding Jim's waist with clawing fingers. Her nails hurt him, but Jim dug his toes into the mattress and pumped for all he was worth, each long stroke making his heart beat faster. After a minute he felt Bobbi's vaginal muscles go into action, not by any will of he own, if Jim had only known it, but by the stern dictates of Mother Nature. Bobbi, her body operating on pure instinct, frantically milked his rigid prick of his clear preliminary secretions, while her silken legs entangled themselves with his in a lock that not even Houdini could have picked. Jim was rapidly approaching climax, but he wanted to be sure that Rona came with him. Delaying his own pleasure with a mighty exertion of will, he deliberately brought himself into contact with her clitoris, subjecting her tight pussy to the relentless friction of his love-making until she was moaning with pleasure. Jim could hear the loud slurping noise of his cock sliding in and out of Bobbi's wet, fleshy vise, while his testicles began to ache with an urgency that begged release. Suddenly Bobbi felt Jim's prick expand within her -- and the first jet of hot viscous nectar splashed against her cervix, igniting a series of explosions deep inside her body. "Aaaaiii!" the girl cried out at the top of her lungs, digging her heels into his thighs and raking her fingernails across his back as an irresistible series of passion-quakes shot through her. Jim's hips went on pumping even after the last drop had been drained from him by Bobbi's hungry, if involuntary, contractions. He could finally bear his herculean exertion no longer and collapsed upon her. He heard the hot rasp of the girl's breath in his ear, felt her velvety arms wrapping themselves tightly around his neck, clinging to him desperately. Bobbi, overwhelmed with drink and the aftermath of her release, didn't hear the sound of the doorknob turning. "Jim! What are you doing!?" The surprise on Jim's face became pure horror when he saw Rona's astonished face. He really didn't know what he had been doing. Or rather he did know -- he just didn't know exactly whom he had been doing it with. Now, for the first time, he looked down at the face of the girl under him, its eyes big and dewy, its lips half-parted with astonishment. Confusion filled those robin-egg eyes, then they glazed over as Bobbi passed out cold. "Who is she?" Jim gasped. "I never saw her before in my life!" "Don't play innocent, Jim!" sobbed Rona. "Can't I even let a friend sleep over without you jumping her?" "So she's a friend of yours!" Jim jabbered as he rolled off of Bobbi and threw a sheet over his nudity. "Honest, Rona, I didn't know. It was dark and I thought she was you. She was wearing your perfume!" "A likely story! I've had it, Jim! I can't trust you anymore! I was such a fool!" Suddenly she spotted Bobbi's cut-offs and halter hanging upon the back of a chair. She snatched them up and threw them into Jim's face. "Here, these are hers! Get your playmate dressed and then both of you get out of here! This is my apartment and I don't ever want to see either one of you in it again!" # Again dressed in the halter, cut-offs, and sandals inherited from Dori, Bobbi was sitting opposite Jim in the booth of a small all-night cafe. Battered by a pounding hangover and fighting hard to control the trauma of what had lately happened, she had been doing her best to explain to her friend who she really was, all to no avail. Jim shook his head. "Miss, that's the nuttiest story I ever heard! Rob put you up to this gag, didn't he?" "You stupid son of a bitch! I'm me! If you won't believe me, nobody else in the world will either!" "Hey, calm down, honey. Don't make a scene." Tears of frustration ran down Bobbi's cheeks. She rested her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. "God, Jim, don't you have any shame? You take my virginity, maybe even knock me up, and now you're calling me a liar!" "Come on -- I'll grant that you look enough like Rob to be his sister, but you can't be Rob, magic or not. Rob would have died before he'd dress up like that. Anyway, don't forget that I've been in bed with you. You're a one hundred percent wild woman -- and Rob Wescott didn't like boys!" "All right," said Bobbi in anger, "if you won't believe me, try sleeping next to this idol I've got here. It'll turn you into a girl too, I bet, and I hope somebody treats you just the way you're treating me!" She realized the instant that she touched her purse that the statuette was gone. "-- Hell, I must have left the damned thing back at Rona's." "I'm too tired for all this crap," Jim sighed. "Look, baby, you're a kook, but well, there's something kind of sweet about you. I'd like to get to know you a lot better. Do you have a place to stay? We can get a room together." Bobbi sprang to her feet and grabbed her purse. "That's enough, Jim! You've been rotten to me! I thought we were friends, but you're out to lunch now that I really need you. I never want to see you again!" Jim leaned back, disappointed. "I'm sorry. We could have started something beautiful." "Oooo!" Bobbi exclaimed as she stalked away from the table, but just then the hopelessness of her situation dawned on her and she stopped in her tracks. "Did you forget something, baby cakes?" asked Jim. "For Pete's sake, Jim, I -- I'm penniless. I can't go home, and the streets aren't safe at night for a -- a woman. I just don't know what to do anymore! I might get raped or killed! My life is over." Jim was starting to feel very uncomfortable, even guilty, but the events of the night had made him cranky and even unsympathetic. "Look, kid, I don't want to see you go away empty-handed. I almost dropped a bundle on a girl in Sacramento last night. You were good in the sack, so you can have it instead. I'd say you earned about a hundred." Jim opened his wallet, took out five crisp twenties, and laid them on the table. Bobbi looked at the money with a face of horror and sickness. "Are you calling me a whore, Jim? Is that it?" She stared into his eyes with a look of hurt and betrayal that made him cringe. "Why, Jim? What did I do to make you think that I was a whore?" Jim saw her weaving and for a second it looked like she might fall over. She caught hold of the back of the chair and began again: "Cassandra did something very cruel to me, but with a little help and some trust I could have bounced back. But I can't bounce back from this, Jim." Her voice cracked. "Not this." Jim shifted in his chair, not knowing what to say. Bobbi McGee just stood there, looking down at the money, her tears moistening it like a warm summer rain. "I'd throw it back in your face," she whispered, "but I need it. God help me, I need it." She hid her face in her hands. Jim dropped his glance, embarrassed. "It's yours -- Miss. I'm sorry. I didn't mean --" The girl straightened. "I know what you meant!" Nonetheless, Bobbi picked up the money as quickly as she could and then fled out the door. Left alone, Jim drank deeply of his coffee, thinking about all the craziness that had blind-sided him that night. This girl, whoever she was, seemed to be a good kid. Something told him that she had deserved something better at his hands. He supposed that somehow he could have handled the situation differently. If only he hadn't been so upset about his quarrel with Rona, and if Bobbi hadn't thrown him for a loop with that crazy story about being Robert Wescott. As mixed-up as Bobbi seemed to be, there was something about her that touched him where he really lived. Her sobbing departure had left him feeling about as bad as a man could. # Jim had never lived through a day like the one which followed his strange encounter with Bobbi McGee. Before it was over, he was frantically driving around the city, anxiously questioning the clerk of every motel located near the cafe where he had last seen her. Finally the clerk at the Balmoral was able to tell him that such a girl had stayed the night, then had checked out. He could only add that she had bought a morning newspaper just before she had left, and had asked him if he had heard about any unskilled labor jobs in the city. Thank God she's planning to stay in the city! Jim thought. He dug through the trash for a copy of the morning edition and spent the next day checking out every job that a girl without a past might apply for. Some businesses remembered seeing the scantily-clad young woman -- in fact very few could forget her -- but none of them would hire a person who didn't even have a library card for identification. Jim exhausted every possibility and for weeks thereafter spent a large part of each day just driving around, looking for Bobbi's face, especially along those streets where poor working class people worked, ate, or shopped. And every day of failure made him hate himself the more for what he had done. But then, one afternoon -- # Working hard carrying soft drinks and burgers to hungry motorists, Bobbi had gradually lost her loathing for her uniform -- the white, hip-hugging short-shorts and the sleeveless, midriff-baring red T-shirt required of all the carhops. Spanky's Root Beer Station didn't pay well, but at least it kept Bobbi from getting drooled on by the homeless at the free shelter, or needing to sell her body. She had just gotten over her first period and still felt ill-humored from the experience. Thankfully, menstruation, as bad as it was, meant that she wasn't carrying Jim's child. That was one of the few good discoveries to come her way since she had turned into a woman. Lost in thought, Bobbi tripped over a teenager who was so preoccupied with her legs that he couldn't keep his feet out of her way. The carhop dropped her tray of waste Styrofoam, smudged napkins, and paper cups on the concrete before she caught herself. The brisk wind threatened to spread the mess far and wide. "S-Sorry, Miss," the youth stammered as he slipped away without offering to help her. Shaking her head, Bobbi bent down to resignedly pick up the litter before it got out of reach. "I'm glad to see that you're all right, Rob!" someone said. Startled to hear her real name spoken, Bobbi stood up, turned, and saw a familiar Ford Taurus. "Jim!" Bobbi cried as she recognized the driver. Then she remembered what had happened the last time they had been together and got angry all over again. "Oh, it's you!" She turned away and stomped back to the serving counter; Jim switched off his ignition, got out of the car, and pursued her plaintively. "Rob, wait!" yelled Jim. "I haven't been able to sleep for worrying about you!" When she refused to slow down or turn, he caught her by the arm. "Will you leave me alone!" Bobbi exclaimed. "If you want a whore, swing down that street!" "Rob, don't. I've been going crazy. I've been watching for your face everywhere, I've been calling your friends, visiting the shelters, checking the hospitals -- reading the obituaries." "Hey, you're calling me Rob! Do you finally believe me?" "I had to believe you -- after I saw Rona." "What do you mean?" "She went to sleep next to that idol that you left in her bedroom -- and she turned into -- a guy." "Oh, no! Poor Rona!" Jim put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "It wasn't so bad. She got used to it really quick. We became great buddies. It turned out that we even liked the same sort of women!" "Rona had to change sex in front of your eyes before you'd believe me?" Bobbi asked sarcastically. "I'm trying to say that I'm sorry for the way I treated you, Rob. Can you ever forgive me?" Bobbi looked him over critically. "What if I don't? Maybe I should keep you on a guilt trip for the rest of your life." "Maybe you should," Jim replied grimly. Bobbi gave him a punch in the shoulder. "Screw that!" she said with a painful, twisted smile. "You're forgiven, you big dumb lug. You're a fourteen carat bastard, but what the hell good does it do me to carry a grudge?" "Great!" cried Jim and, without thinking, he threw his arms around Bobbi, crushing her against his chest. Then, realizing what he was doing, and who he was doing it to, he let go. "Sorry." Bobbi smoothed her hair. "Forget it. I've been needing a hug for a long time." "A hug? I'm so glad to see you that I could kiss you. Get in the car. I'll take you out of here." "Where are we going?" "You can stay with me." "With you and Rona?" "No. Rona's -- she calls herself -- himself -- Ron now -- has taken off. He met this girl whose father owns a chemical plant out East. Actually, they've known each other for years and were best girl friends. But when they got together accidently as a man and a woman, this strange sort of chemistry took over. They dated, they slept together, and finally Ron popped the question. He even admitted to her who he really was. She actually believed him, liked the idea!" Jim shook his head. "I told Ron that he shouldn't jump into a hasty marriage, but --" "Marriage after only one month a man! Jeez, I wish I could adjust that easily -- not that I want to be anyone's wife." "Well, you'll feel much better once you're back among friends." "Friends? What friend did I ever have, except you? Maybe I had acquaintances, colleagues, and even lovers, but not friends." "Make new friends, then! Start small and build, right?" A horn honked; a customer needed service. "I have to get back to work, Jim. Come back for me at seven and I'll go home with you." "Seven? Why?" "I get off then." "Rob!" I can't run out on Spanky's on such a busy day. In fact, I'd better give them a couple days notice so they can find a replacement." "Are you heat-struck? You don't have to give notice to a root beer stand!" "I think I should, Jim. The managers saved my life. When I showed up here I was at my last gasp. The only other job offer I had was from a pimp downtown. I didn't have any identity; the Spanky people thought that I was an illegal alien, but they helped me anyway. I owe them a lot." Jim touched her chin, lifted it, and gazed understandingly into her eyes. "You were always a great guy, Rob Wescott. Now you're a great gal. You just keep getting better and better." "Rob Wescott's had it. You'd better get used to calling me Bobbi McGee," the young woman advised him with a wan smile. # By the end of the weekend, Bobbi's carhop career lay behind her. The last few days had been full of settling in and busy planning. The two friends were now taking a needed break, sitting upon the carpet, a deck of cards and a discard pile between them. Bobbi was wondering whether she should risk her twenty cents on just one pair of kings, or go for an outside straight. That first night at Jim's apartment he had asked her whether she had any plans. She had given him a very serious look. "There's a lot more to this curse than we thought, Jim," Bobbi had said. "I have this compulsion. It's been eating on me and eating on me." She covered her face. "Bobbi?" "I can't fight it any longer. Whatever you think, whatever the world thinks, I just have to give in to it. I hope you'll still be able to respect me." "What do you mean?" asked Jim concernedly. "I have to become a French maid!" "That's good," Jim had replied with a thoughtful nod. "Terrific working conditions, great benefits. And there's lots of jobs out there. In fact, I could use a little French maid myself. I saw this really cute uniform in one of Rona's lingerie catalogs. Lacy panties, short-short skirt, and an itsy-bitsy five-layered petticoat. You'll love it! I'll love it!" "Then wear it yourself, sucker!" Jim had laughed. "I think you're going to be all right, Bobbi." "I'm not going to let this thing beat me, that's for sure," the girl had declared firmly. "Cassandra probably wanted me to commit suicide, or become a drunk, or a druggie or something. Well, she's not going to have the satisfaction! Surviving is the best way I know of to get back at her." "You can do it, and I'm going to help you. As I see it, what you need most right now is a solid identity." "Yeh, I know. How do I get one?" "You can be Rona!" Bobbi had looked up, her brow furrowed. "Rona?!" "She and I talked the idea over, just in case we ever found you. She left all her old documents with me for you to use. She left everything, in fact, except her money." "She'd do that for me?!" "Rona was a little excitable, Bobbi, but a great -- person -- at heart. And she always did like you as Rob." Bobbi had concurred. "She even liked me as Bobbi McGee, until she thought that I'd double-crossed her. But how can I go around as Rona? People knew her." Jim had shaken his head. "She wrote all her friends and told them that she was entering a reclusive religious order in Europe and that she wouldn't be coming back. That took care of one angle. Better yet, she doesn't have any close relatives who'll ever bother to check up on her." Bobbi had considered the possibility carefully. "It could work. Rona and I were both in the realty business and I could apply for a decent job using her resume. But it still might be smart if I moved to a different city." "If you do that," Jim had begun carefully, "would you mind it very much if I came along with you?" Bobbi had looked at him amazed, as if seeing him for the first time. # "Two cards," Jim called suddenly, bringing Bobbi back to the present. She peeled a couple cards off the deck and tossed them to his side. "I'll stay," she told him. Bobbi thought of Rona's hasty marriage. Incredible -- Rona had become a straight guy in a matter of just a couple weeks. But even after a month, Bobbi still didn't know where she stood. She had been fighting what seemed to be an incipient attraction to men more ferociously than Custer ever fought the Indians. These feelings were troubling for a person who had never had a gay bone in his -- her -- body. Even the image of Cindy Crawford didn't do anything for her anymore -- and she was trying hard not to think about Fabio. But perhaps, Bobbi thought, she had to stop thinking left to right and start thinking right to left. Obviously Cassandra's magic could change the body. It had only come out gradually that it could change the emotions, too. Maybe the witch herself hadn't fully understood the power of the idol, that the wound it inflicted actually carried its own healing. Bobbi smiled to herself. That was why Cassandra's revenge would always be a hollow one. Would Bobbi want to be a man again if she could? Yes -- in a minute! It would have been a relief to be able to take refuge once again in what was safe and familiar. Rob had had a routine, a past, he was working toward a future. He had been able to take comfort in the familiar things around him. Now those familiar things were gone and Bobbi suspected that they would never come again. But what lay ahead in this strange new life? That was the question that kept her lying awake at night. Bobbi was pretty sure that she could not recreate the female equivalent of Rob's bon vivant style. It wasn't just the physiological obstacles. Events had changed her heart even more than magic had changed her shape. She had no more taste for the promiscuous adventuring that had defined Rob's social life. Bobbi had kept to her little rented room near Spanky's, drinking the bitter drops of loneliness to their dregs. She had finally grasped the fact that though she had had many lovers as Rob, Rob had had no love to speak of. Why? she had wondered. Was it, possibly, because Rob had failed again and again to truly give of himself? That had to change, the young woman vowed. She couldn't remain a spiritual hermit; she had to be a part of life, even the drab and the risky parts of life. A new body, a new identity, a new job, a new style, even a new sex. This was a good time to make some serious rearrangements. Bobbi looked up at her companion. She had begun to feel very differently about Jim. She had been deeply touched by his efforts to find and to save her. But it was more than just that. Bobbi was starting to enjoy his company -- no, his nearness -- in ways that she never had experienced with a man. The sound of Jim's voice, that cocky expression in his hazel eyes, even the knot in his necktie, stirred her like only the beauty of a girl had before. The young woman watched her comrade as he pored over his cards. Her mind had gone back many times to that night when she and Jim had made love. At first she had recoiled from the memory in horror. But, over the following empty weeks, it had come back to her in a new aspect. The substance of the act remained the same, of course, but she could see it now in a different and brighter guise. But what was she thinking? Her with Jim? That was nuts! They loved one another, truly, and in so many ways, but they never could love one another that way -- could they? Bobbi couldn't forget Rona's experience with her own best friend. Best friends. What a wonderful phrase that was. For some reason the Frank Sinatra song that she had heard on her last night as a man came back as if in answer to her dilemma: "The simple secret of the plot, Is just to tell them that I love you a lot. Then the world discovers as my book ends, How to make two lovers of friends." No! That was crazy! Bobbi thought. It would be much smarter, if she had to get involved with a male, to make it someone -- anyone -- other than Jim. Somebody who didn't know about her past, someone who wouldn't carry around all that baggage of bygone associations, someone who wouldn't have had his ideas about her forged in their former skirt-chasing camaraderie. But Jim and she, Bobbi knew, had so much in common. Sports, politics, music -- as well as that indefinable trust that allowed two friends to tell one another their problems and worries without self- consciousness, without the fear that they were giving a potential rival a secret to use against them. Maybe what the pair of them had had up to now represented a good foundation on which to build something new. But what? To his credit, Jim had been cleaning up his act lately. He had been loyal to one girl while Rob had been going though more than a half dozen. Could Jim be faithful to one person for the very long haul? Could Bobbi? Bobbi had definitely acquired a new respect for loyalty and consistency. She wondered whether the two of them -- Damn! She had to stop thinking that way! Oh, this man-woman business was so confusing! Suddenly Jim passed his hand in front of her eyes. "Earth to Bobbi. This is Houston. Are you reading us, Bobbi?" "Sorry, Jim. I've got a lot to think about." "I guess you do. It must be hard coping. What's it like, being a woman? Bobbi shrugged. "I'm still on the first chapter, buddy. I'll tell you the secret of the plot when I'm deeper into the book." "Maybe you could write a book of your own!" "Maybe I could." But how would the book end? Bobbi wondered. "I wouldn't like reading the part about what we did together. It must have been pretty bad for you, right?" Bobby tossed away her cards. "Don't keep beating yourself up about that, Jim. To tell the truth, I wasn't so drunk that night that I couldn't have said something if I had really wanted to. Even while it was happening I thought that it was -- well, sort of interesting. And I guess I wanted to know how it was going to come out." "I knew it!" crowed Jim, at once happy and relieved. "A man can always tell when the woman is liking it!" "Yeh, I guess we can," nodded Bobbi in automatic agreement. She had for so long been thinking along those lines that old habits were hard to break. "By the way Jim," she suddenly asked, "what did you do with that idol?" "Oh, that. Rona and I tried to use it turn her back into a woman that second night, but when that didn't work, I put it into a safe-deposit box. I hope nobody falls asleep inside the bank vault." "I'd have smashed the thing -- or sent it to a politician that I didn't like!" Then she added with a naughty laugh, "Hey, we could have our first woman president!" "You're not thinking, buddy. That idol might be valuable someday, especially if I can find a rich, frustrated transsexual. In fact, why sell it at all? Just rent it out a night at a time and make a lot of rich people happy. You know, doing well by doing good." "Hey! If you're going into business, I deserve a cut of the action! It's my statue!" "You've got it, Partner!" Jim once more flashed that same grin that had been sending shivers up and down Bobbi's spine these last few days. He extended his hand. "Shake on it?" Bobbi's glance met his enigmatically. "You know," she said tentatively, "in the old days men and women thought it was uncouth to shake hands together." Jim lowered his hand with the trace of a frown. "Yeh? What did they do?" "I could demonstrate." At the moment Bobbi was wearing a pair of old yellow pajamas bought for a dollar at the Salvation Army store. Earlier that evening she had been tempted, if briefly, to try on one of Rona's bustiers or camis. But clothing always sent a powerful message, and Bobbi still hadn't decided what sort of message she should be sending to her old friend Jim. But now the young blonde began to unbutton her pajama tops, very slowly, very deliberately, watching intently for Jim's reaction. Jim sucked in nearly all the air in the room when she flipped her top open with the tips of her fingers. "Oh, Bobbi," Jim said with a dry swallow, "Don't do this to me. I've been going crazy for these last couple days trying to keep my hands off you." She smiled, rather tightly because, despite all, she was a little nervous. "Why don't you just get it out of your system?" Bobbi suggested, still studying him carefully. "I'm not made out of brick. I'm game. But -- but are you sure --? "I don't break easily. I thought I'd proven that much." He still hesitated, which left time for doubt to trouble Bobbi's resolution. "I'm not much of a seductress," she thought vaguely as she looked disapprovingly down at herself. What a dumpy get-up, these old pajamas. They were eyesores. Now she wished that she had instead worn one of Rona's skimpy lounging outfits. Better Victoria's Secret than Goodwill. Bobbi looked up at Jim again. His expression had changed and it suggested a man who would have gladly begun a meal in an expensive restaurant, but was unsure of the table manners expected of him. "What am I doing?" Bobbi asked herself. Where could this nuttiness go? She wondered if she ought to just reach out and embrace him, like Rob would have done in earlier days, to overcome the reluctance of a romantically inexperienced woman. At that moment Jim resolved the problem by reaching out for her, misgivings and desire set deeply into his lightly-tanned features. Bobbi took the hand he offered and squeezed it in hers and, when he shifted himself closer, moved boldly, enfolding his neck with her free arm. It felt good, and since Jim seemed afraid that she'd pull away at the last minute, she seized the initiative, drawing her partner's mouth up against her own, surprising herself with the sandpaper-texture of his chin and upper lip. How strange stubble was, Bobbi McGee thought, at least to one used to kissing the silken faces of girls. But, holding the kiss, she knew that she would have to get used to a lot of new things. The weeks ahead would certainly be a learning process. That was more than a little daunting. But Robert Wescott had always been a quick study.