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Copyright 1999 by Elaine Blankenship and Shannen Greggs. All rights reserved. ============================== Esperanza by BoyChiq and Lainie Lee The rain came down hard, harder, hardest near Buttonwillow. I had got stuck behind a couple of big rigs going up a hill. The wet gloom made mid-after-noon into almost-night. Just as I slowed to no more than a walking pace, the right-hand door of my car opened and a girl climbed in. She dripped water on my seat cushions and turned to lock the door after she was inside. "It's too late now," I said. "T-too late?" She looked back at me with gray-green eyes and a mouth opened to reveal a slight overbite and a trembling lip. "To keep anyone from getting in while I'm driving so slow." "Oh." She tried a smile. She wore no make-up but her skin had that clearness only the young achieve. Her tangled hair, dark in what light filtered though the storm, lay plastered tightly to her cheeks, neck and back. In much the same way, a cotton shirt clung to her shape. I mentally revised her age, those breasts seemed adolescent. I smiled back. She might be delectable, but she might be under age, too. "I hope you don't mind too much, I'm wet and cold and..." She turned her face away but continued looking at me sideways. "And I need a ride to L.A." She wasn't dressed for a fall storm in the California mountains, but Los Angeles would likely still be warm and dry at almost the end of October. I turned some heat on and just drove for a while. The traffic cleared as the big rigs sorted things out up ahead. She studied them through the right-hand window as we moved ahead into clearer weather. I studied her in little sideways glances. The face said eighteen, maybe early twenties and the length of leg in her too tight chinos made that a good guess, too. But she still had only breast buds, like a twelve-year-old. Maybe she was a late bloomer. "If I'm giving you a ride, I want something in return." She stiffened in the seat. "I... I..." Her head whipped back and forth, trying not to look at me. "Like your name," I finished. I had just found something out; she had no intention of offering herself to me. I wondered, a girl bold enough to steal a ride from a stranger, but no, she was only desperate. Or perhaps my looks had put her off the idea. She considered the question of her name. I felt certain that in some way, her answer would be a lie. "Kelly." she said at last, and her stomach made a punctuating growl. "Excuse me." "Hungry?" She nodded. The risks of taking a young girl into a cafe seemed worth it. I took the next exit and parked at the coffee shop in the middle of the big truck stop. I got out my umbrella and hurried around the car. She might have been examining the big rigs parked in the lot more than waiting for me to open the door for her. She got out awkwardly, almost tripping. Her shoes were those clunky things that looked like a cross between maryjanes and high-heeled combat boots. I walked her to the door of the cafe, keeping my hands off her but blocking the wind-driven drizzle with my body and my umbrella. She bumbled at the door, finally jerking her hand back as I wrenched the heavy frame open. She scampered inside with a squeal, as a splash caught her across the calves. I walked in behind her, grinning. She seemed awkwardly, charmingly young, and even younger when she caught one of her big square heels in the drain mat just inside the air lock. "Damn heels," I heard her mutter and she blushed when I widened the grin. Inside, she staggered again and I put out a hand to catch her. "The food! The smell!" she murmured. We took a booth, the place was busy but not packed and I wanted to get her seated. She looked pale and sick for a moment and I heard her tummy rumble again. "I don't think I've been so hungry in years!" "Relax!" I laughed at her expression, wolfish and waifish at one time. She grabbed up a packet of crackers left behind and ripped into it, scattering crumbs like a child. Nibbling on the saltines, she examined her fingers as if she had never seen them before. "I don't have any money." "If I'm going to buy you lunch..." I began. Her color rose. "Dinner," I corrected, smiling gently. She frowned, trying to decide if she was being teased. "...then you can tell me the story of how you happened to be standing on the side of the freeway in the rain," I finished, still smiling. Kelly, if that was her name, started to shake her head. The waitress plopped menus in front of us. "Coffee?" she asked me. I nodded and she poured me one. She hardly gave us a glance, I guess we weren't as odd a couple as I thought. "Wanna coke?" she asked my companion. According to her tag, her name was Francine. "Uh, yeah. I guess," Kelly said. "Diet or regular?" "D-diet?" Francine scooted away. "Decide what you want, I'll be right back." Kelly, stared at the menu without touching it. "I'd better just have soup," she said. "I didn't eat at all today." "Soup." I said. She nodded. "You usually need glasses to read?" I asked. She turned that shade of red again. "Where are your glasses?" I asked. She shrugged. "I don't know." "You lost them? Left them in your last ride?" She made a face as if that had never occurred to her until that moment. "The truck." "Some trucker gave you a ride then kicked you out on the freeway without your stuff?" I guessed wildly. She nodded slowly then shook her head. "No, he, he, didn't want to stop. I screamed...." She winced. "You made him stop?" "And then I ran away.... I was so scared. He kept following me, he called me 'Esperanza' and....." She frowned. "That means Hope in Spanish." She winced again, perhaps at the memory. "But he finally left you alone? In the rain?" I felt angry at the trucker. What had he done to scare her so? I could guess. "No. This was last night, it wasn't raining. I hid in a ditch till he gave up and went away. Then I woke up. I was wet and cold and I tried to catch a ride, no one would stop on the freeway. I climbed the hill, I fell down a lot but the rain washed off the mud. I thought the cars might stop if they were already slowing down. Then you rolled by, and I saw your doors weren't locked." She smiled with a bit of effort. This had been her longest speech yet and seemed to contain no lies. I grinned and Francine, the waitress, came back just then. "What'll you have?" she asked, setting a cola down in front of the girl. "Burgers." I said. "Fries with mine, soup with hers." I decided I would order food, for company more than hunger. "Clam chowder or vegetable?" It was Friday, of course they had clam chowder. I looked at her. "Chowder?" "It's the white kind. Good." Francine amplified completely unselfconsciously. I liked her. Kelly nodded and the waitress scooted away again. "You ordered for me," she observed. "I'm paying for it, too." "I'll pay you back. When I can." I shook my head. "I'm past forty. I don't get many opportunities to buy dinner for a pretty girl." Francine coming back with the soup helped Kelly cover her confusion and embarrassment. "I heard your stomach growling. Teen-agers." I waited until Kelly had murmured a thank you and Francine had left again. "How old are you?" I asked bluntly. She looked warily at me as she opened up another package of crackers, this time more carefully. "How old do I look?" I laughed out loud. "You mean how old am I willing to believe?" She bit her lip, sniffed of the soup and then made a face. "Uh. I'm...I'm 21." I shook my head, more lying. She was particularly bad at it. I changed the subject. "Is the soup all right?" "I think so. I'm just so hungry it is making me feel queasy to smell of it." She tried a spoonful. "No rush. It's after 4:00 p.m. The traffic into L.A. will be murder in this rain anyway." She startled visibly on the word 'murder'. Uh, oh, I thought. She ate a bit more soup and nibbled at the cracker. "So." I returned to a previous lie. "Is it Hope instead of Kelly?" I asked. "Or Hope Kelly, Kelly Hope? You don't look much like an Esperanza." Despite her dark hair streaked with blonde, her face was not typically Hispanic. Too fair, with a dance of freckles, and eyes that odd grey-green. Not that those things meant much, Hispanics varied a lot. She shook her head. "The driver was Spanish, not me." Spanish? No one in California under the age of fifty referred to people of Latin descent as Spanish anymore. Maybe she was from New York, or the East, anyway? Her face changed suddenly and she put her hand to her mouth. She stood and ran for the bathrooms. In her haste, she chose the wrong door and disappeared inside. "You should have turned left," I called. She emerged, hand still over mouth, a shout of "Hey! Miss, ya got the wrong door!" followed her as she crossed the little hall and went through the door marked Women. Francine came over. "Should I go check on her?" she asked. "Would you?" I said. "She's upset and so hungry the food made her ill." Francine went into the bathroom after Kelly or Hope or Esperanza or whatever her name was. I sat there worrying about her and what I might have to do about the situation. A runaway? Probably. Picked up by a trucker who said or did something that scared her, so she ran. It all depended a great deal on how old she was but I wouldn't know that for sure unless she showed me some valid I.D. The fake stuff was all too common in the L.A. area. Logically, reasonably, I ought to call the juvenile authorities right now and just turn her over to them. The risks for me were high in this situation. But if I did that, finked her out, the next time she ran she wouldn't trust anyone. And kids who ran away often did it over and over. I needed to get her to agree to let me call someone. Besides, if I walked out on her now, I'd never know what her story really was. Francine came out. "She'll be okay. Washing her face." She smiled as she passed me. "Your daughter?" The question meant something to Francine as nonsensical as it seemed to me. "Just a hungry kid. Climbed in my car. I was stopped on the freeway." Francine and I just looked at each other for a moment. "Your burgers are up," she said finally and went to get them. I had started on my burger when Kelly came out of the bathroom. She paused there, looking shocked, pale and disturbed, as if something had been made clear to her that she found intolerable. The telephone next to the bathroom door seemed to inspire her. She dialed and spoke into the phone for a bit. I didn't see her use coins so she must have been making a collect call. No conversation followed and she hung up the phone, looking a bit teary. I waved at her and she moved slowly back toward our booth. "Not home?" I asked. She shook her head. "Who were you calling?" Casually, an unimportant question, if I alarmed her she would start lying again. "Family." Tears leaked down her cheeks. She ate more soup and sipped soda, going more slowly this time. I thought about it. I had to do something even if it meant turning her over to the police. That might turn out to be the best choice for me, if not for her. Even that presented a problem if she chose to make any allegations. I put the worries aside. She was a hungry kid and she needed someone to be friendly. "You called someone in L.A.?" I asked. "Your family?" She nodded. "I'm so hungry and when I eat I feel sick," she complained. "One bite at a time," I advised. "Take a sip of Coke, eat some of the bread on your sandwich." I watched her eat for a while. She turned down the offer of any fries but the food she did eat seemed to want to stay down. I ate all my burger and reflected on the waist of it all. Francine appeared. "Dessert?" I shook my head. "Can you box up the burger? Maybe she can eat it later." "Sure." She grinned at the girl Kelly looked grateful until Francine produced a brush and comb from some pocket. "Use these, hon. Your hair is a mess." We both looked at her until she took the stuff and went toward the bathrooms. She hesitated a moment then chose the women's room again. I grinned. "Doesn't have her glasses." Francine dropped the check and sighed. "You want me to call the cops for you before she gets out of there?" "No." I shook my head. "She's got folks in L.A. I'll take her there. Watch, she'll try to call them when she gets out of the bathroom, they didn't answer last time." I took a business card out of my wallet and handed it to her. My name, Walter S. Dalton, my company name, address, phone number, et cetera. She read it, looked at me and I could tell the moment she decided to trust me to do the right thing. Kelly came out while I contemplated what it might be like to be the father of a daughter her age. She looked even cuter with her hair brushed and combed out of her face, a soft dark cloud with lighter streaks framing the classic oval of her features. She went to the phone again. She tried to be quiet but I caught a lot of what she said. She asked for a collect call to "Margaret Kelly" then she said, "I know something about George," when the person came on the line. I didn't hear the rest. She was crying again when she joined me. "I'm ok," she murmured as she slid back into the booth. She busied herself with the soup for awhile. Finally, she looked up and regarded me carefully. "Are you married?" she asked. I shook my head. "Tried it, didn't work out." No need to explain. "Where do you live?" "Burbank." "Can I stay with you a few days? I mean...." She swallowed hard, her eyes wide, her lips trembling. I must have blinked but it felt like I just stared at her. "Folks turn you down on coming back?" "Something like that." A sad little answer. I hesitated to tell her no, she seemed likely to break into a million pieces. Cry at the very least. But how could I say yes? I changed tactics. "Who's George?" She wobbled as if the world had moved underneath her, then she took a deep breath to tell another lie. "Someone I used to know." She didn't ask me how I knew about George. "What happened to him?" "He's dead. I think." Not lying, the answer was too quick. This girl didn't lie that quickly, unless maybe she had been ready for the question. "You think? You don't know?" "He must be dead. Head on collision last night. I-5 south of Fresno." I'd actually heard about that accident on a traffic report, three fatalities and one of them a name that rang a bell now. "George Kelly?" I said. "Yes?" she answered. "The man who died was George Kelly, I heard it on the radio. Sports writer in L.A." "You didn't know him." She was telling not asking. "I read his column." She smiled. "Did you see the accident?" "Oh, yeah." The ghost of it passed across her face wiping away the smile. "From the truck?" "Uh, yes." She seemed to have no concept of what she looked or sounded like when she was lying. "That why you wanted the trucker to stop?" I asked casually. She nodded bleakly. Not lying but the truth was all knotted up here and tangled in the events of last evening. "I woke up screaming," she volunteered suddenly. "I was in an odd place, a camper-like thing that suddenly I realized was moving because I was thrown around. It was the sleeper on the truck...." "Then...?" I prompted. "He stopped the truck, yelling at me in English and Spanish to stop screaming. He thought it was just a nightmare." She shuddered. "You saw something terrible, then you dreamed about it?" "No. I was there. I saw the car coming at me in the wrong lane. It went around a truck, missed it, but it filled the windshield, bright headlights. I swerved but no time to get out of the way. It was over so fast it almost didn't hurt but ..." she ran down. "That was your dream?" She shook her head. "That was how George died." "And you dreamed that you were George," I asked, wonderingly. Her story had grabbed me in the imagination. It almost seemed I could hear the tortured rubber, the tearing metal, the shattering glass, details unmentioned in her brief description of the event. Quite a story for an evening so close to Halloween. I could almost feel the ghost of the dead man in the room with us. "Yes. I was George." Something about the way she said it. Bleakly, hopelessly. Chapter II I watched her struggle to eat the soup."Is that why you jumped when I said 'murder' earlier? You felt like George Kelly was murdered by the wrong way driver?" I asked when I felt sure she would not likely have a repeat trip to rid herself of the food. She began leaking tears slowly. She wiped two away with fingertips, then let the others travel along the tracks on her cheeks to drip off her slender jaw and into her plate. She shook her head but didn't speak. I felt like the criminal. But something about the story still bothered me. "Did you hear his name on the radio? No, wait you couldn't have, they didn't know who he was until this morning and by then you were hiding in a ditch...." "Nothing makes much sense to me about last night," she said. "But, hey! I'm young now! I've got problems, but George is dead!" Then she really turned loose with weeping, staggered to her feet and tried to head for the bathroom again. I moved ineffectually to help her but found myself standing outside the girl's bathroom feeling foolish and cruel. "What the hell did you say to her?" Francine asked at my elbow. "She saw a wreck on the highway," I said. The waitress wasted a meaningless glare on me and headed into the bathroom to try to comfort the runaway girl. Runaway, for that was surely what she was. Maybe she had left something out of her story or just made most of it up. Maybe she had been with the trucker long enough to hear the details of how George Kelly died or maybe I wasn't the first ride to pick her up today. But one thing I felt certain of, now. She had runaway from home. I wondered why; kids runaway for lots of reasons. I glanced at the phone. I wondered too, why had she called George Kelly's widow, if that was really who she had called. And why she had picked Kelly as a name to claim for her own. Francine burst out of the bathroom, moving fast. "You leave her alone!" she snapped at me, heading for behind the counter. "Francie!" One of the other waitresses wailed, "You got tables! Food up!" I certainly wasn't going into the women's bathroom after the girl who called herself Kelly. But what was I to do? Turn her over to the police seemed logical, underage runaway girl, I could be in serious trouble for even giving her a ride. No one trusted grown-ups around children anymore. Francine dealt with her duties, disappeared in the back momentarily and re-emerged carrying a cheap plastic handbag. "Girl lost all her stuff," she said as she disappeared back into the bathroom. I waited at the table where I had coffee. I didn't want to turn her over to the cops. I'd heard to many stories of what happened to kids caught in the gears. What I wanted to do was talk to her parents, find out what they were like, why had she run away? Would they take her back, did they deserve to get her back, would she go back? If they would even talk to me.... She came out of the bathroom, carrying the little black handbag, being led by a smiling Francine. Her face had been washed, certainly, and her hair combed again. But, she did look different and it took me a moment to realize that she wore make-up now. Lipstick in some pink frost shade, eye- color in green and maybe something else. She looked more grown-up and more like a little girl at the same time. I smiled at her and she dropped her eyes, blushing furiously. Francine interposed herself but turned to talk to -- Hope? Kelly? I guess I would keep calling her Kelly -- the girl. "Now you just keep that bag and those cosmetics, honey. You don't worry about it, Julie doesn't work here anymore and hasn't been back in months and it's just ordinary stuff. But don't it make you feel better to look pretty, to have stuff of your own?" Kelly may have nodded, the movement a little spasmodic but Francine seemed satisfied. She turned smiling to me. "You had better take her home if you can get her to tell you where." Francine boxed up the burger and provided us with cups of soda as well. I paid the bill, left a big tip and thanked Francine personally. "You were a big help," I told her. There should be more Francines in the world. Kelly stood around, touching her face in wonder occasionally. Once I noticed her touching her lips and examining the color on her fingertips. She and Francine exchanged an awkward hug just before we left. The rain was down to spits and spats but I held the umbrella above us on the way back to the car. She took the little package of food and followed me. I held the door for her and she waited for me to open the umbrella before venturing out into the rain and early fallen night. Kelly seemed even more unsure of herself as she slid into the seat and accepted the burger and sodas one more time. I closed the door and hurried to my side just as the wind came up and almost turned the poor umbrella inside out. I settled in, buckled up, cranked the engine and adjusted the heat. "Cold for October isn't it?" I said. A standard comment in Southern California anytime the temperature drops below sixty-five; it would be Halloween in two more days but no one around here expected it to be cold. She nodded absently at the conversational null. The burger box was on the seat, the soda in the cupholders but she held the small plastic purse in her lap. She opened it and examined the contents, discarding odd pieces of paper and useless items. I pulled to the end of the lot and paused, watching the traffic merging into the freeway. She gave the big trucks one nervous glance then looked at me, wide green eyes made wider and greener by her new makeup. "You look cute," I said. She blushed. "Francine insisted." "She was probably right; having makeup on almost always makes a girl feel better about herself." I was trying to work things around to ask her to tell me where she lived, her real name, her parents' names and addresses. Maybe she had run from one parent toward the other who didn't really want her showing up. Life could get very complicated for children in the nineties. She shook her head and mumbled something I didn't quite understand. I finally decided it was safe and pulled into the traffic lane to finish the drive to Burbank. I watched her in glances but she kept her face partly turned away. I could see her more as a reflection in the window than directly and she seemed to be working her way through a knotty problem. I regretted not having asked more about the phone calls in the restaurant. "Want to tell me more of your story?" I prompted. "What else is there to tell? You aren't going to believe any of the rest of it." "Maybe I don't believe half of what you've told me as it is. Maybe I really want to help. And maybe you just tell a good ghost story." "The most help you could be would be to let me sleep on your couch for a few days, while I get things figured out." That again, didn't she see what difficulties it would produce. "Figured out? Like what? Where you are going to go, who you're going to live with?" She tried to nod and shake her head at the same time. "Who I really am," she murmured. "Who are you -- really?" I took the bait. "I kinda wish I had that stuff I left in the truck, if I did leave stuff in the truck. I must have had something else with me, even if it was just a jacket." She looked at the pocketbook. "Or a purse. I wonder if I had a purse." She giggled inanely. "I probably did." Unselfconsciously, for the first time since I had met her, completely unselfconsciously, she examined her breasts. "I've got these," she said, hefting one of the little things through her t-shirt. "A purse would almost certainly go with them, wouldn't it?" I laughed, not sure exactly what she was driving at but she asked the question as if she really expected an answer. Suddenly blushing, she turned away from me. "I'm sorry," I said. She shrugged. "I'd better get used to it, I guess." She turned back with a wry smile, I felt glad that she didn't seem to be more upset. "You're going to laugh when I tell you the next part." "Okay, tell me." "I'm a boy," she said. I laughed. She grinned. "See? I told you, you would laugh." She blushed furiously but giggled herself. "Sure you are," I said. She blushed even brighter and the grin must have hurt her face. "Now, this I can prove!" I laughed again and she broke into outright laughter herself with a little edge of dangerous hysteria to it. I shook my head. "No, you are right, that I don't believe." Or did I? It suddenly occurred to me that this was a kid who had been totally unable to tell a convincing lie up to this point. I had always known when she lied; but this time, I didn't sense any lie, I just didn't believe her. How could I? That face, body, hair, posture even. This was a young woman, a girl about fifteen or sixteen, plus or minus two years perhaps. But surely not a boy. The tears were running down her face again and I realized suddenly that the laughter had changed into weeping. I slowed and began looking for an exit or at least a safe place to stop. "No, keep going," she said, with a hiccough in the middle of it. "Are you ok?" "I'll be fine, it just got away from me again." She wiped her face with tissue from my dispenser between the seats, then took a sip of her soda. "I--I guess my makeup must be a mess, huh?" This almost set her off again but she quashed the giggles with visible effort. "Francine gave you some, well, stuff? You want some light, there is a makeup mirror in the sunshade." She shook her head. "I wouldn't know how." I considered that reply. No way did it make sense, neither assuming she was a girl as I had done all along, nor taking her assertion of boyhood seriously. Any boy who looked like her would certainly know how to do makeup. She had pierced ears with tiny little plastic rose earrings and her eyebrows were plucked into a delicate arch. She flipped down the mirror and took a look at herself, reminding me for all the world of some guy checking to see if he needed a shave. I hadn't noticed this sort of behavior in her before. Or had I? The awkwardness I had spotted repeatedly now stood out in my memory as times she had moved like a man and not like a young girl. "Raccoon eyes," she said. "How do you get this stuff off?" I shook my head, did she really expect me to know? Using tissue dampened with water from the outside of the soda cups she removed as much of the makeup as she could. "Better?" she asked. I smiled and said nothing. The effort had reddened her face and made her look as if she had been crying for days. "It's terrible, isn't it?" "Why are you trying to convince me that you are a boy? It won't make a bit of difference about whether I let you sleep on my couch." "Hadn't even thought of that." She undid the seat buckle and moved to turn in the seat and loosen her jeans. "But I can prove it." "No!" I kept control of the car while wanting desperately to reach out and paddle her. She grinned, blushing her face even redder. "Believe me now?" I shook my head but she subsided in the seat and re-fastened the belt. "I'd better wait till we are stopped, your scaring me." I concentrated on driving awhile. "So you are a boy?" "Yes. Surprised me too. I mean I hadn't actually looked until the restaurant, gave me quite a shock." She grinned at her own nonsense. Maybe that was it, silliness didn't seem at all the same as lies. "It turns out I did go to the right restroom the first time." "I guess I really don't believe you. What do you mean, you hadn't actually looked? Ever?" "Well, the first time I saw this face was in the truck. And I thought I was having a nightmare, and...." I glanced at her. "The poor kid." "What poor kid?" Now she had me really confused. She gestured at herself. "The one who ended up in George Kelly's body. Just before the wrong-way driver hit." I felt the skin on my neck creep up into my hairline. "You think you are George Kelly?" She nodded. Now she looked more scared than I felt. "What the hell was the 'Pine Tar Homerun'?" I asked suddenly, desperately. "George Brett, Royals third baseman, got a home run called back for having too much pine tar on the bat. The ruling..." I interrupted, "Floats like a butterfly...." I stopped. "Stings like a bee." She said automatically, like almost anyone my age or older and almost no one younger than me. But she looked at me oddly, for a moment and stopped herself from adding something else. "Shit," I said. "That's not sports, you want OpEd." She grinned. I drove in silence a while. "George Kelly wrote several articles on that damn pine tar bat." "Yeah, I milked that one good." "You're his daughter?" "I was 67!" "Granddaughter? You read all his articles?" She sighed. "So now you believe me?" I asked a few more questions, she could quote Leo Durocher, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, and accurately. I remembered the quotes from an article George Kelly did in the Daily News about famous baseball misquotes. I didn't remember it as well as she did. I asked about football. Horse racing. Olympic medals. I asked questions I didn't know the answers to, she did. I pulled off the freeway at Colusa. I didn't want a coffee shop this time, I wanted a drink. Parked outside a little cafe, I took my hands off the wheel gratefully and turned to look at Kelly, George Kelly apparently. She bit her lip a little, much like any teenage girl might while parked in a dimly lit lot with a man more than twice her age. "So," I said and stopped. She nodded. "Just so." Neither of us said anything for awhile and the night grew around us, darkening with mystery and strangeness. In the distance I could see the glow of Magic Mountain, the amusement park. The other way lay the City of Angels. "And you are really a boy?" I finally asked. I may have boggled more over that idea than that she was really George Kelly. Whatever "really" might mean in this context of surreal revelation. "Uh. Yeah. Do I have to prove it?" She seemed a little reluctant now to strip down and show me. I shook my head. "How could you not know until the restaurant? I mean when you saw, uh -- didn't you check before?" "I dunno, I guess I just panicked when I saw the face and the," she glanced down, "tits, uh, these. I just assumed I was a girl and I didn't want to look. I mean, it was weird enough already, I really thought for awhile I was in a coma somewhere hallucinating." She shuddered and then giggled in embarrassment. The giggles faded into trembling and nervous looks out the side windows. I found it impossible to think of her as a boy, she looked so feminine even in jeans and the way her cookie-breasts showed through the t-shirt, the way her expressions seemed soft and sweet, the way her eyes revealed a woman's soul. Absently she chewed on a fingernail and I had to stop myself from saying "Stop that," like a parent. "Kelly! This is incredible, it can't be real." She quivered once then something seemed to break inside. "Tell me! I'm supposed to be dead! And, and I'm not!" The tears leaked out again, "I'm not, and if I'm not dead, do you see, it means, it means, this poor kid is dead instead." She began to truly weep. "I didn't want to die and somehow, somehow I did this, I killed her! Him, whoever! And, and now," she gestured at the body of the teenage androgyne she had become, "this is God punishing me for not leaving when it was my turn!" I gathered her to me and she released the seat belt to push herself against my chest, "Oh God! I am so sorry! So sorry! I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to." I cuddled and comforted her like I would have any child and I tried not to think of George Kelly, or of boys who dressed as girls but only of Kelly, and the heartbreak she felt at this minute. Chapter III "Do you believe in God?" I asked quietly to her soft, two-tone, nearly straight hair. "Until last night, no, not really. I dunno," she sighed and softened against me, tension flowing away. "I guess I believed in something, maybe Purpose instead of God. Not what most people mean when they say God." "Yes. Well, if you believe that God did this to you, then you would have to believe there was some purpose to it. Right?" "Uh," she said. Noncommittal, but she was listening. I stayed quiet a moment, thinking it through myself. Finally, she asked, "What kind of purpose? What purpose could there be for such a crazy thing?" "I'm not sure, I guess it is a cliche that we might not understand God's reasons for doing something." Suddenly she seemed to realize what she was doing, where she was, who was cuddling her and she pushed herself away, quickly if not quite violently. "Um, I'm ok now." "Sure." I undid my own seatbelt where the buckle had been digging into me. She looked at the cafe. "I'm not hungry." She took a sip of one of the sodas. "You wanna go in?" "There is a phone in there." I didn't want a drink anymore. "Who would I call? I don't know who to call?" She looked like she might tear up again. "I already called my wife." Her wife, oh the mind jibbered at that one. "I don't want to put her through anything like this, she couldn't take it. She's been sick. And now she thinks I'm dead and how would the truth be any better?" I couldn't think of any answer to that. "I called twice, the first time, she wouldn't accept, I said the call was from George. The second time I said it was from someone who knew something about George," she stopped. "You have to give a name," I said. "The operator's won't put through a call without a name." She nodded, "I said 'Hope'. I said my name was Hope. It might even be true, that truck driver called me Esperanza." She paused again and a glimmer of something occurred to me. She went on, "I said, 'Margaret, you don't know me and I never met your husband, but he gave me a message to give you. George loved you very much. Very, very much." Maybe she had no tears left for her eyes were dry, but her voice cracked and broke up on the words. "Margaret said thank you and hung up. I added the bit about never having met myself cause I didn't want her to think I might be my own mistress calling." She widened the smile into a grin and hiccoughed a giggle. "Did you call her?" "Who?" She wiped at her eyes with the soggy Kleenex she had used before. "Your mistress." She broke up into real laughing then and I smiled and grinned and chuckled. "What the hell is your name?" she asked after she stopped laughing. I told her and added, "Don't swear; little girls, even ones who might be little boys shouldn't swear, give people the wrong idea." She thought about that and nodded. "Yeah, I remember when I heard a girl swear I always thought, 'Well, she's easy.' Even if I knew it was wrong. Sorry. Is it Walt or Wally?" "Actually, I prefer Walter but to you it's Mr. Dalton. You're not old enough to call me Walt and no one is old enough to call me Wally." She made a face at me, realized what she had done and grinned. "Guess I had better get used to being a kid again, huh?" "You're not doing too badly at it. Um, know anything about how memory works?" "Hah. I've had my share of senior moments. Oh, memory is in the brain isn't it?" "Or is it?" I asked. Computer people, like myself, know a surprising amount about how memory works, human as well as computer. "Um? Sh-shoot! I dunno? Maybe the brain is just wiring to access the memory, personality whatever?" She shrugged. "Maybe. And maybe memory is two things, physical and call it metaphysical, psychic, something. You think you are George Kelly but obviously that is not George Kelly's body." I grinned. "Tell me! Okay, so I'm not really George Kelly, I just think I am? But I have George Kelly's memories." "Do you? Or do you only have some of them, don't try to think of them, how could you possibly know if you had them all?" "Maybe I'm not as bright as I was, I don't see what you are getting at?" "Call her Hope. You have Hope's body, you must have Hope's brain, you might have some of Hope's memories in there too." She thought about it. I thought about it. "Maybe thinking about it is the wrong thing to do?" she said finally. "Maybe." "Maybe when I'm thinking about it I'm overwriting Hope's memories with George's." "Um, could be." "But maybe if I don't, I'll forget about being George, and then I won't know who I am." She sniffled, reflexively. "I don'wanna to forget about George but if there's anything of Hope left, well, don't I owe it to her to try to keep her alive?" "Um, that sounds, well...." I trailed off. Now she was saying 'her' about herself. I'm a computer consultant not one of these storefront philosophers. Besides, being near her and knowing what I knew about her was having an effect on me that I could not fathom completely. I distracted us both. "I had another thought, about the truck." "Hm? The truck I was in?" "Right. George was a reporter, he found out stuff, and if he didn't know how he knew people that did know how...." She blinked. "We could find the truck, get your stuff back and maybe find out who you are." Now she really looked scared. We decided to use the phone at my place in Burbank. The drive was quiet, perhaps she was considering strategies. I know I was. Strategies for dealing with whatever truths we discovered. She seemed amused at my clumsy attempt to sneak her into my apartment but no one saw us. "Relax, Walter. I'm not going to press charges." She giggled. "Don't joke. You are a minor, probably under 18 and I could get in serious trouble doing this. And I wasn't kidding about calling me Mr. Dalton, at least, where anyone can hear us." "How about if I call you Uncle Walt?" she suggested slyly. "In Burbank? Then you'll be a ghost talking to a ghost." Walt Disney, dead for a quarter century, is still a legend in the city and locally known as Uncle Walt. I unlocked my door and stepped in, motioning her to follow quickly. She didn't. She dawdled like any teen-ager resisting the authority of an adult. "I am a ghost, aren't I? A ghost of sorts at any rate." "Yeah, and we are going to try to find out who you are haunting. Now get in here!" Startled at the tone in my voice, she scooted inside and suppressed a smile. "Walter, I can't quite figure it out. Just exactly how is it you're treating me? I'm almost old enough to be your father, y'know." "Almost? I'm 44. And you've got that wrong, I am old enough to be your father." She smirked. "No one would believe it either way. We don't look anything alike." That was the first time she had referred to the obvious differences in our appearance besides that she looked female, that is. "So if I am not your father, and people see us together, then...." She bit her lip. "Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought of that. But, Walter, this is California, Burbank for Chr-crying-out-loud. Not some little town in the South." I shook my head, she didn't really understand it but why should she? I let it go and I could see that she decided not to push it. I didn't want to explain to her that seeing us together people would almost automatically assume something about one of us or the other or both. I wished that neither of us would ever bring it up again. "Now, turn on reporter mode," I said. "How are we going to find that truck? Or failing that, find out who you are?" She shook her head and plopped onto the couch like any teenager doing heavy thinking "It's gonna be tough using any of my contacts. One, I'm dead, and two no one is going to talk to a kid." "You remember anything about the truck? A name, a brand name, can you describe it?" She tried. "Pabst, Pabst Beer was the emblem on the side of the trailer. But the door of the cab had some other name on it...." "Probably the tractor belonged to the trucker. But Pabst is good, that's an imported beer, well from Milwaukee, not made locally, and there can't be that many places that distribute it." She had a strange look on her face. "What is it?" I asked. "The driver, his name, his name was --Ernesto?" "How do you know that?" "I dunno. I just, like, remembered it." I studied her face. She wasn't making this up and the existence of the memory clearly disturbed her. I had noticed something else about her since we had the long talk in the parking lot but I didn't want to bring it up right now. Her manner of speaking had changed, less precise, more teenager-ish. I didn't want to know if she was doing it deliberately, not yet. "That may help." "Where's your phone book?" she asked. I passed it over. "We gotta look up the Pabst distributors in the area. I dunno if we can call them tonight. Sh-shoot, it might be Monday before anyone would answer the phone." She held the book very close to her face and even so squinted as she tried to find the right part of the listings. "Can we get more light in here, huh?" I flicked on more lights but took the book from her hands when I saw her continuing to squint. "Your eyes that bad?" I asked. She grinned, shakily. "How would I know? Maybe it's just an effect of being new in the body and of having been farsighted for thirty years. I can see you fine enough, but little stuff, like printing, y'know, just kinda blurs out or breaks up or something." She hadn't quite told the truth and something new bothered her. She bit a nail and stared at it while I made up my mind not to press this issue at this time. I found the listing of the Pabst distributorship and noted that their address was in Los Angeles, not too far from downtown. I tried the number but got a recording about business hours. At this hour of the evening, it wouldn't be that long of a drive. "Whatcha thinkin'?" she asked around another bitten-off nail. "Don't do that," I said. "Do what?" "Bite your nails. It is really unbecoming." She blushed but put her hands together in her lap for a moment before changing position and pulling her legs under her. "Get your feet off my couch, you've got mud on your shoes," I said without really thinking about it. "Yes, sir." She straightened up, put her feet back on the floor and waved her hands around vaguely. "What -- what were we doing?" Then she giggled. "I called you 'sir'." "Maybe you had better practice it." she seemed to decide not to giggle again. "Kelly, are you aware of what you've been doing for the last few minutes? Maybe longer?" "I'm," she started then began again, "I've been trying to remember things, not George Kelly things, Esperanza things. Y'know?" I nodded. "'S'funny. I can almost know something and then it sorta slips away? Huh? I think Hope may be my last name, her last name, his last name...." She trailed off and stared at the toes of her sneaks. "Why would a kid do this? Runaway...." "You sure it was a Pabst truck?" I asked. "Uh-huh. I saw the emblem, the blue ribbon. I worked in Milwaukee, for the -- the ball team. Publicity." She didn't name the team, it was probably the Braves when they were there. "I guess the obvious, huh?" "The obvious?" "Reason for running away." "Did you see the name Pabst on the truck?" "Uh, no? I dunno?" "Kelly?" "Um?" I asked her bluntly. "Can you not read now? Is that it? I saw the trouble you had with the phone book. But you don't act that blind otherwise." She shook her head. "I can read, I -- just maybe not that well?" She sniffled. "Great, I'm a queer and a retard. I couldn't use the phone book 'cause the letters kept breaking up into little pieces. Maybe I'm dyslexic." I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "Did the trouble with reading start when you started trying to remember? Remember things about Hope's life?" She shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe." I stood up and fetched her one of my light jackets. "Let's go, we're going to drive over to the Pabst distributors and see if we can find that trucker." Down in the car, Kelly asked. "Can I turn on the radio?" I nodded, the rain wasn't falling here but we might get a few sprinkles, I figured she would put it on a news station. Somehow she found Shania Twain singing "Man, I Feel Like a Woman!". She grinned at me and I smiled. After that song she found another station that didn't play too much hip-hop. "Cool! Backstreet Boys!" she said. I didn't feel sure whose tastes ran parallel, mine and George Kelly's or mine and Kelly/Hope's. But we listened to the groove and felt pretty good about sharing it. I wasn't familiar with the band but they had a nice sound. The Pabst distributor yard was open, trucks loading and we stopped to talk with the yard supervisor. "You sure it was a Pabst truck? We don't run that far north from this yard, and our long distance stuff comes in by train." I could see it in Kelly's face, she was no longer sure of the identity of the truck. We trudged back to the car and sat listening to TLC. I wondered again if I was somehow being had. Maybe just had for an evening's company and a place to sleep. Not all cons are for a big score and the little con is a fact of urban life. But how could she have faked all the knowledge of sports and things that happened before she was born, before I was born in some cases. Especially if she couldn't read. And now that idea started making me suspicious again. I didn't want to disbelieve her story but the bit with the beer truck upset my willing suspension of distrust. "I don't know how long it's been since I listened to Top Forty," she said. I sighed and decided to play along a little more. "Me either. I had the impression music went into the toilet in the early nineties." "Don't like rap or hip-hop?" I shook my head. "Don't say anything," I warned. "S'alright. I don't care much for some of the new stuff either. What am I saying?" She laughed. I didn't comment. "Remember Alan Freed?" she asked after a bit. "Uh, no?" Actually, I did, sort of. I had done some research on the roots of modern music for a college paper. "Neither do I, not so much as I think I should anyway. Early rock-n-roll deejay, some say he coined the name rock-n-roll and that is all I remember about him. Seems a shame, like it might have been important to me once." She bit her lip. She was weirding on me again. "I'm positive that truck had a blue ribbon on it," she said with a little sideways look at me. "Honest! Y'know it's just like so clear in my, waddayacall it, in my mind's eye." While she listened to Ricky Martin and Alanis Morrisette I walked back to the dispatcher's shack and talked to the man there. "Blue Ribbon Freight," he said after a bit of thought and found the address for me in his phone book. "You're shitting me!" she said when I got back to the car to tell her. "Kelly!" I said. "Sorry, I meant, no kidding!" She grinned then burst into happy giggles. Her shoulders and hands moved to the music in an unconscious attempt to dance while sitting down. "Ya think?" "Maybe." And maybe you are beginning to lose it, George Kelly. Or, maybe you have been having me on all this time, girl. No use wondering what we would find at Blue Ribbon Freight, we would be there soon enough. The radio made it unnecessary to talk while we drove the short miles to the other side of downtown. Kelly jumped from the car almost before it stopped rolling. She sprinted across the blacktop to where a grey-and-violet tractor sat, a light in a tiny window indicating that someone was inside the sleeper cab. She stopped halfway there to turn and wave back at me, shouting, "It's him! Ernesto! He picked me up outside Martinez!" By the time I got there she had beat on the door and attracted the attention of the person or persons inside. A sleepy-eyed man in gray slacks and one of those string type t-shirts looked at her from the cab door. "Esperanza?" I heard him ask. She laughed. "You called me that! Yeah, it's me." He smiled, "You left your stuff. You were having a bad trip maybe. I told you no drugs in my truck." He shook his finger at her but he still smiled. When he saw me, his face changed. "Um, this is my friend, Walter. Ernest, Walter, Walter, Ernesto." Kelly said. I tried to look innocuous and smiled at him. I didn't want him to think badly of me. "I wait for you so long I get docked for being late," he scolded her after deciding that he didn't want to know anything further about our relationship. "Who is it, Ernie? You gotta draft coming in that cab," a female voice from inside the tractor complained. "I get you stuff," said Ernesto and disappeared into the cab, closing the door. "Lot lizard," said Kelly. "What?" "Trucker's whore," she explained tersely, "though I suppose I should be careful what I call anyone else, who knows what I've been doing since I ran away." I pondered the way she had used pronouns in that statement. It didn't actually make me dizzy but the effect was similar. Ernesto reappeared with a burgundy backpack and a denim jacket. "You take care of youself, Hopey," he said. Then he added in Spanish, as if that made the caution doubly strong, "Cuidado, Esperanza." He smiled at her. "My stuff," Kelly/Hope/Esperanza sniffed. "Thank you, Ernesto." She clutched the bag to her with tears in her eyes. "Adios," he said and closed the cab door, just as his companion for the evening began complaining again about the draft. We walked back to my car in silence. She slipped the coat on and felt in the pockets before producing some black-rimmed glasses. She put them on and grinned, "Hey! I can see! Dang, these eyes are worse than I thought!" The glasses changed her face considerably, for one thing they were obviously boy's glasses and for two others they were both cheap and thick- lensed. The sort of glasses someone on a budget or depending on charity ends up with. She looked back toward the tractor cab and grinned. "I damn near kissed him." Chapter IV I laughed, a snort really, then we were both chuckling as we got into my car and sat looking at each other. The glasses failed to make her look like a boy, at least to my mind. She blushed and I realized that I might have been staring at her. "You are better looking than I thought," she teased. I snorted again. "Any ID there, something to tell us what your name really is?" She reached into the backpack, produced a small black purse that seemed to embarrass her further. Inside the purse she found a pocketbook and in that a student I.D. for "Terrence Harper Hope." She read the name out loud. Then she said, "My folks called me Terry." "You remember that now?" I asked. I looked at the picture, a serious- looking, slightly younger version of the face Kelly wore now. At an age when long, tousled hair is all that is needed to achieve androgyny. The little box for sex had an 'M' in it. She nodded. "I remember a little bit." She read more from the I.D. "This is for Tustin Unified High School, that's down in Orange County." The last said a little wonderingly. She might just as well have come from Canada or New York City. "It says I'm a 10th grader but it's two years old. And my birthday was... Sonovagun, I got the same birthday, I'm just, just forty-nine years younger!" Tears leaked out again and her glasses seemed to fog up, she pulled them off and wiped her face. "Terry?" I said quietly. Every time a real chance for confirmation of her story came up, that part checked out. The picture on the I.D. did look like her, but ... couldn't it have been of a brother? She bit her lip and smiled at me. "Keep calling me Kelly, willya? Probably no one else in this life ever will again." I couldn't bear to think of hurting her by saying anything about my doubts so I just nodded. Still playing along, still feeling vaguely guilty about doing so, I said, "Kelly, what do you want to do? I have computers at home, if your folks still live in Tustin or Orange County, I may be able to find their address and phone number on the internet." I might as well have sandbagged her. She slumped in the seat and trembled. The glasses fell from her hand and landed in the floor boards. Neither of us made a move to retrieve them immediately. "I guess it isn't fair to them, they don't know where I am, where Terry is. Huh?" "No, but that is for you to decide, from the I.D. it looks like you really are eighteen, by about three months." I smiled. "So you are an adult, and I really can't presume to tell you what you have to do." Was she? I wanted to believe that at least. "Let's go back to your place, huh?" she said. Retrieving the boyish glasses from the floor, she replaced them in her coat pocket. Perhaps not wearing them had become a habit of the body. Perhaps they weren't really hers and just a pair that she had found that fixed her eyes well enough. Driving back, I surprised myself by discovering that I was happy. And that I did believe her, the whole thing, I believed it all once more as I had done in the rainy parking lot when she had blurted out the story. I tried to figure out why believing her made me happy. I knew I felt happy for her, she knew now what her name was, she had an identity and that was good. But it took most of the drive back before I realized that part of my happiness was based on the fact that she was eighteen, of a legal age. Legal age for what, I didn't want to think about too much. She by turns played with the radio and stared out the windows and poked idly around in the backpack. Once she produced a white plastic pill bottle, the labels both in English and Spanish. She looked at the bottle, felt idly of one of her breasts, and replaced it in the backpack without opening it or getting out her glasses to read the label. "You're not dyslexic, at least," I said at one point. She shook her head, "No, just half blind." She grinned. "And those are the awfullest glasses I have ever seen! Was I in some prison where I got them?" Neither of us tried to answer that, some sort of juvenile lock-up or foster care did seem likely if she were, if Terry had been, an incorrigible runaway. Back at the apartment, Kelly asked if she could bathe and maybe do some laundry. "Sure, I've got my own washer and dryer on the patio outside the kitchen. I'll noodle around on the net and see what I can find." "Find? About Terry Hope?" Catching me completely by surprise, Kelly pulled the t-shirt she had been wearing off over her head. Her adolescent breasts looked as startled as I felt, the little nipples popping out. "Sorry," she muttered as she caught me staring and turning her back she hurried into the bathroom, taking her backpack along. "Sorry, oh hell, sorry, sorry!" But I heard her giggling as the bathroom door closed. I shook my head and reminded my libido, "She's a boy." Part of me was unconvinced, or possibly unconcerned. A moment of considering the tax programs I had once worked on seemed to help deflate things. I went into my computer office, the second bedroom of the apartment, and just to give her a little privacy in case she wanted to troop through the house naked while her laundry was being done, I shut the door. I had to move some stuff, I don't think the door had been closed since I put the computers in there. I didn't want to think about her maybe wandering through the house nude but of course I did. I wondered if she shaved her legs? Probably, I hadn't seen any armpit hair in my brief glimpse. Of course, I hadn't been looking for any. I couldn't see myself blush, but I could feel the heat on my face. Just what was I thinking about her, about Terrence "Kelly Esperanza" Hope? "She's a boy," I reminded myself again. Besides being a boy, Kelly was the ghost of a man who had been working for the Milwaukee Braves back about the time I was busy being born. That had to make some kind of difference. And once again it hit me, if I believed her. I had been a rationalist all my life, someone who refused to commit to a belief in the unprovable.... But now, well, when confronted with the inexplicable what does one do? I decided to surf the internet. I'd had enough tortured indecision tonight, find a technical problem and jump in with both feet. I'd dealt with a lot of life's fuzzy questions that way, little one and big ones. With computers, it comes down to on and off, yes and no, the simplest form of black and white. My distraction techniques weren't working too well and I had barely got started when she knocked softly on the door. I had heard her barefeet slapping in the hallway outside my office just a moment before the knock. "You had a few things in the hamper, I'm gonna wash those too. 'Kay? I don't really have enough to make a full load, just my stuff." "Don't wash the whites with the..." "Please!" she interrupted me. "Like I've never done laundry before?" I pictured her smiling and rolling her eyes on the other side of the door. "Laundry stuff in the cupboard above the machines." I said. "Where else would it be? Duh!" She laughed and soon I heard the kitchen sliding glass door open and close. I grinned at the computer screen. If she wanted to practice domesticity, fine by me, I hate doing laundry. And housework in general, for that matter. If I didn't love living in an orderly place more, my apartment would look like a typical guys' dorm room in a sitcom. I heard her running feet going back down the hall and into the bathroom. I wondered if she had worn anything onto the back patio. I hoped so, but with the overhanging balconies of the 2nd floor apartments and the six foot redwood fences, she might have risked it. She seemed the sort to take such risks. I wondered if George Kelly had been driving too fast the night he was killed. I checked the Daily News files on the web and read George's obituary. Services would be Sunday, I noted. Would Kelly want to go? Sunday would be Halloween, too weird to even think about. I felt guilty again when I realized that I was scanning the obit for facts I could use to check Kelly's story. The birthday listed was the same as the one on the student I.D. The name of the wife was Margaret just as Kelly Hope had said. I noted too that George was survived by two daughters, Constance and Grace, no last names or ages given. Might one of them be the mother of Terrence Hope, or of my houseguest if she was really a she and not the boy in the picture. I stared at the picture of George Kelly the one that had run above his column for the last several years. I tried to catch a glimpse of my Kelly in the face, a hint of resemblance. Was there something around the eyes? I finally saved the obit to a file and went to the white pages listings, unsure of any conclusions so far. What the heck was I doing, thinking of her as "my Kelly?" I heard the shower running. One nice thing about living in a big apartment building is there is almost always hot water enough for both showers and laundry if you don't try to do both at 7 a.m. I tried not to picture her soapy young body in the shower. I had been on the internet, I had seen photos of those people called she-males. But the mind's-eye picture I had of Kelly did not include such a jarring detail as a superfluous cock-and-balls. In my mind she was all woman, young and virginal, a newly minted girl. I found six families named Hope living in Tustin, six with listed telephone numbers anyway. And several dozen more in the towns around Tustin; people might have moved in more than two years. I pondered the problem of locating Terry's parents as a means to distract myself from Kelly's presence in my shower. Runaways are usually reported to the police, perhaps the police would have a record of who Terry's parents were. I couldn't see them just handing it out to someone who called though, not without getting more involved with finding out who I was and what I knew about Terry/Kelly. She spent a long time in the bathroom and I spent a long time pondering her problems. I even looked up what I could find on laws regarding runaways. Some of it was good news, some bad. If she had ever been in juvenile court she might be technically still under court supervision until she was twenty-five. Screwy law, that one. But she was eighteen, now, and an adult for most purposes under the law. Don't think about that too hard. She was certainly old enough to decide if she wanted anything to do with parents who evidently had been unable to deal her as she was. Let alone who she had become now that she was haunted by the ghost of George Kelly. I thought about funerals held on Halloween. I'd come back to that again and the goosebumps of the fear of the unknown had a little war with the shivers of concern I felt for the girl who had stolen a ride. I heard her moving in the kitchen, and then the glass door being opened and I decided that she must be loading the dryer. I wondered what she had found to wear, something of her own or something of mine. I tried not to picture what she would look like with one of my size-17 long-sleeve white shirts draped on her slender body falling almost long enough to be a dress. If a transvestite wears men's clothes is it criss-cross-dressing? Just for the heck of it I looked up court cases regarding ghosts and claims of life-after-death, reincarnation and the like. There was too damn much of it to be believed, so to speak. She knocked softy again, "I made coffee. Do you want it in there or out here?" I hate drinking coffee at the computer, I always drink too much, don't enjoy it and end up with acid stomach. And then there are always spills. But I probably drink at least a pot a day sitting right where I was sitting just then. "Bring it on in." I tried not to anticipate how she might be dressed. The door opened and she came in, plastic coffee butler dangling from one hand and two thick ceramic mugs from the other. She wore one of my robes, the orange one my sister Beth had bought me for Christmas nearly two years ago. Beth lives in Florida and hasn't seen me in years and thinks of me still as her teen-age brother, I guess. She also thinks of me as someone who would wear orange, apparently. On Kelly it looked good. The robe, much too tight for me in the shoulders and tending to blare open at the waist, hung loosely from Kelly's narrower frame and nearly went twice around her slender middle. The color contrasted with the green towel she had wrapped turbanwise around her hair and somehow this made her eyes appear more green and her skin glow with clean pink health. Her legs flashed beneath the, on her, mid-calf hem. Long and smooth and needing a bit of a tan. She grinned when she realized I was taking it all in. "Like the package?" she asked as she sat the cups down and opened the butler. I probably blushed and felt an enormous need to clear my throat and sound really adult and masculine. "What do you take in your coffee?" she asked innocently. "Nothing, just black. Sugar and cream make you fat and sweeteners just taste bad." "I have found it so." She poured two cups and I caught myself watching the robe where it lapped over on her chest. No cleavage there, not really but the young skin of her neck working over the angles of the clavicle were ... lovely. "You've got good taste in coffee, Chock-Full-O-Nuts." She took her cup, smelled the aroma and smiled. "Did you put on your glasses to be sure?" She stuck out the tip of her tongue at me. Was she doing these things deliberately? Damn. "C'mon, nothing else comes in that black and yellow can." I took a sip. It was good. Funny how some people can make bad coffee even with an automatic pot. "Mmm. Blue Ribbon Coffee," I murmured. She giggled at my gibe, sipped, made a face and then tried not to co