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Karen's Romance Part Four ? by: Norman O. Johnson This Is Not a Courtroom Drama ? I stood before my full-length mirror for a last look at my ensemble: a navy skirt and jacket with white blouse, very conservative, with stockings and low-heel black pumps. In the cold damp weather we were having then, stockings would keep my legs very warm under a skirt. "So, how do I look?" "Like a very reformed reform school girl," came my mother's voice from where she was standing in the doorway. "I'm so glad you could come up to Raleigh for the trial, Mom." "I'm offering you both my professional and personal support," said my mother. "Your father and I have just about wound up our affairs in Charlotte. We'll be doing some house-hunting here. He's looking forward to his new job at NC State. He'll be an Associate Professor now." "I've enjoyed living with George and Shelly, but it'll feel more normal living with my actual parents." "To change the subject completely," Mom said, "I'd like to meet your friend Reggie. He is Jewish, isn't he?" "Duh, Mom!" She was trying to get me to think about something more pleasant than telling a jury what Principal Martindale had done to me, which was nice. "Well, these days you can't tell sometimes, in between the Jews for Jesus and the people we've lost to cults." "He's a great guy, and I just know you and Dad are going to like him. But seriously, Mom, as a lawyer, do you think I look like a credible witness?" "The main thing is to TALK like a credible witness, but looking respectable can't hurt, especially since the defense is going to portray the witnesses for the prosecution as a bunch of ghetto crack whores and redneck white trash sluts." "And sex changing perverts," I said, snickering. I glanced at my watch with its very feminine gold wristband. It was a premature Hannukah present from my brother Steve. "Ten after eight. Mom, we better get downtown." We went downstairs, got out raincoats and umbrellas, and went out to Mom's car. It was a rainy November day. The streets were wet, and though there was nothing coming down at the moment, the sky was still overcast and gray. We battled morning rush-hour traffic, but got to the courthouse a few minutes before nine. I counted three mobile TV news units parked nearby. One was for Court TV. The trial had earned international notoriety as the 'North Carolina Female Rapist Case'. We had the good luck to find a parking place on the street only about two blocks away, replacing another car that was just pulling out. "We won't be using the Plaza entrance," Mom explained as we got out of the car. "You'll be more likely to run a gauntlet of news vultures there." As we approached the Salisbury Street entrance to the courthouse, we saw a newscaster from Channel 5, the local CBS affiliate, speaking into a camera. Mom leaned close to me. "Get on my other side, away from the curb," she said in a low voice. "I'll run interference for you as we pass him." So that's what we did. Mom and I opened our umbrellas towards the camera to shield our faces as we passed. I could hear part of what the reporter, a boyishly handsome blond man, was saying. "---Most damaging testimony will probably come tomorrow, when a former security officer at the school is scheduled to testify. Her name is Margaret Bowman. She will confess to assisting Helen Martindale and the now-deceased security chief of the school, Rachel Hunsucker." The pit of my stomach tightened at the mention of the name Rachel Hunsucker. Now deceased? That's putting it mildly. Rachel Hunsucker died from eating a poisoned dessert at dinner one night when I was at the school. The case was still unsolved, although several girls at the school, including me, had to take lie detector tests. I had my suspicions about who did it, and in general I oppose individuals taking the law into their own hands, but considering what Chief Hunsucker did to us, deep in my heart I hope the poisoners are never found. I knew the news media vultures would be waiting for us just outside the courtroom, and sometimes inside, as so often happens in highly publicized trials. But the judge had decided to bar TV from the courtroom, because some of the witnesses were still juvenile offenders. We entered the courthouse, went through the metal detectors, and got on an elevator full of lawyers. You could tell they were lawyers from the kind of suits they wore and the kind of briefcases they carried. One of them gave Mom a funny look. She looked like what she was, a lawyer without a briefcase. We went up to the eleventh floor, got off the elevator, and found a bailiff to escort us to the witness room. On our way there, we passed a bunch of news people with microphones and videocameras. I overheard one saying, "Where's the sex-change girl? I heard a sex-change girl was gonna testify. She'd make a terrific sidebar story." I thought to myself, right here, you asshole, but I'm not gonna tell you that. I remembered that a staffer of the Jerry Springer show had phone Mom's cell phone the day I got out of Ida-Watts, asking if I wanted to be on the show. Some people in tabloid and trash-TV circles certainly had my name, but apparently not everybody in that particular swamp knew my name or what I looked like. I thanked the Lord for that! I was finished with being Kevin. He wasn't the real me. His whole life was a lie. I preferred the world not to know. But I could never forget that someday soon I would have to tell Reggie. There were four people in the witness room. I recognized Mrs. Rothstein, Darla's mother, who was sitting in a chair intently watching her daughter testifying over the closed-circuit TV. The second was a young black man with his hair in cornrows. I'd never seen him before, but he looked familiar. The third was a young Asian man of about twenty-five or so, who I knew to be Alexis' older brother. Evidently he was the family member the Weis had delegated to look after their daughter during the trial. The fourth one was a petite, thin young Asian woman with shining shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, and when she saw me, a smile that shone even brighter. My good friend Alexis Wei. "Hi, Keyboard!" I called out, using her old reform school gang name. Keyboard got out of her chair and came across the room almost at a run. I could see the joy of reunion in her large black eyes. We hugged like long-lost sisters. I introduced my Mom to my old friend. "Your daughter is a very special girl, Ms. Lauterbach," Alexis deadpanned. "You're telling me?" Mom quipped. "Now, Keyboard, introduce us to the new Angel," I said, glancing at the young black guy. Alexis laughed, as the young man named Angel jumped out of his chair. "Okay. Karen and Mrs. Lauterbach, this is Angel. Angel, this is Karen and her Mom." He was about an inch taller than the female version, but he had her face, except the eyebrows were thicker, there was no makeup, some stubble was visible on his upper lip, and there was an Adam's apple lower down. "Oh, no," I said, laughing. "This is too weird. A handsome dude like you is an alumnus---" I laughed some more. "Alumna, I mean, of a girls' reform school." He laughed back. He had Angel's old familiar smile, and his large brown eyes twinkled like hers used to. He said, "We control---this end---of the Second Floor." That was the way Angel used to talk, two or three words at a time, when she had an important point to make. His voice, high for a male, was nearly the same as hers. "Young man," said my mother, politely shaking Angel's hand, "I hope you're comfortable with the decision you've made." "Do I look uncomfortable?" Angel replied. "I've known God made a mistake with me every since I was a little, uh, girl. But it wasn't until I met Karen that I decided to do this. I figured if Kevin could become Karen without going nuts, then I could do this." "Unbelievable," I said, shaking my head. I stepped up to him. He had the lithe, trim physique of a basketball player. I patted his flat, firm stomach. "What fine workmanship. Those Mexicans are geniuses." "It's kind of scary, actually," my mother put in. "Criminals on the lam are already using this to get new identities, not to mention spies, terrorists and anyone trying to perpetrate fraud." She looked apologetically at Angel. "I'm not judging you, Angel. I respect your decision, but as an attorney I can see all sorts of legal implications for this." Alexis' brother looked up at us, acknowledged our existence with a brief nod, and went back to watching the trial on the closed circuit TV. "Angel, you're a hunk," I said, and laughed some more. Right after my court-ordered sex change, I had had every expectation of being a Lesbian, if I had a sex life at all. Yet here I was patting a handsome young man's abs, just like any raging straight girl. Alexis stepped up beside Angel and entwined one of her arms around his. She eyed him lovingly. "Of course he's a hunk," she said. "I have good taste in men." At this point, I noticed a familiar voice in the background. It was Darla, on the TV monitor, giving testimony. "My name is still Angel, but now it's short for Angelo DiCarlo," he explained. "Like Karen said, BioConcentrators are a big industry in Mexico. Any kind of body you want, no questions asked, as long as you got those Yankee dollars." He grinned knowingly. "I had some cash stashed from when I was working the streets of Charlotte, selling something I don't have any more." Meanwhile, Mrs. Rothstein had gotten up from her seat and come over to greet us. She looked very much like her daughter, but heavier and with shorter hair. "Hi, Mrs. Rothstein," I said. "I'm Darla's friend Karen." We shook hands. "We met when you came to pick up Darla at the end of her, um, sentence." "Hello, Karen, nice to see you again." I introduced my Mom to Mrs. Rothstein. "I understand you're also an attorney," said Darla's mother. "Yes, but I'm trying to get out of litigation," Mom replied. "I'm moving to move into intellectual property. That's where the new ground is being broken." "Let's all sit down and watch the trial, shall we?" said Mrs. Rothstein. We moved towards the sofas. Alexis sat down next to her brother. Angel sat on Alexis' other side. I sat on Angel's other side. That took up the best sofa. Mom and Mrs. Rothstein sat on the other one. "My Darla's simply a splendid witness," Mrs. Rothstein bragged. "Darla's getting near the thing she and I were both in," Alexis observed. I saw Darla on the screen, seated in the witness' box. "Later that same night," she was saying, "Correctional Officer Bowman shows up at my cell in solitary and orders me to come with her." "Did she give you any idea why you were being taken out of your cell in the middle of the night?" asked the prosecutor. The prosecutor, an Assistant District Attorney, was a short stocky woman, not young, with short pepper-and-salt hair. "No, ma'am," said Darla. "Please continue, Miss Rothstein," said the prosecutor. "She escorted me down the hall to another room in the basement. We met Chief Hunsucker and another, um, student at the door of the room." "Did you recognize the other student?" "Yes, ma'am. She was Alexis Wei. I recognized her, but I didn't know her name until some time later. So then we were dragged and shoved into the room." "You resisted being taken into the room, then?" asked the prosecutor. "We both did. I won't speak for Alexis, but I had a premonition of the horrors to come." "Don't-cha just love the way Daria talks?" said Angel, with a chuckle. "What a great vocabulary." "She got that from me," Darla's mom called out from the other sofa. Angel was calling Darla by her gang name Daria. Darla's sisters in the First Floor Fillies called her that because she was such a huge fan of the old 'Daria' cartoon series, which had developed a cult following in the decade since MTV cancelled it. On weekends, when we were allowed to wear our own clothes, she even dressed like Daria. "After Officer Bowman dragged you into the room, what did you see?" Darla paused and bit her lip before continuing. "I saw Ms. Martindale, principal of the school, raping---" A male voice suddenly interjected, "Objection!" "Sustained," said the judge. "Miss Rothstein, please remember the defendant is not on trial for rape." I bit my lip in frustration. Of course Ms. Martindale was a rapist. But the law said only a man could commit rape, so she was on trial for multiple counts of assault. "What did you see Ms. Martindale doing?" asked the assistant D.A. "There was this girl tied to the four bedposts on her back with her legs apart," said Darla. "Miss Martindale was mounted on top of her. She was thrusting like a man having sex with a woman. She was wearing a strap-on dildo." "Did you see the dildo?" "No, but I saw the straps. It was the only thing she had on." Darla paused for a second or two, then continued. "Alexis and I both screamed. Alexis spat on Chief Hunsucker. Chief Hunsucker said something like, 'That was a stupid thing you did.'" And so it went. Darla spoke about what she saw. She saw Principal Martindale violating Wanda Jean Lassiter. She saw Angel and me lying on the floor, bound and gagged bondage fashion. Unfortunately, she did not remember seeing anybody besides Wanda Jean being raped, not even herself. She did remember feeling sore the next day, "in two different orifices." "I hate to admit it," said Darla's mother, "but the evidence for assaulting my daughter is the weakest part of the case. They wiped out part of her memory so she doesn't remember anybody actually violating her. I know she was sore the next day, but Chief Hunsucker could have done that, and she's dead." "It's valuable testimony, though," said my Mom. "It corroborates that the defendant assaulted the Lassiter girl, and sets the stage for the rest of it." "I'm trying to get Darla to go to law school," said Mrs. Rothstein, "but she has a saying, 'The law is an ass.' And for her, that's the end of it." "Your witness, Mr. Sheffield," said the assistant D.A. on the closed circuit TV screen. Sheffield, the defense attorney, got up to speak, grinning like he knew some devastating secret. He approached Darla and said, "Miss Rothstein, on your second trip to that basement room, were you wearing any clothes?" "No, sir." "What about your glasses, Miss Rothstein?" "No glasses, sir." Sheffield looked pleased by this. "How well can you see without your glasses, Miss Rothstein?" "I'm very farsighted, sir." "Please explain for the jury what that means, Miss Rothstein." "I can see things best if they're far away. Things near me are kind of blurry." Defense attorney Sheffield pounced. "Ah, then how do you know it was Officer Bowman who escorted you into the room?" Darla's response was swift. "I recognized her voice." "And when you got to the room, how did you know Chief Hunsucker was there, if you couldn't see her distinctly?" "I recognized her by her voice." "She spoke to you, then? What did the Chief say to you?" "She didn't speak to me. She spoke to Alexis. Something like, 'That was a stupid thing you did, Miss Wei.'" "Miss Rothstein, will you please remove your glasses for a minute?" "Objection," said the prosecutor. "Overruled," said the judge. "You may proceed, Mister Sheffield." So Darla took her glasses off. Sheffield close to the witness stand, leaned over Darla and said, "Miss Sheffield, can you see me distinctly now?" "No, sir, I see a large blur standing over me that probably represents a human being." There was some muffled offscreen laughter in the courtroom. The judge gaveled for order. It took a while for me and Keyboard and Angel to stop laughing. "Probably human," I joked. "Then again," said Alexis with a laugh, "maybe not." The defense attorney was also amused. "Very well, Miss Rothstein, assuming the blur you see standing in front of you is the defense attorney, I'm going to take baby-steps backwards until I'm as far away as Miss Lauterbach was, when you say you saw her tied up bondage-style. Tell me when to stop." He backed up about ten or twelve feet. "Okay, stop there," said Darla. "Can you see me distinctly, Miss Rothstein?" "You're slightly blurry at that distance, sir." "Slightly blurry, or so blurry that you can't recognize me except by my voice?" "Oh, no, it's you, Mr. Sheffield," Darla insisted. "You're getting into the zone of comprehensible images." "So if you saw Miss Lauterbach at this distance, lying on the floor, you could recognize without having to hear her say anything?" "Yes." "You saw the manacles and fetters well enough that you could tell what they were?" "Yes, sir." "And the gag in Miss Lauterbach's mouth." "Yes, sir." Defense Attorney Sheffield looked slightly disappointed at this. "So when you saw Miss DiCarlo, I mean Mr. DiCarlo, whichever---" I heard a low sinister growl from the person sitting next to me. From Angel. "Objection! Mr. DiCarlo's transgendered status is not relevant---" "Sustained!" the judge interrupted, rapping his gavel. "Very unprofessional," Mom put in. The judge turned to Mr. Sheffield, with considerable annoyance. "The court hereby sets a rule for references to the male witness formerly known as Maria Angelica DiCarlo. When he addressed as a witness, he will be called 'Mister DiCarlo.' However, at the time these assaults allegedly took place, he will be referred to as 'Miss DiCarlo,' because he was a she at the time. But you will not mix them up, Mr. Sheffield. Nor will anyone else, as long as I'm the presiding judge in this case." "Okay, I'll go along with that," said Angel, nodding. Alexis turned to me. "He might try to bait you with that, too." Angel was angry. "Why did the judge say 'alleged assaults?' It happened, damn it!" "He's gotta look impartial, because he's the judge," I explained. "Sh! They're talking again," said Keyboard. "---Could recognize Miss DiCarlo where she was lying on the floor?" "Yes, sir. I could see her quite distinctly," said Darla. The clear implications was that Darla could see Miss Martindale raping Wanda Jeane clear as day, but defense counsel was not going to prompt her to say it. "No further questions, Your Honor." "You may call your next witness, Ms. Agnelli," said the judge. "Thank you, Your Honor," said the assistant D.A. "I should like to call Karen Lauterbach to the stand." I took a deep breath and got up. "Here goes," I muttered under my breath." Darla and I crossed paths on the way from the witness room to the courtroom. When we hugged, she made the first move. "I like to think I'm so detached," she said. "That way I can't be hurt by anybody. But this crime hurt me." She rested her head on my shoulder. A woman bailiff looked at us and gestured impatiently. "Darla, you got friends and a mother in there," I said, "but I gotta testify." She lifted her head. "Okay, just don't let her look you in the eye." So I walked into the courtroom, took my seat in the witness stand, and adjusted the microphone. The Assistant D.A. stepped up, favored with a brief smile, and start. She asked for my name. "Karen Lauterbach." The name rolled off my tongue so easily, I felt it had always been my name. I had come a long way from that shocking day when I first arrived at reform school, newly feminized, and couldn't bring myself to answer to the name of Karen at roll call. "When were you a student at Ida-Cynthia Watkins Girls' Reformatory?" "From August 2009 to August 2010." Student, she said! Like Darla once put it, Ida-Watts was a medium-security prison with classrooms. My eyes met Principal Martindale's eyes. Don't let her look you in the eye, Darla had said. Martindale furiously glared at me with her large dark brown eyes. Her face was a gorgon mask, an image of mythically powerful unadulterated hate. Martindale won the staring contest right away, which was a good thing. She was trying to break my concentration. Prompted by the Assistant D. A., I described my first violation: Chief Hunsucker busted me for fighting, escorted me downstairs to solitary, and locked me in a room. A woman guard, whose name turned out to be Margaret Bowman, woke me in the night and took me to another room. Memory blackout. Next thing I knew, I was tied to a bed, thighs wide apart. Chief of Security Hunsucker and Principal Martindale appeared. They were both naked, except Martindale was wearing that strap-on dildo. Martindale climbed on top of me and stuck her big hunk of plastic in me. "Excuse me a minute," I said. I reached for the package of tissue in my purse, and wiped my face. I glanced at the jury before continuing. Eleven women, one man. Seven of the women were white, three were black, and one looked an exotic mix. (I found out later she was from Belize.) The man was white. I knew the defense had used their jury strikes to create a jury of professional women, most of them in education. Martindale had a jury of her peers, as the Constitution demands. "I yelled back at Principal Martindale," I said. "I told her she and the Chief were a couple of trolls, ogres, ghouls, or vampires, and I hated them for what they were doing to me." In the silence of the courtroom, I heard a noise from the defense table. It was a restrained chuckle or snicker, and it came from former Principal Martindale. I glanced in her direction. For once, she wasn't glaring at me. She had her face in a tissue. At the time, I thought it was a curious way to react. Looking back later, I recognized she was pretending to wipe her face or blow her nose, to cover up the chuckle. She actually thought what I'd said was funny. I then mentioned the other memory blackout, and glanced back at the defense attorney. He was scribbling furiously on his legal pad. I knew the defense's strategy. These trashy reform school girls really didn't 'remember' anything, because they made it up. I continued my testimony, describing both of the times Principal Martindale and Ms. Hunsucker raped me. (Sure, sure, I know it wasn't technically rape, but what would you call it?) After about 45 minutes, she was finished with me, and defense attorney Sheffield began his cross-examination. He spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon picking away at my story, trying to trap me in a contradiction (which I didn't let him do) and constantly belaboring me about the gaps in my memory. There was a bitter moment when he ended a question by saying, "Or can it be you don't remember that either, Kevin, I mean, Karen." Tears welled up in my eyes. What did that have to do with anything? "Karen," I said, so angry I could barely get out the name. "My name is Karen." The prosecutor leapt to her feet. "Objection, Your Honor! The witness' transgendered state has no bearing on her credibility or on anything else about this case." The gavel rapped. "Sustained," barked the judge, with an angry glance at the counsel for the defense. "Mr. Sheffield, the same rule I propounded earlier about Mr. DiCarlo also applies to Miss Lauterbach. Slip up like this again and you'll be in contempt!" While wiping my eyes, I glanced over my tissue and saw a familiar face in the third row: Mrs. Weinstein, Reggie's mother. It was no surprise to see her here. Because he deceased husband had been D. A. here, this was familiar terrain to her. But she hadn't been there when I first took the witness stand in the morning. She hadn't been there when we came back from lunch. I'd been concentrating so hard on my testimony, I hadn't seen her come in. Now she knew I had once been a male. Now Reggie would find out very soon, since he still lived with her, and I wouldn't be the one to tell him. I wiped my face again, and told myself I had to concentrate on the trial. I knew Reggie would phone me about this. I would deal with him later. It wasn't easy, but it did help a little that the defense attorney stood there and waited till my face was dry. "Are you ready to continue, Miss Lauterbach?" asked the judge. "Yes, Your Honor." "You may proceed, Mr. Sheffield." Sheffield then asked me about my gang membership. I told him Mary's Girls liked to tell people we were Gangster Disciples, while we were actually "dubs," that is, kids who say they're in a gang or 'throw signs' (wear the gang colors) without really being in it. I told him Angel had admitted to me we were just dubs, and that I had no contact with any known Gangster Disciples members outside the school the whole time I was there, even when I was the leader of Mary's Girls. He finally said, "No more questions, Your Honor." The judge dismissed me. I breathed a sigh of relief, and escaped to the witness room almost at a run. ### During the days that followed, Alexis, and Angel, and former school security officer Margaret Bowman testified. It was Bowman who clinched the case. The defense attorney kept her on the stand for three days, spinning all kinds of speculations about gang members and marijuana smuggling correctional officers making up false stories to cover their tracks and draw attention off of their successful plot to poison Security Chief Hunsucker. The jury didn't buy it. Nearly two weeks after the day I testified, Ms. Martindale was convicted on eight counts of felony assault and sentenced to five to ten years in the state penitentiary. But I'm not writing a courtroom drama here. The high points of my day in court were being reunited with my old reform school friends, and seeing Mrs. Weinstein find out about my past. For a few days I was mad at the prosecutor for allowing the word 'transgendered' to fall out of her mouth. If she had said something like 'unusual past', Mrs. Weinstein wouldn't have understood the significance of my being called Kevin. The real villain, of course, was the defense attorney for calling me Kevin. That same evening of the day when I testified, I received a phone call from Reggie. I knew it was him when the phone rang, and I knew what the call would be about when I heard his voice. After we exchanged hellos, he said, "Karen, Mom told me she went to watch the Martindale case today. She said she saw you testify." "Yeah," I said. "I was there. That's the truth." "And she said Ms. Martindale's lawyer called you 'Kevin' during the cross, and the prosecutor objected, saying it's not relevant to the trial that you had a sex change." "Yes, Reggie," I said with a great sigh. "That's all true." "You used to be a guy, didn't you, Karen?" "Yes, I was. It was one of those temporary feminization deals. One year as a girl at Ida-Watts Reform School. Then the FDA outlawed BioConcentrators for sex changes, so I couldn't change back. I'm okay with that, because I decided while I was at Reform School that I prefer being a girl." There was a long pause at the other end of the line, while Reggie processed this information. "Karen, I know I said this didn't matter, but now I want to know what you did. You didn't, like, rape a girl or anything, did you?" "No, I just did an underage girl." "So, when you were a guy, you liked girls," he concluded. "Yeah." "Are you still attracted to girls, Karen?" "No, Reggie, I'm not. I did some Lesbian stuff at the Reform School, but I got it out of my system. You're the only person I want now, and that's the truth." "So, you're not attracted to girls, and you don't want to be a guy again." "Right." "Even if it was legal, you wouldn't switch back." "Right." "You know, Karen, I thought you might be a Lesbian when I first saw you at the museum, 'cause of the way you were dressed." "I know. That outfit was a sort of leftover from my Lesbian period, back at the school." I started talking much faster, about as fast as my heart was beating at the time. "But that was before I met you, Reggie. You opened up a whole new world to me. You did that, Reggie. You're the only one who counts with me now." Reggie was talking a lot slower. "I sure hope so, Karen. You mean a lot to me. There's a art of me that loves you very much, but I want you to know, I kind of resent the fact you didn't tell me. I had to find out second-hand through my Mom who heard it from the Assistant D. A. at the trial." I could hear the rising anger in his voice. "Why, Karen, why didn't you tell me?" "Reggie, believe me, I was about to tell you several times, but I was afraid you wouldn't like me any more. How does a girl tell a guy something like that?" "Karen, it would be very, very hard for me to give you up, but I'm still mad at you for not telling me. Tell you what. I'm gonna think this over for a few days. Then I'll call you and tell you whether or not I want to keep seeing you." My heart sank. He wouldn't call again. He would just drop me. I just knew it! I'd lost Reggie! I took a deep breath. No, I told myself. I want to keep him. What can I say to make him want to keep me? Making my voice sound as understanding as possible, I took another deep breath, and began. "Okay, Reggie, I understand you have some feelings to sort out, but while you're thinking it over, remember what a great time we had together, and how happy we made each other." "Good point. Very good point." "You just might end up deciding my past really doesn't matter after all, just like you said it didn't at the restaurant where I met your Mom." I was trying very hard to make my point without sounding resentful. I hope I succeeded. "I might, Karen. I might end up deciding just that." "I still love you, Reggie." "Good-bye, Karen. I'll give you a call in a few days. Maybe in about a week." "That'll be fine. Good-bye, Reggie." As I hung up the phone, my eyes were getting wet again. I would count the hours until I heard his voice again. Would he keep me? Would he drop me? Not knowing was an agony. About a half-hour later, I pulled my face out of my pillow and dried it again. TO BE CONTINUED. Copyright (c) 2002, by Norman O. Johnson (normanoj@h...). With the author's written permission, the above copyrighted material may be archived, copied, transmitted, and redistributed, provided that it remains in its original form with all warnings, copyright, author credit, and other information intact. It may NOT be distributed for profit or sold for profit, except by the author. Norman O. Johnson.