The game between Ted the Clarence and the Devil in Drag continues with the hearts of Richard and Jo as playing pieces....
 

Blue Moon 6.1-6.5

by Donna Lamb

 

 

Richard pulled the limo down the hill into the tree-shaded lane beside the three-story house on Via Buena Vista. Behind the house, the lane turned and widened into the apron of a two-car garage set well below the level of the street out front. The house and garage were both a pale shade of gray-blue with darker trim. The roof of the garage supported a second story deck for the upper floors of the house and there looked to be a narrow patio on the far side of the garage. A backyard full of fescue and blue grass continued down the hill, with a short steep portion eased by stone-inlaid steps, to a small building and a pool. Lemon trees shaded the lawn and an eight-foot high redwood fence covered in something leafy and green kept the neighbors out.

"Jo," said Richard. "I think you're rich." He opened the door and started around the limo to get hers.

Jo surprised both of them by bursting into tears when Richard opened the door. She hadn't even unfastened her belt. He stood there considering why she might be crying. "Too much?" he asked.

"Uh huh." Jo nodded, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hand. Richard tucked her sunglasses into her purse, handed it to her and pointed out the box of tissues set in the under dash. She used one to blow her nose. "I don't know why I have to cry about it, b-but three hours ago, I didn't even own any clothes! And if you say anything about hormones, I'll p-punch you in the b-b-gonads." She tried to get out without opening the seat belt and nearly submarined herself under the dash.

Richard didn't laugh but just gave her a hand to pull herself up then helped her out and shut the door. "Thanks," said Jo. She didn't let go of his hand for a moment, it felt good to hold on to someone. Besides, a mini-dress in January might be possible in California but it wasn't the warmest thing to be wearing. She had goosebumps on her arms. Richard retrieved a hip-length leather coat from the trunk and offered it. "Thanks," she said again, thinking he deserved more for being so -- thoughtful. He held the coat for her, she slipped it on and stuffed the small purse in one of the pockets.

Through windows beside the garage, they could see a long room, almost the width of the house, lined in bookcasess, with a pool table at one end, a big screen TV at the other and an upright piano between. "Family room," said Richard. "You play piano, don't you?" Somehow, they were holding hands again. Both pretended not to notice.

"A little. How do w-we get in? I don't have a key." She squeezed his hand a moment for reassurance. This is scaring the heck out of me, she thought. It's like a haunted house.

Richard didn't want to let her hand go either, though he couldn't exactly say why. Melody Jo somehow seemed more real than a girl named Jo who used to be his roommate, Joel. Still holding hands, they looked for the spare key they figured had to be there. Richard finally found it in a magnetic case on the hood above the light on the pool house. Jo giggled. "Good p-place to hide it," Jo said.

"I dunno, we found it, so could a burglar."

Walking back up to the house, Jo pulled her hand free from Richard's, blushing a bit. Richard pretended not to mind. He let her go up the little yard steps first, admiring her slender legs.

The key didn't open the pool house or the garage but did open the patio door to the family room. They tiptoed in, feeling like intruders. Jo flicked on lights; the back of the house, being on the north-facing slope of a canyon, didn't get much light from the winter sun. Richard opened the door to the garage. "I want to see the Cooper, if it's here."

"If it isn't do I report it stolen?" asked Jo.

Richard flicked more lights and laughed, then stood out of the way for Jo to see. In the nearer stall, just past two doors in a narrow hall, sat a nearly new Mini Cooper.

"It's p-pink!" Jo protested.

"It's got a white roof," said Richard.

"I didn't even know they came in p-pink!"

"You must have had it specially painted."

"I did not!"

"Well, Melody did. If you won't drive it, I will. It's got a turbo, too. That's not standard either."

"The thing on the hood?"

"Through the hood, yeah. You could get these with a supercharger from the factory but somebody put a turbo kit on instead."

"Turbocharger?"

"Yeah. You want me to explain the difference?"

"No," said Jo. "Let's look at the rest of the house." Not knowing about cars made her feel very girly just then, but after all, Richard drove for a living. "What time is it?"

"I've got about an hour," said Richard. Time enough to find the bedrooms, he didn't say.

The rest of the lower floor turned out to be a laundry room, a wine cellar, some storage and a small bedroom partly filled with the sort of junk that accumulates in such unused places. "Maid's room, maybe," said Richard.

Jo paused to flip up the keyboard cover on the piano and play a one-handed arpeggio. "Seems to be in tune,"she said, pleased. She flipped the cover back down. "Let's go upstairs, got to find some keys somewhere."

Richard flipped the cover back up, and standing there, played a familiar pounding chorus. He sang, "Goodness gracious! Great Balls of Fire!" Then he spun away from the piano and stopped, grinning at Jo.

She laughed. "You look more like Elvis than Little Richard."

"Little Richard? That's Jerry Lee Lewis!"

"Yes, but you're Richard. I forgot you said you used to be in a b-band."

He grinned at her. "You really think I look like Elvis?"

She moved her head in a gesture that meant never mind. "Why did you quit? That wasn't bad."

He flipped the keyboard cover back down. "Too much drugs in that scene, our lead guitarist O.D.'d."

"I'm sorry," she touched his arm. "I played in a band in high school, but mostly I did the tech stuff. We weren't very good."

"What did you play?"

"Uh, keyboards. You?"

"Drums, mostly, but keyboards or rhythm guitar when I sang." He looked back at the piano. "Keyboards, huh? So you're pretty good?"

She shook her head, smiling. "Let's see what's upstairs." She turned and started up the steps.

Richard followed, admiring the view. "I really do want to see your bedroom."

"M-melody's bedroom, you mean. Don't get any w-wild ideas." She reached behind her to tug her skirt down.

* * *

In a vehicle somewhere between Hell and Heaven, the Devil in Drag snarled, "Exotic dancer! Nude model!"

Ted the Clarence responded. "Classical pianist," he said, his voice calm.

"Oh, come on! Where's the opportunity for sin in that?"

"You're trying to arrange history, not opportunity. There'll be none of that."

Sophie chewed a fingernail, a bad habit she'd picked up back in Egypt.

"Can we compromise?" she suggested.

"A bargain with the devil? I think not."

"Oh, c'mon, Ted. You've won some points, how am I supposed to tempt them if I'm not allowed a few temptations?"

Ted sighed. "No more cheating," he warned.

"All right! Thanks, Clarence, you're a sweetie."

"Oh, barf!"

* * *

Upstairs, the level of the street, contained a living room, dining room and master bedroom, all with doors onto the wide deck. It also had a big modernized kitchen and a small, cluttered office. Jo booted up the computer in the office while Richard looked through the small pile of mail under the mail slot in the wall.

"The place seems pretty clean," he remarked.

"Um?" said Jo. "P-password." She tried a few things, including password. The sleeves of the leather coat Richard loaned her got in her way, so she pulled the coat off and draped it around her shoulders. The house wasn't warm but it wasn't cold either.

Richard looked at an envelope. "Apparently your last name is spelled, 'T-h-i-e-r-r-y'. Is that French?"

"Mais oui," said Jo. She typed that into the password box, too, then began picking things up and looking at the underside of the objects on the desk.

"I love it when you speak French," said Richard in a Raul Julia growl.

Jo suppressed a giggle, looked at him sideways then typed, "bluemoon" into the password box. It worked. "This is M-melody's dad's computer. He's ... he was an executive at Sony," she said after a bit.

"Pictures, Music or Electronics?"

"P-p-pictures," she said. "Columbia Properties Licensing Office, whatever that means. Looks like he dealt with, um, cable stations showing old m-movies."

"Cool. Explains the nice house." Richard put some envelopes in front of her. "You don't seem to have picked up your mail all week."

Jo rubbed her forehead. "M-m-merde," she said.

Richard laughed then looked concerned. "Your mom said you've been getting headaches."

"Yeah, right behind my eyes. Maybe we should try to find my glasses?" She stared at one object on the desk, a framed photograph of a tall, dark haired man with a woman on one arm and a teen-age girl in a cheerleading costume on the other. "Double shit," she muttered when she realized who the girl must be.

"Hey," said Richard, noticing where she was looking. "Is that you? You were a cheerleader?"

"M-m-melody, not m-me!"

"Still," said Richard. "Bet you --she-- was popular, so cute." He admired the picture, thinking, Oh yeah.

Jo frowned, remembering Joel's high school years. He'd been a pudgy kid before he suddenly shot up in the summer before his junior year. Shy, pimply, nerdy, his one taste of popularity had occurred when the neighborhood garage band he'd joined had won a band competition. Then he'd dropped out of the band, he remembered, and that had been that -- back to the obscurity of computer club and D&D on Friday nights.

"There's other pictures on the wall," Richard pointed out.

Jo looked. Melody wearing a bright blue, leather mini with a sparkly pink top, fronting at keyboards for a band that might have been the one Joel had played with except the kids had different, older faces and better, more expensive equipment. The drum had a logo, Melodie and Harmo-Noise. Another picture showed a younger Melody in Elizabethan costume. A pre-teen Melody in a tutu and one in a Brownie uniform. "Triple shit," said Jo, "I don't remember any of this stuff!"

They stared at one another a moment. "Yeah," said Richard, "do-doo-do-doo do-doo-do-doo."

"The w-w-worst of it," said Jo, trying not to cry again. "I know they loved her."

"Melody? Yeah." He pointed at a glass case against the wall, filled with the sort of memorabilia one collected during the life of a favored child. Award plaques, graduation pictures, odd little sculptures made by immature hands. "You even won a dance contest," Richard noted.

"I can't dance!"

"Who's the dude with the liplock on you?" asked Richard. A framed picture on top of a case showed a teen-age couple dressed for a prom, kissing; the girl, Melody, wore her long, ginger hair in a braid and her green gown matched her eyes; the boy wore a tux in a peculiar violet shade and stood an inch or so less than the girl in her heels.

"That's not m-m-me!" Jo protested again.

Richard stopped himself from pointing at another picture. "Let's go see what's in the kitchen," he suggested.

Jo got up from the desk and quickly left the room.

* * *

"Artifacts without substance, none of these things existed," Ted pointed out. "Melody never led a band or joined the cheer squad or went to a prom with a boy named Kevin. The past we created for her had nothing so dramatic in it that we would have had to change memories to accommodate."

Sophie nodded. "Paper trail only, records have been altered but no memories. People trust records more anyway. Well, this is like that, right? I just made a few mementos to back up the records."

Ted frowned, "You're up to something."

"Nil vulnero, nil turpis; in alveobolos, veritas," Bill Z. Bubb commented from the driver's seat.

"What? That's atrocious. Dog Latin, and bad dog Latin at that."

"In atrocite, veritas," said Sophie. She laughed.

"Bolos isn't Latin, it's Greek, and it doesn't mean ball, it means lump," Ted complained.

"Relevo, Theo," said Sophie, smirking.

"Oh, lighten up, yourself. You're trying to set up a gambit, I can smell it." He shook a finger at her. "How would you like to contemplate calendar reform, hm? Thirteen months of twenty-eight days each with an intercalary yule. No more Strangefellows Days, no more walkng the Earth in that - that costume!"

"Never happen," said Sophie quickly. "Mortals are a lot more contrary than that. Your precious free will and all; they like things messy."

"I'm watching you," said Ted the Clarence.

"Ohh, Ted!" she cooed.

* * *

"There's food in the fridge, I guess you've been living here," said Richard, holding the door open. "Salad stuff, Diet Coke, a cold roasted chicken from Von's, fruit yogurt, skim milk." He made a face. No beer, though the liquor cabinet in the dining room held single malt, premium vodka and various liqueurs and the wine cellar downstairs had several expensive looking bottles.

He retrieved two Diet Cokes and opened them, taking one to where Jo stood at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor. He handed her one of the cans and sipped his while she took a sizable gulp of hers. "You underage?" he asked.

She shrugged. "That graduation p-picture, the date was only two years ago. I thought about that." She frowned. "When I w-was six, when Joel was six, M-mom went to the hospital and the next week we b-buried a b-baby, a sister. I'd f-forgotten all about that."

"Wow?" He sipped at his drink some more, considering. "You think you're that sister now? Got raised by this Thierry couple, mixup in the hospital or something?"

She nodded. "It w-would make some sense. Mom must know? I think I'm nineteen then, maybe twenty. Or M-melody was. Do I look nineteen?" She turned to him self-consciously.

He nodded, smiling. "Or sixteen or twenty-five, you got classic bones, kid." He grinned. "And you're stalling cause you don't want to go up and see your bedroom."

She sighed. "M-m-melody's b-bedroom." But she started up the stairs. "I still can't f-figure out how this could happen. And I don't think it has anything to do with w-w-wishes, that's just stupid."

"Yeah? So what do you think happened?"

Jo stopped, turned and looked down at Richard, catching him looking up at her legs. She yanked at the hem of her skirt. "Remind me to let you go up stairs f-first from now on."

"Check," said Richard. He didn't seem embarrassed at all. I'm really starting to think of her as Joel's sister, I guess. She's sure not Joel anymore. "So you have a theory?"

She nodded, standing aside on the stair and motioning Richard to go ahead of her. "P-p-parallel w-worlds," she said. But Richard brushing past her on the stairwell made her feel strange, and then music began playing upstairs. "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" by Irving Berlin played on a very tinny sounding piano. It took them both a moment to realize it must be a cellphone.

Richard scrambled on up, opening the first door on the right at the top of the stairs. Jo followed him into the bedroom of a teen-age girl just turning into a woman. Eight stuffed animals crowded the large bed -- everything from an aardvark to a zebra, literally -- surrounding a big straw purse and matching hat. The ringing came from the purse. Richard retrieved it and handed it to Jo. A little woven pocket just inside the bag held a tiny pink phone.

Jo flipped it open. "Hello?"

"Is this Melody Thierry?" asked a male voice.

"W-who's calling?" Jo asked. Who knows me? Knows Melody? Someone from those pictures downstairs?

"Smart girl," said the voice. "This is Tom K. Harmon. I found a packet on my desk with a note to call Melody Thierry at this number."

"Uh," said Jo. "I'm M-melody Jo Thierry." She rolled her eyes as Richard grinned at her. Well, I am, apparently.

"I've got your glossies here but your resume is kind of thin. What's your natural hair color? Strawberry blond?"

"Sort of, darker though, m-more like ginger. Um, you're an agent?" Glossies? Pictures? At first, I thought he said glasses, and I do need to look for them. But the man on the phone went on.

"Oh, yeah, sugar. I'm not sure I need any more clients right now but you've got a good look in the photos. Camera likes you. Jeff Sherman took the pictures?"

"That's what it says, isn't it?" Jo guessed, trying not to sound smart ass about it. I don't know? Jeff Sherman? She thought she might have heard of him, somewhere.

"Sure, hey, look, can you get over here today? We could do lunch? Ha, ha. I could look you over, you look me over, decide if we want to do business." He sounded sincere -- and interested. Jo began to form a mental image of the man, tall, with a dark, brown mustache, receding hairline, Ray-Bans. Middle-aged but kind of -- cute? She tried to shake the image -- and the thought -- as soon as it occurred to her.

Richard began to get antsy hearing only half the conversation. He looked around the room, taking in the poster of Orlando Bloom as Legolas with a grin. An L-shaped desk in one corner held a computer and accessories. A corner-shaped glass-cabinet held various dolls and battered-looking, old, stuffed toy animals. A long vanity had three wigstands near one end with a shoulder-length golden blond wig, a page boy platinum and an extravagantly long auburn. The blond wig looked like natural hair. The top of the vanity held the usual feminine weaponry.

Jo bit her lip, making a decision. "Okay, M-mister Harmon. Uh? Three o'clock?" She looked at Richard who nodded; she frowned, he frowned and shook his head and raised his eyebrows. She nodded firmly. "Okay, uh, Tom -- and I usually go b-by Jo. Uh-huh. Thanks." She closed the phone and stared at it.

"You made an appointment to see an agent?" Richard asked.

"He called me!" Jo ran a hand through her hair, wondering what the glossies Tom had showed. My hair is so short.

"What kind of agent?"

Jo startled. "I didn't think to ask, but I guess, uh, m-modeling?" She waved a hand. "He had glossies and, and, I don't think acting. I m-mean, to b-b-be or not to b-b-be?" She shook her head. "Do you think I could do m-m-modeling? That's just standing around, uh, looking p-pretty." She blushed but she did know what she looked like.

Richard tried to be thoughtful and not smile at her naivete. "Almost any kind of agent needs glossies. How far are you prepared to go with this? I mean," he waved a hand, "this house? I think you're not hurting for money? Do you need a job?"

"I don't know," said Jo. "But that's what I was talking about on the stair. M-melody and I have switched p-places, like universes in stereo?" Richard looked blank so she tried the other phrase. "P-p-parallel w-worlds. I can't just go m-messing up her life. W-what if w-we switched b-back?"

"You think that's gonna happen?" Richard sounded skeptical.

"I don't know. B-but it m-might. I think it could? It happened once, why not again?" She waved the hand holding the phone; it rang just then, startling her into dropping it. With a bump and a bounce, it clattered under the bed. Jo put a hand to her mouth and squeaked.

Richard handed the phone to Jo after retrieving it from under the bed, noting that the hardwood floor seemed clean and free from dust bunnies. Maid service, probably. Still on his knees, he presented the phone to Jo with a flourish.

Frowning at him, Jo answered, "Hello?"

"Baby, that was brilliant! Totally defused Cherie before she even suspected a thing!" The big voice came through the tiny phone just fine.

"B-b-b-barry?" Jo squeaked again.

"You're the greatest, babe. Kiss, kiss." It was indeed Barry making osculations into his phone.

Jo sputtered. Richard reached for the phone thinking, How dare that bastard call her! Jo wouldn't let him have the phone though; moving, turning away and scowling -- either at him or Barry, he couldn't tell.

"I love you, too, baby," said Barry, mistaking the noises for more kisses. "But I've got to go, I'm at breakfast with Cherie and some other biddies. Meet you at nine tonight, at Wrangler Jill's, wear something, um, skimpilicious."

"B-b-b-b-b-b-b-!" said Jo, quite literally speechless.

"B'bye, baby-boo!" said Barry. He hung up, still clueless and self-satisfied, imagining Melody in a short dress like she had worn to the office only with heels and makeup, jewelry and smiles. Hot Damn. Melody reminded him of Cherie at that age, before he'd left his first wife. He turned the phone off again and slipped it into his pocket and smiling, went back to his current wife.

"Damn it!" Jo stabbed callback -- glaring at Richard this time, surely -- while she waited for it to ring. Richard watched in awe; Melody Jo angry was intriguing to see. Her eyes flashed green, her cheeks glowed and her movements had that abrupt grace of hunting cats. Wow, he thought, isn't she something?

"The party you are calling is unavailable," the phone said into Jo's ear. "If you'd like to leave a message, start speaking at the tone. Beep."

"Screw you, Aronhaus!" Jo shouted into the handset, then snapped the phone closed. She turned away from Richard and glared at the glass case full of babydolls, bears and bunnies.

"You know, " said Richard without thinking it all the way through, "it's possible that you have been. Screwing Aronhaus, I mean." He ducked when Jo turned around with the phone raised to throw at him.

"M-m-m-I'm not a slut!" she shouted. "Richard, you are a dick! A dickless dick-dildo of a dick!" She didn't throw the phone but suddenly spun back around, tossed the phone on the bed and bent down in front of the glass corner cabinet. "Dunny!" she said, pointing.

"What?" The dickless accusation had stung Richard's pride; he didn't think it fair, just or accurate. True, it had been stupid to speculate on whether Melody had bedded Barry Aronhaus. Especially out loud. Jo angry wasn't nearly as cute when she was angry at him. Still sexy though, he decided. But she's definitely wrong about the dickless thing. He looked at her ass sticking up in the air as she struggled with the latch of the cabinet. Definitely not dickless, oh no.

Jo opened the glass door and took out a bedraggled, stained, loose-limbed, plush rabbit about eighteen inches long, including ears. "Dunny!" she said again. "It's Dunny, I thought I lost him twenty years ago!" She stood, leaving the cabinet open, then sat on the bed, the happy-sad bunny in her lap.

"The rabbit?" said Richard, getting a clue. Dunny?

Jo nodded, stroking the soft fabric of the very old toy. She had a far away look for a moment. "I remember now, w-when the b-baby died, I told them she could have my Dunny to take with her to Heaven so she wouldn't be scared. And she kept him for me, and now I've got him b-back." She hugged the limp toy. "Thank you, sis."

* * *

Sophie snarled, "Is that the same damned rabbit?"

Ted smiled. "You'd better believe it. Miriam wanted Melody Jo to have it. So she wouldn't be scared. We retrieved it from the grave, cleaned it up so it's just like it was when Joel gave it away. The real Miriam, Jo's real little sister."

"And you accuse me of cheating," Sohie grumbled. But she had to admire the slickness of the trick.

"Heartbreak into joy, our stock in trade," said Ted with satisfaction.

* * *

"It's a m-message," said Jo. She had the expression of someone completely convinced by a new truth.

"What's a message?" Richard asked cautiously.

"Dunny is. He's a message from my sister." Jo sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the soft faux fur of the yellow-brown toy rabbit. "She's okay and she's happy and she doesn't need him anymore so she sent him back to me." Jo smiled up at Richard. "She didn't want me to be scared."

Richard stared at her. "Jo, that doesn't make much sense?"

"I don't care," said Jo. "It's not about m-making sense." She hugged the rabbit again and played with its loose limbs and floppy ears. "It's about things working out. I know why I gave Dunny to M-miriam and now I've got him back, so somebody sent him. I think it she did it. And he's a m-message only I could understand."

"Uh," said Richard. She does look all happy and relaxed now. "I guess. But, didn't they make thousands of those rabbits? I'm sure I've seen them before."

"B-but this is Dunny," said Jo. She turned one ankle of the bunny up to show a spot mended with dark brown thread in a curiously angular hourglass-like pattern. "See? And the ears are stitched with w-white thread where I chewed on them."

"Okay," said Richard, unconvinced but willing to concede. What kid wouldn't chew on the ears of a plush rabbit? "But why is the -- bunny a message?"

"You don't think everything that's happened to me is random, do you? That w-wouldn't m-make sense at all. Joel is dead and I'm alive and I've got every good reason to be scared out of m-my m-mind but Dunny here m-means that things are going to be okay. I'm supposed to b-be here, I b-bet." She turned to look at herself in the large lighted mirror over the vanity, leaning a bit closer to make the image less blurry. "M-maybe it's like Quantum Leap and I'm supposed to do something to m-make things right."

Richard opened his mouth but then closed it. Shut up, he told himself. Her ideas are just as good as yours on this because you really don't have any.

But she reminded him."You thought it might be a w-wish one of us m-made. M-maybe it w-was." She stopped to touch her short hair which at sometime had stopped looking like a boy's haircut and more like the sort of shearing that might have been done in an emergency room. A narrow swatch above her left ear seemed to have been shaved with six or eight weeks of slightly redder re-growth showing. She could feel a narrow ridge of scar tissue there and wondered what might have happened.

Richard made a decision. Pulling out his own cellphone, he speed-dialed his dispatch office. "I need to cancel my run this morning, Carmen, in fact, my whole shift for a couple of days," he said. He listened patiently while Carmen told him just why he couldn't do that. "Doesn't matter," he said into the phone."There's no way I can make a pickup at the airport and run all over the county today, a personal emergency has come up."

Jo knelt to replace the tea-colored rabbit in the glass case, remembering that she should keep her knees together. It didn't feel at all awkward to do so. "You stay here, Dunny," she said to the rabbit. "It'll b-be safer. I'm a b-big girl now and just knowing you're safe is enough. I'd look silly carrying you everywhere." She giggled as she re-latched the door of the case. Some of the other toys in there looked familiar, too. Later, she promised them.

"I don't care," Richard told Carmen. "Dock my pay, I'm taking at least two days off and you can fine me another day to hire someone else in my place. Uh-huh. Okay." He closed the phone, looking at Jo. "I may have to make that pickup at the airport, after all, then meet someone somewhere and trade vehicles, they need that bus." Bus being the word limo drivers at Richard's agency used for the oversize, stretched Lincolns and Mercedes they used.

"I'm sorry," Jo told Richard. "I didn't ask you to stay w-with m-me. But I appreciate it." Looking at Richard she did feel gratitude and something else -- something that made her lips tingle, and other parts of her, too. Confused, she turned away. He's so tall and good-looking, -- well, I knew that before. But it sure as heck is different now.

He could see her blush in the mirror and his guess as to why made him smile in a self-satisfied, testosterone-laced, but essentally confused way. "Don't worry about it. Some of the drivers pull worse stuff all the time. My job is safe." But maybe you're not, he added to himself. She looks less like Joel all the time.

"Can I ride along with you? I don't w-want to stay here alone right now." She didn't turn back to look at him. Too many things going on she didn't understand. If he looked at me and grinned like I've seen him grin at some women.... She avoided completing the thought.

"Sure," said Richard. "Maybe we can find you some black slacks and jacket with a white shirt. Then you'd look like a spare driver deadheading along, instead of..." He trailed off. His phone rang and he answered it.

Jo felt grateful for the idea of changing clothes, as a distraction. She began trying doors in the large bedroom. The first opened on a long room the blurry outlines of which seemed to contain electric pianos, computer desks, music stands and amplifiers. The second door opened on a dressing room with a luxury bath at one end and a walk-in closet at the other. Scattered across one counter, Jo discovered contact lens equipment -- packages of disposable lenses, solutions and such -- and on a funny little rack shaped like the face of a kitten, a pair of gold-framed glasses.

Jo tried them on then turned to look at her own reflections in the numerous mirrors. She hadn't really seen herself without some blurring and double vision so far. "Oh crap," she muttered when the full impact of her new looks soaked in. "I'm not just p-pretty, I'm dangerous!"