The Starchild by Erin Halfelven   Chapter 7 Get Around

Simon managed to open the door to his apartment without putting the woman in his arms down; hugging her close to him was no hardship and the rainy patio was no place for someone who was barefoot.

“Here we go,” he said as he eased her down onto his sitting room carpet.

“Thank you, Simon,” she said. She smiled up at him, though the expression seemed a bit strained. “You are still the best master ever.”

“Huh,” said Simon, not sure how to respond. “Habib!” he called out. “Habib? Are you in here?”

“I’m Habib,” said the beautiful naked woman still standing oh-so-very-close to Simon.

* * *

After spinning once like a dog chasing her tail, the girl who thought of herself as Simon realized how ridiculous she must look and contented herself with feeling of all her appendages and accessories. “Jimmies! I’m built like Coco Austin with bigger boobs,” she complained.

She shook her head, flinging water from her hair, her chin and other pointy parts of her anatomy. “Ooo, that was weird,” she said. She looked around to see if anyone had seen her but the rain had began falling harder and she could hardly even see the hotel. Downslope, the Folly continued burning but probably not for much longer. In the distance, she heard the sound of a siren and realized someone must have called the fire department.

“Sugar Pops!!” she said, “I’d better get inside before someone sees me.” She started to trot toward the door to Simon’s apartment but stopped suddenly; the bouncing felt just too weird. “First thing to do is to get Habib to change me back into a guy!” She walked the rest of the way to the door, looking around and calling for Habib several times.

* * *

Up on the deck above the lower entrance to the hotel, Colonel Edge watched the girl he had seen in the rain walk toward him. Mrs. Dumfries had gone out through the front of the hotel to intercept the firetruck and direct it around the building to the narrow track leading to the Folly. Or what was left of that unfortunate building. Edge was alone on the deck outside the dining room.

Alone with a vision of beauty that left him almost breathless. The girl had a shape like an hour-and-a-half glass. Generous, top and bottom, but wasp-waisted almost to an extreme. Long hair that was probably blonde when dry reached to her waist.

She walked toward him through the rain and mist with a background of fire. She did not look up so she didn’t see him on the deck above her. He hung back a little though he could not have said why but he moved forward as it became obvious that she intended to use the lower entrance to the hotel. He kept her in sight until she disappeared almost directly beneath him.

Edge thought there might be a room down there in what he thought of as the basement. He searched his memory to see if he knew who might live down there. He thought he remembered someone complaining that the hotel dining room was directly over his bedroom -- thin, dark fellow, looked like a Mediterranean version of Elvis -- Nader Something?

He debated with himself about going downstairs and trying to find the girl but what would he say to her? I saw you naked on the back lawn looking magnificent in the rain and I wanted to get a better look? He smiled, a little lopsidedly. He didn’t think so, it wasn’t his style. He’d find out who she was before he introduced himself.

* * *

“Crap, crap, crap again,” the girl who thought of herself as Simon muttered as she reached the the patio. She had her arms wrapped around herself under her breasts in an attempt to minimize the distracting motions. “Bounce, bounce, bouncey! Habib! This is not amusing.”

She turned to look back toward the burning hulk of the Folly. “Where is Habib?” she asked aloud. “Habib, if this is your idea of being funny...” She turned back toward the door of Simon’s apartment. Despite it being only about two in the afternoon, gloom filled the space under the first floor deck and two yellowish patio lights did little to make it less foreboding. It was a perfect place to feel a chill run down the middle of your back.

Simon felt a nasty one as she reached for the door handle and heard voices from inside her apartment. One of the voices sounded familiar, kind of like her father who had been dead for almost ten years.

* * *

Across the city, in off-campus housing for the University of Puget Sound, two young second year students woke up bright and early Monday afternoon from their usual weekend drinking binge. Neither of them were far from being expelled for grades and non-attendance and, even with the intervention of wealthy relatives, seemed unlikely to get degrees at this particular institute of higher learning.

Howard Dudat, known variously as Howie (from his first name), Dude (from his last), Bluto (from a supposed resemblance to John Belushi), and Jackass (from his personality), rolled over and groaned. “Am I sleeping on the floor?” he asked no one.

Regardless, he got an answer from his roommate. “Keep it down, Dude,” said Peter Henry Piet from somewhere behind and above Howie. “You ain’t sleeping if you’re talking unless you’re talking in your sleep and if you start doing that, besides the snoring, we are going to be ex-roommates fast.” Pete had several nicknames, too, but usually went by Pete or Piet--who could tell?

Together the friends were known as The Booze Brothers and if someone squinted just right and imagined them in blue business suits with sunglasses and fedoras, they did resemble Jake and Elwood. Either that or a clean-shaven Mutt-and-Jeff.

“Shaddup,” said Howie, with his customary morning charm. He levered his rotund body to a sitting position and looked around the ruins of their apartment. “Dafuck? Who painted shit on the wall?” It did look like shit but was really brownish plum sauce from a local Chinese delivery joint.

Pete, who had been lucky enough to drape his length over the davenport, grunted. “Probably the same chickie who threw up in both of our beds.”

“Both of our beds?” protested Howie. “Now we got to fuckin’ move--again?”

“That or do laundry,” agreed Pete.

With various noises worthy of a logging camp donkey engine, Howie struggled to his feet. “It’s fuckin’ cold in here, too.” Goosebumps covered his exposed flabby flesh and a lot of it was visible since he wore nothing but a stained pair of boxers and a torn Nirvana t-shirt.

Pete hadn’t moved except to put his arm across his eyes. “You know the upchucking chick? Her boyfriend broke the windows in our rooms.”

“Both our rooms? Christ, what an asshole. What dafuck did we invite him for?”

“I don’t think we did. At least, I didn’t,” said Pete. “You, on the other hand, are enough of a dickwad to do something like that.”

“Shaddup,” said Howie, stumbling toward the bathroom. “Didn’t anyone think to close the doors to the bedrooms?”

“Apparently not,” said Pete. “What a good idea. You gonna do it?”

“Shaddup,” said Howie, making tinkling noises into the toilet bowl.

“Apparently not,” Pete repeated.

Howie flushed then brushed his teeth and gargled before saying anything else. “Where dafuck is the Tylenol?”

“We’re out. Take some aspirin,” said Pete. “It’ll work better anyway.”

“You tryna kill me? You fuckin’ know I’m allergic to aspirin.”

“Oh, yeah.” Pete snickered, still on the davenport.

“Smartass,” said Howie, stumbling through the refuse toward the kitchen. He thought he remembered part of a bottle of Tylenol in the spice rack. Tylenol was sort of a spice, wasn’t it? What the hell else would you keep there if you didn’t actually do any cooking?

At the kitchen table sat Pete, buttering saltine crackers and popping them in his mouth between sips from a can of Canada Dry Diet Ginger Ale.

“How can you drink that fuckin’ stuff?” asked Howie.

Pete sprayed cracker crumbs answering. “Mmeef, mpf dmf mf n-nf br-pf,” he said.

“Whadda ya mean, we don’t have any beer?” Howie checked the refrigerator. “Muthafuck! We don’t have any beer!”

“Pt-lmf mu tpf,” said Pete.

“Yeah, yeah, give yourself a fucking no-prize.” Howie shrugged and took a can of diet ginger ale himself and popped it. He took a sip. “Nasty!” he said and took another. He gestured at the spice cabinet but it was out of reach above the stove. The door of the little box glued to the wall flew open anyway and a tiny travel-size Tylenol floated out all by itself.

Pete watched, his mouth full of cracker crumbs. “Mow few noo nadh, Noonadh?” he asked.

“How’d I do what?” asked Howie as the pill bottle orbited his head. He didn’t seem to notice and took another sip of ersatz ginger ale, his eyes slightly glazed.

“Dat,” said Pete, pointing at the Tylenol container.

Howie glanced up then snatched the bottle out of the air. “Muthafuck! Don’t throw stuff at me while I’m hungover!”

Pete laughed damp cracker crumbs all over the kitchen table then took several sips of his beverage to clear his mouth. “It’s not your hangover, it’s your overhang,” he said, pointing at Howie’s belly.

“Shaddup,” said Howie. He wandered back toward the living room, extracting a couple of pills and washing them down with soda.

Still draped across the couch, Pete lifted his arm and squinted at him. “Hey, Dude. Maybe I swapped those Tylenol for aspirin?” he suggested.

“What -- the fuck?” Howie spun around and looked back into the kitchen where another Pete was again buttering saltines and laying them in neat rows. “The fuck?” Howie repeated, spinning back.

Now there were two Petes sitting on the couch, yawning identically. “This is such a crazy day,” they both said. “I think I’m beside myself.”

Howie spun around twice more, spilling diet ginger ale into the detritus of their weekend before fainting dead away.

A fourth Pete emerged from the bathroom and knelt to check Howie’s pulse. “He’s alive,” the triply redundant Pete announced. The two Petes on the couch looked around the room and added, in unison, “If you call this living.”

* * *

Simon, the male one, stared at the slender dark-haired woman. “You mean you really are Habib?” he asked. He sounded distressed by the idea.

Habib, the female one, nodded. “When I made your wish come true, something went wrong, and....” She trailed off looking down at herself, now wearing one of Simon’s white dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up above her elbows.

“Wow,” said Simon. “That’s... something.”

Habib frowned. “It’s perverse, is what it is. Djinn rules are very strict on changing someone’s sex. I think I’ve triggered some sort of.... I cannot....” She frowned. “I think I’m being punished.”

Simon looked wounded. “Does...? Does it hurt?”

Habib shook her head, distracting herself for a moment with the movement on her back of the mass of hair falling down almost to her waist. She reached up with both hands and gathered it off her neck.

Simon took a deep breath.

“No, it doesn’t hurt, but I cannot reach into other worlds, only this one. I cannot make contact with other djinn.” She sighed. “The standard punishment for perversity is forty years of restricted use of djinn resources and abilities.” Her frown came close to turning into a pout. “But I would have thought I would get a chance to explain! I didn’t do this on purpose and neither did you.”

Simon shook his head. He intended never to admit it but the thought had occurred to him to have Habib turn into a Barbara Eden-style genie. And it had sounded perverse to him, too, which is why he would never say anything about it.

“Forty years is not so long,” said Habib. “I once spent half that long as a horse.”

“A horse?” Simon said, startled.

“Yes, not all masters are as reasonable or accountable as you are, Simon. I think I can do this, half the human race manages to be women without to much effort. Eh?” The corners of her mouth turned up.

Simon smiled to see her smile.

She pulled her hair up above her head. “What am I going to do with this? I have no idea how to take care of all this hair. It’s an obscene lot of bother, don’t you think?”

Simon grunted. ”Don’t cut it,” he said in a strangled voice.

She looked at him. “I had thought to, but now I can’t.” She frowned again.

Neither of them moved for a long moment as the realization sank in on both of them that Habib was still bound to Simon’s will by three thousand year old magical agreements.

* * *

On the Little World of the Djinn, Baghadu’ur, the other Habib, the male one, continued to enjoy his luncheon with the Hakeem. The day was bright and peaceful, the land, the food and the houris all beautiful and appropriate. Baghadu’ur felt almost content, though a thought for his master back on earth nagged at him occasionally.

The terms of the djinn sanctions against perversity meant that nothing could be done to change a female Simon back into a male one for another forty years. Habib shrugged, half the human race managed to be women on a daily basis, surely Simon could adjust. And he, or rather she, would have superpowers just as had been wished.

“What in Seven Worlds?” he heard the Hakeem ask and looked up to see where the Judge of the Green Djinn’s gaze was fixed. A very long-eyed race in themselves, Djinn could also magically enhance their vision and Baghadu’ur clearly saw what Hakeem must be looking at.

Miles away, out at the edge of the land around the Judge’s estate they saw a rider moving quickly toward them, driving his horse with almost cruel urgency.