The answer

By Lynda Shermer

Chapter 3 - Travels to My Aunt

So I was out of town for all of halloween, which is one of my favorite nights of the year. My aunt Phyllis wasn't any trouble, being an eminently practical person, and didn't object to how we'd have to rearrange things in her house so she could live entirely on the ground floor for awhile.

While I was looking things over to plan this, she brought up the subject of Susan, and I started telling her about the office, how each shift had one man, and two women due to customer preferences, and how Felicity had been invented, and how, later, Susan came to be.

"Oh, so that woman I spoke to on the phone..."

"Was me. Sorry. That time I got stuck overnight."

"My, my. And you came up with the story about the neighbor to avoid the subject."

"Well, it seemed to me that, just telling you the whole thing, cold, would have taken a long time, particularly to convince you I wasn't just playing a really elaborate practical joke. And it was late, I was stressed, and I'd been crying pretty hard."

"Yes, that might be so. You were quite convincing. I had no clue it was you on the phone. And the only thing that has snapped you out of it so far was an absolute requirement to do something that has to be done by Paul. A duty, as it were."

"That seems about right."

"Sounds dangerous. If it happens again, you'll have to come up with a better solution."

---

On Halloween, she sat on the porch glider, covered with an afghan, and praised the costumes and handed out the candy. She had a wound dressing on her head, and a tall pointy hat, and when people asked, she said she was a witch who'd had a broom accident. She would cackle, and say, "See? Totally ruined my nose," fingering her cute little button nose. It broke everyone up.

Once the rush thinned out, she asked for more details about my coworkers. After I told her some stories, she mused, "June doesn't seem to take things too serious. I'd watch out for her, she might trigger Susan just for fun. I'd like to know more about this Alice, though."

"Everyone would. She's the major office enigma."

"Some sorrow in her past, I wouldn't be surprised. I hope she recovers. Susan... You know, if you had been a girl, you mother always said you would have been named Susan Marie."

"Weird. I wonder if that's how I came up with the name Susan. I might have remembered that, subconsciously."

"It would be dangerous to ask to speak with her again, so we shan't experiment that way. But you say that don't have issues with this Felicity, so..."

Well, as I said, she was my favorite aunt. So I prepared myself, and said "Hello, Phyllis, it is nice to meet you. I am Felicity Martin. Paul has told me so much about you. You know, you are his favorite aunt."

"He's a sweet boy, but I believe I am his sole surviving aunt, as well; still, I worry about him, off in such a big city. It sounds like he is doing alright."

"Well, he has his old college friends."

"As well as some at work, it seems."

She had me talk about work and my co-workers, again, after which we exchanged a few pleasantries, and then I went back to Paul, with great relief. "Well, you don't get stuck as her, at least. I wonder why? Still, did you notice? While you were speaking as Felicity, your posture changed and you moved differently."

"I'm sitting in a chair! How did I move?"

"You sat up straight, extending your neck, partially turned on the seat toward me, placed your feet, closed your legs at the knee, and played with your hair, holding your hands in your lap otherwise. In short, you held yourself as a correct young woman. Bravo, or should I say Brava?"

"This is just getting weird. After this, I'm going to have to go to a football game, belch a lot, and get into a bar fight to re-establish my street cred as a guy."

"I don't think it's quite that bad, but I must say, while you didn't strike me as gloomy before, while you were channeling Felicity, you were smiling more."

"Channeling? It was just acting."

"I'm not sure it's acting if you aren't consciously thinking it through. Also, it’s interesting, there were differences in how you described your co-workers, as Felicity. And I'd swear it was just flowing organically. Somewhere, inside you, you have a considered self image as Felicity, which you were calling upon. I don't think it was too detailed a self image, and you seem to have created it from too much BBC, but it was there. And I think the reason you get stuck as Susan is you have a much more detailed self image of Susan. I think you need to let her out and see what happens, in safe surroundings, and soon. She's leaking."

"Phyllis, I hate to remind you, but your degree is in nutrition, not psychology. You worked in a hospital dietary department."

"True, but irrelevant. I'm right, you'll see," she said, airily.

"Yes, aunt Phyllis," and with that, the subject was dropped.

---

A few days later, I drove back to Chicago, and forgot all about it. My first day back at work, June and Alice showed me pictures of the costume group, which had come in second, behind a group of zombie personal injury attorneys, which I had to admit was tough to beat. Phil had been there, but they'd let him off the hook, letting wear an Edwardian suit, complete with straw boater.

"Now, that is what I'd have wanted to do! The costume is exactly what I'd visualized, although I dare to hazard, Phil played it a bit more, um, grabby?"

"Yes, that's right," June admitted.

"That's hardly acting for him. I worked a few shifts with him for training, and he kept wanting to compare notes about conquests. I would have played it gallant and oblivious."

"You'd just have been cribbing from 'Thoroughly Modern Millie', you mean," Alice objected.

"Well, it's a good interpretation of the role."

"Still, you seem to be good at that visualization stuff alright. I mean, between Felicity and Susan...", June hinted.

"Yeah, my aunt said something about how I made up a whole internal self image for each of them, on the fly."

"Well, Felicity, maybe, but I suspect Susan is a bit different."

"I can't imagine how," I said, and changed the subject.

---

And a week after that, June, working on her nails, engaged me in casual conversation. Without my noticing, she started calling me Susan. Fortunately, before I absentmindedly started to respond, Alice reprimanded her, "Bad June! Naughty girl. Paul is not a toy!"

I spent the rest of the evening glaring at June. Which broke them both up, every time I did it.

After work, in the bar, where I was continuing my new tradition of not drinking by having another Virgin Mary, Alice turned to face me, and grabbed my hands. "Seriously, I never apologized for getting you in this whole mess, or thanked you for coming after me."

"But I'm the one who upset you."

"Only after I attacked you. At any rate, I feel I should make it up to you. How about you come over Friday night, and I'll make you dinner, and you can subject me to one of those games you claim you play with your friends," clearly goading me to get me to accept, but I had always said I wished I knew more about her, so...

"You're on. I'll try to figure out what to bring to beat the pants off you!" Oops! Not quite the note I wanted to hit.

"Hmm, it seems I've triggered your latent vein of competitiveness. How's Italian sound?"

"A lot like Latin, or French spoken rapidly, I find. Oh, you mean, as food. Sure."

"Don't get your hopes up, I'll probably wimp out with spaghetti and frozen meatballs."

"Well, can we at least heat them, first? Just kidding, that sounds fine."

---

So it was that, come Friday, the early evening found me standing in the hallway in front of her door, carrying a bottle of wine and a potted plant.

"Oh, my," she said when she opened the door, "You really went all out, I see."

"Well, I figured there were amends to make on both sides, and if I brought a peace offering, you might take it easy on me and be more vulnerable when we played."

"Not a chance, buster. Still, the plant might not have been a great idea. I have a bit of a brown thumb."

"Ok, but at least it will give you something to talk to, if I freeze up."

I entered the apartment, and was promptly amazed.

It was compact; no one could afford a lot of space on what we made, the couch was worn but looked comfortable, the coffee table was a trunk with some fabric thrown over it. The tv across from it had the current panoply of video game systems attached (each with only a single controller in evidence, I noted), but it was the bookcases, reaching all the way to the high ceilings and covering the walls, that caught my eye. They were overflowing with books, and game boxes.

I had a copy of fluxx stuck in my coat pocket, figuring than an authority figure like Alice would have been rattled by the extreme mutability of the rules, but there were already three of the variants of fluxx on her shelves, in worn boxes, along with a copy of illuminati. I was going to have to rethink my strategy here, pretty drastically. I put my coat on the couch, and followed her through to the kitchen, where she was opening the wine. She had indeed just made spaghetti and meatballs, although I could see she had put some effort into making her own sauce.

"I'm sorry about the store bought meatballs, but this is spur of the moment."

"They're fine; I normally just use those myself."

"Now go back to the living room, I have a little left to do here."

I went back, and browsed the shelves. In one book, I noted a stamp from a familiar used bookstore.

"Hey, did you go to the University of Illinois in Champaign," I asked her.

"No, I went in Urbana. Sorry, bad joke. Yeah, why?"

"How did you end up answering phones?"

"I could ask the same of you."

She was dodging again; I was standing in her living room, and she was still hiding. Hmmm.

"I had to come back and take care of my parents for a bit, before I was finished at school."

"In my case, it turns out there are fewer jobs for aerospace engineers than I'd assumed when I declared my major."

Wait a second; went to U of I, reads, games, aerospace engineering, name of Alice...

"Were you married?"

"Yeah, very briefly. It didn't work out, and turned out to be a very emotionally painful detour."

That explained why the last name had been unfamiliar; and the hair would not have naturally been that purple...

"Wait, I'm seeing something on the astral plane. I'm seeing blue, pale blue... Alice blue. And now, a green field, a field of alfalfa? Soybeans? No, Grass, no, more yellow, straw, hay. A block of hay. Alice...Hay, Alice...bale; Alice Bailey?"

"Wow, that's some trick! No, wait a second, did someone scribble my name in one of my books when I wasn't looking?"

"No, they're still ok, Mike said you always hated people writing in books."

"Yeah. Wait, how did you know that? You knew Mike?". She ran out of the kitchen, stirring spoon clenched like a weapon, glaring at me like she was about to attack.

"Relax! Mike Wells was my dorm roommate. You changed your hair color. It used to be purple."

Her body went slack, as she looked incredulous.

"Oh, god. Paul. You're THAT Paul. Mike always called you Edgar, making fun of how your last name sounded like Burroughs. How embarrassing..."

"I tried returning the compliment by calling him H. G., but it never caught on. Don't worry about it."

"Actually, I changed a lot of things. Now I owe you a whole bunch of apologies, suddenly. First, for not remembering you, and second, do I recall correctly that you ended up reading ALL of Lord of the Rings on the couch in the floor lounge while Mike and I were, er, using your room?"

"No, really just The Two Towers, although it did take me two tries to get through it. And I happen to know, YOU only started reading Pratchett when you stole my copy of Men at Arms."

"Borrowed. Yeah. It's in the bookcase there, if you want it back."

"No, I've replaced it. Consider it a gift."

"Good, I wasn't serious; it would have made a hole in my collection. I prefer the British covers."

"But, wow, you really Have been hiding. I only dimly remember you back then, because you and Mike always snuck in and out of the dorm, but you've been totally different."

"My wild child phase. I've settled down."

"Even that wouldn't account for it. Even allowing for it being at work, you've been concentrated, reserved, while I've known you. You were a lot more outgoing back then."

"Yeah, well, it really wasn't a good marriage. He called me childish, told me to grow up. That rant I threw at you was practically a direct quote of things he said to me. I haven't been the same since. I'm not sure I'll ever be the way I was, again. In part, I asked you here to see if I can, at least for a little while." She looked shaken at all this openness. I went to the table, sat, and reached out to touch her hand.

"I'm still going to beat you," I said, tenderly.

"In your dreams," she smiled, her eyes flashing.

The food was good. After we ate, I cleared the table, putting the dishes in to soak with the sauce pot. We went back to the living room, sitting on the floor on either side of the coffee table/trunk. Despite her home court advantage, now that I saw she had more than Monopoly, I gave her the choice of weapons, er, games; she took her original fluxx off the shelf, and I listened to her explanation of the rules, suppressing a smile, nodding when appropriate, and looking studious. Fortunately for both of our fragile egos, we came to a close fought draw, which she ascribed to beginners luck. We went back to finish the dishes.

As I was leaving, I pulled out my own copy of fluxx.

"Ohhh, next time, the fight is ON, buster. You tried to hustle me, pretending not to know the game."

"I never said that. You just assumed it. Ok, next time, something simple, familiar to both of us again. It shall remain your pick," I offered.

"Ok. And until next week, consider this: even though neither of us remembered we'd met before, you knew just how to take me apart with five sentences."

I started to reply, but she laid a finger against my lips, and kissed me on my forehead.

And with that I smiled and left. Fortunately, I could take the el; I was not used to that much wine.

---

At one point in the next week, when Alice was down the hall, June turned to me, and asked, "What did you guys do? I've never seen Alice so relaxed. Is this what she is like, happy?"

"I didn't do anything to cheer her up THAT much; It turns out we went to the same university, and hadn't realized we'd run into each other back then."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, she used to go out with my roommate."

"And you guys didn't realize it? What was wrong with both of you! Oh wait, he wasn't the idiot she married, was he?"

"No, evidently he came later, but I can't help but think that she repressed the whole period of her life, and that explains why she didn't realize."

"Still, it's pretty weird. What did you guys do?"

"Well, she cooked, we played a game, and then we did dishes."

"Ohhh, dishes. I usually don't even show my date the dishes until the fourth date. You guys are moving fast."

"And then, as any gentleman would do, I left."

"Yeah, I figured, that must be why I don't date gentlemen. My bed is too big for that much waiting." I blushed, and turned my head. Why was she being so open?

---

Next weekend, the game was called on account of movie. There was a new science Fiction movie opening, which we went to see, and afterward, I got to hold forth my opinion on why it was so hard to do a good Mars movie, in discussion as I walked her home. I left her at her apartment door, although I did accept a hug and a peck on the cheek. As I left, I ran into one of her neighbors, a motherly figure, in the hall, and it seemed that function followed form, as she gave me a thumbs up, and I heard her say, under her breath, "About time..."

---

The next week, June continued to look at us with suspicion, but nothing much new happened, until Friday. I went to Alice's place, and brought along a pizza from my favorite pizzeria, which she'd never tried. We'd agreed on toppings ahead of time, an arduous negotiation that resulted in pepperoni and red peppers, and then, she prepared the game, laying out...
Monopoly.

I looked at her, quizzically. She said, "Ok, finish your wine first."

Obediently, I complied. She finished hers, and poured full glasses for both of us again. She looked a little flushed.

"Now, are we in agreement that this constitutes our third date?", she started.

"Ok, for the sake of argument, I accept that, although I am hazy on the social constructs attached to that," I said.

"We need to explore our comfort zones here, I feel. So with a little research, I found the rules, online, for the game I propose...Strip Monopoly."

"I see. Well, I accept your challenge, good knight! As you had choice of games, I get first choice of tokens. I choose...the race car."

"No fair, I wanted the race car," she objected.

"Tough," I replied.

By these rules, you start out with less money, but every item of clothing has a monetary value. You could pay the bank with clothes or money, and if you were paid in clothing from another player you had to wear it. We both managed to get pretty solid positions on the board. We both got bad chance cards, and lost our shirts and pants to the bank (besides, what's the fun of a mixed strip game while you still have your shirts on?) Before she could rebuild her savings enough, she hit illinois, which I'd developed with a hotel. Looking things over, she had to pay me money, and her bra.

"You have to wear it," she said.

We'd made solid inroads into a second bottle of wine while we played, so I said, "I should be proud to wear your token into battle, milady."' and clipped it around my chest. It was lacy, and had something in the cups. I was out of shape enough that I had some chest flab that it pushed around, although I barely noticed it at the time. I was too busy planning how to consolidate my empire. She lost boardwalk to the bank, I mortgaged it, developed it, and she hit it, losing everything. I'd won.

She stood up.

"Game over!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah," she said, stripping off her panties.

"Um, game's over." I hinted.

"Who said anything about the game," she said, launching herself at me, nude, "Fuck chivalry," she muttered.