Bob O’Brien enjoys the fringe benefits his job as a pilot for Atlantic Air Express provides, particularly during layovers. When the opportunity to move into a new apartment near Greenwich Village in New York City arises, Bob jumps at the chance to be able to enjoy the nightlife to the fullest. Unknown to Bob however, the landlord of the Deety Arms has some interesting ideas about what he and other workers at the Arms view as entertainment. Come fly with Bob as he discovers firsthand what customer service entails for those who fly Atlantic Air.

Authors note:

This is the first story of my promised new universe, and I’m pleased to announce that any and all of you are more than welcome to write stories in it. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons I wrote this story. My story is designed as a standalone tale, although I may revisit Deity Arms from time to time. It makes an excellent setting for my stories which would be inappropriate for Ovid. For example, there’s no place for airline flight attendants in Ovid. The town is far too small for commercial air service.

When I began the Ovid cycle, I fully intended to let others write about it. Then I discovered a problem I should have realized before I started: in small towns everything is interrelated. Residents of a small town find their lives intertwined with each other, so if I allowed someone else to write an Ovid story, I’d have to figure out how to fit it into my tales. That just wouldn’t work.

Deity Arms doesn’t present that problem. New Yorkers, like residents of any large city, can live right next to each other for years and never meet. That means Deity Arms can allow for almost limitless stories that don’t interfere with each other.

I’ve tried to keep Deity Arms fairly simple, but by its nature, it can’t be as elegantly simple as Bill Hart’s magnificent Spells ’R’ Us, or as versatile as Jennifer Adams’ fine creation, the Medallion of Zulo. At Deity Arms, you’ll find a strange assortment of gods and goddesses. Some, like Mr. L, are based on real gods, but so little is known about them that almost any attribute can be given to them. Others, like Luk, represent gods so minor and obscure that no one remembers them. Luk is strictly a figment of my imagination. So you see, you can create and use gods until your heart is content–even ones who never existed!

Likewise, Deity Arms has no actual street address. It is vaguely near Greenwich Village. For those of you who don’t know New York, don’t worry. It is just an old, funky, somewhat arty neighborhood like those found in many large cities. The area immediately around Deity Arms changes, since businesses in the real world come and go. Who knows? Maybe there’s even a branch of Spells ’R’ Us nearby and the Medallion of Zulo may be as near as the closest second hand shop.

So have fun with it. I hope you enjoy my story, and I hope it will prompt you to write one of your own. I’d be happy to help you–sort of fill in the details if you need my help. Just be like Mr. L and have fun!

–The Professor

Luk was a jealous god.

Now, that didn’t mean that he would have no other gods before him. Quite to the contrary, Luk was content to be a minor god for all of his immortal life. The problem was, he was jealous. Other gods were at least remembered, even if they were no longer worshipped, but not Luk. Luk had been last worshipped long before Alexander had incorporated his homeland into part of an empire. He had been a minor god even then.

Luk first became aware of himself in an age before written history. In what is now the Balkans, he found himself a war god of a now-nameless tribe near the Black Sea. At first, he enjoyed some small success, inspiring his followers to victorious battles (skirmishes, actually) over neighboring tribes.

Then came the Greeks and Macedonians with their bronze swords and shining armor, and worst of all, their insufferable gods.

The defeat of Luk’s people was too insignificant an event to find its way into recorded history. One minute, he was worshipped by a small but reasonably prosperous tribe: the next minute, his ramshackle temple had been torn to the ground, its wooden supports used to make a fire over which three of the tribe’s fattest sheep were sacrificed to Zeus.

Luk was of course, very jealous of Zeus. The Greek god and his fellow Olympians had it all, it seemed. First, the Greeks worshipped them and then the Romans. Then, once their theology had been supplanted, they moved on into more secular roles. Luk understood they had even managed to migrate to America where they were probably prospering once more.

Well, Luk thought to himself, at least he was on his way to America now. Perhaps there, his fortunes would change. They couldn’t get much worse. The last century had been a living hell for the forgotten god. It seemed as if every turn of events produced another war in the region. It was worse than the Turkish invasions. He had even been shot in two of the wars, but he didn’t remember which ones they had been. There had been so many. Of course, being immortal, he was in no real danger, but being shot had hurt, damn it! His face had taken on a look of weary middle age, and his hawkish nose seemed almost to droop, matching the slant of his shoulders.

But, he thought, as he got off the plane at New York’s Kennedy Airport, his belly full of delicious airline food (which shows just how low he had fallen), perhaps things were looking up.

He had managed to make it into the United States by posing as a Kosovar refugee. In a way, he was, he mused. After all, he had lived in virtually every part of the Balkans. At some time in history, he must have considered himself a Kosovar. Anyhow, America, unnerved by its lack of success in the region, had opened its doors to the Kosovars. For Luk, it was a golden opportunity.

‘But what now?’ he wondered as he stood at the curb near the taxi stand outside the terminal. Perhaps he should have stayed with the gaggle of Kosovars that had flown to America with him. But no, he knew his future lay upon a different path. He just felt it. Ever since he had landed, he had felt it. Something was pulling him into the city. Something that would start him on the road to a better future.

“Where to, buddy?”

He looked over his shoulder to see a swarthy man leaning on a yellow taxi. He wore a yellow badge indicating that his name was Kemal. The man’s accent was vaguely Turkish.

“Excuse me?” he replied in his own heavily accented English.

“New to town, eh?” the cabbie asked with a grin.

Luk shifted uncomfortably. Cabbies all over the world loved newcomers. They never knew when they were being ferried far out of their way. “I need a hotel,” he managed at last. “A cheap one.” There. That would tell the cabbie he had little money. Sadly, it was true.

The cabbie shrugged. “Okay. There’s lots of cheap ones real close.”

Luk shook his head. “No! Not close.” He pointed in the direction of Manhattan. “Over there.”

“A cheap hotel in the city, huh?” the cabbie laughed. “Okay, we find something. Not to worry.” He grabbed Luk’s shabby cardboard suitcase. “You come: we find.”

Luk sighed, climbing into the cab. This was going to cost him he knew, but he had to find out what was pulling at him.

The towers of Manhattan loomed closer and closer, and for the first time in more years than he could count, Luk felt a glimmer of hope. There was something there on that urban island–something that would change his immortal life for the better. His destination came to him in a flash as the cab emerged from the tunnel connecting Long Island to the city.

The driver looked surprised. “No cheap hotels there,” he explained. “That too near the Village.”

“Village?” Luk repeated. Manhattan was hardly a village.

“Greenwich Village,” the driver told him. “It expensive now. All artsy-fartsy. Even bad places expensive now.”

Could his instincts be wrong? No, whatever was pulling at him was there, on the edge of the village. If he refused to heed its call, his future might be bleak. “I don’t care. Go there–now!”

The driver shrugged. A fare was a fare. This little immigrant with his weasel-like face and ragged clothes would not last long in the city. Damned immigrants, he thought to himself, not appreciating the irony that he had been in America only two years himself.

The cab lurched to a stop after cutting across two busy lanes of traffic.

“What’s wrong?” Luk asked, clutching his ragged coat to his chest.

“No wrong,” the driver growled. “We here–where you say.”

Luk looked out of the cab. He had been so lost in thought that he had not been paying attention to his surroundings. That was not good, he realized. A cabbie would be able to drive him all over the city for an inflated fare unless he paid attention. Oh well, the damage–if there was any–was already done.

The neighborhood was a pleasant one, he realized with a wave of relief. Unlike the concentrations of tall buildings at the southern end of the island, this area consisted of smaller buildings, mostly two or three stories high or less, made of brick and brownstone, arranged around a small park which occupied a small block of its own. Most of the buildings were modest but neat, a store or restaurant gracing the street floor with apartments or inconspicuous offices on the upper floors.

“Which building is it?” he called out to the driver as he exited the cab.

“Don’t know,” the driver admitted, pulling his tattered suitcase from the trunk and setting it on the curb. “Did not see number you gave, but must be here. Is that block.”

Luk peeled a bill from his meager roll of money, then sighed as the driver’s hand remained extended for more. Reluctantly, he placed another bill in the driver’s hand.

The driver’s meaty paw surrounded the bills. He didn’t offer any change as he smiled and leaped back into the cab, screeching away from the curb and back into the chaos that was New York traffic.

Luk could only shake his head. He had paid too much, he knew. But what was his choice? He was just a poor forgotten god from a rural province. The big city was a frightening mystery to him. He wasn’t even sure where he was supposed to go.

Then a thought struck him. The pull was still there, but it was all around him. Which direction was it actually coming from? He closed his eyes while gripping his suitcase tighter as protection against would-be thieves. The neighborhood looked pleasant enough, but one could never tell. With his eyes closed, he began to feel the pull. It was coming from the nearer side–the north side–of the square. Triumphantly, Luk opened his eyes.

Before him stood a large building in the middle of the block, its brownstone façade weathered by age and city pollution. It rose six stories above the pavement, making it by two floors the tallest building on the square. Above the polished heavy oak front doors, two gargoyles perched on a ledge. Between them, carved into the stone, were two words: Deety Arms. But part of the stone on one of the words had either worn or been chipped away, for the second ‘e’ looked more like an ‘i’ at first glance.

Deety Arms. Or maybe it was Deity Arms. In any case, it was a fitting sign. His confidence returning for the first time in what seemed like centuries, he strode toward the oak doors.

A bit of his confidence waned as he entered the building. The polished oak wainscoting and plush green carpet in the lobby bespoke of old wealth. Even the hunter-green wallpaper above the wainscoting reeked of money. Luk had felt the old brownstone might be a key to his future, but what possible future could he have here? He was just a poor country god, not sophisticated in the ways of the world.

A security guard looked up from his desk as Luk approached. The guard was big and burly, and Luk cringed under his harsh scrutiny. “Can I help you?” the guard said, surprising Luk with his politeness.

“I... I...” Luk began nervously. His English wasn’t good enough to explain how he had been drawn into the building.

Before he could flee in embarrassment, a man suddenly popped out of a door near the guard’s desk. He was tall and slender, and although his skin was that of a young man, his hair was white and close-cropped. Luk wasn’t sure of modern styles, but he was sure the dark blue suit the man wore was very expensive. He stared at Luk with intense blue eyes. Then he adjusted his obviously expensive tie and offered a hand to Luk, a thin smile on his lips. Nervously, Luk accepted the hand, not at all surprised to find its grip firm but reassuring.

“You must be our new applicant,” the man said in a cultured accent. “I’ll be with you in just a moment. Horace here will give you an employment application. Fill it out and I’ll be right with you.” He turned away, then stopped and turned back to face Luk, a new coldness in his eyes. “Make sure you fill out the application completely and honestly. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir!” Luk said, nearly snapping to attention.

The smile returned. “Good. Then I’ll be with you shortly.” He disappeared again behind the door.

The guard actually gave Luk a friendly smile. “Don’t worry, Mr. L just likes to show off a bit. He got that look from his favorite TV show, Fantasy Island.”

“Fantasy Island?” Luk mumbled, not understanding.

The guard chuckled, not noticing Luk’s ignorance. “Yeah. Boy, you should have seen what he did with the poor bastard who cancelled that show. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in his shoes. By the way, his shoes are now a size seven–women’s. Mr. L made him one of the Rockettes. He–she now–does two shows a day over at Radio City.”

Luk wasn’t sure what the man was talking about. It sounded like English, but he had no idea what the guard was talking about.

Deciding that it was best just to keep his mouth shut, Luk accepted a clipboard and pen from the guard and sat down in a visitor’s chair to study the attached application form. To his surprise and delight, he found the form was in his native tongue–or rather in the language he had been speaking for the last couple of centuries.

Familiar with the first questions, he quickly filled out the form. He had really had no intention of applying for a job when he had wandered into the lobby, but why not? He had no other prospects. It wouldn’t hurt to try to get a job.

Then the questions deviated into things he had never been asked before. Things like:

• What were you god of?
• How many worshippers did you have at the height of your power?
• Did you encourage human sacrifices? If so, why?

Luk had never imagined having to answer such questions. Who exactly was this strange Mr. L anyhow? Whoever he was, he knew Luk was an immortal. No one had suspected him of that in many centuries. No one believed in the old gods anymore, did they?

Luk was perspiring profusely as he finally signed his name to the application. Nervously, his hands shaking, he returned the clipboard to the guard.

“Hey, don’t sweat it, buddy,” the guard consoled him. “Mr. L is really a straight shooter. You got nothing to be afraid of.”

Luk had no idea what a “straight shooter” was. He hoped that didn’t mean Mr. L was armed. Luk had been shot more than once in his long life, and although he couldn’t be killed, being shot as noted before still hurt like hell. Luk didn’t like being shot one little bit. But the guard had also said he had nothing to worry about. He hoped the guard knew what he was talking about.

Before he could worry more, the door opened again. It was Mr. L. The strange man took the clipboard from the guard and glanced at it for a second. Then, with a toothy grin for Luk’s benefit, he said, “Well, all right then, Mr. Luk, shall we talk?”

Luk was ushered into a suite of offices decorated much like the lobby. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had been expecting, but what he saw could have passed for offices anywhere in the world. Attractive young secretaries sat at neat workstations, their eyes never leaving the screens of their computers, while young executives in neat business suits studied documents or talked on the phones in small, tasteful offices. Mr. L’s office was by far the largest, situated at the far end of the office suite with windows overlooking the square.

“Please be seated, Mr. Luk,” he said formally.

“Just Luk, please,” Luk replied. He wasn’t used to any titles before his name.

Mr. L smiled. “Of course. Just Luk then. Now, I assume you were urged to come here.”

“Yes,” Luk replied. “I felt... something. It brought me here.”

“Of course it did,” Mr. L agreed, sitting behind his large oak desk as he studied the application. “Hmmm... I see here you were a war god. So did you spend a lot of time with the military?”

“Uh... no,” Luk managed. “I got to be honest. I not much of a war god.”

Mr. L smiled. “Actually, that’s good. War gods tend to be a little rigid.”

Luk didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. Considering the power he suspected this Mr. L possessed, it seemed safer to be relieved.

Mr. L continued to thumb through the application. “So it would appear you have no special talents.”

Luk thought of mentioning he was a pretty decent farmhand but he doubted if that would raise his stock in Mr. L’s eyes. “No. None.”

“No special abilities or attributes?”

“No.” What, he wondered, was an attribute? Well, he probably didn’t have any anyway.

Mr. L sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Luk, I can’t tell you how often I see this. It’s so sad, really. One minute you’re a god with worshippers and sacrifices and the next minute...” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture, his manicured fingernails nearly glistening. “It would be better if you had some useful talents,” he went on.

Luk’s heart sank. Was he about to be turned away? Mr. L noted the fear in his eyes. “There’s nothing to be concerned about, Luk. We’ve never turned away a god yet. Of course, you’ll have to start at the bottom, but it will be something you’ve had experience with before. We provide lodgings as well. You’ll be on the seventh floor–it’s a modest accommodation, but I think you’ll be comfortable there.”

“Seventh floor?” Luk asked. Maybe his English was worse than he thought. Or maybe he had meant the second floor. After all, the building only had six floors–didn’t it?

“I’ll explain later,” Mr. L said with a wave of his hand. “For now, let’s get you started.”

“Uh...” Luk began reluctantly.

Mr. L cocked his head. “Is there a problem, Mr. Luk?”

“No... no problem,” Luk assured him. He regretted his interruption but he had to know. “What... what do we do here?”

There was a devilish gleam in Mr. L’s eyes. “What do we do here? Why, we have fun, Mr. Luk. We have fun...”

“Atlantic four-one-seven, you are cleared to land...” The voice droned on with runway and wind speed information. I gave the requisite “Roger, Newark,” repeating my instructions to the tower and putting us into a gentle descent that wouldn’t even jangle the nerves of the most jittery passenger in the back of the bus. It wasn’t exactly fancy flying, but I enjoyed it. It was a living.

I had flown airliners for fifteen years–ever since I had gotten out of the Air Force. It wasn’t as if I missed flying fighters because I never had flown them. While in the military, I had flown KC-135’s. That’s the big pup that carries aviation fuel for midair refuelings. It’s like the plane that explodes in the movie Air Force One. Yep, that’s a KC-135. It’s nothing but a big gas can in the sky.

So, flying 737’s for Atlantic Air Express was a treat after flying KC-135’s. Oh, I know. A lot of pilots don’t like the 737. It’s not a glamorous plane at all. It’s small and squat, and in the industry, they’re often called “FLUFs.” That stands for “fat little ugly fuckers.” But take a look at the big new birds. They practically fly themselves. In fact, you can load in software that will allow them to taxi out, take off and land without human intervention. The pilot can be there just to take the blame if something goes wrong. Now where’s the fun in that? Not the 737, though. You’ve got to fly the FLUF. That’s what makes it fun.

In fact, that’s probably why I ended up flying for a little shoestring outfit like Atlantic. There I was, young Air Force Lieutenant Robert O’Brien, Air Force Academy class of seventy-eight. I could have flown for anybody but I loved the 737. The Air Force has some and I had wanted to fly them, but they needed crews stupid enough to go up into the sky with thousands of pounds of aviation fuel in the place where there should have been passengers. So I made up my mind: when I got out of the Air Force, I would only fly for an airline that exclusively flew the 737.

Well, there was another factor, too. I wanted to live in New York. I mean, I was a swinging bachelor again after my wife took off just before I got out of the military. She was out on the West Coast and I wanted to be as far away from her as possible. Besides, I was raised in upstate New York and taught from an early age that Yankee baseball was the only baseball worth following. Also, if you’re a bachelor, New York is a great place to be. There are tens of thousands of eligible young women, and half the eligible guys are gay. ‘All the more for guys like me,’ I reasoned.

Atlantic Air Express was just starting up then. Flying out of Newark, the airline was a niche marketer. That meant it didn’t go after every passenger. Instead, it made a reputation for business travellers by flying two-hour routes out of Newark with frequent arrivals and departures. Flights to the West Coast were less frequent, but they arrived and departed at convenient times. Fares weren’t the cheapest but they weren’t the worst either. Bill Farnsworth, the founder of the airline, was well connected, and he managed to get good slots at many airports, so flight times were convenient for business travellers. When you fly for business, time is money, so convenient flight times often can make up for more expensive fares.

He was a marketing genius too. He knew what the full package business travellers wanted. First, they wanted enough seat room to spread out their Wall Street Journal in the morning and use their laptop coming home that evening. He gave it to them, with a First Class section that was both big and affordable. Sure, that meant a few less seats, but the seats he had were usually filled, both in Coach and First Class.

Next, he realized that a good cup of coffee and a gourmet Danish went over a lot bigger than a rubber omelet and soggy sausage. Have you ever noticed how the big boys in the airline industry put out a food product that would cause a riot if served in a prison? I mean, United even manages to screw up a cup of Starbucks coffee. So that was what Bill did. He made sure we served light, simple and above all, tasty fare. And the passengers loved it.

Then, there were the flight attendants. I mustn’t forget them. There was a time when flight attendants were sweet young things. They were high school beauty queens and college dropouts who used the opportunity to fly to meet well-heeled businessmen and pilots. Object: matrimony. The system worked great for a while. Airlines lured the business traveller with flight attendants that looked like they had just stepped out of the pages of Playboy. One airline even advertised “the Air Strip.” During that performance, an attractive flight attendant would start out in something almost like a sarong. Then, after takeoff, she would strip down to a more revealing outfit. No, it wasn’t obscene–just revealing. Southwest Airlines started out dressing their attendants in hot pants and go-go boots back in the disco era.

Then, all of a sudden, flight attendants decided they wanted to be treated like professionals instead of flying cocktail waitresses. They demanded to fly after being married. Hell, they demanded to fly when they were pregnant. Labor was in short supply and the women’s movement was in full swing. In short, they got their way. That’s why some of the flight attendants today look like somebody’s Russian grandmother. The rest are male.

Again, Bill Farnsworth to the rescue. Amid criticisms that he was trying to start Hooters in the air, he recruited a bevy of sweet young things to be his flight attendants. They smiled, they even giggled, and they served drinks to tired businessmen as if they were getting them relaxed before a night of fun in the sack. Pay a little extra for a ticket on Atlantic? Sure, why not? You could always put it past accounting if you tried. Then you got a convenient flight time, a decent snack, and a little extra legroom to put that woody of yours you got when a flight attendant in a skirt short enough to make Ally McBeal blush served you your afternoon scotch. Yummy!

Yes, no doubt about it. Bill Farnsworth was a miracle worker. He had come out of nowhere with plenty of seed capital. Nobody knew where he got the money, but he seemed to have plenty of it to throw around. He had leased three 737’s and started running them on East Coast routes. The next thing everybody knew, it was half a dozen planes–then a dozen. Now, with nearly thirty planes in the air, he was a force to be reckoned with.

The big airlines had tried everything to put him out of business. They tried matching–even beating–fares but they couldn’t match his cabin service. When a businessman had the chance to pay about the same fare on Atlantic Air or one of the big boys, why not get pampered by a sweetheart on Atlantic Air? The alternative was getting a bag of peanuts or road kill served up by a middle-aged flight attendant with hips so wide she could barely make it down the aisle.

Next, they tried fomenting labor trouble. It shouldn’t have been that hard. Our unions had all agreed to lower wages than any other airline. Add to that the fact that the flight attendants were one small step above waitresses at Hooters and it should have spelled labor trouble. Nope. The unions would walk into Bill Farnsworth’s office and agree to just about anything he proposed. Nobody knew why–it just worked that way.

“The cabin is secure, Captain,” a sweet feminine voice came through the intercom.

“Thanks, Muriel,” I said brightly.

“Any time, Captain.”

My co-pilot, Jeremy Miller pushed a shock of dark blonde hair away from his forehead and grinned his usual lopsided grin. “Why do I get the idea you weren’t just thanking her for securing the cabin?”

I grinned. Jeremy had watched Muriel and I leave together the night before. We had been on layover in Atlanta. Since Jeremy was from there, he had spent the night with relatives, leaving me alone in our hotel room. I had had my eye on Muriel for about a month. As it turned out, she had her eye on me, too. And as they say, the rest was history. “You’ve got a dirty mind, boy,” I said, imitating his Southern drawl, “and I love you for it.”

Jeremy laughed as I turned the aircraft for final approach. “When are you gonna settle down and get hitched, Bob?”

“Never!” I said emphatically, cutting back on the power. “I tried that once and didn’t like it.”

“You don’t want to have kids?”

“Whatever for?” This was an old discussion. Someone reading a transcript of our conversation would have assumed that Jeremy was the older, more mature, speaker. All he wanted in life was a good job, a loving wife, and a house full of kids–preferably someplace south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Except for the good job, we shared no common goals.

Still, I liked Jeremy. He was a good kid. He hadn’t flown military, but he would have been a good officer. He had a lot of self-discipline. He had wanted to fly as long as he could remember. He did odd jobs in high school just to make enough money to take flying lessons. I got the idea his parents could have afforded to pay for his lessons, but they wanted him to pay for them himself just to see how much flying meant to him. Then in college, he flew short hop air cargo to smaller cities out of Atlanta. He logged more hours than I ever did in KC-135’s, and I had a lot of hours. Then, when he got out of college, he snagged a job with Atlantic Air. I knew he would have preferred to fly for one of the bigs–particularly Delta since they were headquartered in Atlanta. No such luck though. He tried to get on there when they were in a temporary hiring freeze. So he ended up with Atlantic.

I had flown with him several times. Although he had only been with Atlantic a couple of years, he could handle a FLUF with the best of them. I was senior enough that I could usually pick my schedule, so I tried to fly with Jeremy on the Atlanta run as often as possible. That way, I got a room to myself. I could sometimes find a willing flight attendant to share my bed. And if I couldn’t, there was plenty of action in Atlanta.

We made an effortless approach and landing at Newark. I was actually glad to get back on the ground. I had been flying a lot over the last couple of months. Now, I only had one day off. Then it was back to a four-day grind which would leave me overnighting in three different cities. But that was it. After that, I had ten days off before flying again. I planned to look for a new place in Manhattan during those ten days. I had renewed my place in Jersey on a month-to-month basis in hopes of finding something in the city. The problem was my income. As I’ve indicated before, pilots with Atlantic don’t make the big bucks they pull in over at American or United. And living in the city wasn’t cheap. If you wanted to live well in Manhattan, it helped if you were a Middle Eastern oil potentate.

Jeremy and I checked in at the crew lounge for messages and found ourselves in the middle of a big party. Most of the crowd were flight attendants, jumping around and squealing while showing a lot of leg. It was heaven, I’ll tell you. A few pilots were there, too. I noticed they were mostly the single guys like me, looking for someone to take home after the party. Foremost among them was Jack “Doc” Vincent. He got the nickname “Doc” because he wanted to be every flight attendant’s personal gynecologist. I mean, I was usually on the make, but Doc made me look like an untalented amateur. “Watch out for Doc,” was part of every flight attendant’s informal training.

Doc was just on his way out. I waved at him from across the room, and he waved back, pointing with a gleam in his eye at a little brunette flight attendant in front of him who was obviously leaving with him–Doc always did have a thing for brunettes. “There’s a lot more of them,” he once told me with a devilish grin.

I almost passed the party up. Muriel had drained me dry the night before in Atlanta, and to be honest, I was getting a little old to burn the candle at both ends. As it was, I had let Jeremy handle the controls for almost the entire flight. I wanted to go home and sleep straight through until I had to fly again. But curiosity got the better of me. I recognized one of the flight attendants on the edge of the little crowd. It was Donna Westfall. She and I had screwed like minks one night last winter in Detroit, where we had been stranded during a snowstorm.

“What’s the occasion?” I yelled over the laughs and giggles.

“We’re just having a little going away party for Jennifer Higgins,” she told me with a grin. “She’s moving to Chicago to work for American.”

That was often an occasion for a party at Atlantic Air, I thought. The money and working conditions were better at the larger airlines. At forty-three, I was one of the older pilots at Atlantic. Most of the young guys left after five years or less. It was the same with the flight attendants, especially once they decided to get married and/or have a family. Jennifer fell in that category. At thirty, she was pretty close to the upward age of our flight attendants. She had lived in Manhattan and had met some corporate rising star. Word was he had been transferred to Chicago, so it looked as if she was going to follow him there.

‘Jennifer looked happier than the proverbial pig in shit,’ I thought as I poured myself a glass of punch and took a minute or two to enjoy the party. I was happy for her. She wasn’t my type–a little too much of the ‘girl next door’ look for me with her short red hair and dusting of freckles. But I had always liked her. She had flown with me a number of times, so I made my way up to the little crowd surrounding her to wish her well.

“Thanks, Bob,” she said to me with a grin when I had congratulated her.

“Say...” I said to her suddenly, “has anybody leased your apartment in Manhattan yet?” I figured if they hadn’t, I’d sublease it from her, assuming it was decent. Apartments in the city that a flight attendant could afford had to be rent controlled. If I could sublease from Jennifer, I might be able to afford to live in Manhattan after all.

She gave me an indulgent smile. “I don’t think you’d like it, Bob.”

“Why not?” I had visions of it being a dump. Jennifer knew I’d be looking for a bachelor pad.

“Well...” she began slowly, “the décor is pretty feminine.”

“That could be changed,” I pointed out. “Where is it?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to find. It’s near the Village.”

Near the Village and she could afford it? But it was hard to find, she said. That meant it might be tucked in off the street. I visualized a quiet, inexpensive if small apartment, near great nightlife. This was looking better and better.

“I might be willing to sublet,” I offered. “Or I could assume your lease if they’ll let me.”

“My lease is up at the end of the month,” she explained quickly.

That was a bummer. “Look Jennifer, even if I have to pay more, I’d really like a shot at your place. I’ve been looking for something in the city for a long time.”

“Some place where you can pick up a girl at a bar and get her back to your place before she sobers up?” Jennifer asked dryly.

“Now Jennifer,” I gasped in mock surprise, “do you really think I’m that kind of a guy?”

Jennifer looked at me with those beautiful green eyes of hers as if she was trying to come to a decision. As I said, we had known each other for a long time. She seemed to be debating if she should go to bat for me or not. “Look, I’ll give you the address. You can check it out if you want. I don’t think it’s right for you though. I’m leaving first thing in the morning for Chicago, so it’ll be empty. I can have the manager show it to you.”

“Great!” I said with a grin. “Do you think there’s any chance at all to extend that lease?”

“Well, probably not since I’ve already given notice,” she explained. Then, seeing my disappointment, added, “But I think the landlord would allow you in at the same rate if I spoke to him.”

“Who’s the landlord, Mother Teresa?” I quipped. No landlord would write a new lease at the same rate if he could figure out a way around it, rent controls notwithstanding.

“His name is Mr. Logan,” she replied, ignoring my jibe. “He’s very nice. He’ll remind you of Malcolm McDowell.”

“Who?”

“You know, the actor.”

“Oh, sure.” I did remember him, come to think of it. He had been the baddie in Blue Thunder, a movie all pilots got a chuckle out of.

Her green eyes seemed to drill into my very soul then. “Look Bob, I really don’t think you’ll like the place. I really recommend you look elsewhere.”

“I really think I want to see the apartment,” I replied. “Am I not good enough for your building?”

That did it.

“Here’s the address,” she said, writing it down on a slip of paper. She acted as if she had just made a major decision. “By the way, don’t try to drive there. Take a cab. It’s a little hard to find.”

She was right about that. I thought I knew the city well, but Kemal, my driver was taking me down streets I didn’t even know existed. Considering the fact that he had an accent so thick that it sounded as if he had just gotten off the plane from Istanbul, I was surprised he found it so easily.

I was impressed. I had expected something out of Joe’s Apartment–a roach infested dive. But the building was impressive–almost stately. Facing a little square which boasted a park, it was surrounded by what looked to be a variety of decent restaurants and bars which might be good spots to troll for women. The building itself was brownstone, six floors high. Carved into the stone was the name Deety Arms. I began to wonder uncomfortably if Jennifer had family money or something. The building looked too nice to be affordable, particularly on a flight attendant’s salary. If the inside was as nice as the outside, I thought I just might have found the biggest bargain in the city. I might even be able to stop looking at other places and take in a few Yankees games.

The lobby was impressive, too. A single guard sat comfortably at a small desk, surrounded by comfortable trappings. The carpet was thick and fairly new and the lighting was soft and relaxing. Hell, this building made the modern apartment I lived in over in Jersey look like the projects.

The guard smiled. He was a big powerful looking guy, but he acted like a real pussycat. He asked in a friendly tone, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah...” I looked at his nametag. “...Horace. I’m looking for a Mr. Logan. I’m interested in Jennifer Higgins’ place.”

His eyes lit up. It wasn’t surprising. This was how things were done in the city. You didn’t just go from place to place looking for an apartment if you were smart. Instead, you knew somebody. You were a friend of a friend. You were related–whatever it took. Good, reasonable places in the city disappeared faster than cheap wine at a derelicts’ convention. “I’ll just see if he’s in,” Horace said, subtly giving me the once-over.

He disappeared behind a solid oak door, leaving me to look around the lobby. I didn’t see much of it, though. I was busy watching people. There were two delightful looking black women on their way back from a shopping trip. They were dressed for action and each had a big Bloomie’s sack. That was a good sign. It meant there were at least some young women in the building.

Then there was the janitor. He was a piece of work. Short, sort of homely in a nondescript sort of way, he carefully polished the wainscoting in the lobby. I caught a look at his name embroidered on his tan coveralls: ‘Lucky.’ Now there was a guy who had been misnamed. If he were about three inches shorter with a name like that, he could have been the Lost Eighth Dwarf in Snow White. He looked up at me and nodded. I nodded back.

Just then, the oak door opened. I almost gasped when I saw the man who came through it. Jennifer was right–this guy was a perfect twin for Malcolm McDowell. He gave me a polished smile and held out his hand. “You must be Mr. O’Brien,” he said in a slight British accent. “Jennifer told me you’d be dropping by.”

I took his hand. If there was ever a perfect handshake, this man had it. It was firm without being too firm and formal without being unfriendly. “Yes, I’m interested in seeing her place–if it’s still available.”

There was a subtle sparkle in his eyes. “Oh yes, it’s certainly available. I’ve been holding it for you. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes, please.”

Jennifer’s apartment was on the fifth floor with a view overlooking the square. The glass had to be incredibly thick for there was no sound coming up from the street below. The apartment wasn’t large–just a living room, small kitchen, single bedroom and bathroom, but it was all I would ever need. As I looked at the femininely decorated place, I became convinced that Jennifer must have had family money. There was no way a flight attendant for Atlantic Air could afford such an apartment. It wasn’t that the furniture was expensive: it wasn’t. Oh, it was nice in a girlish sort of way, but hardly top of the line. No, what made this apartment more than I could swing was the apartment itself. The location, the view, and the décor all smacked of big bucks. Besides, I would have to spend a small fortune making the place look as if a man lived in it.

“What do you think?” Mr. Logan asked me after I had had a chance to wander through every room at least twice. It wasn’t a huge place, but for me, it would be perfect.

“It’s nice,” I said as noncommittally as I could. Actually, I loved it, but I wasn’t going to let him know. Better to let him think I didn’t think it was worth... well, whatever the figure was. This place had to go for at least three grand a month. Either Jennifer’s family was loaded or she had won the lottery.

“Thank you,” Mr. Logan said with a smile. “Now, shall we discuss terms?”

I sighed. Might as well get the bad news over with, I thought. He’d give me the number and I’d tell him I’d think about it. Then, we’d shake hands and I’d never see him again. “Sure.”

He produced a folder I had not seen him carry into the apartment. He must have had it in the apartment already, I reasoned. In it was a lease. With my pilot’s vision, I was surprised to see my name was already on it. A bit presumptuous, I thought.

“Now, the term of the lease is one year,” he began. “However, you can break the lease with sixty days’ notice so long as we have another tenant waiting in the wings, so to speak. There’s a small damage deposit, of course, and no pets are allowed without the expressed permission of management. Now, if you’ll just sign here...”

I raised my hand. “Wait a minute, Mr. Logan. We haven’t discussed the rent yet.”

He looked at me in mock surprise. “Oh, haven’t we? Well, the monthly rent will remain the same as Miss Higgins paid. That would be eleven hundred dollars a month.”

I nearly dropped my drawers. Eleven hundred a month for an apartment like this near the Village? It was impossible. I managed to start to say, “How...?”

Mr. Logan smiled. “How do we keep the rent so low? Well, let me give you a little history of Deety Arms, Mr. O’Brien. This building was built by John Deety back in the late eighteen hundreds. He was a theologian–Harvard trained–and a younger son in one of New England’s most prominent families. He wanted this to be a special place, so he turned it over to a management firm which still handles it to this day. So you see, since the ownership remains the same, there is no huge debt service to worry about as there would be if the property had changed hands. Our firm is very old and well financed. We prefer to choose our tenants carefully and charge them fairly.”

“But you don’t know anything about me,” I pointed out, not ready to believe I could have a dream place for eleven hundred a month. Hell, I paid more than that already to live in Jersey!

“Oh, but we do,” Mr. Logan said with an enigmatic smile. “Miss Higgins was kind enough to tell us about you. You seemed just right for our little family.”

Jennifer said nice things about me? I mean, granted, I had never given her cause to dislike me. As I said before, she wasn’t really my type–too much of a girl next door for me. But she had to know I had quite a reputation among the flight attendants. I doubted if she approved. Well, why look a gift horse in the mouth?

“Where do I sign?”

With another smile, Mr. Logan pointed to a line on the contract and handed me a pen. I took a moment to look over the agreement. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was as he had said. I noticed the building was operated by El and Associates, LLC. El was an odd name, I thought. Maybe it was Spanish, since ‘el’ of course means ‘the’ in that language. I checked the date. It coincided exactly with the date I would have to extend my old lease. No way, though. It was bye-bye Jersey for me and hello New York. I signed gladly.

“Excellent,” Mr. Logan said, taking the lease and my twenty-one hundred dollar check which covered the damage deposit and first month’s rent. “Now, when do you think you’ll be moving in?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him. “I’ll need to set up a moving company and...”

“Perhaps we can help you there,” he interrupted. As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. “Ah, that would be Mr. Luck.”

And it was. The little guy I had seen polishing the woodwork entered the apartment with a respectful nod to Mr. Logan. “Mr. Luck here can arrange for your move. We have arrangements with a moving company.”

We discussed the move in detail. I was at first reluctant to use their company, preferring Mayflower or United or one of the other big companies. But as I discussed it with them–well, really with Mr. Logan as Mr. Luck just nodded when Mr. Logan spoke–it became apparent to me that they would be able to move me cheaply and professionally. Also, they would be able to move me while I was out on my four-day schedule.

So I was well on my way to being a New York resident. I rushed back to my place in Jersey, gave them my notice, and began to get ready for the movers. That had been what had really sold me on using their movers. I wouldn’t have to pack anything up: they’d handle it all–and for peanuts! I had explained to Lucky–or Mr. Luck if you will–how to arrange the furniture and where to stow the rest of the boxes. He nodded dutifully, and as I left the apartment, he and Mr. Logan remained behind to take care of the details. It would be good to return from my trip and have my own stuff waiting for me in my new place.

“You are most fortunate, Luk,” Mr. L said after the newly signed tenant had left.

“Yes,” Luk agreed, not really sure why he was fortunate.

If Mr. L noticed his confusion, he said nothing about it. “Often we go for weeks before a suitable candidate presents himself. This time, we can begin at once. Now, you know what you need to do?”

“This O’Brien, he told me where to put everything.”

Mr. L shook his head with a sigh. “No, no, no, Luk. Forget everything he told you. Now, here’s what you need to do...”

The four days I was away seemed like four years. I was so anxious to get back to my new apartment. As I had ridden away in my cab, I noted that there appeared to be a number of good restaurants and other nightspots right in the neighborhood. It would be great. I could scout around for a girl, wine and dine her, and whisk her off to my apartment without walking a hundred yards.

I managed to find a few things to occupy my time and make the days go by faster. Her name was Gloria and we were on a flight to Denver together. She was one of the newer flight attendants–young and impressionable. Something of a romantic mind hummed under that blonde hair of hers, and I think she had dreams of seducing and marrying a pilot. Silly girl.

I scored again the next night in San Francisco. Not a flight attendant this time–just a local girl who thought being a pilot must really be cool. Another silly girl. Being an airline pilot is like being a bus driver in the sky. Even FLUFs practically fly themselves.

“So you found your dream apartment,” Jeremy surmised. We had just crossed the Mississippi heading back to Newark from a flight to LA. Jeremy had joined my crew at LAX, and I had been regaling him with stories of my new place from the moment we had climbed to cruising altitude.

“You gotta see it, Jeremy,” I told him proudly. “And you can’t believe the service. They’re handling the whole move. By now, they’ve already gotten Jennifer’s stuff out of there and mine in. It’s a real turnkey deal.”

Jeremy shook his head. “I never heard of any apartment building doing all of that. And the rent sounds too good to be true. You wouldn’t be bullshitting a poor old Southern boy, would you?”

“It’s all for real,” I told him proudly. “And I owe it all to Jennifer. Funny, I didn’t even think she liked me that much. I mean, we’ve flown together a few times, but that was it.”

“What?” Jeremy drawled in mock surprise. “You mean there’s a flight attendant out there that you haven’t boffed? And now since she resigned you won’t get the chance.”

“Okay,” I laughed. “My reputation surely isn’t that bad?” Secretly, I was a little proud, though.

“Nearly as I can tell, only Doc Vincent has you beaten,” Jeremy informed me.

“Doc Vincent gets ’em too drunk to know what he’s doing to them,” I pointed out. I meant it, too. Sure, I liked the ladies, but with me, it was mutual. I liked to make sure my partner had a good time too, and I think they appreciated that. With Doc, it was a one-way street. I was a lothario; Doc was a sleaze ball. There was a difference, I told myself.

Jeremy just chuckled when I didn’t reply.

By the time we landed in Newark, I was as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve. I wished Jeremy a good flight–he was on his way back to Atlanta where he lived–and hopped in a cab to head to my new digs.

“Where to?” the driver asked in a Middle Eastern accent. I looked up at him. Talk about a small world! It was Kemal.

“Same place as last time,” I told him lightly.

“Oh sure, I remember you,” he said with a grin. “I know where to go.”

He did too. It was Thursday afternoon and traffic into the city was already heavy. But Kemal seemed to know all the back routes where traffic was lighter. That presented a problem for me though. I was trying to get my bearings so I could find the place on my own, but Kemal whizzed by street signs and landmarks so quickly that I really wasn’t sure how to get to my new home on foot. ‘Maybe I’d have to find Kemal every time I wanted to go home,’ I thought with a chuckle.

And suddenly, there it was–home sweet home. I practically flew in the front door.

“How’s it going, Horace?” I asked the burly guard as I flashed my room key.

“Just fine, Mr. O’Brien,” he smiled. “And you don’t have to show me your key. I know all the residents here.”

“You have a good memory,” I told him.

“I try,” he said laconically.

The moment had arrived. I gave a contented sigh and unlocked the door. I was curious to see how Lucky had arranged my furniture. Then I opened the door, and...

“What the hell?”

I probably made tenants two floors away jump. I couldn’t believe the sight that greeted me. All of Jennifer’s furniture was gone as promised, and new furniture was in its place–but it wasn’t my furniture. What was there was like something out of John Wayne’s nightmares. If I thought Jennifer had feminine tastes, I had another thought coming. Every chair, every lamp, every stick of furniture reeked of femininity. Oh, it wasn’t cheap stuff, but the pastel shades and laces and flowery patterns said it all. Even the pictures were feminine–bouquets of flowers and playful kittens adorned my walls.

I rushed to the phone to call Mr. Logan’s office. I groaned as I noticed that even the phone was a soft pink shade. Carrying it into the bedroom as it rang, I got an even worse surprise. Beyond the frilly flowered bedcover was an open closet door, and in the closet, neatly hung, were dozens of feminine outfits.

“Mr. Logan,” the cultured voice answered.

“This is O’Brien,” I growled into the phone.

If I was trying to sound pissed, Mr. Logan chose not to notice. “Oh yes, Mr. O’Brien. I trust Mr. Luck took care of everything for you.”

“Took care of everything?” I practically yelled. “Have you been up here?”

“Well... no,” he replied. “I left the details to Mr. Luck.”

“Then I think you’d better come up here and look!”

“Of course. I’ll be right there.”

True to his word, he was there in moments, a nervous looking Mr. Luck in his wake.

“Take a look at this,” I yelled with a sweep of my hand.

Mr. Logan looked a little taken aback. “Well, I must say your tastes are a little different from what I would have expected.”

“This isn’t my furniture!” I howled. “Where is my stuff?”

Mr. Logan turned to Lucky. “How could you make such a mistake?” he asked indignantly. “This is not Mr. O’Brien’s furniture.”

Lucky mumbled something, but I couldn’t quite hear it.

“That’s not an excuse!” Mr. Logan blustered. “Now, call our movers and see what happened.” Turning to me, he said solicitously, “Mr. O’Brien, you have my profound apologies. Be assured we will correct this unfortunate error as quickly as possible. Now, please try to make yourself as comfortable as possible. We will get back to you within the hour.”

With that, he and Lucky rushed out the door.

As the door closed behind them, the frown disappeared from Mr. L’s face, replaced by a wide grin. He placed his hand on Luk’s shoulder, causing the smaller man to jump slightly.

“An excellent job, Mr. Luk,” he said with an appreciative chuckle. “You’ll do very well here, I’m sure.”

Good to his word, Mr. Logan called me within an hour. It was about time, though. I felt like an unwanted guest surrounded by all the feminine furnishings. There wasn’t even anything worth reading: the only magazines in evidence being Vogue and Cosmo. I settled in to watch a little television while I waited, sinking into a soft, peach-covered chair as I flipped through the wasteland of afternoon television. My only concession to comfort was loosening my tie, since I was still dressed in my uniform.

I knew that no matter what, I would have to spend at least that evening in this alien place. Well, I sighed, it wasn’t the first time I had spent the night surrounded by all this femininity. Of course, the other times, it had been in on layovers in other cities. During those times, I had been a welcome guest in some local girl’s bed. Somehow, this wasn’t the same.

“Mr. O’Brien,” Mr. Logan began, “again, I must apologize profusely for this unfortunate mix-up. We have traced down your belongings. By accident, your goods were sent to Omaha.”

“Omaha! What the hell?”

“Yes, I agree,” Mr. Logan replied. “We are taking steps to remedy the error at once. In the mean time, please try to make yourself as comfortable as possible. Of course, there will be no charge to you until your proper furnishings arrive.”

“So how long until I get my stuff?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Oh, not long,” Mr. Logan answered brightly. “We should have everything in place by Monday.”

“Monday? But that means I’ll have to use this stuff through the weekend. I can’t do that.”

“If you need anything–clothing, toiletries, accessories, we will provide them for you,” Mr. Logan assured me. “I’m sorry, but it’s all we can do.”

As I hung up the phone, I realized I had no other choice. My old apartment was probably rented out. As for a hotel, I wasn’t made of money. Decent rooms in the city are out of sight. I was being offered a free place to stay for a few days. I looked in the bedroom at the frilly coverlet on the bed: white with little bunches of pink flowers printed on it. Well, I had slept in worse places. Besides, it would give me a couple of days to explore my new neighborhood.

Resigned to my situation, I began to unpack my overnight bag. I would take a shower, get changed, and do a little exploring. Thankfully, I had a fresh change of clothes in my bag. Seasoned flight crews learn to pack extra clothes just in case there’s some sort of overnight delay. I’d shower first and go from there.

Lucky had done a great job of unpacking everything, I realized. The place actually looked lived in with no packing boxes in sight. If it had been my stuff he had worked with, I would have been delighted with the results, but all of this feminine crap was starting to make my skin itch. The bathroom was like the home office of a cosmetics company, with every conceivable feminine beauty aid spread out on the counter. Even the soaps and shampoos were scented. I sniffed each one and picked the ones that smelled least like a flower garden and tried to remind myself that this was only for the weekend.

The shower felt great. Even the liquid body wash I had reluctantly selected felt good–almost soothing to my skin. And I had to admit after I got out of the shower that the shampoo and conditioner had done a great job. My hair looked healthier. Even the flecks of gray in it had seemed to disappear.

I dressed quickly in a sport shirt and khaki slacks and felt like a new man. I would have to go out tomorrow and buy enough stuff to get me through the weekend, but at least I was set for now. I had actually gotten a bit of my good mood back. I was primed and ready for a night on the town.

Horace was still at the front desk. “Good evening, Horace,” I greeted him with a cheery smile.

“Good evening, Mr. O’Brien,” he returned with an equally charming smile.

“Look, Horace,” I began, leaning against the side of his desk, “I’m kind of new to this part of town. Where would be a good place to go for a little action?”

Horace looked a little uncomfortable. “Exactly what kind of action would you be looking for, Mr. O’Brien?”

“Well,” I started, ignoring the implications of his question, “I was thinking of something a little upscale where I could get a bite to eat, something to drink, and maybe an attractive young lady for the evening.”

“A hooker?” he asked bluntly. I could see a touch of disgust behind his impassive face.

“Oh no, Horace. I have a rule–I don’t pay for sex. I haven’t done that since my Air Force days. I’m just looking for a date.”

Horace relaxed a little. I hadn’t expected him to be so prudish. I wondered what he would have done if I had come strolling into the building with a hooker on my arm. Horace was pretty good sized. I wouldn’t want to see him when he got angry.

“Well...” he drawled after a moment’s thought, “...you might try the Southwest Grill across the square.”

“Mexican food?” I ventured.

“Some,” he agreed. “Other stuff, too. You know, the Southwestern grilled steaks and all that sort of thing.”

“Sounds good,” I said with a grin.

It turned out to be a good choice. It was just what I was looking for. The customers were all upscale New Yorkers with a substantial number of them being single women. The commuters had all started home by the time I entered the fake adobe bar which occupied a third of the floor space. That left all the singles who lived in Manhattan to keep the place busy.

I sat at the bar sipping what may have been the world’s best margarita while I checked out the prospects for the evening. I hated to eat alone, so the mission was to find an attractive young lady, wine and dine her, and take her back to my place. Well, maybe not to my place. One look at my apartment the way it was now and she would figure I was Richard Simmons’ best friend. I would just have to hope she lived nearby and didn’t have a roommate.

I caught the eye of more than one girl that evening, so I started to feel good. But I had my eye on one in particular. There was this blonde–she had big blue eyes. The fact that they were sad eyes made her all the more alluring. She wore a short red cocktail dress, smoky hose, and dark red shoes. The way she was perched up on her barstool made her look like a young girl who had never dressed so provocatively before. She was beautiful and vulnerable. I was in love.

“Nice, huh?” That was from the bartender. He looked like he was right at home in a place called the Southwest Grill. Tall and well muscled under his denim shirt, his features were clearly American Indian, accented by the single long braid of black hair down the center of his back. He grinned, showing perfect teeth. “You want me to introduce you?”

“I can handle my own introductions,” I said with a grin of my own.

“By the way,” the bartender said, “I haven’t seen you here before. I’m Trick in case you need anything.”

“Rick?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, Trick. The name on my driver’s license is T. Richard Running Bear. T and Rick make Trick.”

“Bob O’Brien,” I replied, shaking his hand. He had a firm grip, and I felt an odd tingle when I shook his hand.

“New around here?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m just moving in over at Deety Arms.”

“Oh,” he said with a flat tone of disappointment.

“Is something wrong with Deety Arms?” I asked with some concern. After all, this guy worked right across the street from my building. If there was anything wrong, he would have heard about it.

“No, nothing at all,” he replied carefully. He closed his eyes for a moment. As he did so, I felt that odd tingle in my hand again, almost as if something had been removed. I began to wonder if I had pinched a nerve. “Another margarita?” he asked when his eyes had opened again. Maybe he was just tired.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Make it just like the last one. I fact, make two.”

I placed the extra margarita in front of the blonde. “Trick here makes a great margarita,” I told her.

She looked at me with a sad smile. It was all I could do to meet her gaze since my eyes naturally wanted to wander down to her ample breasts which were straining at the satiny red material of her dress. “I prefer white wine,” she said with a nod at her half empty glass. Her voice was pure honey.

“With Southwestern food?” I asked with mock alarm.

She turned back toward her drink. “I’m not hungry tonight.”

“Just came in for a drink after work then?” I asked casually.

“Something like that,” she replied evasively.

“Vera here is new too, aren’t you?” I looked up to see Trick intruding on our conversation. “She’s trying to make it as a model. She wants to be the female answer to Valdez.”

Valdez? Then I remembered. He was that male model from Spain who had disappeared a week earlier. He had just left one of his well-known trysts with a young female model and had never shown up again. I remembered seeing his picture in the paper. Besides, you tend to remember a big blonde, blue-eyed guy with the unlikely name of Valdez.

“I was just getting ready to invite Vera to dinner,” I explained. I had hoped the obtuse invitation would be sufficient to get her to accept and get Trick to back off.

“That sounds like a wonderful idea, doesn’t it Vera?” Trick asked.

“If you say so,” she said softly, a touch of something like resignation in her voice.

“I do,” he confirmed. “In fact, in honor of your first dinner together, the next round of margaritas is on me.”

Well, if Trick wasn’t a hell of a nice guy. Without another word, I put my arm gently around Vera and we walked in for dinner together.

Mr. L put down the phone on his desk. Luk and Horace breathed a little sigh of relief–he wasn’t angry. That meant nothing had gone wrong.

“Horace,” he began with a sigh of his own, “I don’t know what you were thinking of, sending him to Trick’s place. You know our Mr. O’Brien is just the sort Trick enjoys playing with.”

“But I thought with that new guy–that model–he just changed, he’d be busy for awhile. And he does make a great margarita.”

“Yes, he does,” Mr. L agreed. “Fortunately, no harm was done. He was able to ascertain that Mr. O’Brien was one of ours. In fact, he even managed to get him together with his new play toy. Apparently, he gave her the old ‘you’ll get your body back when you’ve slept with a hundred different men’.”

“Are they still falling for that one?” Horace groaned. “I thought that one went out during the Renaissance.”

“Apparently not,” Mr. L mused. No god ever failed underestimating the naíveté of the human species. Of course, when you looked at it from their perspective, it was understandable. They had been taught from an early age that magic wasn’t really possible, so the tricks of the trade the gods used seemed new to every succeeding generation.

Luk looked confused. “Excuse me... what happened?”

“Nothing... fortunately,” Mr. L told him with a sharp look at Horace. “You’ll find, Mr. Luck, that a number of businesses in this area are run by our fellow beings. Trick runs the Southwest Grill. Be careful of him. He’s quite a prankster, and he lives just a couple of doors down the hall from you. Some of our other guests–particularly some of our American Indian guests–find him quite irritating.”

Luk understood what Mr. L meant, except on the seventh floor, there were no halls–or even rooms for that matter. Technically, it wasn’t even a floor, but the term would do.

“So our friend Trick has told his new toy that she can have her male body back once she has slept with a hundred different men,” Mr. L went on. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. By the time she meets that requirement, she’ll be so much a woman that the thought of going back to her male body will be absolutely repugnant. In the meantime, she will have become what is known in the popular vernacular ‘a slut’.”

“Oh,” Luk managed.

“Well, don’t worry,” Mr. L continued. “It appears no harm was done. Now, let’s get ready for our next surprise for Mr. O’Brien.”

Vera wasn’t quite what I expected. Talk about all dressed up and no place to go, she had been dressed as if she was going to a party: yet it turned out she had no plans for the evening. She had little to say during dinner, but I finally figured that out. When she did speak, I noticed a slight accent I couldn’t quite place. Maybe she was self-conscious about it.

After dinner and a couple more margaritas, it was time to make my move. “I’ve really enjoyed talking with you this evening,” I told her. Actually, I had done most of the talking. “I’d like to continue this, but I think we’ve taken up this table long enough.”

“Yes. I too, am enjoying our talk,” she said, but her eyes showed some discomfort.

“Well,” I ventured, “I’d invite you back to my place, but I just moved in so it’s something of a mess.” I didn’t want to tell her what it really looked like, obviously.

“I... I live just a block from here,” she replied.

Bingo! I smiled. She smiled. Now the only remaining problem was how I could walk out of the restaurant with the raging hard-on I already had.

Vera was pretty decent in bed. I don’t mean to say she was outstanding. In fact, she was a little hesitant, but sometimes that can be endearing. She certainly knew enough to know how to please a man, though. I could have gone for a second round, but to my chagrin, Vera seemed to lose interest after the first time. After a little stilted cuddling, I realized I was about to overstay my welcome, so I dressed quickly. There was to be no overnight stay it seemed.

“I’ll call you,” I told her with a hug at the door. I didn’t know if I would really call her or not, but it always seemed like the right thing to say.

“Sure,” she replied. I got the feeling she would be happier if I didn’t bother.

Well, that was just as well, I thought as I walked back to my apartment. She lived too close. If she had really had a thing for me, I’d find her on my doorstep day or night. That could be embarrassing if I had any other plans for the evening. And while she was good, she wasn’t that good. Chalk it up as one more one-night stand.

As tired as I was, I almost hated to climb into bed. Not only was the bedspread flowery and feminine, but the sheets were as well. They had an almost silky feel, and I realized with a little male revulsion that they were satin sheets. ‘Any port in a storm though,’ I thought. It had been a long day, and I was too tired to care what my bed looked like. It was just a bed and I was tired. I was asleep in moments.

“My butt is sore,” Garmon complained, stretching his leathery wings as Grimcost flew to a spot on the ledge beside him.

“Your butt’s always sore,” Grimcost snorted, a bit of steam pluming from his dog-like snout. He reached with a clawed talon and brought down an insect in mid-flight. Popping it into his mouth, he promptly spat it out again. “Not ripe,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

“Hey,” Garmon suddenly said, “have you seen the new guy?”

Grimcost looked at his fellow gargoyle with interest. “No, I was on the north side of the building today. What’s he like?”

“Come on,” Garmon called, fluttering up into the air. “I’ll show you.”

They perched on the ledge outside the apartment window just in time to see Luk sneaking in the door.

“What’s he doing?” Grimcost asked.

“Shh!” Garmon warned him. “He’s just setting up the change.”

“I hope they don’t change him into a kid,” Grimcost muttered. “They took that hockey player down on four and changed him into a little girl. Now she whines all the time. I mean, it gives me a headache.”

“Naw, I think they got other plans for him,” Garmon said, noting the women’s clothing Luk was carefully placing in the closet. “Look, those are uniforms.”

“What kind of uniforms?”

“Just watch.”

It took me a few minutes to wake up the next morning. That was unusual for me. I usually woke up quickly. It was a holdover from my old Air Force days. It was probably the weird dreams I had experienced. I had dreamed there were these two gargoyles with New York accents perched on my windowsill. They were chatting happily to themselves, while that weird little Mr. Luck puttered around my apartment. It must have been the margaritas. I yawned and stretched, surprised at how good the satin sheets had felt. The apartment had been quiet. That was a plus in a city like New York where street noise goes on all night long.

I got up and looked in my bag for a new pair of briefs before heading to the shower. Funny... there weren’t any there. I could have sworn I had at least one more clean pair in the bag. That would be a problem. I hated to wear underwear two days in a row. Well, I would have to live with it.

I padded on into the kitchen. Damn! I had forgotten to go by the market the night before. That meant no coffee or anything. ‘Maybe the nameless woman whose stuff I was using had some coffee packed away,’ I thought. I hadn’t really looked in any of the cupboards or drawers. Maybe I would get lucky. I did. There were several flavors of Gloria Jean’s coffees in the cupboard–whole bean just as I liked them–and a grinder. Another cupboard produced some dainty but useable coffee cups. Minutes later, the mixed smell of hazelnuts and coffee permeated the room.

I made one more quick search for clean underwear, but no luck. In fact, there was no clean anything. I could have sworn I had packed an extra shirt as well. I had pretty well pitted out the shirt I had worn the night before in the New York heat and humidity. I’d just have to go without a shirt.

But wait! A brilliant thought struck me. I might be stuck with a girl’s stuff, but T-shirts were generally unisex, and many women wore oversized men’s T-shirts. Hopefully, the owner wouldn’t mind me borrowing one. Carefully, I started rummaging through the drawers, quickly scanning past the lacy bras, panties and rolled-up pantyhose. I felt a little like a voyeur as I did so, but the end justified the means.

At last, I found a drawer neatly packed with T-shirts. I discarded the first two since one displayed a picture of flowers and another a kitten. What was it with this girl and her flowers and cats? Besides, everything was way too small for me.

Then I had another thought. A lot of women I knew used oversized T-shirts only to sleep in. I plunged down to the lower drawers and was quickly rewarded. There, nestled among the lacy, feminine nighties was a single T-shirt. As I unfolded it, I silently prayed that there wouldn’t be a kitten or a flower on it. There wasn’t! It was a New York Yankees T-shirt in an extra large. My persistence had paid off.

I vaguely toyed with looking through the drawers for some boxers. I also knew a lot of girls who liked to wear men’s boxers. I might get lucky. It was funny–a woman could wear men’s boxers and be perfectly normal, but if I wore this girl’s panties (assuming they would fit), that would make me a transvestite.

Now where had that thought come from? I certainly had no thought of wearing this woman’s panties.

But a little voice deep inside me said, at least they’d be clean. Besides, Jockey made stuff for women too. Granted, it was cut differently, but... No! The thought was just too bizarre. I’d make do with what I had and buy more underwear later.

So I showered and climbed back into yesterday’s briefs. The T-shirt fit fine, and the jeans I had been wearing the day before were in good shape. I even found a stretched out pair of sweat socks in one of the drawers. They were a little tight, but my feet weren’t terribly large for a man, so they fitted okay.

I found myself becoming a little curious about my unknown benefactor as I sipped on my coffee and read the paper I had bought on my way in the night before. She was young, I was sure. I could tell that from the clothing I had gone through and the personal items I had run across. There were no photos or anything, and I assumed they were still boxed up somewhere. Maybe she had even packed them herself and taken them with her rather than trust irreplaceable photos to the movers.

I began to wonder what she did for a living. Mr. L hadn’t mentioned it, but I assumed she was moving into another apartment in Deety Arms. If she was going to be paying rent equivalent to mine, she could be doing almost anything for a living. But if her belongings had been intended for another apartment building, she would have to be pretty well off to afford decent furniture and Manhattan rents. A quick look in the closet might give me some clues. I really had nothing better to do. For all practical purposes, I was on vacation.

I opened the closet and was suddenly assaulted by the subtle scents of her clothes. Whoever she was, she had good taste in perfume, for the scent that lingered was pleasant and fresh. There were mostly casual outfits–jeans, khaki and denim skirts and the like. And there were a couple of dressy outfits which looked like women’s business suits, but their colors and styles didn’t look conservative enough for her to be a lawyer or CPA. There were also several evening outfits, including the proverbial ‘little black dress.’ Its style and size again spoke of a young woman–and one with a nice shape.

Then, at one end of the closet, I discovered to my surprise what my mystery woman did for a living. She was a flight attendant–for Atlantic Air Express no less! I had found nothing to identify her by name, but I was sure I must have flown with her at some time or another. Atlantic wasn’t that big a line, so the odds were that I knew her. It all made sense. There must have been a second vacancy in the building. My mystery flight attendant must have known Jennifer, and Jennifer must have recommended this building to her as well as me.

I wondered who she was. Was it somebody I had slept with? I hoped not. As I’ve said before, I don’t like it when my lovers live too close. Maybe it was Cindy, the little Oriental girl from San Francisco. She lived on the Jersey side not far from my old place. She had said something about wanting to move to Manhattan. There was one way to find out. Cindy was attractive, but a little flat chested. I checked one of the bras: 36C. Nope, it wasn’t Cindy.

Now, I would remember a 36C. But there were a lot of well-built women flying with us. Maybe she had left something in one of the pockets of her uniform. Like most women’s uniforms, it was tailored in such a way that the pockets were worthless, but I knew occasionally women slipped little things in there–like receipts. I stuffed my hand in the side pocket of one of the dark gray uniforms and was rewarded with the same tingling sensation I had felt the night before in the bar. That worried me. There might be something wrong with my hand that would keep me from flying. I rubbed my hand and the tingling went away. Well, it didn’t exactly go away. Rather, it felt as if it moved up my arm, but it lessened as it went. I would have to ask my doctor about it.

There had been nothing in the pocket that would help me find out the woman’s identity. I was becoming more curious by the minute. It was like a puzzle which had to be solved. There had to be something in the apartment that would help me identify her.

But if I was to solve the puzzle, where would I look next? The kitchen! Many women used the kitchen as sort of a home office, paying the bills from the kitchen table. I had not seen any sign of a computer anywhere, so the odds were good my mystery woman did her personal bookkeeping the old-fashioned way–at the kitchen table. Of course, there was a high probability that any current bills were still with her. She wouldn’t trust those to a mover. In fact, there was a good chance that the records were still boxed up someplace. I couldn’t imagine where, though. The overzealous movers appeared to have unpacked everything.

I began going through some of the drawers in the kitchen. After searching four drawers loaded with the usual paraphernalia, I was rewarded with a neat stack of envelopes stuffed with bills and receipts. Each envelope was labelled by month and year in a neat feminine hand. Jackpot!

Luk shifted uncomfortably as he watched the unsuspecting pilot search through the kitchen. He looked up at Mr. L. “Are you sure he cannot see us?” he asked in a low voice.

“I assure you, Mr. Luk, he can neither see nor hear us,” Mr. L replied with a wicked smile. They were only a few feet from their hapless victim.

“And why he not notice the changes?” Luk pressed.

“The first changes are quite subtle,” Mr. L explained. You never notice how tall you are until you stand next to someone you know for example. Don’t worry, he’ll notice soon enough.”

I had her name! Not that it did me a lot of good. Holly Webster. Holly Sue Webster to be precise. I had never heard of her. And I thought I had at least a passing acquaintance with every flight attendant on the line. Let’s see... maybe she had been married and Webster was a maiden name she had reverted to. So what Hollys did I know that flew for us? There was Holly Crocker, a fine looking black girl. No, she was married now to some guy in Cleveland. She worked for Continental now.

Holly Masters? Oh god, I hoped not. She was always trying to land a pilot for a husband. Guys like Doc Vincent and me always suspected she’d figure out a way to get pregnant and try to get the guy to marry her. But judging from the size of the bras, it wasn’t that Holly. She was no 36C unless she was stuffing the cups with tissues.

With that, I had run out of Hollys. Atlantic Air was a small line. I was sure we only had those two Hollys. So who was my mystery woman? Was she attractive? Most likely she was. Bill Farnsworth made sure all his flight attendants were attractive. Was she single? Again, political correctness be damned: few married women chose to be part of “Hooters in the Sky” as the attendants at some of the other lines called us.

‘Well, enough idle speculation,’ I thought. I still had things to do. I needed to check with Mr. Logan and find out the status of all my stuff. Then, there were all the other things I needed to do, like grocery shopping, taking the uniform I had worn the day before in for dry cleaning, and changing my Post Office box to a substation in the Village. Like many single pilots, I kept a Post Office box since I might be gone for several days at a stretch.

I still had a couple of things to do before going downstairs. I still needed to shave. I went back to the bathroom and pulled my razor out of my kit and...

That was funny. I had already shaved. My face was as smooth as if I had just used a new blade instead of my electric razor. Since I had been half-asleep when I got up, I must have shaved without thinking about it. That was the odd thing about moving. It tends to change all of your routines. I usually shaved after my shower, but I must have shaved first that morning.

The other thing I needed to do was to notify the company of my new phone number. I wasn’t officially on vacation: I was just not scheduled to fly for a few days. That was a common situation for pilots. However, that meant I was on call, so I needed to let them know where I’d be just in case they needed me to fly.

“Hey Brenda,” I said cheerily to the woman who answered the phone at Flight Ops.

“Hi yourself Bobby,” she replied. We were old friends. She was a former flight attendant who had married one of our pilots–a friend of mine–and went off flight status.

“Look, I’ve just moved, so I need to give you a new phone number.”

She was silent for a minute. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I replied, perplexed at the concern in her voice. People moved all the time. What was her problem?

“I never thought you’d do that.”

“Well, I got tired of living in Jersey,” I explained uncomfortably. Why was it I felt like we were carrying on two different conversations? I gave her the new number.

“Okay Bobby, I’ll start the paperwork,” she said a little sadly. “Good luck.”

As I hung up, I got the uncomfortable feeling that there was something wrong. Maybe she hadn’t heard me right. Maybe it was a bad phone connection. Well, I’d call her back later and confirm the information I had given her.

I was in a pretty good mood as I headed down to Mr. Logan’s office. I was clean, well rested, and I had even been able to fasten my belt one notch tighter than usual, meaning my exercise program to get rid of a middle-aged gut was working. There was no security guard at the desk, so I went directly in to Mr. Logan’s office.

Inside the door was a small reception area and a modest office behind it. Although the small offices seemed quiet, the insulation in the walls must have been thin because I could hear the sounds of a large busy office beyond the wall. I wondered what business was over there.

“Ah, Mr. O’Brien,” Mr. Logan said brightly as he stepped out of his office to greet me. “I have good news for you. By tomorrow morning, we’ll have made everything right in your apartment.”

That was good news. So the movers would be there in the morning. I could make it through one more day, I supposed. I had been afraid he would tell me that I would have to wait until the first of the week. New York might be the city that never sleeps, but it doesn’t work much on weekends if it can avoid it.

“I’ll be out of town over the weekend,” he explained without waiting for me to reply. “Mr. Luck will be coordinating everything.”

“Fine,” I replied, although I didn’t really think it was so fine. Hadn’t it been Mr. Luck who had screwed up the last move? Well, maybe it hadn’t been his fault. Besides, Mr. Logan seemed to have confidence in him.

So I spent the rest of the day running my errands. There was a little grocery store in the neighborhood, so I didn’t have to go far for staples. I surprised myself with what looked good to me though. Like most single men, my diet had never been the healthiest in the world. I ate a lot of prepackaged meals and junk food. None of it had looked particularly good to me that day though. I concentrated on low fat stuff–salad fixings, yogurt, even some liquid diet meals. I did cheat and get a pint of ice cream–chocolate at that. Usually, I didn’t care much for chocolate, but I seemed to have an odd craving for it.

I had it all delivered to my place. The delivery boy must have thought I was some kind of a fruit when he saw how the place was decorated and furnished. I felt it necessary to explain to him that my stuff was yet to be delivered, so he relaxed a little bit around me. I gave him a decent tip.

By the time I had run all of my other errands, it was nearly five. As usual on a Friday evening, the city was in gridlock. I decided to head back to my place and take a little snooze before going out for the evening. Things had worked out well for me at the Southwest Grill the night before. I thought I’d try my luck there again.

I plopped down on the bed, exhausted for some reason. ‘I hadn’t been so tired in years,’ I thought. Well, there was another sign of creeping middle age. The next thing I knew, the few strands of gray in my hair would spread and young guys on the street would start calling me “gramps.” I’d have to start concentrating less on the twenty-something flight attendants and start working on the first-time divorcees. As they say, life’s a bitch, I thought as I drifted off to sleep...

“Taking George for a walk, Mrs. Dunn?” Mr. L asked the still attractive middle-aged woman in the lobby. She was dressed as if she were going to high tea in a smart pastel suit and conservative heels. Her jewelry spoke volumes about her–old and expensive and a sure sign of significant wealth.

She smiled at Mr. L. “Oh yes, Mr. Logan. Except it’s Georgia now, you know.”

The small poodle whose leash was securely wrapped around Mrs. Dunn’s hand seemed to cower in embarrassment at hearing the name. She whimpered softly.

“Oh yes, that’s right,” Mr. L remarked as he patted the unhappy dog on its foppishly trimmed ears. “How are you today, Georgia?”

The look in the dog’s eyes was one of pure hatred, but although she trembled to do something desperate, she could only involuntarily wag her little tail and pant. She did manage a tiny whine.

“I’m just taking her to the park,” Mrs. Dunn explained. “She’s made a little friend over there. He’s about her size and very interested in her.”

“Yes, I know which one you mean,” Mr. L agreed. He knew most of the neighborhood dogs, having had a great deal to do with them being dogs in the first place.

“Yes,” she sighed. “George used to love the park. Did you know that’s where he met most of his trollops?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, very nice to see you, Mr. Logan,” she said. “I’d better get Georgia over to the park. You know how dogs in heat can be.”

“Oh yes,” he said with a nod. He was glad he didn’t have to talk further. It was about time to check on Mr. O’Brien again.

I slept straight through, eschewing dinner. For the second night in a row, I had strange dreams. Only this time, in addition to Mr. Luck and the gargoyles, Mr. Logan was there as well. He was looking over everything like a military inspector, stopping occasionally to point out something to Mr. Luck who would scurry over to correct it. I was too tired to think what the dreams meant.

It was a gloomy New York morning when I awoke. Rain was gently beating against my bedroom window and there was a distant rumble of thunder. I groaned and rolled over on my stomach, but I thought I must have landed on a pillow, because something didn’t feel right. Only half-awake, I tried to push the pillow away, feeling a sudden pinch on my... extended... nipples.

I leaped up to a sitting position, uttering a sudden cry that didn’t sound like me at all. Things flopped and slid all over the place that shouldn’t have flopped and slid at all. Two weights swung about on my chest, and long hair flopped in my face and against my shoulders. My butt seemed to spread out further than it should have. Suddenly, I was completely awake, but a part of me insisted I must still be asleep.

I had gone to sleep fully dressed, but that wasn’t the case now. I was dressed only in... in... a pink baby-doll nightie. That wasn’t what really upset me the worst though. Pilots are a funny breed, and more than one had probably awaked from a drunken stupor to find himself similarly attired as some sort of a prank. No, what bothered me was what was in the nightie. I looked straight down at a magnificent pair of full breasts–a solid C cup if ever I had seen them. Looking beyond them was an indented waist, a flat stomach, an obvious void between my legs, and hips that flared out into pools of inviting flesh tapering down into slim, smooth and completely hairless legs. They ended with small, well-formed feet with bright pink polish on each of the toenails.

Well, I did what anyone would have done in my position. I screamed bloody murder. That didn’t help much since the scream was as feminine as I could ever imagine.

That done, I tried to control my ragged breathing, if for no other reason than to stop those perfect breasts from heaving up and down. I couldn’t stand the little feminine gasps that my system was producing. I brought my hands up to my face to push the long brown hair away while at the same time trying to ignore how slender my fingers had become and how the polish on the long nails matched that on my toes.

What the fuck was going on?

“This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening,” I muttered over and over as if it was my mantra.

But it had happened. There was no denying that. I suppose I could have tried to delude myself that it was all a dream, but it wasn’t. I was awake, alert, and female. It wasn’t possible. It was obviously magic, and magic wasn’t possible. But it had happened, so it was possible. I was nearly frozen into inactivity by the illogical argument that was spinning through my head.

Wait a minute...

I thought about the dreams I had been having the last couple of nights. I kept seeing Lucky and Mr. Logan and a strange pair of gargoyles. And what was it Mr. Logan had said to me yesterday? Oh yes, he said that by tomorrow morning–this morning now–he would make everything right in my apartment. He didn’t mean he would change out the furniture. He meant he would change me to match the furniture. ‘Why, that son of a...’ No, I’d better not even think that. I needed to get him to change me back and I doubted if calling him names would help much.

I had to call him. I jumped up to get to the phone. The sudden movement caused my breasts to swing uncomfortably. I’d have to be more careful. Oh god, I’d have to wear a bra now. I had to call Mr. Logan right away. He was behind this: of that I was sure.

To my sudden surprise, I realized that I had neglected to get his phone number. Well, no big deal. I would just look up the number in the phone book. But I soon discovered there was no Deety Arms listed. I called information, but they had no listing for the building. As I replaced the receiver, I realized with a sigh that I would have to go down to his office. That meant I would have to get dressed... as a woman.

‘Well, I could manage,’ I thought. Women wore jeans and sweatshirts and all the stuff men wore. I would just look like a small guy. Probably nobody would even notice I was a girl. I looked down at my impressive figure. Yeah, right. Nobody would notice. Of course they wouldn’t notice–at least for the first tenth of a second. Then every guy I passed would be mentally undressing me no matter what I wore.

But there was no choice. I literally stumbled into the bathroom, trying to get used to the sway of my breasts and ass. It was almost like trying to learn to walk all over again. First things first. I went to the bathroom, having to use my new plumbing for the first time. Fortunately, I had to go so badly that I didn’t even have time to think about what to do. The flow just came naturally. I even remembered to wipe myself off like I had seen girls do. The area in my groin was very sensitive to the touch. I had never experienced anything quite like it before. It was not unpleasant, just... different.

As I finished up, I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. It was the first time I had seen my new face. In a way, it looked like the face of the younger sister I never had. I had my same Irish coloring–fair skin, blue eyes, and brown hair. But my skin was far smoother and my features less rugged. My nose was small with a few small freckles. My jaw was less pronounced, and my ears were considerably smaller, hidden in part by my longer hair. My eyes seemed somehow larger, but it may just have been the fact that my eyebrows were thinner and my lashes were fuller and longer. In short, it was an attractive face, but not a beautiful one. I had shed almost twenty years in age as well, and now appeared to be in my early twenties. I had that perky sexy look that was common among Atlantic Air flight attendants, and...

Wait a minute! Oh no. No way. No wonder I didn’t know Holly Webster. She was me. But whoever did this wouldn’t get their way. There was no way I was going to put on one of those tight uniforms and wiggle my ass through the airport. No way at all. Yours truly was not a coffee, tea or me girl.

But what could I do? If I went to the police and told them I was a male pilot who had been transformed into a female flight attendant, I would be spending the rest of my days weaving baskets out at the funny farm. I had to get whoever had done this to me to change me back.

Whoever was pretty easy to figure. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to put all the pieces together. Good old smooth as silk Mr. Logan had to be behind this. But why? What had I ever done to him? I had to talk to him. He had said he was leaving for the weekend, but maybe he hadn’t left yet.

But I remembered I couldn’t call him. I would have to go down to the lobby–as a girl. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, but there was no avoiding it. I’d have to find something to wear.

It felt strange to be going through a woman’s lingerie drawer, even if I was that woman. As I rooted through the drawer praying that there was something in there that didn’t look like it came from Victoria’s Secret, I realized that unless I talked my way out of it, I would be wearing stuff like this for the rest of my life. Oh sure, even if I was stuck like this, I could always buy men’s briefs and wear them, but men’s briefs weren’t cut to accommodate the enlarged butt and narrowed waist I now possessed. And what about the little pocket in briefs for the family jewels? Its emptiness would be a constant reminder of who and what I used to be. With a sigh, I found a pair of silky white panties which looked relatively modest and put them on.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I was now naked except for the panties. I looked like something out of Playboy. I could see the article now: ‘Girls of the Airlines–Come Fly With Me.’ My body gave an involuntary shudder at the thought.

Still, I had to admit to be completely fair that if I had to be a girl, it was better to be a nice-looking one. I had a very nice figure and an attractive face. I might not stop traffic, but I bet I could slow it down a bit. It was odd. I wanted my own body back in the worst way. I had no desire to be a woman. Yet this was a nice body, one to be proud of. It was a body that had been taken care of.

‘Well, enough of that,’ I thought, bringing myself back to the problem at hand. Time to cover up the boobs. When I had discovered those 36C bras, I had never dreamed I would be putting one on. After struggling with it for a minute or two, I managed to get my new breasts seated right in the cups. It actually felt good to get them secured. They tended to move around less. I felt like I could turn around suddenly without having one of them jump up and slap me in the face. Of course, all that force had to go someplace. I felt the straps of the bra cut into my shoulders. I adjusted them a little, but I could see that bras had apparently been designed by a man.

I might have to have feminine garments next to my skin, but that was it. For outerwear, I selected a white sweatshirt that said ‘I Love New York’ on it. Of course, it had a heart instead of the word ‘love,’ but that was to be expected. Then I found a pair of jeans. The sweatshirt was no problem–it was just a sweatshirt. It would be a little warm, but the compensation was that it did about as much to hide my breasts as anything would. Of course, nothing could really hide them. Why fool myself? The jeans were another problem though. They weren’t the loose fit Levis I was used to as a man. Instead, they clung like a second skin. I pulled the sweatshirt down a little further so that the swell of my hips was less evident. That stretched the sweatshirt down far enough that my breasts were more prominent. I couldn’t win.

Now shoes. Tennis shoes would work, but it practically hurt my stomach to try to bend over in those jeans and tie them. I slipped on a pair of women’s flats instead, hoping no one would notice. Then I looked in the mirror. I hadn’t exactly made myself beautiful, but so what? I was just trying avoid an indecent exposure charge, not go out for a night on the town.

With a very feminine-sounding sigh, I headed for the elevator. I thanked God that there was no one in it. I wasn’t ready to play sneak a peek in the elevator with some guy. Of course, when the elevator door opened, I had to face someone as a girl for the first time.

“Good morning, Ms. Webster.”

I could have killed Horace for that. He was courteous and he was cheerful. I hated him. “Cut the crap Horace. I want to see Logan–now!”

Horace looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Ms. Webster, but he’s getting ready for a business trip and I don’t think...”

“That’s right Horace,” I growled, throwing open the door to Logan’s office, “don’t think.”

Mr. Logan looked up from his desk. “Oh, good morning, Ms. Webster. I’m afraid I don’t have much time this morning.”

“What did you do to me?” I practically screamed. “And why?”

He favored me with a small smile. “I would think what I have done is very obvious. But I can’t take all the credit. It was a community effort.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded, my curiosity suddenly piqued.

Mr. Logan steepled his fingers. “Deety Arms is something of a refuge. Quite a number of our residents and all of our staff are what you might call semi-retired deities.”

“Deities? As in gods? You’re joking,” I mumbled, sitting down across from him. Actually, given the tightness of the jeans, I sort of fell stiffly into the chair.

He shook his head. “No joke, Ms. Webster. Did you think old gods just disappeared because no one was worshipping them anymore?”

Actually, I didn’t think any of the old gods were real, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. After what had happened to me, I was ready to believe in everything from Santa Claus to the Easter Bunny. Hell, I’d even believe in the Tooth Fairy if it meant someone would change me back into my normal self.

“No, we don’t disappear,” he went on. “Instead, we are doomed by our immortality to wander the earth forever. Forever is a very long time. Then, with the dawn of the modern world, many of us found that cities like New York have become the crossroads of the world. We began to meet each other, searching for common interests and common goals. Some, like the old Greek and Roman gods stuck together in their own communities advancing their own plans. Others have aligned against them. We are too minor to take part in their fray, so we have banded together for other purposes.”

“What other purposes? Why did you do this to me?”

He grinned. “Purpose? Why? Does there have to be a reason for everything, Ms. Webster? Just accept that the purpose and the why are because we can.”

My pretty new eyes narrowed. “Why are you even telling me all this? Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell others?”

“You may tell whomever you like,” he replied. “No one would believe you. And even if they did, we would be able to handle them just as we handled you. Of course, quite a number of our residents are not quite themselves either. Nothing you can say or do would change the fact that you are now a young woman named Holly Webster.”

“But you could change me back if you wanted to,” I suggested.

“Yes, but we don’t want to,” he said bluntly. “Holly Webster will be much more entertaining than Robert O’Brien.”

“But I’ll be missed.”

“By whom?” he shot back. “You have no family. Your friendships are shallow. No mate will mourn your absence. Do you think one of your many girlfriends will come looking for you? Personally, I doubt it.”

“What about my job?” I retorted. “When Robert O’Brien doesn’t show up for work, somebody will get suspicious.”

He shook his head with a chuckle. “No, I’m afraid Robert O’Brien resigned from Atlantic Air Express.”

“What?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember?” He waved his hand and I suddenly saw an image projected on the wall. It looked like... yes it was. It was Brenda in Flight Ops sitting at her desk. Her phone rang and she put it on speaker.

“Hey, Brenda,” my voice–my old voice–came through the speaker.

“Hi yourself, Bobby,” she replied, not looking up from the paper she had been reading.

“Look, I’m going to resign from Atlantic Air Express, effective today.”

She was silent for a minute. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I replied.

“I never thought you’d do that.”

“Well, I got a better offer,” my voice explained.

“Okay Bobby, I’ll start the paperwork,” she said a little sadly. “Good luck.”

With that, the wall dimmed.

“That isn’t what I said!” I protested.

“No,” Mr. Logan agreed, “but that is what she heard. As far as your employer is concerned, you quit. I doubt seriously if anyone will care.”

“But they will care,” I insisted.

“Why?” he asked. “When was the last time you were at any of their homes here in the area–other than to have sexual relations with one of the flight attendants, that is?” When I was silent, he continued, “You see, you have no good close friends. Oh, there are people who liked you, but they won’t take the time to look you up. All they know is that you resigned. Your final check will be sent to your Post Office box and that will be it. Robert O’Brien will never be seen or heard from again.”

“Change me back!”

“No.”

“I won’t play your game,” I told him, “whatever it is. I won’t be Holly Webster.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Then who and what will you be? Deety Arms is a business, you know. We expect our rent payments on time or we shall be forced to evict you. Then where will you live? What will you do?”

“I can fly,” I told him, trying to sound forceful “There are airlines that will hire women pilots. In fact, a lot of them are begging women to fly for them.”

“But Holly Webster is not a pilot,” he pointed out. “Holly Webster is a young woman with limited skills. She had only a couple of years of college, no degree, and no work experience except as a flight attendant. I would advise you to think carefully before you throw Holly’s life away.”

It was a not-so-subtle threat. I was trapped, and he knew it. He and his minions had forced me into the life of Holly Webster, and for now, I had no choice but to live it. What else could I do? Be a waitress? Clerk in a convenience store? Go sell this body on the street? There were no better prospects, I realized grimly. I was silent.

“Good,” he nodded with a smile. “I see you understand. Since you have decided to be more cooperative, I’ll give you a small gift.”

He waved his hand and I felt a sudden tingling around my head. “You now possess sufficient skill to dress and apply makeup in a proper feminine fashion. You will also find when the time comes that you know how to apply a tampon.”

“Thanks a lot,” I mumbled sarcastically.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to leave.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Horace just behind me. My audience with Mr. Logan was most definitely over.

When the new Holly had left and the outer door had closed by Horace behind her, the walls outside Mr. L’s office seemed to melt away and the other offices of Deity Enterprises came alive. Luk was standing by one of the walls as it dissolved, chuckling to himself.

“All right, Mr. Luk,” Mr. L said, grabbing his briefcase, “you will be in charge for the weekend. I want you to know I’m giving you a lot of responsibility. Should anything go wrong, you know how to contact me.”

“Yes, sir,” Luk replied obediently. “What I have to do about Ms. Webster?”

Mr. L turned and looked at Luk with an impish grin. “Nothing at all,” he said. “I have other plans for Ms. Webster.”

I was fuming as I slammed the door of my apartment, my new breasts heaving uncomfortably as I fought for breath. I didn’t want to live one more minute in this body I had been given. I wasn’t a woman. I didn’t like to wear feminine things. I didn’t like to go to chick flicks. I didn’t like to watch my waistline. And I didn’t like men–I mean I didn’t like men in that way.

I was more frustrated than I could ever remember being in my life. I honestly felt like crying. It had to be this body, I realized. When frustrated, women cry and men hit something. Well, I’d show them. I might look like a woman, but I was still a man. And as a man, I felt like hitting something. I slammed my dainty fist into the door.

“Ow!” I cried, and unbidden, tears did come to my eyes. Only now they weren’t just tears of frustration: they were tears of pain. My hand stung. My stronger, harder male hand wouldn’t have felt a fraction of the pain I had just experienced. Maybe next time, I’d just cry first and avoid the pain.

The phone suddenly rang, causing me to jump. I looked at it as if it was some instrument of the devil. Of course, in Deety Arms, that was probably possible. On the third ring though, I reluctantly picked it up. “Hello?” I said, inwardly cursing my high-pitched voice.

“Holly Webster?”

“Y... yes,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Oh thank goodness you’re there. Listen, I’m Marge Garcia. I’m the Senior Flight Attendant on your flight this afternoon.”

What flight? Oh shit. I looked next to the phone and found a work schedule printed out for a Holly Webster. I was due to be on an early afternoon flight to San Francisco. I had thought that like my male self, I would have a few days off. Maybe I could work up enough guts to appear in public as a woman. Now, I had to be Holly Webster, flight attendant, that very day.

“Anyhow, Bill Farnsworth is going to be on the flight,” she went on. “We’re not supposed to know–you know how he is–but a friend of mine in Flight Ops told me. Look, we’ve never flown together, but we all need to be extra sharp today. Make sure everything is perfect. That means hair, makeup, jewelry, the works. Oh, and wear the shortest skirt you have. You know how he likes that. See you at the airport. I have to reach Mindy Charles. She’s flying with us. Bye!”

I hadn’t managed to get a word in. I knew Marge casually. We had been on the same flight a couple of times, but she was too frenetic for me. She lived for her job and did it well. The other flight attendants didn’t like to fly with her because she had them on their feet every minute of the flight. I thought I knew Mindy too. She was a cute young blonde, probably about the same status with the line as the woman I had become.

I took a moment to sit down and groan. I would have to go through with being Holly, at least for now. I had no other choice. That meant I needed the job. It seemed I was about to be initiated into the life of an Atlantic Air flight attendant whether I liked it or not–and believe me, I didn’t like it.

I packed first. It was to be an overnight trip, so I threw whatever I could think of in my bag. San Francisco is still a fairly dressy town, so I took a white blouse and dark blue skirt combination. I would have preferred jeans and sneakers, and there was a chance I’d end up someplace less formal, so I threw that in too. The blouse wouldn’t go with that, so I threw in a light blue cotton sweater. Of course, I needed different jewelry for each outfit and...

Wait a minute. Why did I know so much about what to take and all? Of course. It was Mr. Logan’s little gift. I thought about short-circuiting his little plan and taking only grubbies, but I realized I had to fit in. Most flight attendants went out together on overnights. It was a form of mutual protection. As the hunted, we needed to travel in herds. If I didn’t have the right clothes, I’d be on my own. The last thing I wanted to be was a sweet young thing all by myself in San Francisco.

So okay, I went with the flow. I packed the way any flight attendant would pack. I began to appreciate a problem women had. Because of their need for specialized outfits to fit different occasions, they had to pack twice as much as men. As a man, I would have thrown in a pair of dark slacks, a sport shirt to match, and worn my uniform shoes and socks with the outfit. That would get me through almost any place in the country. As a woman though, I needed a casual outfit and a dressy outfit, just in case. Then I needed different shoes for each outfit and matching accessories. No wonder women always seemed to have twice the luggage men carried. At least nightwear was no problem. Fortunately, Holly had some pajamas as well as the nighties. Since I didn’t plan to do any bedroom entertaining–now or ever–I stuffed the pajamas into the bag.

Getting myself ready was almost an entertaining experience, bordering on the erotic. When I just let myself go and didn’t think about it much, I was quite expert at dressing and applying makeup. Physically, I might be a woman, but mentally, I was as male as I had been the day I was born. My male self was practically panting as it watched an already attractive woman become even more alluring as she added foundation, blush, eye shadow and lipstick to her feminine face. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I was turning myself on. I suppose those male thoughts had to physically manifest themselves somehow. Since there was no male equipment for those thoughts to affect, they did the best they could with what I now had. In a word, I was starting to feel moist and warm between my legs.

It was a nice feeling. It wasn’t as insistent as the male equivalent, but it was, well... nice. But as pleasant as it was, it was unwelcome. I had to get ready. I didn’t have time for self-stimulation. That would come later, I realized grimly. I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew that the time would come when I would have to learn how to provide pleasure to this new body of mine. I had never been turned on by the idea of lesbian sex, and making it with men was completely out of the question. That left nothing but an occasional rendezvous with Freddie Fingers. But I wanted to put that moment off as long as I could. It would be surrendering to my new body, and I was determined to avoid that for as long as possible.

That was easier said than done. I was actually feeling a little warm already. I went to the kitchen and got a glass of cold water. It wasn’t much, but maybe it would cool me just a little. As I settled myself down, I had an uncomfortable thought. What if Mr. Logan and his crew had not just changed me into a woman, but had changed me into an extremely horny one? Experimentally, I tried to imagine myself intimately with a man. No, it didn’t sound like something I would be interested in doing. I was relieved at that.

But then I realized that although it wasn’t something I wanted to do, it didn’t seem particularly repugnant. I had been a one hundred and ten percent heterosexual male my entire life. The idea of climbing into bed with a man had about the same appeal as climbing into a vat of poisonous snakes. Now though, while I didn’t relish the idea, I was able to accept it at least intellectually.

Well, that was a problem to be dealt with later, I realized. I had to finish getting ready. Soon I was wearing an open-necked cranberry blouse with the collar neatly lying over the lapels of my dark gray jacket. The matching skirt was short enough to please an army of Bill Farnsworths, showing off slim, nylon-clad legs. My heels required a little walking practice, but they weren’t so hard once I got used to them. One last brush of my hair and one last check of my makeup and I was ready to face the world–sort of.

Horace gave me an almost lewd grin. “Good day, Ms. Webster.”

“Good day to you, Horace,” I replied primly, hoping he hadn’t noticed the flush I felt in my face.

The cab I had ordered was waiting, and the driver, a grandfatherly sort–one of the old-style cabbies from New York’s more genteel era. I was grateful that he was respectful and polite instead of one of the younger drivers who would have probably been breathing down the front of my blouse.

I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky when I got to Newark. I used to watch the flight attendants strolling down the concourses, dragging their wheeled overnight bags behind them. I wasn’t alone. Every heterosexual male from thirteen up was doing the same thing. I tried to steel myself for the ordeal, but I couldn’t help but feel like a deer being driven into a pack of wolves. At best, this was not going to be a pleasant day.

My worst fears were realized the minute I stepped out of the cab. It was my first experience getting out of a car in a skirt and heels, and I was a little clumsy at it. I tried to get out as I would have when I was a man. That caused my skirt to hike up, and from a few feet away, I heard a guy in a Rutgers T-shirt say excitedly to his buddy, “Hey, Paul, look–a beaver shot!”

I recovered quickly and swung my legs together. I was trying to ignore my red face by concentrating completely on getting out of the cab without losing my balance on the unaccustomed heels. I managed, but just barely.

I know every male wasn’t looking at me as I made my way down the Atlantic Air concourse, but it certainly seemed that way. Whenever I would look around for something, I would notice at least one man looking away as he was suddenly caught staring at me. Men walking toward me would smile as they locked onto my eyes, but more often they wouldn’t bother, focusing instead on my bouncing breasts. I was completely humiliated. I wanted to run and hide, but I knew it would do no good. I had to work or things would be worse for me. So I did my best to ignore the stairs and rushed to my plane.

“You’ll be up front today,” Marge told me. Marge Garcia was an attractive Hispanic woman in her early thirties. She had a pleasant smile and a friendly manner, but she let you know she was in charge. “Keep the coffee hot and keep it coming. Bill Farnsworth with be in the third row.”

“Uh... why did you put me up front?” I asked. I was reluctant to serve Bill Farnsworth, a man I had met several times when I too, was a man. The thought of him seeing me in this new guise was embarrassing for me.

“Frankly honey, because you’ve got the biggest boobs,” she explained, grinning at my discomfort. Mindy Charles, our other flight attendant giggled at that as she inventoried the snacks for the flight. “Bill likes ’em big and busty. I hope you can handle it okay.”

“Sure,” I said, wondering if I really could. That meant I was in First Class for the flight. The good news is that I would be with seasoned travellers. The bad news was that they would keep me hopping all the way to the West Coast. And I suddenly realized that unlike the other flight attendants who had brought flat-heeled shoes for the actual flight, I was going to be stuck in heels all the way. I’d have to remember that next time or my ankles would be so sore I wouldn’t be able to walk. Apparently, Mr. Logan’s little gift hadn’t warned me about that. I guess he wanted me in heels, the bastard.

After we had our marching orders, the flight deck crew sauntered on, and I do mean sauntered. I knew both the pilot and co-pilot. Rick Hansen was a good pilot, although I was better, and Stan Hackman, his co-pilot, had flown with me before. They greeted us with a hearty “Hi, girls,” and headed for the flight deck. I felt suddenly lost and alone. I had been booted out of the fraternity, relegated to a new role as a lowly flight attendant. The only time soon I’d be on the flight deck would be to deliver one of them a cup of coffee.

I didn’t have much time to feel sorry for myself though. The first of the passengers had started to arrive. I was suddenly busy helping them stuff luggage in overhead bins, hanging up their coats, and taking drink orders before takeoff. I envied the girls in back. They didn’t have to hustle hanging up coats and mixing drinks: only First Class rated those amenities. But the ones I really envied were Rick and Stan up on the flight deck. They would be leisurely reviewing the flight plan and the weather and going through the pre-flight checklist prior to departure. I was nearly in tears of frustration as I thought about the life I had lost.

Bill Farnsworth and his travelling companion hadn’t arrived, and it was only ten minutes until departure. I found myself hoping they didn’t show up at all. Then the pressure would be off. No such luck though. From the galley where I was mixing a gin and tonic for one of my passengers, I heard a booming voice call, “You want the window or the aisle?” The voice could only belong to Bill Farnsworth.

Sure enough, a moment later, Bill Farnsworth stepped through the door. He was a large man, although not fat. Like many well-to-do Texans, he walked with a swagger that made you think he was wearing cowboy boots instead of thousand dollar a pair handmade Italian shoes. His suit and tie were strictly Wall Street, but the rugged face told the story of a man who before his airline days had spent a lot of time outdoors–probably on the back of a horse.

“Hello, darling!” he said to me, giving me a friendly hug that almost caused me to spill the gin and tonic I had just mixed. “How’s about a couple of bourbon and waters for me and my friend here?”

He had nodded at a figure just entering the plane. I turned to see... oh that son of a bitch! It was Mr. Logan! I nearly gasped. Mr. Logan simply gave me one of his typical grins as he handed me his suit coat and slid into the seat by the window.

“Now you be nice to him, you hear,” Bill Farnsworth whispered into my ear. “He represents one of our biggest investment groups. We want to keep him happy.”

So what else could go wrong? I wondered with a silent groan. I had been changed into a woman, forced to work at a job I didn’t want, and now, I was going to have to smile and be nice to the being that had caused it all to happen. I was not having a good day.

Actually, the flight went better than I had thought it would. Although we were pretty full, most of the First Class passengers were happy with a nice snack and a couple of drinks. The snack turned out to be a fruit and cold meat plate, easy to serve and no preparation time. Most of the First Class cabin had settled down to read or nap, so I didn’t have too many drinks to get.

Of course, Bill Farnsworth and Mr. Logan were the exceptions to the rule. How they could put away so many drinks was beyond me. It seemed to have no affect at all on them. To make matters worse, they almost seemed to be playing a little game where I would have to deliver something to Mr. Logan by bending over Bill Farnsworth. The result was a stimulating shift of my breasts that both of them seemed to enjoy immensely. I felt like a medieval serving wench being ogled by lusty knights. I wanted to crawl into a deep hole and die.

So it was with a sigh of relief that I handed the two of them their coats as we deplaned in San Francisco. Bill Farnsworth rewarded me with a smile and Mr. Logan commented, “Well, Holly, you did an excellent job today.”

“She was good, wasn’t she?” Bill Farnsworth said with a proud grin. “Honey, maybe you ought to have dinner with us tonight.”

What was I supposed to say to that? It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I wanted to get out of this revealing uniform and hide in bed with a pillow over my head until I stopped breathing. To my surprise, it was Mr. Logan who pulled me out of the soup.

“Bill, we’re going to be tied up with the Boeing rep tonight, remember?” he said.

“Damn!” Bill muttered. “I forgot all about that. Well, sorry, honey, I guess I’ll just have to give you a rain check.”

I gave him the best smile I could, hoping that it would rain so long he’d have to build an ark.

Rick and Stan were busy making plans for the evening as we all shared a van to our hotel. God, how I envied them! They had the poise and the confidence that came with being aviators. They’d go find a bar someplace, and although they couldn’t drink alcohol, they’d have a great time and probably end up in the sack with some local sweetheart. As for the girls, we had been on our feet for hours, rushing back and forth up and down the aisles every time we heard the chime of the flight attendant call button. We were pooped. All I wanted now was to soak my sore feet in hot water.

“You girls want to join us?” Rick asked.

Oh sure, join them. That would solve their problem–they wouldn’t have to look for girls because they’d have us. Mindy had been known to go for the right guy, but apparently neither Rick or Stan met her standards. “Sorry, guys,” she said. “Not tonight.”

“And I’m visiting relatives,” Marge added.

All eyes turned to me. “Uh... thanks, guys, but I’m too tired.”

No one insisted. Thank god neither Rick or Stan were as insistent as, say Doc Vincent–or Robert O’Brien for that matter. They both shrugged and went back to making their plans for the evening.

“Hey,” Mindy suggested, “why don’t you and I go out and get something to eat? I know a great little seafood place that’s just five minutes from here.”

“I’m really tired,” I said, trying to beg off. I was also frustrated, embarrassed, and a mental vegetable. I had wiggled my new ass in public quite enough for one day.

“Oh come on,” she insisted, squeezing my arm, “you have to eat. We can change and go over there and be back before eight. What do you say?”

She was right. I had to eat. And I didn’t want to eat alone. I’ve always hated room service, and at any restaurant I went to alone, I would be an inviting morsel for some young buck eager for female companionship. I would probably watch my food get cold while I fought off guys. At least with Mindy there, I had a little protection in numbers. “Okay,” I agreed. “Make it in an hour.”

“Great!” she said with a smile. “Oh, wear a skirt. It’s a nice place.”

“Okay.” I had worn one all day. A couple more hours displaying my legs wouldn’t kill me.

So the blouse and skirt I had packed came in handy. Okay, I knew I looked good in a uniform, and I tried to forget how I had looked in the nightie, but this was the first time I had dressed myself in ‘civvies.’ I was on my own this time. I had to pick an outfit from scratch for the first time. I think looking at myself in the mirror then, in my blouse and skirt with all the right jewelry, including earrings, and the right makeup, I felt almost normal for the first time since my transformation.

I mean, I wasn’t being forced to go out to dinner with Mindy. It was a personal choice. I could have just stayed in my room, or gotten out of my heels and slipped on a pair of jeans, but I had chosen to go out to eat as a well-dressed young woman. It was something of an emotional triumph over the fear and embarrassment I had felt as I had gotten ready for work. Maybe I could make it through this ordeal after all.

I still hadn’t given up trying to get back to my normal male self. At that point in time, I didn’t think I ever would give up. I didn’t want to be a woman. There had to be some way back to masculinity. But I was realistic enough to realize that whatever opportunity to return to normal the future might hold, for now I was stuck like this. By accepting Mindy’s invitation, I had made the decision to live as normally as I could. And if that meant dressing and acting like the woman I had become, so be it. I was physically and mentally ready to meet Mindy and go out into the world as a woman.

The restaurant Mindy had selected was excellent. We got there early enough to be seated at once. That was fine with me. The dining room was softly lit and the tables grouped intimately, so I felt less... exposed than I would have if we had been forced to wait in the lobby for a table.

While the restaurant was fairly formal in décor, the wait staff was fairly casual in manner. The waiter was about our age (or rather the age I had recently become). He was friendly and attentive, and at first, I thought he was hitting on Mindy. Then, I realized he was treating me the same way. Well, it figured. If I had been my old male self, he would have been a bit more laid back, assuming Mindy to be my girlfriend or wife. Now though, all he saw were two attractive–and unattached–young women, so why not hit on them? I wasn’t as disturbed by that as I was by the fact that I actually found myself enjoying it just a bit. What the hell was happening to me anyway?

“Hey look, we finished up early,” Mindy said as the last of the dishes were cleared away. “What say we have a nightcap before we head back to the hotel?”

“I don’t know...” I began. I was almost uncomfortably full. I had eaten far less than I would have normally, but my new system didn’t seem to want much food. I had also managed one glass of wine and actually felt a little buzz from it, so I was reluctant to drink more.

“Oh, come on,” she said, her hand on top of mine. “This has been fun. I’d like to talk some more.”

Actually, I wanted to talk some more, too. I was learning a lot from Mindy about the female perspective. Mr. Logan had given me the ability to dress like a woman, but I needed to know more about how to act like a woman. With our innocent conversation about everything imaginable, I was learning a lot about how women think. “Okay,” I agreed, “but just one.” I had to admit, after years of travelling as a pilot and being unable to drink before flying the next day, it was something of a treat to be able to have a drink. So we adjourned to the bar.

“Look at him,” Mindy said with a nod.

I took a sip of my amaretto and glanced as casually as I could in the direction she was indicating. We had been discussing men. It was a subject I thought I knew well until I began discussing them with her. Of course, she had no idea that until that day, I had been a man all my life. I had always thought it was my powers of persuasion and my rugged good looks that had steered women into my bed. Not so, according to Mindy. According to her, what had probably impressed women was my self-confidence. It had made women think I was someone they could be secure with. Secure? Was that what women really wanted? Apparently it was what Mindy wanted.

“You know who I really wanted to know better?” she had said wistfully.

“No, who?”

“Bob O’Brien.”

It took all the willpower I could muster not to choke on my drink. “Why him?” I asked slowly.

She tossed her blonde hair back with a flick of her head. “Oh, I don’t know. He always seemed confident enough but...”

I leaned forward. “But what?”

She sighed, “He always seemed a little sad.”

“Sad?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “Oh, I know, he had a reputation of being quite a swinger, but I don’t think he really enjoyed it that much. I heard he was divorced. I think he was a little lonely.”

Oh, honey, you didn’t know him very well, I thought to myself. He enjoyed himself a lot. But I had to admit there was a tiny element of truth to what she said. I had been starting to show my age, and I know more than one young flight attendant thought I was just a dirty old man. The hair was getting ready to turn all gray, the paunch was a little bigger than it had been, and when I played tennis with one of the young women, I had to play a lot harder than I had a few years before. It was funny, but I hadn’t really realized all of that until just that moment. Could it be that my eyes had told a story that my mind had yet to understand? It was an unsettling thought. But back to the guy she drew my attention to. When I looked at him, at first I just saw a guy. Then suddenly, he looked back at me. I tried to turn away before he noticed my gaze, but I wasn’t quick enough. He grinned at me. I felt my face flush.

“Why did you look away?” Mindy asked.

“He... he saw me looking!” I blurted.

“So? I knew he was looking at you,” she laughed. “He’s been looking at you ever since we sat here. And he’s a hunk!”

A hunk? Well, he was nice looking... I meant for a guy. He was about the height I used to be, well built without being muscle-bound. He had dark hair and what in the dim light of the bar looked like blue eyes. He had on a sport coat with a polo shirt underneath. And come to think of it, I had remembered all of that from just a glance at him. What was happening to me?

“He’s coming over!” she whispered with excitement.

I felt the sudden urge to go hide under a rock again. The last thing in the world I wanted my first evening as a woman, was to be picked up by a man in a bar.

“Hi, are you two waiting for anyone?” ‘Not the most original line in the world,’ I thought critically, but I had used it myself, and as often as not, it would get the job done.

“No,” Mindy said with a pleasant smile. “I’m Mindy Charles and this is Holly Webster. Would you like to sit down?”

Now I had heard Mindy prattle on for most of the evening about a guy she was dating–exclusively–back in New York. I knew the charm she was turning on was because she wanted to be a matchmaker. I had told her I didn’t have a boyfriend and really hadn’t had much experience with guys. Well, it was true, at least from the female point of view. So now here she was, trying to line me up with a ‘hunk.’ I’d get her for this.

“Hi, David Bradley,” he said, wasting no time in offering me his hand. Reluctantly, I shook it and did my best to smile. It felt odd to feel a strong masculine hand wrap around my smaller, daintier one. Although his handshake was gentle, I felt very vulnerable in that moment.

While David and I sat there, silently trying to think of something to overcome the uneasy silence, Mindy looked at her watch and announced, “Oh, look at the time! It’s already late in New York, and I promised to call my boyfriend. Can you get back to the hotel okay?”

She was about as obvious as a bloody meat axe. Sure, she had planned to call her boyfriend, but she was looking for an excuse to leave me with that guy. I glared at her, but she took no notice.

“Don’t worry,” David said, picking up quickly on his cue, “I’ll get Holly back to the hotel.”

‘Sure,’ I thought, ‘but not until after he had made a serious attempt at me. Well, fine. Let it happen,’ I thought. I could handle myself. I mean, sure he was nice looking–for a guy–but I had no interest in guys. I might be female, but I was going to be a celibate female. Just call me the Flying Nun.

“So,” he began when Mandy had left, “where are you from?”

And so it began, the innocuous small talk upon which most relationships, good and bad, begin. The details of the evening are thankfully blurred in my mind. David–“just call me Dave”–was a nice guy. He was polite, gregarious, and understood that no meant no. If I had been born female, I would have probably enjoyed the evening. Dave was a real Boy Scout, and a good-looking one at that.

I think that was what bothered me most of all. As we sat there, talking about everything inconsequential we could think of, I found myself intrigued by his appearance. His features were rugged without being harsh. His smile was warm without looking like the confident leer so many men affect. His eyes were a deep blue that I found myself somehow attached to. In short, I was physically attracted to him.

Was that the way it was going to be? Were the magical changes made to my body severe enough that my very way of experiencing sexual attraction would change? I could now look at someone like Mindy and not see a potential conquest. I could acknowledge that she was indeed, attractive, but it was not an attractiveness that caused a stirring anywhere in my body. Conversely, as careful as I was to avoid being drawn to Dave, I would find myself wondering what it would be like to...

“I know a great place for dancing,” Dave ventured. “Would you like to try it?”

Would I? A part of me was curious. But I held firm. I shook my head. “Sorry, I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.” It was true, and it did make a wonderful excuse.

The disappointment in his eyes was clear, but gentleman to the last, he just said, “Oh.” Then a little brighter, “Then I’d better get you back to your hotel.”

And there was no funny stuff on the drive to the hotel. I found myself wondering if he really didn’t like me. Worse yet, I found it worried me a little to think that might be the case.

“Thanks Dave,” I said in as friendly a tone as I could manage as he stopped the car at the entrance to my hotel. “It was fun,” I lied with effort.

Brightening, he reached in his pocket and produced a business card which he pressed in my hand. “Look, I’d like the chance to show you around San Francisco. Maybe next time you’re in town, we can get together.”

Impulsively, I gave him a little kiss on the cheek. Although I don’t think I was really attracted to him, I had been a woman just long enough to realize that chivalry needed to be rewarded. “Good night, Dave,” I said, hoping he didn’t notice that I hadn’t said I would call him. I had no intention of ever calling him again.

“So what are you doing back here so early?” Mindy demanded as I stepped in our room. She was all ready for bed, face in some horrid green mudpack and an old pair of flannel pajamas on. I hoped her boyfriend had never seen her like that. It was enough to scare off the Frankenstein monster.

“We have an early flight, remember?”

“You let a gorgeous guy like that go?”

“He gave me his card,” I retorted, showing her.

“Let me see!” she said, jumping up and grabbing the card. “Oh, Holly, you little fool!” she exclaimed.

“What now?” I sighed, pulling off my blouse.

“He’s a doctor! Looks and brains! What on earth was wrong with him? Was he gay?”

“He seemed quite happy,” I jibed, pulling off my bra and feeling relief among my back muscles which had been doing their best to hold up my breasts all day.

“Very funny,” she sneered. “I give you George Clooney and you give me Groucho Marx.”

“He was very nice,” I told her honestly as I slipped on my pajamas. “I’m just not ready for a relationship.” ‘That sounded appropriate,’ I thought, and it was certainly true.

“Well,” she groaned, “you can lead a horse to water...”

“Thanks anyway,” I told her. “I appreciate the thought.” I did, too. But I swore to myself that if Mindy ever tried to line me up with a guy again, I’d kill her in cold blood.

Compared to my first day as a woman, the second seemed almost normal. At least there was no Mr. Logan to gloat over my transformation. It was an early morning flight to Newark, and not a particularly popular one. We were only about half-full. Marge had me in the back of the bus, and after we had dished out a light breakfast and some drinks, I even got a little time off my feet, for which I was grateful. My feet still ached from yesterday’s flight. I’d have to remember to bring a pair of flats along next time or I’d need a walker within a week.

Next time.

I guess that meant I expected there to be a next time. No, I hadn’t given up so quickly on getting my real life back, but until an opportunity presented itself, I knew I would have to live out the life of Holly Webster and all that would mean.

In some ways, it was like my first days as a plebe at the Air Force Academy. There I had been a brash young high school hero–good at sports and school and a hit with the girls. I had shown up with longish hair and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and Docker pants. Then suddenly, my hair was shaved practically to the scalp, I was wearing fatigues, and it seemed as if everyone was yelling at me. But I adapted. I became Cadet Fourth Classman Robert H. O’Brien, aspiring candidate for an Air Force commission, and Bob O’Brien, high school hero faded into the background.

That was the way it was for me all over again, only this time, Bob O’Brien would have to make way for Holly Webster, Atlantic Air Express flight attendant. Bob O’Brien had survived Cadet Robert O’Brien, and he would survive Holly Webster–no matter how long it took.

But as resolute as I might be, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. To be Holly Webster, I would have to be on stage all the time. I would have to learn to think like a woman or I’d go mad. And at the same time, I would have to try to find some reason for Mr. Logan to change me back. That would be difficult since I had no idea why he had done this to me in the first place.

I looked at the flight schedule in my purse. I wouldn’t even have a day to recover. I was due to fly to and from Cleveland and then to and from Chicago on Monday. Then, I flew to Atlanta on Tuesday–twice. The rest of the week looked about the same. Then I had Friday and Saturday off before starting all over again. As a pilot, I had enjoyed more time off. It seemed as if flight attendants weren’t given schedules as easy as pilots. It also seemed I wouldn’t have a crack at Mr. Logan before Friday, assuming he kept regular office hours.

I’d check to see if he was back yet as soon as I got home, but if he wasn’t, no big loss. That would just give me more time to soak my aching feet.

Luk had a terrible headache. He had been proud when Mr. L appointed him acting manager for the weekend. Then he found out that being acting manager was hardly a reward. While many of the human tenants had been radically changed by one god or another, they were still New York tenants, and the demands they put on him were almost too much to bear.

But that was nothing compared to what went on all weekend on the floor occupied by the various gods. Although the seventh floor was the only one occupied by immortals, it was much larger than the human floors, stretching out in multiple dimensions almost as far as Luk could see.

The trouble started Friday night when Mr. Gorham and Mr. Orkin got into it. They lived across the hall from each other on seven, and they hated each other. As Horace explained, Mr. Gorham was an African god of thunder named Gor, and Mr. Orkin was the Basque god of thunderstorms, known as Orko. To prove their individual claim to exclusive power over thunder, each had made loud rumblings that reverberated all along the seventh floor. Needless to say, the other residents complained.

No sooner had he gotten that under control with help from Horace’s security staff when O’Hara, the wizened little leprechaun who ran a shoe shop across the square claimed that one of the tenants on four had tried to follow him home “to steal me life savings, he was!” He had promptly changed the suspected felon into a fifteen-year-old female and required him to be the girlfriend of an entire street gang. Luk had managed to get her back–again with help from Horace–and get the leprechaun to change her back, forgetting her brief time with the gang. It had taken all of Luk’s persuasive abilities with his broken English to remind the leprechaun that all transformations had to be personally approved by Mr. L. He reminded O’Hara that strictly speaking, he wasn’t a god at all, and his continued residence depended upon his following the rules. O’Hara wasn’t happy, but he had complied.

The whole weekend had been like that, and now, all he could think of was that in one more day, Mr. L. would be back. He was about to crawl back into the office when he heard the click of high heels as the front door opened. He groaned inwardly. It was that pilot who had been changed into a woman. He expected the new woman to badger him. He wasn’t disappointed.

There was a different security guard at the desk when I entered Deety Arms. I was starting to think Horace was the only security guard in the building. I didn’t need to talk to security though. Lucky was standing there, out of his coveralls and actually wearing a tie. It looked like those cheap ones you see displayed by street vendors over on Fifth Avenue with the garish patterns on shiny rayon.

“So did you get a promotion, Lucky?” I asked, panting a little. My wheeled suitcase had been hard to get up the few steps at the entrance. It was another reminder of how much weaker this feminine body was.

“I weekend manager,” he said proudly. “Mr. L, he trust me.”

“Right,” I agreed. It just went to prove not all gods had high intelligence. Nobody wanted to be weekend manager in an apartment building. It was like being under fire without benefit of combat pay. “So when does Mr. L get back?”

“Tomorrow,” Lucky said, shifting uncomfortably. “But he no help you. You stuck like that for good.”

I winced. I suspected he was right. “Just tell me one thing, Lucky. Why did he do this to me?”

Lucky looked at me as if I were some new kind of idiot. “Why? Because he can.”

I was still thinking about that answer the next day as I flew to Cleveland. Because he can. That didn’t bode well for any chance of getting back to my previous life. It implied that Mr. Logan–or whatever his real name was–was arbitrary and capricious. I had suspected it, but Lucky’s statement seemed to confirm it.

Well, he could have done worse to me, I realized. I supposed there was nothing to stop him from turning me into a streetwalker or a stripper or some big fat chick or god–no, the gods–knew what. I missed being a pilot. It was almost painful to be so close to the flight deck and yet be little more than a passenger. Still, I was around the industry I loved, even if my role in it had changed.

I was also finding there was more to some of the flight attendants than I had realized before. Dana Witherspoon was one of the attendants on my Cleveland flight. I had nearly cringed when I had first seen her that morning. I had bedded her shortly after she went on flight status, and I had an irrational fear that she would somehow recognize me in my new identity. Of course, she didn’t. What I hadn’t realized about her was that she was a great baseball fan. She loved the Yankees almost as much as I did. But I had been so intent to get her into the sack that I hadn’t realized she was a fan.

Like a lot of guys, I had always considered women to be a distinctly separate species. I had never understood my wife in my short time I had been married. And if I were completely honest with myself, I had never really bothered to understand any woman since then. Now I was one of them. They talked to me as if I were just one of the girls. For probably the first time in my life, I was starting to understand how interesting women could be. And now it was too late for me to appreciate it.

Well, that wasn’t true. I did appreciate it. I was relieved to find out that there was more to being a woman than I had suspected. They–we–were more emotional. I had already detected a more emotional side to my nature than I had experienced as a man. And there was some thing about children. I began to notice them and be moved by how they held their mother’s hand or snuggled up against her warm breast. I had never noticed these things before.

Did it mean I was beginning to think like a woman? Probably. How could I avoid it? I dressed like one, acted like one, sounded like one, and I was treated like one. It was only natural that I would start to think like one. But I didn’t want to think like a woman.

I flew back to Newark and rushed down the concourse to catch my next flight for Chicago. I’d be in Chicago by three, have a two hour layover, then catch another flight back to Newark. That would get me in late, but I would have a couple of days off. Maybe then I could forget some of these women’s thoughts. I planned to wear nothing but jeans and T-shirts for two days. No makeup, no pantyhose, no skirts, no heels, no earrings–nothing. I might have heavy breasts and wide hips to contend with, but at least I’d be dressed like a human being again. And I’d watch nothing but macho action flicks on TV. I’d drink beer and watch sports. I might even smoke a cigar. Screw this woman crap. Even if I couldn’t talk Mr. Logan into changing me back, I refused to start thinking like one.

Then, I looked at another mother with her baby and I had to smile. Again, I felt a woman’s need to nurture. I felt soft and vulnerable.

It was like that all day. It was as if there was a war going on inside me. For every masculine thought and impulse, there seemed to be a female counterpart which demanded consideration. I would serve a beer, savoring the aroma as I poured it, my taste buds activated by masculine desire. Then, I would serve it to some corpulent businessman and be disgusted as he slurped it. No way was I going to drink something like that and have it go to fat.

Then I’d look at a beautiful woman and think back to my masculine days. If I had been my old self, the first thing I would check would be to see if she was wearing a wedding ring. Not now though. Now, I found myself looking at her dangling gold earrings and wondering where she bought them and how they would look on me.

In Chicago, the last of the passengers gone, I had nothing to do for about an hour. That was when my plane back to Newark was due to arrive. I turned down an offer from the other flight attendants who would be flying back to Newark with me. They were going over to the Hilton for a quick dinner. I had planned to wander around O’Hare for a little while. I wasn’t very hungry anyway.

I stopped though before leaving the gate at the sight of a familiar face. It was Jennifer Higgins. I wanted to go pound on her forever telling me about Deety Arms. ‘But she wouldn’t know me,’ I thought. After all, when she saw me last, I was a different person.

But I was wrong.

“Hello Bob, or I suppose I should say Holly,” she said with a hint of a smile. She was uneasy, I could tell, but how did she know who I was?

“Jennifer, how...?”

“How did I know who you were?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, Horace owed me a favor,” she explained. “I asked him to let me know when you’d be in Chicago. Since the gang at Deety Arms knew your whole schedule, it wasn’t as if it was secret information.”

“But why do they care about my schedule?” I wanted to know.

She looked around to see if anyone was watching us. “Look, let’s go back to my office. We can get a cup of coffee and talk privately there.”

Jennifer had done all right for herself. She now worked for the Airport Authority as Assistant Director of Passenger Relations. It rated her a small but comfortable office in the honeycomb of administrative areas that the public rarely sees. She looked at ease in her tan suit, white blouse and heels. Although not quite as revealing as the uniform I wore, her outfit was very feminine and downright sexy. I tried to chase off the speculation of how I would look in it.

“Okay Holly,” Jennifer began when we were seated and had our coffee, “we can talk freely now.”

“You did this to me,” I accused. My anger had been building since the moment I saw her.

“You did it to yourself,” she returned without vehemence. “I tried to discourage you from taking my apartment. I was after Doc Vincent.”

“What?”

“Don’t you remember?” she asked. “Doc was at my party, but he left before I could get to him. He would have jumped at my place.”

As I had, I thought.

“But he left just as you were arriving.”

“So I was your secondary target,” I surmised.

“Holly, that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “I wanted to explain what happened and why. But to do that, I need to start at the beginning.”

“I’m listening,” I said, sipping my coffee. I would have liked to fold my arms over my chest to show my scepticism, but I knew I’d just be reminded of the size of my breasts.

“Do you remember Phil Martin?”

It wasn’t a question I had anticipated, but I did remember him. He had been a hotshot pilot with Atlantic Air until a couple of years ago. Then, he had moved on. We hadn’t been exactly friends, but we knew each other. “I remember him,” I replied. “Isn’t he flying for some Asian airline now?”

“That’s the official story,” she admitted, “but it isn’t true, any more than the story of Robert O’Brien’s resignation is true.”

I looked at Jennifer carefully. I knew where this was leading, but it couldn’t be! Phil had been a tall, lanky guy–blonde with a receding hairline. He had inherited quite a bit of money from his parent’s estate and used it to live an enviable bachelor’s lifestyle. The only reason he kept flying was that he enjoyed it so much. I tried to imagine Phil Martin repackaged as Jennifer Higgins with her red hair and feminine bearing. It was hard to do. Jennifer was all girl and had been ever since I had first met her.

She smiled at my distress. “That’s right, I am–or was–Phil Martin. Then, two years ago, I spent the night with a girl in her apartment. That apartment was in Deety Arms. She was a real girl, by the way, but one that I had insulted at a party about a month earlier. Of course, this girl didn’t look like the girl I had insulted. They had changed her into a girl I couldn’t resist.

“The morning after, I woke up like you see me now. I was Jennifer Higgins. There was no sign of the girl from the night before. I never saw her again, but she had left me a letter telling me she had plotted with Mr. Logan and his staff to do this to me–to get even for the way I had treated her.”

“So you’re like me,” I said softly.

She nodded. “Yes, I’m like you. I had a tough time with it at first, just like you probably are now. But after a few days, it just started to seem normal. Logan and his crowd seemed to lose interest in me. Then, after it seemed normal, it started to feel... right. Eventually, I met Jack–my fiancé–and you know the rest. I quit and moved here.”

“But why me?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going to happen?”

To my surprise, she laughed. “Oh, come on now, Holly. If I had told you that you shouldn’t try to get my apartment because a bunch of ancient gods might turn you into a woman if you did, do you think you would have believed me?”

“Okay, good point,” I conceded. She was right. There was no way in the world I would have believed her. I might have thought she was as crazy as a loon, but it wouldn’t have stopped me from going after her apartment.

“I did lie to you about one thing though. My lease had six months to go,” she admitted. “I just told you it was up to discourage you from looking at the place. You have to admit, I did everything I could to talk you out of the place.”

Well, when she was right, she was right. “Okay, so tell me something Mr. Logan and his friends didn’t tell me. Why are they doing this? Do you have any idea?”

“I think so,” she said slowly, “although you’ll never get them to admit it. I think they’re bored and maybe envious of us.”

“Envious?” I repeated, nearly laughing as I said it.

Jennifer nodded slightly. “Look Holly, put yourself in their place. Take Mr. Logan for example. Horace and the others call him ‘Mr. L.’ So I got curious once I found out they were gods. I found a reference to a god in the Middle East far before Christianity. He was called El, and he was powerful beyond all imagining. He headed a council of gods that included an early version of our own god. Then, there’s Horace. I don’t know for sure, but there was an Egyptian god centuries ago named Horus. He was the son of Osirus and Isis. Horace told me once he grew up around the Mediterranean.”

“Now wait a minute,” I interrupted, “I’ve never heard of El, but I have heard of Horus. I took a class in comparative mythology back at the Academy. We’re talking about powerful gods here. What would they be doing running a little apartment building in New York?”

Jennifer sighed and shook her head. “They are still powerful. As nearly as I can tell, they run an investment empire out of that building that is absolutely huge. You can hear sounds around Mr. Logan’s office–sounds like you would hear in a busy broker’s office–but there’s no one there.”

I knew. I had heard them myself and just assumed they were coming from someplace next door.

“The problem,” she went on, “is that no one worships them anymore. So for all the wealth that they’ve been able to accumulate, they’re bored. It probably comes with immortality. The only thing they find interesting is us.”

“Us?”

She smiled. “That’s right. We’re like some sort of huge ant farm to them. Remember when you were a kid? You’d put a stick in front of an ant just to confuse him. Then you’d watch him scurry around until he got past the stick. You’d lose interest in him when he got back on the right path.”

“So what does that have to do with our situation?” I asked.

“Think about it Holly,” she pressed. “This sex change is the stick they’ve put in front of an ant–you. They’ll watch you run around, confused and embarrassed, until you aren’t interesting anymore. They know what flights you’re on. I would imagine there are one or two of them on every flight. You won’t recognize them, but they’ll be there. You’re the entertainment that makes their immortality just a little less tedious.”

“So you’re saying they lose interest when I’m not confused and embarrassed,” I surmised. “That means they lose interest when I start to consider myself normal.”

She nodded again. “Pretty much. I got pretty good at recognizing them. You can tell after a while. It might be a man or woman that looks at you just a few seconds too long, or a child that looks up at you with the eyes of an adult, or a clerk that takes just a little too much interest in what you’re buying. You’ll see what I mean eventually. Then, one day, you’ll start to think of yourself as Holly Webster instead of the former Bob O’Brien. You’ll be too normal for them, and they’ll move on to find some other victim.”

“So if I suddenly start going to bed with guys, they’ll leave me alone?” I asked. “That seems like too high a price to pay.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said with a wicked grin. “But seriously, you don’t have to go to bed with a guy to get rid of them. They might even find that interesting. I think they see something inside us, and that’s what they look at. Going to bed with a guy is just part of it.” She looked at her watch. “I’d better get you back to the concourse. You’re due back to work in about ten minutes.”

“Okay,” I agreed, rising, “but one more question. If I’m interesting to them as Holly, they won’t change me back, right?”

“Right.”

“But if I start to think of this as my normal life, they still won’t change me back, will they?”

She gave me a sympathetic look. “Oh Holly, I’d like to tell you there was a way back to your old life, but I don’t think there is. They had a reason to change you into Holly–it was entertaining. But there’s no reason to change you back.”

“Then I’m stuck,” I muttered, feeling unwanted tears well up in my eyes.

“Give it a fair trial,” Jennifer urged. “I was as male as they come, but I wouldn’t change back now for anything.”

I gave a small smile I didn’t really feel. “Okay. I’ll try.” I supposed I really didn’t have much of a choice.

Jennifer even gave me a sisterly hug as she left me on the concourse. I found myself returning it. While I had been very angry with her at first, I began to realize that she was right. I had pushed her for information about her apartment. I had nobody to blame but myself. And she had even called in a favor from one of those gods just to get information about me. I left her feeling I had a friend. We even promised to keep in touch, and I promised to attend her wedding if I could the following month.

The flight back to Newark was mostly full, but the duties of my job were becoming rote to me now. As I poured drinks and handed out snacks, I had time to think about what Jennifer had told me. First, there was the matter of my being under observation. I hated to be paranoid, but if she was right, did that mean I was being observed even now? I looked at the passengers, giving them a warm if unfelt smile as I served them their drinks. Was it the little boy in 22A who acted too mature for his age? Was he one of the ancient gods? Or how about the elderly couple back in 27B and 27C? They seemed to communicate without speaking a word. Whoever my observers were, I apparently had only one defense against them. I had to become the person they had changed me into.

But was being left alone by the gods worth the price? It would mean I would have to become Holly Webster in thought and deed. I would have to be a young single woman in Manhattan in every observable way. I would have to shop at Bloomingdale’s and enjoy it. I would have to laugh and cry at Sandra Bullock movies and stay away from Van Damme films because they were too violent. I would have to notice babies in the park and smile at them and talk to their mothers. I would have to notice men...

I grimly realized that my sexual orientation would give me away no matter what else I did. That was going to be a problem. Now, to be completely honest, I had to admit I was curious. It was easy to ignore what was–or wasn’t–between my legs most of the time. Sure, I could cross my legs tightly now since there was no obstruction there. And I now had to wipe after peeing–that was an odd sensation. But I had resisted the temptation to play with myself. Even as a guy, I had tried to keep masturbation to a minimum, mostly by finding a female partner to make it unnecessary. As a woman though, I had been reluctant to try it. It was almost as if I feared that it would mean I could no longer change back.

The problem was still preying on me as I got back to my apartment. Part of me wanted to experiment, to see what it was like. The other part of me wanted to resist as long as possible. ‘But why?’ I asked myself. I was never going to be Robert O’Brien again. There was nothing I could say or do that would cause Mr. Logan and his staff to change me back. If I continued asking, they would just derive additional pleasure from my discomfort.

Maybe I could be a lesbian. I opened a copy of the New York Times I had purchased at the airport and looked at the lingerie ads. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be with one of the models. Nothing seemed to be happening. All I could think about was the fact that I now wore garments very similar to theirs. So okay, I found women attractive, but not sexually attractive.

But maybe I needed something more than just a newspaper picture. Then I remembered how Jennifer and I had embraced. There we were, hugging each other closely, our breasts pressed against each other so directly... No, there had been nothing sexual about that. Now if I had been my old self, I would have been as hard as a rock with an embrace like that. I tried to picture Jennifer naked. I could do it, but nothing about the picture aroused me.

So okay, it was time to view things from the other perspective. With a deep breath, I looked at the male underwear ads. To my relief, I couldn’t really say I was stimulated by the view. On the other hand, the pictures were not all that bad either. I began to appreciate the contours of their bodies, the ruggedness of their faces, and the power in their limbs. I began to wonder what it might be like to...

But no, I wasn’t attracted to them. I mean, I wasn’t repelled by the thought of... of... I just didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not yet.

“But when?” a little voice seemed to ask. I threw the paper down in response.

I would swear that I heard a chuckle from the windowsill. I turned and looked out into the night. There was nothing there. Could they be observing me even in my own apartment? I thought of the old Sharon Stone movie, Sliver, where she was being observed in her own apartment. Well, I wasn’t going to give them a show. I shut myself in the bathroom and got ready for bed. ‘No experimentation for me,’ I thought, ‘nor for my unseen audience, if there was one.’

But I dreamed. Oh, did I dream. Impulsively, I had put on a baby-doll nightie when I went to bed. I had awakened as a woman in one, but I was curious what it was like to sleep in one. It was probably a mistake. It seemed to heighten the sexual tension even further to have the soft, silky fabric caressing my body. Maybe I had worked myself up a little after all. Now, I stood in a dreamscape in that nightie. Just out of focus, a number of shapes appeared–human shapes. Some were female, and those I looked at with curiosity but nothing else. Others were male, and it was the male figures who seemed to intrigue me. There was one in particular. He was tall, well built, and I imagined on him a handsome face, although I was unable to see it clearly. He walked toward me and I walked toward him. But suddenly, I could get no closer to him. He was just out of reach. I put out my hand to touch him, but he seemed to float away.

I don’t know how long the dream went on, but it seemed like a long time. I would reach out to him and he would move away from me. I was becoming increasingly frustrated and increasingly... something else too. It was as if there was something between my legs and at my breasts–a feeling of longing.

Then I awakened. I knew something had changed. There was a dampness between my legs. Half-asleep, I reached for it. As my fingers touched my mound, I began to feel a satisfaction I had never imagined. It was almost like a hunger that is suddenly sated or a thirst that is slaked. I was too groggy to know how long I did it, but suddenly, I seemed to erupt in a wave of pure sensation. I was now awake enough to know I had brought myself to orgasm. As the sensation began to ebb, I was sure I could hear the sounds of some inhuman voices snickering outside my window.

“Up yours,” I mumbled to them dreamily as I fell back to sleep.

It’s difficult to say when it happened. Nothing so important could have happened to me in a minute or an hour. But hours turned into days and days became weeks without my noticing. When you fly for a living, time has less meaning. You may find yourself in half a dozen cities in multiple time zones over the course of a day. You might awaken to the cool crisp mornings of Denver and be sweltering under an Arizona sky by evening, with noon under the muggy skies of Newark. Your working day might be as short as a quick hop to Pittsburgh and back or as long as a flight to the West Coast and back, followed by a trip to Florida. Weekends have no meaning. They are just other days when you find yourself flying. Your weekend might be a day toward the first of the week–say Monday–or it might be four days long. The flight schedule dictates your life.

I became truly comfortable with my job in a couple of weeks. I knew where everything was, I knew what to expect, and I was prepared for nearly everything. I began to recognize some of the flight attendants that I had flown with before as one of them. Rather than rating them like I had as a pilot by how easy they were to get into bed, I began to rate them by how well they took care of their passengers. We talked girl talk most of the time, and although I found much of it dull, it was sometimes interesting. A couple of the flight attendants I found to be baseball fans as I was. We even managed to take in a game or two when we could–especially when we could see the Yankees on the road. It even began to seem normal there in a baseball stadium wearing a tank top and cutoffs, my hair in a loose ponytail, squealing with the other girls when the Yankees scored a run.

There were rough spots as well. My third week was a busy one, so of course, that was the week I had my first period. The thought of blood flowing naturally from my body was at first repugnant, but by the third day, it was just one more thing to be endured. At least I had experienced little pain or nausea. I managed though, with the help of the other flight attendants. I found out they all looked out for each other. That extended to warnings about the pilots, too.

“Oh god!” Susan Dexter, the senior flight attendant on my morning flight to Atlanta groaned.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. We were the first two of the crew at the gate in Newark, and Susan had busied herself looking at the flight information.

“We drew Doc Vincent this morning,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

Of course I knew Doc, and knew him well. Since we were both captains, we never actually flew together, but I knew him. We would sometimes be in pilot meetings together, and other times, we would overnight in the same city. We had partied together on those overnights, trolling for local girls. Doc and I both seemed to score fairly often, but with me, it was always just a bonus when the girl would go to bed with me. If she didn’t, well, it was her loss as well as mine. With Doc though, it was as if scoring was the most important thing in the world. If the girl he picked up wasn’t in bed with him in a couple of hours, it was as if she had personally insulted him. He was miffed from then on. More than one flight attendant had spent future flights in tears after refusing Doc–or so I had heard.

I was curious about Doc from a woman’s perspective now. I had heard his name mentioned since my transformation, and never favorably. But that had just been in passing. I was about to see Doc in action. I knew without question that Doc would zero in on me. Susan was engaged and made sure all the pilots knew it, and Paige, our other flight attendant was black. Doc wasn’t too crazy about black girls. He wasn’t openly prejudiced, but he just didn’t seem attracted to them. I understood he grew up in a small town in southern Ohio. Sometimes, little towns in the North were more prejudiced than the Southern towns across the Ohio River, or so I’ve been told.

“Who is Doc Vincent?” I asked as innocently as I could.

Susan looked at me with something approaching pity in her eyes. “Doc is bad news,” she told me. “He makes a play for every girl he can, and you’re just his type.”

I felt a little bit like a gazelle being told there were lions about. I was getting used to stares from men, and a few had even tried to pick me up, and I had held my own, but something told me Doc was going to be a problem.

“Look, Holly,” Susan said seriously, “Doc is nice-looking and he seems friendly enough, but he’s got a mean streak. Do you remember Janice Walters?”

I nodded. Well before my transformation–in fact over a year before–Janice had been every male pilot’s dream girl. Blonde, leggy and a rack that was enough to make a grown man cry, there wasn’t a heterosexual man alive who wouldn’t have given a month’s pay for one single night in her bed. Only one pilot had succeeded, and no, it wasn’t me. Doc Vincent scored with her on an overnight to Miami. We knew because his co-pilot had to sleep in a chair in the lobby that night since the room was in use.

“Doc got Janice drunk down in Miami,” Susan explained. “The poor girl had no tolerance for alcohol. One glass of wine was almost enough. I was in the same hotel that night, but I was with a different flight crew. I had to take her flight back to Newark the next day, because officially, she was sick. I talked to her though, and she told me what happened. Doc got her roaring drunk and promised to take her back to her room. Instead, he took her to his room. She was too hammered to realize what was happening until it was too late. The next morning when she woke up, Doc was gone and there was her blood on the sheets.”

“Blood?” I asked. “Janice was a virgin?”

Susan looked at me sternly. “My god, you sound like one of the men. A lot of girls are virgins into their twenties. Janice was ‘saving herself,’ as she used to put it. She was raised in a very strict, very religious family. She called the senior flight attendant on her flight and said she just couldn’t go to work that day. I knew the attendant she had called, so the two of us went to her room. She was a wreck.”

I was dumfounded. I hadn’t wanted to have sex with a man because of who I had been, but I had always assumed that deep down, all girls were as hot to jump into the sack as I had been. They were all just waiting for the right moment–or the right line. Now, I was being told that a girl who had looked like sex on wheels had been a virgin, and worse yet, that she had been devastated when she had lost her virginity unintentionally.

“She never flew for the line again,” Susan continued. “There was an investigation, but everything was hushed up. Bill Farnsworth saw to that.”

“And what happened to Janice?” I asked, almost afraid of what the answer might be.

To my relief, Susan said, “She got better. She married some guy back in Nashville where she grew up. I even had an invitation to the wedding. The last I heard, she had a little girl.” She looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t think that makes it all right, do you?”

Or in other words, what kind of a girl are you? That was what she was asking. “No,” I said honestly. “I don’t think that makes it all right. I... I think I know what it meant to her.”

As funny as it sounded to me then, I really did know. I was a woman now, and I realized that I would most likely be one for the rest of my life. I had never slept with a man and I didn’t want to sleep with one, but I knew in my heart that eventually, the urges I had already begun to feel would drive me in that direction. But the thought of sleeping with a man against my will was the most repugnant thing I could think of. If I had still been a guy, I admit I would have been more sympathetic to Doc. I would have rationalized that Janice wanted it or she would have never put herself in that situation. Now though, I realized that Doc had been wrong.

Was it rape? I had to cop out. I wasn’t there. Maybe she had been so drunk that her inhibitions had fled. Maybe, for just a small moment in time, she wanted it. No matter though. Her reaction the next day proved that even if it hadn’t been rape in the classical sense, it was wrong. Doc had to have been sober. Few pilots would take the chance of destroying their careers by drinking the night before a flight. He was sober and she was drunk. He had maneuvered her into a position where she may have even been afraid to say no. Then, he had bragged about it to all of us. I had even been envious. Not now though.

“Hello, ladies!”

The voice was deep and masculine. I looked up to see Doc Vincent standing before me. I had known Doc for a long time, but now I saw him through the filter of a different sex. Bob had known him as a contemporary–a guy who loved to fly almost as much as he loved to party. He and Bob could have been brothers in some ways. Now though, it was Holly who saw him, and Holly saw a sleaze ball. She saw a man who had no respect for women and would use them to his own ends, then brag about it. She saw a man who was, behind the thin veneer of respectability, a lying, overbearing, prejudiced piece of shit.

“Hello Doc,” Susan answered primly.

He barely noticed. His eyes were on me. “And who have we here?”

“Holly, meet Doc Vincent,” Susan said, as if she had just introduced me to a snake. “Doc, this is Holly Webster.”

“A pleasure,” he said with a grin. He looked at me the way a starving man would look at a ham sandwich.

“I got the latest weather. It might be a little rough south of D.C.,” a familiar voice called. I looked away from Doc, glad for the excuse. It was Jeremy Miller. So he was flying with Doc. That was too bad. It meant that when we had our overnight in Atlanta, Jeremy would visit his family and Doc would have the hotel room all to himself. Doc would be on the prowl in spades. I had to try to stay out of range.

Jeremy looked at me and read my nametag. “Hi, Holly,” he said, a little shy. “I’m Jeremy Miller.”

He offered his hand in a gentlemanly fashion and I took it. With Jeremy, what you saw was what you got. He had introduced himself to me about the same way he had introduced himself to Bob. I found I liked that. Of course, Bob had been as tall as he was. I had to look up now. And Bob’s hand hadn’t been enveloped by Jeremy’s hand the way Holly’s hand was.

I found instantly that in spite of the sex change, I still liked Jeremy. It was an instantaneous decision, but one I was comfortable with. I found myself silently wishing all men were like Jeremy. Then I extended that to mean I wished I had been more like him when I was a man.

We were in the air right on schedule. The flight was a late afternoon one, arriving in Atlanta at about six. Most of the passengers were businessmen on their way home from New York. They were tired. All they wanted was to catch a little rest before facing afternoon Atlanta traffic. So as far as the passengers were concerned, I had an easy flight. My problems were all on the flight deck. Every fifteen minutes or so, Doc would call up for some coffee. I knew he was just using as an excuse to work on me. I hoped he drank so much of the stuff that he had to pee in his pants.

“Hey, how about having dinner with me tonight?” he finally asked. We were just ready to start our descent, so it was his last chance to work on me in the air.

“I... I...” I began to stammer. I hadn’t expected him to be so abrupt. I wanted to tell him I had plans, but he’d just persist. I had seen him in action when we trolled together. He could be very insistent.

“She’s going with me tonight Doc,” Jeremy suddenly said.

I looked at Jeremy in surprise. Doc couldn’t see his face, so he missed the mischievous wink I got from his co-pilot.

“Yes... yes... that’s right,” I concurred.

Doc sighed. “Well Jeremy, my boy, I didn’t think you had it in you. You just met her and you’re already taking her home to meet the folks.” He gave an unpleasant snort. “Maybe next time, Holly dear.”

“Sure,” I said, fleeing from the flight deck. Only if the next time was during a snowstorm in hell.

I spent the rest of the flight trying to figure out why Jeremy had rescued me. I had just met him. Of course, before I was changed into Holly, I’d known him well, but he had just met Holly before the flight. As Doc wandered off after the flight in search of more willing female companionship, leaving Jeremy and me as the only two people on the aircraft, I asked Jeremy, “Why did you save me from Doc?”

He grinned, brushing that shock of dark blonde hair back. “I guess it’s just because you looked like you could use the help. I didn’t spoil anything for you, did I?”

“Spoil anything?” I repeated, confused. Then I blushed. “Oh, no. I didn’t want anything to do with Doc. Thanks, I appreciate it.”

He grinned again. “Then have a nice evening.” Slipping on his hat, he turned to go.

“Wait a minute!” I called out to him. He turned back toward me. “Then you didn’t really want to get together?” I blushed again as I realized how that sounded. What was wrong with me? Jeremy had just rescued me from Doc and... Of course. He was just telling a little lie to help me. He didn’t really want to get together with me. What a relief! But why didn’t it feel like a relief?

He shook his head and chuckled. “I be damned if you aren’t a forward girl. Well, I’ll tell you what. I think it might be kind of nice to have a little company. Besides, my folks love company, and they’ve got plenty of room.”

“But I don’t want to intrude,” I protested. What was I getting myself into?

He looked at me for a moment as if trying to decide what to say next. Then, with a sigh, he began. “Holly, even though I just met you, I’ve noticed you around. Now, to tell you the truth, I’ve wanted a chance to meet you for a while. If you’d like to spend the night with me at my parents’ place, I’d consider it an honor. We’ll have separate rooms, of course.”

“Oh! Of course.”

I accepted gladly. Who could refuse such a Southern gentleman? His explanation, delivered in that soft Southern drawl of his, was enough to make me trust him. And it would get me far enough away from Doc that he wouldn’t be able to bother me. Besides, I liked Jeremy. As for the separate rooms, well, I was the Flying Nun, wasn’t I?

It turned out getting to his parents’ place involved another flight.

“You look surprised,” he remarked with a smile as he led me to a Cessna 172 tied down among the private planes. “My folks live about an hour away by car in traffic at this time of day. We can fly there in about fifteen minutes or so. They have a private strip at the house. You aren’t concerned about a small plane, are you?”

To someone outside the airline industry, it might have sounded like an odd question to ask a flight attendant. But the truth was that many flight attendants were very nervous about flying in small planes. I grinned and shook my head, though. “I learned to fly on one of these.”

Oops! I hadn’t meant to say that. In fact, I had learned to fly on a Cessna 172 back at the Academy. No one knew I had ever been a pilot though.

“You fly?”

“Not for a while,” I replied, trying to recover. “I don’t even have my log book with me.” Nor did I have one as Holly. I couldn’t prove I was actually a pilot.

“Well then,” he mused, “I guess I’ll have to get us up, but once we’ve cleared Hartsfield, I’ll let you fly it.”

As often in my short womanhood that I had sworn I would never have sex as a woman, I think I would have spread my legs for Jeremy in that moment. I was going to be able to fly again! It wasn’t exactly a 737, but it was a fun aircraft to fly. I grinned from ear to ear.

Mr. Logan picked up the phone just before it rang, as was his custom. “L here.”

“Hello, Mr. L,” a throaty woman’s voice came through the line. He had been expecting the call. Umai had been on the flight to Atlanta with Holly Webster. While Holly had been carefully observing the passengers, expecting some stray god or goddess to be observing her, she never imagined that Paige, the sweet young black flight attendant who had worked with her in Coach while Susan worked First Class was, in fact, a goddess.

Umai was one of the goddesses of Turkey, worshipped long before the Ottomans brought the word of Allah to that land. Her fair skin and blonde hair, while symbols of her deity, were hardly what one would expect of a resident of that part of the world. In fact, for her role as Paige, she had changed into an attractive young black woman, just to make sure Doc would have no interest in her. She had been a goddess of passion and of the hearth, and she delighted in influencing new transformees like Holly.

“How did it go, Paige?” Mr. L asked, although he was already sure of the answer. Umai did not fail in her mission–ever.

“Just fine,” Paige laughed. “She doesn’t have a clue what is about to happen to her. It will be so quick, she won’t have any time at all to think about it.”

“Are you close enough to appreciate it?” he asked.

“Of course, they can’t see me, but I’m riding on top of the wing,” she laughed. “Thank the gods for cell phones.”

“Enjoy yourself, Paige,” Mr. L said warmly, hanging up the phone. He looked up from his desk at Luk who was awaiting instructions. “Well, Mr. Luck, our work with Ms. Webster is nearly complete. I would imagine we will soon have a vacancy.”

“You want I should put ad in paper?” Luk asked.

“No,” Mr. L replied with a wicked smile. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

The plane was a dream to fly. After years of flying the big birds for the Air Force and for Atlantic Air, I had almost forgotten how much fun it was to fly a small plane. I could feel every change in the wind, every air pocket in the sky. I was grinning from ear to ear.

“Say, you really can fly this,” Jeremy remarked.

I looked at him with a teasing smile. “Did you ever doubt me?”

“Not for a heartbeat,” he laughed. “I just didn’t know you could fly it this well.”

I beamed at him.

“Did you ever think about being an airline pilot?”

“Oh, it crossed my mind,” I said evasively. I didn’t think he’d understand if I told him the truth. And for some reason, it was important to me that he know me as Holly. I had been Holly long enough that I had my ‘history’ down pat. I was from upstate New York (roughly where Bob O’Brien was from, but no one noted the connection), my parents were dead, I had no siblings, I had a couple of years of college from a small school no one had ever heard of. In short, my history was similar to any number of flight attendants on the line.

“I think I’ll take a chance on you and let you land,” he told me. I fought the sudden urge to kiss him on the cheek.

Landing a small plane isn’t the same as landing a 737, but I managed okay. Jeremy had radioed ahead, so his father was waiting for us when we arrived. He was the stereotypical Southern gentleman–an older version of Jeremy even down to the twinkle in his eye and the lopsided boyish grin.

I spent the evening mostly in the company of his mother and younger sister. I would have preferred to spend the time with Jeremy and his father, discussing the prospects for the Atlanta Braves, but since I was now a woman, I was relegated to the kitchen with the other women. It turned out to be okay. Jeremy’s mother was an intelligent woman, and his sister had just finished getting her business degree from the University of Georgia not twenty miles down the road.

I had gone out to dinner with many of the flight attendants while we were on overnights, so I had learned to appreciate other women for their intelligence. I no longer thought as I once had that women spent all their time talking about babies and the like. But there in that kitchen with Jeremy’s mother and his sister Sarah, I surprised myself and I actually had a good time. My parents were dead and I had no siblings, and soon, I found myself thinking of Jeremy’s mother as, if not a surrogate mother, at least a favored aunt. Sarah was the sister I never had. Bright and vivacious, she displayed an intelligence and poise I hoped I could emulate.

I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that it was that night I first became comfortable with being a woman. It felt natural there in the kitchen with them, preparing dinner. And after dinner, as the men cleaned up, Wanda–Jeremy’s mother–and Sarah took me for an evening walk in their extensive gardens.

“I had no idea Jeremy was from someplace like this,” I commented, looking around at the antebellum estate. It looked like a scene from Gone With the Wind, and I felt out of place without a hoop skirt.

“This place has been in my husband’s family for over a century,” Wanda laughed. “His great, great grandfather made a fortune in timber. The family isn’t into that now. The current family assets are tied up in agriculture and international trade.”

“And Jeremy didn’t go into the family business?” I asked.

“No,” Wanda sighed. “Ever since he was a little boy, all he ever wanted to do was fly. We didn’t approve at first, of course, and Jack made him earn his own money to take flying lessons. It’s going to be up to Sarah here to run the business whenever Jack retires.”

I understood what flying meant to Jeremy. I had felt the same way. I was so grateful for the opportunity to fly Jeremy’s Cessna that I silently vowed to really take flying lessons when I got home. I would be a pilot again, even if it was only on my days off. It would be tough on a flight attendant’s salary, but I’d find a way.

“Jeremy seems quite attracted to you,” Wanda finally ventured.

Oh-oh, I was being sized up. Well, he had brought me home to meet his family. But that didn’t mean anything. Jeremy had just been bailing me out of a bad situation.

“I like Jeremy too,” I found myself saying, trying to keep the response as bland as possible.

“Oh mother,” Sarah laughed, “quit prying.” Then to me, she added, “It’s just that Jeremy has never brought any girl out here before.”

“Well, he’s not getting any younger,” Wanda said defensively.

“He’s twenty-six, mother,” Sarah pointed out. “You act as if he’s over forty and unattached. He’s hardly in that pitiful state.”

Forty? Unattached? Pitiful? Is that what I had been? Pitiful? Here was a bright, beautiful girl that as a man I would have been zeroing in on telling me that I would have been pitiful. To make it worse, I was actually beginning to see her point.

I was still thinking about that as Jeremy and I strolled that same garden a bit later. Since we had to be up early, we had said our goodbyes, and as if by some unspoken signal, the rest of the Miller family retired to the house, obviously to give Jeremy and me some time to ourselves.

He had gently taken my hand as we began our walk, and to my amazement, I found myself pleased that he did. We walked together, with Jeremy stopping occasionally to point out something which had triggered a childhood memory. I learned more about Jeremy in that hour in the garden than I had learned in all the times I had flown with him.

“I sawed a limb off that tree,” he said, pointing at a stately magnolia near the garden. “I was only ten at the time. I climbed up there and sawed one off over on that side. My father caught me and gave me the whipping of my life.”

I laughed, “It’s hard to imagine someone as sweet as your father giving you a whipping, even if you did deserve it.” Had I really said “sweet”?

“He likes you too,” Jeremy commented. “In fact, the whole family likes you.” Without warning, he gently turned me to face him. “So do I.” The kiss was unexpected, but to my shock, not unwelcome. Instead, I accepted it with relief. I pressed gently against him, feeling the warmth of his lips. I began to feel sensations I had only had faint glimmerings of before.

No.

No. This wasn’t right. I might look like a woman. I might even have to act like a woman. But I wasn’t a woman–not really. I couldn’t allow myself to yield to a man this way–even a man so... so attractive as Jeremy. Yes, all right, he was attractive. There, I had said it to myself. Mindlessly, I allowed myself to endure an even longer kiss.

“We’d... we’d better get back to the house,” I managed softly, my eyes downcast. “We have to leave early tomorrow.”

“Uh... I guess you’re right.” He sounded reluctant. So was I, but I was afraid of where this was all leading. There was a sensation starting between my legs and in my nipples which would be hard to suppress if we continued.

He walked me back to the house, holding me closely to him. I found I had no objection. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted... something more. So it was with a feeling of disappointment that I left him at my bedroom door with only one more small kiss. I wanted him to come to bed with me, but I didn’t want him to. As I think about that, it makes no sense now, but at the time, it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do.

In bed that night, I slept poorly, and when I did sleep, I could see only Jeremy. More than once, I awoke to find my hand between my legs, as if trying to stifle the feeling of emptiness... loneliness... that was there.

We acted as if everything was normal as we flew back to Atlanta the next morning, but I knew that each of us was feeling that our relationship was changing faster than either of us could have imagined. We didn’t kiss–in fact we barely touched. Our conversation was innocuous and soon, we were at work again.

Back in Newark, I told him at the gate, “Thanks for everything, Jeremy. I had a great time.” I must have sounded like a sixteen-year-old girl in braces being dropped off at the front door after her first date with some boy.

“Me, too,” he replied with that lopsided boyish grin that made me want to throw myself in his arms.

I resisted though. There had been a moment at his parents’ home, but the moment was gone. I turned to go, when he called out, “Hey, when do you fly out again?”

“Not for three days,” I said, turning back to him so quickly I nearly stumbled. “Well, I fly out to St Louis this afternoon, but I’ll be back by five.”

“I don’t fly for a few days either,” he told me. “How about dinner tonight? I get back from Cleveland an hour before you. I can pick you up about seven.”

A date? A real date? With Jeremy? Oh, God!

He looked at me anxiously. “Well, what do you say?” He sounded so unsure of himself.

“Uh, okay, sure.” I couldn’t think of any way to say no. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to say no anymore. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I would have done if he hadn’t asked me out.

The grin was back. “Great! Where do you live?”

I gave him my address and warned him it was best to take a cab. I wasn’t sure if it was even possible to get to Deety Arms in anything but a cab. Part of the magic, I suspected.

We parted then as Doc Vincent caught up to Jeremy. “Did you pork her?” I heard Doc ask loudly enough to cause me to blush.

“Shut up Doc,” was all he said.

When I got back to my apartment, I was practically paralyzed. I had never gone out on a date with a guy before. I didn’t have the foggiest notion what I should wear. Granted, I had become more cognizant of proper women’s attire over the last few weeks, but going out to dinner in Manhattan could mean anything from a slinky cocktail dress to jeans. I hadn’t thought to ask him what I should wear. I settled on a beige skirt that was on the short side without being obscene, a cream-colored silk blouse, two-inch brown heels and all the appropriate accessories. By some miracle, I made all the decisions and got dressed just before Horace buzzed to tell me I had a guest.

I met him in the lobby, trying to ignore the stares from Horace and three or four others who were there. I knew the onlookers were part of the motley collection of gods and goddesses that made Deety Arms their home. Obviously, I was the evening’s entertainment. ‘Well, let them look,’ I thought. Nothing was going to ruin my evening with Jeremy.

He was dressed in a brown sport coat with a tan open-collar shirt, so we matched pretty well. On an impulse, I got up on my toes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. I had expected my old male persona to make an appearance that evening, telling me that what I was doing was at the least insane and at the worst perverted. But Robert O’Brien seemed well hidden throughout the evening. Maybe the fact that I had vowed to stay out of bed with my new beau had been enough to satisfy him.

There were a dozen restaurants of every ethnic description near Deety Arms, but Jeremy was intrigued by the Southwest Grill. By now, I had done a little research and I was convinced that Trick the bartender was probably the Trickster of American Indian legends. But it didn’t matter. I imagined that most or all of the restaurants in the neighborhood were owned and operated by the various gods. And the food was good at the Southwest Grill, so why not?

It was like old home week as we entered. We had to wait for a few minutes, so I got to drink one of Trick’s excellent margaritas. He served them himself with a friendly “Hi Holly!” to me as if I had always been a woman. And Vera was there at the bar. Of course, she didn’t recognize me, and even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. She was into men, and the man she was leaning against at the bar looked like he couldn’t wait to get into her.

Dinner was excellent, and the conversation congenial. We talked mostly about our work and our fellow employees. Then the subject turned to our backgrounds. I kept mine as sketchy as I could, which was fine. I had already come to realize that most men would rather hear themselves talk than listen to others. That doesn’t mean Jeremy wasn’t a good listener, but he was a better talker. His stories of growing up in the South and his wonderful family were very entertaining.

After dinner and a good bottle of wine, I was as relaxed as I had been since my transformation. And I had made an important decision. I knew that I was female for the rest of my life. It was obvious that I would have to accept it. And I had even gradually come to the conclusion that I couldn’t remain celibate. It wasn’t a natural condition. My problem was just that I didn’t have the background as a girl to accept the inevitable demands of sex. Little girls usually hear from their friends that sex involves a boy actually putting something inside their bodies. Their emotions take them from repugnance to curiosity and finally to acceptance, if sometimes reluctant acceptance.

The idea of sex with a man had certainly been repugnant to me at first. The idea of being the penetrated rather than the penetrator was almost too much to handle. Slowly but surely though, I had become curious about it. Other women seemed to accept and even enjoy it. I was more than a little surprised to find that women discussed sex with as much gusto as men. If they liked it, would I?

Then along came Jeremy. In my previous identity, I had known Jeremy to be trustworthy. Although I had liked him, I had always considered him a bit of a Boy Scout. Now though, I realized that those very qualities I found naíve before were desirable now. In short, I had decided that if I had to go to bed with a man, I wanted it to be a man like Jeremy. No, that wasn’t right. I wanted it to be Jeremy. ‘Sorry Robert, but it’s time for you to leave,’ I realized.

“I really enjoyed our evening,” he told me in the lobby of Deety Arms. Horace had tactfully found something else to do, leaving us alone. I was pretty sure we were being observed, but I didn’t care anymore. Let ’em watch! With any luck, I’d give them one hell of a show.

“So did I,” I said, taking his hand. We stared at each other for what seemed like hours without speaking, but I know it wasn’t more than a few seconds. “Would you... like to come up?” I asked.

His eyes widened. It was as if he had suddenly found out that the experts were wrong and there really was a Santa Claus. “Why, sure,” he managed.

The elevator ride to my floor seemed to go on for hours. I was about to do something which a few weeks ago I would have found unthinkable. I could barely stay on my feet, and as I leaned into Jeremy for support, I only hoped he wouldn’t notice the way my body was trembling, and the heaving of my breasts as I fought for breath. A small corner of my mind which Robert O’Brien still occupied was screaming out in terror, but there was so little of him left that I could scarcely hear him, and by the time the elevator stopped, his voice was silent.

I was Holly Webster–now and forever. In that moment, I couldn’t imagine being anyone else. And now, I was about to be initiated into another mystery of womanhood, one that was both frightening and exhilarating at the same moment.

I handed my door key to Jeremy, unwilling to remove my hands from around him for fear that the gods would cause him to disappear just to see my reaction. The gods? Were they watching? Let them watch: I didn’t care. They could broadcast what was about to happen on HBO for all I cared.

I didn’t bother to turn on the lights as I led Jeremy into my bedroom. Wordlessly, we undressed each other. Jeremy was already hard and ready, and I could tell from the rising warmth between my legs that I was nearly there as well. I had expected the feminine response to be less insistent than the demanding hardness I had experienced as a man, but I was wrong. Between my legs there was an aching insistence–a need to be filled. Yet as much as I wanted him in me, I was grateful as he took the time to put his hand between my legs and stroke me as we fell onto the bed.

I remembered the old song with the line a woman sings about wanting a lover with a slow hand. I now knew for certain what she was singing about. I felt like singing myself. It was pure heaven. I had never felt anything like it before in either of my lives. I was so... so...

Oh my God! Oh my God!

Luk shuddered as a wave of pure pleasure washed over his office. The building itself was awash with the sensations. He managed a look at Mr. L who stood eyes closed as if facing into a strong wind from the prow of a ship, absorbing the energies that coursed over him.

“It’s happening, Mr. Luck,” he managed to say in a strained voice.

Luk could only silently agree. He wondered for a moment if the new woman producing these waves of pleasure had any idea how fortunate she was... to be truly human.

It was nearly morning. The first light was visible in the east, and on the street, I could hear the city beginning to stir. I didn’t want to get up though. I never wanted to get up. I wanted to stay here in Jeremy’s arms, protected from the world, and make love to him ten thousand times the four we had already accomplished. It was like nothing I had ever imagined. Who would want to be a man when the experience of a woman in love was so much more satisfying? Why had I fought this? I should have leaped for joy when I was transformed and sought the first man I could find.

No, that wasn’t true. It was all so wonderful because it was Jeremy.

“Holly...”

I turned in his arms until I was eye to eye with him. I smiled. “Yes?”

“Marry me?”

I gasped. Marry him? Become a man’s wife? Share his life? Bear and raise his children? Was I ready for that? I had just for the first time experienced what it meant to make love as a woman. Now, I was being asked to be a wife. I had only sought the experience because my body was starting to crave it, and Jeremy seemed the right choice. But marriage?

“What’s wrong?” he asked with concern. “I thought...”

“Oh, Jeremy,” I started, “I... I... Do you mean it?”

“Of course I mean it,” he smiled.

“I really hadn’t thought about getting married,” I told him honestly.

“Neither had I,” he admitted. “It just seems like a good idea.”

He deserved better than me. He deserved a real woman–not a magical fake like me. “But we just... just met. Maybe we should think about it then,” I suggested softly.

“Think about it?”

I nodded. “Just for a little while. A few days at the most.”

“Holly, my father proposed to my mother on their first date. I guess it’s a family tradition. We Miller men just seem to know when it’s right.”

“But I want you to really be sure,” I tried to explain.

“What about you?” he asked softly.

I couldn’t look him in the eye. “I... I guess I need to be sure, too.”

He was upset, I could see, but I wanted him to want me after the glow of our sex had faded. If he still wanted me then, well, we’d have to see. Part of me wanted to accept his offer and run out and get married immediately, but part of me wasn’t sure. It had taken me several weeks to screw up enough courage to have sex. Marriage would require even more courage–maybe more than I had.

“I fly out again Thursday,” he told me. That was my deadline, I knew. I had to give him an answer by Thursday. He looked like a dog who had been hit by a car. I couldn’t let him leave like this. I owed him an explanation. But what could I tell him? That I was his old friend Robert O’Brien all dressed up in a brand new package? That I no longer chased skirts because I now wore one? That the only reason I looked at women’s legs now was to determine what color pantyhose they wore? That the only reason I looked at a woman’s breasts was to see if mine looked better than hers?

I put my arms around him, feeling our bodies come together. “Jeremy, I... I love you. I really do. It’s just that I want to be sure. If I say yes, it’ll be the only time I ever say yes to any man. I want you to feel the same way.”

“I feel that way now,” he argued.

What followed was anticlimactic. We showered–separately–and we dressed, and with a final but meaningful kiss, he was gone. I burst into unwanted and terribly feminine tears the minute he left. I wanted him–oh, how I wanted him! I had never wanted anyone the way I wanted him.

So what was really stopping me?

I had to talk to someone. I needed a shrink. However, no shrink would believe me if I told them what had happened to me. Maybe I still didn’t believe it myself. My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Maybe it was Jeremy! I threw the door open and...

“Oh.”

Mr. Logan favored me with a thin smile. “I’ve had more gracious greetings.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “But look, haven’t you done enough to me?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh come on!” I shouted, storming through the apartment as he followed. “What do you think? First, you turn me into a woman. Then, you make me work as a flight attendant instead of a pilot. Then... Then...”

“Then I make you fall in love?” he said quietly.

I nodded sullenly.

He motioned me to the couch, then sat next to me when I slumped into the seat. “Holly, I didn’t make you fall in love. I merely gave you the ability to fall in love. It was an ability Robert O’Brien seemed to lack.”

“But you made me fall in love with a man!” I yelled.

“Holly, you are a woman,” he said, gently holding my shoulders. “You will be one for the rest of your life. We are finished with you now.”

I looked up at him and brushed away a tear. “Finished with me?”

He nodded. “You are–how shall I say this?–no longer of any entertainment value to us. You are just one more human woman living out her mundane life. Where is the entertainment in that? For much less effort, we can watch Ally McBeal and get the same satisfaction. We have made you into a woman, right down to your DNA. You have learned how to act like, talk like, and think like a woman. What further use would we have for you?”

“But,” I began, my lip quivering, “what about Jeremy?”

He shook his head. “He is of no further interest to us. You may marry him and you may not. Why should we care? Your decision is nothing more than the emotional act of another woman. It is of no interest to us. Until you took Jeremy to this apartment, you were still at least partially a man trapped in a woman’s body. That is no longer the case. I’m afraid you’re just no fun anymore.”

“Then... you think I’m a real woman?” I asked hopefully.

“Of course I do–we all do. We made you a woman physically. The rest you accomplished by yourself. Now, you are a woman in body and soul.”

“Then it wouldn’t make any difference to Jeremy?”

“Of course not!”

“I have to call him!” I exclaimed, jumping up from the couch.

“Then if you will excuse me,” Mr. Logan replied, “I must be going.”

I actually gave him a heartfelt smile. “Thank you, Mr. Logan.”

Before he closed the door behind him, he returned my smile. “No, thank you, my dear. You were most entertaining–in your day.”

I dived for the phone. I surprised myself by realizing I had committed Jeremy’s phone number to memory. I had looked it up earlier in the company roster. The phone rang and rang, until the bland voice mail message finally came on. He wasn’t there. “Jeremy, it’s Holly. I really need to talk to you. Call me!”

He hadn’t had time to get home yet, I realized. I only hoped he would call me as soon as he got in. My hope turned out to be forlorn though. He didn’t call me. I tried to tell myself that he had just stopped off on the way home to run an errand or something. But as day turned to evening and still no call, I knew something was wrong. I tried again to call him, but got the recording again. I didn’t bother to leave another message.

Well, I had given him an out. I had told him we should both think over his proposal. Apparently, he had already done so. I was a good one-night stand, but maybe not good wife material after all. It wouldn’t have worked anyway, I tried to tell myself. He was at the heart of the matter a Southern gentleman, and I was... well, I wasn’t even a real woman. I mean, I was, but not a woman good enough for Jeremy.

At least the gods seemed to be finished with me, just as Mr. Logan had promised. Oh, Horace still spoke to me as I came and went, but he seemed to take little interest in my activities. I noticed no residents carefully looking me over in the lobby, no young children with adult eyes as I walked aimlessly in the park, and heard no strange snickers from the ledge outside my window. I almost missed their attention. At least it would have given me someone to be angry with besides myself.

I actually looked forward to going back to work. My ‘weekend’ was finally over. Maybe I could lose myself in the job. It was worth a try anyhow. My first flight took me to Chicago, which was fine, but once back in Newark, I went out on an Atlanta-bound flight. The whole way down, all I could think of was Jeremy. To make matters worse, Doc Vincent was the pilot.

In Atlanta, the passengers deplaned quickly, and I found myself alone in the cabin, thinking about Jeremy. So deep in thought was I that I didn’t notice that Doc was still on board. I turned from where I had been mooning in the galley and ran right into him.

“Sorry, Doc,” I muttered, trying to move away.

Doc gave me one of his patented smiles. “Don’t be.” Then he put his arms around me.

I became suddenly frightened. “Doc, let go.”

He gave me a boyish grin. “Why? We could both have some fun. I just got word–our return flight to Newark has been delayed. There are heavy thunderstorms up there, so nobody will board here for at least a couple of hours. We’re going to have to move this bird to another gate, so nobody’s waiting for us out there. I can make sure we’re not disturbed.”

“Doc,” I said, trying to twist out of his grip, “I’m not interested. Now let go!” I was becoming frightened. After all, he was much larger and stronger than I now was.

He tried to hug me just that much closer. The stupid pig! I might have been a Lothario myself at one time, but I had never forced myself on a girl. Doc was downright dangerous, and I didn’t feel a bit sorry for him when I did what I did next. For the first time since my transformation, I was happy our uniforms included a short skirt. It gave me enough room to lift my knee and plant it directly in the bastard’s crotch. Doc bellowed with pain and rage, and I thought for a fraction of a second that I had miscalculated, but suddenly, he released me.

I stumbled past Doc and out the hatch. There was no one right at the gate, but all I really had to do was step out onto the concourse. I heard Doc behind me, swearing to himself. I rounded the corner and ran into someone...

“Holly!”

I looked up. I had just run into Jeremy. He was standing there in his uniform, unexpectedly holding me in his arms.

“God damn you,” Doc muttered suddenly behind me, grabbing my arm.

I barely saw what happened next. I don’t think Doc even realized Jeremy was there. All he saw was an uncooperative bitch who had just sent his nuts halfway up his body. It was his mistake, because Jeremy saw him. I heard a crack and wheeled around in time to see Doc’s jaw dropping away from Jeremy’s fist. It was a punch any prizefighter would have been proud of, and before he knew it, Doc was on the floor, taking a row of seats in the gate area with him.

“Hold it right there!” another voice called out, and when I looked back at Jeremy, there was an airport cop standing behind him, holding Jeremy’s arms to his side. Jeremy wasn’t resisting. He was just glaring at Doc lying there on the floor groaning.

“Are you all right?” someone asked from behind me.

I turned. It was just an elderly woman passenger, holding my arm. I replied, “Yes, I’m fine.” She smiled and moved on. It wasn’t until a moment later that I realized she didn’t have the eyes of an old woman. ‘Maybe I was still interesting after all,’ I thought grimly.

I had been distracted for a moment, and in that moment, Jeremy was being led away. I forgot all about Doc lying there and rushed off down the concourse following the guard and calling out Jeremy’s name.

It took some time to straighten everything out. There’s actually a mini-jail at large airports, and the cop took Jeremy there. Since I wasn’t a relative, there wasn’t much I could do, but it turned out to not be a problem. About an hour later, Jeremy walked out of the holding area to the profound apologies of the cop. When I looked at him, puzzled, he smiled and explained, “My father is on the Airport Authority Board.”

“Then everything is okay?” We were just standing there, facing each other, not sure of what to do next.

“Sure,” he assured me. “Only, Bill Farnsworth doesn’t like being interrupted to find out that one of his pilots just decked another one. I had to resign from Atlantic...”

“Oh no!” I cried. What could I do next to ruin his life? I felt like crawling under the nearest rock.

“Don’t worry,” he laughed. “I was going to resign anyway. I start with Delta next week. That’s why I’ve been down here for the last couple of days.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’ve been down here? Then you haven’t been home?”

He shook his head. “I left for Atlanta from your place.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

He looked a little sheepish. “I guess I forgot. I came down here for the final interview.”

Before I had just been relieved. Now, I was actually getting a little mad. It was just like a man to leave and not tell me where he was going and... Wait a minute. Just like a man? Wow had I changed. “Then you haven’t checked your phone messages,” I surmised, realizing it for the first time.

“Sure,” he told me. “That’s how I knew I was supposed to fly out, and... Oh, wait a minute. You got my number out of the company roster, right?”

“Of course.”

He smiled knowingly. “Flight Ops has my cell number. I always forget to check my home number.”

“So you haven’t checked your home voice mail,” I realized.

“I forgot,” he explained with a shrug. “Did you leave me a message?”

“I just asked you to call me,” I replied softly, looking down at my feet like a shy schoolgirl.

“Sorry, was it anything important?”

“I just wanted to say ‘yes,’ that is unless you have any second thoughts.”

“I do have second thoughts,” he told me, and I felt my heart drop through the floor. Then, he went on, “My second thoughts are that I want to marry you just as much as I did in my first thoughts.”

I looked up in happy surprise to see him grinning. We were in each other’s arms in a heartbeat.

So that’s how it happened. I moved into Manhattan as a male airline pilot nearing middle age, and now, I was leaving Manhattan as a young woman about to be married. I was on my way to become a Southern belle. Well, not really. I was going to keep on working, at least until Jeremy and I decided what to do about starting a family. It turned out Delta was hiring experienced flight attendants too, so we’d be working together out of Delta’s Atlanta hub. I’d have to get used to wearing a more conservative uniform and I was sure to be teased about my past work for Hooters in the Sky, but that was okay with me.

I was leaving all the furniture in my apartment behind. It wasn’t really mine anyway, and I had a hunch Mr. Logan would be using it again sometime soon. At the going away party some of the other flight attendants had held for me, Doc Vincent showed up long enough to apologize. His jaw was still swollen from where Jeremy had hit him a couple of days before, but since he hadn’t thrown a punch back at Jeremy, he still had his job. But for how long was anybody’s guess. A couple of other flight attendants were said to be filing complaints against him.

“I really do wish you well,” Doc said sincerely when he had a moment to speak privately to me. “I guess I deserved it.”

‘Yes, that and a lot more,’ I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it. I just smiled. Obviously, Doc didn’t mean a word of it. He wanted something.

“Say,” he said, finally letting the cat out of the bag, “I just happened to think. If you’re moving to Atlanta, has anybody spoken for your apartment yet?”

It was the moment I had been waiting for. I gave him my friendliest smile. “Doc, I just might be able to help you there.”

Mr. L and Luk watched with approval as the attractive young woman gave Horace a warm hug and kissed him on the cheek. The old god blushed shyly and gave her a brotherly hug. “Best of luck, Holly,” he called after her.

To look at her, Mr. L thought, one would never imagine she had once been a man. She carried herself with poise and confidence, and the bright smile on her face was the smile of a woman content with her life–a woman deeply in love. Not all his little projects turned out so well. The city was filled with whores and strippers who had once been residents of Deety Arms. On the whole, women like Holly were preferable, for their rarity if nothing else.

She stopped in front of him. “Well, this is it,” she announced happily.

“All the best to you, Holly,” Mr. L told her sincerely. “You’ll do well, I’m sure.” He pulled a small box out of his coat pocket. “Consider this a little wedding gift.”

She looked at the box a little suspiciously. He couldn’t blame her, he supposed. But the tricks were over. She’d like what was in the box. “May I open it now?”

“Please do.”

He marvelled at how dexterous her fingers had become, in spite of the long enamelled nails. She moved her fingers as if she had been a woman all her life. Upon seeing what was in the box, a small gasp escaped her full red lips. “It’s a pilot’s log book and license!” she squealed with glee.

Mr. L smiled. “I’m pleased that you like it. It seemed a shame to make you take flight lessons all over again. This way, you can fly Jeremy’s plane legally.”

Impulsively, she gave him a quick hug and a little kiss. It wasn’t as warm as the one she had given Horace, but considering what he had put her through, Mr. L was quite pleased. “It’s the least I could do,” he told her, “for referring a new tenant to us.”

She grinned widely and walked toward the door. Mr. L could see Jeremy waiting by the cab in front. Then, at the last moment she turned. “Oh, I almost forgot Mr. Logan. The new tenant I referred to you is a little... prejudiced. He doesn’t care much for blacks. You might keep that in mind.”

“Indeed I will,” he assured her with a parting wave. “Indeed I will.”

The End