Arrow took me to a restaurant called the Boat Shed, which sits right on the water. Virtually all of the building sits on pylons. If you had a boat, you could tie up at their dock and walk inside. The view is beautiful and the service is exceptional. I had a Greek salad with scallops while he had Cajun-seasoned swordfish. We ate without hurry. Arrow made polite conversation, asking about Kristy and Carla, although I doubt he was interested in my replies. The moment we finished eating, he stood, dropped some money on the table, and said, "We'll have dessert back at my place."

There was daylight while we ate, and it was *still* full daylight when we left the restaurant and walked to his car. "What time does the sun set up here?" I asked.

Arrow replied, "This time of year, sunset's about 8:30," and began opening the car roof. He put the top down, made sure my belongings were secure, and said, "Hop in! We're going to take the long way" — which was of course the more scenic route.

It was odd, finding myself on the other side of one of my old fantasies. In the past, I'd wished I could be the manly man driving a cool convertible, watching my female passenger's clothes ripple and her long hair float in the car's slipstream. Not only had I never been that guy; now I was that girl, the female passenger with the rippling clothes and the flowing hair. I have to say, I loved it: my body was electrified and my hair never felt so alive. (Although I have to say, my hair did NOT "float in the slipstream." Weirdly, it blew back around my face, getting in my mouth, poking me in the eyes, and mainly being in the way. But still, great.) I lifted my hands to feel the rush of air. Neither of us spoke at all. I took in the impressions of the drive and scenery, and he concentrated on the winding road and the inquisition ahead.

Arrow's house was a glorified cabin in the woods. It was comfortable, but it was rustic. It had all the amenities, but it was "cozy. In other words, it was small; designed and built to be a perfect fit for Arrow. It was perfect, yes, but perfect for one; it was definitely too small for two. Knowing Arrow, it must have been intentional: a message to the woman there for the evening, there for the week, there for the month. The message was clear: You can find a way to fit in for a while, but not forever. The occasional guest could squeeze in, but there wasn't enough room for a second long-term resident. The house itself told visitors (or lovers) that they wouldn't stay long.

There was no view of the water, but there was no view of the neighbors, either. "It's a tradeoff," he told me, years ago. "I love a nice view, but I love my privacy more. And in a beautiful place like this, privacy costs a lot less than a view."

The floor plan was (thankfully) very open. Otherwise, it would have been truly claustrophobic. The moment we entered, Arrow pointed to a leather armchair and said, "Sit." He set down my bags and went to the kitchen counter, where he cut slices of fresh cheesecake and popped open a Sauternes. He carried both plates, the bottle, and two glasses in one trip. He settled himself in an upholstered rocking chair, half-facing me, and arranged the dessert on a low table.

"I would never have thought to drink wine with cheesecake!" I exclaimed. "These are really amazing together!"

"There's a wine for everything. It's all about knowing the optimum pairing," he explained.

I nodded, and as I took a second delicious forkful, I glanced at Arrow. He hadn't taken a bite yet. He was sitting, holding his plate with one hand and his fork with the other, but he wasn't moving.

"Everything alright?" I asked.

"No, of course it's not alright," he replied. "First of all, I hardly know whether to call you a bastard or a bitch! We're in a totally bizarre, completely unbelievable, wholly unprecedented situation." He took a moment to master his emotions. Then he went on. "That said, I've explained wine pairings to Fred every fucking time he came here, and every time he was surprised. Every time. As if it were the first time that a wine went well with food."

"Oh," I said, taken aback. "Sorry. I didn't realize."

He gave me a strange, searching look, then, with no preamble, stepped directly into the interrogation. He began asking me names, places, memories... one after another. He asked about things I'd forgotten and had to struggle to recall. A few times he actually stumped me, but he made no comment; he simply went on to the next question. He gave me no time to rest or recover. His interrogation was relentless. It lasted for 45 very intense minutes, and then he stopped to refill our glasses and to cut us both another slice of cheesecake.

I hadn't finished my first piece yet.

"Uh..." I began to say.

"What?" he asked.

"I didn't say I wanted more."

He looked at me for a moment, then said, "I'm the man in this situation, in case that isn't clear."

"It's clear," I said, "but I don't see—"

"You're going to have to get used to a more passive role in life," he told me. "Unless you want to be unhappy."

I wanted to tell him That does not compute, but I didn't get the chance. After a quick sip of wine, Arrow picked up the interrogation again, but this time with a new tack. Up to now he'd simply been asking for facts, usually looking for one-word answers. Now he wanted explanations. He picked events from our past and asked me why. Why did I do one thing rather than another? What was my motivation for moving to this place or that? Why did I marry Kristy when I could have married so-and-so? Some of my explanations and motivations were already clear to him, and others he clearly didn't understand. The first few events were pretty simple to explain, but as we proceeded, they got progressively more difficult. Often the pivot or cause he was seeking lay in some emotion that I had trouble articulating. And honestly, I didn't always know why I'd done one thing rather than another. A few times I was able to satisfy him with a piece of information that he didn't already have. In some cases, he had follow-up questions, but generally he seemed satisfied with my responses.

On my part, though, I felt far from comfortable. During the first 45 minutes, Arrow had two "lightning rounds" of one-word-answer questions. I knew most of the answers, but I was beginning to feel the cumulative effect: most of his questions touched an emotional memories. Some memories were good, but some were unpleasant. He asked about friends who'd died, about things that had happened in our teens -- events that at the time were quite disturbing or even frightening.

Often in the second portion, when he asked about events and the why of things, his questions evoked the mixed, uncertain feelings I'd had, especially when it came to difficult decisions.

In retrospect, I'm sure he did it on purpose, to throw me off balance, to unsettle me... or better, to see whether he could unsettle me. If I wasn't Fred, I might have memorized all the right answers, but I wouldn't have the same internal reactions.

Soon, I was suffering from emotional indigestion.

But his last question was the one that REALLY got under my skin.

"Fifteen years ago, you and your family came to Seattle. While Kristy was off doing who-knows-what, you and Carla came to see me. After that visit, you didn't talk to me for five years. Nothing, for five whole years! What was that about?"

"You made Carla cry," I told him.

"And?"

"There is no and. You ate some of her ice cream when you had plenty of your own."

"Right," he agreed. "I did that to show that she couldn't manipulate me."

"That's idiotic!" I replied. "She was a baby then!"

"Yes," he agreed, "and she was running your life."

"She was a baby!" I repeated. "You didn't need to show that you were smarter or stronger than her!"

"I wasn't," he said. "I was showing *you* that *you* needed to be smarter and stronger than her."

I sighed in frustration. "You don't understand," I told him.

He was watching me closely. "That was it? Just for that, you didn't talk to me?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "I was angry! She's my daughter! You made my daughter cry! On purpose!"

"You were angry because you were weak," he replied.

His words were a hot dagger in an open wound. My anger and indignation crested like a wave of hot lava. I lifted my hands as if they'd help me articulate... something—

—And right there I caught myself. I dropped my hands and fell into silence. There was no point in arguing with him; he couldn't and wouldn't understand. For all his good qualities — and he did have many — Arrow had two big defects. One was the illusion that he didn't have opinions like the rest of us. He only had facts. Once he "saw" something, once he drew a conclusion, he was done. He seemed incapable of questioning himself.

Arrow's second defect was that he believed that living alone and not creating permanent attachments to others, had given him a strength and understanding that the rest of us lacked. In reality, the opposite was true, but he didn't have the capacity for seeing that.

Because of those two things, arguing with him was a waste of time. It was like arguing with the TV.

So I bit my tongue and tried to still the anger in me. If we went on talking, I knew I'd end up turning my back on him once again. I didn't want that to happen.

He watched me in silence for nearly a minute, and then said, "Okay."

"Okay what?" I shot back. My anger was cooling, but it was still pretty damn hot. The event was alive in my memory now. I could hear him tell Carla that he was going to take some of her ice cream, and hear her tell him No, it's mine. I told him not to do it, but ignoring my protests, he scooped a spoonful from her dish, a laughing smile on his face. Little Carla's smile fall apart and she began to cry. At the time she was all of three years old. I could see myself telling him off, him not hearing, me carrying Carla to the car, putting her in the car seat, and driving away. I could see it and feel it as though it happened five minutes ago, and once again I was struggling with my anger.

"I believe," he replied. "You're really Fred." Then his face changed, morphing into a wolf-like grin. I don't think wolves can grin, but if they could, they would look like Arrow in that moment: the way a dog looks at a steak, or a cat looks at a fish. "So..." he said, his eyes narrowing and his smile deepening. "What are you going to do with that cute little body of yours?"

"Are you kidding me?" I asked in disbelief. My face burned with indignation.

"I never joke about sex," he replied. "Well, that's not true, but no, of course I'm not joking. Why don't you slip out of your clothes and we can see what you've got to work with?"

"Whoa!" I shouted. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back the hell off! I can't believe you! You've just taken me on a roller-coaster of emotions and memories. You've dug up things that were, frankly, painful to recall. You've pissed me off all over again, and now you just say, Hey, let's fuck?"

"I didn't say those particular words," he observed, "But if that's what you've been thinking, we can go with that."

I scoffed, disgusted, and without thinking said, "Kristy was right."

"It's interesting that you say that," he observed. "Have you thought about why she told me about you?"

"It's obvious!" I retorted. "She wanted us to be able to talk like old friends!"

He laughed, his short bark of a laugh. "No," he responded, smiling and shaking his head. "She was hoping that if I thought you were Fred, I wouldn't want to copulate with you."

"Copulate?" I echoed.

"Do you like the sound of that?" he grinned.

"Good God! You are so freaking full of yourself!"

"Kristy knew that you were coming here for the experience. She was jealous. By telling me that you're Fred, she tried to prevent that from happening."

"That's not why I came here!" I countered.

"You know that I'm the best, and you wanted your first time to be extraordinary."

His emotional blindness amazed me. Somehow he couldn't see how upset I was. Or maybe he did, and he explained it to himself in some crazy way. Probably he figured that if I was in an unstable state, he'd have an easier time getting into my pants. It didn't matter: the fact that he couldn't understand *why* I was upset burned me to the core. I could easily have walked into the night and never spoken to him again.

Why didn't I? I didn't because I'd done it before, and I knew how it felt. Those five years of silence... I regretted them, too. I knew he couldn't understand back then, and obviously he still didn't understand now. Yet, for all his faults, Arrow was a good man. He was generous and kind. Anyone who crossed his path who needed help, he helped them if he could.

Arrow was the sort of man who stops to help a stranger change his tire. He visits neighbors when they're sick, and brings them food. He picks up every hitchhiker he sees. He lent (or gave) people money so they wouldn't lose their homes. He bought paintings from struggling artists and gave them away as gifts.

When someone needs help or encouragement, Arrow doesn't stop to ask if they are friends, or whether they like him, or whether they're deserving. He simply steps in and helps.

Of course, many of the people he helped were frightened by him, or were offended by his insensitivity. He never seemed to understand people's reactions to him, and in these cases he put it down to their being embarrassed about needing help.

Because of that, and because of all we've been through as friends, even though he'd ruined our conversation, the evening, and was potentially ruining our friendship, I wasn't about to give up on him. Still, I had to get my own shots in. So I echoed his word extraordinary? and turned it into a question. "You think you're extraordinary?"

He shrugged and nodded. "Women think so, too."

"How do you know? Do you they write you letters of recommendation?" I sneered.

"As a matter of fact, some have," he replied. He set down his glass and stood to retrieve a binder from a bookshelf. Opening it, he selected two sheets and handed them to me. They were both handwritten, by very different, but obviously feminine, hands.

I scanned them quickly. "This one says I never had an orgasm before and the other one says I've never had SO MANY orgasms before."

"There are others," he said, tilting the folder to show me, "but those two are pretty representative. You can see the rest, if you like."

"No, I don't like," I retorted, handing the sheets back to him. He shrugged and said, "Suit yourself."

I sat there fuming for a few moments, then asked, "So, the fact that I'm Fred doesn't slow your libido?"

"You're not Fred," he replied.

"You just told me I was!"

"You have Fred's memories, but you can't be Fred if you're in that body. I believe they transferred what they could of Fred into that body," he said. Then, quite deliberately and overtly, he ran his eyes slowly from my feet up to my breasts, as though caressing me with his eyes. I had to stop myself from squirming. I didn't want him to see the effect he was having on me. "However, now that you're a woman, you can't be Fred.

"Maybe you can't feel the difference," he continued. "But the quality of your thinking has changed. Now, like all women, you're subject to your emotions and less subject to your intellect. You have no choice in the matter: it's a hormonal fact.

"So, no," he concluded. "The fact that you were Fred is interesting. It's nice that you know all that he knew. But I know that when you take those jeans off, I'm going to find something warm and wet -- something inviting and open. And that is the deciding factor here."

I opened my mouth to talk, then closed it. Most of what he'd said was simply misogynistic baloney, but there was some truth to it... a truth I hadn't considered.

I really wasn't Fred any more. Inside, I felt like Fred. I had Fred's memories and feelings. In spite of Arrow's convictions, I still thought like Fred; I had Fred's values and desires. I still wanted the same things out of life: I hoped my life could be generally peaceful, and I wanted to contribute, to do my bit.

There hadn't been any new urges or yearnings that I'd felt yet... I mean, I didn't want to have babies or find a husband or make a nest. Maybe at some time in the future my biological clock would start ticking, but I couldn't imagine that yet. Maybe it wouldn't happen.

But then again... maybe he was right. In the past when Arrow would offend me, I'd deal with it in my head. This time I was remembering feelings: how badly I felt when wasn't talking to him, how angry I was at what he'd done to Carla, how sorry I felt for his isolation... and another strange feeling, which was a sense of his solidity as a person. Arrow was a rock.

I don't know how long I sat there, stewing in that mix of contradictory emotions. They swirled through me, and I watched them, felt them — and God, I was so worn out. Getting up early, the long drive, the ferry ride, Arrow's frightening greeting, the grilling he gave me, and the strange banter that followed... it was all too much. If I wasn't so worked up, I could have fallen asleep in that moment. I sat, draped across my armchair, with my head down.

Arrow let me sit in my silence for a few moments, then said softly, "Let's try something different," and he held out out his hand. "Put your hand in my mine."

I did. My hand looked small and white against his large, ruddy palm. He didn't close his hand on mine; he let my hand rest there. I still didn't look up.

Then he said, "Come here," in the same soft, low voice. I lifted my head to look at him. "Come sit in my lap. Just see how it feels."

I stood, 117 pounds of awkward, and shuffled toward him. I never felt so Fred as in that moment. Suddenly I understood how slim people who were once heavy could still see themselves as fat, even when the weight was long gone. It was a very uncomfortable, unsettling feeling, but I kept moving toward Arrow, and when I turned, unsure of where to land, he lifted me off the floor and sat me on his thigh. "Lean into me," he said, and I did. "Rest your head on my shoulder," and I did. One arm supported my back; the other rested on my leg.

"How does that feel?" he asked.

"Good," I said. And it did feel good. No one had held me like that since... probably since I was a baby.

He held me in silence. I closed my eyes and felt... oh, what I felt! I felt his strength, his power, his gentleness. I felt protected, safe, at rest. A melody came into my head. At first I didn't know what it was. Then the title percolated up from deep in my memory. It was an old hymn, Leaning On The Everlasting Arms. "A bit blasphemous," I muttered to myself.

Arrow chuckled, but didn't ask what I meant. Instead he said, "Did you bring your pajamas?"

"Yes."

"Could you do me a favor?" I smiled, expecting him to ask me to change into them, but instead he said, "Don't wear them. Don't even take them out of your suitcase."

I laughed softly. He was such a dog. He never forgot where he wanted to go. I said, "Is this what you do?" I meant the whole business of seduction, the way his compass was stuck, pointing toward copulation -- his North Star.

"Yes, this is what I do," he replied. "I understand what women want, and that's why I can bring them there."

"Every woman is an individual," I told him "There's no such thing as what women want."

"Of course there is," he replied. "Some things are hardwired into us. Some women fight it, and it makes them unhappy."

"I wish I could explain to you just how full of shit you are," I said as I burrowed into his embrace.

"Hmmph," he replied. "If I didn't know who you used to be, I would spank you for saying that."

I almost countered with You wouldn't dare! but I stopped myself in time. He would have taken it as an invitation. Instead, I challenged him: "If you know so much about women, why don't you write a book?"

"I have," he replied. "And I'm going to give you a copy. It will help you understand what you've gotten into."

He shifted slightly. I felt his arms reaching toward the coffee table. "Open your eyes," he said. With me still on his lap, he refilled our glasses, emptying the bottle. He put a glass in each of my hands. Then he pulled his dessert plate closer. He hadn't touched his second slice of cheesecake. After shoving two forks firmly into the cake, he set the plate on my belly.

Then, with no effort whatsoever, he stood and carried me upstairs.