Girl Singer

1. Dead Wrong

Lulu Martine

I woke up, shivering, the room still dark. Searching around for my covers in the darkness did no good. I wondered what had happened to my nightlight. Since I turned seventy, I had found my night vision fading and very little help during my frequent trips to the restroom.

Cussing a little under my breath, I groped for the bedside lamp and fell off the bed because the little table also seemed to be missing.

I banged my head against the floor startling a yelp out of me. The noise seemed curiously high pitched.

I felt confused and panicked; at my age, a fall could be dangerous.

Had I taken up drinking again? I hadn't woken up from an alcoholic blackout in nearly forty years, not since I had joined AA six months after the accident that had wiped out my young family.

Something drifted down over my face, cobwebs I thought. I didn't fight them off, trying to lie still and figure out where I might be.

Then I remembered.

I had been drinking again. I'd taken my last full prescription for narcotic pain pills, bought a fifth of cheap bourbon and checked into a downtown fleabag hotel with the intention of taking all my pills at once and drinking myself to death.

"I'm d-d-dead," I said to myself. My voice sounded strange, besides the stutter, but I really hadn't expected to wake up. I didn't believe in an afterlife; despite years of trusting my sobriety to a higher power, I didn't really believe in God.

But other than a headache, a queasy stomach, a stiff neck and the slight bump on the head I'd got falling out of bed, I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so good. The pain in my back, cancer, that I had lived with for more than two years was gone.

I didn't really hurt anywhere but maybe it would be a good idea to find the bathroom since the upset stomach seemed ready to turn into something even more unpleasant.

Had I just gotten drunk and never taken the pills? Surely fourteen strong opiate pills and a fifth of whiskey would have ended my problems, I must have failed to follow through. Drank the booze and forgot the pills? No, I had intended to take the pills first and wash them down with the whiskey. Maybe fourteen wasn't enough?

I stopped worrying because when I sat up I felt the bounce of something on my chest. This didn't feel like the old-man-boobs I had developed in my seniorage. And without thinking about it, I had sat up without bracing an arm behind me; it had been more than two years since I had been able to do that.

My hands went to my chest and felt them—taught, bouncy, girl tits. Ones like I hadn't felt since the last time I had enough libido to hire a prostitute, maybe a couple of decades—and they felt huge, more than handfuls.

“D-d-dreamin’,” I said aloud. My voice sounded funny, it even tasted funny in my mouth. I licked my lips; soft, smooth and plump with no trace of whiskery stubble and certainly not the thin, dry, crusty lips of an old man.

They felt—bruised? I raised a hand and explored my face. Soft plump lips, cheeks smooth, round and not sunken—the face of a child, or a woman.

“I-I’m d-d-drea-,” I said aloud. The stutter stopped me. I tried again. “I-I-ah-I-uh….” It was worse the second time. Now I didn’t remember exactly what I had meant to say. I frowned, annoyed and a bit frightened.

What had happened to me? I was a salesman most of my working life, talking was my business. But I didn’t seem to be the me I had known. I must be dreaming.

I touched the breasts, the hair, the wide spread of round bottom I sat on. A very strange dream, perhaps a delirium brought on by my Last Cocktail of booze and pills.

I could taste alcohol but not the whiskey I had planned on drinking, something more malty, beer?

In the darkness, I felt of my face, again. Soft, smooth cheeks, a buttonish nose and big hoops in my ears—and the "cobwebs" turned out to be long strands of very abundant hair. What little head hair had survived my turning sixty had been eradicated by the chemotherapy.

“I-I-I’m d-d-d-uh,” I said, tugging on one earring, frustrated with my inability to finish the sentence. Or the thought, had I meant to say ‘dreaming’ or ‘dead’? Either made sense but logic had nothing to do with it—and certainly nothing to do with what I felt and experienced.

Because I didn't feel as if I were dreaming. Or dead. I felt very much alive, despite a headache and nausea, I felt good, I felt strong I felt — young.

I dropped a hand from my face to my breasts to my groin. It didn't surprise me not to feel a penis there, the tits had been a clue. And to be honest, a dick would have felt wrong. Why, I wondered?

“S-s-some d-d-dr-uh," I muttered.

I tried to stand up and managed it with a combination of strength, flexibility, and awkwardness that seemed very bizarre. No struggle, though. A day before I would have had trouble standing at all and would have managed it only with an effort that left me gasping.

Am I dead? I asked myself, not trying to speak out loud. Or am I just dreaming that I'm dead? Why would I dream that I’m a woman? I ran my hands over the female body I seemed to have — inherited? Why did I think that?

I stumbled a bit in the dark and the bathroom door did not seem to be where I thought it should be but a dim light from high up in the wall, a window, gave me enough light to see the sink, the toilet, and a dark and sinister darkness that might be an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub. Nothing looked at all familiar but I began to wonder if this were the same hotel room as the one I had checked into for my planned suicide.

If I were in a different body, why not a different hotel room. Heck, even a different hotel, a different city, country — language? Was I even thinking in English?

I smiled in the dark. How would I know? My stuttering had sounded like English but that didn’t prove anything.

I didn't remember having smiled since the rictus of pleasant pain I'd felt after taking my first drink in many more years than I felt like counting.

I stood in front of the toilet for a moment before the thought occurred to me that I had better sit down and do my business. “W-w-wouldn’t….” Wouldn’t want to have an accident, I finished the thought without speaking.

For some reason, this struck me as funny and I sat there giggling and making tinkling noises into the bowl. Afterward, I found the toilet paper and cleaned myself up. The feel of things down there wasn't exactly a surprise, I hadn't been a monk, but it did feel different to have female equipment of my own.

I didn't linger though but wandered back into the dark bedroom. I still hadn't turned on any lights. I debated with myself just crawling back into bed and waiting to see if next time I woke up as dead as I had expected to be.

More giggles. Damn it, I felt absurdly good. It had been so long since I felt good. Years, if not decades. But what I was experiencing had to be a delusion; no one takes a massive overdose of pills and booze and wakes up in a new body.

What did I look like, I wondered. Why hadn't I turned on the light to see?

But I knew why. I didn't want to see my old, gross, dead body lying in the bed.

*

I knew he must be there, I could smell him.

A fat, stinky old man, dead on purpose, dead of booze and pills. Lying in the other half of the bed where I woke up in this new, young, female body.

How had this happened?

Magic?

I didn't believe in magic.

A miracle?

I didn't believe in miracles, either.

Which only left insanity. “I-I-I’m c-c-crazy?" I said aloud.

Other than the stutter, I liked the sound of my new voice. I lifted my chin and sang, "La, la, la-a-a!" No stutter on the nonsense syllables, high and pure, a child's voice, or at least a soprano, a woman. In the darkness, I hugged myself, pleased to be the new me.

But what would it be like to live a new life as a woman? I didn't know but a hundred imaginings occurred to me. If I didn’t stutter when singing, maybe I could make my living doing that? My new brain seemed quick with thoughts, not like the still-life old male brain I had been trying to kill.

Had killed.

I couldn't make sense of it but I stood there in the dark, convinced that a dead man was in the room with me. A dead man who used to be me.

I needed a light but I felt afraid of turning one on and seeing my own corpse. The only illumination in the hotel room came from the dim square of the high window in the bathroom.

There should be a light switch in there, I could retreat to the bathroom and turn on the light and sneak up on my dead man, not have to see him all at once.

I crept backward into the bathroom and felt around for a light switch but no joy. It wasn't on either side of the door, high or low. In the dimness, I saw a line of shadow on the wall beside the mirror. I remembered old-fashioned pull strings from when I was a kid. I reached for the string and yanked.

A small bare light bulb in a socket next to the mirror came on. It probably wasn't more than forty watts but it blinded me because I had looked directly at it. I blinked, my eyes tearing up.

In a moment I could see, more or less. A young woman, a girl, looked back at me from the mirror. Her face seemed absurdly young, pretty but sort of vapid. She wore the remains of quite a lot of makeup, dark stains around her eyes, a smear of bright red around her mouth.

She had light brown hair and eyes that were either hazel or gray, a straight nose, a wide mouth and the sort of clear complexion, under the makeup, that makes one think of Ireland or Scandinavia.

I forgot about the dead man in the next room and made faces at myself in the mirror. I smiled, I winked, I preened, I frowned. I almost laughed out loud to see the new me.

“N-n-name?" I asked myself, but I didn't know the answer. My old male name would certainly not work. Did this girl have an identity that I would have to take over?

That stopped me for a moment. If I had killed myself and taken this girl's body, her life—what had happened to her?

I stepped back to get a better look at myself. The tiny bathroom held a toilet, a sink, an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub with a shower attachment and a rag rug. I pulled the door around to see behind it, a freestanding cabinet probably held towels and supplies but on the back of the door was something more interesting, a 3/4 length mirror.

I stared. “W-w-wow," I said. The face might be only attractive but my new body had the large breasts, lush curves and long legs of an old-fashioned pin-up girl. “W-w-wow," I said again. “N-n-n--." Naked.

Well, I'd known that. I managed not to laugh at myself and ran my hands over my softness. It all felt strange and familiar at the same time. This felt like my body without feeling at all like my old body. I touched a nipple and felt and saw the crinkly response; it kind of tickled.

I checked out the groin area. "Oh," I said. I stifled another giggle. I had a bush, soft and curly hair grew around a damp slit with fleshy lips. I chickened out on exploring that more, at least, not yet.

Further down, my legs were softly furred as well, with some hair in the pits. Was I not American? European?

I noticed my earrings, gold hoops with itty-bitty chip-like red stones set in them. My nails were polished but not painted and a little ragged--as if I had chewed on them sometime recently.

But something else caught my eye. Were those bruises around my throat? The purple marks looked fresh and finger-shaped. I touched them, they hurt a bit if pressed. I tried to swallow and that hurt a bit more. Had someone tried to choke the pretty girl I saw in the mirror?

I turned and looked out into the bedroom. In the light from the bathroom door, I could just barely make out the lumpy shape under the bed covers.

I screamed, then stuffed a hand in my mouth to shut myself up. How could I have forgotten about the dead man in the bed?

*

I tried to stop the whim-whamming of my heart and rationally consider the situation. Yes, there was a corpse-like lump under the covers in the broken-down bed of my hotel room.

But how could it be my old body? I had taken pills and drank cheap booze in an attempt to off myself but there had been no young woman in the room with me when I did that. No naked young woman with a body like the one I now had, for sure.

And yet, even before I turned on the light, I had known he was there. Well, was he really dead? I hadn’t checked yet but the hotel room certainly smelled like someone had died in it.

I saw an old-fashioned table lamp on a dresser near the bed. I crept up on it, hunched over as if I expected to have to run from some sort of retaliation. The switch on the lamp was another pull chain but I hesitated.

Up this close, I had no doubt the man was dead. He wasn’t moving and he smelled of shit and vomit, stale sweat and old cologne. Cologne? I —the I from before— did not wear cologne. I’d even given up on deodorant because I no longer cared.

He was lying on his back. As fat as he seemed to be, I should be able to hear him breathing. If he had been breathing. My hand on the light switch trembled and I yanked it away, almost knocking the lamp over.

Fat? I hadn’t been fat at the end. The chemotherapy had caused me to lose over sixty pounds in only six months. But it didn’t relieve my mind to realize that this corpse could not be mine.

I opened my mouth to scream again but the noise of a key in a lock stopped me.

I stared around the room, looking for a door which suddenly opened before I had located it. Dim light from a hallway outside came in through a crack that swiftly closed after a shape squeezed through.

“Jesus Christ,” said a male voice. “It smells like death in here.”

“Eep!” I said.

“Bonnie?” the voice asked.

Bonnie? Was that her name, my name, now?

“I-I-uh-I-.” No use, I realized. I might as well not be able to talk at all. “M-m-me?” I said, making it a question.

“Don’t try to talk, dummy,” the man said cruelly. “Ain’t there a light in here?” He found a switch by the door and flicked it on, holding an arm over his eyes against the sudden glare.

Almost blinded, I remembered I was naked and tried to run toward the bathroom, my breasts swaying and jiggling with the movement.

“Stop!” the man commanded and I did, collapsing into a heap on the floor. Am I crying? I wondered. Shit yes, I was weeping like a little kid who got nothing but coal in his stocking on Christmas. Her stocking.

“Bonnie Mae, stop that blubbering,” the man ordered.

I looked up and through tears saw that he was standing by the bed, staring at the corpse there.

From my angle near the floor, I couldn’t see the face and I didn’t want to, turning my head away. My insides felt shattered and it took me a moment to recognize the feeling as fear. I was terrified.

The man standing by the bed turned to glare at me. “You done killed another one, you stupid cunt,” he accused.

*

Girl Singer

2. Too Much Lovin'

Lulu Martine

My breath came in great racking sobs. The terror had seized my insides, and I lurched into movement on all fours, crawling toward the bathroom, trying to reach the toilet where I could throw up or shit or whatever seemed necessary.

The man overtook me and pulled me to my feet by one arm. “Bonnie, Bonnie,” he said tensely. “Don’t scream. Don’t scream.”

I nodded. He was hurting me with his grip on my elbow. Not badly, but his grip was tight, and I knew I couldn’t get away. I squirmed and made noises, but I didn’t scream. The man seemed huge, he towered over me and his strength seemed enormous. I didn’t struggle against his grip for fear he might strike me.

He shoved me toward the bathroom, letting me go. I almost fell but caught myself on the doorframe.

“Go in there,” he ordered me. “Wash your face. I’ll fetch your clothes so you can get dressed.” He looked back over at the bed. “Jesus, Bonnie, we gonna have to leave town—again! You gotta quit fucking these johns to death.”

I cried and gabbled something, putting my hands to my throat. I knew he was mad at me because the man was dead, and I wanted to show him that someone had tried to choke me. I was still afraid of him, but I wanted him to know that if this Bonnie had killed someone, maybe she had a reason?

He snorted, then made a motion like a lunge at me. I squeaked and got inside the bathroom, and he yanked the door closed behind me. “Stay in there, you stupid whore,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to come out.”

I stared at the girl in the mirrors. She looked as scared as I felt. I got the ring on the toilet seat up before I threw up. I caught water in my hand and rinsed out my mouth. I stared at my new face in the mirror.

I tried to think about my situation. My name is Bonnie Mae, and I’m a whore? And I’ve killed another one? One of my johns…? Too much sex….

I threw up in the sink this time and had to try to wash it down the little drain, but it was mostly just bile. I drank several handfuls of the cold liquid, and it helped me calm down.

The man outside must be my pimp. I’m a whore, and I have a pimp. My hands trembled, and I grabbed one in the other and tried to stop the shakes. The brain I had been admiring earlier for seeming to be quicker than the one my older male self used didn’t seem to be working at all now.

What had happened to me? I had tried to end my life, and now I had a new life, but… I’m a woman and a whore, and I just killed one of my johns….

“G-g-guh-!” I couldn’t speak, either. The man had called me a dummy, and it was true. Maybe I had brain damage….

My mind spiraled out of control. Was I lying in some hospital bed on life support while my brain died from the effects of the poison I had consumed?

Or was the life I thought I had had just some delusion? A lot of prostitutes are addicts on some pretty nasty drugs. What was I on?

I used the water to try to clean up my face. There was only the one tap, no hot water, and cold water was not going to remove my makeup. I found a washcloth and touched it to a big bar of white soap beside the tap. I used that to clean around my mouth and cheeks and carefully beneath my eyes, but I would need something else to get rid of the eye makeup entirely.

I’d had a wife, a mother, sisters. I knew I needed cold cream or makeup pads or something similar — nothing like that in the bathroom.

*

The door suddenly opening scared a squeak out of me, but it was only my pimp, throwing some clothing at me. “Get dressed, don’t take too long, we’ve got to get out of here.” He shut the door again.

I picked up the clothing. A pair of silk panties with lace. A clumsy-looking brassiere. A silk dress, black with figured flowers that looked as if they had been painted on. Hosiery, silk again, with a seam. Silk? If I’m a whore, I’m apparently an expensive one. Why the hell am I in such a dump of a hotel?

I used the washcloth between my legs where I had discovered some stickiness I didn’t want to think about, then I pulled up my panties and settled them in place. The bra was harder to figure out; I was more familiar with taking one off someone else than putting one on myself.

It also fit, after I discovered how to lift my breasts and settle them into the cups. I felt some relief too from the wobbling and swaying and pulling of my skin from unsupported breasts. My girls seemed more abundant than average, but maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to them being attached to me.

“Bonnie Mae,” said the man, “you better be dressed when I open the door.”

I made gargling noises. He frightened me so badly. I pulled the dress over my head and down past my breasts, so it settled around my hips as the door opened.

He smiled at me. “Good girl,” he said. “Don’t bother with your stockings. Here’s your puhss and shoes, put them on, and let’s get out of here.”

Puhss? Oh, purse. It was the first time I had really noticed his accent. Tennessee? Georgia?

There was another garment sticking out of the purse, a garter belt? I pushed it down and folded the stockings and put them inside too. The shoes had buckles and looked like the sort of footwear dancers wore on stage, with a wide, clunky heel of two or more inches. Could I walk in those?

I put them on, and they fit, and I stumbled only a little, staggering out of the bathroom. The man caught me. “Shit, Bonnie,” he said. “Don’t take on so. He was a piece of crap and good riddance.”

He actually gave me a quick hug and patted my hair, cooing to me. “I know it warn’t your fault he died, honeypie. He was old and fat, and you were just too much lovin’.”

He brushed his lips against my forehead, and I realized I had been kissed. It did a lot to ease my fear of the man. Maybe he’d been mean to me because he was scared, too?

I was still sniffling a bit. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair was a rat’s nest, and I still had raccoon eyes. What did it matter? I knew I must be pretty, and it bothered me to see my face all puffy and smeared. I didn’t think too much about why it bothered me, though.

He pushed me ahead of him. “Go on, sweetcakes. I paid the desk man not to call the cops for an hour. We’ll go out the backstairs and be on the way to Kansas City before they quit settin’ on their hands.”

He seemed almost a different person than the one who had called me a cunt, but he slapped me on the ass hard enough to sting through my thin dress, and I must have jumped a foot with a startled, “Guk!” sound. He laughed.

I could feel the warmth of his handprint on my butt cheek. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I wondered if he would do it again.

*

My brain still wasn’t working, and I allowed him to push me ahead of him, out the door and down a hallway. He opened another door and went first down a narrow flight of stairs, towing me behind him this time. “Don’t trip on the stairs, honeypie,” he warned me. I managed, despite the heels, to stay upright.

Two more flights, another door, and we came out in an alley beside a loading platform. It felt like a clammy early morning of a summer in someplace where the day will be hot and humid. My dress clung to my thighs, and I kept using my free hand to pull it loose so it would hang. This was important to me for some reason.

He seemed in a much more cheerful mood, and I wondered why. He was even humming something under his breath. I recognized the tune: “When You Wish Upon a Star,” a Disney song I used to hear as a child. I opened my mouth to sing along, but he made a shushing motion with his hand.

He looked both ways, up and down the alley, then he seized me and pulled me close. “Babydoll,” he said. He pulled me up on my toes and bent his head to kiss me, right on the lips this time. His tongue insisted on getting inside my mouth, and I was so surprised, I let him.

The kiss went through me like electricity. He had one hand on my ass where he had slapped me, and he clenched that. I wanted to squeal; the feelings were so intense. My lips had already felt bruised, and they were very sensitive.

I felt warmth in my—my nipples, my crotch, even my nose and ears. My body was enjoying what he was doing, and my brain was just a spectator. I could feel his excitement, too. One piece of evidence hard and warm against my thigh.

Oh, gross, I managed to think, but my body wanted to rub against it. I heard myself giggle as he broke off the kiss.

“What was that for, Alvin, I hear you ask?” he said. He laughed. Squeezed me tight, gave me another peck on the lips, and took off down the alley, again towing me behind him.

I felt giddy and dizzy, my hair falling in my face, and I kept pulling at my dress to keep it from clinging. I stumbled, and he caught me, set me on my feet again, and we went at a more reasonable pace. He was singing again, quietly. This time it was harder to place the tune.

Between giggles—I couldn’t seem to stop them—I tried humming along. Finally, I had it. “We’re in the money,” I sang, feeling happy that I had figured it out. “We’ve got a lot of what—.” I wasn’t having any trouble at all with the words, and I didn’t seem to think that was strange.

His hand going over my mouth stopped me. “Sh, sh,” he said. He shook his head. “Bonnie Mae, sometimes I forget you ain’t completely right in the head.” He laughed softly and uncovered my mouth to kiss me again. My body wanted to kiss back and wiggle in his arms, but I resisted that.

I’m really a guy, I told myself. I can’t be enjoying myself kissing other men. But I was feeling good again; still a little scared but sort of roller-coaster scared. As long as Alvin, if that was his name, had an arm around me, I felt—safe? He still seemed large and powerful but no longer scary.

We turned the corner onto a street at the end of the alley and walked along, arm and arm. I looked up at his face, my eyes were about level with his shoulder, and he grinned down at me, then put his other hand to his mouth, a finger on his lips in a shushing gesture.

I heard myself giggle, but I was still mystified as to what had changed his mood. And mine.

He treats me like a moron, I thought. Maybe I am. But even that bit of depressing reverie did not quash the occasional tingle of excitement. I didn’t know where we were going, but Alvin was happy, so…Bonnie Mae was delighted. And I was Bonnie Mae.

*

I wasn’t in charge, and we went where Alvin wanted to, and I couldn’t resist looking at him frequently. Like I had to check his mood if it changed or something. But I did have time to look around and what I saw mystified me.

It was as if we had wandered onto a movie set. The cars and clothes all reminded me of old black-and-white movies, things that would star tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and Bugsy Siegel. No, wait, Bugsy Siegel was a real tough guy, not an actor. But like that.

There weren’t many people on the streets or cars moving, but they all had a look. The cars had bulbous outlines, and almost all of them were black. I remembered cars like that from when I was a kid, but those were old then, and these were new, now.

The women all wore dresses that were at least mid-calf, like the one I wore, or even longer. Most of the men had on double-breasted suits or rough work clothes that still looked old-fashioned. Almost everyone had a hat, men and women.

A lot of people I saw were black, and they were all dressed in work clothes, not one of them in a suit or a nice dress. On one corner we passed, a black teenager offered to shine our shoes. Across the street, another black man unloaded bales of papers from a truck in front of a genuine newsstand like I didn’t remember having seen in twenty years.

It seemed I had not only changed body but changed times too. I’d been born in 1941 myself, five months before Pearl Harbor, exactly. I suddenly wanted to ask Alvin the date but knew I would never be able to get a coherent question out.

We passed the newsstand, and I made another awful discovery. I couldn’t read. Oh, I recognized some of the letters in the big headlines on the newspapers, A, B, and C mostly, and a few others, but there was not one word that made sense to me. Maybe A, I suppose.

I made a strangled noise, and Alvin looked down at me. “You okay, honeypie?” he asked.

“N-n-no,” I managed to say. “I-I-uh-I-.”

He shook his head and tapped me on the nose with a fingertip. “Sh, sh, sh,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Not your fault his heart couldn’t take your good lovin’. You too much woman for him, but I’m sure he went out with a smile…well, no, he didn’t, hmm.”

He grinned at me. “To tell the truth, from his expression, it must have hurt like a sumbitch….”

That hadn’t been what I was trying to tell him, but now I was weeping again. My emotional buttons seemed too easily pushed. “Sh, sh, sh,” said Alvin.

Some guy in work clothes stopped right in front of us. “She gonna be all right, mister?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Alvin. “She’s upset—she’s just upset because her cat died.”

My cat died? My brain was off the rails for sure now. I wailed and put my face against Alvin’s chest, bawling for a cat I was pretty sure didn’t even exist. Poor Fluffy.

*

Next thing I knew, Alvin was loading me into the front seat of a car. “Bonnie,” he was saying, “Get your hands and feet inside so I can close the door.”

I snatched my limbs in and looked up at him with my mouth hanging open. “Good girl,” he said and closed the door then ran around to the other side to climb in behind the wheel. He laughed. “Bonnie, you are something else, honeypie.” He shook his head. “Scoot over here,” he patted the seat beside him.

It was a big old bench-style seat covered in worn cloth and faded leather. I scooted over, and he hugged me up close then kissed me again.

I wanted to turn my face away from his kisses, but instead, I kept leaning into them. Despite myself, they made me feel good. Sooner or later, I would have to stop trying to think of myself as a man. My crinkled up nipples and the warmth I felt between my legs were certainly evidence against the theory.

He started the engine with a key and a foot pedal. It coughed into life, and he leaned out the driver’s side window to look behind us before easing the clutch and merging with the still sparse traffic. When he went to change gears, the shift lever was on the steering column, and he had to use the clutch.

“We’ll run by our doss, grab out stuff and go, okay, baby?”

I had no idea, so I nodded. Doss? It was a word I hadn’t heard since the hippie era.

He laughed, and I giggled.

“You can sing now,” he said.

I looked at him blankly.

“We’re in the money…” he began, and I took over. I didn’t even know that I knew all the words. It was a song about the Depression ending and having enough money to pay the rent and even loan a bit to a friend. It was a happy tune, and I discovered I was dancing in place, tapping my feet and swinging my shoulders to the rhythm. I hit all the notes, too.

He shook his head when I finished. “How come you never, ever stutter when you’re singing?” he asked.

“Ada-ada-ada?” I gabbled. Damn. That didn’t even sound like what I had tried to say.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “You’re beautiful, you sing like a bird, and you fuck like a catamount. But that’s the second old fart in six months died on you.” He laughed. “That witch in the swamp sold you to me wasn’t lying when she said you were too much lovin’ for some men.”

Witch? Sold me!? My toes curled up, and a flash of heat went through me. I giggled and wiggled against him. Something inside me liked the idea of being sold. I am so fucked, I thought. Well, yeah, another part of me remarked, that’s your line of work now.

He squeezed me. “You’re my meal ticket, honeypie.” He kissed me on the forehead again. “You know how much that old fart had in his wallet? Seven hundred dollars. Even after giving the deskman a double sawbuck, we’ve got enough to buy a new car, and a better one than this piece-of-shit Dodge.”

We were definitely not in 2020 anymore. I laughed out loud. My pimp had ripped off the corpse of the man I had fucked to death, and now we had to get out of the city before the cops found me. I laughed again before bursting into tears.

*

Girl Singer

3. Nobody's Baby Now

Lulu Martine

Alvin got me quieted down again by holding me and rubbing my back after we had parked in front of a place that looked like a boarding house run by Norman Bates. He kissed me on the eyelids, and I giggled at the absurdity.

I was beginning to have trouble telling my own reactions apart from those of my body. What difference did it make? I'm Bonnie Mae—I'm an illiterate, functionally mute prostitute on the run from the law. I've got the attention span of a sparrow and the emotional control of an infant. I sighed as Alvin got out of the car.

"Stay here," he told me. "I'll go in and get our stuff."

I whimpered. He was leaving me alone! I was devastated, and that scared me all over again.

"No," he said firmly. "You can't come in. You get near a bed, and you'll wanna fuck, and we just don't have the time." He smiled when he said that, but I wasn't sure he was kidding. What if he wasn't?

Oh, great, I'm a nymphomaniac, too. I squirmed. Some part of me enjoyed the idea that I couldn't control myself.

"We get to Kaycee, we'll stay in a nice hotel, buy a whole box of rubbers, and you can try to fuck my brains out, okay? I promise, honeypie."

Well, I said to myself as he walked away, except for the rubbers, that does sound nice. I was trying to be ironic, but I felt a thrill when I thought of it. My place of business, the one I sat on, felt warm and damp. I thought, son-of-a-bitch, I'm a horny little twat, ain't I?

I sat there for maybe a minute, trying to think my way through my situation. My mind had capabilities my brain did not seem to have room for. Plus, I was alone, and that scared me. I'm not supposed to be alone some voice inside me insisted. I was near panic in a very short time.

Is this going to be my life from now on? Meal ticket for a pimp who steals from dead guys. I quivered. I knew I would start crying again in a moment, and I wouldn't be able to stop until Alvin came back and hugged me, or kissed me, or… or spanked me!

That's what I needed, a good spanking. I squirmed thinking about his hand slapping my ass earlier. Now, I had the giggles. There's a word for girls like you, I scolded myself. Slut. Or maybe bimbo. Not sure I have the intellectual qualifications. Maybe I'm not smart enough for a bimbo; slut is more my speed.

The more I dissed myself internally, the hotter I got. You're a sick, sick girl, I told myself. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," I sang, "that's the way I like it. I like it." And then I sang the whole song, another that I didn't know I knew the words to. Even though I changed one line to "Tell me you're my lovin' man," I hit all the notes and had the rhythm perfect, dancing on my round new butt on the car seat.

I didn't feel nearly so lonely and scared while singing.

I'm a human jukebox, I thought. Why don't I stutter when I sing? "Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon," I sang, finishing up with "Money, money, money," instead of "Music, music, music." When I started a song, I needed to sing it all the way through, apparently, but I could alter it.

What the hell?

If a new car costs only 700 dollars, neither of those songs has been written yet. Was I going to sing another? Uh-huh.

"Let's do the time warp again!" I sang. "It's just a step to the left, then a jump to the right!" All the way through, no mistakes that I could see or hear.

This was kind of cool.

*

By the time Alvin got back, I had sung another five or ten songs. I'd lost count. So sue me, I'm not a mathematician. Alvin was carrying several suitcases as he came down the walk, one in each hand and one under his arm. Three. I could count that high.

The Dodge had no backseat, just a cargo area behind the bench. He put the suitcases down and opened the driver's side door. I sang at him, "I got chills, they're multiplying," and he stood there while I did the whole song: "You're the one that I want!" complete with oo-oo-oos.

When I finished, I bit my tongue to keep from starting another song.

"Where the hell did you hear that one?" he asked. I just shrugged. How could I tell him? And he probably wouldn't believe it if I did.

He shook his head, laughing, while he put the suitcases away. "What kinda music is that? Some new kinda hot jazz?"

I had no way to answer his questions, so I just sat there wiggling in excitement. Would he get the idea I'd thought of while he was gone? He didn't have to sell my pussy if he could sell my voice.

*

He climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine up, watching me thoughtfully.

I noted that after all that singing I had done, I felt charged up still, but not—not as horny as I had been feeling. Well, good—singing was another outlet for all the sexual energy I seemed so full of.

"Scoot over here," he said, and I snuggled up against him. "Put your feet under you, like you usually do."

"Sh-sh-shoes?" I managed to ask. I was already doing it, lifting up to sit on my feet, but I couldn't just kick the shoes off, they were buckled-on dancing shoes, the kind Ginger Rogers probably wore in Hollywood.

"Your shoes are okay," he said. "We'll junk this fucker when we get to Kaycee." He pulled me even tighter to him. "So…so, I'm the one that you want?"

"Oo-oo-oo," I sang then giggled. Did I want him? Well, my body sure did, and I was sort of along for the ride. It was so weird that thinking about fucking a man was not freaking me out.

He laughed. He pulled me up to where I sort of stood on my knees so he could kiss me on the lips without looking away from the road for more than a few seconds. Then he let me sit on my heels again. I had my arms around his neck. It felt—nice.

It occurred to me that I was making a mess of my dress, all wadded up under me. It couldn't be good for the silk. But I didn't want to move.

He glanced at me sideways. "Can you sing something else?"

I nodded eagerly. This was the idea I was trying to get across.

"Do you know, 'Nobody's Baby Now'?"

I hadn't heard that song in probably sixty years, but yes, I did know it. It must have been a popular tune in the time we were in, whatever time that was. I sang, "I'm nobody's baby, I wonder why?" and all the rest of it, to the end.

He looked astonished. "That's …that's different! I never heard anyone sing it like that! It's great, but…did you just make that up? How to sing it like that?"

I shook my head. I must have heard a later version of the song, probably post-war.

Oh, fuck! The war!

I looked around. Cars rolling along, there was more traffic now but still not a lot. No military vehicles in sight. No young men in uniform but plenty of them about. Didn't the war change all that?

And I couldn't ask any questions that were more than one word long! I'm an idiot-savant, I can remember the words to any song I've ever heard, but I can't carry on an ordinary conversation. In the words of a famous fellow countryman of the future, Doh!

Judging by the weather, it must be summer, so Pearl Harbor was at least months away. And this might not be 1941 but some earlier year. I frowned. Numbers were slippery. The harder I tried to think about them, the murkier my thinking got. Oh, yeah, I'm an idiot.

Thinking about the problem another way, am I a time traveler? Can I alter the future? Do I know the future, or do I only think I know the future? And, as we already know, thinking is not what I'm good at. In fact, I'm pretty sure thinking this hard is not in my job description as an idiot.

*

I sighed and came back to being aware of riding in a car snuggled up next to Alvin. He was stroking my hair, petting me like a cat with one hand, while he drove with the other.

It occurred to me that there were no seatbelts in this car. Or probably in any others on the streets. These big heavy things were rolling death traps. I sighed again—nothing I could do about that either.

I had a strange thought. The idea of getting hurt scared me, but the thought of getting killed didn't. I'd been dead before. But a chill went down my spine and raised goosebumps on my arms, despite the heat. I wiggled against Alvin, seeking a bit of comfort.

His expression didn't change. Was he ignoring me? My arms were no longer around his neck, one of them stretched along the arm he was using to pet me, the other lying in my lap. Maybe I was too easy to ignore? I moved a bit to rub my breast up against his arm….

What the hell am I doing!? I gasped. It kept happening, my body had a mind of its own, and sometimes my mind and the other one didn't mesh.

Alvin turned toward me without taking his eyes off the road. "You say something, babycakes?" he asked.

That's pretty funny, ask the dummy if she said anything. I giggled and he smiled. "G-g-guh-go?" I said. I meant to ask where were we going, but he took it the wrong way.

"You need to go?" he asked.

I thought about that. Now that he'd mentioned it, I had drunk all that water in the bathroom. I nodded. All of my worries about time travel and world wars had evaporated when Alvin asked me a question.

"We'll stop and get some breakfast, honeypie, just lemme get outside the center of St Louie." He turned his attention back to driving.

Food sounded good, too. I knew for a fact that my stomach was empty. And just to confirm it, my middle made a noise like a kitten attacking a shoe.

Alvin glanced at me again, smiling. "Ten minutes," he promised.

I smiled at him, but a new worry surfaced a moment later. I'm losing my mind, I thought. I actually wondered for a moment whether ten minutes was longer or shorter than an hour. The longer I was in this body, and I may be in it for a long time, the easier it was to think of myself as Bonnie Mae.

And the easier it was to think like Bonnie Mae, the cheerful, sexy moron. Already the idea of ever having been anyone else seemed stupid. If I had been someone else, wouldn't that person have had a name? And I couldn't think of any names except Bonnie Mae and Alvin.

Well, maybe names in a song.

About that time, Alvin asked me. "Can you sing us another, honeypie?"

I nodded and right away started in on, "Bill Bailey." Which had a name right in the title, didn't it? I bounced and wiggled as I sang and put one hand on my hip like I was being sassy.

When I finished, he was laughing, and I giggled too, because if he thought something was funny, it must be so. Right?

"You messed up the lyrics on that last chorus, honeypie," he said. "You sang Al Porter instead of Bill Bailey. That's my name!"

It was? I hadn't known his last name or that he sometimes went by Al, had I? But, Bonnie Mae did…. Before I could think about how weird that was, he asked for another song.

So I gave him "Blueberry Hill," maybe because I thought it had something to do with St. Louis. He seemed to know it, so it must be an older song than I remembered. Or had Bonnie Mae picked it?

"Pancakes," he said. "You want some blueberry pancakes?" He turned off the street.

I nodded. That sounded great.

*

We pulled to a stop next to a diner, and he helped me out on his side. Then he reached behind the seat and pulled out the smallest suitcase. "This has got your stuff in it. You wanna go in the bathroom and fix yourself up?"

Would I know how? I wasn't sure, but maybe I could find something to take off my eye makeup and a comb for my hair. I nodded. He retrieved my purse too and handed that to me while he carried the suitcase. And he held the door for me. I realized I had been expecting him to.

The place was packed with men in work clothes. Booths along two walls, tables in a small open space, and a counter with stools. Three waitresses in white starched dresses. Alvin spoke to one of them, then led me through the crowd.

All of the people eating or waiting were men, and they were staring at me. My ass got patted and pinched as we made our way to the bathroom. I was excited by the attention I was getting. Bonnie Mae liked it, but I tried to be annoyed by the touching, at least. I knew that wasn't working by my giggles, and the little extra ass-twitch I worked into my walk.

*

There was only the one bathroom. Alvin helped me inside and propped the suitcase on the toilet seat before leaving. "I'll order us breakfast at the counter. Pancakes, scrambled and bacon, right?"

That was exactly what I wanted! I wiggled all over, he kissed me, and I giggled, then he left. He'd opened the case for me, too.

There was only one small mirror over the sink. I found the cold cream and removed the rest of my makeup with tissues. I decided not to risk trusting my ability to summon Bonnie Mae's memories of how to reapply and just got out a comb and brush and tried to repair my hair.

I had such a lot of it, wavy light brown locks, almost blond, down past the middle of my back. The tangles were fierce, but Bonnie's hands knew what to do, teasing them out with the comb, then building volume and curl back with the brush.

I put things away, the stockings and garter belt from my purse back in the suitcase along with the cold cream, tightly closed. I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. The light here was much better than at the hotel in the middle of the night.

Daylight came in from a small, high, frosted window as well as a light bulb over the mirror. I looked at Bonnie Mae and told myself, this is you now. Because if it isn't, then you're dead of drugs and drink in a cheap hotel in Oakland. I shrugged off a question of where the hell was Oakland and considered my reflection.

Bonnie's best features may have been her mouth, hair, and eyes. Her lips were full and bow-shaped, her teeth regular and white. Her hair, after being combed and brushed, looked deep golden blond in the sunlight from the tiny window. Her eyes were clear—gray with enough gold and green flecks that they could be called hazel just as well. Her lashes were long and bright gold. Her brows were shaped but needing some pencil to darken them.

How did I know that? Sighing, I got a pencil out of a pocket in the purse and expertly colored in my too-light brows. Maybe I could handle putting on some makeup, after breakfast.

While putting the pencil away, a lipstick tube fell into my hand. I applied it quickly, blotted with a tissue, and reapplied. Realizing I'd just have to put it on again after breakfast, I shrugged and put the lipstick away. I do know how to do this, I marveled.

But I wouldn't be able to do anything about my pugged little button nose, my high forehead, chubby cheeks, or round little chin. In the face, I was pretty and cute, but not beautiful. Part of that was my too-dumb-to-live expression. I looked like a walking dumb-blonde joke, and I wasn't even really blond.

I gave up on trying to look smarter. In the body—I was something else. I looked down at myself, running my hands down my sides to straighten my dress. Generous breasts, wide soft hips, and a domed belly but a narrow waist when considered with my lush curves. Long legs, tiny hands, and feet. I looked like a pin-up girl.

I wondered how tall I was. Alvin must be nearly a giant since he towered over me, but pushing through the crowd, I noticed that with my two-inch heels, I was almost as tall as some of the men. Maybe taller than a few.

I tried to pick up the suitcase, the damn thing was heavy, and I only managed to move it to the floor, which was needed. I did some business sitting on the stool and finished drying things off down there, readjusting my dress when Alvin popped the door open.

"Food's ready, sugarbun," he said. He grabbed the case, and I took his other arm for him to lead me out to breakfast. Giggling, I turned my face up so he could kiss me. Bonnie, you are such a slut, I told myself, but that just made me giggle again.

*

We ate at the counter, and breakfast was yummy. Yummy? Yummy. I'm a girl, and I can say yummy. Alvin scolded me for holding my fork like a little kid but I adjusted my grip like he wanted and he was happy. "I keep having to show you this," he sighed. But he touched me on the nose and smiled.

I ate everything on the plate and drank a cup of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Alvin had ham and eggs over-easy with grits and biscuits and gravy. He ate 'most all of it, then ordered a small glass of orange juice which he let me sip. I didn't like it, it tasted like sour metal, but he drank all of it. I knew I had had better orange juice, but I couldn't remember where.

He left money by the plate, a bill and some change. I wondered how much it came to, but it occurred to me that it wasn't important. We had money and Alvin was in charge of it, so no need for me to worry. I never had to worry about money ever again—it wasn't my job now. I giggled, thinking of it that way made me feel giddy.

The sun was above the rooftops when we stepped outside, and the morning promised a hot, steamy day ahead. Alvin got us back into the car with the suitcase stowed away behind the seat, me curled up beside him, and the road open in front.

I felt safe and content, despite the lack of seatbelts and air conditioning. I snuggled up against Alvin, wondering vaguely how long it would take to get to Kaycee, and if anyone there would like to hear me sing. But I soon fell asleep to the rumbling music of stiff tires on rough pavement.

*

Girl Singer

4. You're Making Me Crazy

Lulu Martine

I dreamed.

In my dreams, I checked into a dingy motel in Oakland with my prescription for fentanyl and half a fifth of cheap house-brand whiskey. I swallowed pills and liquor until I passed out and died.

But I didn't stay dead.

I found myself wandering around the halls of the motel, climbing Escher-style stairs sometimes, and falling from balconies others. Finally, I stumbled into a cheap hotel room where a plump little prostitute was being choked into unconsciousness by her john.

I didn't feel anything while I watched. I might just as well have been a film editor, looking for the signals in the corners of the frame for where to cut the scenes apart.

The girl passed out, motionless. Then the guy got on top of her, riding her until something in his face changed, and he toppled sideways, soiling himself at the same time as a greenish fluid ran from his mouth and his nose.

After a bit, the girl roused, pushing him off of her. Then she lay there panting, getting her breath back, staring into the darkness…

…gray, gold, and green eyes looking directly into my watery blue ones….

I felt a sucking sensation, like my whole being was caught in the updraft of a tornado. Then I was looking out of the gray eyes at darkness.

*

I woke up when the engine noise changed. We were stopping for gas. I yawned and stretched while Alvin got out to pay for the fuel. The kid wiping the windows with a red rag peered in at me, and I looked to see if all my buttons were done up. They were so I undid a couple of them, just to watch his eyes pop out.

He left pronto when Alvin came back and slid beneath the wheel. "You need to do anything?" he asked.

I shook my head.

He noticed my open top and the blushing kid and grinned. "Amusing yourself?" he asked.

I nodded, giggling.

We sat there while the other station guy pumped gas, however much Alvin had paid for.

"Open two more buttons," he told me.

Squirming, I did so.

The kid had seen. He turned to make his escape, tripped on a bucket of suds, and almost ran headlong into the station building. The older pump jockey came with some change, but Alvin refused it. "Buy yourself a Hershey bar and one for the kid," he said.

"Thank you, sir," the man said, but he was looking at my chest. I took a deep breath and arched my back. He backed away, bouncing off a pillar as Alvin started up the engine and got us back on the highway.

"How far down do those buttons go?" Alvin asked.

I pointed at my middle, where the line of buttons stopped. I should probably wear a belt with this dress, I thought. It would look nice and more complete.

"Undo all your buttons," Alvin ordered.

I caught my breath and began unbuttoning myself. Alvin was only watching in brief glances. I stopped when I ran out of buttons, the wind from the open window on Alvin's side making the loose top of my dress flap open and closed.

"Pull your dress off your shoulders and take off your bra," he said.

I gasped. My nipples, already semi-erect, got hard and stayed hard as I did what he said, the top of my dress pooled around my waist. I was naked from the waist up now, and oncoming traffic had a good view. There were scary sounds as some drivers swerved or stood on their brakes.

Alvin was grinning. "Pull your dress up before there's an accident. Button yourself back up but leave the top three undone."

My breath came in pants as I did what he told me to do. I was sitting on my legs, and I felt something hot and wet against my calves.

"Are you wearing knickers?" he asked.

I frowned. "Kni-ni-ni?" Did I not know what knickers were? That seemed unlikely. I mean Bonnie--did Bonnie not know what the word meant?

"Panties," said Alvin. "You're wearing panties, right?"

I squirmed, nodding.

"Turn around and sit with your feet on the floorboards," he told me.

I did, pretty sure I knew what was next. I heard myself moan. I mean, Bonnie moaned. Maybe we both moaned, even though there's only one of us.

He still wasn't looking at me steady, but for a bit, his glances got more frequent. I moaned again, squirming, rubbing my thighs together.

"Pull your dress up, reach under and pull your knickers, your panties, down to your knees," he said, staring straight ahead.

I made some kind of noise.

"Now pull your dress down, but keep one hand under it and stroke your honeypie."

"Awa-awa-awa!" I gabbled.

"Sh, sh," he commanded. "Hush, no trying to talk. You can't talk, you're a dummy, remember?"

I gasped and moaned, wordlessly. I squirmed and flinched, stroking myself.

After a pause, Alvin said. "Put your other hand inside the top of your dress, find a nipple and pinch and pull on it."

I did that, nearly losing my mind in sensation.

Alvin was talking, but I almost couldn't hear him over the sound of blood rushing through my ears. "Put two fingers in your puss, move them in and out, fast."

Could I do that? Yes, yes, I could.

Then, "Pull and twist on your nipple, almost till it hurts."

This was torture but pleasure, too. So much.

"You wanna cum," said Alvin. "But you can't. Not until I tell you to."

Oh. Oh. The bastard. I moved my fingers and pulled my nipple. I felt hot wet pussy juice on my hand, under me, soaking into the back of my dress. Muscles I couldn't control, that I hadn't known that I had, twitched and jerked.

"Don't move," Alvin commanded. "Stay still. You can't move at all until you cum, but you can't cum until I say."

I froze, muscles stiffening, hardening like wood. I couldn't breathe, couldn't gasp for air. If I couldn't cum, I would pass out—or die. The pleasure went beyond joy to terror, approaching ecstasy.

The road noise crescendoed, or maybe that was just the blood in my brain. I could no longer see, and I wondered if my eyes were closed or if I had gone blind.

"Cum," said Alvin, and the world ended in a scream.

*

When I came back to awareness, I was lying, nearly full-length along the bench seat, both doors of the car open. Alvin stood a little way away, looking down the blacktop as if waiting for someone else to arrive. We were parked on the side of the road, near the crest of a hill.

Had I only imagined a scene that had all taken place while we drove down the highway? Had I finger-fucked myself silly because Alvin told me to? Yeah, I think I had. I certainly felt damp and sticky in the right places. I sniffed of my fingers. Uh-huh. Clam juice.

I squirmed, wondering if maybe Alvin would order me to lick my fingers clean. I didn't want to do that, but I did want him to tell me to do it. My head is so weird.

I shook off a feeling of lethargy, sitting up and looking toward Alvin. He was smoking a cigarette, which I didn't remember seeing him do. Nor did I remember smelling smoke on him. I made a face, and he laughed.

"I know you don't like me to smoke," he said. He shook his head. "You something else, Bonnie Mae Carroll, you really are." He sighed. "C' mere."

I scooted across the bench, under the steering wheel, and stood up beside the car, realizing as I did so that my panties were still down around my knees and that I wasn't wearing a bra. My nipples got hard thinking about it, including the poor boob I had pinched and pulled on. Remembering how that had hurt only seemed to excite me.

I stretched my arms out toward Alvin, knowing that if I took a step, my panties would fall down and trip me. I made a noise, half-grunt, half-sigh.

"Oh, lord," said Alvin. "You ready to go again, ain'tcha?"

I smiled, nodding. I tried to shuffle forward, keeping my panties from falling by clenching my knees together, which made it impossible to walk. My arms still stretched out, I worked my fingers in grasping motions.

I'd been sweating, the back of my dress was damp and stuck to my thighs. Standing there in a soiled dress with my own cum on my legs made me feel deliciously slutty, kind of like a smushed cream pie.

Alvin chuckled. "I can't get over how you'll do anything I tell you to, if you can. And you like it. You have to like it, don't you? Just let them panties fall and kick them off." He took a drag on his cigarette. "Panties ain't no use to you anyways."

He watched as I stood first on one leg then the other, kicking my panties away from me. He put out an arm, and I walked over to snuggle in under it. I could feel my braless breasts jiggle and sway. I liked that feeling. I even liked the drawing sensation of my skin being pulled by the weight on my chest.

"You got to wear a bra most times," he said, grabbing a handful of softness and squeezing. "Otherwise, your titties will be down to your knees, someday. But there ain't no reason for you to wear knickers unless you're having your monthlies. Hmm?"

I giggled when he said knickers. Knickers was a funny word.

He flicked his cigarette away onto the highway in front of a big truck. "So don't wear them anymore. That'll make both of us happy." He bent to kiss me, but I caught a whiff of cigarette breath and turned my face away.

He laughed. "You don't want to kiss me because I've been smoking?"

I nodded. Well, I didn't want to kiss him at all, any time. No sir, I'm a guy in here. Bonnie had other opinions, but she and I happened to agree at the moment. Cigarette breath is nasty.

He laughed again. "You sweet dumb little cunt," he said. "You'd kiss me if I told you to. You'd let me put my tongue down your throat, or anything else in there, if I told you to."

My breathing got a bit ragged. I knew he was right. It was exciting to know that—that if he told me to, I'd kiss him right on his nasty mouth. I'd suck on his tongue if he said to. I'd kiss him and be glad because it was disgusting and he could make me do it.

"That witch woman put some hex on you, didn't she?" he said. "You have to do whatever I tell you to do, and you have to like it. It makes you hot." He took his pack of smokes out of his shirt pocket and looked at it. "I could make you smoke one of these, and then you wouldn't be able to taste it when I kissed you."

I stared at the cigarettes. The damndest thing was that I sure did not want to smoke a cigarette, being from when and where I was from, I knew way too much about smoking. But still, now he had put the idea in my head, I wanted him to make me smoke one because it would make me hot. Horny. Well, hornier.

He took the pack and threw it into the highway in front of another big truck. I stared then looked up at him. "You see?" he said. "You can make me do things, too."

*

We were soon back in the car and on our way again. I cuddled next to Alvin, feeling a bit grimy and soiled. I wondered if I smelled bad. I suspected that I did. I sniffed of my fingers again. Yup.

Some part of me hoped that I had not ruined my dress. I was a woman now, and in this time and place, I would have to wear dresses. They might as well be ones as nice and pretty as this figured silk.

Then again, leaning against my man while I wore a dirty dress made me feel slutty and cheap. And I liked that. I sighed, contented.

"How about a song for us?" Alvin suggested.

I sat up, putting my feet together on the floor. You can't sing right lying down.

Not wearing panties or a bra and having my top dress buttons undone made me feel almost naked. And wearing my soiled dress added to that. I felt nasty. What kind of nasty song could I sing?

I thought of one. Not the version from Roger Rabbit or even Peggy Lee's version. Instead, I imagined Queen Latifah singing, "Why Don't You Do Right?" Then I gave it to him. It was a song from this era. He might have heard it before. But not with me rubbing a silken tit against his arm.

"Holy shit," he said when I finished.

I wanted to giggle, but I suppressed it. Thinking of Queen Latifah, I moved on to her song from the musical Chicago, "When You're Good to Mama." Only I did it Ethel Merman-style, with volume and vibrato. The tit worked well with that one, too.

"Oh, baby," he said.

I moved right along to, "I Wanna Be Loved by You," complete with Boop-Boop-ee-Doops, only in a little girl voice that would have gotten Marilyn arrested. I'd heard a version like that somewhere, and again, I pressed myself against him, soft and sexy.

"Christ, babycakes," he said. "I'm gonna have to pull over and jack-off again, you keep singing like that."

I looked at him with my head tilted sideways, then gestured with my open hands, like, here I am. Bonnie Mae wanted him, and I was Bonnie Mae. Right at that moment, I wanted him, too. I blame the songs.

"We ain't got no rubbers, sweetheart. It wouldn't be smart."

I sat back on my heels suddenly, staring at him. Was he afraid he'd catch something from me? When he sometimes called me a stupid cunt and a whore, he wasn't using endearments. Damnit. I was beginning to like him.

Wait. I still liked him, and I liked that he called me a cunt and a whore. I loved being a cheap slut. What I didn't like was that he wasn't going to fuck me.

I moved away, scooting back on the bench seat, then turning around with my feet on the floorboards again. I hugged myself and pouted at him. I'm a guy in here, I told myself. I didn't really want to fuck him anyway.

"I'm thinking," said Alvin. "I ain't never liked you selling it. I mean, you're sort of a natural cause you enjoy. But, it ain't right, nohow."

I nodded. Maybe he had got the idea I had been trying to push? He had, and he came right out with it.

"But you're good at singin', too. What we need, what we need, is a way you can get paid for singin'?"

I clapped my hands together and beamed at him. I forgave him for not wanting to stick his dick in my nasty cunt.

"I ain't never heard anyone can sing as good as you, honeypie. And you sing songs I ain't never heard before."

I nodded. I cupped a hand behind my ear then tapped my forehead.

His head was going back and forth, trying to watch me and the road at the same time. "If you hear it, you remember it?" he said.

I nodded, and Bonnie Mae added a kissy face at him. I squirmed a bit.

He laughed. "Since when have you been playing charades?" he asked.

I shrugged. That was sort of encouraging. I felt pretty dumb, but maybe I was smarter than the original Bonnie Mae Carroll?

"We need to hook up with someone like that Benny Goodman fellow. I can be your manager, get work for you, take care of you." He smiled. "We'll see doctors for both of us. They've got shots now can take care of most things."

Antibiotics? They had antibiotics in the war, and maybe before it? That would be good. I nodded and scooted across the seat a little closer to him.

"If you ain't having to sleep with strange men no more…then we could sleep together. Maybe, maybe get married? Would you like that?"

I stared at him. Married? Married? The part of me that came from Bonnie Mae was almost over the moon with the idea. The rest of me wasn't so sure.

Married? To a guy? Well, I didn't feel like throwing up, so maybe it wasn't totally disgusting. And this hex I'm under where I have to do whatever he tells me. That was sort of fun when he made me sex myself right in front of him. I felt my nipples crinkle up.

So, I don't have a choice, do I? I nodded slowly, smiling but maybe not like I was sure about it. I scooted a little closer.

"C' mere," he said. He held his arm out, and I snuggled in under it. "You belong to me," he said. "It was a deal I made with that old lady witch. Granny Carroll, she was your grandma, you know? 'Member her?"

I shook my head. Maybe I would remember more of what Bonnie Mae had known. It could happen. I remembered Alvin's last name was Porter, but I hadn't remembered my own name until he told me. I'm a mess.

He sighed. "The deal was that you had to do whatever I told you, but I had to take care of you? I don't think I been doing that good a job. But you, you been doing a terrific job." He squeezed me close.

I took his hand and put it on my breast. He laughed and gave it a gentle squeeze. "So we find you work as a girl singer with one of these bands, it should be a good living, at least, huh? And we got money to last a while so we can look for a good position for you."

He squeezed again, and I squirmed and giggled. "I'm going to take care of Mama," he said, "and you're gonna take care of me, huh?"

I nodded against his chest. I'm a mess, and I need someone to take care of me. And somebody I can take care of too.

Girl Singer

5. Bonnie Mae Goode

Lulu Martine

On the way to Kansas City, between songs, I tried to do some thinking, knowing how poorly equipped for that I was. I wanted to know more about the girl I had become. Wouldn’t her memories be somewhere in the brain I was now using?

Even though it seemed that brain might have been damaged somewhere, it was the only one I had. I tried to remember, had Bonnie always been like this?

But that wasn’t working, it just made me sleepy to try.

“What’re you pouting about, honeypie?” Alvin asked.

I looked at him. How to communicate the problem without being able to talk? And he didn’t even know that the person inside his—wait a minute? Am I Alvin’s girlfriend—or—or what? I belong to him and I have to do what he tells me to do. That sounds like I’m a slave.

Which made me squirm. Damnit, no one is supposed to like and get turned on by the idea of being a slave. But I was.

Alvin laughed. “Horny, huh? I swear, Bonnie, no one could possibly keep up with you. And we ain’t gonna stop somewhere to buy rubbers and find a bed, so you can wear me out and make me not fit to drive.”

I looked at him all big-eyed. It sounded like a wonderful plan.

“Bonnie, no,” he said. “It’s hours still before we get to Kaycee. You should just take a nap. We’ll stop for lunch in a couple hours, I’ll wake you then.”

Even though nothing he said was an order, I knew what he wanted me to do. Which apparently counts. I yawned.

“Go to sleep, honeypie,” he said. Now that was an order, and I felt myself drifting off already. “Have nice dreams,” he added.

Oh, good, that was an order, too. I snuggled up beside him, laying my head on his thigh. I was already asleep and hardly knew it.

*

I dreamed of being a little girl, growing up in a forest with my grandad and my granny to keep me safe and hold me when I got scared.

I didn’t talk at all but no one scolded me for that. I understood when people spoke to me and I could make noises that sometimes were understood, even if they weren’t exactly words.

One grunt for ‘yes’, two for ‘no’, and a bunch for ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t care’ or ‘I’m confused’. A whistling noise for ‘I’m thirsty’ and a smacking noise for ‘I’m hungry’. One word I could say, “poopy,” which had an obvious meaning but was also what I used to mean I was upset or annoyed or scared.

I didn’t like wearing clothes and in nice weather, I would take them off and run around like the bunny rabbits and puppy dogs. “Poopy, poopy, poopy,” I said when my Grandad would catch me and put my dress back on. They’d long ago given up on trying to keep panties on me.

“Why does she do that?” Grandad would ask Granny.

“I reckon she just likes being naked,” Granny would say.

“Well, she can’t keep doing that. Pretty soon, she’s going to have to start school.”

Granny scoffed. “You think there’s any point in sending her to school? She can’t talk. We been trying to teach her her ABC’s with letter blocks but she still don’t know more than about six of ‘em.”

“Buh, buh, buh,” I said.

“Yes, honey,” said Granny. “Bonnie starts with a B.”

I had no idea what school was or what “starting with a B” meant, but “Buh” became another word I used, if you can call it a word. Buh for Bonnie. Buh for one of the letter blocks I recognized, the one with the capital B on it. I couldn’t tell the little ‘b’ from a ‘d’ or a ‘g’ or a ‘p’ or a ‘q’ or a capital ‘P’ or “6” or “9” for that matter, and none of them were Buh because I got told so often that I was wrong.

Buh also meant, “Look at me!” If I did something I thought was notable, like drinking from a cup without spilling it, or escaping from Grandad when he wanted to put clothes on me.

“I swear,” Granny would say, “can’t no one keep that girl in a dress if the sun is shining and it’s warm.” This while she watched Grandad pursue me around the garden patch. He’d make a nab for me and I would shout, “Buh!” if I got away, and “Poopy!” if I got caught.

Either way, I laughed because it was funny.

My cousins thought it was hilarious. But these are supposed to be nice dreams so we’ll leave Ryan and George and Davis out of them.

*

Alvin woke me in early afternoon for a bit of a late lunch. He’d parked outside a diner right along the highway in some middle size town. “I’m gonna go inside and bring us out something to eat, I didn’t think you’d want to go in somewhere until we get a chance to take baths, huh? But I didn’t want you to be sleeping out here by yourself.”

I yawned, nodding that I understood. I made the smacking noise and rubbed my tummy while trying to look famished.

He laughed. “Burger and a coke?” he offered.

I nodded and grunted once. “Now, don’t be scared,” he told me. “I’ll be right back.”

I nodded happily because I knew I wouldn’t be scared to be alone. “Buh,” I said, and he laughed again and hurried off after a kiss

I’m going to have to train him to understand me, I thought. I wondered why Bonnie had quit using her signals and tried to actually talk with such a horrible stutter? Probably some misguided do-gooder trying to educate her.

One thing the dream taught me, Bonnie could function quite well with a little help from people who cared. But anything like learning to read was going to be a major undertaking. I might have an advantage over the original Bonnie since I had actually learned to read once before. In a different body, with a different brain, but still, there might be some carry-through.

“Buh,” I said and pointed at my chest. Much easier and less strain than trying to say Bonnie with a brain broken in the syllable assembly module.

I wasn’t feeling the panic I’d felt when left alone before. I realized it was because Alvin had told me not to be scared. He didn’t want me to be scared because he loved me, I decided. Well, maybe. Better not to think too hard about that.

I looked around. This was a nice little town with wide streets, big green trees and grassy spaces. There were signs all over, too, and I had great fun looking at them and picking out the letters I recognized. Especially the B’s. If the signs were very far away, the Bs had to be pretty big. Maybe I needed glasses.

I’d finally worked out the difference between something that pointed up and something that pointed down, apparently, but telling a ‘b’ from a ‘d’ seemed to still be somewhat beyond my ability. There was a word for this kind of handicap but save me if I could think of what it might be. It didn’t matter anyway.

After a runaway case of the giggles when I spotted a sign that had more Bs on it than I could count, I lost interest in the game. I kept looking at the door where Alvin had disappeared and even practiced a little puppy dog whining just for fun.

About then I realized I had an audience.

*

It being a hot humid day in the middle of Missouri, Alvin had parked the car in the shade under a big old oak tree with the windows all rolled down. So I was sitting in the middle of the bench seat, bopping and being silly, (I’d actually segued into singing “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,”) when three guys showed up, two on my side and a third on Alvin’s side of the car.

“Forget about the doggy,” said one of them. “How much is the pussy in this window?” His buddy laughed like a jackass. I mean, really, “Hee, Haw, Hee, Haw.” It was disturbing.

The other idiot leaned in. “Hey, girlie, you waitin’ on your man?” He did a theatrical gesture. “Well, here I am!” Silent cartoons have better dialog than these guys had.

Scared, I cut off the tail of the doggy song, and that’s not easy because songs are like all one chunk for me. I almost let out a scream, but instead, what came out was — Sink the Bismark.

“In May of 1941,” I sang, “the war had just begun….” Maybe it had, I didn’t know the real date when and where I was, but I started with all the volume I had. The guys were so startled, they just stood there, their eyes getting bigger and their mouths hanging open. Just the reaction I was hoping for.

I did the whole song—God bless Johnny Horton—complete with, “Poom! Poom! Poom!” artillery sounds when I would shake my shoulders so my boobies would bounce. Then I got to the last chorus and waved at the boys that they should sing along. They did, getting into it, though they hardly took their eyes off my chest. For them, the poom-pooms were the best parts.

Past the two guys on my side of the car, in the middle of the chorus, I could see Alvin coming out of the diner carrying two sacks. He looked confused but he hurried toward me.

I added another chorus to give him time to get there, holding my hands out and pushing down on the volume so we ended with a fadeout. My audience had grown, there were several more young men listening now, and a few women, so Alvin had to push his way through.

“Hey! That’s my car! Hey! That’s my girl!” he said several times. I pointed at myself, then at him, nodding and clapping to show we were together. The crowd took it up, clapping and hoo-hah-ing like it was a real show.

Alvin reached through the window to put his two bags on the seat, then struggled against the crowd to get his door open. I was bouncing up and down in excitement, completely forgetting the show I was putting on. Every time I got to the top of a bounce, my braless breasts would almost come out of my partly unbuttoned dress.

I could smell the food and let out a squeal. The bigger, brown paper bag had grease stains on it and the aroma of hamburgers and French fries filled the car. The other bag clinked when Alvin moved it aside to sit behind the driver’s wheel; it had the cokes in it.

The crowd kept talking after the applause died down. “Who’s he?” someone asked but the most common thing I heard was someone asking, “Is she gonna sing again?”

Alvin asked me, “What the hell, Bonnie?” but all I could do to answer was shrug. Which got him to say, “Do up a button or two, Jesus, you’re falling out.” But Jesus didn’t button my dress so I had to do it. Just one button, though, the crowd loved to get a glimpse of my titties and I loved the crowd.

I so wanted a hamburger out of that sack! But somewhere in little Bonnie’s past, she’d been taught not to just grab food but wait for someone to give it to her, so I sat there giggling and laughing and probably drooling. Bonnie is such a little kid sometimes and that’s part of why it is so much fun to be her.

*

After listening to the crowd for a moment or two, Alvin stuck his head out of the driver’s side window and tried to get people’s attention. “Hey, listen everyone,” he called out. “Bonnie’s going to take a break to eat lunch, then she’ll sing another song. Or two?”

“More,” someone shouted.

“Okay, maybe more,” Alvin agreed. “But let her have time to eat, she’s hungry.”

That got laughter and applause and a few people came up with questions but Alvin jollied them into going away so we could eat.

I still had the giggles, so excited that I almost dropped it when he handed me a hamburger. I made my smacking noise several times while I unwrapped my burger. It was hot and mouth-watering with pickle and ketchup only, just the way I like them.

Wait. That’s the way Bonnie likes her burgers. I think in my other life I wanted lettuce, tomato, cheese and grilled onion. No sauce. That’s how I always got them at—the place with the palm trees on their cups?

I couldn’t remember their name. I could see their sign in my mind’s eye but I couldn’t read it because—I’m Bonnie now and Bonnie can’t read. I sang their jingle instead. “In-N-Out. In-N-Out. That’s what a hamburger’s all about.” I took a bite and it was so good, I moaned.

Alvin laughed. “Hamburgers make you horny now?”

I shook my head, giggling.

He passed me some fries on a piece of waxed paper. “So you were singing for the crowd?” I nodded. “Hmm?” He looked thoughtful. “You had about thirty people listening. I think the population of this burg is only maybe five or six hundred.”

I shrugged. Numbers don’t mean much to me anymore. I know six hundred is more than thirty but I’ve got no feel for how much bigger. I must have given him one of my blank looks because he chuckled and assured me, “That’s pretty good. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to charge them to listen.”

I had no clue. I pursed my lips and blew out like I was trying to whistle while looking at the bag of cokes. Alvin got the hint and pulled out a bottle, opening it with the bottle opener hanging by a string from the dashboard. It was all bright orange and bubbly, my favorite kind of coke.

Alvin had two little curvy bottles of coke and two cheeseburgers and most of the fries but I had plenty for me. I still had some of my drink left when Alvin finished his and asked. “Are you ready to sing?”

I glanced down at my chest then at him. He laughed. “I think three buttons undone is plenty. Do you know what you’re going to sing?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t even been thinking about it. My eyes probably got real big. Planning things had never been something Bonnie did or had to do and it just didn’t occur to me.

Alvin sighed, climbed out of the car, retrieved his hat from the shelf under the rear window, and made a noise to get everyone’s attention. “Hi folks! Hi! Ever’one who wants to hear, gather up closer, we ain’t got a platform ‘r a microphone,”

People did get closer, some of them close enough to the car to look in and see me. I waved at them.

“Bonnie will be out to sing in a bit, but we can’t stay long so maybe only two or three songs. We got to get to Kansas City, we’re going to try out for the show at the Schubert. Hanh? What do they call it now?”

“The Folly,” someone called out.

“Yeah, well,” said Alvin. “It is pretty foolish but I think my girl can sing better’n almost anyone.” That got some applause from people who had already heard me sing, including the three jerky boys. Alvin nodded. “Yeah, I surely do.”

He went on, pulling his hat off and setting it on the fender of the car, open side up. “So, we been traveling and that costs money and it might be awhile afore Bonnie gets a job, and funny enough, I eat more than she does.” He got a laugh.

“What I’m saying is that if you want to put any money in the hat, it will be appreciated.” That just got a lot of stares. “Okay, I’ll stop talking. Here’s Bonnie and she’s going to do some singing. She’s real good at it.”

“No music?” someone asked. No one answered.

Alvin reached into the car and pulled me out on his side. I handed him my coke, then he picked me up, and set me on top of the hood. I hadn’t expected that so I squealed and got the giggles. “More people will be able to hear you,” he said.

I nodded, looking around. You could see a lot further from on top of the car and I liked that.

“What are you gonna sing for us, honey?” asked a woman standing right in front of the headlights.

A man behind her commented, “You can almost see through that dress.”

I looked at Alvin. He shrugged. “Sing, Bonnie,” he said.

I turned back to the crowd and stamped my foot to get their attention. Then I sang:

     Down in Alabama near the Georgia side

I started right out, as loud as I could and a few people were startled.

     Way back in the woods where the possums hide

Why did I sing that? Possums are cute but ugly. It made me grin.

     Stands a little shanty made of earth and wood

     Where lives a country gal called Bonnie Mae Goode

I pointed at myself with both hands and all my fingers.

     She’s never gonna learn to read or write so well

I shrugged and kept grinning.

     But she can sing a song just like ringing a bell

I made a hand motion like ringing a bell then I danced through the chorus, one foot mostly in one place while I stomped and shook and shimmied around it.

     Go, go, go Bonnie,
     Go, go, go Bonnie,
     Go, go, go Bonnie,
     Bonnie Mae Goode

I got down, leaning over for the beginning of the second verse, like I was gonna tell them a secret.

     She allus brings her lunch in a paper sack

I pointed at the sack Alvin had in one hand

     Then she’ll dance ‘neath the tree by the railroad track

The tree was right there and the track just down the street

     Yeah, you oughta see her dancin’ in the shade
     Boppin’ to the rhythm that the trains have made

I made chugging motions with my arms.

     People pass by, and if they stop by chance

I waved at the crowd

     They’ll say, sure, that little country gal can dance

I did a spin, holding my dress out to swirl and almost falling off the car. Then I gave them two choruses, encouraging them to sing along. They sang a third chorus, just the crowd, while I danced on the hood. They loved me and I loved them right back.

While still dancing, I saw Alvin, and he was standing there with his mouth hanging open. I laughed so hard, pointing at him, that I did fall off the Dodge and he had to catch me.

Girl Singer

6. An Endless Skyway

Lulu Martine

Singin’ don’t hardly take nothin’ outen me but dancin’ is somepin’ differ’nt. My hair ’n’ dress were all limp and soaked, I guess, from me sweatin’ in the heat.

When I fell offen the hood of the Dodge, Alvin cotched me, ’n’ I th’owed my arms ‘roun’ his neck ’n’ give him a big ol’ kiss ’n’ a wiggle. He ‘most nearly dropped me.

“Buh!” I said, right in his ear, ’n’ I giggled too. What I meant was, “Didja see me? Did I do good?” He set me down on my feet ’n’ gived me my kiss back.

“Bonnie! Bonnie!” Alvin was sayin’, all laughin’. I was so excited, I was bouncin’ up ’n’ down while Alvin had his hands on my middle, keepin’ me f’um gettin’ knocked down by all the folk crowdin’ in on us.

---

Singing didn’t seem to take much effort or energy, but dancing was different. My hair and dress were all limp and soaked, from me sweating in the heat, even though I’d mostly been in the shade.

When I fell off the Dodge, Alvin caught me and I threw my arms around his neck. I gave him a big kiss and a wiggle, too, and he almost dropped me. Right at that moment, I felt a lot more like Bonnie and hardly at all like whoever I used to be.

“Buh!” I said into Alvin’s ear, by which Bonnie meant, “Did you see me? Did I do good?” Alvin laughed, set me down on my feet and gave me my kiss back.

“Bonnie! Bonnie!” Alvin was saying in the middle of laughing. I was so excited, I was bouncing up and down while Alvin kept his hands on my waist, keeping me from being knocked down by the people crowding around us.

“Bonnie! Bonnie! Bonnie Mae!” Some of them were screaming my name. I shook off a feeling of having been right where I was once before. I was just beginning to realize what kind of magic I had accomplished up there on the hood of that old Dodge.

Alvin sort of pushed our way through the crowd, got the driver’s side door open and I slid inside. The windows were all down and the people crowded around them, trying to talk to me, ask me questions. All I could do was laugh and squeal. It felt so good to know that they loved what I had done.

Good old Chuck Berry, I thought. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d just stolen his most famous song before he even wrote it! And the man was probably alive right now, a boy learning to play guitar, somewhere back among the evergreens.

I sat there with my mouth hanging open, still sweating from my efforts. Alvin gave me a few quick glances and looked concerned. “Poopy,” I said, Bonnie’s only curse word. I probably looked every inch the idiot I sometimes felt like.

Had I changed the future? Or would my performance just disappear in a chaotic time stream, allowing Mr. Berry to pursue his own destiny?

Alvin was trying to talk to a man in a business suit but the crowd was too noisy. They shouted at each other while I sat there numbly trying to assess what my knowledge of the future and Bonnie’s talent had done.

I couldn’t sing or dance like that, I felt pretty sure. Not in my previous life and not if I were in sole control of this body, either. And Bonnie couldn’t have performed a song she had never heard. Also, I knew, somehow, that Bonnie could only sing a song exactly the way she had heard it done.

She had an amazing gift, a true idiot-savant power. But she and I together were something else. I’d always loved music, and listened to all kinds, my whole life. But the best I’d ever done, back in my own future, was pick out a few melodies on a piano.

But I’d seen a lot of performers, live and on video. And Bonnie seemed to be able to channel that too, if it had music to it.

Alvin got in on the driver’s side and told me. “Scoot over here, sugarbun.”

I did but he fended me off when I tried to snuggle. “Buh?” I asked him, not sure myself what I meant by that. Then I squealed in surprise when the door behind me opened and the man in the suit climbed in.

“How do you do, Miss Goode?” he said politely. “I’m Herman van Kloot,” he smiled when he said it but he was right there, a big heavy man who made me think of the body I’d found in the bed with me that morning.

Had Alvin just sold me to this guy? Or rented me out? I tried to climb into Alvin’s lap but the steering wheel was in the way and Alvin fended me off.

“Calm down, Bonnie,” he said several times.

It helped, but my body was ready to have sex. Horrified, I realized that my nipples were already hard, and not all the damp I felt between my thighs was from sweat. I looked back at Herman and licked my lips. Bonnie was used to this and quite willing to fuck the guy!

On top of that, we had an audience. There were still people outside the car, laughing and talking and watching us. My brain, Bonnie’s brain, was overheating. She liked the idea of doing it with people watching.

“Buh!” I said to Herman. Meaning, “Am I pretty? Do you like what you see?” I reached up to start unbuttoning my dress. I closed my eyes, the only thing I seemed able to do on my own initiative.

Alvin grabbed my hands. “Stop, Bonnie. No. No. Behave. Herman’s just here to talk. He owns a theater, I think that’s what you said, Mr. Van Kloot?”

I opened my eyes. “Uh,“ said the man, staring at me. “Yes. The Concordian. It’s right on the other side of the square.”

I leaned back on Alvin. Bonnie was disappointed but I was relieved, or tried to convince myself I was. Apparently, I wasn’t going to have to fuck the guy. Or be allowed to either.

“Are you okay, Miss Goode?” Herman asked.

“Buh,” I said. I’m fine, thanks for asking.

Alvin sighed. “Bonnie doesn’t speak, Mr van Kloot. She can sing any song she’s ever heard. She even makes up new ones. But she can’t talk.”

“I—” Herman looked astonished. “Is that right?” he asked me.

I grinned at him, tapped my forehead with a finger and said, “Poopy.” Meaning shit-for-brains, that’s me.

“She’s also, pretty—uninhibited? I have to watch her.”

I craned my neck to look up and back at him and stuck out my tongue.

Alvin laughed. “So this theater?” he asked, looking at Herman.

They talked over my head and I listened. I felt more in control but I couldn’t focus completely and I missed some of what they said. When they talked numbers, I could feel my eyes turning glassy.

But the theater was too big for the town. It had been built as an opera house back when little Concordia was thought to be developing into a metropolis. Now, it had more than enough seats for half the town.

It stayed afloat on showing movies, occasional vaudeville nights and the fact that none of the small burgs around it had any theater at all. Mr. Van Kloot wanted me to do my act there, at least twice this weekend.

That woke me up. I sat up straight with a little bounce and threw my arms wide, singing in my best Ethel Merman, “There’s no business like show business, like no business I know! Everything—”

Alvin clamped his hand over my mouth. “Bonnie, we’re trying to talk here.”

“Mph, mff, mffl,” I kept singing against Alvin’s palm. Stopping a song once I’ve started it is difficult. I tried to pull his hand away but I didn’t have any force to do it with.

“What—what was that?” Herman asked.

“I told you she makes up songs sometimes. Like the one she sang about herself. Though her last name is Carroll, not Goode.”

I manage to stifle Ethel and Alvin let me go.

“Why did you sing Goode instead of Carroll?” Herman asked me.

I tapped my lips twice and put a hand behind one ear then the other.

“Very good, Bonnie,” said Alvin. “It rhymed,” he told Herman.

I giggled, nodding, and they both laughed.

“Well, it can be your stage name,” Herman suggested. “Because, pumpkin, you are good.” He gestured at the crowd outside who had now begun to gather around a hay wagon on top of which a group of musicians were setting up.

That looked exciting and I pointed toward them. “Oo-oo-oo!” I sang.

Alvin looked at me, “That’s…that’s what you want?”

I nodded. “Buh!” I said and I pushed on Alvin to get out of my way.

He shook his head. “Not just yet, Bonnie. Mr. Van Kloot and I aren’t done talking. Sit. We’ll be done in a bit.”

I sat but I pouted. The guys on the flatbed wagon had guitars and a fiddle and a big bass and a horn. It would be a lot of fun to sing and dance with them. And looking at the fiddle made my hands itch in an odd way.

“Those guys are pretty good,” Herman was saying. “They call themselves The Hayriders. They’re from Alabama, too.”

“Oh.” Alvin looked embarrassed and I giggled. “We’re not from Alabama, that’s just her song again. I’m from Tennessee and she’s from Georgia.”

Herman grinned at me, shaking his head. “But you don’t have music,” he said looking at Alvin.

“Hmm,” said Alvin, looking out as the band began tuning up to play after setting up an awning on the hay wagon. “Think you could work with these guys, Bonnie?” he asked me.

I nodded a lot.

“We promised the crowd another song or two. Let’s go see if they’re willing to let you sing with them,” said Alvin. Then he added, “And if they’re good enough to play for you.”

He scooted out and I followed him and Herman got out on the other side. Most of the crowd had wandered off, but a few stood close and I heard some of them talking.

“Good lord,” one large, fleshy woman said. “You can almost see through that dress.”

Her horse-faced friend commented. “She’s a shantoozy and no better than she ought to be, most like.” I took her to mean chanteuse but I recognized the backhanded countrified insult, too, with both halves of my mind. I started to make a gesture at them.

Alvin captured my hand and towed me along beside him so I had to settle for sticking my tongue out at the two ladies. It made me giggle, and Alvin, who had seen and heard what I had, ordered me to behave.

“Poopy,” I said which made him laugh, too.

The band had finished tuning up and getting set and looked ready to play when Herman attracted their attention. “You boys still for hire?” he asked.

“You betcha, Mr. Van Kloot,” said the tall guy with the neat mustache. “That’s why we’re setting up here to play after the little lady there drew a crowd for us.” He nodded at me. “We’re hoping somebody needs a band for a hoedown or a weddin’ or somethin’.”

“Or something,” Herman agreed. “This here is Al Porter,” he continued, motioning to Alvin, “he’s the manager of the girl singer who got such a crowd gathered without even having any music behind her. Come say, ‘Hi,’ Bonnie.”

I stepped up closer to the men, but not closer than Alvin. I suddenly felt oddly shy. “Buh,” I said and giggled.

“Heigh-do,” said the man, “I’m Bill to my friends. I play gee-tar and do some singing and yodeling. Pleased to meet you, Miss Goode.” He tipped his hat instead of offering to shake hands with me, but bent down to offer his hand to Alvin.

“Bonnie doesn’t say much,” Alvin explained. “She lets her singing do her talking for her.”

“Yup,” agreed Bill. “She can sing mighty fine.” He looked back at his band. “We’ve got a girl singer, too, but she ain’t here right now.”

They began to talk business, and damned if I didn’t tune it out almost completely. I tried to pay attention but Bonnie was more interested in getting up on the wagon and closer to that fiddle. I could almost feel the instrument singing in my hands, though in my previous life I knew I had never touched a violin.

At one point, Bill noticed me and called to the big guy with the bass fiddle, “Shook, why’nt you help Miss Bonnie aboard the wagon, she’s gonna sing a couple of tunes with us.”

That made me happy and I let out a squeal and clapped my hands, and all the men laughed. Then with Shook offering a hand from above and Alvin lifting me from below, I got up to the flat bed of the hay wagon. “Knock their socks off, Bonnie,” Alvin said to me as he pushed on my round butt. I giggled and nodded.

I headed straight for the fiddle player when I got on my feet. I held my hands out to him and said, “Buh!”

Oscar was the fiddle player’s name and he seemed reluctant to surrender his instrument. “Can you play the fiddle, Missy?” he asked.

“Buh!” I shouted at him. Everyone looked at Alvin.

He nodded, “I’ve yet to see an instrument she can’t play, but she’s best at fiddle and loves it most.”

Wow? I am? I do? I nodded at Alvin and then at Oscar and he handed the fiddle to me. “You be careful, miss,” he said. “It’s old and likes to be loved and talked sweet to.”

I nodded again. I plucked a few strings and looked the bow over then drew a few notes from the fiddle. Somehow I knew that it was tuned a whole note lower than most usual for a country fiddle, something someone might do to an old instrument to reduce what strain it was under.

I nodded at Oscar, put the fiddle under my chin and blasted out the first few notes of The Star Spangled Banner, then stopped and looked at the other musicians expectantly. They grabbed for their tools and off we went, Bill coming in with the vocals. He had a fine clear tenor and did a passable job of singing the patriotic tune.

I knew I could do better but you can’t sing while playing the fiddle. When we got to the end, I saw Alvin was holding something up toward me. A guitar like the one I had at home! Well, that Bonnie had at home. I handed the fiddle back to Oscar and took the three-quarter-size guitar Alvin must have borrowed from someone.

I checked the tuning, I have no idea how I knew how to do that, then off I went. Staying with the patriotic theme, I did Cohan’s “Grand Old Flag,” singing and playing, and the Hayriders stepped in at the end of the first line, they knew that one too. They were all grinning by now. We went through that twice, with me motioning the crowd to sing along.

“What else you got for us Bonnie?” Bill asked.

I pointed at him with the neck of the guitar. Then I played and sang,

“This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York Islands
From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.”

The tune for the verse is the same as for the chorus so they were right there with me when I sang,

“As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me the golden valley
This land was made for you and me.”

I gave them two more verses, then the chorus twice with the crowd singing along the second time. Then I motioned the Hayriders to be quiet while I played and sang the verses I hadn’t heard since Arlo sang them at a concert I went to in college—the one about hunger and the one about private property being a lie.

Then I pointed at Oscar to come back in with the fiddle, just him, and I sang:

“Nobody living better try to stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can make me turn back
Cause this land was made for you and me.”

Then I brought the band back and we sang the chorus three times with the crowd right along with us.

“Never heard those words to ’The World is Burning’ before,” commented one of the Hayriders when we ended it. I shrugged, it wasn’t quite the same tune, just the first two bars of each stanza. Woody Guthrie was alive somewhere and might be writing the song while I was performing it.

We all took a break then, I passed the borrowed guitar down to Alvin and after he handed it off to Herman, I leaped into his arms.

“Jesus, Bonnie, give me a heart attack,” he complained. I pretended to listen to his chest then shook my head and giggled. He set me down, then took the guitar back from Herman and handed it to me. “I bought this off that girl over there,” he pointed. “It’s yours now, Bonnie.”

I squealed, grabbed the guitar then ran to the lady he had pointed at and hugged her and the guitar at the same time. “He gimme fifty dollars for it, sugar,” she said. “I had to sell it.”

So I ran and hugged Alvin, too.

“You knocked their socks off, honeypie,” Alvin whispered to me. “We’re gonna do five shows at the theater this weekend.”

I bounced up and down a couple of times and kissed him. It did not seem at all odd to be doing that. I’m almost all Bonnie right after I sing, I thought.

“Hey,” Bill called from the wagon. “Can she get up here and do another number? The crowd don’t want to hear us, no more.”

So I climbed back up on the hay wagon and gave them, “Sink the Bismark” again, this time with a band backing me. The Hayriders were good, I only had to do the first verse and part of the chorus by myself.

Then I borrowed Oscar’s fiddle, pointed at Bill and began on “The Battle of New Orleans”. They knew different lyrics than I did but Bonnie knew where they were going and we got through five verses.

My dress and hair were sodden with sweat. Someone passed me up a bottle and I took a drink before I realized it was beer instead of coke. I made a face but drank it down, I needed some kind of fluid.

The Hayriders played something without me while I caught my breath. I’d given his fiddle back to Oscar but he kept looking from me to his instrument and back, even while he was playing. I am good with a fiddle, I thought proudly.

The Hayriders had reached the end of “Sweet Betsy from Pike” but the crowd wouldn’t let them begin a new tune. I could hear them shouting, “Bonnie Mae Goode” and Bill was looking at me with pleading in his eyes.

I nodded, picked up my guitar and walked back out in front of the band. A woman I didn’t know, dressed in cowgirl chic, had joined us on the wagon with a five-string banjo. She glared at me and I shrugged.

I wondered for a moment if there were any electric guitars yet, and if Bonnie would know what to do with one. I listened to the crowd screaming my name, before I finally motioned that they should be quiet. It took them awhile but they mostly did. Then I put another nail in Chuck Berry’s coffin.