Adjustable Magic

  *****

  Leila opens the front door when Ryan is still ten feet away. The initial sighting for both of them sparks a similar disorientation as their first mirror viewing, only in reverse. Instead of looking at yourself and seeing another person mocking you with uncanny precision, you’re looking at another person and seeing yourself in alienated but precise replication.

  Fortunately, perhaps, the distraction of their respective attire outmaneuvers this first flush of distress. Both parties begin shaking their heads slowly.

  Leila stands in the open doorway wearing a soft cotton bed sheet draped over her (his) shoulders like a toga, held together with a mint green terrycloth sash.

  To his ensemble, Ryan has added underwear (his, and unseen), Leila’s short suede jacket, and a pair of pink flip-flops festooned with a large plastic daisy that some woman left in his car almost three years ago. (Actually Ryan remembers exactly who the woman was and the circumstances leading up to the abandonment. She never called wanting the shoes back, and he never called wanting as little to do with her as humanly possible. He has no clue, however, why he still has the shoes.)

  “That’s quite the fashion statement,” he says.

  “What? You couldn’t find a beaded macramé purse and a cowboy hat to complete that outfit?”

  Ryan enters and deposits his travel bag as instructed and then hands Leila a small plastic bag that contains the remainder of her personal items.

  “I haven’t worn any of those,” he announces. “Didn’t even try.”

  She glances into the bag. “Not even the shoes? I mean…” She looks down at Ryan’s daisy adornments.

  “They have heels.”

  “Oh, hardly. They’re wedge pumps. Low wedge pumps.”

  “They’re not flat. I don’t think I’m ready for heels.”

  She shrugs and looks in the bag again. “You should hang onto these jeans.”

  “Why?”

  “This is my favorite pair of jeans. Trust me, you’ll look better in these jeans than any other pants I have.”

  “I’m not having this conversation,” he says. “Seriously. You asked me to come here so we could work together and fix this thing.”

  “Not exactly my words,” she counters. “But, point taken. And I do want to thank you for bringing the clothes, and for getting here so quickly, and just for being here.”

  He shrugs it off. “I’m glad you called. This is like completely unknown territory, so it’s nice to have someone I can talk to who, you know, understands the situation.”

  “Yes, I do understand. Although it’s been many years since I last did this.” His head jerks and his face falls as he stares at her. She grins sheepishly. “Kidding. Sorry.”

  Ryan makes a noise in his throat that with his previous anatomy would come out as a disapproving growl, but in his present format sounds more like a coquettish purr.

  “Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way first,” he says, reaching out and taking her hand. Pausing as he’s struck by how small his seems, but then raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Attention. Whoever or whatever did this. Here we are, together, close, in direct physical contact. So, change us back.”

  He waits five seconds and releases her hand. “Okay, that didn’t work. Can we sit down now and try to figure out what happened?”

  Leila steers him toward the living room. She offers him her favorite chair and curls herself gracefully atop the sofa. Watching one another in this simple act of movement and recline, both are aware that while the other may look like themselves, mannerisms and physical bearing remain all their own. And with this awareness comes a slight shift in perspective.

  “I still firmly believe,” Leila states. “That, whatever it takes, you and I need to work together and be together in order to get through this thing.”

  “I think I’m in total agreement with you on that.”

  “Okay. Can I make just one more comment, and then I’ll… No, let’s make that two more things and then we’ll focus in on this conversation you want to have.”

  “Sure,” Ryan agrees.

  “One, I just want to make sure that you understand that if we cannot ‘fix this thing’, as you say, in the next few hours, we will both have to start dealing with the care and feeding of our own and each other’s daily personal life.”

  Ryan grimaces slightly. “Contrary to appearances, I am a man. And therefore committed to fixing things. I bristle at the idea of making contingency plans in case of failure.”

  “Yes, that’s why you men have such catastrophic failures.”

  “Simply means there’s more to fix.”

  “So you don’t mind if our situation gets even worse? Needs even more fixin’?”

  Ryan is silent for a moment. “All right, agreed. Later, if necessary, we’ll deal with the contingency plan stuff. What’s the second thing?”

  “Well, it’s basically a question. How do you turn this thing off?” she says, using both hands to frame the area of her crotch. “Really. It’s out of control. It keeps getting hard all the time. That’s what woke me up this morning. A hard-on. Interesting way to wake up. I mean, ohmigod, where did this thing come from? And it really was quite fascinating at first. And quite entertaining. Of course I had no idea that it belonged to you at that time. And you have a really nice body, and a wonderful penis. But, honestly, it’s becoming a nuisance now. The thing is driving me batshit. It’s relentless. What, are you mainlining Viagra or something? Because this can’t be normal. How could you ever get anything done? I have to stop and think about slugs or dead puppies and eventually it relaxes and calms down. But I swear, three minutes later and I move the wrong way or something and sproing, there it goes again. Almost anything can set it off. God forbid I should accidently touch it.”

  Ryan doesn’t even try to contain his laughter, but after a few seconds he does try to put a damper on it and apologize.

  “It’s all right,” Leila says. “The amusing aspect is not lost on me.”

  “Yeah, well, what you’re saying pretty well describes my entire seventh-grade year, and believe me, I didn’t find it all that amusing at the time.”

  “Hmm. Maybe that’s the problem. You just needed someone to amuse you.”

  Ryan begins to toss back a witty retort, but can’t seem to find one fast enough.

  “Oh,” Leila groans. “It’s moving again. It knows we’re talking about it. Quick, talk about something else.”

  “Uh… I saw a dead puppy on the way over here.”

  “No. Talk about the stuff you want to talk about. Go on.”

  Ryan scrambles to shift mental gears. “Okay. What do you remember about coming home last night?”

  “Oh, that,” Leila says. “Yes, I remember it crystal clear. Right up to the point where I don’t remember it at all. Is that what this is? I don’t remember getting home because I didn’t. I fell asleep, and I’m still in the car, and I’m having this wicked dream.”

  Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t think the dream scenario works anymore.”

  “Speak for yourself. A dream is still the most logical explanation I see.”

  Ryan continues shaking it off. “No. But listen, we both have the exact same gap in our memory. Obviously something happened in that gap.”

  “Yeah, I fell asleep.”

  “Fine. Maybe you did. But I didn’t.”

  “Good. Then I trust you’ll wake me up when we get to my house. Oh, wait. Maybe we did both fall asleep. And you drove off the road and now we’re both dead.”

  “Uh, huh. And I suppose this is hell?” Ryan asks.

  “Hell? Oh, please, that’s a little dramatic, isn’t it? I think I should be offended. On second thought, we’re not dead. You ran off the road and walked away with a few minor cuts and abrasions. I’m in the hospital. Comatose. Stuck in this dream, unable to wake up. I hope you’re happy.”

  “Not so much at the moment. Can we get back to the memory gap?”

  For the next fifteen minut
es Ryan presents a series of possibilities as to what might have occurred during the approximate six to seven hour period of their mutual lapse of cognitive recall, each followed by a brief discussion of the pros and cons of that theory’s plausibility curve.

  Secret, highly classified government experimentation on unwitting subjects involving anything from hypnosis to better living through chemistry to actual brain transplant; alien abduction with viable anatomical disassembly and/or medical probing gone awry; metaphysical transference of the soul by unknown cause and equally arcane reason (Leila was somewhat keen on this one actually); swamp gas, radioactive clouds, overactive sunspots, dry lightning strikes, and other freaks of natural and supernatural origin are all proposed. With the argument for all overwhelmingly dominated by cons and seriously anemic on supportive pros.

  Next comes a brief consideration of seeking professional help should all else fail. This is greeted, dismantled and rejected with prejudice in short order. Who would believe their story? By any legal or medical standard- fingerprints, dental records, DNA, visual identification by friends and family- all would presumably confirm that they were in fact the person they appeared to be, and not vice-versa. Perhaps each did have their own unique brainwave, but as Leila pointed out, she was fairly sure those weren’t on file anywhere for comparative analysis. Bottom line, the only professional help they would likely receive by going public would be psychiatric in nature.

  Ryan sighs and slumps back in his chair. “Well, what have you got?” he asks.

  “Nothing really,” Leila replies. “But then, I’m in a coma, so I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

  “I think we need to go back to the scene of the crime. As it were.”

  “Reasonable idea,” she concedes. “Except it’s not yet eight o’clock in the morning, so the scene of the crime simply isn’t as it were right now. It’s hardly the time of day for UFOs or covert operations. Even soul transference seems better suited for the dark.”

  Ryan nods. “Good point. Try to recreate the same conditions as much as possible. So, tonight then?” Leila agrees. “We’ll start out about nine and drive back and forth over the middle section of that road as many times as it takes.”

  “And if it doesn’t take?”

  “Then we’ll try again tomorrow. Or come up with a better idea,” Ryan shrugs and smiles weakly. “Or maybe you’ll finally wake up.”

  They both fall silent, processing their thoughts, until Leila inquires quietly.

  “Ryan, what were you thinking about last night just before it all went blank?”

  He eyes her quizzically, obviously hesitant to respond. “I don’t know. Just thinking about my driving I suppose.”

  Leila considers the answer deliberately vague and thoroughly unsatisfactory.

  “I’ll tell you what I was thinking,” she says. “I was thinking it had been a really great evening, and I really enjoyed being with you and getting to know you, and I didn’t want it to end yet. And I was wondering, when we got to my place, if I should invite you in, just to talk and spend a little more time together, or would it seem too much like an invitation for something more.”

  “You told me right from the get-go… prior to the get-go actually, no sex on the first date, not gonna happen.”

  “Correct. Did that bother you?”

  “No,” Ryan says emphatically. “I appreciated it. Takes a lot of pressure out the mix actually. I’m not really into the instant hookup, hurry up and hump thing, you know? But sometimes it does seem, I don’t know, expected that a guy at least try to get into a girl’s pants as soon as possible.”

  “And here you were with the perfect opportunity to do that very thing, and instead you brought them back to me in a paper bag. A true gentleman. Amazing.”

  “Well, maybe…” Ryan begins to shake his head. “The truth. The very last thing I was thinking last night, as I was sneaking glances at you sitting next to me in the car, I was thinking how it might be to wake up in the morning with you next to me in bed.”

  “Ooh. The truth comes out.”

  “Yeah. And by the way, my imagination shorted you, because your body, this body, is beyond nice. More in the neighborhood of scary incredible.”

  Leila blushes slightly. “Gee, scary incredible. Thank you. I think. And, okay, I wasn’t entirely honest with you either. What I said a moment ago is true. I just left out the last part of it. The part where I was thinking it might not be so bad if you did get the wrong impression about my invitation, because maybe rules need to be broken sometimes and it might be nice if you spent the night with me.”

  “In a way, I guess we both got what we were hoping for.”

  “Exactly” Leila announces. “That’s exactly what happened. The very last thing we remember was making a similar wish. And our wishes came true. You spent the night with me and I was in your bed when you woke up this morning. Sure, there’s that ‘be careful what you wish for’ thing going on, but in a way we did get our wishes.”

  “So what are you saying, we wished this on ourselves?”

  “Maybe. Why not?”

  “Why for? What did we do? Drive through a cloud of twinkle twinkle little stardust?”

  “I don’t pretend to know the mechanics of it,” Leila says. “Maybe some supernatural, metaphysical entity just decided to grant our wishes. Purely for the amusement value.”

  “That’s pretty far-fetched.”

  “Really? And just which of your scenarios is near-fetched? C’mon Ryan, think about it. It was a full moon last night. And for a while, just before it all went blank, it was only us out there. No other cars, no houses, no people. Surrounded by oak trees swirling with wisps of ground fog tangled in their skeletal branches. I remember thinking how beautiful and yet eerie it seemed. It was very mystical and magical out there last night.”

  Ryan understands what she’s talking about, even if he doesn’t tend to see it in quite the same way. He’s driven the road to Rocoso Beach countless times and knows it well. There’s a three or four mile stretch in the middle that is virtually unmolested by signs of civilization. Nothing but steeply inclined hillsides of shrub and grass, with angular rock outcrops and clusters of Valley and Blue oak trees. And it can look rather dramatic on a moonlit night.

  Ryan, however, did not notice the landscape last night.

  He did notice the absence of other cars. Granted it’s only a two-lane county road, but it is one that typically gets a fair amount of traffic. Ryan cannot recall seeing a single vehicle once they were beyond the outer fringes of Rocoso Beach, a lack that was unusual enough for him to both notice and remember.

  “All I’m suggesting,” Leila continues. “Is when we’re driving that same spot tonight, we should both have a new wish foremost in our thoughts.”

  “I’m good with that. How about we think- I wish I was back in my own body again.”

  “I guess. It’s simple, straightforward. Probably best not to make it too complicated.”

  “Great. So now we have a plan. And a lot of time to kill. You wanna talk about the day to day maintenance stuff now?”

  “Later,” she says. “There’s something else I think we need to do first. I think you and I should go to bed.”

  Ryan begins to laugh, and then stops abruptly. “You are kidding, right?”

  “No,” she replies.

  “But tha… Wait. What exactly are you suggesting?”

  “That we get in bed and amuse one another. Sex.”

  “I don’t think so. Look, I don’t have even a flicker of homosexual inclination, okay?”

  “Uh, huh. And I’m sure you’ve got nothing against those who do. But Ryan, look, I believe you and I have all the requisite parts here for the heterosexual incline.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not in the right places. I mean… well, you know what I mean. Up here,” he says, tapping a finger against his head. “I am a male. And I look at you, and you look male. It just doesn’t work.”

  “You look at me
and you see yourself. Your body. I am in your body. Do you think that I am you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think of me as being a man?”

  “No, not really. But still, it would be like having sex with myself.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “Like auto-eroticism. Self love. This is your body. You’re familiar with it, you’ve touched it, you’ve bathed it, you know exactly where it’s been. Surely you’re not going to sit there and tell me you’ve never masturbated before.”

  “No,” Ryan declares and then, seeing her brows arch. “I’m saying, no, I’m not going to tell you that. Yes, of course I’ve masturbated. Several times,” he adds satirically.

  “And you know that old joke- why does a dog lick his balls? Well, we both know that if we could, we would too. At least once. Out of curiosity. True story. When I was little I accidentally walked in on one of my older brothers trying to do that very thing. Totally warped my entire concept about some things for years.”

  “Whoa, enough already,” Ryan says, trying to clear that unwelcome image from his head quickly. “And it’s not the same thing.”

  “I certainly hope not. I’m hoping it will be much better. C’mon Ryan, where’s your sense of adventure? We’ve been given a unique opportunity to experience life from the other side. And sex is definitely one of life’s biggies as far as I’m concerned. Think about this. If you suddenly sprouted wings, wouldn’t you want to fly? Yes. Well we sprouted something else. Let’s try ‘em out. I’m sure it’s a lot safer than flying.”

  Ryan feels a warmth spreading in his loins and an amorous bias tilting in his head.

  “And here’s something else,” Leila adds. “I’m still not convinced this isn’t a dream, a strange but very realistic dream, and if I wake up soon only to realize I spent this entire dream talking instead of just enjoying the flight, I am gonna be so ticked. So, please. Please. Come fly with me.”

  “I think this may be the first time a woman ever begged me for sex,” Ryan says.

  “There you go. Did you hear what you said? A woman asked you. Me. Are you ready for takeoff now, Mister Keller?”

  “All right,” Ryan surrenders. “Lead the way, woman. But I have to warn you. I’m not altogether sure I can actually do this.”

  “No problem,” Leila counters. “The shoe’s on the other foot now, if you follow my drift. You don’t necessarily have to do anything. Though I’m certainly hoping you will.”