Free Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff Page A

replaced in mid-stanza by the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.” I jerked my head involuntarily, and something in my headset came unplugged. The goggles went dark, even as the earphones kept blasting away.
    â€œDamn it, Dennis!” I said, reaching up to yank my headset off.
    Dennis paid no mind to my complaint. He was gaping at Penny, who still had her headset on and was still dancing. Only it wasn’t the same dance anymore.
    The self-conscious sway had disappeared. Now Penny’s whole body was in motion, hips, arms, legs, hands, feet, all gyrating to the beat, without a hint of shyness. And the way she moved…well, as Adam later observed, all of a sudden the slogan on her tank top didn’t seem so inappropriate.
    Dennis stared, transfixed. Irwin stared too. I stared. The only one of us who didn’t stare at Penny was Julie—and that was because she was staring at me, instead, with that same funny smile on her face. Eventually I noticed this, and when Julie saw that I noticed, she inclined her head in Penny’s direction and raised her eyebrows as if to say: So, what do you think? “Adam,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”
    â€œWell gee, Andrew, I don’t know,” said Adam, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “but if I didn’t have my head up my ass, I might think Penny was acting like a different person…or maybe like a whole bunch of different people.” Then he broke up laughing, and added: “I just love a parade, don’t you?”

4
    Mouse is lying in a strange bed, in a strange house, with her hand pressed between the thighs of a man she has never seen before. She doesn’t know what day it is, or what city; she has no idea how she got here.
    A moment ago it was Sunday evening, April 20th, and she was sitting in the kitchen of her apartment, checking the movie listings in the Seattle Times . She was drinking a glass of red wine—never a good idea, but she had an overwhelming craving for it, and someone had left an open bottle in the cupboard above her sink. So she poured herself a glass, took a sip, and traced her finger down the column of showtimes, trying to decide between The English Patient and the new Jim Carrey movie.
    â€”and now she is not there. There’s no sense of having lost consciousness; all she did was blink, and suddenly everything is different. Where she was clothed and seated, she is now naked and lying on her side. The fresh taste of wine has become the stale aftertaste of vodka and cigarettes—she doesn’t drink hard liquor or smoke, but she recognizes that aftertaste as if she does both, a lot. The cool roughness of the newsprint under her finger has become the warm clasp of flesh around her hand. And the face of a stranger has materialized, just inches from her own, snoring gin fumes.
    She doesn’t scream. She wants to, but a lifetime of losing time—and covering up the fact—has left her skilled at controlling her reactions. She screams inside; outside she only squeaks, a short sharp note like a hiccup. Even this is muted, as her lips clamp together to bottle the sound before it can grow.
    It’s a bad one. Losing time is never good—it is a symptom of insanity, which in turn is evidence of what a worthless and terrible person she is—but there are degrees of badness, and finding herself in bed with a stranger ranks near the bottom of the scale. Not that this is as bad as it could be: thisstranger is asleep, at least, and only her hand is touching him. Mouse has come back from missing time into tight embraces, into the middle of intimate conversations; once she found a man on top of her, pushing her legs apart, and that time she did scream out loud.
    This isn’t that bad, but it is bad enough. And yet even as she thinks that, thinks what a horrible insane person she must be to find herself in these situations, another part of her mind she thinks of as the