dead and he couldn’t find a charger anywhere. He found
that the room’s phone had been torn out of the wall at some point; only a few
stripped wires were left dangling from the plug, with no sign of the phone
itself. He would have to venture outside if he wanted to find out what had
happened to him. He muttered as he stuffed the money into his pocket; the jeans
were very tight around his new ass and he had a hard time getting his delicate
hand in there.
Cold panic kept gnawing at
the back of his mind as he opened the door. Everything felt wrong, from the way
that he walked to the way that his new chest bobbed with each step. He walked hunched
over, trying to minimize the size of his boobs while doing his best to not think
about them. It was a difficult act to pull off while keeping his balance and
worrying about running into people in the hallway.
Michael didn’t see anyone in
the halls. He made his way to the front desk. The concierge’s eyes flickered
down to Michael’s chest and then back, so quickly that he wasn’t sure if he’d
imagined it or not. “Can I help you, miss?” he said.
Michael said, “I need a
phone charger for this model.” The words came out flavored with the dulcet
tones of the Emerald Isle, which he couldn’t seem to help.
“Sorry, miss, we don’t have
that one. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Michael thought for a moment
and then got directions to the courtesy phone in the lobby. Once there, he
realized that he couldn’t remember any of his friends’ phone numbers; they were
part of the memory on his cell phone, so there’d been no reason to learn them.
Swearing to himself, he dialed the number from the note in the envelope. Whoever
was on the other end was going to give Michael some answers.
Unfortunately, there was no
one home to answer the call. A machine picked up instead. The voice was just as
broadly accented as Michael’s new one. “Top o’the mornin’ to ya! Leave a message
an’ I’ll get back when I can.” It was a woman’s voice, one he didn’t recognize.
Michael hung up, not knowing
what he might say. He headed out the front door and found that he was standing
in afternoon sunlight. The passerby gave him appreciative looks and he barely
kept himself from giving the entire world the finger. A sign down the street
struck a faint note in his mind, and he dug down into his pocket to find the
matchbooks. Sure enough, one of them was from the bar down the street: Paddy’s
Staff.
When he got closer, he found
that the sign showed a stylized picture of St. Patrick striking at a snake with
his staff. The saint was winking at Michael, who didn’t want to think about a
saint winking at him in his current form.
The pub had just opened and
there was no one in it yet besides the bartender and one waitress. The girl
took one look at Michael and made a disgusted noise before heading back into
the storage area. The bartender laughed and said, “So you survived. Welcome
back, shamrock girl.”
Michael frowned at him. “So
you’ve seen me before, then?”
The bartender laughed.
“Yeah, you’re hard to forget. Why?”
“I, ah, I don’t recall much
about that. I found this matchbook, so I was hoping you could help me out. Also
I need a charger for this brand of phone if you have one.”
The bartender shook his head.
“I’m not surprised you don’t remember. I’d never seen a girl drink like that.
Not too many men, either.” He leaned over and looked at the phone, incidentally
sneaking a glance or two at Michael’s chest. “Yeah, I think Rhonda back there
has one of these.”
He leaned back and called
back to the store room, and a few moments later the waitress came back out. She
glared at Michael and said, “What.”
The bartender rolled his
eyes and said, “We need to borrow your charger for your phone, just for a
little while.”
“What for?”
The bartender jerked a thumb
at Michael. “She needs to charge her phone. Why did you
Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain