When it was over be found himself panting slightly and said, “Adequate,” as though he were experienced at this.
“And that’s all? Not very—”
“No, no, the entrée comes next.”
It started. The scene was an old-fashioned street at dusk. A man approached a woman waiting for a bus. The woman wore rather pretty clothes and a head ornament, three decades out of date, which shadowed her face. There was little conversation. Much was conveyed by the man’s swagger, the woman’s jutting hip, a sultry exchange of glances. In the wan traces of sunset their faces were shrouded and a streetlamp caught only suggestive nuances of their expressions, setting a tone of gathering erotic energy.
She responded to a tilt of his head and a murmured invitation. Robert enjoyed this sultry, casual courting, liked the feel of a slim, muscled body. The man had a fine-honed tension running through him, that tightness and pressure which ebbs with age.
They walked a short distance to his apartment. It was atmospheric and suited to the swarthy, intimidating manner of the man. He undressed first, revealing a barrel chest and bushy, black body hair. The arrangement of the lighting cast the woman in a mysterious way as she reclined. There was a hovering excitement in her manner.
The man looked in a full-length mirror nearby. This was to establish identification with the character, but seeing the face full on brought a sudden jolt of recognition to Robert. The hooded look of the man, that frayed lounge in the corner, a familiar French watercolor near the mirror—
The man began some foreplay between the woman’s legs and the humid feel of the bed came through to Robert as he struggled with memories.
My. The thought from Susan, overriding the senso input, startled him. The man was having his effect.
Too raw for me, he thought strongly, hoping to get through the rush of sensation that he could feel between them. I’d like to break it off.
The man moved adroitly with practiced skill. Yes, Robert thought to himself, it was skill, technique. Mere technique. At the time he had thought it was a passion as full and new as the woman’s. He had not allowed for the fact that the barrel-chested man was six years older than she, and far more sophisticated.
No. I want to stay. Concentrate. It might help you, she finished dryly.
I really think—
No. If you break off the thing stops, doesn’t it? And I want to go on.
Robert knew he could rip the connections away, end this now. He reached for the leads, seized one, and stopped. Something in him wanted this to happen. Old memories stirred.
The man embraced the languid woman and his hands moved expertly over her. The woman—a girl, really—rolled to the side at his command. Her movements had a fresh quality to them despite the artificial situation. To fix Helen’s role identification, she looked at herself in the mirror.
He felt Helen’s quick flash of surprise.
It’s—she’s—you!
Was me. Over thirty years ago. The girl stroked the dark, muscular body and Robert caught the tremor of excitement that leaped in Manuel, the man.
But I—you never told me—all these—
I met you long after.
The face, your face—even with the age, and the changes, I can see it is you.
I changed as little as possible. Redistributed body weight, altered hormones—
All this time—
Yes.
You could have told me—
No. My, my change had to be complete. No looking back.
Then that’s why you couldn’t have children. And I thought—
Yes.
My God, I don’t think I can—
But the surge of emotion that came into her cut off the words. Robert felt the same tidal rhythm grasp him and did not fight against it. The heat and harsh cries of decades before seized them both. It went on for unendurably long moments bringing him to a fevered, shuttering, simulated climax.
In the silence afterward the images dwindled, the tingling sensations drained away. They were left, two people in the glossy chairs, the cables dangling from them.
They said nothing as Robert paid off the man and got into the taxi for the hotel.
“It’s revolting,” Helen said. “To learn this way …”
“The practice is common now.”
“Not among the people we know, not—” She stopped.
“I had to conceal it. I moved away afterward, to Chile, where no one knew I had the Change.”
“What, what was your name?”
“Susan.”
“I see,” she said stiffly.
What did she expect, he thought bitterly. That I changed Roberta to Robert, like some cheap joke?
“So you were the sort of woman who makes things like that senso.”
“For him, yes, I was.”
“He was repulsive.”
“He was hypnotic. I see that now.”
“He must have been, to make you do degrading things like—”
“Is it more degrading to do them, or to need their help?”
Her face tightened and he regretted saying it. She said bitterly, “I’m not the one who needs help, remember. And no wonder—you’re not really what everyone’s thought, are you?”
He ignored her tone. “I’ve done well enough. You had no complaints at the beginning, as I remember.”
She sat silently. The taxi whistled through dimly lit streets. “You’ve betrayed me.”
“It all happened long before I met you.”
“If I’d known you were so, so unbalanced as—”
“It was a decision I made. I had to.”
“For what? That man must have—”
“He—” Robert stopped himself. “I loved him.”
“What became of him, then?”
“He went away. Left me.”
“I’m not surprised. Any woman who would—” She shuddered, and conflicting emotions flickered across her face.
The taxi drew up to the hotel. Beggars came limping out of the shadows, calling. Robert brushed them away. The two walked to their room without a word. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the old tile corridors. Inside, he took off his coat and noticed that his heart was pounding.
She turned to him decisively. “I want to, to know what it was like. Why you—”
He cut her off with, “The process was crude then. Manuel had left me. I thought then that he had fallen out of love with me, but looking back, feeling that tonight—”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he had just gotten tired of me.”
“But something made you …”
“Yes. It’s all gotten so distant now, I can’t he sure of what I felt. It’s as though there’s a fog between me and that senso.”
“You didn’t recognize it until …?”
“No, I didn’t. I went through two years of drugs, depression, therapy, tap-ins. I forgot so much. The strains on my body—”
“I still don’t—maybe that man, he was so oily, he must have done things to you, to make you want to change—”