For a few short seconds, it seemed as if Chuck were going to retreat into denial once more, but at last he nodded.
"All right, then, we can work out a deal, can't we?" Scott didn't wait for an answer. "Show me what you do it with."
Chuck looked away, apparently staring at a water stain on the far wall. "Can't."
Scott made an impatient noise. "Cut the crap, Chuck. You already admitted you're doing it, now show me the goddamned thing, whatever it is!"
The head snapped back in his direction and the lips grew firmer. "I can't! I do it with, you know, my head. Like, I imagine how I want the story to be, and it changes."
This wasn't at all what Scott expected, and he wasn't sure he liked it.
"You mean, there's no machine or anything like that? It's just something you can do and no one else?"
Chuck nodded.
Visions of a vanishing fortune raced through his head. But perhaps everything was not lost. He could arrange private showings, charge hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars for the privilege of viewing an altered version of some movie or another. Maybe Chuck could substitute Cary Grant for Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind or something. But wouldn't the studios want a big cut if he did that or maybe even file an injunction or lawsuit against him?
"Listen, Chuck, there might be a lot of money in this for us."
"What do you mean?"
Scott gave a general summary of his ideas, not wanting to be too specific, partly because he didn't want Chuck to realize how nebulous his plans were, partly because he wanted to give the impression that arcane knowledge was necessary. It wouldn't do to allow Chuck to believe he could manage on his own.
"How much can you change things anyway? Could you maybe do a whole movie from nothing?"
Chuck shook his head and almost smiled. He'd begun to relax a bit, Scott noticed, but the set of his shoulders and neck was still alert, intent. "No, I can only, you know, guide things as they go along. If I try to change too much, I lose control. It's like there's too much to keep track of."
Scott nodded. "Too bad, but I kind of thought that might be the case. That's why you only changed some of the movies, right?"
"I guess." With the sudden mood swings that Scott had already begun to recognize, Chuck was taciturn again.
"How come all the sex anyway? That's what gave you away, you know."
Chuck looked away, his hands twisting in his lap, un-speaking.
"Come on, we're going to be friends, you and me. We don't need to have any secrets. If we're going to get rich, I have to understand how this works, how you make it happen, how much you can do."
Without turning away from his contemplation of the wall, Chuck shook his head.
Exasperated, Scott slapped his knees with his palms. "Listen, Chuck, I'm trying to be nice about this. Remember, I know about you; I can tell people what you've been doing."
His companion didn't speak, but he began twisting in his seat and his head moved nervously. Scott thought he had things sired up pretty well, decided it was necessary to push his point now, before Chuck had time to think things through.
"How would you like it if I told people you were a sexual pervert, Chuck? Would you like that?"
Chuck's head swung around, eyes wide, mouth moving now, hands clenched together so firmly that the knuckles were white. "I wasn't hurting anybody! It was all just pretend!"
"Sure, just pretend sex. And pretty rough sex, too. Rape and beatings and pain, right, Chuck? That's the way you like it, isn't it?"
Head twisting from side to side, Scott's companion seemed to be searching for an escape route. Convinced that he had his victim securely hooked, he leaned back, lying full length on the bed.
"But that's okay, Chuck. I won't tell anyone that you're a sicko whose only value to anyone, including himself, is that he has this trick with his head that lets him change the ways motion pictures appear on the screen. As long as you play ball, your secret is safe."
"No! No one's gonna tell again, not ever."
At first, the words and the tone were so out of place, Scott didn't register the meaning. He raised his upper torso, balancing on his elbows, and saw that Chuck's posture had altered completely. He was leaning forward now, hands raised and clenched into fists, and now his eyes met Scott's squarely.
"I'll do you just like I did my old man." And suddenly, inappropriately, Chuck began to smile.
Scott felt the change first in his chest, a funny, itching sensation that fell just short of pain. For a second, he thought he might be having a heart attack, unconsciously glancing down at his own body. Slowly but perceptibly, his chest was swelling out, forming a recognizable, if somewhat overstated, shape. The buttons on his shirt popped and the material peeled back, revealing not his familiar, mildly hairy chest but, instead, a creamy, abundant female bosom.
When he felt the itching between his legs, Scott panicked and tried to rise from the bed, only to discover that somehow the covers had twisted around his wrists and ankles, holding him firmly in place. Chuck Scusset rose, smiling broadly now, eyes preternaturally bright. The itching sensation grew more intense, and Scott felt the muscles in his thighs and calves shifting, assuming different contours. There was an odd pull at the base of his back, as though his pelvis had assumed a different shape, and his buttocks felt broader.
"What the fuck are you doing?" He tried to put force into the words, but they sounded desperate even to him. And the voice wasn't quite right; it was higher pitched, softer than he had expected.
"You've got good hair," Chuck spoke quietly, standing beside the bed. "I won't even have to change that." Scott's bonds pulled him back down onto the bed, retracting so that his limbs were drawn taut.
Chuck was holding a knife in one hand now, bending slowly down to undo Scott's belt with the other. "It's not just movies I can change, you know. They're just easier."
Scott was frozen by shock as his jeans were lowered, revealing far less than he was accustomed to seeing there. The blade flickered in front of his eyes.
"But this is much more fun," Chuck breathed as the knife lowered, for the first time.
A HARD MAN IS GOOD TO FIND
R. Patrick Gates
She was wet. Again.
Why the hell did I sit by the window?
The answer was obvious. Right outside the window a crew of bare-chested men were digging up the road. Several of them had decent bodies. One of them was drop-dead gorgeous.
She crossed her legs. The food came.
"This doctor at the hospital says I suffer from chronic fatigue. That's a very 'in' disease, you know. Shelly, the head nurse on my floor, says he's just trying to get in my pants, but I don't know." Her friend, Darlene, stopped talking long enough to pick through her chef's salad with a fork and remove all the onions.
"Jeff, that's the doctor, called it 'the yuppie disease.' One of the other nurses said it was contagious and I must have caught it from someone, but when I asked Jeff, he said that was baloney. Still, if it is contagious, I bet I got it from that weirdo Roger. I mean, Lisa, he is just too strange, even if he does drive a Ferrari and have a condo on Martha's Vineyard."
Darlene rattled on, but Lisa wasn't listening anymore. Everything her friend was saying she'd heard a hundred times before from her. The gorgeous one was running a jackhammer, making his muscles ripple and dance.
"When was the last time you really, really, got laid? I mean laid till you cummed your brains out and collapsed?" Lisa asked Darlene, never taking her eyes from the jiggling muscle outside the restaurant window.
Darlene, interrupted in the middle of listing the merits of Martha's Vineyard, looked in shock at Lisa. She blushed a deep red, but a twitch of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. "Lee! The way you talk! You sound like one of the guys!" Darlene giggled.