Surreal continuing story: walking through doors and passageways

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
901

“You and Alice were hit with reality shifts–one of the many unfortunate side effects that resulted from my father and Sikes-Potter’s attempts to alter and control reality,” he explains. “Another one was my death–but I’ll get to that later.”

“I thought we were over that,” I say.

“I’m afraid not,” Alexander says. “What’s worse is the fact there’s now someone–or something–that’s now manipulating these previously free-floating reality shifts (or reality bubbles) against you, Alice, and other DXM members.”

“Threshold?” Alice asks.

“Could be them,” the ghost replies. “I’m not really sure, yet. It could also be Lady Minerva Calley. Or, it could be someone else.”

“Like your father?” I pointedly suggest.

“My father has definitely lost his interest in trying to alter reality,” Alexander states. “As you know, he now thinks that the stuff he did with Sikes-Potter caused faeries–or sidhe–to be released into this world and that they are out to get him. He even wants to stay in jail because he figures he’s safer in there.”

“Does he still wear an iron mesh vest?” Alice asks.

“Last I heard, yes,” Alexander answers. "The city jail’s been trying like anything to take it from him but his lawyers have blocked every effort. Anyway, getting back to what happened to you and Alice, the best advice I can offer you for now is…

902

“You should have a deterrent with you at all times. You know, I’m sure, about things like the mark the Good Witch gave Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the ‘mark’ identifying faithful Israelites in the Book of Ezekiel, and the ‘cocarde’ worn by revolutionary citizens in France just after the overthrow of the monarchy near the end of the 18th Century.”
He probably doesn’t know about the mark Ted gave us, the goggles, or the Yellow Fox pins we didn’t happen to wear to the game, Alice thinks to me.

“I see what you mean, Alexander,” I say. “We do in fact take certain precautions and, if some Threshold person is active now in this regard, we are forewarned. I’m glad you told us about this, and we’d like you to explain what you did to get Alice and me out of that bizarre void.”
“All in good time,” says Alexander, as we reach the van. We mortals all get in—I drive, with Alice beside me in the front seat. We see the ghosts off.

“Meet us back at the Morpheus,” Alice says.
“Wilcox,” says Leo again. We all laugh, including the ghosts.

We now get a telepathic message from Fred. Elwood found the lockbox and the other items under Hades’ office, he thinks to us. So your high-school mission is officially over.
That’s a shame, since the school faces another tough competitor next week—Groverton Prep School from Lodi, I reply.

It’s OK—Brandon Sharples is back on his feet. And the League will provide another cover story in case anyone wonders where you went. One more thing—we heard Alexander Lemoyne’s story and the League is alerted. You and Alice stay on guard—the yellow fox and such. Well, we’ll see you in a little while.
OK, Fred, we’re on our way, replies Alice.

The three women we met in the Starbuck’s look closely at Alice, Jeanette, and me.
“Ms. Terwilliger,” says Germaine, “You look slightly different. But Ms. Strong is a bit—er—smaller. And you, _____, you look like a seventeen-year-old!”

I smile. “Oh, I wish I could be,” I say, “but hey, you all know this yourselves—you too are DXM people now and you know what that entails.” They nod.
We return to the Morpheus. I park the van in the private lot, and we all go inside the theater, including Elwood and Guy Demsey. We go into the lunchroom and are greeted by the rest of our group. We don our Yellow Fox pins. Everyone else present also wears them.

George Galloway approaches to glad-hand Alice, Jeanette, and me.
“You were busy playing football and doing cheerleader stuff, so you didn’t see us in the stands,” he says. Alice and I sit together. Dr. Clouse, Lorna, and Jock come into the room.

“Well, the stands were full,” Alice says. “We depended on the fans’ support, and they cheered us so loud you could have heard us here!”
Now all the other women get into a huddle. They turn to face me.

“Don’t discount women friends,” says Vickie Sanders, using a line from a letter she once wrote me. They now surround me and take turns embracing and kissing me! :eek: :o I see the men giving Alice a similar treatment.
Now Alice and I sit together, blushing brightly—and shedding happy tears. :slight_smile:

“Well, what’s next?” I ask, facing Fred. My face is heavily smeared with the various women’s lipstick.
Lorna steps forward. “Here is Maureen McTavish, my neighbor’s daughter. She will be our flower girl.”

“Oh, yes,” I say. “Your wedding is due. Hello, Ms. McTavish,” I say to the seven-year-old girl with flaxen hair and bright blue eyes.
“Hello, Mr. ______, Ms. Terwilliger,” she says. Her parents have obviously taught her courtesy. Now she steps over to Eloise Sharp’s grandson Jack II and suddenly gives him a peck on the cheek; he looks down and smiles slightly and blushes. Eloise leads them out of the room.

Fred says, “Alexander and the other ghosts are having a meeting in the old manager’s office. They’ll be back out here in a little while.”
Now Joan Breastly, in ill-fitting white blouse and snug jeans, appears. She hands Alice and me each another $1000 check. “We have a really special mission for you now—it’s actually set at the reception for Jock and Lorna in St. Aloysius’ Church.”

I want to ask what choice Jock made about what to wear—a regular tuxedo, his police dress blues, or the full Dumfries tartan. But Stan and Joe now wheel a large wardrobe trunk into the room. Daniel and Buster now join us.
Buster sits on a table in front of Lorna, who greets him cordially.

He says, “Those reality-twisters did me a favor—Daniel and I had returned home just as some jerk released mice on the front porch! I caught both of them. They almost got into the house before I showed up.”
Now Ms. Breastly says, “______, this is what you’ll wear for the wedding and the reception—and your mission, which I’ll explain in a minute.” I know, of course, Alice will be Lorna’s maid of honor.

I open the wardrobe trunk and examine the clothes. It’s all women’s clothing—including pantyhose and a pale green dress with a trim pattern resembling the McManus tartan.
Alice, Lorna, Dr. Clouse, Vickie, Mary Blonda, Jeanette, and several other women turn to face me—and start tittering uncontrollably.

I inspect the garments.
“This is clothing for a woman who is six-foot four!”

“Well, guess what!” say Pete and Loora Oranjeboom, approaching and obviously ready to perform sorcery on me! :eek:

903

“Oh no,” I tell them. “I don’t do drag. I’m not dressing up like some big Scottish amazon.”

“But it’s part of your mission,” Pete explains. “You have to do it.”

“I won’t,” I stubbornly say, “and you can’t me, you can’t make me,you can’t make me!”

There’s a quick “doodley-doodley-doop” and suddenly I’m standing in front of the mirror dressed like a transvestite dressed like Margaret Dumont who’s in a production of Brigadoon. An expressionless Buster sits next to me as I try to mentally grasp the fact that’s me in the mirror.

“You know, I seem to recall a scene like this from an episode of Gilligan’s Island,” he comments. “Not that I’ve ever seen more than a few minutes of that idiotic show, of course.”

“Uh huh,” I mumble.

“You probably want to know why you’re undercover as a middle-aged Scottish woman,” Pete says.

“That question has recently crossed my mind,” I say flatly.

“Well,” Pete begins, "it’s because…

904

“…well, you’re undercover—just like when you posed as a scruffy biker at Spike’s Pool Emporium and as a second-string football player in the high-school mission. You’re going to be Daphne McManus, Lorna’s cousin from Oban, Argyllshire, Scotland!”
Joan Breastly sees me and nods. “Undercover is undercover,” she says. “While you are a tall, stately Scotswoman for this mission, you’re still _______, DXM member.”

I inspect my mirror image. I have full, wavy red hair, flecked with gray, running down to the middle of my back. I look at my eyes—now an iridescent green instead of light brown—and see long eyelashes. I wear a suitable pair of eyeglasses. I look down, and see a deep cleavage in my chest. Gingerly, I touch the chest in front—and sure enough, I have female breasts. And, without moving my hands farther down, I sense my male genitalia are gone.

I step back a few inches. So I’m now 6’4”, and in fact Pete and Loora have given me quite a figure—I seem to be at least as stately as Jane Bradley or the others in the Contralto Quartet.
“Now let’s hear what you have to say,” says Buster. Every eye in the room is on me.

“I’m supposed to have something to say about this?” I ask.
This startles me. I now speak, not only in a contralto female voice, but also with a Scottish burr almost as heavy as Lorna’s.

Lorna steps forward and extends her hand. “Glad to meet ya, Cousin,” she says, with an insistent handshake. This seems an affectation since I know Lorna does not usually speak in such slangy American English.
“Oh—and you’ll need to attend to certain female matters, ‘Daphne,’ says Alice, still smirking and giggling slightly, as she hands me another package.

“Thanks, Alice,” I say, still wondering at the burr now in my speech. I examine the package’s contents—a box of sanitary napkins and a birth-control pill dispenser!
“You know, I think this is going too far,” I say. “Birth-control pills? Is it likely that I run the risk of pregnancy?”

Joan Breastly steps forward and says, “Yes, it is, believe it or not. We conducted a mission last year with a male agent in a transsexual role. He did get pregnant, and could not return to male status until the full term was over. We had to pay all of his hospital expenses. The saving grace is that the baby survived.”
I shrug. “There aren’t too many male mothers.”

With my long memory of male associations I now start appraising my appearance. In fact, the image I see in the mirror is quite fetching.
I assume a few sexy postures, admiring my hair, face, bosom, hands, hips, and thighs. “I guess I’m quite an attractive Scotswoman at that,” I say, conceding Pete’s point.

Joan nods. “Part of the reason for your transsexual role is to convince outsiders—Sikes-Potter’s minions, Victor Lemoyne’s minions, or Threshold people—that Alice, as Lorna’s maid of honor, is alone. That is to say, not meaning forsaken by you as _______, but supposedly away from you at the time—as if you had not been invited to the wedding.”
Joan now speaks in a softer voice. “This will lull any outside listener into a false sense of ‘security,’ in order that they may believe Alice attended the wedding unescorted.”

Now Alice, Jeanette, Dr. Clouse, and Sylvia Goldstein have me go with them—to learn what I need to know about using the Pill and the napkins, and how to apply makeup and wash and dry my hair. This, as I expect, takes a while.

Well, we’re ready until the wedding; Joan says she’ll give Alice and me a full briefing just before we go in for the ceremony. (She herself is not on Jock and Lorna’s guest list, but apparently she’ll stay nearby.) I borrow a bra, panties, and a light blue linen dress from Jeanette and Jane, and Amy gives me a pair of flats. When we return to the conference room, I get wolf-whistles from Daniel and George Sharp; Hermione smirks, as do Anna Luglio and Susan Bradley—who still seem to compete for George’s affections.

Now Myron Skagg III, a mortal and the editor of the Courier-Times, appears with Lorraine Adler. They see me, and I suppose they wonder who I am. :rolleyes:
“We’d like to show you a galley proof of my article about the football game,” Lorraine says. “Have you seen Andrea Torrance and Dennis Montrose? And—who’s your redheaded friend? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Alice, Lorna, and I approach Lorraine. Alice says:

905

“Ms. Adler, this is Daphne. She’s Lorna’s cousin.”

“You’re Lorna’s cousin?” she asks somewhat incredulously.

“Yes,” I answer perhaps emphasizing my femininity too much.

“That’s odd,” Lorraine comments, “because when I first saw you I thought you were related to someone else I know.”

“Who?” I ask knowing her likely answer.

“This guy named ____ _____,” she replies. “You look like you could be his sister–his twin sister actually.”

“Well, I’ve spent my whole life on the Britain so I doubt I’m related to this fellow,” I lie. “By the way, is this ____ guy here? Maybe we can make a comparison.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Lorraine says. “Which is too bad because I wanted to ask him some questions.”

“Oh, ____'s not here,” Alice cooly explains. “He had some sudden business to attend to up in Crescent City.”

“When will he be back?” the journalist inquires.

“I suspect he’ll be back in a couple days,” Alice states. “I’ll tell _____ you wanted to talk to him.”

“What’s going on in Crescent City that’s so important that he has to miss Lorraine’s wedding?” Myron asks.

For a second, Alice blanks. She didn’t expect this line of inquiry about my whereabouts to go on this long. Then, I see a spark in her eye indicating she knows how to keep this ruse going.

Alice says, "____ had to go to Cresent City because…

906

“One, he has a niece who has to spend a week in the hospital—female surgery. Her husband is in the Middle East in military service. ______ promised he would go to Crescent City to look after her two kids for a few days.
“Two, he’s planning a trip to the Astoria Column in Oregon. As much as he wanted to attend Lorna’s wedding, he knew the people with whom he was to make the Astoria arrangements were only available this week—in Siskyou County.”

“Oh, I see,” says Lorraine. “Mr. Skagg and I have both been to that Column. I supposed ______ hasn’t had much contact with Lorna McManus.”
“Probably not much,” says Alice, “but what contact he has had counts.” She blushes slightly. “Lorna was with me when I first met him, at the university. And—” now Alice blushes more and gets a bit teary—“he proposed to me and I said yes.”

Lorraine reacts to this news with delight. I’m hard put to keep from showing tears myself.
“________ must have made quite an impression on you, Ms. Terwilliger.”

“Indeed he did,” Alice answers. “I had had a run-in with an English professor and _____ sided with me—and the professor was reprimanded.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Lorraine asks, “What was that professor’s name?”

“John McGowan,” says Alice. I almost say the name too.
Lorraine reacts very stiffly to this name. “Ohh! That letch! I’ve met some chauvinists in my time but he took the cake! On the very first day I was in his journalism class he stared at my bosom—and actually touched my bra strap!”

All of us react with shock at this.
I say, “Ms. Adler, how long did you put up with him?”

Lorraine, rather smug, says, “I stayed the whole semester—it was the only section of Journalism 104 the university offered that semester.”
“You put up with that letch for a whole semester?” I ask incredulously.

“No,” Lorraine says. “I was 20 and still living at home then. I told my folks. My Dad got so mad he went over to McGowan’s campus office the next day and bawled the professor out for touching me…”
Mary Blonda, in threadbare jeans and an old white blouse that looks like a stiff wind would blow it away, says, “Lorraine, is your Dad Matthew Adler, a husky gray-haired man who smokes a pipe?”

“That’s him,” says Ms. Adler. “He’s a lawyer and a former Marine commander.” Lorraine is even more smug now. “He showed up at McGowan’s office—I followed at a safe distance and didn’t let McGowan see me—I thought Dad was going to put McGowan on K. P. duty! He never touched me again. I finished the semester and earned my grade.”
I high-five Lorraine in spite of myself.

She says, “So you’ve come here for Lorna’s wedding, eh? Where do you live?”
“In Gardena in Southern California—Los Angeles County.”
Ms. Adler is surprised. “You live in Gardena?” she asks incredulously.

I smirk, assuming an Anna Nicole Smith pose. “We Scots don’t all live in Glasgow or Edinburgh.”
Now our entire group is present—I even sense the presence of the ghosts, including Alexander. We all sit within speaking distance in the conference room, discussing Lorna’s upcoming nuptials and the football game, among other things.

Daniel, Hermione, Arthur, and Winifred are with us. Alice’s sisters-in-law are in uniform but off duty; her brothers are in street clothes. Arthur’s legal practice is flourishing; I want to ask him if he has worked with Lorraine’s Dad, which is likely.
Buster approaches and jumps onto Lorraine’s lap; he’s friendly. She strokes his fur and he purrs. We continue the discussions.

I know Winifred and Hermione already know who I am; Arthur and Daniel weren’t present when Pete and Loora transformed me, but they aren’t dolts and I think they know as well. Daniel would certainly know WHY I’m a 6’4” Scottish woman; to dispel Lorraine’s suspicions about me—such as they may be—he says:

907

“So how are you enjoying your visit to Northern California?”

“Oh, it’s such a relief to be away from the fires and smoke,” I answer probably a bit too dramatically. “I’ve never liked all the heat and blast furnace Santa Ana winds they get in the LA basin this time of year. I’m guess I’m still used to the rain, damp, and cold in October and November they have in Scotland. At least you don’t have to worry about the highlands going up in flames.”

“Ah choo! Ah choo!”

Our contrived small talk is interrupted by Lorraine’s sneezing.

“Kitty, I’m sorry,” she says in a baby-talk voice as she picks Buster off her lap and places him on the floor. “I’m allergic to short-haired cats like you.”

“I forgot to ask you Daphne,” Lorraine says, “what do you do in LA?”

I hadn’t thought of that part of my cover yet.

“Oh, uh,” I stammer, "I work in the…

908

“…Superior Court building in Torrance in the office of the County Clerk, handling the archives.”
“I thought the L. A. County archives were in Norwalk,” Lorraine says.

“They are,” I reply. But there are archives in branch courthouses as well as in Norwalk.”
I have in fact been in the courthouse in Torrance many times—I even had jury duty there.

“You don’t seen to have so strong a Scottish accent as your cousin or her fiancé.”
“No, I don’t,” I say. “But in the part of Scotland where I grew up, the burr is not quite so strong. You know that the American Texan accent is not the same ‘Southern’ accent as in Tennessee or Georgia.”

“I also suppose,” Lorraine continues, “That women your size are rare in Argyllshire.”
“They’re rare just about anywhere,” I reply. “But my kin who aren’t blood relatives of Lorna’s, both men and women, are often quite tall.”

“I might add that I haven’t seen many tall women with your figure—quite so shapely.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I have an ancestor on the other side of the family from the Netherlands who, most likely, is the source of my ‘shapely’ genes.” This, of course, is my sly reference to the Dutch Pete and Loora, who are present with their four children and Cornelis’ wife Hannah, who is seated nearby. She is, quite obviously, in her seventh month.

I walk across the room to the water cooler. I use ESP on myself, to observe how I walk; Loora has apparently given me quite a sexy wiggle. I get the glass of water I wanted; n then I return to sit with Alice, Lorna, and Lorraine. Buster now jumps onto my lap.
Lorraine has apparently exhausted me as a topic for a possible feature article. She now concentrates on the football game.

“There was a strange incident near the end of the second quarter, what that second-string player Dennis Montrose left the field to talk to a man in the stands in a green suit [This would have been George Galloway] and the next moment he was returning to the field. Would you, or Alice, know anything about that?”
She almost has us with that question. But I plead ignorance. “My family in Argyllshire used to play soccer a lot—we call your ‘soccer’ football in Scotland—but that’s as close as we get. Maybe this Dennis Montrose was a fast runner.”

Lorraine writes stuff down. Myron Skagg watched. He tells Alice and me telepathically. Don’t worry about it—everything she writes goes through me. If she tries to expose you I’ll kill the story.
Now Arthur, who had apparently bumped his hand into a wall that morning, loses his grip on his briefcase. It falls over and a document package falls out. I pick it up and return it to him.

“This is my brother Arthur,” says Alice to Lorraine. “He’s a lawyer.”
“Oh, I think I met you at my Dad’s office last week,” Lorraine says. “I guess you’ve worked with him.”

I figure that to be true—the document I retrieved mentions Arthur as well as Matthew Adler as attorneys of record, on the first page.

Now Elwood comes in. He’s happy, but since the outsider Lorraine is present, he doesn’t speak to us, other than to greet us all. He tells Alice and me telepathically, We got the goods on Threshold—I found their documents in another box buried under Hades’ office!

Director George Stanhouse is present. “Oh, Elwood, I’m glad to see you! I haven’t crossed your path since you helped my office get the goods on that jerk Lemoyne!”
“Lemoyne?” asks Lorraine. I can tell she’s about to burst out laughing. “Do you mean a builder from Lodi named Victor Lemoyne?”

“Yes,” says Stanhouse. “He tried to raze a playhouse in Hayward to build condos.”
Lorraine sputters but finally can’t hold it in. To the bewilderment of all of us, she bursts out laughing; I sense that she has the utmost contempt for our old adversary.

She realizes what she looks like; she pulls herself together and, while she continues to titter, explains her reaction.

909

“I’m sorry,” Lorraine says, “but what a nutburger!”

“Yes, he does have an eccentric side to him,” Stanhouse agrees.

“No, he’s balls-out batshit bonkers,” she states. “I did a story on him right after he turned himself in to the police and each person I talked to about Lemoyne said he was obsessed with some kind of New Age-reality shifting bullshit. Knowing this still didn’t prepare me for what he tried to do to me when I interviewed him in jail.”

“What did he try to pull?” I ask.

“Well, he insisted I take my blouse off so he could see my bare back,” Lorraine begins. “Said he wanted to make sure I didn’t have any ‘faery wings.’ I first thought he was acting sleazy and that this was some sort of lame excuse to get me to take my top off. But when he started babbling how the ‘faeries’ were out to get to get him and showed me the iron mesh he was wearing for protection underneath his prison clothes, I realized how dead serious and absolutely psychotic he was.”

As Lorraine relates her strange encounter with Lemoyne, I see Joan and Pete out of the corner of my eye trying to get my attention. It must be time to find out the details of my mission. I politely excuse myself and walk over to them.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Joan tells me…

910

“Let’s go into Mr. Sharp’s private office—you, Alice, Jeanette, Mr. Galloway, Buster, and the Oranjeboom family.”
We round up the others Joan mentions. We all excuse ourselves and wait for Cornelis to assist Hannah in standing up. Katrina and Maria see their boyfriends Bobby and George off, with happy embraces, and join us.

With Buster trotting along, we all go into Mr. Sharp’s office and sit down in several overstuffed chairs. Cornelis sits Hanna on a wooden bench; Buster sits calmly on her lap—such as it is.
And suddenly Elwood joins us.

Now Pete sits in the big desk chair. Loora, in tight white T-shirt and bright red shorts, approaches him. Her clothing is tight and form-fitting, and when she touches Pete’s hand he gets an erection, as I can’t help but notice. I sit between Alice and Jeanette; I get a view of the braless Ms. Strong’s bosom that she must see herself much of the time—dark cleavage and areolae and nipples visible. She is apparently quite proud of her exaggerated figure. Loora’s other three kids sit near Cornelis and Hannah. Joan speaks.

“Lorna’s family includes two members who had left St. Aloysius’ Church about 20 years ago, much to the relief of Father Isaac Abromowitz.”
“There must be more to it than that,” I comment.

“There is,” says Ms. Breastly. “The two relatives of Lorna are a cousin of hers named Thurman Stout, and an aunt—her mother’s sister—named Myrtle Fife. They had been petty troublemakers but they had one run-in with Abromowitz—literally. They plowed their Pacer into his Checker sedan. The priest’s car was scarcely dented—it was built like a tank—but their car was undriveable.
“They approached Abromowitz but learned an instant too late that he is a practitioner of Tae Kwon Do. They tried to kick him and he laid them flat.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” I say. “He doesn’t seen to be anybody’s patsy.”
Joan continues. “Thurman and Myrtle wound up in jail—and, besides, their Pacer was totaled and they had to pay for damages to Abromowitz’ car. It was years before Thurman and Myrtle recovered, and, more recently, they became involved in illegal importing. They laid low for a while after 9-11, and, as it happened, they made the acquaintance of I. Loomis Knattey, who is now in prison in Canada. And most recently they joined up with Threshold.”

“Forgive me for asking,” I say, “but what part do I play in this?”
“Thurman is a sucker for tall women—especially if they are, or claim to be, related to him. When he was a child he wanted to hug and kiss his six-foot-tall mother—all the time. Lorna herself avoids him. If he sees you, so big and stately, he’ll blow his cover by crumpling into incoherence. He may even ejaculate. Lorna has no love for these errant relatives and they may come in disguise to the wedding, or pass themselves off as attendants or caterers or such. In any case, although they aren’t on the guest list Jock and Lorna prepared, they are likely to show up just the same.

“Besides, Thurman is 5’8½” and Myrtle is 4’11”; if they see a big woman who looks to be kin, they’ll surely react no matter how sly they pretend to be.”
“And they already know me,” says Jeanette.

“Right,” says Joan. You look quite Italian, Jeanette—I understand most of your ancestry is Italian. They know that from Scottish.”
“Besides,” says Alice, “if they think the Maid of Honor is attending the wedding unescorted, they will fall into the trap. That is, they’ll show up—but ‘Daphne’ here will flush them out once they do.”

“That’s it,” says Joan. “And the whole Oranjeboom family—even the kids and Hannah—have the power of sorcery. They will protect you and Alice—and certainly Jock, Lorna, and Father Abromowitz—from Threshold’s various tricks.”
“I can do this, Ms. Breastly,” says little Maria.

“Hey!” says her older brother Jan. “You unzipped me!”
Maria and Katrina giggle; even Hannah smirks. “Maria, you know better than that,” says Loora.

“Sorry, Mom,” The little girl says quietly. She rezips Jan’s fly.
“I wonder what they could do to Lemoyne,” I comment. Everyone else present laughs.

Now Pete asks Elwood to take the younger kids—Katrina, Maria, and Jan—out of the room. He does so, apparently escorting them back to the conference room. He returns alone.
Now the sexy Loora—mother of four and soon to be a grandmother—stands in a pose that is certainly fetching to her husband Pete, who sits next to her.

“Ms. Adler spoke about what Lemoyne did—he of the lechery and chutzpah—when he thought she was sidhe. Pete and I reduced that nitwit to babbling mush with our sexuality. We did it three times; he never caught on.”
“Go on, Loora,” says Buster, sitting calmly with Hannah, who gently strokes his fur.

911

“Well, not only is Lemoyne seriously insane and a lech, he’s also, as you can probably guess, extremely sexist,” Loora begins. “We’re talking about someone with a real Cro-Magnan attitude toward women.”

“So what did you do to him?” I ask.

“Basically, we turned his sexism–and lechery–against him,” Loora explains. "The first time, we…

912

“…started pawing each other—Pete put his hands under my bra cups, and started unfastening my belt. He and I were ostensibly inspecting books on the bookshelf in the office where Lemoyne was. I reached inside Pete’s shorts and started kneading his genitalia. Lemoyne, of course, reacted immediately. He started to ‘rearrange’ himself. He didn’t pay attention to what he was doing, and he dropped a lighted cigarette from his mouth. It burned a little hole in his suit coat. That’s a pity—that coat must have cost him at least $200.”
“And the second time?” Alice asks.

“After a short while, I returned in disguise. I posed as a middle-aged but shapely secretary, with silver-gray hair in an old-fashioned ‘bun,’ granny glasses, and a prim outfit—tweed skirt, sack blouse, and old-fashioned shoes. Pete hid in the next room and caught it all on his camcorder.
“I asked Lemoyne, in my best ‘born yesterday’ voice, to assist me with some typing, faxes, and floppy disks that I was using. I gave the impression of being a middle-aged bimbo.

“As I pretended to type, use the fax, and poke at the computer keyboard, and take dictation—we happened to know he was looking for an executive secretary—I used my sorcery to disintegrate the seams in my clothing, ever so slowly. Within about an hour my skirt had split halfway up my thighs, my panties were down around my knees, and my blouse looked as if the pieces had been stitched together with mop strings. In fact, they were!
“I don’t know what Gwen Berry told you about her experience with Lemoyne, but when he fixes his sexual attention on a woman he loses his concentration altogether. He kept looking down the front of my blouse and reaching for my panties, to try to pull what was left of them down my calves. I eluded him. He stumbled and nearly fell over twice.

“After another twenty minutes my skirt was split almost to the waist, my panties were on the floor and my blouse was just a few linen strips barely held together. My bra was a half-size too big—hard to notice. Lemoyne could hardly utter a syllable, he kept bumping into things, and his hardon was unmistakable.
“When he approached me to relieve me of what clothes I still had on, I called for Pete—but I called him ‘Sid.’ That shook Lemoyne up a little more. And just about that same time I heard him say something which startled both of us.”

“What was that?” I ask.
“He said, ‘Mom!’” :eek:

This startles us. Even Gwen had not indicated that Lemoyne had any kind of Oedipus complex.
“Well, we might want to find out what we cal about Lemoyne’s mother,” says Mr. Galloway, “although some present might wonder if she wears a flea collar, barks, and eats Alpo. She’d have to be in her late eighties if she were still living…”

Elwood speaks up. “I’ve been talking to Leo, Ulrica, and Thurlow,” he says. “They have agreed to assist if any of you want to engage in spy work—which might be in order, if you want to snoop around Lemoyne’s house in Piedmont.”
“I forgot about that place,” I say. “Who is taking care of it now?”

“Philip Greenwood, Alice’s uncle,” says Elwood. “Letitia Frazier and Pula Kinlai both did until they were incarcerated. Lemoyne and Letitia had no choice but to turn the house, like Lemoyne’s business assets, over to Philip Greenwood—but he doesn’t know Philip is Alice’s uncle.”
“Well, Philip wouldn’t condone our snooping in his former employer’s house like common burglars,” says Alice. “I think Gwen still has the run of the house—Lemoyne never asked her for his house-key back, and she said he never told his butler or maid to refuse Gwen entry. So maybe she can help us, along with the ghosts and Philip.”

Now I ask Loora, “So what happened with the camcorder and the middle-aged bimbo?”
“We got ninety minutes of footage of Lemoyne making an ass of himself,” says Loora. “Pete came in as the secretary’s outraged husband. He scared the hell out of Lemoyne.”

“And what happened in the third incident?” I ask.
Now Pete and Loora look quite smug, as they stand with their hands inside each other’s clothing. Pete has a rock-hard erection and Loora’s bright blue eyes have large pupils.

“You know how Loora and I like S&M and sex with odd artificial devices?” Pete asks. I nod.
“Well,” continues Pete, “just after the bimbo incident:”

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we put everything to good use against Lemoyne again. It turned out he’s into S&M as well but he takes it far more seriously than Loora and I do. He is (or was) really into the whole RPG aspect of it. Except with him, you never knew where the role-playing ended and real life began."

“What kind of role-playing was he into?” I ask fully aware that I’d probably find out would be more than I ever wanted to knowabout Lemoyne’s sexual quirks.

“Well, it was some kind of ridiculous ‘Conan the Barbarian’ type fantasy,” Loora answers. “As you might expect from a hardcore sexist asshole like Lemoyne, it also involved a lot of female submission and misogyny. He expected to be worshipped as some type of macho hypersexual god. Frankly, I never bothered to fully learn the details of Lemoyne’s rich S&M fantasy life because I could feel my brain dissolve the more I found out about it.”

“We did agree though that Lemoyne’s proclivities and opinion of himself as a great sexual conqureror was just too ripe a target to ignore,” Pete adds. "So, we decided we just had to take him down again. What we did was…

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“…we made ourselves somewhat larger and Lemoyne somewhat smaller—very subtly. And Pete took his pants off. He had a two-foot-long hardon! :eek: Lemoyne impulsively took his pants down—he couldn’t even see his own genitalia.”
“That’s impressive,” I say. “Hey, I know he’s remarkably physically fit for a man 69 years old. He doesn’t have a potbelly or anything like that.”

“I also removed my top,” says Loora, “and my boobs grew to the size of beach balls. He had been gawking at me, with the sexy clothes I had on. But instead of staring like a normal letch he felt a strong sense of sexual inadequacy. That took him down a few pegs.”
“So you engaged in Bondage & Dominance?”

“Yes and no. Pete and I have B&D outfits. We put them on—but we really threw him a curve.
“I had a whip, but I approached Lemoyne in an un-threatening manner. Pete stood behind him, to keep him from getting away. I was wearing an outfit that exposed my bosom, my crotch and my rear end—but I assumed a guileless posture and demeanor. I tenderly took his hand. He was trembling and tried to wriggle free—but I kept him from moving away. I was dressed as a ‘dominatrix,’ if that’s the right word, but I deliberately cuddled him and generally treated him much like a mother caressing her little boy. He wound up blubbering and lying helpless on the floor.

“At this point Pete and I prepared to leave him. We restored him to normal size. He looked as weak and helpless as a kitten. To wrap the matter up, Pete and I suddenly stripped all of our clothes off; I lay on the floor and Pete screwed the daylights out of me. Then we calmly put our street clothes on, picked up our kinky-sex gear, and left.”
“Well, we’ll want to find out what we can about his alleged Oedipus complex,” says Alice. “We should ask two people—Gwen Berry and Dr. Maggie Johnson.”

“Was he a patient of hers?” I ask.
“I doubt it,” says Alice. “But she would want to interview Lemoyne’s butler and maid. They’re still working at the house—Philip sees to it that they still have income. Maggie will want to find out what the situation was between Lemoyne and his mother—if indeed she is still living.”

In fact, Alice and I do find Gwen and ask her, but she can’t tell us much.
“He rarely mentioned his mother, his sister, or his dead son, to me,” says Gwen. “He did have some binders and scrapbooks in a large locked cabinet. But I’m still on friendly terms with his butler, Horace May, and his maid, Charlene Von Flotoe.”

“So you may be able to cadge the cabinet, or at least the key,” I say.
“Probably,” says Gwen.

Now Alice and several others who will participate in Lorna’s wedding meet with Lorna. Still in the female identity, I quietly go and make lunch in the theater kitchen—a sandwich, a bowl of soup, and a large mug of apple juice. Buster joins me and I serve him a portion of liver.
After our lunch, I relax in an overstuffed chair with an issue of Games. Buster jumps up on the chair arm and starts to purr.

“You’re cute, honey,” he says with a feline smirk.
I respond in kind. I stroke his fur and say, “You’re gonna bust your purrbox.”

Now Buster and I go into the big conference room. Most of our group hasn’t seen me female. I wear a bright orange blouse, that’s slightly tight; a snug pair of blue jeans; and plain black flats. And my wavy red hair hangs straight down my back.

Several of the people who haven’t seen me in this guise turn to face me, including Dr. Clouse, the lovely Vickie Sanders, Joanie Werdin, Sylvia Goldstein, and Lupe, Eloise’s cook. They all recognize me, but the metamorphosis is startling. Lupe sees me, does a Jackie Cooper-style double take, and blurts out:

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“I had no idea those operations took so little time now.”

“Only if Loora and Pete are doing them,” I reply. “But this is just temporary though. Once my assignment is over, I get my Y chromosomes back.”

“So, what do you notice as a woman that you didn’t notice as a man?” Lupe asks.

“Well, for one thing, I like Julia Roberts movies a lot more,” I answer.

The group responds by…

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…laughing heartily at this sally.
I ask Lupe, “Would you say I am more fornida [husky] than Jeanette?”

“Ah, usted està más fornida que ella,” says Lupe in agreement. “But if you’ll forgive my saying so, you don’t look all that much like Lorna, except for the red hair and green eyes.”
“Maybe that’s enough,” I reply, stroking the thick red hair. “Perhaps Lorna’s hypothetical uncle in Argyllshire is big and brawny like Jock.”

“Or like Angus McPherson,” says Dr. Clouse.
“Who?” I ask.

“He’s Jock’s best man. He and Jock were fellow constables in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, and both played the bagpipes. McPherson was, and is, something of a muscleman—but he’s also a kindhearted soul.”
“One more thing,” says Sylvia. “As a woman you will certainly know how the other half lives.”

I mark Sylvia’s words. If the stories I’ve heard from Alice, the other women at the Morpheus, and several women in my own family, are any indications, I know I face certain inhibitions foisted on women by society. I know it’s not merely things like weight of breasts, the “monthlies,” or the ordeal of pregnancy and childbirth, no matter how “routine” those things may seem, in my own estimation, to women such as Eloise Sharp.

Still, I remember what Joan Breastly told me: I am to attend Lorna’s wedding as a woman in order to throw Threshold, or any other potential adversary, off the track. And such is my duty as a DXM agent.

Sylvia, of course, had the hardest row to hoe of all the women present—she came from an Orthodox Jewish family in New York City and thus fought tradition and prejudice like Barbra Streisand’s character in Yentl, because she wanted to become a dramatic critic. She is a gutsy young woman who ended up earning her parents’ respect the hard way.

Well, it’s almost time for the wedding—a few days away. By now all of us have been to places like Zuckerman’s for formal outfits for the wedding; and Jock and Lorna—with Alice and me invited to come along—go to a local bridal registry with which they have made arrangements. They book a caterer for the reception; and Lorna wisely urges Jock to hire Eloise’s daughter Frannie, a professional photographer, for the wedding and reception. Frannie’s brothers Carl and Eddie have connections to arrange for decorations for St. Aloysius’ Church, including elaborate floral displays.

Alice and I later gather the ghosts, including Leo, Ulrica Werdin, Thurlow Skagg, and Luigi Luglio—and Alexander Lemoyne. Leo will serve as an unofficial head of security; he will report to Artie Brown, Mike Bradley, and Cornelis Oranjeboom, who will have official duties.

Cornelis’ wife Hannah is getting around in a wheelchair, for comfort. (Jack Sharp included wheelchair access everywhere when he rebuilt the Morpheus, including in restrooms, backstage, the sub-basement, and the facilities he included at the behest of George Galloway.)

Jock and Lorna also ask for an organizing committee. This includes Alice, Eloise Sharp, Betty Galloway, Eda Terwilliger, Jeanette, and Louise Brown, as well as Eloise’s mother Elizabeth Martin and “Daphne.”
We go to meet Father Abromowitz in the office in his church. He and Jock are the only males present. (We still don’t know whether Jock will get married in a formal suit, his police dress blues, or the full Dumfries tartan.) We women visit Abromowitz wearing modest dresses or pantsuits. So far as I know, of our group only Lorna is Catholic.

Alice introduces us to the priest, referring to me as Lorna’s cousin “Daphne McManus.” Abromowitz, who is nobody’s fool (and certainly knows about our DXM assignments), comments sagaciously:

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“What are the odds that Lorna’s cousin from Scotland would look like ____ ______'s twin sister?”

I sense he knows what’s going on but will publicly go along with the DXM’s undercover operation.

“Now, what’s the plan of action for the wedding?” the priest asks.

Lorna is about to answer when there’s a knock on the office door. It’s Joan Breastly.

“I need to talk to Daphne McManus,” she says. “It won’t take long.”

I excuse myself and leave the office with Joan. We then turn the corner of the hall and stop. Joan has a serious look on her face.

“Our operatives have tipped us off on what Thurman Stout might try to do at the wedding and it’s something far more serious than we anticipated” she tells me. “That makes it all the more important that you stop it from happening.”

“What is it?” I ask.

"Threshold and Stout are…

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“…plotting a chemical assault on all the persons present, including Jock, Lorna, and Abromowitz.”
“Do you mean poison gas?” I ask.

“No, it’s more vicious than that,” she says. “According to our operatives, Stout and Fife intend to release an unknown gas into the church; it’s harmless to breathe but it will dissolve the stitching in all kinds of garments.”
“So everyone would wind up in just their underwear?”

“Yes. And in the ensuing chaos, Stout and Fife would come inside and assault the ‘denuded’ wedding party with a severe reality shift, rendering everyone insane. They also planned to print obscene filers libeling the DXM League, but they abandoned the idea because they couldn’t find a printer, or a person to disseminate the fliers, who would run the risk of a libel suit.”
I mull over this for a moment.

“Ms. Breastly, does the League have medical dossiers on Stout and Fife?”
“Yes, we do,” she says, slightly puzzled at my question. “What does medical history have to do with this?”

“Well, I was considering the possibility that Thurman Stout and Myrtle Fife may have specific allergies.”
“Oh, I think I see what you mean.”

“That’s it. We already have Buster, Salbert’s burro Loochy, and the Sharps’ Great Dane, Duke. I suppose there are other animals in the League’s ranks—”
“Quite a few,” says Joan. “There are several species of parrots, dogs of all breeds, cats galore. And there are wild animals as well: lions, and tigers, and bears—oh my…” :smiley:

I smirk. “I know about that. And of course there are the yellow foxes…”
Joan nods. “Well, we’ll want to find out which kind of critter, or critters, Stout and Fife are allergic to. As for the yellow foxes—well, you’re right. Threshold avoids such things.”

“We may also want to contact the church janitor. He and Abromowitz could help us with some chemical counterintelligence.”
“What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to have someone in the League do research concerning such ‘zap-chemicals’ as Stout and Fife may include in their plot. We could furnish another chemical, that would neutralize the effect of any they may come up with.”
“Well,” says Joan, “You’ll want to visit our facilities at Galaxy 100 for that—you and Alice. We have a senior chemist and researcher named Walt Ryson who knows about everything there is to know about chemical substances and processes. And while you’re there you’ll want to speak also to Trinh Diem, our zoological expert. She’s also a physician and she can advise you both on what animals would repel Stout and Fife…”

“Do you want us to go now?”
“No, go tomorrow morning. I’ll set up the appointments and call you later at the Morpheus. But first you should go out to the Sharps’ place and discuss the matter with Fred—along with Buster, Loochy, and Duke.”
We thank Joan.

“My, you are an imposing woman,” Joan says to me. “If Stout saw you he’d probably shoot his wad in public!”
“Hey, whatever works,” says Alice with a smile; she had just now come into the room.

Now we see Joan off and leave the meeting at the church; we’ll talk to Abromowitz and the others later, since he said he’d come out to the Morpheus later today. He probably senses what we have in mind, although the other women—and Jock—certainly know what it’s all about.

Now Alice and I drive her talking Beetle back to the Morpheus, where we pick up Fred and Buster. We return to the Sharps’ mansion, and go out in back, where we meet with Duke and Loochy in the burro’s corral. Both are DXM animals; Duke talks—in a voice much like Brad Garrett’s. Loochy is mute, but he communicates with a computer keyboard that is large and set about 18 inches off the ground, and angled, so he can tap keys with a hoof. We can read his answers on the 56-inch monitor screen Jack set up.

So Alice, Fred, and I tell the cat, the dog, and the burro what we need to do and what part they will play in it.

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“We’re going to need to collect fur and dander samples from each of you,” Fred explains to the animals.

“Just go collect mine off the couch in the media room,” Buster answers. "Or the crimson chair in the library. Or in front of the furnace vent in the living room. Or the bed spread in Alice and ____'s room. Or any of the chairs in the Green room. Or the–

“Okay, we get the idea,” Duke interrupts. “You’ve shed all over the damn house.”

“I was just making it easier for them,” says Buster. “Besides, I can’t help it. Cats shed. Who am I to defy 40 million years of evolution?”

“Well, it sounds like you’re proud of your little achievement,” Duke says with an accusatory tone. “Really, this isn’t even your house and you have no compuction about about leaving your loose hair everywhere. That takes a lot of balls.”

“Especially considering I don’t have any,” Buster snaps back. “And thank you for reminding me of that.”

“Your welcome,” the dog replies. “And at least I know better to stay outside when I’m shedding.”

“Look, break it up you two,” an exasperated Fred requests. "We just need to trim some fur and dander samples so we can prepare…

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“…the monkey to dance.”

A chorus-line of dancing monkeys on an old vaudevillian stage, step-kick in unison while wearing black and yellow can-can dresses with white lace petticoats.

“Dance monkeys… DANCE!!”, screams Fred eagerly as the dog looks on in horror. Eyes glazed, he claps in time to the monkeys’ kicks, swaying side to side to the vigorous melody.

“Dude, you suck!”, screams the dog as he lunges at Fred, visciously ripping into his throat. Blood pours down Fred’s neck and chest, making the monkeys hoot in delight and dance faster.

The dog licks his bloody chops and nods to the monkeys who in turn flash their lacy behinds under raised skirts to the audience.

The audience is horrified by the sight of Fred gasping, blood pooling under his body…