I manage to get through the first half of the song without a problem. But then, I start to cough. It’s not a dainty little cough either, more like the cough of someone in the late stages of emphysema. It’s the kind of cough that doubles me over. The bass player stops to pat me on the back like I’m a baby.
“I’m sorry,” I wheeze through coughs. The kindly bass player hands a bottle of water to me. I take a few swigs of that. I finally stop coughing. “Thanks,” I tell the bass player. My throat sounds a little scratchy, so I finish the rest of the water.
“Let’s try it again,” one of the control room guys says.
The band sets up again. I close my eyes and try to relax. I count off the beat again. When it’s time, I start to sing. This time I get about a third of the way through before the coughing starts. A pat on the back and bottle of water doesn’t help this time.
Mr. Swift hurries into the studio. He takes me by the arm to help me back into the control room. I still can’t stop coughing. “Relax,” he tells me. “It’ll pass.”
“You want to call a doctor?” one of the control room guys asks.
“Not yet,” Swift says. Another few minutes go by. I drink two more bottles of water. All it does is make my throat feel like wet sandpaper. At least the coughing finally stops. “Let’s give it a few more minutes.”
“OK,” I say, my voice little more than a whisper.
“Have you been ill lately, Stacey?” Swift asks. “You don’t look well.”
“I’ll be fine,” I rasp. “I just need a few minutes.”
He helps me off the chair and leads me back to an office. There’s a couch in there. I feel like a child as he spreads a blanket over me. “You rest for a little bit in here, all right?”
“All right,” I say. I brace for him to kiss my forehead, but he doesn’t go that far. He just turns out the lights so I can take a nap.
For a studio the sound carries pretty well. I can hear Swift on his phone. “She’s choking,” he says. “No, I mean she’s literally choking. These coughing fits. I don’t know what’s up. Better get someone to look at her. I’ve got about two minutes that would be usable. No, it’s probably in her head.” Swift laughs about something, probably at my expense. “I should send you a picture. She must have been sitting around eating ice cream for the last three weeks. No, bigger. Yeah, like your wife. Look, I gottta go. I’ll call you later.”
I roll over on the couch so if he peeks in here he won’t see me crying and guess I overheard him. As I lie there, I wonder if he’s right. Maybe the coughing is all in my head. That subconscious part of me that’s still Detective Steve Fischer might be rebelling against an occupation he thinks is too girly.
I think about this for a couple of hours, until I can’t hold in all that water I drank. Then I get up from the couch and open the door. There’s a bathroom down the hall. I sit down on the seat and let it rip. As soon as I do, pain burns through my lower half. I stand up and see blood in the bowl.
God, not my period! Please, not now. I’ve got all I can handle. What makes it even worse is my purse with the spare tampons is in the control room. There’s no dispenser in here either.
I wait until the blood is down to a trickle and then wipe up the mess with a wad of toilet paper. That will have to do for now. When I stand up, my knees are weak, so weak I have to put a hand against the stall to balance myself.
I should go home. Mr. Swift is right that I don’t look well. I don’t feel well either. I should go see Dr. Palmer. She’ll know what to do. At least she might be able to explain what I’ve got. Unless it’s just performance anxiety; Mac would be the better one to see about that.
I stumble out to the sink. My face is red and sweaty, like I’ve just run a couple of miles. The sweat ruined my combover too, so that swathes of my scalp are visible. When I try to fix it, all I get is more hair in my hand.
With renewed determination, I begin to do my scales. But something’s wrong: I can’t hit the high notes. When I try, my voice cracks like when I was a fourteen-year-old boy. “What the hell is going on?” I ask myself, except instead of my cute chipmunk voice, it’s like someone slowed it to a quarter speed. “What’s happening to me?” I ask myself in my new baritone.
I hurry to the control room, where Swift waits. I wheeze and grunt while I gesture to my throat. He nods to me. “That’s all right. No problem. We can set up another time when you’re feeling better. All right?”
I nod to him. He pats me on the back. “You call my secretary when you’re well again and she’ll make the arrangements.”
I nod again to thank him. He shakes my hand. “Let me call you a cab. This is no time for you to go riding around on the subway.”
Perhaps the most humiliating part of the day is that I have to sit in the control room and hug my purse to my chest while everyone packs up to go home. No one looks at me or talks to me. I’ve made a fool of myself. I need every ounce of willpower I have not to sob right then.
I save that for when I get in the cab.
***
I go straight to the bedroom and curl up on the bed. I pull the covers over my head so no one has to see how hideous I am.
At some point I fall asleep. When I wake up it’s dark in the bedroom. I feel someone shake me. Mac says, “Stacey, what’s wrong? Did something happen at the studio?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want Mac to hear my terrible baritone that’s as gross as the rest of me. “Stacey, stop hiding from me. We have to talk about this. What happened?” He finally rips the covers off of me. I vainly try to cover up again, but he pulls them out of reach. Mac pulls me close to him. I lean on his shoulder to cry. “What happened, Stacey?”
I still don’t want to talk, so like at the studio I wheeze and grunt while I point to my throat. “You lost your voice?” I nod to him. “I see. And things didn’t go well?” I shake my head.
“Wait here a second,” he says. He leaves the room for a minute, long enough for me to snuggle beneath the covers again. At least there I can feel warm and safe. This time Mac pulls the covers right off the bed. He hands my phone to me. “OK, now tell me what happened.”
“I choked,” I type. “Started coughing. Lost my voice.”
“You think this was deliberate?” I nod to confirm his suspicion. “Performance anxiety can be perfectly natural in stressful situations. I’m sure if you explain, Mr. Swift will give you another chance.”
I shake my head violently. “I fucked up,” I type. “Wasted too much $$$. They won’t want me back.”
“Then we’ll find another record label. You can always make a demo on your own. I can help you pay for it,” he says. I collapse into his arms again and hug him. I mouth, “I love you.” He nods to me. “I love you too, honey. But just to be safe, I think tomorrow you should go see Dr. Palmer.”
I shake my head. On the phone I type, “I’ll be fine. Just need rest.”
“Stacey, I’m not stupid. I’ve noticed the weight, the hair clogging the drains.” For emphasis, he runs a hand through my thin, dry hair. “I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, but you aren’t well. We need to rule out anything medically wrong.”
I shake my head again. “Can’t tomorrow. Dress fitting.”
“Then reschedule it. I’m serious, Stacey. I’m worried about your health.”
I think about it for a moment and then nod to him. “Tomorrow PM,” I type.
“That’s fine,” he says. “In the meantime I want you to get out of those clothes, into some pajamas. I’ll make you some soup. I know I’m not a medical doctor, but I think you need to get a lot of rest tonight and some fluids.”
I give him a kiss on the cheek in case I’m contagious, though it’s probably too late for that by now. “I’m going to call Dr. Palmer too. You get changed and lie down.”
“OK,” I whisper.
He kisses me on the forehead, possibly worried I’m contagious. Then he’s gone. I do as he says and change into a nightgown that even wi
th the weight I’ve put on is huge. As I crawl back into bed, I bring the covers with me. Before long I’m asleep.
I wake up later to find a cold bowl of soup and a note from Mac that says he’s sleeping downstairs tonight. I don’t bother with the soup; instead I fall back to sleep.
Chapter 9
Although it seems impossible, I feel worse the next morning. Even before I open my eyes, my throat feels like someone scraped at it with a rusty file for the last twelve hours. I have to roll out of bed and speed-waddle into the bathroom so I can hack up a wad of yellow phlegm into the toilet. I stay down there for a couple of minutes as I pant from the effort.
It takes even more effort to lever myself back up. The nightgown that was big the night before has become snug around my huge belly. I don’t dare get on the scale out of fear for what the numbers will be. The only place that’s lost weight are my breasts, to the point my bra sags loosely, much too big for the nubs that remain.
My morning ritual goes like normal—or what’s passed for normal the last couple of weeks—until I sit down to pee. It feels like I’ve got a cork lodged in my vagina. I have to push as hard as Debbie did to give birth to Maddy just to get a tiny stream of piss out. By the time I’m done, my balding head is coated with sweat and I want to crawl back into bed for another twelve hours.
Instead I stumble downstairs, where I find Mac and Darren have already left. Mac’s left me another note; this one says the appointment with Dr. Palmer is for three in the afternoon at her lab. At the bottom he wrote, “Please be there, honey.”
***
As a fan of “vintage” clothes, Grace wanted me to go somewhere in the garment district to find a secondhand wedding dress. That was a time when I was glad to have Maddy with me. She put her foot down—literally—and shrieked, “A used wedding dress? Gross! Stacey’s not marrying a burger-flipper at McDonald’s. She’s marrying a doctor. She needs a nice dress.”
“There are a lot of nice used dresses,” Grace protested.
“They probably reek of cat piss or have cum stains on them,” Maddy said.
“I think Maddy’s right. I want a new dress.”
I start to regret that decision now. I’d feel a little less conspicuous in the grungy shops of the garment district than in the much more expensive stores downtown. Maddy has of course already found a half-dozen stores to look for dresses. They won’t be cheap either. These stores start at two thousand and work up.
In the cab, Maddy looks over at me. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“It’s just stress,” I whisper. I’ve made sure not to use my regular voice so they won’t realize how deep it sounds. “It’ll be fine.”
“How are we supposed to get you fitted for a dress when you’re blowing up like a balloon?”
“Look who’s talking,” Grace mumbles. Maddy’s clothes are pretty snug too. When she sits, the lower buttons of her shirt look ready to pop off.
“I’m not the one everyone will be looking at.”
I look down in shame at my gut. I wish I knew what is happening to me so I could make it stop. Maybe I wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world before, but at least I wasn’t a fat, hairy freak. Maddy says, “Don’t worry, we’ve still got a little while until the wedding. We’ll both go on a crash diet.”
I nod to her, though I have been on a crash diet. It doesn’t seem to help. And it won’t help with all my body hair.
“At least you got rid of those silly bangs,” Maddy says.
“What was wrong with them?” I ask.
“They looked kind of goofy,” she says. “You looked like you should have been in one of those go-go cages.”
“Oh.”
“I liked them,” Grace says. “They were really retro.”
“Thanks.”
The cab drops us at our first destination. I let Maddy take charge of everything. She bustles inside and signals for a salesgirl. “My friend here is getting married,” Maddy says. “We need to find her a dress.”
The salesgirl looks me up and down. She’s been on the job long enough to mask her horror at the sight of me. “Of course. Right this way.”
We start to look through their catalogs, to find something that might look good. I focus on the ones that cover the most skin, ones with long sleeves and full skirts to cover all my body hair. Nothing with an open back or that shows any of my nonexistent cleavage. I show a few to Maddy, who gives me a thumbs up or thumbs down. The ones she likes we set aside to try on later. Grace I note hangs back.
After we’ve narrowed it down to five dresses, Maddy calls the salesgirl back over. “We want to look at these,” she says.
“Of course. If the bride-to-be would follow me—”
I feel a flutter of nausea at the thought of seeing myself naked. Worse yet, for anyone else to see me naked—or mostly naked. “Um, is there anyone else to try them on?” I ask in my raspy whisper. “Like a model or something?”
“How about Grace and I try them on?” Maddy says.
“We’re not the right size,” Grace says. “Especially not you.”
“She just wants to see how the style looks overall, right?”
“Right,” I say.
“So if we try them on she can at least see how they look in three dimensions.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Grace says.
“Why not?” Maddy stares at her partner. When Grace only looks down at the floor, Maddy says, “What, are you afraid you might like looking like a bride?”
“Not as much as you will,” Grace says.
“I don’t know why I even brought you. You’re such a stick in the mud when it comes to marriage.” She takes the salesgirl by the arm and yanks the woman towards the dressing rooms. “Come on, let’s get started.”
Once they’ve gone, Grace and I take a couple of seats nearby to wait. I pull my phone from my purse and then start to type. “We need 2 talk,” I text.
“About what?” Grace asks aloud.
“U & Maddy,” I type back.
“It’s our problem. We can handle it,” Grace says.
“UR my friends. My problem 2.” When Grace doesn’t say anything, I add, “Y U not want 2 marry Maddy?”
Grace takes out her phone, probably so Maddy won’t overhear her. “Not into marriage,” she types.
“BS.”
Maddy comes out in a dress. To see her in the lacy wedding dress almost takes my breath away. Like any father, I long imagined the day I might get to walk Madison down the aisle to marry some great guy and then dance with her at the reception. It turns out she was never into guys, but to see her in the gown brings back those memories.
“Stace, are you OK?” Maddy asks. “You’re crying.”
I wipe at my eyes. “Sorry,” I croak. “It’s so pretty.”
She does a little turn so I can see the whole thing. With my previous wedding in mind, I avoided anything with a long train. I don’t want anything so ostentatious it needs someone to hold it up for me. Maddy turns back to the mirror, “You really like it?”
“Yes.”
She blushes a little and pats her hair. “It is pretty nice, but I think you should see the others first.”
“OK.”
Maddy goes back to try on the next dress. I pick up my phone again. “U C that? Maddy wants 2 marry U so bad. Dont U Luv Her?”
“I do,” Grace says aloud. On the phone she adds, “Theres some1 else.”
“Who?” I ask aloud. She doesn’t say or type anything; she just stares at me.
I bolt from the chair and then from the store. I get as far as the corner before Grace catches me. She grabs my arm to yank me back. I try to fight back, but Grace is bigger than me and at the moment stronger too.
She drags me over to an alley and presses me against a wall. Before I can say anything, she kisses me on the lips. It’s not like our first kiss five years ago. That kiss was magical, as special as any I’ve shared with Mac. This one just brings more phlegm up
in my throat.
When she starts to realize I’m not kissing her back, she pulls away from me. “I know you still love me, Stace. I know you can’t forget about us being together. I haven’t.”
“I’m with Mac now,” I whisper. “I love him.”
“More than you loved me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying,” she says. “I know that meant as much to you as it did to me. There hasn’t been a single day when I haven’t thought about it. Every time I see you, even looking like this, I still think about it.”
“What about Maddy?”
“I love Madison too. I mean, when you guys were missing it just about killed me. I was so glad to get her back, even if she was huge. But I can’t marry her. It wouldn’t be right.” Grace takes my hand in both of hers. “We can make it work, Stace. We can go somewhere, start over fresh. Just you and me. We don’t even have to get married. Every day can be like that night.”
I shake my head. “Sorry. I love Maddy too. I won’t betray her. Not again.”
“Why do you care so much about her? We were together first. You still remember the thrift store, how lost you were?”
“I know.” I can’t tell Grace the real reason I don’t want to hurt Maddy, so I say, “We’re like sisters. I can’t hurt her.”
“Stace, please—”
“I’m marrying Mac.”
It’s her turn to bolt now. She takes off down the alley. Ordinarily I might be able to run her down, but not now with all this extra weight. There’s another reason too, as everything below my waist cramps at once. I drop to the ground and roll around in the filth like a hog.
Then I hear Maddy’s voice. I don’t want her to find me like this in an alley. I scramble on all fours to scurry behind a couple of dented garbage cans. I drop to the ground again and bite down on my lip so I won’t scream. “Stacey? Grace? Where the hell did you go?” Maddy calls out. I stay put and pray she doesn’t come down the alley.
She doesn’t, or at least not far enough to see me. I hear the phone in my purse buzz; she must have sent me a text message. I stuff the purse beneath me to help muffle any sound.
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 66
