WILDCARD

[OVA version]

By Wendy Barlowe

Contents

1. Who Are You Again?
2. Your Photographic Memory
3. From the Same Cloth
4. You Always Knew Just What To Say [You are here]
5. Mirror Images

Chapter 4: You Always Knew Just What to Say

I called out the next day, and spent roughly half of it in bed with the covers pulled over my head, and most of the other half in my pajamas on the couch under several blankets and at least one cat, half paying attention to the TV. One of the local channels had some reruns of Get Smart playing, and I was going through a few stages of grief as I realized that my tastes had changed somewhat since I was a kid, and I wasn’t finding many of the jokes very funny. Well, I was still captivated by Barbara Feldon and her twee secret agent outfits, so I guess some things hadn’t changed. If I just focused on the little hats and double breasted coats and cool knee high boots, I didn’t have to think too hard about, you know, the execution by firing squad waiting for me when I stepped back into the office. 

Well, they probably wouldn’t actually kill me. At least, nobody had done that yet. There was always kind of a weird range of outcomes with these things, and none of them were good in any straightforward way, but some were tolerable enough to wait out while I got my portfolio in order, and others made me want a lobotomy. 

On one hand, it could be the kind of thing where your boss finds the whole thing tolerably weird as long as you’ve been like, personable, and are in a position that’s annoying to replace. Bonus points if you’ve been able to hold a conversation about either sports or finance. Dean was cursed to be a Mariners fan by birth, so we got to commiserate about our home teams underperforming during the season last year, and combined with being in the middle of a large and very technical project, I probably had the base level of security. 

Assuming that was the case, the next issue was coworkers. There was going to be a lot of rubbernecking, and probably a lot of questions I didn’t feel like answering. The guys were difficult to predict. A lot of men thought of us as being a very direct threat to their own masculinity, after all. I had a hard time picturing anybody in this office getting openly aggressive or anything, but I wasn’t going to be surprised if Paul or some of the sales guys started getting really grouchy. And somebody was probably going to blithely throw out some shibboleth that gave me too much insight into what they were getting off to in their spare time. Women were also difficult to predict, but usually violence wasn’t on the table, at least. However, if they did have a real problem I was more likely to hear about it through the boss and have a harder time fast-talking my way out of trouble before things escalated. 

The show cut to commercial after a pun delivered in a fake German accent. I scoffed. I assumed this was the intended reaction. It feels weird to say, but local station ads were kind of mesmerizing sometimes. You got the usual car ads and movie trailers, but ad space was also cheap enough for locals to buy, so at the moment I was being hit with like, the sweatiest, pinkest man I’d ever seen standing outside the car dealership he presumably owned, trying to list off the models he carried in a manic fugue before heatstroke got him, all the while mispronouncing “Mitsubishi” in a new way every time it came up. Great television. 

The thing was, a neutral reaction at work was never guaranteed. Sometimes your boss just wanted you gone, and it wasn’t always easy to predict. When I was in college I remember running into my then-boss at a gay bar while dressed, and immediately got sacked from my summer job. Another time, I thought I was fine because I survived the initial rocky phase, but then I got hit with a ridiculous performance review that was nakedly blowing things out of proportion, and then I was out. The thing was, with stuff like this you were genuinely at the mercy of everybody around you, and if even one of them was especially inimical to your situation and kicked up enough of a fuss with the right people, it was very unlikely that anybody would really stand up for you, and you were kind of just screwed. 

While I was mulling over which of my coworkers was most likely to kick me into a volcano if an evil god demanded it, my train of thought was mercifully obliterated by a commercial starring a woman who looked like a parody of new age spiritualists. Long straw-blonde hair down to her knees, drapey white robes that sort of blended into the grey-blue sky backdrop behind her. Her weirdly elaborate makeup clashed with the image of a simple mountaintop guru she was surely trying to project. She opened her mouth to deliver a boilerplate pitch about finding a higher purpose and becoming your true self and I immediately lost it. Something about the strange weight she was placing on her words and affected breathiness hit my brain at a weird angle that made it much funnier than it was. You know how it is, right? When you’re wound up so tight about something, and a single unexpected punchline releases all the tension at once?

My maniacal cackling startled Lum and she leapt off my stomach and wandered over to her bed in the corner, next to my desk. I couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually I was laughing at the fact that I was going on for as long as I was. When the spell the strange blonde woman had put me under subsided, I became acutely aware of the time, and that I hadn’t really eaten anything all day, and resolved to get my life together to the extent that I could at least lurch over to Bubblegum and hit the regional burger joint a few blocks over. 

Shower. Clothes. Lipstick. Tiki statues. Car. Aaaand... out. I glanced at the dashboard clock and tried to remember whether Cindy’s time zone was three hours behind or five, and what the soonest interval to when I could call her was. To be frank, Cindy wasn’t somebody I usually went to for this sort of thing, but you know, talking to literally anybody was an upgrade over going insane in my own head all day. And I hadn’t talked to the other girls in at least a year, so they were off the table. One burger plus animalistic side of fries later, I was feeling more like a human being and less like a shambling sludge monster, although I did get some thousand island dressing on my white t-shirt. I did my best to clean it, spiked my cup into the trash bin, and headed home. 

When I arrived, it seemed like I could probably get away with making the call, so naturally I procrastinated for a bit by getting changed back into my pajamas and making some hot cocoa. And then I resolved to pick up the damn phone. 

“You’ve reached the home of Brad Walker...” Began Cindy’s answering machine. 

As their little duet played out, I tried to figure out what the hell I was even going to say. 

I hoped to god I wasn’t going to have to talk to Brad. 

I decided on keeping things vague in the message, both because I wasn’t exactly confident in my ability to retell the events of yesterday, like, coherently, and figured that if I went into too much detail, I could cast suspicions on Cindy if the message was played aloud. So, when the machine beeped to signal it was my turn to speak, I started saying, you know, hey Cindy, I ran into trouble and need to talk to somebody, call me back, here’s my num-

The sound of somebody fumbling with the receiver. “Heyy!” Cindy answered, her voice clear and bright like a bell. “Hey, what’s up, I haven’t heard from you in a while, I was getting worried! Are you doing okay?”

“Cindy, I- god, they found me out at work again, I-” my voice caught as I suddenly got carried away with the emotions and spilled it immediately. 

“Oh my god! What happened? Are you, like, safe?” Cindy asked.

When I composed myself again I continued. “Yeah, for now I think I’m safe. Uh, it just happened yesterday and I didn’t come in today, so I dunno how uh, things are gonna go over. But I think I’ll live.”

“Well that’s good, I guess,” Cindy offers.

“I guess,” I say, “We’ll see.” I slouch into the sofa. “God, and it was the stupidest thing. I didn’t even get outed, like, as me.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Where the hell do I start..?” 

I ran my free hand through my hair, and tried to explain things as best I could. Trixie took up residence on my stomach, and Lum pushed one of my legs off the couch to make room. 

“It’s just so... surreal,” I concluded, “and it keeps happening! I can’t go two days without getting mistaken for someone else! It’s freaky! I feel like a crazy person!”

“Wow, that’s...” Cindy trailed off. A pause. “You know, if things do get really dicey,” Cindy started, “I mean, fingers crossed, god forbid, knock on wood, and all that-”

“Salt over the shoulder,” I added. 

“Salt over the shoulder!” she repeated. She laughed. “Hey, I don’t want to speak it into existence! But if you do need help, we’d love to have you out here. We could help you get back on your feet and all.”

“Yeah, I appreciate it,” I sighed. 

“No, seriously!” Cindy pouted, “I keep offering to all the girls but it’s like they don’t believe me or something! You know I’d drop everything for any of you. And- and I do miss everybody. We’re all so lonely, you know?”

“...Yeah.” I admit. I reached my free hand down to run my hand over Trixie’s back. She looked up at me briefly, and then rested her chin back on my chest

Cindy sighed. “Right? I mean, it worked out the way it was meant to I’m sure, and we all have our own sagas we’re in the middle of by now, but still. Not being able to see anybody from back then is...” she trailed off. “Anyway. Keep it in mind.”

I promised to. 

“Oh, I gotta tell you,” She abruptly changed the subject, perhaps employing a familiar tactic, before rattling off a few anecdotes. Brad’s sister flew out and was weird and catty. She started doing yoga classes. They’re still getting confused for tourists. I asked if she’d heard from anyone recently, and asked after Meg. She said,

“Huh? Well that’s a surprise, coming from you.”

Which struck me as weirdly pointed. I knew I screwed things up pretty thoroughly, but she knew I still worried about her. And stuff. 

She told me Meg was still working at the station in Chicago. When I pressed for more, she said she had to go home recently because her mom had pneumonia, and that being back there again was rocky, but she got to show her some tapes of stuff she’d been working on, which played well. One of her cousins overseas came out to her as gay and she was considering flying out for the first time in a while that summer. Cindy had suggested they meet each other halfway in Hawaii. I tried to explain why I wasn’t surprised that didn’t take.

“Oh! I haven’t been able to tell anyone this,” Cindy redirected things again, “but I think I saw a TV while I was out the other night!”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. 

“Yeah!” she exclaimed, “I went to get appetizers with some of the girls from work at this restaurant they like, and there were these two women in one of the booths behind us who were like, a little familiar, but being sneaky about it, you know? So I was thinking, huh, I wonder if there’s something going on there, right? But I couldn’t get a good look at them or anything without being super obvious. When I got up to use the bathroom I tried to look them over covertly to see if I could pick anything up, and sure enough.”

“I mean, they looked great, you know,” she continued, “It wasn’t like, obviously somebody’s first night out and they’re wearing stuff that doesn’t even fit and don’t know how to cover up shadow, right, like only somebody who was looking for it would’ve read them, but one of them was absolutely crossdressing. I was so excited! Even way out here there’s signs of life! And not only that, but I got a rare sighting of the mythical partner who’s into it! It’s like seeing Mothman or something!”

“Yeah, next you’ll catch Elvis doing the deed with the Flatwoods monster,” I joked. “That’s cute though. I wonder if they live there, or if they’re tourists.”

“Well they weren’t Hawaiian, so I dunno,” she said. “It would be a heck of a vacation though. Hey, wanna know what tipped me off? The TV had this elaborate gown on with the evening gloves and heels and everything, and her girlfriend was in a sundress and flip flops.”

“I mean who can blame her? It’s hard to resist turning everything into an excuse to wear evening gloves.” a smile crept across my face. 

“The gloves are really the ones in charge. That’s where your soul is,” Cindy says. “Oh what was it that Nelly used to say all the time? ‘If you’re on a date with a TV you’ll always be underdressed. It’s a rule of nature.’”

I laughed, though a pang of mourning hit me too.

“Oh god, but when I was on the way back from the bathroom we made eye contact and I felt awful!” Cindy exclaimed, “Like, god, I hope I didn’t ruin their night or something. I just got so excited!”

It started getting late, and the cats had fallen asleep on top of me while we were talking. I tried to wrap things up, and Cindy said something about how she was still adjusting to the time zones working out the opposite way they used to.

“Well anyway,” Cindy finished, “let me know how stuff goes, you know? I’ll be thinking about you.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Okay. Talk to you soon, Wendy! Tell Danny I said hi too! Love you!”

She hung up. I froze, receiver still in hand, and mouth half open.

I drifted through the rest of the night in a daze. The cats followed close behind, certainly aware something was up with me, but for once fully unable to soothe my fears through proximity and languid blinking. 

Surely it was just a mistake, I tried to convince myself, I must not have said who I was, and I mean, Wendy and I didn’t sound very alike, but over the phone, with a bit of trans woman voice, it’s possible..? I knew she wouldn’t play that mean a prank on me on purpose at least, she wasn’t that kind of girl. It must’ve been a mistake. It must’ve been.

I mean, what other explanation was there? For all the doubt in my mind, what was there to doubt? Was I secretly starting to think I was cursed, or something? That I left part of my identity behind in a motel somewhere? 

At some point late at night I placed my body in bed, but very little sleeping seemed to happen while it was there. I simply drifted in and out of delirium and half-dreams while the alarm clock on the nightstand advanced its vaguely legible red digits. At roughly ▒:░▓am, I had to pry myself out of bed and shamble towards the bathroom, still barely conscious. 

I fumbled for the night light and was startled by a dark shape moving in its dim glow, about the size and shape of a human. In a panic, I threw on the lights, and squinted from the shock of the sudden glare. The figure seemed nonplussed by this too, but both of us were too stunned to take advantage of it. Once my eyes adjusted as well as they were going to, I got a better look at the figure before me. A woman. She had a tangle of wild red hair, blue eyes, a defined chin, and pointed nose, with the beginnings of wrinkles forming near her eyes and mouth. Her build was tall and gangly, probably about my height. The neckline of her drapey sea green pajama top exposed part of her collarbone and cut low enough that it would’ve exposed some cleavage as well, were her breasts not somewhat wide set. Below, her long legs stretched out beneath her matching shorts. She was... kind of alluring. 

The strange woman seemed frozen in fear or confusion, unsure whether to bolt or stand her ground. She shifted her weight awkwardly, her eyes darted around, surely sizing me up as I’d been doing to her. Who the hell was she anyway, and why the hell was she in my bathroom in the middle of the night? How had I not been woken up by her breaking in? I wondered what I should do. My folks would probably call me a pansy for it, but home defense wasn’t exactly something I spent a lot of time thinking about. I did have a baseball bat in the closet, but like, I’d never used it on a person. I’d barely used it on baseballs! I wondered whether I should just make a break for Bubblegum and get to a payphone. I wondered whether she’d try to stop me. 

My mind raced for a few frenzied seconds before I snapped fully into reality and realized that I had wholly failed to recognize my own reflection in the mirror. My stomach found itself in a knot, and after some evasive maneuvering, I emptied a volley of puke down the toilet. When I finished, I spat out the rancid saliva pooling in my mouth a few times, wiped my mouth on some bunched up toilet paper, and laid back against the cool tile floor, sweating and panting. As I stared up at the ceiling, I could hear the scratching of the cats at the door.