Johnny stepped around behind Frances, leaned out the front door, and looked around. Seeing nothing amiss -- that is, no more mysterious blue vans in the vicinity -- he closed the door. "Let's go in the kitchen," he said. "Want some water?"
"Sure, great," said Frances as they walked down the hall. Johnny grabbed a plastic bottle out of the fridge and lightly tossed it to Frances, who leaned against the counter.
"Wouldn't you rather sit down?" Johnny motioned toward the kitchen table as Frances twisted the cap off the bottle, put it down on the counter, and gave it a little spin. She took a big swig out of the water before she said, "Nah, I'm fine."
Johnny was secretly glad she'd opted to stand, because it meant he'd continue to have a good view of her body. God, whenever he'd seen her in a skirt in high school, her legs had been blotchy and bumpy -- he guessed her skin was a bit too sensitive to handle a shave well -- but now they looked smooth as silk.
Finally, she noticed. "Are you going to keep staring at me, or are you going to answer my question about the meteor crater?"
Startled, Johnny said, "Come on, I haven't seen you in a year!" He grinned. "You look even better than I remember."
She crossed her arms, which had the delightful effect of adding to her cleavage. "After you've spent a year looking at California girls? Yeah, right. Come on, tell me -- what's the deal with the meteor?"
"It was actually a UFO," said Johnny. Noticing the look that crossed Frances's face, he immediately added, "I'm serious! There was all this metallic wreckage around, and after I put out the fires, I saw this gray humanoid...alien...lying there, looking hurt. He gave me this" -- Johnny held up his left wrist to show off the bracelet -- "and was trying to tell me what it was when he died, I guess, and just disappeared. Then the wreckage disappeared. So there's nothing up there now but some burned grass."
After a few seconds, and a long drink of water, Frances finally uttered a drawn-out "Oooooo-kay. So what'd you tell Officer Shannon?"
"Nothing, really," said Johnny, "but I didn't have to. I figured out that this thing can control minds, so I made her, uh, forget about asking any serious questions, and then I figured out later that it can change reality. While I was figuring that out, I somehow changed her from a Federal agent into a local cop."
"Federal agent? What are you talking about? Shannon DeFrane -- she was two years ahead of us in high school, went to the police academy in Helena, and came back here to be a cop. Her dad plays poker with my dad."
"That's all a change to reality," Johnny tried to explain. "Things were different before, and then I changed them, and you remember them the wrong way, but that's actually now the right way, but I still remember things the old way --"
"You lost me," interrupted Frances.
"I lost myself," said Johnny. "Hold on." He looked down at Frances's feet and imagined her boots transforming into a completely impractical pair of shiny black platform shoes with ridiculously high heels. He felt the world "ripple," and she was now wearing exactly what he'd pictured, from right out of a fetish porn movie. He had to look up at her, now that she was effectively almost a foot taller. "What shoes are you wearing?" he asked.
Frances looked down with a puzzled expression, bracing herself against the counter on which she was leaning as she lifted one foot to get a closer look. "These," she said. "You can see 'em just fine."
"But you rode your bike over here, didn't you?" Johnny probed. "Don't you think those are a little impractical for bike riding?"
Frances still looked puzzled. "What, like I was supposed to wear something newer? A different color? I didn't want to get mud on any of my nicer shoes."
"Don't you think something with a flat sole would have worked better?"
"Flat soles?!" exclaimed Frances. "Do I look like a guy to you? I mean, I know we didn't fuck that often in high school, but you know very well I've got a pussy. Did that 'UFO' scramble your brain?"
Johnny's head swam. It seemed that he'd changed things so that women always wore high heels, and he and Frances had been more than "just friends" in high school, and probably thousands of other little things were different as well.
Sat Apr 12 03:09:10 2008