Message-ID: <7529eli$9804032236@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
From: Citizen@GalaxyCorp.com (Citizen)
X-Good-Total-Length: yes
Subject: {Christopher Leeson}"Bobbi McGee"( MF tg ScFi )
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Path: qz!not-for-mail
Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam
Approved: <usenet-approval@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded <story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
X-Story-Submission: <story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
X-Original-Message-ID: <35254ea0.12339477@news.mindspring.com>


Reposter's note: to contact the author, please send e-mail to cdl25@usa.net


                     BOBBI McGEE 

                 by Christopher Leeson

     "Uuhh," Dori moaned as Rob's hips began a powerful up and down
movement.  He was flint to her steel.  Dori felt the sparks which
were triggering a series of emotional rockets -- fire-breathers
that jetted with scorching energy along the million arterial ways
of her twenty-two year old body. . . .

     Suddenly the doorbell chimed.  With a mutter of frustration,
Rob stopped what he was doing and rolled over.

     "Keey-rist!" Rob panted.  "That's timing for you."

     Dori gasped for breath as his weight eased back from her
chest.  "Get rid of them!" she moaned urgently.

     "I'll just be a minute, doll," Rob promised, rising with a
long sigh.  He quickly dried his particulars with a tissue, threw
on his plaid robe, and then hurried into the living room.  In just
a minute he was back, carrying a small package in a brown wrapper.

     "Who was it?" asked Dori.

     "Nobody.  Just a twenty-four hours delivery service."

     "What did you get?  Who sent it?"

     "There's no return address."  Rob sat down at the edge of the
bed and started tearing off the wrapping paper.  Dori nestled up
behind him and rested her chin on his hard shoulder.

     "Well, well, well," he muttered as he removed the contents of
the box.  "Cute."

     Dori frowned.  It was some sort of primitive female sculpture,
naked except for a strange headdress. No wonder Rob liked it!  He
always did admire big breasts, she knew.  As Rob turned the thing
around Dori observed that it was two-faced; a male figure was cast
behind the female one.  Dori knew immediately which side her man
would be setting outward for viewing!  He was a horny guy, but he
was at least hers!

     "-- Look, here's a card," Rob said, plucking a piece of paper
from the box.  "`To Rob with hate.  Cassandra.'  I never thought
I'd hear that name again."

     "Who's Cassandra?" asked Dori suspiciously.

     "Nobody.  -- She and I used to live together, that's all.  It ended
badly."

     "You never mentioned her!"

     "Why should I?  I know what a jealous woman you are."

     "She was nobody?  Just a live-in girlfriend?!  Who am I then? 
Nobody plus one, or two, or three, or five?"

     "Listen, cute stuff, how do you think I got to be so good in
bed if this was strictly amateur hour?"

     "So you DID have a lot of girls before you met me!"

      "I've always been popular, so sue me!  -- Dori, don't be a
pain."

     "Pain?!  I just want some respect."

     "Baby bottom, you're going nuts over nothing!  Settle down."

     I don't like the idea of old girlfriends sending you gifts! 
Does it say that she's going to be visiting?"

     "I told you what it said!  For crying out loud, Dori, give me
some credit.  I've only had eyes for you from the day I set eyes on
you!"

     "You've only known me a month.  Who will it be next month?"

     "Honey!"

     "I must have been crazy to think that what we had was
something special."

     "It is -- sort of!"

     "Sort of?!  That does it!  Let your old girlfriend know
there's a vacancy.  I'm quitting the fan club!"

     Dori scrambled from the bed.  Rob didn't say anything.  There
was actually nothing he could say when Dori Elrick was in one of
her snits.  He watched her pull on her clothes with a speed never
seen before.  Once dressed in the same peasant blouse and miniskirt
that she had worn earlier to the restaurant (a get-up that made her
look more like a loafing cocktail waitress than a customer to be
served), she started emptying the drawers and stuffing her cheap
plastic- over-cardboard suitcases.  

     Rob might have tried sweet-talking her, but he knew that Dori
was prone to flare-ups and sudden mood-changes.  The best thing for
the girl was a little breathing space.  After all, he hadn't done
anything wrong, except live a life of his own before he had ever
met her.  The little brunette could walk out of his life if she
wanted to, or stay, but, either way, he didn't see any reason to
beg.

     Leaving Dori alone to finish her packing, Rob shuffled out to
the kitchen and turned on the radio.  It was set to the oldies
channel that Dori liked so well and just then they were playing a
familiar tune:

     "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. . . ."

     That was Janis Joplin's "Bobbie McGee," a song that he had
always enjoyed.  But right now the lyrics  depressed him.  They
were about a great relationship  that just couldn't hold together
for the long term.   It reminded Rob of his own history with women. 


     The next song was Frank Sinatra's "I Could Write a Book."  I
bet you could, you old Mafiosi, Rob chuckled as he went to the
refrigerator and broke open a beer.  By the time he finished it,
Dori was coming out of the bedroom, loaded down with suitcases and
even paper bags full of her wash-and-wear things.  As she stormed
past him, Rob noticed an article fall from one of her
precariously-held bags and plop down on the kitchen floor.

     "Dori!" he said.

     She turned angrily.  "Don't plead with me to stay, Rob!" 

     "I wouldn't.  I think we both need some space, but you dropped
--"

     "Ooh, men!  Listen, Rob, I'll give you so much space that
you'll never see me again!"

     With that final pronouncement, Dori stomped out the back door
and Rob heard her footsteps on the stairs leading down to the
residents' garage where her Toyota was parked.

     "Women!" he sighed.  Well, he consoled himself, she had stayed
longer than most.  No big deal.  Rob could cook better than Dori on
her best day, and her sloppy housekeeping always drove him crazy.

     The young man got up from his chair and plucked the fallen
object from the tiles.  It was just a skimpy  pair of blue denim
cut-offs, so small that the lush curves of her lower buttocks were
left bare -- a glory to see, he had to admit.   Rob shook his head
at the memory, then tossed the shorts on the counter top
indifferently.  Unlike some males, Rob didn't get excited about
women's clothes -- unless, that is, they were filled with a woman
who could do them justice.

     The night's fun and games had tired Rob out and he padded
sleepily back to the bedroom.  The moment he stepped in the door he
again noticed the two-faced idol lying on the covers.  His
curiosity renewed, he picked it up and turned the object about in
his hands.  The face on either side of it had little gem eyes and
he wondered if it was valuable or just some cheap import.  There
was an inscription on its bottom which looked very much like Indian
script. 

     Rob couldn't help wondering why Cassandra had sent him the
thing.  They shared very few tastes.  He had known her when she was
a graduate student in anthropology, but Rob was more into sports
cars and had never talked to her about her favorite subject --
except on the subject of exotic mating rituals.  Their sex had been
hot, but her strident feminism eventually turned him off.  With one
breath Cassandra would be expressing the superiority of woman, and
with the next complaining that she hadn't been born a man.

     He wished he could understand women.  Men never went around
wishing they were female -- at least the sort of men Rob felt
comfortable with didn't.  What was the big deal anyway? he
wondered.  Whatever sex you were dealt, the sensible person
accepted it and enjoyed it for all that it was worth.  The one
thing which Rob had really liked about Dori was the way she seemed
to have a hell of a good time with being a girl, the exact opposite
from Cassandra.  Too bad that her peeves and snits always drove him
up the wall.

     That was the way it was.  When something was right with a
girl, something else was wrong.  I just wish that I could find my
perfect match, Rob thought.  He was getting more than a little
tired of these affairs that never seemed to turn into anything deep
or meaningful.  Why couldn't he have a relationship like his
parents'?   Up until the terrible accident that had taken both
their lives, they had enjoyed a wonderful partnership.  

     Rob was beginning to think that he had a lousy taste in women. 
Or was it something in his personality, some quirk in him that
attracted women for a little while, but then drove them away?  Rob
knew he was in a rut -- and not for the first time he found himself
wishing that he could get out of it somehow.  He shook his head. 
How could he?  He was what he was.  It would probably take a
miracle to change a quality so fundamental to his character.

     But he couldn't help but wonder what comprised the happiness
that some lucky couples found with one another.  Common interests,
he thought, trust, sharing, and patience?  Kindness, forgiveness,
and respect?  And he shouldn't leave out friendship.  Of all the
women he had known, not one real friend stood out among them.  That
was a sad commentary.  

     It all had seemed so simple when Rob had been a hormonal
teenager.  Then he had supposed that a lot of high-quality screwing
would bring happiness.  Well, as a jaded veteran he had learned
that the merchandise wasn't bad, but it was no happiness pill
either.  Sex was only one element of a good relationship, not the
bricks and stone.  It two people had nothing else going, it was an
empty thing.

     He put the idol on the nightstand with the female-side out,
intending to admire it later in the morning light.  Then Rob threw
off his robe and slipped under the covers.  He was dead to the
world in a just few minutes.

     As the young man lay half-asleep, he dreamed he was fondling
Dori's breast.  It felt larger than he remembered and when he
touched Dori's boob, he thought that he could feel his own fingers
playing teasingly upon it.  When he opened his blurry eyes to the
early dawn's light, he saw Dori's breasts, but the odd thing was
that he couldn't see Dori at all -- just her breasts.  

     "God, what a dream!" he muttered.

     His chest started itching as he lay there, but when he
scratched himself he felt soft, tender mounds of flesh which were
hurt by his nails as if they were his own.  He grimaced; he just
couldn't seem to get out of that lucid dream about women's breasts. 
Just then his sleepy fingers went to his groin, which was also
itching.  Instead of his scrotum, he found there a wooly patch
occupying an emptiness where his well-oiled equipment always had
parked.  What the hell? he wondered.  Then he understood.  He was
dreaming that he was a woman!  Kinky, he chuckled.  Rob couldn't
recall ever having had such a dream  before.  On impulse, he
decided to go look at himself in the dream mirror.  Robert Wescott
as a woman, he supposed in his sleep-drugged state, should be
something to see.

     The nearly somnambulant Rob staggered to the full-length
mirror and he wasn't disappointed.  A slim girl with long, soft
honey-blond curls gazed back at  him from the glass.  She looked
like a healthy and  athletic sort of miss, as if she swam and ran
a lot,  just like Rob did himself.  Her breasts were nicer  than
Dori's -- not as big Dolly Parton's, of course,  but would have
done credit to Christie Brinkley.   

     The reflected girl had a nest of light brown pubic hair that
almost hid the pursed lips of her pussy.  Her waist was narrow, Rob
noted, but her hips were becomingly round.  Rob touched his
buttocks and saw the girl's hands go behind her also, mimicking him
perfectly.  The girl's derriere felt full and hard, just the sort
that he loved most to fondle.

     The miss in the mirror smiled with pleasure.  Both fondling
and being fondled felt very good.  Intrigued by the heightened
sensitivity of his dream-body, Rob reached forward and stroked his
dream-pussy lightly.  One touch of its sensitive labia sent
something like an electric shock coursing through his body, making
him shudder.

     An amazing dream, Rob thought, but one so intriguing that he
didn't want it to end just yet.  He carefully studied the girl's
oval face with its pert little chin.  If she looked familiar it was
because she looked so much like him.  The angles of his cheeks and
jaw were softened by her feminine sex, however, and they framed
both a prettily turned-up nose and a pair of big robin-egg blue
eyes with long blonde lashes.  Her lips were so full and sensual
that they reminded him of his mother's when she was young.

     The young man grinned as he sleepily considered the
experience.  If he had been unfortunate enough to be born a girl,
he wondered whether it might not have been quite so intolerable had
Mother Nature graced him with the gentle beauty of the girl in the
glass.  

     Rob yawned.  Standing there so long had made him weak in the
legs; he had to lie down or fall.  So, forgetting the strange
dream, he wobbled over to the bed and plopped down.  He was out
cold as soon as his face hit the pillow.

     The seven o'clock alarm bell woke Rob fully.  He yawned and
rubbed his chest. 

     Then Robert Wescott yelled in horror.                
                           #  

     Wrapped tightly in his robe, Rob paced back and forth across
the kitchen floor.  It hadn't been a dream!  He had actually been
looking at himself in the mirror.  Somehow -- by some incredible
somehow -- he had turned into a girl during the night!

     Things like this only happened in stupid movies, he knew, but
not in reality.  In fact, he had lately watched a weird video
called SYNAPSE -- about a male-to-female brain transplant and a lot
of automatic weapons combat.  He also remembered that movie that
Cassandra had once brought home.  It was called SWAT or STITCH, or
something like that.  It starred Perry King, who God turned into
Ellen Barkin for having treated women so shabbily.  But Perry's
character had had to die before being zapped with a female shape. 
Rob knew that he was still alive -- or at least, he thought that he
was.  What had happened?  Suddenly he remembered the statuette in
the bedroom.

     Cassandra!  Now it all started making sense.  When he knew her
she had already been getting into primitive fertility magic studies
and that Mother Goddess stuff.  In fact, she had even done research
among those crazy Wicca cultists.

     Sorcery!  That was it!  Cassandra had cursed him!  She had
found a magic idol and cursed him with it.  In fact, maybe she had
even used it on herself first, considering her silly male-envy. 
Was there now a man named Cass wandering around?  Rob hoped never
to run into the bum -- without a gun in his hand, at least!

     "I've got to see a doctor -- fast!" he -- or rather, she --
muttered to herself.


     Rob ran back into the bedroom and threw on her much-too-large
male pants, shirt, and shoes.  The hapless young woman walked right
out of her size-twelve loafers at her very first step.

     Damn! she thought, I can't go outside looking like this.  I
need women's clothes, at least until I get to the hospital.  Maybe
Dori left some things behind that'll fit this stupid body!  

     Rob, her heart pounding in her throat, rushed to the closet
hoping to find a pair of jeans and a shirt that she could wear
without embarrassment.  The closet was empty, as were the drawers. 
Dori didn't leave much of anything behind, just a little cloth
purse with nothing in it but lint; it had fallen behind Rob's
tennis shoes and been overlooked in her haste.  Then the girl got
the idea to check the clothes hamper and, as luck would have it,
Dori had missed something.  

     Rob found an orange halter top and a pair of panties.  The
clothes from the bottom of the hamper had a sweaty, musky scent,
but Rob wasn't worrying about that as she hastily put them on.  She
was able to get into the halter fairly easy since Rob had watched
lots of girlfriends dressing.  But to her annoyance, the halter
seemed too snug to be comfortable.  Then the young woman realized
that she actually had boobs bigger than Dori's!

     Rob could have gone out barefoot, but didn't want to. 
Suddenly remembering having seen Dori's sandals under the bed a
couple days earlier, she got down on her hands and knees to have
another look.  Sure enough, they were still there.  Rob now had
some footgear!

     But the bikini top and panties weren't enough to clothe her
decently.  Just then Rob remembered that pair of cut-offs back in
the kitchen.  Without pausing for breath, she ran to get the denim
shorts.

     With the cut-offs in hand again, she felt a twinge of dismay. 
They were so skimpily cut!  Why did Dori have to be such a bimbo? 
In her state of mind Rob had forgotten just how much Dori's lack of
fashion sense had excited her as male.

     Realizing that she had no choice, Rob climbed into the
cut-offs and found that she had to exhale hard to get the snaps
closed.  Apparently her remolded hips were a size or two wider than
Dori's.  If the shorts were tight on their owner, they were less
than a second skin on Rob.  

     Though now dressed as well as possible, Rob still felt like
she was standing around in underwear -- and girl's underwear at
that!  Her cleavage was pushed up brazenly by the constraint of the
halter and the panties, not designed to be worn with shorts so
sparing, showed.  Exasperated, Rob stuffed the visible hems up
under the tight denim of her cut-offs and then went to get her
wallet and keys.  As she fumbled them out of the drawer, she
realized that the pockets of her shorts were much too tight for her
to put anything  into them.  Women always had a pocket problem, Rob 
remembered, and they solved it by carrying purses. 

     Resourcefully, Rob seized Dori's forgotten purse and stuffed
the wallet and keys inside it.  Then, as an afterthought, she put
the magic statuette in along with them, hoping that the hospital
could have it analyzed and find the antidote.  Finally, Rob hurried
down to the residents' garage, got into her Dodge Avenger, hastily
readjusted the seat forward, and started the engine.

                           #

     Trembly and preoccupied, Rob almost had an accident in the
morning traffic, but she finally managed to get into the hospital
parking ramp safely.  Without pausing to lock the doors, the
distraught girl raced up to the emergency room.

     "I've got to s-see a doctor!" she stammered to the
receptionist.  The middle-aged woman regarded the girl's dishabille
coolly, asking, "What's the problem?"

     "I'm under a curse!"

     "A what?"

     "A curse!  I've been changed!"

     "What do you mean you've been changed?"

     "I -- I'd rather explain that to the doctor."

     "Do you wanted to see our staff psychiatrist?"

     "I'm not crazy!  I want to see the doctor who knows the most
about breaking curses!"

     As distraught as she was, Rob realized that she wasn't making
much sense.  But who else should she ask for?  A gynecologist?

     "Maybe we should start you out with a family medicine
practitioner," the receptionist suggested.  "What's your insurance
company?"

      "Metro Group Health," Rob answered, frustrated by the way
hospitals did business.  She dug deeply into her wallet to find her
medical services card.

     The receptionist took the plastic rectangle from her shaking
hand and frowned.  "This is a card for a Robert Wescott."

      Rob thought quickly.  "Ah, he's my husband.  We have the
family plan."

     "No you don't.  This card says `individual only.'  Do you have
any other means of paying, Miss?"

     She wanted to scream, to shriek to the world that she was
Robert Wescott, but who would believe that a pretty girl wearing an
overstuffed halter and a pair of flirtatious cut-offs had a grown
man hidden inside her? Anyway, people were watching, listening. 
Rob didn't want anyone to know who she was.  It was just too
humiliating.

     The blonde checked her wallet for cash.  She -- then he -- had
shown Dori a good time at dinner the night before.  There wasn't
more than a few dollars left.  "I've got a credit card," she gasped
in agitation.

     The receptionist took the card patiently, but again had to
frown.  "This is your husband's, my dear.  We can't accept your
card unless you can prove that you're really Mrs. Wescott.  Do you
have a picture ID?"

     Rob was so distressed that she wasn't thinking at all well. 
She fumbled inside her wallet again, saying, "Sure I've got a
driver's license!"

     She pulled out the license and shoved it in front of the
woman.

     The receptionist sighed wearily.  "No, Miss, we can't use Mr.
Wescott's license.  We have to see yours."

     "I guess -- I guess I forgot it," Rob mumbled hopelessly.  Now
she was really getting frightened.  In another moment they'd be
accusing her of having stolen  some man's wallet and trying to use
his health plan and credit card illegally.  If questioned by a
policeman, what could she say?

     "I hope you can get home without being arrested," the
receptionist remarked.

     "What?!" Rob cried out, as if her mind had been picked of its
darkest nightmare.

     "You don't have your own license on you.  Drive carefully."

      Rob shuddered as the horror sank in.  She couldn't prove who
she was, but still had to get help.  If she didn't get a
vaccination for this terrible condition soon, it might go too far
-- and might even become permanent!

     "Can't you put me on welfare, then.  I -- I'm terribly sick!"

     The receptionist took another look at the pretty, but
naughtily-clad and very messed-up, waif.  She suspected that the
little blonde was on drugs.  Well, that was nothing new.  Every
year the emergency room got hundreds of cases of people who had put
all their money into their arm or up their nose.  They were a
terrible burden on the system, but they had to be taken take care
of, even if the taxpayer had to foot the bill.

     "All right honey, we'll see what we can do.  What's your
name?"

     "Ah -- R-Rob --"

     "Excuse me?"

     "Ah, Bobbi!  -- Bobbi Wescott."

     "What is your Social Security number, Bobbi," she asked in a
subdued voice, trying not to set off the distraught girl.

     "I'll find it," Bobbi stammered as she looked for her card. 
Then she stopped suddenly.  It would have the Robert Wescott name
on it, too.  Showing it would just compound her problems.  "Please,
I don't need any more questions, Miss.  I need help!"  She began to
sob.  
                           #  

     Finally Bobbi got to see a doctor.  He suspected  drugs and
checked for them.  While he did so, Bobbi  tried to explain her
transformation calmly and clearly to him, but only convinced the
physician that she was delusional.  He prescribed valium and made
her an appointment with a hospital psychiatrist.  By that time
Bobbi had steadied herself enough to appear rational,
at least to the untutored eye.

     Leaving the hospital, Bobbi realized that medical science
couldn't help her.  Scientists didn't understand magic.  She
guessed that she would have to see a witch instead.  But how did
one find a practicing warlock? she wondered.  They didn't advertise
in the  phone book, or did they?  There was an occult book store
downtown, the girl suddenly remembered.  Maybe she could ask the
clerks there for a lead.

     Bobbi drove home without mishap and, used up, emotionally
spent, she put her key into the lock.  She just wanted to get into
bed, to cover up her head and cry herself empty.  Much to her
surprise, the door only opened a couple inches; the security chain
was set.  As she shook the door in frustration, Dori peered through
the crack.  

     "Dori!  You're back!" cried Bobbi.

     "You're damned right I'm back!" Dori snarled.  "Who in hell
are you and what are you doing with Rob's key?"

     "Damn it Dori, I live here!"

     "What do you mean you live here?  That bastard sure didn't
waste any time replacing me, did he!   Well, I'm going to fight for
my man!  Take a hike, bitch!"

     "No, Dori, you don't understand!"

     Dori was opening the door.  "I understand, all right, you
little tramp!  Rob thinks you're moving in with him!  Well, he's
got another thing coming!  Give me those keys!  You'll stay in this
apartment over my dead body!"

     Dori shoved Bobbi hard against the wall and grabbed at her
keys.  Dori's strength seemed incredible!  Being manhandled by a
sleek girl like Dori so shocked Bobbi that she defended herself
very poorly; she couldn't prevent the keys from being torn from her
nerveless grasp.  Then Dori stormed back into the apartment,
slammed the door shut, and threw the deadbolt.

     "Let me in, you stupid slut!" Bobbi yelled, beating on the
panel with her tender fists.  "At least give me back my car keys!"

     "Your car keys?  They've got Rob's name on them and they're
for his Dodge!  Get out of here, or I'll call the police!"

     Bobbi slumped back against the wall, overwhelmed.  Locked out
of her apartment, her car keys lost, having almost no money, barely
dressed, she realized now that she didn't even have an identity. 
The girl suddenly grasped that her problem wasn't just facing life
as a woman, it was a matter of basic survival -- food, shelter,
clothing! 

     She shuddered.  What a heartless revenge Cassandra had taken! 
Sure, Rob had told her that he had had his fill of her nutty ideas
and had ordered her out of his life -- but this was too extreme a
retribution.  It was like shooting a person in the heart for taking
someone's potato chip.  Black despair overcame the young woman and
a ghastly image flashed before her inner mind -- an image of
herself standing on a high bridge ready to jump, hopelessness and
horror snatching at her from behind, death and darkness waiting up
ahead.

     I don't want to die, she thought desperately.  Jim!  He's my
best friend.  He'll know who I am!  He'll help me!

                           #  

     The door to Jim's apartment opened slowly.  A face that wasn't
Jim's appeared, saying pleasantly,  "Well, hello!  What can I do
for you?"

     Bobbi recognized Rona Spears.  In fact, she knew that this had
always been Rona's apartment -- it had been Jim who had moved in
with her.  

     "Am I glad that somebody's home!"  Bobbi jabbered.  " --
Listen, I'm Bobbi, uh, McGee, a friend of Robert Wescott.  I wanted
to stay with him while I'm visiting the city, but, uh, he's not in
town.  So I thought about Jim and you.  Rob said that you were such
good friends of his.  Is it okay?"   

     Rona sized up the girl.  Yes, she looked just like the type
that Rob Wescott would be interested in.  In fact, maybe his taste
was improving.  There was a natural charm to this young miss.  The
business woman sensed a vulnerability in Bobbi McGee that called
out something benign and sisterly from deep inside her. 

     "Any friend of Rob's is a friend of ours," she said with a
smile.  "I'm afraid that Jim is seeing clients in Sacramento and
won't be back until tomorrow night.  You can stay here until either
he or Rob shows up."

     "That's great, Rona!"

     "Don't mention it, Bobbi."  Just then Rona caught the scent of
her guest's musty clothing and perspiration.  "Did you walk all the
way here from Rob's?"

     "Yes, I wanted to save the cab fare."

     Rona stood aside to let Bobbi enter.  "Well, why don't you
freshen up with a shower?  Do you have an overnight bag?"

     "Ah, no.  It was stolen from the cart at the bus station,"
Bobbi lied agilely.

     "Damn this city!" Rona commiserated.

                            # 

     A half hour later found Bobbi resting upon a stuffed chair. 
Now wearing a pair of Rona's jeans and a shirt, it felt good to be
out Dori's mix-and-match bimbo outfit.  The shower, too, was
restorative, but touching her strange new body while she bathed had
been hard for Bobbi.  She had kept her eyes closed through the
whole process.

     Rona stepped back into the room wearing a dress suit and a
string tie.  "Well, Bobbi, I hate to leave, but I have a dinner
engagement with an important client."

     "You'd leave me here alone?  A stranger?"

     "It's obvious that you know Rob very well.  Somehow, I don't
think anyone with such sad, gentle eyes could be a thief.  And,
besides, there's something about you that makes me feel like I know
you already."


     "You won't be sorry," Bobbi promised gratefully.

     Left alone, Bobbi grew a little restless as the afternoon wore
on.  She got up and paced about the apartment.  She took a Diet
Coke, made a salami sandwich, and found that just one filled her
up.  Maybe a smaller body meant a smaller appetite.  That's good,
she thought -- lower grocery bills.  Then she wandered over to the
full-length mirror.

     "Look at you!" Bobbi rebuked her own reflection.  "What a
sight you are!"  She folded her arms over the swollen front of her
shirt and cast a troubled glance out the window.  

     "How long am I going to be like this?" she mused.  "Forever?"

     Screwing up her courage, Bobbi regarded her reflection yet
again.  This time she had to nod  grudgingly.  "You're
good-looking," she sighed, "I'll  grant you that!"

     The young woman's curiosity at last got the better of her and
she took off her shirt.  Rona's clothes fitted very well, Bobbi had
discovered, but, like Dori's, Rona's bra was just too snug.  In
fact, the discomfort was enough to prompt the new-minted girl to
take it off entirely.  Now bare to the waist, Bobbi cupped her
bra-pinched breasts in her hands and massaged the soreness away.

     "I really grew a big crop of America's best last night," she
chuckled sadly.  Were they hers for keeps?  Was there any way to
break the magic spell?  How long did spells last if you didn't do
something to break them?  She tried to think of all the stories she
had read about magic, all the movies she had seen.  The Shaggy Dog
had to do something brave and heroic to become a boy again, she
recalled.  The Frog Prince had to get a princess to kiss him.  The
Beast had to make Beauty love him.

     Bobbi grinned, enjoying the idea of being kissed by Princess
Di and being restored to gorgeous manhood in her arms.  But it
wasn't a practical solution.

     The blonde put her hands on her hips and tilted her head from
side to side.

     If I'm stuck as a girl for any time at all, Bobbi thought,
I've got to earn a living.  How do I do that?  I can't even prove
I have a high school diploma now.  Maybe I could become a model. 
Bobbi fantasized herself in a bikini and leaning sexily against a
red Nissan  240SX, or a glossy black Acura Integra upon the cover 
of some future issue of SPORTS CAR.  Not much hard work in
modeling, she thought; wearing a bikini in public  would be the
roughest part.  But then she reconsidered. Fat chance!  Those jobs
were hard to get.  Every model  that she had known as Rob had at
one time or other complained that she had had to sleep with
somebody to get the really worthwhile assignments.

     Bobbi winced.  The idea of sleeping with a man  was decidedly
unpleasant, even if it meant earning a good living.  Now that she
was a girl, Bobbi wondered if it meant that she would like boys. 
For an experiment, she called up a large image of Fabio in her
mind's eye and decided that it didn't do a thing for her.  But
Cindy Crawford -- ahh, now that was a body to set her heart strings
strumming!  But could Bobbi thrill Cindy in the shape she was now? 
Maybe, considering some of those tabloid stories about the
supermodel.  Be that as it may, Bobbi could console herself that
plenty of beautiful girls were willing to sleep with other girls. 
Especially girls like the one in the mirror.

     I need a drink, she thought, if I'm ever going to sort this
thing out.  Damn, what if Jim won't believe me?  What then?  Bobbi
went over to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a Scotch and
soda.  

     As she consumed the hard liquor, she felt depressed.  Rob had
worked very hard at building a career in real estate.  Now it was
lost.  As Bobbi she might have to start all over again.  Well,
there were plenty of female realtors.  The women in the business
did well on the whole, as long as they applied themselves as
vigorously as a man would.  

     In fact, it was at a realtor's convention where Rob had first
met Rona, and there discovered that they both lived in the same
city.  The two of them were friendly from the start, but they had
never quite made it into bed together.  It was Jim's heart -- or
loins -- that Rona had set on fire that time when Rob had
introduced them.  Rob hadn't really resented the way that things
had worked out.  He thought that Rona would be good for his friend
and, besides, Rob's hands were full just then with a postal worker
named Charlotte who liked to lick whipped cream off his bare feet.

     Bobbi sighed.  Those were the good old days.  Were they really
gone forever?  What could she replace them with?  The small blonde
downed the rest of her drink, and then tackled a second.  How
strangely and how suddenly her fate had changed!  She suddenly
became worried that this experience was some sort of punishment --
from Heaven, not just from the weird and vindictive Cassandra.  Was
it possible that Cassandra might actually have been acting --
unwittingly -- as Heaven's agent?  

     Bobbi decided that it couldn't be.  Rob had never hurt women. 
In fact, he had made more than his share of women very happy -- for
a while.  At least he had never committed the big faux pas and
gotten one of them pregnant.  That is, he never knew for certain
that any of his girls were pregnant when split-up time arrived.  
     At that point she checked herself, supposing that in another
minute she'd be feeling guilty for absolutely nothing.  Damn it,
birth control was a woman's problem anyway!

     Birth control.  That was a strange thought under the present
circumstances.  Bobbi had become a woman herself and so she
suddenly wondered, with a strangely-melded sense of alarm and
amazement, whether this new-edition body of hers could conceive a
child.  Motherhood.  Imagine that!  She looked down at herself and
touched her small, slightly convex belly.  Could it happen?  If it
could, what should she think?  Most women wanted children, but --

     Bobbi remembered how the tough gang boss trapped in Kathy
Duffy's body in SYNAPSE had finally achieved a happy ending by
becoming a loving wife and the proud mother of a little boy.  And
in Ellen Barkin's movie, too, the character had had a baby.  But
she had tragically died in childbirth.  That was such a sad scene,
Bobbi remembered -- and the film was supposed to have been a
comedy!    

     Bobbi blew her nose on a napkin.  The thought of Ellen's
little girl growing up without a mother to love her, and dress her,
and feed her, and hug her was so terrible that the young woman had
to try as hard as she could not to think about it, lest she break
down and cry.  She finished her second drink to steady her nerves. 
The girl then considered whether she needed yet another refill and
decided that she did.

     A little later, staggering drunk, Bobbi wobbled into the 
bedroom and clumsily stripped off her jeans.  She didn't actually
mean to shed the panties along with them, but they came off, too. 
As she fell into bed, Bobbi's forehead struck her purse and it
hurt.  "Damned idol," she muttered as she rolled over and dug the
accursed thing from the handbag.

     Seeing the statuette again gave Bobbi a sudden idea.  If it
had changed her sex once just by sleeping near it, maybe it would
change her back if she repeated the process.  "I'll just put this
little doodad beside the bed here," she slurred, "and maybe it'll
turn me into a man by morning.  Fight magic with magic!  What have
I got to lose?"  

     As she settled the statuette upon the nightstand, she noticed
a bottle of perfume sitting there next to the lamp.  Its label read
"Magic Midnight."  Bobbi had always loved the scent of perfume on
beautiful women.  With a crooked smile, she fumbled the bottle open
to take a whiff.  She found its odor wonderfully sensuous but,
unfortunately, the girl's quaking fingers dropped the bottle and it
spilled on her lap, not much, but several powerfully aromatic
droplets had been tossed into her pubic hair and across her bare
thighs.  Bobbi recapped the bottle hastily, then turned off the
lamp and fell into a deep sleep.

                           #

      Jim Cardwell opened the bedroom door quietly.  "Rona?  Are
you awake?" he whispered.  He heard a woman's deep breathing and
her wordless murmuring.  "No, she's sleeping."

     The young investment broker sniffed the sweetened air,
recognizing his favorite perfume, Magic Midnight.  Rona always wore
it to make him hot to trot!  Grinning with anticipation, he
stripped off his clothes.  Jim hadn't cheated on Rona since he had
known her, though he had been sorely tempted just the night before. 
The Japanese investors that he had been meeting with had held a
party at the Imperial Hotel with all the amenities provided.  Jim
had let his opportunity to make it with a high-class call girl pass
because his old free-and-easy ways had always brought him grief in
the past and, besides, he cared about Rona and wanted what they had
to work out.  

     But his near miss with infidelity had made him very anxious to
get back to Rona.  Now that he was in the same room with her, those
feelings were rushing back with powerful urgency.  He would either
have to plunge into a very cold shower or into some very hot action
-- and a shower sized up as a very poor second.  Jim softly
approached the bed.  

     Sitting down beside the one whom he thought was his
girlfriend, he touched her and realized that she was sleeping naked
on top of the covers.  Jim sucked in an excited breath as he
stroked Bobbi's breasts.  In the dark they felt even larger than he
knew them to be.  The girl stirred, but didn't wake. 

     Jim, trying not to disturb "Rona's" sleep, checked her for
panties and found that she was wearing none.  He slipped his own
briefs to the floor, kicked them aside, and positioned himself on
the bed.  He took hold of Bobbi's hips to steady them, then, as he
moved his face closer to her love nest, Jim discovered that "Rona"
had used the perfume on her pubic hair.  The little minx, he
thought, had been hoping that he'd find a way to come home early
and so had decked herself out like a carnal feast.  What a woman! 

     He flicked his tongue against the outer lips of Bobbi's pussy. 
The sleeper shifted and moaned, but her alcohol-reinforced slumber
was a heavy one.  Jim chuckled quietly as he next moved his mouth
up to her breasts, licking the nipples as if they had been dabbed
with honey.  Bobbi groaned a bit as the sensation penetrated her
deep trance.

     The young man's cock was now swollen and aching.  He knew that
there wouldn't be much time for foreplay, so he took the woman
passionately in his arms and kissed her hard on the lips.

     "Whaa --?!" Bobbi mumbled as she finally awoke, feeling her
mouth and nose smothered under something warm and wet.

     "Easy, Rona.  It's Jim.  I just got back.  I need you, baby."

     "J-Jim?" the girl muttered confusedly.

     But Jim wasn't listening.  He just kept on kissing Bobbi's
face and neck, using all the techniques that he had developed over
his twenty-six years of living free.  He opened his mouth and
captured one of her large, erect nipples between his hungry lips. 
Jim sucked first on one and then on the other.  He pressed his face
into her smooth, resilient breasts, firm with the golden kiss of
youth.

     "M-My God!" muttered Bobbi.

     Shifting, Jim now ran his tongue along "Rona's" inner thighs. 
He came to the thick fleece between her legs and touched his nose
to it, inhaling deeply of Midnight Magic and natural woman-scent. 

     Bobbi's hips involuntarily lurched as her bedfellow slipped
his eager tongue between her dewy labia, forcing it as far up her
love canal as he could.  Then he drew it back with teasing
slowness.  Her heavy gasp and shifting motion encouraged him to run
the tip of his tongue all over her pussy while avoiding contact
with her small clitoris -- a move which he knew was always slow
torture for Rona.  He heard the girl's breath catch in her throat
and felt her body quiver.  He guessed that she was now ready to be
brought to an even higher pitch.  Equal to the task, Jim put the
tip of his probing tongue into direct contact with her nether bud
and began flicking it back and forth.  That never failed to drive
Rona wild.

     "Oh, Jim!  Christ, Jim!" Bobbi moaned as she felt hot blades
of excitement shooting through every nerve of her body.  

     Unable to hold himself back, Jim repositioned himself to mount
her, guiding his rock-hard organ to her furry aperture.  Tiny,
pulsing shocks raced through him as he shoved himself as deeply as
he could into the unplumbed well of Bobbi's scented maidenhood.

     "Oh!" Bobbi gasped as the tender walls of her interior
expanded to accommodate his penetration.   Jim was surprised to
find "Rona's" pussy so tight, stretching his foreskin back to the
limit, until it almost pained him.  Then his breath caught in his
throat when her vaginal muscles seemed to contract around his
throbbing organ, trapping it in a powerful grip.  Ah, yes -- that
was his girl Rona!

     Jim began fucking poor Bobbi in earnest, with quick, hard
thrusts.  His hips moved like pistons, plunging to the very depths
of her maidenly recesses.

     "Ayiiii!  Ayiii!" Bobbi cried, throwing her head back, holding
Jim's waist with clawing fingers.  Her nails hurt him, but Jim dug
his toes into the mattress and pumped for all he was worth, each
long stroke making his heart beat faster.  After a minute he felt
Bobbi's vaginal muscles go into action, not by any will of he own,
if Jim had only known it, but by the stern dictates of Mother
Nature.  Bobbi, her body operating on pure instinct, frantically
milked his rigid prick of his clear preliminary secretions, while
her silken legs entangled themselves with his in a lock that not
even Houdini could have picked.

     Jim was rapidly approaching climax, but he wanted to be sure
that Rona came with him.  Delaying his own pleasure with a mighty
exertion of will, he deliberately brought himself into contact with
her clitoris, subjecting her tight pussy to the relentless friction
of his love-making until she was moaning with pleasure.  Jim could
hear the loud slurping noise of his cock sliding in and out of
Bobbi's wet, fleshy vise, while his testicles began to ache with an
urgency that begged release.

     Suddenly Bobbi felt Jim's prick expand within her -- and the
first jet of hot viscous nectar splashed against her cervix,
igniting a series of explosions deep inside her body.  "Aaaaiii!"
the girl cried out at the top of her lungs, digging her heels into
his thighs and raking her fingernails across his back as an
irresistible series of passion-quakes shot through her.

     Jim's hips went on pumping even after the last drop had been
drained from him by Bobbi's hungry, if involuntary, contractions. 
He could finally bear his herculean exertion no longer and
collapsed upon her.  He heard the hot rasp of the girl's breath in
his ear, felt her velvety arms wrapping themselves tightly around
his neck, clinging to him desperately.

     Bobbi, overwhelmed with drink and the aftermath of her
release, didn't hear the sound of the doorknob turning.    

     "Jim!  What are you doing!?"

     The surprise on Jim's face became pure horror when he saw
Rona's astonished face.  He really didn't know what he had been
doing.  Or rather he did know -- he just didn't know exactly whom
he had been doing it with.  Now, for the first time, he looked down
at the face of the girl under him, its eyes big and dewy, its lips
half-parted with astonishment.  Confusion filled those robin-egg
eyes, then they glazed over as Bobbi passed out cold.

     "Who is she?" Jim gasped.  "I never saw her before in my
life!"

     "Don't play innocent, Jim!" sobbed Rona.  "Can't I even let a
friend sleep over without you jumping her?"

     "So she's a friend of yours!" Jim jabbered as he rolled off of
Bobbi and threw a sheet over his nudity.  "Honest, Rona, I didn't
know.  It was dark and I thought she was you.  She was wearing your
perfume!"

     "A likely story!  I've had it, Jim!  I can't trust you
anymore!  I was such a fool!"  Suddenly she spotted Bobbi's
cut-offs and halter hanging upon the back of a chair.

      She snatched them up and threw them into Jim's face.  "Here,
these are hers!  Get your playmate dressed and then both of you get
out of here!  This is my apartment and I don't ever want to see
either one of you in it again!"

                            #

     Again dressed in the halter, cut-offs, and sandals inherited
from Dori, Bobbi was sitting opposite Jim in the booth of a small
all-night cafe.  Battered by a pounding hangover and fighting hard
to control the trauma of what had lately happened, she had been
doing her best to explain to her friend who she really was, all to
no avail.  

     Jim shook his head.  "Miss, that's the nuttiest story I ever
heard!  Rob put you up to this gag, didn't he?"

     "You stupid son of a bitch!  I'm me!  If you won't believe me,
nobody else in the world will either!"

     "Hey, calm down, honey.  Don't make a scene."

     Tears of frustration ran down Bobbi's cheeks.  She rested her
elbows on the table and her face in her hands.  "God, Jim, don't
you have any shame?  You take my virginity, maybe even knock me up,
and now you're calling me a liar!"

     "Come on -- I'll grant that you look enough like Rob to be his
sister, but you can't be Rob, magic or not.  Rob would have died
before he'd dress up like that.  Anyway, don't forget that I've
been in bed with you.  You're a one hundred percent wild woman --
and Rob Wescott didn't like boys!"

     "All right," said Bobbi in anger, "if you won't believe me,
try sleeping next to this idol I've got here.  It'll turn you into
a girl too, I bet, and I hope somebody treats you just the way
you're treating me!"  She realized the instant that she touched her
purse that the statuette was gone. "-- Hell, I must have left the
damned thing back at Rona's."

     "I'm too tired for all this crap," Jim sighed.  "Look, baby,
you're a kook, but well, there's something kind of sweet about you. 
I'd like to get to know you a lot better.  Do you have a place to
stay?  We can get a room together."

      Bobbi sprang to her feet and grabbed her purse.  "That's
enough, Jim!  You've been rotten to me!  I thought we were friends,
but you're out to lunch now that I really need you.  I never want
to see you again!"

     Jim leaned back, disappointed.  "I'm sorry.  We could have
started something beautiful."

     "Oooo!" Bobbi exclaimed as she stalked away from the table,
but just then the hopelessness of her situation dawned on her and
she stopped in her tracks.

     "Did you forget something, baby cakes?" asked Jim.

     "For Pete's sake, Jim, I -- I'm penniless.  I can't go home,
and the streets aren't safe at night for a -- a woman.  I just
don't know what to do anymore!  I might get raped or killed!  My
life is over."

     Jim was starting to feel very uncomfortable, even guilty, but
the events of the night had made him cranky and even unsympathetic. 
"Look, kid, I don't want to see you go away empty-handed.  I almost
dropped a bundle on a girl in Sacramento last night.  You were good
in the sack, so you can have it instead.  I'd say you earned about
a hundred."  Jim opened his wallet, took out five crisp twenties,
and laid them on the table.

     Bobbi looked at the money with a face of horror and sickness. 
"Are you calling me a whore, Jim?  Is that it?"  She stared into
his eyes with a look of hurt and betrayal that made him cringe. 
"Why, Jim?  What did I do to make you think that I was a whore?"

     Jim saw her weaving and for a second it looked like she might
fall over.  She caught hold of the back of the chair and began
again:  "Cassandra did something very cruel to me, but with a
little help and some trust I could have bounced back.  But I can't
bounce back from this, Jim."  Her voice cracked.  "Not this."

     Jim shifted in his chair, not knowing what to say.  Bobbi
McGee just stood there, looking down at the money, her tears
moistening it like a warm summer  rain.  

     "I'd throw it back in your face," she whispered, "but I need
it.  God help me, I need it."  She hid her face in her hands.

     Jim dropped his glance, embarrassed.  "It's yours -- Miss. 
I'm sorry.  I didn't mean --"

     The girl straightened.  "I know what you meant!"

     Nonetheless, Bobbi picked up the money as quickly as she could
and then fled out the door.  Left alone, Jim drank deeply of his
coffee, thinking about all the craziness that had blind-sided him
that night.  This girl, whoever she was, seemed to be a good kid. 
Something told him that she had deserved something better at his
hands.  He supposed that somehow he could have handled the
situation differently.  

     If only he hadn't been so upset about his quarrel with  Rona,
and if Bobbi hadn't thrown him for a loop with that crazy story
about being Robert Wescott.  As mixed-up as Bobbi seemed to be,
there was something about her that touched him where he really
lived.  Her sobbing departure had left him feeling about as bad as
a man could.

                          #

     Jim had never lived through a day like the one which followed
his strange encounter with Bobbi McGee.  Before it was over, he was
frantically driving around the city, anxiously questioning the
clerk of every motel located near the cafe where he had last seen
her. Finally the clerk at the Balmoral was able to tell him that
such a girl had stayed the night, then had checked out.  He could
only add that she had bought a morning newspaper just before she
had left, and had asked him if he had heard about any unskilled
labor jobs in the city.

     Thank God she's planning to stay in the city! Jim thought.  He
dug through the trash for a copy of the morning edition and spent
the next day checking out every job that a girl without a past
might apply for.  Some businesses remembered seeing the
scantily-clad young woman -- in fact very few could forget her --
but none of them would hire a person who didn't even have a library
card for identification.  Jim exhausted every possibility and for
weeks thereafter spent a large part of each day just driving
around, looking for Bobbi's face, especially along those streets
where poor working class people worked, ate, or shopped.  And every
day of failure made him hate himself the more for what he had done. 


     But then, one afternoon --

                              #

     Working hard carrying soft drinks and burgers to hungry
motorists, Bobbi had gradually lost her loathing for her uniform --
the white, hip-hugging short-shorts and the sleeveless,
midriff-baring red T-shirt required of all the carhops.  Spanky's
Root Beer Station didn't pay well, but at least it kept Bobbi from
getting drooled on by the homeless at the free shelter, or needing
to sell her body.  She had just gotten over her first period and
still felt ill-humored from the experience.  Thankfully,
menstruation, as bad as it was, meant that she wasn't carrying
Jim's child.  That was one of the few good discoveries to come her
way since she had turned into a woman.

     Lost in thought, Bobbi tripped over a teenager who was so
preoccupied with her legs that he couldn't keep his feet out of her
way.  The carhop dropped her tray of waste Styrofoam, smudged
napkins, and paper cups on the concrete before she caught herself. 
The brisk wind threatened to spread the mess far and wide.

     "S-Sorry, Miss," the youth stammered as he slipped away
without offering to help her.  Shaking her head, Bobbi bent down to
resignedly pick up the litter before it got out of reach.   

     "I'm glad to see that you're all right, Rob!" someone said. 
Startled to hear her real name spoken, Bobbi stood up, turned, and
saw a familiar Ford Taurus.

     "Jim!" Bobbi cried as she recognized the driver.  Then she
remembered what had happened the last time they had been together
and got angry all over again. 

     "Oh, it's you!"  She turned away and stomped back to the
serving counter; Jim switched off his ignition,  got out of the
car, and pursued her plaintively.

     "Rob, wait!" yelled Jim.  "I haven't been able to sleep for
worrying about you!"  When she refused to slow down or turn, he
caught her by the arm.  

     "Will you leave me alone!" Bobbi exclaimed.  "If you want a
whore, swing down that street!"

     "Rob, don't.  I've been going crazy.  I've been watching for
your face everywhere, I've been calling your friends, visiting the
shelters, checking the hospitals -- reading the obituaries."

     "Hey, you're calling me Rob!  Do you finally believe me?"

     "I had to believe you -- after I saw Rona."   

     "What do you mean?"

     "She went to sleep next to that idol that you left in her
bedroom -- and she turned into -- a guy."

     "Oh, no!  Poor Rona!"

     Jim put his hand on his friend's shoulder.  "It wasn't so bad. 
She got used to it really quick.  We became great buddies.  It
turned out that we even liked the same sort of women!"

     "Rona had to change sex in front of your eyes before you'd
believe me?" Bobbi asked sarcastically.

     "I'm trying to say that I'm sorry for the way I treated you,
Rob.  Can you ever forgive me?"

     Bobbi looked him over critically.  "What if I don't?  Maybe I
should keep you on a guilt trip for  the rest of your life."

     "Maybe you should," Jim replied grimly.

     Bobbi gave him a punch in the shoulder.  "Screw that!" she
said with a painful, twisted smile.  "You're forgiven, you big dumb
lug.  You're a fourteen carat bastard, but what the hell good does
it do me to carry a grudge?"

     "Great!" cried Jim and, without thinking, he threw his arms
around Bobbi, crushing her against his chest.  Then, realizing what
he was doing, and who he was doing it to, he let go.

     "Sorry."

     Bobbi smoothed her hair.  "Forget it.  I've been needing a hug
for a long time."

     "A hug?  I'm so glad to see you that I could kiss you.  Get in
the car.  I'll take you out of here."

     "Where are we going?"

     "You can stay with me."

     "With you and Rona?"

     "No.  Rona's -- she calls herself -- himself -- Ron now -- has
taken off.  He met this girl whose father owns a chemical plant out
East.  Actually, they've known each other for years and were best
girl friends.  But when they got together accidently as a man and
a woman, this strange sort of chemistry took over.  They dated,
they slept together, and finally Ron popped the question.  He even
admitted to her who he really was.  She actually believed him,
liked the idea!"  Jim shook his head.  "I told Ron that he
shouldn't jump into a hasty marriage, but --"

     "Marriage after only one month a man!  Jeez, I wish I could
adjust that easily -- not that I want to be anyone's wife."

     "Well, you'll feel much better once you're back among
friends."

     "Friends?  What friend did I ever have, except you?  Maybe I
had acquaintances, colleagues, and even lovers, but not friends."

     "Make new friends, then!  Start small and build, right?"

     A horn honked; a customer needed service.  "I have to get back
to work, Jim.  Come back for me at seven and I'll go home with
you."

     "Seven?  Why?"

     "I get off then."

     "Rob!"    

     I can't run out on Spanky's on such a busy day.  In fact, I'd
better give them a couple days notice so they can find a
replacement."

     "Are you heat-struck?  You don't have to give notice to a root
beer stand!"

     "I think I should, Jim.  The managers saved my life.  When I
showed up here I was at my last gasp.  The only other job offer I
had was from a pimp downtown.  I didn't have any identity; the
Spanky people thought that I was an illegal alien, but they helped
me anyway. I owe them a lot."

     Jim touched her chin, lifted it, and gazed understandingly
into her eyes.  "You were always a great guy, Rob Wescott.  Now
you're a great gal.  You just keep getting better and better."

     "Rob Wescott's had it.  You'd better get used to calling me
Bobbi McGee," the young woman advised him with a wan smile.    

                           #

     By the end of the weekend, Bobbi's carhop career lay behind
her.  The last few days had been full of settling in and busy
planning. The two friends were now taking a needed break, sitting
upon the carpet, a deck of cards and a discard pile between them. 
Bobbi was wondering whether she should risk her twenty cents on
just one pair of kings, or go for an outside straight.  
     That first night at Jim's apartment he had asked her whether
she had any plans.  She had given him a very serious look.  

     "There's a lot more to this curse than we thought, Jim," Bobbi
had said.  "I have this compulsion.  It's been eating on me and
eating on me."  She covered her face.  

     "Bobbi?"

     "I can't fight it any longer.  Whatever you think, whatever
the world thinks, I just have to give in to it.  I hope you'll
still be able to respect me."

     "What do you mean?" asked Jim concernedly.

     "I have to become a French maid!"

     "That's good," Jim had replied with a thoughtful nod. 
"Terrific working conditions, great benefits.  And there's lots of
jobs out there.  In fact, I could use a little French maid myself. 
I saw this really cute uniform in one of Rona's lingerie catalogs. 
Lacy panties, short-short skirt, and an itsy-bitsy five-layered
petticoat.  You'll love it!  I'll love it!"

     "Then wear it yourself, sucker!" 

     Jim had laughed.  "I think you're going to be all right,
Bobbi."

     "I'm not going to let this thing beat me, that's for sure,"
the girl had declared firmly.  "Cassandra probably wanted me to
commit suicide, or become a drunk, or a druggie or something. 
Well, she's not going to have the satisfaction!  Surviving is the
best way I know of to get back at her."

      "You can do it, and I'm going to help you.  As I see it, what
you need most right now is a solid identity."

      "Yeh, I know.  How do I get one?"

     "You can be Rona!"

      Bobbi had looked up, her brow furrowed.  "Rona?!"

     "She and I talked the idea over, just in case we ever found
you.  She left all her old documents with me for you to use.  She
left everything, in fact, except her money."

     "She'd do that for me?!"  

     "Rona was a little excitable, Bobbi, but a great -- person --
at heart.  And she always did like you as Rob."

     Bobbi had concurred.  "She even liked me as Bobbi McGee, until
she thought that I'd double-crossed her.  But how can I go around
as Rona?  People knew her."

      Jim had shaken his head.  "She wrote all her friends and told
them that she was entering a reclusive religious order in Europe
and that she wouldn't be coming back.  That took care of one angle. 
Better yet, she doesn't have any close relatives who'll ever bother
to check up on her."

     Bobbi had considered the possibility carefully.  "It could
work.  Rona and I were both in the realty business and I could
apply for a decent job using her resume.  But it still might be
smart if I moved to a different city."

     "If you do that," Jim had begun carefully, "would you mind it
very much if I came along with you?"

     Bobbi had looked at him amazed, as if seeing him for the first
time.

                            #

     "Two cards," Jim called suddenly, bringing Bobbi back to the
present.  She peeled a couple cards off the deck and tossed them to
his side.

     "I'll stay," she told him.

     Bobbi thought of Rona's hasty marriage.  Incredible -- Rona
had become a straight guy in a matter of just a couple weeks.  But
even after a month, Bobbi still didn't know where she stood.  She
had been fighting what seemed to be an incipient attraction to men
more ferociously than Custer ever fought the Indians.  These
feelings were troubling for a person who had never had a gay bone
in his -- her -- body.  Even the image of Cindy Crawford didn't do
anything for her anymore -- and she was trying hard not to think
about Fabio.

     But perhaps, Bobbi thought, she had to stop thinking left to
right and start thinking right to left.  Obviously Cassandra's
magic could change the body.  It had only come out gradually that
it could change the emotions, too.  Maybe the witch herself hadn't
fully understood the power of the idol, that the wound it inflicted
actually carried its own healing.  Bobbi smiled to herself.  That
was why Cassandra's revenge would always be a hollow one.

     Would Bobbi want to be a man again if she could?  Yes --  in
a minute!  It would have been a relief to be able to take refuge
once again in what was safe and familiar.  Rob had had a routine,
a past, he was working toward a future.  He had been able to take
comfort in the familiar things around him.  Now those  familiar
things were gone and Bobbi suspected that  they would never come
again.  But what lay ahead in this strange new life?  That was the
question that kept her lying awake at night.

     Bobbi was pretty sure that she could not recreate the female
equivalent of Rob's bon vivant style.  It wasn't just the
physiological obstacles.  Events had changed her heart even more
than magic had changed her shape.  She had no more taste for the
promiscuous adventuring that had defined Rob's social life.

     Bobbi had kept to her little rented room near Spanky's,
drinking the bitter drops of loneliness to their dregs.  She had
finally grasped the fact that though she had had many lovers as
Rob, Rob had had no  love to speak of.  Why? she had wondered.  Was
it, possibly, because Rob had failed again and again to truly give
of himself?  That had to change, the young woman vowed.  She
couldn't remain a spiritual hermit; she had to be a part of life,
even the drab and the risky parts of life.

     A new body, a new identity, a new job, a new style, even a new
sex.  This was a good time to make some serious rearrangements.

     Bobbi looked up at her companion.  She had begun  to feel very
differently about Jim.  She had been deeply touched by his efforts
to find and to save her.  But it was more than just that.  Bobbi
was starting to enjoy his company -- no, his nearness -- in ways
that she never had experienced with a man.  The sound of Jim's
voice, that cocky expression in his hazel eyes, even the knot in
his necktie, stirred her like only the beauty of a girl had before. 


     The young woman watched her comrade as he pored over his
cards.  Her mind had gone back many times to that night when she
and Jim had made love.  At first she had recoiled from the memory
in horror.  But, over the following empty weeks, it had come back
to her in a new aspect.  The substance of the act remained the
same, of course, but she could see it now in a different and
brighter guise.

     But what was she thinking?  Her with Jim?  That was nuts! 
They loved one another, truly, and in so many ways, but they never
could love one another that way -- could they?  Bobbi couldn't
forget Rona's experience with her own best friend.  

     Best friends.  What a wonderful phrase that was.  For some
reason the Frank Sinatra song that she had heard on her last night
as a man came back as if in answer to her dilemma:

     "The simple secret of the plot,
      Is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
      Then the world discovers as my book ends, 
      How to make two lovers of friends."

     No!  That was crazy! Bobbi thought.  It would be much smarter,
if she had to get involved with a male, to make it someone --
anyone -- other than Jim.  Somebody who didn't know about her past,
someone who wouldn't carry around all that baggage of bygone 
associations, someone who wouldn't have had his ideas about her
forged in their former skirt-chasing camaraderie.  

     But Jim and she, Bobbi knew, had so much in common.  Sports,
politics, music -- as well as that indefinable trust that allowed
two friends to tell one another their problems and worries without
self- consciousness, without the fear that they were giving a
potential rival a secret to use against them.  Maybe what the pair
of them had had up to now represented a good foundation on which to
build something new.  But what?

     To his credit, Jim had been cleaning up his act lately.  He
had been loyal to one girl while Rob had been going though more
than a half dozen.  Could Jim be faithful to one person for the
very long haul?  Could Bobbi?  Bobbi had definitely acquired a new
respect for loyalty and consistency.  She wondered whether the two
of them --

      Damn!  She had to stop thinking that way!  Oh, this man-woman
business was so confusing!

     Suddenly Jim passed his hand in front of her eyes. "Earth to
Bobbi.  This is Houston.  Are you reading us, Bobbi?"

     "Sorry, Jim.  I've got a lot to think about."      
     "I guess you do.  It must be hard coping.  What's it like,
being a woman?

     Bobbi shrugged.  "I'm still on the first chapter, buddy.  I'll
tell you the secret of the plot when I'm deeper into the book."

     "Maybe you could write a book of your own!"

     "Maybe I could."  

     But how would the book end? Bobbi wondered.

     "I wouldn't like reading the part about what we  did together. 
It must have been pretty bad for you, right?"

     Bobby tossed away her cards.  "Don't keep beating yourself up
about that, Jim.  To tell the truth, I wasn't so drunk that night
that I couldn't have said something if I had really wanted to. 
Even while it  was happening I thought that it was -- well, sort of
interesting.  And I guess I wanted to know how it was going to come
out."

      "I knew it!" crowed Jim, at once happy and relieved.  "A man
can always tell when the woman is liking it!"

     "Yeh, I guess we can," nodded Bobbi in automatic agreement. 
She had for so long been thinking along those lines that old habits
were hard to break. 

     "By the way Jim," she suddenly asked, "what did you do with
that idol?"

     "Oh, that.  Rona and I tried to use it turn her back into a
woman that second night, but when that didn't work, I put it into
a safe-deposit box.  I hope nobody falls asleep inside the bank
vault."

     "I'd have smashed the thing -- or sent it to a politician that
I didn't like!"  Then she added with a naughty laugh, "Hey, we
could have our first woman president!"

     "You're not thinking, buddy.  That idol might be valuable
someday, especially if I can find a rich, frustrated transsexual. 
In fact, why sell it at all?  Just rent it out a night at a time
and make a lot of rich people happy.  You know, doing well by doing
good."

     "Hey!  If you're going into business, I deserve a cut of the
action!  It's my statue!"

     "You've got it, Partner!" Jim once more flashed that same grin
that had been sending shivers up and down Bobbi's spine these last
few days.  He extended his hand.  "Shake on it?"

     Bobbi's glance met his enigmatically.   

     "You know," she said tentatively, "in the old days men and
women thought it was uncouth to shake hands together."


     Jim lowered his hand with the trace of a frown.  "Yeh?  What
did they do?"

     "I could demonstrate."

     At the moment Bobbi was wearing a pair of old  yellow pajamas
bought for a dollar at the Salvation  Army store.  Earlier that
evening she had been tempted, if briefly, to try on one of Rona's
bustiers or camis.  But clothing always sent a powerful message,
and Bobbi still hadn't decided what sort of message she should be
sending to her old friend Jim.

     But now the young blonde began to unbutton her pajama tops,
very slowly, very deliberately, watching intently for Jim's
reaction.  Jim sucked in nearly all the air in the room when she
flipped her top open with the tips of her fingers.  

     "Oh, Bobbi," Jim said with a dry swallow, "Don't do this to
me.  I've been going crazy for these last couple days trying to
keep my hands off you."

     She smiled, rather tightly because, despite all, she was a
little nervous.  "Why don't you just get it out of your system?"
Bobbi suggested, still studying him carefully.

     "I'm not made out of brick.  I'm game.  But -- but are you
sure --?

     "I don't break easily.  I thought I'd proven that much."

     He still hesitated, which left time for doubt to trouble
Bobbi's resolution.  "I'm not much of a seductress," she thought
vaguely as she looked disapprovingly down at herself.  What a dumpy
get-up, these old pajamas.  They were eyesores.  Now she wished
that she had instead worn one of Rona's skimpy lounging outfits. 
Better Victoria's Secret than Goodwill.

     Bobbi looked up at Jim again.  His expression had changed and
it suggested a man who would have gladly begun a meal in an
expensive restaurant, but was unsure of the table manners expected
of him.

     "What am I doing?" Bobbi asked herself.  Where could this
nuttiness go?  She wondered if she ought to just reach out and
embrace him, like Rob would have done in earlier days, to overcome
the reluctance of a romantically inexperienced woman.

     At that moment Jim resolved the problem by reaching out for
her, misgivings and desire set deeply into his lightly-tanned
features.  Bobbi took the hand he offered and squeezed it in hers
and, when he shifted himself closer, moved boldly, enfolding his
neck with her free arm.  

     It felt good, and since Jim seemed afraid that she'd pull away
at the last minute, she seized the initiative, drawing her
partner's mouth up against her own, surprising herself with the
sandpaper-texture of his chin and upper lip.  

     How strange stubble was, Bobbi McGee thought, at least to one
used to kissing the silken faces of girls.  But, holding the kiss,
she knew that she would have to get used to a lot of new things. 
The weeks ahead would certainly be a learning process.  That was
more than a little daunting.

     But Robert Wescott had always been a quick study. 



                                             THE END




                     BOBBI McGEE 

                 by Christopher Leeson

     "Uuhh," Dori moaned as Rob's hips began a powerful up and down
movement.  He was flint to her steel.  Dori felt the sparks which
were triggering a series of emotional rockets -- fire-breathers
that jetted with scorching energy along the million arterial ways
of her twenty-two year old body. . . .

     Suddenly the doorbell chimed.  With a mutter of frustration,
Rob stopped what he was doing and rolled over.

     "Keey-rist!" Rob panted.  "That's timing for you."

     Dori gasped for breath as his weight eased back from her
chest.  "Get rid of them!" she moaned urgently.

     "I'll just be a minute, doll," Rob promised, rising with a
long sigh.  He quickly dried his particulars with a tissue, threw
on his plaid robe, and then hurried into the living room.  In just
a minute he was back, carrying a small package in a brown wrapper.

     "Who was it?" asked Dori.

     "Nobody.  Just a twenty-four hours delivery service."

     "What did you get?  Who sent it?"

     "There's no return address."  Rob sat down at the edge of the
bed and started tearing off the wrapping paper.  Dori nestled up
behind him and rested her chin on his hard shoulder.

     "Well, well, well," he muttered as he removed the contents of
the box.  "Cute."

     Dori frowned.  It was some sort of primitive female sculpture,
naked except for a strange headdress. No wonder Rob liked it!  He
always did admire big breasts, she knew.  As Rob turned the thing
around Dori observed that it was two-faced; a male figure was cast
behind the female one.  Dori knew immediately which side her man
would be setting outward for viewing!  He was a horny guy, but he
was at least hers!

     "-- Look, here's a card," Rob said, plucking a piece of paper
from the box.  "`To Rob with hate.  Cassandra.'  I never thought
I'd hear that name again."

     "Who's Cassandra?" asked Dori suspiciously.
{Page Down}
"Nobody.  -- She and I used to live together, that's all.  It ended
badly."

     "You never mentioned her!"

     "Why should I?  I know what a jealous woman you are."

     "She was nobody?  Just a live-in girlfriend?!  Who am I then? 
Nobody plus one, or two, or three, or five?"

     "Listen, cute stuff, how do you think I got to be so good in
bed if this was strictly amateur hour?"

     "So you DID have a lot of girls before you met me!"

      "I've always been popular, so sue me!  -- Dori, don't be a
pain."

     "Pain?!  I just want some respect."

     "Baby bottom, you're going nuts over nothing!  Settle down."

     I don't like the idea of old girlfriends sending you gifts! 
Does it say that she's going to be visiting?"

     "I told you what it said!  For crying out loud, Dori, give me
some credit.  I've only had eyes for you from the day I set eyes on
you!"

     "You've only known me a month.  Who will it be next month?"

     "Honey!"

     "I must have been crazy to think that what we had was
something special."

     "It is -- sort of!"

     "Sort of?!  That does it!  Let your old girlfriend know
there's a vacancy.  I'm quitting the fan club!"

     Dori scrambled from the bed.  Rob didn't say anything.  There
was actually nothing he could say when Dori Elrick was in one of
her snits.  He watched her pull on her clothes with a speed never
seen before.  Once dressed in the same peasant blouse and miniskirt
that she had worn earlier to the restaurant (a get-up that made her
look more like a loafing cocktail waitress than a customer to be
served), she started emptying the drawers and stuffing her cheap
plastic- over-cardboard suitcases.  

     Rob might have tried sweet-talking her, but he knew that Dori
was prone to flare-ups and sudden mood-changes.  The best thing for
the girl was a little breathing space.  After all, he hadn't done
anything wrong, except live a life of his own before he had ever
met her.  The little brunette could walk out of his life if she
wanted to, or stay, but, either way, he didn't see any reason to
beg.

     Leaving Dori alone to finish her packing, Rob shuffled out to
the kitchen and turned on the radio.  It was set to the oldies
channel that Dori liked so well and just then they were playing a
familiar tune:

     "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. . . ."

     That was Janis Joplin's "Bobbie McGee," a song that he had
always enjoyed.  But right now the lyrics  depressed him.  They
were about a great relationship  that just couldn't hold together
for the long term.   It reminded Rob of his own history with women. 


     The next song was Frank Sinatra's "I Could Write a Book."  I
bet you could, you old Mafiosi, Rob chuckled as he went to the
refrigerator and broke open a beer.  By the time he finished it,
Dori was coming out of the bedroom, loaded down with suitcases and
even paper bags full of her wash-and-wear things.  As she stormed
past him, Rob noticed an article fall from one of her
precariously-held bags and plop down on the kitchen floor.

     "Dori!" he said.

     She turned angrily.  "Don't plead with me to stay, Rob!" 

     "I wouldn't.  I think we both need some space, but you dropped
--"

     "Ooh, men!  Listen, Rob, I'll give you so much space that
you'll never see me again!"

     With that final pronouncement, Dori stomped out the back door
and Rob heard her footsteps on the stairs leading down to the
residents' garage where her Toyota was parked.

     "Women!" he sighed.  Well, he consoled himself, she had stayed
longer than most.  No big deal.  Rob could cook better than Dori on
her best day, and her sloppy housekeeping always drove him crazy.

     The young man got up from his chair and plucked the fallen
object from the tiles.  It was just a skimpy  pair of blue denim
cut-offs, so small that the lush curves of her lower buttocks were
left bare -- a glory to see, he had to admit.   Rob shook his head
at the memory, then tossed the shorts on the counter top
indifferently.  Unlike some males, Rob didn't get excited about
women's clothes -- unless, that is, they were filled with a woman
who could do them justice.

     The night's fun and games had tired Rob out and he padded
sleepily back to the bedroom.  The moment he stepped in the door he
again noticed the two-faced idol lying on the covers.  His
curiosity renewed, he picked it up and turned the object about in
his hands.  The face on either side of it had little gem eyes and
he wondered if it was valuable or just some cheap import.  There
was an inscription on its bottom which looked very much like Indian
script. 

     Rob couldn't help wondering why Cassandra had sent him the
thing.  They shared very few tastes.  He had known her when she was
a graduate student in anthropology, but Rob was more into sports
cars and had never talked to her about her favorite subject --
except on the subject of exotic mating rituals.  Their sex had been
hot, but her strident feminism eventually turned him off.  With one
breath Cassandra would be expressing the superiority of woman, and
with the next complaining that she hadn't been born a man.

     He wished he could understand women.  Men never went around
wishing they were female -- at least the sort of men Rob felt
comfortable with didn't.  What was the big deal anyway? he
wondered.  Whatever sex you were dealt, the sensible person
accepted it and enjoyed it for all that it was worth.  The one
thing which Rob had really liked about Dori was the way she seemed
to have a hell of a good time with being a girl, the exact opposite
from Cassandra.  Too bad that her peeves and snits always drove him
up the wall.

     That was the way it was.  When something was right with a
girl, something else was wrong.  I just wish that I could find my
perfect match, Rob thought.  He was getting more than a little
tired of these affairs that never seemed to turn into anything deep
or meaningful.  Why couldn't he have a relationship like his
parents'?   Up until the terrible accident that had taken both
their lives, they had enjoyed a wonderful partnership.  

     Rob was beginning to think that he had a lousy taste in women. 
Or was it something in his personality, some quirk in him that
attracted women for a little while, but then drove them away?  Rob
knew he was in a rut -- and not for the first time he found himself
wishing that he could get out of it somehow.  He shook his head. 
How could he?  He was what he was.  It would probably take a
miracle to change a quality so fundamental to his character.

     But he couldn't help but wonder what comprised the happiness
that some lucky couples found with one another.  Common interests,
he thought, trust, sharing, and patience?  Kindness, forgiveness,
and respect?  And he shouldn't leave out friendship.  Of all the
women he had known, not one real friend stood out among them.  That
was a sad commentary.  

     It all had seemed so simple when Rob had been a hormonal
teenager.  Then he had supposed that a lot of high-quality screwing
would bring happiness.  Well, as a jaded veteran he had learned
that the merchandise wasn't bad, but it was no happiness pill
either.  Sex was only one element of a good relationship, not the
bricks and stone.  It two people had nothing else going, it was an
empty thing.

     He put the idol on the nightstand with the female-side out,
intending to admire it later in the morning light.  Then Rob threw
off his robe and slipped under the covers.  He was dead to the
world in a just few minutes.

     As the young man lay half-asleep, he dreamed he was fondling
Dori's breast.  It felt larger than he remembered and when he
touched Dori's boob, he thought that he could feel his own fingers
playing teasingly upon it.  When he opened his blurry eyes to the
early dawn's light, he saw Dori's breasts, but the odd thing was
that he couldn't see Dori at all -- just her breasts.  

     "God, what a dream!" he muttered.

     His chest started itching as he lay there, but when he
scratched himself he felt soft, tender mounds of flesh which were
hurt by his nails as if they were his own.  He grimaced; he just
couldn't seem to get out of that lucid dream about women's breasts. 
Just then his sleepy fingers went to his groin, which was also
itching.  Instead of his scrotum, he found there a wooly patch
occupying an emptiness where his well-oiled equipment always had
parked.  What the hell? he wondered.  Then he understood.  He was
dreaming that he was a woman!  Kinky, he chuckled.  Rob couldn't
recall ever having had such a dream  before.  On impulse, he
decided to go look at himself in the dream mirror.  Robert Wescott
as a woman, he supposed in his sleep-drugged state, should be
something to see.

     The nearly somnambulant Rob staggered to the full-length
mirror and he wasn't disappointed.  A slim girl with long, soft
honey-blond curls gazed back at  him from the glass.  She looked
like a healthy and  athletic sort of miss, as if she swam and ran
a lot,  just like Rob did himself.  Her breasts were nicer  than
Dori's -- not as big Dolly Parton's, of course,  but would have
done credit to Christie Brinkley.   

     The reflected girl had a nest of light brown pubic hair that
almost hid the pursed lips of her pussy.  Her waist was narrow, Rob
noted, but her hips were becomingly round.  Rob touched his
buttocks and saw the girl's hands go behind her also, mimicking him
perfectly.  The girl's derriere felt full and hard, just the sort
that he loved most to fondle.

     The miss in the mirror smiled with pleasure.  Both fondling
and being fondled felt very good.  Intrigued by the heightened
sensitivity of his dream-body, Rob reached forward and stroked his
dream-pussy lightly.  One touch of its sensitive labia sent
something like an electric shock coursing through his body, making
him shudder.

     An amazing dream, Rob thought, but one so intriguing that he
didn't want it to end just yet.  He carefully studied the girl's
oval face with its pert little chin.  If she looked familiar it was
because she looked so much like him.  The angles of his cheeks and
jaw were softened by her feminine sex, however, and they framed
both a prettily turned-up nose and a pair of big robin-egg blue
eyes with long blonde lashes.  Her lips were so full and sensual
that they reminded him of his mother's when she was young.

     The young man grinned as he sleepily considered the
experience.  If he had been unfortunate enough to be born a girl,
he wondered whether it might not have been quite so intolerable had
Mother Nature graced him with the gentle beauty of the girl in the
glass.  

     Rob yawned.  Standing there so long had made him weak in the
legs; he had to lie down or fall.  So, forgetting the strange
dream, he wobbled over to the bed and plopped down.  He was out
cold as soon as his face hit the pillow.

     The seven o'clock alarm bell woke Rob fully.  He yawned and
rubbed his chest. 

     Then Robert Wescott yelled in horror.                
                           #  

     Wrapped tightly in his robe, Rob paced back and forth across
the kitchen floor.  It hadn't been a dream!  He had actually been
looking at himself in the mirror.  Somehow -- by some incredible
somehow -- he had turned into a girl during the night!

     Things like this only happened in stupid movies, he knew, but
not in reality.  In fact, he had lately watched a weird video
called SYNAPSE -- about a male-to-female brain transplant and a lot
of automatic weapons combat.  He also remembered that movie that
Cassandra had once brought home.  It was called SWAT or STITCH, or
something like that.  It starred Perry King, who God turned into
Ellen Barkin for having treated women so shabbily.  But Perry's
character had had to die before being zapped with a female shape. 
Rob knew that he was still alive -- or at least, he thought that he
was.  What had happened?  Suddenly he remembered the statuette in
the bedroom.

     Cassandra!  Now it all started making sense.  When he knew her
she had already been getting into primitive fertility magic studies
and that Mother Goddess stuff.  In fact, she had even done research
among those crazy Wicca cultists.

     Sorcery!  That was it!  Cassandra had cursed him!  She had
found a magic idol and cursed him with it.  In fact, maybe she had
even used it on herself first, considering her silly male-envy. 
Was there now a man named Cass wandering around?  Rob hoped never
to run into the bum -- without a gun in his hand, at least!

     "I've got to see a doctor -- fast!" he -- or rather, she --
muttered to herself.


     Rob ran back into the bedroom and threw on her much-too-large
male pants, shirt, and shoes.  The hapless young woman walked right
out of her size-twelve loafers at her very first step.

     Damn! she thought, I can't go outside looking like this.  I
need women's clothes, at least until I get to the hospital.  Maybe
Dori left some things behind that'll fit this stupid body!  

     Rob, her heart pounding in her throat, rushed to the closet
hoping to find a pair of jeans and a shirt that she could wear
without embarrassment.  The closet was empty, as were the drawers. 
Dori didn't leave much of anything behind, just a little cloth
purse with nothing in it but lint; it had fallen behind Rob's
tennis shoes and been overlooked in her haste.  Then the girl got
the idea to check the clothes hamper and, as luck would have it,
Dori had missed something.  

     Rob found an orange halter top and a pair of panties.  The
clothes from the bottom of the hamper had a sweaty, musky scent,
but Rob wasn't worrying about that as she hastily put them on.  She
was able to get into the halter fairly easy since Rob had watched
lots of girlfriends dressing.  But to her annoyance, the halter
seemed too snug to be comfortable.  Then the young woman realized
that she actually had boobs bigger than Dori's!

     Rob could have gone out barefoot, but didn't want to. 
Suddenly remembering having seen Dori's sandals under the bed a
couple days earlier, she got down on her hands and knees to have
another look.  Sure enough, they were still there.  Rob now had
some footgear!

     But the bikini top and panties weren't enough to clothe her
decently.  Just then Rob remembered that pair of cut-offs back in
the kitchen.  Without pausing for breath, she ran to get the denim
shorts.

     With the cut-offs in hand again, she felt a twinge of dismay. 
They were so skimpily cut!  Why did Dori have to be such a bimbo? 
In her state of mind Rob had forgotten just how much Dori's lack of
fashion sense had excited her as male.

     Realizing that she had no choice, Rob climbed into the
cut-offs and found that she had to exhale hard to get the snaps
closed.  Apparently her remolded hips were a size or two wider than
Dori's.  If the shorts were tight on their owner, they were less
than a second skin on Rob.  

     Though now dressed as well as possible, Rob still felt like
she was standing around in underwear -- and girl's underwear at
that!  Her cleavage was pushed up brazenly by the constraint of the
halter and the panties, not designed to be worn with shorts so
sparing, showed.  Exasperated, Rob stuffed the visible hems up
under the tight denim of her cut-offs and then went to get her
wallet and keys.  As she fumbled them out of the drawer, she
realized that the pockets of her shorts were much too tight for her
to put anything  into them.  Women always had a pocket problem, Rob 
remembered, and they solved it by carrying purses. 

     Resourcefully, Rob seized Dori's forgotten purse and stuffed
the wallet and keys inside it.  Then, as an afterthought, she put
the magic statuette in along with them, hoping that the hospital
could have it analyzed and find the antidote.  Finally, Rob hurried
down to the residents' garage, got into her Dodge Avenger, hastily
readjusted the seat forward, and started the engine.

                           #

     Trembly and preoccupied, Rob almost had an accident in the
morning traffic, but she finally managed to get into the hospital
parking ramp safely.  Without pausing to lock the doors, the
distraught girl raced up to the emergency room.

     "I've got to s-see a doctor!" she stammered to the
receptionist.  The middle-aged woman regarded the girl's dishabille
coolly, asking, "What's the problem?"

     "I'm under a curse!"

     "A what?"

     "A curse!  I've been changed!"

     "What do you mean you've been changed?"

     "I -- I'd rather explain that to the doctor."

     "Do you wanted to see our staff psychiatrist?"

     "I'm not crazy!  I want to see the doctor who knows the most
about breaking curses!"

     As distraught as she was, Rob realized that she wasn't making
much sense.  But who else should she ask for?  A gynecologist?

     "Maybe we should start you out with a family medicine
practitioner," the receptionist suggested.  "What's your insurance
company?"

      "Metro Group Health," Rob answered, frustrated by the way
hospitals did business.  She dug deeply into her wallet to find her
medical services card.

     The receptionist took the plastic rectangle from her shaking
hand and frowned.  "This is a card for a Robert Wescott."

      Rob thought quickly.  "Ah, he's my husband.  We have the
family plan."

     "No you don't.  This card says `individual only.'  Do you have
any other means of paying, Miss?"

     She wanted to scream, to shriek to the world that she was
Robert Wescott, but who would believe that a pretty girl wearing an
overstuffed halter and a pair of flirtatious cut-offs had a grown
man hidden inside her? Anyway, people were watching, listening. 
Rob didn't want anyone to know who she was.  It was just too
humiliating.

     The blonde checked her wallet for cash.  She -- then he -- had
shown Dori a good time at dinner the night before.  There wasn't
more than a few dollars left.  "I've got a credit card," she gasped
in agitation.

     The receptionist took the card patiently, but again had to
frown.  "This is your husband's, my dear.  We can't accept your
card unless you can prove that you're really Mrs. Wescott.  Do you
have a picture ID?"

     Rob was so distressed that she wasn't thinking at all well. 
She fumbled inside her wallet again, saying, "Sure I've got a
driver's license!"

     She pulled out the license and shoved it in front of the
woman.

     The receptionist sighed wearily.  "No, Miss, we can't use Mr.
Wescott's license.  We have to see yours."

     "I guess -- I guess I forgot it," Rob mumbled hopelessly.  Now
she was really getting frightened.  In another moment they'd be
accusing her of having stolen  some man's wallet and trying to use
his health plan and credit card illegally.  If questioned by a
policeman, what could she say?

     "I hope you can get home without being arrested," the
receptionist remarked.

     "What?!" Rob cried out, as if her mind had been picked of its
darkest nightmare.

     "You don't have your own license on you.  Drive carefully."

      Rob shuddered as the horror sank in.  She couldn't prove who
she was, but still had to get help.  If she didn't get a
vaccination for this terrible condition soon, it might go too far
-- and might even become permanent!

     "Can't you put me on welfare, then.  I -- I'm terribly sick!"

     The receptionist took another look at the pretty, but
naughtily-clad and very messed-up, waif.  She suspected that the
little blonde was on drugs.  Well, that was nothing new.  Every
year the emergency room got hundreds of cases of people who had put
all their money into their arm or up their nose.  They were a
terrible burden on the system, but they had to be taken take care
of, even if the taxpayer had to foot the bill.

     "All right honey, we'll see what we can do.  What's your
name?"

     "Ah -- R-Rob --"

     "Excuse me?"

     "Ah, Bobbi!  -- Bobbi Wescott."

     "What is your Social Security number, Bobbi," she asked in a
subdued voice, trying not to set off the distraught girl.

     "I'll find it," Bobbi stammered as she looked for her card. 
Then she stopped suddenly.  It would have the Robert Wescott name
on it, too.  Showing it would just compound her problems.  "Please,
I don't need any more questions, Miss.  I need help!"  She began to
sob.  
                           #  

     Finally Bobbi got to see a doctor.  He suspected  drugs and
checked for them.  While he did so, Bobbi  tried to explain her
transformation calmly and clearly to him, but only convinced the
physician that she was delusional.  He prescribed valium and made
her an appointment with a hospital psychiatrist.  By that time
Bobbi had steadied herself enough to appear rational,
at least to the untutored eye.

     Leaving the hospital, Bobbi realized that medical science
couldn't help her.  Scientists didn't understand magic.  She
guessed that she would have to see a witch instead.  But how did
one find a practicing warlock? she wondered.  They didn't advertise
in the  phone book, or did they?  There was an occult book store
downtown, the girl suddenly remembered.  Maybe she could ask the
clerks there for a lead.

     Bobbi drove home without mishap and, used up, emotionally
spent, she put her key into the lock.  She just wanted to get into
bed, to cover up her head and cry herself empty.  Much to her
surprise, the door only opened a couple inches; the security chain
was set.  As she shook the door in frustration, Dori peered through
the crack.  

     "Dori!  You're back!" cried Bobbi.

     "You're damned right I'm back!" Dori snarled.  "Who in hell
are you and what are you doing with Rob's key?"

     "Damn it Dori, I live here!"

     "What do you mean you live here?  That bastard sure didn't
waste any time replacing me, did he!   Well, I'm going to fight for
my man!  Take a hike, bitch!"

     "No, Dori, you don't understand!"

     Dori was opening the door.  "I understand, all right, you
little tramp!  Rob thinks you're moving in with him!  Well, he's
got another thing coming!  Give me those keys!  You'll stay in this
apartment over my dead body!"

     Dori shoved Bobbi hard against the wall and grabbed at her
keys.  Dori's strength seemed incredible!  Being manhandled by a
sleek girl like Dori so shocked Bobbi that she defended herself
very poorly; she couldn't prevent the keys from being torn from her
nerveless grasp.  Then Dori stormed back into the apartment,
slammed the door shut, and threw the deadbolt.

     "Let me in, you stupid slut!" Bobbi yelled, beating on the
panel with her tender fists.  "At least give me back my car keys!"

     "Your car keys?  They've got Rob's name on them and they're
for his Dodge!  Get out of here, or I'll call the police!"

     Bobbi slumped back against the wall, overwhelmed.  Locked out
of her apartment, her car keys lost, having almost no money, barely
dressed, she realized now that she didn't even have an identity. 
The girl suddenly grasped that her problem wasn't just facing life
as a woman, it was a matter of basic survival -- food, shelter,
clothing! 

     She shuddered.  What a heartless revenge Cassandra had taken! 
Sure, Rob had told her that he had had his fill of her nutty ideas
and had ordered her out of his life -- but this was too extreme a
retribution.  It was like shooting a person in the heart for taking
someone's potato chip.  Black despair overcame the young woman and
a ghastly image flashed before her inner mind -- an image of
herself standing on a high bridge ready to jump, hopelessness and
horror snatching at her from behind, death and darkness waiting up
ahead.

     I don't want to die, she thought desperately.  Jim!  He's my
best friend.  He'll know who I am!  He'll help me!

                           #  

     The door to Jim's apartment opened slowly.  A face that wasn't
Jim's appeared, saying pleasantly,  "Well, hello!  What can I do
for you?"

     Bobbi recognized Rona Spears.  In fact, she knew that this had
always been Rona's apartment -- it had been Jim who had moved in
with her.  

     "Am I glad that somebody's home!"  Bobbi jabbered.  " --
Listen, I'm Bobbi, uh, McGee, a friend of Robert Wescott.  I wanted
to stay with him while I'm visiting the city, but, uh, he's not in
town.  So I thought about Jim and you.  Rob said that you were such
good friends of his.  Is it okay?"   

     Rona sized up the girl.  Yes, she looked just like the type
that Rob Wescott would be interested in.  In fact, maybe his taste
was improving.  There was a natural charm to this young miss.  The
business woman sensed a vulnerability in Bobbi McGee that called
out something benign and sisterly from deep inside her. 

     "Any friend of Rob's is a friend of ours," she said with a
smile.  "I'm afraid that Jim is seeing clients in Sacramento and
won't be back until tomorrow night.  You can stay here until either
he or Rob shows up."

     "That's great, Rona!"

     "Don't mention it, Bobbi."  Just then Rona caught the scent of
her guest's musty clothing and perspiration.  "Did you walk all the
way here from Rob's?"

     "Yes, I wanted to save the cab fare."

     Rona stood aside to let Bobbi enter.  "Well, why don't you
freshen up with a shower?  Do you have an overnight bag?"

     "Ah, no.  It was stolen from the cart at the bus station,"
Bobbi lied agilely.

     "Damn this city!" Rona commiserated.

                            # 

     A half hour later found Bobbi resting upon a stuffed chair. 
Now wearing a pair of Rona's jeans and a shirt, it felt good to be
out Dori's mix-and-match bimbo outfit.  The shower, too, was
restorative, but touching her strange new body while she bathed had
been hard for Bobbi.  She had kept her eyes closed through the
whole process.

     Rona stepped back into the room wearing a dress suit and a
string tie.  "Well, Bobbi, I hate to leave, but I have a dinner
engagement with an important client."

     "You'd leave me here alone?  A stranger?"

     "It's obvious that you know Rob very well.  Somehow, I don't
think anyone with such sad, gentle eyes could be a thief.  And,
besides, there's something about you that makes me feel like I know
you already."


     "You won't be sorry," Bobbi promised gratefully.

     Left alone, Bobbi grew a little restless as the afternoon wore
on.  She got up and paced about the apartment.  She took a Diet
Coke, made a salami sandwich, and found that just one filled her
up.  Maybe a smaller body meant a smaller appetite.  That's good,
she thought -- lower grocery bills.  Then she wandered over to the
full-length mirror.

     "Look at you!" Bobbi rebuked her own reflection.  "What a
sight you are!"  She folded her arms over the swollen front of her
shirt and cast a troubled glance out the window.  

     "How long am I going to be like this?" she mused.  "Forever?"

     Screwing up her courage, Bobbi regarded her reflection yet
again.  This time she had to nod  grudgingly.  "You're
good-looking," she sighed, "I'll  grant you that!"

     The young woman's curiosity at last got the better of her and
she took off her shirt.  Rona's clothes fitted very well, Bobbi had
discovered, but, like Dori's, Rona's bra was just too snug.  In
fact, the discomfort was enough to prompt the new-minted girl to
take it off entirely.  Now bare to the waist, Bobbi cupped her
bra-pinched breasts in her hands and massaged the soreness away.

     "I really grew a big crop of America's best last night," she
chuckled sadly.  Were they hers for keeps?  Was there any way to
break the magic spell?  How long did spells last if you didn't do
something to break them?  She tried to think of all the stories she
had read about magic, all the movies she had seen.  The Shaggy Dog
had to do something brave and heroic to become a boy again, she
recalled.  The Frog Prince had to get a princess to kiss him.  The
Beast had to make Beauty love him.

     Bobbi grinned, enjoying the idea of being kissed by Princess
Di and being restored to gorgeous manhood in her arms.  But it
wasn't a practical solution.

     The blonde put her hands on her hips and tilted her head from
side to side.

     If I'm stuck as a girl for any time at all, Bobbi thought,
I've got to earn a living.  How do I do that?  I can't even prove
I have a high school diploma now.  Maybe I could become a model. 
Bobbi fantasized herself in a bikini and leaning sexily against a
red Nissan  240SX, or a glossy black Acura Integra upon the cover 
of some future issue of SPORTS CAR.  Not much hard work in
modeling, she thought; wearing a bikini in public  would be the
roughest part.  But then she reconsidered. Fat chance!  Those jobs
were hard to get.  Every model  that she had known as Rob had at
one time or other complained that she had had to sleep with
somebody to get the really worthwhile assignments.

     Bobbi winced.  The idea of sleeping with a man  was decidedly
unpleasant, even if it meant earning a good living.  Now that she
was a girl, Bobbi wondered if it meant that she would like boys. 
For an experiment, she called up a large image of Fabio in her
mind's eye and decided that it didn't do a thing for her.  But
Cindy Crawford -- ahh, now that was a body to set her heart strings
strumming!  But could Bobbi thrill Cindy in the shape she was now? 
Maybe, considering some of those tabloid stories about the
supermodel.  Be that as it may, Bobbi could console herself that
plenty of beautiful girls were willing to sleep with other girls. 
Especially girls like the one in the mirror.

     I need a drink, she thought, if I'm ever going to sort this
thing out.  Damn, what if Jim won't believe me?  What then?  Bobbi
went over to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a Scotch and
soda.  

     As she consumed the hard liquor, she felt depressed.  Rob had
worked very hard at building a career in real estate.  Now it was
lost.  As Bobbi she might have to start all over again.  Well,
there were plenty of female realtors.  The women in the business
did well on the whole, as long as they applied themselves as
vigorously as a man would.  

     In fact, it was at a realtor's convention where Rob had first
met Rona, and there discovered that they both lived in the same
city.  The two of them were friendly from the start, but they had
never quite made it into bed together.  It was Jim's heart -- or
loins -- that Rona had set on fire that time when Rob had
introduced them.  Rob hadn't really resented the way that things
had worked out.  He thought that Rona would be good for his friend
and, besides, Rob's hands were full just then with a postal worker
named Charlotte who liked to lick whipped cream off his bare feet.

     Bobbi sighed.  Those were the good old days.  Were they really
gone forever?  What could she replace them with?  The small blonde
downed the rest of her drink, and then tackled a second.  How
strangely and how suddenly her fate had changed!  She suddenly
became worried that this experience was some sort of punishment --
from Heaven, not just from the weird and vindictive Cassandra.  Was
it possible that Cassandra might actually have been acting --
unwittingly -- as Heaven's agent?  

     Bobbi decided that it couldn't be.  Rob had never hurt women. 
In fact, he had made more than his share of women very happy -- for
a while.  At least he had never committed the big faux pas and
gotten one of them pregnant.  That is, he never knew for certain
that any of his girls were pregnant when split-up time arrived.  
     At that point she checked herself, supposing that in another
minute she'd be feeling guilty for absolutely nothing.  Damn it,
birth control was a woman's problem anyway!

     Birth control.  That was a strange thought under the present
circumstances.  Bobbi had become a woman herself and so she
suddenly wondered, with a strangely-melded sense of alarm and
amazement, whether this new-edition body of hers could conceive a
child.  Motherhood.  Imagine that!  She looked down at herself and
touched her small, slightly convex belly.  Could it happen?  If it
could, what should she think?  Most women wanted children, but --

     Bobbi remembered how the tough gang boss trapped in Kathy
Duffy's body in SYNAPSE had finally achieved a happy ending by
becoming a loving wife and the proud mother of a little boy.  And
in Ellen Barkin's movie, too, the character had had a baby.  But
she had tragically died in childbirth.  That was such a sad scene,
Bobbi remembered -- and the film was supposed to have been a
comedy!    

     Bobbi blew her nose on a napkin.  The thought of Ellen's
little girl growing up without a mother to love her, and dress her,
and feed her, and hug her was so terrible that the young woman had
to try as hard as she could not to think about it, lest she break
down and cry.  She finished her second drink to steady her nerves. 
The girl then considered whether she needed yet another refill and
decided that she did.

     A little later, staggering drunk, Bobbi wobbled into the 
bedroom and clumsily stripped off her jeans.  She didn't actually
mean to shed the panties along with them, but they came off, too. 
As she fell into bed, Bobbi's forehead struck her purse and it
hurt.  "Damned idol," she muttered as she rolled over and dug the
accursed thing from the handbag.

     Seeing the statuette again gave Bobbi a sudden idea.  If it
had changed her sex once just by sleeping near it, maybe it would
change her back if she repeated the process.  "I'll just put this
little doodad beside the bed here," she slurred, "and maybe it'll
turn me into a man by morning.  Fight magic with magic!  What have
I got to lose?"  

     As she settled the statuette upon the nightstand, she noticed
a bottle of perfume sitting there next to the lamp.  Its label read
"Magic Midnight."  Bobbi had always loved the scent of perfume on
beautiful women.  With a crooked smile, she fumbled the bottle open
to take a whiff.  She found its odor wonderfully sensuous but,
unfortunately, the girl's quaking fingers dropped the bottle and it
spilled on her lap, not much, but several powerfully aromatic
droplets had been tossed into her pubic hair and across her bare
thighs.  Bobbi recapped the bottle hastily, then turned off the
lamp and fell into a deep sleep.

                           #

      Jim Cardwell opened the bedroom door quietly.  "Rona?  Are
you awake?" he whispered.  He heard a woman's deep breathing and
her wordless murmuring.  "No, she's sleeping."

     The young investment broker sniffed the sweetened air,
recognizing his favorite perfume, Magic Midnight.  Rona always wore
it to make him hot to trot!  Grinning with anticipation, he
stripped off his clothes.  Jim hadn't cheated on Rona since he had
known her, though he had been sorely tempted just the night before. 
The Japanese investors that he had been meeting with had held a
party at the Imperial Hotel with all the amenities provided.  Jim
had let his opportunity to make it with a high-class call girl pass
because his old free-and-easy ways had always brought him grief in
the past and, besides, he cared about Rona and wanted what they had
to work out.  

     But his near miss with infidelity had made him very anxious to
get back to Rona.  Now that he was in the same room with her, those
feelings were rushing back with powerful urgency.  He would either
have to plunge into a very cold shower or into some very hot action
-- and a shower sized up as a very poor second.  Jim softly
approached the bed.  

     Sitting down beside the one whom he thought was his
girlfriend, he touched her and realized that she was sleeping naked
on top of the covers.  Jim sucked in an excited breath as he
stroked Bobbi's breasts.  In the dark they felt even larger than he
knew them to be.  The girl stirred, but didn't wake. 

     Jim, trying not to disturb "Rona's" sleep, checked her for
panties and found that she was wearing none.  He slipped his own
briefs to the floor, kicked them aside, and positioned himself on
the bed.  He took hold of Bobbi's hips to steady them, then, as he
moved his face closer to her love nest, Jim discovered that "Rona"
had used the perfume on her pubic hair.  The little minx, he
thought, had been hoping that he'd find a way to come home early
and so had decked herself out like a carnal feast.  What a woman! 

     He flicked his tongue against the outer lips of Bobbi's pussy. 
The sleeper shifted and moaned, but her alcohol-reinforced slumber
was a heavy one.  Jim chuckled quietly as he next moved his mouth
up to her breasts, licking the nipples as if they had been dabbed
with honey.  Bobbi groaned a bit as the sensation penetrated her
deep trance.

     The young man's cock was now swollen and aching.  He knew that
there wouldn't be much time for foreplay, so he took the woman
passionately in his arms and kissed her hard on the lips.

     "Whaa --?!" Bobbi mumbled as she finally awoke, feeling her
mouth and nose smothered under something warm and wet.

     "Easy, Rona.  It's Jim.  I just got back.  I need you, baby."

     "J-Jim?" the girl muttered confusedly.

     But Jim wasn't listening.  He just kept on kissing Bobbi's
face and neck, using all the techniques that he had developed over
his twenty-six years of living free.  He opened his mouth and
captured one of her large, erect nipples between his hungry lips. 
Jim sucked first on one and then on the other.  He pressed his face
into her smooth, resilient breasts, firm with the golden kiss of
youth.

     "M-My God!" muttered Bobbi.

     Shifting, Jim now ran his tongue along "Rona's" inner thighs. 
He came to the thick fleece between her legs and touched his nose
to it, inhaling deeply of Midnight Magic and natural woman-scent. 

     Bobbi's hips involuntarily lurched as her bedfellow slipped
his eager tongue between her dewy labia, forcing it as far up her
love canal as he could.  Then he drew it back with teasing
slowness.  Her heavy gasp and shifting motion encouraged him to run
the tip of his tongue all over her pussy while avoiding contact
with her small clitoris -- a move which he knew was always slow
torture for Rona.  He heard the girl's breath catch in her throat
and felt her body quiver.  He guessed that she was now ready to be
brought to an even higher pitch.  Equal to the task, Jim put the
tip of his probing tongue into direct contact with her nether bud
and began flicking it back and forth.  That never failed to drive
Rona wild.

     "Oh, Jim!  Christ, Jim!" Bobbi moaned as she felt hot blades
of excitement shooting through every nerve of her body.  

     Unable to hold himself back, Jim repositioned himself to mount
her, guiding his rock-hard organ to her furry aperture.  Tiny,
pulsing shocks raced through him as he shoved himself as deeply as
he could into the unplumbed well of Bobbi's scented maidenhood.

     "Oh!" Bobbi gasped as the tender walls of her interior
expanded to accommodate his penetration.   Jim was surprised to
find "Rona's" pussy so tight, stretching his foreskin back to the
limit, until it almost pained him.  Then his breath caught in his
throat when her vaginal muscles seemed to contract around his
throbbing organ, trapping it in a powerful grip.  Ah, yes -- that
was his girl Rona!

     Jim began fucking poor Bobbi in earnest, with quick, hard
thrusts.  His hips moved like pistons, plunging to the very depths
of her maidenly recesses.

     "Ayiiii!  Ayiii!" Bobbi cried, throwing her head back, holding
Jim's waist with clawing fingers.  Her nails hurt him, but Jim dug
his toes into the mattress and pumped for all he was worth, each
long stroke making his heart beat faster.  After a minute he felt
Bobbi's vaginal muscles go into action, not by any will of he own,
if Jim had only known it, but by the stern dictates of Mother
Nature.  Bobbi, her body operating on pure instinct, frantically
milked his rigid prick of his clear preliminary secretions, while
her silken legs entangled themselves with his in a lock that not
even Houdini could have picked.

     Jim was rapidly approaching climax, but he wanted to be sure
that Rona came with him.  Delaying his own pleasure with a mighty
exertion of will, he deliberately brought himself into contact with
her clitoris, subjecting her tight pussy to the relentless friction
of his love-making until she was moaning with pleasure.  Jim could
hear the loud slurping noise of his cock sliding in and out of
Bobbi's wet, fleshy vise, while his testicles began to ache with an
urgency that begged release.

     Suddenly Bobbi felt Jim's prick expand within her -- and the
first jet of hot viscous nectar splashed against her cervix,
igniting a series of explosions deep inside her body.  "Aaaaiii!"
the girl cried out at the top of her lungs, digging her heels into
his thighs and raking her fingernails across his back as an
irresistible series of passion-quakes shot through her.

     Jim's hips went on pumping even after the last drop had been
drained from him by Bobbi's hungry, if involuntary, contractions. 
He could finally bear his herculean exertion no longer and
collapsed upon her.  He heard the hot rasp of the girl's breath in
his ear, felt her velvety arms wrapping themselves tightly around
his neck, clinging to him desperately.

     Bobbi, overwhelmed with drink and the aftermath of her
release, didn't hear the sound of the doorknob turning.    

     "Jim!  What are you doing!?"

     The surprise on Jim's face became pure horror when he saw
Rona's astonished face.  He really didn't know what he had been
doing.  Or rather he did know -- he just didn't know exactly whom
he had been doing it with.  Now, for the first time, he looked down
at the face of the girl under him, its eyes big and dewy, its lips
half-parted with astonishment.  Confusion filled those robin-egg
eyes, then they glazed over as Bobbi passed out cold.

     "Who is she?" Jim gasped.  "I never saw her before in my
life!"

     "Don't play innocent, Jim!" sobbed Rona.  "Can't I even let a
friend sleep over without you jumping her?"

     "So she's a friend of yours!" Jim jabbered as he rolled off of
Bobbi and threw a sheet over his nudity.  "Honest, Rona, I didn't
know.  It was dark and I thought she was you.  She was wearing your
perfume!"

     "A likely story!  I've had it, Jim!  I can't trust you
anymore!  I was such a fool!"  Suddenly she spotted Bobbi's
cut-offs and halter hanging upon the back of a chair.

      She snatched them up and threw them into Jim's face.  "Here,
these are hers!  Get your playmate dressed and then both of you get
out of here!  This is my apartment and I don't ever want to see
either one of you in it again!"

                            #

     Again dressed in the halter, cut-offs, and sandals inherited
from Dori, Bobbi was sitting opposite Jim in the booth of a small
all-night cafe.  Battered by a pounding hangover and fighting hard
to control the trauma of what had lately happened, she had been
doing her best to explain to her friend who she really was, all to
no avail.  

     Jim shook his head.  "Miss, that's the nuttiest story I ever
heard!  Rob put you up to this gag, didn't he?"

     "You stupid son of a bitch!  I'm me!  If you won't believe me,
nobody else in the world will either!"

     "Hey, calm down, honey.  Don't make a scene."

     Tears of frustration ran down Bobbi's cheeks.  She rested her
elbows on the table and her face in her hands.  "God, Jim, don't
you have any shame?  You take my virginity, maybe even knock me up,
and now you're calling me a liar!"

     "Come on -- I'll grant that you look enough like Rob to be his
sister, but you can't be Rob, magic or not.  Rob would have died
before he'd dress up like that.  Anyway, don't forget that I've
been in bed with you.  You're a one hundred percent wild woman --
and Rob Wescott didn't like boys!"

     "All right," said Bobbi in anger, "if you won't believe me,
try sleeping next to this idol I've got here.  It'll turn you into
a girl too, I bet, and I hope somebody treats you just the way
you're treating me!"  She realized the instant that she touched her
purse that the statuette was gone. "-- Hell, I must have left the
damned thing back at Rona's."

     "I'm too tired for all this crap," Jim sighed.  "Look, baby,
you're a kook, but well, there's something kind of sweet about you. 
I'd like to get to know you a lot better.  Do you have a place to
stay?  We can get a room together."

      Bobbi sprang to her feet and grabbed her purse.  "That's
enough, Jim!  You've been rotten to me!  I thought we were friends,
but you're out to lunch now that I really need you.  I never want
to see you again!"

     Jim leaned back, disappointed.  "I'm sorry.  We could have
started something beautiful."

     "Oooo!" Bobbi exclaimed as she stalked away from the table,
but just then the hopelessness of her situation dawned on her and
she stopped in her tracks.

     "Did you forget something, baby cakes?" asked Jim.

     "For Pete's sake, Jim, I -- I'm penniless.  I can't go home,
and the streets aren't safe at night for a -- a woman.  I just
don't know what to do anymore!  I might get raped or killed!  My
life is over."

     Jim was starting to feel very uncomfortable, even guilty, but
the events of the night had made him cranky and even unsympathetic. 
"Look, kid, I don't want to see you go away empty-handed.  I almost
dropped a bundle on a girl in Sacramento last night.  You were good
in the sack, so you can have it instead.  I'd say you earned about
a hundred."  Jim opened his wallet, took out five crisp twenties,
and laid them on the table.

     Bobbi looked at the money with a face of horror and sickness. 
"Are you calling me a whore, Jim?  Is that it?"  She stared into
his eyes with a look of hurt and betrayal that made him cringe. 
"Why, Jim?  What did I do to make you think that I was a whore?"

     Jim saw her weaving and for a second it looked like she might
fall over.  She caught hold of the back of the chair and began
again:  "Cassandra did something very cruel to me, but with a
little help and some trust I could have bounced back.  But I can't
bounce back from this, Jim."  Her voice cracked.  "Not this."

     Jim shifted in his chair, not knowing what to say.  Bobbi
McGee just stood there, looking down at the money, her tears
moistening it like a warm summer  rain.  

     "I'd throw it back in your face," she whispered, "but I need
it.  God help me, I need it."  She hid her face in her hands.

     Jim dropped his glance, embarrassed.  "It's yours -- Miss. 
I'm sorry.  I didn't mean --"

     The girl straightened.  "I know what you meant!"

     Nonetheless, Bobbi picked up the money as quickly as she could
and then fled out the door.  Left alone, Jim drank deeply of his
coffee, thinking about all the craziness that had blind-sided him
that night.  This girl, whoever she was, seemed to be a good kid. 
Something told him that she had deserved something better at his
hands.  He supposed that somehow he could have handled the
situation differently.  

     If only he hadn't been so upset about his quarrel with  Rona,
and if Bobbi hadn't thrown him for a loop with that crazy story
about being Robert Wescott.  As mixed-up as Bobbi seemed to be,
there was something about her that touched him where he really
lived.  Her sobbing departure had left him feeling about as bad as
a man could.

                          #

     Jim had never lived through a day like the one which followed
his strange encounter with Bobbi McGee.  Before it was over, he was
frantically driving around the city, anxiously questioning the
clerk of every motel located near the cafe where he had last seen
her. Finally the clerk at the Balmoral was able to tell him that
such a girl had stayed the night, then had checked out.  He could
only add that she had bought a morning newspaper just before she
had left, and had asked him if he had heard about any unskilled
labor jobs in the city.

     Thank God she's planning to stay in the city! Jim thought.  He
dug through the trash for a copy of the morning edition and spent
the next day checking out every job that a girl without a past
might apply for.  Some businesses remembered seeing the
scantily-clad young woman -- in fact very few could forget her --
but none of them would hire a person who didn't even have a library
card for identification.  Jim exhausted every possibility and for
weeks thereafter spent a large part of each day just driving
around, looking for Bobbi's face, especially along those streets
where poor working class people worked, ate, or shopped.  And every
day of failure made him hate himself the more for what he had done. 


     But then, one afternoon --

                              #

     Working hard carrying soft drinks and burgers to hungry
motorists, Bobbi had gradually lost her loathing for her uniform --
the white, hip-hugging short-shorts and the sleeveless,
midriff-baring red T-shirt required of all the carhops.  Spanky's
Root Beer Station didn't pay well, but at least it kept Bobbi from
getting drooled on by the homeless at the free shelter, or needing
to sell her body.  She had just gotten over her first period and
still felt ill-humored from the experience.  Thankfully,
menstruation, as bad as it was, meant that she wasn't carrying
Jim's child.  That was one of the few good discoveries to come her
way since she had turned into a woman.

     Lost in thought, Bobbi tripped over a teenager who was so
preoccupied with her legs that he couldn't keep his feet out of her
way.  The carhop dropped her tray of waste Styrofoam, smudged
napkins, and paper cups on the concrete before she caught herself. 
The brisk wind threatened to spread the mess far and wide.

     "S-Sorry, Miss," the youth stammered as he slipped away
without offering to help her.  Shaking her head, Bobbi bent down to
resignedly pick up the litter before it got out of reach.   

     "I'm glad to see that you're all right, Rob!" someone said. 
Startled to hear her real name spoken, Bobbi stood up, turned, and
saw a familiar Ford Taurus.

     "Jim!" Bobbi cried as she recognized the driver.  Then she
remembered what had happened the last time they had been together
and got angry all over again. 

     "Oh, it's you!"  She turned away and stomped back to the
serving counter; Jim switched off his ignition,  got out of the
car, and pursued her plaintively.

     "Rob, wait!" yelled Jim.  "I haven't been able to sleep for
worrying about you!"  When she refused to slow down or turn, he
caught her by the arm.  

     "Will you leave me alone!" Bobbi exclaimed.  "If you want a
whore, swing down that street!"

     "Rob, don't.  I've been going crazy.  I've been watching for
your face everywhere, I've been calling your friends, visiting the
shelters, checking the hospitals -- reading the obituaries."

     "Hey, you're calling me Rob!  Do you finally believe me?"

     "I had to believe you -- after I saw Rona."   

     "What do you mean?"

     "She went to sleep next to that idol that you left in her
bedroom -- and she turned into -- a guy."

     "Oh, no!  Poor Rona!"

     Jim put his hand on his friend's shoulder.  "It wasn't so bad. 
She got used to it really quick.  We became great buddies.  It
turned out that we even liked the same sort of women!"

     "Rona had to change sex in front of your eyes before you'd
believe me?" Bobbi asked sarcastically.

     "I'm trying to say that I'm sorry for the way I treated you,
Rob.  Can you ever forgive me?"

     Bobbi looked him over critically.  "What if I don't?  Maybe I
should keep you on a guilt trip for  the rest of your life."

     "Maybe you should," Jim replied grimly.

     Bobbi gave him a punch in the shoulder.  "Screw that!" she
said with a painful, twisted smile.  "You're forgiven, you big dumb
lug.  You're a fourteen carat bastard, but what the hell good does
it do me to carry a grudge?"

     "Great!" cried Jim and, without thinking, he threw his arms
around Bobbi, crushing her against his chest.  Then, realizing what
he was doing, and who he was doing it to, he let go.

     "Sorry."

     Bobbi smoothed her hair.  "Forget it.  I've been needing a hug
for a long time."

     "A hug?  I'm so glad to see you that I could kiss you.  Get in
the car.  I'll take you out of here."

     "Where are we going?"

     "You can stay with me."

     "With you and Rona?"

     "No.  Rona's -- she calls herself -- himself -- Ron now -- has
taken off.  He met this girl whose father owns a chemical plant out
East.  Actually, they've known each other for years and were best
girl friends.  But when they got together accidently as a man and
a woman, this strange sort of chemistry took over.  They dated,
they slept together, and finally Ron popped the question.  He even
admitted to her who he really was.  She actually believed him,
liked the idea!"  Jim shook his head.  "I told Ron that he
shouldn't jump into a hasty marriage, but --"

     "Marriage after only one month a man!  Jeez, I wish I could
adjust that easily -- not that I want to be anyone's wife."

     "Well, you'll feel much better once you're back among
friends."

     "Friends?  What friend did I ever have, except you?  Maybe I
had acquaintances, colleagues, and even lovers, but not friends."

     "Make new friends, then!  Start small and build, right?"

     A horn honked; a customer needed service.  "I have to get back
to work, Jim.  Come back for me at seven and I'll go home with
you."

     "Seven?  Why?"

     "I get off then."

     "Rob!"    

     I can't run out on Spanky's on such a busy day.  In fact, I'd
better give them a couple days notice so they can find a
replacement."

     "Are you heat-struck?  You don't have to give notice to a root
beer stand!"

     "I think I should, Jim.  The managers saved my life.  When I
showed up here I was at my last gasp.  The only other job offer I
had was from a pimp downtown.  I didn't have any identity; the
Spanky people thought that I was an illegal alien, but they helped
me anyway. I owe them a lot."

     Jim touched her chin, lifted it, and gazed understandingly
into her eyes.  "You were always a great guy, Rob Wescott.  Now
you're a great gal.  You just keep getting better and better."

     "Rob Wescott's had it.  You'd better get used to calling me
Bobbi McGee," the young woman advised him with a wan smile.    

                           #

     By the end of the weekend, Bobbi's carhop career lay behind
her.  The last few days had been full of settling in and busy
planning. The two friends were now taking a needed break, sitting
upon the carpet, a deck of cards and a discard pile between them. 
Bobbi was wondering whether she should risk her twenty cents on
just one pair of kings, or go for an outside straight.  
     That first night at Jim's apartment he had asked her whether
she had any plans.  She had given him a very serious look.  

     "There's a lot more to this curse than we thought, Jim," Bobbi
had said.  "I have this compulsion.  It's been eating on me and
eating on me."  She covered her face.  

     "Bobbi?"

     "I can't fight it any longer.  Whatever you think, whatever
the world thinks, I just have to give in to it.  I hope you'll
still be able to respect me."

     "What do you mean?" asked Jim concernedly.

     "I have to become a French maid!"

     "That's good," Jim had replied with a thoughtful nod. 
"Terrific working conditions, great benefits.  And there's lots of
jobs out there.  In fact, I could use a little French maid myself. 
I saw this really cute uniform in one of Rona's lingerie catalogs. 
Lacy panties, short-short skirt, and an itsy-bitsy five-layered
petticoat.  You'll love it!  I'll love it!"

     "Then wear it yourself, sucker!" 

     Jim had laughed.  "I think you're going to be all right,
Bobbi."

     "I'm not going to let this thing beat me, that's for sure,"
the girl had declared firmly.  "Cassandra probably wanted me to
commit suicide, or become a drunk, or a druggie or something. 
Well, she's not going to have the satisfaction!  Surviving is the
best way I know of to get back at her."

      "You can do it, and I'm going to help you.  As I see it, what
you need most right now is a solid identity."

      "Yeh, I know.  How do I get one?"

     "You can be Rona!"

      Bobbi had looked up, her brow furrowed.  "Rona?!"

     "She and I talked the idea over, just in case we ever found
you.  She left all her old documents with me for you to use.  She
left everything, in fact, except her money."

     "She'd do that for me?!"  

     "Rona was a little excitable, Bobbi, but a great -- person --
at heart.  And she always did like you as Rob."

     Bobbi had concurred.  "She even liked me as Bobbi McGee, until
she thought that I'd double-crossed her.  But how can I go around
as Rona?  People knew her."

      Jim had shaken his head.  "She wrote all her friends and told
them that she was entering a reclusive religious order in Europe
and that she wouldn't be coming back.  That took care of one angle. 
Better yet, she doesn't have any close relatives who'll ever bother
to check up on her."

     Bobbi had considered the possibility carefully.  "It could
work.  Rona and I were both in the realty business and I could
apply for a decent job using her resume.  But it still might be
smart if I moved to a different city."

     "If you do that," Jim had begun carefully, "would you mind it
very much if I came along with you?"

     Bobbi had looked at him amazed, as if seeing him for the first
time.

                            #

     "Two cards," Jim called suddenly, bringing Bobbi back to the
present.  She peeled a couple cards off the deck and tossed them to
his side.

     "I'll stay," she told him.

     Bobbi thought of Rona's hasty marriage.  Incredible -- Rona
had become a straight guy in a matter of just a couple weeks.  But
even after a month, Bobbi still didn't know where she stood.  She
had been fighting what seemed to be an incipient attraction to men
more ferociously than Custer ever fought the Indians.  These
feelings were troubling for a person who had never had a gay bone
in his -- her -- body.  Even the image of Cindy Crawford didn't do
anything for her anymore -- and she was trying hard not to think
about Fabio.

     But perhaps, Bobbi thought, she had to stop thinking left to
right and start thinking right to left.  Obviously Cassandra's
magic could change the body.  It had only come out gradually that
it could change the emotions, too.  Maybe the witch herself hadn't
fully understood the power of the idol, that the wound it inflicted
actually carried its own healing.  Bobbi smiled to herself.  That
was why Cassandra's revenge would always be a hollow one.

     Would Bobbi want to be a man again if she could?  Yes --  in
a minute!  It would have been a relief to be able to take refuge
once again in what was safe and familiar.  Rob had had a routine,
a past, he was working toward a future.  He had been able to take
comfort in the familiar things around him.  Now those  familiar
things were gone and Bobbi suspected that  they would never come
again.  But what lay ahead in this strange new life?  That was the
question that kept her lying awake at night.

     Bobbi was pretty sure that she could not recreate the female
equivalent of Rob's bon vivant style.  It wasn't just the
physiological obstacles.  Events had changed her heart even more
than magic had changed her shape.  She had no more taste for the
promiscuous adventuring that had defined Rob's social life.

     Bobbi had kept to her little rented room near Spanky's,
drinking the bitter drops of loneliness to their dregs.  She had
finally grasped the fact that though she had had many lovers as
Rob, Rob had had no  love to speak of.  Why? she had wondered.  Was
it, possibly, because Rob had failed again and again to truly give
of himself?  That had to change, the young woman vowed.  She
couldn't remain a spiritual hermit; she had to be a part of life,
even the drab and the risky parts of life.

     A new body, a new identity, a new job, a new style, even a new
sex.  This was a good time to make some serious rearrangements.

     Bobbi looked up at her companion.  She had begun  to feel very
differently about Jim.  She had been deeply touched by his efforts
to find and to save her.  But it was more than just that.  Bobbi
was starting to enjoy his company -- no, his nearness -- in ways
that she never had experienced with a man.  The sound of Jim's
voice, that cocky expression in his hazel eyes, even the knot in
his necktie, stirred her like only the beauty of a girl had before. 


     The young woman watched her comrade as he pored over his
cards.  Her mind had gone back many times to that night when she
and Jim had made love.  At first she had recoiled from the memory
in horror.  But, over the following empty weeks, it had come back
to her in a new aspect.  The substance of the act remained the
same, of course, but she could see it now in a different and
brighter guise.

     But what was she thinking?  Her with Jim?  That was nuts! 
They loved one another, truly, and in so many ways, but they never
could love one another that way -- could they?  Bobbi couldn't
forget Rona's experience with her own best friend.  

     Best friends.  What a wonderful phrase that was.  For some
reason the Frank Sinatra song that she had heard on her last night
as a man came back as if in answer to her dilemma:

     "The simple secret of the plot,
      Is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
      Then the world discovers as my book ends, 
      How to make two lovers of friends."

     No!  That was crazy! Bobbi thought.  It would be much smarter,
if she had to get involved with a male, to make it someone --
anyone -- other than Jim.  Somebody who didn't know about her past,
someone who wouldn't carry around all that baggage of bygone 
associations, someone who wouldn't have had his ideas about her
forged in their former skirt-chasing camaraderie.  

     But Jim and she, Bobbi knew, had so much in common.  Sports,
politics, music -- as well as that indefinable trust that allowed
two friends to tell one another their problems and worries without
self- consciousness, without the fear that they were giving a
potential rival a secret to use against them.  Maybe what the pair
of them had had up to now represented a good foundation on which to
build something new.  But what?

     To his credit, Jim had been cleaning up his act lately.  He
had been loyal to one girl while Rob had been going though more
than a half dozen.  Could Jim be faithful to one person for the
very long haul?  Could Bobbi?  Bobbi had definitely acquired a new
respect for loyalty and consistency.  She wondered whether the two
of them --

      Damn!  She had to stop thinking that way!  Oh, this man-woman
business was so confusing!

     Suddenly Jim passed his hand in front of her eyes. "Earth to
Bobbi.  This is Houston.  Are you reading us, Bobbi?"

     "Sorry, Jim.  I've got a lot to think about."      
     "I guess you do.  It must be hard coping.  What's it like,
being a woman?

     Bobbi shrugged.  "I'm still on the first chapter, buddy.  I'll
tell you the secret of the plot when I'm deeper into the book."

     "Maybe you could write a book of your own!"

     "Maybe I could."  

     But how would the book end? Bobbi wondered.

     "I wouldn't like reading the part about what we  did together. 
It must have been pretty bad for you, right?"

     Bobby tossed away her cards.  "Don't keep beating yourself up
about that, Jim.  To tell the truth, I wasn't so drunk that night
that I couldn't have said something if I had really wanted to. 
Even while it  was happening I thought that it was -- well, sort of
interesting.  And I guess I wanted to know how it was going to come
out."

      "I knew it!" crowed Jim, at once happy and relieved.  "A man
can always tell when the woman is liking it!"

     "Yeh, I guess we can," nodded Bobbi in automatic agreement. 
She had for so long been thinking along those lines that old habits
were hard to break. 

     "By the way Jim," she suddenly asked, "what did you do with
that idol?"

     "Oh, that.  Rona and I tried to use it turn her back into a
woman that second night, but when that didn't work, I put it into
a safe-deposit box.  I hope nobody falls asleep inside the bank
vault."

     "I'd have smashed the thing -- or sent it to a politician that
I didn't like!"  Then she added with a naughty laugh, "Hey, we
could have our first woman president!"

     "You're not thinking, buddy.  That idol might be valuable
someday, especially if I can find a rich, frustrated transsexual. 
In fact, why sell it at all?  Just rent it out a night at a time
and make a lot of rich people happy.  You know, doing well by doing
good."

     "Hey!  If you're going into business, I deserve a cut of the
action!  It's my statue!"

     "You've got it, Partner!" Jim once more flashed that same grin
that had been sending shivers up and down Bobbi's spine these last
few days.  He extended his hand.  "Shake on it?"

     Bobbi's glance met his enigmatically.   

     "You know," she said tentatively, "in the old days men and
women thought it was uncouth to shake hands together."


     Jim lowered his hand with the trace of a frown.  "Yeh?  What
did they do?"

     "I could demonstrate."

     At the moment Bobbi was wearing a pair of old  yellow pajamas
bought for a dollar at the Salvation  Army store.  Earlier that
evening she had been tempted, if briefly, to try on one of Rona's
bustiers or camis.  But clothing always sent a powerful message,
and Bobbi still hadn't decided what sort of message she should be
sending to her old friend Jim.

     But now the young blonde began to unbutton her pajama tops,
very slowly, very deliberately, watching intently for Jim's
reaction.  Jim sucked in nearly all the air in the room when she
flipped her top open with the tips of her fingers.  

     "Oh, Bobbi," Jim said with a dry swallow, "Don't do this to
me.  I've been going crazy for these last couple days trying to
keep my hands off you."

     She smiled, rather tightly because, despite all, she was a
little nervous.  "Why don't you just get it out of your system?"
Bobbi suggested, still studying him carefully.

     "I'm not made out of brick.  I'm game.  But -- but are you
sure --?

     "I don't break easily.  I thought I'd proven that much."

     He still hesitated, which left time for doubt to trouble
Bobbi's resolution.  "I'm not much of a seductress," she thought
vaguely as she looked disapprovingly down at herself.  What a dumpy
get-up, these old pajamas.  They were eyesores.  Now she wished
that she had instead worn one of Rona's skimpy lounging outfits. 
Better Victoria's Secret than Goodwill.

     Bobbi looked up at Jim again.  His expression had changed and
it suggested a man who would have gladly begun a meal in an
expensive restaurant, but was unsure of the table manners expected
of him.

     "What am I doing?" Bobbi asked herself.  Where could this
nuttiness go?  She wondered if she ought to just reach out and
embrace him, like Rob would have done in earlier days, to overcome
the reluctance of a romantically inexperienced woman.

     At that moment Jim resolved the problem by reaching out for
her, misgivings and desire set deeply into his lightly-tanned
features.  Bobbi took the hand he offered and squeezed it in hers
and, when he shifted himself closer, moved boldly, enfolding his
neck with her free arm.  

     It felt good, and since Jim seemed afraid that she'd pull away
at the last minute, she seized the initiative, drawing her
partner's mouth up against her own, surprising herself with the
sandpaper-texture of his chin and upper lip.  

     How strange stubble was, Bobbi McGee thought, at least to one
used to kissing the silken faces of girls.  But, holding the kiss,
she knew that she would have to get used to a lot of new things. 
The weeks ahead would certainly be a learning process.  That was
more than a little daunting.

     But Robert Wescott had always been a quick study. 



                                             THE END



-- 
+--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+
| story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us |