First published in The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction
©1994 Kij Johnson. All rights reserved.
BOB IS DRIVING down Coney Island Avenue in the rain. His
dust-blue Tempo veers a little as he struggles with a box: something small,
in brown paper, with no return address. He was going to take it home from
the post office and open it, but he got curious at a stoplight, and now,
even though the light’s changed and he’s splashing toward Brighton Beach in
medium traffic, he’s still picking at the tape that holds the top shut. A
bus pulls in front of him just as the tape peels free and the box opens.
Bob looks around. The room he has suddenly found himself in is large.
The walls are covered with vividly flocked paper, fuschia and crimson in
huge swirls that look a little like fractals. He blinks: no, the pattern is
dark blue, with silver streaks, like the patterns of electrons in a cloud
chamber. The bar in front of him is polished walnut, ornately carved with
what might be figures, and might only be abstract designs. No, it’s chrome,
cold and smooth under his fingers. Wait a second, he thinks, and he
remembers: driving his Tempo down Coney Island Avenue in the rain. The box.
Bob blinks again: the walls are red and fuschia again.
There are people in the room: he sees them reflected in the mirror
behind the bar. They are draped over the wing chairs, which are covered in a
violent red velvet, or they walk across the layered Oriental rugs in poses
of languor. They all wear suggestive attire: A lilac corset with
lemon-yellow stockings. A leather jacket over a chain harness over bare
flesh. Nineteenth century women’s lingerie, with the crisp lace-edged white
camisole and pantaloons that appear not to have a crotch, although nothing
peeks out but pubic hair. A man’s red union suit. There is something
unsettling about them all, but Bob isn’t sure what it is.
“Well?” The swarthy bartender wipes out a glass with a dirty towel and
slams it onto the walnut bar in front of Bob.
“What?” he says, startled. The bar used to be—something else, he
thinks. The man snorts, impatiently.
The people reflected in the mirror—what exactly gender are they?
Bob turns to look: no, it’s very hard to tell. The men—the ones dressed like
men, anyway—are rather small and fine boned, and the women—or the ones
dressed in corsets and such—seem fairly large. They sit on what are now aqua
leather couches, move across what is now pale gray carpet.
“Your drink?”
Bob licks his lips, which are suddenly dry, and turns around to face
the bartender, whose mustache is blond, and curls up at the tips. His skin
is very pale.
“Didn’t you used to be darker?” Bob asks.
The man snorts again. “What’re you drinking?”
“Gin,” Bob says distractedly. “I don’t even know where I’m
drinking.”
Clean-shaven and dark-skinned, the bartender walks away still holding
the towel. “But, my drink—” Bob starts.
The bartender snorts a third time and picks up another glass.
Bob looks down, and there is a glass of oily white fluid resting on
the bar, which is now chrome, dully reflecting the blue-and-silver
wallpaper. Wait a minute, he thinks suddenly. This cannot possibly
be right. Where the hell am I, anyway? Bob squeezes his eyes shut.
“I know, it’s strange.” The voice in Bob’s ear is calm and slightly
amused. A cool hand touches his wrist, strong broad fingertips resting
against his pulse. “The first time here is very unsettling. You have to
figure out the certainties, and then you’ll be better.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Bob says, eyes still scrunched up.
“There’s always a bar, even if it looks different every so often,” the
voice says, sounding as if it’s cataloguing. “There is always a mirror. The
seating is always in the same approximate places. It changes, though; that
can be upsetting. The beds upstairs—they stay. Well, of course, they
would—after all, we are a whorehouse. And a bar. The customers never
change: why would they? But members of the staff may change a bit. After a
few visits, though, you’ll be able to recognize most of us most of the time.
It’s not so bad. Open your eyes.”
“Where am I?” Bob asks.
“The Boïte.” The voice sounds amused. “C’mon.”
Bob slits one eye at his drink: the bar is chrome again, but his drink
is still clear and oily-looking. With a sigh of relief, he reaches out, and
snags it, lifts it to his mouth. The gin is sharp and spicy, ice-cold. He
gasps a little and opens both of his eyes. A mirror: yes. The people are
still there, reflected in it, or Bob thinks so: they could be different
people. The aqua couches, with the blue walls; when he blinks: yes, red
armchairs again, with the flocked wallpaper. Next to the NEC cash register
on the bar is a little card with the Visa and Mastercard icons on it, and in
handwriting beneath it: CASH OR CHARGE ONLY—NO CHECKS!
“Feel better?”
Bob does feel better; he takes another swig of his drink—still gin,
still ice cold, still like open-heart massage—and smiles at his reflection.
Still Bob. He turns to the person who’s been speaking to him.
She—if it is a she—is a redhead, with a smooth flat haircut that stops
at her strong jawline. She’s wearing a fur coat with—apparently—nothing
beneath it: Bob gets glimpses of peach-colored skin and downy blond hairs
where the coat falls away from her thigh. She is wearing a single earring, a
crystal like a chandelier’s drop in her left ear. Her? He thinks so.
A knockout, he thinks, if it’s a woman.
“I’m Jacky,” she says, and holds out her hand. It seems a little big
for a woman’s hand, but maybe a little small for a man.
“Bob,” Bob says. “Um, where exactly am I? You said, but I didn’t
quite—” He pauses.
“The Boïte.” She picks up a glass filled with something clear from the
carved walnut bar. “It’s French. One of the Boss’s little jokes.”
“‘The Boss?’ ”
“Mr. S. Mr. Schrödinger. You don’t get it?” Jacky pauses, tilts her
head to one side. Her earring hangs away from her face. It’s in her right
ear now.
Bob clenches his eyes shut again. “Jesus Christ. Go away.”
Jacky’s voice continues. “It’s your first time, poor thing; I bet no
one’s explained any of this stuff to you, have they?”
“Just go away. You’re all some sort of dream.”
There is a sound that might be a fingernail pushing an ice cube around
a lowball glass. “You know about the cat, don’t you? She’s around here
somewhere, if she’s alive. Well, she is and she isn’t; I say it, but it
never makes any sense to me either. Like the Trinity, not that they—it, I
mean—has anything to do with us here. So,” she says, and her voice sounds
like she’s spelling something out to a rather slow child, “This. Is. The.
Box.”
Bob maneuvers the glass he still holds to his lips and drains it.
Still gin. He opens one eye and glances sidelong at Jacky. Earring in the
left ear. Was that where it was last time? The gin is starting to make
itself felt; he can’t exactly remember. “So this is like limbo?”
“Sort of.” Jacky shrugs. The fur slips fetchingly, briefly exposing a
broad smooth shoulder before she pulls it close again. “It’s a lot more like
a cathouse, though. I’m certainly thirsty.”
Bob leans across the bar and taps the bartender on the shoulder.
“Another for the lady,” Bob says; he bites his tongue at the bartender’s
sneer as the man turns his back.
Jacky sips from her full glass, and smacks her lips.
“Jesus, how do you guys do that?” Bob asks. “It was empty a second
ago.”
Jacky smirks. “It both was and was not empty. It partook of both
states at once. No—” she says and holds up her hand as Bob opens his mouth
to speak— “I don’t know any more than that, so don’t ask me. I just know it
works. Look at your glass: is it empty or full?”
Bob looks down. “Empt— No, it’s—” he stopped.
“Don’t think too much. Take a sip.”
Bob sips. Gin. He gulps. When his eyes have stopped watering, Bob
says, “This is all too confusing for me.”
“Well, it would be. So are you interested?”
“In what?” he asks carefully.
“This is a whorehouse, what do you think?”
“Sex?” His pants seem to tighten when he thinks of it. But, the broad
shoulders, the big hands— “Uh, Jacky…” His voice trails off.
She pouts a little. “Don’t you like me? I thought you did, I look just
your type; but if I got it wrong, maybe the Madam can—”
“No,” Bob says, and swallows hard: he seems to be having trouble
standing. “No, I like you fine, I like you best of everyone here, you’re
very, uh, attractive. But, uh—”
“What?”
The earring has changed places once more, he’s positive of it this
time. Damn it he realizes fuzzily, I’m starting to like the look.
“You are a woman, aren’t you?”
“What possible difference can that make?”
“I, uh, just prefer women, that’s all.”
“I thought you preferred me?”
“Well, what are you?” Jesus, I must be drunk.
Jacky laughs something that would be a giggle if Bob were a little
more sure of her gender. “You asked for it.” She drops her fur off her
shoulders.
Jacky’s skin is smooth and moderately muscled, with dark nipples
half-erect in the air. Jacky has soft ash-blonde pubic hair, with a small
trail of fur leading down from her navel. What Jacky doesn’t have is
genitalia: no penis, no breasts. She’s—Bob’s not certain of that she
again—too muscled to look comfortably feminine, too smooth to be really
male. Bob can feel himself shrivelling, looking at her.
Jacky tilts her head to one side again, as if she can hear the air
being let out of his tires. “This is The Boïte, right? Schrödinger’s. So,
what’s inside the box? Me. And I could be a pussy, or I could be a pistol.”
“What?” Bob is mesmerised by the sight of her body. Wonder what her
skin feels like?
“You won’t know, of course, which I am until I come. Neither will I.
You have to make me come first, and then I’ll turn out to be one or the
other. And then we’ll really get going.”
“What if you’re male?”
Jacky leans forward until her face is inches from Bob’s. Her high—or
low—voice whispers against his lips, “I’ll still be the best fuck you’ve
ever had.”
Bob licks his lips. “I have to make you come first?”
She nods.
“How do I make you come when I don’t know what to do?”
“I’ll show you.”
“All—” Bob stops and clears his throat. “All right then.”
Jacky straightens briskly. “It’s fifty a shot, so to speak—we checked
your finances, you can afford it—automatically withdrawn from either your
Visa or Mastercard. Unless you’d prefer to pay cash?” Bob shakes his head.
“Mostly they don’t,” says Jacky, nodding with satisfaction. “Visa then?
Okay. We already have your number. Ready?”
“Yes,” Bob croaks. “Can we go upstairs now?”
Jacky leads him up a broad flight of stairs lavishly ornamented with
statuary depicting fauns and satyrs being raped by nymphs—or is it the other
way around? Bob’s having a little trouble focusing. He pulls at Jacky’s fur,
which slides off her shoulders, but she keeps moving up the stairs pulling
him along by the fur.
He catches Jacky at the door to a room and pulls her close, kissing
her hard. He feels her body crushed against him, the flatness of chest and
silky skin stretched over hard muscle. Her hand is sliding under his belt,
flat-palmed against his belly, moving down until she has his rigid penis
under his fingertips, pulling and pressing. Bob fumbles the door open and
they cascade into a room that might be red or might be honey-colored. They
pull apart for a second: Jacky drops the fur coat. At the sight of the body
Bob hesitates again. “What’s wrong?” Jacky says, moving to stand chest
to chest with him. She is just his height.
“I just wish I knew you were a woman, that’s all.”
She laughs once, a low bark. “Except you never do know. You
only think you do.”
THE BUS ACCELERATES until Bob can see around it again. The
box he got at the post office lies in his lap, its flaps folded closed.
Rain’s smearing the windshield: Bob adjusts the timer and turns on the
headlights before he remembers the cathouse. “What the—” he says aloud. The
bar that kept changing, Jacky and that strange conversation, and the room—
So which was she—he? Why can’t I remember? Bob’s most of the
way to Brighton Beach before he figures it out. The box is closed, after
all.