One Eyed Jacks Page 0,3

second or two, then at his own reflection. His features began to change; his skin darkened. Hair was still a problem. He couldn't quite get it to do what he wanted yet. In the old days he could actually have turned into a woman, but that had always made him feel weird. He pulled on the wig and closed his eyes, waited a moment, then reopened them.

"I love you."

It was even less convincing than the few times Veronica had said it herself. He pulled off the wig and changed back. Beth was right, you couldn't know what another person was thinking or feeling. Couldn't ever actually be them. He tossed the wig and picture into the drawer and slammed it shut.

Who the hell would want to, anyway?

Luck Be a Lady

by Chris Claremont

Once they heard where she was going, nobody would take her. Some cabbies were apologetic, others curtly dismissive, a couple offered rude gestures and ruder words.

If the plane had arrived on time, when the dispatchers were on duty, she might have fared better-but mechanical delays and rotten weather en route had delayed the flight so long it was well past midnight before she finally landed, and there was nobody official to turn to.

One asked point-blank why Cody was going there and, hoping it might persuade him to change his mind, she told him: "A job interview"

"Where fo'?" he asked, "ain't nobody hirin' down there."

"The clinic," she said.

"Shit, missy, you got better places to go an' better things to do wit'chu life than waste it down 'at shithole, trust me."

"Absolutely," a friend chimed in, his accent so thick Cody barely understood the word.

"Decent lady got no bizness goin' there," the driver continued, hands weaving a fascinating pattern in the air before him as he spoke, took a sip of coffee, spoke, took a drag on a Marlboro, without ever missing a beat. "Shit, nobody human got any bizness there. Unless. .." Suspicion dawned and he looked narrowly toward her. "Maybe you're one of 'em."

The way he asked, far too deliberately casual, trying to mask the sudden burr of fear and hostility barely hidden underneath, caught Cody's attention and she tilted her head to give her one eye a better view of him.

"One of what?" she asked, genuinely confused. "Them," as if that was the most obvious reference in the world. "Jokers, aces-whole fuckin' crowd."

"I'm a doctor."

"Cops got a name for their precinct down there, `Fort Freak.' Fuckin' fits, y'know. Ain't there enough sick people needful amongst your own, why you gotta go take care o' them? Pardon me for sayin', lady, but you ain't got the look o' no Mutha Teresa, know what I mean?"

"Absolutely," his friend chimed in.

"Look. . ." She sighed, fatigue from her trip combining with apprehension to put steel in her voice, an edge that made the cabbie stiffen ever so slightly and take a reflexive half step backward. "All I'm looking for is a way into the city. If none of you will take me, can you at least point out some other way?"

"Sure," the other cabbie said, striking out with some humor of his own, "walk." Nobody laughed, and when Cody turned her eye on him, with a look she'd learned within forty-eight hours of landing in Vietnam and perfected over twenty years as a surgeon, he promptly wished he'd resisted the impulse.

"Hey, life's a bitch. Only other option's, you take the Q33 transit bus over to Roosevelt Avenue/Jackson Heights, then catch the F take you right into Jokertown."

"F what," she asked.

"F you," muttered the jokester, but she ignored him. "Subway," said the first man. "Sixth Avenue line, that's what the letter stands for, take it downtown."

"Thank you," she told him, hefting shoulder bag and briefcase and following his pointed direction along the sidewalk to the bus stop.

"Better watch your step, Doc," he called after her, "they're animals down there, you got no idea." (And you do, she thought.) "They see a nice piece like you, sonsabitch freaks'll prob'ly eat 'chu!" And on cue, came his friend's stolid "Absolutely!"

Cody didn't argue. For all she knew he might be right.

At the station she scrambled into the next-to-the-last car, surprised to find it crowded. Where'd all these people come from? she wondered. The bus driver said this station's supposed to be one of the main ones on the line and there couldn't have been more than a half dozen of us waiting. She shrugged. Isn't my city, this could be the only train they run