Identity Matrix (1982) (21 page)

After almost two years on the streets, makin' it for peanuts as a free-lance, I knew I'd either hav'ta hook up with one of the pimps in town or I'd finally get tossed in the joint for real, not just do a few thirty-day stretches in County Jail like usual. My cop friend told me this Cougar Lodge was a high-class house, run right and with state exams and stuff like that. I'd already had to use the free clinic a few times, for one abortion and lots of times for VD checks, and while I was clean still I knew it wouldn't last. Not with the kinda Johns I was gettin'. So I tole the guy O.K., I'd try it, and he took me to his own Doc—a fancy one—and I came out clean. And then I got this bus ticket, and here I was, goin' south to who knew what? Who cared, either?

"Stateline, Nevada casinos," the driver called out, and pulled in. I looked around. So this was Tahoe, I thought. Looked like the Reno Strip in the Oregon mountains.

I got off and found it was real cold. I didn't expect that, although I had my heavy jacket on. Reno was cold, but we'd been gain'
south,
for Christ's sake!

The same guy I'd met in Reno was there to meet me, all bundled up, and he got my bag, real gentleman-like, and we walked to his car. It was somethin' else, I'll say. A big, fancy Mercedes all shiny and new. Maybe, Misty old girl, you got hooked up right. Maybe you finally got the breaks.

His name was Al Jordan, a little, fat guy about fifty or so puffin' a big fat cigar. He was the manager, he told me, and went over the terms once more. I reminded myself that I was twenty-one, at least to him, since at twenty I was still too young for the legal stuff, but I'd been lyin' about my age for a while now.

The place was real beautiful, up in the mountains and all. Kind of a winter resort, with snow and everything. I didn't mind, since Cedar Point was sure colder'n this sometimes and Reno wasn't exactly Miami Beach in February.

The place looked like a big old hotel, which I guess it was once. It was real pretty inside, too, with a big hall, blazin' fireplace, bear rug, all that. But I really knew I was in the big time when I saw that they took all the big credit cards.

That was a giggle. Wonder what they put on the little slips?

I got introduced to the staff by Al, then we went into his big, fancy office and he gave me a bunch of forms. I looked at 'em but had a little trouble readin' 'em, and he helped me. They was the damndest things. Tax withholding forms, social security, shit like that. I really started feelin' like I'd found a home.

"You'll work a six day week, with Mondays off," Al told me. "But you'll get six days around your period off, and you can go anywhere you want, stay here, go into Tahoe, whatever. You're paid once a month, at the beginning of your break, into a bank account in your name—that's one of the forms there, the yellow one.

You can take as much out as you want any time at the desk, or let it stay. It'll be in the bank, making money for you, until you want to use it."

That sounded fine to me.

I had my own big room, with bathroom, and big, round bed. Al let me decorate it the way I wanted, on the Lodge, and I had a lot of fun doin' that. We also went on a shoppin' trip to Tahoe, with me pickin' up a buncha really sexy clothes and all.

The other girls were real pretty, too. Some were real smart, some came from the streets like me, but all looked
gorgeous.
I never got along much with other girls—men was my style—but they was nice enough as a bunch and we each had our own room and place.

Al brought this one guy to me who was a beauty expert, they said, and I really got the works. After he was through I almost didn't know myself, and when I got into my workin' outfit I decided I was at least as sexy as the other girls.

The workin' outfit was real high heels, panty hose with black mesh, and a kinda bikini, plus nice, long earrings, a sexy hairdo done for us by a guy who came through a lot, cosmetics, and the like. We was told to let our hair grow long, keep our fingernails long and them and toenails painted, and all that.

When a customer—we was told never to say trick or John—came in, we kinda paraded in the lobby struttin' our stuff and he picked whichever of us he wanted.

There was some bad feelin' among some of the other girls against the ones that got picked most often, but as I got picked a lot I didn't mind. Let 'em eat their hearts out.

The guys weren't real kinky types, either. Oh, a cou-ple, but mostly those types were weeded out. We ser-viced the best in the West, Al always said—salesmen, big shots, show-biz people (sometimes even makin' house calls down to town for them types). Some were into bondage and S&M, which was cool, as long as they didn't hurt
me.
Al knew which way we all bent and he tried to steer the customers to the right girls when he thought he should. He seldom made mistakes.

I never liked the S&M types, and so I never got 'em. Oh, once, a goof, but I put that straight. Bondage, though, I didn't mind, and all the other kinky stuff, the role-playing and other games, that sort of thing. Some of the guys got off just from the mirrors I had all around, includin' on the ceiling.

I told myself every day when I woke up, around two or so, that I had found paradise, maybe for a lot of years. Carole, for example, was thirty-seven, looked young-er, and still goin' strong. I could do it forever. I made a lot of lonely guys happy, gave high-class sex to guys who hardly knew how to fuck, and I couldn't get enough. I really liked the ones on power-trips, though. I was so submissive bondage was just an extra turn-on, and I loved it. I couldn't get enough.

The rest of the time I just stayed home, mostly, watchin' TV and shit like that, including the porn movie channel to get ideas. Every once in a while I'd go down to Tahoe, 'specially after the weather got warm and the ski bums cleared out, to swim a little in the pools of the big hotels, gamble some, and, once in a while, get picked up and treated for a night, sometimes for a freebie but mostly not. I spent some dough, though, not so much on that—I found I never really had to buy a meal—but on pretty clothes, jewelry, that sort of thing.

Hell, I had nothin' else to spend it on, and I could die young or somethin' and what good would it do me? At the end of a year I got a big raise, too, so it kept buildin' up. I bought mink and jewels and fancy, sexy clothes and still had money in the bank, even after the govern-ment took out its cut.

Over that first year, though, a real funny thing hap-pened. It was so graduallike I didn't even think about it 'cept when buyin' clothes, but here I was, a growed woman, and I outgrew my bra!! Got thinner at the waist, too. Changed a bit. My 35-24-35, which wasn't bad, became a 42-23-36, which was real weird at my age. I was always sexy, but I started bein' almost always horny, even always dreamin' of sex. I thought maybe Al was puttin' somethin' in the the food, but even he and the other girls noticed it and said somethin' after a while. I never really tried to figure it out, but while it was better than ever for business the big boobs sometimes made my back hurt and I started findin' myself rubbing my workin' parts just sittin' around. It was like I was becomin' an
animal
or somethin

', and it worried me a little. I told Al, but he just said this life was what God had made me for and now that I'd found it I'd just turned completely on. "All your juices are flowing full-tilt," he said.

But it
was
a change. My voice was a little lower and all-the-time super-sexy without me even havin' to shift gears, and I knew my moves were all super-sexy, ani-mal like. But as time went on I worried less and less about it. I got lots of customers every day, and a lot of repeat business, and a couple of the big show-biz stars started wantin' me only. Pretty soon I stopped worryin' about things, or even thinkin' much about anything except fucking and pleasing men and getting as many as I could.

Finally, after I'd been at the Lodge a long while, one of Al's friends, Joe Samuels, who ran a fancy strip club in town, asked me if I'd ever thought about doin' that. I told him I had-I'd watched them fancy strippers and really liked the idea of takin' it all off while all them men watched.

It turned out that Al owned part of the Copa Club and didn't mind. He was such a sweet guy. I got up a little early and went to school again, but this was a different kind of school. A stripper's school—only they said "ex-otic dancer" or some such shit. There was a lot more to learn than I figured. Not just the dances, the moves, but the timing. When to turn, when to drop this or that, all that.

So I started stripping for the Copa Club part of the time and as I got to be more of a draw I got less and less of the walk-ins at the Cougar, stayin' only with my old regulars and the really big shots.

I loved stripping almost as much as fucking, and there was no reason not to do both. I was goin' up in the world I loved, and I was havin' a ball at it.

I got recognized on the street, not just for bein' sexy but for bein' a big shot,
a celebrity.
I got a rush just lookin' at the Copa Club's big sign now, with a picture of me on it and just one word, "MISTY." All capitals like that. I didn't like to read and never read much of anything but that one sign I read over and over.

I got a driver's license—I don't think the testing guy was payin' any mind at all to how I was doin'—and credit cards and a little sports car in a fancy pink shade.

Pretty soon Joe was gonna open a new, bigger Copa Club in Vegas, and he and Al wanted me to go down there. I liked it in Tahoe, but Vegas was big time, and I couldn't say no. Besides, it was warm, even in the winter.

I didn't want to leave Al, and it was kinda a tearful goodbye, but I knew I hadta go. I went down a couple weeks early to get settled in and look around my new home town.

It was Reno and Tahoe all rolled into one. I had no troubles there, even if I wasn't really known yet—I knew I'd own this town, at least the part of it I wanted, real quick. I stayed at the Sahara while lookin' for my own place and I had a lot of fun cruisin' the strip, tryin' to have a good time each night without liftin' a finger or payin' a dime.

My third night in town, I met this nice-looking young guy, said his name was Jeff something-or-other, and we went out on the town and had a real good time, even if we did lose at the tables. After, we went up to my room at the Sahara and, well, one thing led to another, and I was gettin' all set, when I turned my back on him for something or other and felt a sharp sting right in my ass. I let out a sharp "Ow!" and started to turn around, but the whole world just blacked out.

Chapter Ten

Run program!"

Again there was no sensation, no idea that anything was going on, but funny things, lots of big words and memories and all sorts of stuff, rushed back into my head.

An elderly man who looked like Einstein, only fatter and older, stepped up to me. "How do you feel?" he
asked gently in a soft accent that was central European, I guessed. I seemed to know him from somewhere, and I struggled to recall.

"Stuart," I managed.

He smiled. "Excellent! You know me. Now-who are you?"

I tried to think. Who? It was all so mixed up. "Mis-ty Vic-tor Gon-ser Carpen-ter," I managed.

"Which is it?" he prodded. "Which one are you?"

I tried to think for a minute, sort things out in my head, and they wouldn't quite come together. It upset me, not knowing, not being able to put it all together.

I tried to think. I remembered Misty Ann Carpenter and her life perfectly. I was Misty Carpenter and it was my life. On the other hand, I was also Victor Leigh Gonser, male, mid-thirties, somehow in the body of Dory Tomlinson. I tried to look at my body, feel my body. It was Dory's body, yes, but it was also
my
body. Misty's body, Vicki's body. It felt both natural and odd.

"I—I'm both;" I said in wonder.

Eisenstadt nodded again. "Good. Very good to come so far so fast. I think that as you go on the two parts of you vill more and more come together. You vill be a new person, not Victor, not Vicki, not Misty, but a blend of all three. I think that is all ve can hope for, and I think it might just be for the best."

He signalled and the apparatus was lifted from me. He offered his arm and I got up from that chair, that damnable chair, and unsteadily followed him back into his office. He gestured for me to sit down, then poured a little brandy for me which I gulped greedily.

"Do you know how long it's been?" he asked gently.

I shook my head, still trying to get a grip on myself. "Long, I think. The only attention I've paid to time recently was when to take the yellow pills and when to take the green ones."

He chuckled, then grew suddenly serious. "It's been more than three years."

That stunned me. Three
years! I
was twenty-three now, then, and Dory would be almost seventeen.... That brought up a thought. "Dory?"

He turned and gestured behind me, and I recognized an older Jeff Overmeyer enter with a strange, dark young woman. She was a tiny woman, not just in height but she seemed so small and fragile, with dark reddish-brown skin, wide, flashing eyes that looked almost coal black, and long, almost blue-black hair.

But she was extremely attractive, narrow-waisted, small-boned yet somehow with the toughness of leather about her. Her face was a classical Amerind beauty'

s, with high cheek-bones and the look of the exotic, almost mystical, about her.

She wore tight, faded jeans and an old T-shirt with some Indian design, showing small but firm breasts beneath. A faded pair of cowboy boots seemed perfectly in place on her.

"Dory?" I gasped.

She just stood there a moment, staring at me, wide-eyed. "Vicki?" she responded, unbelievingly. "Is that
really
you?"

I got up, she ran to me, and we hugged and held each other close. I found that I was crying, and, looking at her, I saw that she was, too.

I was conscious of how different I now appeared to her, and felt a little odd about it. We finally let go, and Eisenstadt offered her another chair. She just sat there for a moment, staring at me.