Indefinite Overhaul - Part One

One of my earliest ever stories from April 2001 and never quite finished, published here for the first time... 

"I'm looking," I said, "with a slightly embarrassed smile, "for something new. I'm tired of who I am and how far I've come."

                The old man behind the waxy counter screwed up his face and peered right into mine. I could hear his breathing, dry and scrapy. He was the kind of fellow who gave you nightmares about growing old that you just knew were well founded.

                "A complete change?" he asked though he'd heard me say it myself moments before. I felt a little self conscious as he eyed me up and down. He was the creepiest man I'd ever met and I suddenly didn't feel as though trusting my future life to his judgement was such a good idea despite the rave reviews a number of aquaintances of mine had given of his services.

                He was simply supposed to be able to set you up in a new life complete with a fresh appearance and friends, even family. He'd alter your memories so you could function in your new profession and be able to fit into your new social life and apparently even make slight modifications to your personality if the change warrented it.

                Like I said, friends of mine had actually done this, just for a week or so, and come back with wild stories of being someone else. The ultimate holiday, one of them called it. Talk about leaving your worries at home. I wasn't so interested in the short term offer though myself. I intended to go in for the more expensive but in my case definitely necessary indefinite overhaul. I wanted to leave my life behind for good and start off somewhere else, as someone else.

                It's not that my life was so bad, and in fact I was counting on this fact so that I could save myself some dough and trade in one life for another. I was pretty darn loaded, and not bad looking. I was a late twenties young professional in my cut to size suit and slicked back black hair. And I was tall enough to be an impressive figure if I wanted to. No, I'd just had enough of it all. I felt I'd gone the wrong way somewhere down the line and wanted another shot. What can I say? Doesn't everyone?

                So I'd plucked up the courage and withdrawn the cash, and I stood there in his little backstreet shop, feeling too big for the place really, and not too damn well sure that I'd come to the right place.

                "So," he continued in his graty, shuffling voice, "do you have any idea what kind of change you're looking for? Do you know who you want to be?"

                He lent forward on the counter and peeped down at my feet as he spoke. I stepped back a little, not sure I should go any deeper into this. I could see myself regretting it all in the not at all distant future.

                "Hmmm?" he said.

                I looked to my right and left for an excuse not to speak but in the piles of clothes and trinkets, all reminiscent of something in my past, I could find nothing. So I finally spoke.

                "I, well I always just, you know," I said. The old man raised one of his eyebrows.

                "Hmmm? he said.

                "Well it's just that in all my years," I continued, "I never really amounted to anything I ever dreamed of being. I never became president, or flew a jet, or went into space. You know what I mean?"

                He was no longer looking at me, and just continued to gaze mindlessly down at his thick woody hands, totally silent, but for his breating. I felt silly suddenly, revealing my stupid childish dreams to this guy and felt my face blushing. I glanced round at the door and considered leaving. Of course I find it quite amusing now to consider what might have become of me if I had. But I didn't; and if my life has taught me one thing recently, it's that you can go crazy dwelling on a past you can never change, and probably (if you could go back) wouldn't bother changing anyway when it got down to it.

                Then he brought me round to face him with a long, low hum that rose from his throat and filled the little shop. He stopped abruptly finally as I came once again to be looking at his face and snapped his eyes up to look into mine.

                I came to know then what unnerving actually meant.

                Then suddenly, he was full of smiles and talking like he was normal, though I knew beyond a doubt in my mind that he was not.

                "I have just the thing you would probably like," he said in his business-like turn of phrase. He smiled at me. I wasn't sure what I was suppossed to do exactly, but I went along, "oo"ing and "ah"ing, saying things like, "great," and "what is it exactly?"

                He turned and hobbled into the back room which made me smile. It's not that I find physical infirmity in the least bit amusing, but his lope was too comical to describe. Although I couldn't help wondering between sniggers why he didn't use his process on himself. Why deal in perfect lives while you yourself are old and crackled, and just about ready to drop. Couldn't he sort himself out with something to keep the pain away? Or maybe he just worked there part time and couldn't afford to have another shot at happiness like I could. I suddenly felt sorry for him. I wanted to offer him money that he could use to buy a new life. But I knew as I thought these things that I wouldn't do such a thing. Embarass him and me. A stupid idea!

                He pottered in the back just out of sight, humming now and then, for a few minutes before returning finally. He had a notebook in his hand and chuckled to himself as he reached for the phone. It was an old fashioned black and white movie phone with an earpiece you had to hold, the kind of thing one always sees in expensive department stores with an anachronistic dial stuck on the base. This one was no exception. I was starting to think the old man did everything for effect. It even crossed my mind that he was really a younger man by night and merely used his own technique to borrow the body of an older man during business hours so as to continue his oh so "stylish" charade of mystery and weirdness.

                But now he was dialling busily, swinging the number disk at the base of the phone and releasing it to revolve back round to its original position. I realised I hadn't operated a phone like that for ten years or more.

                He paused, waiting for the other side to pick up and in my tepid mixture of boredom and uneasiness, I started to abscently let my gaze flit around the room. The clothing stacked on most of the surfaces was totally diverse in its nature. There were childreens clothes and up, right through to the dowdy old fashioned styles favoured by the older generation. And both sexes were amply accommodated for. I lifted a layer or two and found the outfits to be sorted, apparently in terms of sex, then age, then material wealth. It was like a furniture store to suit anyone, regardless of caste or upbringing. There were aisles I hadn't seen before leading to willowy grottoes of clothing it seemed would never be sold. Was this part of his rumoured process, or a by-line. Perhaps this was simply a quaint little clothing store and the transformation was of one's style as opposed to the more fantastical physical metamorphosis I had imagined from my friends' wild tales. When I considered this alternative, it suddenly seemed preposterous that I had been misled by them. Was it a big dupe? Were they just trying to set me up, and would be outside, laughing when I finally emerged, embarrassed from within. I glanced about for a back exit. I didn't want, suddenly, to have to face down the shopkeeper and try and explain what I had been talking about before. I could hear him talking on the phone now. Whoever he'd been dialling was presumably in and ready to discuss my case to ends I couldn't guess at.

                I was confused suddenly, and felt threatened by the towering piles of clothing around me. It made me remember hiding from my Father in the wardrobe as a child, of being found and beaten for my disobedience. I just wanted to leave now. There was no back way, which left only the front. So, my desire to escape superceding my embarrassment at facing the old man again, I moved timidly toward the main, open area of the store.

                Just before I rounded the corner I heard him say goodbye to the voice on the other end of the line and clink down the receiver. Damn, I thought. As I stepped back into view he was looking right at me, and I knew it would be much harder for me to leave now. While he had been on the phone I could imagine my slipping out the front door and his calling ineffectually behind me. Now though, I would have to face him if I wanted to leave and I was never too good at confrontations.

                Before I could explain away my departure he began to speak and really for me then it was too late.

                "Everything is prepared," he began, letting time drawl out his words, "I have contacted someone who is compatible with your vision, a party who would also be happy with what you have to offer." He smiled, or at least crinkled up his face. "You are very lucky. The party has had to wait a long time for a suitable mate to found. It could have been you who had to wait, but as it is, we shall be able to set you up right away." He bunched his note up into a ball in his fist and dropped into a drawer behind the counter. I looked longingly toward the door, but it seemed a thousand miles from where I stood in the mists of my own angst.

                "So," I said when my pressure of speech wore me down and he did not continue, " what will happen now? I'm not totally sure I want to continue with the service you have running here." It took a lot out of me to say that last line, and I could feel the colour hit my cheeks though the old man didn't seem to notice.

                "Well first of all," he said, "there is no charge."

                "What?!" I'd expected to be robbed blind by his charges. This was a pleasant but great surprise.

                "The other party involved put down a great deal of money to be placed in a life that suited their desires. It seems only fair that your fee be included in her payment, large that it was." He squinted at me and winked as though I were taken into his confidence, but I was sure I'd missed some detail. She?

                "When the other party arrives, the transfer will be completed in a short while, and you can go on to live your new lives in peace."

                "Wait a minute," I said, trying to catch up with what he was saying, "you said, "she." The person coming here is a woman?"

                The shopkeeper turned away from me and began rustling around in a pile of trinkets laid out behind him. "That's right," he said so I couldn't see his expression, "a woman."

                I was reeling. What did this mean then? I tried to put it all in perspective but the heavy incensual odour in the air was breaking my concentration. I started to feel heavy in my limbs and the heat dragged on my bones. I couldn't remember what we had been saying. The old man was peering at me anxiously as though he were examining a marrow in the market-place. I shook my head to straighten myself out then looked at him, not sure what to think or believe.

                "A woman?"

                The shopkeeper stepped back a little and let his expression go blank.

                "Yes," he said, "a woman. You'll be trading in your life for that of a woman, quite a powerful one as it turns out."

                This was amazing. If he was telling the truth, if everything my friends had told me was true, within half an hour, I would not be a man anymore. I would just be a woman. I would wear dresses and have smoothe legs and a pretty face, I'd wear my hair long and apply make-up every time I went out. This was a shock. I was expecting to set off into the life of someone who at least would be male. Seeing my consternation, the shopkeeper said, "you wanted a complete change," seeking to placate me.

                I was dumbfounded, but the idea had some merit the more I thought about it. Women had it comparitively easy in life. I knew quite a few from work, and their work load never seemed to be up to mine. Of course I didn't want to get involved in any way with guys. I didn't think, "great, now I'll be able to legally pursue my homosexual desires," because I didn't have any. I just came, the more I thought about it, to think that maybe it would be a good thing after all. Remember of course, that I hated my life enough to go to this crazy place originally. Becoming a woman seemed in a way to be the furthest I could get away from a life I didn't enjoy.

                So I agreed.