Over the next several hours, Eve managed to draw Dave's story from him. He told her about Julie, how they met and seemed to fall together, and he just drifted off into the story.

Dave told her how, even back in high school, he'd wanted to somehow work in the book industry, preferably with the science fantasy he loved. He'd realized early on if he was going to be in the business he'd have to be in New York, the hub of the industry, and had figured early on that the best way to gain any foothold was to go to school there. A long struggle with quite a bit of luck gained him acceptance at Columbia University. Of the eighty-some kids in the Bradford Class of '88, only he and Jennlynn Swift, the valedictorian, had managed to get into such prestigious schools -- she'd gone to Caltech.

Columbia was a very strange world for a small-town kid like he'd been. In his first year, he had lecture classes larger than the whole of Bradford's high school. It had been shaky at first, and it took a bit of adaptation, but once he got things together he'd done well. One night, he'd gone out for an evening with his roomie, his girlfriend, and her roommate -- Julie. She was from Hartford and a well-to-do family, pretty far from being the small-town, farm-country boy with a widowed mom who had to watch every cent. They were enough different that they found much to talk about that first evening, mostly about how different they were, and at the end of the evening, they'd agreed it would be fun to see each other again sometime.

When summer rolled around, Dave had managed to secure an internship at Bacon and Simon press. It was a scut-work job, but it gave him his first foot in the door of the publishing industry. He didn't see Julie all summer -- she was at home for an internship at her father's company -- but they'd managed to talk on the phone a few times. By the time fall rolled around, they were glad to see each other again. New York can be great fun for a kid with a girlfriend, even if he didn't have much money. Together, they'd done a lot of the fun things there are to do in the city: caught some great shows, visited some of the exotic clubs, and had a good time. And, slowly, along the way they fell in love.

He met her parents during the summer of that year, when she'd invited him up to Hartford for the weekend. He got along all right, if distantly, with her folks -- it was pretty obvious they'd rather see her interested in someone with money, someone with some future in the business world, rather than one in literature. But they were polite, and he was polite, and they stayed distant.

By the time they were seniors, they were engaged. She planned on continuing her MBA, while he wanted to go to graduate school; funds were thin just then, so he'd decided to take a year off to work at Bacon and Simon, mostly reading books that came in over the transom. It was clearly going to be expensive to live, even in a tiny apartment in a safer section of Manhattan, but a little to his surprise, she offered to move in with him to split the expenses. Her folks didn't think much of that idea, so they eloped one weekend and were married by a justice of the peace, avoiding the huge and expensive social wedding her mother had set her heart on at the moment she knew she was going to have a daughter.

Over the course of the winter, he found a couple promising writers at Bacon and Simon, but he'd seen an awful lot of trash, too. Still, those finds and the subsequent treatment of their manuscripts gave him a good reputation as a promising editor in the really rather small world of books. That winter, he started taking classes for his master's, part time; the following fall, he went to his supervisors at Bacon and Simon and told them he wanted to finish it up full time. They told him that when he did, he'd have a job when he wanted to come back. But as his work on his master's drew to a close, he'd gone trolling a little and accepted a good offer as a mid-level editor at Dunlap and Fyre, and he and Julie moved to a bigger apartment on the lower west side, near the Village.

Julie had her MBA by then and was working at Smith, Fawcett, making good money, but she soon realized there was a glass ceiling there, too. After a while, they decided to turn a problem into an opportunity; they both wanted to have kids, and they wanted them before she was too seriously established in her career. This looked like an opportunity, so they deliberately set out to get her pregnant. Tyler was born in January of 1996, shortly after she quit working at Smith, Fawcett; Cameron came along eleven months later. A few months after Cameron was born, Julie hit the job market again, first part time at Harris and Wheeler, and a few months later, full time at Bellinger Gates. It seemed like a good place for her; she was making good money and seemed to have a bright future.

After it was clear she was going to be stable at Bellinger Gates, they decided they needed a bigger place, so got a nice, if expensive, flat in Battery Park Village, close enough that they were in easy walking distance of their jobs. She'd been promoted a couple times in the last two years, and so had he. They were now a nice young urban professional couple on the rise, and life seemed perfect.

Until yesterday, when it proved their life was really a house of cards that tumbled with the tower.

"I don't even know if I have a job anymore," he sighed. "I know the buildings facing the World Trade Center took a pounding. But Eve, even if they're habitable, I don't know that I could even go to work there again. Every time I looked out a window I'd see a pile of rubble where the towers used to stand and where Julie died. Damn it, Eve," he said, the tears he'd managed to hold back so far starting to flow, "She was my life. I don't know what I'm going to do without her. I'm not even sure I care."

"You have your boys to think of, you know," she smiled. "Wouldn't she want you to carry on?"

"I know," he sobbed. "But it seems so futile."

"Dave, do you believe in life after death?"

"Not really; I wish I did, but I don't."

"If there is, wouldn't she want you to show your love for her by being the best dad you can be to your boys?"

"I suppose," he nodded, the tears still rolling.

"Dave, I told you it's all right to cry," she told him in her warm, low, mellow voice. "You need to cry for her, and you don't need to be ashamed about it. I know it's hard to believe right now, but your boys still love you, your mom still loves you, you have friends who love you and will help you carry on."

It was a long morning, and not a happy one. A couple times, they watched the ongoing coverage on television, but Eve never let it go on for very long -- obviously just enough to help the reality sink in. By the middle of the day, Dave was beginning to accept the reality as he sat in the kitchen, still dressed only in Shae's bathrobe.

Shae was in and out of the kitchen a few times, tanking up her coffee, and getting breakfast for the boys. Dave was vaguely aware she was talking with the boys and playing with them in the living room, but paid little attention. Finally, Eve called a halt. "We probably ought to come up for air," she smiled. "And you might like to get some clothes on. I'll get with Shae and see what we can do about lunch."

"Yeah, I think I need the break," he nodded.

"I think what I got you will fit," she replied. "Just sweats and like that, I think on the large side, but it'll do for today."

It felt good to use the bathroom, to get dressed. He didn't feel good, but he didn't feel as dismally depressed as at this time yesterday. Eve's incredible empathy had let him talk out a lot of things he hadn't even realized himself. How lucky he was to have had her available! For the life of him, he couldn't remember her from high school, although she'd clearly been a member of his class, and she remembered him well. That was vaguely troubling; there were only eighty-one graduates of the Class of '88 at Bradford. While there had been kids he hadn't known well, he'd at least known everyone -- and he was just plain drawing a blank on her. Blank or not, though, it was good to have her to talk to.

Back from getting dressed, he found the boys at the kitchen table -- sitting up pretty high, too, considering he'd felt like a shrimp next to it -- it was also Shae's size. A little bit of investigation revealed the boys were each sitting on several books, while Shae was busy at the counter, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. "Dave, I can do PB and J for you," she smiled. "Or there's still some of the tuna salad left."

"The tuna salad, if it won't be any problem," he said.

"If it would have been a problem, I wouldn't have mentioned it," she grinned, cutting the sandwiches, then taking the plates over to the boys. "Tyler, Cameron," she asked, "Would you like some milk with that?"

"Yes, please, Aunt Shae," Tyler said.

"Aunt Shae?" Dave smiled.

"Tyler and Cameron and I talked it over," Shae reported as she headed for the refrigerator. "We agreed that since I'm an adult, it's not right to just call me by my name, but since the kids on TV get to do it, it wasn't fair to make them call me Miss Kirkendahl, either. We decided that since they didn't have any real aunts, I could be their Aunt Shae."

"Sounds like a fair deal," Dave smiled.

"I must say that you have a pair of nice and polite boys," Eve said. "I think you and Julie did very well with them. I hope Sergei and Milla are as nice and polite when they're Tyler's age."

"Sergei and Milla?" Dave asked. "Your kids?"

"I can't have children, so John and I adopted them from a Russian orphanage a couple years ago," Eve explained. "They were barely a year old, but we decided to leave them that much of their Russian heritage. They're pretty good kids, and John makes quite the doting father. I really should get home and see them, if only for a few hours." She let out a sigh and continued. "Perhaps we'd better make plans for the next move."

"Yeah," Shae agreed. "Dave, from what I could pick off the TV this morning, there's no way you're going to be allowed to get into your apartment soon, even to just get clothes. But you and the boys are welcome to stay here as long as you need to. I don't want to have to leave you sleeping on the couch. I've never set the third bedroom up and just dumped stuff in there. I can arrange to get a bed and dresser in there if you're going to stay for a while."

"We don't really know, do we?" he asked. "It might be a couple days, or it might be a couple months. I really don't want to put you out that long."

"You're not putting me out," Shae said flatly. "This place is pretty big for me, just by myself. Up till last spring, I always had a roommate. I won't mind having one again for a while, especially under the circumstances."

"Shae, you may be too kind," he said gratefully, "But I'll take you up on the offer, for now, anyway, until things get worked out. I feel I should pick up my share, though."

"No way," she said. "At least not now, not until you find out what happens with your job and stuff. Once you know you're going to be stable, we can work it out. Until then, you're my guests."

"Like I said, Shae, you may be too kind, but I'll gratefully accept."

"Like I said, no big deal," she smiled. "Next problem. Your mom has called a couple times this morning, wanting to know if she should come. Emily is planning on coming with her, I guess. She's been here before, and I've always put her up then. So, if your mom is coming, we're back to the extra-bed problem, or else we'll have to find a motel room."

"There's another problem," Dave sighed. "I can't really invite Mom without having Julie's folks here, at least for a little while. Her dad will be all right, but her mom will be very emotional and overprotective of the boys. We, uh, don't like each other very much."

"Not surprising," Eve nodded. "I sensed that last night. I can be here to temper it, of course. While I need to get home to see John and the children, and there are a couple of my clients who are probably frantic, I'll make it work. I'll find a few minutes this afternoon to call John and my clients if I feel I shouldn't leave here."

"Maybe having Emily and Dave's mom here would take the edge off of it," Shae suggested.

"Good point," Eve said. "We'll just have to make it clear that we can't have too much confusion. On the other hand, perhaps a little group therapy will be useful, too, at least among the adults."

"No planes are flying," Shae noted. "But if we give Dave's mom and Emily the go signal, they'll be ringing the bell in twelve hours or less. It's probably not a good idea to have them driving all night, so we need to get them moving now, or wait until tomorrow."

"Julie's parents probably can be here in three to four hours, depending on how bad the traffic is messed up," Dave commented. "They would be here now if they knew where to come. Maybe. I can't get over the thought that they knew where the boys and I were as much as you two did, and they didn't do anything about it."

"She sounded rather hysterical," Eve noted. "Perhaps they weren't capable of thinking very clearly."

"Wouldn't surprise me," Dave snorted. "How about if we tell Emily and Mom to start this way, but don't figure on getting here before late tomorrow afternoon? Eve, you and I could call Stan and Deborah, talk with them a bit, maybe have the boys talk with them, and you could tell them that too much confusion isn't a good idea today, maybe tomorrow?"

"Mostly because it's true," she nodded. "I could do that."

"Eve, while you did well on picking out these sweats," Dave said. "I need to be dressed better for Julie's folks. It doesn't have to be real nice. I take it there's a K-Mart around here somewhere? That'd do for now."

"A couple miles," Shae nodded. "There's better places, too. I could maybe hit a furniture store and do something about the bed problem. Or, maybe we could just get some cheap sleeping bags and pads while we're at K-Mart."

"That's probably the wiser idea," Eve noted. "Emily might have something like that, too. When we call Dave's mother, we must let her know things are going to be a little crowded and primitive. Why don't the two of you go deal with those issues right after lunch? I can talk with the boys a little and make some phone calls."

Dave was not surprised to discover that Shae's plain-looking Ford Taurus had been modified to fit her; the driver's seat sat a little lower and farther back than the passenger's, and on the way back from K-Mart he commented on it.

"No big deal," she smiled. "It's like the apartment; everything isn't easy as big as I am, but it makes life a little simpler. The guys at the dealership worked it out somehow. I could make do without it, but when I used to travel a lot, I was always folded up in some damn econobox rental, so it was nice to get home and be able to get into a car comfortably." She giggled and went on. "It's just a Plain-Jane car. John and Eve have a minivan and a Trans-Am. I'll give you three guesses who gets the Trans-Am most of the time, and it ain't John."

"Doesn't surprise me," Dave shook his head. "She really is something else, isn't she?"

"My best friend ever, for years and years, clear back into high school," Shae grinned. "She's a very good person to take problems to. I've seen her do it before. And to me."

"You?"

"Just the being tall," she sighed. "Dave, I really am something of a freak, and I know it. It gets to me, sometimes. I got a pretty good ride through high school and college on being tall, but it doesn't work quite as well in the real world. I lucked out and just happened to fall into something where it's an advantage again. When the show runs out, and it will sooner or later, I have to be prepared to do something where being tall isn't going to be a disadvantage."

"Any ideas?"

"I want to go into producing children's shows," she said. "As things worked out, I'm more than just talent on Avalon. But that's because things are small and low key, and because I got a couple other breaks that might not be there the next time. But it's gotten me down in the dumps at times, especially since I've been in New York. So, I'm real happy that my best friend wound up only a couple hours away in Bucks County. We went a few years when we only saw each other rarely, but we ran the phone bill up a lot. We've carried each other a lot over the years."

"She's an incredible woman," he shook his head. He took a deep breath and went on. "Shae, this is embarrassing. It's clear that she went to school with us, but I just can't recall her. Not at all."

Shae turned and flashed him a grin. "It's not surprising," she said. "She's changed a lot since we ran around together in high school, including her name. You're not the first person she's stumped, but you knew her as well as most of the kids in the class."

"But . . . who is she?"

"You've got all the pieces; you figure it out," Shae grinned. "I'll give you a hint; it takes a huge leap of imagination."

"Shae, you're toying with me."

"Yeah, I guess I am," she smiled. "Most of the kids in the class know now, at least those who have been in contact with Emily, so it's fun to come up with someone we can stump. It hasn't happened for a while, but we talked it over and decided I'd better be the one to break the news to you, since it might be hard to explain to the kids. There are a couple sensitive points you need to understand, too. That's why when you said you didn't remember her name and hadn't been to the reunion, she put you off a little."

"You said you were best friends with her clear back in high school," Dave shook his head. "I remember you being friends with a lot of kids, but I remember when we were seniors you were real close with Denis Ri . . ." All of a sudden, it hit him. His eyes grew wide as he gasped, "Shae, you're shitting me!"

"Nope," she grinned. "I told you it took a huge leap of imagination."

"Eve is Denis Riley?"

"No," Shae sighed, "Not really. This is one of the sensitive points I needed to raise with you. She would tell you that Denis Riley was a role she had to play between the ages of six and sixteen, and part time for another year after that. The year we were seniors, that is." She let out a long sigh and went on. "Most people didn't particularly like Denis. For that matter, I didn't much, and she didn't either. For many years, she's referred to Denis in the third person, like he was a totally separate person. Which I have come to believe he was."

"You're telling me Eve is a transsexual . . ." he shook his head. "Well, of course she can't have kids of her own. But Denis Riley? That's hard to believe!"

"Only her folks and I saw the transition, since it all had to be a big secret," Shae said calmly. "Nobody else in Bradford knew about it until we had the tenth reunion three years ago, when Eve outed herself to the class. You can imagine what it would have been like around school if it had gotten out that Denis was a transsexual. He literally could have been killed! By the time the reunion rolled around, people had grown up enough to accept it, except for a few religious-nut pinheads."

"You say this was going on while we were in school?" he said, still incredulous.

"Right under everybody's noses," she laughed. "You remember how I used to spend a lot of time with Denis?"

"Of course," he shook his head. "Everybody figured his folks had asked your folks to have you watch over him."

"That's what we wanted everyone to think," she laughed. "In fact, it did happen, but only after the Rileys and I cooked up the idea in the first place. My mother was a real gossip back then; we figured she'd get that story out, and she did. It made a good cover story for what we were really covering up."

"That Denis was becoming a girl?" he said, still incredulous.

"Exactly," she smiled. "It didn't happen overnight, it took most of three years. It's a hell of a story, and maybe we can tell you parts of it sometime. We had some adventures and went some places that no one in Bradford could ever have even dreamed. But let me just give you a good example. Eve has a pretty good chest for a woman her size, doesn't she?"

"Yeah, she does," Dave nodded. "Implants?"

"No, they're all natural. It turns out Eve was actually somewhat intersexed, and genetically pretty close to being a girl, anyway. When she went on estrogen therapy, they popped out pretty quick. When we graduated, she had a good solid B-cup that she had to bind with ace bandages so no one would figure it out. They grew more later."

"I'll be damned. Denis Riley!"

"Look, Dave," she said. "Do me one favor. Don't think those words, especially around her, at least unless you're talking about a specific incident in school. She is not the same person. Physically, she's so much a woman that a geneticist couldn't figure out the difference, and a gynecologist only could if they knew about the procedures she's had. Mentally, they're not the same person, either, but only her folks and I really know just how true it is. Back in high school, Denis really was a misfit. Kids called him geek, queer, weird, wuss, girl, things like that, and they were right." She snickered and went on, "Especially when they called him a girl. All that stuff came about because he was working so hard to repress the girl part in him. Or, as Eve would say, having to struggle to present as a boy. Once she quit having to do that, it allowed her to be the warm, bright, empathetic, personable woman she is, and I'm proud to say I helped bring that person out. For a year, I had to watch her literally put on Denis so he could go to school. He'd get in my car after school and turn back into Eve by the time we got out of the parking lot. I could see the difference. I mean, not physically, but in personality, attitudes, even the way they spoke, it was plain as day. Now, do you wonder why we didn't want to let anyone know?"

"It's hard to believe," Dave nodded as she pulled into the apartment complex parking lot. "But would it be offensive if I said that Eve makes a better woman than Denis ever would have made as a man?"

"No, it wouldn't be offensive. In fact, with one exception, everybody who has ever seen both of them has said pretty much the same thing. The exception is her brother, who's married to a sanctimonious, pinheaded religious nut who fills his ears full of crap."

"That's a shame," he shook his head. "I would have to say the difference is so big that I never would have guessed it without you laying out some pretty broad hints."

"No one ever has," she grinned. "Including her sister. They are that different. In fact, there have been times it's been a little irritating. Back when Eve was transitioning, we spent some time in places where some people were trans, some were genetic, and you didn't always know which was which. I don't think Eve was ever clocked in those situations. I got clocked, though, quite a bit. Someone would look at the two of us and figure that Eve was the genetic girl and I was the trans."

"Because you're so tall, right?"

"Yeah," she sighed as she pulled into a parking space and shut off the engine. "Plus I have big hands, big feet, a moderately prominent Adam's apple, and a few facial tells that people who know the difference usually pick up on. My natural voice pitch is in the low range for a woman, and I can slide it down to sounding like a man real easily. I do it storytelling all the time; you've seen me. On top of that, I was a jock. It's pretty clear to us that genetically I'm fairly close to being a boy myself, but I don't have the gender dysphoria that Eve had, thank God. Anyway, what it all means is I continue to get false clocked. Frankly, it would piss me off if I hadn't spent as much time around the trans scene as I have. It gave me a little different perspective on things."

"That's got to be embarrassing," he shook his head.

"It gets that way," she said. "In fact, back while I was still on the road doing basketball, one time I was in San Francisco. I got an appointment with the most prominent plastic surgeon in the country doing facial feminization surgery, to see if he could clean up some of those tells on my face, and get a trache shave to deal with the Adam's apple. He'd worked on Eve, and virtually everyone in the trans community swears by him, which is why he charges a ton. Getting false-clocked occasionally is irritating, but it's not $35,000 irritating, which is what he wanted."

"Another downside to being as big as you are," he nodded.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "At least Eve could fix her problem with estrogen and surgery. I can't."

"I'm sorry," he said. "But I was always impressed, and maybe a little inspired as to how well you took being tall."

"How's that?"

"I've seen tall people slouching to cover their height, to try to look like everyone else. I have to say that when the tallest person I knew in high school wore high heels, she was doing a pretty good job of not being ashamed to be tall. I'm only on the tall side for a guy, but with you as an example, I never thought I had anything to be ashamed of."

"Blame my mom and dad," she said. "They're both tall, and I guess they both slouched a lot in school. But when they realized their kids were all going to come out tall, too, well, they worked real hard to teach us to not be ashamed of it. That's why Mom always wore heels when I was little, and part of why she got me doing it." She shook her head and continued. "I guess it also didn't hurt that I was a closet exhibitionist, I liked to have people looking at me. That's part of why I got into TV, and there's some stories to tell there, but we're getting way off the subject.

"What I wanted to say was we weren't going to tell you about Eve just yet, but if your mom and Emily are coming, you had to know. Emily knows, of course, and I'd bet about twenty to one that your mom will find out from her if she doesn't know already, because it's no secret in Bradford anymore. So, you had to know, or you might misconstrue something that was said. But I think you'll agree with Eve and I that we don't want Tyler and Cameron to know, not because it's anything to be ashamed of, but because it's hard to understand at that age."

"Yeah, you're right about that, especially on top of everything else they're dealing with. We'd better not let Julie's folks know, either. They're, uh, pretty rigid. Like I said, I don't get along with them particularly well myself."

"You're cool with Eve, then?"

"Yeah, sure," he nodded. "You're right; she sure can't be Denis Riley."

Shae's cell phone went off. She pulled it from her purse, turned it on, and said, "Shae." He couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, but she was saying, "Yeah . . . pretty good, better than we expected . . . yeah . . . yeah, that sounds like a pretty good way to do it . . . uh, I dunno, that's not something Shaella would say . . . glad you think so . . ." That went on for a while, before he heard her say, "Oh, an hour, maybe a little less, depends on the traffic, no way of telling right now . . . yeah, you're right, I'll be as quick as I can. See you in a few."

"Trouble?" he asked.

"Sort of," she said. "I called about my job this morning. We're not going to try to do the regular shooting schedule this week, but there was talk about putting together an emergency Avalon to help kids deal with this. We're going to rush ahead with it, try to have it on the network tomorrow."

"That's pretty quick, isn't?"

"Damn quick, we've never done it this way before. We're going to skip a lot of the frills and fancy stuff and just wing parts of it. Look, Dave, taking care of you and your kids is the first thing on my list, but I think this is important to a lot of other kids. Eve can look after you this afternoon. No idea how long this will take, but it won't go late. This probably wouldn't be a good time to take the kids on a studio tour; things will be pretty crazy. We can do it in a few days."

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