It was a relatively quiet evening. After dinner, they washed the dishes, and Shae ran a Disney video she'd rented; it happened to be one Dave hadn't seen, so he and the boys watched it while Shae did a little housework and then came to join them. By the time the movie came to an end the boys were starting to wind down, so Dave had them get ready for bed; Shae told them a story and sang a little lullaby to them, then turned off the light. When Dave checked a few minutes later, they were sound asleep.

"Dead out," he reported to Shae as he sat down on the couch. "They still usually get naps, but didn't today, so it's not surprising."

"Well, good," she smiled. "Dave, I usually don't drink, but sometimes I like a small glass of wine. Would you like some?"

"I think so, if it's no trouble."

"It's no trouble," she smiled. "You should know that by now."

In a minute, she was back, with a small glass of white wine for each of them, sat down on the far end of the couch and swung toward him. "Thanks, Shae," he said after she'd handed him the wine. "You're too kind to me."

"Like I said, no big deal," she smiled. "Dave, I know Eve has talked with you a lot today, but she's not here now. How are you bearing up? I mean, really?"

"I do all right as long as I don't think about it," he said. "But the slightest thing can get me to thinking about it. Like tonight, when I was making dinner, I was thinking that if this hadn't happened, I'd be doing the same thing, but for Julie, not for you. Things spiraled down from there, and I had to forcibly get my mind off it, mostly thinking about high school. You and Eve have had me wondering a lot about that."

"Well, you're making progress. I take it you'd rather talk about something else."

"I can think of lots of things," he said. "Some of them about Eve, of course, but I remember you saying that you attract guys you'd rather not."

"Yeah, I do," she nodded, sipping at her wine, then setting it on the end table. "Dave, I put a lot of guys off, just from being so damn big, you know that."

"You were intimidating in high school, and I know you didn't date a lot, except for Denis."

"Well, I said I didn't want to," she sighed. "I guess I lied a little. I wouldn't have minded more, but I scared a lot of guys, or they didn't want to be seen with a girl so much bigger than them. While it appeared I was dating Denis, you know now that there was something else going on, so it didn't count. With the exception of one special occasion, you were the only guy I ever really dated in high school. Dave, did you ever hear the song, Pick Me, Please?"

"I think so," he nodded. "It was on the charts, what, three or four years ago."

"It reminds me of when we were freshmen and sophomores. I used to go to school dances solo in hopes I could get someone to just dance with me," she said sadly. "But nobody ever picked me out. Not once, Dave. I finally quit going."

"I'm sorry, Shae. I didn't go to dances much. I think I would have danced with you at least a little, though. People kept pushing us at each other, after all."

"Yeah, you probably would have, you're one of the good guys, Dave. Those two times you kissed me goodnight, well, Dave, they were the only ones in high school, except for that one special occasion I mentioned, which was a special favor to a couple out-of-town guys Eve and I knew a little, and more for Eve than me, at that. It was the only date she had in high school, and we had to be real careful about it."

"There was more than that," he snickered. "I remember you and Denis kissing in the lunchroom, several times."

"Strictly an act, so people would think we had a hot romance going on," she smiled. "We really didn't like to kiss like that; we both thought it made us feel like lesbians. This was while Eve was still technically a guy, so it really seemed strange. But I'm wandering away from the point. I did finally get to do some dating in college, all jocks. Well, I hung out with jocks a bit, there were some I liked enough to go to bed with but none enough to get serious with. How do I say this? Eve had her surgery a year to the day after we graduated, and when we were sophomores at Ball State, well, she slept around a bit, trying out the new equipment and validating herself as a woman, so to speak. I guess I was doing the same thing. We finally realized what we were doing, and that pretty well ended our round-heel phase."

"I don't see where the part about attracting the kind of guys you don't want to attract comes in," he said.

"Mostly because I haven't got there yet," she grinned. "Going back to the time when Denis first told us he thought he was a girl -- she hadn't named herself Eve, yet -- after his folks and I figured out he was serious, we realized we had to find out more about this transsexual thing. We didn't have any idea of where to start. Now, you know I have huge feet for a woman, even one my size. So does my mom. Years before, she'd discovered a place over in Chicago where she could get good-looking women's shoes that fit, and she turned me onto it. It's a place called 'Dress to Desire', and I still get shoes there if I happen to be in Chicago. However, big-footed women aren't their main clientele. Want to guess?"

"Haven't a clue."

"Crossdressing men," she smiled. "You know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Yeah," he grinned. "It does sort of make sense when you stop and think about it."

"I still get shoes from the same sort of places here in the city," she grinned. "Anyway, I got the bright idea that, in a place that did gender bending, somebody might know something about gender reassignment, which we didn't even know enough to call by that term at the time. I was right, and it was there we met our first transsexual, and where we started to get the leads on where to get the information we needed. I say 'we' because I was just as in on the deal as Eve's folks, maybe even a little more in some areas. Well, the guy who runs the place, Carl, he's a tiny little shit, smaller than Eve, even. He's in his sixties now, and doesn't dress much anymore, I'm told, but when he does, she looks gorgeous, and you really can't tell. Anyway, Carl has been studying women all his life; how we move; how we act. I mean, more than a woman does; we just do it; we grow up with it."

"Sounds logical but strange," he smiled. "I noticed that you switch 'he' and 'she' around a lot. I guess a place like that, it wouldn't be surprising."

"Very true, and you get used to it. Well, anyway, Carl is a super-nice guy, very supportive, and was a big help to Eve every step of the way. Now, remember, I just said a woman does things we do just because we grow up with it? Eve had missed out on sixteen years of it and had to play catch-up. I was pretty tomboy at the time, and her mom wasn't much better, so we turned to Carl for help. And, Carl told me I should sit in on these discussions; I was such a tomboy that I didn't act much like a girl. From his viewpoint, he was right. Eve and I wound up going to several seminars, some private sessions, and well, we both picked up some tricks that no teenager should legally be allowed to know. Some of those tricks were just a little bit bent, the kind of thing a man presenting as a woman would do, if you get my drift."

"Not really," he shrugged. "I guess I never thought about it."

"You don't see a crossdresser wandering into a grocery store in jeans and a T-shirt," Shae smiled. "Most shoot for over-the-top glamorous. Mix that in with the kind of exhibitionist I already was, and well, it could get pretty spectacular. Well, anyway, these seminars and the like, there were some weird people there, and I got hit on some, but real strange, even for that place. Carl had put out the word that Eve and I were jailbait, even though I wasn't, but it wasn't that kind of getting hit on. I mean, these people were really strange. Finally, I went to Carl and asked him what the hell was going on. He was kind of disgusted at how naive and clueless I really was, and explained that I was getting hit on by male subs who wanted some female domination."

Dave giggled. "Now that you mention it, I can see how that could happen. You can be, uh, pretty intimidating."

"Don't I know it," she smiled. "Like I said, I had never heard of such a thing, and I thought it was totally weird. Carl had a heart-to-heart with me and basically told me that, as big as I was and the way I looked, I was going to get hit on like that whether I liked it or not, so I'd better get used to it and learn how to handle it." She let out a sigh. "Look, I understand quite a bit about what's going on with gender identity dysphoria, what Denis had; there's no way I could have avoided learning it. But this femdom stuff, I didn't have a clue. And, to be honest, I still don't understand it in my gut."

"Me neither," Dave shook his head. "I mean, I know of people who get off on it, and sometimes it gets pretty damn serious, but understand it? No way!"

"I understand it to the point that it's a kink, or like being gay, like a lot of things," she nodded. "Usually people who have kinks like that can't do much about it, they just have to accommodate it and control it. So Eve tells me, anyway. That's a big chunk of her practice she was deliberately vague about around the boys. A bigger chunk is parents, friends, relatives, wives, of people who have those kinds of kinks, as well as trans people, trying to help them accept it. We usually don't see transsexuals as kinks, there's a different mechanism going on, gender identity dysphoria, but there are some who really are kinks. I mean, even though we hung around some weird people, and Eve still has them for clients, we're both really pretty darn straight. Realistically, the experience I'm telling you about is part of the reason Eve got into that specialty."

"I wondered about that," he smiled. "So this Carl helped you learn about some of this stuff, then?"

"That and a lot more over a period of a few years. Later Carl set us up with a couple very special seminars, brought in a couple dominatrixes, some male subs, and we sat and talked about it, while they did some demonstrations. Then, once we'd talked about it, we did some practical exercises, some on other occasions. Although I don't care for it, I learned how to be a pretty intimidating dominatrix. Mind you, this is while we were still in high school. We didn't even tell Eve's folks about it; they would have absolutely shit, even though there was no sex involved -- these guys never touched me."

"I'm sorry if this is insulting," he grinned. "But I have a vision of you in black leather, carrying a whip."

"Ja, und sprechen mit ein Nazi accent, too," she laughed. "I've got an outfit like that, and it would flat knock your eyes out. I really look over the top. I don't wear it much. I really don't like the femdom stuff; it doesn't do a thing for me, in fact, it kind of squicks me. But once in a while, there's a good reason to do it, like when I first got hit on to do Charley's House. There's never any sex involved. But here's the thing: nineteen times out of twenty, when I get hit on, that's the reason; I can pick up the cues pretty easily. Sometimes it's some potentially cool guy, but I always find myself thinking, do I want a kink like this to be the father of my children? Thanks to Carl and Eve, I'm pretty damn tolerant of people's kinks, probably more than most people, but there are still limits."

"I see," he said softly. "I never thought of that, but I can see how it would be troubling. And I can see how you'd attract guys like that. I'll bet that causes you some problems. I mean, Shaella Sunrise versus Shae the Intimidating Dominatrix."

"Mistress Grimm," she smiled. "Yeah, it does. Like I said, I don't like it, I never did it much, and don't do it at all anymore. And it's always been very private, never in a club scene or like that. If word of it got into the wrong ears, I'd be toast and so would the show."

"No one will hear it from me," he promised.

"Thanks, Dave," she smiled. "The funny thing is there's a little Mistress Grimm in how I play Shaella Sunrise."

He shook his head and smiled. "OK, this is one I have to hear."

"It goes back to when we were defining the Shae character on Charley's House. You may have picked up on the fact that a lot of what Shae does, besides telling stories, is mediate between adults and kids, or kids and other kids, right?"

"Yeah, that's pretty obvious."

"Well, once in a while a character acts out. It can be an adult as much as a kid, and Shaella has to exert a little authority, or at least common sense. Now, no violence, ever, and not just because she's a gentle giantess. You may not have seen it -- it doesn't happen every show -- but when there's a trial of wills between Shaella and someone else, she draws herself up to her full seven feet, which looks more like ten feet due to the set and the other actors. She stands with her feet apart a little, puts her hands on her hips, and gets an extremely disgusted look on her face. It's kind of like a dog's fur standing up. That's all it takes, she stares them down. In the scripts, it's called 'The Glare'. She can be talking very sweet and controlled, but the body language is saying, 'Run for cover.'"

"I get it," he laughed. "The Glare evolved from body language that said, 'Lick my boot, slave.'"

"Exactly," she laughed along with him. After a moment, she went on. "On the show, we usually use a couple seconds of just Shaella from a real low camera angle, down at her feet, and a wide-angle lens. Do it right, and she looks forty feet tall, not just ten feet tall. I mean, it's like the camera is a mouse down between her feet. It does a good job of telling the viewer that Shae is about to breathe heavily on someone."

"I can imagine," he grinned. "I'll probably be seeing a fair amount of Avalon after this; I'll probably catch it."

"Probably. It's one of those tricks we don't want to overwork. Now, the really interesting part is I discovered along the way that The Glare works in the real world. Not perfectly, it won't stop someone who is really upset or violent, but if someone is just being mouthy or rude and I want to pull them up short, it often works. I had to use it on a couple people who thought they were security guards or something when Eve and I were looking for you last night. It's all body language; I can continue talking in a pleasant, casual tone, but just me looking down at someone with The Glare will often bring someone up short. Now, there's an advantage to being my size, it adds to the menace. Try it on your kids sometime when they act out. Don't raise your voice, be firm but gentle, but look pissed. Unless the kid is really hyper, they'll pick up the body language."

"You know, you're going to make some kid a great mother."

"I hope," she sighed. "I want to have a family; I think I'd be good at it and it gets lonely at times being single. But like I said, I mostly attract the kind of guys I really don't want to build a family with. If I don't turn up someone decent in the next few years, I may give being a single mom a try when Avalon runs out. But damn it, a kid needs a father, too."

"You've talked with Eve about this, I suppose?"

"Since we were back in high school," she sighed. "I've been involved in tall clubs and like that, but I'm not sure I want to get involved with a guy as tall as I am, or taller. My mom and dad are tall, and I'm taller. I'm not sure if I want to run the risk of having a kid even taller yet."

"Because it's been hard enough for you?" he nodded.

"Right," she said, picking up her wine glass again. "It was pretty cool being tall on the basketball court, and there have been times it's been pretty cool since, like Avalon. But it's a massive pain in the butt most of the time, and I'm stuck with it."

The "third bedroom" in Shae's apartment was small, and had probably been intended more as a den or home office. She used it as a storeroom, so it just had seldom-needed items more or less dumped in haphazardly. There really wasn't much, so it had been easy to clear space for the sleeping bag and foam pad they'd bought on their trip to K-Mart earlier in the day.

The sleeping bag was fresh from the package and smelled new, and the foam pad only took a little of the hard out of the carpeted floor, but still it was probably going to be better than spending the night in the recliner like he had done the night before. He'd been rather stiff in the morning, but he'd needed the sleep so badly that it hadn't mattered.

What a long day! The horror of the day before seemed a little numbed, now; reality was setting in a little as he squirmed around, trying to find a comfortable way to lie in the sleeping bag. He wasn't sure how he and the boys would have gotten along if Shae and Eve hadn't come out of the past to rescue them -- but almost certainly, it would have been worse than it worked out. The women had been taking care of him, comforting him, mostly with Eve running things even when she wasn't present.

Denis Riley? Unbelievable! There clearly had to be a more interesting and elaborate story there than the pieces he'd heard. Shae had been through much of it with her and had some adventures of her own along the way. The way Shae had turned out was almost as different from what he would have expected as Denis' unseen future had been. She clearly had some good stories to tell, over and above the few he'd been told.

Her extreme height obviously caused her some problems, but it'd given her some opportunities, too. Even though she clearly didn't have all the problems worked out, and he'd picked up a touch of moroseness from time to time, over all, she'd turned out to be a heck of a woman herself, certainly a more well-rounded, interesting, and intellectual person than he could have foreseen back in Bradford. How different things had turned out for Eve, for Shae . . . and for himself, too, not even considering what had happened the morning of the day before.

Julie would have liked Shae, liked Eve, and would have been fascinated by who Eve had been and had become. It was too bad Julie hadn't ever met the two . . . but then, he most likely would never have reunited with them, if it weren't for . . . if it weren't for . . .

All day long, the image of the tower crumbling, the sound of Julie's last words "I love you, Dave!" had been present in his mind, hovering there in the background like an unwanted presence. Only rarely were they near the surface, but they never went away. When they had threatened to surface, he'd roughly shoved them into the background, thinking about something else, often with Shae or Eve's help -- and until now, they hadn't left him alone enough to give him the opportunity to think and brood. Now, in this darkened room with only a tiny nightlight, was the first time he'd really been alone and not doing anything or vitally concerned with something since he'd seen the plane hit the tower.

He remembered standing there on the sidewalk, watching the flames and the smoke . . . frantically trying to get Julie on her cell phone, then talking with her, trying to calm her down. After a time, he'd backed off for a block and then two, trying to get a little better angle on the fire than looking almost straight up at it. That had probably saved his life and kept their children from becoming orphans. From his viewpoint on the ground at a distance, it looked as if the fire was dying down, and he figured maybe firemen had gotten to the blaze, were dealing with it, and this would soon be over with . . . and then, the unbelievable sight, and Julie's last words, "I love you, Dave!"

What could the last few seconds of her life have been like? It didn't take much imagination for him to visualize the smoke-filled trading center, the floor falling out from under her, desks and computers and people all floating, free falling . . . "I love you, Dave!" . . .and ending in an instant. Oh, my God. At least death had come for her quickly, but only if he could have told her one last time that he loved her!

That was the thought that broke him. There had been tears before, not many; he had to be strong for the boys, and no matter what Eve had said, "Boys don't cry" ran pretty strong in him; it was hard to cry in front of the women, and he'd kept himself under control. Now, there were no children, no women, and he didn't much care as the tears rolled as he hopelessly sobbed, "I love you, Julie!" All the wonderful times they'd had, the wonderful future, now a might have been, her wonderful smile, her wonderful voice . . . "I love you, Dave! . . . I love you, Dave! . . . I love you, Dave! . . ."

The more he cried, the more it built, and the more it built, the more he cried. Soon his body was wracked with inconsolable sobs, and at first he was barely aware of the arm around him, of being held close to someone, cuddling and consoling him like he was one of the kids . . . Shae's quiet voice whispering, "Go ahead Dave. Cry for Julie. She deserves it. She knows you love her . . ."

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.