Chapter 11

Evidence...more proof that she was living in an alternate reality.  It has to be it.  What else would explain the boxes of Cookie Crisp and Cap’n Crunch sitting next to her raisin bran?  She’d never buy that kind of cereal.  The calories alone would send her from a size seven to a...a twenty.  And on a shelf under the cereal, more items jumbled up the wide space, declaring that another person lived her.  Among other things, there were protein bars, protein powders, energy bars, energy drinks, bottles of Gatorade, canisters of Gatorade powders, a giant bag of Cheetos and three boxes of full-sized Snickers bars...not to mention the Twinkies, the Ding Dongs, the honey buns, the peanut butter crackers, and little packages of Rice Crispy Treats.

Good gracious!  Chrissie peeked at Race from under her eyelashes.  He wasn’t that big!  How in the world did he eat all this junk?  Her “husband” had a serious sweet-tooth, that was evident.  She touched a box of Twinkies, trying to remember the last time she ate one of those.

Too long.

Grabbing a handful of fat and sugar, wrapped in plastic, she turned and dumped the lot on the island counter.  “Seriously?” she asked Race, arching an eyebrow to hide the growing panic in her system and scanning his lean body from head to foot.  “Where does it all go?  To your feet?”

He offered her a small smile, barely a curve of his lips, as he stretched a leg out from under the table.  “I burn a lot of calories.”

“Right,” she said, remembering what Dena said.  “You ride bicycles.”

“I do,” he replied calmly, nodding.

She glanced down at the Twinkie under her fingers.  Maybe she should take up bike riding.  That golden confection looked mighty tempting.

“So, I’m married to a pedal-pumping, metabolic superstar,” she muttered to herself, but her sister and Race clearly heard her.  She didn’t mean to be callous, just trying to wrap her head around the guy reclining at her kitchen table.

He stood up, deliberately unfolding his body, and Chrissie took a step backward at the look in his eyes.  Crap.  When was she going to learn to keep her mouth shut?  “I’m...I’m sorry,” she said, barely able to breathe through the clot of regret taking up residence in her throat.

He spoke not a word.  Both sisters watched him leave the kitchen and open the door to the basement, closing it behind him with a low click.  Half a minute later, the familiar notes of KISS’s “Heaven’s on Fire” thumped up the stairs and rattled windows.  

Well, at least we share the same taste in music, Chrissie thought, shuddering to think she might have married someone who was into pop songs or similar disasters to the music culture.  

The Twinkie continued to call her name, so Chrissie figured, screw it, and unwrapped it, stuffing half in her mouth as she walked back to the table.  Dena scowled at her.

“What?” she asked, the word muffled through cake and cream as she struggled to chew.  Her heart was thumping hard, but she couldn’t allow the fear to get to her again.  She could do this.  She was alive and kicking.  It could be worse.

“Do you have to be so mean?”

Chrissie sighed, swallowed, and swallowed again to keep her turbulent stomach from rebelling.  She said, “I didn’t mean it...it’s just that...God!  Everything’s so different!  But it’s not, you know?”

Dena nodded, still scowling.  “Oh, yeah, I know.  You’re still my sister, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out who the hell you are any more.”

“Because I’m not me!”  She waved her other half of snack cake in her sister’s face.  “When was the last time I had something like this in my house?  You know I can’t eat this stuff.  I’d blow up like a balloon.”  Then she punctuated her point by shoving the rest in her mouth and closing her eyes in ecstasy, despite her unconscious need to fly into another frenzy.  Just the perfect amount of sweet and creamy...

“That good, huh?” Dena asked, smirking.

“Delicious,” Chrissie moaned.  The snack cake landed in her stomach with a thump, and sat there, waiting for a signal to let it go back up.  Chrissie ignored her instincts.  She wasn’t going to get worked up about this again.  She wasn’t, dammit!

“You going to orgasm on that Twinkie?”

Chrissie cracked an eye open and glared at Dena.  “I might.”

Dena rolled her eyes.  “Do you want another one, or should we talk about what just happened?”

Chrissie looked away, embarrassed.  “Do we have to?”

“It would be a good idea.  You insulted your husband--”

“He’s not my--”

Dena pinched her hard.  “Ow!” Chrissie screamed.  “What was that for?”

“He is your husband, and you’d better get used to it,” her sister pointed out.  

Defeated, Chrissie rubbed her arm and frowned.  “Yeah, I know...I know!” she repeated after seeing Dena’s jaw set with determination and her sister’s fingers moving toward the other arm.  “I get it, sis.  

“I’m not sure that you do,” Dena replied sadly.  “You didn’t spend that whole day with Isaac on Mom’s mountain.  You spent it with Race.  Isaac was the one skiing down the mountain in a trash can.”

Chrissie frowned.  “So, I’m remembering things totally different.  Does that sound like normal memory loss to you?  It doesn’t to me.  I feel like I’ve been abducted by aliens and dropped onto another planet.”

Dena blinked at her as though realizing something.  “Do you remember last summer when we went on that shopping spree in Branson?”

“Of course,” Chrissie snorted. Not a wise reaction.  Snorting used a lot of stomach muscles, and they were already revving up to do more than help her throat make derogatory sounds.   “I bought two pairs of shoes, the rug in the dining room, and about three pounds of chocolate espresso beans.”

Her sister’s gaze narrowed in thought.  “You bought one pair of shoes because you said Race would have a fit if you came home with more than that, and you bought three pounds of ginger chews because you tried some in Japan and loved them, but you couldn’t find them anywhere else.”

Chrissie’s head caught up with her stomach and started getting that dizzy, disoriented sensation again because it was all too surreal.  She figured she’d been doing pretty good after her breakdown in the closet.  She thought she’d finally got a grasp on the whole business and was starting to accept it...as weird as it all was.  But there was only so many flipsides her mind could take, too many memories she didn’t know thrown at her.  The cereal and junk food, she understood.  The wedding dress in her closet, the cologne on her bathroom vanity, even everybody telling her things that she couldn’t recall...but to make such an important decision as which shoes to buy based on her “husband’s” opinion?  Not in this century!  And that was the splinter in the lion’s paw, because it was proof that she wasn’t herself anymorel.

Chrissie gripped the edge of the table to stabilize herself.  “No...no, that’s not right.  I got the red sling backs and the denim wedges...and I hate chewy candies.”

Dena got up from the table, reached into the pantry, and came back with a plastic container of small candies individually wrapped with golden paper.  “Japanese ginger chews,” she said dropping them in front of Chrissie.  “And you put the denim wedges back, saying that you didn’t really need them anyway.”

Staring at the candy, Chrissie swayed in her seat, the emotions becoming too much to shove down.  No, no, please not again.  She gulped back the panic.  Oh, God!  This had to be something more serious than just memory loss.  Dr. Malik had been wrong.  She had a brain tumor, or a fried synapses, or something lodged into her gray matter, a bone fragment or an ingrown hair follicle that festered and was infecting her brain.  No one influenced her shoe decisions!

She brought her eyes up to her sister, her stomach rolled as her lunch and that damned Twinkie threatened to make a reappearance, and she squeaked, “Dena, I think I’m going to be sick.”

She tried to rise, but her legs trembled so violently that she fell back down again.  Dena rushed to get the trash can.  “Okay, just breathe,” she said, placing the container next to Chrissie.  Sticking her head down into the receptacle, Chrissie gulped in deep breaths, the pungent odor of coffee grinds and onion peels burning her lungs.  The smell activated a reverse in body functions, and she emptied her stomach.

No more Twinkies...ever!

After a moment, she felt better, calmer, more herself.  Dena offered her a glass of water.  Chrissie rinsed out her mouth, spitting into the trash can.  “Better?” her sister asked, rubbing Chrissie’s back.  She nodded and sat back in the seat, closing her eyes.

Dena dropped down into the chair beside her.  “Chris...I don’t want to worry you, but I think we’re dealing with more than just memory loss.”

You think?!

“It’s really is like you woke up in someone else’s life,” Dena went on.  “Do you have any holes in your memory from the last two years?”

Chrissie squeezed her eyes, making tears drip down her cheeks.  “No,” she whispered for an answer.  “I remember everything.”

“Everything but Race.”

Chrissie nodded.  Dena said, “Shit...that can’t be normal.”

Chrissie opened her eyes to glare at her sister.  What part of this day had fallen in the normal category?  Dena smiled faintly as though reading her thoughts.  

“Okay, so we’ve got some things to figure out,” Dena said.  “But you’re not dying, and you’re not in any physical danger, so we just have to think positively.”

“Positively,” Chrissie snorted again, thankfully it didn’t trigger any more upheavals in her stomach.  “My life isn’t my life anymore, D.  I don’t know about you but there’s a big fat negative sitting in that statement somewhere.”

Dena folded her hands over Chrissie’s.  “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“I hope so,” Chrissie replied.

Dena stood up.  “You going to be fine here without me for a while?  I think I should go pick up your prescriptions and get some things from my apartment.”

“What more could possibly go wrong today?” Chrissie asked sourly.  Dena replied, “That’s the spirit,” and hugged her briefly before slipping out of the back door.  Chrissie had to do something to keep her mind off of things, so she gathered the dirty dishes, loaded the dishwasher and took out the trash.  She noticed that the window in the backdoor was covered with a piece of cardboard, and the coffee cup wreckage had been cleaned away.  Then she stood in the middle of the kitchen, thinking nothing about her home seemed different -- no extra televisions, no stereo equipment stringing ugly cables and wires across the baseboards, no evidence that a man resided here at all -- and wondered why.  Besides the clothes hanging in her closet and the man down in her basement, it was like nothing changed in her life.

But everything had.  

Music blared up from behind the closed basement door: The Rolling Stones’ “Hand of Fate”.  With the songs before that, “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zepplin and “Gimme All Your Lovin’” by ZZ Top, it was as though Race blasted a playlist of this whole situation.  She needed to go down and talk to him, figure out these living arrangements between the two of them until life got back to normal.  Her remembered life, or his.  Either way, they couldn’t continue pussy-footing around each other.  The past hour told her that.  If he remembered things differently, maybe he needed to tell her, possibly trigger her memory...or something.  Once Dena picked up her medication, she should be able to handle the change in realities.

She hoped.

Chrisse squared her shouldered and descended in the bowels of her house.  Just as she stepped onto the top tread, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” sounded off the first notes, and Chrissie slowly tackled the stairs to the beloved beat...and she smiled.  God, she loved this song.  She swore her heart thumped and pounded to the rhythm every time she heard it.  Right now, it was dancing inside her ribcage.

Then she rounded the corner to the basement and her heart stopped.

Race sat astride a stationary bike, pedaling hard and fierce, and wearing only a pair of cycling shoes and the tightest, butt-hugging pair of spandex shorts ever to come out of the ‘80’s.

Heavenly Mother, save my soul...

In front of him, a large projection screen displayed a moving highway, as though Race was actually riding a bike on that blacktop, and he focused on it as he pedaled, his blue eyes trained to the picture.  And when the road began to rise up a hillside, Race rose up on his stationary, too, and worked his legs to climb the imitation slope, his jaw clenched with determination and his chest rose and fell rapidly with each breath of exertion.  Chrissie realized that the movie and the bike must be synced with each other, some kind of smart exercise equipment.  

Lean, taut muscles flexed and gleamed magnificently with sweat, and Chrissie -- for just a second, mind you -- thought, What a man like that could do between the sheets!

Her thoughts startled her, and she turned to flee up the stairs again, but her stubborn feet wanted to ogle some more at all that hard, masculine flesh and remained where they were.  She tripped, falling to the hardwood treads with a crash and a curse.

“Chrissie?!”

Chrissie raised her head up from her embarrassing disaster and turned to say something as he rushed across the room and hovered over her half-way up the stairs.  The words stuck in her throat when she came in direct eye contact with a black-swathed bulge stationed between two muscular thighs.

“Oh, my God!” she spurted out, lurching backwards and hitting her head on the wall.

“Jesus, Chrissie, give yourself a concussion, why don’t you?” he grumped, hauling her to her feet.  “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she muttered, thankful she was up away from temptation.

“Are you sure?” he asked, smoothing locks of hair out of her eyes.

“Yeah...you’re busy...I can come back.”

He finally released her.  “No, I’m done.  I just needed to work the kinks out of my system.”  He smiled ruefully.  “My masseuse hasn’t been herself lately, and I didn’t want to bother her for a body massage.”

Chrissie blinked at him...then she got it.  Oh...  She cleared her throat.  “Right...massage...”  Oh, to put her hands on that line of muscles that graced his back...and shoulders and abdomen and legs and...

Stop thinking about it.  

“So what brings you down here?” he asked, obviously trying to steer the conversation.

“We need to talk?” she offered, keeping her eyes on his and away from his nearly naked body.  But, wow, it was difficult.