The next week was an uneasy one. Chris spent a great deal of time at her school office, and I painted frantically to catch up on the next Froggity book. In my absence, the publisher had decided to continue the series with three more books, but those needed to be completed almost immediately in order to be part of the packaged series. Blanche, of course, had not answered any of the frantic emails or text messages Candace, my art director, had left.
I felt a need to reassure Candace, so I called her. “Jamie, I am so relieved to hear from you.” Her voice was low and breathy, although since it came from smoking a pack a day, it wasn’t that sexy.
“Sorry, Candace, I had an accident a few weeks ago, so I’ve been in and out of the hospital.”
“Good Lord, are you okay?”
I made up a weak story about head injury and slight concussion, but it was enough to pacify my boss. “So I’ll get right on these notes,” I said, “and should have the dummies for all three books ready in about a week.”
“It’s going to be tight, but we’ll make it work. Once I get back to you, the finals will be due in another week. I know that’s a crazy schedule, twenty-four paintings in seven days.”
I wanted to scream. Crazy didn’t begin to describe the situation. Impossible was more accurate. “Candace, I know you’re getting pressure from the production people, and it wasn’t your fault I was out of commission for a few weeks, but wouldn’t it be better to give me another two weeks so the artwork is the same quality as the other books?”
“Yes, but you can’t believe the number of books waiting for artwork. The editorial team has finally gotten its act together and begun accepting books from the writers. Three weeks ago, we had four books in the queue. Now we have twenty-four. The Froggity books need to be finished yesterday so you can take on some of this backlog.”
“And if I need to take my time on Froggity?”
Candace sighed, her disappointment clear even though we were separated by the Atlantic Ocean. “I need to hire four more artists anyway, so I’ll assign them the bulk of the new books. I can give you what’s left, but if you’re not available to start this next project, there might not be room for you later.”
Four artists? Crap. I’d never get assigned another book, since there were four of us already. “Candace, I will absolutely do the very best I can. Depend on it.”
“Thanks, Jamie, I knew you’d step up. Now no more blows to the head. There’s just no time in our schedule for that.”
I disconnected and flopped down into my saggy green chair. Blanche probably had the painting skills, since I could play the lute in her body, but she clearly didn’t want to use them. Inspired, I grabbed a blank sheet of paper, pondered the tone to take, then decided friendly would be more effective than hostile.
Dear Blanche,
If you’re reading this, it means our minds have once again switched bodies. I assume you understand that’s what has been happening to us. I don’t appreciate the extra weight you’ve put on my body, but I can deal with that later. And your video threats really don’t mean much—I doubt either of us can control what happens.
There is one thing, however, that you MUST do should you inhabit my body again, and that’s keep up with my work. If I (or we) don’t deliver the paintings on time, I’ll lose my only source of income. Your nasty video mentioned your fear of poverty, so you must help. I need to earn an income, and painting is what I do best. Attached is a list of the paintings required, as well as a few samples from previous books. I know you can do this, since I’ve been able to play the lute in your body.
Jamie Maddox
I wondered where to leave the note. If I left it in the studio and Blanche never went there, all would be lost. I couldn’t leave it lying around the flat for Chris to see and think me even more mad than she already did. For now, I folded the note and slid it into my back pocket.
The next morning when Chris and I bumped around each other in the kitchen, I aimed for casual. “Let’s just say you’re right, and my personality did split into two, me and Blanche. How are we different? Does Blanche dress the same way I do?”
Chris poured herself a mug of coffee. “Not really. She tends to wear what you’d consider dressy as her daily clothing. That crushed velvet jacket you bought as a joke? Blanche loves that.”
I shuddered. The midnight blue jacket was so dark it could have been the background for an Elvis painting. “What else does she wear?”
“Skirts. She doesn’t like wearing jeans. And she’s much bolder in her color choices. She puts crazy outfits together, but they work.”
That we were standing around talking about Blanche’s wonderful fashion sense churned my stomach. The elephant in the discussion, of course, was that Chris must think I chose boring, less risky, less flashy clothes, which fed right into her idea that I was too cautious and without ambition. And another thing—Chris seemed to brighten whenever she said Blanche’s name.
“Okay, thanks. I was just curious.”
“Does this mean you’ll go see Dr. Kroll?”
“Nope.”
Before I left, I slipped the folded note into the pocket of the velvet jacket, even though only an idiot would wear it in the summer.
Back at my studio, struggling to bring the next Froggity story alive with a few brushstrokes, I thought about what would happen if I lost this educational publishing job. Chris certainly wouldn’t let me starve, and she’d pay the rent, but she preferred to keep our finances separate. We still split everything fifty-fifty, coupled in such a way that an uncoupling could happen as fast as sliding down the emergency chute on an airplane. Yet if Chris and I were truly committed to each other, why did we still have things arranged for an easy exit? We were intimate in so many ways, yet we had no joint account of any sort. It was the most uncommitted commitment ever.
She was receiving money from her father, and she had a part-time job at UC London, but otherwise her income was lower than it had ever been. I would have been thrilled to pay more than my share, to literally feed and clothe the woman I loved.
* * *
Dr. Raj still hadn’t come up with anything. We talked every day, and he’d go into painful detail about this theory or that, but ultimately nothing he said reassured me that my body-switching days were over. I obsessed over the weather reports as if my life depended on them. Every morning, I raced to the kitchen window and searched the sky for cloudy wisps that might gang up and start a thunderstorm.
One day I couldn’t paint and I couldn’t bear to sit in the flat, so I walked all the way down to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. I returned to Dr. Rajamani’s basement exhibit and stood in front of each of the twelve scans, staring at them as if one of them held the answer to my problem. As I moved from scan to scan, my spirits sank because each scan was nearly identical, a mishmash of red and green and blue, with slender threads of white visible at the outer edges.
Then it hit me. The scan in front of me had much more white than the others. I checked all twelve, and found one more just like it. These two had been the only ones to catch my eye the day Chris and I had attended the exhibit’s opening. I called Dr. Raj, and he answered right away.
“Jamie Maddox, I am studying this. Be patient.”
I told him about the huge amounts of white in the two framed scans.
I could hear his confusion. “Of course, I did notice that as I prepared the exhibit, but I could find no data to explain it. Give me the patient numbers of the two with more white, if you please.”
I read off the two numbers and waited while he checked his research. “Hmm, the reason there was no more data on those two subjects is that they dropped out of the study after only one session.”
Excitement pulsed through me. “I’ll bet one of them was Ray Lexvold.”
“Yes, one was Ray, and the other was Meg Warren.”
“Dr. Raj, it can’t be a coincidence that the two scans with all that white never came back. We know that Ray was sent back in time. What if Meg was as well?” I asked Dr. Raj for her phone number and address. Maybe I could track her down and eliminate her as another traveler.
I had time, so took the Tube to Meg’s Soho flat. She didn’t reply to my buzz from the locked vestibule, but someone leaving held the door open for me. I climbed the narrow stairs, which were clean as freshly-fallen Minnesota snow, then found number Three A. The hallway smelled of furniture polish. I knocked, but no one came to the door.
I tried twice more, with the same results, then a door down the hallway opened. An elderly woman popped her curly gray head out and glared at me. “No matter how much ye knock and disturb the rest of us, ye can’t bring a person to answer her door when she isn’t there.”
I approached her, hands up in apology. “I’m so sorry. Do you know when Meg will be back?”
“Not an inkling.”
I handed her my card. “Could you have her call me when you see her? It’s very important.”
With a curt nod, the woman accepted the card and closed her door.
I slid a card under Meg’s door, then left. There was nothing more I could do.
That night I read about the Tudors and realized how lucky I was to have known Elizabeth, even if it had been under crazy circumstances. Then it struck me: I was the only person currently alive on the planet who had actually met her.
Elizabeth was pressured her entire life to marry, at least until she was beyond childbearing age. Her councilors were terrified that the country would erupt into warfare without a clear line of succession, since so many branches of the Tudor family could claim they were next in line.
Possible marriage candidates included Philip II of Spain, the widower of Elizabeth’s sister Mary. Eric XIV of Sweden was passionate about a marriage, but the oafish Swedes were almost considered clowns in court, with their thick accents and rough clothing. Elizabeth had been courted by the Archduke Charles of Austria and the Earl of Arundel, yet she’d strung each of them along until they drifted away. She insisted on meeting each man in person, but few members of foreign royalty would consent to travel the great distance to England only to be put on display and rejected at a whim.
My heart sank into my ankles as I read more about Dudley and Elizabeth. They loved and fought each other their entire lives. She never married him, however, because of the cloud of suspicion surrounding his wife’s death. Some believed that the very fact that Dudley was available after his wife died kept Elizabeth from marrying anyone else.
I put the book down. Poor Amy Dudley, in love with a man who wanted nothing to do with her, then dying so young in a tragic fall. What would it mean for the future if Winston succeeded in killing Dudley? The Master of the Horse was so handsome and charming that every man the council put before Elizabeth as husband material paled in comparison. Without him, what would Elizabeth do? I did a quick search on plots to kill Dudley and found there were two. Neither succeeded, and neither involved Winston.
On the weekend, Chris and I went to Spamalot at the Apollo Victoria, even though I hated its steep stairs without railings. Descending to our ticketed seats felt like a barely controlled fall. Chris seemed to have given up on the idea I had multiple personalities, and a truce of sorts settled over us. We laughed until we cried and ended up holding hands. That night, for the first time since I’d returned to my own body, we made love. At first, I was nervous, thinking she would be comparing me to Blanche, but her delighted moans told me I could withstand that sort of scrutiny.
Later, as I curled around her warm back, Chris kissed my hand. “Babe, can I ask you something?”
I nuzzled closer in assent.
“Why haven’t you asked about the manuscript that you…that Blanche started writing?”
I sighed. “I guess I don’t want to know anything more about her. The whole thing seems like a bad dream. I don’t ever want to leave you again, Chris. And if Blanche ever came back, there’s no telling what she’d do.” I told her about the plot with Winston to kill Dudley, about the horrid things Blanche had said to my parents. She’d likely done the same to my friends, since neither Ashley nor Mary was letting me back into their lives. “I don’t want that sort of person around you, or running my body. She could really muck things up.”
“But the novel is really good. I just think you might try reading it. Maybe, given your…experience, you might be inspired to add to it.”
I sat up, letting the covers pool around my naked hips. “By ‘add to it,’ you really mean ‘keep going,’ don’t you? You think I’m writing a novel called Sleeping with the Queen, not Blanche.”
Chris sat up as well, and we faced each other in the dark. Until this Dr. Raj mess, I’d been very content with my life, and by content I didn’t mean settling for less but content as in happy. Why, in Chris’s eyes, was that so wrong?
“I’m trying to respect what you believe to be true, but I also think it would be a good idea for you to step outside your comfort zone. Read what you’ve written. You might feel some creative spark.”
“Blanche lived here, in this time, and in my body, for less than a month before she began writing. I just can’t believe she could have assimilated that quickly.”
“That’s the thing. It’s written in some form of very old English, which makes the voice totally unique. And the details are rich and vivid, so you feel as if you’ve stepped into Elizabeth’s world.”
I snorted. “I have, remember?”
With that, we slid back down into bed, pulled the covers back up over our shoulders, and rolled away from each other.
The next day dawned so hot that I was sticky with sweat even before I left the bed. Chris was already gone. I dressed in loose shorts and a baggy shirt, took a walk to get my creativity flowing, then attacked the next Froggity painting. That afternoon I would try Meg’s flat again.
Candace liked what I was sending her, so my job once again seemed on firm ground. The sweat pooled at my waist and tickled the back of my neck until, five hours later, my growling stomach drove me downstairs into the pub.
“How’s the artisté?” asked Sam as he poured me a tall frosted glass of lemonade.
“Parched,” I said. “When is this heat going to break?”
“Oy,” Sam said. “Probably about October.”
We laughed and talked of politics and neighborhood scandals. The fresh salad he brought me and the iced drink were two things I’d really missed when stuck back in Blanche’s body.
Something flashed against the brass railing around the bar. I turned around but saw nothing out the window. Five minutes later, it happened again. “What’s that flash I keep seeing? Do you think I’m going blind?”
He shook his head. “Naught but a bit of heat lightning. It’ll move on quickly, but it does give one a start to see the flash in a blue sky.”
I froze, then slowly placed my glass on the bar. Heat lightning.
Another flash. I looked at Sam but couldn’t hear the words he was speaking. Another flash, then darkness as I was yanked from my body and sucked up into the heavens.