Big Flipping Deal Ch. 04

[The story so far: Thanks to an unusual provision in his neighbor's will, Nick finds himself renovating a house with gorgeous transgender interior designer Lindsey. Both her looks and her personality magnetize him, so much so that he begins to fantasize about her and experiment with watching she-male porn while masturbating.

SPOILER ALERT! There is no sex at all in this chapter! If you're not here for the characters and the story, please jump to the next chapter to save yourself some frustration.]

*****

Lindsey rang my doorbell the next morning.

I went to answer it in just my pajama bottoms, because I'd barely gotten out of bed, and it obviously couldn't be Lindsey - she wasn't due to meet me at Mrs. P's for another forty-five minutes.

But it was Lindsey. Standing on my porch, distorted by the fisheye of my front-door peephole lens.

Shit! What the fuck!

"Uh, hey," I said through the door. "I'm not quite dressed yet, so, uh ..."

She held up a bag and a cup-carrier. "Sorry I'm early. I brought coffee and donuts. Should I take it over to Neena's?"

Yes! No! My brain couldn't figure out whether to panic more at missing the chance to get her inside my house, or at what she'd think if she came in and saw my house. I looked around the front room. It's not that bad. Not really.

"Let me get a shirt!"

I dashed back down the hall to the bedroom, where Mister Whiskerdoodle gave me a good-morning grumble from the bed. Grabbing a shirt from the closet, I raked a comb through my hair and returned to the front door.

"Hang on," I said, clambering into the t-shirt. "Just a second ..."

Shirt on, hair smoothed down, heart pounding, I opened the door.

"Hey. Good morning." I attempted a relaxed tone, but I'm pretty sure I failed.

"Hey," she replied with a hint of a chuckle. Her shirt today had a deep v-neck but nothing adorning its plain white cotton fabric. Khaki shorts and tennis shoes rounded things out, the shorts fitted enough to conform to all her curves. I resisted the temptation to see what curves showed in the crotch region.

With the door held wide, I stepped out of the way and let her through. "Come on in. Kitchen's over there. Probably better to eat at the table than on the fleabag couch."

"Oh, yeah, no way is my ass touching that couch." Before I could blink my way into being fully offended, she went on, "It looks way too comfy - I slept like crap last night. Put some donuts in me while I'm on a couch like that and we'll never be able to get my butt up."

"Well, thanks. 'Comfy' is probably the nicest thing you could say about that couch. I got it second-hand after my ex moved out and took the one we bought together."

"Hm." I couldn't tell if the little noise meant, You let the chick walk all over you like that? or if it meant, Fucking exes.

She headed the direction I'd pointed, got to the kitchen, set the breakfast stuff down there.

Putting a thumb over my shoulder toward the bedroom, I said, "Just give me minute to throw on some pants and shoes. You can start without me."

"Nah, I'll wait. Where's Mister Whiskerdoodle?"

Ahah! said the neurotic, ego-undermining part of my brain. That's why she came over - she wants to see her aunt's cat.

"He's ... in the bedroom," I said. I tried to remember if I'd left the lotion next to the computer or anything embarrassing like that. I'd made the bed the second I got out of it, to keep my hairball-hacking friend from moving over to my unmade side and endangering the sheets and mattress instead of just the comforter. So that part was okay. "You want to come visit him? I can change in the bathroom."

Smooth, she's not here two minutes and you're trying to get her in the bedroom. Too bad you wouldn't be brave enough to do that if she had a pussy instead of a penis. Oh, fuck it. It's not like she's going to think you're hitting on her.

Lindsey shrugged. "Yeah, it's been a couple years, but I always liked that cat. She got him when I was in middle school, I think. Kind of hard to believe he's made it this long. Is he doing okay?"

I made an eh gesture with one hand as she followed me down the hall. "About as well as when I moved in here and first met him."

Predictably, Mister Whiskerdoodle raised his head and said, "Reh-eh-ehh-eh-ehh," when we walked in. Then, way less predictably, he got up, stretched, and padded toward the corner of the bed as Lindsey approached.

"Hi, Mister W," she said, bending and reaching down to scratch him under the chin. He gargled and started head-butting her fingers.

And if I'd thought there was no way she could get more attractive - leaning over, v-neck dangling to reveal cleavage and a flash of bra-cup, legs so perfectly toned and smooth - she proved me wrong by smiling at him as he started to purr. It was a smile I hadn't seen on her before. Innocent and happy, no sign of worldly wise cynicism or sarcastic wit. The smile of a teenage girl petting her favorite cat.

Teenage boy, I reminded myself. She wasn't a girl when Mrs. P got Whiskerdoodle.

"I'll, uh, just finish getting ready," I said, breaking away much later than I probably should have.

In the bathroom, as I shucked my p.j.s and put on new underwear and a pair of shorts, I chastised myself. Or maybe she was, inside, even if she didn't have tits or girl-curves. People don't pick that, right? You are or you aren't.

This moment of progressive open-mindedness helped keep me from being disappointed that I wouldn't be masturbating this morning, which I'd expected to have time for based on our originally planned meeting time. Or maybe it made me relieved that I wouldn't be masturbating, since my she-male porn adventure the night before still hovered in the back of my head ready to suggest a repeat.

When I finished dressing and opened the door, I found Lindsey sitting on the bed with Mister Whiskerdoodle in her lap.

Really, Mr. W? He almost never sat in my lap.

Before I could mention that, though, Lindsey said, "So you're a musician too? I thought you were just the graphic arts type."

Her nod toward my computer and keyboard took my gaze over there, and I felt self-conscious when it came back. "It's more of a toy, really ..."

"Expensive toy!" Her eyebrows went way up.

"Don't remind me," I said. "It was the first splurge I managed to save up for after Carmella left me on the hook for the whole rent on this place, and my car broke down just a couple weeks later. Really bad timing."

She gently eased Mister Whiskerdoodle aside and stood up. Amazingly, he didn't complain at all. "I guess. But at least you've got something you love out of it, right?"

I blinked a little and headed for the kitchen. 'Love' seemed like a really strong word. "It's fun to plunk around with, sure. But I can't really play. I quit piano lessons in seventh grade, and by the time I got interested in music again, I was too busy and too lazy for lessons or a lot of practice. I just dial the tempo on my composition software way, way down, play some stuff in really slow, and once I've got enough tracks layered together, I speed it back up so it sounds semi-decent."

"So you're actually writing music?" We reached the table, and she pulled a chair out for herself and lifted a coffee from the cup-carrier. "That's a hell of a lot better than me. Neena gave me lessons all the way up to college, and I was pretty damn good, if I say so myself. But I don't do shit with it anymore. You'll have to let me hear some of your songs sometime."

Sure! How about now? "Okay. One of these days when we need a break ... why not? But don't get your expectations up too high. It's no Beethoven or Keith Emerson."

"Who?" she asked, dumping a couple of sugars in her cup. "Emerson, I mean. I know who Beethoven is, duh."

We ate a few donuts and drank our coffee and I went into a couple of the keyboard players and groups I liked, prog bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Dream Theater. She'd heard of a couple of them, but had no idea what kind of music they played.

"I like ditzy crap," she admitted. "I put a Katy Perry CD in and just let it repeat for a week or two whenever I'm in the car."

The conversation wrapped up with me saying Katy Perry was actually more tolerable to me than most of the stuff on pop radio these days, then wondering if I'd just made a totally backhanded compliment.

Lindsey didn't seem offended, though, and since we'd had our fill of donuts, we picked up our coffees and headed for Mrs. P's.

* * *

The day turned out to be long and crammed full of way more than I expected. Apparently, I really should have been listening better when Lindsey was telling me about it over pizza the night before.

Before we even got started, we had to unload Lindsey's car, which she'd packed to the gills with borrowed tools and twelve-packs of soda, bottled water, and sports drinks. I also had to fetch my ladder over, since we'd need it to get the doors off the higher cabinets and to paint later.

By the time we had everything inside and the drinks in the garage refrigerator, my watch said 9:00, the time we'd originally planned to meet and get started. Job One was pulling the sink and countertops, which required us to shut off water to the faucet, decouple the plumbing, mop up the spillage with a towel, lift the sink out (heavy and awkward), unscrew a bunch of L-clamps holding the countertops to the cabinets, and then heave the counters loose and carry all the crap to the garage. I asked Lindsey if we were going to get one of those little dumpsters for all the trash we'd be generating. She said yes, but that she only wanted to shell out for one ten-day rental, so it wouldn't be delivered until later in the renovation. Then she told me that we'd gone over all this the night before.

"I guess you were even tireder than you looked."

After that, we removed all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts - a snap using power screwdrivers, but there were dozens of the things, and the whole job took longer than I'd have expected. By the time we'd finished, my stomach was growling for lunch, which took the form of delivery Thai food that Lindsey called in for.

Spaced here and there through the morning, several non-food deliveries arrived - the laminate flooring, the kitchen veneer, the new cabinet doors, drawers, and hardware. We also took a few breaks for drinks, though at no point did Lindsey suck my dick or have sex with me on a roll of carpet like I'd fantasized earlier in the week.

But we did talk.

I learned that she'd gone to UT a year ahead of me, and I made a joke about being surprised I didn't remember her. Then I freaked and hurriedly explained that I meant it as a crack about there being 50,000 people at UT, not about the likelihood that she'd looked different in college. She laughed and said that college was when she'd ditched her old gender, paying extra for a singleton room in a co-ed dorm and wearing dresses and makeup full-time, except when holidays rolled around and she went home.

"I hadn't had my nose done yet, though," she said. Then she gave her boobs a little two-handed lift and continued, "And I was still stuffing my bras by hand. So you might not have recognized me anyway."

I took a quick drink of Accelerade so I'd have a reason to swallow that wasn't related to that boob heft. Then I shifted subjects to some of the courses I'd taken and whether she'd had any of the same professors.

We spent the afternoon painting the kitchen a rosy color that would go nicely with the veneers and the tile combination Lindsey had picked out, after which we divided up the boxes of flooring and moved them to their target rooms. The instructions said they should sit in the boxes in the room of installation at least three days before being opened and laid down. Something about acclimating to the temperature and humidity, which could make the slats expand or contract.

It hadn't sounded like that much work, but when quitting time rolled around a little after five, I was beat, hungry, and paint-spattered. Lindsey had managed to avoid too many paint drips, although a day of manual labor and hauling trash to the garage in Dallas summer heat had left her looking slightly less than her best.

That is, a few hairs out of place and a hint of sweat gloss, which meant her hotness still far exceeded anyone I'd ever dated. Especially since some of the sweat appeared down in the v-neck of her shirt.

Apparently, she felt dirtier than she looked, though, because instead of suggesting another end-of-day pizza, she told me she needed to head home for a shower. I said I planned on doing the same, then winding down to an early bedtime.

"Good plan," she said. "It's another full day tomorrow, so you don't want to be up till all hours making music on that computer of yours."

I laughed and agreed, but inside I was thinking, No, I for sure will not be up late using the computer for music.

Definitely not for music.

* * *

Sunday was another coat of paint in the kitchen, sanding down the cabinets, and cutting and applying veneer, which turned out to be a bitch. I ruined several sheets measuring wrong or getting the angle of the saw wrong. Lindsey had a couple of misfires gluing the flats down, and ended up growling that she should have just coughed up some of her own money and paid for a whole new set of cabinets to be put in. The job trailed over into Monday night and Tuesday night before we finally got it done. Wednesday and Thursday we hung the new cabinet doors and installed the new drawer fronts and hardware. Thursday night, she informed me she needed Friday as a break, and I didn't complain because I was behind on my graphic arts moonlighting.

And then came Saturday, a week and a half since I'd met her.

Our plan for the day was to strip the kitchen linoleum in the morning and re-floor it in the afternoon. We got most of the way through the first part, slicing with utility knives, peeling up strips of vinyl flooring, scraping and cleaning away the glue that held the crap down to the concrete subfloor. I got a motherfucker of a headache near the end and went back to my place for some ibuprofen. (Lindsey had acetaminophen in her purse, but for some reason it never works on me.)

When I walked back, head still throbbing, I found an enormous black pickup truck along the curb in front of Mrs. P's.

Some friend of Lindsey's, dropping off more tools?

No.

As I climbed the steps to the open front door, I heard her raised voice coming all the way from the kitchen.

"- you doing here? How did you even know I'd be here to let you in?"

Max, her ex-boyfriend, maybe? I went in and started down the hall, my step a little faster. How in the hell would he have found out where Mrs. P's was?

Turns out, he wouldn't.

A masculine voice answered her, deep enough I could never have imagined it being Lindsey's ex - not because I expected Max to sound gay or effeminate, but because its resonance and thick East Texas accent simply didn't go with my picture of lousy-fuck, girl-hitting Max.

"Hell, Leonard, I've got my own damn key to the place. It didn't make a shit's bit of difference to me whether you were here or not."

"Well, you shouldn't have your own key," she replied, not quite yelling, but with an almost-unhinged fury in her tone. "This isn't Neena's place anymore, it's mine. Mine and -"

I showed up in the kitchen doorway.

Lindsey and a big, beefy guy looked my way. If I'd thought her voice sounded mad, her eyes made me worried things might get violent here. Maybe that had more to do with the hint of fading bruise she still had around the left one than with her expression. But her expression was pretty bad.

"Oh, is this the pansy boyfriend?"

I guessed the guy to be early or maybe mid fifties, dyed-black hair slicked back from a heavy, furrowed forehead, bags under the eyes. His mouth seemed to have been made extra-wide by the forces of nature in order to give it plenty of room to display all the contempt he could possibly muster at once.

Taking just a single step into the kitchen with them, I cautiously asked, "What's going on, Lindsey?"

"Leonard," the guy corrected me, as if it were obviously his place to do so. "And what's going on is, there's stuff in the attic my wife got in the will, and I came over to get it. But Leonard's all pissed I didn't knock and say 'can I please come in' or some shit, right, Leonard?"

Lindsey just stood with her hands in fists at her side, eyes blazing. I couldn't blame her - the way the dick kept calling her 'Leonard' made me want to throttle him myself.

"Look," I said calmly, holding up both hands. "The attic's empty. I carried everything down for -"

But I didn't get to explain that Mrs. Pinobscott, who couldn't possibly have gotten up the ladder herself, had asked me to move the stuff from the attic to the garage years ago so she could go through it.

"'Oh, look, the attic's empty,'" said the beefy prick, in a mocking, mincing voice. "Carly said the stuff was there, so I'll have a look for myself, you little faggot. But thanks anyway."

"Dude," I said, starting to really simmer and unable to help myself. "It's 2015. Nobody goes around calling people 'faggot.' It's -"

"Nick -" Lindsey said with what was probably a warning in her tone. I didn't hear it, because the douchebag rolled his eyes and went on spewing crap.

"Oh, don't start this bullshit with me," he said. "You think I haven't heard it all from Leonard for years? Fucking faggots. Jesus Christ, why the hell Neena would leave you her place and have a couple of fags sucking each other's dicks under her roof is beyond me."

"Listen, you asshole," I said, now pissed that he was dissing Mrs. P on top of Lindsey, "I'll suck her dick wherever I goddamn want to. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?"

"I'm his father, you stupid bone-smoker." His voice dripped sarcasm thick as sour milk starting to clot.

I blinked and glanced at Lindsey, but she was staring at her father like she might vomit on him at any second.

"Do you even know what an idiot you sound like?" he rattled on, stepping toward me as if to bear me down with his looming, massive bulk. "'I'll suck her dick'? Earth to queer-bait, girls don't have dicks."

Out of nowhere, I had a flash of Aunt Elise downing a whole bottle of sleeping pills in her Maryland bathroom before going to bed for the last time. I completely snapped.

"Some of them do, ass-wipe! Some of them have bigger dicks than you! And bigger balls too, I'll bet."

Just like that, I was lying on my back looking at the ceiling. My headache had miraculously disappeared, replaced by a completely different headache that throbbed in a totally different way. I could hear a distant voice screaming through the slow rotations of the room: "- the fuck out! I swear to God, I will call the fucking cops on you! GET THE FUCK OUT!" It sounded like Lindsey, but I had no idea why she'd be so mad at me. But then her face floated into view above me, and she wasn't mad at all. A door slammed somewhere. Her eyes were so blue, so beautifully blue and full of sympathy and concern, and I felt her hand on my cheek and her other hand on my shoulder, and I watched her beautiful, lush lips moving. "Nick! Nick, are you all right? Nick?"

The obvious thing to do was to kiss her, so I did. I lifted up on one elbow and put my other hand behind her head in that rich golden hair and I pulled her to me until our lips met and her eyes fluttered closed for a second.