The Spudnik was different. When the mute kid opened the door for him and let him inside, it felt exactly the way Frankie imagined a home should feel. It smelled like old socks and french fries, young sweat and dander—smells that were familiar and alive, and his penis twitched in response to the burrowlike warmth. There were other smells, too, new and strange. Candles burning. Musty incense. Shampoo. Food. The lights had all been turned down, and candles flickered. Lilith and Y were sitting cross-legged in the corner with their eyes shut. They were meditating, Geek whispered. Frank sat down to watch. A videotape of the ocean was playing over their heads on a monitor set into the transom above the front seats—a long, low, continuous shot of waves lapping gently on a pebbly beach. The watery sounds drowned out the noise of the parking lot and the highway beyond. Frank closed his eyes, too. He had never felt so relaxed in his life.
When they were done meditating, Geek rolled a joint. Char was cooking dinner, stirring a stew pot. The kid’s hair was damp, like a hedgehog who’d crawled out from a shrub into the rain. Warm, fragrant steam rose from the pot.
“Smells good,” Frank said.
The kid glanced up, then looked away, but not before the quick grin, like the beam from a moving flashlight, flickered through the mat of hair.
“Char’s pretty nonverbal,” Geek offered. “Awesome cook, but not much of a conversationalist. From Montreal. Been traveling with us for a couple of months now.”
“What do you guys do anyway? Just bum around?”
“Not exactly. We’re activists.”
“What’s that?”
“You know. Political activists.”
“Oh.” Frank thought for a bit. “You mean, like politicians?”
“Oh, shit!” Y laughed, snorting smoke. “That’s very amusing.”
Frank didn’t get it. Or rather, he got it that Y and the others were laughing at him, and ordinarily that would have made him want to bust someone’s head open, but now, with the pot and all, it really didn’t matter. He figured eventually they would stop laughing, and then someone would explain. Frankie sat back and waited.
“You’re not kidding, are you?” Geek said.
Frank shook his head.
“You’re perfectly serious.”
Frank nodded.
Geek peered into Frankie’s face. “Wow.” He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses. “Check it out,” he said. “We target a range of food-related issues. Right now it’s genetic engineering. We drive around the country to communities and engage with the people and do actions. Basic biotech. Consciousness Raising 101. We’re the Seeds of Resistance—that’s our name. We also publish a ’zine and a Web site. . . .”
“Bio-what?”
“Oh, jeez. Don’t you know anything?”
Frank shook his head.
“Biotechnology,” Geek said. “Robocrops. Frankenfoods. Fish genes spliced into tomatoes. Bacterial DNA into potatoes. Corn and—”
“Cool! You do all that stuff right in here?”
“What stuff?”
“What you said. Splicing, you know, whatever . . . fish genes and potatoes and—”
“No, Frank,” Geek said. “We’re against that.”
“Oh.” Frankie was disappointed.
“You have a lot to learn,” Geek said.
“Yeah,” Frank agreed, taking the joint and inhaling deeply. “You can’t learn shit in Ashtabula.”
They ate the kid’s excellent dinner, and smoked more dube. The kid started collecting dirty dishes, and Frank went to the sink and rolled up his sleeves. He ran some hot water and squirted detergent on a sponge. The kid bumped against him, gently shoving him out of the way.
“Hey, Charlie, dude,” Frank said. “I’m a janitor. I wash things.”
Char stared at him.
“That’s my job,” Frank said.
The kid clicked the silver tongue stud against teeth that were small and perfectly white. Frankie stared. He was still feeling the pot.
Y held out his hand to Lilith. “Bedtime,” he said, pulling her to her feet. He turned to Frankie. “May as well crash here.”
“Maybe Frank’s got a home to go to,” Lilith said.
Frank shook his head. “No way. I sleep on a guy’s couch.”
“Then crash out here with Char,” Lilith said. She spun in a circle, dropping a kiss on Geek, another on the kid, and then she danced over to Frankie at the sink. The Spudnik rocked as she approached. She draped her arms around his neck.
“Night, Frank Perdue,” she sang into his ear, and when he turned to face her, she kissed him for the second time that day. “Mmm,” she said, winking at Char. “Finger-lickin’ good.”
“Night,” Frankie stuttered. He stood there staring as Lilith followed Y into the small bedroom at the end of the trailer. When Char flicked him with a towel, he realized he was dribbling suds.
The kid laid out pieces of foam on the floor, around the base of the dinette table, and piled some blankets on top. Frank crawled under one side of the pile.
“Bonne nuit,” the kid said.
“Huh?”
“Bonne nuit,” Char repeated. “Good night.”
“Oh,” said Frank. “Yeah.” He lay there for a while. “Hey. Thanks for dinner. It was good.”
When Char didn’t answer, Frank closed his eyes. Just as he was drifting to sleep on the last gentle eddies of pot, he felt something wriggling across his stomach.
“What the—?”
He snatched at the movement in the dark and came up with the kid’s wrist in his hand. He couldn’t believe it. He twisted, and Char’s small, pointy face appeared in front of him. The next moment the kid was kissing him on the mouth.
He was being molested by a juvenile punk with a tongue stud. This could not be happening.
He sat up and backed away, underneath the dinette. “Dude! What the fuck—?”
Char sat up, too, then threw back the blankets and started to peel off sweaters and shirts, in layers, like an animal shedding skins. The streetlight shone through the windshield, creating a silvery glaze that outlined the slight body. Frank recoiled into the far corner of the dining nook. The last piece of clothing was a sleeveless undershirt, and the kid ducked, pulling it off quickly. For a moment the shaggy head was caught in the cloth, but after a brief struggle, it emerged again. The slim body unfurled, then straightened and arched, and Frankie found himself staring at a perfect pair of girl’s breasts. Naked, they gleamed in the light—was it the pot or the moonlight now?—and the transformation was complete.
Animal to human. Boy to girl. Girl to fucking goddess.
She took Frankie by the hands.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “I think