Suddenly becoming a man was a most perplexing circumstance, without any apparent cause or meaning. Julia was sure that she had never before heard of this happening to anyone else. It was certainly something that doesn't happen every day. Julia's physique had impossibly changed – which was to her something of intense fascination. She flexed a more muscular wrist and spread out the fingers of a less delicate hand, made of heavy knuckles and bigger bones.
She was disturbed out of her examination of herself by the pretty woman who was now standing over her. "Are you alright?" She said.
"I'm alright, I just hit my head. I think there's something wrong with your fence, though." She said, pulling herself up. "I'm sorry about that."
"That's quite alright, as long as you're ok." The woman glanced back towards the fence and continued conversationally, "We meant to get it fixed for ages now, but it wasn't really made to be climbed on, that's true. Are you running away from someone? You look really tired. Come over and take a seat in the shade, I'll get you a drink."
"Thank you very much." Said Julia and followed the woman to the veranda. She was being confusingly kind to a person who was essentially, or entirely, a trespasser and a stranger.
"You look familiar." The woman said, smiling over at Julia as if she knew what she was thinking. "I wouldn't usually be this kind to a trespasser, but you live in this area, right? I think I've seen you around the place."
"I live a few houses down." Julia got a better look at the woman now, and she did look familiar, with her red hair that was a little bit gray at the roots, and an intense expression, the type of person that looks you fixedly, dead in the eye when they speak to you so you don't know where to look and forget how to blink. It seemed strange that she would recognize Julia now that she was a man and all.
"So you've been jumping the neighbour's fences? I always wanted to do that. What do their gardens look like? I have these dreams sometimes where something's chasing me and I have to get away, and I trick them by jumping over the fence, but then I always wake up before they get me. I actually slap myself until I wake up. And it's weird, they say you can't feel anything while you're dreaming, but I always feel it, you know?"
The woman vanished through tinted sliding glass doors into her house before Julia could respond. It became very quiet for a moment, and she had a chance to look around, finally wondering why it was that this property was so much more extravagant than the others- did it denote a closeness to the Inner party? A better job than Julia's was? I have to get out of here, she thought hurriedly, throwing a look back at the fence, expecting the men to show up at any moment. She was stupidly glad to have someone to talk to though, and felt bad for running away from the woman. Chances were the men would not recognize her now anyway.
"What's your name?" The woman said, emerging again from the house and handing Julia a glass of juice. "I've probably heard of you before if you moved in when these houses were built like I have, we've probably been neighbours for years now. But I don't know about you, I suppose I haven't really made much of an attempt to get to know my neighbours. I'm Lana Parsons in case you recognize me."
"I'm Julian Stucco." Said Julia, deciding on a name straight away and immediately regretting picking one so close to her own, in case the woman did know of her, but she didn't seem to notice anything.
"Well, you're very daring." She said, and the two of them paused awkwardly for a moment. There was the sound of a bang from somewhere over the fence that made Julia jump.
"What do you suppose that was?" Said Lana. "Maybe it was just the fence, maybe a screw came loose or something when you fell like that."
"Probably." Said Julia, and then in an afterthought added, "I don't mean to be rude, but perhaps I should be going soon? You don't think I could cut through your house, do you? I was just thinking it would be easier than jumping any more fences and my head still hurts quite a bit from my fall."
"Well you must stay here then, you could be concussed! Here, sit down for a while, and I'll protect you if anyone comes." She laughed, and pressed a compliant Julia down into her seat. "You seem harmless enough to me, I don't know who would be after you to make you jump over fences like that. Not the thought police, I hope?"
Julia laughed in a way that sounded painful even to herself.
Lana gave her a strange searching look, and said, "I'm not so afraid of them anymore, to be completely honest." She paused, as if waiting for a response, in a way that seemed to Julia oddly tactful and yet prying, and, on getting none, she continued, "Do you live on your own, then?"
Lana went on to fuss over her. She seemed somehow desperate for Julia to stay, in a way that made Julia think that she didn't get company very often. She was indeed a very singular woman.
They got to talking a while longer. The woman seemed deeply interested in whatever small talk Julia was making and seemed to have a very indiscriminant sense of humour and kept squeazing her shoulder, giving her looks that were practically melting. Julia was beginning to get an inkling of where this strange kindness was coming from. She must make an attractive man. Julia caught her own reflection a few times in one of the woman's glass doors, and managed to study herself for long enough to get a good impression of what she looked like now. As a man, she was slightly too thin and slightly too short, but her face had improved. She looked better as a man than she had as a woman. Her features had gotten stronger, but they were still unusually fine for a man, and her skin was unusually good. The woman kept touching her, and in truth Julia was happy enough to get the attention; she seemed nice, if in a slightly aggressive way. In the interest of getting away, though, Julia began to answer her in shorter syllables, and pull away a little bit, which Lana didn't seem to like very much. Julia kept her eyes on the fence, waiting for her pursuers to inevitably catch her up.
Finally, after the space of at least half an hour, they arrived; two men in business suits plummeted from the same fence that had proved so fateful for Julia. Both of them hit their heads with bangs clearly audible from the veranda.
"Oh, my fence will be ruined if this keeps happening." Said the woman. She didn't rush over to help the men as she had with Julia. They got up on their own, and she was watching Julia very closely instead, as Julia was watching them in terror. She felt she had to forcibly calm herself, lest she be given away. But her hands were still shaking slightly as the men took a few steps towards them.
But the worry was needless; they didn't seem to recognize her at all. They bowed towards the veranda at Julia and Lana and said, "Excuse us, please." Then they waddled across the garden towards the adjacent fence. It was immediately apparent why it had taken the men so long to catch up with Julia; they were terrible at jumping fences. They did not have the upper-body strength to pull themselves up to the top either metal or wooden bar that lined each fence in the neighbourhood and nor, in this case especially, could they easily jump high enough to grasp it in the first place. They stood there, jumping up and down in front of Lana's fence, trying to reach the top pole and it looked a bit comical from such a distance.
"Well," Said the woman, "Are these the people you were running from? No? If not you then they must be after someone else, which seems a coincidence that is, frankly, quite hard to believe. How many houses down from here did you say you were from, again?"
Julia found that she could not look away from the men, when she answered "I-I don't know those men. This is all just a coincidence."
But the woman just looked at her shrewdly, "So they are after you then? And why is that?" Her eyes had gotten very wide and she moved in uncomfortably close to Julia. "Well, this is interesting. This doesn't happen everyday, that's for sure."
"I know what this looks like, but I promise I don't know those men."
"Well then. If you don't know them, how about I call them over?" and when Julian blanched, she smiled slowly and said, "How about you kiss me, or maybe I'll do just that?" She snorted at her own bluntness and moved closer still, making Julian smile too, thinking it was a joke. "I'm not joking." Said the woman, who had become very serious again.
Julian gave the woman another quick smile, hoping that this was still a part of the joke, he kissed the woman, with just a quick peck, and the woman laughed, like it was hugely funny. "Come here, then." She said, pulling him into a corner, against where the sliding doors joined to the brick, and breathing heavily now, she said "Kiss me properly, or I'll call them over."
Julian was quite disconcerted. The joke was going too far. He was, after all, not used to being a man and didn't really want anything too much from this woman, which seemed to be where this was ultimately headed. But at the threat of blackmail, no matter how light hearted it seemed to be, he didn't think that he had a choice. The men were meanwhile straddling the top of the fence, building up the courage to jump down. Julian thought that if he could just keep Lana from calling out to them for long enough for them to get over into the neighbour's garden, he still had a good chance of escape.
She pressed herself against him, or rather pulled him until he fell forwards against her, and then kissed him again with a rough intensity. She was pawing at him, when- in a fit of squeamish coyness, or perhaps to test his avidity, Lana pushed Julian away from her.
"What are you doing?" She said, strangely annoyed, "Kiss me, or I'll call those people over here and tell them who you are."
Confused, Julian thought there was no point arguing that she had been the one to push him away and that it hadn't been indecision on his part, and instead he returned to kissing her. He pressed against her again, she had her hands in his hair and it was pulling almost painfully, and then- perhaps as another part of a joke, or from a sudden feeling of revulsion, the woman pushed him away a second time.
Julian took an exasperated step back to ask her what was wrong, but before he could, she said, "Do it, I won't tell you another time, or I'll call them over."
So for the third time, he leaned against her and they gently tipped back together and hit the wall. This time he caught one of her hands, a sign of enthusiasm, he hoped, and to prove that it wasn't him who pushed her away.
He was finding it more appealing this time. He kissed her, he touched her, and then once again, she managed to squirm away from him.
"That's it!" Declared Lana, she cupped her hands around her mouth and called to the men, with a voice that seemed to Julian to be magnified several times beyond a normal human volume: "She's over here! She's over here, only you don't recognize her because she's changed her hair colour and also her gender!"
This, needless to say, immediately got the attention of the two men