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dressed as I was now. I could change
my appearance, but I had the same earthbound limitation as everyone
else when it came to wardrobe. The laundry had been piling up for
weeks, and I was down to the bottom of my drawer. I was wearing a
threadbare white camisole and red terrycloth shorts. I’ve owned
them both since I was an early teen. A pair of well-worn cowboy
boots pulled the entire look together. It was my best white-trash,
come-hither outfit. The two guys planning the convenience-store
takedown were getting all worked up. I wanted to mess with them by
sprouting some facial hair, but I wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t have
turned them on. Anyway, Allie couldn’t show up at the Legal Aid
office looking like a trollop. She had to be refined and demure,
and she would be. All it would take was a wardrobe change and a
little molecular rearrangement, no sweat.
    I checked on Gabi; she had given up on the
spare ribs and made a move on the dessert. The six chubbies were hours away from their final course—it gave Gabi free reign
over the warm apple pie and soft-serve ice cream. She came back
with a mound of chocolate and vanilla swirl. “Are you finished
already?” she asked. “You’ve hardly touched anything.”
    “Got to watch my weight; I barely squeezed
this rear end of mine into these shorts. There’s butt showing
everywhere.”
    “I noticed that you look a little sluttier
than usual,” she smirked, “but those are old, aren’t they?”
    “Totally old. I only wear these when there’s
absolutely nothing left in the closet, or I need to persuade a
handyman to fix my plumbing . . . literally.”
    Gabi giggled. “I wish I had a toosh like
yours. They haven’t invented a pair of jeans you don’t look good
in.”
    Gabi was one of the few people who actually
knew what my real butt looked like. I’ve refined the art of
rear-end replication down to a fine art. Now you may be thinking
that a butt is a butt and it didn’t need to be fiddled with, but if
you really want to sell the makeover (to a guy, anyway), you’ve got
to have the rear end down cold—some men can pick a butt out of a
lineup quicker than if they were looking at your face.
    “Tell me again,” Gabi said, “How did you get
away from that creep?”
    “I told you, he was sloshed. I got lucky and
hip-checked him into the wall. He smacked his head, and I got the
hell out of there.”
    “You are so totally bitchin’,” Gabi said as
she scraped the last bit of ice cream out of her dish. She didn’t
need to know that Ax followed me to Vincent’s place and laid the
aikido whoop ass on him. Our secret was our secret, one we
would take with us to the grave. The actual situation had been much
more dangerous than the highly adulterated version I relayed to
Gabi. I only told her what she needed to know—that I was completely
wasted and had gotten into a car with Vincent, a guy I shouldn’t
have gone with. It was a mistake I would never again repeat. I told
Gabi that he had treated me without respect and that I laid him
out. She didn’t need to know that Vincent was growing colder and
colder with each passing second and that he would never again have
the opportunity to drug another unsuspecting girl. Okay, I may not
be the most innocent girl in the world, but I only mess with the
creeps who are up to no good and need to be stopped. Yes, my
methods are completely unconventional, and the
brother-and-sister-switching-form tag team even creeps me out sometimes. God had given us these talents for a reason—so think
of us as the yin and yang of a superhero team, a superhero team
with a strong sense of irony.
    Okay, so the guy with the bloody bandana
totally winked at me. I tapped Gabi on the hand and began sliding
out of the booth. “Chow time’s over, friend of mine; this girl’s
got laundry to do.” Gabi didn’t look happy about the abrupt exit,
but as they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure.”
    “But I’m not—” Gabi said