The Changeling - The Switch Pt. 05 DEBUT
It was a few minutes before 6 AM. I found myself in the gym, in the basement of the Puzzle Palace, face -- to -- face with Adrienne, the star of the studio's flagship strip game show.
Lying on the deck next to the pool on her belly, Adrienne leaned on her elbows to prop her head and raise her back to send her naked breasts dangling before me. Her unshod feet danced in air, but the bare rounded half-moons of her butt remained firmly planted, accentuating her sculpted, smooth contours. A dreamy look peered across her face as she slicked her shoulder length ashen brown hair back, darkened by her dip in the pool. "first time on stage is like the first step out on a walk on a freezing cold day," Adrienne reflected, "the first few timid tip-toes are difficult, the strides that follow become easy when we enter upon playing a part."
Lying naked facing Adrienne with my chest buried in the towel underneath me, I had to agree. "To succeed on the stage of life, you have to be determined to persevere where all else fails."
As a new hire at TPP, I was assigned to grunt work in the laundry at night to learn the business from the bottom up. Ordinarily, at 6 am I would be coming off my shift and headed home, or,more accurately, at least the premises with Jim Dowd, the real Maggie Dowd's husband. But today, I was pulling some unpaid 'overtime' at the star's request. A lowly new hire, like Maggie Dowd, ought to regard this opportunity as a Command Performance, the lucky break leading to an appearance on stage.
For me Marge Keating, investigative reporter, I was already on the stage of my own creation. On a mission from my magazine to uncover the secret behind Puzzle Palace's success in launching itself from an amateurish webcast in an attached garage to performances before a live, sophisticated studio audience in a glittering tower of glass and steel rising above the suburban sprawl -- o -- polis. I not only inserted myself in TPP's apparatus, I was now interviewing its star. How did that happen? I was assigned to the laundry detail.
In the gym, Adrienne remarked, "The studio," a sly smile pierced her lips, "with our CEO Rich--that's Mr Erickson to you--in particular, believes for whatever reason that all aspiring starlets should understand every aspect of the operation, so that they will perform better on stage. To make an entrance, one must be capable of playing many roles." A dreamy look came over Adrienne's face as she thought aloud, "Rich--ugh Mr Erickson often says, "every--um--drummer boy should have a field marshal's baton in his rucksack." Adrienne's face was clouded by a quizzical expression. "You were in the Army whatever does that mean?"
I took a deep breath. Oh, yes I was on stage with an interesting set of props. With the real Maggie away, back in the Army incognito, on an unstated mission to parts unknown, I wore her clothes, drove her car, carried her pocketbook and even lived with her husband Jim in her house.
Like other couples working the night shift at The Puzzle Palace, Jim and I would ride to work at The Puzzle Palace together. Imitating other couples, we briefly embraced as we separated at the entrance to the lockers.
At home, Maggie's home, although Jim and I occasionally ate together, little passed between us. For the most part, Jim kept to himself in his own room sketching. He would dress up in his special garb, an artist`s smock; sometimes he'd even sport a beret, ritually sharpening his pencils to start sketching.
Busy working on his sketches trying to get into the Puzzle Palace's arts department, Jim paid me little mind. Occasionally, I wandered into his preserve to express polite interest. Although Jim claimed he needed a nude model to catch the reflection of light and the shadow, he didn't ask me to disrobe; I didn't volunteer.
Maggie put it right when she described Jim as harmless. "Posing nude for him as he sketches isn't enough to stir his hormones. You have to attack him."
As for Maggie, I absorbed her personality; I knew all her relevant dates but I did not live her life. I had to cautiously approach relating her real life experiences.
I stretched and flexed my back muscles launching my bare ass in the air before I sidestepped the question. "Most of my Army experience isn't worth wasting breath repeating. The interesting parts, now, there are a few; none can afford to be relived, certainly not a one can be retold." I congratulated myself. It was literally true.
On the laundry detail, Rachel in the midst of mindless babbling, blurted out, "Never volunteer, that's an army expression, isn't it?" Picking up a bag of laundry, Rachel suddenly realized, "You never talk about your days in the Army. What was it like for a woman with all those guys?"
"Nothing worth talking about, I replied, "What is, can't be said."
Throughout each night on the Laundry run, my partner Rachel blathered about the day she made it on stage in the Puzzle Palace flagship strip game. "In a magic moment the actress' silver robe came to me."
"You got selected when you were inspected prior to the shower," I prodded Rachel
A dreamy look came over Rachel's face as she explained, "Billy and --me--ugh we was on the night crew. We decided to stick around and splash around in the pool in the gym, after work was over. At 6AM, I slapped Billy for studying the round butts clustered around Mr Ericksen competing for a slot."
"You were beseeching Mr Ericksen for a spot on camera, weren't you?" I suggested.
"Adrienne," Rachel responded, "the star, standing nearby, butted in.decided, "`For you, I have a solution. For his wandering eyes, an apt conclusion, in the cock and ball jam, he'll find absolution. For you, an on stage introduction.'"
"You understood all that?" I asked.
"No," Rachel replied, "Not right away. I learned TPP turned up short a contestant. Next thing you know, I was flat on my back, legs in the stirrups spread, pubic hair plucked. Billy body hair shaved waterworks locked, Boy was he fucked! You know the rest. I got a fitting in a classy outfit--I was unprepared and nervous--I lost out in my performance, Billy's joy stick remains subject to requirements. You all know..."
"Rachel...," I assumed a reassuring voice. "You didn't win the contest but turned in a performance-- " I thought for a second, "likely considered endearing by some in your audience."
"Well, now that's quite a story..," Rachel continue blabbering.
Rachel was a blabberer, but as a reporter, I had to try to harvest valuable information given up in senseless babble.
For an investigative reporter, my job in the laundry had not turned out to be an unmixed blessing. The assignment should have brought me everywhere in the silver steel and glass building through every floor from the 5th Floor Penthouse which housed the Executive Suites to the sub-basement. In the Penthouse, where Rachel and I began dropping off and retrieving laundry, we'd find bags of clothing in the Executive offices. Rachel smirked, "The Executives are the only ones who don't have to strip to enter or leave the building, but that doesn't stop them from bringing in their dirty duds from home for us to wash." Rachel strained as she picked up a heavy black plastic bag and tossed it in the cart and I placed clean clothes on hangars in a closet.
Hands on my hips, I sneered, "Rank has its privileges."
"Like in the Army?" Rachel queried.
I looked around the room for scraps of paper or notes. I had come to the Puzzle Palace determined to succeed where all else failed. The Puzzle Palace didn't grant interviews. "If you need to know about the show, subscribe to the service or apply for a job." Even those former employees who could be located said nothing bad or informative. "It was a steady check. They wouldn't take pros or junkies. Everybody hired was kept busy at something. To know more, the only way to make the webcast as contestant is apply for a job there."
My initial soundings led me to doubt I'd find the sordid tale of sex, humiliation and abuse my editor believed lurked behind TPP's glittering steel and glass tower that overlooked the suburban sprawl -- o -- polis.
Previous journalists who tried couldn't survive the initial interview. Cover stories were too flimsy. With a better structured cover, I had made it past the interview but to date what I had learned would probably never make it into print. Indeed, if 'the truth' I had found out did wind up in print, it could bring the Puzzle Palace more applicants.
While Rachel blithered, I did get a chance to nose across desktops and credenzas. As much as Rachel ceaselessly babbled, she took notice of my activity. "Yeah," Rachel shouted, "look under the desk. They sometimes hide bags of clothes there too." As much as Rachel was a font of information, anything I came across in the offices might prove important in determining how the Puzzle Palace rose so fast so quickly. Yet, I had not been out of Rachel's sight long enough to dare going through the desks or trash. To dig, I had to be in a position where I was working independently.
"And Adrienne?" I asked.
"When we get to the medical office," Rachel promised as we wheeled the cart into the elevator, "I'll show you."
Down in the gym, I had asked, "Adrienne, your time is split between your job as a nurse where, you, a subordinate, bow to the dictates of a looney doctor, but at every turn try to soften the blow of his excesses and your presence on stage where you're the undisputed star of the show."
"Perhaps, never having set out to be a star," Adrienne replied, "I came to realize how playing a part can put you in control of the script. Whether I return to the daily melodrama of medicine or perfect my stage presence I am simply acting out a part. Do you understand?"
At work on the laundry, Rachel and I wheeled the carts into the fourth - floor medical office. "A Hollywood set masquerading as a real medical office," Rachel declared as we entered the medical office, "When Billy and I came in for our pre -- employment physicals, everything looked normal, the nurse's reception station, with a telephone and a computor hook up, and the typical bank of plastic chairs resting on linoleum floors beyond."
"Superficial normality," I snickered, "Offices laid out like you might expect to find in any medical facility. The larger office for the doctor with diplomas and awards. A cubbyhole for the nurse with a sweater hung over the back of a chair."
