“—Exciting?”

She narrowed her eyes at the twilight sky, as if the answer to whatever he’d just said was spelled out up there in the clouds. It was bright, violet, but soon it would be full dark, and whatever answers were up there would be unreadable and lost.

“What did you say?” she mumbled, trying to bury the fact she’d just spaced out for the last couple of minutes.

“That Flip whatsamadoojit.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then frowned and shut it again.

Stuart just chuckled in that good-natured way of his.

“Annnnd I’ve lost you. That’s okay.”

He reached one hand over from the steering wheel to pat her knee; the gesture devoid entirely of flirtation or sensuality, and she tried to force a smile, but it came out too tight. Stuart was so like a big brother sometimes, too much so. He was safe, and what was not to like about that? But he wasn’t…What?

They parked the car around the side and followed the footpath to a big, garish yellow Pombaline trying-to-be-Mediterranean restaurant, and former Hotel. It was called the ‘Portugina.’ Not ‘Geena’. ‘Jai-na.’ Everyone who had a shred of dignity left in this sun bleached, skater-kid town hated the name and just called it the ‘Portugal.’ The place was too pretty and quaint and made her feel antique and womanly, and not in a good way.

Out the front, children were running and weaving around the ‘rustic’ (meaning cracked) pillars of the portico. Her mood slumped a little further, reclining into the fantasy of the now booked-up Le Bistro Rablais and its elegant lack of shrieking kids.

Why did people bring their kids to a party? You went to a party to get away from kids. Depressing to think the dreariness of settled suburban life was encroaching into the party scene now: there was no escape.

There was a back entrance with a fountain that lit up beautifully at night, they should have snuck in that way, but too late now, up the landing steps and they were inside.

It was packed to the walls, people chatted, laughed, loitered. She took Stuart’s hand and pulled him out a side door onto the al fresco area where buffet tables were lined up with an array of appetizers and snacks. Food was a good place to start if they didn’t recognize anyone, and the catering was decent: if the world was going to explode, a last meal of salmon canapé and a cocktail was nothing to be upset about.

The two of them remained there for a little while, catching the eye of some people they recognized, and chatting in between drinks. Then, direct vision sharpened and the peripherals hazed out. Her eyes had seemed to radar out in that direction and pick him out of the crowd without her even knowing how her brain had done it. A buried part of her brain lit up like a forgotten instinct, so fast and familiar it was scary. As soon as she saw him she quickly looked down, distracted herself with the tendons flexing on the back of her hand, pretending to admire her nails. She turned, brushing her hand against Stuart’s arm to get his attention.

“Over there,” she indicated, keeping her voice smooth. “That’s Scott – he invited us.”

Of course, Scott wasn’t alone.

“Well then, let’s say ‘Hey’!” said Stuart, and accompanied her over with an eagerness that secretly pleased her, because it made it look like going over was his idea.

Scott greeted the two of them. Jerry did not.

Wanting his attention, she looked at Jerry to catch the precise moment he figured out she was there, but he seemed to be working out who Stuart was.

The voices in the background had receded. She could hear her own voice, speaking, and calmly.

The conversation burbled back into awareness, as if it had skipped ahead. The two men seemed engaged in other things, they were quick to part again, almost like she and Stuart had buzzed in and pulled them away from something more important.

As she and Stuart passed between the dining tables, searching for a place to sit for a drink, she had the disgruntled feeling of being overlooked. He didn’t even ask her how she was. Yeah. Ouch.

“Did you know that other guy?” Stuart asked.

“That,” she said, trying to sound casual, “was Jerry.”

“Oh. Jerry.”

He chuckled.

“He’s little shorter than I pictured.”

“What did you picture?” she inquired. She had herself pictured a flattened, 2D, almost cartoonish character from irascible post-breakup memories, only to be met with the unstoppable, indescribable rush of warm, fuzzy nostalgia…

“Me? The way you talked about him…”

How did I talk about him?

She didn’t ask.

They migrated past the tables to the garden area, where they found Scott’s girlfriend Tasha and some of her female friends. The women chatted for a little while Stuart went to hunt down a non-alcoholic drink for himself. Tasha and Scott were relocating; by implication, circling in on marriage. She replied: oh, how nice, and all that—

“—and, Jerry’s here,” said Tasha.

A waiter stopped by with a tray of mouth-watering samples: miniature, bite-sized Tiramisu cheesecakes. Tasha and the other females each took one, but she had to pass–lactose intolerance.

“We’ve crossed each other,” she finally replied, composing herself.

Tasha didn’t say anything; as if waiting for elaboration. There was nothing to say. Jerry was obviously healthy and looked well and nothing seemed out of shape in his world. Now she was staring intently at the tiny cheesecake Tasha was eating.

“He looks delicious!”

She’d blurted it out.

“I mean, that looks delicious. Jerry looks like he’s well.”

“Does he?” Tasha was eyeing her, squinting. “Well, that’s interesting.”

Stuart seemed to be taking a while, so she left Tasha and the women and went back in search of him. He was at the bar trying to decipher some weirdly named cocktails. Something made her turn and found herself suddenly watching Jerry – now alone – and she marvelling at how her quick reflexes kept pulling her into this trouble.

Actually he wasn’t alone, but chatting up some woman who was probably drunk; throwing her head back every time she laughed, which was a lot.

Oh dear, she thought. Jerry flexing his game? Dinner and a show…

He was in the deep end, engaging a woman who was an intimidating package, had to be over six feet natural, plus heels. Meanwhile, the tall girl’s friends stood off on the side, also tall and having a mini convention critiquing their friend’s determined – or crazy – admirer.

Watching their smirks and tittering, she didn’t feel so amused anymore.

Now Stuart had turned to watch too, plus other people along the bar, while the drunk woman had begun to raise her voice, and Jerry was raising his voice in response. There was something of a slinging match coming on and she suddenly didn’t want to be standing there, playing voyeur to this coming Hindenburg. But if it was the Hindenburg, she had train wreck syndrome: she couldn’t look away.

From the raised voices, it sounded like Jerry’s height was being torn into with gusto. God knows she herself had uncorked a few zingers at his expense in that department. Jerry’s height insecurities were like the gift of comedy that just kept giving, (‘let’s make out; I’ll even let you sit on my knee…’), but he was only a tad shorter than her, barely noticeable, unless she wore big heels, which was like all the time, and with relish.

This woman’s ultimate crime was, she just wasn’t very smooth or funny at turning down a guy. Just mean. And the woman wasn’t about to stop, in fact, her friends finally had to swoop in and extracting her like a decaying tooth.

Trying to look disaffected, she and Stuart collected their drinks, found a table, and sat down, but almost as soon as she put her drink on the table, she was stretching to her feet again.

“Bathroom,” she said. “Don’t wait up.”

She pivoted away, and wandered as if looking for the bathroom, even though she knew exactly where it was, scanning tables vaguely, even asking herself what she was doing, and replying again to herself: she just wanted to talk. She wanted to see if he was doing okay. He didn’t always know how to shake himself off and just laugh, like she did. He went into himself and it concerned her, and she’d feel the need to reach in and pull him out.

Now Stuart would be wondering where she was. She returned to the table.

The live music cranked up, the two of them moved in for a better seat, but instead of sitting back down, started dancing in the paved garden beyond the tables with the festoon lights strung up. Here, Stuart actually surprised her; he knew how to dance! – if only a little, and taking it slowly, and with her firm guidance.

She fixed her gaze at Stuart and kept it there, trying to filter out the crowd. Her eyes were smoky and her lipstick very dark, burgundy, and Stuart he was tall, pale, soft spoken and academic.

He got flustered at the prolonged eye contact and concluded it by kissing her brow and looking away as if bashfully.

A brow kiss? She wasn’t lying on her death bed just yet.

“Hey, where’s the bathroom?” he mumbled. She pointed it out and he went off.

Jerry must have scurried home by now. Well, she was here with Stuart, she was enjoying herself, and not in a wild way but just enough to keep sane.

Later, after dark, parents mercifully took their kids home, the crowd thinned some, and Scott invited them to his house for eleventh hour drinks.

They sat out on the patio, while she went into the kitchen to top her drink up and, on impulse, started rooting through the cupboard, suddenly recalling the cocktail shaker she’d once gifted Tasha with,  curious to see whether it was still up to the task of carrying out its life-sustaining duties. Then Jerry walked in on her.

She was struck by that lightness of earlier, like exhilaration, the feeling of dropping suddenly, tinged with frustration like contained panic. Maybe she hadn’t given him enough credit, thinking the tall lady had defeated him. He didn’t look cut up or anything.

But he still didn’t look at her.

“Staying for the Flip?” she enquired. You couldn’t be certain; Jerry loved his nightly hibernation, and while she loved sleep too, she loved being awake more, and it won out every time she had any choice. Eight hours was a heck of a long time without some reminder that you were still alive.

“Of course,” he replied. “Can’t miss it.”

She asked him what he was planning and he made a joke that everyone would get ‘flambéed’ by cosmic radiation. She only wondered if he was taking cooking classes. It would have caused her jealousy meter to spike. Then she laughed before she could help it, a laugh of relief. Was that a note of bitterness she detected from him? Did it sound like he was still nursing break-up wounds? Was that why he avoided her this whole time? She hated to be smug, but…well, no she didn’t, it felt good.

They exchanged some words, and her voice didn’t even sound like her own. He got a glass of water. It was like he needed a millimeter of space between them at all times; he was so close he should have been touching her but she couldn’t feel it. He left the room again.

Damn that guy. She’d laughed at his dumb cosmic flare joke, why couldn’t he humor her now? Meet her eye, show interest in Stuart, be a grown up. And he’d sounded smug, like he was going places and she wasn’t. He always sounded like he was subtly making fun of her, talking down to her, and it was infuriating.

She felt angry and seriously turned on, and wanted his attention. Not for him to look at her like a used toy, like he’d had his fun with her and was now looking for someone serious.

The homebrew cocktail – an improvised lime Daiquiri with no lime, but slices of orange and lemon and white wine vinegar – ended up startlingly more alcoholic than intended. She couldn’t take it out to the others, it was too much. She drank it all.

She still had the baggie, too. The one Stuart had asked her to dispose of. The party wasn’t over…

She slunk into the living room, where the TV was on, but the room was empty. He must have been in here; on a small table by one of the chairs there was a glass of half quaffed rum.

She wanted his attention and she was going to get it. She felt crazy, in a good way. Or did she feel good in a crazy way? Hard to tell. The seconds snapped along like separate frames, she saw herself acting ahead of time before she could stop it. Saw the baggie in her hand.

Next second the powder had tumbled into the drink, melted into the deep dark liquid void of rum.

Suddenly she was back in the kitchen, like Alice come out of Wonderland, wondering if it was real. Only one way to find out.

There was some sherry in the pantry. Fully wild, she tipped the bottle back, letting the bitter syrup spill into her mouth until it nearly induced her to gag.

A short time later she hovered at the living room entranceway, very drunk, and saw Jerry out of his seat, standing as if dazed. His face was stonier, eyes glazed and unfocused. But she wasn’t looking into face anymore, and was no longer interested in whether he was looking at her. She was looking at his body, his groin.

She leaned around the entranceway and beckoned him with her hand, and put a finger to her lips to shush him. He stumbled across the room after her, looking totally out of it.

The house was still empty, they were all out on the porch. Down the hallway, she met him in a bedroom. She leaned against the wall, folding her arms, trying to look casual, like they’d just bumped into each other by accident. He didn’t play along, but stared at her with foggied expectation.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he slurred. She smiled. He reconsidered: “You always do.”

“Come here,” she said, pointing right at her feet. He stepped in front of her. The drug had kicked in, his view of her seemed misaligned.

“You came alone didn’t you?” she said.

“What?” He paused. “New perfume.” He sounded enticed. “Different.”

He was wrong. It must have intermixed with other scents at the Hotel, but it hadn’t changed at all.

“It’s hard meeting new people,” she sympathized. And with a small smirk, added: “Especially girls.”

She ran her hands under his shirt, letting his torso glide against the flat of her hands. It struck her how much she loved the feeling of his body against her palm. Not hugely toned, but familiar, an old chair she wanted to sink into.

“You’re drunk,” he said, somewhat stupidly.

Speak for yourself, she thought.

She kissed him, trapping his voice in his throat. One hand slid down the crotch of his pants, capably surrounding his shaft and squeezing, and slipping further until she was cupping his balls. She took one of his hands and passed it against her breast for a teasing instant, just long enough to tell him her nipples were erect, before drawing it back again.

“Get on the bed.” Her lips vibrated against his. “Now.”

“Jenfff—” he grunted, but she kissed him again, and bit his lip and held it.

“You were looking for action all night,” she said plainly, holding her face oppressively close to his. “You got it. You want me. Now you’re going to fuck me.”

“We are not—” his voice stopped as she rolled his balls in her hand. Gripping them, she felt like she had him on a leash, and if he kept refusing her she could twist him until he relented. Her heels had her looking down upon him.

“Just a kiss.” Drunk or not, he knew her too well to believe that. She was waiting for him to pass out, and she would keep going. Easing her hand around his balls, she was already dipping her head again, puckering her lips, but he turned his head at the last second. His reflexes were terrible, and her lips smeared across his cheekbone.

“No.” For an instant he looked panicked. “This is Scott’s house.”

“What if it was my house?”

Her hand had tightened around his balls again. He gulped in air.

“I’m going to pass out.”

Without warning he shoved her off him, surprising her with his roughness. Before she even realized what she was doing she slapped him hard across the cheek. He staggered a little, screwed his eyes, and after a little start like he’d come out of a trance, he blinked and, like he can’t remember what just happened, left the room.

Her eyelids dropped, shutting the world behind a curtain of black, orange and blinding blue.

Composing herself, she went and found the others on the patio, and didn’t want to be alone anymore, but wanted to melt into the group like she’d belonged the whole time. So when they all left their seats and traipsed into the living room for the countdown, she went too, tangling her thoughts in abstractions like; since when did geomagnetic polar reversals have countdowns, to the second? They were unpredictable. It didn’t make any sense.  

The glass tumbler by the chair – now empty.

“Everyone, please be quiet.”

Right at that moment, Jerry walked in front of the TV, flourishing a strange looking machine, affecting this pretence of profundity like someone about to unveil the secrets of the universe:

“You are about to witness something incredible.”

He was grinning in an un-Jerry-like way.

“He’s not fooling around,” said a guy called Remy, a friend of Scott’s.

“We need witnesses,” Jerry went on in a rush, his eyes flicking around at everyone wildly.

There was a ripple of anticipation: Remy was jabbering on, but fell silent once Jerry switched on the machine. It made a low frequency buzz that was soothing and sinister at the same time. The TV continued to play, a mindless noise in the background.

Someone nudged her arm. It was Stuart, at her side. She’d barely noticed he was right there.

“This looks like it’s going to hurt,” he muttered. “Hurt someone, anyway.”

There was something lofty, parental, in his voice. She had the flash of inspiration that Jerry was trying, bizarrely, to get her back, and maybe prepared to hurt himself in the process. Bad.

“What are you doing, Jerry?” she barked.

His face was blank again, the grin had gone, as if he didn’t know the answer himself. She waited a moment but he didn’t reply. The silent treatment again. He was hiding from her in the one place she could not get him – inside his own skull.

“Jerry, look at me.”

Stuart nudged her arm again.

“Has he ever done this before?” he muttered, sounding faintly concerned.

She just shook her head. She didn’t even know what ‘this’ was, only that she didn’t like it. It must be the machine causing her flesh to prickle and hairs on her arms to stand up.

“Don’t do it,” she said, but her voice came out breathless; even as she said it she saw in Jerry’s determined stare he wasn’t listening to her, all his focus was on the machine and there was no stopping him.

In the background, the TV was chanting with the countdown. She recalled the horror stories about people taking bad trips, doing incredibly stupid things. Yet none of the horror stories prepared her for the kind of trip Jerry made.

He held out the machine like he was presenting it to some invisible person as a gift, and at the last second his hand wrapped around what looked like a gun trigger, squeezed, and there was crackling snap around the room, like static. Jerry’s stare became focused on something in the distance, but there was no distance; just empty air.

The room acquired a strange resonance like a huge cavern, but it was only for a moment, and as the countdown reached its end, Jerry took steps forward – where he was planning on going wasn’t clear; there was just blank wall opposite him – but it didn’t matter, as he never arrived.

It was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever seen. He tripped and in the same instant, there was a bang like a firecracker and his body seemed to pull inward at all sides, all at once. At the same time, he dropped to the floor. Or, what was left of him lying on the floor; a single thumb wrapped in a scrap of cloth.

They all stood there and it seemed, somehow both like ages passed and time had stopped.

Remy launched forward first, breaking the collective trance of wonder, and dropping beside the machine that had tumbled over the floor after Jerry had disappeared. He tilted it between his hands, examining its condition, muttering darkly.

Dazed, everyone else traipsed over to the tiny object lying where Jerry should have been lying.

She didn’t want to get any closer but she was drawn, as if magnetically, step by step over the carpet. Stuart’s hand swept around the crook of her arm, trying to hold her back, but she brushed him off, crossing the room until it lay at her feet. As she stared, the features on the tiny object grew by perspective, sharpening into something familiar; something she dared not believe.

The object on the ground was Jerry. The whole thing, all of him. He was miserably tiny. And his clothes, and they were tiny too. Was he still alive? There was no way.

Minutes passed as they stared, asking hollow rhetorical questions. Remy babbled with projected assurances while Scott peppered him with questions that hung in the air without answers.

The room swam, the gasps and alarmed protestations of the others, now crowded around Jerry’s body, deepened into a muffled drone, like she had plunged underwater. The chunk wedge heels on her feet suddenly felt like toothpick-narrow stilettos as her balance faltered—

—then caught herself and the world cleared up again. She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the horrifying notion that if she’d fainted, she would have squashed Jerry flat under her incredible weight.

His now tiny head shifted to the side like he was trying to roll over while asleep. He was still alive. The relief was like jumping out of the way of a speeding train; she felt good only because she’d narrowly escaped feeling much worse. She had been certain he was dead – worse than dead, body obliterated. It was as if he’d been spared, like by divine intervention or something. What other explanation was there?

While she was trying to hang on to her breath, the others were remarking in stunned voices, also realizing Jerry was alive.

On the ground, the Jerry-shaped person let out a faint, breathless whimper and vomited.

“Jerry?” said Scott. “Can you hear me?”

Jerry didn’t respond; his head had flopped back down against the carpet.

“I don’t think he can hear us,” said Tasha, sounding worried as she exchanged glances at the rest of them.

Another small, pained squeak came from the floor.

“Is he awake?” Tasha went on. It wasn’t clear; he was shifting in an uncoordinated way, and his eyes were closed.

“i said i can hear you!”

A tiny voice had projected up from the floor. Realizing what it was, her lips pursed while her chest suddenly felt tight. Not in a bad way, but in a ludicrous, inappropriate way – she found herself trying to hold back incredulous laughter. Only some of it was from her earlier, giddy relief. Mostly, the voice coming from Jerry’s mouth was just so unbearably cute.

“Oh my gosh, did you hear that?” Tasha exclaimed. “Was that him?”

The tiny voice came from the floor again:

“scott? tasha?...remy?”

“What’s that on the ground?” Scott pointed out, “Is that…vomit?”

She’d noticed it, too, but she was too distracted by Jerry’s size. Now something got through her head: Jerry was alive, but was he sick? She was, after all, herself, a little sick just looking at him.

“Yeah,” Remy said, squinting down at the floor. “He threw up.”

He said this in a strange, clinical, slightly fascinated way, like the whole thing was a spectacle, and she remembered: hadn’t he been the one to set Jerry up to this in the first place? She glared at him and all her anger and giddiness and fear tumbled out into her voice:

“You! – What the fuck did you make him do?”

The others all stared at her. Even some part of her own mind shrunk away: the part subconsciously comparing the thunderous volume of her own voice to the delicate voice that had come from the floor.

Remy cowered under the look she shot him.

“I didn’t do anything.” Previously babbling calculations and estimations previously, now this was all he could utter.

Her glare softened as she stared back down

“Jerry, say something,” she said. “Please.”

Say you’re fine, sweetie.

A part of her just wanted to hear that tiny, cute voice again, just to make her feel better; the sound of it was like an instant rage soother, an acoustic stressball.

But Jerry didn’t reply. He had sat up; his eyes were wide open and he was staring up at each of them in shock, utterly unable to comprehend. He now looked on the verge of screaming.

Scott went very still as if something had just occurred to him. Then he said:

“Does he…Does he know who he is?”

Jerry’s eyes found Remy:

“remy,” he said. “what the fuck happened?”

Hearing that tiny voice say ‘fuck’ nearly made her laugh again. He was obviously in a state of panic but she had the sudden urge to grab him and lift him up to her ear, let that sweet trill lullaby down her ear canal.

Remy then said some things that honestly made no sense, and only confirmed her hunch that neither he nor Jerry had known what they had been doing. On top of that, it became clear Remy didn’t know how to fix the situation. When he heard this, Jerry’s tiny body was wracked with trembling sobs.

“the solution is just going to come to you while you’re goggling at me like an idiot?” he screeched up from the floor.

She couldn’t suppress the urge anymore. It was clear none of them had a better idea about how to handle the situation.

She stepped closer to the tiny figure, trying not to alarm herself at the insane size comparison between either of her wedge heels and her ex-boyfriend’s miniature stature, and crouched, saturating the gesture with gentleness so she did not frighten him into mental breakdown. She couldn’t even imagine the terror he was in right now, but his tearful eyes and tiny chest quivering in and out rapidly gave some indication.

“Jerry,” she said, as steadily as possible, “calm down. You’re tired and sick. Let’s get you off the floor.”

He couldn’t be trusted at that size; the powder was still in his system and he wasn’t thinking clearly. He could still make a berserk run and, in the stampeding chaos of a pursuit after him, accidentally end up so much mulched grit under someone’s tread.

That thought invigorated her more than anything. Without thinking about it too hard, she cupped her fingers around him, drawing his entire body against her palm, and – so he could not thrash and spring free – kept him wrapped there in a gentle fist, before lifting him.

He was so incredibly light that it almost made her panic; there was so little of him, barely anything. He separated from the floor so easily she almost had to check he hadn’t slipped from grasp.

Her entire ex-boyfriend was wrapped up under her fingers, she thought, stunned, and her own feelings confused her. There was the sheer cuteness of it: holding her ex in the palm of her hand – literally. And she was self-conscious of the full power over this tiny person; his whole body was subject to the manipulations of her fist. His whole world was her fist. Amazingly, he wasn’t even struggling, wasn’t fighting against the inside of her hand to get free. He totally trusted her. Or he was too tired to resist her. She was swamped by the affection she felt towards him, as if in picking him up she’d staked a claim of ownership. She was utterly dizzy with disbelief.

She held him protectively to her chest, turning her hand so she could see the top of his head in the crook of her thumb, and on impulse, touched the soft hair on the crown of his exposed head with the fingers of her other hand. His body had relaxed now, and she could feel his tiny heartbeat pulsing against the inside joint of her middle finger. It was so – lame as it sounded, there was no other word for it – precious.

And he felt good inside her hand; fitted, contoured. She was tempted to squeeze him out of pure contentment, but refrained.

The others were debating what to do with him, and she let them; feeling there was nothing for them to debate: if someone had tried to lift him out of her hand right there she would have slapped them, or worse.

*

“Tonight did not go the way I thought it would,” she said quietly and with such a serious tone that Stuart laughed, thinking she was deadpanning, but she was serious.

They were in the car, driving away from Scott and Tasha’s. Jerry was curled up asleep in her hand, which she kept rested on her lap, as Stuart drove.

She kept staring down at him in disbelief, while cupping him and stroking him; couldn’t keep her anxious fingers away from him; he was so tiny and delicate looking, and his hair was so soft and felt so good rubbing and forth against the sensitive pads of her fingertips. It was weirdly therapeutic and somehow totally right; she’d been running after him all night and here he was, literally in the palm of her hand and not going anywhere.

“We’ve got to get him to the hospital,” said Stuart.

“And what?” she looked up, eyebrows drawn tight. “Does this look like something a doctor can fix?”

“Well, no, but…” the rest of the reply never came.

She noticed they were taking the road home, like Stuart was heading there by default, sans any better idea. She didn’t complain.

They had to take Jerry to get checked over by someone. But the thought of normal sized medical equipment poking and tapping around his tiny body bothered her. And what if the doctors admitted him as an inpatient for investigation, or a science lab? But what other choice did they have? Who else was qualified to medically examine him, just to sign off on his health status, without wanting to take him away from her..?

“I’m about to say something utterly ridiculous,” she admitted. “But what about the vet?”

“You really think so?” Stuart flashed a glance at her.

“Stuart. Look. He’s the size of a mouse.”

“That doesn’t mean you show him to a mouse specialist.”

She stared fixedly out the window.

“First thing tomorrow, I’m going to make an appointment.”

It was 1 AM when they arrived back at their place – rental – no time to sit around and have a languid tea party over the ‘Jerry question’. That would have to wait. But first, they needed to figure out where Jerry would sleep.

With spontaneity that even surprised her, she perked up:

“He would fit on the bedside table!”

It was so cute, and a crazy thing to wake up to every morning; Jerry’s tiny face tucked up in—

—Every morning? Whoa there, girl. Just how long would he be staying with them?

Stuart just gave her a puzzled, strained smile.

“Honey, I’m not sure how he’d feel about that.”

But she was only joking. Half. Sort of. Not.

After rustling around the laundry and spare cupboards, he came out with something else.

She raised an eyebrow.

“A sponge?”

“Got to admit,” he half shrugged, “it works for size, right?”

She said nothing as he placed it on the table in the space dividing living room and kitchen, and close to the master bedroom. Close enough, she thought, that if Jerry screamed out in the night she would hear him from the queen bed.

This was insane, she chided herself. He was tiny, not a child. And she was sure as hell not his mother.

Still, she didn’t want to leave his side.

They both stared at Jerry, lying on his side on the sponge, with a hand cloth for a blanket. He looked peaceful, at least. The ‘blanket’ was wrapped around him, except for one of his bare feet, which stuck out. She stared at it, utterly charmed.

Then, to her amazement, Stuart extended a pointer finger down and gave Jerry’s exposed foot a tickle. Jerry snorted in his sleep, kicking his foot away, but didn’t awaken. Stuart stepped back, chuckling.

“What do you think, Jen?” he murmured. “What have we got ourselves into?”

With a bewildered sigh, he retreated into the bedroom.

She remained a moment longer, running her eyes over his miniaturized features, still telling herself that the tiny person didn’t just uncannily resemble her ex-boyfriend in miniature, like a perfect replica doll, it was him, in every way. Everything that Jerry was previously was contained in that minute frame. She rolled his top up and thumbed his chest, searching for his heartbeat. He looked so peaceful she wanted to be certain he wasn’t depressing into cardiac arrest. The incomprehensibly tiny heart beat into the sensitive pad of her thumb. Satisfied with his pulse rate, she smoothed the blanket back over him.

With another of those impulsive moments of hers, she bent and kissed the side of his head, not so much wanting to kiss him as wanting to see what it would be like at that size. It wasn’t weird or self-conscious at all like she’d expected; his cheek fit into the crevice between her lips and it was totally natural. His head shifted against her lips as he stirred in his sleep. She quickly drew back, not wanting him to wake.

Stuart called from the bedroom. She turned and left, switching off the light, meditating to herself on everything. She had survived the night’s misadventures and decided it wasn’t a disaster after all.

In the bedroom, Stuart was good for one roll in the hay, but it took some cajoling and was over quickly. He seemed disturbed that, in the midst of everything, she would even be in the mood.

But, for her, the sex was so outrageously inappropriate in the circumstances and somehow that made it unbearably erotic, perverse and thrilling. She was startlingly wet, even after Stuart had come and finished. He went to sleep and while he snored softly, she gave herself a second helping in record speed: it was as if her sex drive was a firecracker that had been lit up by a match. What was happening to her? What was this? It was kind of…

…exciting.