Novella

Written in 2006

The one time I made a mistake and thought my client was a man, while in fact she was a woman. I was intrigued by that mistake. Even after she corrected me, I was still in doubt and wondering if this was a prank by my colleagues or a trans-person who tried to affirm their identity. That interaction gave me the idea for this story.

Story no. 05 / Novella

Dick

What if the one person you run away from is the only one worth finding?

Marion Bellacourt has not used her real name in twenty years. She is Dick Aldridge now, an architectural consultant in Portland, three weeks deep into a seduction that will end the way all her seductions end: with someone else’s money and a clean disappearance.

She reads women the way she reads everything: for the one detail that tells her what they need. Then she builds the man who has it and walks away before her cover or her clothes are stripped.

She has never been caught.

Then a court summons arrives with a paternity test.

Her touch felt like sandpaper scraping the skin off my forearm.
Dick