"Are you drunk again, you dirty bastard?!" That was the first thing Gary heard as he came out of the weird blurry haze that was the after effects of his fusing with his wish-created double.
"God damn you to hell, you cocksucker!" The voice was female and strident and followed by the sound of something being thrown and breaking.
Gary forced himself to focus and his vision managed to come clear. He was laying on the dilapidated couch of a seedy little apartment. He was dressed in the clothes he had seen "Jerry" wearing earlier, except now there was no Jerry and the clothes were his. The woman, currently rampaging through the tiny living room, tearing cheap dime store paintings from the walls and kicking over second hand end tables, was about fifteen years younger than Gary, but it was hard to tell. She had seen some hard years and they showed in her eyes and her face. Too much drinking and too much smoking had robbed her of her youthful glow. She was cocaine thin, overly made-up, and her clothes were cheap. The obviously fake breast implants were the most expensive looking thing about her.
A name floated up out of the swamp of mingled memories that were the legacy of Gary's fusion with Jerry, "Lisa?"
"Oh, so you remember my name now?!" Lisa whirled to face him like a prize-fighter released from his corner of the ring. "What about that Linda bitch?! Linda. Linda! LINDA! I'm sick of her fucking name and you got the gall to say it while I'm sucking you off?!"
Gary looked down and realized his pants were undone, his dick at aching attention and wet with saliva. Yeah, this wasn't going well.
"Lisa, uh, look," Gary began uncertainly. His fused mine was coming clearer and he knew that this - - woman was his girlfriend. Apparently, when Linda cheated on him with that thug he had left his family and gone on the bender of all benders. For over five years years he had lived in an alcoholic stupor, homeless some of the time, unemployed for nearly all of it after he lost his job with the law firm where he had been a rising star.
Gary/Jerry had eventually managed to pull himself up out of the gutter via panhandling and a series of jobs involving unskilled labor, even it was just for enough money to buy his night's drink. Lisa was the one who pulled him all the way back up on his feet.
She was the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold - - even if she was only an occasional hooker, moving up from stripper to bartender at the titty bar where she was employed, and especially because she was brassier than she was golden. The apartment was actually hers and once Gary had proven he could hold down a job at the taxi service he had been officially given a key and a place on her bed, instead of a spot on the couch when he got to the homeless shelter too late for a cot.
"Well?!" Lisa growled with an impatient stamp of her foot and a toss of her dyed red hair which looked more purple than red.
"I - - I - - ," Gary was uncertain and put on the spot. He could have strangled his father. He had said the merge would be the best plan. Instead he had gone from moderately successful West Coast lawyer on a visit to his hometown to a recovering alcoholic that lived with a loose woman and worked as a cabbie. How was this an improvement exactly?
"Look, I was spaced out, I don't love that bitch anymore," Gary lied just a little. Even out in California he still wondered from time to time if he had done the right thing leaving Linda, "You're my woman now. So, uh, maybe - - ?"
Gary trailed off. His dick was still hanging out and at half mast. Lisa fixed him with a withering look that sent it the rest of the way down. "You get the fuck out of my apartment, Gary! Find somebody else to put up with your mopey, wishy-washy sack of shit self! I'm done!"
When Gary hesitated, she emphasized her point by hurling a dead potted plant at his head. "GET OUT!"
He paused by the door after he got his junk situated and his pants zipped up, "I'm sorry, Lisa. Really." And the hell of it was that he really meant it.
"Just go," Lisa said in a said, tired voice. He went.
Getting his bearings Gary discovered he was standing outside a boarding house on the edge of the industrial park. Bricksford Heights and Dad's bolthole were a few miles due west. He had turned in the cab at the end of his shift so there was nothing for it but to start walking.
