...and across the parking lot to the office to check out. "Room 113," he said at the counter.
"Was everything satisfactory?" the clerk asked automatically. She was giving most of her attention to a local newspaper. Leslie nodded and took the little survey card the clerk was absent-mindedly holding out. "Thankyou, pleasestaywithusagain."
"I will! Such hospitality!" Leslie intoned. "And I loved your free continental breakfast!"
Several seconds passed before something clicked and the clerk realized aloud, "We don't have a free continental breakfast." Looking down, she saw her bagel was missing. But by that time, Leslie was already out the door and across the parking lot.
In his car, Leslie took as big a bite of the bagel as she could and stuffed it into a cupholder. His military training told him, in the back of his head, that he shouldn't have done it, but he felt like he hadn't eaten anything in days. After checking the mirrors, Leslie stopped and studied his own reflection. He let out a short noise of exasperation and ran his hand through his slightly askew hair again, then tugged upward a little on his neckline. He didn't want to be showing a lot of cleavage. He looked up at the mirror again, and on second thought, he didn't want to be showing too little, either. He pulled it down a bit.
I look so awful, he thought. If only he didn't need to get to his apartment so fast. He'd had barely any time to get ready.
Leslie resigned himself to his subjectively slapdash appearance and got out onto the open road, where he had plenty of time to ponder how his body had changed and what he could do about it once he got to his new place. Never did he realize that his prolonged contact with the dress and medallion overnight--for many hours more than most medallion users and exceeding his usual length of sleep, on account of his exhaustion the night before--had changed his mind so nearly completely, to a degree few medallion users had ever experienced, into the natural feminine mind he would have developed had one of his chromosomes been different.
