Alice At Heart by Deborah Smith

pushing up the material of his pajama bottoms. He felt worried and orgasmic, directing commands at an endangered woman he didn’t know. What she provoked in him was a sensation he’d never experienced before in his life. Another rush of energy surged through his body, and he sank a hand into the jumbled covers as he came, like a lovesick teenager, inside his clothing. And somehow he knew.
    Alice Riley had heard him. Wherever she was and whatever had just happened to her, she’d listened.
    I froze in a front aisle of the convenience store with a container of whipped butter in my hands, while a sad young man with dirty blond spitcurls waved a pistol at both me and the Mexican cashier who had befriended me. Her name was Maria.
    “Give me your damned money,” he screamed at us.
    Maria shrank back. I could not make myself move an inch. I felt doom swirl around us like a pulling current.
    Make him look at you, Alice. Make him put down the gun or he’ll shoot.
    The deep male voice rose inside my mind out of nowhere, filling me with the vibrations of a low-pitched hum. My spine arched; I gasped as if electrified. Him. The face in the water. The injured man. Fingers of sensation webbed my skin and delved inside me. I felt my womb loosen, welcome, and then retract. Moisture spread between my legs, and my knees went weak. Pleasure, at a moment like this. Life. That voice .
    “Please, don’t hurt us,” Maria begged and began fumbling with the cash register. She knocked over a jar of pennies, and the robber jumped at the crash.
    “I’ll kill ya!”
    “No, you won’t,” I said. Just like that, in a low voice. The robber swung toward me furiously. Inside, my backbone turned to water and drained into my own feet. Strangely, I was still satiated with the unknown voice, the slick fertility some male stranger had provoked inside my belly.
    Make him look at you, Alice, the voice urged again. The way I’m looking at you .
    My head came up. I squared my shoulders, tilted my chin just so, feigned grace and patient command. I stared into the robber’s eyes, past the bloodshot whites and wide-open irises, inside the dark, fluid pools of his brain. So much of what we are is water. We change with the tides, we struggle in our own endless seas to transform ourselves into something or someone splendid. I dived beneath his fear and confusion, his paranoia, the currents of drugs and abuse and hopelessness that pushed him away from every shore. I made a mewling sound of sympathy.
    Float , I sang in my mind. Breathe. Become who you truly are . I began to hum to him, a silent, erotic, spiritual song.
    He wavered. His hand, bearing the pistol, slowly eased to his side. His expression stilled. Without a word he turned unsteadily and walked out the front door. A tiny set of metal windchimes sang in his wake. The sound filled the stunned silence.
    “How did you do that?” Maria cried. “You charmed that crazy snake!” She pressed a button behind the counter. The door lock slid into place, alarms began to ring, and the police were summoned by some faceless computer somewhere. Out under the awnings of the gas pumps, the robber wobbled to a halt, sat down on the ledge of a pump, and gazed back toward the store, watching me. He began to cry and dropped his head into his hands. I began to cry for him, and my knees went weak.
    I was changing. I had left Riley and had begun to turn into someone new, someone even odder and more potent than before. Maybe because I was free of my hateful relatives, other people could see me differently. Or I could see them. And in some cases, hear them.
    You did it, Beautiful .
    His voice again, the stranger. I didn’t sense him nearby, or I would have run. But his masculine current vibrated under my skin, and as my womb cooled I recoiled.
    All my life men and boys had stared at me oddly, taunted me, ignored me, avoided me. My fantasies of loving and being loved by a man were just phantoms, my sexuality confined to