The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman Page A

Rebecca brushed the dirt off her pants and, without looking back at the Dumpster, walked toher car. Driving home, she became overwhelmed with fatigue. During the twenty-minute trip, she felt the need to pull over twice. Both times she had to get out of the car and walk around it twice before she felt ready to continue.
    Parking in front of a fire hydrant, Rebecca barely made it to her house. She lay down on the couch and began dreaming, or remembering—she couldn’t tell which. She saw herself in bed with Stewart. Shortly after waking, they sneezed at exactly the same time. Both sneezes were forceful: so forceful that Rebecca blew her personality into Stewart and Stewart blew his into Rebecca. Neither immediately noticed that anything unusual had happened. Stewart rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom. Rebecca reached for the Kleenex on her bedside table and discovered that she was on the wrong side of the bed. The right side was usually hers, but being on the left side wasn’t particularly odd. It had happened before. When she put on her housecoat, she found it tight, but not so tight that she was alarmed. But then, looking at her hands, she saw that they were large and masculine. They didn’t look like her hands at all. She was still staring at them when she heard a scream from the bathroom.
    The scream was odd because it sounded exactly like her voice. Rebecca went to investigate and saw herself coming out of the bathroom. This made her scream. The scream that came out was not her voice, but her husband’s voice.
    “Stay away from me,” Rebecca said.
    Stewart raised his hands, open-palmed, noticing that his nails were long and painted. “Rebecca?” Stewart asked in Rebecca’s voice.
    “Stewart?” Rebecca asked in Stewart’s voice.
    They exchanged housecoats and wondered what they should do. Craving normality, they went downstairs and started breakfast. Rebecca made eggs. After they’d eaten and cleared the table, Rebecca suggested that they might as well make the best of it.
    “Wouldn’t that be … gay?” Stewart wondered.
    “More like self-abuse.”
    “It is tempting.”
    They went upstairs to the bedroom. It was over quickly. Afterwards, they stared up at the ceiling. Neither of them had found it that arousing.
    “It must have been the sneeze,” Rebecca said.
    “That’s what I’m thinking too.”
    They headed back to the kitchen, where Rebecca took the pepper shaker from the back of the oven. They both sniffed. The pepper made them sneeze. The sneezes were intense, but it was hard to get the timing right. On the seventh try, they managed to sneeze simultaneously. Stewart blew his personality back into his body and Rebecca blew her personality back into hers.
    “Weird,” Stewart said, happy to be back in his own body.
    “Very,” Rebecca agreed.
    They hugged, showered, got dressed and went to work. They pretended that nothing had changed. They continued to pretend when they returned that evening. But something had changed. Touch had become something they had to think about, and each time they had to think about it the less inclined they were to do it. In four days it became impossible, and in four weeks they’d drifted so far apart that Rebecca couldn’t find Stewartanywhere. She looked in every room, under every bed and inside every closet, but he wasn’t in the house.
    Rebecca woke up frightened. She was filled with anxiety and a desperate feeling that something very important was missing. She got off the couch and began searching for her keys, which she found on the kitchen table. She searched through her purse and found her wallet near the top. Still, the feeling that something was missing would not go away.
    Taking short, shallow breaths, she stood in the middle of the kitchen. Hoping it would relax her, Rebecca decided to shower. She had just covered her hair with shampoo when she realized that she didn’t know what time it was. Fearing that she was late for work, she rushed to