All three breathed a sigh of relief when the toilet next door finally flushed and the door opened. Claire immediately bent and peered at the floor in the next stall, frowning when she saw that there was only one picture there now. It was the snapshot, she saw, and it had come to rest near the opposite side of the next stall, too far away for her to reach it at the moment.
“Where’s the other one? Where’s Brad?” Jill asked in a bare whisper against her ear and Claire shrugged her confusion.
“What is it?” Kyle hissed from his perch on the toilet. They straightened and whispered the explanation to him. All three stared at each other blankly, each trying to sort out where the picture might have gone as they listened to the sound of water running in the sinks in the main part of the bathroom, then Jill’s eyes widened. Lifting her eyebrows in question, she jerked a thumb toward the door.
Claire stared at her, taking a minute to realize she was suggesting the woman who had entered must have picked it up. Frowning over the possibility, Claire moved to press her face to the crack on one side of the door. Jill promptly crowded up next to her to peer out the crack on the other side.
Claire had a pretty good view of the girl through the crack as she turned off the taps and walked over to the hand drier, good enough to see that she wasn’t carrying any pictures in her hand. There didn’t appear to be any pockets in the form-fitting black dress the woman was wearing either, she noted.
Claire was about to pull away from the crack and kneel to give the floor of the next booth a more thorough look over, when Kyle gave a “psst.” Both she and Jill glanced over their shoulders to find he’d stood up on the toilet to look out at the room. Obviously he’d seen something they’d missed, for he was gesturing down toward his feet. Claire glanced down, didn’t see anything and glanced back up to find Kyle pointing toward the door.
Claire turned back to her crack and peered out, this time focusing on the woman’s legs, then feet. At first she didn’t see anything, then as the girl finished at the hand drier and turned to walk out of the room, her eyes widened incredulously at the sight of the folded magazine photo stuck to the bottom of one high-heeled shoe.
5
“T hat is so me,” Claire muttered as the door closed behind the girl with the picture-bearing shoe.
“What do you mean?” Kyle asked, stepping off the toilet. It left him standing behind her, his chest against her back in the small space.
“I’m usually the girl with the toilet paper trailing behind her on her way out of the bathroom,” Claire explained with a wry twist of her lips.
“Yeah well, she’s walking out with my date under her heel,” Jill said with disgust. “Kind of like Magda with Ted under her thumb.”
“Maybe,” Kyle commented. “But I can’t think of a guy more deserving of Magda than Ted. God, what an arrogant ass he turned out to be.”
“Yeah,” Claire agreed. “And I thought I had bad taste.”
“Thank you very much,” Kyle said with amusement and Claire flushed.
“I meant other than you, of course,” she amended. “Most of the guys I’ve dated—aside from you—have been total turds like Ted.”
“Thank you very much for pointing out what bad taste I have,” Jill said shortly.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” Claire said quickly.
“Yeah. He had me fooled, too, Jill,” Kyle assured her.
Slightly mollified, Jill sighed and gestured Claire out of the way. “Back up. I’ll go get the other picture. God! Why couldn’t it have been your picture she walked out with?”
“Well I’m glad it was Brad,” Claire countered, backing into the small bit of space between the toilet and the side wall to leave room for Kyle and Jill to juggle around and get the stall door open. “I’m already Brad Cruise.”
“Hardly,” Jill snorted, managing to struggle her way out of the booth.
Claire frowned as the stall door swung closed on her back, then turned to Kyle to ask, “What does she mean, ‘hardly’?”
Kyle hesitated, his expression pained.
Jill’s voice came from the stall next door. “You’re only half changed.”
Claire’s head jerked sideways at the announcement and then she tugged the stall door open and hurried to the mirror over the sink to peer at her reflection.
“Oh my God,” Claire breathed with horror. Some of the features staring back at her were her own. She was looking at her green eyes and her little turned-up nose, but they rested above Brad Cruise’s mouth and chin with the five o’clock shadow. Her hair was a strange mix of short light brown hair and long red waves, and her body…well…it was a mishmash of Brad and Claire. She had the jacket and pants from his suit, but the pants ended above her knees and she also had boobs. They didn’t go well with the bulge between her legs that was his “package.”