Chapter 2

While still in the grip of an orgasm while Terry knelt in front of me in my studio gulping my ejaculating semen with relish, I had my first glimpse of the life I lived before Jane Wilson. Once again, it was a terrifying event. I died, and it wasn't a normal death. I felt the pain of a bullet rip through my chest and heart, exploding out my back in a cone of pink mist.

Terry thought I'd collapsed with pleasure. I didn't correct her mistaken assumption.

During that life I'd been a male, but after assimilating Josh Randall's memories, I worried his life experiences would be even less applicable to my current incarnation than Jane Wilson's.

Thankfully, capturing his memories took only a few weeks, not the eighteen months required to relive my life as Jane Wilson.

Randall was born at the turn of the century and lived thirty-one years, dying nine months before Jane Wilson's birth, leading me to believe that, at the moment of his death, his life force escaped his no-longer compatible body and entered the fertilized zygote that would become Jane Wilson. Using logic, Jane's life force — her consciousness? — probably became me during my incubation in my mother's womb.

Randall was a miner, and for much of his adult life, he worked for a company that mined, milled and smelted copper in Echo, Nevada. At the end of his life, he was industrial blacksmith, operating a huge steam hammer to bend and mold various metals into tools and equipment used by the mill and smelter. He was murdered by a group of strikebreakers the company imported to force the union to its knees. I don't know who prevailed, the company or the union. I know for sure that Josh Randall lost.

Unlike Jane Wilson, Randall's passion wasn't his work. His wife and two daughters gave his hard life meaning, and they returned his love with full measure. He was a large man with huge hands, very strong, and unfortunately his short-fused temper occasionally insured his participation in barroom brawls. He killed one man with his bare hands, but he wasn't prosecuted for the assault. The other man drew a gun and wounded him before Randall ended the fight by breaking his opponent's neck with one blow from his meaty fist. The authorities decreed that Josh had killed his assailant in self-defense.

Randall lived in different times, no telephones, no television, no computer, not much in the way of mechanized transportation, and he didn't like horses and hated mules. He liked dogs and put up with cats because his daughters adored them. He crapped in an outhouse in back of his small clapboard home and wiped his ass with pages ripped from a Montgomery Ward catalog. His wife cooked with wood and coal. The same stove heated the house. The winters were harsh and long, and finally I realized why I hated cold weather so much. No centralized heating and no air-conditioning at all. His laundry was hung on clotheslines; water for bathing was heated on the cooking stove, and others in his family reused the hot water until it became tepid and dark with grime and dirt.

I turned sixteen the day I experienced Josh Randall's earliest memory, completing his history in reverse order, and thanked fate that I was living in better times. I started my sophomore year in high school the day after my birthday.

"Grace to Brent, come in please," Grace said.

"Sorry," I grumbled. I'd been reviewing my life as Josh Randall trying to figure a way to use his life experiences to enhance my life as Brent Carson.

"Doing a little woolgathering, huh?" Grace said.

"Yeah. I was just thinking that we have a lot of reasons to be thankful. Life is a lot easier now than it was in the early 1900s."

She laughed. "Instead of Brent I should call you Bent. You have the weirdest thoughts, little brother."

"How's your writing coming along?"

"Okay." She twisted her pretty face into a grimace. "That's a lie. Writing is hard, really frustrating. Sometimes I just want to give up."

"I read a novel last week, one I checked out of the library. Terry recommended the author to me. James Lee Burke. Have you read any of his novels?"

"No."

"Check him out. His dialogue is crisp, his narrative lively, and his characters come alive on the page. Spend a few weeks copying his writing style, assimilate what works into your own style, and you'll be a better writer because of it."

"Is that what you do with your art?"

"No."

"What do you do?"

"I look at the beauty in the world around me, let my mind wander from the large to the small, turning what I see into composition, color, form and texture, and then try to capture my mind's eye vision on canvas." I chuckled. "It's hard, really frustrating. Sometimes I just want to give up."

"Touché," she said and laughed as she pulled the car to the curb.

Grace was driving us to school, a rare event with only two vehicles in our family. She stopped at the curb to pick up her friend, Kate. I slipped out of the car and held the door for the girl, greeted her, and grinned when she flashed a lot of leg as she clamored into the vehicle. I moved into the back seat.

Kate was a pretty girl, slim, almost too thin. She had a long, classically beautiful face, and she wore her auburn hair softly curled at a medium length. Like Grace, this would be Kate's last year in high school. The two girls were close friends.

"Guess who called me last night?" Kate said to Grace.

Grace giggled, moving into girl-talk mode. "I don't know. Who?"

"Hank Sharp. Ooh, he's a hunk. He asked me..."

I tuned them out and returned to my silent investigation of Josh Randall's life. Surely I could use some of his life experiences to my advantage, some of his talents, some of the knowledge he'd accumulated during his short life.

I made a small mental list.

He was an exceptional bare-knuckle street fighter. That might hold me in good stead if one of the school bullies assaulted me. I grinned with that thought.

He had a green thumb. Instead of being a miner, he should have pursued farming as a career. Everything he planted grew like a weed, and like most skills, his gardening was based on knowledge he'd picked up along the way. Mom had a uncultivated garden patch at the rear of our property. Some organic vegetables would taste good this winter, and Phoenix had a fall growing season as well as one in the spring. Nothing but cacti and native desert plants thrived in the Arizona summers, though.

Randall could chop wood. I needed more and different kinds of exercise, and we had a wood-burning fireplace in the family room, as well as a fire pit in the backyard. Maybe I could talk Billy into borrowing his father's pickup truck, and we'd take a daytrip to the mountains and bring in a few cords of wood, which I'd later reduce to the proper size for the fireplace and fire pit to burn during the winter months.

Randall also enjoyed hunting and fishing, sports I hadn't tried, but he didn't hunt or fish for sport. He killed animals and jerked fish out of streams to feed his family better than his meager wages would otherwise allow. I'd let his hunting skills rest with him in his grave, but decided to try my hand at fishing. In her youth, Jane did some fishing in the Louisiana bayous, once again for food, not sport. Mom loved fish; Dad preferred beef but would eat fish, mostly shellfish, though. Still, I'd get a kick out of putting some fresh fish on our dinner table. Fishing required fishing poles, reels, lures... a boat. I'd done some boating on Lake Pleasant, some water skiing. A boat would be good.

Like a car of my own.

I needed money.

I focused my attention on Grace and Kate. Their conversation hadn't changed much since I tuned them out. Their topic: boys.

With an inward chuckle, I said, "Grace, after school will you drive me to some art galleries in Scottsdale?"

"I can't. I have... how about tomorrow?"

"I'll call Terry. Maybe..."

"No! I'll do it. I want to do it, Brent. It's just that..."

"Tomorrow will be fine, Grace."

That afternoon, Terry and I were fucking on her couch. With Grace busy, Terry begged off the last hour of her shift at the art store and picked me up at school. We'd driven directly to her apartment for some afternoon loving.

Just before we were ready to climax, the door opened and Terry's roommate, Nora, walked into the room. Terry was riding me, and she didn't miss a stroke.

"Don't stop. Don't stop," she said. "Coming..."

I watched Terry's eyes. They were fixed on her roommate, I assumed. I couldn't see Nora. She was behind me.

"Coming..." Terry repeated and her eyes rolled back in her head when her body shuddered in orgasm.

Her fluttering cunt took me over the edge. I spurted my viscous offering when exquisite sensations briefly removed me from the here and now. I bellowed with pleasure, reared back and thrust forward while jerking her spastic cunt down around my shaft with my hands on her hips as another jet of semen squirted. I ejaculated two more times before I collapsed, but Terry was still moving on me, so I marshaled my sapped strength and stayed with her until she experienced her last pulse of pleasure with a heartfelt sigh.

A few seconds later, Terry kissed me and said, "Nora's home."

"I noticed."

Terry looked over the end of the sofa. "She's also playing with her pussy."

I chuckled. "That's something I'd like to see."

"That can be arranged," Nora said as she walked around the end of the sofa and came into my view. She hadn't removed any clothing. She'd merely raised her skirt and pushed her hand under her panties. Her busy fingers didn't falter as she walked.

"Nora has a difficult time coming with a man," Terry said. "I think you should eat her, and then fuck her."

From Terry's comment, I figured that Nora's unscheduled arrival had not been the accident I'd initially presumed.

Nora was a pretty girl, petite, barely five feet, not more than a hundred pounds, with a cute figure. Dark hair and eyes, a button nose. I guessed her age at twenty-five. Later, I discovered I'd guessed wrong. She was twenty, a year younger than Terry.

"Would you like that, Nora?" I asked. "Would you like me to eat you, and then fuck you?"

She nodded, her fingers still busy under her black, lacy panties.

"Let's take this to my bed," Terry said and lifted herself off my still-hard cock. It glistened with her fluids and mine.

Nora fixed her eyes on the shiny shaft. She licked her lips.

"Would you like to clean it with your mouth, Nora?" I asked.

She nodded again, looked up from my cock to my eyes, and then shifted her lusty gaze to Terry. I saw Terry nod, and Nora dropped to her knees and took my cock in her hand. Her tongue lapped around the crown as if it were a Popsicle.

"Can you taste Terry's juices as well as mine?" I asked.

She groaned and nodded, sucking half my length into her small mouth.

That answered the silent question in my mind. Terry and Nora were bisexual lovers.

Nora pulled her mouth off my cock, and her tongue licked up all the juices on the shaft. "Do you like the way I taste."

"Yes," she said.

"Terry will taste the same way. I want you to eat her while I fuck you."

Nora smiled. "I'd like that."

I didn't notice that Nora had any problems climaxing with a man. Of course, I made sure she had an orgasm. As I fucked her from behind while she was lapping up a come cocktail — stirred, not shaken — from Terry's cunt, I used my fingers to fondle her clitoris.

The three of us climaxed simultaneously.

A half-hour later, we explored some other sexy combinations and permutations available for three participants.

Fun.

As Jane, I'd had sex with two men one time, and with another woman and a man quite a few times. Looking back, I think sex with Terry and Nora was the best threesome I'd experience in both lives. Three lives, if I counted Randall's, but I couldn't count that life. Randall wasn't lucky enough to climb into a bed with two sexy women. Not that he considered himself unlucky. He loved his wife passionately.

I also looked forward to some alone times with Nora. She was a lively, happy tart, and with her petite size, I hit bottom, an event that rarely happened with Terry.

The first gallery owner I spoke with looked at me like I had two heads and told me to go away without looking at my portfolio. I didn't have much more luck at the second gallery, but the manager was at least polite and took ten seconds to flip through the photographs of my paintings before sending me on my way.

I'd taken the photos in my portfolio with a digital camera. They weren't very professional. The lighting was wrong, producing glare in places, eroding the quality of the paintings I was trying to present with the photographs.

The third gallery owner studied the photographs. I apologized for their quality, telling him he needed to see the actual paintings to appreciate them.

He shook his head and said, "They don't fit this gallery. Did you see any large paintings displayed as you walked back to my office?"

"No." I reached for my portfolio. "I'm sorry I wasted your time. I should have been more observant."

"Whoa!" he said. "I have another gallery opening in early December located at the south end of downtown Phoenix. It's an old warehouse and tortilla factory I'm renovating to change its use. The gallery spaces are voluminous. Your work might fit that gallery. Of course, I'll need to see the actual paintings before I can make any commitments, and if I'm interested, I stress if, I'll want to deal with your parents for any contractual relationship, not you. How old are you, young man?"

"Sixteen." Going on a hundred and two, I thought.

"That's what I thought. When may I see the paintings?"

"Tonight, tomorrow, whenever. I get out of school at four o'clock. Will you want one of my parents present?"

He smiled. "That would be best. Let's do it tomorrow about five-thirty."

I agreed and gave him my address.

That evening, my father promised to leave his office early the next day, and Mom wanted to meet Gary Frazier, the gallery owner, and said that she'd make arrangements to be there, too. What's more, Mom had some ideas on how my paintings should be presented.

"That studio doesn't do your paintings justice, Brent," she said. "Its size forces an observer to stand too close to the paintings. I'll clear that wall..." She pointed. "... and we'll hang the large painting there. We'll hang another over the fireplace mantel, and two more on that wall." She pointed again.

"Hang one in the entry," Grace said. My sister had gotten into the spirit of the event on the drive back to our house from the gallery. "For impact," she added, "we should hang all the paintings in the entry and the family room. Grouping them makes a larger statement."

Later, I corralled Dad for a private conversation.

"Do you know how galleries and artists work together?" I asked.

"Not really, but I'd guess that a gallery shows an artist's paintings and takes a cut from any resulting sales."

"That's essentially correct, but the details count. For example, the percentage of gross sales a gallery takes varies. This will be my first show, so..."

"If Frazier agrees to show your paintings," Dad said, interrupting me.

I smiled. My dad had doubts. I wasn't concerned. He'd come around. I said, "Frazier will hem and haw and appear reluctant, but in the end, he'll do it."

Dad huffed a laugh. "A negotiating ploy, huh?"

"Yep."

"I know about negotiating," he said.

"I know you do. Here's what I want. I want fifty percent of gross sales. I want the gallery to pay for the frames. I want the gallery to pay for the professional photography needed for brochures and other marketing material, and the gallery should pay for the brochures. I want a say in how the paintings are framed, and how and where they're hung for the show. That's what I want. I won't get it. This is my first show. He'll ask for a sixty/forty split, sixty to the gallery. Hang tough on that one. He'll bend to the fifty/fifty. He'll want me to pay for the framing. Bend on that one if you must, but be prepared to front the money for the frames. I'll pay you back out of my cut from the sales. Hang tough on the photography, but if you have to, agree to split that cost, but in that instance, I'll want ten color prints of each photograph for my future use. In the end, I'll back away from interfering with where and how the paintings are hung. I gave you those 'wants' to use in the negotiations."

"Got it," he said, warming to the subject.

"Now let's talk about pricing. Pricing is critical. If the paintings are priced too low, they won't sell. If the paintings are too cheap, buyers will think there are underlying negative reasons for the low price, and they'll walk away without buying. If the paintings are priced too high, they won't sell. Buyers are astute. They understand value and won't shell out their money if the value isn't there. Ask Mr. Frazier for his opinion regarding a price range. His response will tell us a lot, mostly about the quality of his buyer list. I see nine of the paintings averaging $5,000 each, and the largest should sell for $10,000. Also, if the show doesn't sell out and only one or two paintings remain unsold, the price on those paintings should increase, not decrease."

Dad looked a little shocked. "That means you'll net $27,500."

"No. Remember, I'll be paying for the frames and half the cost of the photography. I'll net around $25,000. Next item: exclusivity. If he asks for it, that's good, but don't give it away except for Phoenix. Exclusivity beyond Phoenix is possible but... let's do this. If he asks for exclusive rights, I'll jump into the negotiations."

"All right. Son, how do you know all this?"

I grinned. "The Internet." And my life as Jane Wilson.

"Oh," he said.

Gary Frazier did indeed hem and haw, but he made a low-ball offer. Dad, bless his greedy nature and negotiating skill, laughed at him, and in the end, did better than I expected. The split leveled off at fifty/fifty. I paid for the frames and any prints of the professional photographs of my work I wanted for my portfolio. I promised to keep my nose out of where and how my paintings were hung. We accepted Frazier's pricing without negotiating. The nine paintings would average $6,000 each, and Frazier planned to put a $12,000 price tag on the largest painting. He knew his buyer list better than I.