The Change

She always knew that, eventually, in any long-term relationship, she would start to lose her individual identity; she just never thought it would happen at Kaldi’s, on a cool Sunday afternoon, while killing time before a movie.

She was sitting there, wiping the table with an old napkin, thinking, “I should have told him to get me a latte instead of a mochachino,” when he came back to the table, clutching two plastic-lidded paper cups, and announced, “I got you a latte instead,” and, without ever making eye contact, set the cups down and picked up the paper, snapping it open to the Real Estate section.

She felt a slight tingling in her forearm, like the after-effects of a tetanus shot. She looked down and noticed (not at all to her surprise, really) that her arm was swelling. Instantly she knew -- they were melding to some mean of the two of them. She took an inventory of her transforming body -- breast flattening, wrists thickening, a twinge just above her midriff that she assumed was the extra rib evaporating. Across the table, the only part of him visible -- the hand -- was changing, too, becoming more slender and feminine, but, to her dismay, not much.

“Damn it,” she thought, “I’m changing more than he is.” And it was true -- she caught a glimpse of his face as he turned a page. He was growing thinner, but not as much as she was growing thicker. His hair was now a little long, sort of a fashionable page-boy, while hers was already well above her collar and showed no signs of slowing.

She tried to distract herself with her latte, but when she picked up the cup she almost crushed it, unaccustomed as she was to her new, more trollish strength. Her face itched and her shoes were too tight. She assumed that a strange new mound was forming between her now-hairy thighs, but she was too frightened to get up and go to the bathroom to check. Besides, she thought, which bathroom should she use?

Across the table, he had switched to the entertainment section.

“Sweetie,” he said, in a higher pitch and more inquisitive tone than usual, “I think I would like to see that French film instead.”

“I dunno,” she said, scratching a stubbled cheek, “It sounds kind of whiny.”

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