One of the things I learned quickly was that Lucy Maya wore glasses. I sat on the couch surrounded by books and articles of every ilk - everything from witchcraft to little known aspects and traditions of major religions.

I had been this way for days, sitting and reading almost continuously. After a few days of holding papers near the tip of my nose, it dawned on me that perhaps I should search for a pair of reading glasses in one of these drawers.

I found them in her briefcase. Spectacle search aside, I had done little else except read, order food, and phone my job. I told them I was recovering nicely and would require another few days before I reported. By this point, I had read through tons of material.

I picked up an article on reincarnation I had taken from one of the more off beat websites I had encountered and sighed. It, like most of what I was digging through, was not helping me at all. Most of it was plain junk.

A couple of days ago, when I revealed to my brother Alex that I was actually Craig Morton. I revealed to him that some twist of fate took my demised soul, placed it in the vessel of Lucy Maya while she lay still in her coma.

I told him that I would take what the lunacy of the Universe had handed out to me and start living her life. To be more accurate, living my life while trying to fill in her shoes.

I felt that one of us, she or I, was given another chance for a reason. I just needed to find out what that reason was. However, like every part of my new life, it turned out to be far from easy. One can't just settle and wear someone else's life like changing coats. I had a need to understand how and why I existed, even if no real answers were available. It consumed me.

It was not only a need to know how I got here, I needed to know who I ... Lucy ... was. Piled in with the books of the mystic, were every letter, answering machine tape, yearbook, and scrap of notes about Lucy I could find. I had read through them all, repeatedly, trying to formulate a picture.

I spent long blocks of time in front of the open door of her refrigerator asking myself what kind of person ate this type of food. I held up her clothes, trying to determine what kind of person wore things like this. I even examined the doodles on the edges of her hand written phone messages.

Then there were the interviews. Sitting around rooting through the scattered clues to my new life, Alex and I had a brainstorm. With my brother claiming to be a psychologist who was helping me recover memories lost from the accident, we rang every person in Lucy voluminous address book, and quizzing them - sometimes for hours on end.

Slowly over a matter of days, we were able to put together a working biography of Lucy. The biography complete with details would make navigation of her life a great deal easier. I had filled two notebooks with information of all kinds.

An unforeseen, but added benefit was we were able to prepare all of the people in her life that Lucy was not the same person she was before entering the mysterious world of the coma. Her faculties and intelligence may be as sharp, but her memory had definitely taken a severe beating. The path was laid - huge inconsistencies in my behavior may create concern, but the concern would be spawned of sympathy.

As it was in the first days of the hospital, it was getting used to my body that was another difficult part. Over the past few days, I had spent a great deal of time in front of the mirror. It took me hours just to familiarize myself with my new female form.

I had learned through my interaction with Alex, that I was not presenting myself as I assumed I was. Many of my expressions, on the face of Lucy, conveyed an entirely different meaning. Many of these misunderstandings, I learned, were largely through stereotypes imposed on women.

As a serious person, for instance, I as Craig Morton was often said to look thoughtful or carry a certain gravity. On Lucy's visage, these looks were interpreted by Alex as bitchy or dour.

My male habit of broad aggressive movements in this thin athletic body were overly assertive and tom boyish, often plainly crude. Making matters worse, my efforts to compensate for this were frequently over the top - like a woman playing what she thought a drag queen would act like in a very broad farce.

I was learning over time that there was great middle ground between Lucy and me, and by just "being neutral" - staying away from the extreme behaviors for either sex - I came off as much more plausible. I still needed a great deal of practice.

I called for Alex while he was in the kitchen. He had been in there quite some time; I suspected he was hiding out from having to wade through more reading, or plainly just hiding out.

After his initial acceptance of my situation, his constant testing of me to make sure that he could believe both me and his instincts, Alex went through periods of time where it was all too much for him.

In the middle of reminiscing over our parents, or one of the many subjects we had covered so many times in the past, he would stop in mid sentence.

At these times, he struggled to come to grips with my memories emerging from a completely foreign body. It was an impossibility, which sat before him, testing the limits of his understanding at every waking moment. The indescribable magnitude of the situation was sometimes too much for him, as it often was for me. His method would be to simply walk away from it. I suspected, as he remained in the kitchen, this was one of those times.

I had no sooner called his name than I was jarred as the apartment buzzer sounded. It wasn't an uncommon sound, as flowers and packages of goodwill had flooded through the doorway since it became common knowledge I had emerged from a coma. But, it still caught me off guard.

Standing up, I pressed the intercom button to identify the visitor.

"Hello?" I asked. The sounds of the busy lobby filled the apartment from the speaker. After a moment's pause (indicating indecision) a voice finally spoke.

"Hi, Lucy. I don't know if you remember me, but my name is Arnie. I was the one who left you the flowers. You know, the guy from the hospital when you woke up?" His voice sounded oddly neutral for someone on a friendly mission.

I was caught by surprise. There had been a few attempted visits since I arrived home, but those were all announced by telephone first. In those cases, I was easily able to plead weakness and recovery to brush them off.

However, no one ever just came by. Someone just arriving at your door in the stretched out metropolis of Los Angeles is such an unexpected event that I wasn't even sure how to react.

"Arnie. Yes, I remember thank you for the flowers. I would invite you up, but ... I'm not feeling so great," I lied, "You understand don't you."

"I can ... I understand ... But I have to talk to you. I was driving the bus when the car.... spun into mine. I was there at the accident. I was also there when you woke up. I ... I need to talk to you," he repeated.

I took my finger off the button and leaned against the wall next to the speaker. At this point Alex had walked into the room and was listening. His face was also puzzled. He shrugged silently.

I put my finger back on the button, "Okay, Arnie, come on up."

As he entered the apartment, I puzzled over him. Arnie Williamson was definitely not like the bus driver I had seen before.

Out of his Metro Transit uniform, he seemed a great deal smaller as if his work clothes were padded. His face came to a sharp point and he was bespectacled, he must have been wearing contacts the first time I saw him. He appeared like someone who would be more at ease flunking an English student than tossing a homeless drunk from the bus.

His voice carried a slight Southern tinge, which was rare in this part of California. His demeanor was slightly nervous, evident as he took in the apartment with quick cuts of his eyes. He however, saved his most inquisitive glances for Alex. Alex shifted nervously under his gaze.

"Hello Arnie." I began putting on what I hoped was a grateful voice, "Can I get you something to drink? I had heard about how you read to me everyday too. How your reading to me was probably responsible for bringing me out of the coma. You don't know how appreciative I am."

The bus driver said nothing as his eyes continued to dart about the room. He took notice of the pile of paper and picked up one, glancing at it casually, before putting it down. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was something about him that was making me nervous.

"Well then, Arnie," I began, breaking the uncomfortable silence, "what brings you here?"

He chose not to answer my question before asking one of his own. Pointing to Alex he asked, "You're the brother aren't you?" Realizing he was not being precise, he elaborated, "You're the brother of the man that died in the accident I mean. Craig Morton, God rest his soul."

There was something very strange about his manner.

"I'm his brother, yes," Alex answered cautiously. He too picked up on the strange vibe coming from the bus driver.

Arnie returned to the matter at hand, "I know this has been hard on everyone," he was a slow deliberate speaker, "and no one more than you. You've lost ... a friend, and have been out of our world for a week. It's been hard for me as well. I was driving the bus when your car spun out and hit me. The lawyers at the Metro Transit tell me I shouldn't be talking to you at all, the way people seem to sue over anything and all, but that didn't seem like the right thing to do. I was there after all when you were in the accident, and I was there when you came out of the coma." He said the last part with a driving emphasis.

He continued his monologue, "Do you realize, you didn't go straight into that coma ma'am? You had a little gash on your head and were in a tree. I brought you down, holding your head up to slow the bleeding while waiting for the ambulance. That's actually when you slipped into your long dream. What's funny is when you came out, that day in the hospital, I held you too because I thought it was God bringing a miracle down upon us." Arnie spoke of God in the comfortable every day way of certain Southern denominations.

"Thought?" I asked. I had no real reason to speak; I just wanted to interrupt his story, which was growing more uncomfortable than his unwavering stare.

"Yes ma'am. Thought, because after going home, I started having feelings and ... strange dreams. I don't know if you've ever held someone in their arms as they fell into a coma - or die - but it, their spirit, washes through you. You feel it. But when I started thinking about it on the way home after holding you when you woke up from your coma, it wasn't the same spirit. At least I don't think it was."

Wasn't the same spirit? Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

Alex interjected, "Mr. Williamson, Arnie. I appreciate that you're in touch with your spirituality. It comforts us to think in those terms at a time like this. However, we can't believe in such things as spirits washing through bodies and the like. People fall into comas and come out of comas all the time. This kind of talk will only upset Ms. Maya."

Arnie paused to watch Alex speak, his eyes fixed upon him. When Alex finished, Arnie continued as if Alex hadn't said a word, "Well ma'am, I know this is going to sound insane. But I think something happened to you when you were in that coma. Something more than you just losing your memory. I'm not sure if it was a different spirit, I felt, or if being in a coma changes a person so that their spirit just feels different. But looking at all these papers about religion and reincarnation lying about, and watching you move about and talk like you were being yanked around by a brand new puppet master, I think you're on to it too."

He paused, gazing at me intently, "Do you feel like something ... I hate to use the word but ... supernatural ... went wrong while you were in that coma? You can tell me."

Why he assumed I could tell him anything, was beyond me.

"No Arnie, I don't. I do feel ... a little off, not having most of my memory is tough, but that's about it. I do, however, appreciate your concern."

He stood up and took off his round spectacles to clean the lens with the hem of his sweater. He turned to show himself to the door. He had one final thing to say.

He looked over his shoulder to be sure we saw the resolve in his face, "Well ma'am up until I came up here, I thought I was just having crazy dreams, or that maybe, just maybe, something happened to you that you weren't aware of. Now I think you do know. Moreover, I think you're lying to me about it. I just hope that something, isn't some great perversion, which slipped past the eyes of God and must be fixed, like my dreams keep telling me. I may only be a bus driver, but there are many things I am aware of. And if it turns out that I'm one who somehow made this all wrong, by your smashing into my bus, I guess I'm going to have to be the one to make it right. Good day ma'am. Good day sir."

The door clicked behind him.

As soon as I heard the elevator doors close down the hallway, I let my breath out, "That was fucking weird. How couldn't possibly...?"

"Why not?" Alex answered my half asked question, "It's no crazier than anything else that's happened. Your spirit did in fact leave your body and it did in fact lose its way after all. Why couldn't he have felt it?"

"What if he is right about my slipping past the eyes of God? I've often thought I was some great cosmic perversion, my very existence could set events ... well events I don't want to think about, into play."

Alex smiled without humor, "Aiding and abetting a cosmic perversion. I'm sure that will look good on the resume I submit at the pearly gates," he put his hand on my shoulder reminding me of the consoling he did after my parents had moved on, "I think something large is happening here. A mistake, maybe. A cosmic injustice, I don't know, but I don't think so. But, from the sounds of our bus driver friend, the difficult task of being Lucy Maya just got that much more so."

I stumbled across Janet sitting in the hallway of my apartment complex. I was holding an arm full of groceries with my key tenuously gripped to slide into the door. She was seated in the hallway throwing a rubber ball against the wall apparently waiting for someone.

She was no more than sixteen, despite her clothing, which tried its best to convey womanhood onto her still young body. Her demeanor, like her clothing, attempted to portray a more mature essence. Upon seeing me, she eyed me with narrow disinterest, which slowly brightened into recognition. I wonder how well she knew me. I braced for an uncomfortable encounter filled with lies of head injuries and diminished memory.

"Hi," I said simply. She threw the rubber ball with the expertise of an inmate in solitary; it bounced onto the floor, then wall, and back into her hands perfectly. I surmised she spent long stretches in these hallways. I also guessed she was not a favorite of the neighbors.

"Hi," she returned the greeting. Her voice was more melodic and innocent than I had anticipated. Her dress and body language prepared me for someone much "harder" than that. Her pose was most likely defensive built from hours of being a nice looking young lady in a not so nice city.

Watching me fumble for some time uncomfortably with my keys, seeing I was unwilling to do the intelligent thing putting my bags of groceries down, she offered to help.

"That would be nice. Thanks." I responded. She took my keys unlocked my door, swinging open the apartment door. I placed the groceries down on the dining room table with her following me in with my keys.

"Thank you," I said, "I'm sorry what was your name?"

"Janet." She stood back and examined me closely. "Your psychologist called my mom just the other night. Mom told me afterward that you were left with no memory from the accident, but it is a hell of a thing to see. I've met you on several occasions. You usually invite me in for coffee when you see me in the hallway."

"I let a kid your age drink coffee?" I laughed skeptically. I doubt very much this was something a straight arrow like Lucy would do, "Nice try, I lost my memory, but I'm not stupid."

At this she laughed openly and heartily. It too was musical. "No, no I guess you're not. But we have met, really, and you have - at least a few times - let me in. I'm not very good about remembering my key,"

She explained, "So I find myself waiting in the hallway for Mom to get off from work. She throws a fit if I wander around the city. You know because of the gangs and all." This part of Los Angeles was up-scale and completely gang free. I suspected it was more Janet that concerned her mother than outside forces.

I began unloading groceries as Janet had made herself comfortable on one of the dining room chairs. It became apparent that this was going to be another time that she waited in Lucy's ... my ... apartment for her mother to come home. She was far more pleasant a visitor than the troubling figure of the bus driver which Alex and I had experienced earlier today.

"So, if it's not rude," she asked seeming not really to care if it were rude or not, "what's it like losing your memory? Did you lose it all?"

Her bright eyes watched me as carefully as they would a new video from a boy band. I had been wandering around the kitchen holding two cans of soup, opening every cabinet one at a time, then closing them, as I tried to discover where they went. No wonder she asked. I would have to rearrange everything to my system soon, I decided.

"It's like," I began again, speaking truthfully, "it's like waking up and finding you're someone else. Everything about your life is a mystery to you. Your friends ... your enemies ... all of it. Even," I laughed, "where you put your soup."

"Yeah, my mom calls it a mixed blessing. She says coming out of a coma after a week and having everything working is a second chance. But having no memory must make it awfully lonely." Janet looked embarrassed at leaking the confidence of her mom, and on top of it, making me feel bad.

She pulled out her ball and nervously rolled it between her palms. She was miles away from the girl who played mildly tough while bouncing it in the hallway. I wanted to rub her head as I did my nephew when he stuck his foot in his mouth, but I felt it was inappropriate.

She changed the subject, "So are you going back to work and stuff?"

I nodded my head. I had been putting off going to work while I delved into my research on Lucy and matters of the supernatural. But for both subjects I had gotten as far as I was going to. I didn't feel like I was ready to assume Lucy's life fully, but there was a point in which I had to.

Bills would eventually pile up, and I was only putting off the inevitable. After the creepy visit from the bus driver, being surrounded by people seemed like the right thing to do.

I looked at Janet noticing her color coordinated outfit, matching both her lips and her nail polish. I had an idea, hoping to solve one of the larger problems I had run up against.

"Which gives me an idea. This is a bit awkward Janet," I said, "but when do you head to school in the morning?"

"8 o'clock. Why?"

"Well, here's the thing. There are some simple functions that I have developed a strange block against. You see, the coma..." I paused my fiction to search for the right words, "And one of those functions is that I can't seem to be able to deal with my make up or hair very well,"

I was right, this was awkward.

I plowed forward, "If it is okay with your mother - and I want her to call me to make sure - I'd like for you to come over before work and help me with my make up. I'm willing to pay you a great deal for it. I'm not starting for a couple more days, but it would be a huge help."

She perked up, "Paid! Really? A great deal? I'll ask mom for sure when she gets home. It'll probably be okay ... you guys get along pretty well. You were very nice to mom when she first moved into the complex after ... dad took off."

And as if just discussing her mother brought her home, Janet looked at her watch and stood up. "Mom's probably back, I don't want to freak her out. I'll have her call about the make up thing."

She half walked, half skipped to the door. Before she left she put a large smile on her face and turned toward me, "Thanks for the coffee."

[To be continued]