Some kind of anthropologist *I* am. I mean, Jim was always...off. Just a little--not so anyone would really *notice*. But you play roles long enough, and you slip up. And Jim slipped.

I mean, to talk to the guy, you wouldn't know that he'd written a brilliant article on the military applications of complexity theory. Hell, you wouldn't know he had a master's degree in complex systems (which he does, apparently, it's there in the minibio for the article). Complexity theory and Jim Ellison? Give me a *break*--except that I found it, read it, and all of a sudden, *bam*, all those times he managed to guess things looked less like serendipity or like him doing some detective trick, like a dog fetching a stick--and a hell of a lot like skull sweat.

Like I said. Off. He sometimes *plays* stupid or uneducated or just plain ornery, but he's not. God, his *vowels* are wrong for his social class, how the *hell* did I not notice that his vowels are wrong--

I had been *played*.

Some kind of anthropologist I am.

Once I figured out that he was playing a role, playing some kind of complicated game--complexity theory, strategy, hah!--I started looking at him a little more closely, thinking back over years of knowing him and researching him and living with him, trying to figure out exactly what it was that was *off*.

Well, hell, when you really look at him, when you *think* about it, when you stop trying to do integration by parts (it's easier, right, but it doesn't work on human beings; human beings don't break down that way--*stupid*, Blair, really damn stupid) and you step back, then you realize...hey...this guy has a *lot* of stuff off about him. This guy is put together *wrong*. He talks wrong for what he reads, he dresses wrong for what he does, he dates wrong for what he says he likes, he eats wrong for how he feels about his body--he just doesn't make a lot of *sense*. He's wearing his life like a damn cheap suit, and I never noticed until I found an article while cleaning out my office, an article written just before he went to Peru and published in a journal I'd taken out of the library and never brought back. Complexity theory. Huh.

What the hell is *wrong* with *me*?

Some things fit him. His senses fit him. His legs fit him.

I fit him.

I came home that day, article in hand, and threw it down in front of him. He looked at it. "Hey," he said, "I haven't thought about this in years."

"You use it all the time," I said.

"Yeah," he agreed, skimming over it, "I do, but you know, I don't think I even have a *copy* of it."

"You're welcome."

He blinked and stopped, raising his head to meet my eyes. "Yeah, Sandburg, thanks," he said.

And *that* didn't fit him either.

And I looked at him, thinking, damn, that *shirt* fits him, and then I realized--oh, oh, *stupid*, Blair, how did you not *notice*? I mean, I noticed that there was something weird about what he wore, something just a little...

Well, just a little *queer*.

I stared down at him, realizing slowly, uncomfortably, that the only guys I knew who rolled their sleeves like that were guys I'd slept with or who had wanted me to sleep with them. It's not, like, a one-hundred-percent certain way of telling--nothing is, you know? I mean, look how wrong I've been about *Jim*--but all the guys *I* know who dressed like that (like Jim does twice, maybe three times a week) usually preferred other guys.

Hell, I thought, this man has closets in his damn closets--of *course* he's put together wrong!

So I leaned over and gave him a kiss, a nice long kiss, wet and open-mouthed and deliberately *nasty*, the kind of kiss you give someone you're planning on nailing into next week.

(Wrong again, Blair: it took him less than five minutes to start nailing *me* into the next *eon*, not that I minded.)

And afterwards, he nuzzled the back of my neck, and said--with the right vowels this time, the I-have-an-education-and-a-housekeeper vowels--"So how did you guess?"

"Hell," I answered, "you can't even *walk* straight," and he pulled me closer.

"I suppose not," he said. "I tried, but I never could get the straight-boy hips thing down."

"Just quit wiggling your ass at me and you'll be fine," I muttered into the pillow, and fell asleep to the sound of his laughter.

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The End