When we got there, again, someone was waiting for the elevator as we got off. Just like the man downstairs, she spoke to me and to the box. I noticed that neither of them had said a name, hadn’t even pretended to try to remember one, just “Hello.” So, maybe everybody in this building had some kind of mysterious secret…?

I followed the box to apartment to apartment C0, silently noting the irony that apartment “see zero” would be occupied by someone who can’t be seen. The two keys that had been floating above the box ever since the first key had been used now went to work, each unlocking its proper lock, after which the door swung open. Both keys pulled out of the door and dropped onto a table just inside, as the box and I entered the apartment. The box disappeared down a hallway while the door swung closed and locked itself behind me. I even saw the chain lock apply itself with no visible help, by which point my… “hostess?”… had, uh, disappeared behind closed doors.

Momentarily the closed door (not the front door, the one the box had ducked behind) opened, and jeans similar to the ones modeled in the store emerged, topped by a rather tightly-filled knit sweater, with matching knit gloves at the ends of its sleeves. Again, no sign of the box which had seemed so integral a few moments earlier. But that thought fled my mind as I took in the sight of these well-filled clothes walking towards me.

The clothes stepped towards a kitchen, where a cabinet opened and a glass floated out. The outfit grabbed the glass from the air, then cocked it towards me, which I took to be an offer of something to drink.

“Um, sure. What do you have?” I replied, wondering what empty clothes needed with something to drink. Or an apartment, for that matter.

The clothes turned towards the refrigerator but it opened without any apparent move by the outfit to open it. A couple of things slid around on the top shelf, and I saw a few different fruit juices, along with lemonade, ice water, ginger ale, and even beer. I decided on cranberry juice, watching as the jar floated out, filled the glass still being held by my oufit-hostess (or hostess-outfit), and returned to the fridge. Just before the fridge door closed itself, I noticed all kinds of food in there, and again I wondered why empty clothes needed a refrigerator… or food.

“Thank you,” I said, as the outfit handed me the glass of juice, and led the way to the living room couch. It gestured for me to sit first, so I did, expecting it to sit next to me. I sipped my juice, noticing that the clothes hadn’t moved. When I leaned towards the table to put my glass down, a coaster from a stack on the other end of the table floated towards me. I waited for it to stop, then put my glass down. The outfit was apparently waiting for me to lose the glass, because once I did, it sat right in my lap. Actually, it sat sideways in my lap; as soon as it did, its shoes unstrapped themselves and floated down to the floor, as the outfit wrapped its sleeves around my neck. I put my left arm around its back, while my right arm busied itself with getting more familiar with this sweater. That led to the gloves leaving their places at the end of the sweater’s sleeves to caress and massage my shoulders, while the sweater actually pressed the ends of its empty armholes against my face, as if to emphasize that there was no body in it.

And that’s where the story ends. Like I said at the beginning, I don’t know if this really happened or not. If it was a dream, I can’t say for sure that I was asleep at the time, and if it really happened, I can’t say for sure that it happened to me.

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“You like that?” I asked aloud, without meaning to. “Well, I like it too. Too bad there isn’t just a little bit more of you. I mean, more to you.”

The jeans cocked one leg behind them, as if to back away, but made no immediate move to get away from my rubbing fingers. But finally it did, backing away a few steps until, again, it was just beyond arms-length. Then, the jeans and tube top just collapsed, like their supports had been removed. But neither of them hit the floor; instead, the now limp tube top came to rest on top of the box I had been standing on just a little earlier. Then the shoes’ ankle straps again undid themselves and the pantyhose lifted their legs into the air, letting the jeans slide free, then fold themselves in midair and place themselves atop the box. Meanwhile the pantyhose continued to hover there in the air momentarily, almost in a sitting position, while the box floated next to it holding the jeans and tube top. Then, finally, the hosiery stepped out of the air and back into the shoes, which again strapped themselves to the pantyhosed ankles.

I should point out that in all this time, not much else was going on in the store, but the apparent lone employee on hand, sitting behind the register the whole time, paid little or no attention to what I thought were strange goings-on. Neither did she pay much attention when a box-with-legs approached the cash register, piled with clothing to buy. She watched placidly as each item floated up off the box and onto the counter, then she rang it up and put it into a bag. Once everything was rung up, lo and behold! a credit card floated up from under the box to pay for the purchases. I tried to get a peek at the name on the card, but the cardholder (there’s a quick way out of what to call her/it) cleverly positioned the card so that I could see nothing but its underside even as the card passed practically in front of my face. I honestly can’t tell you why I didn’t just reach out and grab it…

Once the cashier had processed the card, she put the charge slip, a pen, and the charge card on the counter. Now, the register area was on a small platform about a foot above the store’s floor level, meaning the pen and charge slip rested about eighteen inches above the top of the floating box. But, hey, if you don’t have a solid form, what is eighteen inches, right? The pen floated upright and signed the charge slip, but it was one of those unreadable scribbled signatures I call wannabe-autographs. It must have matched the card, though, because the cashier checked it and then handed over the card, a copy of the charge slip, and the bag with my new “friend’s” purchases. The bag floated up off the counter, then down towards the box, then disappeared underneath it, setting my mind abuzz again. I could see earlier that the box appeared to be just a prop. Yet, again, the pantyhose disappeared inside it at a level improbable (apparently not impossible) to the eye, and now charge cards were first appearing from its underside and then disappearing inside it along with shopping bags full of clothes.

Again I was left shaking my head and deciding not to try to figure out what was going on, since I had plenty of clues that were absolutely no help in figuring anything out…

The door swung open in front of the box-with-legs, the same way it had when we entered, and stayed open until I had cleared it, although the box was by this point a few steps ahead of me. I continued to follow it, not having to worry about being discreet like I had tried to do earlier. We walked around the next corner, where the box approached the first door, which again swung open in front of it and stayed open until I had entered, even though the box was still a few steps ahead of me. As it approached a locked door inside, three keys floated out from its underside; two floated just above the box, while the third unlocked the door and let us in, and again the door stayed open until I had come through a few steps behind the box. The key pulled itself from the lock and returned to where it had come from, under/inside the box, as it waited by a bank of elevators.

When one arrived, a sharply-dressed man exited. When he came out, he was actually looking straight down at the box as he said hello to it, and another to me, then went on his way, leaving me to wonder if the residents of this building were… missing something, or was it me that was missing something. Remembering both the bus driver, the bus passengers, and the cashier back at the store, I figured it must have been me…

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“OK,” I said, in a wavering voice. “I shouldn’t have leaned on you, and I don’t know why I thought I had to see how strong you are, but could you please put me back down now?!” The box complied, slowly lowering me back to the level it was at when I stepped aboard. By this time there was something new floating above the jeans — a tube top. A very nicely filled tube top, at that, ending about six inches above the jeans.

I already knew there was no body inside these clothes, but my hands wouldn’t stay away. This time I found myself rubbing the bottom of the tube top, which caused the whole outfit to begin swaying back and forth, obviously enjoying the feeling.

“Sorry for stepping on your box just then,” I started, before it hit me — the box was no longer part of the picture, at least not at the moment. Apparently it had dropped to the floor directly below where I had stepped off it. I stared at the box, wondering if it had actually been part of this… entity from the get-go or was it just a prop, like the clothes. I picked it up and turned it over, not knowing what to expect its underside to look like.

It looked like the underside of a cardboard box. No circuits, no visual hints of a portal of any kind. Nothing out of the ordinary. I even reached towards it, expecting my hand to somehow disappear inside it. Instead, my fingertips thudded solidly against it like it was no more than the slit-off underside of a cardboard box it appeared to be.

I tried to shake the conflicting thoughts from my head and finish what I had started to say.

“Better,” I said, having resumed dragging my fingertips back and forth along the fabric of the tube top, “but I still wouldn’t mind a bit more. And maybe whatever’s gonna happen next can happen somewhere private?”

Apparently it wasn’t ready for me to stop what I was doing at that particular moment. And, to tell the truth, neither was I. I mean, what are you supposed to do when a pair of jeans with a tube top floating above, clothes you know have no one in them, walks up right next to you and just stands there? As I continued rubbing the tube top’s bottom hem, I leaned a bit closer and did something I know I wouldn’t have been able to do if there had been an actual invisible woman wearing these clothes: I looked down inside them.

Not like staring down a blouse as in looking at cleavage. That would have been some trick, looking into an invisible woman’s cleavage… No, I leaned over enough so that if there had been someone inside the clothes, we would have bumped heads. Then, I looked down. I could see the bottom of the bulge where the unseen breasts were pushing the tube top outward, but from the inside. I could see the inside of the jeans’ waistband, the seam where the two leg openings separate (something you’d NEVER see on a visible woman, even if she were wearing transparent clothing), the empty shoes below the jeans’ equally empty leg openings. Very odd. But a good kind of odd…

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