I’d gotten a spare key from my parents and let myself inside, relieved the locks hadn’t been changed. I’d left the house in the care of my old roommate, Tim. He wasn’t the type to make radical changes, but if any Otherworldly denizens had come calling after I left, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Tim had taken some extreme security precautions.

When I stepped into my kitchen, however, I came to a total standstill and wished I’d brought a weapon. There was a stranger sitting at my table.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

He was wearing a stiff gray suit and had short, neatly trimmed black hair. His face was turned away from me as he rummaged through a briefcase on the table, but he jumped in alarm at the sound of my voice. He spun toward me, face showing the same panic I felt. After a few moments of study, however, his eyes widened, and his body relaxed.

“Eug?”

I stared, wondering how this guy knew my name, and then ... I saw it. I gasped in disbelief.

“Tim? Is that you?”

He flashed me a grin and settled back in the chair. “Of course it’s me. Who else would be here?”

I was dumbfounded and couldn’t answer right away. “But you ... you’re wearing a tie.”

He glanced down and scowled at the paisley silk monstrosity around his neck. “Yeah, it’s a pain, but my job has a dress code.”

“Your ... your job?” I felt like I’d wandered into some alternate reality and had to seek out a chair of my own at the table, lest I faint out of sheer mental exhaustion.

“Yup,” he said with mock enthusiasm. “I’m a productive member of society.”

“You cut your hair,” I said, reduced to simply pointing out the obvious.

“Another requirement of the job.” He absentmindedly smoothed some of his hair back and then brightened. “But they let me wear my headdress.”

“Your headdress?”

He jumped up again and disappeared down the hall that led to the bedrooms. While he was gone, I glanced around, looking for any other signs that I had entered a parallel universe. Nope. Everything else was the same. Tim returned shortly, carrying a full, feathered Lakota headdress that reached nearly to the floor. He put it on and grinned at me triumphantly.

“See?”

I looked him over from head to toe, taking in the formal suit juxtaposed with feathers. “Where exactly do you work?”

“I sell car insurance,” he explained.

“And they let you wear all that to work?”