Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) (15 page)

There had been a fair number of storms during the two years Ed was at the wilderness program. I had spent a quarter of it with screaming migraines tearing out my eyes, and the other three-quarters resuming my experiments with creating legitimate identification.

Things had changed. Social Security had now become our de facto identification number. All private services and utilities could be denied if you didn’t surrender it upon request. I was furious it had happened and had spent years fighting it. I always declined to give mine or would give obviously false numbers, like a string of nine fives in a row. I’d explain the Unites States was not a police state and the law was clear that our Social Security number was strictly between us and Social Security. I warned that if we continued to submit to the request, it would be tattooed on our wrists. I’d encourage others to fight with me, to refuse or sabotage, or even just whine a bit, but they all had the same line: “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.”

I hated them.

They would say, “You’re like my grandfather, getting mad when the state started requiring pictures on driver’s licenses. He said it wouldn’t amount to nothing but an incursion on our rights. But he was wrong; it prevents anyone else from using it. The pictures keep us safe.”

And I’d clinch my teeth so not to speak.

“Same with the Social Security number. It will make it near impossible for people to defraud the banks, hospitals, and insurance companies. And that’s good, because we all pay the price when they’re taken advantage of.”

I wanted to rip their stupid patronizing heads off.

“But you’re young,” they’d say. “One day you’ll understand the world isn’t safe. People take advantage. You’re just too angel-faced sweet to know any better.”

It was all I could do not to tear apart their lives just to prove the angels weren’t on their side.

But it was my own fault. I’d spent years perfecting the image of innocence. I only got speeding tickets when I couldn’t be bothered to cry, and I could make a Social Security agent weep genuine tears that I had been raised by antiestablishment hippies in a bus.

It explained the name: Willow.

But I hadn’t made this one up. I had a genuine birth certificate. She’d been buried with her parents in a cemetery with five headstones. The place sat in a farmer’s field and was surrounded by a low iron fence that had fallen into pieces decades before. The oldest graves were from the turn of the century and sat square center of the plot, but then this family of three with a different last name had knocked down one side of the railings to be fitted in. They shared a single, wide marker with the dates of death just one day apart and the year was seventy-four. The child, like me, would have been four.

Her death, chiseled between mother and father, kept bringing me back. I was glad her parents were dead. I had two deceased brothers and knew most intimately what it did to a family to lose a child. But here it seemed they had been wiped out together and I hoped the mother that had lived an extra day never knew.

Every now and again, I would show the place to someone, and we would wonder what had happened to them. I was certain it had been a road accident and finally went to the newspaper to search the dates, but the family wasn’t even in the death notices. I asked the property owner, but they’d only bought the farm in the last decade and didn’t know. The oldest neighbors said the former owner had let the fields lay fallow, but I wouldn’t find her as she’d passed many years before. They thought the graves had something to do with a family reunion.

Blessed hell, that turned it dark.

I was now fully committed to learning the story and was prepared for anything from shotguns to food poisoning. I suspected it had happened in a state park, because that’s where family reunions take place, so I started searching the libraries on the way to each wide open pavilion with a bar-b-que, scanning the old newspaper microfilms for their names.

As first suspected, it was a car accident. The father’s death certificate was in the county courthouse, but the mother and child’s were not. I understood what I was seeing. They had been transported to a larger city with a better hospital and I knew where to go. They were an hour away, but the couple didn’t share the same last name as the tombstone suggested. Each came from a different city outside the state.

Something about them seemed too tragic to ignore, but my interest in them was purely macabre. At least until I saw the child’s death certificate. It didn’t list her place of birth. It was unknown.

It meant her birth certificate was clean.

And I had to have it. She had to live again. I wouldn’t do anything bad with her, no check kiting or credit card fraud, or anything to sully her name. I’d likely just set her aside, bury her again in my box of stolen names and illicit valuables. I had loved her for ages and now I’d take care of her.

But first I had to find her.

I had a good idea of where to go for that too.

Her birth notice was in her mother’s home paper and her birth certificate was in county records. I arrived at the court house looking like a starry-eyed Deadhead, smelling of patchouli, bells jangling on my ankles, smiling peace and wonder at the Southern conservative clerks. Against my chest was a clearly visible gold cross.

I had to explain why I had no identification to claim my birth certificate, but the face of an angel never lies and it was really very simple. I’d lived my whole life in a psychedelic bus following the Grateful Dead from one city to the next. My parents were New Age mystics sitting in lotus and meditating on Shiva; but at a Kentucky concert, a Baptist preacher came to denounce our wicked ways and I went down on my knees to accept the Lord.

“Bless your heart,” the woman behind the counter whispered and then, “Jesus be praised, you found your way.”

The birth certificate was mine and she was confiding, “I can always tell a good soul.”

~~~~~~

Willow was in a midnight garden under the hickories. I’d buried her in the backyard in the dark hours of morning, and I dug her up six months later at noon. It looked like dusk though. Overhead two systems were colliding and the pain in my head predicted tornadoes. The wind was on the verge of drawing blood, pelting me with nuts and broken twigs, kicking up scattered leaves and grass, and whipping my hair across my face until it stung. My eyes were red and full of tears, and I was nearly blind, but I wasn’t crying.

I was done with crying. I was battling the wind now and everything it threw at me. It was fierce and cutting, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t anything worse than what was screeching through my skull, and it was definitely preferable to Ed’s indifference.

I’d been begging him for more than a year to listen to me, to understand we would soon be over if he didn’t pay attention to me. I couldn’t be ignored. I wouldn’t stay home alone any longer. But he said our relationship was too strong for me to do anything. We were too deeply connected for it to end.

“And right now,” he said, “the juvenile delinquents at the wilderness program need stability. As their counselor, I have to be there for them.”

And I had to get away. The rains were coming and with them would come the release and the ecstasy, and I’d use the high not to think about what I was doing. I wasn’t exactly running away, I was just leaving without mentioning it. And I wasn’t too certain when I’d be back either. I had a shoulder bag of books and a carry-on, but that meant very little about the length of time I intended to roam. I traveled light. I’d taken only a fur coat, cash, and lipstick to Dallas, so in relative terms, I was packed for a lunar expedition.

I was back at the Nashville airport buying a ticket at the counter, unsettling the airline agent with my insistence, “I really don’t care what city. I just want the next flight into Mexico,” which was probably not the smartest thing to walk into an airport and say.

She looked suspicious.

I answered before she could ask, “No, I have not just robbed a bank.” Though I did have someone else’s name on my credit cards, and Willow’s driver’s license in my wallet.

She offered, “Cancun?”

And I threw my hands up, “Sure.”

“Returning when?”

“I don’t need a return.”

“No return?” She had a good look at me and decided I was not escaping the law but something else. She became concerned, “Are you sure? A return ticket is invaluable.”

I was less convinced, “I don’t think I’ll use it.”

Fingers frozen over the keyboard, she was chewing her lips. Then without further warning, she reached across the counter for my hand, asking, “Are you alright?”

That was the last question I needed to be asked. I stepped back before she made me cry. I would have agreed to anything. “A return is great.”

She withdrew. “It will make going through immigration easier.”

“Lovely. I’ll take it.”

“When?”

“Oh ... Um … Well … Hmm …”

“Let’s just make the return for a week and you can change it if you need. Okay?”

“Okay.”

It was my second day in Cancun and I was sitting alone at an outdoor café in the city’s tourist district, but I was never alone for long. I had no problem traveling by myself because people always reached out to draw me in. This time it was a table of three Mexican men. They were in their late twenties or early thirties, immaculately dressed, and laden with gold.

We chatted across the café until one extended the invitation, “Come join us.” Then when I took a seat, he introduced the table, “I am Miguel. This is Hector and Ramiro.”

“And I’m Willow.”

Ten minutes later, I was explaining, “I hate to dash anyone’s hopes, but I prefer women.”

They reacted by pulling back in astonishment. Hector asked, “Lesbian?”

And I smiled, “Yes.” I could have told them I was married, but I’d found marriage did little to dissuade men’s interest. Nothing quite shifted the dynamics like saying women were preferable. I always ceased to be a potential conquest and became instead a strange member of the team.
We’re all after pussy here
.

While they spoke amongst themselves in Spanish, I stared at the traffic passing on Boulevard Kukulcan. There was a steady stream of taxis, buses, and rentals on the road, and the sidewalks were busy with young American tourists.

I had no idea what the three men were saying, except they were rearranging their plans with regard to me. After much amusement, Ramiro left the table smiling, and then his friends and I continued to converse over drinks.

We were talking about the Mayan ruins that were a couple of hours outside Cancun when Ramiro returned. On each arm he had nearly identical blonds that stood a foot taller than him. I’d never seen anything like them. Not in the flesh. Everything about them was exaggerated. Each strand of hair was the same unnatural color, teased to a height that made them four inches taller, and their lips were abnormally large, freakishly plump and painted in high gloss pink to match their miniskirts and six-inch heels. As they moved closer, I felt the need to push back to give their breasts room at the table. I studied their faces and thought they had to be Americans, but I couldn’t tell if they were pretty because they seemed like another species.

And they had a shared expression that was as practiced vacant as mine was innocent.

“Bunny and Candy,” Ramiro gave them names.

He pulled up chairs and settled them on either side of himself, which put the rabbit next me. He leaned around the great swell bursting from the stressed buttons of Bunny’s chest, motioning me forward to whisper, “I brought this one for you.”

“Did you say bought or brought?”

“¿Cómo?”

“Never mind.” I pulled back to look at her and she laid her vacuous eyes on me to smile.

“Thank you, Ramiro, how very thoughtful.”

Then two quick hops and she had scooted her chair closer to mine, dragging Ramiro and the clone with her.

And I swallowed a disconcerted laugh.

The restaurant was filling as the sun began to set and I was searching its perimeter for a gracious excuse to leave. I’d played the homosexual card countless times before, but no one had ever thrown down two plastic chips to see my hand.

Sitting at the same table with them, watching their lips wrap around fat straws to suck at something pink, I no longer felt decidedly feminine. We were now a gathering of three men, two female caricatures, and an aberration.

I was a freakish anomaly until Katia arrived to balance it out. I was looking at the exit with longing as she entered, and she was taking in the whole scene at our table with disapproval. Her black hair was pulled into a ponytail which left her clean face exposed so that her expression was clear. Condemnation had narrowed her eyes, but there was no sign of surprise. She’d seen it before.

Miguel had ordered six shots and Katia stopped the waiter to add one more. She pulled a chair from an adjoining table and then kicked at Hector’s feet until he made room for her to sit on my right. 

She asked, “Ramiro, are you scaring the turista?”

“No, she likes. ¿Sí? You like?”

Smiling at no one in particular, I raised my rum and coke to murmur through the ice, “Mmm hmm mmm.”

“Turista, look at me.”

“Hmm?”

“You like Bunny?”

“Mmm hmm mmm.” Then dropping the glass from my lips, “I don’t think this is Bacardi.”

I didn’t mean for her to explode, but she sent Spanish like shrapnel across the restaurant to the bar, screaming something-something-something that sounded like she was going to eviscerate the bartender, and then something-something-Bacardi. The men at the table were sinking into their seats, covering their laughing embarrassment with gold-covered fingers, and the bartender was smiling guiltily while making two more rum and cokes from a newly opened bottle of Bacardi.

She was a mad general in the green zone, casually strolling in to call down artillery. The whole place was shell-shocked. Taking my half-finished drink, she downed it, exchanged it with the new drinks brought by the waiter, and while helping to disperse the tequila shots, she said to Bunny, “This is all you get.”

And Bunny giggled, then whispered in Ramiro’s ear.

I couldn’t shoot tequila, or any other straight spirit. If I even dared to try, I would gag, vomit, and die of mortification. But I’d been handling this social quandary for some time, so when everyone else threw back, I tossed mine straight over my shoulder to splash on the sidewalk.

I’d been caught before. I’d endured outrage for slinging Jack Daniels into a crowd, shock for flinging Absolut across the carpet, and there’d been chaos with the flaming 151, but nothing quite compared to Katia. She had led this shot, so she was putting her empty glass down before the rest of us were finished. She caught my hand while it was still at my shoulder and held it there as evidence of wrongdoing, complete confusion scowling across her face. Then contrary to her expression, she grabbed the back of my head to force the absolute strangest kiss on me. Full, open mouth, passionate, I-want-to-fuck-you kiss.

We’d only just met. She hadn’t even heard my name. I wanted to treat her like a man and be outraged, but the act was exquisite. Shocking, presumptive, and quite possibly wrong without consent, but it was definitely unique, and I can’t help but respond to something pleasantly different. 

I moaned an amazed, “Oh God,” in her mouth, and then felt her lips smile. Without releasing the hold she had on my hair, she slid to my ear to whisper, “These guys are very rich,” and Bunny started yanking at the arm of my chair, but Katia was still sharing, breathing into my neck, “We could have a great time at their villa.” Now Bunny was pulling at my arm, trying to bring my attention around, and the men were laughing, speaking in Spanish while Katia looked around to shout, “Bunny, no,” and then her breath was back against my neck, making me shiver, promising, “You will see things you have never seen.”

I most desperately wanted to see things I had never seen, but I thought she should know, so I whispered back, “I’m not actually a lesbian.”

“No importa, turista. If you like, I will make you one.”

~~~~~~

So far it was nothing I hadn’t seen before or couldn’t have imagined. We were at a stucco house wedged crooked and tight between more stucco houses off Boulevard Kukulcan. Across the street, the ocean filled a vast lagoon with still water, and boats were tied to a dock. The party had grown to include three giggling senior graduates from someplace wholesome like Nebraska. They were swimming drunk in their underwear, periodically looking around the backyard pool to ask, “Where are Bobby and Jake?”

Miguel repeatedly assured them, “They will be here soon,” but after an hour, he no longer bothered to look at Hector with mischievous shame, and both had stopped silently shrugging, “Bobby and Jake?”

They didn’t look particularly interested in the girls. It seemed more a matter of habit, like a night-cap, except the necessary conclusion to each evening was a few American teenagers.

Their attention was on the glass top table and the tray of cocaine. And my focus was with them. I had wanted to try it ever since reading
Diary of a Drug Fiend
, but the psychonauts Ed and I mixed with were users of marijuana and psychedelics. I’d done a fair amount of both, eating through several sheets of acid, choking down pounds of mushrooms, and swallowing more ecstasy than was decent, but no one we knew had a connection to cocaine.

I understood what it should do—Aleister Crowley’s descriptions sounded quite merry—but I’d lift my head from Miguel’s powder and feel nothing. I snorted line after line and only managed to numb my throat. My head remained utterly straight.

It was a problem I had with most new drugs. My brain had to learn how to get high. It had taken two years and several pounds of pot before I finally got stoned. In the meantime, I’d bong hit everyone to the floor and then drive them all home. And I could still tip a bottle of codeine with no effect. Hydrocodone was an aspirin and Xanax was a Tic-Tac.

But telling people this always seemed to cause offense, as though I were insulting the quality of their drugs. Not wanting to appear rude or ungrateful to my hosts, I didn’t mention it. I just did every line Miguel put before me. And then everyone else would do a line. If I had recognized it was a contest to see who would quit first, I might have warned them, but it wasn’t obvious until it was down to just two of us.

And we’d left the others in a terrible state. Hector was on the edge of his chair, rocking off the tips of his toes. He was making a high keening noise and I worried he was about to start screaming. I thought he might be freaking out over Katia. She’d been non-stop jabbering at him in manic Spanish, talking too fast to do any of the last four lines. And Candy was a panting wreck I couldn’t look at. She’d had a quick burst of frantic self-destruction, ripping apart her hair and smearing lipstick across her face, and now her eyes were streaming mascara down her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying. Bunny had dashed to the bathroom half an hour earlier, and I had no idea what condition she was in, but I was watching Ramiro run fully clothed into the pool while Miguel cut out more lines.

Miguel had no chance in this competition either. He was breathing heavy with the jitters and I was still hoping to feel something.

I drew up the offered line and Miguel finally gave up.

He said through clinched teeth, “You are fucking steady.”

Hector’s screech had settled into a quivering moan. He was still rocking but he paused to look at me and cross himself, incanting, “Ave María Purísima.”

Ramiro was shivering in the pool, chattering out, “You win, guapa.”

I asked, “Do I get to pick the prize?”

Hector dropped his head between his knees and turned hysterical, but I couldn’t tell if it was laughter or a return high-pitched madness.

Miguel stopped rolling his jaw to ask, “What is the prize you want?”

“Show me something I’ve never seen before. Shock me. Surprise me. Blow my wee little mind. I don’t care what you do, but let’s not be boring.”

~~~~~~

It probably would have been wiser to insult the cocaine. I’d thrown down the don’t-bore-me gauntlet in a dangerous crowd. But after the cocaine episode, they were also a little afraid of me. It had taken them the rest of the night to get themselves straight, and while they did, the little Nebraskans were put into a cab.

I’d gone with Katia in Miguel’s Mercedes to retrieve my suitcase and a shoulder bag of books from one of the big hotels on the beach. I didn’t checkout, but I didn’t think I was coming back either.

For a year, I had been asking myself, “What am I doing?” Questioning with each new identification made, “Do I want to do this?” But I’d rent a house and apply for credit regardless, wondering, “Does this make me happy?” Then for months, I’d collect cards, only stopping when the banks began to decline. In a day, I’d blow their limits, blasting through tens of thousands, doubting, “Is this even fun?”

I didn’t know. I was pretty certain it used to be, back when I was sixteen and seventeen, in the time before Ed, before I had been exposed to the principles of psychology and mental awareness. Ed didn’t believe the excuse that I was bored was the legitimate reason for my actions, but then he didn’t believe the goal of life was to be entertained, and I did.

The objective was to be happy and amused, and whether that was achieved by self-awareness or breaking the law made no difference to me. Having done a bit of both, I was conscious that neither was thrilling me at the moment. And I was avoiding the one because I didn’t want to observe my thoughts, or think about what I was doing in the rental houses, or to Ed, our marriage, or my mind.

I didn’t want to dwell on what I was doing in Mexico either, but I knew I would see it through. Once I tipped over the edge of any action, the instant I gave a little and said, “Yes, sure, why not, let’s do this,” momentum carried it along.

Waking to a house full of strangers, I was already avoiding the question, “What am I doing with these people?” Trying not to look at Hector on the couch cleaning a gun. Ignoring the sounds of Bunny and Candy upstairs with Ramiro. None too crazy about Katia or screwdrivers for breakfast. And then there was Miguel, sitting next to Hector, facing Katia and I on the opposite couch, wanting to know, “What you said last night, is this something you still desire?”