The Girl She Used to Be (14 page)

I find a twenty-four-hour coffee shop a block and a half from the bar and figure it’s the only way I’ll make it till daylight.
I wander in and survey the room for fear of repeating the bar incident. The place is old and the floor creaks with each step.
There is a long bar along the right wall even though no liquor is served here, and the place is empty but for the exception
of seven over-caffeinated students typing with speed that hints of unreachable deadlines. I walk to the bar and order their
version of a Marble Mocha Macchiato and hand over a third of my remaining life savings.

I walk to a soft leather chair in the corner of the café and drop down and the leather deflates to the shape of my body. I
nearly drift off to the gentle tinkling of plastic keys.

The weight of depression sets in because I realize this current batch of misery is of my own doing. Things really weren’t
that bad in Columbia, in retrospect. It was safe, suburban, upper middle class—in fact, the exact kind of place most young
professionals aspire to call home, and it was handed to me, free of charge. My angst toward the feds had blinded me, allowed
me to displace my boredom with a passive-aggressive infliction of punishment. And this is where my decisions have brought
me: to a hopeless collapse. This is what rock bottom feels like. All of the fear and all of the insecurity and all of the
sadness have got to stop and my only question now is, How is it going to end?

To my knowledge, the only real pleasure I’ve experienced ever came from Jonathan. He is, in the strangest sense, the only
true thing in my adult life, the only person who doesn’t require me to live a lie, my only chance at gaining a brief glimpse
into what my real life might look like. The closest I can come to being myself, for better or for worse, is with him. He knows
who I was and what happened to me. The fact that his father initiated the string of pain and misery in my life is beginning
to matter less and less.

If I’m going to flame out, I want it to be with Jonathan.

I actually miss him.

The beer overpowers the caffeine and I hear Billy singing “White Wedding” and his truths about fairness and safety and sureness
and purity softly echo in my head as I fade.

• • •

I wake to a guy in a business suit turning the pages of his newspaper in a manner that suggests he wants me to get up.

I rub my eyes and the sun is blasting through the window and I wince in pain. I glance around the room and the same students
are pecking away but they have decelerated, spending equal time typing and twisting the kinks out of their necks.

I reach for my half-rate Macchiato knockoff as though I had only dozed for a few minutes and take a loud sip to key in the
other patrons that I am indeed a paying customer; I could easily be mistaken for a homeless person at this point.

As clarity makes its way back, I reaffirm that there is only one way for all of this to end, and that is with Jonathan—and
I am determined to find him.

There is a phone by my chair as though some subliminal force pushed me to this particular seat as part of a grander plan.
I stare at the phone like it’s a weapon of mass destruction.

A weapon of self-destruction.

I take another sip from my coffee drink (for no other reason than to rehydrate), then I pick up the receiver like I’m pulling
the pin from a grenade.

I call information for New York City and run through all the boroughs until I find out there is an unpublished listing for
an Anthony and Sylvia Bovaro in Brooklyn. I return the phone to the cradle and think. There are benefits to having lived in
anonymity for almost my entire life; I tend to think outside of the box because I have never been inside the box.

I grab my coffee—my passport for staying in this café—and snag a pen from the bar and the last remaining computer. I try to
Google Jonathan but it’s as if the guy never existed. As for Anthony Bovaro, the best I can get is an address for a post office
box in Brooklyn.

I grab the phone again and call New York information, requesting the toll-free number for the post office servicing this specific
zip code. I look around the room to make sure no one is paying attention and I relax as they’re all buried in their overdue
term papers and their inferior West Virginia news-papers.

I dial the number and an older man leisurely answers.

“Hey, you guys are on thin ice with my mail,” I say firmly, yet quiet enough that no one hears. “I want to talk to a supervisor.”

“Ma’am, just relax. How can I help?”

“You can start by making sure my mail goes to my post office box and not to a residence. My husband and I want privacy, which
is why we got a box in the first place.”

“Certainly, ma’am. You say your mail was sent to your house instead of your box?”

“Worse, it was sent to my neighbors’ house—and we don’t want them knowing our, uh, business dealings.”

“I understand. What’s your box number?”

“Four ninety-one.” He pauses for too long, so I add, “Name is Bovaro.”

He waits a few more seconds, then says, “Um, are you Mrs. Bovaro?”

“What do you think? Why don’t you just let me talk to your supervisor.”

“No, ma’am, I’ll be happy to help you.”

“For starters, I want to make sure you have our correct home address on our information card, so if there’s ever a problem
again, the mail comes to
our
house and not our neighbors’. You have the Atlantic Street address?” I’m totally winging it now.

“No, we have the address on Hicks Street.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. We haven’t been there for years. How did you not get our new address but manage to send our mail
to our new neighbors? What kind of operation are you running down there?”

“Ma’am, I—”

“Listen, next time you guys have a problem I want a phone call, you hear me? You probably don’t even have our most recent
number. What number are you showing for us?”

“Um, we, um—718-555-4369?”

Bingo
. I scribble the number on my napkin and slam down the phone.

I walk over to the barista, a college-aged coffee slinger who does not appear to be in the mood for anything other than nursing
her hangover, and ask to use their phone.

“Phone’s by the chair over there,” she mumbles, never making eye contact.

“I know,” I say sweetly, “but I forgot my calling card number and my cell died this—”

“Sorry,” she says and rubs her eyes.

“It’s an emergency.”

“Go call nine-one-one.”

I grind my teeth as I reach in my pocket and ball up all of my money and put it on the bar. “This is it. This is my bribe.
I can give you six dollars and change. So what do you say?”

She looks at me, though she might be seeing double. She steadies herself on the edge of the bar and says, “Oh, what do I care,”
and plops an outdated phone on the bar and the bell in the bottom dings loudly and all the patrons look our way. The barista
stares at the money like she wants it to stop moving in circles, takes the five-dollar bill, and leaves the rest.

I pick up the phone and dial.

It rings six times and I am awash in failure; I fear an answering machine is imminent. And though this chapter of my life
is coming to a close, it also happens to be the last chapter in the book.

After ring seven, someone picks up and all I get is an unfriendly, raspy male voice. “Yes.”

“Um, oh,
hello
?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, um, I’m… I’m trying to reach Jonathan?”

He pauses. “Who?”

“Jonathan.”

Another pause and then, “Sorry, no Jonathan here. You got the wrong nu—”

“Wait!” I yell, loud enough to cause the procrastinators to stop typing. I know that if this guy hangs up the phone, I am
done. Forever. I try to think of something to say, to extend the conversation, to
create
a conversation, until I can find a way to link myself to Jonathan without sounding like an undercover agent. Then it hits
me. Jonathan. Who am I kidding?

He resumes. “Look, there’s no—”

“Actually, I’m looking for Johnny. You know, Little John?”

“Oh, Little Johnny? Why didn’t you say so?”

I
knew
it. Those Versace frames aren’t fooling anyone.

“He’s out of town,” Raspy Guy says, “but he can’t really be reached at this number anyway. Call his cell. 212-555-1214. Is
this Carla?”

I finish writing the number on my napkin and consider lying and saying yes because, of all the skills I’ve acquired over the
years, my most practiced is that of assuming an identity.

“Uh, no. Just an old friend.”

“Oh, well, Carla will be happy to hear that.”

I close my eyes and inhale loudly. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to upset Carla.”

“Do I know you? Your voice sounds familiar.” He might know me better by my scream. I consider belting out a few renditions
of “Daddy! Daddy!” for him. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Angelina Benedetto.” See how easy this is?

“Hmmm… sorry, doesn’t ring a bell. Angela, you said?”

“Angelica, uh, Berenetti.” Good gravy.

“Well, if you’re a friend of Little Johnny’s…”

I think for a second and smile. “I am.”

We have one of those weird endings where no one says good-bye, like in the movies.

I look for the barista again but she’s disappeared. Who cares; I’m calling Jonathan’s cell phone no matter what she says.

I dial and on the third ring he answers and I can hear the wind and I know the top is down and I am anxious to be with him,
wherever he is, wherever he is going.

“Guess who?” I say.

“I… don’t know.” It’s a better response than
Carla
. “Um,” he says, fumbling with his phone a bit, “someone calling from the Mountaineer Coffee Mill?”

“Right. Now who do you know who could be so unfortunate to be calling from a coffee house in Morgantown, West Virginia.”

“Well, that certainly narrows it down.” I hear the rhythm of the concrete clicking under his tires. “How are you, Melody?”

I sigh and listen to the road and though it was only a day ago, it seems a lifetime ago (or, at a minimum, a persona ago)
that I had the wind in my hair and I was feeling the irregularities of the highway in the seat of my pants.

“I’m cold, dirty. I’m exhausted and broke. I’m at the end, Jonathan.” I whisper, “I didn’t leave you. I hope you know I didn’t
leave you.”

The lag of his cell phone delays his response, but it seems he might have hesitated anyway. “I know.” I hear a horn blare
in the background. “Hey, up yours, you fu—uh, fantastic driver.”

“Always the gentleman.”

“It’s a challenge.” A few more concrete seams distance us. “You have a… an unexpected, positive effect on my life, Melody.”

I smile. “And for some reason you have the
only
positive effect on mine—which is why I want you to know that I didn’t leave you; I was taken away.”

“It seems no one wants me to have you, not the good guys or the bad guys. It’s just one big—hey, how’d you get my number?”

“Your dad gave it to me.”

He laughs. “Seriously.”

“I might be. 718-555-4369?”

“Holy sh—”

“You mean that was dear old dad? The Disemboweler of Brooklyn?”

“Where’d you get
that
number? That’s the private line for his office in Brooklyn. Not many people have it.”

“I’ll tell you later. So where are you? I’m a damsel in distress here.”

“Distress?”

“West Virginia, Jonathan, West Virginia. People think I’m Billy Idol.”

“I’m still in Baltimore.”

I take a deep breath. “Will you come and find me?”

There is a long delay before he answers and I fear we’re about to lose our connection. “Are you sure, Melody?”

The barista returns to the bar and glares at me. “I’m sure.”

“I’m getting on I-70 right now. What’s the address?”

“254 Walnut Street, outside the university.”

“254 Walnut. Got it.” I can hear his car accelerate and the wind increase into the phone. “Don’t move.”

We end our call and I push the phone back toward the interior of the bar. The barista walks over and returns it to its hiding
place, then stares at me like she’s possessed. “Anything else?” she asks.

“I have about four hours to kill. What can I get for a dollar and forty-six cents?”

She grabs a can of Pepsi and slides it over to me and clears the bar of all of my money.

I use some arithmetic to plan out my stay: twelve ounces, that’s three ounces per hour, and at a half ounce per sip, that’s
one sip every ten minutes or a quarter-ounce sip every five minutes. The soda may evaporate faster. I open the can and walk
to the free computer.

I consider killing time by visiting one of a dozen of my favorite math Web sites, but I’m just too shot, even for math.

I decide to Google Sean Douglas but I get over 33,000 hits and I’m not about to start narrowing the results. Then I try to
Google some of my past identities—May Adams, Karen Smith, Jane Watkins—and sure enough, my aliases are even more mundane than
Sean’s moniker. Hundreds of thousands of hits and I am not tied to a single one, as though they made me vanish before I was
ever created.

Which is exactly what I’m about to do right now.