Any formal requests to have Fletcher, Daniel J., taken to County Mental Health have been superseded by three outstanding felony warrants for Edwards, Steven B.
Booking, strip search, surrender my boot laces, two and a half hours in a holding cell, low-profile reflexes up and alive. Guys mumbling to themselves or talking in groups, amplifying tales of street bravado, and I’m staying invisible, far away from anyone’s radar.
Guard calls my name, “Edwards, Steven. Your lawyer’s here.”
Steven Edwards must be a serious wack job. They’ve got me a four-piece—wrists and ankles cuffed and locked to a D-ring at my waist. I penguin-waddle with four pounds of nickel-plated chains under escort to another cell with a bolted-down steel table and two benches. The deputy escort—four times my size, all of it chest and shoulders—leaves me alone in the cell, standing watch through a shatterproof window.
My lawyer, Steve-only-slower’s lawyer, shows up, a court-appointed drone who knows my file better than he knows my face, but doesn’t know he’s never seen either until now.
I’m taking a calculated risk that Jimmy and his drones are rat-mazing through a mental health ward for a time before word of my transfer to jail catches up, and that I’m out before someone on their payroll takes a fall for a traffic warrant and pays someone to be in the same cell as me. House of cards. House of glass cards. House of razor blades in a slight breeze, and I’m standing under it all.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Edwards,” he says and takes a seat, opens his briefcase. For the second time today, I’m in a secured room against my will with another state employee reading through my file that isn’t my file.
I’m counting on the inefficiency, lags, paperwork that I abuse to hopscotch from one name to another to work in my favor just once more. Keep Daniel Fletcher’s mental health alert a few steps behind Steven Edwards’s warrants, get Steven Edward out before either Steven Edwards or Daniel Fletcher catches up.
“I’m going to be straight with you, Mr. Edwards,” he says. “You’re out of options. I have only one suggestion for you.”
“Edward,” I cut him off. “No s.”
I hold my hands up to chest level, as high as the cuffs will allow and fan my left fingers.
“You’ve mistaken me for somebody else.”
The lawyer didn’t understand, saw Steven Edwards’s name, stats and photo in his file. He knew Steven personally, knew with a long squint at my face and a second, then third, look at my fingers that I wasn’t Steven Edwards.
“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. He could be talking about my uncanny similarity to Steve-only-slower or my fingers, but I don’t ask. I don’t ask what Edwards, Steven B., is wanted for, don’t care.
He checks the Steven Edwards file for Distinguishing Marks, asks for my Steven Edward address and driver’s license number. I give him my San Francisco address, tell him I just moved here and wait for him to run the check, knowing it’s clean and that it will come back with my picture.
The lawyer pulls the few strings that court-appointed lawyers will pull, gets me back to a phone while he talks to the D.A., who runs a background check. Stay here as long as I can because it means I’m alone, don’t have to watch my back. No coins, I exhume Raymond O’Donnell’s credit card from my memory. Picture the raised white numbers, say them out loud and remember the rhythm of the sequence. Call home, see if anyone picks up.
Hey, sweetie. I’m okay. They’re letting me come home…
If they had her, they’d make her answer. She doesn’t, so they don’t. Call the bar, ask for Keara.
She quit today, said she was moving down to her sister’s…
411, check for her name and her sister’s. Greater San Diego, Leucadia, Del Mar, Oceanside, Mission Beach. Brick wall, brick wall, brick wall.
I’m sorry, sir, but there’s nobody by that name in the directory listing.
Can you check under ‘Wheeler?’
And the first name?
Brick wall, brick wall, brick wall.
Dressed me, moved to her sister’s.
Close my eyes, see our apartment in my head, measure it out, think, think, think. Twelve-foot by fourteen-foot living room, painted the color of bleached bone with a ceramic tile fireplace on the north wall. The junkyard couch is mine, but the Mexican blanket draped over the arm is Keara’s. I can’t see that blanket in my head. Open my eyes. Payphone, steel table and shatterproof window. Close them, walk through the apartment but I can’t see anything. In my head, our place is as empty as the day we moved in.
Sometimes I know things before I know them. Stitch my recollections together. Re-member.
She hated her face. So much like her sister’s, but not. Their eyes are identical, their smiles distinguish them more than any other feature. Andrea’s smile is even, with the gap between her front teeth. Keara smiles more with the left side of her lips than her right, like the woman at the hospital.
You slam the car door, then remember your keys. The plane lifts off, you remember the coffeepot is still on. That wordless, bone-deep, quantum-second understanding where your whole body is shocked with cold static.
She hadn’t been upset when I told her I’d fabricated my life story and my name and everything else. She’d been happy. Told me she’d lost her lease, soon after that. Brought a girlfriend home and had a party, just the three of us, and they fucked my eyes loose. Keara’s name isn’t on the lease or any of the utilities.
I’m cold. It’s August, daylight fading but swamp-gas hot, and I’m shivering.
Job-hopping, leaving employers without notice to work somewhere else, she always had a reason. Said her driving record stank, so Sarah registered her car. Midnight phone calls and hang-ups.
Cold, cold, cold.
Someone in a pickup had been blaring a horn outside her old apartment complex. The guy broke a window and the goddamned manager thinks it’s my fault.
Told me she rescued Rasputin as a kitten from a shelter. Healthy outdoor cat, until someone in a pickup ran him down.
Close my eyes and see the photos of Andrea and Keara. Relax, don’t force the memory, let it bubble to the surface on its own. They’re there, side by side in my head. Different faces, but not. I remember the woman at the hospital, and how different she’s going to look when the doctors are finished. Keara’s teeth looked so bright white and sculpted and perfect because they were. Cast porcelain from a custom mold. Threaded titanium mounts planted into her jaw—they won’t change size with the weather, so they won’t hurt—with the teeth screwed in.
I want to say What happened? but I know. Jesus God, baby.
She doesn’t want to be found, wants to hide. Absolutely must hide, and nobody will ever find her because I taught her everything I know. She asked me to. Wanted to learn the ropes. Sometimes I can be so smart, and sometimes I can be so stupid. Can’t feel my fingers. Stretch them out, make a fist.
I did some things when I was younger. Even after I stopped, I still went to jail. That lawyer, he took a set of facts and moved them around, changed their order for a whole different truth. That’s what he does, what he’s good at.
I’ve had a lifetime of practice doing the same thing. Don’t know if I’ve got it right, but I want to because it means she’s okay. It means she’s gone and they can’t find her. It means whoever she’s hiding from can’t find her, and the people she doesn’t know she’s hiding from can’t find her, either. Neither can I. As long as I don’t know, I can’t tell anyone. It means she’s okay. Can’t describe what I’m feeling. Not that simple.
I’ve cultivated some bad habits, but trust isn’t one of them. I’d sooner share a needle with someone than trust them. Then there’s Keara. The one time I give in, I pick the most kinked, dull, rusty and blood-mottled needle of the lot.
Over the next eighty minutes, I show my fingers and non-tattooed forearm to three deputies, the warden who confirms the lawyer’s call to the D.A., and, finally, the judge. Gavel, escort, holding cell, lun
ch—cheese sandwich and warm fruit punch, hot and turgid in my stomach—wait, wait, wait, another escort, sign for my belongings, changing under watch, three gates and I’m out into the late afternoon light of downtown. The tail end of summer as autumn approaches, thin clouds streaking the orange sky like flaming brushstrokes and the warmth feels like God’s kiss on my skin and my eyes and in my lungs.
The longest non-godsplitter day I’ve ever had. I’ve lived my whole life in the last twenty-four hours:
Bedroom.
Hospital.
Psych ward.
Jail.
New name.
Crash survivor logic takes hold: Enough of this. I haven’t seen a doctor voluntarily since I was a child, except as a scam. But maybe they have something new, some new test or treatment. I’m good with numbers, but I’ve lost count of my ‘maybes.’
My liver can’t withstand much more. Neither can my heart—drugs, electroshock, hoping someday I’ll see Keara again but knowing I won’t. Not wondering what’s happened to Dad or Shelly, not even knowing where Mom is buried.
Drowning man’s promise. Junkie-gambler’s promise: I’m going to get better, find help. I’m going to find Dad and I’m going to find Keara and tell her that she’s safe, that she can call me Johnny all she wants, whenever she wants, from now on. The cold fist in my stomach melts away, gone, gone, gone. One of those rare moments when I can feel every cubic inch of my own flesh, blood and bone.
My name is John Dolan Vincent. I was born April 3, 1959, to John Dolan Vincent Sr. and Shelly Marie Vincent. I have one sister, Shelly Anne. I am twenty-eight years old. I have a juvenile offender record that has been sealed, no high school diploma and no college education. I have a rare, congenital abnormality: a fully articulated, supernumerary, fourth metacarpus on my left hand. I’m good with numbers, especially spatial coordinates. I have a photographic memory and a steady hand. And I have a drug problem.
I can’t go home. The Personnel Department will be waiting for me, and it’s a matter of time before they figure out I’m here. Back inside the station lobby, I make a pay phone call to the only safe passage out of here.
I’m waiting by yet another vending machine in yet another plastic chair, counting the minutes and hoping Jimmy doesn’t show up first.
“Daniel,” Dr. Carlisle holds his hand out, eyes squinted to a hazy smile, a mixture of relief and confusion. I return the handshake.
“But it’s really not ‘Daniel,’ is it?”
“Steve, either,” I say.
“I assumed so. What should I call you, then?”
“Can we just stick with ‘Daniel’ for now?”
He nods.
“I don’t normally do this,” he says, pulling away from the station. He punches his dashboard lighter, says, “You left your cigarettes. I thought you might want them.”
“I do, but they’re not mine. Thanks.” I light a smoke, and Carlisle slips on a pair of sunglasses in the bright afternoon light. Flashback—I’m in another passenger seat outside another jail with my entire life inside yet another brown envelope.
“I’m glad you don’t own a Ranchero,” I tell him.
“Why’s that?”
“Long story.”
“I’ll bet it is,” he says. “Maybe you can tell it while I drive. Where are we going, anyway?”
“I’m not sure. Just head toward downtown. Union Station.”
Silence, then he says, “I normally wouldn’t do this unless it were an emergency.”
“It is.”
“I mean life or death.”
“Like I said.”
“Some people were looking for you at the ward,” he continues. “I’d seen them earlier at the hospital.”
“I know.”
“They’re not friends of yours, are they?”
“No, they’re not.”
“You’re in trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“You owe them money?”
“Far from it.”
“You in some kind of witness protection program?”
“Not even close.”
“Why don’t you tell the police?”
“I guess I’ve had a different relationship with cops than you have. Besides, they couldn’t help.”
“Those people are above the law?”
“Yes, they are.”
“At least I know you’re telling the truth this time,” he says.
“And how’s that?”
“Because you’re evading my answers. You’re not so quick.”
“Finally, you get something right,” I say, and he laughs. Right then, I know where I want to go. I navigate through downtown, not quite as far as the train station.
“You were really impressive back there.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice. Here, this is where you can drop me.”
We stop outside a taco stand, busy with the bustle of evening traffic, Mexican dance clubs opening their doors, taking chairs down from tables and preparing for the night to come. A man with a baseball cap and a cowboy shirt, sleeves rolled down and cuffs buttoned in the heat, pushes an ice cream cart down the sidewalk. So much going on inside my head and out.
Carlisle points to the envelope.
“I guess your stuff found you. Small miracle.”
Bigger than that. The cops must have taken it all with them, stored it under “Edwards” because my transfer order to County Mental Health never caught up.
“A young woman came looking for you,” he says. “Molly. Presumably your Molly.”
“What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. She gave the admissions nurse a message, and I gave it to the police with the rest of your things.”
The cold fist hits me again, I look at the brown envelope and inhale. I’m holding a live tarantula, a sample of human skin, freshly harvested.
There’s no point in trying to conceal how I’m feeling, and I’m too tired for that anyhow. I know he means well, and I can’t look at him when I think that. He did try to do the right thing for me, but he’s letting me make my own choices now. The equation doesn’t balance, so I need to make it balance.
“What I said back there,” I say, my mouth suddenly more dry and nervous than it’s been since I’ve met him, “I just had to say something. I couldn’t leave with those people, and I would have if you’d discharged me. If they hadn’t shown up, then it would have been different. I needed those seventy-two hours, the protection.”
“And you gave yourself a detour to jail to lose them again.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, this is where I’m supposed to say that you can’t keep running from your past. But I’m sure that sounds pretty weak to you.”
“I’m way ahead of you.”
“Are you?” he says. “So I’m dropping you here?”
“Do you think I’m still bluffing?”
“After the last forty-eight hours, you want to go to a taco stand?”
“I can’t go home, you know that.”
“You mean you don’t want me to find out where you live.”
“That’s not it. Though maybe it’s a good idea you don’t know, in case someone asks you. Anyone does, you can tell them the truth about leaving me here. It’s the last place you ever saw me.”
“You need money?”
“I’ve got money. Not here, but I’ve got plenty.” I get out of the car, and he calls to me through the window.
“You can still reach me at my office, if you need to. I’ve got an emergency number, too.” When I don’t say anything, he says, “You going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. That’s not important. So long as I know Molly’s okay.” I start to walk.
“Hey,” he stops me one last time. “What’s your name? Just give me that much.”
“That would be cheating,” I tell him.
“How about just your first name?”
I start to smile and suddenly my breath gets caught in a coming torrent of laughter, someth
ing I haven’t done in a very long time. And I give him the punch line while I can still breathe.
“My name is John,” and I think I’m going to suffocate because it’s so funny. “I’m in the phone book.”
I walk toward the taco stand, trying to breathe, with tears coming out of my eyes because I’ve never laughed so hard in all my life.
TWENTY-TWO
Behind the taco stand, through the ruptured chain-link fence. Twelve acres of packed dirt and weeds buffered by Los Angeles on four sides. Homeless guy sits on the ground, back against a wall, eating scab-colored chili off waxed paper, fished from the trash of a nearby burger joint.
This has been my address when I was Paul Macintyre, with a post office forwarding to a Venice Beach mail drop. I sit down on a patch of concrete, dead center in the lot. My first word was ‘light.’ Ite. I’m as far from a wall or a door or window or hallway as I’ll ever get. Any kind of enclosure. Boundary. She interrupted me mid-sentence, across the table, and silenced me with a kiss. When was I last more than an arm’s reach away from any kind of enclosure? I was on a rooftop. My eyes dart, looking for a foothold but there is none. Nothing to measure. I miss her. I know I could assemble the facts into any shape of truth I want, but I know the first one was right. She’s gone, afraid of someone for a long time before she met me. She’s safe, now, even if she’s not here with me. I taught her everything I know.
Inside the property envelope is a letter, sealed inside an envelope of its own, neon-blue like a giant, freeze-frame spark between my fingers. She’s been practicing, switching her up strokes for down and vice-versa. It’s vulture-perched in my fingers, looking back at me. Any other day, I could tell you how many pages, just from the thickness.
Ite. Ite. Ite. Memories stuttering, my brain running and screaming. I tear the blue open. A blast of her smell, my present for her. I remember every waking second with you. I’ll be seeing her face in every woman for a long time. I breathe in and I smell her and the warmth of God sings in me and the fading day spreads out like a cold sheet of light.
Close my eyes. My name is John Dolan Vincent, after my father. My first word was ite. Open my eyes.