Or at a table alone—reading a newspaper.
There he is. Wallace.
Maybe I am a detective.
The dining area lets out onto a sorry little patio. I enter the dining area through the unlocked patio door. The few Golden Care staff members I see are all preoccupied with empty dishes, wheelchairs, phone calls.
I sit down opposite him—carefully, slowly, as if he’ll dissolve right in front of me. He looks up like he’s been expecting me. No smile. Barely an acknowledgment of my being here, of my finding him here, but acknowledgment enough.
“Sorry to run out on you like that,” he says. “Bet you figured I wouldn’t last an hour.”
“Something like that,” I confess.
“Obviously I’m a little heartier and more resourceful than I appear,” he says.
“And highly motivated.”
“My e-mail.”
“The only thing that surprised me more than your boldness in taking on Wallace yourself was including me on your e-mail. Copying a third party. That has to be a blackmail first.”
He doesn’t answer, just smiles.
“I don’t know whether you want me as a witness, in case something happens, or you want to drive a wedge between Wallace and me because you suspect some association between us, or you want to prove some connection to me, or all of the above.”
He doesn’t answer me, as I knew he wouldn’t, but he does respond.
“And what I don’t know,” he says, “is whether my old friends the Stewartsons have won you over, or offered you a deal. They can be persuasive . . .”
Now it’s my turn to be silent.
“On the other hand, you’re here without them. So you haven’t shared my whereabouts with them. Not yet, anyway.”
He picks at his food for a moment, looks up at me. “He stole my money. He stole my identity. There should be consequences.”
“Should be.”
“And the fact that there may not be . . .” He shakes his head. “But there are going to be.” He says it firmly, angrily, resolved. A few of the elderly look around at us.
I lean in conspiratorially. “If he refuses—you must have thought about this—are you really prepared to go to the police?”
“If I have to, yes. Because if I don’t, he’ll dodge the wheels of justice forever.”
“He’ll probably dodge them even if you do tell the police.”
“That’s a chance I’m prepared to take.”
“He sent a couple of detectives to see me,” I tell him.
“What?” This surprises him. “He’s gone to the police?”
“They were really looking for you, asked me if I knew where you were—because of my being cc’d on your e-mail, I’m sure. They found me, couldn’t find you. But I think they’re expecting me to pass the message on to you . . .” I did not tell him the detectives were imposters. The threat of real cops was more likely to deter him from his quixotic mission.
“Did the police follow you here?” he asks. A little panicked.
“Not that I could see.” I had looked behind me repeatedly, doubled back on myself, saw nothing. “So the message for you . . .”
“Yes?”
“That Wallace is important to this town. Part of the economy. We don’t like things that make us or our citizens look bad . . . That kind of stuff.”
“But if I show them the evidence, they’ll have to do the right thing. They’ll have to investigate. Prosecute . . .”
I shrug. “Not necessarily. And anyway, what evidence exactly?”
He looks off.
That might be the dark and perfect beauty of what Wallace the Amazing had pulled off these many years. That there was scant evidence.
“Where do you stand?” he asks me point-blank.
Where do I stand? Help this underdog with his crazy plan, and bring a little justice into the world? Turn Wallace the Amazing in, or ally myself with the Stewartsons for my five million share? Or distance myself from both these blackmailers, and stay loyal and true to my previous life, to my paycheck, to my universe, to my employer, to the myth of him?
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Archer.” That’s all I really know at this point. That’s all I really know about where I stand, for now. His vulnerability, his aloneness, in taking on the entertainment juggernaut of Wallace the Amazing, a powerful system that I helped to hold in place, that I helped create, that controlled him—although it now seems the “system” isn’t me exclusively.
I look at him—hunched over, hiding out here, life and health gone. This stooped, prematurely aged, and beaten specimen, up against the institution of success and ingenuity and adulation that is Wallace the Amazing. All this man has on his side is the truth. It is literally his only possession. A commodity with little value in this town where the artificial reigned supreme. Where artifice is the founding principle. But truth is probably in equally short supply, of similarly little value, in every other city too. In Cincinnati, Dubuque, Boise, Racine, Saint Paul, Joplin, Iowa City. All the places they might have you believe—with their serious faces, their dark suits, their somber demeanors—that truth is worth something. Arguably Vegas is at least more honest with itself. Part of me wants to see where the truth would lead. Wants to help truth mount up, ride into town, and watch its effect from safely behind the saloon doors. Watch its white horse’s hooves circle in the dirt, watch the dust rise up and choke some people and make others cough uncomfortably. Truth, the new kid in town. With uncanny aim. Unrufflable nerves. Whatcha gonna do about it, pardner?
“All you’ve got is the truth . . .” I say aloud.
He looks at me. Lights up, comes alive at this. “Yes. And in the end, is it everything? Or is it nothing? That’s the multi-million-dollar question.”
Five million, to be exact, I think to myself. Five million to me, and who knew how much more to the Stewartsons?
“Five million, ten million, fifteen million, give or take,” he says. Each figure tossed out with an accompanying twirl of his fork. Guessing, fantasizing. Obviously undecided on what he could or would demand. Uninformed on what was there.
Give or take, indeed.
Having found Archer Wallace so quickly, so adeptly, you’d think it would be easy for me to find Debbie, who, presumably, was in hiding somewhere, having done a smart little sidestep, probably out her back patio, to avoid the Stewartsons and their head-cracking greeting of me. She had not returned to her neat little home, as far as I could see, as I circled it slowly several times—and she did not come back to my condo either.
Maybe I was, for now, simply someone to avoid. I would avoid me. From her point of view, whatever I did for a living exactly, trouble was clearly tracking me now, and she might not end up so lucky the next time she had to save me. Maybe it was simply, understandably, self-preservation on her part. When I looked in the window of her place a day later, her cell phone was no longer on the counter. I assumed she had come back for it, and could reach me if she needed to. That is, if she wanted to.
But the other possibility, of course—the one that I tried to push out of my mind and couldn’t—was that the Stewartsons had found her at home the day they burst in looking for me, and they were now “keeping” her (somewhere) to ensure the trustworthiness and usefulness of their new partnership with me. (Pros like them, it must have been easy to find us—talking to neighbors at my condo, getting a description of Debbie, a description of Debbie’s Triumph, whatever.) And they clearly liked keeping people. Her cell phone might be in Dave Stewartson’s pocket—just out of her reach.
She had saved me from the Stewartsons. Was her reward to be chained to motel fixtures? And if the Stewartsons had her, they would probably have learned a lesson when I scooped up Archer Wallace. They’d undoubtedly be more prudent, more adept, in hiding her from me.
And though the adrenaline rush of her r
escuing me had faded, my appreciation had not. I don’t know whether in the chaos of inverted identities and perceptions, of my life and beliefs thrown into a maelstrom, I was unconsciously drawn to an anchor, but she was the anchor I yearned for now. Maybe my new sense of closeness, of desire for her, was somehow worth the swirl of events, the uprooted craziness.
Whether she was being held in case I needed more “persuasion” as a partner, or she was just hiding till I had extricated myself from the chaos of my life, it put anxious shadows into my thoughts and dreams, and fresh urgency into my plans.
For now, the anchor was cut away from me; my boat was unmoored in unknown seas, and I was on my own.
I began to reconstruct my own life—my own movements, my own residences—over the past twenty years (forgotten motels, featureless short-term rentals, temporary domiciles and living situations that ran together so unmemorably, so fluidly one into the next, that it required receipts, calendar datebooks, the Internet’s infinite memory to revivify it). Once I had done all this grunt detective work of dates and geography, once I had it charted in front of me, the rest of the task turned out to be still substantial, but at least methodical.
It was a matter of finding, and then eliminating, all those other fellow travelers (right now only addresses, ID numbers, car registrations, tax filings) who had moved from city to city with me. With every new city that I charted from my past, some of the names got crossed off, of course, while some were added, and as I continued—traveling digitally over my route through the fuzzy, foggy years—fewer and fewer names were constant. And once the attrition of geography and facts had narrowed it down to a small handful (by which time, by which small handful, I was fairly trembling), I put names to the numbers and the movements, and sluiced it down finally to one.
Dom Carter.
The one person who has moved along with me, week to week, city to city, close by, likely within a few blocks, for literally the past twenty years. Eerie to think it.
My Internet searches revealed no further information about Dom Carter than the name. Which in and of itself strongly indicated, nearly confirmed outright, that Dom Carter was exactly who I thought.
Dom Carter.
I stared at the name, scribbled on the pad, the silent tournament of elimination finally reduced to this opaque “winner.” How does he play? What will his game be like?
How will Dom look, what will Dom say, how will he react if I confront him? It was preoccupying to say the least. And of course, part of the prize of Dom Carter, the nearly painful pleasure, was that he was likely living within a short drive of me. Which turned out to be exactly the case. A firm, final confirmation.
I pull in across the street from Dom’s condominium. A blue Camaro in the driveway. A little bit of personality, in a job that allows none. This little bit acceptable, still invisible enough, in the milieu of Vegas. Wonder how Dom likes Vegas?
I get out of the car, lock the door.
I look at my hands. They are trembling. I rest them on the roof of my car for a moment, try to steady them. It’s no wonder. This will be pivotal. This will be a confirmation of a world different from what I have so clearly imagined and inhabited for twenty years. This will rewrite it. This will coat it over in a new color, hide the previous color forever. And this, answering the detective in me, will be evidence of a different Wallace from the one I always thought I knew. Evidence indelible. Irrefutable. Safely out of reach of whim or imagination.
I still don’t know if I’m going to go through with it.
I know I’m going to go through with it.
Dom may or may not have imagined the idea of someone else doing what he does, the idea of redundancy, which had only occurred to me after twenty years, and only through an inadvertent revelation. Dom might not even believe me. I’m not sure I’d believe me.
A trim nondescript walkway. Hardy plants in the sand that require no care. Utterly self-sufficient. Hardly draws a second glance. Like Dom. Like me.
I ring the bell.
Dom opens the door. And I know it is Dom, instantly, by the sterility that frames Dom. By the condo’s unlived-in, unoccupied feeling, by the rented couches. By the side-by-side computers—an easy giveaway.
The obviousness of it centers me. Keeps me upright in my dizziness. Because standing there before me is the first complication. One I somehow should have predicted, but could and would never have, I guess.
Dom is Dominique.
And Dominique is beautiful.
And the smile that I diligently, professionally suppress—the smile that earns me second glances and approving appraisals—escapes from me now, unbidden, authentic, surprised.
“Yes?”
I’m able to process the name thing quickly: Dom from Dominique, not a lie exactly, but not the truth exactly either. Easier for her to move through paperwork, through life, dodge uncomfortable situations and entanglements, with purposeful ambiguity. Going by Dom—maybe a helpful reminder to herself of her own imposture. Helping her to never forget.
“Hi, I’m . . . Jim Isaacson, and, uh . . .” There are about a thousand places to begin, and I can’t pick from among them.
“And what?”
I’m too dumbfounded, too off-balance, to find a gentle, polite, oblique way in. I have only utter directness available to me. “We need to talk, Dominique.”
She is suspicious but can’t help the edge of her own smile. “We do, huh?”
“Yes.”
“About what . . . Jim?” Her eyes narrow. She has picked up somehow from me already—from my expression, my stance, my unsteadiness?—that it’s not my name. Which only confirms for me, this is a detective.
I look at her with import. “We need to talk about Wallace the Amazing.”
She furrows her brow mechanically, gives the practiced response. “Wallace the Amazing? What about him?”
I smile. “That’s exactly how I’ve handled it for the past twenty years.”
Now her placid beauty goes visibly off-center—unmoored, challenged. She has caught the whiff of something significant.
“Dom—Dominique—I do what you do for a living. You do what I do. We’re each other’s backup system. Tennessee, Baton Rouge, Phoenix, Chicago. We’ve shared the same existence for twenty years, a few miles apart. I never would have guessed there was another one, which is why you may be having trouble with the idea . . .”
I find myself spilling it all at once like that. And maybe it makes it seem more credible. I have no idea whether she can handle it, or accept it. Or whether she has long suspected such a thing, or even known for sure, or like me, had not the slightest inkling.
But I have my answer in an instant. Something darkens in her eyes; a light goes out—a light of innocence, clearing room for dark truth.
Silently, perhaps shell-shocked, she opens the door wider, and motions me inside.
Two cups of coffee. I watch the broken understanding cross her face. I watch what happened to me, happening to her. My sympathy goes out to her.
But throughout it, she’s breathtaking.
“And why are you telling me this?” Knee-jerk defensiveness. Resentment at having her morning, her life, disrupted, her world rocked. But it’s also a good question: Why am I? What’s to be gained or derived, exactly? Am I looking for an ally? Do I want to be known at last? At least by someone? And more than that, understood? Appreciated at last? The full answer, I know, is deep and subtle and multifaceted. For now, I cobble together a response.
“We’re detectives. We’re after the truth. We live for the truth. I thought you deserved this truth.”
She looks at me, cocks her head. “Detectives?” She shrugs. “Well, I guess.”
How embarrassing. How revealing. How perfectly belittling. Seeing what we do as “detective” work—that was only my eccentric, lonely glorification of it. My grand definition of it, m
y grand delusion, for twenty years. She’s never even thought of the term.
And then, setting down her coffee cup, as if the first step in ushering me out: “Look, you really don’t know me . . .”
Oh, but I do know you. You have moved around from city to city, venue to venue, and have therefore not been able to establish a relationship, have therefore remained isolated, cut off, alone. You have filled your time with reading, with daydreaming, with empty projects, with false cheer. You have filled the emotional emptiness with fantasy, with perverse imaginings that drive you crazy, that you have to switch off like a television screen. Your existence has stayed lean, everything about it—from the disposable objects in your rental home (things you don’t care about, nothing that lays down roots) to your perennially unsatisfying takeout meals, quick, second-thought calories and nothing more. You look lean, hungry, your arms and abs ripped from constant, empty exercise to fill the void. Even your eyes are hungry-looking, and though this is a fashionable and sexual look, a turn-on to others, it comes out of need, and desperation, and hunger in oneself, which holds little promise for a relationship, if one should stumble into one. And oh, one does—here and there. Briefly. Interrupted, before it can even begin, by secrecy, by insularity, by professional privacy that can’t be risked or punctured. Yes, I know you. And you, by the way, know me. You just don’t know yet, how well you already know me.
And why be silent? Why not say it aloud? Why pretend, be formal, when the intimacy is automatic? This is me I am looking at. I am looking at a mirror. We talk to our mirrors, after all. “Oh, come on, Dominique. I do know you. And you know me. We’ve lived the same life for almost a quarter century. Thinking, obsessing, about the same person, about each night’s performance.”
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