Talk Talk

by T. C. Boyle

  “That’s terrible,” Bridger said, just to say something. Dana sat rigid beside him.

  “Tip of the iceberg,” the counselor sang out. “And in your case, honey”—turning to Dana—“it’s even worse, or potentially worse, because this isn’t simple ID theft, where a drug user or ex-con tries to make a quick score and move on, but what we call identity takeover.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dana said, her face lit from beneath as the sun crept up the wall behind her. “Something’s over, you’re saying?” She turned to Bridger and he was trying to help as best he could when the woman simply scrawled the term on her pad and slid it across the desk.

  “Identity takeover,” she repeated. “It’s when somebody becomes a second you—lives as you, under your name, for months, sometimes years. And if they live quietly and don’t get in trouble with the law, they might never be detected—”

  “Now I don’t understand,” Bridger heard himself saying. “Why would anyone want to do that—assume somebody’s identity—if it wasn’t for some credit card scam or something? I mean, what’s the point?”

  The woman shrugged. Looked down at the telephone on her desk as if she expected it somehow to provide the answer. She began boxing the photocopies between her hands in a brisk valedictory way, then looked up. Her eyes were gray and clear and lit with a strange excitement and they went from Bridger’s face to Dana’s and settled there. “Think about it,” she said in a soft voice. “You’re broke, uneducated, you owe child support payments, you’ve got a criminal record and your credit report stinks—maybe you’ve defaulted on a loan or gone bankrupt or driven your business into the ground. You find somebody solid—somebody like you, Dana—with good credit references, higher education, no criminal record of any kind at all. You said you had a Ph.D., right?”

  Dana looked to Bridger for a translation and he did the best he could: She says you have a Ph.D., right?

  “From Gallaudet,” Dana said after a moment, her voice echoing tonelessly off the walls. She sat up, squared her shoulders. For the first time all afternoon the hint of a smile settled on her lips—she was proud of what she’d accomplished, proud of the recognition it gave her in a world full of slackers and underachievers, and she saw it as a springboard to more, much more. Her ambition was to move up to a four-year college, and not a deaf college like Gallaudet, but a hearing college where she could teach the contemporary American novel and poetry and maybe even creative writing to hearing students. “In English/ American studies. I did my thesis on Poe and won the Morris Lassiter Award for Scholarship two years ago, the year before I came here to teach at San Roque.” Her voice ruptured—she was tired, he could see that—and she chopped and elided the syllables. “It is un-der consideration at a ve-ry pres-ti-gious univ-ersity press my the-sis dir-ec-tor gave me an inroduction to—to which, I mean—but I don’t really feel comftable mentioning the name until things are finalized. It wouldn’t be right somehow…”

  “Yes,” the woman was saying, and she wasn’t really listening, just trying to make a point. She had one of the photocopies in her hand, the one that showed the imposter, the smug thief with his shoplifter’s eyes, in sharpest detail. “You see”—she tapped a glittering red fingernail on the stretched skin of the page—“this is Dr. Dana Halter. And you can bet he didn’t have to write any thesis to get his degree.”

  Though he knew he should get back to Digital Dynasty, let himself in quietly and see to The Kade’s unfinished business, he couldn’t let Dana suffer all this alone. The news had been exclusively bad—No, the counselor had informed them, the city was not liable for the towing and impound fees and the police were within their rights for having arrested her because her base identifiers were the same as the thief’s and they could try a lawsuit but it was just about as unlikely to fly as the San Roque phone book on her desk, though they might try small claims court for the towing and impound costs, but of course that would depend on the whim of the judge—and he wanted to be with her, even if it was only to order out pizza and sit in front of the TV while she put her head down and plunged through her student papers. Which was just what happened. They drove separately to her place and while he went out for the pizza (extra large, half garlic and chicken, half veggie) and two dinner salads with Italian dressing, she threw down her briefcase and got to work.

  It was just after eight when the phone rang—or flashed, actually. He’d been sipping Chianti and watching a re-run of Alien, a movie he must have seen at least twenty times (Dana loved the tag line for the trailer: In space no one can hear you scream), trying not to feel too guilty about work. His feet were propped up on the coffee table, the fifth slice of pizza had plugged the hole in him, and he was enjoying the fact that he could crank the sound as loud as he liked without having to worry about distracting her. Every once in a while, as the creature retreated in a tail-whipping blur or mugged to the thunder of the score preparatory to ending the existence of one clueless crewmember or another, he would glance up at Dana. She was sitting across the room at her desk, the buttery glow of the lamp catching and releasing her face as she hovered close with her red pencil and then leaned back again, order restored and everything finally at peace—but for the creature, which was doing its thing now with the saliva machine and the multi-hinged jaws. Yes, and then the phone began to flash.

  Dana glanced up. “Would you get that?”

  He lifted his knitted ankles off the coffee table without shifting his gaze from the screen—they were going to commercial, a direct cut from the drooling teeth to a baby’s naked bottom sans irony or even the faintest glimmer of network awareness—stood and crossed the room to the phone. Like most of the deaf, Dana had a TTY, an assistive listening device that was compatible with her cell and allowed her to send and receive both text and audio messages. He depressed the on button and the light stopped flashing, but instead of a text message, a high querulous whine of a voice came stabbing through the speakers: “Dana Halter? This is John J. J. Simmonds, accounts payable, down here at T-M? I’m calling about your delinquent account—”

  “Who?” Bridger said.

  “Because if you’re having financial difficulties, I’m sure we can work out some sort of payment schedule, but you have to understand that payment in full must be made each month under the terms of the agreement you signed—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Bridger said. “Hold on now—what account?” He glanced up at Dana; she was frowning over one of her papers, the red pencil poised at her lips.

  “Don’t give me that crap—”

  “I’m not—I mean, we, I mean she—”

  “—because deadbeats are one thing we just do not tolerate and I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  “I can, yes, but—”

  “Good, now we’re getting someplace.” The voice came right back at him, hard-charging, impenetrable. “Let me give you the straight facts: we’re going to need a certified cashier’s check in the amount of eight hundred twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents overnighted to our offices by closing time at five p.m. Pacific Coast Time or we will discontinue service and we will take legal action, and this is no idle threat, believe me.”

  Bridger could feel the irritation rising in him. “Hold on just one second, will you? What account are we talking about here—can you please just tell me that, please?”

  “T-M Cellular.”

  “But she doesn’t—we don’t even use T-M. Both our phones are with Cingular.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. I’ve got the past-due deadbeat bills right here in front of me. You understand what I’m saying? Eight hundred twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents. FedEx. Five p.m. tomorrow. This is no game, let me assure you of that.”

  “Okay, okay.” He was watching Dana, her brow furrowed in concentration, the red pencil dancing—she was oblivious to the whole thing. On the screen, the monster was back, the camera gave a sudden jerk, and there was blood everywhere. “Listen, this is probably a mistake—she’s just been the vict
im of identity theft—and if you would just send the bill so we can iron things out—”

  “Who am I talking to?”

  “This is her boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend? You’re telling me you’re not Dana Halter? Then why in Christ’s name did you say you were?”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “You put her on right this minute, you hear me? I mean now! You think this is some kind of joke here? You think I’m a clown? Put her on or I’ll have your ass too—for, for—obstruction!”

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean ‘you can’t’?”

  “She’s deaf.”

  There was a pause. Then the voice came back, harsher, louder, a theatrical bray of outrage and puffed-up sanctimony. “I thought I’d heard it all, but you got balls, you really do. What do you think, I’m stupid here? We’re talking fraud, felonies, we are going to take legal action—”

  “Wait, wait, wait”—an inchoate idea had begun to form in Bridger’s head—“can you just tell me what the number is, the number on the account? I mean, the number of the phone itself?”

  The voice was exhausted, exasperated, drenched with contempt. “You don’t know your own phone number?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  Heavy irony, the world-weary sigh of disgust: “Four-one-five…”

  As soon as he had the number, the instant the man on the other end of the line gave up the last digit, Bridger shouted “Check’s in the mail!” and pulled the phone cable out of the wall. Then, his heart pounding with the audacity—the balls, yes—of what he was about to do, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Dana was still at her desk, still bent over the papers with a red pencil and a wondering frown, before he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed the number. There was the distant faintly echoing hum of the connection being made, of the satellite revolving in the sunstruck void, and then the click of the talk button and a man’s voice saying, “Hello?”

  PART II

  One

  “YEAH, HI. Is this Dana?”

  They were announcing a special over the loudspeakers—Attention, Smart-Mart shoppers, we’re having a blue-light special in the housewares department, our superdeluxe model three-speed blender for only thirty-nine ninety-five while supplies last—and the clamor distracted him. Plus, Madison was hanging on his left arm like a side of beef, totally sugared-out, her hair in her face, a smudge of chocolate on her chin, chanting I want, I want, I want, and where was Natalia? “Hold on,” he said into the phone, “I can’t hear you.”

  He gave the place a quick scan, the phone in one hand, Madison occupying the other, the usual chaos prevailing—kids running wild, fat people shoving carts piled high with crap up and down the aisles as if it were some sort of competition or exercise regimen, heads, backs, shoulders, bellies, buttocks, a stink of artificial butter flavoring and hot dogs grilled to jerky—and then he found a small oasis of calm in the lee of the menswear department and put the phone to his ear again. “Yeah? Hello?”

  “Dana?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  There was the briefest tic of hesitation, and then the voice on the other end of the line began to flow like verbal diarrhea: “It’s Rick, I just wanted to hook up on that thing we were talking about the other day—”

  He didn’t recognize the voice. He didn’t know any Rick. Madison pinched her tone to a sugar-fed falsetto: “I want Henrietta Horsie. Please. Please, Dana, please?”

  “Rick who?”

  “James, Rick James. You know, from the bar the other night? The one on, what was the name of that street?”

  That was when everything went still, the loudspeakers muted, Madison moving her mouth and nothing coming out, the bare-legged kids charging silently up and down the aisles and even the babies with their purple-rage faces stalled right there in mid-shriek. He felt sick. Felt as if someone had taken a shank and opened him up. And he was trembling, actually trembling, when he clicked the off button and slid the phone down inside the Hanes display case.

  His first thought was to find Natalia and get her out of there, to get in the car and make scarce, but he fought it down. It was nothing—or no, it was something, definitely something, something bad—but there was no need to panic. So they had the phone number—that was inevitable. He’d get another phone, no big deal, but then what if they could somehow trace it or get to the house? But no, he told himself, that was crazy. He was safe. He was fine. Everything was fine.

  Madison, five years old tomorrow and with the shrunken hungry bewitching face of an elf out of some fairy tale, let go of his hand suddenly and allowed herself to come down hard on the hard shining floor. He looked down at her in that moment as if he’d never seen her before, her eyes contracting with calculated hurt or sullenness, ready for bed—past ready for bed—and then he jerked his head up and scanned the place for Natalia.

  William Wilson was thirty-four years old, a pizza genius and a clothes horse, and to his own mind at least, a ladies’ man, though his last lady—the lady before Natalia—had given him a daughter of his own whom he loved till it hurt and then turned into a queen bitch and landed him in jail. He’d always hated the name his mother had imposed on him—William Jr. after his father, who was his own kind of trouble—and when he was in elementary school he felt a little grand about it and insisted that everybody call him William and not Bill or Billy, and then in junior high he saw how uncool that was and got a warm-up jacket with Will stitched across the breast in white piping, but that didn’t seem to make it either. Will, William, Bill, Billy: it was all so ordinary, so pedestrian—or plebeian, one of his favorite words from history class, because if anybody was the opposite of plebeian, it was him, and Christ, how many William Wilsons were there in a country the size of the U.S.? Not to mention England. There must have been thousands of them there too. Hundreds of thousands. And what of all the Guillaumes and Wilhelms and Guillermos scattered round the world? By high school he’d adopted his mother’s maiden name—Peck—and nobody dared call him anything else, because he was quick with his tongue and his hands and feet too, black belt at sixteen, and there was only one kid at school who even thought about fucking with him and that kid, Hanvy Richards, wound up with the bridge of his nose broken in three places. Peck Wilson, that was who he was, and he went to the community college and got his associate’s degree and rose up the ladder from delivery boy to counterman to manager at Fiorentino’s in his hometown of Peterskill, in northern Westchester, and he traveled too, to Maui and Stowe and Miami. He tried out women the way he tried out drinks and recipes, always eager, always exploring. By the time he was twenty-five he was flush.

  Sure, then he met Gina, and it was all shit after that. Or no: to give her credit, because she had an awesome body and a pierced tongue that tasted of the clove cigarettes she smoked and could make him stand up straight just thinking about it, she took him on more of a shit-slide, a whole roller-coastering hold-your-breath-and-look-out plunge into a vast vat of shit and on shit-greased wheels too. But he didn’t want to think about that now. He wanted to think about Natalia, the girl from Jaroslavl who never got enough of anything—the shopper extraordinaire, restaurant killer and bedroom champion—with the breathy bitten-off Russian accent that made him itch and itch again and her little daughter by the guy who brought her over and got her her papers, an older guy she never even liked let alone loved.

  They were in the car now, the Z4 he’d bought her (black, convertible, with the 3.0-liter engine and six-speed manual transmission), and the trunk was full of Smart-Mart loot and Madison was squirming in her lap. “Why is it we must go so soon?” she said, giving him a look over her daughter’s head. When he didn’t answer right away because he was fumbling with the packaging of one of the CDs he’d picked up while she was shopping (the new Hives, a greatest hits compilation of Rage Against the Machine, a couple of reggae discs he’d been looking for), she lifted her voice out of the darkness and said, “Dana? Are you listening to me?�
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  He loved the way she said his name, or the name she knew him by, anyway—down on the first syllable, hang on to the n and then rise and hit the ah like a bell ringing—and he dropped the plastic CD case into his lap and reached for her hand. “I don’t know, baby,” he said, “I just thought you might want to go someplace nice, like that seafood place maybe, you know? Aren’t you getting hungry?”

  Her voice floated back to him, coy, pleased with itself: “Maggio’s? On Tiburon?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and he had to release her hand to shift down. “I mean, if you’re still up for it.” He gave her a glance. “And Madison. She could sleep in the car—I mean, she’s really knocked out.”

  She was silent a moment. The engine sang its sweet song as he accelerated into the turn. “I don’t know,” she said, “too much tourists, no? Already, already the tourists! What about—?” And she named the priciest place in Sausalito.