Siri, Who Am I?

by Sam Tschida

  Her expression says duh! “Obviously. We haven’t gotten shoes yet.”

  “True. We need shoes, but I’m thinking of something else. Something big.” Nakatomi Tower big, and I am John McClane. “Jingle Bells” is playing in the background.

  I text JP: I know things are weird between us, but I have a business proposition.

  ??

  At least he’s talking to me.

  I respond. I’d like to make an offer on GoldRush. The building and the business.

  I show Crystal the text and wait for her to get excited. Instead, she says, “Girl, are you nuts?”

  “Maybe. It’s a good idea, though. For one, JP can’t sue us for stealing his intellectual property and all that. Two, it can be our GoldRush headquarters. We can have desks and fresh flowers and a coffee pot—it’ll be our office. I’m thinking that we can phase out the stripping.”

  She laughs. “Phase out the stripping? How does that work? Like we move in some desks and a copy machine and only have stripping a couple of hours a day?”

  “I don’t know. We can work out the details later. And maybe that’s a bad idea. You are reeeeaaaally good at it.”

  I already offered you the club. It’s yours.

  I like the price, but what strings are attached to that deal?

  I want to buy it. You already gave me enough.

  Haven’t bought the yacht…yet.

  Uh-oh.

  He still thinks there’s hope.

  You’re giving me GoldRush. Why?

  You were right. Whatever happened to the employees at that place happened under my watch. I just wasn’t looking.

  I spend a crazy long time staring at that text.

  He says, I know you’ll do a good job.

  I’ll buy it.

  You don’t have enough money.

  Technically true. I could put a lot of cash down with the money from the new bachelors Jules has brought in.71 Maybe buy it contract for deed. I know that goes against the kind of advice dads give, but it’s not like I care. No dad to object in this case.

  No more discussion. I’ll have the papers drawn up tomorrow. It’s a gift. Do whatever you want with it.

  I start to tear up. JP is being so good to me, so good to everyone. He doesn’t seem to want to break up. I think he’s trying to win me back and I’m posting selfies in the Forever 21 dressing room for a guy who might not want me.

  I don’t know how much that place is worth, but it’s got to be at least hundreds of thousands of dollars—maybe even a million.

  “Crystal, it’s time to break out the champagne.” I want to celebrate, but I also feel like the mantle of responsibility has been passed to me like I’m about to take my place on the Iron Throne. Is this moment too solemn for champagne?

  * * *

  An hour later we’re at our new office. I don’t know what we’ll do with it but it has a bar, a kicking sound system, and a stage. “I think we should keep the club running and maybe set aside a certain amount for office space,” I suggest to Crystal.

  “I like that. We could have singles’ events.”

  It’s going to be awesome.

  I take a selfie of us making crazy excited faces and caption it: Guess who just bought a strip club?!

  “So should I quit stripping tonight?” Crystal asks.

  “Probably wait until JP gives me the deed, or however that works.”

  Now that I almost own the property, I think it’s fine for me to start a fire in the parking lot—just a small one, in a trash can. It’s the last thing on my list for the day. I call out to one of the security guys, “Yo, do you have a light?”

  “I got a book of matches,” he says. Everyone who works at GoldRush smokes, which is fine by me. I’m not going to be a fucking health evangelist, even though I’m a vegetarian.

  He waits for me to stick a cigarette in my mouth so he can light it for me. What a gentleman. “Can I just have the book?” He hands it over, mystified.

  In one corner of the parking lot there’s a metal trash can. It looks like an old oil barrel, black with bits of rust and empty except for some beer bottles that should have been recycled. Not a lot of environmentalists at the strip club. GoldRush 2.0 will have a recycling bin. #dolphins.

  I hold the yellow dress close to my heart for a moment and shut my eyes tight against my emotions as I think about the last week, about the person I was. I’m not mad at her. She did the best she could and she brought me to where I am today, ready to officially move on. Hell, I already have moved on. I’m wearing a brand-new dress from Forever 21 and some pretty cute shoes. I’m a bona fide business owner and I have a damn good friend in Crystal, even if she did try to kill me. Even JP—I never expected him to care about something just because I do. Is that love, or just an awakening?

  One kiss, and I drop the dress into the barrel on top of cigarette butts and Budweiser bottles, their blue labels peeling from exposure. I douse my old life in Everclear taken from behind the bar and light a match. The flame goes out before it hits the dress. I try again and again. By the fourth match, I’m practically in the trash can so I can hold the flame against the yellow fabric. It won’t ignite. I’m getting streaks of rust on my new dress from leaning into the can to light the old one.

  “Fucking dress!”

  After I use the entire book, the dress looks slightly blackened in a couple of spots where some old paper burned on top of it, but the dress isn’t going unless I take it to a crematorium, and it’s not quite that serious. I really wanted to take a picture of the flaming dress for Instagram, but I have to settle for a plain old shot of it in the trash. I caption it: Moving on.

  Maybe it’s symbolic. The old me isn’t gone. I just threw her in the trash with a few other bad habits—lying, cheating, and red meat.

  I almost take the dress out of the barrel. Imagining the once-beautiful garment being picked up by trash collectors and tossed in with food waste and dirty diapers makes me cringe, but what am I going to do with a partially scorched Prada gown? It doesn’t spark joy. My old self doesn’t spark joy.

  So it has to be good-bye. I have things to do and places to be. I blow a kiss to the can and walk away. I have a date at a taco truck.

  71 Three so far! 35k × 3 = I’M RICH!

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I can take the blue Metro Express bus most of the way to L’Empire Tacos, about a 90-minute ride according to Metro Trip Planner.72 The homeless guy next to me smells so much like old piss and cigarettes I can barely breathe. Plus the bus fumes. It’s time to hurry up on those zero-emission buses, LA! I miss my (JP’s) Ferrari. But this is part of the process. If I embrace this cocoon of reality for long enough, I’m totally going to emerge a millionaire.

  “I’m going to snap a pic, okay?” I tell the guy. I have to document this shit for my fans.

  I smile with teeth and he smiles without. #Meth #ThanksKobra.

  I erase and rewrite the caption approximately twenty times until I finally settle on: Bussing it to the taco truck date, Max. Stay away from meth, kids.

  While deciding between the pink bubbly hearts and the red heart emoji—is the red heart too much like long-stemmed roses on the first date, because I think that would scare him away—I miss my stop. When I finally get off it’s almost 8:30 p.m. What if Max waited for twenty minutes and left? I kick myself for not taking an Uber. I’m an idiot.

  I run as fast as I can in my Payless heels. The sun is setting, and the stoplights seem to glow extra bright against the dusky backdrop like they’re charged with the electricity of a summer night. I’m feeling it too. I’m electric blue against the evening sky. Everyone else is moving in slow motion in their booty-hugging shorts and bare-midriff tops as I race toward L’Empire Tacos.

  Running in the heat has done nothing for me. I arrive out of breath and s
weaty. Blisters are starting to form where the heel of my shoe cuts into my ankle, and Max is nowhere to be seen. I sit down at the communal picnic table to catch my breath. He’s running late, too—no big.

  The perpetually too-long line at the taco truck is, as expected, too long. That’s part of its charm—twenty extra minutes to stare into the eyes of your loved one and talk about whether you’re going to take a risk on an enchilada or get the tacos like normal. The parking lot is filled with the same amount of trash and janky cars as last time. There’s no grass anywhere in sight. Unlike last time, my dress isn’t splattered with blood from a recent head wound and I know who I am. I am prepared to be happy.

  If Max comes.

  He didn’t respond to my Instagram post and I can’t even be sure that he saw it. I feel like Meg Ryan at the end of Sleepless in Seattle. You might say the stakes were higher for her because she had to get from Baltimore to the top of the Empire State Building, probably in bad traffic. I think a 90-minute bus ride through iffy neighborhoods with a missed stop is probably about the same.

  Mostly I hope that Max shows up, but I also hope that he has a car. It’d be nice if I didn’t have to ride the bus back to Crystal’s in the middle of the night. But I’m prepared. I burned my yellow dress today (sorta). I own a strip club. I can ride the bus after midnight. I’m one of the weirdos on the bus.

  A bunch of other spicy nightlife types are sharing the table with me, the same table I shared with Max a few days ago. I stare at my phone and pretend they’re not there, but I’m obviously way too cute to ignore. (I put in some extra effort for this date.) A guy starts talking to me. “You waiting for someone, mamacita? How ’bout you come home with me.”

  I respond, “Get out of my face, dirtbag” so fast, crowd management was obviously my first language. Two other guys get the same treatment. I ain’t no ho—that’s something I’ve firmly established over the last two days.

  At nine-thirty I feel like an idiot. I’ve watched at least twenty people eat dinner and I can’t take it anymore. I’ve made a fool of myself. Max isn’t coming. Maybe he didn’t even check Instagram. Who knows. My whole future could have died with Max’s phone battery. Maybe he went to work and forgot his charger at home. My mind is trying to provide me with an explanation to save me from a total breakdown at the taco truck. Max would know about this because he studies brains. If he shows, I’ll ask him.

  Also, I’m starving. I think. At this point, I can’t identify what’s the matter with me. Just so I don’t start crying from low blood sugar, I get in line. I thought Max was my real relationship, but maybe it was all in my head. When he said he didn’t want to be together, maybe he meant it. Crystal is right and I’m just cyberstalking him.

  I can add cyberstalking to my list of things to atone for: check fraud, theft of intellectual property, charging rich guys thirty-five grand to date strippers (I’m still kind of proud of that, though), and parking in handicapped spaces (in a stolen car). Speaking of which, I should make sure I’m cool with the police. I’m pretty sure I am, but Denise was too busy arresting Kobra to peace out officially. Maybe I still need to get a piece of paper with a stamp on it.

  Crystal is right. I probably shouldn’t have been in Max’s face online. I probably should have…I don’t know…joined the biology department and tried to get into one of his labs. No—that’s stalking, too. It’s like I only know how to stalk people. That’s how I landed JP, too. I’m a stalker.

  “Hola, what would you like?” a voice interrupts my shame spiral. Thank God, but also ouch—I’m at the front of the line.

  “Um, I’m sorry, I didn’t look at the menu yet.” I glance around. “Is it on that board?”

  He points and says, “Side of the truck.” It’s a giant sign. There are a bunch of choices, but it’s all confusing because it’s half in Spanish.

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Depends on what you like.”

  Someone behind me says, “Jesus.”

  “I’ll take the tacos,” I say without even reading. There has to be an order of tacos. “Vegetarian ones.” #Brenda.

  I also don’t know what sides or salsa I want. “Maybe I’ll order for the guy I’m meeting.” If he doesn’t show I’m going to have to carry a bunch of tacos home on the bus…but if he does show, I’ll have to wait in line for another half an hour. The guy behind me looks like he’s ready to pull a gun on me so I just say, “And I’ll take a burrito. Surprise me.”

  Now I’m sitting at a table with a bunch of people, a couple of dogs, and two plates. No Max in sight.

  “Excuse me, someone’s sitting here,” I say to a guy about to sit in front of Max’s plate.

  He rolls his eyes and then saves about five inches on the end of the bench for Max.

  “Are you gonna eat those?” another dude asks me. He can’t get over the fact that I’m sitting in front of two plates of uneaten food. Neither can I.

  “I’m waiting for someone.”

  He’s not coming and all I can think is What am I going to do with this burrito? It was ten bucks. I might have Kobra’s money but damn, $10 is a lot for a burrito.

  It’s shapeless and huge. Nothing to do but Instagram it. I don’t even write a caption. The uneaten burrito speaks for itself.

  Immediately, people start commenting with crying emojis. Crystal was right. These random people I don’t even know are the only ones responding to my posts. My online shit did nothing but drive Max away.

  I take a sad bite of my taco and set it back down. I don’t think I can eat, but the taco is fucking amazing so I inhale it.

  I refresh my Instagram just one more time. There are a ton of notifications, including one from @BlackEinstein314. My heart soars and my pulse races. It could be something bad, but I’m optimistic.

  It’s not a comment. It’s a like. Instagram tells me that @BlackEinstein314 likes one of my posts.

  Please let it be the picture of the two of us on the scenic overlook. Please.

  It is! That’s as good a declaration as any that Max is into me and that he has forgiven me.

  So where the hell is he?

  As I’m looking at the screen, he comments. I don’t love you, too.

  A smile breaks out on my face like the morning sun on a cold winter’s day. I’m bursting—he doesn’t love me. I’m pretty sure that means he loves me. Or maybe that he likes me. I don’t know, but it feels good.

  “Mia.” I turn, half expecting Max, even though I know the voice belongs to someone else. I see JP, dressed casually, like he’s about ready to drive to a winery in Sonoma. “Mia,” he says again. “Thank God I found you.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “You told the whole world, right? Instagram.”

  I don’t know what to say. Why exactly is he here? He proposed. I left the house. I invited another guy out for tacos on Instagram. To me, it seems like we’re done.

  “I love you, Mia. I shouldn’t have proposed the other day. I didn’t realize how badly you were injured and how extensive your memory loss was. You aren’t acting like yourself.” He shakes his head as if confounded. “I saw your Instagram posts. Burning your clothes in a trash barrel and…taking the bus—I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I’m worried.”

  That’s nice of him. “I’m fine, JP.”

  “I’m not even mad that you invited the house sitter out to tacos. I want to take you to a doctor and get everything back to normal, back to the way it was. I see now that you’re just not yourself. That was a serious head injury.”

  “Going back to normal is exactly what I don’t want. I’m not that person anymore. I don’t even like her.”

  “I was only gone for five days, Mia. How could everything be that different?” He gestures to the crowd that doesn’t include Max. “The house sitter isn’t even here. You’re waiting for no one. Please come h
ome with me.”

  The Ferrari does look good.

  “Max is coming,” I say. He liked that post. Any dummy could figure out what that means. He’s coming and he’s forgiven me.

  “Everything was so perfect before. It was so beautiful.”

  I think for a second before coming clean with him. “JP, it was beautiful in pictures. But none of those pictures were true. They were staged and filtered, just like my life. It was all spin.”

  He shakes his head. “No. Some of it was real.”

  Did he really not know? “I lied about everything. I lied to you. The business was all facade, my image was all facade, I was in trouble with the cops. I charged you for matchmaking and then set myself up with you.”

  He draws his eyebrows together. “You faked your way into my life. Sure, I was mad. But hey, it’s what you do. It’s what we all do. What am I? I was born with this money. I’m not brilliant. I pretend every day to be as smart and good as people think I am, but it’s an act. You, though—you made it on your own. That is impressive. You faked your way to the top. I’m not mad. I’m proud of you.”

  Faked my way to the top—that is pretty cool. No one at the top deserves to be there, so what does it matter that I faked it? He’s right.

  “Just get in the Ferrari. Let’s go get a cocktail somewhere nice and then go home. Tomorrow I’m going to find you the best doctor in LA.”

  If he had told me all this five days ago, if he hadn’t been gone when I’d lost my memory, I would have fallen right back into my place at his side. But…I don’t know now.

  Max texts: If you’re in line, I’ll take the special!

  He follows it up with a pic of him in the helmet. On my way. Sorry I’m late! Have been in fMRI room telling the truth all day. Fixed lie detector. Learned a few things about myself…

  I remember that there are no phones allowed in the fMRI room. He didn’t even find out about our taco date until the “I don’t love you, too” text a few minutes ago.