by Tosca Lee
2
* * *
I wake the next afternoon beside an empty shot glass. I stumble to the kitchen to find the groceries put away, flashlight waiting by the door, batteries swapped out. There’s a notepad on the table with a wobbly spiral scribble where I attempted to get a pen to work. Apparently it never did.
The letter I reread at least fifty times is nowhere to be found. I finally find a piece of it in the ashes of the living room’s wood-burning stove. The bear in the bedroom is turned toward the corner.
At least I had the sense to cork and put away the tequila. I find it shoved to the back of a cabinet, only an inch of it gone. Whatever I did in my prior life, heavy drinking was obviously not a part of it.
Even burned to ash, I can recite every word of the letter, picture each determined arch of the script. Whether I ran from the mob (my latest theory, given the almost alarming amount of cash I brought with me to Maine) or stole drug money from that abusive boyfriend, I was resolute by the time I wrote it. And though I remember only unhelpful details—that I grew up in a yellow house and had a high school friend who lost his finger in a tubing accident—I know for sure I was no idiot.
Your life depends on it. Others’ lives depend on it.
So this is what it is to be dead: afternoon breakfast of cold cuts and a banana. Maintenance on the composting commode. Boat to shore to take in the trash. Head an hour out of town to purchase three boxes of hair color and cheap shades. Drive back to town to the local fly shop for supplies. Return to cabin, dump everything on kitchen table. Dye roots so the scrubby patch looks far less conspicuous. Eat dinner in front of the first season of Roswell because it’s the only DVD set in the cabin’s library I haven’t seen yet.
Work at the table until dawn.
All this time, the letter is running in an endless loop through my head.
* * *
Two days later, I am out of cold cuts and sick of bananas. I need to make a run to the Fly Shop and pick up gas for the boat.
I grab my bank card and driver’s license and then pause. Who is that girl in the picture? Is she a victim? A criminal? I try to see her in each light. I can’t. But what else is there, when you’re living a false identity?
I flip the license over. It was issued in Maine, though I know for a fact the Center I woke up in is in Indiana. My identity might be fake, but the license itself is not, despite the suspiciously good photo. I wonder for the fiftieth time if I’m in a witness protection program. And for the forty-ninth time, I hope to God if I am that I’m living far enough away from whatever it was I witnessed.
Trust your decision, Clare said more than once to me. But it was so much easier to find peace in that mantra when she was here.
In town, I drive slowly by the small public library. I tell myself I should see if they have a DVD collection. But I’m really thinking about the computers inside. It’d be an easy enough search to look for a fatal car accident earlier this month.
An easy trace, too.
Don’t go digging.
I stop instead at Citgo to fill the Bronco and the boat’s plastic gas tank before heading to the Fly Shop.
My case of flies—streamers, mayflies, beetles, and caddies—is light but full. The owner’s wife, Madge, who can no longer tie them since her stroke, inspects a full fifteen of them before squinting up at me.
“How long did you say you been tying flies?” she says.
“As long as I can remember.”
“Well, you didn’t lie when you said you were good. I’ll give you that.”
No. But I’m pretty sure I lied more than once about how I learned. I don’t remember whose hands I watched weave thread and feathers into colorful nymphs and midges, but I never forgot the patterns.
I convince her to lower her commission if only by five percent—it’s not like either one of us is going to get rich at any rate—and ten minutes later, I’m out the door with some cash in my pocket. Not that I’m strapped.
The Food Mart is busy in the middle of the day, no fewer than five people waiting in line at the deli counter. I scan the register and then the produce section on my way in, an empty five-gallon water jug in each arm. I drop the jugs in the bin and walk along the ends of several aisles.
“Can I help you find something?”
I whirl around and come face-to-face with a friendly-looking man in his fifties. Tanned face, white bushy brows, sunspots on his forearms.
“Yeah. There’s a guy who works here—he helped me with some wine the other night.”
“Wine’s this way,” he says, gesturing for me to follow. “Do you know what you’re looking for?”
“Actually, no. He made a recommendation and I forgot what it was. I was wondering if he’s working today.”
“Was it Dave?”
“I, uh, didn’t get his name. About my age . . . brown hair?” Blue eyes.
“Oh, Luka. I’ll see if he’s gone to lunch yet,” he says.
Luka. Definitely not from around here. I loiter near a display of saltines, canned tomatoes, and chili beans. A moment later a familiar form strides toward me down the aisle. I shove my hands in my pockets and hope my smile is friendly enough to have warranted his kindness the night I was an ass.
“Bronco!” He grins. The stubble on his cheeks is gone. He’s got a nice mouth and really great jawline, and with that hair I wonder why he’s not teaching ski school in Utah or modeling underwear or something.
“Yeah.” I give a little laugh. “Keyless Bronco girl.”
“I hear you’re back for that cider.”
“No, I just came to get some water and”—I dig three twenties out of my pocket—“pay you back. Thanks, by the way.”
I hold the money toward him, but his eyes are searching mine. I slide my fingers up to the hat covering my stubby patch of hair. His gaze follows. I drop my hand. “Here.”
“That’s too much.”
“Actually, it’s thirty-eight cents short, but I don’t have change.”
He frowns. “I never gave you a receipt.”
“I remember what everything cost. Take it.”
He slowly folds the bills and slides them into his pocket. “You need help with that water?”
Ten minutes later he’s following me out of the Food Mart, a jug in each arm. After loading them in the back of the truck, he says, “So, Bronco. I have an idea.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You’re obviously not from around here—”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Okay, yeah.” He laughs a little. “You been to the Mad Moose yet?”
“I’ve been pretty much nowhere.”
“I thought I’d go into town and grab a sandwich. Join me.”
I had been planning to head back, but it’s not like I have a full afternoon planned. And aside from the Fly Shop, Food Mart, and gas station, I’ve never been anywhere in town.
I shrug. “Sure.”
His face lights up, and I decide there must be some woefully slim pickings around here to warrant a smile like that.
He unties his green apron on the way to his Cherokee, then gets the door for me. It’s a whole three-quarters of a mile to the restaurant on the public dock where resident feral ducks dart between outdoor tables fighting over the intermittent dropped French fry. It’s warm enough that the place is half full. He pulls my chair out for me, and as I sit down I realize this is the most people I’ve been around since my arrival over a month ago.
“Were you really coming here before I showed up?” I glance at him over my menu.
“Nope.”
We order, and he sits back and regards me. He’s the kind of ruggedly pretty that makes me wonder if I went for his type before—and if that’s what landed me here. I remember exactly one date from my past, if it can even be called that, when some kid’s mom dropped us off at the mall with thirty dollars to see a movie in sixth grade. I don’t remember the name of the movie—or the kid.
“How do you like Maine?
” he says.
“It’s quiet. You live in town?”
“I’m renting a studio over Charlie’s down the street. It’s not bad. I basically hear whoever’s playing at the Dropfly on the weekend for free. So, Bronco, do you have a name?”
“Emily. Porter,” I add.
“Emily,” he says, trying it out. And then he leans forward, hand extended. It’s warm, his grip firm. “Luka Novak.”
“So what brought you to Greenville?” I ask, fiddling with a straw wrapper.
“The fishing.”
“Really?”
“No.” He laughs, though it sounds more ironic than anything. His eyes have turned gray as the drifting clouds. “A fresh start, I guess.”
My skin actually prickles.
It’s then that I begin to notice a few people at the next table over staring in our direction. Mine, specifically. I reach toward my ear, checking that the scrubby patch of hair is covered by my ball cap. It is. I tug the hat a little lower.
“Hey,” Luka says quietly. “Everything okay?”
“I feel like people are staring.”
“It’s because you’re pretty,” he says.
I stammer something stupid about thinking it has more to do with not looking like I’m from around here.
When our food arrives I busy myself spreading mayo on my burger, glad for something to do.
Luka offers me some of his lobster roll, but I’m suspicious of anything that looks like a scorpion, no matter what it tastes like. He eats with relish, shaking his head with appreciation after each bite. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Bronco.”
I’m just happy to be eating something that isn’t made of cold cuts or my cooking. And to be socializing like a normal person, the sun shining on the parts of my face not obscured by my Red Sox cap.
I glance up when I realize he’s stopped eating.
“What?”
“What are you doing Saturday night?” he says.
“Working, probably.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Pretty much every night.”
“Doing what?”
“I, um, tie fishing flies.”
“At night?”
I drag a French fry through some ketchup, flick another onto the ground, and immediately regret it because it incites a stampede of feral ducks—not to mention several more gazes our way. “Yeah. I guess I’m kind of a night owl.”
“Come catch a band with me for an hour or two.”
“Wow. Groceries, lunch, live music . . .”
“I just got in last month and haven’t had a chance to make many friends yet. I’m guessing you haven’t, either.” He smiles when he says it, though there’s a tension in his posture that doesn’t match his offhanded shrug. I don’t get it. A guy this good-looking and outgoing just can’t be that desperate.
The next table over is talking about a bear one of them shot on a hunt the day before, and orders a round of celebratory shots. I was envious of the couples and groups seated around us when we first sat down. Now, as laughter erupts from the table and a few more stares bypass them to turn my way, I feel jittery and more isolated than before. I told myself to live a quiet life, to fall in love, even. Obviously, the former me didn’t think this through; I might make friends, might even be attracted to a guy like Luka. But I’ll never be able to tell the truth. And what kind of friendship—let alone relationship—is that?
“It’s the fall spawn and the weather’s good. There won’t be much demand once it gets cold.” I’m not exactly desperate for money, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m going to be at the Dropfly at eight—”
“I thought you could hear them from your place for free.”
“I can. But I don’t have Guinness on tap.”
“Ah . . .”
“So if you can, come by. If not, we’ll do it another time.”
“Okay.”
He asks for the check and I try to pay—he bailed me out the other night, after all. But he waves me off and lays one of the twenties I gave him on the table.
As we return to the Cherokee, I notice a guy in a pair of khakis and a black jacket standing near the small crowd outside the ice cream place, staring in our direction. What is it with people here? I glance at Luka, but he’s opening my door. When I climb in and look over again, the man is gone.
By the time Luka drops me off at my truck, I’m relieved to head back up the hill. But I keep one eye on the rearview mirror all the way.
3
* * *
Sunlight is slanting through the windows of the living room by the time I wake on the sofa. I shield my eyes and squint at the clock in the kitchen. After 4:00 P.M.
That can’t be right.
I shove up, clammy beneath the down comforter from the bedroom. But when I twitch it aside and drop my feet to the rug, I pause. My legs are bare. So are my arms. I glance from the clock to my legs with rising confusion.
My name is Emily Porter . . . I am in a cabin on a lake in the north woods of Maine. I stayed up late making—I glance at the table—nymphs and streamers, by the look of it. It’s September 25. It was warm yesterday and the day before, when I went into town. Warm days translate into very cool nights this time of year. Hence the comforter, which gets too warm with my sweats. I exhale. No wonder I threw off my clothes.
I drag the comforter off the sofa to carry it back to the bedroom, but my foot tangles and my knee hits the coffee table. I stumble away and gather up the comforter before I trip on it again. That’s when I notice something blue sprawled beneath the edge of the table.
A faded towel from the bathroom. I lean down and pick it up. It’s damp.
I drop the comforter back onto the sofa and take the towel to the bathroom. After hanging it on the rack, I grab my toothbrush and root around for the toothpaste. At the sight of myself in the mirror, I stop. Tilting my head, I slide my fingers into the thick side of my hair. It, too, is damp. And now I’m chilled.
I glance around me, walk into the bedroom, for once ignoring the bear. The floor and bed are empty. I pad out to the kitchen. The table is filled with multicolored bits of feather, glues, thread scraps, and an impressive array of flies. The spool on the bobbin is empty. A half-finished lure is still in the vise.
I don’t remember running out of thread. Granted, I’ve also woken up more than once to find the mustard on the counter after a forgotten predawn sandwich—further proof that my meds are off. But if I showered sometime this morning, where the heck are my clothes?
In the tiny laundry room just off the kitchen I rifle through the basket, peer in the washer and dryer. In the living room again, I shake out the comforter, check beneath the sofa. Hands on hips, I take in the DVD case sitting open on top of the TV, a stack of board games on a listing double shelf just to the right of it, the wooden coasters on the coffee table next to the year-old copy of Discover Maine magazine . . .
Clare’s tao cross is lying on top of it.
I know I left that hanging in the truck.
I rush to the bedroom, pull on jeans and a T-shirt. Not bothering with shoes, I hurry out the front door. Outside, the sun has dappled the water gold against the pebbly shore. The johnboat is beached, the rope tied to a nearby fir exactly the way I left it. But there—at the end of the floating swim dock: a rumpled pile of clothes.
What was I doing? Swimming in my underwear in broad daylight? It’s somewhere in the sixties. Not exactly swimming weather. And I have never once had the urge to jump off that wooden platform.
I walk to the beach and drop a foot ankle-deep in the water. It isn’t freezing, but it’s cold enough to wake a person up.
Or merit a comforter after getting out.
I spend the next hour trying to retrace my steps. I can’t imagine that I drove into town in dripping-wet underwear. What did I do—swim to shore just to retrieve Clare’s cross? Why?
But it’s impossible to retrace what you can’t remember.
I begin to wonder if my activity the other evening had nothing to do with tequila.
Back inside, I sit down with the tao cross, turn it between my fingers before looping the string over my head. And then a thought makes my hands go cold. It’s not possible that I had company—is it? No. I never told Luka where I was staying, and no one followed me home. Even Madge at the Fly Shop has only my box number at the post office. Still, I clasp the cross so hard that the string digs into my neck—and then goes slack as the pendant slides right off its bail.
I sigh, pull the string over my head, and move to the kitchen table where I grab my bottle of head cement and brush some on the end of the thick wire bail. I’m just about to push it back into the hole at the top of the cross when I pause . . . and reach up to turn my work lamp on.
Tilting the cross this way and that, I see it wasn’t a trick of the light; there’s something curled within the tiny opening. I pick up my needle and press the tip against the lining, slide it upward until I can grab the edge of it with my tweezers. I pull slowly, turning the cross as I do. The paper comes out in an elongated spiral half the length of the cross.
I spread the tiny scroll open on the table with the tweezers and a fingernail. A series of minuscule numbers is written on the inside.
385911571269
Twelve digits. No sequence I recognize.
This was Clare’s cross. Did she know this was here when she gave it to me? I don’t recall seeing a number like this associated with anything religious. Was this series, this code—if it’s even that—intended for her or someone else before her?
Or for me?
I squint at the numbers. Too many for a phone number. A bank account, then. A tracking number. A ticket number. A bar code. A serial number. Latitude and longitude. I rifle through every series of numbers I can remember—even in reverse order—but I have never seen this sequence before. If I had a computer, I could search for it, but out on the Dorito I don’t even have a landline.
I try it as a number with commas. I try adding them together. I try finding the difference between the first two, then the second two, and so on. I add up the occurrence of the digits.
