Unwritten

by Charles Martin

  “So, what’s so important?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “Not good enough.”

  She responded quickly and without measure. A true emotional response. Uninhibited. She was yelling. “ ’Cause it hurts. ’Cause I don’t want to talk about it. ’Cause I can’t. Haven’t ever…” She hid her scarred wrist under the other.

  Steady touched my arm. “A minute please?” I followed him outside. He slid the cabin door closed behind me. She sat arms crossed, glaring through the glass, shut out. Liking the idea that we were talking about her behind her back about as much as the fact that she had to beg us to get her way. The smell of salt washed over us. He spoke softly. “Go with her.” He waited. Hands in his lap. Silence was response enough.

  “Why?” I finally asked.

  He pulled out a fingernail clipper and began trimming his nails. Trimmed three before speaking. “Because you need this.”

  “Me? This is about her.” I waved a finger in the air. “This has got nothing to do with—”

  He closed his eyes. “It has everything to do with you.”

  “What could this possibly have to do with me?”

  He clipped a nail, which fell on the deck. His nails were always trimmed short. “That’s for you to figure out.”

  “Steady, you of all people should know that I cannot do this.”

  Another finger. Another clip. “And you of all people should know that you can.”

  I shook my head. “Being around this woman is like walking across a dormant volcano. You’re never quite sure when the mantle is going to blow. My primary thought every time I get within five feet of her is that I want her off my boat.”

  He switched hands. “If you go to France with her, she will be off your boat.”

  “That solves the second problem. Not the first.”

  He shrugged. “She’s an onion.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Multilayered.”

  “Oh, I thought you were going to say she leaves a bad taste in your mouth and brings tears to your eyes.” He didn’t bite. I said, “If she’s an onion, what am I?”

  He spoke matter-of-factly. “A coconut.”

  I tried to deflect. I countered. “Why, ’cause I’m hardheaded?”

  “No, because a steady diet of coconut juice will give you the runs.”

  I was not winning this. “That’s not funny.”

  He slid the trimmers back into his pocket, which meant this conversation was coming to a close and he’d made up his mind.

  I turned and walked back through the door, intent on proving that she’d not thought this through. I stood across from her. “Let’s assume for one minute that I agreed. That I said I’d go.” She let out a deep breath. “You’ve got other really big problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “Crossing the ocean. You don’t have a passport and you can’t get one without some black market help.”

  She looked away. Her voice softened. “I already have one.”

  “I’m sure Katie Quinn has one. I’m not so sure that”—I pointed at her—“you do.”

  She nodded. “I have a passport.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve had it since I was fifteen.”

  “But—”

  “Katie Quinn is not my real name.”

  Even Steady looked surprised. He asked, “It’s not?”

  “ ‘Katie Quinn’ is the name I created when I needed it.”

  “It’ll never work.”

  “It worked for Jason Bourne.”

  “He’s fictional.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been traveling back and forth to France for years without anyone knowing it.”

  “How?”

  “It’s simple, I make myself look like someone else.”

  I didn’t respond. Steady smiled at me and whispered, “See, you two have more in common than you thought.” I brushed him off.

  “I’ll pay you. I can pay you more than you make in a year. Or five years.”

  “You don’t know how much I make.”

  “I’ve seen how you live. It can’t be much.”

  “I don’t want your money.” I leaned forward. “And even if I did, you couldn’t afford me.”

  “ ’Course I could. I could buy everything you own ten thousand times.”

  “What’s my trust worth?”

  “Please don’t make me beg any more than I already have.”

  Steady sat back. Almost smiling. He knew she was winning and he almost seemed to enjoy the banter.

  “We have to go to the bank.” She pulled a small key with a rope fob from her front pocket. “Safe-deposit box.” She’d already begun planning our trip.

  “You mean, I have to go to the bank.”

  She nodded.

  “What’s in the box?”

  “Passport.”

  “What else?”

  “You’ll see when you open the box.”

  Steady had now crossed his hands across his lap and was smiling ear to ear. I returned to her. “Katie—”

  “My name’s not Katie.”

  “Okay, unnamed woman. I’ll get the passport, but I can’t go with you to France.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  “Please.”

  “Why can’t you go alone?”

  “Because you can go places I can’t.”

  “I thought that was the point of you having this other identity.”

  “I need someone.”

  “You can hire someone there. It would be simpler. You don’t need me specifically.”

  This time she turned. Eyes glassy. Voice softer. Pain surfacing. “Because—there’s something there, and… I don’t want to face it alone.”

  Now we were getting closer to the truth. I waited.

  “I changed my name when I was about sixteen. I’ve spent my adult life becoming someone that I just buried in the Gulf of Mexico ’cause I don’t want to be her anymore. So now, I’m trying not to be two people, not just one. That leaves me without many options. I don’t know—” She was crying now. “Who is me now? How in the world would I know me if and when I met me? I’m not sure I’d know me if I bumped into me in the street. I just know I was born one person, I became a second, and now I’m trying not to be either one while I search the ocean floor for a third. How screwed up of a human being do you have to be to get where I am? I mean, how many more me’s do I get before there’s no more me? Can you answer that?”

  This had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. “I cannot.”

  “Me, either. All I know is that unbecoming me is…” She shook her head. Tears dripped. “… Like dying every day. Over and over. I go to bed dead, wake up dead.” She shook her head. “I’m caught in the middle, afraid to laugh for fear of resurrecting someone I can’t be.”

  Quiet settled around us. Moments passed. I pressed her. “Can I ask you something and you give me an honest answer?”

  She nodded. “I’ll try. Right now I’m pretty deep in three-dimensional lies.”

  I stood, increasing the distance between us. “Are these tears real or are you acting?”

  She wiped her face. “I think they’re real, but to be honest, I’m not sure I’d know if they weren’t.” Arms crossed. She stared through me, across the ocean. “I’m going to France to face something and I’m not sure I can face it alone.”

  Talking with her reminded me of the week I taught myself to drive a clutch. My neck was sore for a few days. Problem was that embedded between those lines was the truth. “Fair enough.” A breeze pressed against the trees. I’m not quite sure what made me say what I said next. “I’ll go.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t know whether to kiss me, hug me, or shake my hand, so she did none of them. She brushed her face and wiped her palms on her cut-off jeans. “Well, thank you.”

  “You do realize, of course, that whoever flies us
can’t know that you are you.”

  “They won’t.”

  “And neither can the customs people who check our passports.”

  She paused for effect. “You just worry about you and I’ll worry about me.”

  “And you’re sure you want to do this?”

  “Positive.”

  “You’d better be, because if you thought things were bad before, let the world in on our little secret and…”

  She let out a deep breath. One she’d been holding. “I know what’s at risk.”

  If I had any illusion of being in control, it was over. I was now along for the ride and I couldn’t see the track ahead. Space Mountain. And while I had several problems about to surface, only one was immediate. I had to find my passport and make myself look like the photo. I glanced past her. Way past her. Off my island and back a decade. And maybe, clinging to the edge and cracking fringe of my voice, lurked the anger and pain that time, oceans, sunsets, and tides had not washed away. “You better, because if you don’t, you will shortly.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Katie said she thought we’d be gone a week. Maybe two. Given the uncertainty of a return date, I winterized the boats in my slip on the southeast side of Chokoloskee. Little more than a rickety dock where I moored Gone Fiction and raised Jody out of the water on a motorized lift. I left the batteries charging and paid a kid named Lenny, who lived in a trailer on the docks working the bait shack, a few bucks to keep the pelicans from crapping on either and to wash the boats when they did. He nodded and took my money.

  I keep an old Dodge diesel truck in storage. I crank it enough to charge the batteries but really only use it to tow Jody. I raised the storage unit door and pulled the truck out. Katie and Steady climbed in. She wiped the dust off the dash, adjusted the AC vents and the thermostat. “Why do you drive a diesel?”

  “I like it.”

  Another adjustment to the vent. “So you’re one of those people.”

  “What kind is that?”

  She fiddled with the thermostat, talking to herself. “Cold or hot, make up your mind.” She turned back to me. “The kind that compensates by owning a big, hooked-up truck.”

  “Are you one of those rich actresses who compensates for their isolated loneliness by owning twenty cars?”

  She lifted her feet onto the dash, tucking her knees into her chest. “That’s not fair.”

  “No?”

  Exasperated, she turned the thermostat all the way down. “Seventeen.”

  We could have hung meat inside the cab of the truck. “Seventeen, what?”

  “Cars.” She rested her head on her arms across her knees. “You’re still compensating.”

  “Or I could be a guy who pulls a boat, who needs it.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Compensating. You didn’t make a big enough splash in life the first time around so now you’ve got to do it with an engine that sounds like a tractor.”

  She had a point so I said, “I’ll bet you own a Porsche, don’t you?”

  A nod. “Four.”

  “And one of those black Range Rovers like they drive in James Bond movies.”

  “Two. Identical.”

  “Why two?”

  “So I have one to drive while the other is in the shop.” She reached for the thermostat again. I placed my hand on hers, stopping her. “Can I help you with the temperature in here?”

  Steady was shaking his head, laughing to himself. He said, “You two will get along fabulously.”

  She shrugged him off and said, “Yeah, it’s cold one minute, hot the next. I don’t know what the problem is, but I don’t have this problem in any of my cars.”

  “Well, maybe if you left the knob alone long enough, the temperature would settle somewhere rather than fluctuating between two extremes.”

  She twisted the knob, returning the setting to “snow,” and looked out her window. “You got that right.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Somewhere between two extremes.”

  We rolled down Tamiami Trail with frost hanging off our eyebrows. Near the Shark Valley Everglades National Park she turned the knob to “sweat” and we did. Around the ValuJet memorial she rolled down her window and then twisted it back to “snow” in Coral Gables. As we turned onto the Mile, Steady muttered beneath his breath, “I don’t think I was this cold at the Battle of the Bulge.” A few blocks in and the otherwise calm Katie shrieked at the top of her lungs. I jerked, slammed on the brakes, and we both stared at her. She was pointing.

  At Starbucks.

  Steady tried to smile. “You’d like some coffee?”

  She nodded.

  I pulled into the driveway and spoke at the glass in front of me. “You could just ask.”

  She muttered a repentant “Sorry.” She turned to me. “Okay, this is how I want it and it’s very important that you say it just like this.”

  I nodded obediently, half listening.

  She said, “I want a tall triple latte with seven shots of caramel, three shots mocha, one Splenda, half packet of NutraSweet, half shot of regular espresso, half shot of decaf, extra foam, upside down, and tell them not to burn the foam.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Extremely. We’re talking about coffee.”

  “No. Coffee, I can order. This—this is something else.”

  I stepped out of the van. She hollered behind me. “If they can’t make that then tell them I want a double tall nonfat, half caf, extra hot latte with whipped cream, vanilla, hazelnut, almond, raspberry, and toffee nut syrup, extra foam, two packets of Sweet’N Low, one packet of sugar, half pack of Equal, and three shots caramel sauce.”

  “Are you drinking coffee or baking a cake?”

  “Hold on, I’m not finished.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Now pay close attention. Actually…” She grabbed a sheet of paper and began writing, talking out loud as she wrote. “I also want a venti seven shot, three shot decaf, and one and a half pumps amaretto, two percent, seven NutraSweets, extra whip, extra chocolate, extra sprinkles, java chip Frappuccino light blended coffee.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?”

  She waved me off. “Here, I wrote it down. Just get all three.”

  I walked inside, approached the counter, held up my sheet of paper, and said, “Kid, I apologize for what I’m about to do to you.” Then I read verbatim the list she’d given me.

  The guy said, “Are you for real?”

  I slowly shook my head. “You have no idea.”

  He nodded knowingly and I handed him the sheet of paper. He reread it. “I feel for you, bro.” He shouted something nonsensical back to some guy who returned with a “recall.”

  The guy behind the counter returned to me. “Anything for you?”

  “Small coffee, please.”

  He smiled, poured the coffee, and handed it to me. “On the house.” Another glance at the truck followed by a long look down the street. He rested one hand on top of the cash register the same way reminiscent men do at bars. “Katie Quinn used to come in here and order the same thing.” He tapped his name tag. “Used to call me by my name.” He nodded. “Once tipped me a hundred dollars.” He punched a few keys on the cash register. “Nineteen dollars and seventeen cents.”

  I handed him a twenty.

  In about six minutes, the guy baking the coffee concoctions placed Katie’s three cups on the counter, along with a fourth small black for Steady. He slipped the little cardboard sleeve over each and then wedged them into a cardboard carry tray. Curious, I sampled one of hers. The stuff hit my tongue and I almost puked syrupy coffee puree across two walls. I passed on testing the second and third.

  I slid a hundred dollar bill into the tip jar and returned to the van, where I found her foaming like Pavlov’s dog. I set the tray in her lap and her entire body smiled.

  I wound through the Grove. Steady talked as I drove. “I’ve arranged for a plane for tomorrow evening. Tonight
, I’ve reserved two rooms at the Biltmore.”

  Katie took out a piece of paper, wrote, sipped, and sipped some more. By the time we got to the bank, her legs were bouncing, her head was on a swivel, and her eyes were darting left and right at a frantic pace. There was no telling how fast her heart was beating. She handed me the key, told me what to say, and I walked in. The people took absolutely no special notice of me. A man in a suit walked me to a room, inserted his key, asked me to do the same. I did. The man pulled out the drawer and left. I pulled the curtain and opened the drawer.

  Katie Quinn was either stupid—which I seriously doubted—or she’d been considering door number three long before I ever mentioned it to her. On top lay her passport, which I didn’t open. I wanted to but figured it really wasn’t my business. Okay, so then I thought better of it and I opened it up to find a picture of a woman who showed a vague resemblance to Katie Quinn. Maybe just the eyes and the cheek lines. The woman called herself “Isabella Dubois Claveaux Desouches.”

  Beside it was a cell phone with a car charger. Beneath that lay money. And lots of it. Almost two hundred and fifty thousand in American dollars and nearly that much in euros. All in stacks of hundreds. In a small flannel bag next to that was jewelry—jeweled watch, a diamond ring, another colored ring, and a diamond tennis bracelet and necklace. Per her instructions, I extracted twenty thousand of each currency, grabbed the passport, phone, and the jewelry, and returned the box to its locked home. I stuffed my loot into a red bag they’d given me for my convenience and walked to the van, looking over my shoulder.

  In the truck, I handed her the bag and said nothing. She took it then tapped Steady on the shoulder. “I need a few things from the costume store, if you don’t mind.” It struck me that she tapped his shoulder and yet I was driving.

  A few miles later, I parked and left it running in front of Bozo’s Party Store. Katie gave us each a list with specific instructions to get exactly what she’d written. “It’s very important that you not deviate.”

  She slid me a hundred and raised both eyebrows. “And I want the receipt.” I shook my head and we walked into the store with our assignments. Twenty minutes later, after having occupied the attendant for most of that time, we walked out with two bags of enough stuff to make one person look like six. Three different wigs of varying colors and lengths, fake eyelashes, false eyebrows, differing size things that women stuff inside their bras or wrap around their chest to make their boobs look bigger or smaller, peel-off tattoos, various colors and sizes of panty hose, four pairs of fake eyeglasses, and enough makeup to last her a year.