"Yes, there was." Another long inhalation, exhaling smoke through nostrils like a dragon. "Whatever. Not gonna argue with you about that. What I came here to tell you was that I did some digging."
"What do you mean, digging?" I need something to do with my hands, somewhere to look that isn't Logan.
"I looked around for information on you." He says it quietly, flicking his thumb across the butt of the cigarette, ash dropping away and scattering in the breeze.
"Did you find anything?" I almost don't want to ask.
I pluck the lighter from his hand, and it is warm from his palm. Translucent green plastic, a centimeter or two of liquid sloshing at the bottom. Black tab, silver wheel, and a mouth for the flame. I roll my thumb over the wheel, creating sparks. Do it again while pressing down on the black tab, watch flame spurt to life. The pack of cigarettes is on the rooftop by the toe of his boot. He sits cross-legged beside me, shamelessly, openly eyeing my body, my cleavage, my thighs, the black sliver of silk over my core. I reach over, take the pack of cigarettes. He watches me, but does nothing. I withdraw one of the cylinders and fit the tan, speckled end to my lips, as I watched him do. Spark flame, touch the flame tip to the end of the cigarette. When smoke rises, I inhale.
"You're going to cough your brains out," Logan warns.
Smoke fills my lungs, too much, too hot, thick and burning. I hack and hack and hack, eyes watering.
"Why do you do this?" I ask.
He shrugs. "Habit, one I can't quite quit. Not that I've really tried, though, I guess." He takes a drag. "Try pulling it into your mouth first, and then inhaling. Or just don't inhale. It's a shitty habit, absolutely horrible for you. I feel a responsibility to tell you that you shouldn't start smoking."
He doesn't try to stop me, though, doesn't take the cigarette from me. Just watches as I do as he suggested, and though I still cough, it's not as bad as the first time. I become dizzy, faint; it is a heady feeling, and I think I understand the attraction of this habit.
"What did you find out, Logan?" I ask, after a few minutes of silence.
He doesn't answer right away. Not for more long minutes of thick, tense silence, smoke rising in a thin curl, an occasional drag for him, for me. I let the silence hang, let it weigh as heavily as the clouds.
I like smoking. It gives me something to do to fill the silence, the taut space between my words and his.
"Information is power." He stabs out his cigarette with a short, angry twist of his wrist. "I want to blackmail you with this, what I found out. Not tell you unless you come with me. But then I'd be no better than Caleb."
I digest what he's insinuating. "You think Caleb knows who I am and isn't telling me?"
"I think he knows more than he's told you, yes." He stands up, unfolding his lean frame, and strides away from me across the rooftop, stopping to put his hands on the waist-high wall separating him from the tumble into space. "Do you remember that day in my house, in the hallway? When I got back from walking Cocoa?"
I swallow hard. "Yes, Logan. I remember."
This is the second time he's brought this up. I remember it all too well. It recurs, a dream, a fantasy, memories assaulting me as I bathe, as I try to sleep, lost details of hands and mouths when I wake up.
To get away from the renewal of the memory, I look up. At the sky. Dark with clouds, hazed with smog and light pollution.
I wish I could see the stars. I wonder what they look like, how I would feel looking up and seeing sky full of scintillating diamond points of light.
His words echo in my soul, throb in my ear, and I am pulled back down by the ache of need in his voice. "You were naked. Every inch of your fucking incredible skin, bare for me. I had you in my arms. I had you, X. I had my hands on you, had you on my lips, on my tongue. But I let you go. I . . . made you walk away." He turns, glances at me. As if he can smell me, as if he can see what lies beneath the fabric of my dress. "I don't think you'll ever understand how much that cost me, to walk away from you. How much self-control that took."
I shake all over. "Logan, I--"
He turns away, resumes staring out at the skyline, speaks over me. "I am haunted by that. I had you, and I let you go. I'm not haunted by the fact that you're gone, though, that I let you get away. It's more the fact that I still know it was the right thing to do. As much as I hate it, as much as it hurts . . . you aren't ready for me."
"That again? What does that mean, Logan?" I stand up now, tug the hem of the dress down. Seven strides, and I'm standing a few feet behind him. "I thought you said you found something out about me."
He shakes his head. "It doesn't mean anything. Never mind."
Logan reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, pulls out a square of folded paper. Holds it, stares at it. The wind plucks at the paper, fluttering the corners, as if it wants to rip it away, keep it from me, whatever is written there. He pivots so he faces me. Steps closer. I stop breathing. I tingle all over. My skin remembers the feel of his skin, the taste of his tongue. I shouldn't. That is not the choice I made. But . . . I can't forget it. And deep down, I don't want to.
"X, when I said there's so much I could say? I don't know how to say it all. I want to take you away, again. Run off with you, make you mine. But that wouldn't be enough for me. I'm a proud man, X. I want you to choose me. And . . . I think you will, someday."
He presses his body against mine, and I feel every inch of him, hard, taut, warm. My breasts flatten against his chest, my hips bump against his. Something in me throbs, aches. Recognizes him, feels pulled by him. I forget everything, in these moments, except how utterly stolen away and carried off into the wild wind I feel, with him.
The paper crinkles against my bicep as he grips me, a hand on my arm, a palm to my cheek.
No . . . don't; I try to form the words.
"Don't, Logan," I whisper, but maybe the words are only a breath, only a sigh, only the minuscule brush of my eyelashes fluttering against my cheek, the sweep of lips against lips.
He does.
He kisses me,
and kisses me,
and kisses me.
And I don't stop him. My traitorous body wants to writhe and meld to his, wants to wrap itself around him. My hands sneak up to his hair, bury in the blond waves, and my throat utters a sigh, and maybe a moan, a feverish, desperate sound.
It is but a moment that we kiss, a single moment.
A fortieth of an hour.
But it is one in which I feel utterly changed, as if some too-loose skin draped over my skeleton is snatched away and my true form is revealed, as if his touch as if his kiss as if his very presence can make me more truly me.
I want to weep.
I want to sag against him and beg him to keep kissing me until I cannot bear any longer the soft and tender intensity.
He backs away, wiping his wrist across his mouth, chest heaving as if desperately battling some inner demon. "Here." He hands me the square of folded paper. "It's your real name."
I feel struck by lightning, wired, surging with too much of everything, too much heat, too much fear, too much doubt, too much need.
He puts a hand to the half wall, as if supporting himself, as if about to leap over and fly away.
"Logan . . ." I don't have anything else I can say.
"You have to decide if you want to know," he says. "Because once you know . . . you can't take it back. Once you start questioning, there's no stopping it."
"I have to know now, don't I?" I ask, almost angry at him. "You posed the question, and now I have to have the answer."
"True." He lets out a breath, moves to walk past me, but stops a breath and a touch away. His indigo eyes meet mine. "You can come with me. We can leave New York." He glances up at the cloud-shrouded sky. "I can take you somewhere far away, and show you the stars."
Could he have heard that wish? Can he see into my mind, read my thoughts? Sometimes I wonder if he can.
"But . . . you won't." He wipes a thumb across my li
ps. "Not yet, anyway."
He almost seems about to kiss me again, and I'm not entirely sure I would survive another stolen kiss, another breathless moment far too close to a man who seems to see far too much of me.
"If you ask the questions, X . . . you can't shy away from the answers when you find them."
I don't watch him leave. I can't. I won't.
I don't dare.
A long, long, painful silence, stretching like a rubber band about to snap. When I'm sure I'm alone, I finally look away from the skyline, from the dark shapes of skyscrapers and apartment blocks, away from the clouds and the dim distant lights. The rooftop is empty once more, but for me and the ghost of Logan's kiss.
I unfold the square of paper.
My cigarette smolders on the white rocks beside me, forgotten.
There on the wrinkled, off-white scrap of paper is a scrawl of messy male handwriting, in all slanting capital letters.
The letters form a name.
My name.
If I could prevent myself from reading it, I almost would. But I don't.
Logan has given me my name.
I both love him for it, and hate him for it.
FIVE
Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro." I whisper, reading. "Isabel."
Is this me? Isabel?
How did Logan find this?
I trace the letters, imagining that I am able to feel the impressions of the pen on the paper, imagining the way his strong fingers gripped the pen and sliced firm concise strokes to create these letters. Twenty-six letters, simple strokes of ink on pulped and flattened wood. All to create a name. An identity.
Isabel.
I stare at the paper, for how long I do not know.
And then I discover something else written in the bottom right-hand corner, printed small.
Ten numbers.
212-555-3233. Beside it, two more letters: LR.
His phone number?
I repeat the numbers in my mind until they are meaningless, shapes in my mind, sounds subvocalized, semantic satiation. Those ten numerals are burned into my brain. I cannot forget them, no more than I could forget the four names that belong to me.
Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro.
I turn on my heel, folding the paper into tiny squares, and stuff it into my bra. Stride to the doorway, down the stairs. Three flights, and out into the building. The hallways are dark and empty, corridors of shadow and moonlight and city light streaming from office windows in rhombuses and trapezoids across thin carpet. I find the elevator, take it to the third floor. I do not have my key, cannot go back to my apartment or to the penthouse. I do not want to go to either place.
I tap hesitantly on Rachel's door.
"Madame X?" A quizzical, sleepy stare. "It's four in the morning."
"I know. I'm sorry. I just--I didn't know where else to go."
"Come in." Fingers rub corners of eyes, feet shuffle across hardwood. "What's up?"
"Do you have a computer?" I ask.
"Sure, of course. Why?"
"Can I use it?" I ask.
"Yeah. What's going on?"
I don't know how to answer. There are too many layers to be able to explain any of them. "I just . . ." I shake my head. "I can't explain."
A shrug. "Okay." A gesture at the corner of the living room, a desk, with a thin silver thing on it. "Go for it. You want some coffee?"
I retrieve the computer, a thin laptop, a logo of an apple with a bite missing adorning the top, which lights up when I lift it open. The icons are the same as on the computer in my apartment, so I have no trouble finding the icon that will take me to the Internet. Rachel watches from the other end of the couch, curious.
I type "Isabel name meaning" into the search bar.
Why? What do I hope to find by searching for meanings in a name?
Isabel means "God is my oath."
Meaningless to me.
Maria, obviously, is a reference to the Virgin Mary, a common enough name in Latin cultures.
De la Vega. It means "of the meadow" and is a name whose bearers historically were among the Spanish nobility.
Navarro holds even less meaning for me, as it merely refers to someone from Navarre, a region in Spain.
There is a cauldron of emotions within me. Boiling, overflowing, weltering. Violent, virulent. But they are all hidden under a layer of ice created by shock.
I have a name.
A real name.
Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro?
"Isabel?" Rachel asks. "Is that your name?"
"I suppose so. I don't know."
Logan could have just made this up. Picked the names at random. How do I know this is me?
Do I feel like Isabel? I don't know.
I look at Rachel. "You had a name, before . . . this. Before you became an apprentice."
A nod. Eyes downcast. "Yeah. Nicole." A breath, a sigh, eyes glancing out the window, seeing not the city but the past. "Nicole Martin."
"And now you're Rachel?"
Another nod. "Yeah. When I was fifteen, I got picked up by a pimp. He called me Dixie, like Dixie sugar. Because I was sweet, because he always wanted more sugar." A fake, low, gruff voice, an impression of a male. "'C'mere, Dixie. Gimme some sugar.'"
"What does that mean? Give me some sugar?"
A smile, quick, amused. "Oh, um . . . like, well, usually it means to kiss someone, like your grandma would tell you to give her some sugar, and it'd mean give her a kiss." The smile vanishes. "But for Deon, it meant get on my knees and suck his dick."
"Oh." I don't know what to say.
"So I was Nicole, and then I was Dixie until Caleb found me, and then I was Three." She brightens. "And now I'm Rachel."
"How . . ." I trail off, and try again to formulate my question. "Do you . . . feel like Rachel? When you think of yourself, who are you?"
A long, long silence. A shrug. "I dunno. I'm still Nicole, in my mind, I guess. There's no one in the world but you and Caleb that know that name, though."
"You don't have a family?"
"Naw. Never had a dad, mom was a druggie, which is how I got hooked myself, watching her use. She OD'd when I was just . . . shit, twelve? Never had no one else, and I ran off when the city tried to place me." Rachel is silent, staring at the past via middle distance. "I guess I'm Rachel now. I feel like that name is me. It's a new me. I can be Rachel, and pretend I never was Nicole or Dixie."
"I see."
A sharp, knowing glance at me. "You trying to figure out who you are, ain'tcha? Madame X, or Isabel?"
"I suppose you're right. That's exactly what I'm trying to do."
"In my experience, you have to kind of . . . convince yourself that you're someone else. That you really are your new name. You want to be Isabel, you have to think about being Isabel. Learning to answer to a new name means owning it for yourself, first."
I don't know what I want. Who I want to be.
Do I want to be Isabel?
Do I want to be Madame X?
I think of Logan, how he insists that I deserve the right to choose.
But I don't know what to choose.
I drift away, out of apartment number three, to the elevator, to the lobby. I don't think I even said good-bye to Rachel, or closed the door behind me.
I find myself on the street. It is still dark out, quiet for New York City. A few cars whoosh by, a yellow cab with its light on. A white panel van. A police car.
I wonder if you know where I am. If you're looking for me.
I do not want to be found.
Not by you.
A cafe, open twenty-four hours. An older woman, tired looking, bored, stares at me as I enter. "Help you?"
"Do you have a phone I can use?"
A blank stare. "You in trouble?"
"I need to call someone. It's important. Not legal trouble, no."
Another blinking moment, and then the woman digs into an apron pocket and withdraws a cell phone, hands it to me. It is o
ne of those that flips open. I dial the number: 212-555-3233.
A sleepy, beautiful, sun-warm voice: "Hello? Who's'iss?"
"It's . . . it's me."
"X?"
"Yes."
"Where are you?"
I glance at the woman. "Where am I? What is the name of this place?"
The woman just gestures at the menu on the counter in front of me. I read the name of the cafe, the address.
"I'll be there in ten," Logan says. "Stay there, okay?"
He shows up in under ten minutes, wearing khaki cargo shorts and a black tank top that show off his sleeves of tattoos covering his arms from elbow to shoulder, and flip-flops. "X, you okay?"
I shake my head. "I have so many questions." I wish desperately to cling to him. I dare not, for fear that I will never let go. "I don't know . . . anything. I don't know what to do."
Logan glances around, eyes the menu, then slides into a booth. I take the bench opposite him. He glances at the woman. "Two coffees, please." He shoves a menu toward me. "Hungry?"
I nod, and peruse the items on the two-sided, laminated sheet. I decide on Belgian waffles and bacon. I've never had them, and they sound good. After the food has arrived, Logan and I spend a few minutes just eating; the waffles are so delicious that I don't want to waste a single minute talking when I could be eating.
We're done and Logan has his big hands wrapped around the small white ceramic mug of black coffee. He lets out a breath. "So what are your questions?"
"Where did you find the name?"
"The name?" He lifts an eyebrow. "Not 'my name,' but 'the name'?"
"Is it mine?"
"You don't trust me?" He sounds wounded.
I want to be logical, but it is hard. "I do. I want to, at least. But can I? Should I? That could be any name. How do I know it is mine?"
He nods. "You have a point," he says. "You told me you got hurt six years ago, that you had total amnesia. You didn't tell me which hospital, or anything like that, so I started broad. Did a search on nameless coma patients in the entire New York City area. Put some resources into the search, friends who know who to ask about things like this. Six years ago, there were thousands of accidents that resulted in the victims going into a coma. Of those however-many-thousands of coma patients from six years ago, all of them were identified. Most of them woke up within a few hours or days, and of those who woke up, most got their whole memories back, while some got only parts of their memories back."
"What are you saying?" I feel faint.
"Do you know how long you were in a coma?"
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