by Rick Dakan
"What, is it fake or something? Why the wrong address?"
"It's not fake. But it's not real either. The address is obviously wrong, but I never carry around anything that has my real address on it. That's easy - it's not like they check up on you at the DMV when you move. And that is a real, official California driver's license. But it's not my real name. And it's not the only one I have.
Same for the social security card in there. They're not fake, but they're not me."
"Identity theft?"
"Sort of. Sometimes. Typically it's dead people - use an old birth certificate right and no one's the wiser. So yeah, that license there is for Chloe Carmichael. And I file a tax return every year for Chloe too. She makes minimum wage as a freelance house cleaner and just barely gets by, which means she ain't paying much in the way of taxes. But it's a clean cover if I ever need it."
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"That's all pretty much what I figured," bluffed Paul, handing the license back to her. In fact the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Who was she, anyway? "But now something new's bugging me. What the hell's your real name?"
"Chloe."
"Just not Chloe Carmichael, right?"
"For the world, for my friends, for you, I'm Chloe. That's my real name. What does it matter what name I was born with? Who the fuck cares? Whatever it was, I didn't choose it. My parents did. I chose Chloe, and that's all you need to know." She said this matter of factly, although Paul detected a hint of annoyance beneath her words and decided to drop the subject.
"Cool," he said, although he wasn't at all sure if it really was.
They rode along in silence for a few minutes, before Chloe spoke again. "Speaking of parents, have you talked to yours?"
"Yeah, a couple of times. They want me to come home to Florida and see them. They feel really sorry for me.
All they know is that I got fired - they don't know about the money or, you know, anything else I've been up to."
"You should. You should go see them." She paused to fish an Altoid from the tin below the ashtray. "I've never been to Florida." She let this hang there. Was it a request to come along, or just a stray comment?
"I will. At some point, I will. There's a Pirate festival in Key West in November. I thought I might go back for that. Stop by Sarasota and see them at the same time."
"A pirate festival? Now you're talking my language! I could bring the whole Crew - we'd go wild on that shit.
Have you ever been?"
"Nope, but it's supposed to be a lot of fun. I've been to Fantasy Fest - which is kind of Key West's version of Mardi Gras, except it's around Halloween - and that's awesome. If you're into drunken debauchery and public nudity."
"Which I most definitely am," said Chloe.
"I imagine the pirate festival's the same, except, you know, with pirates."
"Sounds like a party. We'll definitely have to pull that one. I'll look into it, see if there are any angles we can play to make a few bucks while we're there."
"You're always looking for the angles aren't you?"
"I never seem to find any angels, so angles are all that's left."
Although it was late afternoon and early summer, when they crested the hill and came into the "town" of Killian Beach, there was already a fog rolling in off the Pacific Ocean. Nevertheless, Paul had to admit that it was a beautiful sight. The town was little more than a single convenience store/gas station/restaurant and about fifty expensive beach houses spread out along the cliffs overlooking the beach below. For Paul, a native of Florida's west coast, these northern California beaches always seemed surreal to him. Instead of the flat expanses of white sand and warm water that he'd grown up with, these beaches were often just bits of sand at Chapter 13
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the foot of towering walls of rock and the water was inevitably too cold for him to swim in. Nevertheless, it sure did look pretty.
Chloe drove them to one of the fancy beach houses that sat further up the cliff side, a good three hundred or so yards from the actual beach. It still had a great view, looking down on the other houses and the water below.
Inside, the two-story vacation home was fully furnished and tastefully decorated. It felt like something between a lived in hotel and a model home. There was a spacious, bright living room/dining room area with floor to ceiling windows looking out on the water. Three bedrooms, two baths, a rec room with a pool table and big screen TV, and a well-appointed kitchen finished off the interior. But the best part was the large wooden deck that wrapped around two sides of the structure and supported that most classic and important of California accoutrements: the hot tub.
"Very nice," said Paul.
"Yes indeed. The only drawback is that they only have dial-up for Internet access, but, other than that, we're set." She dropped her backpack in the center of the living room and started to unpack her laptop. "Take any of the bedrooms you want and make yourself at home."
Separate bedrooms of course, as he'd assumed but secretly hoped wouldn't be the case. Paul, out of spite, took the master bedroom for himself and unpacked his clothes into the empty chest of drawers. There was a king sized bed and as he flopped down on it he was in heaven, so much more comfortable than the couch. He was already starting to nod off when Chloe knocked on his open door.
"You wanna take a walk with me down to the beach? I need to stretch my legs after being cooped up in that car for hours."
"Sure," he said. "Let's go."
They walked at an ambling pace down the winding road towards the beach access, Chloe passed the time with tales of her wild high school years which had apparently involved a lot of camping out on beaches much like this one. She had her messenger bag with her in case they wanted to do some shopping at the convenience store. They wandered up and down the beach, shivering slightly in the brisk breeze blowing in off the water.
The fog was truly settling in now, and they couldn't even see all the way back up to their house anymore.
The convenience store had a little bit of everything, including some wine and frozen pizzas, which they bought for dinner, and a small general delivery post office where Chloe dropped off a letter.
"Who's that for?" asked Paul.
"Just getting in touch with an old friend. Something I forgot to mail before we left and I found it sitting in my bag."
"Oh, ok. Are you about ready to head back? I'm starving."
"I know how cranky you get when you haven't eaten, Paul, so let's get a move on. That hill we walked down isn't going to be nearly as much fun going the other way."
They huffed and puffed their way back up to the top of the cliff and set about preparing dinner. Paul volunteered for the arduous task of pre-heating the oven, opening the wine and sticking the frozen pizza into the oven. Chloe started the hot tub warming up and then checked her e-mail at the dining room table.
"How're things going with the comics con?" Paul asked as he set a glass of wine down next to Chloe and Chapter 13
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sipped on his own. A little tart for his tastes, but it was certainly drinkable.
"Seems good. They've got about two dozen of them up on e-Bay already, and they're getting some interest.
It'll be a five or six days before we really know how it's going." She drank deeply from her glass. "Well that's a mediocre vintage to be sure. You'd think they'd do better, being so close to Napa and all."
"Cheap wine is cheap wine the world over," said Paul.
"I hate cheapness. Inexpensive is good. It's fucking great sometimes. But that doesn't mean it has to be cheap.
There's great wine to be had in these parts for what we paid for this bottle, but all we got is this cheap stuff."
"Yep, but on the bright side, there are three bottles of it in there, so there's more than enough to get us too drunk to notice how cheap it is."
"Fucking right," said Chloe with a smile, draining her glass. "I'll pour us another round."
They ate and finished
off another bottle of wine in the living room, chatting away about wine and beer and food, subjects about which Paul knew quite a bit. One of his many un-pursued hobbies was fine dining and cooking, and Chloe seemed impressed with his expertise.
As they drank the last of the second bottle, Chloe got up to get the third, but when she came out of the kitchen she continued walking right on out to the deck. "Come on," she said.
Paul forced himself up off the comfy couch, his head spinning from the wine, and followed her outside. There was a crisp, cold bite to the air. Chloe had peeled off the cover on the hot tub and was testing the waters. "Still not as near-boiling as I like it, but it's plenty hot. You wanna join me?"
"Sure, why not? Let me go get my bathing suit."
She laughed. "You're kidding, right?"
"I guess I am," he said, although he hadn't been.
"This is California. A hot tub in California. The dress code is strictly au natural." And then, as if to make her point, she stripped her t-shirt off over her head with one quick motion, revealing a black bra that could have been a modest bikini top. "Come on, don't be shy."
Paul took off his own shirt self-consciously. He wasn't in the best shape of his life, but he wasn't looking too bad either. He showed the earliest signs of love handles and was a bit soft around the middle. Chloe now stepped out of her shorts, and to Paul's surprise he saw that she wasn't wearing any panties. She revealed a thick, black bush of pubic hair, above which was a tattoo that said something he couldn't quite make out in the dim light. She turned her back to him as she unhooked her bra, and he couldn't help but take a good, lingering look at her full, round ass. He felt a stirring in his pants, which he was already in the process of unbuckling.
She tossed her bra to the deck and climbed up into the hot tub, sinking down fast into the hot water.
Paul stripped off his shorts and underwear and now stood naked in the crisp night air. His slight embarrassment and the chill worked against his growing arousal, which was fine with him. He followed Chloe into the tub, but as soon as his toe touched the water, he pulled it back. "Damn that's hot!" he said.
She laughed. "Don't be such a wimp. Just plunge on in, you'll get used to it in a second." She reached over to the side where she had set the wine next to the controls. She spun a knob, setting the water jets in motion with a roar, and then poured them both glasses of wine. Paul eased himself below the water; glad for the cover the Chapter 13
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frothing bubble afforded him. He watched Chloe pour, her wet breasts and pink nipples the sole focus of her attention until she turned towards him to hand him a glass.
"So this is genuine California hot tubbing, huh?" he asked, which sounded much lamer when he said it out loud than when he'd thought of it a moment before. She smiled and sat back in the tub so only her head and shoulders were above the water, making it easier for Paul to look right at her without ogling at her breasts.
"A prime example. Usually the view's not nearly this nice, but the wine's better. I take it you've never done this before?"
"Not really, no. Not like this."
"See, I'm good for you Paul. I get you involved in all kinds of interesting new activities."
"Sure. Forgery, Fraud, Breaking and Entering, and Hot Tubbing."
"Now be fair, the forgery was your idea, not mine."
"You do have a point. I'll cop to that one."
"And you're the one who said you needed a lawyer. I just offered to represent you is all. And since I'm not a real lawyer, I had to make up for my lack of legal knowledge with pure zealousness for my client."
Paul raised his glass towards her in a salute, "Which I greatly appreciate! Thanks again for that."
"My pleasure," she said. "It was an easy gig to be honest. I wish they were all that simple."
"So what's next?" asked Paul. "Where do we go from here?"
"You mean while we're on our little vacation or what's my Crew up to next?"
"Both I guess."
"Well, hopefully we'll get a chance to see a friend of mine while we're up here. I'll have to take the car tomorrow and poke around a bit, so you'll be here by yourself most of the day, if that's ok."
"I could come with if you want."
"No, no, that's ok. I've got some stuff I need to get done. We'll take a drive around the day after, though. Tour on up the Pacific Coast Highway a bit, which is just gorgeous."
"Sounds good." Paul knew she'd be up to something tomorrow, but there was no sense in pressing her on it.
She'd deflect any inquiries he made. "I'll just hang around the house and do some drawing, I guess. Maybe start working up some ideas I had for a new comic."
"You're thinking about starting a new series? That's great! You know, when we were gathering all those comics for the comic con I dug up a few old issues of your stuff. I especially loved that six issue series you did five or six years ago. 'End Dead' I think it was called."
"Thanks. That's one of my favorites too. I love drawing zombies and that kind of stuff. It didn't sell real well, but the critics liked it."
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Chloe poured them both some more wine, flashing wet boobs again as she did. "Zombies are fucking cool,"
she said. "The original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite movies ever. I just got the four DVD set that came out a while ago. It's amazing."
"What's your fascination with zombies? Aside from that fact that they're so cool."
"That's about it, really. I've loved monster movies since I was kid. When I was fourteen I even got my tattoo inspired by monster movies, sort of."
"What tattoo?"
"You didn't notice it a bit ago?"
"I saw something, but I couldn't make out what it said."
"Here, have another look." She stood up on her seat, so the water only came up to her knees. Her pubic hair was matted down and dripping, which was all Paul was looking at for the first moment. Then his vision expanded to include the pleasing form of her hips. Like a cello he thought. It was only third of all that he concentrated on the Gothic-script lettering just above the line of her hair. "MANEATER" it said.
"Maneater? Is that a warning or should I not take it personally?"
Chloe laughed as she plopped back down into her seat, splashing Paul as she did so. "The funniest part is that I didn't even get the whole joke of it at the time. I was fourteen and my best friend convinced me it was a good idea. There might have been some acid involved, I don't remember for sure. I just thought it was funny - you know a man-eater, like Jaws or a zombie or something."
"You missed the whole vagina dentate angle?"
"I didn't even have sex until I was sixteen! That was the last thing I was thinking about. I just wanted to have that tattoo somewhere my parents wouldn't see it. I wore one piece bathing suits for years as a result."
"Did you ever think about getting it changed or removed?"
"Are you kidding? Of course not! Unlike when I was fourteen, now it's actually true," she said with a smiling bite at the air. "Rrrowr."
"Ok," Paul laughed, "Now you've got me really scared. I definitely need some more wine."
"What about your ink there, sport?" Chloe pointed to Paul's right shoulder, where he had the logo for his former company, Fear and Loading Games, tattooed in bright red. "You gonna cover that baby up now that you've, shall we say, severed all ties."
Paul craned his neck and looked down at the tattoo - a logo he'd designed. It featured a very Ralph Steadman-like gamer reeling back from his laptop, different sized eyes goggling in what might be fear or, more likely, narcotic frenzy. Below, in a harried, graffiti script it said Fear and Loading Games. He'd grown so used to it he scarcely remembered it was there sometimes. "I don't know. Sometimes it's good to have a reminder of your mistakes. Besides, it's my design. At least that's one thing they can't take away from me."
Chloe reached across the tub and topped off Paul's wineglass. "That's the spirit," she said. "Now drink
up, sailor and tell me more about where you got the ideas for End Dead."
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They finished the final bottle over the next hour, and stayed up chatting about zombies and comics and tattoos and everything else that came into their heads until their skin wrinkled from the water. Yawning, Chloe finally called it a night and headed for bed. Paul watched her nude body as she went inside to get them some towels, leaving watery footprints across the carpet. Was she coming on to him? Nothing in her body language -aside from the naked thing - suggested this. But then there was the naked thing. Hot tubs were well out of Paul's area of expertise and he didn't know what the etiquette was on something like this. Luckily, he was drunk enough not to put too much thought into it.
She returned with a big beach towel wrapped around her body and tossed one to him. "I might be gone by the time you get up tomorrow, but I'll be back by late afternoon. Good night."
"Ok. G'night," he said, clambering out of the water and wrapping himself in the towel. It was only then that he dimly remembered that she never had answered his second question. His attention had quickly wandered to other subjects, especially that tattoo. What was the Crew planning to do next? And did whatever it was include him? He'd have to ask again tomorrow.
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Chapter 14
Chloe was indeed gone by the time Paul stumbled out of bed late the next morning. He felt a little awkward in the strange, empty house, so he decided to do a little exploring. He puttered around, poking through drawers and looking for signs of who owned the place. There wasn't anything that led him to believe that anyone actually lived here. The kitchen was fully stocked with three different kinds of silverware and a ton of cheap, mismatched ceramic plates. There were two blenders. Everything was immaculately clean and recently dusted. It all looked to him not like someone's beach house, but rather like a vacation rental. He knew this area teemed with such places, which went for hundreds of dollars a night. Was Chloe just renting the place for the week or did she really know the owners?
After a bagel and cream cheese breakfast/lunch, he sat down at the dining room table with his sketchbook.
