The Passenger (2 page)

It was eight in the evening, well past the dinner crowd, so I took a seat in a booth, figuring the counter is where everyone talks. I probably wouldn't be very good at that, since I had no identity. That would come later.

A waitress named Carla dropped a menu in front of me.

“Can I start you off with anything?” she asked.

“Coffee,” I said. “Black.”

“Try it first; then decide.” She poured the coffee. “I'll give you a minute to look over the menu.”

She was right. It wasn't the kind of coffee you drank straight. I drowned it in cream and sugar. Even then it was hard to keep down. I perused the menu, trying to decide what I was in the mood for. It occurred to me that Jane Green might be in the mood for something different than Tanya Dubois. But since I hadn't yet changed my clothes or my hair, I could probably last another day eating the food that Tanya liked. Jane Green was just a shell I embodied before I could be reborn.

“Have you decided, sweetheart?” Carla asked.

“Apple pie and French fries,” I said.

“A girl after my own heart,” Carla said, swiftly walking away on her practical white nurse's shoes.

I watched Carla chat with a trucker who was hunched over a plate of meatloaf at the end of the counter. He grumbled something I couldn't understand.

Carla squinted with a determined earnestness and said, “Sunshine, I think you need to go on antidepressants. Yes indeed, you need a happy pill. The next time you walk into my house I want to see a smile on that handsome face of yours. Do you hear me? See that sign there? We have the right to refuse service.”

“Carla, leave the poor man alone,” some guy in the kitchen yelled.

“Mind your own business, Duke,” Carla said. Then she filled more cups of coffee, called customers
honey
and
sweetheart
, and belly-laughed at a joke that wasn't funny at all. I thought it would be nice to be Carla, maybe just for a little while. Try her on and see if she fit.

I devoured my pie and French fries so quickly even Carla was impressed.

“I haven't seen three-hundred-pound truckers put food away that fast. You must have been famished.”

“Yes,” I said. Short answers. Always.

I paid the check and left, walking down the dull drag of the small town, which hardly deserved a name. I walked into a drugstore and purchased shampoo, a toothbrush, toothpaste, hair dye in auburn and dark brown, and a disposable cell phone from behind the counter.

The clerk, a middle-aged man with the name Gordon on his name tag, rang up my order and said, “That'll be fifty-eight dollars and thirty-four cents.”

I paid in cash. As I was leaving, the following words escaped my mouth: “Thanks, sweetheart. Have a nice day.”

It felt so wrong, I almost shivered in embarrassment.

I
FOUND
a liquor store on the way home and purchased a bottle of Frank's favorite bourbon. I figured I could drink away all my memories. I paid in cash and said a mere “thanks” to the clerk.

Back in the hotel room, with the heating unit rattling out of time, I spread my bounty on the bed and tried to decide my next move. I'd known it all along, but I didn't yet have the courage. I took a shot of bourbon and plucked my phone book from my purse. I inhaled and practiced saying hello a few times. Then I dialed.

“Oliver and Mead Construction,” the receptionist said.

“I'd like to speak to Mr. Roland Oliver.”

“May I ask who is calling?”

“No. But I'm sure he'll want to talk to me.”

“Please hold.”

A click, and then Beethoven blasted over the line. Two full minutes passed and the receptionist returned.

“I'm afraid Mr. Oliver is very busy right now. Can I take a number, and he'll call you back?”

I didn't want to say the name, but I didn't see any other way of reaching him.

“Tell Mr. Oliver that his old friend Tanya is calling.”

This time I got only a few bars of Beethoven before Mr. Oliver's deep sandpaper voice came on the line.

“Who is this?” he said.

“Tanya Pitts,” I whispered.

He said nothing. I could hear his labored breath.

“I need your help,” I said.

“You shouldn't have called me here,” he said.

“Would it have been better if I left a message with your wife?”

“What do you want?” he said.

“A favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“I need a new name.”

“What's wrong with the one you've got?”

“It's not working for me anymore. I think you know someone who can take care of these things.”

“I might.”

“I want a clean identity, a name that's prettier than my old one, and if possible, I wouldn't mind being a few years younger.” Tanya Dubois was about to have her thirtieth birthday. But I didn't want to turn thirty before my time.

“You can't get identities served to order,” Mr. Oliver said.

“Do your best.”

“How can I reach you?”

“I'll reach you. Oh, and if you wouldn't mind, I'm going to need some cash too. A couple grand should do it.”

“You're not going to become a problem now, are you, Ms. Pitts?”

He used my name like a weapon, knowing it would feel like a stab in the gut.

“Make it five grand,” I said.

I knew I could get more, but I had gone years without asking Mr. Oliver for a dime, and I found a point of pride in that.

“Where are you?” he said.

“I'll be in touch.”

“Wait,” he said. “How have you been?”

I could have sworn the question was sincere, like it mattered to him. But I knew otherwise.

“Good-bye, Mr. Oliver.”

T
HE
next day I took 81 South to I-35 South, bisecting Oklahoma. I stopped in a town called Norman just after three thirty and checked into the Swan Lake Inn. I didn't see a single swan or lake during my two-night stay. I gave Mr. Oliver exactly forty-eight hours before I made my second call.

“Do you have it?” I said.

“Yes, I have what you requested,” he said.

“I don't want to wait. Tell me now. What is my name?”

“Amelia Keen.”

“Am-me-li-a Ke-en.” I sounded it out slowly. Then I said it again, trying to decide whether it suited me. I thought it did. “That's a good name.”

“I'm so happy you're pleased,” Mr. Oliver said in the tone of an automaton.

“Who was she?”

“Just a girl who died a year ago in a house fire. No one is collecting death benefits. She wasn't married and didn't have any children. She was twenty-seven when she passed, which makes you twenty-eight now.”

“You got the age right. Form of ID?”

“Social security and a passport without a photo. Do you have an address for me?”

“Overnight the documents care of Jane Green to the Swan Lake Inn on Clyde Avenue in Norman, Oklahoma. Then wire five grand to Amelia Keen at the Western Union office on Clyde Avenue. I'm going to ditch my phone after this call, so everything better be in order.”

“You—Ms. Keen,” he said. “I suppose you should start getting used to it.”

“I suppose so.”

“Ms. Keen, be careful out there. If you get caught, you're on your own.”

“Wasn't I always?”

“You'll have what you need tomorrow. I don't expect we'll need to speak again.”

“I have one more favor I need to ask of you.”

“What?”

“Don't try to kill me.”

A
MELIA
K
EEN
.
Amelia Keen.
It was a name you could make something of. Maybe Amelia Keen had some ambition. Maybe she would go to college, learn another language. Amelia Keen could become a teacher, a businesswoman. Maybe she could fly airplanes, maybe become a doctor. Well, that was probably a stretch. But Amelia Keen could be educated. She could take up tennis or skiing; she could mingle with folks who did more than play pool at a bar every Saturday night. She could marry a man for more than his pretty last name.

I walked down to the lobby of the Swan Lake Inn. I almost wanted to meet the misguided soul who'd named it, just to ask if he or probably she had bigger plans that had fallen through the cracks. It tried harder than the last fleabag motel, which made it somehow seem even more forsaken.

I spoke to the desk clerk. She couldn't have been older than nineteen. This didn't look like a stop along the way—she was doing hard time at Swan Lake. You could tell from the way she clamped her mouth tight over her teeth that whatever dose of ambition she was dealt as a child she'd already squandered on booze and meth. She had checked me in without an ID, no problem. Her name tag said “Darla.” I've always been fond of name tags, since I'm terrible at remembering names. Or maybe I don't see the point of learning someone's name when I'll just have to forget it later.

“Hi, Darla,” I said. “How's your day going?”

“Good, Ms., Ms. . . .”

“Jane Green.”

“Right,” she said, pupils as unfocused as a blind man's.

“I'm expecting a package to come for me tomorrow. It's really important. Can you call my room as soon as it arrives?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Darla said, writing herself a note.

I gave her a twenty-dollar bill, even though she'd called me “ma'am.”

I turned off my disposable cell, trashed it in a Dumpster outside the Swan Lake, and bought a new one at the corner convenience store. I strolled down the main drag, found another diner, and ordered a burger and fries. I made it clear to the waitress that I wasn't into small talk. I avoided eye contact with every person who passed my way.

Having no name is dangerous. One false step, someone discovers that you're no one, and eventually they find out who you really are.

I spent the night in the motel room, watching people on television pretend to be someone else. I realized I had to have a new personality, new mannerisms, inflections, likes, dislikes. I picked up the scratch pad and the cheap ballpoint pen by the bed and began jotting down character traits that I might try to shake.

Tanya hated broccoli and avocados. She called everyone a bastard, even in a friendly way. Sometimes she just used it as a replacement for a name that had slipped her mind. Tanya had a tattoo on her ankle. Something stupid she got in high school. Tanya was always twisting her back or rubbing her shoulder, trying to align herself between adjustments. Every once in a while, she stole Frank's pills—he had a bad knee. Unfortunately, Frank wasn't much for sharing narcotics and was very good at basic math.

I looked at the piece of paper on Tanya and thought how fucking dull this woman was. How lucky I was to be able to leave her behind. I found a book of matches at the bottom of my purse. Tanya's purse. I ripped the page off the pad and set the corner on fire, dropped the ashes and last bit of flame into the toilet, and let her go.

Then I scribbled some ideas for what Amelia Keen might be like. She'd have good posture. She'd look like someone who read books. She'd read books. Amelia was a good swimmer, but so was Tanya. Maybe Amelia should take up running. It might come in useful sometime. Maybe she was the kind of person who made friends easily. No, that wasn't a good idea. One thing I knew for sure about Amelia Keen: she was a single woman and she was going to stay that way.

D
ARLA CALLED
me in the morning. The package had arrived. I tossed a sweater over my pajamas and rushed into the lobby, trying to swallow my adrenaline.

Darla held out a large brown envelope. I forced a warm smile, said thank you, and made a swift departure.

I got a paper cut rushing to unzip the seal with my index finger. A small dot of blood landed on my new birth certificate. Amelia Keen, born 3:32 a.m. on November 3, 1986, to George Arthur Keen and Marianne Louise Keen at Providence Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. A Scorpio. Powerful, magnetic, jealous, possessive, compulsive. My mother used to read charts obsessively. I never bought into it, mostly because I was a Pisces, which always sounded a lot like a jellyfish without the sting. But looking back, maybe that's exactly what I was.

Now I could change all of that. Change everything about myself that I didn't like, starting with my hair. I had become a blonde a long time ago when I realized that men look at you differently when you burn the color out of your hair. I wondered how they'd look at me as a brunette. Maybe they wouldn't look at me at all. It would be nice to be invisible for a while.

I took the shears into the bathroom and took inventory of what I saw. A cheap dirty-blond dye job, hair too long to style, light brown eyes shaded by dark circles. I sliced a few inches off the bottom, into one straight even line. I had been cutting my own hair for years. Not because I was cheap or particularly good at it, but sitting in that chair, the hairstylist asking all those questions, always gave me a knot in my gut.

I gave myself bangs, even though I knew the hair would tickle my forehead and drive me mad, but I already looked less like Tanya and more like Amelia. I mixed the auburn and brown together with the developer and began drawing lines on my scalp with the plastic bottle. After my hair was soaked in product, nostrils burning with chemicals, I checked my watch, slipped off the gloves, and turned on the television.

There was a movie playing, set in a college. One of those old campuses, stone buildings with pillars and staircases everywhere. Students reclining lazily on the grass under the shade of hundred-year-old oak trees. I liked the way this one girl looked. She was trying to get people to sign some petition. I didn't catch what it was all about. She was wearing faded blue jeans that seemed as soft as an old T-shirt, a white tank top, and a green army jacket; dog tags and a house key hung from her neck. She looked like she didn't care what anyone thought of her. And she looked really comfortable. At the bar I always wore dresses or skirts and impractical shoes that took bites out of my feet. Amelia Keen wasn't going to wear anything that hurt her.