“Okay, so no irregularities? No red flags?”
“No irregularities. No red flags.”
“Bottom line,” I say. “I’m still safe using Vicky Lanier’s identity.”
“You are safe. Though I never understood why you picked an alias with the same first name as you.”
How quickly he forgets. I slip my foot out of my shoe, bend my leg, and hold my foot up for him to see the tattoo above my right ankle, a small red heart with the name Vicky wrapped around the top half. A bad idea when I was sixteen years old. And pretty hard to explain if I used an alias with the name “Jane” or “Molly” or “Gina.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot about that. It’s been a while since I’ve . . .”
Since you’ve seen me naked. Yeah, Rambo. I’d just as soon put that behind me. I have put it behind me, as much as you can ever put something like that behind you.
“So, Rambo, nobody could say I’m not Vicky Lanier, right?”
“Nobody could say that. As long as your story is that you ran away from home at age seventeen from Fairmont, West Virginia, and kicked around doing things that kept you off the grid. Paid in cash, that kind of thing.”
The sad part is that my real bio isn’t far off from that. And that’s no accident; that’s why I picked Vicky Lanier for my identity. Rambo himself was the one who said it to me—back in the day when he was a cop hearing bullshit from suspects, sorting out the truth from the crap—the best lies are the ones closest to the truth. I didn’t live in West Virginia, and nobody abducted me, but I did leave home at age seventeen in 2003. So when I had Rambo create me an identity, I had him find a girl named Vicky who went missing in 2003 at age seventeen. I wasn’t sure there would be a match with criteria that specific. Turns out, there were three girls who fit that description, which is disturbing in itself. Vicky Lanier from Fairmont, West Virginia, looked the most like me, so I chose her.
“Just make sure nobody does a fingerprint-based background check on you,” Rambo says. “Then your prints would come up with your real name.”
Right. But I can’t do anything about that.
He cocks his head. “You realize you just paid me to do the same thing I did when I created this identity for you. I wouldn’t have given you ‘Vicky Lanier’ in the first place if it wasn’t clean.”
“Always good to update,” I say.
“Nah,” he says out of the side of his mouth. “You’re expecting someone to inquire. To look into your background. You’re expecting trouble.”
I stare at him with a perfunctory smile.
“Never mind,” he says. “I don’t want to know.”
He’s right on both counts. There’s going to be trouble. And he doesn’t want to know.
8
Simon
I’m meeting Vicky for lunch at the Chinese restaurant by the law school. She often works days, so when she doesn’t, we try to hook up for lunch, especially in the summer, when my schedule is so light.
She kisses me on the cheek. “Hey, handsome.” She wets her finger, wipes the lipstick off my cheek, and takes her seat across from me in the booth. “How’s your buddy the dean?”
“Not this again,” I say. “What am I supposed to do, defy him? Spit in the face of the most powerful guy at the school?”
“He spit in your face first.”
Vicky, bless her heart, fights for me. She doesn’t like the idea of Dean Comstock forcing me out of consideration for the full professor slot. She can get pretty worked up when people disrespect me. I find that incredibly sexy about her, for some reason.
“Simon, all you’re doing is applying for full professor. You have just as much a right to do that as that schmuck with the rich daddy, Reid whatever. Who cares what Dean what’s-his-name, Dean Cumstain thinks?”
“Comstock.” I laugh. “The guy who could singlehandedly derail my career? I think I do care what he thinks.”
She shakes her head, disappointed and angry. I meant what I wrote in my journal. I love this woman and I always will. But she doesn’t love me back. She likes me and cares about me, but I don’t do it for her in that way. And that, for me, takes the air out of the balloon. Maybe Freud would have something to say here about the id or superego, but I’m not one of those guys who likes challenges. I’m not attracted to someone who’s not attracted to me.
When I first met Vicky, just six weeks after her sister’s suicide, she was so angry. Sad, too, but mostly angry. I was able to help her. Maybe that’s the only reason she was drawn to me. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to her. Your heart doesn’t come with explanatory notes.