Exposed (5 page)

I
sabel 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 café, 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 one 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 café, 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?”

I think back. When I woke up, I was unresponsive. Awake, but not all there. It took time before I could even focus my eyes. Longer still before I could understand questions, or respond. I couldn’t speak. Whether it was a cognitive problem or physical, doctors weren’t sure. But as Caleb spent more time with me, I started to speak. Mimicking words, showing comprehension. I have no memory, however, of being told how long I was in a coma for. All of this that I know, I only know because Caleb told me. My actual memories of the time immediately after I woke up are extremely hazy.

I shake my head. “I—I don’t know, no. I—Caleb never told me. I never thought to ask.”

He just nods. “None of the coma patients I found out about fit your description, even physically speaking, symptoms or whatever else aside.” A sip of coffee. “So I went back farther. Year by year, searching for coma patients who were admitted with no identification. A ‘Jane Doe,’ they call them. I spoke to hundreds of doctors and nurses, and no one knew anything.”

“You did all this? The searching?”

He shrugs. “I told you I’d find proof. I’m still working on it, but it takes time. Maybe I should sell my businesses and become a private investigator, you know? I’ve got a knack for it, I think.” A wave of his hand. “Point is, yes. I’ve spent every waking moment, and most of the hours I should have been sleeping, looking for information on you. I went back three years before I found anything.”

He pauses, I don’t know why. I am frustrated, curious, fearful. “And? What did you discover?”

“In 2006, there was a car accident. Three passengers. Mom, dad, a teenaged girl.”

“A car accident?” It is hard to swallow. “In 2006?
Nine
years ago?”

He nods. His voice is tender, hesitant. “Details are sketchy. The mother and father were killed instantly. The young girl was in the backseat; somehow she survived. She was brought to the hospital, but again, the details on how she got there are murky at best. I spoke to a nurse who was working the ER that night, and she remembers only that the call came in, a sixteen-year-old girl with severe cranial injury, unconscious. That’s all she knew. She worked on the girl. They were able to save the girl’s life, but she didn’t wake up, and was transferred to a different floor of the hospital. The nurse lost track after that, because shit, ER nurses in Manhattan . . . they see dozens, hundreds of patients every day. Can’t keep track of ’em, you know?”

“A car accident?” I’m dizzy. “Not a mugging?”

“The nurse described you exactly, just younger. Dark skin, black hair. Beautiful. Latin, Mexican or Spanish or something. She described your injuries. Where you’ve got your scars.” He touches his hip, where I have a scar. His head, where I have another, beneath my hair. “And that person, if it’s you, was in a car accident. No question about that part.”

“So . . . if the hospital couldn’t identify me, how could you?”

“The city, the hospital, the police, they’re swamped, you know? Like, they’ve got thousands of cases, thousands of missing persons and mistaken identities and unsolved deaths and Jane or John Does. So, I’m not excusing the fact that they gave up the search, just putting some perspective on it. They put some effort into it, but without a good reason they just can’t keep spending the manpower on something forever. It wasn’t a crime that landed you in the coma, just a car accident. Not an unsolved murder, or something like that. So they gave up. You were in a coma. Things get glossed over, forgotten about.” He lifts a shoulder. “Whereas I have the resources, the time. And I have the motive to keep looking. So I did.”

“You found me.”

He nods. “I found you. Or rather, first, I was able to track down the car. Every car has a unique number—a vehicle identification number, what they call a VIN—and when the police show up on the scene, they record that number, and when the wreckers take a trashed vehicle to a yard, they record that number, and the salvage yard where the car ends up reports that number . . . everyone involved with disposing of a wrecked vehicle has that VIN. That car is kept track of scrupulously. It’s kind of weird, actually, considering how easily people can be lost. But anyway, I was able to get access to that police record, find the VIN. This is basic shit, okay? There’s no reason they couldn’t have done this, but they didn’t. What I found out is the car was a rental. That was part of the problem, what makes it tricky, because not all rental companies keep the best records. Like, the big-box rental places like Avis or Budget or whatever, they keep extensive records, but smaller places don’t, necessarily.” He waves a hand. “So I traced the car to the rental service, and convinced them to help me find the original paperwork. Took some convincing, because this rental service was kind of sketchy. They didn’t take a lot of information, didn’t ask a lot of questions, right? Just took a big cash deposit, and a name and driver’s license. Even then, I don’t think they’d object too hard if someone only had, say, a Spanish license but not an American one, you know?” The waitress comes by, refills Logan’s coffee. He sips, continues. “So I offered the guy running the rental service enough cash that he was willing to dig up his old paperwork. The car was rented to Luis de la Vega. Cash deposit, rented for a week. No other info. Just the name, and a photocopy of a Spanish passport. Luis Garcia de la Vega Reyes. With that name, that passport picture, I had more to go on. Such as INS records.”