When it came time for me to start apartment hunting, I knew I couldn’t show my face. Despite my father’s arrest, the angry mob continued to demand justice, tar and feathers in hand, and I needed to remain anonymous. Even without the death threats making it difficult, I knew no one would sell to the infamous Reese Carlisle, and if they did, it would be humiliating to ask to buy a place we had once owned. So I took matters into my own hands: I checked the real estate listings online, used my master keys to investigate properties until I found one I liked, then emailed the realtor and completed the entire transaction online. I had to use my real name, but a privacy clause and extra commission point bought his silence.
Now I enter the dark apartment, a wall of windows providing enough ambient light to see my uninspired, decidedly minimal decor. I drop my purse and press my back to the door, sliding down to the floor. My black skirt rides up my thighs and my legs flop apart, knees rubbery, ankles weak.
I’d like to think I had too much wine, but that’s not true.
Not even after a night of halfway decent sex am I this shaky.
I know what the issue is.
My gaze flickers to my purse the way it would to a ticking time bomb. I fumble with the clasp before retrieving the shiny black room key and turning it over and over in my hand like a magician with no trick.
My phone beeps, the sound muted by the contents of the bag, and for a fleeting, foolish second I think it’s him. The stranger. It’s not, of course. It’s Doug, being normal. Wondering where I am. What went wrong.
I close my eyes, guilty. Then I type. Sorry. Family emergency.
He asks if we can reschedule.
I turn off the phone. I was going to throw it away tomorrow, anyway. Just like I’ll throw away Denise.
I yank off the cheap wig. I have a closet full of them, thanks to my brother’s short-lived career in theater management. They’re one of the few items that were returned to us after the raid. At least they came in handy. They help me become Harriet and Isabel and Jess. People nothing like the person I was. And most definitely nothing like the woman I am.
The stranger wouldn’t want this woman. He likes redheads with brown eyes who laugh when they’re not supposed to. My once-bleached hair is back to its natural black, my fingernails haven’t been painted in three years, and I only bother to shave my legs when I have a date. I don’t think the stranger would know what to do with this girl. He could read a million newspaper stories exposing my father’s crimes and hypothesizing about mine and never find the truth.
Liar. Thief. Murderer. Whore.
It’s in there somewhere.
I get to my feet and cross the spacious, sterile room. In the kitchen I find a pair of scissors and deftly cut the room key into twenty tiny pieces, watching them slip through my fingers into the trash.
Denise was not a success.
Maybe Elle will have more luck. She’s an economist who likes Elton John and extreme sports.
ON SATURDAYS I VOLUNTEER at the Holden City Food Bank. I applied here at the same time I started my alphabet dating system and thought I’d last a week. Now I’m on my second pass through the alphabet and my eighteenth month volunteering.
I park in the pothole-riddled lot alongside half a dozen cars boasting more rust than metal. I drive a black Mercedes. Before the scandal I drove the pink Maserati my father had given me for my sixteenth birthday, but that was repossessed and sold at auction to someone who professed to be in my fan club.
At that point I’d been earning my own income for years and had a sizable inheritance from my mother, so the scandal didn’t leave me personally bankrupt. I considered buying something less expensive, but a cheap car would attract attention in downtown Holden, where I need to blend. It makes me stand out at the Food Bank, but I told them I inherited it and they’re willing to believe me. Or at least Lyla, the manager, is willing to pretend she does, since they’re always desperate for people. “I’ve got no time for your drama,” she’d warned when I showed up in sunglasses for my interview and provided only my initials on the application. She didn’t recognize me, and I’m convinced she would not have cared if she had. But someone would have. Someone would have asked why I was volunteering at the Food Bank instead of donating. Why I wasn’t rotting in prison with my father. Why I was driving a fucking Mercedes instead of taking the train.
The answers are: paperwork, lack of evidence, and because I don’t want to.
Lyla was as surprised as I was when I kept showing up for shifts, but we soon found a rhythm. I arrive, scribble my initials on the time sheet, and go to work in my quiet, lonely aisle, where I organize non-perishable donations by myself for six hours. Thirty minute break for lunch, then back to work. With the exception of Lyla, no one talks to me, and I don’t want them to.
Voices carry in the warehouse, and I can hear their conversations. There are two groups of people who work here: Older white ladies who have retired and want to give back, and young black men whose mothers know Lyla and wrangled them jobs. I know this because when you talk as little as I do, you get good at listening. One of the white ladies thinks one of the black guys would be perfect for her daughter, but her friends think that’s asking for trouble. He was, after all, once arrested for drug possession. It was pot, but still.
I awkwardly and unwillingly straddle both groups. I’m white, which puts me with the women. I’m twenty-eight, which puts me with the guys. I’m not paid to work here, which puts me back with the women. I think Janet stole Suzanne’s roast beef sandwich and just put the balled up plastic wrap back in the fridge—I’m with everybody on that one. And yet despite all our shared interests, I’m an outcast. I prefer it that way.
Growing up, my father insisted we volunteer. I’d done the requisite rounds of reading to seniors and helping to build a couple of homes, not because community service was important to me, but because it would look good on college applications. At my interviews, I’d smiled and nodded and enthusiastically ruminated on all the wonderful things I’d learned while helping those less fortunate, and because I’m not a dimwit—and my father was a billionaire—I was accepted to every Ivy League school in the country. I got my degree from Yale.
“R.C.,” Lyla says.
“Uh huh?” I don’t turn around, too busy squinting at expiration dates on canned corn. You can hear Lyla coming from the other side of the warehouse. She’s a big lady with bright red braids twisted up on the sides and spilling halfway down her back. She wears wire-rimmed glasses, at least one item of animal-print clothing, and kitten heels every day. You can track her progress around the entire space by the click of those heels. When she’s angry, you know it. When she’s trying to sneak up on you, you know it. It’s usually some combination of both.
“You closed up last week, right?”
“Yeah.” Two months ago, I’d been given the special privilege of being trusted with the warehouse keys so I could lock up when Lyla leaves early to take her daughter to swimming lessons. None of the white ladies would stay late in this part of town, and she didn’t trust the guys not to lose the key. I was the least bad option and I didn’t care enough to say no.
I hear her sigh and glance over my shoulder. A zebra-print blouse does its very best to accommodate her ample bosom and generous stomach. I don’t want to ask, but I do. “What’s wrong?”