| |
Should I tell this sordid tale at the beginning or the end—or halfway through, toss you into the pool in medias res and watch you sink or swim? The story already has an inherent flaw to it, as you've undoubtedly noticed: I'm the one narrating the thing. So you know there won't be much at stake for me. I'm guaranteed to live through it.
But what about my victims?
Let's start with my closet. The faces hanging inside are not my own. They sag on their hangers, rubbery flesh with empty eye holes and mouths that gape askance when I slide open the door to pick and choose from among them. Who will I be today? The wrinkly old doctor, the sunburned construction worker, or the pasty office drone? Just three out of so many choices.
Do I have a favorite? For the past few days, I've worn the tanned, good-looking surfer face in my free time; it's done wonders for my self-image. Both men and women alike seem to favor this one above all others during my day-to-day interactions. People step out of the way and smile up at me as I walk the busy sidewalks, and of course I return the expression with my own teeth showing through the mouth—because I bleach them at home in the evenings, they appear to be part of the face. People seem to think they've crossed paths with a movie star, even a god.
They have no idea who lurks behind the mask.
But that's part of the game, you see. I don't let on that I'm not the doctor or the worker or the accountant or the surfer. When I wear those faces, I am those people. Their credit cards are mine. So are their cars, their homes, their lives. I become them.
How did I dispense with the bodies? That's a morbid question. Why dwell on such a thing? But if you must know, there was a circular saw involved, a room draped in plastic drop cloths, and a basement furnace. As for the bones, they were bagged and put out with the trash. Derivative? Perhaps.
The bodies never concern me, only the lives I step into. I watched these men for months, "stalked" them, if you will, studying their solitary lives, their total lack of social interaction, their daily routines traveling to work and returning home, digging their own six-foot trenches as they tread the same path every day without exception. Simple men with simple lives—yet so much variety when they're all mine to wear as I like.
Today, I'll be the construction worker. I could use the exercise, and the sunshine will do me good.
I tug the face from its hanger and step into my bathroom. This is my apartment; it belongs to the man behind the mask. I rent it under a pseudonym, of course, an anagram of The Lone Ranger. Go ahead and try to figure it out. Don't forget to use all the letters; that's how anagrams work, you know.
Employing a fresh compound of costume glue, I affix the face to my raw foundation, the me no one ever sees, ravaged flesh from that accident long ago with the carjacker. I didn't get out fast enough for his liking, and he took what was mine, driving off to leave me writhing in the middle of the street. My warm welcome to Los Angeles.
I'll be working on a new building downtown today. I've been "out sick" for a few days, but that sort of thing is common enough. No one would suspect that I lead multiple lives. I reach for my hard hat and lunchbox and notice a message blinking on my notebook computer, seated on the small kitchen table.
You have a new friend request.
Not from a new friend—an old one, a girl I haven't seen in years. There's an email included with the social network request and the thumbnail image of a smiling, vivacious brunette.
Hey Matt, you always told me to look you up if I made it out to L.A. Well, I'm here! Can't wait to hear about the awesome movies you're writing ;) Call me. Then her phone number.
Shannon Templeton. From high school, back in Indianapolis before I'd gone Westward Ho. A past life, but not forgotten. I could never forget someone like Shannon.
I'm staring at the screen, and I don't know how much time has passed. I delete the message and head toward the door for my day as Carlton Snookes of Daley Construction—not Matthew Helms, aspiring screenwriter.
I don't even know who that is anymore.
––––––––
The building site is just the change of pace I need, being out in the city's sunshine and automobile exhaust. The men ask where I've been, and I gesture to my belly, just a slight paunch in my otherwise tall, lanky frame. They get the idea and start pretending to crap their pants. They're overgrown juvenile delinquents, but they make me smile. I feel the flesh of this face stretch at both sides of my mouth.
I treat the faces when they're fresh so they won't bleed all over the place, and I maintain them regularly with oils so they'll stay supple and lifelike. The last thing I want is one of them toughening up on me. That would be awkward.
I know everything about his former life, this man I've become. Old Carl Snookes was a widower, his wife and two kids taken by a drunk driver almost a decade ago. He lived on the east side of town in a cramped studio, not unlike my first L.A. apartment. I've been to his place a few times—to pick up the hard hat, the lunch box, some of his clothes. It's not in an area I'd want to live. But since I'm paying the rent over there, I might as well make an appearance every now and then to make it look lived in.
––––––––
When I get home, there's another message blinking on my computer.
Shannon again: Cute avatar. Wish I could see what you look like now. It's been so long.
She's referring to my profile image of a clay skeleton dressed in business attire, slumped over a clay workstation. The death of an accountant—or a screenwriter.
Why is she contacting me like this? Why now, after fifteen years? I don't want to see her. I don't want to see anyone from the past. I'm not that person anymore.
I should have deleted this account a long time ago, or at least changed the profile name to my pseudonym. (Figured it out yet? THE LONE RANGER—scramble it up and see what you get.)
I'll admit it. Sometimes I have trouble letting go.
––––––––
The next day, I'm the surfer/actor/god again, stopping by the shop on the corner for my morning coffee made to order. The barista has it ready for me, knowing my daily fix, and she smiles warmly as she says, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" Her gaze lingers, unblinking, as if she's hoping I'll grasp the subtext.
I toast her with my extra-large cup, though I always order a medium—and that's what she charges me for. "Keep up the good work."
She gives me a wink. The folks in line clear a path as I make my exit. I'm head and shoulders above most of them, and they all look at this face as if they've never seen anything quite like it before in person. Who is he? Somebody famous, I'll bet.
On the sidewalk outside, I survey the Daley building site where I worked as Carl yesterday. I might lose my job there if I keep showing up late. But I need to take a walk, clear my head a little.
I start thinking about Shannon and Matt.
She wanted to study psychology and become a counselor. Her home life had been a mess—cheating mother, abusive father—but she'd always found solace in the office of the school counselor, Mrs. McCrae. Shannon often talked about wanting to do that with her life: help troubled teens.
Matt dealt with his cold, indifferent home in his own way. He had an older brother by two years who wanted nothing to do with him, no matter how much interest Matt showed in his sports activities, and a single mom who, when she wasn't working two waitressing jobs, was on the couch staring at the TV with a cigarette smoldering in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Meanwhile Matt was in his room downloading movies onto his computer and watching them over and over again—Scarface, The Godfather, all that old gangster crap. And he started writing one of his own: Blood Money.
He made the mistake of telling Shannon about his new hobby, and she got him to show her the working draft.
"It's good," she said with a half-hearted smile. Matt could tell she didn't like it. Wasn't her genre. Too much blood, too much cursing. She preferred French films from the '60s.
So that was the last time he ever showed anybody one of his works in progress. It jinxed the whole thing, and he was never able to finish it. Blood Money went into a trunk file, and he turned to other projects: finishing high school, moving out, heading to L.A., grabbing the first paying job he could lay his hands on (delivering pizzas), renting his first crappy apartment above a pawn shop where trannie hookers outside plied their trade throughout the night.
Fifteen years ago already? Time sure flies when you're somebody else.
––––––––
I hung up my first face in the closet a month after that carjacker with the can of pepper spray had his way with me. Only it wasn't pepper; it was acid. The doctors did what they could with my face, but without skin grafts, it would never look close to human. And on a pizza delivery salary plus tips, I couldn't afford the medical coverage it would take to fix me up.
You never know what you've got until you've lost it. My car. My face. My job. My apartment. I was on the streets, homeless, so ugly only the schizophrenics didn't seem to mind. I tried to cover my deformities with a bandana and sunglasses, but that made me look just plain creepy.
The doctor was my first.
When he wasn't working on disfigured faces at the hospital, he held down a shift at the methadone clinic where the heroin addicts lined up every morning for their recovery fixes. He came to the clinic at the same time every day, 6 AM, and he left the hospital at the same time every evening, 5 PM. He took the bus, and thanks to the spare change I'd been able to beg off the more compassionate folks who passed me by, I found out where he lived—a nice, two bedroom-house in the suburbs. Not much, but a lot more than I had at the time. There were no family or friends who came to visit him. Just me.
Maybe I'll be the good doctor today. My way of giving back to the neighborhood, filling his shoes at the clinic. That's the key, you know: I have to be able to fill their shoes. The faces are one thing, but to really pull it off, to actually be these people, I have to share the same size and shape.
The voices are easy. I've always been good at those.
––––––––
The only way Matthew Helms could distract the attention of his mother from the TV set was to impersonate one of her favorite actors, to ask her in the voice of Robert Redford or Paul Newman if she'd like him to order a pizza for dinner.
"You're so good at that, Matt," she'd say absently, glancing back his way to blow out some smoke. "You could be anybody you want to be."
––––––––
When I return to my apartment, located above a deli in a cleaner part of town, I see there's another message from Shannon. Why won't she leave me alone?
I'm trying not to take it personal, Matt. Who knows, maybe you don't even check this account anymore. But if you do, please give me a call. I'd sure like to see you. Her phone number. Again.
I peel off my face after tossing the empty coffee cup into the trash. Flustered, I almost drop the face in there, too—but I remember in time and catch it, spray it with the oil that keeps it flexible, and hang it in the closet with the others leering at me, seeming to laugh at what they see underneath.
I really hate them sometimes.
I'm glad they're dead, and sometimes I'm even glad I was the one who ended them. But sometimes I find myself curled up in the corner of my bedroom sobbing, unable to stop, and I don't know how I've gotten there.
Not today. I'm too irritable to give in to self-loathing and despair. This reappearance of Shannon is strange and uncomfortable. I know she can't possibly find me; I haven't bought or rented anything by the name Matthew Helms in years. I know I could easily block her messages and never hear from her again. I could deactivate this network account—probably something I should have done a while ago.
Waiting to hear from my brother has been a waste of time. And Mom never would touch a computer.
But before I know what I'm doing, I've bent over the keyboard and started typing.
Shannon, it's really been a while! How are you? I don't have a phone—starving writer, you know. But it's great to hear from you. Sorry I haven't responded sooner, I've been sick.
And before I realize it, I've already clicked SEND.
––––––––
My first mistake was agreeing to meet Shannon at the coffee shop.
No, my first mistake was contacting Shannon at all.
What was I thinking? I didn't have a face in my closet she would recognize as Matt Helms, even with the passage of time. So I settled on one that belonged to a Midwestern transplant such as my true self, a thirty-odd-year-old door-to-door salesman who had the same splotchy facial coloring as Matt used to. I'd toyed with the idea of wearing my L.A. god-face, but I truly doubted Shannon would ever believe that was Matt. And besides, I couldn't have the barista see me with another girl. My daily X-larges might suddenly be downsized to smalls!
The added benefit of being this incarnation of Matt from Indiana: I didn't have to suck in my gut like I did when I was the surfer-god. Everybody from Indiana has a paunch, men and women alike. It's like a standard regulation uniform.
Every time the door opens and jingles the bell mounted above, I look up, my heart leaping into my throat. Why do I feel like I'm on a first date? It's been fifteen years. A lifetime ago. I'm sure as hell not the same person I was, and I doubt Shannon is either. People grow and move on.
The only consistent thing in life is change. You know that.
The doorbell rings for the twenty-third time, and I look up again like Pavlov's dog—without the slobber. There she is: Shannon Templeton, looking exactly how I remember her. Fifteen years haven't passed. She's still a senior in high school, as gorgeous as ever. But somehow I've lost track of time, been carried away by a stream of sewage. I'm not the boy she knew, not even close.
She's still clean.
I'm foul as foul can be.
She holds her purse strap against the shoulder of her cotton peasant blouse and glances about the shop. Thankfully, it's full of strangers sitting around idly chatting, tapping their notebook computers, waiting in line to order or out of line for their drinks. Shannon rises up on her toes—she still does that, and it's just as adorable as ever—to peer over the heads she can or around the ones she can't. She bites her lower lip. I swallow; I always liked that facial tick of hers—so pensive. Her dark eyes keep scanning the room. The nervous, hopeful glow to her face that was so evident upon arrival slowly begins to fade.
She doesn't give me more than a cursory glance. Why should she? I'm no one to her. This face I wear—it's nothing like the one she remembers.
My chin starts to itch. I haven't worn this flesh-mask in a while, and it's chafing me underneath. Like leather, it needs to be oiled to stay supple. Have I neglected to treat this one regularly? The itch intensifies, but I know better than to scratch at it. I never touch these faces while I wear them; I never know if something might go awry. This one in particular, I can feel it stiffening, digging into my ravaged flesh beneath with its crusty glued edges. The itching has mutated into a burning sensation, and it's spreading.
I'm trapped beneath. I have to get it off.
The restroom is occupied.
I have to go home. I have to leave. Now, before it's too late.
But Shannon remains in the doorway with one hand on it, still on tiptoe at the back of the line, straining to see a corner of the shop she might have neglected on first inspection. The glow is completely absent from her face now. She has the look of a beautiful girl who's been stood-up before and knows what it's like, despite it being the most unfair thing in the world.
I clench my fists to keep them from ripping this face off and hurling it across the shop. It's me, Shannon! Matt! I'm still here! I'm—
She's gone. The bell jingles as the door swings shut behind her.
––––––––
There's no message on the computer when I return to my apartment. The Midwestern face is in the trash; I'll burn it later. I won't be wearing that one ever again. I should go through my closet and discard the faces that have outlived their prime.
Haven't I been maintaining them regularly? I seem to remember doing so; but then again, I'm quite the unreliable narrator.
I deactivate the Matthew Helms network account. There won't be any more messages from Shannon, and I won’t be waiting for any from my brother. Fifteen years is a long time. People change. They grow, move on. They disappear. Sometimes you can't even recognize them anymore.
Who is this masked man, you ask? The Lone Ranger—or Gale Treehornn, as I prefer to be called. (I'm sure you were expecting a much more ironic anagram. How's that for an anticlimax? Hey now, don't be hating.) Gale Treehornn, master identity thief. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Why do I do what I do? Well, I'm afraid you'll have to answer that question for yourself. We all like to wear our little masks, pretending to be someone we're not for the people around us.
Are we really so different, you and I?