Scott Sherman - Third You Die

“Darling,” she said, as if my insecurity were the problem, “I believe in you. Remember how you helped me that time with Dottie Kubacki?”

My mother was referring to a debacle of an incident where she’d talked me into spying on one of our neighbors she’d become convinced was having an affair with my father. That little stunt had left me with an almost broken tailbone and an equally painful memory of the suspected adulteress in her three hundred pounds of naked glory.

“Who could I possibly trust more than you, darling?” my mother asked. “You’re always there for me.”

My mother wasn’t perfect. But she loved me unconditionally, and that counted for a lot. Plus, she never arranged to have me kidnapped and brainwashed into being straight. You had to add points for that, too.

Sure, she was high maintenance. But most worthwhile things are.

I let myself enjoy what I was pretty sure were likely to be the last nice thoughts I had for her today.

At least I didn’t have to worry about my accent-with my mother in the room, I rarely got a word in edgewise. Today, that’d work to my advantage.

My mother gave Steven a hug. “You’re a genius, darling. He looks awful.”

She grabbed me by the arm. “Get up, old man.” She dragged us to a full-length mirror mounted on the wall.

I was already in my costume for the day. A conservative Hugo Boss suit with a red power tie. They had it specially tailored to accommodate the padding they strapped to my belly and shoulders, making me look bulkier and out-of-shape. They also had me in elevator shoes, bringing me to a more respectable height of five feet six, an inch taller than my mother.

“Just look at us!” my mother exclaimed. “Don’t we make a gorgeous couple?”

I wouldn’t go that far. Nor did I quite get the whole reverse-Oedipal vibe. But, yeah, we did look close enough in age and style that we could pass as something other than mother and son.

At some point, Andrew must have come into the room, because he was the one who answered.

“You know,” he said, and I could hear he was being sincere, “I think this could work.”

“Of course it’s going to work!” my mother assured him. “We’re going to be the Jewish Woodward and Bernstein by the time this is done.”

I was pretty sure Woodward and Bernstein were the Jewish Woodward and Bernstein. At least, Bernstein must have been. I wasn’t sure about Woodward.

My mother gave us one last look in the mirror, squeezed my hand, and grabbed her stylist. “I think,” she said, “we’d better go find me a purse. The right purse will be key.” They hurried out of the room.

Andrew took her place by my side. Seeing that everyone had pretty much fled the room as soon as they could, he leaned over and whispered hotly into my ear.

“Wanna know how good that Steven is? I can honestly say if I were meeting you for the first time, looking as you do now, I would not, at this moment, want to fuck you.”

“Gee,” I gushed. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Of course, knowing that’s you under all that, I’m kind of turned on in a perverse way. It’d be like making it with you and not making it with you, all at the same time.”

“Well, you’re going to have to keep that nauseating three-way as a fantasy,” I said. “Mustn’t smear my makeup and all that.”

We reviewed our plan on the ride over to Families by Design. We were in our tricked-out video van, full of equipment rented by our tech guru, Laurent. From this command center, they’d be monitoring and taping every moment of our interview. My mother had a video camera concealed in her brooch and a backup in the temple of the stylishly thick eyeglasses she wore, which she didn’t need, but which further altered her appearance.

I was also wired, with my camera hidden in my tiepin.

The small devices wouldn’t record more than grainy, heavily pixilated images, but that was adequate for the job. It would give the footage a realistic spy-cam quality. And while it was hard to get good video from this kind of equipment, the sound would be clear and capture everything that was said. That was its most important role in gathering the material we’d need to prove if Families by Design was, in fact, unforgivably lax in assessing its potential parents.

“Now, remember,” my mother said to me, “you must turn and look at me frequently. Not just your head, darling, your whole body.”

“If we’re there adopting a child together,” I said, “I assume they’ll believe we’re a couple. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to constantly gaze adoringly at you. Wouldn’t want to overdo it.”

“It’s not that, darling. It’s just that the cameras I’m wearing aren’t going to capture me. I need you to get my reaction shots with that clever little one you’ve got on.”

Not for the first time, I concluded that my mother’s greatest talent was to make and keep herself the center of attention.

Andrew handed us fake IDs and made us run through our cover story again. He’d already had the production staff prepare the false documents and applications we used to set up the appointment. The most important part of our deception was establishing me as a wealthy investor whose start-up funds helped build three of the five most popular online social networks, making me very rich, indeed.

I’d had input into the planning of our fake identities. What no one knew was that the character I was playing was based on a real customer of mine back in the days I was hustling. Not only was my client fabulously wealthy and a brilliant venture capitalist, but he was also a motormouth. I’d learned enough from him that, if I had to, I could speak believably about how I’d made my fortune through the art and science of angel investing.

Our assumed names were Murray Goldsberry and Zorah Heffelbergen. We decided to pose as an unmarried couple to create the first of many considerations any reasonable adoption agency would want to ask about. Not that unmarried people couldn’t adopt, mind you, but it was a point of information worth exploring in a culture where married couples enjoyed certain rights and responsibilities that would affect a child’s well-being. But, trust me, being uninterested in tying the knot was the least of the Goldberry/Heffelbergens’ problems.

I couldn’t wait to see what the folks at Families by Design would make of the others.

“Our goal,” the alarmingly well-manicured and groomed owner and chief operating officer of Families by Design, Amanda Peterson, said smiling, waving her arms at us like a spokesmodel demonstrating a particularly valuable prize on The Price Is Right, “is to help you build the family of your dreams.”

So far, Ms. Peterson said everything with a smile. From “How nice to meet you,” to “Can I get you something to drink?” to “So tell me, how did you hear about Families by Design?” was delivered with a Zenlike joyfulness. I wished I had a vest full of explosives so I could open my jacket to see if she announced a bomb scare with that same accommodating merriment.

An attractive, well-poised woman with impeccable diction, Ms. Peterson was probably somewhere in her late forties, although with the right skin care routine and a good surgeon, she may well have been a good deal older. Her skin was tightly stretched against her face, which, like the rest of her, was too thin by half. For all her outward graciousness, you got the sense this was a woman willing to starve herself, or anyone else, for that matter, to get what she wanted.

As generous as she was with her smiles, they never quite reached past her cheeks. It gave them a robotic unnaturalness. The top half of her face was either immobilized by Botox or disinterest; it was too soon to tell.