Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

"Is good, yes?" the foreigner repeated with his sinister eyes sparkling. "So police won't know you."

"You could've asked me first."

The foreigner shrugged. "I also could've made you look like monkey's asshole." He diddled some more with the machine.

"No more drugs," said Shannon.

"A little for the pain."

Shannon was clear enough in his head to start thinking now, to start remembering and putting things together.

"How long've I been here?"

"Two days."

"And this was all because of Whittaker, the foundation guy? Is he the one who wanted to help me out?"

"Your friend, you mean. Your friend wishes to remain anonymous."

"What do you mean, anonymous? What the hell is this?" Shannon felt like he ought to make trouble, for form's sake, but he was beginning to suspect he had stepped into a good thing.

"Ta, ta, ta," the foreigner said again. He finished with the machine. He drew the chair up to the bed and sat down on it, murmuring, "Now we see." He leaned forward, studying Shannon's face, peering at him from underneath his untamed eyebrows. He reached out and when Shannon made to slap him off, he said, "Et-et-et" and pushed past him. He held Shannon's cheek and chin gently with his fingertips, turning his face this way and that.

"You are very ugly now, like monster," he murmured. "But soon you will be Handsome Dan, like in movies." Handsome Dang.

Now Shannon did push the foreigner's hands away. "You ought to ask before you cut up someone's face."

"Yes, yes." The foreigner seemed unrepentant, even amused. He went on studying Shannon a while in silence. Then, in a low voice, as if meditating out loud, he said, "Let me tell you how will be, how always is. I give you new face, name, papers, work to do. I even change your fingerprints and DNA."

"What? I thought you couldn't do that."

"In body, no. In computers, yes-which amounts to same thing."

"What do you mean? You mean you can get into the computers? The records? All of them? The feds, the cops, the prisons? You can change all the records of my fingerprints and DNA? You can do that?"

"I am identity mang. I tell you."

Shannon's face grew blank and distant as the implications occurred to him.

"You see?" said the foreigner, nodding. "This is what you want, yes? This is beyond wildest dreams. You will escape police now, live new life now, yes?"

"Yeah," said Shannon, thinking it through. "Yeah…"

"Yeah." The foreigner mimicked him, mocked him. "Maybe for month. Maybe for year, maybe two years, maybe sometimes three, who knows? Then you begin to make mistakes, do little things same as like you used to. You are thinking, 'It does not matter now. I am new man now.'" New mang. "'I escape police.' Then one day you don't escape. You steal, you fight, you run traffic light, you drink in street, police arrest you. Maybe you get away one time-because fingerprints are changed, face is new, you have papers. But soon you are back. You steal, you fight. You go to jail. You go to prison. Three strikes. Or you kill someone. It is all again. All my work, what's the use, what's the purpose, yes? A month, a year, two years, maybe sometimes three. Then it is all again. All the same like before."

Shannon gestured for the apple juice. The foreigner held it to him and he sucked at the straw. As he leaned back, tired with the effort, he shook his head. "No," he said. "Not me. I get what you're saying. But not me. I'm done with that life. You give me a fresh start and I'm gone, baby, gone, so help me."

"Yes, yes, yes, 'so help me.'" The foreigner waved his spotty hand. "You all think this. Fresh start. Like magic, you think. Because you are American. Because you are dumb. You think: 'This is big, wide country. I come to new place, no one knows me, I change. I have therapy, I read book, I take medicine, I have operation, I am new mang.'" He shook his head, those sinister, laughing eyes glistening. "You are never new mang. I am identity man who tells you this. You have identity like stain in fl esh, it never leave you. You have history, like stain in mind. Look at arm. Hmm? Look."

Shannon looked at his stinging left arm. There was a bandage wrapped around it, but he could see red, raw flesh peeking out from beneath the edges. "What's that…?"

"They are gone now. The little scars. I take them away from you. Soon the flesh will heal. There will be nothing."

Shannon stared-at the bandaged arm, then at the foreigner, then at the bandaged arm again. His reaction to this new piece of information surprised him. He had always hated those little round scars on his arms. He had never noticed them without a pang of rage. There were nights when he lost sleep over them, angry at his crappy luck, generally furious and forlorn. And yet now-now that they were gone, he sorrowed for the loss of them. He felt violated, wronged, an intimate piece of him stripped away while he slept.

"What'd you have to do that for?" he murmured, half to himself. He already knew the answer.

"Because they are identifying marks, no? I take them off records, but maybe someone remembers. They make for questions. So I take them." He watched, amused, as Shannon mourned over his lost scars. "So what? So I take scars-so what? Is history gone? Did mother not burn you with cigarette now? Do you not lie awake at night in anger and pain because you have no love in life, no love in heart until you die? You know this. Shannon-is not even real name. You change already. You are new mang? No. Identity like stain. You have nature, you have history. These I cannot take away. So," concluded the foreigner breezily, throwing his hands in the air and letting them plop back down into his lap, "you are fucked." He stood up. "You are not changed. You cannot change. You will do again same like before and like before, same things will happen to you. But… for now you have new face. So that is something, yes? I do what I can do."

Shannon glanced at his bandaged arm again. He couldn't shake that weird sense of loss.

"So what do I look like?" he asked. "My face, I mean."

"I show you later," said the foreigner, "when you are Handsome Dang."

"Just give me a mirror. What do I look like?"

But already the older man was toying with the machine at the bedside. "Sleep," he said.

And Shannon sank away into sleep.

The next time he woke up, he was alone, although he had the sense that a door had just closed, that someone had just left him. His mind cleared faster this time. He cranked his eyes wide. He worked himself into an upright position on the bed. Looked around him.

The IV bag and its silver pole were pushed against the wall. The tube was wrapped up on a hook on the pole. He looked down at his right arm. Nothing there now but a square of gauze taped in the crook of his elbow where the needle had run in. The catheter was gone, too. So were the bandages on his left arm. He could see the red, naked patch where the burn scars had been. He was still in pain, a lot of pain, more throbbing pain in his head than before, in fact. But that was all right, he could take it. He was glad to be free of the tubes and off the drugs.

He moved his feet over the edge of the bed and sat up. He had to wait there until his stomach stopped roller coasting. While he waited, he noticed a couple of painkillers, Vicodin, on the bedside table next to the juice bottle. That was reassuring. He'd go without them as long as he could, but he was probably going to need them soon.

He was wearing a hospital gown, one of those papery smocks that opens in back so your ass hangs out. He looked around the room for his clothes. No sign of them. That annoyed him. He wanted to get dressed. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to get some air and be his own man again.

He wanted to see his face, too, see what the foreigner had done to him, get a look at this "new mang" he was supposed to be. There was a bathroom just past the end of the bed, the door open. That got him moving. He managed to stand up. Hanging onto the bedrail, he edged his way unsteadily across the floor.