T. Boyle - Talk Talk

She wasn't cool with it. Wasn't down with the program or hip to it or copacetic or even just basically willing, but she let him guide her up to the counter and tried on a smile for the heavyset woman, who gave it right back to her. “Can I help you?” the woman said, and that was easy to read-context, context was all.

“Yes, please,” Dana said, and dropped her eyes a moment while she extracted her driver's license from her purse and laid it on the counter. “I'm Dana Halter?” she said, looking up again. “I just-I don't know, I guess I misplaced my mailbox key…”

The woman was younger than she'd first appeared. She was wearing a pink cable-knit sweater that gave an unfortunate emphasis to her shoulders and upper arms, her skin was pale to the point of anemia and she wore a pair of clunky-looking glasses with clear plastic frames. But her eyes were what mattered, and her eyes were nonjudgmental. She barely glanced at the license and then slid it back across the counter. “No problem,” she said, and her smile brightened, and then she said something else.

“I'm sorry, what?”

Dana saw the woman flick her eyes to Bridger and then Bridger said something.

“She said,” he repeated, speaking slowly so that she could read his lips, “that there is a twenty-five-dollar fee for replacement keys and I said that was okay. Right, honey?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding vigorously and holding the woman's eyes, “sure. That's only fair, and I'm sorry-it was my fault, not my fiancé's.” She was elaborating now-lies always required elaboration. “So stupid of me.” She turned to Bridger, playing the airhead, the doll-face, the bimbette. “My bad, honey,” she said. She was beginning to enjoy this, especially the aftershock of the term “fiancé” on Bridger's face. But then the woman said something else and she had to ask “What?” again.

“Number?” the woman was saying. “What number?”

This was what she'd been afraid of-any honest person, any normal person, would have had the number on the tip of her tongue, but Dana didn't have it because she was an imposter-she wasn't Dana Halter at all. Or not this Dana Halter. She felt her lips tighten. For a split second she looked away, averting her eyes like a criminal, a liar, a scam artist, and she struggled to control her voice as she repeated the version of the story she'd rehearsed about this being their second home and how they'd been away and how to her embarrassment-Can you believe it? — she'd forgotten the number. But here was her ID-she thrust the driver's license across the counter again, and dug out her social security card and a major credit card too-and she wondered sweetly if the woman could just look it up in her records?

The smile was gone now and the woman's eyes had lost their sympathy. She didn't look suspicious so much as uneasy-an understanding was awakening inside her and Dana recognized it and for the first time in her life played to it. She stood absolutely still, poised at the counter in the silence that was eternal, and let her eyes do the talking for her. “Yes,” her eyes said, “I'm different,” and it hardly hurt at all to see that this time it was the woman who had to look away.

Aside from the usual glut of flyers and one-time-only offers addressed hopefully to “Occupant,” there appeared to be three or four legitimate pieces of mail in the box. Dana caught the briefest glimpse of a commercial logo on one of the envelopes-was that a bill? — before bundling the whole business up in two trembling hands and willing herself to walk in a measured way to the exit, even turning to look over her shoulder and wave two appreciative fingers at the woman behind the counter. Bridger was waiting for her outside. Together, they crossed the street, careful to look both ways and present an air of calm to anybody who might be watching, and then they were in the car and the mail-Dana Halter's mail-was theirs.

The surprise was Bridger. He was so wound up he actually snatched the bundle out of her hands and began pawing through it, impatiently tossing newsprint flyers and glossy brochures to the floor at his feet. There was an expression of willed triumph on his face, something hard there she'd never recognized before-from the look of him you would have thought he was the one whose identity had been stolen. He came up with the letters-three of them, addressed to the postbox-but it was she who slipped the bill emblazoned with the PG&E logo out of the pile and lifted it exultantly to the light. He might have said “Bingo!” or “Eureka!” but he didn't have to. They both knew what it meant. They had him now. They had their man.

“Open it,” he said.

She could feel the smile aching on her lips. “It's a federal offense.”

“Horseshit,” he said, or something like it. “What about stealing somebody's identity-what kind of offense is that? Open it.” He made a snatch at the envelope then, but she was too quick for him, shifting it to her left hand and secreting it in the space between door and seat cushion. She was afraid suddenly, frightened at the prospect of what was about to be revealed. They were so close. The face of the thief, his mocking eyes, the cocky thrust of his chin, came back to her. So close. Her stomach clenched around nothing, around the remains of the stale croissant and sour coffee they'd got at a gas station hours ago. Bridger said something, terse and urgent-she could feel the force of his expelled breath-but she dropped her eyes and shut him out. He tried to turn her face to him, his fingers at her throat, and she shook him off. Silently, deep in her mind, she counted to ten. Then she tore open the envelope.

The address inside, the service address, stared out from the page, and it gave her a jolt that was almost physical, as if her auditory nerves had been suddenly restored and someone had screamed it in her ear: 109 Shelter Bay Village Mill Valley, CA 94941 Bridger slammed his hand down on the dash and raised his chin to howl in triumph, and then he pumped his fist twice in the air and pulled his lips back to emit what must have been a hiss of jubilation. Context told her what it was: “Yessss!”

The other envelopes revealed little-the first two proved, respectively, to be ads for real estate and equity loans, addressed in a neat computer-generated script meant to mimic human agency and dupe the addressee into opening it. The third one, though, was more interesting. It was addressed to “The Man, Box 2120, Mill Valley, California, ”and inside was a thrice-folded sheet of lined paper torn from a yellow legal pad. A cryptic message was scrawled across it at a forty-five-degree angle in a looping oversized longhand: “Hey, that thing we talked about is on, no problema. See you soon. Ciao, Sandman.”

“'See you soon,'” she read aloud, looking to Bridger.

He had on his wondering look, his features floating across the pale globe of his face like drifting continents. His hair bristled. He ran a hand through it. “Is he going someplace? I mean, Dana, Frank, whatever his name is-is he planning a trip maybe?”

“What's the postmark?”

Bridger turned the letter over. It had been postmarked in Garrison, New York, four days earlier. “Where's Garrison?”

“I think it's near Poughkeepsie,” she said. “Or maybe Peterskill. Maybe that's closer.”

“So what's that-an hour, hour and a half north of the city?”

She shrugged. “I guess. Yeah.”

The sun was on the car and though it was cool enough outside-in the low seventies, she guessed-she began to feel it and turned to crank down the window. When they'd come back to the car, she'd slid into the driver's seat-it was hers, after all, though Bridger had done nearly all the driving to this point-and now she looked out on the quietly bustling street and felt a tickle of emotion in her throat. “What now?” she wondered aloud, and Bridger pulled her to him, awkwardly, across the wheel. They embraced a moment and then he leaned back so she could see his face and the answer there: “We go after him.”