Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

Jane didn’t answer. The woman needed to get something said, so she didn’t try to interrupt her with some disclaimer that would have to be a lie.

The woman looked out the windshield. “I pulled myself together a little bit after that. I remember actually laughing—a nervous little laugh—because finally something was happening the way somebody had said it would, and that meant everything was on track again. But it wasn’t. He said, ‘Get up,’ and switched on the light. He turned away, so I thought it was some clumsy attempt to be polite, because I was only wearing my nightgown. But when I got up I saw he was going through my stuff: my suitcase and my bag. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he said he was collecting the money I owed.”

“Did you owe them money?” asked Jane.

“No,” said the woman. “I paid all the expenses, and gave them fifty thousand dollars. That was supposed to be it. But he said I was mistaken.” She looked down at her hands in her lap.

“Did he explain what he meant?”

“I didn’t really listen carefully to the rest. There was something about extra expenses because I wasn’t on the plane, and that meant they had to look for me. And fees for other things. Once I knew where this was all leading, it hardly mattered what he called it.”

“Did you argue with him?”

“Sure. I wasn’t trying to run away from things I’d done and live in luxury or something. He was taking the money I was going to need to stay hidden and get started again. I was desperate. I started to yell at him.”

“And then what?”

“And then I stopped.”

Jane looked at her closely. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said the woman. “I did. It was one of those surprises that come, and when they do, the biggest part is wondering how you could be so stupid that you didn’t know before. All you had to do was step out of your own skull and look at yourself from anywhere but your own eyes. I saw him looking at me, and saw that the shouting didn’t make him nervous. He raised his voice too, but he wasn’t mad. He was just showing me he wasn’t afraid of being heard. He could make all the noise he wanted.”

“And you couldn’t.”

“No. I couldn’t. I saw it in his eyes. They were … amused. I don’t mean he thought I was funny. I mean that he was watching my face while it all occurred to me, and he was enjoying each step.”

“Each step?”

“I’m thinking, ‘Why am I yelling?’ The reason you yell is to bring other people—neighbors, passersby, police. If that happens, I’m going to be caught and shipped back to Washington and put in jail. Or maybe it’s more basic, less civilized. I’m angry, like an animal. My throat tightens and my mouth opens wider. But what does my animal anger mean to this other animal? He’s much bigger and stronger and faster than I am, and he knows how to fight—has fought. So yelling is not only pointless, it’s actually self-destructive. Yelling and fighting were out.”

“You said he was watching you figure that out. Did he say anything?”

“He said, ‘The maintenance fee will be five thousand a month.’ ”

“What’s a maintenance fee?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know. Or maybe you do, and you want me to say it. He said they’d continue to check on me to be sure I was okay, and if I needed things, they would get them for me.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Renew my licenses and cards and things. Even that had never occurred to me. I had a wallet full of fake cards, but what happens in a year when they’ve expired? What if I needed a college transcript or a reference for a job?”

“Did you agree to it?”

She shrugged. “I told him I didn’t have enough money. When I ran away I had two hundred and five thousand dollars. I paid them fifty to help me. I put up another twenty-five for expenses: that Sid Freeman guy, plane tickets, hotels, cars, hair, clothes, and I don’t remember what else. He was taking another twenty-five right then. So if I never spent anything at all—never even bought any food—I could only pay for twenty-one months. Then I thought, ‘Well, okay. Maybe I can find a job quickly, and that will buy me more time.’ Isn’t that amazing?”

“It sounds fairly sensible.”

“No, it doesn’t. What I’m telling you is that it took me maybe five seconds to hear it, and accept it, and get used to it, just like the yelling.”

“You didn’t have much choice, and you had already figured out that arguing with him tonight wasn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“I didn’t have any choice at all. I was being robbed and I couldn’t fight or yell for help. I was getting scared. I thought about running. I was in a strange city across the continent from anything or anybody I knew. I had no credit cards or licenses or identification except the ones they had given me, in a name they chose, and no hope of getting any others. How far would I get? But the big, big surprise was that it took me maybe five more seconds to see everything that had happened the way it really was.”

Jane wondered if she did. “How was it, really?”

“They had promised to make me disappear. I had thought of it as hiding, but it wasn’t. They made me cease to exist, and what was left was this woman that they had invented. Whatever they decided was all right with me, because it had to be. They owned me. I was already not really evaluating what he was telling me, because I knew it was settled. But I was listening, because I had to know what he wanted so I could do it.”

Jane guided the car onto the circular interchange for the San Diego Freeway and accelerated up the long hill to the south toward the airport. “It’s over now. Don’t blame yourself. If anybody is to blame, I guess it’s me.”

The woman looked at her with glazed eyes. “I should hate you, but I don’t seem to be able to bring back enough of myself to feel it. I think it, but it’s just something I know is appropriate, not an emotion.”

“It’s a start,” said Jane. “Being in a situation like that isn’t something that changes you into a different person. He was holding a gun on you.”

“No, he wasn’t. If you want to know what really happened, I’ll tell you. He said I would pay them five thousand a month. I said I couldn’t for very long. He said a smart girl like me would think of a way.”

“This isn’t necessary,” said Jane. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Yes I do,” said the woman. “I said, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ So he reached out and tugged my nightgown so the hem came up over my knees. He said my legs weren’t bad, so there might be hope. I batted his hand away and pulled back from him. He just stood there and put his hand on his hip. That opened his coat so I could see the gun. He never touched it, just looked at me and waited.” She squeezed her eyes closed, and Jane saw tears stream down her cheek. “I said, ‘You don’t need the gun.’ And I started to take the nightgown off. He didn’t even have to ask. I’ve never done anything like that in my life, never thought of it. I just knew that was what I was supposed to do, and I was thinking I would save myself some little bit of nastiness if I just did it.”

Jane said, “This isn’t what I want to know.”

“But it is what I want to tell you. It took about fifteen minutes to reduce me to that. He had come to make sure I understood that I would have to do what they wanted, and this was the most painless way I had to tell him that I got the idea: he didn’t have to hit me or cut me or something. And you know what? Before it happened, I was already used to it. It had already sunk in, and seemed perfectly natural in the new order of things. I had already learned that I could get by without my money, and now I told myself I could get along without whatever this was, too. But having to be hit in the face or have an arm broken, or even having to stand there and listen to him saying it, and then have to do exactly as he said, seemed worse than just getting it over with quietly. Then you came in.”