Assumed Identity

13

Here’s the postcard I never thought I’d send. I hope you meant your promise. The last time and place. Counting on you. PLEASE.

Buchanan stepped from the bathroom, its toilet flushing. “Last night, you mentioned something about R and R.”

Alan squinted, suspicious. “That’s right.”

“Well, you call this being on R and R? Being caged in here?”

“I told you, Don Colton’s supposed to be invisible. If you start wandering in and out, the neighbors will think you’re him, and when the next Don Colton shows up, they’ll get suspicious.”

“But what if I’m out of here? Me. Buchanan. A furlough. I haven’t had one in eight years. Who’d notice? Who’d care?”

“Furlough?”

“Under my own name. Might do me some good to be myself for a change.”

Alan cocked his head, squinting, nonetheless betraying his interest.

“Next week, I’m supposed to go back to that doctor,” Buchanan said. “By then, maybe your people and the colonel will have decided what to do with me.”

“I don’t have the authority to make that decision alone.”

“Talk with the colonel,” Buchanan said.

Alan continued to look interested. “Where would you go? Since you don’t have a passport, it can’t be out of the country.”

“I wouldn’t want to leave the country, anyhow. Not that far. South. New Orleans. Two days from now is Halloween. A person can have a damned good time in New Orleans on Halloween.”

“I heard that,” Alan said. “In fact, I heard that a person can have a damned good time in New Orleans anytime.”

Buchanan nodded. His request would be granted.

But he wouldn’t be going as himself.

No way, he thought.

He’d be stepping back six years.

He’d be reinventing himself to be the person he was then. A hundred lifetimes ago.

A once-happy man who liked jazz, mint juleps, and red beans with rice.

A charter pilot named Peter Lang who’d had the tragic love affair of his life.