Derailed

FORTY-THREE

That’s when it first occurred to me.

When Deanna got on the phone and said, I thought you were dead.

Or maybe it wasn’t exactly then. Maybe it was later, after I’d told Deanna what I’d been up to — what had happened to me in the Fairfax Hotel — and she gasped and went silent and then told me the police had come to the house with a warrant for my arrest. Because they’d found Winston’s body in the Staten Island dump.

Or it might’ve been later that day, when a somber and pale-looking city spokeswoman read a list of the dead on a news program. The confirmed dead and the presumed dead — otherwise known as the still missing.

My name was on it.

It was kind of surreal, listening to myself be declared officially missing. It was like attending my own funeral — my very own memorial service. The city spokeswoman said this list was carefully compiled from the hotel’s computer hard drive, recovered in the rubble — people who were known to have been registered guests at the time of the explosion. And from belongings found here and there, scattered around the blast site and stored in the hotel safe. Briefcases, PalmPilots, engraved watches, and jewelry. My watch, for example, was missing. “To Charles Schine with all my love,” it said on the back. The spokeswoman explained they’d matched this list to the people who’d made it to emergency rooms and hospital beds.

I was picking up the phone to call someone — anyone — and explain that I wasn’t dead after all, that I was still here. I was getting dressed at the same time, because maybe a phone call wouldn’t be enough, it was possible I would have to show up and produce myself in the flesh. I was rummaging through my sock drawer, and I came across Winston’s wallet.

Which is when the idea really occurred to me.

When it changed from the ridiculous to the possible. From a wishful notion to an actual plan. I’d buried Winston’s wallet in my sock drawer and forgotten about it. But I remembered something Winston told me now.

The easiest thing to get—new identities, he'd said.

His wallet, for instance, had four of them. Driver’s licenses.

A Jonathan Thomas. A Brian McDermott. A Steven Aimett.

And a Lawrence Widdoes. The only one of the four who looked even remotely like me — younger, of course, but the same basic coloring.

I thought you were dead, Deanna said.

So did a few other people.

I’d checked into the Fairfax Hotel, but I’d never checked out. Or maybe I had, but only in the vernacular sense of the term. As in, Did you hear what happened to Charley? He, well, checked out. He died.

Which reminded me of one other popular saying.

I’d be better off dead. Yes, we’ve all heard that one, too. An expression we use in times of crisis, when things are absolutely hopeless and there seems to be no way out.

Unless there is. Unless you think that you’re good and trapped, but there is a way out after all.

Being dead.

Maybe that was the way out.

If I showed up, I’d be alive.

But what if I didn't?