Nightlife: A Novel

28

It was Thursday morning, and Nicole sat at Tyler Gilman’s computer in his bedroom. The scanner he had beside his printer had given her an idea. She scanned the pattern from the back of an honor roll certificate that had been posted on Ty’s wall onto a blank sheet of paper. She did it on four sheets, then turned over the paper and did it on the reverse side. “Ty,” she called. “Help me think of a new name.”

He lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “How about Tara?”

“Too unusual.”

“You are unusual.”

“No. I want something that sounds like everybody else’s name. I want to fade, Ty. I want to be invisible for, like, two years, and have a life.”

“Victoria? Veronica? Melissa?”

“Too long. Maybe I’ll be an Anne. Let me see. Foster, no, Forster. Anne Forster.”

“That’s good,” said Ty. “That’s really good.”

She reached into her purse, took out the disk she carried, and put it into the computer. She opened the file containing the blank birth certificate. She selected the type font that fit the rest of the document and filled in the blanks to make Anne Forster a woman born twenty-two years ago, on the nineteenth of July. She put one of her sheets of paper with the filigree patterns on it into the printer and printed the certificate. Ty reached for it, but she said, “Don’t touch it. The ink will smudge.”

He stopped himself, and held his head at an angle to see the certificate in the tray. “It’s just like the real thing. What should my name be?”

“Your name?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It should sound real too. How about Joshua? Josh Forster.”

“Uh . . . not quite right.” She managed to conceal her surprise, but her mind was not moving quickly enough. “Who are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you and I have the same last name? What are you trying to be?”

“Your husband.”

She smiled indulgently, but she shook her head. “That’s so sweet. But Ty, you’re twelve years younger than I am. That difference is three-quarters of your life. Nobody would believe we were married. More likely, they’d think I was one of those teachers who run off with one of their students. They’d call the police.”

She saw his eyes begin to cloud, and he lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She had said too much, and she had to fix things instantly or she was in trouble. “How about my brother? You could easily be my brother. That way, if we traveled together, people wouldn’t think anything of it.”

“I don’t want to be your brother.”

“Ty, please. Don’t insist on taking extra risks. Our lives could depend on this. We can’t be lazy-minded and draw attention to ourselves.”

“I don’t even look like your brother.”

She thought about what she had seen of his parents’ room. “Does your mother dye her hair to get rid of the gray?”

“Yeah.”

She got up and went into the master bathroom off Ty’s parents’ bedroom. When Ty caught up with her she was opening cabinets and drawers. She knelt at an open cabinet under the sink, and took out a hair dye box with a picture of a beautiful woman on the front. She stood and pulled Ty to the mirror, then held the box up beside his hair. “Look. Her hair color is exactly the same as yours.”

“You’re going to dye your hair the color of mine?”

“Yes.”

“Our eyes are different.”

“My eyes are a paler blue than yours,” she said, “but I have blue contacts. And brown and green. But I’ll wear the blue. We’ll look amazing.”

He said nothing, just stared unhappily into the mirror at her. She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Brothers and sisters can stay in the same hotel room at night. They do it all the time to save money.”

He smiled.

“Come on. Help me.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Ty, we’ve only got about three days left before your parents show up. Anything we need to do to prepare has to be done well before then. And some little thing might be what saves us.” She tore open the top of the box.

“What if she notices it’s missing?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “She probably won’t notice, at least right away. She’s got three boxes. I do know that if she can’t find a box of hair dye, what she does about it isn’t going to be calling the police. That’s all I care about.” She started to take small bottles and plastic gloves out of the box and set them on the sink.

“This looks really messy.”

“It is.”

“Then let’s do it in my bathroom.”

“But that’s smaller and darker.”

“If they come back and we’re gone, you don’t want them to figure out what happened right away. If there’s a stain on the counter or something, they’ll know the exact color you dyed your hair.”

She stared at him. He kept surprising her. She followed him into his bathroom and set up her kit on his sink. She pulled her top off over her head, and heard the intake of breath from Ty. “Don’t,” she said. “Not now. I just can’t take a chance that I’ll stain my clothes. I don’t have any except these.”

He said, “I . . . I’m sorry. I should have thought about that. I have, like, three hours before I have to go to work. I can go out and buy you some now. I’ll bring them when I get back from work.”

“Where were you thinking of going?”

“I don’t know. The mall?”

“Go someplace big, where nobody pays any attention to you and you put stuff in a shopping cart. Is there a Wal-Mart or a Target or something?”

“Yeah. Both.”

“Then I’ll give you a list of what I need, with my sizes. Buy some stuff for yourself, too, and mix it all together, like it’s for your family. Okay?”

“Sure.”

She stepped into his room, took a blank sheet of paper from the printer, and wrote out her list. She picked up her purse and took out some money. “This is six hundred dollars. If you spend all of it in one place, they’ll notice you.” She handed him the list, and watched him read it. “Can you handle all of that?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I can do it. I’ve bought things for my mom.”

“Just do your best, Ty. Be careful.” She leaned close and kissed him slowly, passionately, then held him at arm’s length. “The thing I care about most is that you keep yourself safe. If anything in or around the store doesn’t seem right, then avoid the place. Don’t go in.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Then go. Get the exact sizes I said. Try to stick with dark colors and earth tones. Don’t worry about the lengths of the pants. I’ll shorten them if they’re too long. And try to find me a small, cheap suitcase with wheels, about the size to hold the clothes.”

She kissed him again, and he looked a bit dazed. He didn’t want to go. His arms lingered around her, until she grasped his wrists and removed them. She spun him around and pushed him toward the door. “Get going!” She snatched a pillow from the bed and hurled it in his direction. He sidestepped it easily and was out the door.

She listened to his footsteps going out, then the sound of the car. She went into the bathroom, took off the rest of her clothes, and opened the bottles. The strong, acrid odor of the chemicals filled the room. Some people hated that smell, but for her it brought back very early memories. The first time she had smelled that smell she had been five. Charlene and her mother had arrived in the downtown hotel the night before the Tiny Miss Milwaukee pageant, and she and her mother had gone down to the ballroom to watch the other contestants being brought in by their mothers for registration. As they watched the other little girls, her mother had looked increasingly worried. Finally she had locked Charlene in their room, gone to a drugstore down the street, and come back with two hair-dyeing kits. The next morning at the opening of the pageant, Charlene and Sharon Buckner had appeared with the same fresh golden hair and the same carefully applied makeup. They had looked almost alike, the pretty daughter like a miniature of the pretty mother.

As she worked, she reflected that it was a relief that Ty was gone. The dyeing wasn’t difficult to do, but it did require that she pay attention to the time, and he was always trying to distract her.

She finished, and she could tell even while it was still wet that she had done a very good job. She went to her purse, found the little plastic case with her colored contacts in it, selected the blue ones, and put them in. She stood in front of the mirror. “I’m a Gilman.”