The Scared Stiff

2

“It’s unfair,” Lola said that night, the two of us sitting up in bed, not ready for sleep. “We’ve put that money in all these years, and it should be there to help us when times get bad.”

“Not with that kind of policy,” I said. “It is fair, the deal they’ve made, if we listen to them. They’ll only help us if we’re dead.”

“If one of us is dead,” she said.

“Well, yes,” I agreed, and very late that night, she woke me by elbowing me in the ribs, crying, “Barry! Barry!”

I opened groggy eyes and blinked at her, and her whole face was luminous in the dark.

“Barry!” she said, in a loud whisper, like a stage aside. “One of us is gonna die!”

Well, that woke me up, all right. Sitting up, gaping at her, I said, “What?”

“For the insurance!” she whispered, bubbling with excitement. “One of us makes believe to be dead, so we get the insurance money!”

I was having trouble keeping up. “How can we make believe we’re dead? Fake a death? Lola, they’ll catch us right away.”

“Not in Guerrera,” she said.

I stared at her. Guerrera. Her homeland, her little country down in South America. “Lola,” I whispered; now I was whispering too.

“I’ve been lying here awake,” she told me, “just thinking about it. We know people there, we have family there.”

“They keep terrible records down there,” I said. “The police force isn’t the most advanced in the world.”

“The death can be there,” Lola said. “The funeral, too.”

As excited as Lola by now, I said, “We can get a death certificate in Guerrera for a pack of cigarettes!”

“A little more than that,” she said, “but not much.”

I contemplated this wonderful idea. “It could work,” I said.

She pointed at me. “It has to be you,” she said.

I said, “It has to be me? Why?”

“If I go down there,” she told me, “and have a convenient accident, a local girl who moved to the States and her husband insured her for a zillion siapas, everybody will smell a rat. We don’t want to raise suspicion.”

“Okay, you’re right,” I said. “It has to be me.”

“But not now,” she said. “It’s too soon since you talked to Steve about life insurance.”

“You’re right. We’ll wait till January,” I said. “We can hold off for four months. We’ll wait till we’d normally go down there anyway, for our post-Christmas visit.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Then the gringo has his accident, and his grieving widow can talk both to the locals and to anybody who comes down from the States.”

“That puts it all on you, Lola,” I said. “That could get pretty tricky.”

“I’d love it,” she assured me. “Come on, Barry, you know me.”

I did. I grinned at her. “Okay,” I said. “Looks like I’m gonna die.”

“I’m sure you’ll do it very well,” she said.

“Thank you. Only, what then? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Guerrera.”

“Barry,” she said, “I thought about that too. All I’ve been doing is lying here thinking. I don’t know everything, we’ll have to figure some of this out together, but I know how to get you back to the States when it’s all over.”

“Good. Tell me.”

“I had two brothers that died young,” she reminded me. “There’s birth certificates on file up in San Cristobal but nothing else. With a birth certificate, you can make up a whole new identity.”

“You mean, become one of your brothers.”

“Grow a mustache,” she said. “Work on your tan. You could look Guerreran with no trouble at all. Wait a minute, my brothers’ names...” She thought, trying to remember, then remembered. “Who would you rather be, Felicio or Jesus?”

“Jesus!” I said.

She looked at me in some surprise. “Really? I didn’t think you’d—”

“No no no no no, I don’t want to be Jesus; that’s not what I meant. I want to be the other one.”

“Felicio.”

“Felicio. That’s not bad.”

“It means happy,” she said.

“Oh, good,” I said. “I’ve become one of the seven dwarfs.”

“Felicio Tobón de Lozano,” she said, rolling the name around in her mouth.

I said, “So I’d come back to the States as him—”

“And live with your sister.”

“I’d like that,” I said.