So the real me and a false me were competing with each other to win what? Five thousand dollars, that’s what. And the competition would involve the finalists reading their essays aloud at a ceremony at Freedom College in Anaheim, California. This meant that my two distinct and separate identities were to show up at the same place and time. This is like asking Superman and Clark Kent to appear at Perry White’s birthday lunch. The other competitors, the letter informed me, were Kevin Chen, who was, evidently, Asian American, and hence, not average; Danny Pepelow, redhead-sounding; and Sue Dowd, whom I could not form a picture of. I wondered what the legal consequences of my deception would be; I wondered if I would have to blurt out in a packed courtroom that I had been swooning in a lovesick haze over Zandy the pharmacist and therefore this was a crime passionel. I calmed down after telling myself that any action taken against me would probably be civil and not criminal, and if they did levy a suit against me, it would be very easy to choke on a Tepperton pie, cough up a mouse, and start negotiating.
The next day, I was nervous about the inevitable arrival of the second pie letter, the one that would be addressed to the real me. This led me to an alternative fixation. I should capitalize it because Alternative Fixation is a technique I use to trick myself out of anxiety. It works by changing the subject. I simply focus on something that produces even greater anxiety. In this case, I chose to plan a face-to-face encounter with Elizabeth the Realtor. I had on one occasion written her a “get to know me” letter that I never sent because no matter how much I approached it, how I rewrote it, I always sounded like a stalker. “I have observed you from my window…”
“Your license plate, REALTR, amused me…” It all sounded too observant and creepy. Which made me ask myself whether I actually was too observant and creepy, but the answer came up no, because I know my own heart.
I had to admit that my previous plans to impress her had backfired like a motorcycle. It was time to do the manly thing: to meet her without deception, without forethought. I decided to present myself as an interested renter, one who is looking to move up to a two-bedroom to make room for an office, in which I would be working with the renowned writer Sue Dowd on a biography of Mao. This seemed to be the honest thing to do.
I called the number on the rental sign, expecting to get, and prepared to deftly handle, the instructions that would take me through the telephonic maze that would finally connect me to her voice mail. But a miracle happened. She answered. Crackle pop, she was on a cell phone in her car. I explained who I was, Daniel Cambridge (a swell-sounding name when I leave out the Pecan), that I live near the Rose Crest, and that I was looking to move up. I left out the part about the Mao bio because, jeez, she’s not an idiot.
She told me she was between appointments, had twenty minutes free, and could meet me there in ten. I hardly had time to bathe. Well, okay, I said. I could postpone my conference call, I said. I hung up and cranked on my shower with stunning accuracy. Perfect temperature with one swing of the wrist. I stepped in, knowing I was on the clock, and yet I still experienced one recurring sensation intractably linked to my morning shower. The flowing, ropey hot water sent me back in time to home, to Texas, to the early hours of the morning. To save money, my mother had always turned off the heat at night, which made our house into an ice hotel. Every wintry morning, as a frosted-over adolescent, I made the chilly jaunt from bedroom to spare bathroom. Stepping into the steamy shower was the equivalent of being cuddled in a warm towel by a loving aunt, and now I’m sometimes rendered immobile by an eerie nostalgia in the first few moments of even a quick rinse. This sensation slowed me down like an atom at absolute zero, even though Elizabeth was at this very moment probably running yellow lights to fit me in.
I was toweling off at the window when Elizabeth the Realtor pulled up in front of the Rose Crest. She remained in the car for several minutes talking to herself. I realized she was probably using the hands-free car phone, at least I hoped she was, as one nut in the family would be enough. I threw on some clothes and scampered down the stairs, skipping across the street at the driveways. I was overcome with an impression of myself as an English schoolboy. I might as well have been wearing a beanie and short pants. As Elizabeth got out of her car, I appeared from behind her and greeted her with a “Hello y’all, I’m Daniel Cambridge.” I had not intended the slight country twang that affected my speech. And I do not know, if I perceived myself as an English schoolboy, why my greeting came out as though it were spoken by the cook on a wagon train. I suppose I was confused about just who I actually was at that moment. I had now committed myself to a drawl, and I was rapidly trying to uncommit. So over the next few sentences I fell into a brogue, then a kind of high nasal English thing, then migrated through the Bronx, searching until I found my own voice. I finally did, but not before Elizabeth had asked, “Where are you from?” to which I saved myself with, “I’m an army brat.”
I followed Elizabeth up one flight of stairs. She reached into her purse, producing a daunting ring of apartment keys that jangled like a tambourine. There was a delay while she flipped and sorted the keys on the ring, and she managed to open the door on the sixth try. There were three odors inside. One was mildew, one was tangerine, both emanating from the same source: a bowl of fruit rotting in the center of the kitchen table. The third aroma was from Elizabeth, a familiar lilac scent that made itself quite known now that she was contained within the four walls of the sealed apartment. This scent thickened and intensified as though it were pumped into the room by a compressor.
Elizabeth swept the pungent tangerines into a paper bag and stuck them in the waste can under the sink, all the while talking up the glories of apartment 214. She wore a tight brown linen skirt that stopped about three inches above her knees, a matching jacket, and a cream silk blouse with a cream silk cravat. She turned on the air conditioner to max, which intensified the moldy smell, causing us both to sneeze. She flipped on the built-in kitchen television to make the place seem lively and swung open the refrigerator to show me its massive cubic feet interior. Price seventeen hundred a month, she said, first and last, plus a security deposit.
“This is a great building,” she said. “Usually they want references, but I can get you around it.”
“Don’t worry, I have references,” I said, wondering who I meant.
This was the first time I’d had a chance to really see Elizabeth. She had always been either too far away or too close up. Now I could frame her like a three-quarter portrait and see all her details. She was tan. Probably not from the sun, I guessed. She wore several gold rings studded with gems; none was on her wedding finger. She had a gold chain around her neck, at the end of which was a pair of rhinestone-encrusted reading glasses. Her eyes were blue. Not her irises, but her lids, which had been faintly daubed with eye shadow. Her skin had a hint of orange; her hair was a metallic gold, which darkened as it neared the roots. She was a collection of human colors that had been lightly tweaked and adjusted. Her efforts in the area of presentation made me admire her more.
Elizabeth was a prize object. She had picked up beauty tricks from everywhere; she had assembled herself from the best cosmetics had to offer. Any man she chose to be with would be envied, and made complete by her. A man who built an empire would certainly need Elizabeth by his side; he would need her and he would deserve her. I knew now that no matter how much I lied to her, the truth would come out about who and what I was, but I just stood there anyway, continuing my dumb charade while she radiated perfection.