Die For You

He needed to disappear again. Everything that might have been used to identify him is”-he swept his arm-“all gone.”

“His fingerprints are all over the place-here, at the office,” I said. “DNA-everywhere.”

“That only helps us to identify him if he’s in one of the systems already,” Breslow said patiently, as if she’d responded to this statement a hundred times before. “And we won’t know that until the fingerprints and DNA we found here are processed and put through IAFIS and CODIS, the national databases that store this type of data. It could take a while-maybe a week for a priority case, between processing and getting the information to the FBI, waiting for them to respond. And if he hasn’t been arrested and processed for anything else in the U.S., or if his DNA doesn’t show up on another unsolved-case file, we’ll have nothing.”

I sank back down on the bed. I felt him slipping away, this man I loved and lived with for five years. I remembered him stepping into that elevator, calling, “I love you, Izzy” as it took him away. I thought that’s what he said; I assumed it was. But maybe that’s not what I heard at all. I relived that horrible screaming again, feeling a cold finger trace the back of my neck, raising the hair there.

“No,” I said. “No. This is not right. You’re making some kind of mistake here.” It wasn’t possible, was it? That the man I married was someone else entirely than I believed him to be?

Detective Crowe was leaning against the wall, staring at me hard. “He needed your Social Security number to start his business. The name Marcus Raine doesn’t appear anywhere on the corporation documents. He’s not even an employee of the company. Everything’s in your name. Yours and Rick Marino’s.”

I didn’t even know what to say. I just sat there mute, reeling.

“Do you know what Social he used to apply for your marriage license?” asked Breslow. Her tone was gentle, empathetic. I glanced over at her and saw compassion on her face; she was a woman who’d been lied to, knew how it felt. It hadn’t made her bitter, like it had with Crowe. It had made her smarter.

Our files were all gone; they knew that. “I have no idea.”

She handed me three more pieces of paper. A copy of Marcus Raine’s green card with his picture, a copy of his Social Security card, and a copy of our marriage license.

“That’s Marcus Raine,” she said. She came to stand beside me, pointed a finger at the stranger’s picture. Then she tapped the copy of the Social Security card, then the marriage license. The numbers were the same.

Crowe picked up a picture of Marc from my desk. “This is not the same man.”

We were all quiet, my mind racing through options, possibilities, ways this might all be a mistake.

“So you’re saying that he stole another man’s identity, used his Social Security number to marry me, then used my name and Social to establish a corporation for Razor Technologies.”

I couldn’t believe I was still speaking. I was shredded like the mattress I was sitting on, little pieces of me drifting into the air and floating away.

Breslow nodded. “It looks that way to us at the moment.”

“Then what happened to this man?” I asked, holding up the copy of the green card.

“That’s another very good question,” said Crowe.

I thought I should rail in defense of my husband, the real Marcus Raine, rant about what a terrible mistake they were making, threaten to sue, do something other than sit there and stare at the wall. But I couldn’t.

“So, Mrs. Raine, any thoughts on who you might have married?”

I had the oddest sensation, sitting in my ruined bedroom faced with two detectives who knew more about my husband than I did. It was as if my train had reached its final destination, except when I stepped out onto the platform, I was in a place I hadn’t intended to visit and couldn’t name, but one that was vaguely familiar just the same.

My phone vibrated in my pocket again. I flipped it open and read the text message there, feeling the bottom drop out of my stomach. I tried to keep my expression neutral but my cheeks warmed.

“Your sister again?” Crowe asked. I couldn’t tell if there was suspicion in his tone. I nodded but couldn’t find my voice, shoved the phone back in my pocket, walked over to the window.

“Mrs. Raine,” said Detective Breslow, “I strongly suggest you check your bank accounts.” Her tone implied that she already knew what I’d find.

SHE LET HIM take her against the heavy porcelain sink in the unisex bathroom. She clung to his wide back in what she knew he thought was passion. Really she was just afraid that their weight was going to pull the sink, cold and painful beneath her buttocks with each deep thrust, from the wall. She felt his passion, his desperation. And even if she didn’t share it necessarily, it felt so good to be wanted like this. Wanted by someone who hadn’t watched her give birth, who didn’t shave while she peed, who hadn’t seen her sick in bed with the flu. With him, she was a mistress, still a mystery, something not quite possessed.

“I love you,” he whispered, his voice tight, his eyes closed in pleasure. “I’m sorry, I do.”

She’d asked him not to say it. She didn’t feel obliged to answer. She found herself watching his face, thinking, No, I don’t love you. And as she succumbed to an earthquake of an orgasm, she buried her face in his shoulder to keep herself from crying out, I don’t love you. I love my husband. Strange as it was to be thinking this as he shuddered and moaned with pleasure. “Oh, God.” He let his weight press against her. She felt his chest heaving and she clung to him.

She was someone else with Ben, not a mother, not a wife, not someone defined by her relationships with other people. She was an artist, an unencumbered heroine in a story that took place in her imagination.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pulling up his pants and glancing at the door they’d locked behind them. She always hated these moments when the pleasure had passed and they hastily pulled on their clothes. The groping and ripping off of garments was always exciting. The aftermath was just cheap. A grimy happy holidays sign hanging on the back of the door just made it worse.

She turned away from him, lifting her panties over her hips and letting her skirt fall. She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look so bad after all, did she? Maybe it was the lighting.

“You can’t do this,” she said lamely. “Turn up at my apartment like that. We both have families.”

“I know,” he said, looking ashamed and miserable. “I know.”

She didn’t feel guilty yet. That would come later when he was gone, when the kids came home, or when she was laughing with her husband. Now she just felt sated, or rather as if something that pained her had been salved.

“I have to go,” she said, moving to him, resting against him.

“What’s going on?” He put a gentle hand on her arm, looked at her with concern. “A family emergency, you said.”

She hated when he did this, acted like their relationship was real, not some asinine mistake they were both making. He always wanted to chat and cuddle, or talk about his feelings like some teenage girl. Didn’t he understand? She just wanted to forget about herself for five minutes. When they first started seeing each other, what thrilled her the most was that her worries about the kids, money, her career, disappeared during these little romps. If the relationship evolved, all those worries would just carry over into this new place. The euphoria, the blessed escape of it would disappear; it would become just another thing to worry about. And that she couldn’t manage.

She told him quickly about Marcus and her sister, tried not to be curt or dismissive. Someone knocked on the restroom door; it was the only one in the back of the small coffee shop. Outside, she heard the clinking of silverware, the mutter of conversation. The aroma of bacon and maple syrup made her remember she’d skipped breakfast.

“I’ll be just a minute,” she called. There was no answer.

“What do you think happened to him?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, pulling her phone from her pocket and glancing at it, looking for messages.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he offered. “I know the crime-beat reporter pretty well.”

She’d met Ben at a gallery opening for her work. He was an art critic who’d been less than kind to her in an earlier review. Common, maudlin, were the words that stuck in her mind. But still, she found herself drawn to him. He was a tall, powerful man with close-cropped dark hair and a neat goatee, a small silver hoop in each ear. From the nastiness of his written comments and his striking appearance, she expected him to be verbose, loud or overbearing. Instead she found him soft-spoken, carrying an aura of vulnerability. She found herself watching his face, for that moment when he thought no one was looking, when the muscles shifted and relaxed, revealing the true man. It never came. He was guarded, always.