tag that says “Patricia.”
She is beautiful. Reddish hair.
She seems so nice. So genuine.
There’s something about her eyes. A gentleness. A kindness. After spending the last few years trying so hard not to look into Enid’s dark eyes, to now see a pair so beautiful, he feels light-headed.
He takes a long time to buy that chocolate bar. Makes small talk about the weather, how only a couple of days earlier he’d been in Chicago, how he’s on the road so much of the time. And then he says something before he’s even aware he’s said it. “Would you like to have some lunch?”
Patricia smiles, says if he wants to come back in thirty minutes, she gets an hour off.
For that half hour, as he wanders the shops of Milford’s downtown, he asks himself what the hell he’s doing. He’s married. He has a wife and a son and a house and a job.
But none of it adds up to a life. That’s what he wants. A life.
Patricia tells him over a tuna sandwich in a nearby coffee shop that she doesn’t go to lunch with men she’s just met, but there’s something about him that intrigues her.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“I think I know your secret,” she says. “I get a feeling about people, and I got a feeling about you.”
Good God. Is it that obvious? Can she divine that he’s married? Is she a mind reader? Even though when he first met her, he’d been wearing gloves, and now has his wedding ring tucked into his pocket?
“What sort of feeling?” he asks.
“You seem troubled to me. Is that why you’re driving back and forth across the country? Are you looking for something?”
“It’s just my job,” he says.
And Patricia smiles. “I wonder. If it’s led you here, to Milford, maybe it’s for a reason. Maybe you’re driving all over the country because you’re supposed to find something. I’m not saying it’s me. But something.”
But it is her. He’s sure of it.
He tells her his name is Clayton Bigge. It’s like he has the idea before he actually knows he has the idea. Maybe, at first, he was just thinking about having an affair, and having a fake name, that wasn’t a bad plan, even for an affair.
For the next few months, if his sales trips only take him as far south as Torrington, he drives the extra distance south to Milford to see Patricia.
She adores him. She makes him feel important. She makes him feel as though he has some worth.
Driving back on the New York Thruway, he considers the logistics.
The company was rejigging some of the sales routes. He could get the one that ran between Hartford and Buffalo. Drop going to Chicago. That way, at each end of the run…
And there’s the money question.
But Clayton’s doing well. He’s already been taking extraordinary measures to conceal from Enid how much money he has tucked away. It would never matter how much he made, it would never be enough for her. She’d always belittle him. And she’d always spend it. So he might as well tuck some aside.
It might be enough, he thinks. Just enough, for a second household.
How wonderful it will be, for at least half the time, to be happy.
Patricia says yes when he asks her to marry him. Her father had already died, but her mother seems happy enough. Her sister Tess, though, she never warms to him. It’s as though she knows there’s something off about him, but she can’t put her finger on just what it is. He knows she doesn’t trust him, that she never will, and he is especially careful around her. And he knows that Tess has told Patricia how she feels, but Patricia loves him, genuinely loves him, and always defends him.
When he and Patricia go to buy rings, he maneuvers her into picking a wedding band for him identical to the one he has in his pocket. Later, he returns it to the store, gets his money back, and is able to wear the one ring he already has, all the time. He fraudulently fills out applications for a variety of municipal and state licenses, everything from a driver’s license to a library card-it’s a lot less tricky then than in a post-9/11 world-so he can bamboozle the marriage license office when the time comes.
He must deceive Patricia, but he tries to be good to her. At least when he is home.
She gives him two children. A boy first. They name him Todd. And then, a couple of years later, a baby girl they christen Cynthia.
It is an astonishing juggling act.
A family in Connecticut. A family in upstate New York. Back and forth between the two.
When he’s Clayton Bigge, he can’t stop thinking about when he will have to return to being Clayton Sloan. And when he’s Clayton Sloan, he can’t stop thinking about hitting the road again so he can become Clayton Bigge.
Being Sloan is easier. At least that’s his honest-to-God name. He doesn’t have to worry so much about identification. His license, his papers, they’re legitimate.
But when he’s in Milford, when he’s Clayton Bigge, husband to Patricia, father of Todd and Cynthia, he’s always on his guard. Doing the speed limit. Making sure there’s money in the meter. He doesn’t want anyone running a check on his license plate. Every time he drives to Connecticut, he pulls off the road someplace secluded, takes off the orangey-yellow New York plates, puts a stolen blue Connecticut plate on the back of the car in its place. Puts the New York plates back on when he goes to Youngstown. Has to always be thinking, watch out where he makes long-distance calls from, make sure he doesn’t buy something as Clayton Sloan and give his Milford address without thinking.
Always uses cash. No paper trail.
Everything about his life is false. His first marriage is built on a lie told by Enid. His second marriage is founded on lies he’s told to Patricia. But despite all the falsehoods, all the duplicity, has he managed to find any true happiness, were there any moments when he-
“I have to pee,” Clayton said, stopping his story.
“Huh?” I said.
“I gotta take a leak. Unless you want me to go right here in the car.”
We’d recently passed a sign promising a service center any time now. “There’s something coming up,” I said. “How you feeling?”
“Not so good,” he said. He coughed a few times. “I need some water. And I could use some more Tylenols.”
I hadn’t thought to bring any bottles of water, given how quickly we had left his house. We’d been making pretty good time on the thruway. It was nearly four in the morning and we were closing in on Albany. The Honda, as it turned out, needed gas, so a pit stop was a good idea all around.
I helped Clayton shuffle into the men’s room, waited for him to do his business at the urinal, assisted him back to the car. The short trip drained him. “You stay here and I’ll get some water,” I said.
I bought a six-pack of water, ran it back out to the car, cracked open the plastic cap on one of them and handed it to Clayton. He took a long drink, then took the four Tylenols I’d put into his hand and downed them one at a time. Then I drove over to the gas pumps and filled up, using almost all of the cash in my wallet. I was worried about using a credit card, fearful that police had figured out who’d taken Clayton out of the hospital, and that they’d be watching for any transactions by my credit card.
As I got back into the car, I thought that maybe it was time to let Rona Wedmore know what was going on. I felt, the more Clayton talked, the closer I was getting to the truth that would, once and for all, end Wedmore’s suspicions about Cynthia. I dug around in the front pocket of my jeans and found the card she’d given me during her surprise visit to the house the previous morning, before I’d gone looking for Vince Fleming.
There was an office and cell number, but not a home phone. Chances were she’d be asleep this time of the night, but I was betting she kept her cell next to the bed, and that it was on 24/7.
I started the car, pulled away from the pumps, but pulled over to the side for a minute.
“What are you doing?” Clayton asked.
“I’m just going to make a couple of calls.”
Before I tried Wedmore, however, I wanted to give Cynthia another try. I called her cell, tried home. No luck.
I took some comfort from that, strangely enough. If I didn’t know where she was, then there was no way
