“You don’t have a family?”
“Naw. Never had a dad, mom was a druggie, which is how I got hooked myself, watching her use. She OD’d when I was just . . . shit, twelve? Never had no one else, and I ran off when the city tried to place me.” Rachel is silent, staring at the past via middle distance. “I guess I’m Rachel now. I feel like that name is me. It’s a new me. I can be Rachel, and pretend I never was Nicole or Dixie.”
“I see.”
A sharp, knowing glance at me. “You trying to figure out who you are, ain’tcha? Madame X, or Isabel?”
“I suppose you’re right. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”
“In my experience, you have to kind of . . . convince yourself that you’re someone else. That you really are your new name. You want to be Isabel, you have to think about being Isabel. Learning to answer to a new name means owning it for yourself, first.”
I don’t know what I want. Who I want to be.
Do I want to be Isabel?
Do I want to be Madame X?
I think of Logan, how he insists that I deserve the right to choose.
But I don’t know what to choose.
I drift away, out of apartment number three, to the elevator, to the lobby. I don’t think I even said good-bye to Rachel, or closed the door behind me.
I find myself on the street. It is still dark out, quiet for New York City. A few cars whoosh by, a yellow cab with its light on. A white panel van. A police car.
I wonder if you know where I am. If you’re looking for me.
I do not want to be found.
Not by you.
A café, open twenty-four hours. An older woman, tired looking, bored, stares at me as I enter. “Help you?”
“Do you have a phone I can use?”
A blank stare. “You in trouble?”
“I need to call someone. It’s important. Not legal trouble, no.”
Another blinking moment, and then the woman digs into an apron pocket and withdraws a cell phone, hands it to me. It is one of those that flips open. I dial the number: 212-555-3233.
A sleepy, beautiful, sun-warm voice: “Hello? Who’s’iss?”
“It’s . . . it’s me.”
“X?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
I glance at the woman. “Where am I? What is the name of this place?”
The woman just gestures at the menu on the counter in front of me. I read the name of the café, the address.
“I’ll be there in ten,” Logan says. “Stay there, okay?”
He shows up in under ten minutes, wearing khaki cargo shorts and a black tank top that show off his sleeves of tattoos covering his arms from elbow to shoulder, and flip-flops. “X, you okay?”
I shake my head. “I have so many questions.” I wish desperately to cling to him. I dare not, for fear that I will never let go. “I don’t know . . . anything. I don’t know what to do.”
Logan glances around, eyes the menu, then slides into a booth. I take the bench opposite him. He glances at the woman. “Two coffees, please.” He shoves a menu toward me. “Hungry?”
I nod, and peruse the items on the two-sided, laminated sheet. I decide on Belgian waffles and bacon. I’ve never had them, and they sound good. After the food has arrived, Logan and I spend a few minutes just eating; the waffles are so delicious that I don’t want to waste a single minute talking when I could be eating.
We’re done and Logan has his big hands wrapped around the small white ceramic mug of black coffee. He lets out a breath. “So what are your questions?”
“Where did you find the name?”
“The name?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Not ‘my name,’ but ‘the name’?”
“Is it mine?”
“You don’t trust me?” He sounds wounded.
I want to be logical, but it is hard. “I do. I want to, at least. But can I? Should I? That could be any name. How do I know it is mine?”
He nods. “You have a point,” he says. “You told me you got hurt six years ago, that you had total amnesia. You didn’t tell me which hospital, or anything like that, so I started broad. Did a search on nameless coma patients in the entire New York City area. Put some resources into the search, friends who know who to ask about things like this. Six years ago, there were thousands of accidents that resulted in the victims going into a coma. Of those however-many-thousands of coma patients from six years ago, all of them were identified. Most of them woke up within a few hours or days, and of those who woke up, most got their whole memories back, while some got only parts of their memories back.”
“What are you saying?” I feel faint.
“Do you know how long you were in a coma?”