“But my face, Caleb. You just said it was burned. How would that happen in a mugging gone wrong?”
“I didn’t say it was burned, X. I said it was messed up. You’d been beaten, savagely and brutally. The doctors think your face was kicked, that you’d tried to turtle, you know? Hands over your head? The damage was so severe your face would never be the same. I didn’t want you to have to live with that, so I had it fixed. I never said you were burned.”
And just that fast, my nascent identity is gone.
I hate you.
“You are Madame X . . .” you say. And I want so desperately to be able to cling to that, but I cannot, and the words you speak, once so familiar and comforting, seem empty now. “And I am Caleb . . .”
“Stop it, Caleb,” I say, barely able to manage a whisper. “Just . . . stop.”
“If you wish to choose a new name—”
“Why do you get to decide what I am allowed to do?” I ask. “Why is my entire life dependent on you? Why is my entire existence dependent on you?”
You sigh. It is a long-suffering sound. “Stop the car, Len,” you say.
The car slides to a halt in the left-hand lane of Fifth Avenue, a few blocks from your tower, early-morning traffic rushing past on our right.
You gesture at the car door, the window, the world beyond. “Then go. Find your own way.”
“Caleb—”
You open your door, watching the traffic, and then circle around behind the vehicle. You pull open my door. Grab my wrist. Haul me out. Close the door, return to the rear driver’s-side door. “You are not dependent on me because I insist on keeping you captive. It is just the way things are. You want your ‘freedom’ so badly”—you weight the word with sarcasm—“then so be it.”
You lower yourself into the car. The door closes with a soft thud. A smooth purr of the engine, and the Maybach glides away, leaving me alone.
You have made your point: Where do I go? What do I do?
Who am I? If I am not Madame X, who am I?
Isabel? Is she real? Is Logan’s story the truth?
If it is, then that means yours is a lie; if yours is true, Logan’s is a lie.
There are holes in both stories. Reasons to doubt both. Perhaps neither are true.
I have been walking as I think, and I do not know where I am. Not far from where you kicked me out of the car, a block or two away maybe. There is a church on a corner, dark stone, Gothic architecture. Stairs, with people sitting on them, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and talking on cell phones. I sit on a stair, legs tucked demurely beneath me, fighting panic.
I am alone in Manhattan. I have no money. I have no identification. I have no identity. I am no one. If I go back to you, ascend your tower, I am consenting to be yours. Consenting to be Madame X.
I could call Logan, but what do I know about him? Very little. What he’s told me, and what I feel. I feel like I can trust him. I feel, when I’m with him, that anything is possible. I do not doubt him, when we are together. I know him. He is in me. Everything is okay, with him. But now, away from him, I doubt it all. I doubt him. I doubt me. I doubt Caleb.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until a foul-smelling old black man dressed in rags sits beside me, takes a swig from a brown paper bag–wrapped bottle, and eyes me sidelong. “Somebody done you wrong, huh?”
I sniff. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
The old man nods sagely, as if what I said made some kind of sense. “Worst kinda pain, right there. The not knowing.”
“I don’t know who I am.” Why am I admitting this to a homeless drunk? But I am, and it is cathartic.
“Yeah, me neither. But then I never was no one much. I ain’t drunk ’cause I’m homeless, you know, I’m homeless ’cause I’m drunk.” A swing, an eye cast toward the sky, as if seeking something in the clear, cloudless blue. “Or maybe it is the other way around. I can’t ’member no more.”
“I can’t remember either. I can’t remember who I used to be, and I’ve lost confidence in who I am now.” I don’t bother wiping away the tears.
“Don’t need to know who you was, or who you is. Only need to know who you wanna be.”
That is a surprisingly helpful statement. I stare at the man, absorbing that last sentence. I only need to know who I want to be. Rachel said much the same, and so did Logan.
The question remains, however: who do I want to be?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
At some point, the old man totters off, swigging endlessly from the bottle.
I see you approaching, a god striding the earth among mortals. Navy blue suit, bespoke, of course. White button-down. No tie, top two buttons undone, baring a V of flesh. Dark hair swept back, effortless, artful. Eyes like black holes, absorbing all light and matter, absorbing, drawing, seeking, sucking everything in. Sucking me in. Dragging me in. You sit beside me, lean back, elbows on the stair behind you.
“Come home, X.”
“Home?” I speak the word as a question, spit it like the bitterest gall. “Where is that?”