Six Years

They sold pens and markers. Not a lot of them, but maybe . . .

I thought about it for a second, maybe two, and then I headed into the shop. When I checked the small selection of writing utensils, the disappointment hit me harder than I expected.

“Can I help you?”

The girl behind the counter couldn’t have been more than twenty. She had blond hair with streaks of pink in it. Yep, pink.

“I like your hair,” I said, ever the charmer.

“The pink?” She pointed at the streaks. “It’s for breast cancer awareness. Say, are you okay?”

“Sure, why?”

“You got a big bump on your head. I think it’s bleeding.”

“Oh, that. Right. I’m fine.”

“We sell a first aid kit, if you think that’ll help.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I turned back to the pens and markers. “I’m looking for a red marker, but I don’t see any here.”

“We don’t carry any. Just black.”

“Oh.”

She studied my face. “I got one here though.” She reached into a drawer and picked out a red Sharpie marker. “We use it for inventory, to cross out stuff.”

I tried not to show how anxious I was. “Is there any way I can purchase it from you?”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to do that.”

“Please,” I said. “It is really important.”

She thought about it. “Tell you what. You buy the first aid kit and promise to take care of that bump, and I’ll throw in the pen.”

I made the deal and hurried into the men’s room. The clock had to be ticking. A police car would eventually drive by major rest stops and check cars, right? Or wrong? I didn’t have a clue. I tried to keep my breathing even and smooth. I checked my face in the mirror. Ugh. There was swelling on my forehead, and an open gash above my eye. I cleaned it out as much as I could, but a big bandage would make me stick out like a sore thumb.

The ATM was next to the vending machines, but that would have to wait a few more minutes.

I rushed out to my car. My car license plate read “704 LI6.” The lettering in Massachusetts is red. Using the marker I turned the 0 into an 8, the L into an E, the I into a T, the 6 into an 8. I took a step back. It would never stand up to close inspection, but from any sort of distance, the plate did read “784 ET8.”

I would have smiled at my ingenuity, but there was no time. I headed back toward the ATM and debated how to approach the machine. I knew that all ATMs had cameras—who didn’t?—but even if I avoided being seen, the authorities would know it was my credit card.

Speed seemed more important here. If they had a picture of me, they had a picture of me.

I have two credit cards. I took out the max on both and hurried back to my car. I got off the highway at the next exit and started taking side roads. When I reached Greenfield, I parked the car on a side street in the center of town. I considered taking the nearest bus, but that would be too obvious. I found a taxi and took it to Springfield. Naturally I paid cash. I took the Peter Pan bus from there to New York City. Throughout all of this travel, my eyes kept shifting all over the place, waiting for—I don’t know—a cop or a bad guy to spot and nab me.

Paranoid much?

Once in Manhattan I hired another taxi to take me out to Ramsey, New Jersey, where I knew Julie Pottham, Natalie’s sister, lived.

When we reached Ramsey, the driver said, “Okay, bud, where to?”

It was four in the morning—clearly too late (or, depending on your point of view, too early) to visit Natalie’s sister. Plus I needed rest. My head hurt. My nerves were shot. I could feel my body quake from exhaustion.

“Let’s find a motel.”

“There’s a Sheraton up this way.”

They’d require identification and probably a credit card. “No. Something . . . cheaper.”

We found one of those no-tell motels designed for truckers, adulterers, and us fugitives. It was aptly named the Fair Motel. I liked that honesty: We aren’t great, we aren’t even good, we’re “fair.” A sign above the awning announced “Hourly Rates” (just like a Ritz-Carlton), “Color TV” (mocking those competitors who still use black-and-white), and my favorite part: “Now Featuring Towels!”

This place wouldn’t require ID or credit card or even a pulse.

The woman behind the desk was in her seventies. She looked at me with seen-it-all eyes. Her name tag read MABEL. Her hair had the consistency of hay. I asked for a room in the back.

“Do you have a reservation?” she asked me.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Yeah, I am,” Mabel said. “But the rooms in the back are full. Everyone wants a room in the back. Must be the view of the Dumpster. I got a nice room overlooking a Staples store, if you’d like.”

Mabel gave me a key to room 12, which ended up not being as nightmarish as I imagined. The place looked fairly clean. I tried not to think what this room had probably witnessed during its lifetime, but then again, if I stopped and thought about it, I wouldn’t like to think about that in a Ritz-Carlton either.

I collapsed into bed with my clothes still on and fell into one of those sleeps where you don’t remember falling asleep and have no idea what time it is when you wake up. When morning hit, I reached for my iPhone on the night table but, alas, I remembered that I didn’t have it anymore. The police did. Were they going through it? Were they seeing all the places I had searched, all the texts I had sent, all the e-mails I had mailed out? Were they doing the same at my house on campus? If they had gotten a warrant to track me down via my iPhone, wouldn’t it stand to reason that they also had enough to search my place? But then again, so what? They wouldn’t find anything incriminating. Embarrassing maybe, but who didn’t have some Internet searches that were embarrassing?

My head still hurt. A lot. I smelled like a goat. A shower would help but not if I had to change into these same clothes. I stumbled into the bright morning sunlight, shielding my eyes like a vampire or one of those guys who spent too much time in a casino. Mabel was still behind the desk.

“Wow, what time do you get off?” I asked.

“Are you hitting on me?”

“Uh, no.”

“Because you might want to clean up a little before you make your big move. I got standards.”

“Do you have any aspirin or Tylenol?”

Mabel frowned, reached into her purse, and pulled out a small arsenal of painkillers. Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, Bayer. I chose the Tylenol, downed two, and thanked her.