Steve shuddered inwardly.
The doctor continued, “You’re also talking months of very sophisticated procedures.”
“I’ll skip that.”
“Of course, there is also gait analysis.”
“Gait analysis?”
“It’s how you walk. Each of us has our own unique way. And now there are sophisticated cameras and computers that can identify someone based on that characteristic alone.”
“How do I change that?”
“With a lot of practice and concentration.”
As the doctor continued talking, Steve gazed out the window, across the lake to the mountains, where the sun was bright on the peaks of Mont Blanc. He’d gone skiing there once many years ago with Marilyn, his first wife, for their honeymoon. The conditions were perfect: blue skies, deep powder. They’d spent the days with a guide exploring the endless slopes. In the evening, they drank white wine from Neuchatel, ate fondues, escargots, and raclette. Later they made love, and talked excitedly about plans for a family, for their future; a future that never happened.
He suddenly felt a vast emptiness in his gut, a surge of fear. He’d forfeited everything from that past. Now here he was so many years later planning an even greater loss by ceding his identity to the strange, unfamiliar face peering at him from the right side of the screen, the visage he was about to become. It was as if he were consigning his real self to oblivion.
The doctor brought him back from his reverie. “You also said you wanted to change your voice. Is that still the case?”
“If it can be done within the time span I’ve set.”
The doctor stroked his chin. “I’ve spoken with a couple of colleagues who specialize in that region of the throat. It is possible to feminize a voice; that is, make it higher pitched by splitting one of the cartilages in the voice box. That shortens the vocal chords reducing the wave length and making it higher.”
“Not what I’m after,” said Steve.
“I assumed that. It’s difficult to make a voice deeper but we could inject filler, hyaluronic acid, to roughen the voice or make it more hoarse.”
“How would you do that?”
“Endoscopy, a tube down the throat. Again, no external cuts on the body. A colleague would be doing it, not me.”
“Tell your colleague I’m game,” said Steve, letting out a deep breath, “So, doctor, when do we start?”
“This afternoon, after lunch. As we originally planned. If you’re not too tired, of course. In any case, over the next few weeks, you’ll be asleep much of the time.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
San Francisco/Washington, D.C.
It was about five weeks later and five weeks after the memorial service for Steve Penn, that Doug Robb, a tall, broad-shouldered man, rented a three-room apartment in the Jasper Building at 45 Lansing Street in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The Jasper, with 320 residential units and thirty-nine floors, was one of several spectacular new high-rise apartments that shot up like a giant steel and glass forest in San Francisco over the past few years.
They are home to many of the Internet technology warriors, who have invaded San Francisco, swarming north from Silicon Valley; young men and women who pulled down huge salaries and/or hold stock options from absurdly successful companies with names like Uber, Facebook, Netflix, Google, Airbnb, most of which manufactured nothing but boasted net a worth greater than General Motors or Ford or General Electric and offered services that weren’t even dreamt of a decade ago.
Doug Robb was paying $8,000 a month rent for his apartment. It was on the 29th floor, with a stunning panoramic view of the city, day and night. It was equipped, of course, with all the magical accoutrements required to attract discerning young residents. Doug was in his early 50’s and older than most of the other tenants. He had hazel eyes, a strong roman nose, full cheeks, and a prominent chin. His black hair was graying at the sides. Gray also flecked his light moustache and neatly trimmed beard.
“I’m here to reinvent myself,” he told Ronnie, the bartender, who offered him a free welcoming beer the day after he moved in. Doug was polite and well spoken with a deep, resonant voice, but tended to keep to himself much to the disappointment of several female tenants, who regularly worked out alongside him in the gym or watched him swim laps in the 20th floor pool.
He’d been an investment consultant back East, he told Ronnie. “Got left a pile of money by an aunt because I was her only living relative. So I decided I could afford to come to SF and try to strike it rich.” He was investing for himself and a few friends, running his own start-up fund. “I’m in it for the thrill of the chase,” he chuckled, accepting another beer. “But I’m not kidding myself about the chances. It’s like the Gold Rush all over again. It’s the people who sold the miners their supplies who got rich; almost all the miners went broke.”
His business card stated simply, Douglas H. Robb, President, DHR Investments. There were a PC and a couple of laptops on the glass-topped desk in the second bedroom, which he had converted into an office. There was also a printer, but no files, not even sheets of paper. He was rarely on the phone, spent hours every day taking long walks through the Presidio or along the beach toward Crissy Field. After a week, he bought himself a mountain bike and every few days would head off in his Toyota to explore Mount Tam and the hills of Napa on the other side of the startling blue bay.
In his desk drawer, he had his American passport and birth certificate. In his crocodile wallet were six credit cards, a driver’s license, social security card, health insurance card, membership in the Harvard Club, and a CV that went back fifty-three years to his birth in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was backed up by framed degrees from Harvard College and Wharton Business School and membership in the Society of Financial Analysts, which hung on the wall by his desk – all in the name of Douglas H. Robb.
In fact, the real Douglas H. Robb had passed away forty years ago. He was hit by a car in Brookline while riding his bike home from school. About half a century later, his identity was usurped by another man who apparently committed suicide in the waters off Cape Cod, Steve Penn. From Switzerland, Steve had Fed-Exed a passport picture of his new self to Charlie Doyle, who then completed the application for an American passport in the name of the hapless Baltimore teenager, Doug Robb.
For the rest of his life, however, Steve could never rid completely banish the occasional twinges of disbelief when he looked at the person staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, in Washington D.C., is located just west of the White House on 17th Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and New York Avenue. It was completed in 1888, in the grandiose French Second Empire style, with curlicues and gables, a brassy intruder to the austere neoclassic world of federal Washington. For years, it was the world’s largest office building; it was also considered a monstrosity. Mark Twain referred to it as “The Ugliest Building in America.” The architect ended his life by suicide. As time passed, it became increasingly inefficient and outdated, a huge rambling artifact. But then in 1969, it was rescued and transformed from a Washington eyesore on life support, to a National Historic Landmark, and a fortune was spent to resuscitate the vast, quaint structure.