Less than ten seconds later, the computer told him there were more than 100,000 entries under that category, and Ricky started to read from the beginning.
By the end of the day, Ricky had learned that the business of creating new identities was a thriving one. There were dozens of companies spread throughout the world that would provide him with virtually every sort of false documentation, all of which was sold under the disclaimer for novelty purposes only. He thought there was something transparently criminal in a French business that offered to sell a California driver’s license. But while transparent, it was also not against the law.
He made lists of places and documents, putting together a fictional portfolio. He knew what he needed, but obtaining it was a bit of a problem.
He realized swiftly that people seeking fake identities already were someone.
He was not.
He still had a pocket filled with cash, and locations where he could spend it. The problem was, they all existed in the electronic world. The cash he had was useless. They wanted credit card numbers. He had none. They wanted an E-mail address. He had none. They wanted a home to deliver the material to. He had none.
Ricky refined his computer search and started reading about identity theft. He discovered that it was a thriving criminal enterprise in the United States. He read horror story after horror story about people who awakened one day to find their lives in turmoil because someone somewhere with little conscience was running up debts in their name.
It wasn’t a difficult leap for Ricky to recall how his own bank and brokerage accounts had been eviscerated, and he suspected that Rumplestiltskin had accomplished all this with remarkable ease simply by acquiring a few of Ricky’s numbers. It helped explain why the box containing his old tax returns was missing when he went to search for it. It wasn’t particularly difficult to be someone else in the electronic world. He promised himself that whoever he managed to become, he would never again idly toss into the trash a preapproved credit card application he received unsolicited in the mail.
Ricky pushed himself away from the computer and walked outside the library. The sun was shining brightly, and the air was still filled with the heat of summer. He continued walking almost aimlessly, until he found himself in a residential area filled with modest two-story wood-frame houses and small yards often littered with bright plastic children’s toys. He could hear some young voices coming from a backyard, out of sight. A dog of undetermined breed looked up from where he rested on one small lawn, restrained by a rope tied at one end to his collar and the other to a thick oak tree. The dog wagged his tail vigorously at Ricky’s appearance, as if inviting him to come over and scratch its ears. Ricky looked around, at tree-lined streets, where the shadows thrown by leafy branches created dark spots on the sidewalk. A slight breeze ruffled through the canopy of green, making the streaks and splotches of darkness on the sidewalks shift position and shape, before returning to rest. He took a few more strides down the street and in the front window of one house, he saw a small, hand-lettered sign: room to rent. inquire within.
Ricky began to step forward. That’s what I need, he said to himself.
Then, as abruptly, he stopped.
I have no name. No history. No references.
He made a mental note of the location of the house, and walked on, thinking to himself: I need to be someone. I need to be someone who can’t be traced. Someone alone, but someone real.
A dead person can come back to life. But that creates a question, a small rend in the fabric, that can be uncovered. An invented person can suddenly rise out of imagination, but that, too, creates questions.
Ricky’s problem was different from the criminals, the men seeking to run away from alimony payments, the ex-cult members afraid they were being followed, the women hiding from abusive husbands.
He needed to become someone who was both dead and alive.
Ricky thought about this contradiction, then smiled. He leaned his head back, facing into the bright sun.
He knew exactly what to do.
It did not take Ricky long to find a Salvation Army clothing store. It was located in a small, undistinguished shopping mall on the main bus route, a place of pavement, low-slung, square buildings, and bleached and peeling paint, not exactly decrepit and not precisely run-down, but a place that showed the fraying of neglect in trash cans that hadn’t been emptied and cracks in the asphalt parking lot. The Salvation Army store was painted a flat, reflective white, so that it glowed in the afternoon sun. Inside, it was similar to a small warehouse, with electrical appliances like toasters and waffle irons for sale on one wall, and rows of donated clothing hanging from racks occupying the center of the store. There were a few teenagers pawing through the racks, searching for baggy, fatigue pants and other bland articles, and Ricky sidled in behind them, inspecting the same piles of clothes. It seemed to him upon first glance that no one ever donated anything to the Salvation Army that wasn’t chocolate brown or black, which fit his imagination.
He quickly found what he was seeking, which was a long, ripped wool winter overcoat that reached to his ankles, a threadbare sweater, and pants two sizes too large for him. Everything was cheap, but he selected the cheapest of the offering. Also the most damaged and the most inappropriate for the still-hot last of the summer weather that gripped New England.
The cashier was an elderly volunteer, who wore thick glasses and an incongruously red sport shirt that stood out in the bleak and brown world of donated clothing. The man lifted the overcoat to his nose and sniffed.
“You sure you want this one, fella?”
“That’s the one,” Ricky replied.
“Smells like it’s been somewhere nasty,” the man continued. “Sometimes we get stuff in here, it makes it to the racks, but really ought not to. There’s much nicer stuff, you look a little harder. This one kinda stinks and somebody should have repaired that rip in the side before putting it out for sale.”
Ricky shook his head. “It’s exactly what I need,” he said.
The man shrugged, adjusting his glasses, peering down at the tag. “Well, I ain’t even gonna charge you the ten bucks they want for that. Say, how about three? That seems more fair. That okay?”
“You’re most generous,” Ricky said.
“What you want this junk for, anyway?” the man asked, not unfriendly in his curiosity.
“It’s for a theater production,” Ricky lied.
The elderly clerk nodded his head. “Well, I hope it isn’t for the star of the show, because they take one whiff of that coat, they’re gonna go looking for a new prop master.” The man wheezily laughed at his joke, making small breathy sounds that sounded more labored than humored. Ricky joined in with his own false laugh.
“Well, the director said to get something ratty, so I guess it’ll be on him,” he said. “I’m just the gofer. Community theater, you know. No big budget…”
“You want a bag?”
Ricky nodded, and exited the Salvation Army store with the purchases under his arm. He spotted a bus pulling up to the pickup spot on the edge of the mall, and he hurried to catch it. The exertion caused him to break a sweat, and once he slapped himself down in the backseat of the bus, he reached inside and took the old sweater and dabbed at the moisture on his forehead and under his arms, wiping himself dry with the article of clothing.
Before he reached his motel room that evening, Ricky took all the purchases to a small park, where he took time to drag each one in some dirt by a stand of trees.
In the morning, he packed the new old articles of clothing back in a brown paper bag. Everything else, the few documents he had about Rumplestiltskin, the newspapers, the other items of clothing that he’d acquired, went into the backpack. He settled his bill with the clerk at the motel, telling the man he would likely be back in a few days, information that didn’t make the clerk even glance up from the sports section of the newspaper that occupied him with a distinct intensity.