Page 21 of Exposed

Is this me? Isabel?

How did Logan find this?

I trace the letters, imagining that I am able to feel the impressions of the pen on the paper, imagining the way his strong fingers gripped the pen and sliced firm concise strokes to create these letters. Twenty-six letters, simple strokes of ink on pulped and flattened wood. All to create a name. An identity.

Isabel.

I stare at the paper, for how long I do not know.

And then I discover something else written in the bottom right hand corner, printed small.

Ten numbers.

212-555-3233. Beside it, two more letters:LR.

His phone number?

I repeat the numbers in my mind until they are meaningless, shapes in my mind, sounds subvocalized, semantic satiation. Those ten numerals are burned into my brain. I cannot forgetthem, no more than I could forget the four names that belong to me.

Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro.

I turn on my heel, folding the paper into tiny squares, and stuff it into my bra. Stride to the doorway, down the stairs. Three flights, and out into the building. The hallways are dark and empty, corridors of shadow and moonlight and citylight streaming from office windows in rhombuses and trapezoids across thin carpet. I find the elevator, take it to the third floor. I do not have my key, cannot go back to my apartment or to the penthouse. I do not want to go to either place.

I tap hesitantly on Rachel’s door.

“Madame X?” A quizzical, sleepy stare. “It’s four in the morning.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Come in.” Fingers rub corners of eyes, feet shuffle across hardwood. “What’s up?”

“Do you have a computer?” I ask.

“Sure, of course. Why?”

“Can I use it?” I ask.

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

I don’t know how to answer. There are too many layers to be able to explain any of them. “I just...” I shake my head. “I can’t explain.”

A shrug. “Okay.” A gesture at the corner of the living room, a desk, with a thin silver thing on a desk. “Go for it. You want some coffee?”

I retrieve the computer, a thin laptop, a logo of an apple with a bite missing adorning the top, which lights up when I lift it open. The icons are the same as on the computer in my apartment, so I have no trouble finding the icon that will take me to the Internet. Rachel watches from the other end of the couch, curious.

I type “Isabel name meaning” into the search bar.

Why? What do I hope to find by searching for meanings in a name?

Isabel means “God is my oath.”

Meaningless to me.

Maria, obviously, is a reference to the Virgin Mary, a common enough name in Latin cultures.

De la Vega. It means “of the meadow” and is a name whose bearers historically were among the Spanish nobility.

Navarro holds even less meaning for me, as it merely refers to someone from Navarre, a region in Spain.