Page 37

“Thank you, dear,” the woman said. “You both have wonderful trips now.”

“You too,” I said with a smile.

We walked off the plane, and I waved to Stephanie, turning left, following the signs toward ground transportation, as she turned toward her gate.

But instead of going any farther, I ducked into a different nearby gate and pulled out my phone, pretending I was checking messages. I needed to give it a few minutes for her to get farther away and then see what time Stephanie’s flight left. I had to either get on that exact plane or another one soon after to follow her to San Diego. I would have to pay cash again.

Standing up and slowly making my way to where I could see the row of gates, I made sure she wasn’t unexpectedly coming my way. Seeing nothing, I dashed to the closest bathroom and into the handicap stall, where I’d have more room.

Unzipping my carry-on, I quickly pulled off my jeans and top and changed into an entirely different outfit, including Glenn’s red flannel shirt. Then I stowed my John Lennon glasses in my purse, twisted my hair up as high as it would go, and put my Dodgers cap back on, tucking in all of the wisps of hair under it.

When I emerged from the stall and looked at myself in the mirror, I was pleased. It was as close to a total change as one could get without hair dye. For good measure, I grabbed my makeup bag from my purse and started applying dark eyeshadow and heavy strokes of blush.

Before I had dropped out of cosmetology school, one of my favorite classes had been Transformative Makeup, really making someone look different. We used contour sticks, foundations, and color to change the look of someone’s features. Although I couldn’t afford the expensive contour sticks now, I did a poor man’s version with what I did have, all Walgreens makeup I had purchased over the course of many years, some past their expiration point or cracked, but oh well, they wouldn’t kill me.

There was a tube of lipstick at the bottom of my purse too—an orangey color that really didn’t look very good on me. Someone had left it on the sink in the women’s bathroom at the bar weeks ago and never came back, so I kept it. Now it became an integral part of my disguise.

Swiping it on, I was further satisfied that anyone walking past me in an airport would not recognize me as the same person I had been just minutes before. Different clothes, different hair, hat on, glasses off, major makeup on my face now. The only thing the same was my fringed purse.

Going back into the handicap stall, I reopened my suitcase and pushed the purse into it, sitting on the top to squish it down until I could get the zipper to close. The suitcase strained against the bulk but held up. There, now the purse was hidden too.

Slipping from the bathroom, I imagined myself as a stealth ninja, occupying the quiet corners of the airport where people wouldn’t be looking. I walked close to walls, kept my head down, and maneuvered behind crowds or in and out of spaces with no one taking a second glance. Moving quickly, I found the monitors where all of the departing flights were listed and located what had to be Stephanie’s San Diego flight, the only one leaving anytime soon. It was about a dozen gates down in that same concourse.

My next stop was the counter where a gate agent had just finished welcoming passengers onto a plane to Phoenix. She was tidying up the desk area as I approached.

“Hi,” I said. “I just had a change of plans. Can I buy a ticket to San Diego here? Whatever your next available flight is, please.”

“Sure, honey.” She began typing. After a few moments she said, “All I have left is the back row.”

“No problem.” I felt relieved. I could hide back there more successfully.

“Can I pay cash?”

“You sure can.”

She handed me the boarding pass with a smile. “Have a good flight!”

I steadied my breath as I walked away. This was happening. This was actually happening. Now I needed to avoid detection before the flight and during boarding. Once I was in my seat, I would feel more confident. I would be one of the last to deplane, so I didn’t think Stephanie would see me. If she got up to walk to the rear of the plane to use the restroom, I could literally pull my baseball cap over my face the way I had seen others do when they wanted a nap.

Cautiously I approached the general area of the San Diego gate, still staying one gate down as I surveyed the scene. It was crowded, people starting to fill every seat, but no Stephanie. I backed myself into a wall and glanced around.

There were three gift shops, four restaurants, a first-class lounge, and multiple bathrooms. She could be anywhere. I would have to wait. Moving to a vantage point that was more of a diagonal from her gate, I pushed myself into a dark corner and stood there, alert as a cat, quiet as a Buddha.

After about fifteen minutes, I saw her. She was walking down the concourse.

I shrank further into the wall, willing myself to take up less space.

She scanned the now overflowing waiting area and sighed before heading to an empty seat and wedging herself in.

I would wait until she boarded and then board myself. I didn’t want to be last—people sometimes looked up at those who were last to board, everyone who was already seated eager to get moving and annoyed that these people might be delaying them. I planned to slip into the line at just the right time to move with the masses and be undetected by her. I only had to get past her row to the back of the plane and I’d be home free.

With my head down and my change of clothes and overall disguise, I was maybe 80 percent confident I could do this. But that 20 percent was starting to tear up my stomach. What would I do if she recognized me? I would simply have to lie, to pretend I was someone else. With the change of clothes and makeup, if I admitted I was the person who was on her last flight and said I had a sudden change of heart to go to San Diego, she would be incredibly suspicious.

No, lying was the only way. I bit my nails as I thought about the whole horrid scenario that could unfold. I’m walking down the aisle, and she looks up and says, Jasmine? Is that you from my last flight? What are you doing here?

My mind shot back to cosmetology school. There had been a woman in my class with a thick Southern accent. I always enjoyed listening to her speak, and now, as I stood there, minimizing myself against the wall, I conjured up that accent again and silently rehearsed saying Sorry, ya got the wrong gal in a strong Texas twang. Hopefully that would be enough to throw her off the trail.

My only other concern was that Stephanie might be in the same row as me, but I dismissed that. Anyone traveling for business was not going to be in the last row, the one where you couldn’t push your seat back and were right next to the bathrooms. No way.

I watched her do various things on her phone. As they began to call rows for boarding, I held my breath, praying I was right when it came to where she’d be sitting. She boarded with the second group—not first class, but still a way better seat than mine. I slipped into line ahead of about a dozen other people and handed the gate agent my boarding pass.

Stephanie’s ID poked again at my left breast, and I gently rearranged it to a more comfortable position. As the line moved through the jetway to the plane, I took a deep breath and pushed the brim of my cap lower to cover more of my face. I wanted to look for her, to see exactly where she might be sitting, but the risk was too high. If I looked up, full face, and she happened to be looking to the front of the plane at that exact time, I could be screwed. Better to keep the head down. Walking that way all the way to the back of the plane, I felt like I might faint the entire way.

The last rows were already packed except for my empty seat. I would have to be in the middle. As I reached my row, the flight attendant stopped me.

“Hey, we’re getting real full up top back here. I might need you to gate-check that roller.”

My knees went weak. Gate-check? I hadn’t considered that possibility. There was no way I could part with this bag. It had everything I owned in it, literally everything, including my purse. Without it I wouldn’t have a cent.

“Uh…” I stammered, unsure how to handle this unexpected curveball. I couldn’t make too big of a scene, but there was no way I would allow this bag out of my sight. “Is there anything we can do?” My voice came out weak and thin, and I could see how pathetic I looked in her eyes.

“I think there’s room next to my bag,” a guy with a wide smile in the row up from me said. He winked. “I don’t like waiting for bags when I land either.”

Clicking open an overhead bin, he lifted my suitcase so easily it could have contained feathers. With a small push, he got it in next to others.

“Well then, problem solved,” the flight attendant said, and relief coursed through me.

I took one quick peek up toward the front of the plane, trying to see if I could recognize Stephanie. I thought I saw her, also in a middle seat.

Wedging into my spot, I stayed there for the duration of the flight, my cap tipped partially down and my mind racing for my next plans. By the time we landed, Glenn would be blowing up my phone. My stomach tightened at the thought, memories of him dragging me by my hair into his truck, screaming at me for trying to leave him. His anger would be unstoppable on this one. He would be ballistic that there was no steak dinner waiting for him too.

I planned to never answer his calls again. In fact, I would block his number so that he couldn’t keep bothering me. I couldn’t keep lying to him about my whereabouts—that time had passed. It was now time for the disappearing act.

And I had this plan, this crazy plan, that had come into my mind. Get Stephanie’s credit cards. Maybe more. Maybe. I might bail on the big part, the really big part, and just take the credit cards, but I would get a few things lined up just in case.

I wished I could be writing down the order of things for my next moves—it would be easier to remember and keep track of—but I couldn’t risk my seatmates seeing anything. This would all have to be in my head. I bit my fingers as I rehearsed the order again and again: land; get off the plane; get a rental van—it dawned on me that I would need one with a wheelchair lift, just in case; figure out which Hilton was five miles from the beach in La Jolla; look up cheap motels within a few miles of there; find a Walmart; buy scissors, hair dye, plastic gloves, and the largest suitcase I could find. Maybe get something slightly nicer than what I was wearing to complete the look that I was a high-powered executive.

Next would be getting to Stephanie’s hotel in the middle of the night. The rest was almost too much for me to think about. I knew what I planned to do, knew what I needed to do in order for this to truly work, but the thought of it was making my stomach turn. What if it didn’t work? What if it did? Each thought was almost equally horrifying, and yet I was on autopilot now. A woman on a mission.

Any missteps might ruin me, I needed to stay focused. One task at a time. I could always back out of the plan if I got too scared. But I could never go back in. This was my only chance, my only true way of escaping Glenn, my mother, my siblings, everyone. There was literally no one in my world that I couldn’t do without. Sure, I would miss Anna and the bar waitresses, but friends came and went. I would find someone new to hang with in Mexico.

Money. I was hemorrhaging my own money, and it was only the first day of my departure. The ticket to San Diego, a rental van, a motel room, a suitcase, hair dye, all expenses I hadn’t counted on when the day had started. That was why I needed to do what I needed to do. I needed Stephanie’s money first and foremost; the rest would unfold for me in some way. Nothing could be accomplished without money. If I had just been able to grab Stephanie’s credit card in addition to her ID, would I be planning what I was now planning? I wasn’t sure. If I had, perhaps I could have stolen some of her money before she realized it, but I also wouldn’t have access to her full accounts; I wouldn’t have her laptop and phone and clothes and everything else I coveted about her.

She seemed nice enough, I reasoned as I bit my nails, but she had been able to live the wealthy American lifestyle for a long time. Long enough. She was a grown-up version of Allison, expensive shampoo and doting parents and money dripping off her.

It was my turn to have a dream. I was so sick of other people getting all of the breaks, and she seemed to be one of those people. Probably a fancy high school followed by a fancy college fully paid for by her rich parents. A handsome husband who was captain of some team while she was a cheerleader. A perfect pregnancy and amazing child. A family who still held Thanksgiving around a cozy table with a log crackling in the fireplace, playing board games after dinner, laughing and sharing inside jokes as they ate homemade pumpkin pie with dollops of real whipped cream on top, not the kind that came in a can like I always had.

I bet she had a walk-in closet draped with clothes and jewelry too. I could see her house and her life in my mind. Banquets and art openings and who knew what else on weekends. As I thought about it, I got angrier and angrier. It was time for me to have a life of luxury and ease. I would be outthinking and outsmarting everyone, from Glenn to Stephanie. I just needed to take this one gentle step at a time.

It was dark outside when the plane landed. I couldn’t believe I was in San Diego instead of Denver, how different a day could be from how you envisioned it. Looking toward the front, I saw Stephanie and the rest of the passengers standing up and collecting their bags. Her robin’s-egg blue purse flashed at me as she put it over her shoulder.

“I’ll get your bag,” the man with the big smile said and pulled it down, plopping it on its wheels and even spinning it the right way and lifting the handle for me. “There you go.”

He seemed so fatherly it gave me a sharp pang for the man I never knew.

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I turned it off airplane mode. It took a few seconds to catch up, but then the text button lit up with eight new messages and the phone icon showed six voicemails. I knew what they would say before I even opened or listened to them. All from Glenn, of course, in an escalating staircase of anger. Yet I couldn’t help myself from hitting play on the first voicemail.

“Jasmine, baby, where are you? I love you so much. Don’t do this. What are you thinking? Come home, sweetie. I’ll change, I promise…”

In the sixth and final voicemail, his tone had completely changed.

“Are you fucking serious with this shit? You’re going to tell me you’re making me a steak and then take off? I will find you, Jasmine. You can’t hide. I will hunt you down. And I do mean hunt. You won’t ever get away with this, bitch.”

A shiver hit me and I felt a renewed purpose. I had to hide from this psycho permanently. The thought of the hunting rifle he kept hanging on the living room wall made my whole body go numb.

This was the new me, though. Deleting all of the voicemails, I went to my contact list and scrolled to his name, hitting block. I was never going to hear from him again. Glenn’s anger sharpened my focus. I glanced ahead to where Stephanie was and thought, Sorry, but this has to be done. There is simply no other way. Time for a woman to help a woman out of a jam.

We all shuffled off the plane. I saw Stephanie walking far down from me, headed toward baggage claim. I followed the signs to rental cars. It took several agencies to find a wheelchair-lift van. After getting the keys, I sat in the parking lot calling up Hiltons in the area and mapping the distance to the beach until I found hers. Next came motels. One was just a mile from the Hilton. There was a Walmart down the block from it. Perfect. Steering the car that way, I kept repeating to myself, “I’m in California, I’m in California, I’m half a country away from Glenn and going to be further soon.”

The San Diego landscape already looked so different from Madison, even in the dark. The air was warmer, a sea breeze in it, palm trees dotting every street. People were out running in shorts and T-shirts; a bright red light-rail train went whizzing by; the houses had Spanish-tile roofs and were built lower to the ground, many a sort of a creamy peach color I wasn’t used to. This was a different world, that was for sure, and I couldn’t wait to take a big bite out of it once I had money and nice clothes.

At Walmart, I studied the rows of hair dyes, carefully slipping Stephanie’s ID out of my bra and looking at her hair color. A medium brown, I would call it, and I found a shade labeled just that. Adding hair-cutting scissors, plastic gloves, the largest suitcase I could find, a decent-looking professional top on a sale rack, a new purse in a bland shade of beige, a Diet Coke to keep me up, and some beef jerky for protein, I took my haul to the motel and got to work.

Standing in front of the mirror, I said a little goodbye to my long blond hair and started chopping. Once I got it to the proper length and it looked reasonably even across the bottom, I turned to the dye. The color went on easily, but I had to wait thirty minutes for it to set, so I flipped channels and nervously drank my soda and nibbled at the beef jerky. My appetite was not very strong, and my stomach was tight and tense. Abandoning the jerky on the nightstand, I chewed my fingernails instead and thought about the next move in my chess game.

It was getting close to eleven p.m., and I needed to wait until I was sure Stephanie would be asleep. Any sort of conference was bound to kick off by nine a.m. at the latest, so I was sure Stephanie would try to be asleep by two. I also guessed she had checked in with the evening team at the Hilton. I wanted to arrive when the overnight team was there so that no one would possibly remember her checking in earlier, just in case. After working in hotels myself, I knew there would be a shift change when the 2:30-to-10:30 p.m. crew left.

Sliding Stephanie’s ID out of my bra again, I studied her picture for a long time, then looked at myself in the mirror. It was uncanny how much I now looked like her if you had never met me or her. If you had, you might notice that I was a little thinner with a slightly longer chin and eyes set farther apart, but our noses were close enough, and the rest could definitely be missed by anyone who didn’t know either of us. And she had told me in our conversation that she had never met any of these news directors.

Stepping into the shower to rinse off the hair dye, I turned the hot water up almost as high as it would go, washing off Glenn and my past. Taking the soap and scrubbing every inch of my body, I got all of the blush, dark eyeshadow, and orange lipstick off with a washcloth, then watched as the brown hair dye circled the drain and slithered away.

I thought of Stephanie, totally oblivious to my plan, in her hotel room a mile away, thinking she was getting ready for a conference. I was sorry for what I might do, I truly was, but I couldn’t see another path. And I had asked my grandma to guide me, then been seated by this woman. Wasn’t that a sign from the universe? Clearly, I was supposed to meet Stephanie and use her for whatever I needed.

Blow-drying my hair with the tiny hair dryer that was stuck to the wall of the motel bathroom, I changed back into the nicest clothes I had with me, including the shirt I had just purchased at Walmart. It was made of thin material but had a floral print and a simple neckline. It looked better than the mostly dirty and crumpled clothes in my own suitcase. I was passable as a conference attendee arriving late at night. I wasn’t planning to use my fringed purse at the front desk. Not only did it not look like it belonged to a professional woman, but I was cognizant that there would likely be security cameras in the hotel lobby, and if anything were to go awry, I didn’t want to be recognized by Stephanie in any way, shape, or form.

I swapped out my own driver’s license for Stephanie’s, slipping her ID into the plastic holder of my wallet and putting my own license into my bra; then I tucked the wallet into the new beige purse and returned to the bathroom to apply makeup. This time I tried to emulate what Stephanie had on in her ID photo and what I had seen on the plane. Neutrals and pinks. Nothing gaudy, nothing that screamed, Look at me. Just boring, professional makeup. When I was done, I stepped back and admired my work, turning my head from side to side. It really was uncanny. Grinning at my image, I clicked off the bathroom light and returned to bed.

It was still not yet midnight, so I lay down carefully on my back, so as not to mess up the makeup, and shut my eyes, willing myself into a meditative state. Visions of my recent life began to dance: the bar on rocking nights when everyone and everything seemed fun, the early days with Glenn when he would make me pancakes in the morning and deliver them to me in bed. How he insisted on opening that passenger door. Stay with the good thoughts, Jasmine , I told myself. Don’t think about the bad.

I drifted off.

But suddenly, Allison’s face came to mind, red lips, head thrown back, laughing at the party, tail in her hand; that was followed by the thought of Glenn’s face laughing after he smothered me with that pillow. I shuddered, jerking out of the half-sleep.

I sat up and slugged the rest of the Diet Coke, pulled the tags off the big suitcase, put a few more items of my own clothing in there, plus my baseball cap and makeup in case I needed them, and went to the minivan outside.