Page 35 of The Lie Maker

She said nothing. She scowled at the noisy fan as she took a seat at the kitchen table. Bill had set out a long cutting board covered with cheeses, various meats, pickles, and pearl onions. I wouldn’t have expected charcuterie in a place like this. Venison, maybe.

“Drinks?” he asked.

“Coffee, if you have it,” Gwen said. “And can you do anything about that fan?”

“What about it?” Bill said.

“It’s incredibly annoying.”

“If you want to sweat through lunch I can turn it off,” he offered.

“Never mind,” she said, accepting defeat with a grimace.

Bill looked at me. “Water’s fine,” I said.

There was a coffee maker on the counter, the carafe half full. Bill filled a glass from the tap, poured a cup of coffee for Gwen, and returned to the table.

“One always likes to be a good host,” he said, sitting down.

From the moment he’d first appeared at the door, there was something about him that seemed familiar.

“Have we ever met?” I asked him.

“Huh?”

“I feel like maybe we’ve met before,” I said.

Bill squinted at me. “I don’t think so. You spend a lot of time at Suffolk Downs bettin’ on the ponies?”

I shook my head. I had my pen and notebook out and on the table. “You mind?” I asked.

Bill shook his head. “Gwen here says you want to get to know me.”

“A sense of you,” I said. “She explained to you what I’m doing?”

“Yeah.” He speared some slices of prosciutto and lean, rare roast beef, cut off a couple of slices of crusty bread, and started making a mini sandwich. “You’re my lie maker.”

“I’m working on a backstory for you. Something for you to learn, to remember, and whenever you’re with people in your new life, you know, you can tell those stories instead of things that really happened to you, so as to keep people from figuring out who you are.”

“Like that Seinfeld episode,” Bill said. “The one where Peterman buys Kramer’s anecdotes and passes them off as his own when he writes his autobiography.” He smiled. “I watch a lot of TV.”

I recalled the episode. “Something like that.”

“But without the laughs,” Bill said, chuckling.

His smile faded almost immediately. “So, what can I tell you about myself? I’m not sure I get the point of this. Whatever I tell you, you gotta change it, right?”

I looked to Gwen for some guidance, then back to Bill. “Not really. I mean, just as an example, if you’re into cars, I could work into your background that you once sold them at a dealership. Even if you didn’t, that’s a story you could probably tell pretty convincingly. Or, your interest in food seems to go beyond eating it. Maybe you were a chef, or ran a restaurant, or were a critic.”

He nodded slowly, thinking about it.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I do like fine food and fine wine. But you should get a sense of my personality, too. I’m kind of a dick. Ask Gwen, she’ll confirm it.” He grinned. “A pain in the ass to live with. I was married. Maybe I still am, technically. Had a kid. But they’ve gone their way and I’ve gone mine.”

Bill took a breath. “I like biographies. I met Donald Trump in an elevator once. I lost my virginity at thirteen to my second cousin. I once dated a girl who was an extra in a Star Wars movie.”

Bill recalled another brush with celebrity. “I got Patrick Stewart’s autograph one time. He was at the table next to me in a restaurant in Memphis, had this cap on, head down low, trying to keep people from noticing him, but I spotted him right off. Thing is, I like TV. Watched it all the time as a kid.”

So I got that part right, too, although inventing someone who liked to watch television was not exactly like getting all the right numbers in the lottery.