Tom smirked as the attendant wheeled him into the nursing home. It was the fifth time the burly man clad in white had assisted Tom in such a fashion, but no trace of recognition could be found on his face. It was an occurrence Tom had come to expect. It was an occurrence he had come to rely on.
Easily pushing Tom, the attendant asked, “How do you like it so far, Mr. Talbot?” Tom paused for a moment, forgetting that “Talbot” was the name he had assumed. Belatedly he answered, “Not bad I guess. We’ll have to see how this weekend goes.” The attendant nodded, “That’s how the program works. We’ve got three days to convince you that Forest Glen is the place for you.” After twelve days, Tom knew it wasn’t. The food was middling, the bedding sub-par, and the staff uninspiring. A free stay was a free stay, but he had already decided this would be the last go around.
Safely in his room, Tom leapt out of the needless wheelchair and plopped on the bed. He ran the figures in his head. This con was netting him about a grand’s worth of room and board, but that wasn’t the biggest advantage. The nursing home was an ideal staging point for his other endeavors, namely shoplifting. For which he was late.
Tom changed clothes and lithely strolled through the facility’s halls. The clueless staff noted his presence, but took him for a visiting family member and waved him through. He paused at the front door to converse with the intake orderly one more time.
Tom offered his hand and said, “Hey, thanks for taking care of my dad.” The man’s face was a caricature of polite confusion, “Ugh, yeah. Your dad is umm Mr. umm…” Tom finished the sentence, “Talbot, Wayne Talbot.”
“Oh, yeah. Nice guy your dad. I hope he enjoys his stay.”
A grocery store lay directly across the street from Forest Glen. It stocked a decent selection of booze, and had a fairly ineffective security camera system. He only had a slightly suspicious assistant manager to beat.
Wandering the aisles, adding items to his carts at random, Tom contemplated the vagaries of his existence. The fragments of his moral core always seemed to coalesce in moments of boredom. It was one of the ways he knew it was time to move on to a different gambit. It was among his deepest convictions that an abundance of introspection was a surefire path to life’s more painful intrusions: hunger, incarceration, and sobriety.
Despite a clerk stocking a shelf mere feet away, Tom swiped a moderately pricey wine, and slipped it into his jacket. A customer at the opposite end of the aisle noticed his barely disguised theft and moved toward the clerk to inform him. Tom spun his cart in a 180 degree arc and raced around the corner. Out of sight from the pair, Tom whipped off his coat with the bottle inside and stuffed it into the bottom of his cart. The eager young clerk promptly rounded the corner and nearly collided with Tom. The worker exclaimed, “Did you see some guy come running through here?” Tom grinned, “Why, no I haven’t. What’d he look like? This guy running.”
The stock boy scratched his head and replied, “He was kinda tall. Kinda, but not that tall. And maybe like an older guy, only like 60 though. He coulda been younger. I just didn’t get a good look at him.” Tom grasped the man’s shoulder and comforted him, “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find him. What’d he do?”
“He took some wine, and that’s been happening a lot. We keep getting ripped off. I betcha it’s the same guy.”
Wanting to avoid eating his dinner surrounded by geriatric invalids, Tom feigned leg pain and had his meal delivered to his room. The food was bland, but it kept him from getting the queasy pains that accompanied drinking on an empty stomach. Only a quarter of the full bodied red remained as he finally dozed off. The TV left playing the premium cable that came gratis with the room.
The next morning, Tom lay sprawled across the bed, fully dressed. Still dazed, he mumbled as a hand rapped across the door. Light from the hallway spilled across his face as a young woman opened the door. She was dressed in the facility’s calculatedly inoffensive uniform of polo shirt and khakis. Fully in the room, she announced, “Good morning Mr. Talbot. I’m Quince from guest services. Shaking off the alcoholic fog, Tom smiled at the euphemism for “housekeeping”.
Tom sat up in the bed and focused more fully on his visitor. Quince couldn’t have been more than 22. She had dishwater blonde hair and a petite build. Tom found her objectively attractive, but subjectively out of reach. Glancing at Tom, she started to speak, but stopped short as she saw Tom’s face. She mouthed a single, “Oh.” Tom queried, “What?”
“Oh, I was just expecting someone older looking. You look pretty good for 65.”
“What can I say? I got the good genes.”
Tom played it nonchalantly, but the exchange shook him. He wasn’t used to discussing his appearance. It was a topic that rarely came up. He looked himself over in the bathroom mirror, checking for some perceptible change. His typical non-descript face stared back.
Later that afternoon, Tom took himself through the grocery store routine again. This time he made off with a purloined bottle of vodka. Confident as an innocent man, he didn’t notice a lone figure sitting at the picnic table in front of the store. Ten steps past the table, he heard a friendly female voice call out, “Mr. Talbot! Is that you?” A tremor passed through Tom’s body but he kept walking and refused to look back. The voice called a second time, but he ignored it again.
Back in his room, Tom pounded the vodka back. The liquid depressant slowed down his heart, but muddied his intellect. He replayed the visit to the store ad nauseam, trying to find the flaw in his system. The system was his life and his life relied on the system. If it was deteriorating or had developed a weakness it needed to be addressed now. Tom skipped the evening meal, fortifying himself with the Finnish import instead.
The next morning was a tortuous affair. Still slightly drunk, Tom forced himself awake at 6 AM. In the bathroom, he brushed his hair to the other side, and tried to think of a further disguise. Inspiration struck and he changed into a battered tartan bathrobe he had bought from a thrift store. He crawled under the covers and obscured his face before falling back asleep.
A few hours later, the familiar thump shook the door. Tom called out, “Come in.” Relief eddied in the recesses of Tom’s mind as an unfamiliar middle aged woman came in. Peeking with one eye, Tom watched as she went about tidying up the room, ignoring him as if he were just a lump of crumpled sheets and blankets.
When the maid had left, Tom sorted out his wardrobe and planned another grocery store heist. Cheese was on the menu today. His hand was on the door handle when a knock startled him. Cautiously, Tom opened the door. Quince stood mere inches away.
“Hi, Mr. Talbot. I was hoping I’d catch you.”
“I saw you at the grocery store yesterday, but you didn’t hear me. I just wanted to let you know that if you need anything, I can pick it up. No need to wear yourself out walking all over the place.”
Tom’s vision wavered and refused to focus. He backed up into the room until his heels clipped the bed, and collapsed across the mattress. From a far way off, he could hear Quince calling out his alias. Her rosy cheeked face filled his tunnel vision. A secondary fear suddenly overwhelmed him, an ambulance ride and ensuing ER visit. He forcefully slowed his breathing, and felt the fugue state breaking.
Quince held Tom’s hand and gently stroked his hair. He stared into her blue eyes and said, “You recognized me. How’d you do that?” Baffled, Quince asked, “What?”
“No one recognizes me. Never. How’s that possible?”
“I’d seen you like two hours before. Who forgets people like that?”
“Everyone. Store clerks, the staff here, teachers, even my mom.”
Quince held his gaze in disbelief, “What in God’s name are you talking about?” She got up from the bed and moved toward the door. Tom sat up and continued, “You’re seeing me. I mean genuinely seeing me. I’m not some geriatric loser. That’s why I don’t look 71 or whatever this Talbot guy is supposed to be.”
“That’s crazy. You’re crazy. Quit making this up. I’ll get a psych eval on you right away.”
Tom held his palms up in defense, arguing, “I can prove it. Follow me.” He brushed past her and went into the hall, heading for the front desk. Quince followed a pace behind.
Tom harangued the receptionist from across the lobby, “Hey, you know who I am right? What room am I?” The bespectacled woman stared back blankly. Quince fell in at his hip and questioned her as well, “C’mon, you did the intake for him. Tell me you know who this guy is. Sarah, who is this?”
Sarah glanced at Tom, over to Quince, and back to her computer. She typed a few lines and read something on the screen. Looking back Tom, Sarah finally replied, “This is Mr. Spence. He joined us two weeks ago, and he’s in room 146.” Tom leaned over her desk and gleefully shouted, “Eeennnnt! Wrong! Try again.” Sarah and Quince froze aghast.
Tom stalked off out of sight of Sarah, and shouted back at Quince, “Watch this!” He strolled back up to the desk and announced to the bewildered receptionist, “Have we ever met before? Have you ever seen me in your life before this instant right now?” Sarah checked Tom’s face, both with and without her glasses on. Soberly, Sarah answered, “I don’t believe so.”
Tom raced back to his room, with a flabbergasted Quince in tow. She machine gunned questions at him, “No one remembers you? Who are you really? How long has this been going on?” Feeling bombarded, Tom ignored her and pressed on.
In Tom’s room, Quince continued, “This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t even imagine. I’m sure we can fix this. If I can see you, I’m sure other people can too.” Where are you going?” Tom paused from packing his suitcase to answer the last one. “I’m getting out of here. I can’t very well hang out at some nursing home with some college drop out that actually sees me.”
Genuinely hurt, Quince clasped both hands in front of her chest, and argued, “I’m going to community college. What the hell’s wrong with you? You’re like some creepy weirdo pretending to be an old person. Who does that?” Tom snatched his bag and moved for the door. Still incensed, Quince blocked the door and pulled her phone out and snapped a quick pic of Tom’s surprised face. Furious, Tom nearly screamed, “What are you doing?”
“I can’t let you just keep ripping people off. I’m turning you in. I’m the one person who can pick you out of line up.”
“Don’t do that. Please, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Just let me go. Please … please.”
Pearlescent tears granted Tom’s face its most distinct feature yet. Taken aback, Quince paused, “What, what are you doing?”
“You took away the one thing that made me special.”
