You Can't Catch Me(41)

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Curiosity for sure. Plus, she’s pretty persuasive, this one.” Jessie points her thumb at me.

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m a librarian in Upstate New York.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

She motions to herself. “Do I seem like the kind of person who’d willingly come all this way to try to talk someone into searching for the person who stole my money?”

“You do not.”

“Exactly.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“She gave me this whole speech about how we were a band of brothers and we had to stop Jessica Two before someone lost more than just their money.”

“Jessica Two?”

“It’s what I call her,” I say.

“I am so fucking confused right now.” JJ leans back in the booth. She catches the eye of our waitress, and that silent signal for more passes between them.

“I’m Jessica One,” I say. “To me, anyway. So, when I met the other Jessica, and she did that thing she does—you know, Oh, we have the same name, how unusual—I started thinking of her as Jessica Two. Jessie’s Jessica Three. You’re Four.”

“Why do you get to be One?”

The waitress delivers JJ her drink. She holds the glass in her one hand, staring at the liquid in the murky light.

“This might be the stupidest fucking conversation I’ve had in a long time, and that’s including the one I had with her. No wonder she took our money,” JJ says.

I lean forward. “Okay, let’s forget about what to call her, or us. We don’t have to be a band of brothers, or a band of Jessicas, or anything. But she took something from us. She did. And we should try to get it back.”

“What makes you think you’ll succeed?”

“I have no idea if I will. But I feel like the three of us together have a better chance than me alone.”

JJ looks me in the eye. “She’s not going to like this, you know.”

“Who cares what she likes or wants.”

“You should care.”

“Why?”

“Because she doesn’t stop at taking your money. If she thinks you’re a threat, she’ll come for more than that.”

“How do you know that?” Jessie asks.

“Because that’s what she did to me.”





Chapter 18

You Know the Drill

JJ’s story has a familiar ring to it. When she got back from Afghanistan and finished her rehab, she decided to pursue her first love, cooking. She did great in chef school despite her disability, but when she graduated, she couldn’t get a job. She was receiving a disability pension from the VA, but she was down. A friend of hers hired her to cater a dinner party to try to kick-start a business, and over drinks in the kitchen they were joking about all the silly advice she was getting.

“Stay positive seemed to be the most consistent one,” JJ says. She points to her missing arm. “Like, forget this ever happened! Think of your blessings! You are such a lucky person!”

“Sounds annoying,” I say.

“I’ll say. But it got us thinking. If people buy into that shit, then maybe we should take it to its logical conclusion. Like, you want positive? I’ll show you positive. And that’s how the relentlessly positive one-armed lady chef was born.”

“Is that what you call yourself?” Jessie asks.

“Not overtly. But it’s the not-too-subtle subtext of the YouTube channel I started. Anyway, we were right. We started filming videos in my kitchen, inviting other chefs I’d heard of from around town to guest on the show and they’d have to say yes, because who turns down a one-armed army vet?”

“No one,” I say.

“Exactly. And then we’d get them to promo it to their customers and on their social, and pretty soon we’d taken off. We got this massive bump when Bourdain retweeted one of my videos, and then everyone wanted in on the action.”

“Advertisers?”

She finishes her drink. “Yep. Knives, appliances, you name it. I was getting big ad buys. I bought a house, paid off my debts, things were going well. Being relentlessly positive didn’t come so hard for a while.”

“And then?”

“The paper did a profile on me. Mentioned the kind of ad revenue I was getting. I got a lot of business from that profile. I even cut it out and had it laminated and hung it on the wall of my kitchen and everything. You’ve got to laugh.”

“More relentless positivity?” I ask.

She grimaces. “You know it. Anyway, a couple months later, I got invited to give a demonstration at a cooking expo in Des Moines.”

“You were flattered.”

“Course I was. She knows how to get to a person’s soft spot.”

“Was it made up?” Jessie asks. “The convention?”

“No, it was real.”

“Mine was made up.”

“That right?” JJ gives her a look of pity. But we’ve all been taken for fools.

“How do you think she managed it?” I ask.

JJ shrugs. “Never thought much about that part, to be honest. For all I know, she applied for me. It wasn’t a real ‘invitation,’ if I think about it. More like a confirmation that I was attending, with my travel and hotel information.”