Exposed (Madame X, #2)(16)

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 forget them, 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 city light 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 it. “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.

There is a cauldron of emotions within me. Boiling, overflowing, weltering. Violent, virulent. But they are all hidden under a layer of ice created by shock.

I have a name.

A real name.

Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro?

“Isabel?” Rachel asks. “Is that your name?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know.”

Logan could have just made this up. Picked the names at random. How do I know this is me?

Do I feel like Isabel? I don’t know.

I look at Rachel. “You had a name, before . . . this. Before you became an apprentice.”

A nod. Eyes downcast. “Yeah. Nicole.” A breath, a sigh, eyes glancing out the window, seeing not the city but the past. “Nicole Martin.”

“And now you’re Rachel?”

Another nod. “Yeah. When I was fifteen, I got picked up by a pimp. He called me Dixie, like Dixie sugar. Because I was sweet, because he always wanted more sugar.” A fake, low, gruff voice, an impression of a male. “‘C’mere, Dixie. Gimme some sugar.’”

“What does that mean? Give me some sugar?”

A smile, quick, amused. “Oh, um . . . like, well, usually it means to kiss someone, like your grandma would tell you to give her some sugar, and it’d mean give her a kiss.” The smile vanishes. “But for Deon, it meant get on my knees and suck his dick.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what to say.

“So I was Nicole, and then I was Dixie until Caleb found me, and then I was Three.” She brightens. “And now I’m Rachel.”

“How . . .” I trail off, and try again to formulate my question. “Do you . . . feel like Rachel? When you think of yourself, who are you?”

A long, long silence. A shrug. “I dunno. I’m still Nicole, in my mind, I guess. There’s no one in the world but you and Caleb that know that name, though.”

“You don’t have a family?”

“Naw. Never had a dad, mom was a druggie, which is how I got hooked myself, watching her use. She OD’d when I was just . . . shit, twelve? Never had no one else, and I ran off when the city tried to place me.” Rachel is silent, staring at the past via middle distance. “I guess I’m Rachel now. I feel like that name is me. It’s a new me. I can be Rachel, and pretend I never was Nicole or Dixie.”

“I see.”

A sharp, knowing glance at me. “You trying to figure out who you are, ain’tcha? Madame X, or Isabel?”

“I suppose you’re right. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“In my experience, you have to kind of . . . convince yourself that you’re someone else. That you really are your new name. You want to be Isabel, you have to think about being Isabel. Learning to answer to a new name means owning it for yourself, first.”

I don’t know what I want. Who I want to be.