by Wim Hylen
After a drunk driving arrest, Kyle Perkins moved from Bradley Beach, New Jersey to Eldham, Colorado, a town he picked by throwing a dart at a map of the United States. Intent on making a fresh start, he adopted the name Charles Bonhoeffer because it sounded regal, like an Austro-Hungarian prince. He didn’t think of it as a lie, but as an exercise in creativity and imagination, a powerful wave in the dull sea of his life.
He started attending AA meetings. Although he knew truthfulness was the foundation of recovery, he was dishonest in the meetings. He claimed to be a former executive with a Fortune 500 company who had embezzled funds and sexually harassed his secretary. He told his fellow addicts that there were many details that he couldn’t share about his former life because of the non-disclosure agreement he had signed. In truth, other than drunk driving and the innumerable fabrications he had concocted in bars throughout Monmouth County, Kyle had been a model citizen. As a manager at a car rental company he had been unfailingly reliable, no matter how hungover. He was kind to the employees he supervised and loyal to the few friends he had. He visited the graves of his parents once a month and visited his brother, the optometrist, every Sunday, regaling his niece and nephew with absurdist fairy tales – The Princess Who Worked at Wendy’s, Snow White and Her Aggressive Bodyguards – that made them squeal with pleasure.
When he found himself lacking motivation to attend meetings, he buoyed himself with the thought of seeing Aileen, a real estate agent whose career had been derailed by drinking. She was smart and tough and spoke with the husky growl of Stevie Nicks. But she had moments of vulnerability where she would cry quietly, not the hysterical sobbing some addicts engaged in that smacked of egotism. She would wipe away the tears with her long fingers and brush her blondish-gray hair away from her face, as if the motion could dissolve the grief.
Aileen declined Kyle’s first invitation to meet for coffee but accepted his second. They talked for three hours over pie and espresso, sharing secrets – hers plumbed from the depths of her soul and his a jumble of truth and the fictional missteps of the disgraced executive he was impersonating. Afterwards, they kissed outside her car and he waved as she drove away, letting out a quiet sigh. When he thought of what she had told him, how she had siphoned money from clients and spent six months in jail, emotions collided: empathy and tenderness but also a tinge of superiority.
After a week of indecision, he decided to come clean. With a mix of excitement and anxious guilt, he worked up his courage with a single shot of tequila. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, swirling mouthwash, trimming his goatee, and rehearsing what he would say. At dinner, in a hot rush of honesty, Kyle revealed his litany of lies to Aileen. As the truth poured from his mint-scented mouth, he was cleansed and renewed. He sat across from her as if stripped naked; Kyle, a Budget Rent A Car manager from Jersey.
Aileen listened intently as he spoke, her face an inscrutable mask. When he finished, she swirled the lemon in her water with a straw and asked only one question: why? He knew this was coming, had rehearsed an intricate response, but under pressure he found himself mute. His prepared answers rose up before him, facile explanations that he had conjured as easily as his lies. How to describe the expression on Aileen’s face right before she walked out of the restaurant? There was anger and disappointment but also something else he couldn’t put his finger on. Despair, weariness, defeat?
Two weeks later, in the middle of January, Kyle moved back to Bradley Beach. He hated the Rocky Mountains, he decided. The freezing Atlantic Ocean, its water a sickening greenish color, called to him. Somewhere in its depths, an angler fish was working its scam, dangling a bioluminescent lure in front of its repulsive face, hoping to deceive unsuspecting prey.
Wim Hylen's work has been published in The Adroit Journal, On The Seawall, The Westchester Review, JMWW and Brilliant Flash Fiction, among other places. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
January House Literary Journal 
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