“Can I see your driver’s license, please?” he asked.
“Uh-huh! Yup.” I nodded and then shuffled towards my car—hands still between my legs. I opened the door, dug in my bag and pulled my license out. He took it and looked down at it, and then the usual thing happened.
He squinted and raised it to his face as if he hadn’t read it correctly. Then he looked up at me, confused, looked back down, pulled it away from his face, as if he still hadn’t read it correctly yet, and then looked up at me again, still confused.
“Pebecca?” he asked.
I sighed. “Pebecca,” I repeated flatly.
“Not Rebecca?” he enquired.
I shook my head and he eyed me suspiciously.
“Nope,” I said. This was such a familiar conversation, really; I’d had it almost every time I changed schools, every time I went to a dentist, a doctor, picked up a letter from the post office, tried to take out a credit card at my bank, or a cell-phone contract. I knew this script so well. In fact, next he would probably say,Wow, that’s an inter—
“That’s an interesting name,” he said.
Aha! Told you. I sighed again, waiting for the questions about how I came to be Pebecca. Only, they didn’t come.
“Can I see your ID too, please?”
“Why, does it sound made up?” I asked, half-joking.
“Can I just see your ID book, please?” He passed my driver’s license back and I gave him my ID book. He flipped it open and scanned it. Once he had found the word he was clearly looking for, he stared at it for a few seconds and then started nodding.
“It was a mistake,” I quickly added. “My mom was crying—there was some water, she was using that ink that feathers, you know? It was, that is to say, the line kind of disappeared and . . .” I stopped talking. I always had such a need to explain this. “It’s a mission to change it. I tried once, but you know those queues at Home Affairs. And then this other time they lost the paperwork, so, you know . . . stuck with it!”
He nodded. “My uncle’s name was Barnabus,” he said with a small smile. “If anyone could have done with a name change, it was him.”
I smiled back at him. This was also a usual response. People always tried to make me feel better by telling me about their friend or family member or someone they met that had a worse name. It always made me feel like shit. As if there was something wrong with me.
“Miss Pebecca Thorne, would you mind opening the trunk of the car for me, please?”
“What?” I asked.
“Please can you open the trunk of your vehicle, ma’am?” he repeated as he walked to the back of my car.
“This is ridiculous,” I gushed. “I mean, I don’t have bolt cutters or explosives in there. I’m not the bloody Unabomber, for heaven’s sake.”
“Unabomber? Why would you mention him?” He looked up at me again. God, I kept saying the wrong thing and I wished I could justshut the hell up!
“Fine. Fine.” I shuffled over to the back and popped the trunk. A solitary suitcase filled the space and we both looked down at it. It was a rather expensive suitcase that I’d bought on a whim before traveling business class. I’d thought that, if I rocked up with crappy luggage, they might not allow me on the flight. It was a stupid purchase, really, and now all the big, blingy, goldLVs on the bag just made it look like I was heading off to star in a hip-hop video with Cardi B or Ice-T or D O double G.
“Please open your suitcase,” he commanded.
“Is this really necessary?” I asked nervously.
“Please.” His tone was very firm now and I did what he asked. I removed my hands from between my legs and unzipped the bag, and then watched in horror as he started riffling through it, pushing bras and panties out the way to get to the bottom. I could see he was trying not to touch them, pushing them aside with quick flicks of his wrist. But, because of this, one of them went flying out of the trunk and landed on his foot with a loudthud. The thud was completely silent, actually, since the panties in question were nothing more than some pink lace and elastic, but I swear I could hear it as loudly as a drum. We both looked down at the pink lace now capping his big, black boot.
“Uh . . .” He bent down quickly and hesitated before picking them up. “Sorry,” he said awkwardly. I could see he didn’t know how to handle them, as he picked them up with his pinkie and swung them towards me. I grabbed them from him and shoved them into my pocket. His eyes drifted down to my pocket, and that’s when I realized that my hands were no longer between my legs, hiding myotherpanties. This was a disaster. Within a few moments of meeting me, this man was already an expert in my underwear. I quickly put my hands back between my legs and he looked away. He riffled through the bag again and, after a thorough search, he finally zipped it back up and closed the trunk.
“I told you you wouldn’t find anything,” I said, when he was done. “I’m just an author.”
“Would I have read anything that you’ve written?”
“You might have,” I said. “The Heart is Just a Muscle.”
“Wait!” Suddenly, his entire demeanor changed. His body language relaxed and his once-stiff shoulders slumped slightly. “Becca Thorne?TheBecca Thorne?” he asked.
