Falling Down by David Cole

names. Many names. For the past few years, I have been Laura Winslow.
    That is not my real name.
    My Hopi name is Kauwanyauma. A Hopi word.
    Butterfly Revealing Wings of Beauty.
    This is the irony of that last border I want to cross. I am an ex pert in tracking people down, in exposing false identities, yes, in creating them as well. At some time in my past, probably in those years of drugs and sex whenI lived in Yakima, I created a whole new identity for a woman named Laura…Laura…I don’t even remember what last name I used at first.
    Winslow is a small, decaying town in Arizona. I chose that name one day while looking at a map. I created my whole identified life from the name Laura Winslow. Social Security number. Driver’s license, credit cards, even a major-league business in computer forensics.
    You see the irony, my old friends? I can track down anybody. Eighty percent minimum. Guaranteed. I’d just been asked to create a new identity for Mary Emich and her girl. I could do that in thirty-six hours, bottom line.
    But sometimes, creating new identities works. I’m the proof.
    I don’t even know my real name.
    I was born on the Hopi reservation in a traditional village. I never knew my mother, never knew her name, never knew her life except for the singular fact that she was a prostitute working the southwest rodeo circuit. My father had a name. George Loma. But he left no written records behind that he ever existed. When I knew him, he didn’t even carry a wallet or any kind of identification holder. I can distinctly remember when I was twelve, by then I had spent a lot of time in bars in Flagstaff, so I knew about ID cards and driver’s licenses and social security cards. When I asked my father about these things, he pulled out an old cigar box filled with newspaper clippings of rodeo events that he’d entered and sometimes won. Here’s my identification, he said then. See my name? I circled my name every time .
    But in the dozens of newspaper clippings, the circled name varied from year to year, gradually stabilizing on George Loma. So I don’t even know if that was his birth name, nor did he ever reveal his secret Hopi name.
    I am nameless, as much as anybody can ever be.
    But with my ability to create truly authentic-looking identity papers, I am now named Laura Winslow.
    Do you see the irony of my life?
    One of the best private investigators in the business, absolutely dynamite at finding people who don’t want to be found. But I can’t even find my own past!

9
    â€œI love this part of the park,” Mary said.
    She’d come back to get me, not really paying attention to me, intent on her own purpose and leading, toward that purpose, me along one of the park’s paths. I hardly looked at the signposts, scarcely could focus on where I was, on what I was doing.
    â€œGod damn those sheep,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    Still within myself, everything outside my emotional shield.
    â€œFuck those goddam sheep,” I said.
    â€œLaura,” Mary said. “What sheep?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou’re cursing some sheep.”
    Looking around, lost just for that instant. Like when you’re in your car at a stoplight, foot on the brake, but the car next to you moves ahead and you react in panic that somehow you are moving.
    The entire heavens shift while you remain static, you’re aware that events and people and machines function totally outside your control or awareness.
    â€œI can’t stay here,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œTalk to me while I go to my car. That’s all the time I’ve got.”
    â€œBut…Laura. You promised. You said at least you’d look. At the computer. You said you’d help me. Laura?”
    â€œLet’s do it really quick,” I said.
    â€œAre you sick?”
    â€œLet’s get it over with.”
    â€œThank you,” she said.
    Â 
    Walking