Talk Talk by T. C. Boyle

like an electric drill, “I'm innocent. It's all a mistake. It was somebody else they wanted, not me. Look”--and she held up the affidavit, pressed it to the glass. “You see? This exonerates me.”
    Bridger couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if the smallest flare of interest awakened in the cashier's eyes. There was something unusual here, something out of the ordinary, and for a moment he almost thought she was going to act on it, but no such luck. “Cash or charge?” she repeated.
    “Listen,” he said, stepping forward, though Dana hated for him to interfere, as if his acting as interpreter somehow exposed or diminished her. She didn't need an interpreter, she always insisted--she'd got on just fine all her life without him or anyone else conducting her business for her. Dana gave him a savage look, but he couldn't help himself. “You don't get it,” he said. “I mean, ma'am, if you would only listen a minute--they got the wrong person, is all, she didn't do anything... You saw the affidavit.”
    The cashier leaned forward now. “Four hundred eighty-seven dollars,” she repeated, enunciating slowly and carefully so there would be no mistake. “You pay or you walk.”
    Next it was the victims' assistance office in the back annex of the police station. They were fifteen minutes late for their appointment with the counselor because even after Bridger convinced Dana to go ahead and pay the impound fee and put in a claim with the police later on, there was a delay of over an hour before the car was released, and no one--not a clairvoyant or a president's astrologer or even the public defender--could have said why. As a result, Dana was pretty well worked up by the time they stepped through the door--mad at the world, at the headmaster, the torturer's assistant in the impound office and Bridger too, for daring to speak up for her--and things went badly, at least at first. To give her credit, the woman behind the desk (middle-aged, creases under the eyes, every mother's face) was a living shrine to patience. Her name, displayed on a plaque in the center of the desk, was Mrs. Helen Bart Hoffmeir--“Call me Helen,” she murmured, though neither of them could bring themselves to do it. She let Dana vent for a while, offering sympathy at what seemed the appropriate junctures, but of course the soothing soft gurgle of her voice was lost on Dana.
    At some point--Dana was clonic with anger; she wouldn't take a seat; she wouldn't be mollified--the woman extracted a three-tiered box of fancy chocolates from the filing cabinet behind her and set it out on the desk. “Would you like a cup of chamomile tea?” she asked, lifting the top from the box and looking from Dana to Bridger with a doting smile. “It helps,” she added. “Very soothing, you know?”
    So they had chocolates and tea and Dana calmed down enough to take a seat and attune herself to what the counselor had to say. They made small talk for a few minutes while they sipped tea and worked their jaws around nougat and caramel and cherry centers, and then the woman looked to Dana. “You do read lips, then, dear? Or would you be more comfortable with an interpreter? Or your husband--?”
    “My boyfriend.”
    “Of course, yes. Does he--can he translate?”
    “Sure,” Bridger said. “I can try. I took a course last semester in adult ed, but I'm pretty clumsy with it--” He gave a laugh and the woman took it up. Briefly. Very briefly. Because suddenly she was all business.
    “Now, Dana,” she said, spreading open the file before her, “as you've already no doubt gathered, you've been the victim of identity theft. ” She removed four faxes from the file and pushed them across the table. The mug shot of the same man gazed out at them from all four, and Bridger felt a jolt of anger. Here he was, a white male who looked to be thirty or so, with a short slick hipster's haircut and dagger sideburns, his eyes steady and smug even there in that diminished moment