Features

My friend Taffy invited me to visit her in New York. She and her friends sent me a round trip ticket to the East Coast including a jaunt to Jamaica, to a resort where you walk around without clothes and pay for drinks with beads. I’m not much of a nudist but I’m big on accepting gifts with no strings attached. 

I told Taffy I’d come, without clothes or money, or my identity. Then I explained my theft problems. She said she would have me, even though someone with my I.D. was running stop lights in Vallejo, and I would have to rush back to the West Coast after the Caribbean vacation to prove to a judge that I was not the black woman with blonde hair and gold teeth in the cream-colored Jaguar. What I didn’t tell Taffy was that besides arriving sans cash or clothes, I’d land at Kennedy with one item: the flu. 

I didn’t tell her this because I didn’t know I had it until I stepped off the plane and dissolved into the passenger seat of her Suburu. I lay there prone all the way to Westchester County. When we pulled in front of her house in White Plains, I crawled up the stairs and collapsed into a bed in her guest room. I didn’t get up for the next eight days.  

Between sweats of biblical magnitude, I had plenty of time to think about my identity problem. I wished that the Vallejo woman had taken the flu from me along with my passport and credit cards. I wished she hadn’t tried to buy a car in my name in San Francisco, but I was grateful that she wasn’t able to do so because, despite the fact that she now owned most of my M.O., she still couldn’t prove she had the proper credit.  

While sweating I dreamt that people were chasing me and I had no face. Weird things happen when you combine influenza with identity theft. I don’t recommend it. 

Meanwhile, Taffy was crossing things off the list of activities she’d planned. No visits to the Whitney or MOMA. No ice skating, shopping at Loehmann’s or a trip to see a Broadway play. No hikes in the snow-covered woods, no swimming at the health club, no corned beef-on-rye at the 2nd Avenue Deli. Instead of having a pedicure together, Taffy took me to her doctor. She wasn’t feeling well either, so it was a double date.  

The Scarsdale doc didn’t bother to take my temperature. He listened to my list of complaints and said, “You’ve got the flu. Rest. Drink plenty of liquids. It will go away soon.” But when he heard Taffy’s symptoms, he jumped into action. He gave her a bag of medicines and prescriptions. She drove home, took a pill, and fell into bed. The next morning she wound up in the hospital, where she stayed for three days.  

In the meantime I got better. I made a list of things we could do when Taffy recovered. I wrote down kayaking in Long Island Sound. We had done this together the year before. Taffy had bundled me up in long underwear and all-weather gear, set me inside a little red kayak and told me to paddle east. The Sound was covered in ice which she instructed me to break through. I asked if this activity might be dangerous. 

She said no; I complied. I always do what Taffy tells me. See above for reference to nude trip to Jamaica.  

When Taffy got out of the hospital I showed her my list. “We’re not going kayaking,” she said. “Why not?” I asked. “Because I found out it’s unsafe to paddle in ice.” “Oh great,” I said. “Now you tell me.” “Shut up,” she replied. “You show up here with no identity and the flu, what do you know about anything?” “You’re right,” I said. “Point me in the direction of Jamaica. Maybe a good sunburn on my private parts will knock some sense into me.”  

“Probably not,” said Taffy. “But what the hell, you definitely have nothing to lose.”