He used Richard Lively’s Social Security number to open a bank checking account, depositing the remainder of his cash. Once that was accomplished, Ricky found that sorties into the world of bureaucracy were relatively easy. He’d been issued a replacement Social Security card by filling out a form, one that he signed himself. A clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles hadn’t even glanced at the picture on the Illinois license when Ricky turned it in and obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license, this time with his own picture and signature, his own eye color, height, and weight. He also rented a post office box at a local Mailboxes Etc. location, which gave Ricky a viable address for his bank account statements and as much other correspondence as Ricky could produce rapidly. He welcomed catalogs. He joined a video rental club and the YMCA. Anything that provided another card in his new name. Another form and a check for five dollars got him a copy of Richard Lively’s birth certificate, mailed by a thoughtful county clerk outside of Chicago.

He tried not to think about the real Richard Lively. He thought it had not been a particularly difficult task to delude a drunken, sick, and deranged man out of his wallet and his identity. While he told himself that what he had done was better than beating it out of him, it was not much better.

Ricky shrugged off the feelings of guilt as he expanded his world. He promised himself that he would return Richard Lively’s ID to him when he’d managed to truly extricate himself from Rumplestiltskin. He just didn’t know how long that would take.

Ricky knew he had to move out of the motel kitchenette, so he walked back to the area not far from the public library, searching for the house with the room for rent sign. To his relief, it was still in the window of the modest, wood-frame home.

The house had a small side yard, shaded by a large oak tree. It was littered with brightly colored plastic children’s toys. An energetic four-year-old boy was playing with a dump truck and a collection of army figures in the grass, while an elderly woman sat on a lawn chair a few feet away, occupied mostly with a copy of that day’s newspaper, occasionally glancing at the child, who made engine and battle sounds as he played. Ricky saw that the child wore a hearing device in one ear.

The woman looked up and saw Ricky standing on the walkway.

“Hello,” he said. “Is this your house?”

She nodded, folding the paper in her lap and glancing toward where the child was playing. “It is indeed,” she said.

“I saw the sign. About the room,” he said.

She eyed him cautiously. “We usually rent to students,” she replied.

“I’m sort of a student,” he said. “That is, I hope to be working on some advanced degrees, but I’m a little slow because I have to work for a living, as well. Gets in the way,” he said, smiling.

The woman rose. “What sort of advanced degree?” she asked.

“Criminology,” Ricky replied off the cuff. “I should introduce myself. My name is Richard Lively. My friends call me Ricky. I’m not from around here, in fact, only recently arrived here. But I do need a place.”

She continued to look him over cautiously. “No family? No roots?”

He shook his head.

“Have you been in prison?” she asked.

Ricky thought the true answer to this was yes. A prison designed by a man I never met but who hated me.

“No,” he said. “But that’s not an unreasonable question. I was abroad.”

“Where?”

“Mexico,” he lied.

“What were you doing in Mexico?”

He made things up rapidly. “I had a cousin who went out to Los Angeles and got involved in the drug trade, and disappeared down there. I went down trying to find him. Six months of stone walls and lies, I’m afraid. But that’s what got me interested in criminology.”

She shook her head. Her tone of voice displayed she had some large and immediate doubts about this abrupt outlandish tale. “Sure,” she said. “And what got you here to Durham?”

“I just wanted to get as far away from that world as possible,” Ricky said. “I didn’t exactly make a great many friends asking questions about my cousin. I figured it had to be someplace far away from that world, and the map suggested it was either New Hampshire or Maine, and so this was where I landed.”

“I don’t know that I believe you,” the woman answered. “It sounds like some sort of story. How do I know you’re reliable? Have you got references?”

“Anyone can get a reference to say anything,” Ricky replied. “It seems to me that you’d be a lot wiser to listen to my voice and look at my face and make up your own mind after a bit of conversation.”

This statement made the woman smile. “A New Hampshire sort of attitude,” she said. “I’ll show you the room, but I’m still not certain.”

“Fair enough,” Ricky said.

The room was a converted attic area, with its own modest bathroom, just enough space for a bed, a desk, and an old overstuffed armchair. An empty bookcase and a chest of drawers were lined on one wall. It had a nice window enclosed by a girlishly frilly pink curtain, with a half-moon top that overlooked the yard and the quiet side street. The walls were decorated with travel posters advertising the Florida Keys and Vail, Colorado. A bikini-clad scuba diver and a skier kicking up a sheet of pristine snow. There was a small alcove off the room which contained a tiny refrigerator and a table with a hot plate. A shelf screwed into the wall contained some white, utilitarian crockery. Ricky stared at the efficient space and thought it had many of the same qualities as a monk’s cell, which is more or less how he currently envisioned himself.

“You can’t really cook for yourself,” the woman said. “Just snacks and pizza, that sort of thing. We don’t really offer kitchen privileges…”

“I usually eat out,” Ricky said. “Not a big eater, anyway.”

The owner continued to eye him. “How long would you be staying? We usually rent for the school year…”

“That would be fine,” he said. “Do you want a lease?”

“No. A handshake is usually all we require. We pay utilities, except for the phone. There’s a separate line up here. That’s your business. The phone company will activate it when you want. No guests. No parties. No music blaring. No late nights-”

He smiled, and interrupted her, “And you usually rent to students?”

She saw the contradiction. “Well, serious students, when we can find them.”

“Are you here alone with your child?”

She shook her head with a small grin. “There’s a flattering question. He’s my grandson. My daughter is at school. Divorced and getting her accountant’s degree. I watch the boy while she’s working or studying, which is just about all the time.”

Ricky nodded. “I’m a pretty private guy,” he said, “and I’m pretty quiet. I work a couple of jobs, which takes up a good deal of my time. And in my free time, I study.”

“You’re old to be a student. Maybe a bit too old.”

“We’re never too old to learn, are we?”

The woman smiled again. She continued to eye him cautiously.

“Are you dangerous, Mr. Lively? Or are you running away from something?”

Ricky considered his reply, before speaking. “Stopped running, Mrs…”

“Williams. Janet. The boy is Evan and my daughter whom you haven’t met is Andrea.”

“Well, this is where I’m stopping, Mrs. Williams. I’m not fleeing from a crime or an ex-wife and her lawyer, or a right-wing Christian cult, although you might allow your imagination to race ahead in one or all of those directions. And, as for being dangerous, well, if I was, why would I be running away?”

“That’s a good point,” Mrs. Williams said. “It’s my house, you see. And we’re two single women with a child…”

“Your concerns are well founded. I don’t blame you for asking.”

“I don’t know how much I believe of what you’ve said,” Mrs. Williams responded.