Identity Thief by JP Bloch Read Free Book Online

anyway, you didn’t even lose any money.”
    “Fuck you. Fuck everyone.” I hung up on him.
    Since the address the credit people had was that of a condo we’d used as income property before selling it, I wondered if the crazy old lady I sold it to was involved. According to the cops, she wasn’t.
    “She’s quite a character,” said one of the officers. “Every time we talked to her, she’d raise her right hand and swear that she’d never stolen anything in her life. She has all these bumper stickers on her car about supporting your local police. There’s a record of her filing a report with the postal service that she wasn’t receiving some of her mail. We’re not sure she even understands the situation.”
    Next came the real kick in the balls. It turned out that since I myself did not lose any money and because I didn’t owe the credit jerk-offs anything, the entire case was dropped.
    “Keep an eye on your finances at all times,” said the local police, inanely. “Maybe the identity thief will strike again.”
    I was so pissed off I could hardly see. I wanted to say something like, “No, I think I’ll sit back and let this scumbag drive me to the homeless shelter.” But I managed to contain myself, and said instead, “Yes, I’ll speak to my brother, my accountant, and make sure nothing fishy happens.” As if I hadn’t already done this.
    Someone pretended to be me. I could scarcely comprehend how angry it made me.
    Whoever it was, I hated him so much that I would get up in the middle of the night and pace the floors in rage, fantasizing things like setting his body on fire or stapling his dick to a desk. I knew he had to be some lowlife scum. Sometimes I even imagined killing his whole family in righteous punishment. Maybe I’d saw off their heads. Maybe I’d keep the identity thief alive. He’d have to live with his guilt. They probably were all on drugs, on welfare, on everything that spoiled life for decent people like me.
    From her separate bedroom, Esther either slept through my torment, or would care only to the extent that I had woken her up by walking too loudly or knocking something over.
    “Damn it,” she would say, “you’re a shrink. Surely you must know how to handle this better than you’re doing?”
    “Eat shit,” I’d reply. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
    “If that’s true, then you really are a spoiled little piece of shit.”
    “Ha! Look who’s talking about being spoiled. When have you ever had to worry about anything in your shitty life?”
    “For starters, when my husband fucked everything on the planet with tits.”
    “Oh, yada, yada, yada.”
    In the middle of all this was some asinine shrink conference that I’d already arranged to attend. Everyone wore name tags—I hate name tags—and scurried about like millions of amoebas. I couldn’t begin to concentrate on what any of the speakers were saying. Listening to some idiot drone on in a carpeted hotel stateroom, I experienced true claustrophobia for the first time in my life. I could feel my damp, white dress shirt sticking to my stomach.
    There was a speaker whose English was incomprehensible, but everyone had to soberly nod as he spoke, as if we understood a single word. Finally someone else got up to speak. With a big smarmy smile, he began by saying how he didn’t need a mic because he was sure everyone could hear him. For some reason speakers were always saying that, as if it made them superior beings who were so self-confident speaking in front of groups.
    I stood up, wiping the copious sweat from my forehead. “Yeah, we hear you all right,” I said. “But why don’t you shut the fuck up?”
    The room was silent as I took my leave. I spent the rest of the conference in my hotel room, watching stupid TV shows and drinking scotch straight out of the bottle. I didn’t even try to find a whore, that’s how lousy I felt.
    Hardly adding to my bliss was the omnipresence