Here She Lies

minute our receipt informed us that the report would arrive via e-mail within half an hour.
    While we waited I Googled my name to see if anythingincriminating popped up in relation to my new life as an embezzler. I was listed in only three places: on a federal prison staff directory and on two sites related to photography. Then we Googled Bobby’s name and learned that he was even more nonexistent in cyberspace than I was, appearing only on the staff directory. Lexy’s name brought up nothing (a relief). But Julie — Julie was famous. Her name brought up over ten thousand hits, ranging from her Web site to professional articles to marketing blogs to cyber-dating links. Seeing the repetition of her name made me sharply miss her and by association Lexy ( always Lexy) and if it hadn’t been so late I would have tried calling them again. I clicked on a few of Julie’s links, but we were far too anxious about seeing our credit report to really check them out. Every few minutes we maximized my Web-mail page to run e-mail. The usual junk just kept coming in, flying to me like I was a cyber-magnet, everything except the one thing I really wanted.
    And then, there it was. Our credit reports came in two separate files: Anais Faith Milliken and Robert Bowie Goodman. We opened mine first.
    After my name was my Lexington address (calling our road a lane and with the zip code completely wrong) and my job history (showing me as a therapist, not a physical therapist, at the prison and completely omitting my underrealized career as a photographer, which made it look as if I hadn’t been gainfully employed for most of my adulthood, whereas in one way or another I actually had been). Below those blocks of misinformation blared the words FELONY WARRANT.
    “Look at the date.” Bobby’s outstretched finger touched the screen.
    “That’s last week.”
    “Before you lost your wallet.”
    As we paged through the voluminous report it got stranger and stranger. There were Visa and MasterCard accounts with store and company associations I had never heard of, all opened in the recent past. I had never shopped at Neiman Marcus or Harry Winston or bought myself anything at Bergdorf Goodman. I had never had that kind of money. There were also loans — loans I had never taken. I did not own a Jaguar purchased from a dealer in Santa Monica!
    The more I read, the more my blood boiled. I started pounding the keyboard so hard as I scrolled through screen after screen of me-getting-ripped-off that a couple of the great American novelists in the cafe turned around to notice me, annoyed. I ignored them. Bobby put his hand on the back of my neck and the warmth of his touch automatically slowed my pulse. I heard his deep, deep sigh. My fingers stopped typing and I turned to him.
    “Why haven’t we gotten any of these bills?” I asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ve been going over our credit reports with a fine-tooth comb, Bobby. None of this was there. This doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Those printouts are two months old.”
    “I didn’t realize they’d be wrong so fast.”
    “Neither did I.” He shook his head. “If one of us had thought to look this up before you walked out—”
    “You were having an affair!” My voice, I realized,sounded hysterical. From the corner of my eye I saw a writer arise and whisper to the bearded man behind the counter. They both glanced our way. I shrugged and pressed an extended finger to my lips in a promise of future quiet.
    Bobby leaned in close and whispered as adamantly as a whisper could be: “But I wasn’t! That was all part of this. Don’t you see it?”
    I reared back on my stool. Yes, I saw it. All of a sudden it was very clear: the amorous-looking credit card charges had been signs of betrayal, but not the kind I had assumed. They had been a mere foreshadowing of something far worse. Some thief had not been stealing Bobby — he had been stealing me. In secret. He had established credit accounts in our name and made sure the bills never reached us — but why had he put those Lovyluv charges on the cards we regularly used? Had he wanted me to think Bobby was having an affair? But what was his reasoning, knowing we would ultimately learn about the rest?
    “What about those e-mails from Lovyluv?” I asked. “I know I’ve said it a million times, but how did she know so much about you?”
    “I don’t know. I’m as baffled by this as you are, Annie. That’s what I’ve been