“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”  (Chinese Proverb)

Lee had heard some people claim that after retirement a retiree feels like a new person. Retirement was suddenly on his mind as he endured a fourth day of this overseas business trip without his rheumatologist’s prescriptions—and without updated notifications of any kind from the Chinese customs officials at the airport who had confiscated the “restricted drugs” he was accused of “importing.” But he didn’t want to feel like a “new” person, just like the “old” person he was used to feeling like before the most recent onset of recurring bouts of stiffness and soreness in his hips and knees (exacerbated, certainly, by fourteen hours of coach-class cramped confinement during the flight from Boston to Beijing).

 But regardless of the physical ailments that Lee was hopeful would be alleviated by the time he finally did retire—a time his management team at Intercontinental Computing Solutions seemed to be hoping was just around the corner—he was not thinking that retiring would make him feel like a new person, only like a different person. He had had past experience with an accidental version of that concept.

In the basement of the downtown Boston high-rise where Lee worked, there was a nifty deli—a great little restaurant with an especially satisfying soup and salad bar. The owner, Julio, was smart and personable. His wife, Vanessa, worked on the same floor of that building and for the same company as Lee—although he had not known she was married to Julio when he first met her or first met him.

For a reason still unknown to Lee—he had lost the courage to try to find out—the first time he had bought a salad and a coffee in the downstairs deli, Julio expressed his gratitude by saying, “Thanks, Frank!”  Lee was immediately puzzled, looked around for whomever Julio was thanking, then realized he himself was the only person in line at the register. But he did not correct Julio, being in a hurry to get back upstairs to a waiting lap-top and its omnipresent flowcharts, and also not wanting to possibly embarrass Julio by saying something like “My name is Lee; why are you calling me Frank?”

Lee decided the mistake was just a slip of the tongue; although, since this was the first time they had encountered one another, he wondered how the name “Frank” had found its way onto that tongue. Did Lee perhaps resemble another of Julio’s deli customers who was really named Frank? Regardless, he just glanced at the oval logo and name-tag on the crisp white shirt in front of him, said, “You’re welcome, Julio.” He did not dwell further on the puzzling encounter as he ascended the escalator to the lobby and then took the twelve-floor elevator journey back to his cubicle. If he gave the little incident any attention at all for the rest of that day, it was limited to guessing that the next time he saw Julio the mistake would not be repeated—or, if it was, the solution to the little mystery would simply be for Lee to gently correct Julio and properly introduce himself.

A few days later, arriving in the office early to tackle some inscrutable spreadsheet formulations in preparation for a company financial audit in Japan, he dashed down to the deli for some strong coffee. Seeing Lee from a distance at his post near the cash register, Julio shouted a friendly and hearty greeting: “Good morning, Frank! What gets you up so close to sunrise?” Lee was surprised, but his mind was preoccupied with what awaited him up on twelve. Yes, for a split second it did occur to him that this was the right time to inform Julio that his name was Lee Bay. But the look on Julio’s face was so genuinely welcoming, so downright congenial,  that Lee feared he would spoil something nice if he were to point out the continuing error. So he let it pass. He just replied to the effect that he was in the office early because of some deadlines to get some important work done. As he hurried toward the deli door, Lee heard it again: “Thanks, Frank!” 

And Julio heard it again: “You’re welcome, Julio.”

And so it continued—for a couple of years. Lee had gained an alter ego: a secret identity. Down in the deli, he was no longer Lee. Down in the deli, Julio had transformed him into Frank.

He was allowing Julio to call him by a “wrong” name. Up on the twelfth floor, he did not feel like Frank. He felt like Lee only. But for a few minutes every couple of days or so, as he sauntered down to the basement for a morning cup of dark roast or a lunch-time bowl of vegetarian stew, he was finding it easier and easier to imagine himself as another person . . .

It occurred to him that Frank’s attitudes toward work might not be identical to Lee’s attitudes toward work. For example, might Frank consider the prospect of resigning or retiring differently from how Lee did? Freed from the shackles of a high-technology corporation, would Frank contemplate more adventurous experiences than Lee would dare? (And, although he did not pose the question to himself until later, would Frank—as Lee certainly did—consider that question of what to do after retirement an uncomfortably complex puzzle requiring a not-intuitive solution?)

What was inevitable did, of course (by definition), come to pass.

A little over two years had gone by. By now Lee certainly knew Vanessa and Julio were married. And based on some comments he had made to her about what qualified as a good cup of coffee, she knew that he frequented her husband’s deli. And Julio knew that Lee worked upstairs on the same floor, for the same company as his wife—but apparently did not know it was for a different ICS division. In any case, Julio and Lee had never discussed her; and additionally, despite the laws of probability, Vanessa and Lee had not yet traipsed down to the deli at the same moment in time. She was not in the habit of spending much time down there at her husband’s business during her work-day. Thus it was the case that Vanessa and Lee had never appeared together in the presence of Julio.

On the early morning that the inevitable happened, she was talking to her husband near the register. As Lee approached, Julio gave his habitual “Hey, Frank, how’s it going, buddy?”  

Vanessa looked puzzled, then gave her habitual “Hi, Lee.”  

Julio looked puzzled.

Lee tried to look not puzzled.

“This is Lee? The guy you know from upstairs?”

She laughed. “Yes! Right! This is Lee! One of my ICS . . . more-or-less colleagues.”

Julio looked seriously upset. “You told me your name was Frank,” he said.

Lee did not correct him. He did not say, “No, I never told you what my name was. You just assumed it was Frank, and I did not want to embarrass you.” No, that was not what Lee said. He said instead: “Some people call me Frank.”

Which was true—unless one had had the same seventh-grade English teacher Lee had had: Mr. Ralston insisted that “people” was always to be considered a plural noun.

Julio cleared his throat. He seemed uncomfortable. “It’s a nickname?”

Lee nodded briefly.

“I’ve never heard anyone call you Frank,” testified Vanessa.

“How did you get that for a nickname?” asked Julio, frowning.

Lee needed a credible explanation. To save face (his or somebody else’s), he told what he judged to be a credible lie. It generated itself instantly.

“In college I spent a summer semester in Paris. This was before the introduction of the Euro; and the first time I went out for a drink with a group of my classmates, I was embarrassed when the waiter would not accept my American currency when I tried to buy a round. Maurice, one of the teaching assistants, called out—making fun of me—‘Oh, you American, don’t you know francs?’ Most everyone laughed. But one of the members of our group, Miroslava, was confused. She was not part of our college class but was, rather, Maurice’s girlfriend from Budapest. Miroslava and I never had met before. She thought Maurice was trying to introduce me. ‘Nice to meet you, Frank,’ she said. So that’s it, Julio. That’s how I picked up Frank as a nickname. Everyone thought that was hilarious, and all that summer in Paris no one called me Lee. It sort of stuck with some of my friends back in the states when I returned.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Julio.

“That’s how it happened,” Lee said.

Both Julio and Vanessa looked dubious.

Lee wondered if he looked dubious.

“Well,” said Vanessa, “you don’t look like a Frank to me. I’ll keep calling you Lee.”

“I’ll keep calling you Frank,” said Julio. “You don’t look like a Lee.”

“I’ll answer to either,” Lee said truthfully.

And so it continued.

Lee’s young and surprisingly rambunctious Beijing business colleague Mingyu offered more than one interpretation of the story when Lee shared it with him a few years later. He thought Lee should take advantage of his second identity. Perhaps when he traveled on business to South Korea or Rio de Janeiro or other far-flung ICS sites he should try some things Frank would do routinely but Lee would not. Mingyu imagined not-exactly innocent, unreservedly absurd, mainly laughable examples of what Frank would do with confidence that Lee would shy away from. Lee did not imagine the same sorts of examples.

He asked Mingyu if the ancient American police procedural Dragnet had been available on Chinese television when he was growing up. “Definitely no,” Mingyu replied. “I have never seen or heard of such a show.” Lee told him it was famous for a dramatic voice-over disclaimer: “The story you have just seen is true, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” He promised Mingyu, in dramatic “narrator” tones, that if he ever told anyone about him, he would not change his name. “Oh, please, Frank,” said Mingyu, “if you ever tell Julio or Vanessa about me, please call me after your legendary American outlaw Jesse James—or even simpler, just James.”

The more he thought about it, as he sat with James in his cubicle in the Beijing ICS office helping him revise audit flowcharts, the less certain he became that Frank—regardless of recent hints to Lee from ICS management—was ready to retire. As soon as he was able to return and resume taking the pills Dr. Rometti had prescribed, he might want to refresh his “sense of self” over a cup of highly caffeinated beverage from that adventurous downstairs deli back in Boston.

Raised on the rural coast of Oregon, James Joaquin Brewer currently shelters in West Hartford, Connecticut while working on a collection of coordinated fictions involving anachronistic encounters among possibly time-traveling poets of the past. Published writing of a variety of genres appears in The Seattle Post-Intelligencere Write Launch, LitBreak, The Hartford Courant, Aethlon, Jeopardy, Rosebud, The Poetry Society of New York, Closed Eye Open, The Manifest-Station, and his “A Room of Their Own” appeared in Issue 5 of Quibble.