LITMIR.BIZ

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      What Bart was suggesting was that Darren run away. He’d never been the type to run from his problems, but suddenly it seemed as though he were being offered freedom, the likes of which he’d never known.

      He sat up, slipping his sunglasses down his nose so he could regard his friend more clearly. “If I hide out somewhere, I can take some time to work on my own stuff.” Not having to sneak in his real work at night would be incredible. He had some money saved up, and if he sold his BMW he would have some decent cash quickly, enough to live on for a while. He could probably finish his line of software programs in less than a year.

      “Right. You’re the next Bill Gates. I forgot.”

      Darren didn’t bother to correct him. He had one line of educational software he was developing to help kids read. His younger brother Eric had a symbol-retrieval problem and he’d found a way to help him by writing a simple program. Eric was now studying engineering at college—and the fact that he’d made the difference in his younger bro’s life gave him a lot more pride and satisfaction than his most successful day at the family firm. Now he wanted to see if he could create a more elaborate program that might help other kids like his brother.

      Maybe his program wouldn’t cure cancer, but helping kids overcome learning hurdles felt more useful to him than getting some KIM client’s brand of deodorant up two percentage points in the marketplace.

      “Okay. But you’ve got to help me.”

      Bart grinned. “You have come to the right place,” he said, almost rubbing his hands with glee. “You’re one of the most famous faces in America. But, my man, we’re about to change all that.” Bart, the sometime actor, rose majestically from behind his desk and gestured. “Follow me,” he said. After a surreptitious glance up and down the hallway, they surmised the coast was clear, then took the elevator to the main floor.

      After hiding in the back seat while Bart drove them out of the building’s car park, Darren wondered how famous people handled celebrity. He felt hunted, and the baseball cap and dark glasses, not to mention the Brooks Brothers suit, weren’t helping him blend in with the crowd.

      They ended up in a drugstore, where Bart pondered a row of Miss Clairol boxes. “You want to blend in with the locals, but look completely different from how you look now. Where are you going, anyway?”

      Maybe it was the throwaway comment about Bill Gates, but it made up Darren’s mind. “Seattle.”

      “That’s a long way away.”

      “Exactly. I don’t know anyone there, I’ve no reason to go. Hell, I was only there once for a weekend. No one will think to look for me in Seattle.”

      Bart picked up a box of dark brown hair dye.

      “What are we doing in the girl aisle?”

      “Women’s hair dye doesn’t last as long as the men’s stuff,” Bart explained, reading the instructions on the box as though he might actually need them.

      “I’m not dying my hair.”

      “Do you want to disappear or don’t you?”

      “Yes. But…” He stared at the box. “If I wear Miss Clairol, I might as well pierce my ears and wear pink golf shirts.”

      Bart snapped his fingers. “Now, that’s a great—”

      “Forget it.”

      “Listen, here’s some advice from a once potentially great actor. If you want to become a character, you step into his shoes and into his skin.”

      “And into their hair dye. Yeah. I’ve got it.”

      “It’s not just his hair. It’s the whole persona. What we’re doing is building a character. Who is this man who’s going to appear in Seattle? We’ll start with the hair and see where it goes.”

      A woman glanced at them curiously and then picked up a box with a picture of a blonde on it.

      Darren stood there surrounded by women’s hair-styling products, wondering how his life had ever come to this. Finally, he pulled out his wallet and handed Bart a twenty.

      “You’re buying it.”

      Two hours later, they were at Bart’s place and his damp hair was now brown. Darren couldn’t believe how it changed his appearance. His skin tone seemed lighter, his eyes darker.

      “I’ve been thinking,” said Bart, who was getting right into this dye-your-hair and dress-up thing. “You really are a computer geek, and you’ll be living in Silicon Valley north, so why not dress like one? It’s the perfect disguise.”

      “What, you mean wear plastic pocket protectors and plaid weenie shirts?”

      “Too much?”

      “Definitely.”

      “Okay. The trick is to keep people’s attention off your face. I’ve got some black thick-framed glasses from when I played Willy Loman. They’d be perfect. The hair, baseball caps, those will help. But I’m thinking wild shirts like boarders wear. Loud, casual and cheap.” His buddy laughed and then clapped him on the back.

      “Geek chic.”

      Darren snorted. But he kind of liked the idea. Who’d look for him under a loud shirt? He’d never owned such a thing in his life.

      “Okay,” he said, knowing he couldn’t pass up this opportunity to escape being marriage bait and at the same time follow his private dream. “I’ll do it.”

      “Great.” Bart dug in a drawer for a pair of kitchen shears. “Now, hold still,” he said, and picked up a lump of Darren’s still-damp hair.

      “I paid two hundred bucks to have my hair cut two weeks ago,” Darren informed his old buddy.

      “Welcome to the world of—hey, what are you going to call yourself?” Bart asked as he started cutting.

      KATE MONAHAN SAT AT HER kitchen table with her calculator and her monthly budget. She had the pleasant feeling of being ahead of her target.

      She’d worked a lot of extra shifts to get here, but knowing her investment account with Brian’s bank was growing, and that soon she’d be able to follow her life-long dream and enroll in teacher’s college, had her beaming.

      She heard the broken cement at the end of the duplex’s driveway rattle as a car rolled in. The landlord was too cheap to fix the drive, or much else, but the rent was reasonable so she didn’t complain. She wondered if this could be the new tenant moving in upstairs, and got up to look out the window.

      She hoped it would be someone as friendly as the last tenant, Annie.

      Kate went to the kitchen window and peeked out. Well, it was a guy moving in. Annie had been a fun-loving flight attendant—a girl after Kate’s heart—and the house had been more like a single home than a duplex. But Annie had been transferred to Denver. Somehow, Kate didn’t think this guy and she were going to be watching old movies together and sharing bowls of popcorn, or borrowing shoes and jackets.

      He got out of a nondescript beige compact that had seen better days and glanced around as though suspecting he might have been followed.

      The guy was tall, and he stretched his back as though he’d been driving a long time, pulled off the baseball cap he wore low over his eyes and scratched his scalp. He had dark brown hair in a cut his barber ought to be ashamed of, glasses with thick black frames on a pleasant, strong-boned face. He looked sort of familiar, though she was certain they’d never met. But it was hard to concentrate on his face when he was wearing such a wild shirt. Bright red, with big white flowers. The shirt was open to expose a white T-shirt that was soft from many washings. He wore creased cargo shorts and navy flip flops.

      Shoving the cap back on his head, he popped open the trunk and pulled out a computer keyboard and a cardboard box with computer-type stuff sticking out and started toward the outside

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