Page 1 of Total Exposure

Prologue - Evangeline

I like winter because I can wear a scarf that covers my face. January is my favorite month. When the cold threatens to overtake most people I go outside, covered up from head to toe, and… live. Free from stares of strangers. Secure in the notion that I am alone and unnoticed in the city of people who are way too consumed with getting back inside to be bothered about me.

The one among many who needs to get back out.

This feeling is called many things. But I have my own name for it. It’s the blur of movement. A flock of starlings forming a mass of collaborative beauty in the sky. The rush of traffic on a freeway. Headlights passing by like time. The swirl of stars overhead that remind you, every time you look up, that you don’t matter.

It’s anonymity. Or obscurity.

The blur. I’m part of the blur.

Secluded in the isolation of being nobody.

It’s not just a fantasy of mine. This is the world I live in so completely that today is the first day I’ve left my penthouse apartment to venture outside in almost six weeks. This is my day because it’s January and I can cover up from head to toe and live the fantasy for real.

For once. I hope tomorrow is just like today.

People think Denver is nothing but snow. I wish it were true, but it’s not. Three hundred days of sunshine every year. Yes, it snows, and yes, there are a few weeks’ worth of days like this every winter. Days when the wind is strong, and the snow falls sideways, and covering every inch of skin is normal behavior.

But it’s not enough when such days are your only key to the outside world.

I spend my summers locked inside with the AC set as low as it will go, wearing sweatpants, and fingerless gloves, and hoodies. If I can muster up the will to leave my sanctuary, I wear a hat, and sunglasses, and long sleeves—though the blouse is usually billowy and thin because of the heat.

Even then, it’s too hot to be outside like that. So I don’t walk in the park, or go to street festivals down below on the 16th Street Mall, or eat on one of the patios of the numerous trendy restaurants.

I just watch the blur from above, wishing for winter. I have a large terrace that wraps around my corner apartment where I can be myself in the summer. So I do get out, just not… out.

Like now.

I breathe in the frigid air, not even minding that the wind blows down my throat, doing its best to suffocate me even through my scarf.

Maybe I want to be suffocated? Did the wind ever think of that?

There is no one on the mall with me today, though it’s noon on a weekday and the shops are open. We’re not going to get enough snow to shut things down. Just enough to keep the world frightened and hidden away. And it feels good. That they’re the ones hiding and I’m the one out.

I walk briskly down the mall, past the art gallery. One of the few places I actually do like to visit. Especially early in the morning when no one else has time and I have plenty. A coffee shop, a Mexican restaurant that won’t open for a few more hours, and then Mott’s is right there. The used book and vinyl store. I got a call last night from Dan, the owner and one of the few people I consider an acquaintance. He found the recording I’ve been searching for.

Mei Ling Chao. Age thirteen. Live performance number seventy-one. 1959 in British-controlled Hong Kong.

I push through the doors and the heat overtakes me. People always overreact with the heat during a blizzard. Which I hate because keeping a scarf wrapped around your face indoors with a furnace set on seventy-five is more suffocating to me than the wind blowing down my throat.

“There she is,” Dan says. He’s bent down behind the counter, so I can’t see him until he stands up holding a stack of used books that were probably donated overnight and now he’s got to sort through them.

“I got your message,” I say, breathless, but not because of the cold or the wind. “Are you sure this is it?”

He looks at me from over the top of his wire-frame glasses and sets his stack of books down on the glass countertop that protects all sorts of semi-valuable trinkets. “RCA Victor.”

I breathe out. A huge sigh of relief because yes, that’s all he needed to say. There are many copies of this particular recording of Mei Ling Chao, but the one produced by RCA Victor is the real deal.

I need the real deal.

“That’s the one,” I say, my heart racing with excitement.

“Why are you so interested in this one?” he asks.

It’s a loaded question. He knows nothing about me. Not my real name. Not where I live. Not even my email. He has one contact number for me and it’s a digital number that reroutes to my cell phone.

“I collect,” I say. “I told you that.”