By Peter Gutiérrez


It wasn’t as if he liked deceiving people.

      That’s what Jansen kept telling himself. That he was different from all the others out there pulling similar acts of misrepresentation. After all, he wasn’t doing this for recreational purposes. It was his calling. Everything else, including the day job, was simply preparation. This was where real life happened: to be so zoned-in on the screen that he didn’t care how long things took; didn’t care how much he sweat onto the cheap, burnt-orange fabric of the swivel seat under him; didn’t care that soon he’d start to cramp up in unexpected places; or that he was alone, again, on a Friday night.

      Jansen swallowed some warm Diet Coke, then let the hand holding the two-liter bottle fall to the side. His fingers worked the plastic neck, idly twisting the bottle back and forth. There was a lot of downtime in this work. And make no mistake, this was work, a natural extension of his job even if it wasn’t sanctioned. That was one reason he fought the temptation to have a beer on evenings like this. The other was that then he’d be no good if he went out into the field; although the sun had set hours ago, it was still filthy hot out there--and this was April.

      He’d gotten used to Central Florida’s daytime heat soon after moving down here, but nights were a different matter. He hated how the warmth lingered after dark, collecting in the parking lots, the never-ending roadside construction sites, the massive strip mall Dumpsters overflowing with soiled diapers and french-fry grease.

      His Midwest friends didn’t understand any of this, and he couldn’t blame them. You think Florida, you think cooling off in the waves whenever you want to. But no way, not for him. Jansen had moved from Illinois, a state not known for its beaches and yet full of magnificent, uncrowded ones, and here he was surrounded by swamps in the Sunshine State--and pointing that out to everyone. His co-workers teased him about his gripes, and he went along good-naturedly. Even his license plate made a joke of it: “Y NO BEACH.”

      Of course sometimes folks thought that this meant “Wino Beach” and that ticked him off a little.

      Jansen placed the pop bottle on the floor, hit Enter, and kept his hands poised above the keyboard because--yep, there it was, an opening for an IM to a girl he’d met a few days earlier in his “spring break.” Then the waiting again. Rhythm was crucial. Even when he knew what he’d say in advance, he had to make it seem a fifteen-year-old was making things up as she went along, worried that Mom or Dad would walk in and catch what she was doing over the resort’s wi-fi.

      The same reasoning served to explain why he favored Diet Coke: it’s what “Tammi” would be drinking, and on IMYourFriend.com, he was Tammi. In fact, in that guise he’d already been invited to a couple of parties. As a rule, though, parties didn’t interest him. He was looking for a more personal connection.

      So were those he sought. Fortunately, they didn’t think it odd that a high school freshman on vacation would ditch her parents. That’s why the con worked so well. Kids were kids. You expected impulsiveness. Everything seduced them because the world was so new that they hadn’t yet learned to see beneath its surface. On the floor close at hand was a pile of glossy teen magazines. Although he used them for research, Jansen hated the shallow, fake girls in them, most in their twenties anyway. Hated them just as much as he loved the actual girls who spent their money on such trash.