On THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

January 17th

On THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Memoirs – Part V

Once again in hiding, I travelled to Des Moines, Iowa and adopted the name Jacksonville Florida. I got a job as a tax advisor and took up with a 39-year-old widow named Penelope and moved into a quiet suburban neighbourhood. Our next door neighbours were Adam and Trudy Lamb, an architect and a housewife, respectively. On our first day in our new neighbourhood, the Lambs invited us over for a dinner party.
Soon after we sat down to dinner, which was pork tenderloin, the Lambs initiated a conversation.
“Now do you two plan on having kids?” asked Mrs. Lamb, innocently.
At the same time, Penelope confirmed and I denied our desire to procreate.
“I had a recent bad experience with children,” I added to support my assertion.
“Yeah, they’re nasty, huh?” agreed Mr. Lamb. “We had a couple of our own, but they’re all grown up now.”
“Ever heard of Rumpole of the Bailey?” asked Mr. Lamb.
“No,” I replied, “That sounds like a string of nonsense words.” I knew what Rumpole of the Bailey was, of course, but I didn’t want to blow my cover.
“It’s a British TV show,” explained Mr. Lamb.
“We love British TV,” explained Mrs. Lamb.
“Anyway,” continued Mr. Lamb, “the guy who wrote that, John Mortimer, had two wives named Penelope. Isn’t that weird?”
“And he cheated on both of them,” added Mrs. Lamb, “and the first one used to write books about it. He didn’t care though, he just shrugged it off. Although they did divorce, so maybe not. The first Penelope was a lot older than him, and married when they met. They had to hire a private investigator on her husband’s behalf, and then give him evidence of their…”
She paused, partly searching for the word, partly for effect.
“Philandering!” She concluded, “Anyway, what could she expect, right? He clearly had no respect for the institution of marriage in the first place. What an odd way to go about living your life.”
Mr. Lamb stepped in, “The reason I brought it up is because your name is Penelope, isn’t that right?”
Penelope nodded.
“Not that I’m suggesting either of you is an affair-haver. It just brought that to mind, your name, which was the same as the guy’s wives names,” Mr. Lamb overexplained. “Maybe it’s more common in England. Are you English, Penelope?”
Penelope shook her head.
“And what was your name again, sir?” Mrs. Lamb asked me.
“Jacksonville Florida,” I answered.
The Lambs said nothing. They wanted to say many things, like “That’s not a name, it’s a city,” or “That is a bizarre name!” or “That sounds made up to me,” But they didn’t. They didn’t want to offend the new neighbour, even though any of these questions may have started a conversation much more interesting than the one we’d just had about John Mortimer’s wives. These conversation would have had stakes, implications, would have raised the possibility that I would someday soon murder the Lambs in their sleep. If they had called attention to the fictitious nature of my name, Jacksonville Florida, then they may have considered moving after that dinner party, which would have saved their lives. Instead the Lambs were silent. And the silence, as they say, was deafening.