Good Boy!

8:37 p.m. — A man from Fairweather Lane reported an expensive watch was stolen.

“God is punishing you,” he declared.

Jen blew her nose. “I have a cold. I don’t think God cares about something so trivial.”
“No, I’m right. God is punishing you because you’ve done something wrong. He’s warning me. You’re hiding something,” Marco insisted. He knew he was right. Jen was sneaky. But Marco was much smarter. The cold medicine just about soothed her to sleep, but Marco didn’t appreciate Jen ignoring him like that.
“Maybe that’s what happened to my watch. You probably gave it to some other man.”
“Oh Marco, stop it. I didn’t take your watch. I’m sick. Just let me sleep,” Jen begged.
“You don’t love me,” Marco accused before storming from the bedroom. He would teach her a lesson. “The time you took drugs and passed out,” would become Marco’s memory of Jen’s cold. For years afterward, Marco would consider Jen’s cold to be just one of the many flagrant abuses she’d inflicted upon him. He’d never forgive. He’d never let her forget.

Marco wasn born in White Falls and christened by his parents, a housewife and an electrician, Mark Martin. His parents’ union was short-lived, and Marco remained unusually close to his mother. “I was always a good boy,” Marco often enjoyed saying. “My mother loved me.” But Mark Martin wasn’t very interesting; few but his mother could see his exceptional talents, qualities bestowed upon him by his mother’s very own genes.

During a trip to Cancun, Mexico at age twenty, Mark’s high school Spanish classes proved to be a pivotal inspiration. Mark Martin reinvented himself, returning as Marco Martinez del la Cordoba.

Once Mark decided he was supposed to be Marco Martinez del la Cordoba (had there not been some cruel twist of events that forced his mother from Argentina to White Falls) his devotion to this untruth was unwavering. “My mother was the daughter of the Argentine royal family,” he’d explain. Marco’s fabricated past was made even more believable by a knowledge of Argentine history. He’d regale others with his monologues on Jesuit ruins of San Ignacio, and Juan de Garay, and stories about Roque Saenz Peña. Marco’s eyes would gleam when his new friends started humming “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” because he knew he’d won again.

As Marco moved from state to state, job to job, woman to woman, his grounds for relocating became as ingrained (and as plausible) as the rest of his burgeoning fictitious life. His reincarnation was much easier to pull off once he arrived in Townsville.

Marco liked to tell people he’d once gone to Harvard and after he decided it was a waste of his time, he dropped out. (In truth, a brief visit to Cambridge was as close as he’d ever been to the university.) Sometimes he’d add that Harvard frequently invited him to lecture on any number of topics. Marco innately understood his own worth.

Marco’s only military experience was a high school stint in the junior ROTC, but his tales of flying in a B-1B Lancer were believable, especially when he sported that intimidating “buzz cut.” Though Marco himself had no official power, he believed he had a special bond with the military and police, which gave him a profound sense of authority-by-proxy.

To Marco Martinez del la Cordoba, buying a James Taylor CD was equal to being close friends with the musician. Using Microsoft products meant that he knew Bill Gates. Marco’s friendships were established in minutes; his list of former secretaries and servants and colleagues and agents and top executives was long. Few noticed that he often spoke of them, but never to them.

“I never lie!” he’d repeatedly assert. The dragons he created were necessary to showcase his slaying skills. “See? I’m a good boy,” he’d say. And someone had stolen his watch!

Marco professed to be an expert on so many esoteric subjects, most people were keen to believe him—it was easier than verifying his claims. Marco arrogantly assumed that no one was stupid enough to question him. If they dared, the character assassination Marco meted out was vicious and brutal; many decided to tell themselves he was simply too appealing to doubt.

Because most jobs were beneath him, steady employment remained elusive. He was meant to be a teacher. An artist. A restaurateur. A philosopher. A writer. Marco’s grandiose future plans still hadn’t come to fruition yet, so Jen’s job was to keep the bills paid and offer unwavering encouragement and support, even if she secretly questioned his artistic abilities.

“We must keep our posture,” Marco would proclaim as he spent Jen’s paycheck on more art supplies, expensive cheeses, the best cuts of meat, his brandy. He became Townsville’s resident connoisseur– on everything. Marco’s exceptional and impressive talents meant one thing: he deserved the best.

Marco did, in fact, have one very special talent: He had mastered the art of self-deception. Marco never stopped lying, because in his mind, nothing he ever said, thought, imagined or fantasized was actually a lie. He never considered telling the police that he’d found his watch. Perfect Marco couldn’t imagine misplacing it; he firmly believed the thief had simply returned it. Marco Martinez del la Cordoba was, as he always said, a good boy.