by Natasha Bell
“But it can’t be.”
“Sure, I know. Not many artists look like supermodels, right?” the boy says. “But that’s her. I saw her with my own eyes, kissed her with my own lips.”
Marc looks up at the boy, scanning his face for doubt or confusion. “It’s not that. She just can’t be this young. This woman’s twenty-five, thirty at most. My wife went to university with Amelia. She has to be closer to forty than thirty.”
“No way!” The boy’s eyes pop. “Wow, then either Amelia Heldt found the elixir of youth or she’s got Demi Moore’s surgeon on speed-dial.”
Marc looks back at the Polaroid, studying the woman’s skin. Could plastic surgery make someone my age look like this? Now he looks more closely, there’s something unsettling about the woman, almost familiar—could that be a product of surgery? Does she have some celebrity’s nose, another’s eyes? Is he recognizing that?
“Can I keep this?” he asks.
The boy gives him an almost cold look. “Dude, that’s like the only proof that what I told you is true. I need to like send it to The New York Times or something—”
“I’ll pay for it,” Marc interrupts and the boy’s expression changes.
They settle on $200, almost all the cash Marc has left. He’ll have to use his card now and get stung on the exchange rate as well as the charges. And all for a silly photograph that hasn’t got him any closer to finding Amelia. He stares at it some more as he rides the subway back uptown, trying to imagine me with this woman. It’s late afternoon. He wanders through Central Park for a while, then finds a dingy restaurant for dinner before returning to his hotel. It takes him a long time to get to sleep, his mind busy trying and failing to come up with a plan for tomorrow. I can’t give up, he chants beneath his eyelids. But he has one day left and no more leads.
* * *
He wakes in a cold sweat with half an erection. He wants to cry and scream and thump the pillow. Not only have his dreams shredded his sanity, but he’s waking to a day of nothing. He has twenty-four hours left to find Amelia and no clue except a stupid snapshot. There’s no reason today for him to extricate himself from these sheets, no purpose to his being in Manhattan.
Eventually he drops his feet over the edge of the bed and heaves his weary limbs toward the shower. He tries to let the scorching water wash away his negativity. He allows his mind to roam, scanning all the things people have said, all the places he’s been, seeking something he’s missed. Perhaps he should go back to the landlord, see if he knows anything else. Or he could visit galleries at random. If Amelia did the opening night stunt at one, she might have tried it at others, there might be someone she’s made friends with. Even as he thinks these thoughts, the water washes them from his hair to his toes and down the drain as extreme long shots.
He scrubs himself with a towel and wraps it around his waist, pads back into the room. As the door swings into the claustrophobic space, something catches his eye. Next to the unmade bed, on the low table with the battered lamp and his notebook lies the Polaroid. From this angle, with the faces flattened and alien-looking, his sense of recognition reaches uncanny. He steps toward it, his towel dropping to the floor, and picks it up. Yes, he’s seen this woman before, he’s sure of it. Think! he silently instructs himself. He wants the woman to open her eyes; he’s sure he’d know her if he could see her pupils, if she could look at him, if he could connect those cheekbones and that puckered mouth to a gaze. “A gaze,” he murmurs, stepping hesitantly on to a train of thought, like it might be the right subway car but heading in the wrong direction. A gaze, a glance, a glare…This is the girl who walked out of the bar on 29th Street, near the first address he had for Amelia. She stared him down like some pervert wandering the streets. Her expression was hard and mean, but if you softened those features, if you caught her in an act of tenderness, if you unplaited her hair, she’d look like this, wouldn’t she?
As certainly as the thought arrives, it begins to retreat. He scrutinizes the photograph, doubting himself. He notices the tiny scar of her empty lip-piercing, almost but not quite invisible beneath her foundation. It can’t be, can it? What are the chances? But it’s something. And the only something he has, so it has to be worth a try. He dresses in a hurry, grabs his bag and heads out. He’ll go to the bar. That’s his plan. She’d shouted something about seeing them again, so they must know her. Someone will know how to find her.
He exits Penn Station without so much as a glance at the Empire State Building and pounds down the sidewalk, cursing dawdling tourists and darting across intersections with whichever light says walk. He’s back at the blue bar within fifteen minutes. Tom&Fi’s, established 1989. The tinted glass door is propped open and the faint sound of Elvis Costello drifts on to the morning street. Catching his breath, he steps into the dark entrance.
His eyes take a moment to adjust to the gloom. To his left is a long bar with a dozen empty stools facing the shiny rows of beer taps. Straight ahead a pool table and a couple of dartboards nestled among posters advertising Pabst Best and Coors. The place is empty. Costello keeps crooning. Marc leans across the bar to peer through an archway to the back.
“Uh, hello?” He speaks tentatively at first, then shouts.
A balding man appears.
“Hey. What can I get you?”
“I’m not here for a drink,” he says, fumbling in his pocket for the Polaroid. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Are you British?” the guy asks with a smile. “I like your accent.”
“Thanks,” Marc replies automatically. “This girl, do you know who she is?” He presents the photograph across the bar.
The guy whistles and steps away as if the image might incriminate him. “You don’t want to go showing that around here, man. If Erin’s boyfriend sees you waving that thing, you won’t know what hit you.”
“Erin?” Marc says, relief flooding through him. “Is that her name? Do you know her?” He’s not crazy, it is the woman he saw. Can she really be Amelia, though?
“She works for us sometimes. But seriously, you need to put that away.”
“She works here?” Marc says, frowning. Amelia has money, a life; the woman he’s been searching for all week can’t work in a grubby bar.
“Just cleaning and stuff,” says Tom. “She came in looking for bar work, but you know, it’s Tom&Fi’s joint, you kinda have to only have Tom and Fi tending the bar otherwise it don’t make sense, do it? I’m Tom, by the way. Fi’s my sister.”
“Marc,” Marc says, taking Tom’s offered hand. “Look, it’s important, do you know where Erin is, where I can find her?”
Tom looks him up and down, perhaps trying to determine if he’s looking for trouble. He must decide upon the negative. “Stick around, she’ll be in in a bit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, calm down, she usually comes by before lunch, to see if we need her tonight. Take a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Coffee?” Marc says dubiously.
Tom disappears into the back and returns with a cup of steaming liquid.
As Marc’s finishing his coffee, the girl from the photograph stomps into the bar, leans over the counter and hollers for Tom, who’s out back once more. She glances up the bar at him, then flicks her hair over her shoulder and looks away.
Intimidated but determined, Marc says, “Excuse me. You’re Erin, aren’t you?”
Her head snaps back to him and she scowls. “Do I know you?”
“Not as such.” He smiles weakly. “But I, I was wondering if I could have a word with you?”
She scowls some more, but says nothing. Taking this as a positive sign, Marc slips off his stool and approaches her, holding out the Polaroid.
“What the actual fuck?” Erin says, twisting her shoulders to face him square on. She’s slender but muscular, a good inch or two taller than hi
m in her chunky heels. “Where did you get that? What do you want?”
Marc steps away, leaving the photo on the bar between them. “I don’t want to get you in trouble. You can keep the picture. I just want to ask you about that night.”
She narrows her eyes at him, but nods toward a booth on the opposite wall. They sit across from each other in silence, Erin clearly unwilling to speak first.
“I, um, you see,” Marc stumbles under her glare. “I’m looking for the artist, for Amelia Heldt. I mean, I’m assuming you’re not her, though you were pretending to be her that night, weren’t you?”
“It was just an acting gig,” she says, holding the glare. “I was told it would stay private, so I agreed to the weird stuff.” She gestures distastefully toward the image.
“You’re an actor?” he says, the cogs in his mind whirring but as yet spitting nothing out.
“Yeah,” she says, her face softening. “Stage, you know, or at least that’s what I want to do eventually.”
“Right. And you were hired by Amelia to play her for the evening?”
“My agent set it up. It seemed kinda shady, going in and just kissing everyone like some big orgy, but the artist had requested me apparently, and I guess I was flattered. They told me there’d be no cameras.” She scowls again, moving her lip piercing back and forth with her tongue. “I didn’t know that was taken.”
“Keep it. I think it’s the only one. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Kieran would kill me if he saw this.” She looks down at the table, her lashes brushing the skin beneath her eyes. Marc feels a pang of sympathy, wondering about the story inside the girl before him. He shakes the thought off.
“Do you know how to contact Amelia? You said she requested you?”
She looks up and shakes her head. “I only spoke to my agent. She said she’d seen me around was all. I can give you her details if you want, I guess she should have her number.”
“That’d be great,” Marc says, trying to hide his disappointment.
She fishes in her handbag and retrieves a business card. “Keep it, I’ve got tons.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure,” Erin says and shrugs.
“Sorry if I scared you.”
“Whatever. Are we done?” she says, already snatching her handbag and the Polaroid. She leans over the bar to shout to Tom that she’ll be back at six, then stomps out into the street.
Marc looks at the card. Inside a small black-and-white image of a clapperboard he reads the contact details for Maxine Stein, Inc. He considers asking Tom if he can borrow his phone, but looking again he realizes the address is only six blocks away. He leaves a handful of dollars on the bar and walks back into the sunshine. He turns up 9th Avenue and walks straight until he hits 35th. He’s almost back at Penn Station by the time he finds the entrance. He locates the button for the fourth-floor address and, after a garbled explanation of his business, is buzzed through the door and instructed to take the elevator.
Suite 410 is less luxurious than he imagined, but a rosy-cheeked woman behind the desk gives him a friendly smile as he approaches. He vomits out his reason for being there in one long breath, trying to explain the urgency with which he needs to contact Amelia and how he’s traced her here and this really is his last hope. The woman, whose name he learns from a wooden block on her desk is Maria, gives him a sympathetic smile and says she’ll call her boss.
“She’s at a casting,” she says, dialing.
Marc clutches his hands still behind his back and wills his foot not to tap. Maria speaks through a microphone attached to an earpiece. He can only hear one side of the conversation, but he imagines the person on the other end is not best pleased to be interrupted by some bizarre tale about a performance artist. Even to him, his story sounds unlikely when he hears another person repeating it.
“I have a man here who says he knows that artist Erin…Amelia Heldt…yes, that one…no, he doesn’t, that’s not why he’s here…he’s trying to get in touch with her…I know, I know we did, but he really needs to contact her…of course, I know, but he’s lost his wife and he’s come all the way from England…I’m sorry, I don’t know what difference that makes, but…yes, I know…uh, huh…I understand…yes, I promise…no, I won’t bother you again…thank you for your time.”
She presses a button to hang up and removes her earpiece before looking up at him. Her mouth is drawn into an apologetic line.
“No?” he says, trying to hold himself together.
“She said we signed a confidentiality agreement with the artist confirming we wouldn’t reveal any personal details about her under any circumstances. I remember now, she almost didn’t hire us because she didn’t want to give us any details at all, but our insurance means we have to cover all bases. You know, if an actor falls down on someone’s set or something to do with negligence, we have to be able to contact someone immediately, else we could be liable…” She trails off.
“Right.” Marc clears his throat. “I should leave you to get back to work then.” He pivots slowly on his heels, remembering as if drunkenly where he exited the elevator. How can he have come this close and be turning around? Amelia’s address is in this office somewhere and he’s giving up. He wonders what else he can do. Threaten it out of the receptionist who’s been nothing but sweet to him? He almost turns around, almost clenches his fist ready to slam it on her desk, almost conjures the words to frighten her into submission. He’s not some spy from a Le Carré novel, though; he’s just a man who’s been told no.
“Wait,” Maria says, her cheeks suddenly flushing. “Oh Jesus, she’ll kill me if she finds out I’m doing this, but I’ll get you the address. You have to promise not to say where you got it.”
“Really?” Marc says, feeling as if every muscle in his body is an elastic band that has just this second snapped. “Of course, I promise.”
The woman smiles in spite of herself, shrugs and pushes her chair back to stand up. “Wait here,” she says and toddles through one side of the heavy double doors behind her. Marc sways excitedly on the balls of his feet, then stuffs his hands in his pockets, pulls them out to scratch his upper arms, and paces around the room inspecting framed headshots. Finally, I’m getting somewhere, he thinks, then immediately replaces hope with worry. What if it’s another dead end? Would Amelia have given these people the right address? A headache begins to throb in his temples as he thinks about the paranoid lengths Amelia’s taken to keep herself hidden.
“She’ll probably fire me for this,” Maria says as she re-enters the room. “Still, I’m always talking about quitting.” She looks up and flushes again. “Here you go.” She holds out a small sheet of headed notepaper with an address scrawled on it. “It’s in the Village,” she says. “Around Fourth, I think. Do you know the way?”
Marc nods and tries to think of a way to thank her. He wants to hug her, but she’s already shuffling back behind her desk.
“You’ve no idea—” he begins, but she cuts him off.
“Don’t mention it, it’s my good deed for the day. Now go find her!” She waves him in the direction of the elevator and turns back to her computer.
“Thank you,” he says and does as he’s told.
* * *
The loopy address reads: 126 MacDougal Street, Apt 6.
Marc rides the E to Washington Square Park and walks along leafy West 4th until he spots a green sign reading MacDougal. His intestines give a flip as he realizes he’s less than a block away. He stops to take in the fire escapes and signs crowding above him, the litter and traffic and noise. A group of youngsters that could have stepped out of one of his classes swarms around him and a woman with a stroller, enveloping them for a moment in their foreign chatter before crossing the street. Marc reaches out to steady himself against a lamppost, glancing at the nonplussed mother bending over her kid. H
e thinks of our street and our house and our family, imagines what a horror it must be to have a child in this city. He takes a breath and carries on. Tomorrow he’ll be home with our girls, but today he’s here for a reason. He counts the numbers down on the left side of the street, crossing over West 3rd and passing an array of restaurants and cafés on the other side. Between something called Silver World and Ali Baba, he finds a black-framed glass door beneath a plastic awning reading 126. Stepping back, he looks up to observe the arched windows towering four or five stories toward the sky. Sucking in his breath, he walks up to the address panel. He runs his index finger down the first five names, then stops. A.H. Apt 6. That has to be her. He’s actually here. He’s a finger-press away from meeting the woman who’s eluded him all week.
He presses. He holds down the buzzer for far longer than necessary, then gives two more short rings for good measure. Forty seconds later, he tries again. Fifteen seconds after that, again. Then every thirty seconds for at least five minutes.
“Bitch!” he says, slamming his fist into the wall beneath the panel. Pain shoots from his already-bruised knuckles along his arm. He looks down and sees blood pricking through the grazed skin. His cheeks are wet with tears.
She’s out, that’s all, he tries telling himself, but this latest dead end feels more final than those before. This is the end of the road. This was his last chance and it’s no good. He stumbles away from the doorway. Turning back the way he came, he takes a few aimless steps and wonders what to do. He could go to the park, check out the Arc de Triomphe rip-off. Will it remind him of Paris? Of being there with me? Kissing on the Eiffel Tower, walking hand in hand down the Champs-Élysées with Lizzie’s stuffed toy in my rucksack? Was I betraying him even then? He wipes his eyes on his shirtsleeve. He feels dangerously close to hyperventilating. Or passing out. It’s three o’clock and he’s eaten nothing all day. Without looking, he steps into the road and crosses to the other side. At the corner of 3rd Street, a turquoise awning announces Ben’s Pizzeria. He pushes open the glass door and steps up to the counter. He asks the aproned guy for two slices of pepperoni and a Coke. He sits in a chair by the window and chews methodically, tasting nothing. He stares dumbly at the intersection on the other side of the glass. He doesn’t feel better. The cheese sits angrily on the top of his stomach. He wants to throw up. Still, he slurps more Coke. His hand is sore and his head still pounds, but his body doesn’t matter right now. Nothing does. He’s in New York for no reason at all. It’s been a waste of time and money. It doesn’t matter what he does next because whatever it is won’t bring him any closer to understanding me. We’re further from each other now than we’ve ever been. Amelia has forced him further than he’s been from our daughters too. She’s turned him into a daft, middle-aged man chasing ghosts in an unfriendly city when he should be at home with what’s left of his family. Serena Graves was right, he should have steered clear. He believes her now. Amelia is dangerous.