Looker

by Laura Sims

  “You on break already?” A voice—Mrs. H’s—intrudes before I can get the actress safely to the spare room. I find myself sitting on the front stoop, wineglass in one hand and cigarette, with long, drooping ash, in the other. “Huh?” I say, confused and still caught up in the dream. “You on break? You going somewhere? Or you just going to sit on that stoop all day?” She grins at this, showing her rotted teeth, or what I suppose are her rotted teeth. I grin back, showing my pearly whites. We’re like two fiercely grinning gorillas facing off. “For now I’m going to sit here, yes. Nice seeing you, Mrs. H,” I say, using Nathan’s technique. She drops her grin and grunts a little in response. I’m fuming helplessly because she has punctured the skin of my fantasy and it’s gone now. I can’t get it back. She starts to wander off to her own stoop, but she stops abruptly and turns to me, holding on to the fence for balance. “You know they’re moving, don’t you?” she says. A line of sweat sprouts at my hairline. “Who?” I ask, my voice higher than I want it to be. She doesn’t answer, but her eyes soften as if she’s sorry for me. I try to keep my own eyes steady on hers even though I’m shaking—my hands are shaking. My lips are trembling. My heart is stuttering. “No,” is all I can say. She stares at me for a long minute, then shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says, turning to hobble off at last.

  It’s not true. It can’t be true. She wouldn’t leave. This is her home. Mrs. H must have heard wrong. She might even have made it up just to torment me. Just to watch the cloud of fear pass over my face. Sick.

  Over the next few days, I stalk the actress as if I were planning to carry out my fantasy plan after all. I walk by her house or sit on the stoop or stand behind my building’s front door and monitor her comings and goings so I can ascertain that Mrs. H was dead wrong, the actress isn’t moving. Each day that I watch her, I feel better—stronger, steadier. Yesterday she walked home with shoulder bags full of vegetables, fruit, and flowers, from what I could tell—a solo trip to the farmer’s market. Today she works alongside her staff members in the garden, readying the greenery for winter. Lifting a small evergreen into the ceramic tub that sits on the top step of their stoop, smoothing the soil around its base. She does it tenderly, lovingly. Would she take such care with a plant she was planning to leave? She isn’t moving and she probably never will! Mrs. H, as usual, was delusional and meddling. If only she would move.

  *

  One morning, after the actress’s jog but before she takes the girls to school, I walk by her house. I’m no longer worried about her leaving the block, but I’ve kept watching her anyway. It’s been helpful to have a new routine, a new purpose.

  As soon as I approach the house, I see it: the sign. In her front garden. A very discreet sign that nonetheless says FOR SALE in bold black-and-white lettering. FOR SALE. It says other things too—the name of the Realtor, the contact number, the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah—but all I see is FOR SALE. A rushing noise fills my head and suddenly I can’t breathe. I grasp the top of her fence and stand there gasping, staring at the signpost—not at the sign—at the post where it enters the dirt of their small garden, where it pierces the dirt, killing whatever nascent plants might be struggling to break free and find air. HOW COULD THEY DO THIS? HOW COULD SHE DO THIS TO ME?

  *

  Nine a.m. I’m at home drinking wine. I was guzzling it, but now my pace has slowed. The glass shakes in my shaking hand. The actress is leaving. The actress is leaving. No—the actress is trying to leave. She cannot leave. I cannot let her. I have to talk to her. Talk sense into her. Isn’t that what the actress herself would do, in one of her roles? As the street-smart detective, the no-nonsense hooker, the firm and protective young mother?

  I spend the rest of the day on the couch, watching the movies of hers I own or can rent. Dangerous Game has just been released for rental on Amazon. Finely Tuned is streaming on Netflix. I have DVDs of The Sultan of Hanover Street, Slow Tremor, Morning’s First Light, Working Class, and even Black Wave, that blockbuster that announced her official arrival on the Hollywood scene and enabled her to buy her house on this block. Where she belongs. I drink these movies in with my wine and eat only popcorn all day and lie awake for hours practicing my lines.

  I dream that she’s with me in the spare room, but the room as it used to be—full of her discarded belongings. She’s going through each box with me, lifting each item and explaining its origin and use, as well as the feelings and memories she attaches to it. She is patient and kind, and happy to be sharing her life with me. We laugh often. Her eyes tear up at the sight of a tiny onesie her daughter once wore. She wore this in the hospital as a newborn, she tells me. She was premature and had to stay in the NICU for weeks. The tears roll steadily down her cheeks now and she holds up the tiny matching hat the baby wore. I thought she was going to die, she says. I thought I would lose her and then I’d die myself. Those weeks were the worst of my life. I tell her I understand. And I do. Somehow, I do. I’m crying, too, and we stand there, watching each other weep in complete silence and companionship until morning comes and I wake in bed alone, with a cold and damp face.

  *

  Six a.m. Like clockwork, the actress comes running down the block. She will pass my house on the way back to hers. When she gets close enough, I clear my throat quietly and rise from where I’ve been sitting on the stoop. I’ve dressed in exercise clothes, too, though of course I haven’t exercised in days. I hardly moved all day yesterday! Still, it makes me feel more assured, matching her this way. As she gets closer, she doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t look up or wave or make any acknowledgment of my presence, but I stand up and hold my hand in the air. “Wait!” I say, though this is not what I’d planned to say. Her head turns slightly in my direction and then I’m amazed to see her picking up speed, running now toward her house as if she were being chased, as if I really were holding the kitchen knife in my hand. “Wait!” I say again, louder, more urgently this time, and I get up and take off after her, running faster than I expected. She’s ahead of me but so close I can see the sweaty, freckled back of her neck, see the slight muscles in her biceps bulge as she pumps her arms, hear her breath come in hard, short bursts. I’m nearly close enough to touch her when she yells, “Help! Help!” and turns into her open garden gate and slams it behind her, but I push it open and catch her on the second stair of the stoop, I catch her arm, I touch her where she touched me at the block party, and as she struggles to pull away from me I manage to get out, “We . . . have to . . . talk,” while gasping for air. She tugs her arm free and races up the steps, fumbles for her keys, saying, “Shit, shit,” the whole time, until she finds the right key and twists it in the lock. I’m down on the second step, panting, watching her from below like we’re in one of her movies, like she’s about to escape the would-be killer or the enraged ex-lover. But when she runs into the house and slams the glass-paned front door behind her, it jolts me out of my reverie. She locks the door as I walk deliberately to the top of the stoop. We stand there looking at each other; I’m calm now, but she’s red-faced, wild-eyed. I notice, suddenly, that she’s holding her phone to her ear, talking to someone. Who has she called? The police? Before I know it, I’m pounding on the glass door with my fists, screaming, “What are you doing! What are you doing!”

  When I feel a gentle touch on my back—like a lover’s touch, or a child’s—for one irrational moment I think, It’s the actress. Even as I watch her talking heatedly into the phone I think, It must be the actress. But when I whip around it isn’t her, of course—it’s Mrs. H—who tried to tell me, who was right all along, who must be gloating now, seeing me crazed at the actress’s door. “Calm down,” she says softly, her face close to mine, her hands gripping my shoulders. “You have to calm down, you’re going to get yourself in big trouble.” She doesn’t sound like she’s gloating; she sounds gentle and chiding—almost as if she were talking herself, not me, out of acting this way. She’s so caught up that there are tears in her eyes. Anger rises up in m
e hard and swift, and I shove my hands into her chest. “Not you!” I scream. Her gray eyes go wide. She teeters, then stumbles and starts to fall. The glass door bursts open and I hear the actress say, “Peggy!” When I turn, she’s reaching her arms out—not to me, but to Mrs. H. But it’s too late. The old lady falls backward down the ten brownstone steps, her arms spinning helplessly. Her head hits the sidewalk with a sickening thud. “Peggyyyyyy!” the actress screams, hysterical now. We stand motionless, side by side at the top of the steps. Sirens sound in the distance. The actress is the first to move. She runs down the steps to Mrs. H—to Peggy. I watch her touch the body lovingly, carefully, and pull it onto her lap to cradle the battered head against her chest. I think of last night’s dream, of the story the actress told me about her newborn daughter, and I wonder if it’s true. She looks so comfortable in this pose, as if she’s used to it, the posture of loss. It’s beautiful—stunning, even—and despite everything I feel myself relax. As if I were seated in a velvet multiplex chair, tipping my head back, watching as the figures loom larger, much larger, than life—the young, beautiful woman holding the older woman’s body to her, weeping over her, feeling everything that is rich and terrible and dark and lonesome in this life, feeling abandoned and full of despair, and beaming it out to us. Beaming it to me. When the actress leans her head back and screams, I draw in a delicate breath and my hands go to my chest. It moves me so much. The tears slide down my cheeks, just as they did in the dream. I sink to my knees and wait for the sirens to come.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank . . .

  My extraordinary agent, Chris Clemans: champion, coach, advisor, collaborator, and friend.

  My brilliant, keen-eyed editor, Valerie Steiker.

  The Scribner team: Nan Graham, Roz Lippel, and Colin Harrison, for their early and ongoing support. Thanks also to: Jaya Miceli, Sally Howe, Jennifer Weidman, Kate Lloyd, Kara Watson, Ashley Gilliam, Jason Chappell, and Kyle Kabel.

  Agents, assistants, and others at the Clegg Agency: Marion Duvert, Simon Toop, and David Kambhu.

  Robert Hass, for his beautiful translation of Yosa Buson’s haiku.

  My first readers—dear friends—without whom this book (and my life) would be much less interesting: Courtney Brkic, Jessica Cary, Jennifer Firestone, Camille Guthrie, Amelia Kahaney, Jen Lee, Margaret Lewis, Corey Mead, and Idra Novey.

  My loving, supportive parents, by blood and by marriage: Chris and Karen Mead, Joe and Judy Teefey, and Bob and Marcia Sims.

  My husband, Corey Mead, and my son, Caleb, for their humor, love, and companionship.

  Margaret Lewis, to whom this book is dedicated, for her unfailing, fathoms-deep friendship.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © JEN LEE

  LAURA SIMS lives outside of New York City with her family. Looker is her debut novel.

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  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Laura-Sims

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Laura Sims

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  First Scribner hardcoverexport edition January 2019

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  Interior design by Kyle Kabel

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  Jacket artwork: Lipstick Smears by Studio 504/Getty Images; Female Figure by Tim Robberts/Getty Images; Background by Mucella/Getty Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9911-0

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9913-4 (ebook)