by Vendela Vida
“What do you want to drink? I’m having a G and T,” she says.
“Sounds good. Same. La même,” you say to the bartender.
“Why’d it take you so long to get back from the set?” the famous American actress asks you.
You explain that the young sisters needed a ride home, and they didn’t know directions.
“Their parents weren’t on set?” she says.
“I guess not.”
“Wow,” she says. “That’s amazing. When I was young, my dad was there at every film I shot.”
“The girls told me their parents didn’t really believe they were in a movie with you.”
“I posed with them, so I guess they’ll have some proof. Sweet girls. Wonder if they’ll make it.”
Your drinks arrive quickly, as though they were made before you ordered. You consider that is a possibility.
You tell the famous American actress you think it might be hard for them to make it in Morocco.
“I thought that before I came,” she says, and sips her drink through a small black straw, “but do you know what I found out?”
“No,” you say.
“There’s a huge film school in Morocco! And guess who supports it?”
You tell her you have heard about the school, but you don’t know who supports it.
“You don’t know?”
You shake your head.
“All these big names. Martin Scorsese and people like that helped start it or they fund it or something like that.”
You say wow.
“Wow is right,” she says. “That’s why they can film A Different Door here. They have such a great Moroccan crew. That was half the reason they were able to shoot it here—they didn’t have to bring hardly fucking anybody over. Except for me, my secretary, the bodyguards, and Ivy, my stand-in who abandoned me.”
“I heard she fell in love with someone who worked at the hotel in Marrakech.” You feel the gin and tonic going to your head.
“At the hotel in Marrakech? You think she fell in love with someone there?” She cackles.
Again: the bizarre laugh.
Again: the question you don’t know how to answer. “That’s what the producers in the van were talking about,” you say.
“She fell in love with the fucking director! Who’s fucking married! And she’s fucking married!”
“Shit,” you say, and this amuses her.
“Fucking shit is right,” she says. Then she summons the bartender and orders two more gin and tonics. You consider stopping her, reminding her that you have to go to sleep soon and she probably does too. But the truth is you are enjoying all this—the tenth-floor lounge, the drinks, the conversation. When you’re with the actress, the life you left at home seems unreal, almost as though the events of the last few months didn’t happen.
“So, anyway,” she says, after the bartender leaves, “thank God you were here. Because Ivy, who I will admit could be a bit dramatic . . . well, she had to go. I’m sure if she recovers she’ll be able to work with me again. She’s been my stand-in on, like, nine or ten movies now. She’s trying to act, and has had small parts. Nice girl, pretty girl. So tell me about you,” the famous American actress says, as though she’s exhausted talking about Ivy. “What’s your story?”
You laugh nervously. You sound like someone else.
“What’s the story of why you’re here?” she continues. “Why the fuck are you in Morocco?” She suddenly looks very drunk.
“I left my husband and I wanted to get away.”
“A spa day wasn’t enough?” She laughs at her own joke.
“I don’t ever think I’ve ever done a spa day, but no, not enough for what he did.”
“You should see your face right now. You look like you’ve been injected with venom or something.”
“That’s how I feel about my marriage,” you say.
“So you came to Casablanca of all places?”
You nod. “Even here didn’t seem far enough away.” The alcohol is making you more honest than you want to be in her presence.
“And you were just going to stay in Casablanca until . . . until you were offered a role as a stand-in for a movie?”
You tell her about your backpack being stolen at the Golden Tulip.
“Tell me the whole story,” she says, and genuinely seems to want to hear it.
You tell her all about the Golden Tulip, about the backpack, the embassy, and Sabine Alyse, how the police asked for your grandfather’s name. You haven’t talked this much in a week. When you’re done recounting the events of the last few days, she shakes her head. This is the response you want. You’re afraid of the cackling.
“Holy shit,” she says. “Well, that explains the clothes.”
You look down at your outfit. “No, my suitcase wasn’t stolen. These are the same clothes I owned before.”
She sips her drink. She looks as though she’s debating whether to apologize. “So is Reeves Conway your real name?”
You tell her it’s your sister’s baby’s name.
“Reeves Conway is your niece?”
“Yes, she’s my twin’s baby.”
“Fucking A. What kind of bodyguards do I have?” She looks up to the ceiling. “I mean they didn’t even check you out to see if you were who you said you were.”
You tell her that the bodyguard who interviewed you trusted you because you bonded over turtles and birds.
“And that makes you trustworthy? I should fucking have you fired right fucking now. You’re an impostor.”
You panic. You went too far. Now you’re going to be fired, and you have nothing. You should never have been flattered by her invitation for a drink. Especially when she herself said you were the only person she could think of.
A cool sweat runs down your back and collects at the weak elastic band of your underwear.
“I’m sorry,” you say.
“I’m sorry too,” she says, and her face changes. “I was just fucking with you!”
“Fuck,” you say. You don’t typically swear but it’s contagious and you feel relieved.
She laughs her strange cackling laugh that you now know must be dubbed over if she ever laughs in a film.
“You know I trained as a stage actress, right?” she says. “I really do have some good acting chops. Do you believe me?”
“I have witnessed them firsthand,” you say. You wonder what they did when she was a stage actress and they couldn’t dub her laugh. Maybe she was only given very serious roles. You understand why she’s no longer in theater. You wonder if she does too. Someone must have surely told her about her cackle. But if so, why does she still laugh that way?
“So what is your name?” she says. “Wait!” She extends her hand as though to stop you. “I’m going to try to figure it out.”
“Okay,” you say.
“Rebecca?”
“No.”
“Sybil?”
“No.”
“Okay. Give me time. Even one week. I’ll get it. Are you staying for the whole shoot?”
“I think so.”
“You have nowhere to go? No one expecting you at home?”
You tell her that no one expects you back for another week.
“Does your sister care that you’re going around using her daughter’s name?”
You tell her your sister doesn’t know.
You look at your watch. It’s after midnight. You have to get to bed. Maybe it’s the gin and tonics that are making you paranoid, but you’re getting the strange feeling that the famous American actress wants something from you, that her extending of friendship toward you is calculated. When your sister was most effusive in her kindness toward you, it was because she needed something.
“The call sheet says we’re being picked up at seven,” you say.
“You’re being picked up at seven,” the famous American actress says. “I don’t have to do anything until nine. We’re having more drinks.”
S
he pauses to look up. “Garçon,” she says, waving the bartender over once again. “I had to play a girl in a French café once,” she explains to you. “‘Garçon’ was the only word I had to say in the whole fucking movie.”
At seven the next morning you and the two producers are picked up and driven through Casablanca’s standard morning gridlock to get to the film set. Today’s scene takes place in a traffic jam. Given your experience of the city at rush hour, or at any hour, you would think that would mean they could film on any street in Casablanca. What’s the need for a set? But the producers inform you that today’s shoot is extremely complicated, as they have had to block off two streets and create their own traffic jam. This has entailed obtaining permits from the city, and locating fifty-three period cars from the 1960s. It has also required making sure that the fifty-two extras who have been hired to drive the period cars have insurance, and that they have been background-checked and fingerprinted in the event that they should wish to drive off.
The driver of the fifty-third car, the one who will be chauffeuring Maria, played by the famous American actress, is an actor himself. As you sit in the van with the producers, stuck in real traffic making your way to the manufactured traffic, a situation has arisen. This is what you, in your brief career as a stand-in, have already learned is terminology for a problem. A situation has arisen. You imagine that when it was discovered your predecessor, Ivy, was having an affair with the director, and had to go home to face her husband, the same phrase was used to prepare the practical secretary for the debacle ahead: a situation has arisen.
The producers panic when they receive the simultaneous texts stating that a situation has arisen. They both jump on the phone. By the time they’re off their respective phone calls, the van has traveled half a city block.
“Fuck me,” says the young American producer.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
“Maria’s chauffeur—the dude who was supposed to play Maria’s chauffeur today—doesn’t have a driver’s license,” the young American producer says.
You think of suggesting that someone else play the part of the chauffeur, but you’re sure they have already considered this.
“Is it such a problem since he’s just going to be sitting in traffic anyway?” you say. “I mean, that’s what the sides say. That they’re just sitting in traffic, not moving, right?” You take out the sides and read the description aloud: “‘Maria sits in the back of a taxi. She sits there until she gets fed up with the standstill, opens the back door, and marches out onto the street. The cars honk as she walks past.’” You look up from the script. “He doesn’t need a driver’s license. He won’t be moving.”
The producers look at each other and nod, then send texts.
You arrive at the makeup trailer. Today the wardrobe woman is inexplicably dressed in Elizabethan attire. You don’t comment, you don’t ask questions. She is, after all, in charge of costumes. You imagine she’s collected several in her career, and keeps them in steady rotation.
“You want the spank again, yes?” she says to you.
You have learned that some things that are phrased as questions are not questions. Yes, you tell her, you want the spank.
There’s a knock on the trailer door and you finish hiking up your Spanx, which still takes a bit of effort. When you’re dressed the wardrobe woman unlocks the door. You’re touched by this small act of courtesy: she locks the door while you change.
The tattooed man steps up into the trailer.
“How are you?” he says, but doesn’t wait for a response. He informs you that something different will happen today: you will actually appear in the film.
“What?” you say. You are not excited about this proposition. You think of your twin. You know that if she were in your situation and had just received this news, she would be thrilled. She would be texting her friends, calling your mother. She always likes to brag to your mother, and maybe because of this tendency, you’ve always felt your mother loves you more. But you can’t be certain. Lately, you’ve been tempted to tell your mother about the details surrounding your recent falling-out with your sister, but you refrained. You even contemplated that instead of flying to Morocco, you would fly to Arizona to visit your mother and her new husband in the large stairless white house they live in on a mesa, but decided against it: you were concerned that if you revealed everything to your mother and she still spoke to your sister, your heart would be broken once more.
The tattooed man has ignored your “What?” and has been speaking Arabic with the wardrobe woman and the makeup woman. Today the makeup woman has a David Bowie–like triangle of eye shadow around her right eye.
When the tattooed man is finished talking with the Elizabethan and David Bowie, he returns his attention to you and your question. He explains that the shots that are filmed from very far away—the scenes that are used to show Maria stuck in traffic—will in fact be the scenes with you in the car. You will be wearing the wig and a scarf around your face, so it’s easy enough for them to do a profile shot of you from a distance, sitting in the car.
You pause and agree—you have no choice but to agree—but ask why they don’t just use the famous American actress for those shots.
“It’s important that she not get exhausted and we have reports that she is getting exhausted.”
“Of course,” you say. You don’t offer that one way for her to conserve energy might be to refrain from drinking gin and tonics until one in the morning. You don’t offer that you yourself are exhausted because of her.
The tattooed man and the makeup woman are discussing specifics. They are studying your skin. The wardrobe woman takes a scarf and wraps it around your face. She’s demonstrating how much of your face will be covered.
The tattooed man wants to make sure that even if you’re shot from a distance, your acne scars will not show. You imagine he’s telling the Elizabethan and David Bowie how terrible it would be if viewers thought that the famous American actress had your skin. The three of them stare at you. You’re at a loss; you force a smile. Apparently, you’re not applying the foundation you bought at the Casablanca beauty store correctly.
The makeup woman gets out her apron with all her brushes, but instead of tying it around her waist, she places it on your lap as though to suggest it’s your weight to bear. She spends a good twenty-five minutes layering foundation on your skin. You are turned away from the mirror, which is a good thing. You are afraid of the craterlike quality your skin will take on when she is done. For a moment you feel like contacting the man at the Casablanca beauty store. If only you had saved his card. He could help this woman do her job.
When your face has been slathered in foundation and powders, the wardrobe woman takes a scarf and wraps it around your head. Unsatisfied with the result, she removes it and wraps it once more. The three of them, the Elizabethan, David Bowie, and the tattooed man, discuss your appearance while only occasionally glancing at you. Then phones are removed and photos are taken.
“This is so we can make sure the scarf falls the same way on her,” the tattooed man says.
You don’t need to ask who her is. You know that he means the famous American actress.
The tattooed man escorts you through real Casablanca traffic, until you turn the corner and arrive at the traffic that’s been manufactured for the film. Of course the trailers couldn’t be on this street—they would be too conspicuous in the shots. Filming has not yet commenced and so the sidewalks are still open to the public. The pedestrians yell at the parked cars, and in particular, at one extra who, for some reason—perhaps he’s getting into character—won’t stop honking.
It’s still morning but you can feel the heat of the day seething up through the cement. This day is hotter than the preceding ones. The old cars are diesel, the smell of their exhaust potent.
The tattooed man walks you to a white car in the middle of all the others. You slide inside the backseat, and greet the driver, who, you know
from the situation that has arisen with the producers, cannot drive. The tattooed man closes the door. You note the old car has ashtrays, and that it’s without seat belts. The upholstery on the backseat bench is leather, cracked. You run your fingers over the ocher stuffing that’s trying to emerge.
There’s a speaker in the car through which the director is talking. He speaks for five minutes in Arabic, and then translates for you with one sentence: “We start filming in two minutes.”
In twenty minutes an announcement comes through the speaker saying the filming is commencing. You sit up tall, looking forward intently. Maria is supposed to be growing increasingly frustrated with the traffic. Your driver has been instructed to honk, joining in on the cacophony being created by the other cars around yours. The horns of old cars sound cartoonish, like horns on bumper cars at an amusement park.
Despite the incessant honking, as you sit in the backseat of a period car in a constructed traffic jam in the heart of Casablanca, you begin to feel something that approximates joy. The film will come out, and though no one will know that you were in the backseat of this car, that you are the one whose scarfed profiled appears in the distance, you will know. You will have existed. You will have proof that you were here.
You are picturing yourself at seventy, looking back on your youth. You will remember that you were young once, that you were thirty-three. You were in a movie in Casablanca. Now that you are on the cusp of being a full-fledged adult, as you now see adulthood, your youth has been documented. Your youth will not be defined by the events of the last several months.
An announcement comes on the speaker and the honking ceases. Twenty minutes later, filming commences again. The cars honk, you sit up straight and look forward intently.
Two hours pass, during which filming occurs five more times. The wardrobe woman comes to the car to rearrange your scarf. She consults the photo on her phone.
You sit for another hour, two hours, three. You try not to think of anything at all.
Then, almost too soon, the famous American actress is escorted under an enormous silver umbrella—the sun is hot—toward the car. The door is opened and you greet her hello. You switch places with her. She slides onto the leather red bench of the backseat.