The Stand-In

by Deborah Moggach

  She turned to me. ‘You can do this all the time!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where do you go?’

  I shrugged. ‘I have some friends down in the Village,’ I said. ‘Actors, writers. Some of them live in lofts in SoHo. We play word games and eat Cajun cooking.’

  ‘I love words,’ she said, as if she was saying I love guacamole.

  Walking along the sidewalk, I realised that it was not just myself who made a fantasy of her life. She made one of mine. London was a theme park of toffee-apple vendors and Penhaligons, as phonily convincing as a Ralph Lauren store. My life consisted of smoky debates among the literati. My father was a brilliant professor and my mother a Home Counties aristocrat. Lila had reconstructed my life, she had polished it up and simplified it, just as I had hers. On the rare occasions, that is, when she thought about it.

  We stopped at Toni’s Deli, a place I occasionally frequented. It was famous for its overstuffed sandwiches.

  We ordered pastrami, to go.

  ‘So who’s your friend?’ asked Toni, a large Italian.

  ‘She’s my cousin from London,’ I said.

  ‘I have an apartment in Belsize Park,’ said Lila.

  ‘She means flat,’ I corrected.

  ‘I mean flat,’ she said, stifling her giggles. ‘And go easy on the to-mah-to.’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘Haven’t I seen you someplace before?’

  ‘Nope siree,’ I interrupted. ‘Not unless you’ve seen Leave it to Soak. That’s the high spot of her career so far. She thinks she’s a remarkably talented actress but in fact she’s a nobody.’

  He wrapped the sandwiches. ‘I can see you’re a nice happy family,’ he said.

  ‘She’s just jealous of me,’ I replied. ‘She finds it hard to cope with her competitive feelings.’

  Out in the street we burst out laughing. We strolled along, munching our sandwiches. I suddenly felt close to her. Just for a moment she was mine, all mine. The sky was aflame with the setting sun. Just for a moment there was nobody else around to pull us apart – no Chuck, no Irma, no multitudes of adoring fans. We were two ordinary women in jeans and sneakers, laughing together and licking mustard off our chilly hands. A guy delivering crates of sodas stopped and whistled.

  But then, when I turned, I saw that he was whistling at Lila.

  It was dusk when we got back. A white Lincoln Continental was waiting outside the hotel, gleaming in the street lights. It had come to fetch Lila to a meeting with some producer; she was late. We hurried up to my room where she changed, like some reverse Cinderella, out of my clothes. It was only then that the driver recognised her. She bundled the wig into the pocket of her fur coat and kissed me goodbye, hastily, in the street. She was going to a meeting about some new project, some film in LA. Our strange interlude was over; she was suddenly Lila Dune again, with a separate life I could never touch. She was a film star with twenty movies behind her and two ex-husbands; with a house in Hollywood and an apartment in New York that I would never see. I stood, choking in the exhaust smoke as the car drove off. It rattled over the manhole cover, the punctuation mark of my countless dreams, and was gone.

  I took the elevator back to my room, went in and shut the door. I picked up the t-shirt and pressed it to my face; it smelt of her perfume. The clothes were empty; she had dissolved away, it was as if she had never been here.

  I walked a long way, that night. It was bitterly cold. I passed a row of benches. Each one was occupied by a mummified bundle, faintly snoring. I saw the white breath issuing from them. I passed a late-night bar, with LITE illuminated in the window. Far away, I heard a police siren. In a doorway, something stirred inside a large Toshiba box. All over the city, people slept in boxes like caddis fly larvae. A man approached me, his hand outstretched. His hair looked matted with glue. ‘God bless America,’ he said to me, and collapsed at my feet.

  In America, crime pays. I saw my lawyer this morning; you wouldn’t believe the offers I’m getting. Films, books, TV. Three companies – CBS, Columbia and something else – are bidding for the screenplay rights to my story. God bless America. I’m famous, you see. I always knew I would be famous one day.

  Six

  WE FINISHED SHOOTING in early December. The movie had been brought in on schedule and under budget and everyone was in high spirits, especially Lila. She glowed. Maybe she was taking some new vitamin shots. Maybe it was just due to the festive season. I didn’t guess the reason, then. I was supposed to fly back to England but she said I should stay on for a few days.

  ‘New York, it’s so neat this time of year. The stores and everything, don’t you just love it?’

  We were at the wrap party, which was being held in a new night club down in the meat district. It had been converted into a temple to the internal combustion engine. Bits of cars were built into the bar; sawn-off Cadillacs lined the walls, for seating, and downstairs there was a huge room crammed with open convertibles facing a drive-in movie screen. In honour of Lila they were going to show one of her old pictures, a comedy caper called Smackeroos, about a quarrelling couple who pulled off a bank heist and then couldn’t agree how to spend the money.

  I didn’t have time to answer Lila because suddenly she was whisked away. She was always being whisked away – by Irma, by her agent Roly, by the unit publicist Corrina. For six weeks I had hardly been able to finish a sentence; I would find myself talking to the air.

  Brushing past a jutting radiator grille I went into the bar. Grover, her co-star, was performing in front of a video camera and a crowd of party guests. He was singing about how great it had been, working on Bump. The list of names he warbled, needless to say, excluded mine. I wore my bronze dress, for the first and possibly the last time, but nobody had remarked on my Cinderella transformation and my arms were cold.

  ‘Hey, sing us a song!’ I swung round, but of course it was Lila they were pulling out of the crowd.

  ‘I can’t!’ she cried, laughing and struggling.

  ‘Come on, Lila!’

  She cowered, in her blue leather dress. It’s strange, about actresses. Give them a part to play and they will do anything, in front of an audience of thousands. But ask them to just be themselves in front of their mates and they collapse in embarrassment, they are as hopeless as everybody else. I had never heard Lila sing. She had starred in a sudsy bio-pic, once, about a doomed country and western singer but that had been dubbed. She looked around for help. Suddenly I realised she was searching for me.

  ‘Hey, Jules!’ she cried. ‘Get your ass over here, I’m not doing this alone.’

  People stood back and I stepped over to her. She put her arm around me, whispering in my ear.

  ‘What the fuck are we going to give ’em?’ she hissed.

  Ridiculously, the only song I could think of was I’m a pink toothbrush, you’re a blue toothbrush. Lila and I stood there, paralysed. The car headlights dazzled us, as if we were rabbits. I felt dizzy. After all these months of impersonating Lila, here I was, her partner.

  ‘Stand by,’ called Chuck, ‘and . . . action!’

  Lila and I stood there, dumbly. I heard the crunch of plastic glasses as people milled around. Then Bob, one of the grips, called out to me, ‘Hey Jules, what’s that tune you’re always humming?’

  ‘What tune?’ I asked.

  ‘Me and My Shadow.’

  I stared into the lights. I didn’t even know I hummed it.

  ‘Do I?’ I asked.

  He called back, ‘You do a whole lot of things you don’t know about.’ He laughed. ‘We’ve been watching you.’

  I blushed. Then I turned to Lila, and linked my arm through hers.

  ‘You know the song?’ I asked. ‘Me and my shadow,’ I sang, ‘strolling down the avenue . . .’

  Arms linked, we sauntered across the floor, twirling imaginary canes and tipping our top hats like Jack Buchanan. ‘Me and my shadow, all alone and feeling blue . . .’ Lila’s voice was high and breathless; mine was stronger. I’ve got a good,
clear voice and I had taken lessons, years before, when I had auditioned for A Little Night Music. We sauntered up and down, hip against hip, moving smoothly in step.

  ‘and when it’s time for bed, we climb the stair, we never knock, there’s nobody there . . .’

  Lila’s voice echoed mine, hesitantly. I smiled into the headlights, tossing my hair. At last I was stopping the traffic. I felt strong and confident in my shimmery dress, slit to the thigh. Tonight they were gazing at me, just at me. I out-Lila’d Lila. Who was the shadow now?

  We finished with a flourish and they applauded. Lila, panting, put her arm around my shoulder.

  ‘Aw shucks,’ she laughed. ‘It was nothing.’ She turned to me, affectionately. ‘Let’s hear it for Jules. Seriously, I’d just like to say how much I appreciate her coming over to work with us on our picture. She’s been more than a lighting stand-in, she’s brought something very special to Bump, like, a touch of British class.’ She squeezed my shoulder. ‘Furthermore, she’s been more to me than that, she’s been real supportive, it’s been a learning process for me, too, and I hope it’s been a two-way experience, like, that she’s learnt something from us.’ She stumbled to a halt.

  I smiled at them all. ‘She’d put it better,’ I said, ‘but I haven’t helped her learn her lines.’

  Everybody laughed. I realised that I was perspiring, heavily. When I went off to find a drink I heard someone say, ‘Yeah, but she’s got better legs.’

  Who did they mean, Lila or me? Which one of us? I never knew.

  It was a good party. The presence of a film star – even when you have been working with them for weeks – gives a gathering an unmistakable sexual throb. The star doesn’t notice it, but the rest of you do. I looked fondly at the now-familiar faces of the crew – Vinny the clapperboard loader, Bob the standby plasterer, or was it Don? It was too late, now, to find out. Rodney, who was wearing too-youthful chinos. I was going to miss them.

  I chatted with Grover’s stand-in, Joseph, a young actor whose father had been a stuntman. By the nature of my job I knew him far better than I knew Grover for we had stood together, chilly and immobile, all over New York, making small talk to each other while the technicalities were interminably adjusted.

  ‘Lila’s right,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t have gotten Mary-Lou together without your help. She was starting to give her real depth, by the end. I saw some rushes last week.’

  I glowed. It’s curious; people don’t tell you things until everything is over. It’s like neighbours only starting to talk to you once your house is up for sale. A film set is like a factory floor; its workers are both busy and yet disengaged. They do their job, they crack jokes, they complain about the bacon but-ties and the traffic jams on the way to work. They clock-watch; they talk about their diets. In America they talk about their diets all the time. The one thing they never talk about is the film. Those conversations took place long before, during script conferences with the writer and Perrier-drenched lunches with the actors. Most of the film crew haven’t even read the script, except the parts that concern them.

  And then, some time before it’s over, they all start talking about their next project; what film, what star. They talk about it with more interest, and in much greater detail, than they ever talked about the movie they happen to be making. Kelly was flying to Europe to work on some Scorsese picture. Rodney was going to work on a TV series called The Menoporsche. It was about a Wall Street broker with a mid-life crisis. Rodney’s assistant had gone to do a TV commercial and the next day I was booked on a flight to London.

  In fact, I wasn’t that keen to hurry back. Trev had gone away for a few days; he said his sister was ill, and though such brotherly concern was deeply uncharacteristic I had to believe him. I didn’t really want to return to an empty flat. Nor was there any work in the pipeline. I had phoned Maggie and she’d got nothing for me. As I wandered down to the drive-in movie I thought about Lila’s words. When applied to New York, ‘neat’ was a pitifully impoverished adjective – I pictured my father’s contempt – but she was right, it would be wonderful to stay on for a few more days.

  That’s all I was thinking, idly, as I went into the drive-in movie. I opened the door of a Chevrolet and sat down in the passenger seat. The film had started and various members of the unit lolled around in their automobiles, moaning that they had nobody to neck with. In the doorway stood Irma, her face rapt and illuminated as she gazed at the screen. She wore a black dress with a white lacy collar, like a nun; she watched her beloved Lila as if she were undergoing a religious experience. It was pathetic, the way she worshipped Lila. I knew she distrusted me, and I certainly distrusted her. She hadn’t spoken a word to me during the entire shoot. She was jealous, that was why.

  I had seen Smackeroos before, on TV. It was not one of Lila’s more distinguished efforts. Under the sixties flick-ups she pouted and simpered. In those days she was just a starlet.

  Just then the real Lila came in and climbed into the neighbouring convertible with Roly, her agent.

  Staring at herself on the screen she said, ‘Holy shit, take a look at that hair!’

  ‘We’re not taking Orson,’ said Roly. ‘I’ll get an asthma attack. Why does he always want to sit on my lap? The damn dog’s got some sort of radar.’

  Lila was watching the movie. ‘Eek! I look like Sandra Dee!’

  ‘Sweetheart,’ said Roly, ‘just leave him in New York. Your maid can look after him.’

  Lila was next to me, in the driving seat of her car. I watched her younger self, squeaky-clean in a summer dress, running through a meadow while banknotes fluttered from her handbag.

  ‘I remember that!’ said Lila. ‘I had these menstrual cramps. I was blown up like a frigging balloon.’

  I yawned. Catch Lila thinking I was engrossed in her old film. I lifted my wrist, in the darkness, and looked at my watch. Tomorrow night I would be whole again, sleeping in my own bed.

  Lila was talking to Roly. He replied; I couldn’t hear what he said. Then she turned to me, gripping the rim of my door.

  ‘Hey Jules!’ she said. ‘I have a proposition for you.’

  At first I didn’t take it in. She said something about flying to LA the next day, she was going with Irma and Roly. Why didn’t I take another week in New York, do some shopping, see some shows? I could check out of my hotel and move into her apartment.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Stay in my place for a week. You’d be doing me a favour. See, I don’t trust my maid to look after Orson. And he gets kind of lonely at nights.’

  I sat very still. Up on the screen the celluloid Lila sat at a kitchen table, counting a mountain of banknotes. ‘Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy,’ she gasped.

  I turned to Lila. ‘Say that again?’ I asked.

  Seven

  THE NEXT MORNING I checked out of my hotel and took a cab up to Central Park West. Lila had already left for Los Angeles. It was a wonderfully sharp, sunny day; the air hissed into my lungs. I knew her apartment building, of course; I didn’t need her instructions on how to get there. Weeks before I had found out her address; I had sneaked a look at the casting assistant’s file. Since then, many of my midnight walks had drawn me, magnet-like, in that direction. I haven’t told you about those walks, have I? I used to vary the route. I consulted my map and took different streets to keep myself stimulated and delay the climax of arrival. Sometimes I walked up Madison, past the Ralph Lauren mansion where she and I had browsed amongst the sweaters. From there I would cross Central Park, fast, avoiding the shadows moving behind the trees. Sometimes I cut diagonally along Broadway, that junk-filled arterial vein, jostled by panhandlers and teenage runaways who loitered under signs blazing Hot Male Sex Acts.

  Then I would cross Columbus Circle and walk up Central Park West, until her building hove into sight. Sometimes, on purpose, I would delay looking up. I would pause and pretend I wasn’t interested. I would watch the passing taxi-cabs bouncing down the street – all the traffic boun
ces, in New York, there are so many potholes. Then I would look up, slowly, to the top floor of her apartment building, the penthouse floor, and see if her lights were on. There was a row of windows up there – tiny glowing rectangles. I came to know every combination of light and dark windows, a geometric puzzle whose clues were locked into her evening’s unknown activities. Once I brought along my binoculars. (I’d stolen them, in fact; I didn’t tell you that either. I stole them from a store on 47th Street, from under the nose of the assistant.) Once I brought along my binoculars and saw a tiny figure emerge from her balcony. I saw the blonde hair. My heart thumped, as it had thumped long ago when I had watched Dawn in that wine bar.

  Sometimes I went right up to her building, which was a few blocks from the Dakota. It faced the park. I paused under the canopy and gazed into its lobby. It was vast, with red lacquer walls and a lot of mirrors. There were armchairs and lamps, and vases containing Japanese arrangements of tortured, polished branches. There was a desk and two doormen, and a sign saying ‘All Visitors must be Announced’. I had gazed through the glass, into the theatre for which I had no ticket.

  Today, however, I was admitted. One of the doormen gave me an envelope with the keys inside. The other carried my bags to the elevator.

  I thanked him coolly. ‘I can manage from here, thanks.’

  I was already becoming a different person, rich and blasé. Stepping into that elevator I felt my metamorphosis begin; it was like stepping into my bronze dress. Stock Liquidation, say the signs all over New York. New Season’s Stock Arriving. Old buildings disappear overnight and new ones rise up in a matter of weeks; the city makes amnesiacs of its population, nobody can remember what anything was like before. On the 31st floor the doors slid open silkily and I emerged a new woman.

  Fidelia, the maid, opened the door. She was small and Spanish. Orson snapped at my ankles; he and I disliked each other on sight, and it was a mutual feeling that intensified during my stay.