by Emily Beyda
A job. Again that quick fluttering, hope. A dangerous feeling. I push it down.
“I already have a job,” I say. “I work here. I don’t need another job.”
“Yes,” says Max gently, reaching forward to take my hands in his. I want to wriggle away from him, but his palms are soft, his grasp gentle. I find that I don’t mind it as much as I normally would. “You do have a job. But this is something much more important. This is a calling.”
His eyes are locked on mine again, liquid with sincerity. A calling, I think. Religious. Okay. Not porn.
He turns to Scott, smiling. “Scott,” he says, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step out. What we have to discuss is extremely sensitive. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course,” says Scott, but he looks annoyed.
I can sense him in my peripheral vision, trying to catch my eye, get me back on his side, but I won’t look away from Max. This is between us now. It’s been between us all along. The thin door shuts with a quiet click. We sit together in the dark for a moment, listening to the silence as Scott stands outside, waiting to see if we’ll start talking, and then, after a few beats, to the clap of his descending footsteps. We smile at each other. I imagine Scott pacing in the lobby, back and forth before the dimmed lights of the candy display, wondering what is happening above his head. Max seems to be waiting for something else. Another sign. I want to reassure him, but I don’t know what he needs me to say. He folds and unfolds his hands. Are they shaking slightly, as mine are, or is it just a trick of the low light? He looks once, twice, at the door. He leans back in the chair. He looks away. He begins.
“Do you know of a woman named Rosanna Feld?”
His voice has a forced lightness. He has folded his hands back together and seems to be fighting to keep himself from fidgeting. His energy has shifted palpably, the tension returned to his frame. There is a new slipperiness to the way he sits, as though if I say the wrong thing he will leap up out of his chair and flee. For some reason, this question is more important than he can say. I wait to see if he will keep talking. He doesn’t. He seems to be holding his breath.
“Yes,” I say carefully. “I think so.”
I remember her face on the shiny plastic display panels of the makeup section of the drugstore near our school, where I would go, cutting class, to wander up and down the aisles until the coast was clear and I could hide out back home. I remember her slick wide lips, her head tossed back in a perpetual silent laugh, her eyes too wide, too many rows of thick black fur-like lashes, the eyes themselves hidden and dimmed. I remember sliding a tube of the mascara she advertised out of the narrow slot where it waited, the next tube clicking into place, the slippery feeling of the plastic, tender against tender skin when I slipped it into my sleeve, the ache of acquisition. But what she was famous for, what she has become since, I am unable to guess. I know her only for that one frozen image of her face. I hope that this will be enough. Max is still waiting for me to speak.
“There was a time in my life when she was very important to me,” I say.
I have said the right thing. Max’s face smooths out. He sits still. He unclasps his tightly clenched hands.
“Good,” he says quietly, almost to himself.
“So is that what this is about? Does she need an assistant or something?”
Not as good as a star, but still something. I can do that. I can be useful. I can assist.
“No,” Max says. “It’s a little more complex than that.”
The mysterious weakness that was there before has fallen away. Somehow, I have given him whatever it was he wanted.
He pulls out a stack of papers from a briefcase that I hadn’t noticed hidden beneath the desk. “Before we discuss the job, I need you to sign this,” he says. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious. It just says that you can’t disclose anything we say in this meeting. That everything I’m about to tell you stays between us.”
This seems reasonable. I sign.
“Rosanna,” Max says, “is looking for a double.”
* * *
—
Rosanna leads a busy life, Max says. She does not want to do everything herself. She wants me to do some of the things she has to do for her. To take her place. He is businesslike as he ticks through a list of obligations, perks.
“We will lend you Rosanna’s likeness,” he says. “You’re already close—the closest we’ve seen yet. We have been looking for some time. Ever since…well, we don’t like to talk about it, we managed to keep it from the press, but you’ve already signed the NDA, so I’ll tell you. If you mention this to anyone else, there will be severe consequences. For Rosanna. For me. Possibly for you as well.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, “I won’t tell anyone.”
I notice that my voice is softer, lower than it was when I was speaking to Scott. I want to reassure this man. I want to make him like me. He rewards me with a beat of eye contact, a tight little smile. I have the strange urge to reach across the desk and squeeze his hand like he squeezed mine earlier, reassuring me. I want to touch him. To tell him everything will be all right.
“Besides,” I say, “this is all so strange that no one would believe me anyway.”
This gets another smile, a longer one. “You’re right,” he says. “They wouldn’t.”
“So why now?” I ask. “What’s changed?”
He sighs, finally looks away. “This is the part you really can’t tell anyone.”
“Of course not,” I say. “You can trust me. I promise.”
“I know I can,” he says, as if to himself. “I know.”
He takes a deep breath. He begins.
“A while ago, Rosanna had a nervous breakdown. And everything changed. She’s too sensitive, too fragile to live the kind of life she used to live. She has always had a hard time with some of the small demands of her life in Los Angeles. Social engagements, work—it’s all hard for her. But now it has become impossible. She’s afraid to even leave the house. And her brand is suffering: she’s losing endorsement deals; the sales are dropping on her makeup line, her athletic gear. It’s hard to sell an aspirational lifestyle when you’re not being photographed, giving interviews, keeping your name in people’s thoughts. I’ve waited, we’ve all waited, for her to recover. But she can’t. Not without the help of someone like you. She needs someone to pick up the slack, to take care of the things she can’t, make sure the money keeps coming in until she’s back on her feet and out in the world again. And it’s you. She needs you. You have Rosanna’s face. The face Rosanna needs.”
His voice goes thin here, so fragile it seems as though it will break. I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.
Max looks back to me again, his face wide open and vulnerable, eyes locked on mine. “Please say you’ll help her,” he says. “Please.”
What else is there for me to do? To stay here, living in the buttermilk-smelling basement of my former foster mother’s ranch house, paying her in cash, watching her get more and more annoyed with every day that passes? To keep working this pointless job, getting older and older and sadder and sadder until I transform into a female Scott? To keep visiting my mother’s grave, spending every night at work or alone? When Max is holding a whole new world in front of my eyes, a world where I will be indispensable, valued. No, there is nothing for me here.
I nod. “Of course I will,” I say.
A flash of relief, and then a protective shell seems to click over that vulnerable face. Max nods once, suddenly all business.
“Okay,” he says. “Good. This is what I need you to do.”
Max will get someone to pack up my things, drop them off at the Goodwill. I will tell my former foster mother that I am moving out, give her the cash Max will give me to cover my rent through the end of the month. She will not be sorry to see me go. I will take a l
eave of absence from the community college. I will claim a family emergency, a sick aunt. No one will care enough to check. After a while, they will forget that I was ever there at all.
“People drop out of college all the time,” says Max. “And you’re only taking one class this semester anyway. If you want to keep painting, learning about art, we can get you supplies in Los Angeles. A private tutor. Whatever you need.”
I do not ask how he knows which classes I’m taking. I find it reassuring that he knows all this about me, that he has done his research. He knows who I am. And he wants me anyway.
“That won’t be necessary,” I say.
I want him to think me easy, amenable. He has showed me a glimpse of a bright light, opened an aperture into the stifling confinement of my small life. I want to take his hand and let him lead me into the shining unknown.
Max will take me with him to Los Angeles, give me an apartment, pay my rent. The first year, they will pay me a hundred thousand dollars. The next year, if I do well, more. More and more in the years after that.
“And how much will Scott get,” I ask, “as a finder’s fee?”
A small smile cracks Max’s face. “Five thousand.”
I feel a smug little jolt of power. We’ll see who’s smart, I think. We’ll see who’s in charge now. “Can you make it ten?” I say. I gesture at the walls. “He could probably use a few more posters.”
“For you,” says Max, “anything.”
The first contract will be for three years, extendable upon the agreement of both parties. They can fire me if they need to, but I cannot break the contract before then. The money will be collected in a Swiss account under a limited liability company Max has set up for me under a false name. Tax-free. Compound interest. I will have no expenses during my time on the job. They will provide me with food, housing, any little thing I want. I will be taken care of, cosseted like a privileged child. The money will be ready for me when I leave. When I leave, they will provide me with a visa to any country in the world, anywhere I want to go. Anywhere but here.
“You could buy an apartment in Paris!” Max says. “Look out your window at the Eiffel Tower. Or Florence, a villa outside the city where you’ll eat pasta and spend your afternoons drawing under the olive trees. Think of it, the European countryside! A new life, totally on your own terms.”
When my time as Rosanna ends, I will be asked to change my appearance to the point that I do not resemble her. She will own my old face as well as her own. My appearance will become her legal property. I will agree never to speak to anyone from my old life again, never to get back in touch with my distant family. I will let the few acquaintances I have here lapse.
Max must have seen me hesitate. “Will that be a problem?” he asks.
I think of my grandmother, long dead, of the scattering of cousins killed overseas or floated away to other lives in other towns, people I haven’t seen in years. Of the friends I never had.
“No,” I say. “I guess not.”
I will never again return to this place. I will never again be called by my old name. In Los Angeles, I will be Rosanna. And when I leave, I can be anyone I want. I can pick a new name, a name without a past. Any name but my own.
Max puts the contract on the desk, turns back to the page with an empty space on it, waiting for my name. He comes around the desk, sits close beside me. I can feel the light pressure of his knee on my knee, his arm brushing mine. The warmth of him. I am surprised again that his touch does not disgust me, that I do not want to move away. He lets his hand linger as he gives me the pen, heavy and black and rimmed around the cap with gold. A beautiful object. Mine, if I want it. Max would give me anything I asked for now.
“Take all the time you need,” he says. “But don’t disappoint me. You know you are the only one who can do this. Rosanna needs you. I need you. Please.”
I take the pen. I close my eyes. I think of my life here, of the dirty carpet in the basement, the hours of bad television, my stupid job. I think of my few almost friends, of the silent scraps of my family that remain out there somewhere, far from me. I picture myself three years from now, once all this is over, sipping champagne on a terrace somewhere, a sketchbook on my lap. A mysterious woman. A woman with a past. I slide the contract toward me. I look at Max. Max looks at me. I sign.
The plane is small, and I am the only one in it. They have taken away my phone, so I cannot tell how much time is passing. No one talks to me during the flight. I sit. I try to read the stack of gossip magazines someone has left tucked into the seat in front of me, all of them featuring articles about Rosanna, but the words swim. I drink the sweet champagne they bring me in tiny plastic cups, ignore the food. My old life already seems so far away. Last night I was sitting on the carpet of the empty basement, listening to my former foster mother watching TV upstairs, drinking the last of the beer from the mini fridge, thinking about calling someone, anyone really. Not telling them I was leaving, just grabbing drinks, being outside somewhere, with the people I cared about, secretly saying goodbye. But there was no one I wanted to call. I sat there and listened to the mutter of the television. I closed my eyes. I imagined my new life. Soon, I thought, I will be on the other side of that screen. And now I am here. I have never drunk champagne before. I have never been on a plane. I try to picture how the basement, the house, the theater, my whole town would look from up here. A fading speck of dirty earth. Nothing more significant than that.
I try to identify when we leave one state, enter another, where the borders are, the lines that separate one place from the next. But it is impossible to tell. Outside is mostly cloud anyway, a blank white screen I cannot see through, even when I strain my eyes trying to distinguish the vague shapes of the country passing below. I try to guess when we are over Arizona, where my father is presumably still in prison. It was a life sentence, but who knows? We haven’t spoken in years. Now we will never speak again. I wonder if I will miss him. If I will regret this. No, I tell myself, I won’t. Outside the window, the landscape slides by fast. I picture the shadow of the plane passing over it, darkening the mountains beneath, sliding over the land like some enormous deep-sea fish, leaving a rippling wake of light behind.
* * *
—
Los Angeles sneaks up on you. One minute you’re above the vast splendid deserts of the south, and everything is gaping canyons, red earth, pink light, the landscape glowing as the plane passes silent overhead. Then dust seems to creep up over the mountains, turning them slowly gray. Everything flattens out. Becomes monotonous. Before you have time to prepare yourself for it, the city is below you, surrounding you, all you can see, endless miles of industrial sprawl, low buildings faded to the same undifferentiated shade of dirty white by decades of year-round sunshine, stretching out pure and uninterrupted to the horizon, skirting the broken-glass glimmer of the sea.
We land with a bump, the plane bouncing off the tarmac with a buoyancy that seems unnatural. I breathe into my abdomen, pushing away the familiar tightenings of an oncoming panic attack. In, out, counting the beats; in, out, in again. The plane comes to a standstill. Breathe in. Outside, the white concrete of the runway shimmers and twists in the dirty heat. Breathe out. Try not to feel the tightness of the walls around me, as plush as a coffin, slick and white. In. A black car, doors opening. Out. Max climbs from the back seat. I watch the way the wind gets its fingers in his hair, tugging at his coat, making the loose legs of his black suit rustle. Something about the shadow of him, dark against the bright bright of concrete and sun, makes my heart turn over in my throat. I do not know this man, I think. I do not know this man. In, I tell myself, out. Breathe.
The stewardess sticks her head around the room divider. “You’re wanted outside,” she says.
I make my way into the wind, waving from the steps of the plane like I’m someone important, a celebrity, a president’s wife, like this is
fun. I force myself to smile. Max squints up at me through the fading sunlight, his expression not changing, tense. Disappointed, I think. He is disappointed in me already, and we haven’t even started yet.
“I’m here!” I say, falsely cheerful. “I made it.”
I make my way down the steps to the idling car, my small bag slung heavy over my shoulder. Now, I think, now he will break the awkward silence. He will tell me he’s glad I’m here, introduce me to the rest of our team. He will take my bag. His face will light up again, with that same excited softness from the theater, that same look of knowing, the two of us together working as one. This time I will understand what he means when he looks at me that way. But instead he nods, tight, swiveling his eyes around as if he is afraid, embarrassed to be seen with me, my rumpled shirt, my stretched-out jeans, his gaze sliding toward the sky, where clouds skitter like frightened sheep. A sign of rain, I would have said, in other places. I should have put on makeup. I should have done something about my hair. I shift my bag from one shoulder to another. Max waves me into the car.
“You did,” he says. An afterthought: “Thank you. I’m glad.”
* * *
—
The apartment they have found for me is far from the airport. As we drive the freeway rises and dips like a wave, so I can see the whole city spread out stucco-pale at my feet, interrupted here and there by startling rows of palm trees, their shredded leaves like the heads of strange creatures peeking over the rooftops. I feel so lonely I can barely breathe. I don’t know what I had expected. Perhaps that Max would greet me at the airport with flowers and a team of personal assistants, everyone telling me how happy they were to see me, that I had made the right choice, that I was exactly what Rosanna had been looking for. Perfect? I thought I would be special here, that Max at least would look at me and seem pleased. Now he sits with the driver in the front seat, far from me, silent. The radio is tuned to a classical station, and underneath everything there is a mutter of brass on brass, the discordant clash of horns like a storm. Inside me everything aches and pulls, my heart beating fast. I try to slow my breathing, close my eyes, but the effort just makes me feel sick. I will not let myself regret this, I think. I won’t.