by Emily Beyda
* * *
—
On the fourth day, restless, I finally gather enough courage to take a walk. I know that Max could still come back at any moment, that the neighborhood outside is still as forbidding and unfamiliar as it always was, but surely a quick stroll up and down the hill, just once, won’t hurt. The small room is becoming cramped with my smells, a staleness that I can guess at, rather than sense. All morning I have sat by the window with the sun on my face and practiced with the flash cards Max left. I know them all, or at least I am close. I can match the pictures of the executives, makeup artists, friends, to each of their names and the snippets of stories Rosanna likes to tell about them. I can see an icy blonde and think Marie, Rosanna’s oldest friend, who grew up alongside her attending the best all-girls schools and commiserating about their equally famous and emotionally neglectful parents, sitting on the back patio of Les Deux drinking French 75s, the night she almost got arrested for letting a vial of cocaine drop from the front pocket of her Dior saddlebag in front of three mounted police on Melrose. I’ll see a handsome man with a blunt-edged face and think Leo, remember contract negotiations, a long awkward lunch where we ate oysters and he was overly pushy about picking up the check, that lingering hug. I can picture Ron swimming in his tank, the bright flash of fins. I know it all by now. When Max comes back, if he comes back, I will show him how hard I am working, how I am piecing all the fragments he has left me into a mosaic, a fractured image of the woman I am here to impersonate. He will see how hard I’ve been working, how seriously I’m taking this job. Surely my hard work has earned me a little time outside?
I press the cards into a neat stack. I stand up. Just ten minutes, I think. For ten minutes, I will walk up the hill, let the sun shine warm on my upturned face. I scrawl “Out for a walk” on the back of a magazine subscription postcard. Just for fun, I try to match my handwriting to Rosanna’s neatly sloping letters. I’m good at forging signatures—my mother’s, my doctors’, my teachers’. And now Rosanna’s. It’s not perfect, but it’s close, sharing that same slanted narrowness, the letters leaning forward as if they’re pushing against a strong wind. I prop the card up on the table where Max can’t miss it. I’m feeling better now, full of the energy that comes with making a choice, and part of me almost hopes that Max comes while I’m gone so he can wait for me like I’ve waited for him. So I can give him a small taste of how terrible waiting feels.
I wish I had something to cover myself up with, sunglasses, at least, or a scarf I could wrap around my snarled hair. Max hasn’t left me a hairbrush, and there’s only so much damage control finger combing can do. But there is nothing I can use here, no way of concealing my face. I decide that’s okay. There isn’t any great mystery about a woman who maybe, if you squint hard, looks a little like another, famous woman, going for an afternoon walk in her slightly grimy designer sweats. I reach the door, put my hand on the knob, and remember that I have no shoes. Disappointment breaks inside me like an egg, and I try to reassure myself. Okay, no shoes. So I won’t walk. Just take one of my magazines down to the courtyard, sit on the fountain and watch the birds. Isn’t that why they picked this place? So I could have some slight distraction? I will go down into the courtyard and sit in the shadows of a bushy palm and watch the parrots return from their excursions into the surrounding hills. I reach out for the knob again and turn. But it doesn’t move. My hand rotates around it, sliding over the cold slickness of the metal, the knob itself remaining maddeningly still. Locked. The door is locked.
A rush of nauseated fear and fury climbs up hot into my throat, pressing close into my lungs, choking me, filling my mouth with bitter spit. I close my eyes, breathe deep. I carefully search for some mechanism to open the door. I unslide the sliding bolt, click the knob back and forth in my hands, telling myself I will not panic, I will not allow myself that luxury, but my heart is speeding up and my breathing is shallow in the top of my chest. I am trapped here. Caged. I think of earthquakes, of fires, of Max forgetting to come back. The drop from the window is long, the building surrounded, moatlike, by a thick gravel belt. How could he do this to me? How could he leave me alone for so long? I picture the damage a fall could do to my body, my face, of movies where prisoners tie sheets together and clamber down vine-covered walls like the walls outside, running like I will run into the hills. But this isn’t a movie. Someone will see the sheet rope, call the cops. The door, when I come back, will lock me out instead of in. If I leave that way, I will not be able to return. If I want to come back, there is no way out but the door. And the door is locked.
I pinch my eyes closed, force myself to breathe. One breath. Another. There has to be a rational explanation for all this, for why Max is staying away so long, for why the door is locked. I think of the money. How much must I have earned already? What’s four days’ worth of a hundred thousand dollars? A little more confinement is a small price to pay for absolute freedom in three years. More money, more freedom than I’ve ever had before. I just have to put up with a few more days in this room, making more money every day, getting paid to do nothing more than lounge around in my pajamas and read magazines, and then Max will come back. He has to. Then I will go out into the world, start living again, enacting Rosanna’s life.
I make myself stop trying to force open the door. Soon the trying will turn to screaming and pounding and I will become my mother, just another crazy woman confronted by a locked door. I tell myself the door is locked because there is nowhere I need to go. I tell myself this is a good thing. I do not need the distraction of the outside world. I don’t know how to approach it yet as Rosanna would, what she would look like going on a walk, how she would greet her neighbors. Surely that’s why Max doesn’t want me to leave. I am learning. I am here to learn. I open the window and lean my head out into the sunshine, force myself to take deep breaths. I tell myself that this is enough.
* * *
—
Max comes by with his arms full of garment bags. It has been almost a week since I saw him. I am not exactly sure how long. That was the first thing to go once I realized the door was locked. My solid sense of time collapsed, the days slipping over one another like waves, each becoming the next becoming the next, an endless liquid spill of hours. And now it’s over. He’s here. Sitting at the window with a stack of magazines, I see the car pull up to the curb, the door open. Max clambers out, lifting bag after bag from the trunk, artless, cumbersome. Anger passes through me, quick and electric, at the sight of him moving with such unconscious freedom through the open air. Does he have any idea what I’ve been through? Sitting here waiting for him, all alone? But I think of the other girls. I think of the money. I breathe. I stand up fast, dizzy from not eating, snatch my note off the table where it has been sitting for days and stick it into the gap between the wall and futon. How long has it been since I showered? I am suddenly aware of how I must smell, how the soft, heavy fabric of my sweat suit clings to my unshaven legs, how my hair is hopelessly tangled with dirt and sweat. There’s no time to fix any of it. A key turns in the lock, and I hop back into the space in front of the window, where I pick up the magazine I was reading, trying to look focused, trying to look relaxed. Like I’m working so hard that I didn’t even notice time passing while he was gone.
“Oh, hello, Max,” I say as the door opens. “How nice of you to stop by!”
I try to keep my voice casual, soft, but it comes out sounding more sarcastic than I intended it to, and he smiles at me, a tight little thing. I wonder if he has just come from Rosanna’s house. Did Rosanna ask about me? What did she say? I wonder if now, as Max looks at me, he is comparing my body to hers. I feel the softness of my upper arms and belly, the sweat smell of my clothes, the million invisible ways in which I am doomed to fail. I want to show Max all the things I have done, how hard I’ve been working without him, but he doesn’t ask. Unceremoniously he drops the bags he is carrying onto the futon.
“A few things from Rosanna,” he says.
“And how is she?” I ask.
“Well,” says Max, “she’s perfectly fine.”
This can’t be true. If it were, I wouldn’t be here. But at least it means there’s nothing wrong. She’s approved of me. She has given Max her clothes. I am the best of all her identical girls.
Max zips open the bags, takes out water-loose swaths of heavy-looking fabrics in dark colors—olive, navy, maroon—plain shades and stripes. He moves with compact efficiency, not looking at me, not talking, body anxious and stiff. The air in the room changes, becomes heavy with her smell. It’s warm, like Max’s smell is warm, tuberose and musk and amber, the dank undertone of sweat, something intimate and human, evoking a body, a faint note of cigarettes. Does Rosanna smoke? I want to ask Max, but the way he is moving with such minute concentration—straightening each sleeve, brushing the wrinkles from the skirts, pulling on fabric until everything falls straight on the hanger—precludes conversation. I think of my best dress, how proud I was of it. It’s embarrassing to remember it now, looking at all these fine things. I picture it, the dirty lace, the cheap sheen of the plastic fabric, the imprecise stitching at the hemline and neck. How could I ever have thought it was beautiful?
When all of Rosanna’s clothes are on the rack, Max stands still in front of it, one hand on the sleeve of a long black coat I recognize from Rosanna’s cover of Vanity Fair, where she wore it tied loose over black lace underpants, a leather bustier, her eyes heavy on the camera, as if she was making an accusation.
“Max,” I say finally, “what do you want me to try on first?”
For a fraction of a second, he looks at me like he has no idea who I am, his eyes unfocused and wild, but the moment passes quickly and he smiles at me again, that same tight, professional smile. I wonder if I’m imagining things.
“Why don’t you pick?” he says, his voice even. “I’m interested in seeing where your sartorial instincts lead, now that you’ve had a few days with the magazines.”
I leaf through the rack and pick out a long white silk dress. I hold it up to my body. I recognize it from a red-carpet shoot Rosanna did with the blond woman from the flash cards, Marie, the two of them in coordinated shades of white, each a perfect mirror of the other, beautiful, elegant, impossibly slender. I could only dream of ever looking like that. But the fabric slips smooth and cold over the bare skin of my arms, and for a moment I believe I deserve to wear it. It is the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.
“How about this?” I ask. “Fancy, right?”
I can’t help but notice that Max still isn’t looking at me, not really. Maybe there’s another girl he liked better. Maybe it makes him angry to have to consider my less-than-perfect face. But Rosanna has chosen me. There’s nothing he can do about it now.
“No,” says Max. “Not that one. Although I admire your ambition. Let’s start slow.”
He takes a short striped dress from the rack, draping the shoulders over my shoulders, laying the arms flat along my arms. With the back of his hand, he smooths the fabric down into place so it clings tight to my body, his hand circling my waist. He still won’t look me in the eyes.
“Try this on,” he says, and turns away to give me some small measure of privacy.
The room is small. It has always been small, growing smaller over the past few days (weeks?) of loneliness, when it was just me, pacing back and forth across the worn beige pile of the carpet, waiting for something, anything, to happen. But I have never felt the smallness the way I feel it now. Max is so close that if I move my arms the wrong way, taking off my dress, I will touch him. Can he see the shape of my body, warped, wavering, reflected in the green glass of the window? I wonder if he will see me, dimly mirrored. I wonder what he will think when he does. But I don’t want to go to the bathroom to change. This is my space now. I have the power here, not Max. Rosanna has chosen me, and even if he doesn’t approve, he has to adjust. From now on, we will work together. I close my eyes. I take off my sweat suit, place it folded on the couch. The air of the room is cold on my bare skin. The air of the room is full of her. I pull her dress down over my eyes, the fabric falling heavy on my skin. Her smell, too, clings to me. I am almost afraid to breathe, like I will breathe it in and waste it, another small part of her gone, but I also want to breathe and breathe and breathe, swallow up as much of her as I can, so that her smell becomes my smell, her body mine. So Max will look at me again and know that she has made the right choice.
“Okay,” I say, “I’m ready.”
Max turns around. His gaze sifts over my body. I can see him noticing my hairy legs, the cracked nail polish on my toes, the line of the dress, how it hangs slightly crooked, too tight, uneven at my knees. How all of me, every inch, is wrong. He looks at me like he hates me. Like this is somehow my fault, when he’s the one who picked the dress, brought the clothes. When he’s the one who brought me here. If I’m not good enough, it’s his mistake, not mine.
“Take it off,” he says. An afterthought. “Please.”
“But I—”
“Please take off her dress.”
“But don’t you—”
“Take it off, take it off now.”
His voice stays low, tight, controlled, as clenched as his clenched fists. I keep my gaze locked on his, pull the dress up over my head, hand it to him. If this is how you want it, I think, fine. But he doesn’t blink, doesn’t even look down toward my body. I am nothing to him, not even a body, less than that. He snatches the dress from my hands. He unclenches his hands. He strokes the fabric slowly, smoothing out the wrinkles he has made.
“Shit,” he says under his breath.
I stand with him in silence, so close I can smell the expensively medicinal scent of his cologne, bergamot and clove, the damp wool of his suit. It must be a cold day. I lift my hand and hold it just above the center of his back, an inch from his body, the same way he, his movements slowing and then coming to a stop, is holding his hand over Rosanna’s dress. We stand there together for a long time, his cold scent in the air mingling with her warmth, the cold air of the room raising goose bumps on my bare skin.
Finally he turns.
“I have to go,” he says. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I need to go back to the house for a while, to get the right clothes for you. Get dressed, I’ll be back soon.”
He’s going back to argue with her, I’m sure of it. He’s going to tell her how wrong I looked, wearing her clothes, how I am clumsy and filthy and hopelessly not right. I want to speak, but I can’t make the words break through the hard knot of shame blocking my throat. Max slides past me, eyes down, apologetic, without another word. Outside, I can hear the wild parrots cackling, a noise like pinched laughter. I can feel my heart beat, slow and heavy, in the center of my chest. The door shuts with a terse finality. The click of a lock sliding into place.
* * *
—
I push down the quick rush of panic. I tell myself that this time it’s different. That he’s just going to her house, she lives right by me. Soon he’ll be back with more clothes, a stern admonition not to undercut her authority. I tell myself I’m glad to be alone again. Or not alone—with Rosanna. I will practice even more, try even harder to prove myself worthy of her. When Max returns, he will see that she was right all along.
I stand close to Rosanna’s clothes, running my fingers up and down the length of the fabrics, lifting them in my hands. They feel heavy and smooth, expensive. They have the substantial realness of real things, living things. I am almost afraid to touch them. I pick out a silk tunic whose light gray fabric slips through my fingers like water, leather leggings, a pair of leopard-print booties with red soles. I try not to think about how much each piece must have cost. Rosanna doesn’t have to think about things like that. If I’m going to act like her, I have to learn to think like her. To for
get how expensive her world is.
I try it now, imagining. I picture the Rosanna in the magazines, the casualness of her, the carefree grace. I want to dress like that. I put the first clothes I picked to one side; they’re too much, I’m trying too hard. Instead, I pick out dark-washed blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a heavy knit gray sweater, ballet flats, all thick and supple with the fineness of well-made objects. These are my clothes. I bought them with my own money. Money means nothing to me. I can do whatever I please with them. They are mine. They belong to me. Anything I want, I can own. Anything I look at, I can possess. I have nothing to worry about. Worry is a concept I do not understand. These are my things. These are the things I deserve. I can do whatever I want with them. I can do whatever I want.
Naked, I rifle through the bag of shapewear that hangs at the end of the rack, picking out a pair of control-top tights, an elastic corset, a push-up bra. I have hated my body for years. I know what to do. I slide the tights on over my thighs, wiggling when they stick, until they cover my body as tightly as a second skin. I suck in my gut, clip on the corset, push myself over the padding of the bra. When I put on the shirt, it floats over my newly defined waist, skimming against my skin at the nipples and hips like a bird landing on the surface of still water. In the tiny bathroom I stand close to the mirror, breathing through my nose so I won’t fog it up. Up close, my face is an alien planet, the texture of my skin uneven, pitted like rained-on soil.