by Emily Beyda
“What a nice picture,” I say. “They really did a good job.” I try to fill my voice with awe to hide how unsettled I am.
“That’s my girl!” says Max.
He moves closer to me with this weird, awkward jolt. It is strange to have him being the one to touch me. I have always been the one to ask, to reach for him and be denied. Does he move toward me now because I’ve done so well? Because I look like that, like her, because I’ve taken on some small part of her power to bring the things she needs to herself without lifting a finger. For a moment I keep my body stiff, uncertain of what I should do. I haven’t earned this, I think. The closeness, the touch. But still, it feels nice. If he’s pleased with me, she must be pleased, too. She must know I’m doing well.
“Rosanna Steps Out!” the headline reads.
“Read to me,” says Max. His arm is still draped around my shoulders. I am trying hard to act like all this is normal.
“ ‘Rosanna Feld was seen yesterday grabbing lunch in Los Feliz, security in tow.’ Are you this alleged security?” I ask, trying to puncture the tension in my belly with a bad joke. “I better hope nobody tries to assassinate me.”
“Very funny,” says Max. “Keep reading.”
“ ‘The star’s team refused to comment on her time away from the Hollywood scene, saying that rumors about her secret pregnancy and brush with a notorious New York City sex cult are nonsense. Here’s hoping she’s back for good!’ ”
There she is, with her camera smile. There I am. I remember the bright faces of contestants on the television makeover shows I used to watch on those long afternoons home faking sick with my mom, looking in the mirror after their transformation. “Wow,” they would always say, “I can’t believe that’s me.”
“Wow,” I say, “I can’t believe that’s me!”
Max lets me go. “Right,” he says. “Of course it is.”
His whole manner has changed. He looks the way I am used to him looking—kind, professional, a little stiff. Somehow this is a relief.
“Should we look at the rest?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says, and then, seeming to catch himself: “Yes, of course. How exciting!”
But his voice sounds flat. He’s not very good at pretending. I find this comforting. With Max, I will always be able to see what’s coming next.
I pull another magazine from the pile. Max seems to assemble himself as I watch, standing up straighter, smiling. This is good news, after all. He should be happy for me. For us.
“Good choice,” he says. “Go on.”
“ ‘Reclusive heiress Rosanna Feld came out of hiding for a meal at Hollywood hot spot Doppia, where she was often seen with friends, fans, and fiancés in happier times. We’re glad to see her out on the town and back on her feet. Feel better soon, Rosanna!’ ”
“What suck-ups,” says Max, grinning, swept up again in the excitement of our success, “gunning for that first interview. Like Rosanna cares what they think. And fiancés, plural? There was only one, and that didn’t last long. I do like the phrase reclusive heiress, though. Has a certain Gothic ring to it. Another.”
“ ‘Hollywood Heartbreak: Still mourning the loss of her longtime partner, a grief-stricken Rosanna Feld braved the crowds at a restaurant they used to frequent in happier times, before their split and Rosanna’s subsequent disappearance. Hollywood insiders are calling it a hopeful sign that the starlet is finally starting to recover from the devastation of what may have been a miscarriage as well as a breakup. Let’s hope we’ll be seeing more of her signature Euro Chic style on the town soon!’ ”
Max has nothing to say about that one.
We keep going through the stack, magazine after magazine, story after story. Each one has a slightly different theory, a slightly different angle of approach. Some talk about Rosanna like she’s an eccentric loner holed up in the hills or a calculating businesswoman manipulating the laws of supply and demand by withholding herself from the public eye. Some speak about her as if she’s a diva too good for us all or an emotionally fragile sweetheart who’s just taking time for herself. The theories they offer about her disappearance don’t seem plausible to me, and Max of course isn’t saying anything. Maybe what he told me is true. Or maybe she’s just bored by it all, caring for her mental health, on the mend in her mansion in the hills, tucked away watching her new life begin. It becomes less and less strange to look at the images, but still, I mostly keep my eyes focused on the captions. Looking directly into Rosanna’s, my own, face, gives me an uneasy feeling.
“And what does Rosanna think about all this?”
What I really want to ask is what she thinks about me now that she’s been forced to acknowledge the reality of my existence. I wonder how she feels now, wherever she is, looking at those pictures of me. Us, I guess. Watching me take my first steps into her world.
Max flips through another magazine, studiously casual. “Oh, you know how these tabloids are,” he says. “It’s all nonsense. She’s experienced enough not to take any of it personally.”
He knows this isn’t what I mean. My heart sinks. She didn’t like me, then. If she liked me, he would have said.
“Of course,” I say. “A true professional.”
I don’t let my smile shift. I keep my voice calm.
“Like you,” Max says.
“Yeah,” I say, “like me.”
The first thing is to go to the old places, the beautiful places that she, I, haunted before I came, where we were photographed dancing, drinking, buying clothes, eating lunch, kissing strangers.
“You get to go back,” says Max, “live her life again, making the right choices this time. It’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” I say.
It’s not what I want. It’s dangerous, thinking about what I’d change in my previous life. There are too many turning points to pick one moment and say, There—there is where it all went wrong. I imagine Rosanna feels the same.
“Anyway,” says Max, “it’s what’s good for Rosanna. She was alone the first time. But now she has me, watching out for you in a way I could never watch out for her, orchestrating everything carefully so you don’t do anything she shouldn’t. It’s perfect. A balanced and logical system. What I’m offering you is something Rosanna never had. Deliberation. Control. I’m going to help you take her life back for her.”
We’ll make people love her again. We’ll remind them of her. And maybe she’ll see it and be ready to come back into the world. I’ll smooth down the ground before her, make her landing soft. When she returns, it will be to a better, brighter world. All thanks to me. I will take the darkness from her, draw the poison from her blood like a leech. But not yet. Now we are taking things slowly. It is important to take things slowly, Max says, to artificially create the rhythms of ordinary life, building a new reality one day at a time.
“And after that?” I ask.
“After that, maybe she’ll get to go somewhere new. You will.”
I am Rosanna’s reincarnation. My footsteps will cover up her old tracks, obscuring them, keeping her hidden while she still wants to hide.
“But part of this is up to you,” Max says, “a big part. You have to learn to sense her needs. I can’t tell you everything, especially when we’re out in the world together. You have to internalize every part of her personality so you know the things she wants to do but can’t do on her own. So you develop an instinct for how she wants you to live her life.”
I nod, as if I’m considering this for the first time. As if understanding Rosanna in this intimate way, getting under her skin, wasn’t my goal all along. Let Max think this is his idea. That he has control here, too.
I begin meditating for large chunks of the day, trying to feel my way toward Rosanna’s energetic hum. I want to be her avatar, her haunting, her projection. I try not t
o think of her as a person separate from me, as myself as separate from her. Watching the tapes becomes an exercise akin to looking at old yearbooks, seeing that smooth young face, glowing, hopeful, both you and not you, looking out from a past so blurred by distance that it’s almost as though you imagined it. Not that I have any yearbooks. Not that there are any pictures of me where I look like that—beautiful, hopeful. I mostly skipped school on picture days, or hid in the bathroom until it was too late and the photographer had gone home. I changed schools so much that it seemed pointless to create a permanent record of anything, to act as though some kind of continuity existed, could exist, for me. Like the ground was ever steady beneath my feet. It was my way of feeling invisible, and in my invisibility, safe. But I can imagine what it would feel like, and this is it, this strange sensation of lateral movement, of both changing and not changing, holding on to a version of yourself that stopped existing a long time ago. Rosanna, wherever she is, aging in the darkness, nervous and alone, is nothing like the self-assured young woman on the tapes, the woman the public knows her to be. But I am. I am emerging into the world, clear-skinned and beautiful, wearing her old clothes, her old face. I am more like Rosanna than Rosanna is, now.
* * *
—
In the mornings I dress to leave the house, and so the next time the car idles at the curb and Max stands in the doorway of the apartment instead of coming inside and tells me we’re going to lunch again, I am ready, made-up, dressed; my purse, Rosanna’s purse, packed with her lipstick, cigarettes, half-empty wallet; and I stand up from my cross-legged pose, calm, like this is nothing unusual, and walk past him with a smile. She wants a martini today, I think, red meat. I crave gin, the salty tang of green olives stuffed with little slivers of pickled pimiento. I never liked olives before. Carrying Rosanna is like a strange pregnancy, bringing an onslaught of urgent new needs, cravings I never would have come up with myself.
“Today,” I say, “Rosanna wants a martini for lunch. Somewhere pretty, with white tablecloths.”
“Right,” says Max. “The Chateau it is.”
He takes my arm and leads me out the door. The air outside feels sharp against my skin, but I don’t flinch, I welcome the feeling now. I love it. With Max beside me, Rosanna within, everywhere feels like home.
* * *
—
We drive to an old hotel in the hills where fountains drip in silent courtyards and climbing vines choke the wavy glass windows. There’s a no-phone rule in the dining room, so I can relax my public smile and spend a slim half hour hunched conspiratorially with Max in the back booth, making bets as to who will pretend not to look at us next.
“Over there,” I say, discreetly angling my chin toward a studiously underdressed couple in expensively minimal athletic gear. “They’re definitely noticing.”
“Well done!” says Max.
He picks out less obvious gawkers: the preppy family in matching navy blue and white outfits; a smooth-faced older man in a perfectly cut gray suit.
By the time we leave, a crowd of paparazzi stands outside, waiting to capture me climbing into the waiting car. A few of their faces seem familiar, maybe from the other day, the other lunch. It’s sort of comforting, like going to a party where you don’t know a soul and being surprised by an old acquaintance, a neighbor’s daughter, someone you were distantly friendly with at school. I take this as a good sign. They are coming back for more. I give one of the familiar ones a conspiratorial little wave. When we get back to the apartment, the photo’s already up online. Max shows it to me on his phone: “Rosanna Gets Flirty with the Paps,” the headline says.
“Don’t do that again,” says Max. “It’s too desperate. Not a good look.”
I won’t.
* * *
—
The next time we leave, it is to drive together down the hill to an outdoor market in what looks like it might be downtown. The streets are filled with a crush of strangers smiling into the air at nothing in particular, baskets and babies in their arms, their tranquillity unaffected by the cars rushing past, so close, the smell of gasoline and burned rubber giving the hot air an acerbic edge I can feel pressing against my teeth. I look for the Hollywood Sign in the hills above us. I haven’t seen it yet. As is true of many things, part of me is wondering whether it even exists.
Max and I smile back at all the strangers. We eat raspberries out of the carton, rifle through rainbow stacks of leafy vegetables whose names I don’t know. He buys me a bouquet of lilacs that scratch my arms, a small jar of buckwheat honey. I don’t want any of it, but it feels good to be out in the world together, free. Someone takes a picture of us on their cell phone. In it, I am looking up at Max and smiling. “Rosanna’s Forbidden Romance?” the headline says.
Max sighs. “You can’t look at me like that.”
“Whatever,” I say. “It’s like you said. They just need something to write about. People look at each other. It’s not a big deal.”
But my heart speeds up a little. Now Max is the one to hold the magazine close to his face, to press his fingers down hard on the glossy image, as if that would be enough to erase it. He says he will find me a new companion. It looks strange, he says, the two of us spending so much time alone. But days pass, weeks, and he doesn’t find anyone else for me. I tell myself it is because he doesn’t want to.
* * *
—
Max has a present for me. I am in my apartment. The light outside is the same light it always is: a clear, flat, seasonless gray. I am sitting on the couch with my magazines, not reading. I don’t read anymore. I remember. I know every word of every article, the specific details of Rosanna’s weight-loss tips, fashion tips, makeup tips, tips for interior design.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I don’t want a present—the room is overcrowded already with the photographs, clothing, magazines. I feel hemmed in by objects. Is this how Rosanna feels? But Max has been so nice, so considerate about getting me out of the house every day, taking me beautiful places. So I mirror the expression on his face. I am expectant. I am pleased. I close my eyes. He places something small and smooth in my hand.
“Open your eyes,” says Max. “Open your hands.”
I do. I look into my palm. A phone. He is still looking down at me.
“Thank you,” I say, neutral, pleased. “That’s nice. Is it Rosanna’s?”
It’s an older model, a little worse for wear, the edges battered, one corner of the screen cracked like a spider web, both more and less than I expected somehow. I think about my mother’s phone, which I had been so impressed by when I was little. If I was good, if I promised not to show Dad, she let me play games on it. A black-and-white pixelated screen where a snake chased its own tail, getting longer and longer until it grew too long to sustain itself and the screen went blank. But I don’t want to think about that old phone, that old life. I don’t want to think about the people I might call, the possibility of a secret life it represents. I don’t want to think about how Max is handing me the key to a door I am no longer sure I want to unlock.
“Thank you,” I say.
He’s still looking at me expectantly, smiling wide, eyebrows raised. Clearly this is important to him in a way I don’t yet understand. I try doing what Rosanna would do, making a joke. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll run up a bill making personal calls?” I say. “Drunk-dial my old boyfriends? Order a hundred pizzas sent to your house?”
“You can’t,” he says. “You don’t have anyone to call.”
He’s still smiling. But it’s not a joke. His face has snapped shut, a cruel heat coming into his eyes. He wants to remind me that I am not, that I have never been loved. As if I could forget. I could say the same thing about you, I think. We look away from each other, mutually embarrassed. Max clears his throat. His voice, when it emerges, is businesslike, flattened out.
&
nbsp; “I’ve logged into Rosanna’s account on both this phone and mine, so all the texts you’ll receive will also go to me. All other functionality has been suspended. There is no internet browser, just an email application. I’ll read the message, and we’ll decide together how you should respond. If I’m not in the room with you, I’ll need you to send me your responses before you reply. Read receipts are on, so I’ll see when you open your texts. You need to open and read all texts within five minutes, respond in ten, no matter how late it is. Keep the phone charged, the volume on. It’s important that you don’t keep anyone important waiting. If you do not respond, there will be consequences.”
I don’t care. I don’t care about his limits. The important thing is that I have some way of getting in touch with the outside world. There is always a way around these things. I can call the police, remove the SIM card. The door is open now. Now it is my choice not to walk through. I sit up a little straighter. I look Max in the eyes.