The Body Double

by Emily Beyda

  “Now that you’ve been going out in public,” he says, “people have started asking questions. I’ll make sure you don’t have to talk to anyone who isn’t important, but there are a few relationships I need you to prioritize. If you receive a message, it means that person has your new number, and if they have your new number it’s because I think it’s essential that you participate in a conversation. Pay attention, Rosanna. I need you to remember this.”

  “I know,” I say. “I will.”

  He doesn’t notice that he has called me her name. Inside me something feels like it’s clicking into place. Power. A quiet hum.

  “Here,” says Max, moving away from me.

  He comes back with three boxes, phone-book-size binders filled with printouts of what seems like every conversation Rosanna has had in the past two years. I flip through a book from the box at random. Some of the texts are blacked out, so there are odd gaps, chunks of conversations missing, inked-over time stamps and contact names. It feels like I am reading letters sent from the front lines of an incredibly pointless war.

  “Has Rosanna agreed to this?” I ask. “Is she okay with me reading all her texts?

  “Rosanna’s privacy is important,” says Max. “But I want you to understand what she sounds like. I want you to know her voice.”

  Together we read through pages and pages of Rosanna’s old conversations—texts, mostly, but a few phone calls that someone has transcribed, capturing every awkward pause, every sigh, the way that Rosanna often seems to be talking herself toward rationalizing the decisions of the people around her.

  “It’s good,” she’ll say. “I mean, it’s totally fine. I really feel loved. But also singled out, you know? And honestly, he had to lie to me to make this happen.”

  Max is in the listening role.

  “You’re so right,” he says.

  His name has been redacted from the top of the printed screen.

  * * *

  —

  We sit on the floor together and pass pages back and forth. It starts out serious, with Max carefully pointing out the different ways Rosanna uses language. He has me guess what she’s feeling so I can learn her cues, the way she uses a lot of commas when she’s excited (“so basically she emails me, and, I don’t want to make a big deal of it, but, it’s kind of a big deal”), how she never puts a period at the end of anything unless she’s mad (“fine.” “sure.” worst of all, the dreaded “k.”), her surprising enthusiasm for semicolons (“lol; well I gotta go over to George’s house and tell him about the other dude I’m seeing sooo”). I like her. I don’t know why this surprises me, but I do. Rosanna on the phone is different than I expected her to be, different than she is on-screen. Here she feels real. Full of life, effusive sometimes (“honestly I just feel so blessed to have you in my life” shows up a few times, a verbal tic or insincerely copied and pasted?), but also deadpan (“send videos, I beg you”), sarcastic (“It’s raining in Los Angeles, so everyone’s driving about ten miles an hour and I’m pretty sure we’re all gonna die”), shifting moods as she moves from conversation to conversation as lightly as a butterfly. She is quick with a comeback or a snappy response (“God, she has no idea how to even be a person, are we gonna have to Kaspar Hauser a bitch?”). With every piece of information I learn, I feel more and more complete. I feel the version of Rosanna I carry around inside myself slowly coming into focus.

  There’s one subset of texts I find particularly interesting. In them, Rosanna sends messages, usually late at night, usually one at a time, to men whose names are blacked out on the screen. “Hi,” she says, “I was just thinking about you.”

  Or “Heyyyy,” she says, “you up?”

  Sometime she just sends an emoji. They respond with pictures of themselves, shirtless, a protective black line drawn thick over their eyes, everything else exposed. They flirt back, calling her gorgeous, asking her what she’s wearing. When they ask her to come over, though, she doesn’t respond. Max moves quickly through these conversations, but as we read them power tingles in my fingertips. The power of Rosanna’s silences.

  The day passes fast, the sky outside going pink, then dark, the pages in our hands getting harder and harder to read. Max doesn’t switch on the light, and neither do I. Soon it is so dark I cannot see a thing. In the dark room, the light of the phone seems substantial, like a ghostly presence, another living body between Max and me.

  “Okay,” he finally says. “Okay, I think you’re ready.”

  He takes my phone back from me, makes some adjustments. A name pops up on the screen. Marie. I remember her picture from that photo shoot, Rosanna’s best and oldest friend. She is beautiful. I think of the way she must look now, hunched over, waiting, lit blue with the screen’s light. I wonder what she and Rosanna talk about when they’re together. Does she know? Is she in on our little conspiracy, helping Rosanna hide out? I open the message.

  “Hey,” it says, “I’ve heard you’re back. Is it true?”

  I look at Max and speak in Rosanna’s voice. “I’m back!” I say. “Thank goodness; so excited to see you, honestly, you can’t imagine the quality of conversation I’ve had to put up with, save me!”

  Max nods, rewards me with a small smile. I type.

  “Ask her to go on a hike with you,” he says. “She’ll want to see you face-to-face. It’s better if you make the offer.”

  “Not to be too L.A.,” I add, “but, let’s hike soon?”

  Marie writes back quickly. “Of course,” she says.

  Max gives me a tight little smile.

  * * *

  —

  The next afternoon Max takes me downstairs to a car with no driver in it. I’m surprised by the absence—we’ve never been alone together outside of the apartment, and it feels unnatural somehow.

  “This isn’t a Rosanna outing,” he says. “There’s something I want to show you. A corpse flower. It blooms every ten years. And it’s time any day now for it to open. I want us to be there together when it does.”

  It’s strange to be alone in the car, unprotected by the silent presence of the driver. It’s somehow more intimate than being together in the apartment. Such a small space. I find myself fighting the urge to reach over and take his hand, as though we are any two other people, fond of each other, on an excursion, driving through the city alone. Not a Rosanna excursion. So who is this for? For Max? For me? The radio hums quietly. I force myself to look away from him, to look at anything else, the cars outside, sepia and still in the heat, the crumbling purple of the mountains through the tinted glass of the window. I know without him saying it that this is not a place he has taken Rosanna. That this is somehow mine.

  “It’s the most amazing thing,” he says, a little breathless.

  It’s good to hear him talk about something that’s outside us both, which doesn’t concern the project at all. It’s almost as if what passes between is ordinary, a tenderness built on affection and mutual regard. Rather than, well, whatever it actually is. Are we coworkers? Friends? Something stranger, darker than that?

  “What’s it like?” I say, wanting to keep him speaking.

  “Carnivorous. Huge. Taller than you, although, to be fair, you’re not very tall. And the smell is the worst thing you can imagine! There’s a reason they call it the corpse flower, you’ll see, it’s just awful.”

  “Sounds gross,” I say. “Why do you want to see it, again? Can’t we just go to the beach?”

  Part of this is Rosanna, carrying out her friendly, teasing affect, and part of it is me. A strange thawing of the silent place inside where my old self lives. I feel uneasy, a little nauseated. But I don’t know any other way to behave.

  Max laughs. “It’s not gross!” he says. “It’s fascinating. A completely strange thing, totally unique. Almost impossible to find in the wild. One of a kind. A cultivated beauty. Like you.”
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  “Oh,” I say, “enormous and smelly. Now I understand. You really have a type, huh?”

  He laughs, a real laugh, devoid of bitterness. He is the one to reach over and squeeze my hand.

  “But really, though,” I say, “what is it about this flower? Are you interested in flowers in general? Are you secretly some kind of botanist? There’s so much I don’t know about you.”

  I’ve never asked Max about himself before. It didn’t feel right, to intrude into his past, when he never asked me about mine. This is probably because there is no mystery for him; he knows everything he needs to know. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. I am surprised when he answers without hesitating.

  “Nothing like that,” he says. “I didn’t go to college or anything. I’m a hobbyist, I guess. But I was kind of a weird kid. I spent a lot of time alone. We had this neighbor, though, Mrs. Nutting, who had the most incredible garden. When things were strained at home, I used to go over there and just spend hours with her, talking about flowers. She taught me everything she knew.”

  “Do you talk to her now?” I ask.

  He slants his eyes away from me to look back at the road, suddenly uncomfortable, his shoulders inching closer to his ears. “Not really,” he says. “I don’t really talk to anyone. My life is different now. My work—I work a lot. I don’t think there’s anyone who would understand.”

  Max lets go of my hand and reaches over to turn up the volume on the radio. We drive in silence for the rest of the ride, each too embarrassed to speak. We are alike, the two of us. I understand, I think.

  * * *

  —

  At the botanical garden we stand silent in front of the long furled leaf of the flower. He’s right, it’s as tall as I am in my bare feet, and beautiful. Otherworldly, with its strange pale center, the flower unfurling like a spinning dancer’s skirt. No one takes my picture. They seem totally oblivious to my presence. Their focus is on the flower, sitting silent in the humid greenhouse, its leaves stubbornly shut, growing in dark and tender privacy. I had thought this would be a relief, no longer having to feel the pressure of so many strange eyes. Instead it’s unsettling, like walking through a room of friends without being seen. The crowd around us presses close, their bodies warm in the warm air. My hand brushes against Max’s, finger on finger, interlaced, and for a brief moment his hand opens up like the flower is supposed to and his fingers catch on tight to mine. We stand close, protected by the anonymity of the crowd, hand in hand, together, like any two other people, like strangers. For one brief moment, our bodies belong to us.

  “Isn’t it incredible?” Max says.

  His voice is a revelation. Totally sincere. The greenhouse the flower blooms in is small and cramped and full of people, the smell of the flower compounded by the various smells of so many bodies, taking up space, pressing up against me skin to skin. But I do not feel overwhelmed. Max distracts me with his beauty, the naked wonder written on his face.

  “It really is,” I say.

  For the first time, Max leaves me at the curb. He pulls up in front of the house, and at first I don’t know what to do. Does he really want me to go into the building by myself? How will I get into my room? The door, surely, is always locked, even when we’re gone. But Max reaches across me and opens the car door, letting the cold night air rush in, pooling at my feet.

  “Go on,” he says, his voice surprisingly gentle, almost hard to hear over the low radio, classical again, like it was on my first night, our first night together.

  “But how will I get in?” I ask.

  Max smiles. “I trust you. The door’s unlocked.”

  I nod, oddly numb. This should be a relief, Max trusts me now, Rosanna trusts me, the door is, will always be unlocked from now on. But I don’t feel relieved. I feel nervous. He’s abandoning me. The door will always be unlocked, and I will always be inside, vulnerable to whoever comes to find me.

  “Well, okay then,” I say. I feel an odd formality, a distance. A reminder that we are coworkers before anything else. “Good night, Max,” I say. “Tell Rosanna I say hello.”

  I walk by myself up the narrow staircase. I open my own unlocked door. I hesitate in the doorway; there is a new unruly energy in the room, as though someone has been here while Max and I were away. The air feels unfamiliar. Unclean. Of course everything looks the same, the magazines still stacked in the same neat order on the windowsill, dishes piled dirty in the sink. The phone is the only valuable thing I own, and it’s where I left it, sitting on the edge of the table, quiet as a coiled snake. Has Rosanna been here, looking around? The air seems to carry some faint floral perfume, as delicate as green hay. Maybe that’s the perfume Rosanna wears now. I tell myself I am crazy to suspect her. No one has been here, no one even knows this room exists. Still, that night I push a chair in front of my unlockable door. Just in case, I tell myself. Just in case.

  * * *

  —

  The next afternoon the phone buzzes. It’s a text from an unfamiliar number, telling me to come downstairs. Max, I think, dispensing with the small intimacies that tie us to each other already. In the garden alone, there had been such tenderness between us. It makes sense that he would withdraw now, threatened. Trying to make the truth that is building between us disappear. Well, two can play that game. I can make him wait, too. I take my time getting dressed, putting on clothes he doesn’t particularly like, a high-waisted skirt, a turtleneck in olive green that Max thinks washes us out. I go to the kitchen and remove the wad of bills hidden in a jar of kosher salt and tuck it in my purse. Just in case, I think again. It feels good to have another secret to keep, this one all my own.

  I am strangely reluctant to move the chair from in front of the door. I know Max must have been the one to text me, but what if he wasn’t? What if it’s a stranger, waiting outside the door to catch me in the act of emerging into the world disguised as Rosanna, and I am discovered, ruined, worse? I’ve been living in a strange dream. Maybe somebody thinks it’s time for me to wake up.

  The day has a surreal quality to it. The light feels dense, thick with something building, gathering force. And when I open the door of the car, the back seat is empty. Everything else is normal, the air conditioner blowing cold, the quiet murmur of classical music, the outside sepia through tinted windows, the impassive silent back of the driver. But the back seat is empty. I am alone.

  Don’t panic, I think as the driver pulls away from the curb. I force myself to breathe. It is getting harder and harder. This must be a test, some sort of reflection of our closeness the day before, my new open-door privileges, to see if he can trust me to remain calm, greet him appropriately as I meet him wherever he is waiting for me. Max has never told me I’m not allowed to speak to the driver, and so now I do, trying to sound normal. I am normal, I think. I am Rosanna and I am normal and everything is fine.

  “Where’s Max?” I ask.

  I light my phone up in my lap, but there is no word from Max, no sign. I text the unfamiliar number back. “Max, is this your number? Where are you?” I type.

  Nothing.

  The driver doesn’t say anything, either. He clicks on his turn signal, eases us out onto the busy street at the bottom of the hill. It is as though I haven’t said anything at all. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve actually spoken, did I imagine that, too? I don’t know anything about this man. I don’t know if I can trust him. I don’t even know if he’s been the same driver this whole time, I can’t even remember ever looking at his face. The back of his head is anonymously well-groomed, with short hair, no distinguishing marks. He could be anyone. He could be taking me anywhere. My heart speeds up. I try again. “Is he meeting me wherever we’re going?”

  But there is only silence in response.

  It isn’t long before the car pulls up to the curb, packed with the usual crowd of shabby men with expensive cameras, waiting for s
omeone like me to make an appearance. I can see them shift, so close to the windows, circling like a pack of wolves. And no Max. No sign of him at all. Seeming to sense our vulnerability, they move closer until we are hemmed in on all sides. I can hear my name, a murmur low through the glass like cruel laughter: Rosanna, they whisper to one another, like it’s a secret I shouldn’t be told. I am taking too long, I know. I bend over so my head is clamped between my knees and try to steady my breath, to think. How did they know I was coming? It must have been Max. He must know where I am. I try to be comforted by this, but their appearance feels random, like they’re alive to my movements, sensing a shift in trajectory in the same way a flock of birds catches the wind. I think of the great black flocks of starlings settling into the trees outside my grandmother’s house before she died, how in the evening when the sun started to set we would sit out on the porch waiting, scanning the clear sky for black specks, and there would be nothing, nothing until suddenly the air was full of birds, tiny and immense, a swooping parabola of wings, a shadow that widened and collapsed into itself, dipping down, down over the fields and circling the house in a whirl, a funnel, the rush of their chatter, the flap of their wings passing over us, spreading like ink spilled over the still blue page of the sky. Max knows I’m here. He must.

  “Please,” I say, “just tell me where Max is. Just tell me what he wants me to do now, and I’ll do it, please.”

  He’s supposed to protect me. He’s supposed to keep me safe. That’s the deal I’ve made with him, the promise we’ve made to each other, that I will do what he wants me to do and he will keep me safe. The driver still doesn’t answer. The only sound is the low hum of the air conditioning. I am cold and scared and I can see the men outside the car adjusting their cameras around their necks, holding them up, their faces disappearing behind the machines until everything around me becomes flat black glare and reflection, until all I can see is Rosanna’s face, over and over and over, staring back. I kick the back of the driver’s seat just once, trying to get his attention, and then it feels so good that I kick it again and again. I can feel the weight of his back through the seat, and he must feel me, too. It must hurt. But he doesn’t move. He can’t. He is afraid to react in the same way I am afraid to react around Max, to let slip the mask of restrained pleasantness and bare my sharpened teeth.