Pretending to Be Us

by Taylor Holloway

  I could piece together what happened. Lucy, the daughter of immigrants, had ended up as the sole breadwinner for her family. When she told me that she had complicated family issues, this is what she meant. There was no college graduation photo in the album. Come to think of it, there was no high school graduation photo.

  Mark was right. She'd found an opportunity to get a major film role and despite the impossibility of it all, she’d gone all in. Looking around at the house, I understood why. She wanted to help her family.

  In time, the light started to fade. Lucy’s grandmother went inside and came out with an honest-to-God oil lamp. “Ingen elektricitet,” she said apologetically.

  I understood then. No electricity. That’s why we were outside in the first place. It was cooler.

  They had no electricity? Jesus Christ. Austin was one hundred degrees in the shade this time of year. It wasn’t safe not to have electricity in this weather, especially for older people. No wonder Lucy was willing to lie to me. If my grandmother was living without electricity I’d lie too. I mean, my grandmother was dead, but family is important.

  The light was almost completely gone from the sky when a woman with a bag of groceries came limping up the front walk with Lucy. Lucy froze when she saw me. She looked around herself like there might have been a convenient bush to hide behind, but there was nothing. I’d found her and she was going to have to deal with me. I had some things I needed to tell her, and she was going to listen to them. If, after that, she wanted me to leave her alone forever, I would go. But not before.

  The old woman pointed at me and chirped something at Lucy who turned pale and then red. Lucy’s mom and grandmother both started talking over each other.

  “Hi,” I said awkwardly to Lucy as they bickered. “I, um, was wondering if we could talk.”

  31

  Lucy

  “How’d you find me?” I asked Peter. My mom and Mormor went inside but I knew they were listening, so I’d insisted we talk in Peter’s car. Plus, it had air conditioning, and I was hot and tired from the long walk back from the food pantry.

  “It was an adventure,” he said, shaking his head and laughing weakly. “The doorman at Daniel’s place told me.” His expression shifted. “You should know that they’re onto you there. The HOA wants you to stop staying overnight there.”

  I sighed. “What’s new. Everybody’s on to me these days.”

  “So, you don’t live here?” Peter asked.

  I shifted uncomfortably in the cushy, leather seat. “Sometimes I do. If I can’t find another good place to stay. But there’re only two bedrooms here, so I have to sleep on the couch, and as you can see, it’s no palace.”

  I hadn’t wanted Peter to see this place. I liked it better when he thought I was a fancy, refined princess. We weren’t always this poor. There had been some pretty good times when I was a kid. We’d had a normal enough life back then. We even took vacations now and then. But over time, things had just gotten harder and harder. The world got more expensive, but our wages never rose. Mormor’s health got worse. My mom’s back went out, courtesy of working as a nurse assistant and later a teacher’s assistant for many years. Then I had to go and quit my good job at the hospital to try and be an actress.

  Look how that turned out.

  Peter didn’t seem to know what to say. “Your grandmother seems very nice,” he managed eventually.

  I smiled thinly. “She is. She likes you a lot. I’m glad you can’t understand her, because I’m pretty sure she planned our whole wedding this afternoon.” I sighed. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I never wanted to lie to you. But I knew if I told you who I was, I’d lose everything. And now I have.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked beyond me out the window to my house. “I think I understand now why you did it.”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” I said. “I still should have told you.”

  I hung my head. I was glad to have the chance to explain things to him, but I knew this was probably the last time I’d ever see him. At least in real life, that is. I’d still watch his movies. I’d probably cry whenever I watched his movies from now on, but whatever. At least I could still see him.

  Peter reached over and grabbed my hand. I jumped, but I didn’t pull away from him. The feeling of his warm hand on mine was so comforting. It was all I could do not to start crying again. I’d cried a lot on the flight back from France. I stared at his hand over mine and soaked in the feeling, trying to commit it to memory. Would I ever care about anyone the same way I did about Peter? I doubted it. But at least I’d had a few nice days.

  “Please don’t apologize. Lucy, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I didn’t... I didn’t understand.”

  His easy forgiveness almost made me feel worse. He forgave me because he saw how poor I was. That sucked.

  “I don’t want your pity, Peter.” I shook my head at him. “Please, just go. Forget all about me. I’m glad I got the chance to apologize to you in person, but I know you’re busy and I don’t want to bother you.”

  Peter seemed mildly annoyed by that reaction. “I liked looking at the pictures with your...” he trailed off, clearly not knowing what her relationship to me was.

  “Mormor,” I supplied. “My grandmother.”

  “Is her name Mormor? Your grandmother?” Peter was smiling, but I didn’t trust it. I knew he probably hated me. He was just being polite.

  “Mormor just means grandmother. Her name is Lucia Antonia. Like me.”

  “So, she’s planned our wedding?” Peter asked. “Will it be nice?”

  I sighed, playing along. “It'll be lovely. She just wants to know if you like chocolate cake or vanilla.”

  “I like both. I’m really looking forward to it,” he told me. “But maybe let’s just trying dating for a while first.”

  I frowned. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Can’t we put this behind us?” Peter asked. “There’s got to be a way to fix things.”

  I felt my mouth drop open in shock. He couldn’t mean that. I didn’t believe it. “Which part?”

  “All of it.” Then he smiled.

  “You don’t know me at all,” I told him. “You really don’t.” I paused.

  “Then introduce yourself to me,” he replied hopefully. “We can start over. We can try again.”

  “You can’t mean that,” I stuttered. “I-- I lied to you. A lot. So much of what I told you wasn’t true.” I looked around at the dilapidated neighborhood. “I’m not the girl you thought I was at all.”

  He nodded. “And you think that I won’t like the real you? You think I would rather have a princess?”

  I laughed a little bitter laugh. “Of course. Why would someone like you ever want someone like me?”

  He stared at me like I was being ridiculous. “Don’t sell yourself short, it doesn’t suit you.” My breath froze in my lungs and my heart thumped. “Was everything fake?” he asked me. “Was what happened in Avignon not real? It felt real to me.”

  I frowned. “You know that part was true,” I told him churlishly. “I’m not that good an actress.”

  “Then why don’t we give this a real try? No more secrets. Come home with me tonight.”

  “Peter, we can’t date each other. We’re from totally different universes. Look around you--” I started, but he reached over and kissed me. I jumped back from him, starting to cry again.

  “Lucy, listen,” he said, gently brushing the tears away. “We can fix this. I can help with you--”

  I shook my head. “Don’t make it worse,” I told him. “Don’t offer me... whatever you were going to offer me. Just accept my apology and let me go. I’m no good for you.” She slipped out of the car seat and into the night. “I hope you get everything you ever want. I hope you forget all about me.”

  32

  Lucy

  Why’d he have to be so nice? Why’d he have to be so damn nice? I would have liked it better if he’d showed
up and yelled at me. If he’d showed up furious, I’d have known how to react. Because then I could feel like the monster I was. Instead, I just felt empty and sad.

  But nice? I didn’t know how to handle nice. I didn’t know how to interpret his easy willingness to forgive me. I definitely didn’t know how to interpret his desire to try again. The woman he liked, the one he thought I was, she wasn’t real. Nothing about her was real. There was no way I could live up to her. It was better not to try. My little heart couldn’t take it.

  After I ran away from Peter (and it was not one of my best moments), I took the bus back to Daniel’s. He didn’t have rent for next month, so it was probably only a matter of time before we’d both be couch surfing, but right now we still had each other, and I had nowhere else to go. My other good friend in town, Aimee, was a doctor. She had plenty of couches for me to sleep on in her giant doctor palace, but I was still too proud to admit to her how badly things were going. She still thought I was having a blast at my new job, and since she was on sabbatical, calling her was unthinkable.

  The bus ride gave me a long time to think. Austin’s bus system is not efficient, clean, or pleasant. It’s used almost exclusively by people who can’t afford to drive. Looking around at the other people on the bus, I tried to tell myself that I was lucky that I got to pretend I was on the other side of the economic spectrum, even if it was only an act. I had a good time. It was great while it lasted. A bit stressful, but still fun.

  I even got to go to Europe. Avignon was beautiful. I would definitely go back there one day. I could have explored the old city for ages. I probably could have spent weeks at the art museums. There was a whole big wide world out there that I’d never even known that I was missing. It was better, I told myself, to have experiences that don’t last than not to ever have them at all.

  It was that way with Peter, too. I’d met an incredible, wonderful man. He fell in love with a woman that wasn’t real, but I’d fallen in love with the real him. I got the better end of that deal. Even though it couldn’t last, even though it went down in flames, it was still much better to know. No matter what, I’d made some memories that would last me a long, long time.

  I was feeling a little bit more optimistic by the time I got home. I’d found a few okay-sounding jobs in a discarded newspaper on the bus. The hospital was hiring again. Maybe I could go back to being a secretary. I was a pretty good secretary. Clearly the Hollywood life was out of my league, but I could go back to answering phones and making appointments. That was probably where I belonged.

  Santiago was at Daniel’s when I got there. He and Daniel were seated opposite one another at the little kitchen table. Santiago’s expression was nervous.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked Daniel suspiciously. “Is he here to serve us Darcy’s promised lawsuit?”

  I could only imagine she was going to sue us for a billion dollars. Too bad for her, I had exactly twenty-five dollars in my purse. And she couldn’t have it.

  “No. Sit down,” Daniel said. “You need to hear this.”

  I perched on the edge of the third chair. “After the day I’ve had you can’t possibly make things worse,” I told Santiago. “What’s up?”

  “She made it up,” he told me. Looking back and forth from Daniel to me. “That contract clause that gave her all that power? She forged it. She snuck into the library where the original was in a filing cabinet and switched out the versions. The whole thing about the cameras malfunctioning and the trip to Avignon? That was all part of her plan.”

  “She wanted to delay the production for four days.” I was no lawyer, but I’d read that stupid contract clause the same way everyone else did. If four days went by with no production, she basically became the boss of everything. Whoever signed off on that needed to be fired, but we’d all seen it.

  “No. I mean, yes, but that didn’t matter until she switched the contracts. She needed to get access to the document.”

  I sat up. “What are you saying?” I asked.

  Santiago leaned forward eagerly. “I’m saying that she made it all up. All of it. She’s probably got the original version squirreled away somewhere.”

  “Why are you even telling us this? You’re her lap dog.” My voice was dripping with hostility, but I couldn’t contain it. I still blamed Santiago for his part in what happened.

  Santiago frowned. He smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead. “Not anymore.” He looked over at Daniel. “She’s been blackmailing me for ages.”

  I blinked. I knew it! I knew she had to have something big on Santiago. He was much too opinionated and independent to be under someone like Darcy’s thumb. The man overflowed with personality. “What changed?” I asked.

  Santiago beamed. His teeth were perfect. “My family is really conservative. Darcy told me that she’d tell my family that I was gay if I didn’t stay loyal to her. She has some... not great pictures of me. But I don’t care anymore. I came out to them today.”

  “You came out to your family today?” I asked. That was a huge deal under any circumstances. “Congratulations.”

  Santiago smiled and looked at Daniel in a way that made my heart hurt. “I realized that life was too short to lie about who I love. Especially now that I’ve met Daniel.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said, trying to keep my shit together. It felt like everyone else got to find love. “For you both. I really am.”

  “My family aren’t exactly excited,” Santiago added with a wry smile, “but now Darcy doesn’t have any leverage. I’m free.”

  I couldn’t help my smile. “That’s great,” I told him. “But it doesn’t change anything for us. It doesn’t matter how Darcy did what she did. Unless we have video or something of her altering the original, we can’t prove anything.” I sighed. “Plus, it’s not like I’m getting my job back.”

  Daniel smiled. “You might.” he told me. I could see his lawyerly brain working through the scenarios and against my better judgment, I started to hope. “The movie was almost done. You did ninety percent of your scenes already. It’s going to be really difficult to reshoot all that. It'll take weeks.”

  “So?”

  Daniel stared at me. “So, with Santiago taking a hike, Darcy’s going to need a new assistant. How about you?”

  I laughed. “I don’t think Darcy’s going to hire me to be her assistant again.”

  Santiago and Daniel exchanged a glance. “Sure, she will,” Santiago told her. “I’ve already queued it all up. In exchange for Darcy not suing you into the ground, you’re going to take my place as her personal slave, er, personal assistant. It’ll be incredibly humiliating for you and satisfying for her. She knows that you don’t have any money. This isn’t about that. It’s about power over you, her rival. If you come to her all humble and pathetic, she’s going to take bait. Trust me. She’s a sucker for anything that results in anyone else having to lick her boots.”

  “I don’t want to lick her boots.” There were very few things in the world I wanted to do less than lick Darcy’s boots.

  “Do you want to save this movie?” Daniel asked.

  I blinked. “I don’t see how I can.” I frowned. “I definitely don’t see how being Darcy’s new Santiago will fix things.”

  Daniel pulled out a tape recorder. “You need to get close to her. You need to get her on the recorder admitting what she did. Then we can expose her. I think we can all agree that her playing the lead role is as good as throwing all the millions of dollars that have gone into this production in the trash. And you deserve to get paid. You worked too hard for too long to let Darcy win.”

  I stared at the tape recorder. “Are we really going to use a tape recorder from nineteen-ninety-two for this?”

  Daniel laughed. “We can probably get a smaller one. That’s the one my dad gave me when I graduated law school though. It’s lucky.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You know this is insane, right? It’s never going to work.”

  “Is it cr
azier than pretending to be a princess and shooting a major motion picture?” Santiago asked. “Because I figured this would be right up your alley.”

  I winced. Okay, he had me there. “If we were going to do this, and it’s a really big if, what would we do?”

  33

  Peter

  “Lucy, go get me another iced latte. And not so much sugar this time. And more ice. Also, no hazelnut syrup.” Darcy didn’t even look at her.

  “You asked for the hazelnut syrup,” Lucy mumbled.

  “I didn’t ask for your backtalk though, did I?” Darcy raised an eyebrow and stared down her nose at Lucy like she was absolutely nothing.

  Lucy dropped her gaze, shuffling backwards. “How much sugar do you want, Darcy? How much ice?”

  “I don’t know. Less sugar. Less ice. How hard is that to understand!” Darcy ordered, tossing the mostly full beverage at Lucy. Lucy managed to catch it, but a lot of it ended up on her white shirt. “You’re so dumb.” Lucy made an irritated noise and attempted to keep the liquid off of her body. “Well go on! I’m waiting,” Darcy insisted.

  Lucy was drenched in hazelnut iced latte. She looked for a moment like she wanted to hurl the drink back at Darcy and then punch her in the face, but she didn’t. She just hung her head and walked away. It was painful to watch.

  I’d received a cryptic text from Daniel telling me that he, Santiago, and Lucy had hatched a plan to somehow save the production, but we all had to play along. Vanessa and Emma were both in on it. I’d eventually gotten the plan out of Daniel and it sounded like a real long shot. However, going along with it was probably my only opportunity to be near Lucy. She was still avoiding me, obviously, but I knew that at this point the only way to possibly save both my relationship with Lucy and the production was to go along with any scheme, no matter how weird. So, I was game. That didn’t mean it was easy though.