Imposter

by Antony John

  I text back that I’ll be there.

  Five minutes later, Annaleigh shuts off the water. It sloshes as she slides into the bath. “You can come in now,” she calls out.

  I hesitate. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I open the doors. She’s submerged beneath a nest of bubbles. Only her left leg rises above the surface.

  “I just realized that a bath is kind of boring if you don’t have someone to talk to,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re letting the warmth out, by the way.”

  “Oh.” I close the doors behind me.

  When I turn around again, she’s got a smile on her face like she’s teasing. It’s not the smile that draws me in, though. It’s her wet hair, and the color in her cheeks and lips, as if she’s radiating heat.

  “So we’ve got about thirty-five minutes,” she says.

  “Unless housekeeping comes early.”

  “True.” She lifts a finger to her lips. “I’ve been thinking—if we get kicked out, Brian’ll have to find someplace else for us. I vote for the Chateau Marmont. Or maybe the Four Seasons.” She tilts her head to the side. “Are you planning to stay over there? This long-distance conversation feels kind of weird.”

  “Unlike taking a bath in someone else’s suite, you mean?”

  “It’s no one’s suite until someone checks in.”

  I pad over to the tub and sit at the end. She places one dripping foot in my lap and points her toes like a ballerina. “Julia Roberts got a foot massage,” she says.

  “Do I look like Richard Gere?”

  “No. You look like his cute grandson.”

  I run my hands over her foot. Press my thumbs into the pad of every toe, and slide a finger between them. She watches me intently, her breathing slow and deep. I love the sound of it, and the way she bites her lower lip.

  “You haven’t tickled me yet,” she says. “Must be all that practice. You probably bring all your girlfriends to the Pretty Woman suite, huh?”

  I nod. “Every one of them. I always figure, what’s twenty-five grand for a decent foot massage, right?”

  “Don’t exaggerate. You told me you bribed the cleaning staff with fifty bucks. You cheapskate, you.”

  “Ah, you’ve seen through me already.”

  She opens her mouth as if to reply, but hesitates. “Not through you, no. Just seeing the real you, I think.” She cups her hands and lifts a cloud of bubbles. “Why are you being nice to me, Seth?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

  My thumbs come to rest on the top of her foot. “I’m being nice because you deserve it. Because you’re the one person in this whole place who’s real.”

  “Real,” she murmurs, like it’s a funny concept. “Is any of this real? At home I spend every day just trying to get by. My last boyfriend wasn’t nice to me. Be honest. Is this just one of those summer camp moments where everything is magical because it can’t last?”

  It’s a good question. I thought that being on the beach with Sabrina was real, and I was wrong. What makes this situation any different?

  “It’s real if we want it to be, right?” I reply.

  She closes her eyes momentarily. I figure this is the end, and the reality we suspended the moment we walked into the bathroom is about to return with a vengeance. But then Annaleigh slides along the tub and kneels so that we’re eye to eye. Drops of water run down her neck and over her shoulders.

  She smells of soap and shampoo. I know exactly what I want to do but I’m too afraid to do it.

  “Will you go out with me tonight?” I ask, stalling.

  Her already pink cheeks grow rosier still. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  I run my fingers through her hair. She cups my chin and leans forward, closes her eyes, and kisses me. Her lips are soft. Every brush of her tongue is pure electricity.

  I don’t need to ask if she’s in character now. There are no cameras and no audience here. There’s just the two of us, holding tight to each other.

  27

  SABRINA PULLS UP AT THREE O’CLOCK SHARP.

  “Thanks for coming,” she says as I climb into her car.

  Her makeup is perfect. Not a hair is out of place. The outside world may ruffle Annaleigh’s feathers, but not Sabrina’s.

  We get onto Santa Monica Boulevard, heading east. “So how are you doing?” she asks brightly, as if she has already forgotten yesterday’s awkward rehearsal.

  “Why do you want to see me, Sabrina?”

  She fingers the ends of her hair. Whatever expectations she had for this meeting clearly didn’t include me being short with her.

  “Sabrina?”

  She peers at the rearview mirror and her shoulders slump. When I check the side mirror, I see why. The green Mazda is right behind us.

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Probably a paparazzo.”

  “Uh-uh. He didn’t take that photo of us at the party. He wants us to know he’s watching too. Even sends stupid texts.” I check him out in the side mirror, but I can’t get a good look. “Stop at this traffic signal.”

  “The light’s green.”

  “Just do it.”

  She brakes suddenly. Our stalker is tailing us so close that we’re bumper to bumper as we stop. We’re two rocks in a creek, and traffic flows around us like water.

  I step out to the sound of blaring horns. It’s a crazy thing to do, but I want the guy to know how it feels to be trapped. To feel like the one being pursued.

  I can just make him out, jamming the lock on his door. I hold up my cell phone and he covers his face with his hands. Doesn’t matter. There’s nothing he can do to stop me from taking a picture of his license plate.

  Then I’m back in Sabrina’s car. “Wait until the light turns red, and floor it,” I tell her.

  Seconds tick by, and the light switches from green to yellow, and yellow to—

  Sabrina guns the gas. The cross traffic doesn’t even move before we careen across the intersection. Behind us, the Mazda is stuck at the light.

  “We need to get off this street,” I say. “He’ll catch up again.”

  She takes the next left. A few blocks later, she turns right.

  I email the photograph to Gant. He said I needed to find out who this guy was. Well, now we’ve got his license plate. It’s a start.

  For a minute, neither of us speaks. Sabrina still looks tense, though.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about?” I ask.

  She’s gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white. “I know this entertainment reporter,” she begins. “We’ve done a couple interviews. I’ve told her stuff off the record, and she’s never used it, so I trust her. Anyway, I asked her about the story on Annaleigh’s father. She did some rooting around and . . . well, there’s something weird about it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble to hide all that stuff about Annaleigh’s family. I mean, the moment she was cast, every gossip columnist worth their dime would’ve started digging. My contact did, and she said she couldn’t find anything.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t looking hard enough.”

  “No way. Whoever dug up the info knew what they were looking for. Must’ve had details—where she’s from, contact information, that sort of thing.”

  Could Kris have paid someone to find this stuff out? It’s possible, but unlikely.

  “You know Annaleigh’s contact info,” I point out. “And you just said you know a reporter.”

  “Wait. You don’t think that I did this, do you?” Sabrina stares straight ahead, shoulders rigid. “That is what you think, isn’t it?”

  I don’t answer becaus
e I’m not sure. It’d be crazy for her to tell me all this if she’s the one pulling the strings, but then, I don’t know who took and sold those photos of Sabrina and me at the party either. Fact is, some of those pictures came out immediately after the kiss cam, almost like someone was trying to divert attention back to Sabrina. If there’s a list of suspects, Sabrina’s on it.

  I stare out the window at the city to my right and the hills to my left. We’re in the vicinity of Hollywood Reservoir. Does Sabrina know that Annaleigh and I came here for the photo shoot? Is this another clue?

  “How does anyone really have friends?” she murmurs, although I can’t tell if she’s talking to me, or herself. “I really wanted us to be friends.”

  “Yeah, well, so did I. But friends don’t bring their ex-boyfriends back into the movie without warning. Friends don’t make out in a dark corner one minute and then bad-mouth each other the next. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

  “You’re right,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  It’s not even an explanation, let alone an apology. Maybe she doesn’t know the answer herself.

  “Why do you want us to be friends when you hardly know me?” I ask.

  “I know that evening on the beach, you really listened to me and seemed to care. Being with you was like starting over, seeing everything for the first time, without all the bad stuff. You don’t know how long it’s been since I felt like I could open up.”

  Her words pull me back to the beach. But instead of reliving the roller-coaster emotion of the encounter, I just feel confused.

  “You wouldn’t even let on which version of you I was talking to,” I remind her. “How can I trust you when I don’t even know who you are?”

  For a while she doesn’t answer. Then she begins to nod, slow at first and then faster. “Okay, then,” she says. “I’ll tell you the truth. If we can’t even be friends, at least I’ll set the record straight.”

  Sabrina turns off the street and we begin the climb into the Hollywood Hills. We’re heading away from Beverly Hills, and the hotel, and Annaleigh.

  “Where are we going?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t look at me. “Somewhere no one can hear us.”

  28

  WE PASS THE TURN FOR THE reservoir and head on to Griffith Park, within sight of the city but somehow removed from it too. Barely a day goes by there isn’t a film crew somewhere in the massive grounds.

  Sabrina parks the car and gets out. “Come on,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “Please, just come.”

  She leads me into nearby woods, secluded and quiet, and sits on a patch of grass. I join her so that we’re side by side, close but not touching.

  She undoes the clasp of her bag and removes a pouch of tobacco. Opens it, and stops. The internal debate plays out on her face: the need to smoke versus the fact that I don’t like it. When she puts it away, I’m surprised.

  Sabrina faces forward, not blinking, loose hair whipped about by the breeze. “No,” she says suddenly. “No, I can’t do this.”

  She grabs her bag and strides quickly away.

  Is this Sabrina the actress? Or Sabrina the public figure? I can’t believe the real Sabrina would resort to something so melodramatic.

  I wait for her to drop the act. It’s got to be hard to maintain that kind of energy without an audience. But she doesn’t stop, and her shoulders are shaking.

  I follow her at a jog. When I catch up, she’s crying—not delicate tears either, but sobs that rack her body. Mascara streaks angry lines down her face.

  I don’t know this version of Sabrina at all. It’s not a persona she’d want anyone to see, though. Not ever.

  “Sabrina?” I sit down, and coax her to join me on the grass.

  She crosses her legs, Indian-style. “The other night at the party,” she begins, “I didn’t mean to be rude about you. That was stupid of me. Hurtful. But Kris said something at the bar, and I . . . I just panicked.”

  “Go on.”

  “He knew I kissed you. I don’t know how he knew, but he did, and he told me I was embarrassing myself. That I needed to get a grip on my life. He said what I was doing to you was cruel.”

  “So you were leading me on.”

  “No. That’s not it. He meant that, you know, things are complicated for me. And maybe you’re not the best person to handle it.”

  “Handle what?”

  I wait for her to put the pieces together, and reveal the picture once and for all. Instead, she grabs fistfuls of hair and leans forward until her face is almost in her lap.

  “I ruined everything,” she cries. “With you. With Annaleigh. I shouldn’t have said that stuff about her. That was stupid.”

  “So why did you?”

  “Because I was jealous.” She takes a rasping breath. “It’s not fair what happened to her. But no matter what people say, she knows deep down that her father was the one who messed up. Not her. She’s innocent.”

  “And what about you?”

  Slowly, she pulls herself upright. She looks me straight in the eye, but then turns away as if holding my gaze is too much. “I . . . I’m an addict,” she says quietly. “Pills mostly. Amphetamines to get up. Vicodin when I’m flying and need to come down. Other stuff too. Sometimes . . . anything.”

  I feel the words as much as I hear them—icy fingers around my heart, a hand pressed tight around my neck. I want her to take them back. Start over.

  “I’ve been trying to quit for over a year now, but . . .” She shakes her head sharply. “No, that’s bullshit. I say I want to quit, but I don’t. Not really.”

  I don’t know what to say. I feel like I can help Annaleigh because I know what we’re up against. Drugs are different, though—a moving target, something that happens to other people, not the ones close to me.

  “Does Kris know?”

  Sabrina seems to have been expecting the question. Either that, or she has steeled herself to answer anything. “It’s why we broke up. He gave me an ultimatum: him or the pills.”

  “And then he left you.”

  She pauses, and a sickening smile pulls at her lips. “No. I chose the pills.”

  I try to imagine how such a conversation could play out, but what sane person could ever say those words?

  “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she says. “I imagine that I’m watching myself, trying to work out which version of me is real. I can’t stand it, so I take something to make the doubt go away. And then I take more to keep it away.”

  I think about Sabrina’s weird behavior. How I never knew which version of her I was getting. “That evening on the beach—”

  “I was clean, I swear. I wanted to prove to myself that I was in control. You helped me too. Kept me real for a few hours. But it was so tiring. You have no idea. And then, when I got home . . .” She doesn’t finish the thought. She doesn’t need to.

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I want you to know the real me. Instead of being pissed, you should be pleased you get to walk away.” She stares at her nails, bold red and manicured, a perfect exterior to distract from what’s inside. “I don’t want you to walk away, though. I think, deep down, you still care, and I need to open up to someone. It’s been so long since I could just . . . talk.”

  “What about Genevieve?”

  She pulls a strand of hair across her mouth. “No. I can’t talk to her.”

  “Sure you can. Ask her to visit. She’ll come.”

  “No, she won’t. She’ll never come again.” She sounds maddeningly certain. “Something happened. Something I can’t take back.”

  Another clue to the puzzle, but this piece will stay hidden. Friend or not, real Sabrina can’t trust me with everything.

  She told me not to believe the hype, the f
iction of who she is. She warned me, even. But I thought I knew better. Hard to unlearn assumptions accumulated over years of seeing her on film. But the truth is that Sabrina is more alone and confused than anyone I’ve ever met.

  Three years ago, I watched helpless as Mom’s insides were liquefied by infection. It was so all-consuming that I didn’t notice what was happening to Dad until it was too late. I swore then that I would take care of Dad and Gant. Others too, if I could. But as Sabrina leans against me, crying warm tears into my hair, I feel lost. I try to tell myself that I’m being the friend she needs simply by being here. But I’m not. I’m just a spectator, as irrelevant now as I was at the beach.

  What use is a friend who has no idea how to help?

  29

  GANT BOUNDS UP FROM THE DESK CHAIR. “Where have you been?”

  “Just . . . out. Why?”

  He jabs a finger at my laptop. “You were right. The photo of you and Sabrina at the party was from a security camera.” He practically trips over the words.

  The party. Sabrina seemed invincible that evening, sultry and seductive in a little black dress. I remember the way she looked at me, dark eyes constantly moving, like she was drinking me in. How much of it was real? How much was drugs?

  “I didn’t believe it at first,” Gant continues. “The image is too good. But then I realized, it’s in a dark corner, so the camera would be calibrated for low light. A security camera would be mounted to the wall too, so there’s no problem with shake. Suddenly you’ve got yourself some very valuable footage of Sabrina and Seth making out.”

  “The party was at Machinus Media Enterprises,” I remind him. “Who could’ve gotten hold of security film?”

  “I’ve got a theory about that,” he says. But instead of sharing it, he sits down and taps the keyboard. “Now take a look at this one.”

  I join him at the desk. Another photo fills my laptop screen—Sabrina and me at the beach. A beautiful girl and her doting boy. A cigarette and a secret.