I stare at the screen on my phone and see that Tony is calling. My agent only calls with very good or very bad news; anything in between he does by email. It has to be about the Fincher film. I think it might be too soon for good news and let it ring, but then something inside me screams that I deserve this part, it must be good news. I answer, listening while Tony speaks on the other end. I don’t say much. I don’t need to.
As soon as I put the phone down, there is a knock on the bedroom door.
“Come in.” I pull the sheets up over my bare legs. I’m wearing one of Jack’s T-shirts; I still haven’t been able to go back to my own house or get my things.
“I heard the phone ringing, I just wanted to check you were okay?” He peers around the door.
“Come in, I’m fine. It was Tony.”
“Good news?” He sits down on the bed and I shake my head. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine, honestly. I didn’t really expect to get it.”
“Bullshit, of course you should have got it. Do you know who did?” I nod, wishing I didn’t. “Who?”
“Alicia White.”
His face experiences a freeze-frame. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“No joke. Alicia got the part.”
He looks genuinely appalled by this news, which does make me feel a little better. “Wait here,” he says before leaving the room, as though I have anywhere else to go.
I let myself fold a little, now that there is nobody to see the creases. I didn’t just want that part, it meant so much more than that. Acting is like taking a vacation from myself, and I need a break. I need to be someone else again for a little while, think her thoughts, feel her fears, walk in her shoes, with the help of a map-shaped script. I don’t know how to explain it; sometimes I just get so damn tired of being me.
There’s no secret ladder to reach the stars; you have to learn to build your own, and when you fall, you have to be brave enough to start the climb again. Never look back, never look down. I’ve put my broken self back together plenty of times before, I can do it again. I can handle not getting the part, I think. I just can’t believe that she did. Of all the people. Tony says that she somehow knew where we were having the secret meeting with Fincher and followed him afterwards. I don’t know what she said to convince him, or how she knew where he would be. The only person who knew where I was and what I was doing was Jack. How did she know? And why is it that so many horrible human beings succeed in life?
Jack returns with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
The anger I feel rushes straight to my head. “Did you tell Alicia where I was meeting Fincher?”
He looks as if my question has physically hurt him. “If you try hard enough, I think you’ll remember that, like you, all I knew beforehand was that you were meeting your agent. I didn’t know anything about Fincher until you got back. Even if I had known, I would never do that. Do you really not know how I feel about you?”
I do know. I just don’t believe it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He pours two large glasses and downs one of them. I don’t even like whiskey, but I drink it anyway. All of it. It’s as though we are out of words and wasted time. When he kisses me, I kiss him back. When he lifts the T-shirt up over my head, I don’t stop him, even though I’m wearing nothing underneath. I reach down to unbutton his jeans, my fingers far more confident than I would have expected them to be. It’s as if my body has taken over, no longer trusting my mind to make the right choices. When his hand reaches down between my legs, I open them a little wider. I’m not feeling like myself right now. I’m not feeling shy or anxious. I want this. I want him. I think I’ve wanted him since we first met, but I just wouldn’t let myself be that person. I forget about everything that has happened, concentrating instead on the taste of him, the feel of his body on top of mine. If I’m honest with myself, as honest as I can be, I’ve imagined this moment for so long that now that it is happening, it feels completely natural. I don’t even feel bad when it’s over. I feel satisfied, I feel like a woman again and I feel alive.
I don’t know whether it was the whiskey or the sleep or the sex, but I’ve remembered something. I know what I did with the gun and I know where it is.
But that can wait.
For now, I just want to lie in Jack’s arms and pretend I might be able to stay here. I’ve spent too long equating love and loneliness; it doesn’t have to be that way. And I’ve spent too long trying to be nice, always trying to do the right thing, doing what I thought I should. Turns out doing what you want to do feels pretty good.
Sixty-six
Maggie does not feel good. She can’t sleep and she doesn’t even want to eat. She stares at the photo of Aimee and wonders why she still hasn’t called. She should have figured it all out by now, but maybe Aimee isn’t as clever as Maggie has been giving her credit for all these years. Sometimes when we put someone on too high a pedestal, it only means they have farther to fall. Maggie checks the landline to make sure it is working.
It is.
She’s cold, so she comes to stand in front of the fire, throwing another log on top. She notices that it didn’t hurt to pick it up. When she looks down at the splinter in her hand, she sees that the black shape has risen to the surface, a halo of white skin separating it from the pink coloring of the rest of her finger.
It’s formed a scab.
Her body knew that this part of it was harmful, so has rejected it.
Just as Maggie has rejected Aimee.
She takes a pair of tweezers from the mantelpiece—there are three different-colored ones to choose from. Then, slowly—because she wants to savor this moment and she already knows how much pleasure and satisfaction it is going to give her—she starts to lift the edges of the scab.
It feels so good.
When the whole thing has been gently torn away, she examines it on her other finger: a tiny black splinter of wood and a piece of her skin, conjoined. She puts the little piece of herself on the mantelpiece. She wants to keep it. She’s not sure why.
The fire is hot now, crackling and spitting, yellow flames wildly dancing in the otherwise darkened room. Holding the tweezers in her hand makes her want to remove some more of herself, but she can’t find any stray hairs on her chin. Looking back at the face in the dusty mirror, for just a moment Maggie feels like she doesn’t know who or what she is anymore.
But she remembers her name, her real one, and wonders if Aimee remembers hers.
Maggie borrowed her name from a dead woman, just as Aimee borrowed hers from a dead little girl. The thing about borrowing other people’s things is that, eventually, you have to give them back. She lifts her splinter-free finger and starts to write her real name in the dust, taking longer to write the A than any other letter.
Sixty-seven
I wake up to the annual sadness of autumn; it’s pitch-black outside the bedroom window, yet my phone informs me that it is morning. The night sky has outstayed its welcome, and the darkness I can see seems to seep inside me, as though the color black is somehow contagious. It feels as if I have forgotten how to turn on the lights, and my life will be little more than a shadow from now on.