Slowly I unclasp the purse, opening it. I reach in and it’s basically empty, except for an envelope.
Queasy, suddenly breathing hard, the hangover washing back over me intensely, I pull a series of Polaroids out of the envelope.
There are eight photographs of me. Two were taken backstage at what looks like a Wallflowers concert: a poster for the band in the background; a sweaty Jakob Dylan holding a red plastic cup behind me, a towel draped over his shoulders. Two were taken during a magazine shoot: hands in the frame with a makeup brush touching up my face, my eyes closed serenely, Brigitte Lancome setting up a camera off to the side. The other four: me standing next to a pool wearing shorts and a vest with no shirt, mattresses on the ground everywhere, and in two of the Polaroids it’s bright out and a giant orange sun beats down through smog, and behind a long glass partition near a teenage Japanese waitress wearing a sarong, Los Angeles is spread out behind me. The other two Polaroids were taken at dusk and Rande Gerber has his arm around my shoulder while someone lights tiki torches in the frame next to us. This is a place I recognize from various magazines as the Sky Bar at the recently opened Mondrian Hotel. But my nose is different—wider, slightly flatter—and my eyes are set too close together; the chin is dimpled, more defined; my hair has never been cut so that it parts easily to one side.
I’ve never been to a Wallflowers concert
Or had my photo taken by Brigitte Lancome.
I’ve never been to the Sky Bar in Los Angeles.
I drop the photographs back in the Prada handbag, because I don’t want to touch them anymore.
The bathroom reeks of bleach and disinfectant and the floor is wet and gleaming even though the maid hasn’t started cleaning in here yet; a bath mat is still crumpled by the tub and towels lie damp, oddly stained, in the corner. There are no toiletries anywhere, no bottles of shampoo, no bars of soap lining the tub’s edge. Then someone positions me by the tub so that I’m crouching next to it and I’m urged to move my hand to the drain and after feeling around in it my fingers come away stained slightly pink and when I move a finger farther into the drain I feel something soft and when I pull my hand away again—involuntarily, alarmed at what I’m touching, something soft—the pinkness is darker, redder.
Behind the toilet there’s more blood—not a lot, just enough to make an impression—and when I run my fingers through it they come away streaked with pink as if the blood has been watered down or someone had tried to clean it up in a hurry and failed.
Just off to the side of the toilet, embedded in the wall, are two small white objects. I pull one of them out of the wall, applying pressure at a certain angle in order to extract it, and after inspecting the thing in my hand I turn to the crew. There’s an empty silence, people are fixating on the bathroom’s cold light.
“I may be out of it,” I start quietly, breathing hard, “but this is a fucking tooth .…” And then I’m talking loudly, as if I’m accusing them of something, holding it out to them, my arm outstretched, offering it. “This is a fucking tooth,” I’m repeating, shaking hard. “This is a fucking tooth,” I say again, and then I’m told to race out of the room.
3
The crew directs me to Security but because there’s not really such an office on board, this scene is shot near the library at a table meant to simulate an office. For “texture”: an unplugged computer terminal, four blank spiral notebooks, an empty Diet Coke can, a month-old issue of People. A young British actor—who had small parts in Trainspotting and Jane Austen’s Emma, and who seems lost even before I start talking—sits behind the makeshift desk, playing a clerk, pale and nervous and fairly cute as far as English actors playing clerks go.
“Hi, I’m Victor Ward, I’m in first class, cabin 101,” I start.
“Yes?” The clerk tilts his head, tries to smile, almost succeeds.
“And I’m looking for a Marina Gibson—”
“Looking for?” he interrupts.
“Yes, I’m looking for a Marina Gibson, who’s in cabin 402.”
“Have you looked in cabin 402?” he interrupts.
“Yes, and she wasn’t in cabin 402, and neither, it seems”—I take a deep breath and then, all in a rush—“was anyone else and I need to find her so I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like her, um, paged.”
There’s a pause that isn’t in the script.
“Why do you need to page her, sir?” the clerk asks.
“Well,” I say, stuck, “I … think she’s lost.” Suddenly I start shaking and have to grip the sides of the desk the actor’s sitting at in order to control it. “I think she’s lost,” I say again.
“You think a passenger … is lost?” he asks slowly, moving slightly away from me.
“What I mean”—I breathe in—“is that I think maybe she moved to another cabin maybe.”
“That’s highly doubtful, sir,” the clerk says, shaking his head.
“Well, I mean, she’s supposed to have met me for lunch and she never showed up.” My eyes are closed and I’m trying not to panic. “And I’d like her paged—”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t page people because they’ve missed a meal, sir,” I hear the actor say.
“Could you please just confirm for me that she’s in that room? Okay? Could you please just do that?” I ask, teeth clenched.
“I can confirm that, sir, but I cannot give out a passenger’s room number.”
“I’m not asking you to give out a room number,” I say impatiently. “I’m not asking for a passenger’s room number. I know her goddamn room number. Just confirm she’s in room 402.”
“Marina … ?”
“Marina Gibson,” I stress. “Like Mel. Like Mel Gibson. Only the first name is Marina.”
The clerk has pulled open one of the spiral notebooks, which supposedly contains a computerized listing of all the passengers on this particular crossing. Then he wheels over to the monitor, taps a few keys, pretends to appear authoritative, consults one graph and then another, lapses into a series of sighs.
“What room did you say, sir?”
“Cabin 402,” I say, bracing myself.
The clerk makes a face, cross-checks something in the spiral notebook, then looks vacantly back up at me.
“That room isn’t inhabited on this crossing,” he says simply.
A long pause before I’m able to ask, “What do you mean? What do you mean, ‘not inhabited’? I called that room last night. Someone answered. I talked to someone in that room. What do you mean, ‘not inhabited’?”
“What I mean, sir, is that this particular room is not inhabited,” the clerk says. “What I’m saying, sir, is that nobody is staying in that room.”
“But …” I start shaking my head. “No, no, that’s not right.”
“Mr. Ward?” the clerk begins. “I’m sure she’ll show up.”
“How do you know?” I ask, blanching. “Where in the hell could she be?”
“Maybe she’s in the women’s spa,” the clerk suggests, shrugging.
“Yeah, yeah, right,” I’m muttering. “The women’s spa.” Pause. “Wait—there’s a women’s spa?”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, Mr. Ward—”
“Hey, wait, don’t say things like that,” I say, shuddering, holding my hands up. “Whenever somebody says something like that, something is definitely fucked up.”
“Mr. Ward, please—”
“I think she’s in trouble,” I say, leaning in. “Did you hear me? I said I think she’s in trouble.”
“But Mr. Ward, I don’t even have a Marina Gibson on the passenger list,” the clerk says. “There’s no Marina Gibson registered for this crossing.”
The clerk looks up at me as if he can’t possibly comprehend the expression on my face.
I wait in the hall in a small chair, watching everyone who enters and exits the women’s spa until it closes.
2
F. Fred Palakon calls at 7:
00. I’ve been in my room since the women’s spa closed at 5, mulling over the prospect of roaming the entire ship to look for whoever it was who called herself Marina Gibson, ultimately discarding that prospect because the photo from last night’s dinner was slid under my door in a manila envelope stamped with the QE2 imprimatur. The photo didn’t come out too well, the main reason being that the Wallaces aren’t in it.
The couple sitting at the table in the Queen’s Grill are people I’ve never seen before, who don’t even vaguely resemble the Wallaces. The man glowering at me is much older than Stephen; and the woman, confused, looking down at her plate, is much dowdier and plainer than Lorrie.
Marina has turned her head away so her face is just a blur.
I’m the only one smiling and relaxed, which amazes me since the only things that look even remotely familiar are the small mound of caviar on my plate and the carafes of the wine Stephen ordered and the Japanese women, in shadows, at the next table.
The original and the three copies I requested are spread out on a desk I’m chain-smoking at, and it’s so cold in the room I’m half-frozen, wearing two J. Crew sweaters under the giant Versace overcoat, and the remains of today’s hangover linger, insistent, like some kind of reminder. I’m vaguely aware that tomorrow the QE2 docks in Southampton.
“So you’re not going to Paris?” Palakon asks. “So you’ll be in London after all?”
A long stretch of silence that I’m responsible for causes Palakon to snap, “Hello? Hello?”
“Yes,” I say hollowly. “How did you figure that … out?”
“I just sensed a change of heart,” Palakon says.
“How did you manage that?”
“Let’s just say I know these precocious moments of yours usually come to an end,” I hear him say. “Let’s just say I concentrate intensely on you and what you have to say and do.” A pause. “I’m also viewing everything from a different angle.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter, Palakon,” I sigh.
“We’ve located Jamie Fields,” Palakon says.
Briefly, I glance up. “So my job’s over, right?”
“No,” Palakon says. “Just made easier.”
“What are you doing right now, Palakon?” I’m asking. “Some lackey’s giving you a pedicure while you’re eating a giant box of mints? That’s what I’m picturing.”
“Jamie Fields is in London,” Palakon says. “You’ll find her the day after tomorrow on the set of the movie she’s shooting. All the information you need will be waiting for you at the hotel. A driver will pick you up—”
“A limo?” I ask, interrupting.
A pause, then Palakon gently says, “Yes, Mr. Ward, a limo—”
“Thank you.”
“—will pick you up in Southampton and drive you into London, where I will contact you.”
I keep moving all four copies of the photograph around, repositioning them while Palakon drones on. I light another cigarette before stubbing out the last one.
“Do you understand, Mr. Ward?”
“Yes, I understand, Mr. Palakon,” I answer in a monotone.
Pause. “You sound on edge, Mr. Ward.”
“I’m just trying to ascertain something.”
“Is that it, or are you just trying to strike a pose?”
“Listen, Palakon, I’ve gotta go—”
“Where are you off to, Mr. Ward?”
“There’s a gnome-making class that’s starting in ten minutes and I wanna get a head start.”
“I’ll talk to you when you arrive in London, Mr. Ward.”
“I’ve already marked it down in my datebook.”
“I’m relieved to hear it, Mr. Ward.”
1
I find Felix the cinematographer at the piano bar, hunched over an array of snifters half-filled with brandy as he stares miserably at his own reflection in the mirrors situated above the racks of alcohol, relentlessly smoking Gauloises. The pianist—who I’m just noticing much to my horror is also the male aerobics instructor with the hideous teeth—plays a mournful version of “Anything Goes.” I take the stool next to Felix and slap the photograph next to his arm. Felix doesn’t flinch. Felix hasn’t shaved in what looks like days.
“Felix,” I say, trying to contain myself. “Look at this photo.”
“I don’t want to look at any photos,” Felix says miserably in his halting, untraceable accent.
“Felix, please, it’s important,” I say. “I think.”
“I’m not supposed to look at the photo, Victor.”
“Fuck it—just look at the fucking photo, Felix,” I spit out, panicking.
Felix turns to me, muttering “Grouchy, grouchy,” then glances tiredly at the picture. “Yeah? So? People having caviar, people not looking so happy.” He shrugs. “It happens.”
“Felix, I did not have caviar with these people,” I’m saying. “Yet this photograph ex-ex-exists,” I sputter.
“What do you mean?” Felix sighs. “Oh god, I’m so tired.”
“But this is the wrong photo,” I squeal giddily. “That’s not the couple I had dinner with last night. These people are not the Wallaces. Do you understand, Felix? I—don’t—know—these—people.”
“But that’s the picture, Victor,” Felix says. “That’s you.”
“Yes, that’s me,” I say. “But who are these people, Felix?” For emphasis I’m running my hand over the photograph. “I mean, what is this? What the hell’s going on?”
“Deluded youth,” he sighs.
“Where, Felix? Where?” I ask, whirling around. “I don’t see anyone under sixty on this goddamn boat.”
Felix motions to the bartender for another.
“Felix,” I say, breathing in. “I think I’m scared.”
“You should be, but why?”
“A lot of reasons,” I whisper.
“A certain amount of hardship is to be expected in this life.”
“I know, I know, I need to accept the bad if I want to accept the good—oh god, Felix, just shut the fuck up and look at the fucking photo.”
Felix’s interest rises slightly as he holds the photo closer to his face and the atmosphere surrounding the bar is smoky and vague and the piano player continues with the mournful rendition of “Anything Goes” while various extras playing soused nannies, croupiers and beverage personnel listen, rapt, and I focus on the silence surrounding the music and try to get the bartender’s attention.
“It’s been altered,” Felix says, clearing his throat.
“How do you know?”
“You should be able to see this girl’s face.” He points at Marina.
“Yeah, but I think she turned away when the flash went off.”
“No,” Felix says. “She didn’t.”
“How can you tell?”
“The position of her neck—see, here?” Felix runs a finger along Marina’s throat. “The position of her neck suggests she was looking at the camera. Someone else has been—oh, how do you say?—superimposed over this girl.” Felix pauses, then his eyes move to the Wallaces. “I assume the same thing happened with this couple,” he says, squinting at the photo. “A rather crude job, actually.” Felix sighs, placing the photo back on the bar. “But hell, who knows? Maybe you were really drunk and feeling rather friendly so you joined another table.”
I’m shaking my head. “I’d never sit with those people,” I’m saying. “Look at that woman’s hair.” I order an Absolut-and-cranberry from the bartender—with lime, I stress—and when he brings it I drink it quickly, but it totally fails to relax me.
“Maybe I just need to get laid,” I sigh.
Felix starts giggling. “You will.” He keeps giggling. “Oh, you will.”
“Spare me the giggling, Felix.”
“Haven’t you read the new draft?” he’s asking.
“I think the script keeps changing, Felix,” I say. “I don’t think this is what I signed on for.”
“You’re really not accu
stomed to disappointment, are you, Victor?”
“I think something bad happened to that girl,” I’m saying meekly. “To … Marina.”
“You think errors are being made?” Felix asks, taking a long swallow of brandy, moving one snifter aside for another. “I think people can know too much.”
“I just … I just … think there’s been some kind of—oh man—like emergency and …” My voice trails off. I stare over at the piano player, at the extras sitting at tables, on couches, nodding thoughtfully to the music. “And … I just think no one’s responding—oh man.”
“You need, I think, to find a more fruitful and harmonious way to live.”
“I’m on the cover of YouthQuake magazine,” I exclaim. “What in god’s name are you talking about?”
“Perhaps the two are unrelated.”
“Tell me I’m not being wrongheaded and foolish,” I plead. “Tell me this isn’t an ‘extraneous matter,’ Felix. I mean, I’m a fairly easygoing person.”
“I know, I know,” Felix says sympathetically, inhaling on a cigarette. “It’s intolerable, eh?”
Finally I ask, “What about Palakon? How is he involved in this?”
“Who is Palakon?” Felix asks.
“Palakon,” I sigh. “The guy who got me on this fucking boat.”
Felix stays quiet, then stubs the cigarette out. “I don’t know anyone named Palakon.”
While signaling the bartender for another drink, I mutter, annoyed, “What?”
“Palakon’s not in the script, Victor,” Felix says carefully.
Pause. “Whoa—wait a minute, wait a minute.” I hold up a hand. “Hello? You are driving blind, baby.”
“No, no, I don’t think so,” Felix says. “And please don’t call me ‘baby,’ Victor.”
“Hold on, Felix,” I say. “I’m talking about the guy I met at Fashion Café. That kind-of-euro twit who got me on this floating nursing home in the first place. Palakon?”
This doesn’t register with Felix. I stare, dumbfounded.