The Stand-In

  Moments later it was Susan who tsssk’d at a chipped nail and wrinkled her nose. Vowing to polish it later, she picked up the phone and dialled Lila’s number.

  It rang six times. Finally Lila answered, ‘Hi?’ She sounded sleepy.

  Susan’s high, whiney voice asked, ‘Is Trev there?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Suddenly Susan said, ‘Oh shit. Wrong number,’ and quickly put down the receiver.

  What was Lila thinking? She must have been uneasy by now. There was a story in the National Enquirer – hotly denied, no doubt, by Trev. There was a girl, phoning up – a secret girlfriend, who had dialled Lila’s apartment by mistake, instead of Trev’s.

  Quickly I dialled Lila’s number again. It was engaged. I knew it would be.

  I put down the receiver. A deep sense of satisfaction spread through me, heavy as treacle. I knew exactly what she was doing – phoning Trevor to demand who the hell was that woman on the phone?

  Now she knew what it felt like.

  I poured myself a glass of white wine and drank it slowly, rolling it around my mouth. I gazed at the skeleton building opposite, rising to block my view. The offices on either side were emptying. Secretaries were returning to their blameless homes in Queens. They would pick up groceries on the way, in brown paper bags. They would kick off their shoes and surrender themselves to their TVs. Our buildings were so close, but I knew nothing about them and they were unaware of my existence.

  Susan didn’t exist either, except in my head. And now, in Lila’s. We both believed in this phantom that I had created; she had thickened up for Lila just as she had thickened up for me, wasn’t that fascinating? She was a performer in our own drama. Lila and I were strangely bound together by this figment of our jealousy. Where did reality begin? It’s all in our heads: the most dangerous place on earth.

  Roly didn’t mention anything, the next time I saw him. Sony had taken over Columbia Pictures and he had been having dinner with some Japanese businessmen. He seemed very tired and lay on his bed whilst I massaged his pale, suety skin. He had fatty deposits around his hips, like a woman. Face down, he looked ludicrously unknown to me; he could have been a dead porpoise washed up on a beach. All day long he had been making and taking calls; he was in the middle of complex negotiations with Columbia, putting together some package with three of his clients – two stars and a director – and he was due to fly out to his LA office the next day. Why should he be interested in Lila’s boyfriend’s rumoured infidelities? His breathing grew rubbery and I realised that he had fallen asleep.

  Once Roly was out of town, I felt bolder. I don’t know why, but I did. The next morning I went to a call-box in the Citicorp Plaza and dialled the Post.

  ‘I’d like to talk to somebody about the stories that have been circulating concerning Trevor Parsons and myself,’ I said in Susan’s die-away voice. ‘I respect Lila Dune as an actress and as a human being, and I don’t want to hurt her. But Trevvy and I have a very special relationship, and though he intends remaining business partners with Miss Dune, once the details of their production company are finalised he’s invited me to move into his apartment. That’s why he didn’t move in with Miss Dune, you see, in the first place. We’ve gotten this fabulous Thai decorator to fix it up.’ I gave the address of Trev’s apartment and the name of his decorator.

  I replaced the receiver, flashing a smile at a passing shopper. The lower level of the Citicorp was lined with shops. In the window of Doubleday’s a book was displayed: The Man Who Shot Greta Garbo. Someone had tried to shoot Lila, hadn’t they? So crude of them.

  Dinosaurs stood in the lower level of the Citicorp. They were some sponsored display of fibreglass models. One of them had a long, arched neck; its piggy eyes were level with mine. I squinted at it playfully. Nobody else seemed to realise, but I knew. Underneath the city, beasts were breaking through like the rocks in Central Park. They reared up, under the buildings. The city creaked with their strainings. In the streets, metal plates were bolted vainly over them.

  I sat down at a table, shaking. Nobody noticed, half the people there seemed to be afflicted with the DTs. I sat there, shaking with laughter.

  All I meant, I’m sure, was to sow seeds of doubt and unease in her mind. I wanted to undermine her relationship with Trev and I knew I could do it because I was clever. I was also a superlative actress. You know that by now, don’t you? I could become anyone I chose.

  Lila was deeply susceptible – she went to an astrologer, for God’s sake. She was incredibly insecure and rocky; she had freaked out often enough, in the past. I had heard more about this from Roly. One little push, and over she’d topple. Trev’s charm lay in his shiftiness; women found him irresistible because they couldn’t trust him. Or – more exactly – because he made them feel that only they could reform him.

  I knew exactly what Lila was thinking: Where the hell was Trevor, all those days when he didn’t turn up on location? Was he really writing? How did that girl know her own private number? Was this why Trev had bought a separate apartment – he was just using her, and he would dump her once he had set himself up?

  This was all I meant to do, I’m sure. It’s hard to see it clearly now. But I only meant a little harm.

  I’ve never believed that Kennedy syndrome business. People remembering exactly what they were doing when the bombshell dropped; when the world changed. I don’t remember what I was doing when Kennedy was shot.

  But I remember that Monday in late April. The light was fading. I’ve always loved cities at twilight. In Los Angeles it was the most magical time. You didn’t see many people, of course, just an increased activity along the freeways. But the flushed sky was beautiful, and there was the sense of a city stirring. Waiters stood in restaurants, combing their hair.

  In New York, the streets swarmed. The setting sun hit the tops of the buildings, firing their windows. The Port Authority buses were packed; regiments of people stood, their arms extended like soldiers, hailing taxi-cabs. The grocery stores were illuminated like theatres. I had gone down Greenwich Avenue to my local pharmacy, to buy some aspirin. My period had started and my stomach ached. But I was feeling surprisingly mellow, that evening. I remember that quite clearly. I was thinking about Lila and the times we had had together. I knew she wasn’t thinking of me – like hell she was – but I was remembering the afternoon she had worn my jeans and we had sauntered along 3rd Avenue, our arms linked.

  I hadn’t heard from her for so long. Nor had I heard anything via Roly. Sometimes I didn’t seethe; I just missed her painfully. I missed Trev all the time, of course. In fact I missed him more intensely as the weeks passed. I cried for him in the middle of the night, soaking my pillow. I missed his high spirits and his fitful companionship. I missed his sudden, obliterating lust. But my feelings for Lila fluctuated unexpectedly, as they did for my family, and I sometimes felt ashamed of the devious ways I had tried to damage her. I remembered her standing beside the phone booth in Leicester Square and gazing at me with her wide eyes. ‘Boy, I sure as hell wouldn’t want YOU for an enemy!’

  I went back to the apartment and unpacked some pasta that I had bought from Balducci’s. I gazed at the limp, green tagliatelli; it lay on the draining board like something I had dredged from a pond. I remember thinking how sad it was, that I would be cooking it just for myself. Each month for decades my period had come, draining away my hopes.

  Outside my windows the offices were lit for the cleaners. I was going to switch on the TV but I suddenly felt too weary. My life was slipping away from me. I couldn’t even picture what I kept in the hall-way, in my Belsize Park flat.

  And then, at 7.10, the phone rang. It was Roly.

  ‘My dear,’ he said. ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘Fine.’

  He spoke in his office voice, suave and yet formal. It meant that his secretary was still there. He said that he’d had a call from some TV producer about a small part in a networked soap; they needed an English actress to pl
ay a tennis pro. ‘Could you meet with them next week?’

  My spirits lifted. Since joining BCM I had had several such meetings and they had all come to nothing. But in an actress’s breast, hope springs eternal. It bloody well has to.

  He told me the time and the place – somewhere downtown, in Tribeca. He told me the name of the guy and I scribbled it on a piece of paper. I remember taking a sip of vermouth and realising how much I enjoyed speaking to Roly on the phone. Like many unattractive men, he grew more alluring via the mouthpiece. One felt the pure pull of his personality.

  I remember gazing at the worn, brown carpet and thinking about the terrible injustice of good looks. I was thinking about myself and Lila. God modelled us like putty, with careless abandon, and our only years on earth were determined by the whim of His thumbs. Maybe that was why I felt so bound to Roly, a walking example of life’s insufferable chanciness. He and I had more in common than he realised.

  I remember, very clearly, thinking this as I looked out of the window. The radiator rumbled, like my mother’s stomach in church on Sunday. I thought of my parents and how, in their different ways, they had both expected great things of me. I was modelled by them as much as by a God in whom I no longer believed. One press of someone’s thumbs and I could have become a Lila.

  Roly was repeating some story Ellen Barkin had told him. They had bumped into each other the previous week in the First Class lounge at Kennedy. Then he told me about some catering cock-up at his nephew’s barmitzvah. He was chatting to me at some length because he said he couldn’t meet me that night. ‘See, I have to go visit Lila.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’

  My mind raced. She was having a nervous breakdown. She had been toppled over by my stories in the papers. She was splitting up with Trev.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said. Just then another call came through for him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he told me. ‘It’s Jay. I’ll have to take it.’

  I don’t know how many minutes passed before he came back on the line. Only a couple, probably. I heard his faint voice. ‘Talk with Alan Levine,’ he said. ‘He’s their attorney. Sure Schulhof’s seen the rough cut. His response was positive. I was led to believe we had a deal . . .’

  I sat on the arm of the chair, my tumbler of vermouth on the table in front of me. During that moment, the apartment imprinted itself on my mind for ever; the two narrow windows, the brown carpet, the framed Edward Hopper print on the wall. The vase of dried flowers on the bookshelves. The illuminated kitchen doorway. My brain locked. All I could think was: I’ve done it. She’s finally freaked out.

  ‘. . . no, he has three others but they’re all in turnaround,’ said Roly, ‘he’s available, let’s go with him.’

  Finally he came back on the line.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

  ‘What’s happened to Lila?’

  ‘Huh?’

  I took a breath. ‘You were telling me about Lila.’

  ‘Oh. Sure,’ he said. ‘This is it.’ He paused. ‘She’s pregnant. She’s expecting Trevor’s baby, isn’t that a thing?’

  I suppose I didn’t reply, because after a moment he spoke again.

  ‘Jules?’ There was a pause. ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re going to get married! How about that!’

  Three

  SOME PEOPLE HERE don’t talk about what they have done. Others talk about it all the time, obsessively. They tell me more than I have ever wanted to know, and then they tell it to me all over again. A woman called Carletta follows me around like a dog. Her voice is low and monotonous; she mutters to my retreating back. I think she’s got a crush on me. ‘You have beautiful hair,’ she says. She just loves my accent, and when I speak she gazes at my lips. Sometimes she reminds me of how I was, with Lila. She’s my doppelganger. I can recognise her footsteps, without turning round. And I can never get away.

  She talks all right, but she never tells me what I want to hear. Nobody does; not quite. What I want to know is when it happened. Not it: the deed. It: the decision. That’s the most interesting moment, isn’t it? The moment when everything changes. When your body changes chemically. It’s as if you have had a transfusion, and there is suddenly someone else’s blood in your veins.

  It fascinates me, you see. In fact, it fascinates me a lot. I look at myself from a great distance. She’s sitting in her apartment and she is changing in front of my eyes. One phone call did it.

  The old Jules died and somebody else was born. She looked the same. White blouse, blue cardigan and jeans. Streaky blonde hair tied back in a band. She looked rather preppy that day. She moved around the apartment – look, she even did the washing-up, just like anybody else! Eventually she switched off the lights, one by one, and went to bed. But she didn’t read. And her eyes remained open.

  The next day I phoned the agency. I wanted the phone number of the TV producer, Abe Zacharias. I had forgotten to write it down the day before. Roly was in a meeting, so I spoke to his assistant, Larry.

  He gave me the number. Then I asked him about Lila. I couldn’t help it; I needed to confirm, from another source, that it was true. I had some sick compulsion to hear it again.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but she’s not announcing it to the press for a coupla days.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Trevor’s involved in some urgent project, he’s working round the clock. He’s holed up in his apartment and he doesn’t want to be disturbed. Not by the press, not by anybody. He’s writing some treatment he has to deliver Thursday.’

  That day I lunched with Roly. I wore the fitted suit that he found so attractive. He noticed no difference in me. He talked about some deal he was putting together and his voice drifted past my nostrils like the scent of cooking. I smiled and nodded. My mind was being repeatedly scratched by a needle, playing the same tune over and over. He’s having a baby with her. The record was stuck; by now the words had worn into nonsense, like a Yogic chant. Om . . . om . . .

  ‘You’re not eating, honey,’ said Roly. ‘You don’t like it? Want me to send it back?’

  I looked down at my noisette d’agneau. They were three small chops. Their bones had been removed; they were tightly curled like foetuses. They lay in their own thin liquor.

  I paused, and said casually, ‘I hear Trevor’s working on a new project.’

  Roly nodded. ‘Lila told me about it. But it’s a big secret.’ He lifted his glass of water and took a sip. ‘Even me, she doesn’t tell the story to.’

  ‘Really?’

  He patted his lips with his napkin. ‘Even me.’

  Outside it was chilly. Standing under the canopy, Roly buttoned up my coat. He buttoned it so tightly around my neck that I could hardly breathe. We walked down the street, hunched against the wind. Outside a liquor shop, I paused. I thought: maybe I’m not sounding pleased enough about Lila. Will he think I’m strange?

  So I said, ‘I know! I’ll buy a bottle of champagne for Lila and take it round to her place.’

  He said something but I couldn’t hear. Some truck had gridlocked, the traffic was at a standstill and the horns were deafening.

  ‘What?’ I shouted.

  ‘If you’re going tonight,’ he said, ‘make it early.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s working for the next couple of days.’

  ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘She’s what?’

  ‘She’s filming. Guest appearance, just a couple of days.’ He yelled at me closer. ‘She has an early call, she goes to bed at nine. Dead to the world.’

  Four

  JULES TOOK A cab back to her apartment. She slammed the door shut and dumped the bottle of champagne on the table. Her legs were trembling.

  She sat down in the kitchen. She had to think, fast. The more she thought, the more flustered she felt. And yet paralysed. Such innocuous words, such an innocent arrangement! Lila drugged and asleep in her apartment; Trev
alone in his. The two items of information had triggered off an idea so bold, so foolproof, that she could hardly believe it. Because it was magically simple. If she could keep her wits.

  I can’t remember what she did until twilight. Most of the time, I think, she sat immobile on the edge of the bed. At one point she jumped up, opened the closet and rummaged in her suitcase. At the bottom was the letter she had tapped out on Trev’s typewriter. She took it out and put it in her handbag. She selected a book from the shelves and put it into her handbag too.

  She must have sat still for a while, then. Everything had fallen into place. She didn’t even dare think about it.

  When she looked at her watch, for the hundredth time, it was 4.15. Some time later she made herself a cup of tea. Usually she didn’t take it sweetened, but that day she loaded in three spoonfuls of sugar. It tasted like the tea they give you in hospital. Later that night, when I returned to the apartment, I found sugar spilt on the kitchen table; there was some sprinkled on the floor, too. What a state she must have been in!

  At some point, too, she ran herself a bath. I suppose it was something to do, before darkness came. She lay in the water for a long time, until it grew tepid. Then she dried herself thoroughly with the towel. With mild interest she looked at herself in the mirror and saw how thin she had become. Almost emaciated, really. Her hip-bones jutted out and her breasts had shrunk. She brushed her teeth, as if she were preparing for a long journey.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed again. How insufferably hot it was! She could hardly breathe. So she got up and opened the window; then she sat down again. She smelt a faint scent of perfume. It must have wafted up fifteen floors, from trees down in the canyon of the streets. Spring had arrived; buds were swelling and bursting.