I try to make sense of what’s happening right now but without any clues, I don’t get very far. “I’m sorry, what?” I hear myself ask pathetically.
“I’m sorry, what?” she echoes back at me in a painfully accurate British accent that makes me cringe inside. She shakes her head dismissively at my confusion and continues in her Texas drawl. “I can’t help not doing it exactly right if you only give me a day’s prep, can I? I’m doing the best I can and for the money you’re paying, I know for a fact you won’t find anyone better than me. Seriously, I don’t get what you want. You ask me to turn up and do a bunch of weird shit with you and then you start calling the cops. I thought the cops were part of it when they turned up! But they were real! Do you know how much trouble that could have landed me in? I mean, why would you do that?”
All I can do is stare, and then I choose my words with care. “Look, I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know who you are. I thought you were Emily, but you’re obviously not. I’m just looking for Emily. Actual Emily.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” she shouts, her features scrunched in disbelief. She squeezes her eyes shut and blows out a long, loud breath before opening her eyes again. She gives me the time-out sign. “Okay, that’s it. Time out. I’m done. I’m quitting, okay? I quit. Just keep the money, I’ll call my agent and tell her to pay you back, you strange, strange person.” She starts to remove Emily’s earrings from her ears and thumps them down on the table.
She’s quitting? My mind scrambles to catch up. But as I watch her I realize there’s something about the way she’s removing her earrings. It reminds me of being in a dressing room after a curtain call. And suddenly the whole situation sharpens into focus. This woman is an actress, an actress being paid to play Emily. And she thinks I’m the one who hired her. For a terrifying second, I wonder if I did hire her, if somehow without realizing I have gone completely mad and all of this is down to me. Have I created an elaborate distraction to keep myself from cracking up after George left me? But that can’t be true if only for the simple fact that I wouldn’t know how to begin hiring someone in LA, even if I had gone mad.
“Wait, stop!” I burst as she hastily continues to remove Emily’s valuables. “I am not part of whatever this is,” I say, gesturing to the situation. “I definitely didn’t hire you, okay? I am a real person. I’m not role-playing.”
She stops unhooking Emily’s bracelet and raises her eyes to mine. “What? You’re not the person who hired me?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t call the cops on me?”
I pause, unsure of how to answer. “No. I did call the cops but I didn’t hire you. I was looking for the real Emily Bryant and you showed up instead. I only met her once so I wasn’t a hundred percent certain you weren’t her until just now. That’s why I called the police the other day, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about any of it, but I had a feeling there was something weird going on.”
Her expression sobers. “There’s a real Emily?” she asks, her tone concerned. “What do you mean you were looking for her? Why were you looking for her?”
I hesitate to explain everything that’s gone before. “Basically, I’ve been looking for her for four days. She left her wallet and car keys with me at an audition and then she just disappeared. So I looked in her car, found a phone number and address, and called. Then you showed up at my apartment. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it—you look quite like her, you sounded like her. I suppose my only theory is that whoever hired you is trying to cover up the fact that Emily disappeared at that audition. I think I was one of the last people to see her.”
“Shit,” she says almost to herself and sinks back down into her chair.
“Do you know who actually hired you?” I ask, delicately.
She looks up at me, embarrassed. “No.” She shrugs hopelessly. “I thought it was you. The job came through my agent and I taped the scenes they requested and sent it back through them. Just like a normal taped audition.”
“What scenes did you do?”
“It was, like, similar to when I came to your place.”
“Someone scripted our interaction? Before we had it? How is that possible?”
“Well, no, obviously, it was like a sort of scene outline. They gave me a character breakdown for your character as well as mine.”
I feel my blood freeze. “They did what?” I exclaim. I suddenly realize that I am a part of this whether I like it or not. Whoever hired her knows about me; they’ve been watching me, following me maybe. I think of my apartment and how things have been moved around the last two days. Whatever happened to Emily involves me now too, and whoever hired this woman hired her to deal with me. “Do you have my character breakdown?”
She bites her bottom lip as she weighs the requests. “Yeah.” She’s reticent but gives a dutiful nod. “I’ll get it,” she says, rising.
In the living room she drops down onto one knee in front of the sofa and roots around underneath, finally coming up with a tatty cracked leather handbag. Her own things, hidden “offstage.” She rises businesslike and hands me a dog-eared padded envelope.
“So this is everything I have. Breakdowns, scene guides, everything. My agent sent them all through.”
She hands me the packet of papers and I take them.
“Your agent must know who hired you, right?”
“I guess,” she answers, then catching my expression adds, “Oh, should I…I can check.”
I nod her on, astounded that even at this point, she still isn’t leaping into action to find out what the hell is going on.
She pulls out her iPhone, hesitantly. “Do you mind if I take this in the other room?” she asks, indicating the bedroom beyond.
“Yeah, sure.” I understand. If I were her, the last thing I’d want to do is discuss this situation with my agent in front of me. She heads off into the other room, closing the door behind her. I wait until I hear the soft mumble of her voice then make my way back to the kitchen.
A few minutes later she returns, her brows knitted. “Okay, so, I spoke to her and…she’s not exactly sure who hired me. She’s never heard of the company before. The payments are coming through but she doesn’t have a name or anything like that. She’s going to call them now on the number they gave her and see if anyone picks up. She said she’d call me back straight after.”
She sits back down opposite me at the table.
“That’s great. Listen, thanks so much for doing this.”
“No problem,” she says.
One question keeps snagging in my mind, and as a silence descends I decide to broach it.
“Can I just ask? What kind of acting job did you think this was?” I try to keep the bewilderment from my voice but it’s hard given the situation we’ve both found ourselves in.
She gives me a defensive glance. “Well, they told me it was supposed to be immersive theater. Site-specific, you know, like you’re playing a character in a real setting and you interact with other actors in character but also with members of the public. I’ve done a bunch of it before. I did this interactive reconstruction of Marilyn Monroe’s final day up near her old house in Brentwood a couple of years ago. I just had to act out her last day, errands around LA, her meals, everything. The ‘audience’ bought tickets and followed me around to all the different locations. It was pretty dark. But people are really into true crime at the moment so, you know, you go where the work is.”