The Body Double by Emily Beyda

Author:Emily Beyda [Beyda, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

Max is waiting in the car, idling outside the door to the studio.

“Maxie,” I say, “that was a fiasco. You have to work harder on prepping me next time. That woman was totally unorganized, I practically had to do her job for her. From now on, we’re prepping a list of anecdotes and laugh lines in advance, and I’m doing the pre-show interviews on my own. I obviously can’t trust you to handle it.”

I remember what I had said on the show earlier, and I feel bad for a moment. I do need to be kinder to him. I will be kinder to him. The poor boy works so hard.

“Still,” I say, “it could have been worse. I’d better text Bruce.”

I go to take my phone out of my purse, text my agent, like I normally do after these things. But there’s something wrong. It’s not the phone I remember, sleek and new. It’s a battered thing with a cracked screen—my old phone, maybe, from years ago. Max is holding something in his hands. I look. It’s my phone, the phone I remember, new, unblemished, that rose-gold back. I take it out of his hands. “Whoops,” I say, “looks like we accidentally switched.”

I type in the passcode, my father’s birthday, once, twice. Nothing. On a whim, I try my own birthday, and the phone unlocks, opening on an unfamiliar screen.

“Did you change my password?” I say. “Honestly, Max, what’s wrong with you?”

I can see his face, how white it is, how stiff. Good. He knows he’s made a mistake. He pauses for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth between me and the driver. I can tell that there’s something he wants to say to me that he can’t say in front of this man.

“You’d better not text Bruce just yet,” Max finally says.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “Of course I need to text him. I always do.”

He lowers his voice even further. “Just wait,” he says, practically whispering. “Until we’re back at the house, okay?”

The car idles, the driver’s eyes shifty in the rearview mirror. Max’s face has gone totally white. He’s looking at me with something almost like terror.

“Okay,” he says, his voice returning to a normal volume, a high false cheer directed at the driver’s back, “let’s go back to Ms. Feld’s building. We’re done here.”

The driver nods, steering us back toward the gate through the empty streets of fake New York. Max places his hand over the screen, something urgent in his gaze.

“Rosanna,” he says, “just wait, okay? I’ll explain when we get back to the apartment.”

“The apartment building?” I say. “Is now really the time to visit that old thing? Can’t we just go back to the house? I’m tired.”

“I know you’re tired,” says Max, “I’m tired, too. But just wait. I’ll explain when we get there, okay?”

He reaches forward to take the phone from my hand, and as I shift away from him, I feel the cold brush

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