Like Me

by Hayley Phelan

  “Oh, we—” I stammered.

  “We don’t know each other,” Gemma finished, a little too firmly for my liking, though I was too concentrated on the way Benoit seemed to be looking at us through his aviator frames to really care.

  Benoit took a step back, and I tried, through sheer will, to force his eyes to stay on me. “But my god!” he said. He had a faint Germanic accent I couldn’t quite place. “The resemblance. Like sisters or—”

  “Oh no.” I laughed self-deprecatingly, so that Gemma wouldn’t be insulted. “No, please, I don’t.”

  Gemma fixed me with a thoughtful gaze. “Well,” she said carefully, “I guess I could see it.” My heart skipped a beat.

  “Of course, are you kidding?” Benoit exclaimed. “You could be twins.”

  “The hair’s different,” Gemma said. “And the eyebrows.”

  “Here—” He took out his phone. “I must capture this.”

  “Babe, I’m sure this girl”—she looked at me pityingly, beseechingly—“doesn’t want to have some stranger take her picture.” Her eyes flashed back at him with barely concealed annoyance. Ah, I thought wisely, trouble in paradise.

  He turned to me and stuck out his hand. “Hans Benoit. And you?”

  “Mickey, Mickey Jones,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Mickey,” Benoit said. Then he turned to Gemma, and I felt the absence of his eyes on me like a sudden drop in pressure. He said to her: “Strangers no more.”

  She sighed loudly. Benoit had already taken a few steps back and was looking through the camera on his phone. Gemma said to me: “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

  “Of course she wants to,” said Benoit. “Look at her.”

  “Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “I don’t mind.”

  Benoit motioned with his hands for us to get closer. “Smile,” he said, and we did. “Actually, don’t,” he said, and then we didn’t. “Now just look over there, yes, exactly, my god, it’s uncanny.”

  He showed us the results on his phone. I cringed. I thought we looked nothing alike; it must have been some joke, Gemma had been trying to protect me, I was nothing next to her.

  “You model?” he asked.

  I nodded, feeling chastised.

  “Never seen your book around. What agency you with?”

  “Would you stop harassing the poor girl?” Gemma said.

  Trying to regain my composure, I forced myself to smile and said, “Jason at Elite.”

  Benoit shook his head. “All agents are the devil.”

  He peered back at his phone. Gemma hooked her arm in his.

  “I’ll AirDrop it to you,” he said. “Mickey’s Cell Phone, right?”

  Before I could even respond, my phone dinged, and I accepted the photos with a light tap of my thumb. Gemma started to pull him away.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said to me, and added, rolling her eyes, “twin.” She could be funny like that. A real dry wit.

  Benoit laughed and said over his shoulder, “The question is, which one of you is evil?”

  Gemma hit him on the arm. “Stop!” She laughed, then looked back at me warmly, and I thought maybe, actually, we could be friends, I’d misread the interaction. She’d never been more beautiful than in that moment. “Anyway, I’m obviously the evil one.”

  I winked at her and said something, hoping to be funny, about how only time would tell. They walked away and I stood there for a long time, my heart beating fast as a criminal’s.

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t until later, when I was safe at home under the covers, that I dared to look at the photos again. Though I looked pale and waxen next to her, there was indeed, upon closer inspection, a kind of familial resemblance.

  Eagerly, I opened up Instagram, and went to Benoit’s profile. He had posted the series of photos on his Stories, sandwiched between a photo of smoke billowing from those orange funnels that sprout up around New York City in the summer, and a close-up of Gemma’s face backlit by the late afternoon sun. He hadn’t tagged Gemma or me, but he had written SISTERS on the last photo, the one of us looking off into the distance. I felt lightheaded. I remember thinking the really weird thing was that we looked so comfortable with each other, like we’d known each other for years. My therapist now flags this as an “interesting observation,” but all I thought at the time was that Jason would be thrilled.

  I responded to Benoit’s story: Ha! So nice meeting you two!

  Then, perhaps against my better judgement, I decided to post the picture he’d sent of the two of us smiling. It took me a long time to think of a caption. But when I did I laughed out loud. I wrote: Which one of us is evil, though?

  * * *

  —

  Gemma leans in close. Her mouth is slightly parted, her lids low; beneath them her eyes are unfocused, staring off into the distance. With a graceful flick of the wrist, she applies mascara from a pink tube to her eyelashes as a warm, artificial light suffuses her face. The motion is repeated again and again, with such precision it becomes clear it is the work of a machine, a Boomerang.

  Never leave home without a flick of @Glossier’s mascara.

  A link is provided to purchase. Just swipe up.

  * * *

  —

  Gemma is standing at an angle, one foot thrust forward, an arm at her hip. She is wearing the Paco Rabanne Embellished Chainmail Dress and Totême Flip-Flop Heels in Black. A phone obscures her face. It is dim-lit, and there is a diagonal line running through it, the edge of a mirror. All of it is a reflection.

  She is on her way to the opening of a new club, The Rising. Everyone is going to be there.

  * * *

  —

  A storefront emerges out of the blackness of a New York City street, teetering back and forth before growing stationary. A neon sign announces Bethune Street Body Work. In the window is a diagram of a human body, the major organs and veins shown in vibrant colors. One Hour Massage = $45, another sign reads.

  “Brb, getting a late-night massage,” Gemma’s voice trills, though she is still nowhere to be seen.

  As the door grows closer, a sign comes into focus. CLOSED, it reads, in all caps.

  “Psych!” Gemma says, and a hand, glowing ghostly white in the evening light, appears at the bottom of the screen, reaching for the door. It swings open before she can reach it, and a stocky man in a suit greets her.

  “Welcome to The Rising,” he says.

  * * *

  —

  The room is spinning. Light filters in from the street, and the neon sign in the window casts a pink glow on several potted plants, a golden Buddha, and a reception desk with a little bell on it.

  “How cool is the super-secret entrance to The Rising?” Gemma asks.

  She walks towards an elevator at the end of a hallway. A hand depresses the arrow denoting Up.

  Gemma’s face appears in the near-dark, her eyes large and shining.

  “Okay, my sweets, that’s it for now—no phones allowed in the club!”

  The doors slide open, and she walks in.

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, I watched as Julia glided a butter knife into the soft white flesh of her poached egg, splitting it so that the tangerine-yellow yolk spilled forth, dressing her avocado toast. Blake climbed onto her chair and took pictures, balancing on her knees.

  I was thinking about what had come out of my body that morning: a white pearl of sebum, hard and perfectly round, from a tender pink bump between my groin and navel that I’d been worrying for days. I had rolled it between my fingers appreciatively, thinking how mysterious the body could be, how many secrets it hid from us. Then I tossed it. It almost seemed a heartless thing to do now.

  Once Blake was satisfied, she climbed back down and sat
in her chair, studying the photos. “Mmm, it looks so good,” she said, meaning the food in the photos, not the food on our table, which we all knew she wouldn’t eat.

  Julia forked a gooey piece of avocado toast into her mouth.

  Blake looked up. “Want me to send you one?”

  “Nah,” said Julia, through a mouthful. “Brunch isn’t my brand.”

  “Ha! And what is your brand, pray tell?” I asked archly.

  “Drinking, fucking, and smoking.”

  We laughed. I sliced off a piece of one of Blake’s gluten-free waffles and slid it into my mouth.

  “So good, right?” Blake asked, even though she hadn’t tasted them yet herself. I’d lied and said I’d already eaten, knowing that I could eat whatever was on Blake’s plate for free. This secretly pleased her, as if I were not just consuming her food but eating up her fat right off the bone, and she pushed her plate towards me. “Have more,” she said. “I’m not that hungry.”

  She toyed with the photos on her phone. “Which one’s better?” she asked us, toggling between two identical and uninteresting photos of our brunch table. Blake had no eye. It was quite sad. Arbitrarily I picked the first photo, then I made her take a picture of me with my fork hanging out of my mouth and my eyes giving a look like fuck my life, or whatever, and I looked depressed and skinny and cool. I was going to caption it waffle monster but before I could even post it, I noticed I had a new direct message.

  It was from Benoit: hey m we met in the bookstore…would love to shoot u…u in?

  My heart leapt into my throat, and I looked up as if I’d seen a ghost. Julia and Blake both gawked at me.

  “What is it?” Julia asked.

  Silently, I showed them my screen. They both let out surprised puffs of laughter. Julia leaned back in her chair. Blake leaned forward. I hunched over my phone protectively and began typing. I don’t even remember what I said. But the answer, of course, was: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  * * *

  —

  Gemma is staring directly into the camera, the beginning of a smile, or what I think is a smile, playing on her face. She is on a pier somewhere, high above the sea. Behind her, the ocean glitters like a thousand diamonds before cresting softly onto the golden shores.

  “I think true beauty is about being real,” she says. “Authenticity. That’s the most beautiful thing in the world to me.”

  She is wearing a ribbed white t-shirt, jeans, the gold locket that Benoit gave her. Her lips are painted red, and her blond curls bounce gently in the breeze.

  The camera blinks.

  She is standing in almost the same spot—only slightly different. She’s leaning farther against the railing behind her, looking just to the left. “The advice I would give my younger self is…it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. It only matters what you think.” She is speaking strangely. It becomes clear she is being prompted, asked to repeat the question within the answer. “Oh,” she says, her face lighting up. “And don’t get the gap in your teeth fixed.” She makes air quotes around the word fixed. This is a part of her story I know very well: Early on in her career, it was suggested she get the gap in her two front teeth closed. But Gemma refused. Gemma persisted. Gemma won.

  The camera blinks.

  “Am I living my truth?” Gemma laughs. She gestures at the surroundings behind her. “I’m definitely living my dream. Hopefully that’s the same thing.”

  The camera blinks.

  “My big break came when I was working in a cheese shop.” She giggles. “That was my part-time job in college. It was a very Gouda job.” She pumps her pale-blond eyebrows at the camera ironically. “That’s a cheese industry joke for you. We used to make up puns all day to amuse ourselves. Anyway, one day Hans Benoit came in, the photographer? And that was kind of it.”

  The camera blinks.

  “My secret talent is ballet. And that I can touch my tongue to my nose.” She demonstrates the latter, tilting her head back and making herself go cross-eyed. Gemma describes herself as a nerd. Though it’s obvious to anyone with eyes she isn’t.

  The camera blinks.

  Her hands are on her hips. Her face mimes someone deep in thought. “My motto is…beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I guess that goes for everything, not just beauty. Like, different strokes for different folks.”

  The camera blinks.

  “The one beauty product I definitely can’t live without is Kleenex Pure Beauty Wipes. I’m legit obsessed with them.”

  The camera blinks.

  Now Gemma is holding a colorful plastic package in the palm of one hand. She peels back the top of it and extracts a Kleenex, which billows in the wind. The Kleenex is Millennial Pink.

  “I’m really obsessed with being clean. If I have stuff on my skin for too long, it drives me nuts. Obviously, in my line of work it happens, so I always keep a pack of these in my purse to use on the go.” She flourishes the Kleenex in front of the camera and it flutters dramatically. A thought seems to occur to her. She smiles slyly. “In fact…”

  Gemma begins polishing her red mouth, following the contours of her lips carefully. When she is finished, she waves the Kleenex in front of the camera, showing what she has done: a bloody gash where her lips have pressed into the delicate tissue. She smiles triumphantly, her lips naked and pale.

  The camera blinks.

  Gemma leans far out over the railing, looking out at the horizon. The Kleenex is gone. Her lips aren’t quite as pale. They’ve been touched up with something pink and natural-looking. “My biggest dream,” she says. “Hm…” She looks genuinely perplexed. “I just want to be happy, you know? Happy in myself. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do.”

  The screen dissolves to black, and the credits roll. Gemma is gone. The interview is over. If you’d like to know more about Kleenex Pure Beauty Wipes, click here.

  * * *

  —

  My shoot with Benoit was four days away.

  I promised myself I would tell no one. No one. And then, after a few drinks, I told a lot of people. Benoit is going to shoot me. All of the struggle I’d faced—the dead-end casting calls and godawful penny-pinching shoots, the fear that I’d never be anything, would be broke for the rest of my life, a failure like my father—was validated in those six words. It had all been worth it. Even the people who didn’t really know who he was knew enough to pretend to be impressed. Benoit is going to shoot me in four days. I have a shoot at Benoit’s studio.

  That was all I knew. Benoit communicated in short Instagram DMs, laced with charming grammatical errors common among ESLers. It would be “intimate and low-key,” a “super chill vibe.” I figured that meant it’d pay pennies and I might have to take my top off. That was fine. I was no prude. I thought about messaging Gemma. I spent a lot of time staring at the white space under my last message to her, trying to penetrate its emptiness, bore past its glassy surface and directly into Gemma’s brain. What was she thinking? Had she said something to Benoit about me—endorsed me somehow—that made him want to work with me? Did she even know about the shoot? I wanted to reach out to her but could think of nothing to say, no way to bring it up.

  So I watched the Kleenex video on repeat. It had come out just a few days before. I had, of course, already read and reread the little Q&As and profiles of her that I could find online. But this was one of her first video interviews, and it was interesting to watch those words coming out of a moving mouth instead of marching across a screen in tiny black-and-white lettering. It felt almost unnatural. There seemed to me a great significance buried deep within the video’s pixels, a meaning behind her dreamy expression, the ocean behind her, the fact that the beach she was on, as I learned later, when I googled it, was called Paradise Cove. I wondered what she was thinking about when they asked her if she was living her truth. I wondered if the sun was in her eyes. I wondered if she really
was living her truth and, if she was, what the fuck that even meant.

  The Kleenex wipes smelled like strawberries. Good at first, and then nauseating. I wrapped my fingers in them and ran them across my brow, along my jawline, between my breasts. I put on red lipstick and watched myself take it off in the mirror.

  * * *

  —

  The day before the shoot, Benoit’s production assistant, Kiki (@KissKiss), emailed me. I’d already tried to elicit what details I could from Benoit without seeming overeager, but he was incapable of giving a straightforward answer. Finally, now, I had some concrete information: Call time was nine a.m., and hair and makeup was to begin promptly. The shoot was expected to last until sunset. Lunch would be catered. A car was coming to pick me up at 8:15 in the morning. Any hair around my bikini line, arms, and underarms should be removed. Also, she wrote, Benoit is very sensitive to scent. She warned me against wearing any perfume or scented lotion or eating onion or garlic within twenty-four hours of the shoot. Even deodorant was discouraged. Benoit recommends using lavender oil, she wrote. Anything too artificial kills the vibe. Vibe, I was already learning, was a key word in Kiki and Benoit’s vocabulary.

  She didn’t tell me what the shoot was for, and I didn’t ask.

  While early today there can be a tendency to worry or stew if you’re in limbo on a matter, dear Aquarius, the day shapes up to help open communications. Benoit was a Leo. I knew his birthday because last summer, when they were very much on, Gemma put up a photo of him blowing out the candles on a Momofuku sprinkles cake, and he’s wearing a wifebeater and the aviators and there’s a sheen of sweat over his tattoos. 43 years young! Happy birthday, my love. Gemma’s birthday was November 7, a Scorpio. They had an 83-percent compatibility rating, whereas I had a 76-percent compatibility rating with Benoit, and an 85-percent with Gemma.