Like Me

by Hayley Phelan

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that!” he said, laughing, but without my mother’s comforting presence, I could not bring myself to respond. His laughter subsided. He began toying with the corner of the napkin he’d carelessly discarded in front of him.

  “You know,” he said, pinching the napkin and, with a flourish of his wrist, letting it flutter briefly in the air so that it settled flat on the table, “you and I are more alike than you think.”

  I snorted. He began carefully folding the napkin crosswise. “It’s true,” he said, his eyes not meeting mine. “I see you. I know what you’re capable of.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, a little too urgently. I wanted, desperately, for him to stop talking.

  “Yes you do,” he said, raising his eyes to meet mine, as the napkin became smaller and smaller. “You’re more intelligent and cunning than I think you even realize. Oh, yes, I know what you’re capable of—because I’m capable of the same.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  He patted the small triangle of a napkin briefly with his fingers. “I’m not trying to insult you, Michaela. I’m trying to tell you something. You’d do well to listen. You should be proud you are the way you are. You and me are survivors. It’s in the blood. There’s no escaping.”

  When I was sixteen, my father gave me a black BMW as a present. By then, I already had a taste for drunkenness, the luxuriousness of a dulled consciousness, and though I promised to take good care of the car, I was not about to temper my habit. So I drove drunk a lot. One night, coming home from a party, I was more intoxicated than usual—I’d chugged half a bottle of vodka on a dare, just to show those idiots I could. I remember very little about what happened, except the sick thwap of something going under the tires. I had sped up, trying to put distance between me and whatever had just happened—and the next thing I knew, someone was shouting at me, and I felt strong arms under my armpits. Miraculously, I was unhurt. But the car was totaled. I’d driven it into the trees on a winding road a few blocks from our house. When the cops drove me home that night, they’d already called my parents to tell them I’d be charged with drunk driving and I’d heard my mother, hysterical, all the way from the back of the cruiser and felt sick with guilt. But when we got to my house, it was my father that answered the door. He made me go into the kitchen and told me to pour myself a cup of coffee, then he took the cops outside. I drank my coffee slowly. Through the thick fog of alcohol, a beast of remorse and terror was beginning to rear its head. I felt badly for what I’d done, but worse that I had gotten caught. It had been stupid, I should have been more careful. Tears fell from my eyes as I mourned my life, which I was sure was already over. After what felt like a long time, my father came back into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat down next to me at the table.

  “Well, they’ve agreed to drop the charges.”

  “How?” I asked, flabbergasted.

  He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and looked at me frankly, turning something over in his mind. “If you’re old enough to get in trouble like that, you’re old enough to know: I paid them off.” After I didn’t say anything for some time, he went on, “Don’t look so shocked, Michaela. I did what I had to do. Any father would.”

  This was a few months before he was charged. I knew nothing of his exploits, but, though he had read shock in my face, I wasn’t actually surprised. On some level, I always knew my father was capable of that kind of thing. And though I’d later come to despise him for it, that night my whole body was suffused with gratitude for him. I got up from my seat and hugged him tightly. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” he said, and his eyes were wet. “Don’t ever do anything so stupid again.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. “I won’t.”

  We never spoke of the incident again, not even when my father gave me a new BMW. Not even when we saw the Robinson kids with tear-stained faces, and learned that some maniac had drifted into their yard and run over their dog in the dead of night. Not even when he got arrested and everything he’d ever done was put under a microscope.

  Now, I stared at my father and felt the weight of that transgression like the weight of a heavy promise: destiny, dread. He held my gaze, as if he knew what I was thinking. To my embarrassment, I felt that my eyes had welled with tears; first one crossed the threshold, tickling my cheek like a fly to be swatted, and then that pregnant, inevitable second one, too: I felt them catch on my jaw, hover tremulously, then fall.

  “Oh, come now, there’s no reason to cry,” he said, unfurling the napkin and dropping it in my lap. “Wipe those away before your mother comes back.”

  * * *

  —

  On the subway ride home from the Four Seasons that night, I missed my stop. I didn’t get off at the next one either. Instead, I transferred trains and, all while pretending I wasn’t doing what I was doing, rode to West Fourth and then walked to Gemma’s apartment. It was dark out, and I made sure to stay in the shadows. The entrance was silent, unforgiving. No one came or went. I wished I knew which window had been hers, was still hers for all I knew, and I studied each one, praying for some sort of sign, an identifying mark. But they were all the same, indistinguishable squares of glass; anything, anyone, could have been behind them. I began meandering along the streets, feeling comforted by the fact that Gemma had once walked them, too. It occurred to me that I’d been foolish to only look for her at her apartment building. After all, in New York, one’s apartment is hardly the most likely place they’d be. I went into the dive bar she always used to go to and ordered a gin gimlet, which was her favorite drink. Time passed, in the uncertain way of growing drunkenness. I had another gimlet. When that was drained, the bartender, a nice-looking kid with a scruffy beard, asked if I’d like another. Startled from whatever reverie I was swimming in, I blurted out Gemma’s name instead.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  I straightened my shoulders, trying to sober up. “Do you know Gemma Anton?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so?”

  “She comes in here a lot,” I said and then, to my embarrassment, hiccupped. I added quickly, to erase the hiccup, “She’s a regular.”

  “Lots of people are regulars in here.”

  “She’s tall, blond. A model”—hiccup—“kind of hard to miss.”

  He looked at me strangely.

  “She wears a locket like this,” I said, sliding it off my neck and showing it to him. I closed the back of my throat, trying to prevent any more hiccups.

  He gave the locket a cursory glance, then laughed. “So, like you, you mean?”

  Hiccup. Fuck. “Yes, we look alike.”

  “I mean, there’s a blond girl who used to come in all the time with that photographer guy.”

  My heart leapt. “Hans Benoit?”

  “She does look a lot like you,” he said.

  “Was it Benoit?”

  “Yeah—that’s right, that’s his name. I like his shit, actually.”

  “Do you—I mean, have you seen her recently? Do you know where she is?”

  His face darkened. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no reason, it’s just”—hiccup—“never mind—”

  “Is something going on?”

  “No!” I said, though I’d accidentally raised my voice. “Everything is fine. Just give me another gimlet.”

  He looked on the point of refusing when I rudely jammed a crumpled twenty-dollar bill on the table, and he reluctantly turned to mix me one. So she had been here with Benoit. Often. The old illusions boiled up in my head: Benoit had strangled her and tossed her in the river. Benoit had banished her from the industry. Benoit had done something awful to her, he had broken up with her, insulted her, and she was so heartbroken she went to extremes, did the unthinkable, deleted her Instagram.

  More time passed at the bar
. My brain was awhirl with images, which shapeshifted as soon as I tried to pin them down—they became violent, less real. I asked the man next to me if he knew Gemma, only he didn’t seem to understand me. I stumbled from my stool, and it fell over behind me. A girl helped me pick it up.

  “D’you know Gemma?” I croaked.

  She shook her head and hurried away. I worked my way through the rest of the bar, asking everyone if they knew her, trying to show them pictures, then stumbling over my words, getting confused over what I was saying, forgetting where I was. People started whispering. I could feel them staring at me, growing alarmed, or maybe they were only disgusted. But I couldn’t stop. Eventually I was reduced to murmuring her name repeatedly, my body jerking with hiccups as I paced back and forth, phone in hand, until they threw me out.

  I stumbled away from the place, found a darkened doorway to lean against and get my bearings. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers into them, trying to keep the rising nausea at bay, and the grid appeared in red behind my eyelids. Gemma’s last Instagram reared up, her face growing pink from the fading sun—or is it from something else? Something just out of the frame? No—no—no—Gemma, I repeated to myself again, strenuously, her face growing pink from the fading sun, standing out on that pier. Her caption had read Pre-partying for @TheRising tn, and by pre-party I mean gazing forlornly at the sun completely alone. Was it strange that I could recall, down to the punctuation, every caption she had ever posted, almost as if they had come from somewhere deep inside myself? I didn’t think so at the time. Instead I had a flash of inspiration. The hiccups subsided almost instantly. I knew what I should do.

  I hurried back out onto the street.

  “Is it Thursday?” I screamed at the closest passerby, a white guy with long, scraggly hair, who looked up at me with alarm, then confusion. “Today is Thursday, right?” I asked impatiently.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, and then before he could ask me if I wanted a drink or needed help or some other bullshit, I turned on my heel and jogged towards Seventh Avenue. It appeared in my mind like a beacon, calling me towards it: The Rising.

  Gemma had religiously attended the Social for Social Thursday parties, and though it was true I hadn’t seen mention of them anywhere else on my feed, I was sure they were still going on. The Rising had probably only become more exclusive and under-the-radar—from the get-go, they had never allowed photos inside—and I was sure that if Gemma was anywhere on a Thursday, it would be there. I cursed myself for not going there sooner. My lack of interest in any sort of nightlife had, for the most part, benefited me, allowing me to concentrate on what mattered—content, content, content—but it was stupid that I hadn’t thought about how it might be costing me a Gemma run-in. More determined than ever, I shot up Seventh Avenue and veered towards the Meatpacking District. I knew the club was located somewhere on Bethune Street, which only had three blocks to it. I made it to the street in five minutes, paused to catch my breath, and recognized it instantly: the weary-looking awning and the innocuous sign, Bethune Street Body Work, and the neon signs in the window alongside the chart of the human body sliced in half with all its organs showing, poor thing. I took out my phone and reapplied Glossier Generation G Sheer Matte Lipstick in Zip to the shadowy, slightly cross-eyed woman in the screen. I walked purposefully towards the door, perfectly calm.

  Of course, there was a sign in the window saying it was closed, but this did not deter me at all. I would have figured as much. I waited patiently at the door for the bouncer, whoever he was, to see me and let me in, usher me into my rightful place among the anointed, where, if I was unable to find Gemma, I was sure to meet someone who knew her, who possibly had been with her that very night she’d last posted. But when nothing happened, I grew impatient and tugged on the handle. The door rattled but did not budge.

  “It’s Mickey Jones,” I said, barely suppressing a smile as I imagined how embarrassed, how apologetic, they’d be when they realized it was me at the door, me they kept waiting. Proof that my father was wrong, proof of my power.

  After a minute of silence, my smile faded. I moved closer to the glass and looked past my blurry reflection into the room. I had to laugh—it was a perfect imitation of a massage parlor, complete with a money tree behind the cramped reception desk (the handmade sign Scotch-taped to a jar, marked Tips, was a particularly brilliant touch) and an aquarium in the corner, which was giving off an unnatural blue light. Obviously the bouncer, or the host, was ushering whoever had just arrived inside—the club must be hidden somewhere, perhaps at the end of the long, dark hallway just to the left of the reception desk. Sure enough, a figure emerged in the hallway, moving towards the door. I knocked loudly and stepped back, relieved, trying to calibrate my smile so that it conveyed both my annoyance and my gracious forgiveness.

  When nothing happened, I began to grow angry. Could they really not recognize me through the glass? Couldn’t they tell I was somebody?

  “Um, hello?” I called through the door, this time not bothering to hide my irritation. I yanked at the door again. “It’s Mickey Jones,” I yelled, and this time I tried to push through the door, though it wouldn’t budge. “Hello!” I pounded at the door with my fist.

  Finally, the door opened halfway, and a middle-aged Asian woman wearing a pink sweatshirt, white slacks, and rubber sandals stood in the slim gap in the door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a thick accent, which was obviously fake. They had really gone the extra mile.

  “The Rising,” I said breathlessly. “I should be on that list.”

  “What?” She drew her eyebrows together and tilted her head to one side, as if trying to hear me better.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said impatiently. “I know it’s supposed to be secret.” I made bunny fingers around the word. “But I’m okay, I come all the time.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling and shaking her head, already beginning to close the door. “Wrong place.”

  I heaved a dramatic sigh. “Please,” I said. “Don’t give me that. I know this is The Rising. I’ve been here, like, fifteen times.”

  “I’m sorry, no, no, no,” she said, shaking her head and smiling and stepping away from the door like I was going to rob her, like I was going to bash her head in and step over her dead body.

  “Stop the act,” I said in my gentlest, most coaxing voice. “It’s fine.” I made a calming motion with my hands, smoothing everything down, smiling wide. The woman’s face relaxed slightly, her grip on the door slackening just enough—I lunged forward and pushed through the door. The woman yelped and ran behind the tiny reception desk in the corner. I blew past her, past the fish tank, down the darkened hallway, down, down, down, searching for the elevator.

  I heard the woman speaking loudly in Mandarin behind me. I’d reached the end. The elevator was ingeniously concealed behind plain drywall. I slid my palm against its smooth surface, searching for the button, for whatever trick would make it open up and ferry me above.

  “Let me in!” I screamed, slapping my fist against it. I knew it was here, it had to be. What devilish lengths they would go to, whoever they were! I breathed in eucalyptus, and it burned my nostrils. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense! I pressed my entire body against the hard surface, shivering all of a sudden. A strange strangled sound erupted from my throat. I was sobbing.

  “What’re you doing?”

  I whipped around to see a twentysomething guy, probably this woman’s son, wearing Air Jordans and clutching an iPhone in one hand.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “You have to leave,” the man said patiently. “Or we’ll have to call the cops.”

  I saw that his phone was pointed at me, his face illuminated by the screen, and my stomach dropped, the ground giving way beneath me fast as the power dynamics swung like a seesaw. I felt suddenly afraid, indignant, trapped.

  “Don’t film me!” I screamed,
taking a step towards him.

  The man remained impassive, his phone pointed at me like a gun.

  “I demand that you stop filming me!” I screeched.

  “You are trespassing on our property. I will continue to film you until you leave.”

  His voice was calm, as if he knew he held all the power, and that was what really irritated me, that was what really drove me nuts. I was breathing fast and hard like an animal, trapped in the corner. He took a few steps forward and said something in Mandarin over his shoulder. A spark flew in my chest—I knew I had to escape, I couldn’t allow him any closer. With superhuman agility, I barreled towards him, my body cutting the air like a knife, the wind rushing in my ears—the man was so surprised, he didn’t have time to react as I wrenched the phone from his hands and flew, soaring, soaring, soaring past him, the room blurring behind me, until I was outside gulping at the air, and I was still running until I reached the river just a few blocks away, just barely missing a car whizzing by on the West Side Highway, and tossed the device, that wretched all-seeing eye, into the Hudson River.

  In a trance, I walked back over to Gemma’s apartment. The doorman, a different one from the last time I’d been there, nodded at me familiarly. “Welcome back,” he said. “Good night.”

  I took the stairs, all the way to the top floor, where there was unlikely to be anyone passing through. Then I curled up on the landing, and slept.

  * * *

  —

  A week later, the day of the shoot arrived, blown in on the most perfect summer’s day. Since the dinner with my father, I’d hardly eaten or slept. But the funny thing was: I felt fucking great. Best I’d felt in years. I’d discovered new depths to lightness. The hunger had calcified and hollowed out. It felt like a glass ball I carried around with me, balanced in the palm of my hand: hard, but light, so light! Sometimes I felt like my toes would lift off the ground, that I would rise and effervesce and disappear into nothingness.