Like Me

by Hayley Phelan

  Trust your intuition, dear Aquarius, and nurture faith and positive thinking. If you find that obstacles to the realization of goals always seem to pop up, then it’s important for you to take an honest inner inventory of what you really believe you deserve. New York City had confirmed its first Brazilian Flu case. Sixty-three Likes. A mall had been shot up in Pennsylvania, the second mass shooting in twenty-four hours. Forty-two Likes. Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, an apparent suicide, the fucking coward. Two new Follows. Comment: Hi! I’m a big fan of your page! It’s my birthday coming up. I suffer from lupus and it would mean a lot to me if you Followed me on my birthday. Thank you! It was going to be seventy-five degrees and sunny, with a cool breeze at night. I had 132K Followers.

  The night before, I’d submitted a request to be verified on Instagram, utterly confident that I would qualify. Every time I blinked I could see it; the blue check mark danced in my mind as I readied myself for the day to come. The car came for me at five a.m., a big, shiny black Lexus, and because it was still dark out, and because I hadn’t slept in days, and because I usually only ever rode in cars like this with Joe the promoter and the faceless men on their way to some club, I had a moment of confusion, thinking, disoriented, I was returning from somewhere rather than leaving. I would have wondered briefly if I’d been dreaming, except I didn’t dream anymore, because I didn’t sleep. I was wearing Le Specs The Flash sunglasses, a black-and-pink Balenciaga hoodie, Adidas Alphaskin Sport Shorts, Adidas Classic Stripe socks, Nike Air Force 1 sneakers, and an Off-White Basic Nylon Fanny Pack.

  I greeted the driver warmly, wrapping my arms around him in a professional, formal hug, then considered, rather smugly, how much sleep he had probably gotten last night—what? At least five hours?—and marveled yet again at the amount of time humans were willing to waste every day. He laughed nervously, probably flattered and impressed with the level of personal attention I was giving him, and I slid smoothly into the back seat. Now that I wasn’t sleeping, I’d become super productive. Everything in my life was optimized. Instead of wasting calories on imperfect food that left gaps in my daily nutrition and often left me bloaty, I kept myself alive by consuming vitamins and power bars at thoughtfully scheduled breaks during the day. At night, I exercised: yoga, Pilates, videos I found on the Internet that seemed to mostly involve jumping around…I’d streamlined elsewhere, too: instead of thinking up new things to say to Followers or friends, I just copied and pasted from a memo I had in my notes app.

  Lol okay.

  Lol, thanks.

  Um, no, lol.

  Lol, thanks mamma.

  Lol! I miss you!

  In the back of the car, I took a selfie, pretending to drink from a coffee cup I’d already drained before leaving the house. I remembered something Gemma had written on Instagram, en route to one of her shoots: When your call time is 5 a.m., and you have to pick up your coffee the night BEFORE. When we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, I filmed myself, the lights of the city streaming behind me: “And why, you might ask, am I up so early? Something I’m really excited about and really want to tell,” I said in a breathless, excited voice. “Buttttt I can’t, because lawyers. Stay tuned, though.”

  Someone from JOY had sent over an NDA and some other paperwork, which I’d hastily signed without reading. You’re welcome to take behind-the-scenes pictures, but everything specific to the shoot—your makeup, the team, set, etc.—is under strict embargo until further notice. I knew the deal. I’d seen it hundreds of times on the Instagrams of other models and influencers, even, I suspected, when there was no actual embargo—they just wanted to feel important, and also they’d seen other, more famous people do it, and they thought if they parroted those famous people, they might become more famous, too. Under embargo. What a scintillating phrase! I knew Gemma had probably used it at some point. I had a distant recollection of that. I tried to remember her posts from her first shoot with JOY, but strangely the images blurred in my mind. I thought there was a farm animal involved, but I couldn’t remember if it was a pig or a goat or a lamb. I felt a pressure build between my eyes, a headache coming on, and pressed my fingers against my forehead. I was hot to the touch.

  The car turned onto a nondescript residential street in Park Slope, then pulled over. It was still dark out, eerily quiet, and I made a joke to myself, trying to ignore the headache: What if he kills me! What if this is all a ruse, and I’ll be dead soon, ha ha ha ha! But no: the driver opened the door and let me out, smiling distantly, and I noticed two trailers, humming with air conditioning, parked outside a weary-looking brownstone. Figures milled around a white-tented craft table. As I got closer, I noticed Benoit, Styrofoam cup in hand, head bent in thoughtful consideration, nodding occasionally while Kiki spoke to him. As far as I could tell, he was wearing the exact same outfit he’d had on at our last shoot: navy sweatshirt, cuffed navy sweatpants, and Gucci loafers. He was wearing aviators, too, and it was only then that I remembered I’d snapped them, and again I felt the satisfying crack between my fists. The impression startled me, emerging from a mass of blackness that I’d buried the night under. I felt vaguely ashamed. I tried not to think about it. Instead, I stared at his aviators, trying to ascertain whether they were a completely new pair or if he’d managed to get the old ones repaired. It didn’t matter either way. He was wearing them. Of course he was.

  I called out to him, forcing my voice a few octaves higher than normal to convey cheerfulness.

  Benoit, who was swinging one of his legs back and forth so that the sole of his shoe made a pleasant scratching noise on the pavement, did not look up, apparently lost in thought. Only Kiki acknowledged me.

  “Hey, Mickey, welcome,” she said, coming over and almost touching me, her arm jerking forward and then falling back. Even still, this was a remarkably warmer welcome than I’d received before. To Benoit she said, in a slightly lower voice: “Talent’s here.” Benoit instantly came to life, spinning on his heel to face me and opening his arms.

  “Ah, my peach!” he said. He kissed me on both cheeks and sniffed my neck, and I stared at the smaller versions of myself reflected in his glasses.

  “Those new?” I found myself asking him, or thought I did anyway—it was getting more and more difficult to decipher the line between what was happening in my head and what wasn’t.

  Benoit readjusted the frames on his nose. “Hm?” he asked. “Did you say something?”

  I shook my head no. And then, maybe because I had asked the question or maybe because I was staring at them, he tapped the lenses. “You know, my peach, the longest monogamous relationship I’ve had is with these glasses. I’ve been wearing them since I was twenty-six. Isn’t that beautiful? Some objects are worthy of love, no?” He lowered the glasses and winked at me. I smiled. Benoit nodded. “So,” he said, looking at me sideways. “How are we feeling today? Are we ready?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Marvelous,” he said, with his signature out-of-time bravado, and I had to keep myself from rolling my eyes.

  “Do you want coffee?” he asked me, walking towards the craft table, then carrying on without a reply: “Cate and I have been thinking a lot about the run of show today, how best to get what we want, because of course, it might get messy. It will be taxing. I told you the working title, yes? ‘Human Being.’ Isn’t that beautiful? When I saw the shows, and everything looked so slick—yech—you know? Aren’t we tired of everything looking the same?” Black coffee streamed into his Styrofoam cup in a swirl of steam. I clutched my hand harder around my phone. “This is a rebellion.” He turned to face me, leaning against the craft table. “It’s a fucking revolt, that’s what today is, that’s what it’s all about. A fucking revolt. Against the fakeness and the slickness and the LED lighting. The average American adult consumes eleven hours of media a day. Isn’t that absurd? Or maybe it was twelve hours a day? Wait…now I can’t remember, it’s something like six months in a year—”
>
  I nodded and knit my eyebrows together, like I was really blown away by what he was saying and really concerned, though all I was really thinking was that this was a fashion shoot for a large media conglomerate, and that Benoit was probably getting paid six figures to do it.

  “Kiki,” he called, and I turned to see her ferrety face pop up from behind her clipboard. “What was that stat—Americans spend how many hours—”

  “Eleven,” she said.

  “Right, I knew it.” He nodded to himself. Then he leaned backward, his ass inching ever closer to the perfectly chopped kiwi artfully arranged on a plastic plate. “Eleven hours!” he screamed. “What about people? No, it’s an epidemic. Bringing people back to people: that is what this is about today. Not media. Not fashion—I don’t even want you to think about fashion today, okay? This is about humanity. Humanity with a fucking capital H. By the way,” he said, suddenly calm, readjusting his stance at the table so he was facing me at a three-quarter angle, “you’re not on your period, by any chance? We could possibly use that. But if you’re not, then that’s okay, too.”

  I shook my head, taken aback by the question.

  “Ah, that’s too bad. I had this vision—you see what I mean, we want this to be human in every way. In all the grotesque glory that is humanity. But,” he added, cocking his head to peer at me, “you’re not on it.” As if he thought I could bring it on by will or something, as if his power over me extended all the way to menstruation.

  “No.”

  He sniffed sharply, and I could see the mask of affability falter ever so slightly, only for a split second but enough that my reflexes kicked in, and I found myself, to my horror, mumbling an apology to him.

  He assured me it was fine, and I was left with the shame of having apologized to a man, this man, for not arbitrarily having my period at that moment.

  “Not to worry, at all,” he said. “It’s all cool, cool, cool.” He nodded several times, as if to emphasize that he was entirely laid back about this issue.

  I said nothing. The sky was turning a pale gray, the color of something empty.

  Benoit righted himself and reached his arms in the air, groaning quietly. He clasped his right hand in his left and stretched sideways, revealing his soft belly. I turned away and filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee. Four thousand Views. Sixteen new Followers. Comments:

  omg she’s totally shooting Vogue

  fucckkk why can’t I look like her

  best of luck babes

  dyinnnnggg to know

  i’m single & lonely & u look like a nice girl. can u follow me?

  I pressed my thumb against the miniature version of my face ringed in rainbow, and watched the video on silent. I watched as my mouth formed words like invisible bubbles. I couldn’t now remember what I had said, but it didn’t matter. My skin looked impeccable, I’d caught the morning light perfectly. My perm, which had finally recovered since that night in the rain, had dried nicely—it helped that it didn’t suffer hours smushed against my pillow at night anymore—and the curls pooled attractively around the collar of my hoodie.

  Benoit suddenly called out for Cate, and I startled, my heart hammering unnecessarily, maybe it was the coffee, which I’d drunk so quickly. I turned and saw Cate emerge from the semi-detached townhouse we were parked in front of. For the first time, I got a really good look at it: the paint trim was peeling, the yard overgrown, and one of the front windows had been smashed and then boarded over. It looked condemned. Benoit strode purposefully towards her, and I heard him say, “Cate, she doesn’t have it.”

  Cate spurted Purell on her hands and worked them over carefully. She was wearing a mechanic’s suit cut entirely from paper-thin suede that was halfway unbuttoned to reveal a plain wifebeater and lots of gold jewelry. Ignoring Benoit, she walked straight towards the craft table and filled a cup with hot water, then plunked in a lemon slice, while he trailed behind her. She took a sip of hot lemon water and turned to me.

  “Has he explained to you about the hair?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

  Benoit, obviously irritated, snapped, “She’ll be fine with it.”

  Ignoring him still, she continued to look at me.

  “Because it’s a big change,” she said, gently like I was a little kid, her voice as smooth as calamine lotion.

  “Why wouldn’t she be fine with it?” Benoit asked loudly behind her.

  “Yeah, I’m fine with it,” I said easily.

  Cate put her cup down and then, without warning, stuck her fingers into my hair and pulled it back into a tight ponytail at the top of my head, intensifying the dull ache at the center of my forehead. She transferred the ponytail to one fist, then twisted it over and over again so that my hair was pulled as tight as possible against my scalp and I had to screw up my face to keep from crying out. All the while Cate just looked at me curiously.

  She sighed. My scalp screamed and tears sprang to my eyes. “Well, we have to do it regardless,” she said, but it wasn’t to me, it was to Benoit.

  “Of course. It’s essential,” he answered.

  She let go of my hair. I worked to catch my breath.

  “You’re going to look like a real badass,” she said to me.

  “Good.” I tried to smile. My head was pounding. The headache had morphed into a full-blown migraine. I turned to refill my coffee cup and wiped the back of my hand quickly across my eyes, to steal the wetness there.

  “You okay?” Cate asked, as I took my first sip.

  I nodded, forcing the hot liquid down my throat. “Oh yeah,” I said, smiling. I felt Benoit’s eyes pressing against me. “I’m great. I’m just peachy.”

  Benoit smiled appreciatively, then motioned for me to follow him to the hair and makeup trailer.

  “You know Bill, right?” he asked over his shoulder.

  I frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  He whistled. “Oh, wow,” he said. “You’re in for a real treat. Imagine Picasso, but with a pair of scissors and a blow-dryer. A real artist.”

  He opened the door of the trailer and called inside: “Maestro, I have your first victim—well, your only one, today.” A gust of air conditioning made the hair on my arms stand up. I walked up the small steps and looked into the narrow space, then stopped short, inhaling quickly and nearly tripping over the threshold.

  “Whoopsies,” Benoit said. “You okay?”

  The man, the man who could only be Bill, was already getting up from his seat. I noticed his cowboy hat first, the same pale-gray felted job he had worn that night, the night that…I pushed the memory from my mind. He put his hand on my forearm to steady me.

  “You okay there, love?” he asked.

  I looked into his eyes, which were the color of antifreeze fluid, and gave him the most evil smile I could muster. “Oh yes,” I said. “I’m absolutely perfect.”

  He laughed lightly, then removed his hand from my forearm and tucked it almost shyly behind his head, just beneath his hat. “Oh, good,” he said. I heard Benoit screaming something to Cate outside. Our eyes met, then Bill stuck his hand out for a handshake. “I’m Bill. I’ll be doing your chop today—don’t worry, we’re going to make it as painless as possible.”

  I laughed. “When have I ever been scared of pain anyhow?”

  He looked at me curiously, then ushered me towards the leather chair in front of the mirror. I realized he had no idea who I was.

  Bill got right to business, gently probing my skull, lifting strands here and there and rubbing them between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Are these your natural curls?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Lucky girl.”

  He let my hair fall around my shoulders, then slid a hand underneath it and lifted it like a curtain. His hand was warm and moist against the nape of my neck. Could he really not remember? I bored into his reflection in the mirror, and he shot me a polite sm
ile. He really didn’t remember!

  He started by using a spritzer to dampen my hair, then he combed it through, and even though he was gentle, unimpeachably gentle, my head throbbed with pain. I had let myself be defiled by a fucking hairdresser. Vacantly, I watched him pick up a pair of long scissors. They flashed silver in the mirror as he cut, five inches in two swift chops, sending a sheaf of golden hair to my feet. My stomach lurched forward. I smiled as if I had expected this. I thought about how small and harmless his dick had been. He tried to make chitchat but I was having trouble following it, distracted by the sudden weightlessness of my head, the way my hair now stuck out around my chin.

  “Uh-huh,” I said to something Bill had asked, as I watched him unfurl a gadget from the coil of its black cord, his cowboy hat bent in concentration.

  “That’s great,” he said soothingly. “Happy to hear that.” The gadget free, he paused, smiling kindly at the two of us in reflection. A hairdresser! A fucking hairdresser! “So, are you ready, lass? There’s no rush.”

  It was then that I noticed he was holding clippers.

  “Oh,” I said. “Are we, um—how much are we doing again?”

  He cocked his head curiously. “We’ll probably buzz you on a three—is that what you mean?”

  “Oh, yeah, um”—my eyes darted around the room—“is there a bathroom in here?”

  “It’s okay to be nervous,” he said, winking at me. “I know women and their hair. But you’re in good hands, promise. Buzz cuts are really having a moment now, I mean since Karma—”

  “You know, it’s just that I have a headache, actually.”

  “Oh, I can give you something—”

  “And I need to pee,” I said, standing up so quickly that I knocked his hands, which had been hovering around my head.

  “Sure,” he said, totally unbothered. “It’s over there, at the back.”

  I shut the door behind me, and pressed my hands against the cold metal sink, fear-choked and gasping, my eyes darting back and forth in the mirror, studying the contours of my hair. I thought about how painstakingly I’d cultivated the curls, how long I’d studied those images of Gemma. Okay, so it wasn’t perfect, it could certainly use some styling—still, it was mine. More than that, it was hers. I could not believe they wanted to strip me of it, they had to be mistaken. Didn’t they understand, didn’t they know, wasn’t it obvious that without it I’d be—I didn’t know what I’d be actually, but I knew I’d no longer see Gemma when I looked in the mirror. Pain strobed across my forehead, forcing my eyes shut. I pressed my fingers against my temples. Outside the bathroom door, Bill cleared his throat. I opened my eyes, flushed the toilet, and ran the tap water for a second, never taking my gaze from the reflection in the mirror. I took a deep breath.