The Stand-In

by Deborah Moggach

  I was going to walk all the way home. I felt safer out of doors; it cleared my head. Besides, a cab driver might remember me. But I suddenly felt sick, so I hailed a cab.

  He looked Iranian or something. He didn’t turn around when I climbed in and he was silent throughout our journey. It was as if I didn’t exist. When I paid him, he didn’t look at me; he just took the money and drove off. I thanked God for his rudeness.

  There was nobody waiting at my apartment building. No cop cars. Nothing.

  There was no porter on duty, either, in my building. At night they just locked the doors. I opened my bag and took out my keys.

  Had I forgotten something? Had I left something of mine in Lila’s apartment?

  Incriminating evidence. I rode up in the elevator. The words applied to me. It was like hearing the words malignant tumour, so familiar in print, suddenly whispered into my ear by a doctor.

  I let myself into my apartment, rushed into the bathroom and vomited violently down the toilet. I knelt there for a long time, my knees hurting on the cold tiles. Strings of mucus slid from my mouth; I watched them with vague curiosity.

  What was I supposed to do now? What did people in my position do?

  I didn’t say the word ‘murderer’, even to myself.

  Nine

  I SAT UP most of the night, drinking tea and smoking. I felt literally ill with fear. Like all clichés, you don’t know how true they are until they apply to you. It was the same sensation as really bad flu. My own symptoms alarmed me. Time stood still; I was jolted out of my normal life. My ordinary routines seemed as distant and innocent as activities dimly remembered from childhood. Or from another life altogether. The city went about its business below me, stirring as dawn broke, and I was sealed off by my illness. The slightest noise that I made – putting the cup down, getting to my feet – sounded as loud as a pistol shot. My guts had turned to liquid; I had diarrhoea and kept on having to go to the bathroom. The more my body emptied, the more it ached.

  What should I do? Buy an air ticket and fly back to England? Far too suspicious. I was supposed to be living here. A possible job was just coming up. How could I explain it to my landlady and to Roly?

  When would they find the body? When would the alarm be raised?

  He had decorators in; they would be arriving in the morning.

  Suspicions. Body. One of the strangest things was having to apply this new vocabulary to myself. I still couldn’t connect it up, I didn’t dare. I was still too numb. It didn’t belong to me, it belonged to books and films. Cosy, escapist stuff. A frisson here and there, mounting to a climax. It wasn’t supposed to really happen. That was the point of it.

  I re-ran the events over and over, but the more I did them the more they slipped from my grasp. I tried to remember the sequence and whether I had made any mistakes. Had I left anything in Its apartment? (I couldn’t call him by name any more.) The conversation with the new doorman disturbed me, but he had seemed convinced. And nobody had come for me yet.

  Nobody would come for me yet. I looked at my watch. 5.50. Nobody would have discovered anything. It seemed unbelievable, that I had been through all this and people were still sleeping. Even Lila, with her early call, wouldn’t have woken yet.

  It never would wake, now. I understood by now that It was dead. For several hours I had been like an amputee who still felt the phantom limb twitching. This was partly shock. Events hadn’t happened the way I had planned. I hadn’t meant to shoot It – not really. That was what I told myself. The débâcle had wrong-footed and flustered me. I had to catch up with myself. No doubt it would have been just as shocking if it had gone according to the rehearsal because nothing feels quite the same as you expected, once you’re doing it. Events are always, joltingly, different.

  At 6.0, or 6.30 at the latest, Lila would be woken by either her alarm clock or the studio phoning. Would she notice her shoes on the floor? Would she feel disorientated? I didn’t think about her as a person at all, not now. I didn’t think how she would react to the news of Its death. That part of me was locked.

  I didn’t think about It, either. Not in that way. It had ceased to be Trev. It had simply become a towelling-clad lump of silenced incriminating evidence. Murder depersonalises its victim, utterly. I had felt a passing tweak when I saw Its bit of pizza crust, and the effort It had put into doing up Its apartment. That was all. I couldn’t afford to feel anything else. Besides, there wasn’t space. I was simply consumed by fear.

  When day broke I escaped from the apartment. I couldn’t stay there any longer, trapped. I was too frightened of the phone or my doorbell ringing.

  I spent most of the day at loose in the windy anonymity of the streets. Nobody could find me, there. It was a glorious spring day. I kept downtown, well away from Central Park West. In the Village, the trees were in blossom. My ears felt as highly-tuned as a bat’s; I picked up signals nobody else heard. The slightest, imagined noise made me break out in sweat.

  I bought myself a hot dog, though I wasn’t hungry. I ate it simply to stop myself collapsing. At the news-stands I looked at the papers, but of course there was nothing in the headlines yet. Just some Wall Street scandal and a murder out in the Van Dyke Projects, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Not his death; somebody else’s. It seemed inconceivable, that Trevor’s name might soon appear in print.

  I paused outside Balducci’s. Another Jules had gone in there and bought herself a take-away arugula and prosciutto salad. She existed in a past from which I was now completely excluded. I didn’t dare stop anywhere for long. When I wandered into an art gallery in SoHo, full of dismembered bits of metal, the phone rang and I made my escape. When I passed the window of a coffee shop and a man turned to look at me I broke into a run. How stupid! It only made me more alarmed at myself. He had probably just fancied the look of me.

  The whole city had changed overnight, as if it had been planted with invisible mines. The streets looked so innocuous, so deceptive, but I knew the truth. The whole place had been wired up. At school, when we played Prisoner’s Base, our surroundings were transformed. The toilet block, the shrubbery – they were suddenly places of concealment and menace. Just looking at those bushes made my heart thump.

  I sat for a few moments on a bench in Washington Square. I was flanked by old men, walking sticks planted between their legs, enjoying the sunshine. A woman passed, pushing a báby in a stroller. She glanced at me and leant over to tell the baby something. See that lady? Know what she’s just done?

  A black guy loitered, and caught the eye of another guy. They moved away together, murmuring. I told myself it was just a drugs deal but it didn’t make it any better. Nothing did. The usual chess games were set out, but today each player’s pause was tense with significance. When they moved the pieces I knew they were signalling a message to the next table, and then the next. Pawn to bishop. She’s here. That’s it, late thirties. 5 foot 6. The hunched figures sat at the tables, pretending to concentrate. They looked like elderly immigrants but they didn’t fool me. Black, belted overcoat. Suede boots. She’s getting up. She’s heading for the kids’ playground. When I hurried past the slide, a little girl screamed.

  I couldn’t stay away for ever. At 2 o’clock I returned to the apartment. The doorman didn’t step out with a message. I rode up to my apartment. As I fumbled for my key, I heard my phone ringing on the other side of the door. It was the police. I stood rooted to the spot. But why didn’t they come here? The phone went on ringing. It seemed to be going on for a long time. I jammed my key into the lock, opened the door and rushed in. I picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi. Roly here.’ I had forgotten all about Roly. He hadn’t crossed my mind.

  ‘Where’ve you’ve been, sweetheart? I’ve been trying to call you all day.’

  I caught my breath. ‘Just for a walk.’

  ‘You OK? You sound kind of –’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I gasped.

  ‘I have some news for you,’ he sai
d.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Jules,’ he said. ‘You still there?’

  I whispered, ‘What news?’

  ‘Abe Zacharias has to fly to LA next week. He has to rearrange his schedule. Can you meet with him tomorrow? At three?’

  I put down the receiver. It was slippery in my hand.

  That phone call had a disorientating effect. It made the whole thing return to unreality, all over again. If nothing had been discovered yet, maybe nothing had happened.

  I made myself some tea, pulled down the blinds and undressed. I was suddenly very sleepy. In fact, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I realised that I was still hungover; that was why I felt so ill.

  I climbed into bed and slipped between the sheets. It simply hadn’t happened. After all, nothing had changed in the apartment. Hollywood Wives was back in its position on the bookshelf. How was even I to know that it had ever been removed? There was no sign that I had been out the previous night. No bloodstained clothing; no muddy shoes.

  The whole thing had just been a series of fleeting, vivid projections in my head, as insubstantial as a film. Haunting, of course, but it had been powerful stuff. I would sleep, deeply, and other dreams would arrive to take its place.

  It was dark. Something was ringing. At first I thought it was the doorbell.

  I stumbled out of bed and started for the door. Then I realised that it was the phone.

  I lifted the receiver. I glanced, puzzled, at my watch. It was 8.15. What day of the week was it?

  For a moment I didn’t recognise the voice on the line. It sounded so different.

  ‘Jules,’ said Roly.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘My dear, I have some terrible news.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘You there?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Trevor Parsons. He’s been shot.’

  ‘Shot?’ I gasped. I sounded perfect. Then I asked, ‘Is he dead?’

  Clever, wasn’t I?

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When did they find him?’ I shut my mouth. That was the wrong question. Was I mad?

  Roly didn’t seem to notice. He sounded too upset. ‘I don’t know all the details. Somebody came to his apartment, I’ve been with the police all afternoon, we had to find Lila, they been shooting somewhere up in Long Island. Jules, it’s chaos here. Reporters, TV . . . sweetheart, it’s terrible.’ I heard phones ringing. Someone was calling him. ‘Don’t you worry, you look after yourself, my precious. Maybe I won’t be able to see you tonight. I’ll call you later.’

  I put the phone down. My first feeling was pure terror. It’s actually happened.

  Then I thought: maybe Roly was phoning me to check that I was at home. The police had asked him, so I wouldn’t smell a rat. Should I get the hell out?

  Then I re-ran my lines. How had I performed, on my first test? Not too well. I had sounded surprised and shocked – fine. But then I had asked that slightly strange question. Not too strange. I hadn’t asked: Did the decorators find him? Nothing really stupid.

  I gave myself notes, like a director. It calmed me down, to think of Jules as somebody else.

  It didn’t calm me down. Not really. Just then I rushed to the bathroom and vomited violently, yet again.

  Ten

  THE NEXT DAY, Thursday, Lila was arrested. To be exact, she was taken in for questioning.

  Roly told me. Thank God it was over the phone, so he didn’t see my face. My performance was radio rather than TV. Actually I didn’t have much chance to speak at all. He was distraught and the words poured out.

  He had been at the precinct station all morning – he, Irma and various people. Lila’s mother had arrived and was trying to see her. The entire news media was there; the place was staked out.

  ‘She was seen going to his place,’ he jabbered. He was speaking from a call box; I heard the buzz of voices in the background. ‘She went there that night. Tuesday. They have witnesses. Do you believe this? They’ve traced the bullet. It matches her hand-gun. She had a hand-gun, see, in her purse.’

  ‘Did she?’ I asked in a surprised voice.

  ‘It was no secret. We all knew about it, she showed it to just about everyone. Who’d believe it? Isn’t it all just terrible? Her lawyer’s in there with her, I’m waiting for him to come out. Sweetheart, I have some more calls to make.’

  ‘What did she say?’ I asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What did Lila say?’

  ‘I just saw her for maybe five minutes. She’s hysterical. Well wouldn’t you be? She says she didn’t do it. She says she was in bed asleep.’

  I made myself some scrambled eggs for lunch, but I couldn’t swallow them; they clogged up my mouth.

  However much you prepare yourself for news, it can still throw you into chaos. Words like Irma and her mother were surprisingly shocking. They threw me off course. I imagined the two of them, sitting sobbing in some dingy waiting room. Lawyer gave me another jolt. Suddenly it was official.

  I even thought, for a split-second: why isn’t Trev visiting her? Wasn’t I stupid!

  I tried to reassure myself. I said: it’s all going according to plan. But I felt so buffeted, I could hardly remember what the plan was. Had they found the bottle, or had Fidelia unwittingly cleared it away before the police arrived? Had they found the letter? Was there anything I had overlooked?

  I had visited Lila that night. The doormen had seen me come and go. At some point, maybe the next time I spoke to Roly, I had to mention this. Otherwise it would seem a curious omission, to say the least. To sound innocent I had to volunteer the information. I saw her that night! Gosh! It must have been just before it happened!

  I would certainly be questioned by the police, sooner or later. I had better start rehearsing now; I needed to be word-perfect. A wide-eyed look; a breathless voice.

  I washed up my plate, looking out at the office block opposite. Sun shone through the windows, illuminating the snowy white blouses of the secretaries. They looked Walt-Disney-innocent; they looked like virgins.

  As I stood there, a thought struck me. I hadn’t put it into words before that moment. I remember gazing at the row of spider-plants along the window-ledge, and the plastic bottle of washing-up liquid. They had the carefully-spaced look of stage props. As I did so, I thought: From now on, I will be acting all the time.

  It was true. Unless they find me out, I’ll be acting for the rest of my life.

  That was what a criminal did. Act. All the time.

  I decided to walk to Tribeca; it wasn’t far. On the way to my meeting I stopped at a news-stand. It was no longer a news-stand; it was a heavily disguised, unexploded bomb. I approached it cautiously.

  There was nothing on the front page of the Times, though I didn’t dare unfold it. All I saw were Budget Deficits and the Iran-Contras. But the Post had it: a double column on the front page. FILM STAR’S LOVER SLAIN.

  I bought the paper. The man didn’t even glance at me.

  The father of film star Lila Dune’s expected love-child was found shot dead yesterday morning in his glam 73rd Street condo. Painter Joseph Carillo discovered the body at 12.30. London-born writer Trevor Parsons, 28, was slain by a single bullet. 19th Precinct police spokesman, Lt. Frank Gozzoli, said: ‘We are treating this case as homicide.’ Cops rushed to Long Island, where Lila Dune was filming in the Rittner-Morowitz comedy ‘Three Can Play’. When informed of her lover’s slaying she screamed, ‘No! No! It’s not true!’

  ‘You play tennis?’ asked Abe-Zacharias. ‘You play it well?’

  I smiled modestly. ‘I was the Junior Tennis Champion at school.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘No shit?’

  Of course it was shit. It was a lie. But I could play well enough. Any middle-class, athletic girl brought up in Sussex knows how to hit a ball across a net.

  He seemed to be talking about doubles.

  ‘I play singles and doubles,’ I said.

 
He lifted his hand. ‘You’ve misunderstood me,’ he said. ‘We use doubles in the show.’

  I tried to gather my wits. He went droning on. He was a swarthy, humourless man in his early thirties. TV producers, I had noticed, were getting younger. We sat on leather settees drinking Badoit water; the pink, rag-rolled walls of his office enclosed us like a womb. I told myself: I’m safe here.

  ‘You seen our show?’

  He was asking me a question. I had meant to watch it the day before but somehow or other it had just slipped my mind.

  The phone rang. I jumped. He answered it, speaking in a low voice and looking at me.

  He put it down. It rang again. I knew it was the police.

  ‘I’m in a meeting,’ he said down the phone.

  The other person talked for a long time. All Zacharias did was nod, at intervals. His eyes were on me. Keep her there, talking, while we surround the building. Act natural.

  ‘Yep. Sure. You got it.’ He put the phone down.

  There was a knock on the door. I froze. Another man came in. He was even younger. He was introduced to me but I didn’t catch his name. He was disguised as another producer but I knew he came from the Homicide Bureau. He hadn’t shaved; he had been up all night, trying to track me down.

  They started talking to me about Samantha Seymour. Who the hell was she? I kept quiet. You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used in a court of law.

  Samantha Seymour was the English tennis pro in their show, The Best People. That’s what they pretended, anyway. She appeared in six episodes. They told me the plot.

  ‘. . . when Karl rejects Nancy, she takes her revenge . . .’

  ‘. . . confrontation between Dwight and Jade . . .’

  ‘. . . major surgery . . .’

  The words boomed like airport tannoys, calling out unknown names and destinations.

  ‘. . . Adam’s blackmail demand . . .’

  ‘. . . Abbie’s near-fatal car crash . . .’

  ‘. . . Tourmaline’s half-sister . . .’

  I gazed at the walls. Their pinky-purplish mottling reminded me of my father’s hands, when they were cold. He used to take my hand in his; just when we were crossing the road.