Vapor

by Amanda Filipacchi

  Then we’d go back to his place and have sex, often, because the beard turned him on when he was in a good mood. When he was feeling low he’d ask me to take it off.

  After spending about a week watching my movies every day, all day, I was still at it. And one day, as my beard fluttered in the wind and my black coat flapped behind me like a cape while I was skating down a one-way street to get to a distant theater, a car slowed down next to me. It was Damon.

  Through his open window, he said, “Are you happy?”

  I saw his amputated finger resting on the steering wheel.

  “Did I escape?” I asked.

  “Are you happy?” he repeated sincerely. He wasn’t referring to the job I had done on his finger, as I thought for a second, but to the job he had done on my life.

  We both slowed our rolling and came to a standstill.

  I glanced around to see if there was a policeman nearby. There wasn’t. But there were some male pedestrians. I didn’t know what to do.

  I turned to two of the men, pointed at Damon, and said, “Help! Stop this man! He stole my wallet!” This, I thought, sounded better than saying, “Stop this man! He kidnapped me!”

  The two male pedestrians only stopped their walking; not the man. They remained standing there, staring at the woman in the beard on skates who had forgotten to adopt a man’s voice when calling for their help. And Damon drove away.

  I reproached myself later for my lack of resourcefulness. Yet I still had no idea what I could have done.

  Nathaniel reproached me too. He said I was stupid, that I had scared Damon off.

  “So?” I said.

  “You’ll have a harder time catching him now. He’ll be more careful.”

  “How am I supposed to catch him? I can’t have an undercover cop following me every day.”

  Something good started happening at around that time, but, still unnerved over my encounter with Damon, I wasn’t able to appreciate it fully. This good thing was that my two movies, both of them, became sleepers. First I noticed it myself: each day the theaters got a little more crowded. And the things I heard people say when I followed them afterward were good. From my past experience going to movies and overhearing people’s comments, I couldn’t remember if this was usual. So, to check, I went to a few other movies and compared. I got the distinct impression that people said more good things about my movies.

  Another indication I got about my movies being sleepers was a call from the director of the science-fiction movie, telling me so. Then it was a call from my agent, telling me so. Then I heard it on TV. And the TV said it was because of me; because I was in both. I thought it very nice of it to say that, but I wasn’t sure it was true. Then the critics said it too. And the TV wanted me to go on it and talk. Many times. I did. One time I went on Joe Letterman. I had trouble being completely present for the experience, because thoughts of Damon still harassed me; I was a little more subdued and tired than I normally would have been. And magazines interviewed me. I had to pose for their photo shoots. Out of all my experiences involving acting in movies and then promoting them, posing for shoots is what made me by far the most uncomfortable. I had never been photogenic. Nothing required my personality as little as being photographed, and I was not good at things that didn’t require my personality. The result is that I looked either utterly expressionless or overly expressionful. I could never find a middle ground and just look natural. The frustrated magazine photographers always had to resort to catching me by surprise, which wasn’t very convenient for them, since it drastically fouled up the carefully planned poses and backgrounds they had dreamed up for me. They’d grab shots of me while I was getting my makeup touched up, for example, or they’d discreetly instruct the lighting person or the stylist to distract me for a moment. Click.

  And then I got an offer to star in a medium-budget romantic comedy. I turned it down for two reasons: I wanted to finish relishing in peace the release of my first movies, but mostly, I was having nightmares about Damon and I wanted to take it easy for a while. I needed to recuperate from my last encounter with him.

  The seeds of the idea for my plan wafted through my mind, but I still didn’t pay much attention to them.

  Until it happened again. A week or two had passed, and I was just starting to recuperate, to feel stronger, when the car slowed down next to me and he asked me once more if I was happy. But then another car honked behind him, and another, and he drove away without getting an answer. There still was masking tape over his license plate. I had a relapse. I could feel it right then and there, before his car had even disappeared from view. It was dark and heavy and sickening, this relapse, and I turned around and walked home staring at the pavement, my eyes unfocused, and my beard still in my bag, not to be used that day to watch my imitation Jane Austen movie for the fifteenth time.

  When I got home I had an excited message on my machine from my agent, informing me of an offer from a major director, to star in a huge-budget movie and get paid a huge amount of money that no actor with as little experience as I had ever been paid. As I sat on my bathroom floor listening to the message again, all things came together at once in my mind; all things that mattered—and two things did—became clear: I would accept the offer, and I would go ahead with my plan. The latter had developed in my brain on my way home, so I already knew more or less what had to be done.

  I hired workmen to make some changes in my apartment.

  I began taking many leisurely walks in the streets.

  Finally, it happened again. The car came, slowed next to me.

  “Are you happy?” said Damon.

  I didn’t look for a policeman. And I didn’t answer. I just looked sad. Fortunately, I was not wearing my beard, or it might have gotten in the way of looking sad. And then, with the skills Damon had taught me, I made my eyes moist.

  “Are you happy?” he asked again, with more concern.

  I continued looking at him sadly and started walking away.

  “Wait!” he said.

  I stopped.

  “Please come back.”

  Trying to look reluctant, I slowly went back to him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  I shrugged, shook my head, looked choked, and softly said, “Nothing.”

  “Tell me. Is it that you want me to be arrested?”

  I looked at him and didn’t answer.

  “If that’s what’s making you unhappy, I’ll turn myself in to that traffic cop right there, right now.”

  I couldn’t suppress a small smile. His offer was tempting. But my plan was better.

  I sighed and closed my eyes and gave him a long, devastated look before walking away.

  “Anna! Wait!” he said, and partially came out of his car. “Come back Anna!”

  But I didn’t go back. I walked away, my head hanging.

  I left my window open at night. And I lingered on the balcony before going to bed. My apartment was on the second floor, and there was a fire escape.

  It didn’t take long.

  The following night he came.

  I was lying in bed as he entered through the window. I was still afraid of him. It may sound silly, but what I was afraid of, was of being kidnapped again.

  As he wiped off his translucent white pants, which had gotten dirty from the windowsill, he said, “I know that this is probably a trap and that you’ll either kill me or have me arrested.” He struck me as funny just then, and I had trouble not laughing. He added, “But I want to know why you seemed so unhappy.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said, leaning on one elbow in bed. “It’s no use.”

  “You must tell me. Please.”

  I acted hesitant, and then put on my bathrobe. “Okay, we can talk.” I shuffled into the next room, motioning for him to follow. He did. I turned on a small light.

  He did not pay particular attention to the eight- by eight-foot, cloth-covered cube in the middle of the room.

  “Si
t down if you want,” I said, pointing to a couch against the wall. “I’ll get something to drink.”

  But before I left the room, he said, “So this is the moment when you signal the police that I’m here?”

  “Hardly,” I said, but I said it with a smile because I was an inch from the doorway, which I went through the next instant and slammed the door, which locked automatically, and that was that.

  That was that. But that was not all.

  I opened a fake closet in the wall that divided our two rooms, propped myself up on my captain’s stool, and looked at him through the one-way mirror.

  He was at the door, trying to open it. Then he went to the window, which faced the building across the street and which was soundproof, bulletproof, one-way, and locked. He tried to open it.

  The whole room he was in was soundproof. Therefore, on my navigation board, or my panel of commands, I switched on the two-way microphone and spoke into it: “Take the cover off that big square thing there.”

  He pulled off the cover, looking a lot like those men in commercials who pull sheets off new cars.

  Underneath the cloth was a brand new cage with all the necessary accommodations: bed, bath, and toilet.

  It took a bit of work to convince him to go into the cage, requiring me to say things like: “You are in a cage already. The room you’re in is a cage. I just want you to go into a smaller cage. No big deal. And life is a cage anyway. Right? So what’s the difference.”

  That didn’t do it. So I added, “I won’t release you until you go in the cage. And we can’t have our little conversation until you go in the cage. Due to our past, I can’t feel safe while talking to you unless you’re contained.”

  It was the threat of no conversation that did it.

  “But it’s just for the length of this conversation?” he stupidly asked, as he stepped in.

  “Yes,” I answered, and slammed the door behind him with a simple press of a button on the control panel.

  I hadn’t lied. A conversation can last a lifetime.

  I switched off the two-way microphone and laughed like a villain, a wicked witch, a mad scientist, frightening myself a little in the process.

  I was so happy it was indescribable.

  I unlocked the door and went back in the room within which Damon was caged. I sat on a lounge chair, facing him.

  Damon said, “Can you tell me, now, why you’re not happy?”

  What an admirably focused, one-track mind he had. Like me.

  “Did I escape?” I asked.

  “I don’t understand that question. And before you explain it to me, tell me everything I want to know. Why aren’t you happy?”

  He was right, I would let him ask the questions, for now. I didn’t want to clutter this beautiful, precious, sacred moment with my own needs. Let the experience be stark and bare, composed mostly of his reactions and yearnings. I would sit back, observe, and relish.

  “Oh, I’m very happy,” I answered.

  “I don’t mean right now. I mean in general.”

  “I’m actually very happy in general. The only slight blemish on my happiness was the knowledge of your existence.”

  “That means I succeeded. It worked.”

  “If I could go back in time,” I said, “I would not choose to go through what I went through with you.”

  “Even if the result is success in your career and great happiness?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re happy now.”

  “Idiot! You could have made me happy without kidnapping me. You could have helped me, encouraged me, offered to make me do all your acting exercises. I would have gone along with it.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” he said, turning the bathtub faucet on and then off, to check if it worked, I supposed. “I’m surprised you can’t see that. I was able to push you way beyond the levels you would have attained if we were friends.” He flushed the toilet, which worked too. “It worked because it was against your will.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You had no right.”

  As I got up to leave the room, he asked to be let out.

  “No,” I said, “we haven’t finished conversing. We’ll continue tomorrow.”

  I left, and my irritation was gone soon after. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t, because I was so happy. A few times I got up and looked at him through the one-way mirror. He was taking a bath. I was pleased in the same sort of way a cat owner whose cat is using the new scratching post the first day it was bought is pleased.

  Early in the morning, I opened the door quietly. Damon was sleeping. In a soft singsongy voice I said, “Hello Damon.”

  He rose, and stared at me through the bars of his cell. His hair was sticking up.

  I sat on the lounge chair and beamed.

  “You do look happy,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m so happy. You have succeeded, like you said.”

  We chatted. He asked about my life since my return to it. I told him everything; about the parts I got, the people I worked with, how easy it had been to find an agent, how shocked I was when I was offered practically every role I auditioned for. We laughed over this, and he looked moved, with tears in his eyes.

  “I’m so happy Anna. I’m happy that it’s worked out so well. And thank you for being so generous in sharing it with me.”

  “I hope you’ll be as generous in answering my own questions.”

  “Absolutely. Shoot.”

  “No. I’m still digesting the present. I’ll save them up for later.”

  At about noon, he started getting antsy, I could tell. I assumed he was anxious to get out. But it was something else.

  At 12:30 P.M. he said, “I need a TV.”

  I found this interesting. “Is that so?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t say why.”

  “But you must say why. Or no TV.”

  “It’s very important. I need a TV,” he said, clutching onto two bars.

  “So that you can build an escape device out of it?”

  “No. There is something on TV that I must watch. It’s extremely important.”

  “What is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is.”

  “Yes it does. Some programs are not suitable for criminals.”

  He looked at me earnestly.

  “At what time is your program?” I asked.

  “One-thirty.”

  The words rang a bell. One-thirty was the time when he used to disappear every day for half an hour and come back having cried. Could TV-watching be what had been going on in the unfilmed room?

  I fetched the TV Guide from my night table and came back flipping through its pages. Among all the shows playing at 1:30, I was stumped as to which one Damon could be interested in. Laughing, I read the selections out loud to him, glancing up at him reproachfully after each title: “Harry and the Hendersons, Stories of the Highway Patrol, Papa Beaver Stories, The Bold and the Beautiful, Gourmet Cooking, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, The Look, etc.”

  Perhaps it was one of the children’s shows, which, come to think of it, would fit well with the eccentric, childlike side of his personality.

  “Which one is it?” I asked.

  “Will you get me a TV?”

  “We can’t let you miss one of these shows.”

  “Will you get me one,” he whispered sadly, which piqued my curiosity even more.

  “Why not.” I went into the other room and unplugged my TV. I carried it into his room and placed it on a little table, facing his cage.

  “Could I have some privacy now?” he said.

  “I want to watch TV too. It’s my only TV.”

  “Please, could I have some privacy?”

  “Did you give me sugar when I wanted it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Therefore,” I said, “I think I’ll be watching TV at one-thirty.”

  At
1:25 P.M. I told him, “Okay, it’s almost one-thirty. What channel do you want?”

  After a long sullen pause, he murmured, “Two.”

  I switched on channel two and looked in the TV Guide.

  I screeched. “The Bold and the Beautiful?”

  He sat, stone-faced, staring at the set.

  We watched the soap opera, and he cried. I could tell he was trying to restrain himself, but tears rolled down his cheeks anyway. I handed him a box of tissues, which he did not touch.

  Why he was crying was beyond me. The show was not sad. Even though I hadn’t seen previous episodes, I was pretty sure I wasn’t missing some deep level of sadness. The actors were appropriately beautiful (their boldness was less apparent), and they had names like Ridge, Brooke, Thorn, Sally Spectra. There was also a beautiful legless character in a wheelchair, called Stem.

  “Why did you cry?” I asked afterward.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t cry,” I said. “And I’m sure I’m not less sensitive than you.”

  He was silent.

  “If I wanted to treat you the way you treated me, I would now torture you until you told me why you cried. But dammit, I don’t have an ice gun. I guess I could get ice cubes out of the freezer and throw them at you until you cave in.”

  He still didn’t tell me why he cried.

  I went for a walk that afternoon. I was eager to experience the sensation of being out walking, while having someone locked in a cage in my apartment.

  And I wasn’t disappointed. It was a great, rewarding feeling.

  I stopped by a gourmet store and bought caviar and smoked salmon and unpasteurized Camembert and two baguettes. Then I bought champagne and went home.