by Sara Shepard
Dot nodded and eyed her drink. It didn’t look tampered with as far as she could tell, but what was she expecting? Metamucil-like granules floating on top? A color change?
“I ordered for you,” Dorothy breezed on. “The burger, mushrooms, no bacon. Medium-rare. Is that okay? Did you want a salad? I got you fries.”
“No, fries sound great. Hey, doesn’t that guy look exactly like Salman Rushdie?”
Dorothy frowned, then followed her gaze toward the bar. Dot knew she only had seconds before her aunt’s attention returned to her. Luckily, they both had drunk about the same amounts of their stingers—or else Dorothy had ordered another. A few quick movements, and it was over.
“That looks nothing like him at all,” Dorothy said, turning back to their table. “And believe me, I know.” She cupped her hands around her drink, seeming none the wiser. Dot almost felt bad for her. She’d just pulled the oldest and possibly stupidest trick in the book on her aunt, and she’d fallen for it.
“You do know,” Dot said, leaning forward on her elbows salaciously. “Didn’t you say you used to party with him?”
Dorothy’s eyes twinkled. “Darling, do I have a story for you.”
Dot sat back to listen. All she had to do now was wait. And try not to inwardly combust.
ELIZA
I CHASE DESMOND’S car for a block, yelling his name. He drives right past my house, but he doesn’t stop, making a right at the dead end and looping around the other street in the neighborhood. I can hear the Batmobile’s engine growling, but houses block my view. I slap my arms to my sides, baking on the lonely sidewalk. My face blazes with anger for Andrew’s petty little stunt. I trusted him—and for what? I haven’t yet gotten the information. There probably is no information. I was probably blathering on at the Shipstead to myself. Except it’s not a tumor that made that mischief—it was just me.
An engine hums behind me, and I turn. A limo is waiting at my curb. The driver leans out the window. “Eliza Fontaine?”
“Y-yes.”
“I’m Sal. From Dr. Roxanne. I’ve been calling.”
I look at my phone, and yes, there are four missed calls from a 310 area code I don’t recognize. I can feel sweat running down my back. There’s no way I can do Dr. Roxanne. I have to cancel. I consult my phone, readying myself to call Laura, who will be furious, and Posey, who will probably start crying or go into spontaneous early labor as a result of her distress. Only, almost comically, my phone is at 1 percent battery life. As I’m looking at it, the thing shuts down.
The car’s engine purrs. Sports radio plays softly out of the speakers. “First time on the show?” Sal asks. When I don’t answer: “First time on any show?”
I make a small squeak of confirmation.
“It’ll be all right. Believe me, I’ve picked up tons of nervous guests in my day. Way more nervous than you—and they do great.”
I take the bait and look up. “Anyone I’d know?”
He smiles mysteriously. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy. Now, you ready to get inside?”
He gets out, opens the back door, and gestures me in. I peer at the interior. Leather-on-leather. An open bottle of Perrier rests in the center caddy. There’s a bunch of trashy magazines in the seat pocket.
I do as I’m told and sit stiffly. I don’t bother to buckle my seat belt. Maybe we’ll get in a crash. Maybe I’ll perish. Though unbidden, the incident at the bar with Andrew runs in my head on a continuous loop. I open my palm and realize that the earring Andrew gave back to me is still there; I’ve been clutching it so hard it’s made an impression in my skin. Shakily, I thread it through the hole in my ear. My throat starts to close, and I shut my eyes, wondering where Desmond has gone. If he’s ever going to speak to me again. Why I’m always such an asshole. Why I couldn’t have just let it go for one day.
“So, you an actress?”
I meet Sal’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “An author.”
“Yeah? What sort of book? Self-help?”
God, I don’t want to talk right now, but his grandfatherly voice gets to me. “Fiction, actually.”
“No way! I’ve always thought I have a book in me. What’s it about?”
I poke a finger through a hole in my jeans. Hopefully they’ll have clothes for me to change into at the show. The show. My chest clenches again. Why am I going through with this?
“Love,” I manage to answer. “And having to rewrite your entire past.”
“Hey, now I know that firsthand,” he says as he merges onto route 5. “My first wife? Cheating on me through our entire marriage. With—get this—my freaking brother.” He chuckles. “All this time I think she’s crazy for me. And I think when she says she’s got a headache and doesn’t want to have sex, she’s really got a headache. Now I gotta believe there was no headache. She was just sore from banging Nico. Excuse my language.”
I shut my eyes, which the driver interprets as a quick attempt for a nap, for which I’m grateful. When we stop, I look around. Dr. Roxanne, I was told, is shot on the CBS lot, but we’re in a completely different part of town. Sal puts on his blinker and turns up a long, pretty driveway. The Magnolia Hotel, reads an old-fashioned sign that’s nestled between a jungle of blindingly green palms.
The hair on the back of my neck rises. “What are we doing here?”
“She’s shooting on location this week. You ever been to this place? Pretty swanky.” He glances at me in the rearview. “Honey, you need some water? You’re looking kinda piqued again.”
“I’m fine,” I think I say, though I can’t be sure, because everything has gone muzzy. It’s the tumor, I desperately want to think, except I can’t think that anymore because it isn’t true. Yet this place is awakening parts of me I didn’t know were there. I have no knowledge of ever being at the Magnolia Hotel in my life, but somehow I know that the road will bend at the top and two valets will leap out from behind an invisible post—and they do. I also know that when I step out of the car it will smell like orange blossoms—and it does. I know that the valet who greets me—bulbous nose; bristly, wheat-colored hair; trim in his uniform—will have a deep, cranky voice with a slight accent from somewhere in the middle of the country. And look. There he is.
I know this because I wrote him. I wrote about this whole place. But it isn’t supposed to be real.
“Eliza? Eliza Fontaine?”
My head swims as it turns. A PA in a Dr. Roxanne ball cap rushes up. “Thank God you’re here. Let’s get you to hair and makeup.”
The nameless grunt grabs my arm and guides me to a trailer on the other side of the parking lot. In the distance, I can see the tree line that leads to the bungalows. In the late-day heat, the buildings shimmer and dance. I continue to smell that orange-blossom scent even though I don’t see a single blossom anywhere. Unconnected brain pathways bang together like the metal balls in a Newton’s cradle. I swear I’ve never been here, but I’ve been here. I looked at plenty of photos of this place online for research for The Dots, but once again, my descriptions were so accurate. It’s like my fiction made this place real.
In the trailer, everyone talks to me at once. The makeup lady, a small, spidery woman with sad eyes, sits me down and starts caressing me with a powder puff. “Water?” asks a PA wearing heavy perfume. Another PA takes my phone from me and plugs it into a charger. A young, pretty blonde with a headset and a clipboard sidles up next, pumping my hand forcefully.
“Roz Lowry,” she says. “It’s awesome to meet you. Your agent reached out—I’m so happy we were able to make this work.”
“Uh-huh.” I try not to sound suicidal. My hand is slick with the lotion from her palms.
“Pretty cool that we’re doing this here, huh?” She sweeps an arm out the trailer’s tiny window, gesturing to the monstrous hotel structure behind us. It is the color of raw chicken. It is an association I’ve made before.
Amanda, the makeup artist, has me tilt my head back so she can apply false eyelashes. “So you’re going on first,�
�� Roz says somewhere above me. “Taylor Swift is on after you, so Roxanne might ask you if you’re a Taylor fan, which I hope you reply yes. Then she’s going to ask you some pretty standard stuff about yourself. How old you are, where you went to school, that sort of thing. And why you wanted to write the book. You know, the questions we sent ahead of time. Try not to get too complicated with your answers—it’s a live taping, so we won’t be able to do retakes.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmur, feeling feathery makeup brushes swipe across my eyelids.
“I just finished your book today, by the way,” Roz says. “Amazing. And really heartbreaking.” She offers a gleam of perfect white teeth.
When my phone, sitting on a counter being charged, bleats, I jolt up. I see another number that I don’t recognize, except this one is from Palm Springs. A sharp, hot feeling darts through my chest. I glance at the makeup artist. “Uh, can I take this?”
“Sure thing, honey.” She lets me slip out of the chair. “Just make it quick, okay? We’re on in about ten.”
I walk outside the trailer and start across the parking lot before I pick up. “This Eliza Fontaine?” It’s a guy’s voice.
“Y-yes . . .”
“This is Darrell from the Tranquility resort. Andrew Cousins-Glouster called us—said you’re looking for a security image?”
“That’s right.” I stare down at my shadow. It slants crookedly across the lawn. I look like I’ve been dismembered. “At the Shipstead bar.” I give him the date I’m looking for.
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t have security footage from that night—our cameras were out. But I have Richie on the line from the Shipstead with me, and I think he can shed some light on what you need. Richie?”
“Hey,” Richie says, reluctantly, his voice gravelly and cautious.
“Hi.” I can feel sudden sweat on my lower back.
“So yeah, Andrew described you, and I remember you. I mean, sure I do, because of the pool, you know? You were drinking stingers, which we rarely make.” Stingers! “And so was the lady sitting next to you.”
“The blonde?” I ask incredulously. There was no way Gabby was drinking stingers. There was no way Gabby was drinking anything. My heart rockets. I can almost taste the stinger in my mouth. I can hear, once again, “Low Rider.”
“Nah, you met with a blonde, but she came in later. This lady had dark hair, like you.”
My mouth opens. “Are you sure?” I don’t remember that at all.
“Your name’s Eliza, right? I made a joke that she looked like your twin. It was like a second Eliza sat down. I called you two the Elizas. Then the black-haired lady looked at you and said something that must have really pissed you off. You looked livid.”
“Please. Stop staring,” I whisper.
“And then she left. And then your friend with the curly hair arrived.” There’s a pause, and a cough. “So, yeah, that’s what I’ve got.”
“Thank you, Rich,” Darrell breaks in. I’d forgotten he’d been listening. “Miss Fontaine, does this help? I want to make sure you have what you need. Any friend of Andrew’s is a friend of ours.”
I whisper something that might be a yes or might be a no, and the call ends. I let my phone slide from my fingers; it clatters to the grass. A dark-haired woman. Another me. I’m less shocked than I should be, and that’s what frightens me the most.
I root around in my memory, and a few lights come on. I can sense someone sliding into the seat next to me. I’d smelled her drink first, then gazed at the brownish liquid in the triangular glass. I turned and looked, and she was sitting there, next to me, so poised and composed. I’d sucked in a breath.
It was me. Me exactly. My same face. My same body. My same smile. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. And then: “Please. Stop staring.”
My heart isn’t pounding anymore. I’m not even sure that it’s beating. I’ve stopped next to a parked Range Rover. When I glance at my face in the window, I see her. Her eyes. Her mouth. Her cheekbones. Her skin, even her expression. I whip around, swallowing a scream, and then her name. Except it’s my name. And she isn’t behind me. She isn’t anywhere.
But she was. At that bar. I just don’t know who she is.
From The Dots
Dot tried to pay attention as her aunt told her about her partying days with famous writers in New York, but it wasn’t easy. Dorothy kept sipping at that stinger, more and more of it disappearing down her throat. Nothing seemed to be happening. So that was a good thing. A very good thing.
But then, at one point, Dorothy leaned on her elbow and gave Dot a soapy smile. “I’m so happy you came out tonight, dear. Have I told you how much I missed you?”
And then Dot saw it. A slump of her aunt’s head, her chin slipping off her palm. “Oops,” Dorothy said, giggling. Dot took stock of the way her own body felt—she’d drunk half her stinger, but she was still lucid. Her hands weren’t shaking. Her vision wasn’t doubled.
Her heart cracked inside her chest. So there it was.
Like an old roof that could no longer withstand hurricane-force winds, Dorothy suddenly lost her composure. Her cheeks went from pale to flushed in seconds. Her eyes began to water. Her movements became florid and haphazard. When she smiled, she couldn’t quite control her lips. Dorothy stared at her palms as if she’d never seen them before.
Dot glanced around the restaurant, terrified that someone was on to what had happened, but all of the businessmen and doctors and first dates were caught up in their own worlds. She was grateful for Dorothy’s paranoid need for concealment. But Dot’s expression must have given something away, because when she looked across the table, Dorothy was staring at her in sober understanding.
“What did you do?” her aunt growled.
Dot licked her lips. The stinger had formed a thick coating at the back of her throat.
Dorothy stared at the drink in front of her. It was possible she saw two drinks instead of one, or maybe the drinks were spinning. Then she looked at Dot again. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“What did you do?” Dot asked quietly. “That drink was meant for me, not you.”
Dorothy’s eyes widened. “How dare you do this to me?”
“How dare you do it to me?”
“Did you know I have cancer?” Dorothy exploded. “Ovarian. I was going to tell you tonight. And now you’ve done it. You’ve probably ruined my chances of surviving.” She jumped up from the table. For a moment, she just stood there, peering around the restaurant, her eyes narrowed on a back hallway that led to the kitchen. Then, clutching her chest, she took off for the back door, the one they always came through.
Dot leapt up, too. She had no idea whether to believe the cancer story or not. But before she followed her aunt, she glanced at the remainder of Dorothy’s drink. She plucked it from the table, carried it to the bathroom, and poured the rest of it down the sink. She could feel the bathroom attendant’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look over. She didn’t look at anyone.
Then she went outside.
Dorothy was half in the shadows in the alleyway behind the restaurant, bent over at the waist and making retching noises. She wiped her eyes, stood, and glared at Dot. “What do you want?”
“Do you need me to get you a doctor? Do you need your stomach pumped? Before we call the police, that is. Because I am going to call the police.”
Dorothy blotted her mouth with her sleeve. Her nostrils flared. “You win. You win, Dot.”
“It isn’t about winning.”
“This wasn’t what you think. I was trying to help you.”
“How?”
Dorothy stuck her nose in the air. “Your drink wasn’t going to kill you—it was just going to knock you out long enough that I could get you out of this town without you protesting. I was going to get you a doctor. You were going to be fine.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“You should.”
“And where were we going to go?”
“Bolivia.”
Dot scoffed. “Why there?”
“Have you ever been? I spent some time there a few years ago. It’s so beautiful. And private.”
“I thought you were in Africa.”
Dorothy’s eyes were glassy. “We were going to have a wonderful life.”
“Why do you think I would want to have a wonderful life with you after what you’ve done?” The alley led to a busy avenue. Cars rushed past, their headlights bright, but she and Dorothy were in a pool of shadows. Dot doubted that a single driver saw them. “And who’s to say you wouldn’t keep doing this to me? Keep drugging me. Keep poisoning me. All to keep me in your control.”
Dorothy looked disappointed. “I’m sorry you see it that way, dear.”
“How else can I see it? You slap me so that I’ll cry and then you can hug me. You poison me so I can get sick and you can take care of me. It’s . . . it’s insane.”
“Clearly you’ve been listening to your mother. This is exactly the kind of thing she would say. I nursed you back to health, dear. It’s not my fault you can’t hold your liquor.”
“So why not take me to a fucking hospital? Why hide me in your room and bring in creepy Doctor Singh whenever I need an IV?”
“Doctor Singh is an old friend, and—”
“Stop talking!” Dot roared. “Just stop, okay? I know what’s going on. I’ve tried to put this puzzle together a million different ways, hoping that this isn’t the answer, but it’s what I keep coming up with every time.” She felt tears come to her eyes. “How long have you been hurting me? Did you come back just to hurt me some more? Did you hurt Thomas, too? Did you give him something to make him crazy? Were you the one who shot him?”
Dorothy stepped away from her, her footsteps clumsy and heavy. She had a pinched, cruel smile. “So many questions.”
Dot’s blood turned cold. Just like that, she knew she was right. “How could you shoot your own child?”
Dorothy rolled her eyes, then turned on her heel and ran across the alley. Her fur trailed behind her like a tail.
