We Are Watching Eliza Bright

by A. E. Osworth

  When she wakes, she smells breakfast. She has the sudden urge to wrap herself in her bedsheets instead of getting dressed. Just like they always do in the movies. Like they’re modest. Like they’re wearing togas. She does this, because why not? Why not perform a little when everyone is looking at you? She glances at herself in her mirror and frowns. She is far from looking like a movie star and she blushes deeply, her shoulders and collarbones turning red along with her face; starlets never look like they’re drowning in their own bedding. Starlets have perfect teeth, gums that don’t look like bones covered in a thin sheet of skin. She turns away and heads into her living room. Preston is fully dressed, ready to leave. “Watcha makin’?” she asks.

  “Bacon,” he rhymes, and they both smile.

  “It’s fake bacon, you know,” she says, listening to the limp sizzle that heralds tempeh.

  “Oh, it’s impossible not to know. I am deeply aware that this isn’t real bacon.” They are silent for a little while. Eliza is served eggs, toast and facon. It’s nice. She never would have made the tempeh for herself. It would have sat in her freezer for a long time before she admitted it was never going to get eaten, or until she moved. To Sunny Santa Cruz, maybe.

  “Did you watch it?” she asks. It’s on HBO Go, after all. She would have canceled her account, except canceling things is just as difficult as getting credit card information back.

  Preston shakes his head. Eliza is disappointed. We think it is excusable that he hasn’t watched. We wouldn’t either. It is impossible to watch people think you’re wrong and say so publicly to the tune of applause. We’re keeping tabs for him, so he doesn’t need to.

  “I’m going to do the interview with See No Monkey.”

  Preston’s grip tightens on his fork, but he tries his best. “How much are they offering you?”

  “Offering me? It’s just an interview, people don’t offer money when you’re at this stage—well, maybe they do for you. But honestly, it’s not about the number, whatever it winds up being. It’s about the chance to just—not be here anymore.”

  Preston frowns as if he is imitating a frown. It seems too deep to be honest. “Okay, look. Just promise me you won’t take an offer until I’ve had a chance to try, okay?”

  Eliza wants to ask, “Try what? Try to hire me? Date me?” And we would like to know as well. Instead: “You’re going to get ketchup on your shirt”—she points at the fork. It is dangling eggs dipped in red. She shivers. Ketchup on eggs looks barbaric. Let’s pause here—we can’t quite imagine her inflection. Is it sweet, the way Delphine would talk to Jean-Pascale? Simpering, fake, the sonic equivalent of an exaggerated pout? Is it thin, hard, sarcastic? A way to point out a flaw, however small, in this great man who volunteers to protect her, even if the threat is imaginary?

  Preston checks his phone. “I have to go. To work,” he clarifies. “Christmas marketing waits for no man.” He does not mention the PR nightmare; he wants to pretend it will not be a substantial part of his day.

  Preston shoves the last two bites of his eggs into his mouth, leaves all his tempeh save for one attempt at a bite and plods to the door, opens it. Eliza isn’t facing him when he opens the door, pauses briefly and then slams it. She jumps at the sound. “Nope,” he states, his voice wavering even as he tries to cram it down, repress this sign of weakness. He opens the door just enough to poke his head out and looks both ways down the hall. “Nope. Nope.” He slams the door again.

  Or. Or it all could’ve gone this way: Eliza is still sleeping as Preston is trying to sneak away. She is still tangled in bedsheets, now more ensconced since he got up. Or he rises from the couch and brushes his teeth with his finger, not having planned to stay over because they aren’t fucking, but still trying to be a knight in shining armor. A superhero. Still convinced his presence is a shield. Perhaps no breakfast is had by anyone. Perhaps no sex is had by anyone. Perhaps they both want to have sex and don’t. Perhaps they fuck until the wee hours and now they’re exhausted, energy sapped, unprepared for the rest of their days, their lives, spending their life force on something so fucking trivial. Get back to making our game, you absolute losers!

  One thing is for certain. In the moment Preston opens the door, he’s alone with it. He has to make a decision. He hesitates, unsure of what to do. He shakes his hands as if they’re wet or made of spiders. Too slow, too slow, his body throbs even though the danger isn’t real! We wouldn’t actually hurt them. Come on now; Eliza is out of her fucking mind if she thinks we would cross that line, even with her, as much as she’s the fucking worst. Preston is probably catching all his fear from her. Finally: he runs to the bedroom and heaves her from bed, dead weight, and he is strong in a way he doesn’t expect but is running on adrenaline and so remarks at this with some distant part of himself. Or he runs across the apartment and grabs her body off the kitchen stool, sheet and all. She is yanked to her feet. Wherever she is scooped from, we can hear exactly the way she reacts in our heads. “Preston, what the fuck?” Eliza says.

  “Nope. We’re leaving. Nope.” His voice is getting higher, louder, shoutier. She sits back, resists being pulled further. “What’s going on?” From her perspective, Preston looks insane. But we know what’s going on inside Preston’s head, even though she doesn’t. Picture his thoughts like a circuit board; his mind is usually very organized. But an electrified pulse of terror surges when he sets his eyes on it, and now his circuits can only communicate a wordless, thoughtless flight response. Where he has worked so hard to be rational, now everything is flooded. No longer capable of sensical communication, he slings her over his shoulder and carries her toward the door. “Preston, what are you doing? Stop, I don’t have clothes on!”

  Eliza starts to feel burning fear drop into her stomach, the same feeling induced by the helium-affected voice in the song. Eliza’s fear feels so different, less like it will flood her sense of self or the way she thinks, and more like something terrible she’s eaten. Indigestion. Bodily. Perhaps because she hasn’t seen it yet. Or because women aren’t intellectual in the same way.

  It is very apparent that Preston isn’t slinging her over his shoulder to be romantic, to take her to the bedroom. He grips her tight and his entire body is one white-knuckled fist, and he is clenching on to her out of terror. “Preston, what’s wrong, what’s—what are you doing? Put me down!” She doesn’t expect him to be able to lift her like this, but in a strange, logical part of her head responding to all this insanity, she supposes he can. He’s much bigger than she is.

  “You’re not staying here” is all he manages to blurt out. He is breathless, from carrying her or from fear. Or both.

  “Preston, put me down, put me down,” she says again and again as she feels his body open the door once more. She slaps his shoulder a few times with a flat palm, not wanting to hurt him but hoping to startle him into coherence. “Preston, I am an adult person, I can walk or run out of here on my own after I put some damn clothes on, just fucking tell me what—” And then she is in the hall, looking back at her own door and coughing as his shoulder digs into her stomach.

  At first, she thinks it is a Barbie. Just a Barbie, naked and nailed to her door. Pok, pok, pok, she remembers. Her eyes trace its feet, pointed but flexed at the toes in a perpetual approximation of high-heeled contortion. Up to its waist, so tiny as to look permanently and unrealistically corseted. Nipple-less breasts, as neutered as the smooth plastic between her legs. Barbie’s shape when she is wearing clothes is ideal, most definitely. Seeing a naked Barbie, however, is disturbing. With pride, she thinks that Circuit Breaker surely has nipples and a vagina, until she remembers that she definitely knows Circuit Breaker does. She’s witnessed the violation.

  Up to the swanlike neck, and that’s where she thinks the doll ends. Headless. But no, not quite, for there is still brown hair. Eliza wonders where one can get a brown-haired Barbie doll—is it still called Barbie when it isn’t blonde, or does it have some other name? A red carnation is—what?
—nailed over its face? That’s what holds it to the door, the same thing that obstructs—no, no. The face is cut away almost lovingly, the edges are so smooth, carefully curved, carved like waves, and the flower is stuffed into the now-obvious void.

  We want her to scream, but she doesn’t because Preston’s shoulder is still digging into her diaphragm. Or she doesn’t because the fear is too much. It is choking her, this thing that she is swallowing, that’s stuffing itself down her throat. She forgets she has a mouth; forgets she has a face. She is only trying to stomach it. Only a helpless girl slung over a shoulder. Or she is not scared at all. A lizard person, feelingless. Scream, you bitch. We want you to scream. It’s how this kind of story goes.

  The doorman looks at the odd couple, his brow furrowed. He puts his hands up to perhaps push the sheet back onto Eliza—it is slipping; we know from the security cameras. From the photo we are sharing over and over, replicating like a virus. Eliza scrambles to cover her almost-exposed chest, but each of Preston’s too-quick steps smashes and jostles her. As he runs through the door, the sheet bursts out behind them and billows, like a superhero cape, in the cold December wind. The sunlight springs through it and she is an Athena. Or an Artemis. Or a Venus. Or a girl, rat-faced and terrified, drowning in a sheet.

  A shutter click. The sound a phone makes when a photo is snapped. Gorgeous, gorgeous. A swooning, skinny woman. Bare-breasted, looking up at the building. A terrified CEO pushing her, and her body bending like a tree in a storm, about to break but still—supple enough. Here is their first intersection with The Inspectre in meatspace, where three bodies pass each other, almost colliding. But no one sees him. No one sees him, yet we all know he’s there. He uploads the image, the art, to 4chan. To Reddit. Tweets it. He walks away.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Here is a partial list of things that happen right after Eliza and Preston find the faceless doll:

  From the cab, Preston calls the police. They agree to search the apartment, the building, to make sure no one is still there.

  He also calls the super, who questions the doorman. He provides a list of who he’s let in that morning: a locked-out resident for whom he can vouch; a Fresh Direct delivery to apartment 2F; a Con Edison meter reader. We know Con Edison sent no such person. They do not. No one checks.

  Preston stashes Eliza in his minimalist apartment, lends her clothes. He tweets something about oversleeping his alarm. He goes to work and tells her not to leave. He walks out of his apartment, leaving her to steep in her bewilderment. There is almost nothing here. A couch. A television, large and mounted to the wall. A bed. The computer. How does anyone live like this? she thinks. We know it’s about a clean mind, a slate for ideas, a font for his own creativity. There’s no art. There’s barely a surface to sit on. But the windows—he’s on the top floor and the slanted roof is made entirely of glass. She stands in borrowed sweats and surveys the Flatiron District. Preston’s building is high but not too high. She watches people moving below, on the street. She wants to walk around, resents Preston for giving her orders. She doesn’t work for him anymore. He can’t boss her around.

  She settles onto the couch, snuggles up with Dog. Dog always looks some mixture of sad and confused, even as his tail betrays his happiness. She finds it amazing how small a ball he can curl into. He snuffles his nose into her lap; such a good boy. While Eliza isn’t a stranger, she is not a fixture in this apartment, and yet Dog welcomes her with open paws. Eliza almost emails See No Monkey to schedule a flight out. She almost logs on to Todoist to add “purchase new dumb phone” to her daily tasks, but she changes her mind. She is paranoid, but not without reason. We could probably see the task if she’d just enter it; we own her accounts now. But she has learned, and so quickly too. She grabs instead a piece of paper and a pen, both difficult to find in the non-clutter that is Preston’s apartment. This is the point at which she screams. Not the kind we want. It’s angry, like a raging barbarian. It is not being able to find a simple pen and paper that unlocks this primal yell. If she could be in her own space, she would be able to find it. But instead she’s in a strange, soulless apartment, with none of her things around her, not one ounce of comfort. It’s like trying to live in someone else’s brain. Good. Good that she feels she can’t go back. This is the kind of thing we want her to feel.

  She receives a series of direct messages on Twitter:

  @franglais: hey, so i know you don’t want to hear from me right now.

  @franglais: i wouldnt either if i were you

  @franglais: but do you want to grab coffee?

  @franglais: i have some apologizing to do

  For most of the day, Eliza isn’t going to respond to these messages, which is a little harsh, we think. Even if we put ourselves in her shoes, JP is offering an olive branch and the least she could fucking do is hear him out. If she doesn’t let him talk to her, it’s as good as censorship. Preventing him from saying his piece. But the messages itch at her like bugs on her skin or in her head. Eventually she relents and gives him a set of streets at whose intersection he can find a Starbucks. She makes sure to pick one close, but not the closest. She also doesn’t call it a Starbucks. She calls it a coffee place and trusts that he will figure it out. See? Learning. Except here, she is actually paranoid. We left her Twitter alone, so we could shame her in public and she could watch. She changed the password right away. We couldn’t get into her direct messages; someone would have to socially engineer her password out of her, and Eliza is on her guard. And make no mistake, we’re all dying for information. If someone made it available to us, even the most Lawful Good would likely click on it eventually. But we digress.

  @BrightEliza: 3:30pm. Today. Let’s get this over with.

  @franglais: fair enough.

  Eliza refuses to listen to Preston. She takes cash from her wallet—some of the women on the show had given it to her the night before, after learning what was happening at the bank. They’d bought her drinks too, and dinner. They’d said so many things, so many horror stories and so nonchalantly. Or perhaps Preston gives her the cash; maybe he feels guilty. Either way, she puts on some ugly sports sunglasses she finds in a small, neat pile next to his bed, where a bedside table might be in a more maximalist apartment, borrows a big puffy coat and a knit cap from a mostly empty closet and walks until she finds a Best Buy. She purchases a phone that she is assured doesn’t connect to the internet at all. She prepays for her minutes, her texts, in cash. She turns off her smartphone and wonders if it’s too dramatic to throw it into the Hudson. Instead, she slides it into the street and watches a taxi run it over.

  She’s put only a few numbers in the phone. She thinks perhaps she should text Suzanne her new number, but she is afraid to do so—do they have access to Suzanne’s phone? Her texts? The funny-farm thing came from their chat, so it’s possible. She calls See No Monkey and tries to schedule a flight out.

  “Okay, well—I guess let us know when you can get back into your apartment? We can’t really—schedule—a flight under these conditions. Or an interview. I guess let us know.” The recruiter seems so disinterested. Eliza’s entire body tenses. She spends the rest of the afternoon watching Doctor Who on Preston’s giant screen and crying. She interrupts herself before her appointment with Jean-Pascale only once, to take Dog out for a stroll—would they notice that Dog wasn’t with him today? Who would guess? She hasn’t seen the photo we have, she doesn’t know that no guesswork is necessary. When three o’clock comes, she puts the sunglasses, the coat and hat back on. She sets off, planning to wait at the Starbucks. Jean-Pascale, however, is already there.

  Chapter Seventy

  @theinspectre: your friend didn’t like her flower, @yrface

  @theinspectre: see, @yrface? she doesnt look happy at all [expand to see photo]

  @theinspectre: you are proving much more difficult to find, @yrface

  @theinspectre: congratulations, @yrface

  @theinspectre: @yrface and thank you. I do lov
e a good puzzle.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Suzanne: Eliza, are you seeing these tweets?

  Suzanne: that means hes here

  Suzanne: he sent a photo of you, fuck

  Suzanne: and what the fuck, he left you a flower? at your literal, actual apartment?

  Suzanne: fucking talk to me, Eliza, are you okay?

  Suzanne: shit was it him? this photo is everywhere? i’m seeing it everywhere

  Suzanne: fuck. how many people do you think know here?

  Suzanne: at fancy dog?

  Suzanne: probably everyone

  Suzanne: everyone with a reddit account at least

  Suzanne: which is everyone

  Suzanne: listen, im not a programmer, but you are. can you find out where it came from?

  Suzanne: shit, fuck, Eliza, text back. I’m calling rn

  Suzanne: okay, pick the fuck up, your phone is going straight to vm

  Suzanne: devonte has the photo. he says its going around

  Suzanne: i dont like this

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Suzanne: im gonna go over there

  Devonte: you absolutely cannot go over there

  Suzanne: like fucking hell i’m not going over there, she’s not picking up, she could be fucking dead

  Devonte: wait, really, dont go

  Suzanne: i have to check on her

  Devonte: no i mean dont go to her apartment, she isnt there

  Suzanne: ???

  Devonte: in the photo

  Devonte: shes getting into a cab

  Devonte: prestons with her

  Devonte: preston tweeted this morning that he overslept

  Devonte: hes lying

  Devonte: shes at his apartment

  Suzanne: do we know where he lives?

  Devonte: no?