Vendela Vida - The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

“And you were just going to stay in Casablanca until. . until you were offered a role as a stand-in for a movie?”

You tell her about your backpack being stolen at the Golden Tulip.

“Tell me the whole story,” she says, and genuinely seems to want to hear it.

You tell her all about the Golden Tulip, about the backpack, the embassy, and Sabine Alyse, how the police asked for your grandfather’s name. You haven’t talked this much in a week. When you’re done recounting the events of the last few days, she shakes her head. This is the response you want. You’re afraid of the cackling.

“Holy shit,” she says. “Well, that explains the clothes.”

You look down at your outfit. “No, my suitcase wasn’t stolen. These are the same clothes I owned before.”

She sips her drink. She looks as though she’s debating whether to apologize. “So is Reeves Conway your real name?”

You tell her it’s your sister’s baby’s name.

“Reeves Conway is your niece?”

“Yes, she’s my twin’s baby.”

“Fucking A. What kind of bodyguards do I have?” She looks up to the ceiling. “I mean they didn’t even check you out to see if you were who you said you were.”

You tell her that the bodyguard who interviewed you trusted you because you bonded over turtles and birds.

“And that makes you trustworthy? I should fucking have you fired right fucking now. You’re an impostor.”

You panic. You went too far. Now you’re going to be fired, and you have nothing. You should never have been flattered by her invitation for a drink. Especially when she herself said you were the only person she could think of.

A cool sweat runs down your back and collects at the weak elastic band of your underwear.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

“I’m sorry too,” she says, and her face changes. “I was just fucking with you!”

“Fuck,” you say. You don’t typically swear but it’s contagious and you feel relieved.

She laughs her strange cackling laugh that you now know must be dubbed over if she ever laughs in a film.

“You know I trained as a stage actress, right?” she says. “I really do have some good acting chops. Do you believe me?”

“I have witnessed them firsthand,” you say. You wonder what they did when she was a stage actress and they couldn’t dub her laugh. Maybe she was only given very serious roles. You understand why she’s no longer in theater. You wonder if she does too. Someone must have surely told her about her cackle. But if so, why does she still laugh that way?

“So what is your name?” she says. “Wait!” She extends her hand as though to stop you. “I’m going to try to figure it out.”

“Okay,” you say.

“Rebecca?”

“No.”

“Sybil?”

“No.”

“Okay. Give me time. Even one week. I’ll get it. Are you staying for the whole shoot?”

“I think so.”

“You have nowhere to go? No one expecting you at home?”

You tell her that no one expects you back for another week.

“Does your sister care that you’re going around using her daughter’s name?”

You tell her your sister doesn’t know.

You look at your watch. It’s after midnight. You have to get to bed. Maybe it’s the gin and tonics that are making you paranoid, but you’re getting the strange feeling that the famous American actress wants something from you, that her extending of friendship toward you is calculated. When your sister was most effusive in her kindness toward you, it was because she needed something.

“The call sheet says we’re being picked up at seven,” you say.

“ You’re being picked up at seven,” the famous American actress says. “I don’t have to do anything until nine. We’re having more drinks.”

She pauses to look up. “Garçon,” she says, waving the bartender over once again. “I had to play a girl in a French café once,” she explains to you. “‘Garçon’ was the only word I had to say in the whole fucking movie.”

At seven the next morning you and the two producers are picked up and driven through Casablanca’s standard morning gridlock to get to the film set. Today’s scene takes place in a traffic jam. Given your experience of the city at rush hour, or at any hour, you would think that would mean they could film on any street in Casablanca. What’s the need for a set? But the producers inform you that today’s shoot is extremely complicated, as they have had to block off two streets and create their own traffic jam. This has entailed obtaining permits from the city, and locating fifty-three period cars from the 1960s. It has also required making sure that the fifty-two extras who have been hired to drive the period cars have insurance, and that they have been background-checked and fingerprinted in the event that they should wish to drive off.

The driver of the fifty-third car, the one who will be chauffeuring Maria, played by the famous American actress, is an actor himself. As you sit in the van with the producers, stuck in real traffic making your way to the manufactured traffic, a situation has arisen. This is what you, in your brief career as a stand-in, have already learned is terminology for a problem. A situation has arisen. You imagine that when it was discovered your predecessor, Ivy, was having an affair with the director, and had to go home to face her husband, the same phrase was used to prepare the practical secretary for the debacle ahead: a situation has arisen.

The producers panic when they receive the simultaneous texts stating that a situation has arisen. They both jump on the phone. By the time they’re off their respective phone calls, the van has traveled half a city block.

“Fuck me,” says the young American producer.

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

“Maria’s chauffeur — the dude who was supposed to play Maria’s chauffeur today — doesn’t have a driver’s license,” the young American producer says.

You think of suggesting that someone else play the part of the chauffeur, but you’re sure they have already considered this.

“Is it such a problem since he’s just going to be sitting in traffic anyway?” you say. “I mean, that’s what the sides say. That they’re just sitting in traffic, not moving, right?” You take out the sides and read the description aloud: “‘Maria sits in the back of a taxi. She sits there until she gets fed up with the standstill, opens the back door, and marches out onto the street. The cars honk as she walks past.’” You look up from the script. “He doesn’t need a driver’s license. He won’t be moving.”

The producers look at each other and nod, then send texts.

You arrive at the makeup trailer. Today the wardrobe woman is inexplicably dressed in Elizabethan attire. You don’t comment, you don’t ask questions. She is, after all, in charge of costumes. You imagine she’s collected several in her career, and keeps them in steady rotation.

“You want the spank again, yes?” she says to you.

You have learned that some things that are phrased as questions are not questions. Yes, you tell her, you want the spank.

There’s a knock on the trailer door and you finish hiking up your Spanx, which still takes a bit of effort. When you’re dressed the wardrobe woman unlocks the door. You’re touched by this small act of courtesy: she locks the door while you change.

The tattooed man steps up into the trailer.

“How are you?” he says, but doesn’t wait for a response. He informs you that something different will happen today: you will actually appear in the film.

“What?” you say. You are not excited about this proposition. You think of your twin. You know that if she were in your situation and had just received this news, she would be thrilled. She would be texting her friends, calling your mother. She always likes to brag to your mother, and maybe because of this tendency, you’ve always felt your mother loves you more. But you can’t be certain. Lately, you’ve been tempted to tell your mother about the details surrounding your recent falling-out with your sister, but you refrained. You even contemplated that instead of flying to Morocco, you would fly to Arizona to visit your mother and her new husband in the large stairless white house they live in on a mesa, but decided against it: you were concerned that if you revealed everything to your mother and she still spoke to your sister, your heart would be broken once more.