Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

When the doorbell rang, both he and Elizabeth stayed put and stared at each other. “You’re closer,” Andrew said.

“I have a cat on me,” Elizabeth said back, her face hidden behind a magazine. Iggy was curled up on her stomach. This was their trump card, always, and he respected it.

“Fine,” Andrew said. He wandered over to the door and pulled it open, expecting to see one of the neighbors, maybe, not Zoe or Jane or Ruby, but one of the well-meaning half strangers, the ones who always wanted to tell you which day was alternate-side-of-the-street parking, even though their car was parked in the driveway. It could also be the UPS guy, or FedEx, but it was too early in the day — they were late on the route. There was always an outside chance it would be a fleet of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons of New York City.

Instead of any of these, when Andrew opened the door, he saw Lydia.

It was her face exactly — the face he remembered most precisely. Not the bleached-out punker she became, not the fashion model she tried to be, not the junkie. It was Lydia Greenbaum in all her frizzed-out glory, angry at what she’d been given and hungry for everything else. Andrew’s eyelids fluttered, and his knees softened. On the way down, he thought he saw her smile, her teeth as white as a shark’s.

• • •

When he opened his eyes again, Andrew was on the couch, lying in the spot where Elizabeth and Iggy had been so smugly undisturbable. Elizabeth’s face was inches from his own, her mouth hot and open.

“Oh, my God, Andrew, are you okay?” she was whispering, and looking around, as if for ghosts. Andrew wished he could ask which ghosts were present. Had he hallucinated? It hadn’t felt like a vision. He should ask Dave what one of those felt like, if it was different from a regular dream.

“Wow,” Andrew said. “I fainted? I don’t know. Um, I’m not really sure what happened.”

Elizabeth smiled. “I am.” She leaned over and helped him sit up. “Andrew, this is Darcey. Dead ringer, huh?”

His head was sloshy and heavy, a bucket filled with wet leaves. He blinked a few times before turning in the direction Elizabeth was looking. When he did, he was sorry he had. He should have sewn his eyelids shut and stayed down, like an animal playing dead.

She didn’t just resemble Lydia, this girl. Andrew got the whole thing immediately; it wasn’t complicated. Someone in Los Angeles had found a girl who looked so much like Lydia that the money just flew into their hands — this was how careers were made, luck and bone structure. But what those people didn’t know, what they couldn’t know, because they hadn’t known Lydia, was that this not-Lydia girl possessed the quality that was the closest to Lydia’s heart — black, black, black ambition, the darkest little lump of coal right where her actual heart should have been. That was what Andrew saw when he opened the door — Pandora, just before she opened the box. Not-Lydia knew what she was going to do to him, and she was excited about it. Andrew felt sick — the movie was going to give Lydia her due after all.

“Hey,” said not-Lydia. “Nice to meet you.”

Another woman appeared behind her, holding a glass of water. “Oh,” she said. “You’re awake. I was going to splash this on your face. I’ve always wanted to do that, haven’t you?”

Andrew looked to Elizabeth.

“That’s Naomi, the producer,” she said.

“Well, glad I woke up, then,” Andrew said. “Should I get my lawyer on the phone?”

Naomi walked around to the couch and sat down next to Andrew. “I was really hoping that wouldn’t be necessary.” She snapped her fingers at not-Lydia, who nodded and reached down into a large bag sitting by her feet.

“There better not be a stack of cash in there,” Andrew said.

“Right, because no one wants that,” Naomi said, rolling her eyes. Not-Lydia passed her a sheaf of papers. Elizabeth leaned forward to try to see what it was, but Andrew took the stack of pages and hunched over, as if he were a tightwad fifth-grader protecting his spelling test.

It was Lydia’s handwriting. Pages and pages of it — small and neat and slanted to the right, her blocky letters. Andrew saw his name over and over again. And when Andrew kissed me, I knew his mind was somewhere else, in the library even, or with stupid, boring Elizabeth…. Andrew came over again tonight, told me he thought girl drummers were sexy, and I slapped him, and he laughed, and then we fucked on the kitchen floor….

“Who has seen these?” Andrew felt his face turn pink.

“What are they? Let me see!” Elizabeth reached for the pages, and Andrew tucked them under his legs. He looked at Naomi.

“What are you trying to do here, exactly?” he asked.

“Listen, Andrew,” Naomi said, clasping her hands together. “I know you’ve been reluctant to get on board, and I just wanted to come down and try to answer some of your questions in person. Can we speak freely?” She pointed to Elizabeth.

“Let’s go outside,” Andrew said, standing up slowly.

“Are you kidding me?” Elizabeth said. “You watched me push a baby out of my vagina, and I can’t listen to your conversation with Naomi ?”

“I wasn’t privy to your previous conversations, so this seems fair,” Andrew said. “Let’s go.”

Naomi shrugged. “Hang tight, Darcey.” Darcey shrugged back — Andrew found looking at her so unnerving that he quickly turned back to Naomi, who mouthed, Sorry, to Elizabeth and then flashed a megawatt grin. Andrew opened the door and held it while Naomi walked through, then let it slam behind him.

“Ditmas Park is so cozy,” she said. “It’s like the suburbs, but without leaving behind any of the grime!” She ran a finger along the porch railing and then lifted it in the air. “So authentic.”

“So, what is this?” Andrew waved the pages by his head. He was trying to breathe deeply, from his belly button, through his scapula, to his third-eye point.

“That is a very small sampling of pages from Lydia’s diary.” Naomi opened her eyes wide. “She was very detailed.”

“Yes, I can see that. My question is what you’re doing here, in my house, with these pages.” He clenched his jaw.

“And I’d like to hear your reservations about seeing her story on film. We’re not going to make her into Saint Lydia, if that’s it. Did you see Ray? Walk the Line ? Those were films about complicated people. That’s what we’re doing. It’s going to be Ray meets Sid and Nancy minus the Sid, meets Coal Miner’s Daughter , only the coal miner is an orthopedic surgeon from Scarsdale.”

Andrew chuckled, despite himself.

“Listen, she loved you, and you didn’t love her, I get it. And then she becomes this superstar. And then she dies. That’s a weird situation. And now someone is going to put it all on-screen, and you feel like an asshole.”

“That’s really not the problem.” Andrew crossed his arms. There were too many problems to name just one of them. Visions of Harry watching a movie where his father slept with a dead celebrity danced in his head. Ads for Mistress of Myself would be on the radio and the television, with movie posters plastered all over the sides of buses. He didn’t want to see Lydia’s face, even if it was not-Lydia Lydia. Who would call and ask what he’s done in the last twenty years? Entertainment Tonight ? He didn’t want to feel old. He didn’t want to feel like a sideman in someone else’s life story. He didn’t want his wife to hate him. He didn’t want his wife to leave him. He didn’t want his wife to think that she’d fallen into a marriage by accident, by trickery. He didn’t want to feel like a failure. He didn’t want to feel like a rich kid who’d never had to work for anything. He didn’t want to feel like he was selling out. He didn’t want to feel like Elizabeth was selling out on Lydia’s behalf. He didn’t want to feel like he’d chosen the wrong life, chosen the wrong partner. He didn’t want to sit in a dark room and watch himself make mistakes. He didn’t want any of it. “Or maybe it is, I don’t know.”