The woman blinks, dumbfounded, and I suddenly wonder if I’m acting completely mad. From her expression it’s impossible to tell if she’s been caught red-handed or if she’s terrified of the madwoman in her kitchen.
But I’ve come this far, so I continue. “Why are you pretending to be Emily?” I demand.
The woman’s gaze falters, her eyes darting past me to the door. She’s scared. I notice a tremble in her hand and my resolve wobbles.
When she looks back at me there is a nervousness to her, but no fear. She’s calculating what to do next. There’s a subtle tell, a look behind her eyes that I recognize from years of improvising scenes with other actors. A look that tells you that your scene partner is trying to preempt where you’re going in the scene so they can figure out their own path through it.
And it’s that tiny glimmer that, finally, tells me I’m right about all of it. This woman isn’t who she says she is.
I play my ace card. “You know I was the one who called the police, right?” Her confidence suddenly falters. She isn’t Emily. She isn’t. I push on. “If you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to call the cops again, now, ok—”
Her fear crescendos into exasperation. “All right!” she blurts, suddenly slamming the packet of coffee she’d been holding down on the counter, her change of energy jarring me not nearly as much as her sudden change of accent from New York to a thick Texas twang. Jesus. I step back, spooked.
“Okay. Good for you,” she says, hands raised in angry surrender, her body language completely different, all hint of the person she was a moment before gone. “I’m not. Well done, you want a fricking medal? Unbelievable. You are one strange person; do you know that? I give up. I quit, okay? Happy?”
I try to make sense of what’s happening right now but without any clues, I don’t get very far. “I’m sorry, what?” I hear myself ask pathetically.
“I’m sorry, what?” she echoes back at me in a painfully accurate British accent that makes me cringe inside. She shakes her head dismissively at my confusion and continues in her Texas drawl. “I can’t help not doing it exactly right if you only give me a day’s prep, can I? I’m doing the best I can and for the money you’re paying, I know for a fact you won’t find anyone better than me. Seriously, I don’t get what you want. You ask me to turn up and do a bunch of weird shit with you and then you start calling the cops. I thought the cops were part of it when they turned up! But they were real! Do you know how much trouble that could have landed me in? I mean, why would you do that?”
All I can do is stare, and then I choose my words with care. “Look, I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know who you are. I thought you were Emily, but you’re obviously not. I’m just looking for Emily. Actual Emily.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” she shouts, her features scrunched in disbelief. She squeezes her eyes shut and blows out a long, loud breath before opening her eyes again. She gives me the time-out sign. “Okay, that’s it. Time out. I’m done. I’m quitting, okay? I quit. Just keep the money, I’ll call my agent and tell her to pay you back, you strange, strange person.” She starts to remove Emily’s earrings from her ears and thumps them down on the table.
She’s quitting? My mind scrambles to catch up. But as I watch her I realize there’s something about the way she’s removing her earrings. It reminds me of being in a dressing room after a curtain call. And suddenly the whole situation sharpens into focus. This woman is an actress, an actress being paid to play Emily. And she thinks I’m the one who hired her. For a terrifying second, I wonder if I did hire her, if somehow without realizing I have gone completely mad and all of this is down to me. Have I created an elaborate distraction to keep myself from cracking up after George left me? But that can’t be true if only for the simple fact that I wouldn’t know how to begin hiring someone in LA, even if I had gone mad.