Great. I’ll be there in 30 mins. X
I suppose the silver lining to her coming here tonight is that there’s no way I’m going to have time to get nervous about tomorrow’s meeting.
I flick on CNN, watching the minutes count down to her arrival and wondering if I should have changed out of my sweats and into something more suitable for company. But then I don’t really want her coming into the apartment; it’s getting late and while I had thought we could have been friends before now it’s probably best if I don’t get too involved with whatever weirdness is currently going on in her life. To be honest I should have probably handed her things in at the police station or something. Most people would have by now.
I grab her wallet and keys and place them ready on the entrance table, next to the security monitor.
I mute the TV when the intercom sounds, and head out to the hallway to answer the security phone.
“Hi Mia, it’s Lucy at reception. We’ve got an Emily down here to see you?”
It’s strange hearing Emily’s name coming out of someone else’s mouth, and immediately my worry about the whole situation is halved. Emily is just a person, an ordinary person, standing downstairs at reception, talking to Lucy. I’m suddenly certain that whatever happened to Emily yesterday will be something underwhelming and disappointingly banal.
“Okay, great. Thanks, Lucy. Could you send her up?”
“Sure, no problem.”
Only after I hang up the phone do I remember that the rental document I stole from Emily’s car is still downstairs locked away in my car.
Shit.
I dither for a second before dashing into the living room to grab my Audi keys, but just as I pick them up the door buzzer sounds. I don’t have time to go and get them. She’s here.
I see her on the video monitor in grainy black and white. She’s dressed differently from yesterday, which isn’t particularly unusual, but for a microsecond it throws me. Though her hair is tied back in the same loose bun and her same minimalist Nike rucksack is slung over her angular shoulder, just as it was.
I open the door with a smile. “Emily! Hi.”
The words come before I really see the woman in front of me. She was looking the other way on the monitor and now that our eyes meet for the first time I know instantly: This isn’t her. This isn’t Emily.
“Hey! Good to see you again,” the woman says, giving me a broad beautiful smile. I feel my features ease into a smile in reply while my mind races to make sense of what the hell is going on. Her voice sounds exactly the same as Emily’s. Her creaky New York vocal fry. Her hair, her rucksack, her tinkling bracelets all the same and yet…Her face is extremely similar to Emily’s but it’s notEmily’s.What the hell is going on? I study her features—full lips, chestnut hair, thick brows, a smudge of eye shadow, and pale skin—all like Emily’s, but not.
I must be just misremembering what Emily looked like, right? After all, I only spoke to her for a few minutes almost two days ago. I could definitely have misremembered her. She just responded to the name Emily as well. It would be beyond weird if she wasn’t her.
The woman hitches her rucksack pointedly and I realize I’m staring at her.
“God, sorry,” I apologize, having to tear my eyes away from her. “It’s been a really long day. Jet lag!”
“No, no, it’s me who should be apologizing. Seriously. Thank you so much for taking care of my car, Mia. I really appreciate it.”
For a second I wonder if this might just be a friend of Emily’s, but why would she have her bag, her jewelry, her voice. Why would a friend of Emily’s be pretending to be Emily? That’s ridiculous, it’s definitely her.
I shake off the thoughts. Flustered, I grab for her wallet and keys on the table next to the door, giving her a reassuring smile. “Got everything right here.” But I catch myself just before handing anything over. As desperate as I am for this weird situation to be over, I wonder how Jane would handle this and I pause. The woman in front of me hasn’t even told me what happened to her yet. Why she disappeared on me. Where’s she’s been all this time. It’s still all a complete mystery.
“Can I ask what exactly happened yesterday?” I ask. “I mean, sorry to be rude, but where the hell did you go?”
There’s a subtle flicker of annoyance behind Emily’s eyes. “Ah, yeah. I guess I owe you an explanation, right?” She smiles apologetically. “I’ve kind of been having a bit of man trouble, so to speak. It’s complicated. I’m so sorry about the whole thing; getting you involved, putting you out.” She shakes her head at what I assume is the ludicrousness of her situation. “Basically, after you went down to feed the meter, I got a call, from my ex”—she rolls her eyes—“so I took it in the restroom. It was kind of an emergency and you were in your audition by then so I had to get an Uber across town to go sort it out straightaway rather than wait for you to finish and get my keys. I should have waited, or left a note like you did, but it was pretty time-sensitive. Anyway, the whole thing went on for ages and my phone ran out. So I only got your message when I finally got home and charged my phone this afternoon. It’s been intense”—she raises both hands, ringed forefingers crossed—“but hopefully I’m rid of this guy now.”
Jesus. I guess I was wrong about her not being the sort to take shit from boyfriends. But then I suppose even Jane took shit from her boyfriend.
It’s a vague story and I find it difficult to believe something could have been such an emergency that she’d have to leave her bank card with a complete stranger. But then conveniently she hasn’t actually told me what the emergency was. Again I feel Jane nudging me on. The plastic contours of Emily’s car keys sweaty in my hands, I decide that I deserve to know more. I’ve spent a day and a half of my life worrying about her.
“What did you have to sort out exactly?” I ask, my tone blunt.
She’s caught off guard by the directness of the question. I watch her realize that I still have her keys and wallet and she doesn’t have any choice but to answer. This woman who doesn’t quite look like Emily.
“Oh, okay. I broke up with my boyfriend a few months ago,” she answers dutifully. “But he’s turned up in LA the other day. And I got a call from someone in the building where I’m renting an apartment.” She shakes her head. “It was a neighbor, the woman next door. She was calling because amanwas climbing in one of my windows.” She gives me a quick tight smile, and I can see where this story is going. “So I asked the neighbor what he looked like and she described my ex so I told her to tell him she was calling the cops. So she tells him that and he freaks out and he falls off the window ledge. He hits the ground at a funny angle, and he’s flailing around, yelling, and I can hear her shouting at him down the line and then he goes quiet. Completely blacked out. Turns out he broke his ankle. She tells me she’s calling an ambulance but I tell her not to because I know he doesn’t have health insurance because he’s still on my joint insurance. So I tell her to wait and then I look around for you in the waiting room but you’ve gone into your audition already so I called an Uber. I get back to my place, grab him, and take him to the ER, and then we’re there for like twelve hours. I had to call his family and tell them what happened. Which was the worst. Then I rang my insurer and had him taken off my policy afterward. And then my phone died.” She sighs heavily, her story complete. “So that’s what I had to sort out.”
I feel embarrassed for making her tell me.
