Five
When I get home, I throw up two more times: once while I’m brushing my teeth, and the second during my hour-long scalding shower.
While at the park, we took the long way back to the parking lot so as to avoid the main set area. Tyler asked Tun to grab my stuff while he walked me straight to the car.
“What are you going to say when people ask?” I mumbled, brain still not working, feet stepping in the same spots that his were in front of me, like a baby deer literally following in its mother’s footsteps.
“That you weren’t feeling well so I made you go home.”
“Food poisoning,” I said. “No one ever wants to know more about food poisoning. Or say a heavy period. Like, World War Three bloodbath level,” I added. Neither of us laughed.
After I got my bag and made sure everything was inside, and Yan, the studio-assigned driver, had started the car and was ready to leave, I mustered up my most grateful smile. “Thank you,” I said to Tyler. I could still smell and taste the tangy bile on my tongue and was not looking forward to my next encounter with a mirror.
He nodded and, right as he was stepping back and about to shut the door, moved forward, reinserting himself between the door and me. In silent synchronism, we looked to make sure the driver’s door and window were both closed, and the partition between the front and backseats fully rolled up before saying anything.
“Do you… need me to come with you?” Tyler asked, scanning my face.
Even in my state, I snorted out a laugh. “Tyler, this is your first day of shooting.”
He shrugged. “May and I agreed that we each get one diva moment on this movie. I could storm off. You know how volatile actors are.”
“I’m okay,” I said. A blatant lie, but he let me have it. “I just need to shower and sleep it off. Shooting is at the lot tomorrow, right? For the scene with that diplomats’ party thing? Two P.M. call time?”
His frown deepened, and I watched him almost reach out for my shoulder before catching himself and settling his hand atop the car door. “You can’t work tomorrow.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Khin—”
“I just need to sleep it off,” I repeated, aware that I sounded like a single-minded toddler. “And it’ll look suspicious if I don’t show up tomorrow.”
After a long silence during which I’d refused to be the first to break eye contact, he at last sighed and nodded. “I’ll come pick you up,” he said. “We can… sort out a story.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he repeated. “I’ll see you at one thirty.”
I take a Xanax right before I change into a pair of cream silk pajamas—my favorite, although unlike in the past, they don’t improve my mood—and then I crawl into bed, pull the covers up right under my chin, and prepare to drift off.
Except I can’t close my eyes. Because every time I close my eyes, I’m there again. And again. And again and again and again. It won’t stop.
At 5 A.M. , I do my laundry. By seven, I’m re-color-coordinating the pile of clothes in my wardrobe that Nay and Thidar had flung around while trying to choose my First Dinner With Tyler outfit, Saweetie’s “Best Friend” blasting in the background. I know that night was less than a week ago, but it feels like a memory from a distant life. Like someone else’s life. Someone who did not commit first-degree murder.
So this is how it’s going to be, I think as I grab a stray purple Kate Spade dress from between the pinks and hang it in its correct section. There’s going to be a before and an after . When people talk about defining moments that split your life into two distinct segments, this is what they’re talking about.
I have another coffee, take another shower, have a small sandwich while still in my pajamas, then decide on my outfit for the day: dark blue jeans and my favorite black vintage Prada halter-neck top. If I’m going to feel numb, I might as well look hot while doing it.
Except—I can’t be feeling numb. I can’t go through the rest of today on this precipice of a panic attack. I want to talk to someone. Not Tyler because I can’t afford to freak him out (even more). The first names that I want to reach for are Thidar and Nay. Nay wakes up earlier because she likes to have a run before going into the office for another day of Important Publicist Things, but I can’t bring myself to go further than stare at her name in my call log. For one, I don’t want to bring them into my mess. And two, as I recall the way they were worried about me just last week, worried about things that, objectively, are much less important and urgent than my committing a murder, I can only imagine what this news will do to them. I can already picture them whisper-arguing while I’m out of the room, telling each other, We should’ve checked on her more, and See, I told you she was barely hanging on . In spite of them being my best friends in the whole world, the thought of having them see me like this, at my absolute, definitive rock bottom, ignites a searing shame.
I have a habit of checking my email as often and as thoughtlessly as most people check their Instagram feed, so I open my phone and refresh my inbox—and right at the top is an email from Clarissa from five minutes ago.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Checking in
Hope yesterday went well. Let me know if you need anything on my end. Can still send you that company card if you need one.
Remember—write me a good story. I want to be astounded .
C
As much as I want to forget last night, I take a deep breath and force myself to remember why I was in the park in the first place. The shoot. The film. Tyler. The article.
There’s also the rest of my fucking life.
What happened has already happened, Tyler and I have both agreed we can’t tell anyone about this, and now I have to put it behind me. I have to. I can’t spend every single night of the rest of my life in an insomniac daze, unable to do something as simple as make myself a breakfast that’s more substantial than a slice of cheese between two pieces of bread.
Unsure of where exactly one starts when embarking on The Journey to Get Your Life Back on Track After Killing Someone, I gravitate toward what I’m most familiar with: work.
The night after that dinner with Clarissa, as the start of my research, I’d stayed up to gather as many celebrity profiles as I could find by entertainment writers I admired. Now, opening my laptop, I swipe to the browser window that has approximately ten tabs still open. Caity Weaver on Cardi B for GQ. Jia Tolentino on Selena Gomez for Vogue . Allison P. Davis on Meghan Markle for The Cut . Ashley C. Ford on Serena Williams for Allure . All of E. Alex Jung’s profiles in Vulture .
I start with the Selena article, and keep a blank document open to compile a list of questions and observations to be mindful of for my own story. But despite being a fairly quick reader (at least, pre-murder), sentences keep blurring as I reach the end, and I have to return to the beginning, only to realize I’ve lost focus again by the time I read the last word. Fifteen minutes later, and I’ve read the first—I scroll back to the top of the page to double-check—one and a half paragraphs. Even better is the fact that I’ve absorbed approximately 10 percent of it.
My frustration begins to fuse together with my exhaustion and anxiety, and it takes me another fifteen minutes to finish that second paragraph.
A break. I need a ten-minute power nap to recoup.
I put the laptop down on the floor, pull my throw blanket tighter around me, and flip so I’m facing into my cushions. As I rest my burning eyes, I congratulate past-Khin for splurging on the larger, more expensive couch.
The next thing I’m aware of is my phone vibrating from where it’s fallen underneath my chin. It’s Tyler.
“Hey,” he says. “I texted you to say I’m downstairs but you didn’t respond. If you’re still asleep, I—”
The clock at the top of the screen says 1:45 P.M. Fuck fuck fuck. “No!” I say, jumping up and running into the bathroom for a quick pee while simultaneously putting my hair up into a tight ballerina bun. “Be right there, give me five,” I say, and use my elbow to end the call.
“Afternoon,” Tyler says when I enter the backseat exactly five minutes later.
“Good afternoon,” I say with my biggest, brightest, it- is -a-good-afternoon smile. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good,” he says.
“Good.” I nod.
“You?”
“Yep,” I say. It’s not even the right answer, but I can’t be bothered to amend it, and he lets it go.
The rest of the ride is undiluted silence, the kind that suddenly makes you aware of your own breathing pattern. Although Yan is in the driver’s seat just a few feet away, the black opaque rolled-up partition makes it feel like Tyler and I are blocked out from the rest of the world. I know we should be using this alone time to get our stories straight as planned, but he’s giving me the grace of waiting for me to bring it up first, and as hard as I try, I can’t bring myself to even think about last night without wanting to vomit again. It’s okay, I reason. We’ll talk about it during one of the breaks.
“Ready?” I ask as we pull into the lot.
Reminding myself that my job is still on the line here, I envision myself taking everything from the Before and shoving it into a large, airtight, opaque container. Weirdly, it works. I can already feel that part of my brain shutting down, the lights dimming to complete darkness.
“Khin,” he says while Yan parks the car. “We should talk—”
“Tyler!” The door swings open and Yasmin, the director, is standing there, a small army of people with headsets around their necks and clipboards in their hands on standby right behind her. I only had a brief chat with her yesterday, but I like Yasmin. She’s a few years older than me, talks quickly and efficiently like someone who doesn’t have the time for small talk, and although she has a string of highly acclaimed indie flicks under her belt, this is her first big blockbuster. “Afternoon! Hi, Khin!” she says, leaning over to wave at me.
“Hey, Yasmin,” I say, hopping out of my own door that Yan is holding open. I take the two seconds while I round the back of the car to gather myself.
But my conviction that I can get through today in a composed, professional manner is shot to pieces when Yasmin says, “Tyler, we have… a situation.” Her eyes dance over to me toward the end of the sentence to imply that I, too, am included in this “we.”
“What’s up?” Tyler asks.
Yasmin sucks in her cheeks. “There’s… police. Inside.” She nods back at the set which, from the outside, looks like an unassuming giant container amidst the colony of trailers. Crew members carrying long ladders and large circular reflectors enter and exit the container through one semipermanently open door. Extras pulling up the hems of their hta meins and pa soes are shuffling about, presumably not running so that they don’t sweat through their long-sleeved tops; I’m assuming they’re going to be in the background of one of the first scenes of the day, which is a lavish dinner soirée at the house of Princess of Fictional Country’s Ambassador.
I stare at them, all these human beings doing their jobs and going about their day, but the longer I stare—and I can’t stop staring, in fact I’m incapable of doing anything else, even blinking—the more those individuals blur into one multicolored kaleidoscopic haze. One of my last few functioning brain cells is aware that I’m having the kind of out-of-body experience that I’ve only ever heard people talk about. My chest shouldn’t feel this tight, I think. Do I want to cry? Sit down? Run away? I don’t know. I don’t know how to do… anything.
The police are here. And they must be here because the body’s turned up; it’s the sole logical explanation. But how ? In less than twelve hours?
“Oh?” Tyler’s voice flicks some sort of switch, and, albeit with great effort, I turn both my head and attention toward him. “Is there a permit problem?” he asks, eyebrows raising in surprise.
“Not… exactly.” Yasmin draws out every word. “Apparently there was… a situation… last night. In… the park.”
As though someone’s called “Action!” Tyler looks baffled, brows furrowing, chin tilting slightly to the side. I, on the other hand, can feel the backs of my thighs start to sweat inside my jeans. “Let me guess.” He rolls his eyes. “Noise complaint from the neighbors.”
Yasmin gives a short, nervous laugh. “No, no noise complaint. More like… a body.”
Okay, now the undersides of my boobs are sweating.
Tyler, however, frowns more, never one to break character. “A body?” he asks. “What do you mean a… body?”
Yasmin makes meaningless gestures in the air with her hands. “This morning, some people were fishing in the lake and it would appear that they discovered… a body. Like… a human body.”
“Oh my god, that’s awful,” he says, jaw dropping.
“Yes, terrible. They’re still trying to figure out who it is. Poor man didn’t have any ID on him. All they know is that he’s a foreigner. A white man in his forties, probably.”
“Holy shit! And you said the police were here ?”
“Mm-hmm,” Yasmin says, the apprehension returning in her voice.
“Do they think one of us saw something?”
“Not… exactly,” she says in the same protracted tone as earlier. “Basically—” She coughs, like the rest of the sentence is lodged in her throat. “The coroner put the time of death between midnight and seven A.M. The body was discovered around eight.” When she says, “The water damage is making the investigation difficult,” my knees almost buckle in relief. That small, sweet moment is quickly snatched away by her next words: “They think he was murdered.”
My gut gives out like I’m free-falling off of the world’s highest roller coaster.
“They don’t think it was an accident? Maybe he was drunk and fell over?” Tyler offers.
Yasmin shakes her head. “They’re saying it’s murder because they found scratch marks on his face. And bruises as well, although that might have been from hitting himself on the bridge as he fell over. But there was also some sort of injury in one of his ears. Looks like he might’ve been stabbed there, although we’re waiting on the official autopsy report to confirm this.”
“Damn.” Tyler exhales, tugging a palm down his face. “Okay, do they think one of the cameras caught something? Because we didn’t start shooting until six. We can hand over the footage if—”
“Tyler.” Yasmin says his name like a mother preparing a child for devastating news. “We closed off the park at noon.”
Tyler takes a second, his eyes darting around as he processes the information. “But this guy got in.”
“Yes, and they checked all the park security footage and saw him sneaking in past the entrance on the other side when the guard on duty went to the bathroom—”
“So it’s possible that someone else—”
“He was the only person who entered via that entrance all day. They’ve gone through all the footage on all of the cameras except…”
Tyler shakes his head. “Except what?”
“Except the ones that we had them turn off. On our side of the park. And the only people who were allowed in through our entrance was our people. We had five guards there.”
“I’m… not following,” he says, not fidgeting in the slightest. If I didn’t know firsthand that Tyler knew what he knew, I would believe his performance, and the knowledge that I would be just as gullible as Yasmin is now if he ever decided to lie to my face doesn’t sit well—but I can’t contend with that fear right this moment.
“Tyler—” Yasmin sighs again. I feel a surge of pity for this poor woman who just wanted to shoot a rom-com with two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and is now having to inform one of said stars what he and I already know: somebody got murdered last night, and the police know the culprit was—is—part of the movie crew. “They think it’s someone from the set.”
“That’s absurd!” Tyler says with a bark of laughter. “ Loads of other people were there! The park cleaning staff—”
“All left through the other entrance, and every single one of them was gone before the man entered the park. The cameras accounted for all of them. The only people in the park at the time were us.”
“So what are you saying?” Tyler asks with another half laugh, like surely there’s a miscommunication here. “The police are here to, what, arrest us?”
In a feeble attempt to blend in, I mimic Tyler’s laugh, although mine peters out in a sharp downturn. Thankfully, Yasmin joins in, snorting as though it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard, more ridiculous than the idea that she might be working with a potential murderer. “Oh god, no!” she says. “Please, I would have our legal team here so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them. But they do want to talk to us. And in terms of the movie, this does throw a wrench into our shooting schedule. We’re trying to iron everything out ASAP, but our on-location shoots are called off for the foreseeable future. We’re going to be in this lot”—without looking, she points behind her—“until we’ve been given the all-clear. Legal doesn’t want to take any chances. The police will talk to you two in a couple of hours if that’s okay?”
I swear my heart outright stops beating. “The two of us?” Tyler asks.
“They asked me for a timeline of as much as I could remember from yesterday, and I mentioned that Khin had left early and that you escorted her out. I think they just want to double-check with you both that you didn’t see anything as you were making your way back to the car.”
In the most casual fashion, Tyler shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets like he’s heard everything that Yasmin has said, but doesn’t see how any of it affects him in any way whatsoever. “Okay,” he says. “I can talk, as long as it’s between takes.”
“I—”
“I think this is an absurd accusation, especially because everyone was so exhausted last night we barely had enough time to use the bathroom, let alone go murder a man, but I get that they’re doing their job. But similarly”—he waves over at the people striding around the lot—“ we have jobs to do, too. There are a lot of hardworking people on this set who were here long before we were, and will have to stay behind for hours after we leave. And unless the police are going to personally pay for their overtime, I’m not going to make this team work even longer hours than they already are. And if they have a problem with that, then I can call Legal.”
There’s a pause during which I worry that Yasmin is going to snap at him or, for some reason, turn to me and ask if I saw anything. I suddenly become aware of my posture, specifically, how quiet and hunched over I am, like I’m cowering with guilt, so I straighten my back, and—because who better to take cues from than a professional actor—put my hands in my own pockets like I’m chill, casual, innocent, just a woman hanging out while those in charge clear up this small, unfortunate hiccup.
At last, Yasmin nods and spins on her heels. “Send hair and makeup to his trailer. Is May ready?” she asks one of the staff who begins talking into their headset.
I seem to have loaded lead into my sneakers when I got dressed, because my feet will not move. I don’t notice Tyler hanging back until he shifts close enough to me and, now that everyone else is already scrambling back toward the main area, places a hand on the small of my back.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, and gives me the gentlest of nudges. It works. My feet remember how to walk.
“How?” I ask.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“How?” It’s a demand more than an ask this time.
I look up at him, but his gaze is trained forward, still resolute in its ignorance. “Not here,” is all he says.