Chapter 10
Priscilla
Pressing the button reactivates the red light and the Dallas countdown, followed by a blink-and-you-miss-it shake.
“I wish we knew how to keep going,” I say, wrapping my hand around Marlowe’s wrist.
If my regular life is all that waits for me on the other side of this door, I’m interested in extending the time I have before returning to it.
My agent and manager want to know if I’ll ever accept another “real” audition instead of coasting on my recurring commercial work, and if not, then we need to have a “serious talk about the direction my career is going.” Erik is waiting to hear if I’m going to keep my hair this dark red, or if I’m ready to book a changeup with my hairstylist. My mom keeps asking how she can prove she’s not the woman she used to be.
“You’re sick,” Marlowe replies.
She doesn’t want me to acknowledge the emotion thickening her voice, so I do her a favor and play along, replying with a “Perhaps I’m just full of wonder for the universe?”
“I hope you enjoy all the wondering you’ll get to do. Because as soon as you let me go, I plan to get out of this machine and never again discuss what happened here.”
“Ah, yes. Repressed silence,” I say. “The healthiest coping mechanism. Very adultlike.”
Angry heat rolls off her in a strong enough wave that my cheeks flush. “I’m not repressing anything. I just have obligations I need to return to.”
“What about Dallas?” I ask.
“What about Dallas? He’s spent decades making this thing, he got it to work—but apparently not even work correctly—and he left without saying goodbye. I think we’ve done plenty for him.”
As a kid, how many nights had I stayed awake, completely alone, excited to see my mom when she got home from her late shift at the bar, only to be greeted with a “You shouldn’t be up right now. Go to bed”? No one deserves to be neglected without explanation, and certainly not by someone they love.
“Here,” I say, releasing Marlowe’s wrist and opening the door. “Back to the reality you love so much.”
We don’t get more than a step out of the machine before we see her—a woman with dark red hair tapping her foot, taking a phone call as she paces the darkened stage while sipping on an iced coffee.
From the back, she’s dressed in my same outfit, down to the black platform boots I bought after seeing my publicist wear them and the leopard print coat with furry cuffs that a stylist let me take home after a photo shoot a few years ago.
After my parents’ divorce, when my mom started leaving me home alone to fend for myself, I used to fantasize about having a twin.
I knew I liked myself enough to tolerate another version of me, and I figured the same would be true the other way around.
Maybe we would be the only two people in the world who could do such a thing, since no one else ever seemed to want to stick around for very long.
“I don’t care how long I’ve been stalling this production. It’s a commercial. They’ll survive. I’m not putting on a chicken suit,” the woman says into her phone. “Tell Matt he needs to be realistic with my time and energy. And respectful. Really emphasize the respectful part.”
“Looks like I got my wish,” I say.
“No, no, no,” Marlowe mutters with increasing urgency. “I need to go home.”
The woman turns around.
I prepare my biggest smile for her, but it’s not another me wearing my clothes.
It’s not another me with the fake-red hair and the cloud of expensive perfume that was gifted to me at an award show years ago and I still use to this day, because some Midwestern frugalities can’t leave me, no matter how high my paychecks have gotten.
It’s Marlowe.
Definitely not the Marlowe we left hiding in a closet, too skittish about her girlfriend—Alice Yeung, which is something we definitely need to discuss further—to face the question of them living together.
No. This Marlowe has a glint of egotistical self-satisfaction in her eyes I know in my bones, having seen it in enough other actors to be able to recognize it on sight.
Marlowe—the Marlowe I’ve come here with—rocks on her feet. “I’m you.”
She is me. Though she pulls off this particular outfit with much less of a chic, devil-may-care energy than I do. It looks like a costume on her, not an outer representation of her fun and resilient spirit.
“What the fuck?” says the other, obviously famous Marlowe.
She’s right about everything she said about the commercial, which must be the same one I just shot back in LA.
I didn’t mention any of my concerns or embarrassments.
It felt like courage in the moment, to roll with it and “be a good sport,” whatever that means.
Hearing her push back, though, it now feels like cowardice. Why didn’t I stand up for myself?
“I have to go,” Famous Marlowe says into her phone.
“Tell them to rework the premise. I won’t show up to be laughed at.
” She jams a finger to the screen to end the call, slams her iced coffee down on the table, then walks right up to the Marlowe I know.
“Did you go to Turkey and get your entire face done? You even have the same freckle on your ear as I do. What the fuck?”
“Mars?” someone else calls out. “Where did you go? You really shouldn’t be on our stage. We have a lot of set pieces that are very delicate, and—”
Another person skitters through the curtains, halted in her tracks by what she finds.
This time, it is another me.
“Oh. Wow. Um. Hmm. Okay…” Other Me says, taking two steps forward, then another two backward, over and over, stuck in a confusion loop.
This version of me wears—well, there’s no easy way to process this—she wears a sweater-vest that looks almost identical to the one Marlowe has on.
It’s a brown woolen V-neck one over a white T-shirt, with matching white sneakers and a pair of small studs in each ear.
Her hair is shorter than I’ve worn it in years, though it’s not shaggy like Marlowe’s is.
It’s the brown my original hair color would be if I didn’t have salon appointments every six weeks.
It’s been well over a decade since I’ve seen this color on myself.
I think again of Erik, waiting to hear if he should request a color change for my next appointment. The brown does look nice, though it also has the effect of making Other Me look not younger, but meeker. Not enough like Cilla Cove. Way too much like Priscilla Covington-French.
“Hello, me!” I say to Other Priscilla. Maybe my straight-backed, big-smiled confidence will transfer to her in some kind of shared-DNA symbiosis. “Let me guess, you’re a teacher?”
She manages a nod. Or it’s the last act before she stiffens into a board and falls face-first toward the floor. Anyone’s guess.
“To sum it up quickly, we are all duplicates of each other,” I tell her.
“And I’m really sorry, but we don’t have time for either of you to process the shock.
We’re still processing it ourselves, and look at us!
Out and about!” I glance between this Priscilla and Famous Marlowe—or excuse me, Famous Mars—then over to the Marlowe I know.
“If you don’t mind compartmentalizing it for the time being, that would be a big help to us.
” I nudge Teacher Priscilla in the shoulder. “I know you’re good at that.”
She almost tips over.
“The Memory Machine sent us here from an alternate reality,” I continue. “Greetings, earthlings! We come from a land where we have each other’s jobs!”
“The Memory Machine?” Teacher Priscilla questions.
“Alternate reality?” asks Famous Mars.
“I know!” I say. “Turns out, it’s supposed to send Dallas to a different version of some event within his own memories.
I’m sure your Dallas has never shared that with you, so, surprise!
The machine hasn’t worked properly for us, though.
It’s sent us to two random alternate realities instead.
We haven’t found the Dallas we know yet.
The last Dallas we met wasn’t feeling very charitable, so we didn’t get as much information from him as we’d have liked.
Hopefully you guys have a Dallas who’s chattier!
Or best-case scenario, you have our Dallas. ”
“Let’s just get back in the machine,” Marlowe whispers to me, but Famous Mars overlaps her, saying, “This is fucked-up. You guys are sick.” She turns to Teacher Priscilla.
“I told you my fans were sick. I don’t know how they found out about you, though.
Or the name of the Memory Machine. That’s new. ”
My own quip hasn’t had a chance to form before my Marlowe says, “We’re not your fans.”
I shouldn’t think of her with such a definitive possessiveness, because she isn’t my anything, but as she’s currently the only thing I recognize with certainty, she is mine. I’m not sure what other label fits. In some ways, she’s always felt like mine. My rival. My only equal. My Marlowe.
“Would a fan know that you’re holding a cold brew with one pump of lavender syrup, a splash of half-and-half, and very light ice?” my Marlowe continues.
“This is an iced Americano with a bit of oat milk and a sprinkle of cinnamon,” Famous Mars says.
“No, it isn’t,” my Marlowe challenges. “I—we—get the same drink every single day. From Sawyer’s Coffee.”
“You’re trying to get a sip of my coffee, and I’m not going to give it to you. You’re fucking sick,” Famous Mars tells her.
If I had to choose, and in this scenario, it seems I do, I much prefer my Marlowe. Famous Mars has her same combative nature, but there’s an unbearable smugness on top of it. My Marlowe at least possesses kindness. Famous Mars is as blunt and ungenerous as my bangs were in the fourth grade.
“Would you stop swearing? We’re in a school,” my Marlowe says.
Famous Mars looks at the closed curtain. “They can’t hear us back here.”
“Yes, they can,” Teacher Priscilla murmurs, almost too soft for anyone else to hear.
“What?” Famous Mars barks out.
“Stop being so rude,” my Marlowe tells her.