Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
It starts raining on our walk back to the cottage, so we run-walk the last half mile, Kiera holding our bag of food gingerly, and then burst inside and turn on the space heater immediately.
It may be June, but it is Ireland.
A shady little house on an overcast day still gets cold.
Maureen reacts with enthusiastic tail wags and licks when we arrive, reminding me that I’m supposed to get the dog back to Cillian.
But then she nuzzles my neck and gives us a sweet whine and I decide that one more night of kidnapping her can’t hurt.
I let her out, and she does her little routine before coming back in.
I feel bad for leaving her home all day, and resolve to walk her in the morning.
It’s very clear that Kiera has been here a lot.
The first thing she does in the kitchen is crank on the old oven and put the pies on a tray.
She then pulls down a large yellow porcelain bowl from a very high shelf and dumps the butter-cheddar chips into it.
From another high shelf in one of the few cabinets, she pulls out a copper wine chiller and puts in the bottle of Pét-Nat she brought from the shop.
From the selection of mismatched, clearly thrifted or inherited dishes, she picks out a small sky-blue plate, and shatters a bar of sea salt caramel chocolate onto it.
All the while she sings along with the Kate Bush album she put on.
“I’m going to build a fire,” I say, not sure what else to do, and thinking it would be cute.
“Ooh, lovely,” she says.
“The new you, I suppose.”
I have a pang of guilt and for a moment I can’t figure out why.
Then I realize it’s because I’m secretly wishing that it were Aimee here.
Not Kiera.
Even though there’s nothing wrong with Kiera.
She’s great, in fact.
It’s just that I’ve missed Aimee so, so much.
Aimee and I could change in front of each other, pee in front of each other, rage in front of each other, be excited in front of each other.
I went to her for advice and to vent and she came to me for the same thing.
It was never one-sided.
Another memory flashes in my mind, long suppressed.
We were fifteen, and I had gotten dumped for the first time.
The boy was named Dickie, which I was somehow able to take seriously.
He had bright green eyes and straight, post-braces teeth.
He played baseball and wore the black-and-blue Burchell Hawks gear 90 percent of the time.
We had been official for two entire weeks, and then he’d broken up with me because another girl said yes to homecoming faster than I did .
I was obviously heartbroken, particularly because he had called my house phone and done the dumping in a matter of ten seconds.
My parents were out at dinner with some friends, so I ran to Aimee’s house unannounced and rang the doorbell.
Aimee answered and half an hour later we were in the backyard eating pizza ordered by her parents and drinking Sprite over lots of ice (she had a machine in her fridge, unlike us) from Tervis tumblers.
I cried and cried, as I used to do so often, then she made me laugh, and I felt better.
It’s so strange to imagine crying in front of someone so easily now.
Unless I’m filming, I never do.
I get the urge often, but I never let it happen.
I take a match to the newspaper I’ve put under the careful pyramid of logs and watch it erupt in flames.
I’m getting pretty good at this.
“Oh shit, the flue,” I mutter to myself, remembering in time.
“All right, I’m going to borrow some comfy clothes. Cool?” says Kiera, walking into the bedroom.
“Cool!” I say with a little too much enthusiasm, making up for any involuntary unkind thoughts.
“I’ll change too.” I dust off my hands and stand in front of the hearth, where a fire is now roaring.
I follow her and pull open the wardrobe, grabbing for a specific hanger.
Kiera pulls a big T-shirt out of the small dresser, singing, “ The hounds of love are hunting ” in a low Kate Bush imitation.
She stops when she sees me.
“What’s wrong?”
I point limply at the wardrobe.
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Give it a go. But I swear to God if you tell me Narnia’s back there—”
“No, no.” I laugh.
“I was getting something to change into and somehow I knew exactly where these would be.”
“You wear them constantly. I’m not surprised. It’s muscle memory.”
“Yes, but my muscles have different memories.”
There’s a silence between us as she decides whether or not to humor me and my wild story.
“Right.” She looks at the ratty old sweatpants.
“Did you still have them in your… other life? And keep them on a hanger like a psycho there too?”
“Yeah, that’s what’s so bizarre—the holes and everything are in the same places.” I hold them up.
“It’s spooky. Like, what, no matter what I would have worn them in the same way? I don’t know. It’s weird.”
The part of my mind that has still in no way accepted everything that seems to be going on screams, NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?
!
The other part of my mind, the weirdly chill part that has adapted and can’t help but keep living, walking, breathing, eating, sleeping, says, We Sliding Doors -ed ourselves, that’s all; it’s totally cool and normal.
These things happen!
“Well, if you’ve worn them in two different lives it explains why they look like such shite. They are comfortable, I’ll give you that,” she says.
“Good to know that in any given world, you still wear those hideous things. No wonder you can’t be talked out of them.”
She reaches into the wardrobe and pulls a pair of bike shorts down from the top shelf.
She takes off her jacket and button-down, her side to me, undressing down to her bra.
She’s clearly not self-conscious in front of me.
For a moment I think it’s unusually comfortable, but then remember that she saw me three days ago, two days ago, yesterday, and today.
It’s only me who’s known her for a matter of hours.
It’s funny, too, because I was just fantasizing about how perfect my friendship was with Aimee, and all the while it seems to be the kind of lived-in relationship I have with Kiera.
“It’s available to stream in ten minutes,” she says, shimmying into the shorts.
“So if you’ve got some script you’re going to write out for me to read after, you’d better get started.”
“Oh, shit, I totally forgot. Yeah—paper and pen?”
“I’ll get them while you change. Shall I pour you some wine?” she asks, walking out of the room.
“Yeah, that would be amazing, thank you,” I call after her.
“You got it,” she says from the kitchen.
She starts singing along with “The Big Sky.”
I put on a tank top, as I’m a little warm, the humid and rainy air feeling different now that I, myself, am dry and have built a fire.
I flip more carefully through the clothes here, looking for familiarity.
It’s strange.
There are few things I know—things I would never throw away and have in my other life as well.
Some well-worn cast T-shirts from high school.
An old Jungle Book nightgown I bought when I was unquestionably too old for it at age sixteen when my mom and I went to Disney World.
My dad’s old Levi’s jeans from the nineties.
I touch the old, faded denim and shake my head at the bizarreness of it.
Seeing these things reminds me that I had meant to call my mom today in the waking hours.
I consider doing it now, but I have to see Brilliance.
I send her a quick text instead.
sorry about the early call!
I mean, at this point it seems pretty confirmed that these people fully know me and that no one is playing a weird, elaborate prank on me.
Still.
Calling my parents, having them explain in more detail what my life has been like up until now—it’ll make it feel more legit.
“Eight minutes ’til showtime, and you’re not saying a word or having the light on while we watch, so you’d better crack on.”
I laugh.
I love the way Kiera is willing to commandeer what is not her home for the sake of a TV show.
I’m the same way.
Whenever a new episode of something like The White Lotus is on, I need everything to be perfect.
Snacks, drinks, vibey lighting—it all has to be just so .
“Thanks,” I say, seeing the Moleskine journal on the table with a Pilot G2 pen.
“You know, this is my favorite pen in real life too.”
“This is real life to some of us, love, but yes, it’s a very good pen.”
I give an apologetic smile and she cheerfully blows me off.
I open the journal.
“A whole new journal? Are you sure I should write in it? It feels sacred.”
Now a look of kind exasperation flashes on her face.
“First off, it’s yours . Second off, you’ve got a whole lot of them over there.”
She points at a bookshelf, where there are at least twenty more.
“Do I keep a diary or something?” I ask, thinking that would be incredibly useful.
“As far as I know, you buy a new one every time you get a good idea or read something about gratitude journaling, then you either don’t write in it until you think the idea is fully baked, not wanting to waste any pages, or you write in it for about seven pages and then never touch it again. Then you need a new one the next time you have a good idea, since the other one’s already sullied.”
My mouth curves in a weary twist.
“I seem like a lot of fun.”
“Oh, it’s endearing,” she says with a loving shrug.
“The candles, on the other hand, are out of control.”
She opens up a cabinet, and out pours the pungent—but nice—scent of about thirty candles.
It’s the source of that scent I smelled when I first arrived.
“What the hell?” I ask.
“I’m like a hoarder of nice ideas.”
“I don’t know the story with those candles, exactly,” she says.
“You buy them because you love the scent, then you never want to waste them so you burn the cheap ones from the supermarket.”
“Oh, come on,” I say.
“You’re joking.”
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir.”
I stare at the candles.
What is wrong with me?
But as I think about it, I realize it’s not that far off from me in my real life.
My therapist once told me I have a scarcity mindset .
“Here you are,” says Kiera, putting down a glass in front of me.
“Oh.”
“What is it?”
I flush a little, embarrassed by my knee-jerk objection.
“Nothing!”
“No, go on, what is it?”
“I thought it would be in a wineglass. I usually… I’m sorry, this is great.” I shake my head, truly baffled.
“God, what’s wrong with me? I’ve become a total asshole! In every reality! ” I slap my hands onto my cheeks.
“You’ve a bit of a stick up your arse in your real life as well, don’t ya?” asks Kiera, hands on her hips.
I have no words for what an idiot I feel like.
I don’t even care .
I’m just used to it back home.
Home where I’m used to agreeing with powerful producers that the nose on this Sancerre is truly divine and that it’s so much better out of a Zalto.
I admire her for not getting activated.
For not being sensitive.
Instead, she manages to look amused.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Not hurting my feelings,” she says.
“They’re your glasses, after all. You used to have them fancy ones from the shop, but they broke. These are safer for us all, believe you me. The last time one of those nice ones shattered I was picking microscopic shards of glass out of my foot for— Okay, only five minutes left, get writing.”
“Shit. Yes. I’m on it.”
I’m suddenly going weirdly blank.
I only have a few minutes.
She’s going to watch the whole episode either way.
I’ll do the end scene.
I scribble down a bit of the setting.
The big rolltop desk, the ferns in the corner, the large velvet couch.
The piano.
I write down the lines I remember, knowing that it might not match up completely, but hoping I can at least show a little insider’s knowledge that helps me prove myself.
It wasn’t my fault you left.
That was your choice.
You couldn’t accept that you were wrong; you forced me to leave .
I blank on the rest of Kim’s line.
I end it with a scrawled etc.
No .
That’s my line.
Well, that’s not going to convince anyone.
Why couldn’t this have been an episode with one of my many indulgent monologues, instead of it being one of the sneaky ones, which had me lurking around corners and standing with dramatic lighting at the tops of staircases for the first twenty-five minutes?
Kim’s next line: You were too damn proud to hear me, I write.
That’s not quite it, but I can’t put my finger on why.
I keep writing.
To listen maybe?
I put that too, in parentheses with a question mark.
Then me.
Proud?
If there’s one thing in my life that I’ll look back on with pride, it’s this.
I write out the direction then, how I shoot her right in the chest.
How Kim—or her former character—collapses against the piano.
Then I walk over to her and pull off the diamond necklace.
My line.
I’ll think of you every time I wear it .
Her only line I remember for sure: You bitch .
Maniacal laughter, etc.
, etc.
We’ve filmed so many episodes that my brain has this—suddenly inconvenient—tendency to completely delete the past scripts to make way for the imminent new ones.
It’s lucky I remember this much.
I probably would have come up empty on a monologue, ending up scribbling something about revenge?
as the specific lines escaped me.
“Okay, pencils down,” says Kiera, settling into the couch with her enormous bowl of chips.
“Hit the kitchen light, if you will.”
It’s only when I do it that I notice that the room is slung with twinkling fairy lights.
Behind the books on the bookshelf, with the tchotchkes, even in the kitchen.
I used to decorate with them when I was a teenager.
And it does make a room cozy.
I’d never do that now.
Grayson’s house is all expensive lamps from Rove Concepts and retro-inspired, brand-new pendants from Schoolhouse.
The mood lighting is mostly smart bulbs that are set to very specific timers and have very specific routines.
He got a guy who does the Hollywood Bowl to do the lighting design.
Sometimes they don’t work, for some unknown reason, and I end up moving through complete darkness until I find a blessedly analog lamp.
I sit down on the couch.
I’m actually excited to see the episode.
Or maybe nervous is a better word.
It seems unimaginable that it exists without me.
Not because they can’t or shouldn’t make the show without me, but because I’ve been on it since day one.
There’s never been an episode of Brilliance that I wasn’t on.
Even those few episodes where I had no lines and only sat staring catatonically out a hospital window because I fell off of a sliding library ladder at the Montgomery mansion, only a white bandage wrapped just so around my perfectly curled hair to indicate some sort of injury.
Kind of like now, where I have only an entire other life to indicate that something is wrong, but I seem generally fine.
I don’t even have a bandage.
The episode plays out now basically how I remember, but with some strange differences.
It’s Bizarro World Brilliance .
There’s the first scene at the coffee shop with the teenage characters having their homework and hot chocolate flirtation.
The character who plays my sister shows up at her husband’s office and confronts him about an affair.
Daphne—now played by Kim instead of me—stands in a hall, eavesdropping to hear her grandfather saying that the money is all gone.
Daphne then runs off to tell her lover about the money when she overhears a conversation between him and her sister , who are having their own affair.
Then there are the filler scenes.
The Downton Abbey– esque subplot with the middle-aged butler and his younger protégé and would-be lover, where they clean the tires of the vintage Rolls-Royce and try not to give in to temptation.
The scene between the server and her boss, who both want the same woman but are also fighting temptation between each other.
The scene at the bank where the teller removes a safe-deposit box and admires the handful of diamonds within it before glancing surreptitiously around and putting them away again.
I said that scene was stupid and served no purpose but to ham-fistedly remind the audience that there are diamonds at the bank, but I was overruled.
I try to tell Kiera this, but whenever I open my mouth to speak she glares at me.
At the first commercial break, she says, “I don’t care if you’re a time traveler or whatever, I have been waiting for this finale for ages and you will not spoil it for me, or I’ll put those treasured pants of yours straight into the fire.”
“I’m sorry! You can’t imagine how weird this is.”
She gives me a tolerant look, then does a zip-lip gesture.
I nod, mirroring the gesture back at her.
And then in the next segment, I find myself speaking along with one of Daphne’s sister’s lines.
Kiera stares daggers at me, then at the next break says, “Bloody hell, this is like watching Titanic with you.”
I refill her wine as an apology and then say nothing else as I sip my own.
It’s funny—I’m remembering now that Grayson and I had a fight about wineglasses early on in our relationship.
I was drinking some expensive Chablis out of a coffee mug and he called me a rube with no taste.
He said it like a joke, but I really didn’t ever do it again.
Huh.
I look back at the screen and see the slow camera zoom on the gun at the small of Kim’s back.
“This is it,” I say.
Kiera inhales deeply through her nose beside me and I hold up a hand and whisper, “ Sorry!”
Jordan Levinson is indeed playing Velma, Daphne’s long-lost friend from equestrian camp.
She crosses in front of Kim.
Kim makes a different choice than I did—she doesn’t get tearful.
She looks villainous and deathly serious.
It actually sort of gives me chills.
I always thought she was good.
“That wasn’t my fault. You chose to leave.” Her voice cracks.
Velma stands in front of her and stares her down.
“That can’t be how you remember it.”
Dammit.
Dammit dammit.
The lines are different.
“I—” starts Daphne.
“You what? You could have stopped me. You wanted me gone.”
“Oh my God,” Kiera mutters beside me.
She is quite literally on the edge of her seat.
“I knew it.”
“That’s not what I wanted,” says Daphne.
“Then what do you want?” asks Velma.
The camera shows the gun again.
Daphne’s fingers play with the trigger, shaking a little.
Then—
She pushes the gun under the pages of an open book and steps away from the desk.
“No!” I say out loud.
This time Kiera doesn’t shush me, because this time she also said, “Oh my God.”
“I think you know what I want,” says Daphne.
Wait a minute.
Wait—
The camera moves to an angle between them, each of the women’s faces on one side of the screen.
Daphne reaches for the necklace around Velma’s neck, fingering the diamonds.
Then with the intensity of a jump off a cliff into uncertain waters, the two of them suddenly move forward, their lips catching each other’s.
There is then a hot and heavy make-out session.
The credit music starts as the camera moves off, showing that around the corner, the man who plays my—I mean Daphne’s—lover lurks in the dark, watching them.
His eyes shift to the gun on the table, and the screen goes black.
The credits roll as the muted saxophone theme song—a clear rip-off of “Careless Whisper” that has now become iconic in its own right—begins to wail.
“Damn,” I say, my eyebrows up and mouth agape.
“That was a much better twist.”
“ Jesus, I knew they were going to do that—there was all the weird talk about horse camp and— Wait.” She shifts to me.
“Better twist? I take it that wasn’t the same as in, eh…”
“No. That was actually much better.”
She goes over to the table to pick up the Moleskine.
“A lot of it is close enough, I think!” I say.
“The setting of the room, all of it—the gun! But like I said, I guess they wrote it differently with a different actress. They were always changing stuff. I should have known it wouldn’t be the same without me.”
She starts to read and I start to think.
Why was it different with me?
Maybe I didn’t have chemistry with Kim or something.
But that’s not fair; I would have if I’d been told this was a possible storyline.
Maybe in this reality, it’s enough to save the show from the Hollywood guillotine.
Plus, there are no major queer characters, all relegated to utility roles, an oversight that has been noted by everyone, including the cast.
I think over the two scenes.
It’s got to be close enough to the scene to prove it to Kiera, doesn’t it?
The meaning of some of the lines, the words—they were close enough.
Watching the episode, more than anything so far, feels like the real, tangible proof that I don’t exist.
Meg “Meggie” Bryan exists, and she exists here in Avalon.
Lana Lord is no more than fiction.
I set out to convince Kiera, but I think I really convinced myself.
This is really happening.
“Wait, what time is it?” I say suddenly, looking out the window.
“Just after ten?”
“How is it still twilight?”
My heart starts to pound.
I can’t take any more strange details and right now everything seems suspicious.
She shrugs.
“Always like that this time of year.”
“Really? How have I never heard that? I knew it about—”
“Should I read this or not?”
“Sorry, yes, go ahead.”
She laughs and shakes her head.
When she finishes reading she looks up at me.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“Do you believe me?”
She sets it down.
“Look. I told you back at the doc’s house. I believe you believe it. I know we came up with this little plan so you could prove your story, but I don’t need you to do that. You’re my friend, I told you.”
I get up and let out a frustrated groan.
“Why did they have to rewrite it ? I mean, I said the gun! The piano! The fact that the last scene is Kim and Velma?”
She makes a face.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t want to do this! It makes me feel like I’m quizzing you.”
“Tell me why that isn’t proof enough,” I say, pointing at the journal where I wrote my lines.
“Well, you’ve hate-watched every episode with me, and frankly a monkey with her own G2 pen and a Moleskine could have predicted all that. It’s my favorite show, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s good . No offense to the other you, ’course.”
“None—none possibly taken, because it would be way too confusing a rabbit hole to take that personally.” I let out a sigh.
“I really wanted to prove it to you.”
“Well, to be honest, that’s exactly what you said would happen in the finale when we watched last week’s episode. What you wrote there? That was almost word for word your prediction.”