The Elizas: A Novel(58)

I point at him playfully. “I thought social media made you sad.”

“Snapchat makes me sad. Selfies make me sad. Thinking that a text message serves as a love letter makes me sad. Posting on Missed Connections, that was poetry.”

“You’re so weird.” I down my cocktail and gag. The stinger tastes bitter, unlike things I usually drink, but the flavor doesn’t conjure any new memories. Desmond drinks slowly, tapping his toe at the smooth, sax-heavy jazz number on the stereo. The old couple sips wine and talks quietly. The bartender ignores us, making a big deal out of cleaning the barware. In the distance, a maid feverishly vacuums the rug, her head bopping to music over her headphones.

“So tell me how you think it transpired,” Desmond says in a low voice. “You came into this bar. Is that right?”

I look around. “I think so. And I spoke to someone. I’m sure of it. Someone who said you’ve got to get ahold of yourself.” I squeeze my eyes shut tightly. “If only I knew who.”

“Do you think it’s someone you knew?”

“I feel like it, yes. But I was also surprised to see the person here. It felt very . . . unexpected.”

“So maybe it was Leonidas. I mean, if you’d already broken up, you wouldn’t expect to see him, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Let’s assume it is him. He sits next to you at the bar. You have a conversation. He says you’ve got to get ahold of yourself. Does that seem right?”

“It could be . . .”

“And then what? What do you think you talked about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your breakup? Maybe you were really upset? Maybe that’s why he said you had to get a grip?”

“Maybe . . .”

“But what got you out to the pool?” Desmond muses. “Leonidas must have said something to get you to head out there. You needed some air? Or maybe he wanted to be . . . intimate?”

He gets a goofy look on his face when he says it, and I blush. “I doubt it. I was feeling afraid, not sexy.”

“Okay. So maybe Leonidas says something that frightens you. Like he’s going to hurt you. You run out to the pool. You have a bigger argument, maybe about your breakup. He pushes you in.” He smiles triumphantly.

“Maybe,” I say, emptily.

“Maybe not?”

I swivel and look at the pool out the window. Now, a couple of kids are splashing each other in the shallow end. A woman in a black bikini dips in her long legs near the diving board. “I feel like the person who pushed me was a woman.”

“Oh.” Desmond frowns, studies his cocktail napkin, which is an illustration of various knots, like the wallpaper.

“But maybe my memory is wrong. I mean, Leonidas knows me. He was talking about me on the phone. It fits.”

“Or maybe it doesn’t,” Desmond says. “I mean, I met him, Eliza. He seemed . . . Well, he seemed like a big dumb dog, no offense. So maybe it was someone else.”

Deep down, I agree with him. It would be easy if Leonidas was the answer, but it doesn’t feel right.

We don’t say anything for a while. Someone is using a leaf blower outside. To blow what, I wonder. We’re in the desert.

“Did you ever hear the story about the starlet who was murdered here in the sixties?” I ask Desmond, to break the silence. He shakes his head, so I explain about the mix-up. When I’m done, Desmond looks chagrined. “Poor Diana Dane,” he cries.

“What are you talking about? She’s the one that lived. It’s Gigi Reese you’re supposed to pity. Someone killed her, and they didn’t even care who. Her mystery was never solved.”

“I know, that’s sad, too, but it’s an expected sort of sad. But imagine what Diana Dane had to deal with. All those articles talking about her death. Do you think all of them were nice? Maybe someone snuck something disparaging in there, since she wouldn’t be around to defend herself.”

“I’m pretty sure they all sung her praises.”

“Oh.” Desmond blots his face with a napkin. “Still, the idea of someone mistaking someone else for you is spooky. I wonder if she had any moments of thinking, Hey, if everyone thinks I’m dead, perhaps I am! Public opinion can sway all sorts of truths.”

“You’re missing the point of my story.”

“Or maybe she thought, Hey, this gives me an out. I can leave Hollywood. Start another life. Go on a crime spree—no one will catch me because they all think I’m dead.”

“But she loved Hollywood. She didn’t go on a crime spree.”

Desmond sips his drink. “Huh. There’s so much more possibility to her story if she decided to run with the whole dead thing.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling more and more annoyed. “The point is that poor, dead Gigi Reese went unnoticed. The point is that some people are remembered only because they resemble someone else.”

“If I had a double, I might go on a crime spree,” Desmond says dreamily.

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Okay, I probably wouldn’t. But I’d do something unexpected. For me, I mean.”

I try to imagine what would be out of character for Desmond. Joining a fantasy football league, maybe. Adopting a child. I wonder about the anti-Eliza. I would take up residence at an ashram. I would breathe deeply and worry little.