“What is it that you do here?” asked Becca ingenuously.
Elaine literally threw back her head and laughed. “ ‘Do’? I do look-alikes! Ground control to Becca! I mean, that’s what it says on the card, right? Look-alikes. I cast look-alikes.” Becca still seemed perplexed. “For trade shows and special events, OK? Meet-’n’-greets. Conventions. Comedy sketches. Ever done comedy?”
“I’ve done improv. I’m in Metropolis — the theater group.”
Elaine wasn’t impressed.
“Last week, Rusty was on the Leno show — my Russell Crowe. You know how Jay sometimes does movie takeoffs? Like Johnny used to. God, I used to book Johnny like crazy. He’s got emphysema now, poor man. But he’s richer than Croesus so I ain’t gonna feel too bad. I flew Rusty to Japan just last month, they’re crazy about Russell Crowe in Japan — and Drew too,” she said, with a wink. “They did a nine-eleven memorial thing over there. I had my Russell, my Clooney, my Bette. She did ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’ Does she have a voice on her! I’m desperate for a Nicole — lost mine to pilot season, what can you do? I’d kill. I actually do have a couple of Ewans, believe it or not. Thought they’d be harder to come by. Audiences eat the duets up. But the Nicole really has to be able to sing. Moulin Rouge has become a cash cow for us. And,” she said dramatically, “I’ve got a Cammie Diaz and a Lucy Liu… but no Drew.” She inhaled deeply. “That’s where you come in.”
• • •
THAT NIGHT, BECCA made Annie go with her to a nightclub in Playa del Rey that Elaine recommended. Some of her people would be performing.
The show was a cavalcade of look-alikes. Most of them were tacky, but a few had natural talent as impersonators. Annie was stoned and couldn’t stop laughing, but Becca was moved in a way she couldn’t explain. A bad Kit Lightfoot did his thing, then a Russell Crowe came onstage in a cheap gladiator outfit and Becca thought him awful. He was muscle-bound and inelegant, his accent was absurd, and you had to squint even to imagine a resemblance. Her opinion of Elaine Jordache’s judgment soured right there.
Toward the end, after a few peculiar acts — a lurid Celine Dion, and a ranting John McEnroe being interviewed by a long-haired Larry King — a second Russell Crowe took the stage. Becca thought this one to be nearly charismatic as the real thing. He did the hand-to-forehead tic of the character from A Beautiful Mind and spoke in “schizophrenic” tongues, a creative stream-of-consciousness monologue that Becca found funny and poetic, with pointedly scathing asides directed at his earlier, idiotic incarnation. This Russell was someone who didn’t relish sharing the stage.
Afterward, the two girls went out for a smoke. Annie got woozy from the wine and the weed and they decided to go home. On the way to the car, Becca saw the second Mr. Crowe and called out, “You were amazing!”
“Thanks,” he mumbled, head down, as if still in character.
She walked a little closer. “I’m a friend of Elaine’s,” she stammered. “Elaine Jordache. She told me you were in Japan — that you went to Japan.”
He eyed her warily. “Oh yeah? That was no thanks to her. She’s a cunt — worse — a Jewish cunt. And she’s trying to fucking rob me.”
His ears pricked like an animal’s and he bolted, sprinting down the block. Annie gasped then broke into laughter, while Becca’s mouth remained open in astonishment. They ran for the car and tussled awhile, Becca trying to wrest away the keys. Annie insisted on driving and made a screeching turnabout, stopping at the light in time to see the Russell chase down his inferior. He threw his shadow to the ground and pummeled him. Like puppet and despotic puppeteer, the weaker Russell squeaked and moaned, squirming under the rain of blows.
“Ohmygod!” muttered Annie, and floored it.
Sleepless in Albany
HE HAD BEEN dead just forty-five minutes when Lisanne arrived. The nurses stayed out of the room while the aunt and one of her father’s neighbors sat vigil. All of the medical equipment had been disconnected.
His skin was like tallow. The aunt spread baby powder on the hairless, purple-bruised arms, draping a small towel over the genitals, then gave Lisanne the powder and gestured for her to do the legs. She wasn’t sure why they were doing it, but it was somehow a comfort. His shins reminded her of slick wood handrails. The cologne of the talc commingling with death smells faintly sickened. His mouth twisted to one side, like that of a whispering conspirator in a medieval religious painting.
• • •
AFTER HE HAD been cremated, Lisanne kept dreaming that she was a victim of one of those undertaker scams and that what she thought were the dusty remains of her father were actually those of animals or indigent men. Finally, to break the cycle, she went downstairs.
Her aunt sat in Dad’s favorite chair half asleep, the cool, ash-filled vase poised on a thin shellacked table beside her. It took four hours — four whole hours to burn a body then grind its bones to dust. Lisanne picked up the urn, revolved it, then quietly set it down. She traced a half circle around it, then tapped the tabletop’s veneer. Just the kind of piece people bring to Antiques Roadshow, she thought randomly.
Lisanne heated up milk in a saucepan. While her aunt slept, she padded to the library to browse the bookshelves so she might further distance herself from the soot of nightmare. Her father had been a professor, a learned man. She drew a forefinger over the spines: Poverty — A History; Wedekind’s Diary of an Erotic Life; The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought; The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa; The Book Lover’s Guide to the Internet; a cool green, five-volume set called Mexico — A Traves de los Siglos; Hardy’s Selected Poems. She never really knew him, nor would she now by his obscure and bloodless books. They would crumble soon enough, like the body of their collector, whose exit she’d been too late to observe.
“Why didn’t you fly?”
The aunt appeared in the door like a dark oracle.
“Because it terrifies me.”
Lisanne paused, wondering if she should go on. Why should she have to explain herself to this crone?
“And because I would have had to drug myself into a coma, which always makes me uncomfortable.”
The old woman winced at her niece’s low comedy but said nothing. She left the room.
Lisanne climbed the stairs and returned to the same bed she’d slept in as a girl — the same bed her mother chose to die in, ten years back. She had missed that death too.
She took half an Ativan and settled under the covers, imagining herself on a 747, first class, selecting wines and cheeses offered by the handsome steward… joshing with a flirty fellow passenger after a spate of turbulence… the uneventful landing… the connecting plane and swift arrival to hospital… Dad’s deep-water eyes rising just once more to surface sea brightness at the unexpected sight of her, and the aunt’s tearful relief as she entered the room… a convocation of hands prayerfully entwined as he shanty-sighed his last respirations, sinking back to the briny depths.
As the first wavy softness of the drug entered her bloodstream, Lisanne’s thoughts drifted to her high school boyfriend. The aunt said Robbie had moved back to town six months ago. It was at least ten years since they’d spoken and she decided to see him before the train left for Chicago on Sunday night.