“Yes,” you say. “I’ll get the police document and I’ll bring it here.”
“Bring it tomorrow,” she says. “In the meantime, do you want to tell me whose passport and backpack they gave you? They were American, I assume?”
“Yes, she’s American,” you say.
“Her name?” she says.
You panic. If you give up Sabine Alyse’s name you will have nothing.
You decide to lie because you have no choice: “I don’t remember. I’ll have to go back to the hotel and get that too,” you say.
She looks at you skeptically, taking in your features for the first time. You imagine her describing you to someone else, perhaps the police, the ambassador, the secretary of state, the president. He will be so disappointed.
“You said you’re staying at the Golden Tulip?” she says.
“Yes,” you lie. “The Golden Tulip. I’ll be there until this all gets resolved.”
She scribbles something on a paper in front of her, a paper you cannot see. You imagine it’s a list of suspicious persons, people she and the president are disappointed in.
“What time will you be back here tomorrow? What time can we expect to see you?”
“First thing,” you say. You know you need to be agreeable. She suspects you of something and you need to be agreeable.
“Nine A.M.,” she says.
“Perfect,” you say.
“I’ll take down your name so we’re sure to have the appointment booked. What was your name again?”
She says this so casually that you know she suspects you, that she’s trying to trap you. You give the name of a woman who helped you at the baggage store in Florida. You noted her name on the receipt. “Megan Willis,” you say. It’s the only name that comes to mind. Megan Willis is the one who suggested you purchase the basic black backpack, and that, when you really think about it, was the first true mistake. This all started with Megan Willis.
You walk casually out of the embassy door, and once you’ve exited you move quickly. Fuck, you think. This latest lie will be yet another thing you will have to explain when you return. You have no money to take a cab or bus, so once again you must walk. You wind through streets and pass through a small square where several policemen wearing dark black vests surround two groups of people. In the center of one circle is a woman; in the center of the other a man. The woman is crying and she’s pointing at the man, and though you can’t understand what she’s saying, you know some sort of violation occurred. She gesticulates, using her hands to show the way the man fondled her rear. Two policemen are listening to the woman and another is holding the man by his arm. You watch and then, as though reminded that you too are a woman, you move on.
As you continue to walk to your hotel, you think of how fortuitous it was that Sabine Alyse didn’t cancel her credit cards. And then you wonder why a woman who has a AAA card in her wallet and shops at J.Crew and strikes you as a fairly together woman wouldn’t cancel her credit cards when she discovered her backpack with her wallet and passport were missing. You got the backpack this morning, so she’s been missing it for at least that long. You canceled your cards within an hour. You contemplate what might have prevented her from making the calls you made to Vipul and Christy. Maybe Sabine is somewhere where she can’t make calls. She’s been kidnapped. You picture her blindfolded. She could be dead. And what if the embassy knows she’s dead? What if the embassy finds you, and her backpack on you? Wouldn’t they assume you did it? Wouldn’t they assume at the very least that you stole her possessions?
No. No. This is madness. She’s not dead. And you have a document proving the police gave you her possessions. The document is everything. And it’s back in the hotel.
As you approach the Regency you see a line of people formed as though they’re protesters, but they’re not shouting anything; they’re just staring. It’s the prince, you think. He must be at the Regency.
But as you get closer and make your way through the line, you see filming is now taking place at the entrance to the hotel. You explain to a guard that you’re a guest at the Regency, and he informs you that you’ll have to wait a few minutes before you can enter. He apologizes.
You move closer to the entrance of the hotel and join other guests who are watching the filming. You are vibrating, almost jogging in place. You need to find that piece of paper with the red stamp. But instead you are forced to watch the filming of a movie.
The scene being shot involves a woman on an old bicycle as she rides up to the front entrance of the hotel and disembarks. Then she does it again. And a third time. Lights are adjusted. Cameras are pulled forward and back on a trolley.
You find yourself enjoying this. Its repetitions are soothing. And now you are sure the document is on the desk, in your room, where you left it. It’s in the Regency, and all is safe within the Regency. The director says, “Cut!”
After the woman disembarks for the fourth time, she takes off what you realize is a long, dark black wig with bangs. Beneath the wig her hair is brown, like yours, and pulled back into a tight bun. You recognize her. She’s the young woman you saw emerging from the hotel elevator when you first checked in. You had no idea she was a movie star. She doesn’t look like a movie star. She looks like you: same height, same plain face. She disappears into the hotel and the bike is rolled out of view, back where it came from. Seconds later, another young woman is on the bike.
The cameras start rolling but now it is this other woman with black hair who is on the bike, cycling up to the front of the hotel. She disembarks. You see that this woman resembles a famous American actress. And then it hits you: this is a famous American actress. Her face has been on the covers of so many magazines, and yet, even at this distance you can tell she’s more beautiful, more delicate, more bizarrely perfect in real life.
She retreats and a crew member walks the bicycle out of sight. A minute later she rides up again. Everyone on set is more focused, more engaged now that it’s the famous American actress on the bicycle.
She does three takes and on the fourth take her foot falls off the pedal and the pedal spins and she laughs. A makeup woman wearing a short, brush-filled apron, rushes out and uses a wet wipe on the famous American actress’s leg, removing any grease. Another woman who is so elaborately dressed you guess she must be from the costume department emerges from the side of the set and adjusts the right fold at the bottom of the movie star’s pedal pushers. A crew member walks the bike back to the starting point. Then the movie star rides up to the front of the hotel again and this time doesn’t send the pedal spinning. When the scene is finished, she raises her hands in the victory sign — she can ride a bike without messing up a scene! The crew around her claps, and she gives an exaggerated and theatrical bow.
You have read a few magazine profiles about this famous American actress and now you think that they haven’t done her justice. In real life she is more beautiful, yes, but also very human, very funny. She is capable of making fun of herself, of her mistakes on set, and the crew applauds this. You haven’t been on any movie sets before, but you are fairly positive that everyone on this set is in awe of the famous American actress, and everyone likes her more than they expected to. There’s an earnestness in the way they surround her afterward. The director approaches and puts his arm around her in a fatherly way.
Filming appears to be done for now, at this location at least. The famous American actress is ushered into the Regency, but a transformation has occurred: she’s no longer a girl biking up to the entrance of a hotel; she’s an American movie star once more, and now she’s surrounded by two men who, if you’re not mistaken, must be her bodyguards. They whisk her past the onlookers in the lobby and into an elevator that is miraculously waiting. Is there a third bodyguard inside who timed it so that the doors would open just when she appeared? The swiftness with which she enters the lobby and is lifted up to what is surely the best room is so well orchestrated it makes everything that happened on the film set look like it was done by amateurs — shabbily dressed amateurs.