(6-letter word)
It took me a while to figure out that the anagram for rubies was bruise. He was alluding to one I had given him that morning.
Another night I was astonished to see a moonstone on my carpet; astonished because moonstone was so long a word. The note read:
Dear Anna Graham,
Their beauty depends on their time and place. Their otherworldly air is, strangely enough, more appropriate for life than for acting. Please take them out of your acting.
(9-letter word)
How could I take them out of my acting if they had too many letters for me to figure out what they were? I tried for a while, but gave up.
I didn’t want Damon to think I was interested in his anagrams, so I tried not to ask him for the answer the next day, but I caved in. The answer was monotones.
The following night there was a very pretty pink flower on my carpet. I had never seen that kind of flower before. Its leaves smelled sweet. The note read:
Dear Anna Graham,
Perhaps you are not aware that this is what you are, sometimes.
(9-letter word)
First thing in the morning, I said, “There’s no point in giving me flowers. I know nothing about them. I know stones, from my job, not flowers.”
“It was an eglantine,” he said.
“And its anagram?”
“Don’t you want to guess?”
“It’s nine letters long.”
“Still, it’s a shame not to try. I’ll tell you tonight.”
I couldn’t guess, barely tried, and that night he told me: inelegant. This was obviously a reference to the fact that the night before I had thrown some of my meal in his face after he informed me I could stop acting complex.
He kept on writing scripts for me to learn. I discovered that the easiest way to get through the scenes was to plunge into them and do them as well as possible, automatically, detachedly, absentmindedly, on remote control.
Eventually, I learned to slip into character without thinking. Damon said he was becoming awed, not by my acting, but by my efficiency and power to spontaneously don traits.
He made me do a scene in which I was strangling my future son, so I had to pretend to be strangling Damon, who’d be lying on my bed.
He would order me to act sad while we were watching a funny movie, and vice versa.
He would make me pretend I was a teacup or a flower for a whole day, or just a word, like “Otherwise.” He didn’t expect me to literally act like a teacup, but rather to have its essence.
And what I hated even more than the scenes were the moods. That week he made me do “alert,” “impractical,” and “spreading rumors.” Later he made me do “leech,” “nonsmoker,” and “fishing for compliments.”
Sometimes he made me do a person: “lighthouse keeper,” “pool cleaner,” or “X-ray technician.”
Sometimes the people he made me do were less tangible than that: “former teammate” or “divorced twice.”
And sometimes he made me do things that could not be done, like making me act “intramural” or “summarized.”
Months started passing. I was not rescued by anyone. I often thought of my parents and what they must be going through.
The clothes I had worn on my arrival were now baggy. And I could tell my body was hard; I no longer felt much jiggle when I moved.
Life always becomes routine, no matter how strange it is. Sometimes, for brief moments, I almost forgot I was a captive, and I was able to laugh with Damon. He remarked on this one day, and I became serious and said, “Just because I hate you doesn’t mean I’m not able to enjoy your company, sometimes. Just because I sometimes enjoy your company doesn’t mean I’m not unhappy.”
And the scenes continued. The one I hated the most was where he made me play my mother thanking Damon for everything he had done for Anna: improving her, making her a good actor, etc. Afterward I told Damon I found his scene preposterous and repulsive, and that I would disown my mother if she ever did such a thing, which she would never do.
He made me do an Oscar speech in which I had to thank him and act moved, with tears in my eyes. He would be sitting in the imaginary audience, and I had to ask him to get up, and I would clap.
After that scene, Damon asked me if acting out these scenes of success would make them less special or exciting for me, in the future, when they did happen. He didn’t want to rob me of any upcoming happiness; that would defeat the whole point of what we were doing.
I stared at him and said, “What makes you think there will be any success?”
“I think we’re making a lot of progress. I may not be the most expert judge of acting, but I’m noticing changes, which, in my opinion, are improvements.”
A theme began recurring in the scenes he made me do. It involved selflessness and having ruined someone’s life.
A man who apologizes to his wife for having had an affair. A father who apologizes to his daughter for having molested her. A son who apologizes to his mother for having stolen from her. It was all about remorse and guilt.
And he always played the character at fault.
I accused him of having personal issues, of being unable to judge the scenes objectively. “You need me to satisfy some sick need in you, some weird obsession,” I said.
The anagrams never stopped coming. One night there was a piece of satin with a stain on it. The anagram for both satin and stain was saint, which is what he was telling me I sometimes was, probably referring to my rescue of him.
Another night I got a truffle. It was sitting in the middle of a small saucer, on my carpet. The note read, “You should be less this.” I ate the truffle with relish. I would ask him for more truffles tomorrow.
At dinner the following evening, he said, “I assume you didn’t guess the anagram for truffle. Do you want to know what it is?”
“No, but I’d like to have more truffles.”
“I’ll tell you anyway. It’s fretful.”
“Have I been fretful?”
“Yes, you have been a bit fretful.”
“Oh,” I said softly, and slung a pea at him with my plastic spoon.
My favorite anagram was the three different desserts he once left for me, real desserts (no bananas or yogurts or anything like that). In fact, they were: a chocolate mousse, a piece of chocolate cake, and a creme brulée. I tried to find the anagram for fat, but then saw from the card that the word was supposed to have eight letters. So it was probably desserts. I wrote it down and instantly found its anagram by reading it backward: stressed. The message on the card was that he wanted me to stop being this. The desserts would certainly help in that enterprise. They were good.
And then the anagrams became weird, comparatively speaking. They became sick. He left me a little dish with fuzz in it. I couldn’t figure out what it was. It just looked like dust. And that’s exactly what it was, because he wanted to tell me that I would always have a stud at my side. Then I again got a dish, but this time with a little thing in it, a little hardish reddish thing, which looked like a scab, and it was. This was to let me know I’d be taking a lot of cabs once I made it.
One day, I gave him an anagram. I asked him to cup his hand for me, and I poured into it my cut nails from my hands and feet, and I said, “This is what you will be when I’m through with you. And I don’t mean the animal. Five-letter word.”
He left the room carrying my nails and came back later, having guessed the two answers: the one that applied, slain, and the one that did not, snail. He said it was a good one.