Zara takes in the long makeup table and the clutter of shoes and bags opposite Cosima’s tidy costume racks. The men’s dressing room is so much like the women’s that Zara feels like she’s stepped into a mirror world — everything an inch to the left of where it should be, the colors muted, the smells sharper. Aftershave and deodorant instead of hairspray and flowers.
“Is there a reason you wanted me to see this?” Zara asks Adrian, who led her in with a huge smile and no real explanation.
Then Zara notices something at the end of the long table, and it feels like a reason to stay put.
Carl’s bag.
Rich brown leather with brass clasps. It’s sitting on a chair right at the end of the makeup table.
Enna’s death won’t stop bothering her, and she doesn’t know how to let it go. Maybe it’s easier to worry about Enna’s death than it is to worry about Echo, about Leopold. Maybe this is just another way that Zara’s paranoid brain is distracting itself. It tells her that this is an opportunity she shouldn’t ignore.
We keep our eyes open.
“All right,” Adrian says, clapping. He pulls out his phone. Bounces lightly on his feet. “You and I are going to take a picture.”
“What?” Zara asks.
Adrian grins at his phone without answering. He seems thoroughly distracted. Would he notice if Zara stuck a hand into Carl’s bag?
“You stand over here,” Adrian says, waving one of his hands, directing Zara toward the best lighting.
She walks, her steps sticky with self-consciousness. As much as Zara loves standing in front of hundreds of people at a time, cameras are different. They demand little slices of perfection. What happens onstage is beautiful, but it’s also messy and breathing and real.
Zara fiddles with the hemline of her shirt. “What’s this for?”
Adrian looks so beautiful and sure of himself. “Leopold wants us to do it.”
“Did he say why?” Zara asks. She thinks back to his office, the director’s body so close to hers. He’s famous for pushing his actors.
She shouldn’t let it bother her.
Adrian shrugs. “Just a marketing thing. You know. Get your face out there.”
Zara snaps back into the present. “He said he didn’t want anyone to see me until the gala.”
Adrian is getting frustrated now. Which he also expresses by shrugging. “He must have changed his mind.”
That sounds like such a small thing, but it makes Zara go incandescent with worry. Why does Leopold want to change the plan now? He must be desperate. She made a little bit of progress in their meeting, but it wasn’t enough.
“Wait,” Adrian says, hopping next to her, his arm going around her shoulders. It feels like a rash spreading. Adrian holds his arm out, making the muscles on his forearm hop out. “Put your head on the boyfriend shelf,” he says.
“The what?” Zara asks.
“Right here,” he says, patting the smooth place just below his collarbone. Zara laughs, surprising herself with the warm sound.
“Like this?” she asks, tilting her head into place. Adrian’s chest rises and falls. The moment gives Zara a forceful shove of déjà vu. This feels the same as taking pictures with every boy she’s dated.
He hugs her tighter. “We have to make it look couple-y,” he says, the corners of his smile curling as the phone makes the fake shutter snap.
Couple-y. It hits Zara all at once. If Adrian posts this online, two million people will see it by morning.
“Don’t put that up,” she says. Adrian’s fingers rush over the buttons of his phone. He is a hurricane of social media. “No worries,” he says. “You look really good.” He thrusts the phone out between them and shows Zara — the entire frame is taken up by the two of them, her hair falling in a soft curtain, her T-shirt dipping at the neckline to reveal contours of her chest that she would rather not have two million people staring at. She’s wearing her necklace strung with eight keys, not that anyone besides Eli will know what that means. And then she notices Adrian’s caption — Love this Echo.
“Oh God,” she says.
“Why do girls always hate the pictures you take of them?” Adrian asks, already off in his own little realm, muttering and focused on the screen. He pushes a button. “Look. A thousand people liked it already.”
A thousand? How is that even possible?
Hot panic-prickles spring up on Zara’s neck. Eli. What will she think when she sees it?
Maybe that Zara doesn’t feel anything for her. Maybe that Zara will do anything for Echo — even pretend to date someone famous. Maybe that Zara is desperate for attention, for closeness, for love.
Maybe nothing at all.
They’re stuck in the Aurelia all the time. Eli flirts with Zara, but she probably doesn’t mean anything by it. Zara’s just there. As far as Zara knows, what Eli is experiencing could be the same as when Zara leaned her head on Adrian’s chest. An almost-feeling. An empty replica.
“You all right?” Adrian asks. “Do you want me to get you something from the snack machine?” Oh God. One picture and now Adrian is being sweet and solicitous and acting like her boyfriend.
Zara almost says no, but she has less than three minutes before they go back onstage. She still needs to look through Carl’s bag.
“Yeah. I could use a ginger ale.” Her stomach is a mess, so it’s not even a lie.
Adrian sends a smile back over his shoulder as he leaves the dressing room. Zara waits a beat. Closes the door. Waits another beat.
Then she crosses the room.
She’s not sure she should be doing this. Any of this — staying at the Aurelia, hiding things from Leopold, spending so much time with Eli, pretending that she belongs with Adrian Ward.
The brass clasps come undone with a sharp flick and Zara’s hand slides along the opening of the bag. The leather has a thick, musty smell. It gives her the right feeling, so she plunges her hand in. She finds a few loose mints, a change of shoes, a copy of Murder on the Orient Express, a wallet, a phone.
What did she expect? A bottle of pills with Enna’s name on it? Secret messages that spell out I killed her? Anything, she realizes with embarrassment, as long as she could show Eli. Zara wanted to go back to her triumphant and glowing and all she came up with were purse mints.
The door swings open.
“Thanks for the ginger ale,” Zara says, dropping the bag at her feet.
But it’s Toby, not Adrian. She didn’t think any of the other actors would come in during break — they usually flock to the greenroom.
Toby scolds her with expertly furrowed eyebrows.
“Adrian brought me here,” she says. The words are true, but they sound as convincing as a set built out of cardboard.
“Of course,” Toby says. “Adrian Ward, with whom you have as much chemistry as a cat and a cold bath.”
Zara’s relieved. She doesn’t want to be Adrian Ward’s fake girlfriend. But what if he can see how she feels about Eli just as easily? What if everyone can? Toby is old friends with Leopold. He could tell the director about her feelings without having any idea how much damage he might be doing.
“That’s not Adrian’s, is it?” Toby asks, nodding at the puddle of leather sitting at her feet.
“This? I. Ummm.” Zara picks the bag up gingerly, pats it back onto the chair. “I was walking by and it fell.” The open clasps sit there, calling her a liar.
“Oh, sweetie, sweetie,” Toby says with music in his voice. It would comfort Zara if she wasn’t so firmly in the clutches of her nerves. “You know I’m going to have to tell Carl about this.” He looks at her appraisingly. “Unless . . .” He draws it out, makes her wait. “I want you to come out with me tonight. To the bar. There hasn’t been any time for us to bond in this horrid production.”
The threat of telling Carl should be enough, but Zara can see another reason to go out with Toby — and it’s not to bond. We keep our eyes open. Toby knows everything about the Aurelia. He can tell her more about Carl and Enna.
There’s only one little problem. “I’m not twenty-one.”
Toby sticks a hand to his chest, as if the words have fatally wounded him. “We’re going to the Dragon and Bottle! It’s a hundred-year-old theater bar. If you’re Aurelia, you’re family.”