suggest I trade in Grace for some person I have never met?â
The lady made a noise as if she was blowing into the phone. âLook. The people who play the characters are real people who pretend to be different people than they are. And the scenery is not real either. The forest scenes, for instance, are filmed in Montana.â
âMontana,â Mrs. Blue said.
âIn America,â the lady said.
âYes,â Mrs. Blue said, âI know where Montana is. What I want to know is when can I see Gracie again?â
âGracie does not exist,â the phone lady said. âThe show has been canceled because the writer quit. Someone close to him is in a coma and now he canât think of anything else apparently. The show is not coming back.â
âDo you know,â Mrs. Blue said, âthat this Rick is a convicted murderer? And that he pretends to be all nice, but you can see it in his eyes sometimes.â
âHe is not real,â the phone lady said.
âIt is a crime to leave her in that house with him,â Mrs. Blue said. âIt is a crime!â Her voice broke. âPlease,â she said.
âOh my God,â Mrs. Blue heard the woman on the other end of the line say. âCan someone take this line from me?â
âMadame?â another voice said. âWhat seems to be the problem?â
âDo you know what happens when you donât end a story properly?â Mrs. Blue said in the phone. âThey relive and relive the last page.â
Mrs. Blue lowered the phone on her lap and sat quietly while on the television a chef was throwing tomatoes in the air and catching them behind his back.
GRACE IN THE STORY
âI do want to marry you, Rick,â Grace said.
She was standing alone in the hallway of the Fata Morgana mansion, talking to the mirror. There were bruises on the side of her forehead, purple and red bruises, but somehow Grace didnât notice this, like she didnât notice that she kept losing her balance or that her wedding dress was torn.
She took a step toward the dresser. âBut I need to know what youâre keeping from me.â
The chandelier above her head swung slowly from left to right, making her shadow dance on the beige carpet.
Grace took a hairpin from her hair. Her face contorted with pain. A long, bloody strand of hair hung from the hairpin. For a brief moment Grace stopped. She stood frozen with her hands in midair as if some question had come up in her mind, some memory, but she could not reach it.
Then a voice from downstairs thundered through the hallway.
âGrace! Where are you?â
Grace dropped the pin on the carpet. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs, loud, banging footsteps. A strong feeling of déjà vu came over her, the feeling that this had happened before. Then came the blow to the side of her head and everything went black.
DR. KROON
The secretary was in the doctorâs office. She had changed out of the sea-green dress and into her regular clothes. Sheâd made this appointment a week ago, after she had suddenly thrown a plate of snacks against the wall in her motherâs house. She could not remember why she did it. Her mother had been kind enough to act like it never happened, even though it had disturbed the whole choreography of the evening. They could not chitchat over snacks as they usually did between five and six oâclock, and there were more silences than usual. Her father even came out of his hobby room asking about the noise, and out of desperation her mother had served dinner at five thirty to make things seem slightly normal, to have something to talk over. By the time she left they were feeling so uneasy that their heads bumped when they kissed good night.
âIt was very strange,â the secretary said when the doctor looked into her eyes with some kind of scope. âIt is like my body threw it, without my mind.â
âBlackouts.â The
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