The light on her phone still blinked: Schlo’s last words, still unheard.
The night of the Oscars, first she’d been brave. After that, she couldn’t remember.
First she’d donned the dress to crash the awards ceremony. Who doesn’t want to play the hero?
Getting in, bypassing the red-carpet protocol had been simple. The security had been too focused on keeping people corralled inside the auditorium, not out. What’s more, no one would stop a woman who didn’t exist. Even the guards had looked past her. They’d looked through her as if she’d been invisible. Mitzi would’ve never zippered herself into this dress if she hadn’t needed the disguise. The gown featured skirts within skirts within skirts. So many tiers of dry, white satin. She might’ve been a ghost as she’d roamed up and down the aisles of the Dolby Theatre shouting for Schlo. Shouting for him to plug his ears and escape with her.
Around her neck, in place of a diamond necklace, she’d worn her noise-canceling headphones. Her skirts she’d lifted as she stalked past people who refused to make eye contact. People with trembling smiles and the crazed eyes of cattle trapped in a slaughterhouse.
A pariah, she’d shouted, “Schlo! You don’t have to die!”
A Cassandra, she’d shouted, “Come with me. Take my hand!”
Onstage a young actress, barefoot, had clutched an Academy Award and wept into a microphone. She’d gasped, saying, “I don’t want this,” and shook the statuette. “I want to live!” As the orchestra had struck up a fanfare, she’d shouted louder. The music had drowned out her words, and she’d lifted her Oscar. Lifted and flung the flashing, gilded award. Crashing it into the violin section before a pair of men had grabbed her by the thin, bare shoulders and carted her into the wings.
A booming voice had announced the nominees for Best Sound. A film clip had begun as the lights dimmed. The audience had drawn its collective breath, but this hadn’t been the scream.
It was then, in the near-dark, a voice had said, “Mitzi, baby girl, are you nuts?” Schlo it was, hissing from where he sat, a few seats off the aisle.
Mitzi had lunged, stumbling over the knees of famous people. She’d reached to get him around one hairy wrist and haul him to his feet.
A wraith, she’d screamed, “I’m here to rescue you!”
A second film clip had begun to play. Another not-scream. And the audience had released a vast sigh of relief.
Schlo tried to shake her off, but Mitzi had held firm. She’d intended to drag him to safety.
That’s when the world had exploded. Something, some force bigger than Ambien and alcohol had struck her. She hadn’t saved anyone. What took place next, she couldn’t remember. She’d woken up the next morning, dazed, wearing the white dress in an alley in Hollywood.
Her neck had stung. The voicemail on her phone blinked as a clue.
Now she stood to regard the dress as it hung in the locker. These, these flounces of tulle and satin, such a flash fire they were, just waiting to happen. They’d make the best primer for a bomb. Below these Mitzi stacked reels of silver nitrate film. To the brittle skirts she clamped little alligator clips. The clips she spliced to wires. The wires stretched all the way to her doomsday scenario.
Foster tried the phone number once more. For Lucinda. For Meredith Marshall. Neither woman answered.
The dogs howled an ambulance out of the night. As if just by joining forces, every Pomeranian and Chihuahua in the building, every corgi and dachshund in the Fontaine Condominiums, they howled to manifest a siren. The siren created the flashing strobes of red and blue. The lights brought the ambulance to the building’s front door, where it idled at the curb.
Reflected in the building across the street, a bright square of light framed a figure drinking wine. The mirrored Mitzi pinched up an Ambien and placed it on her shadow tongue. She tipped back a shadow glass until it was empty.
How her last session had gone, she had no idea. As always, she’d blinked awake to find the actress gone. No blood. No body. A length of tape had spooled from one reel to the other, but she’d not had the heart to listen to herself butchering anyone. She touched the pearls that hid the last faded bruises on her neck. Where the necklace had come from, she had no idea.
She watched out the window as her reflected self fitted earphones on her head. She was listening for clues about her mother. About the death of her father. Any extra chatter on the tapes that might fill the gaps in her memory. To answer the questions she had about how she’d arrived at this place in her life. On the street, the paramedics were unloading a gurney and bumping it up the front steps.
The reflected her poured a new glass of wine. A shadow finger reached to press Play on her media player. A voice filled her head. The voice of a child, it blotted out any reality of the present.
Bright, bright and clear, clear and soft, the voice said, “My name? My name is Lucinda Foster.”
A man’s voice followed. The voice of Mitzi’s father, as blocky as his handwriting, said, “Would you like to be in a movie, Lucinda?” The question rose and fell in volume as if he were turning away and not giving her his full attention.
“My name is Lucy,” said the girl. “My mother’s name is Amber. Amber and Gates Foster are my mom and dad.”
Mitzi stopped the tape. Rewound a section. Hit Play.
“…and Gates Foster are my…”
She repeated the process to be certain.
“…Gates Foster are…”
The girl on the milk carton. The girl Mitzi had been trying to remember for so long. Someone else had been looking for her, the man she’d been working beside for the past few days. This man who’d come
