The other side of now, p.5
The Other Side of Now, page 5
She called me Meggie.
Most people don’t even know that’s my name. When I moved to LA and started auditioning, there was no question that I had to come up with a stage name. My real name is Meg Bryan. Not Meghan, not Megan, not Margaret. Meg, and then, affectionately, Meggie. And while it might be easier for casting to remember a name like Meg Bryan, since it sounds like Meg Ryan, it’s not worth the earworm similarity. Not when you have to do the, no, I said Bryan, yes, I know, it sounds like that, ha ha, yes, I know, yeah conversation over and over again.
So, I came up with Lana Lord. In retrospect, it’s a little more showbiz than I wish it were, but whatever, it has worked.
I never think about my real name unless I’m talking to one of my parents. Even Grayson calls me Lana.
Does my Wikipedia even say my real name? It must, but I don’t know for sure.
I reach for my phone, but then remember it’s plugged in. I get up and go over to the bar.
Cillian doesn’t look up when I approach.
“Can I grab my phone?”
He dries his hands on the rag from his back pocket, and then hands it to me. But it’s not my phone.
“Um … sorry, no, no it’s—it’s an iPhone, but it’s got no case on it, and … I mean I had it…”
“Meg, this is your phone. You’ve made me hold it a million times, I think I’d know.”
I freeze. Look up at him. He doesn’t seem like someone who’s trying to mess with a celebrity by saying her childhood name or withholding her things. He’s acting like someone who knows me well enough to be comfortably exasperated with me.
I think about everything that girl Kiera said. How she seemed completely at ease sitting down at my table. And then her questions about Cillian?
Wait, what the hell is going on?
Cillian loses patience holding the phone out for me and sets it down on the counter. He then walks away. With a booming voice, he tells the room at large, “Hold your whisht, get the fuck out, you’re not stayin’ all night like last night.”
I stare at the phone on the counter. It’s one generation behind mine and despite the sage-green silicone case, there’s a hairline crack down the middle of the screen.
There is a grumble from the remaining customers at Cillian’s closing time call. The crowd has thinned considerably, and they all seem pleasantly buzzed, making a lot of happy, late-night noise about the fact that they’ve got to go. Some people seem to think or know that the call doesn’t apply to them.
I pick up the phone Cillian gave me and go, helpless, back to the table where my beer and food are sitting.
Some older women walk up to the bar and start telling Cillian how much they love him, how he’s got to give their daughters a chance.
He’s very popular.
The phone screen background is an auburn golden retriever in a little red bandana. The dog has also been put in a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans. I used to have the same pair but lost them at a karaoke bar in a Korean mall in downtown LA.
According to this phone, since it’s after midnight, it is June 25, like it’s supposed to be. Two days after my birthday, technically, given the time difference and the flight.
I slide open the phone and it asks me for a passcode. I give a shake of the head, feeling like I might actually be going crazy. It scans my face, and opens.
I set it down with a clatter. I have another gulp of water, a swig of beer, and a big bite of soup-dipped sandwich.
In my experience, anytime I think I’m sick, dying, or losing my mind, I need rest, food, and water. I’m always behind on at least one of those things.
I pick up the phone again and open the browser. I type in my name. Not my real name. The one the world knows me by.
Lana Lord.
Unfortunately, it’s not my first time googling myself and so I know that usually, a knowledge panel pops up. It says “American actress.” It lists the things I’ve been in. It has my age and where I’m from. It says that people also search for Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Sydney Sweeney. There is usually a slew of images of me, good and bad, and whatever recent articles have been written about me or about Brilliance.
But not this time.
This time, I don’t come up at all.
CHAPTER THREE
I drop the phone on the table again, this time pushing my chair back, away from it, my ears ringing and my heart pounding. It has always been a latent fear of mine that I might one day lose my fucking mind. That the super normal call of the void thoughts I have might one day take over and I’ll lose control to them. That instead of sitting on a fifteenth-floor balcony over Park Avenue and idly thinking, What if I jumped, I’d actually do it. Or that I might fill the silence of a movie theater with some horrifically offensive word, all because my mind thought, You know what would be the worst thing to do right now, and then a synapse misfires and I actually scream it. Or what if, on a walk with Dido, I come upon a teacup-sized kitten and valiantly bring it home only to present it and have a loved one shriek, That’s a rat! and then look down and see a panting rodent in my bare hand.
It’s why I could never do peyote or ayahuasca, no matter how many totally legit gurus Grayson knows, and why even the legal THC/CBD bath bombs I use can sometimes send me into a spiral. I’m afraid that something will loosen in my psyche and I will simply cease to have power over myself.
It’s why I get so uncomfortable and heartbroken when I see the many unhoused people of Los Angeles, walking around with signs and bare feet, talking to themselves, so often in anguish, especially when you can tell that they were once good-looking and were probably told by all the townies where they came from that they ought to give Hollywood a try.
It freaks me out.
I’ve told my therapist and she reminds me that it’s very normal to have fears like this. That it doesn’t mean it will happen. That our brains actually do the whole call of the void thing as a way of stretching limbs and considering all options available in order to make the safest choice.
I don’t share these fears with anyone else, however, lest I either seem more troubled than I am or even worse, more inconsiderate than I am. As if I’m actually saying I’m afraid of mental illness. When in fact, I’m actually afraid of being safe one second and in irreversible crisis the next.
So the fact that I feel like I might very well be losing my mind right now is making me more than uneasy. Angry at my therapist even. You said I’d be fine! You said nothing weird or fucked-up would happen!
I breathe in deeply, trying to keep the panic attack from taking hold, even though I can feel my hands starting to shake and my heartbeat becoming particularly hard and irregular. The voice in my head saying, No, this is worse than usual—this might really be a heart attack.
The pub has now completely emptied out, and the music has been changed to something quieter. I can hear the clinking of empty glasses and I see Cillian stacking pints with one hand and taking the rag out of his back pocket and wiping down a table with the other.
I look away.
He did seem like he knew me. Didn’t he?
I don’t know, maybe not. I am practically a professional rationalizer. I blame myself for any and all bizarre interactions. Someone could push me into an elevator shaft and on the way down I’d be saying, Oh no, whoops, I’m sorry!
Another surge of adrenaline.
I block one nostril and breathe in for four seconds, hold it, switch sides, breathe out for four seconds. Box breathing.
I want to do grounding techniques, but it’s hard to ground yourself while falling endlessly in an unfamiliar hoistway.
I feel eyes on me and glance back up to see Cillian coming my way.
I get self-conscious and try to give a polite smile, but I’m sure it comes off as more of a grimace.
“Meg,” he says, crouching down beside me. Now that he’s not yelling over a bunch of rowdy people, I hear that he’s got a nice, soothing, slightly raspy voice, and that accent. Aimee used to tease me that the only reason I wanted to go to school in Ireland was because of the boys and the accents.
“Yeah,” I say. Another surge; my lungs feel devoid of oxygen and unable to regain it.
“You all right? Are you having one? Meggie, look at me, it’s okay. It’s all right.”
He sounds so sure, so certain that it’s all going to be okay, that it comforts me. Even though I feel like my world is inside out right now, I know he can be believed in.
Somehow, it cuts through. My heartbeat steadies.
I finally lift my gaze and look into his eyes. A soul-rocking wave runs through me—a sudden magnetic pull that seems to go from me to him and back again. I see the tiny scar in his eyebrow and the short stubble on his jaw and I want to reach out and touch him. I feel a deep fondness for him that warms me as effortlessly and completely as desert sun on my skin, transcending and eclipsing logic, confusion, panic, and anything else I can imagine.
“Um.” I pin my tongue between my teeth.
“You haven’t had one of them in a long time.” His hand is now on the back of my arm. My elbows are on my knees; my heart is in my throat. He squeezes me gently. “It happens when you feel out of control, remember. That’s what we’ve learned, yeah? And it almost always happens when you haven’t eaten and then you eat. It’s because your blood sugar is rising back to where it belongs. Right?”
That’s not what we’ve learned. That’s not even what I’ve learned.
“Right,” I say anyway, trying to catch my breath, too distracted to ask him what he means by we.
“Is it all the stuff with Aimee or is it … the other thing?”
My head shoots up. “Aimee?”
“Yeah, last I talked to you, you were upset about the Aimee thing again. But I can understand if it’s—”
“How do you know about Aimee?” I furrow my brow and stare into his flawed, beautiful, strangely familiar face.
No one in my life now knows about Aimee. I haven’t been around a soul who knows her name in over a decade, except my parents.
“Well, you told me most. I heard the rest. You know how this town can be. With bloody Kay Donahue running around unchecked.”
He gives a small hint of that smile again, and I can see that it is rare and only earned. Unfortunately, the mention of Aimee has changed everything, and I cannot be distracted by his gritty beauty.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, more muddled than ever. “Why are you acting like you know me?”
The hint of dimples fades completely, and he takes his hand off of me. His honey-gold eyes bore into mine and he says, “It’s going to be like this, is it? It wasn’t my fault what happened, you know.”
I shake my head. “No, no—”
“Forgive me, Meg,” he says, standing. “Thought you needed some help, that’s all.”
He flips the rag over his shoulder and walks back to the bar.
I stand too. “Do you watch the show or—”
He holds his hands up. “Meg, I think you should go home. I don’t know what you’re playing at or what it is that you need, but clearly it’s nothing I have to give. So do me a favor and let me close up. I didn’t mind you coming in here—it’s a business after all—but if you’re going to be like this, then I don’t need that, I really don’t.”
Suddenly my overall confusion gives way to the embarrassment of the moment that’s actually happening. I clear my throat and nod.
“Right. Um. Yeah, of course, sorry ’bout … thank you again for the food. Oh shit—how much do I owe you?”
I check my jacket pocket for my debit card and find that it’s missing.
“We’re square,” says Cillian.
“What? No, I can pay, I—I can’t find my card.”
“That’s why people carry wallets.” He grabs something from behind the counter and comes over with it. “I found it on the floor. Again. But there’s no charge.”
Again?
“Oh, that’s not—”
I take the unfamiliar card, about to say that it’s not mine when I see that it has my name on it. Meg A Bryan. It’s even got the right middle initial.
It’s a debit card for a bank I don’t recognize. It’s clearly well used, with an expiration date only a year from now. I look on the back and see my own signature there in the little white box. I haven’t seen it in a while—I usually sign Lana Lord these days. But it’s definitely mine.
“Goodnight, Meg. And hey, bring back my bloody dog, will you?”
He goes behind the bar, through a swinging door, and into what I assume to be the back kitchen.
Did he learn my name from the card? No, that doesn’t explain anything, because I don’t recognize this card. It’s not mine. Even though it really, really appears to be.
I take another bite of the sandwich as I put my coat back on, then grab the phone. Cillian comes back out with a scratched black bus tub and starts putting the Guinness and Jameson branded bar mats into it.
I shut the door behind me, seeing a last glimpse of Cillian before I go. He’s not looking at me, but I get the feeling that he was.
I hightail it back to the house.
I consider that maybe I somehow got canceled and now the world hates me. Then, because of this, I had lost my mind, time passed Rip Van Winkle–style, and now I’ve actually gotten my mind back. There was an old William Powell movie about that: he hits his head and, instead of getting amnesia, it turns out he had amnesia and he’s gotten his memory back. Maybe it’s that.
Or what if I was in a coma?
Oh God, what if I’m in my fifties or something, having lost decades of my life?
I open the phone and look at the calendar. No, it’s the year it’s supposed to be. And of course, if it was decades later, this phone would be an absolute relic.
I’d wonder if I’m dreaming, but of course I’m not. This isn’t what dreams feel like. They aren’t tangible, with buttery bread and cold walks in the middle of the night. At least not for me. My dreams never immerse me like that.
My mind goes to an old episode of The O.C., the rain episode where Ryan hits his head and then finds himself in an alternate universe. One where he never moved to Newport.
I inhale deeply and remind myself that I am not in an episode of The O.C. or Brilliance or a William Powell movie. I’m in reality. Where things like that simply don’t happen. There’s an explanation. There has to be.
I get the door of the cottage open, throw on the lights, and toss the keys on the entry table without looking.
I hesitate for a second, feeling like something strange happened, but unable to put my finger on what.
I need something a little stronger than that beer I had at the pub. My nerves are rattled and my mind is racing.
I go to the kitchen and then directly to the middle left bottom cabinet, open the door, and crouch to reach to the back for the good bottle of whiskey. Then I stand and reach up to the right cabinet above the sink and get out a rocks glass—
“Oh my God,” I say, dropping the bottle. It lands on the rug beneath the little kitchen table and miraculously does not break.
I slowly set down the glass and put my palms to my temples and step backward, looking at the open cabinets and the bottle on the ground, its agitated bubbles pooling at the side-turned-top.
How did I—how did I know that?
How did I know that’s where the booze would be? How did I know where the good whiskey would be? Somewhere in my absent mind, I knew that I was reaching for the bottle of Green Spot hidden there.
And how did I know where the rocks glass would be, much less which of the mismatched glasses I had in mind to use? Because I had. I’d known I was reaching for the cobalt blue one with the thin lip.
I stare at the glass on the counter. It’s familiar and yet there is no reason in the world it should be. Much like how I’d felt looking into Cillian’s eyes earlier or hearing about that girl’s date. It didn’t feel like the first time I had done it.
Okay. Okay. I can figure this out.
I pick up the bottle and pour some whiskey into the glass. I have a sip, then, over the rim of the glass, I see that I am not alone.
There is a dog sitting on the sofa, staring at me, sleepily wagging its tail.
I cough, choking on the hot, undiluted alcohol.
“Hello?” I call out, straining my ears for a response but afraid I’ll get one. I’m suddenly self-conscious that I haven’t been alone this whole time, or that I’m in the wrong house altogether. Like the owner of the dog might be around here somewhere. But then I recognize the dog. It’s the same one from the phone background.
Bring back my bloody dog, will you?
At this point, I have to accept that something is definitely going on.
What if the person who owns this place looks like me or something? A doppelgänger? And that’s why Cillian—no, but that doesn’t make any sense, he called me Meg. So did Kiera. Meggie even. And before I can go down the road of thinking that maybe my long-lost twin lives in this house and she’s named Meg, that credit card he handed me had my full name on it. And my signature. Maybe her name is also Meg Anabelle Bryan?
But then Cillian knew me well enough to know about Aimee.
I go over to the dog and its tail starts thumping harder, rhythmically and comfortably against the upholstery. There’s a pink collar tucked beneath the fur, and this makes me assume, possibly regressively, that it’s a girl.
“Hi,” I say. “Are you the dog who likes to wear sunglasses?”
For some reason, her presence makes this all feel a little easier to digest. Some people would arrive to their Airbnb, see a pet, and be outraged that someone left it behind. Not me. And honestly, even if I’m losing my mind, at least there’s a dog here.
I sit beside her, and she squints sleepily at me, her wavy-haired ears submissively back and flat against her head, making her look a bit like a dolphin. Her wet nose sniffs at me.
“Hi, puppy,” I say. “You are…” I look on the collar and see the tag. “Maur—Maureen?”
