“Iamthe person from my past.”
“What did you...I don’t...”
“I am the person from my past. It’s me you’re talking about. I’m the thing that will come back to haunt me—or at least I will be, if more photographers come here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Al—”
“My name isn’t Al.”
“Alice then. Alice, I thought—”
“My name isn’t Alice, either. It isn’t Alice at all. I changed it to Alice, because being Alice is easier, okay? Being Alice is better. I like her more than I liked that other girl I was—in fact I like her so much I don’t think I can bear to go back.”
She didn’t like the way her voice was rising and rising with each word, but there was nothing to be done about it. Her throat was so full of tears and feelings and other foreign things that she had to strain just to keep talking. And then there was the roar to contend with. Oh God, the roar was so loud now. She had to shout in this thin, high way just to hear herself over it.
Much to his apparent consternation.
“Okay, okay, hey it’s okay. You don’t have to go back, all right? I get it, I get it—no matter what the reason for wanting to be someone else, I get it. I want to be someone else too, remember? And even if your reasons are nightmarish, I don’t care. I’m here for you to be who you need to be, honey I—”
“Oh please don’t say any more!”
“But I...I don’t...”
“Don’t say any more, don’t be understanding. That just makes it worse!”
“How? How in God’s name does that make it worse?”
“Because it doesn’t matter, Bernie. It doesn’t fucking matter how understanding you are. It’s torture to know how understanding you’re being. How good you are, how kind, how loving. And all of it irrelevant...all of it meaningless. At the end of all of that some photographer will just take my picture and I’ll be Enid again. That’s the real problem. You can walk a thousand miles for me and at the end I’ll still be Enid. I’ll still be the girl who survived—that’s what they’ll say. They did it before and it was unbearable, it was unbearable. I can’t go back to that. I don’t want to be the girl who survived. Who would want to be the one who survived?”
He was silent then, for a little while. He didn’t need to be, however. She could still hear what was happening inside his head. She could see it in the way his eyes suddenly seemed to be staring at something else—something far-off and frightening. It was there in the way his whole body sagged just a little, like a weight had been put in his shoulders. Like her weight had been put on his shoulders.
He was figuring it out.
He was figuring it out, before she’d even had a chance to properly say. She’d somehow spilled it all in the middle of that big wrenching rant—or at least, she’d spilled enough. Apparently, those few crumbs were all it took to reveal the truth...though she should have known.
Everyone knew. Everyone knew.
That was the problem—everyone knew.
Everyone had heard her name, including him.
“Are you...are you Enid Kazinski?
Now the whine was higher than the roar.
Probably because it was coming from her.
“My God, youare. You’re Enid Kazinski.”
“Don’t say any more. It’s hurting me. Don’t.”
“You’re the sole survivor of Flight 359. The girl who walked through fire—that’s you? All this time, that was you? That can’t be you.”
“Let’s pretend it isn’t—just for five more minutes. Can’t we pretend?”
“Honey, I can’t. I can’t, oh God, you let me go on like this. You let me go on about myself and my stupid problems—you’ve spent all this time taking care of me. You’re the sole survivor of a fucking plane crash and you let me complain about my fucking movie star problems. Why did you let me do that? Why did I do that? Jesus, I wish I hadn’t done that, baby. I’m so sorry.”
He held out his hands to her but she would not take them.
