I know. I used to hang out with people like that.
I used to be like people like that.
I can deny it. Even to myself.
“I’m really very . . . normal,” I say softly.
And isn’t this one of my problems? I’m normal?
“Oh yes. I can see that,” the colorist says.
I’m just like a million other girls in New York.
“Aren’t you from . . .?”
“Massachusetts,” I say.
“My grandmother was from Massachusetts.”
“That’s nice,” I say. Realizing that for the first time in—what? weeks?—I’m having a normal conversation.
She paints white goop on my hair.
“What’s your doggie’s name?” she asks.
IV
Dr. Q. licks the tip of his pencil.
“You think that . . .,” he says, consulting his notebook, “your husband and this, this friend of yours, D.W., the publicity man, have formed a conspiracy against you and are forcing you to become . . . let me see here . . . the American version of Princess Di. Who, you so adroitly pointed out, is dead. Meaning . . . you believe that, consciously or subconsciously, your husband secretly wants . . . you dead.” Pause. “Well?”
“I heard them discussing it on the phone.”
“Your death.”
“NOOOO,” I scream. “The conspiracy.”
“Oh. The conspiracy.”
“D.W. told me there was that tell-all book.”
“Cecelia,” Dr. Q. says. “Why would anyone want to write a book—an ‘unauthorized biography’—about you?”
“Because the press . . . they’re always after me . . . and there’s that girl, Amanda. The one who . . . died.”
“You call someone who was, according to you, your best friend ‘that girl’?”
“She wasn’t my best friend by then.”
“That girl?”
“Okay. That woman.” Pause. “My photograph was in all the newspapers this morning. From last night. At the ballet . . .,” I whisper.
“Was that you, Cecelia? That girl with the short white hair, running down the stairs, looking over her shoulder, laughing, holding the hand of an unknown boy?”
“Yes! YES. Didn’t you see my NAME . . .? Princess Cecelia. . . .” I’m breaking down, crying, covering my face with tissues. “There are photographers outside the window!”
Dr. Q. stands up and pulls back the blind. “There’s no one there. Except the doorman and old Mrs. Blooberstein and that disgusting Chihuahua.”