Free The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida Page A

You recognize her. She’s the young woman you saw emerging from the hotel elevator when you first checked in. You had no idea she was a movie star. She doesn’t look like a movie star. She looks like you: same height, same plain face. She disappears into the hotel and the bike is rolled out of view, back where it came from. Seconds later, another young woman is on the bike.
    The cameras start rolling but now it is this other woman with black hair who is on the bike, cycling up to the front of the hotel. She disembarks. You see that this woman resembles a famous American actress. And then it hits you: this is a famous American actress. Her face has been on the covers of so many magazines, and yet, even at this distance you can tellshe’s more beautiful, more delicate, more bizarrely perfect in real life.
    She retreats and a crew member walks the bicycle out of sight. A minute later she rides up again. Everyone on set is more focused, more engaged now that it’s the famous American actress on the bicycle.
    She does three takes and on the fourth take her foot falls off the pedal and the pedal spins and she laughs. A makeup woman wearing a short, brush-filled apron, rushes out and uses a wet wipe on the famous American actress’s leg, removing any grease. Another woman who is so elaborately dressed you guess she must be from the costume department emerges from the side of the set and adjusts the right fold at the bottom of the movie star’s pedal pushers. A crew member walks the bike back to the starting point. Then the movie star rides up to the front of the hotel again and this time doesn’t send the pedal spinning. When the scene is finished, she raises her hands in the victory sign—she can ride a bike without messing up a scene! The crew around her claps, and she gives an exaggerated and theatrical bow.
    You have read a few magazine profiles about this famous American actress and now you think that they haven’t done her justice. In real life she is more beautiful, yes, but also very human, very funny. She is capable of making fun of herself, of her mistakes on set, and the crew applauds this. You haven’t been on any movie sets before, but you are fairly positive that everyone on this set is in awe of the famous American actress, and everyone likes her more than they expected to. There’s an earnestness in the way they surroundher afterward. The director approaches and puts his arm around her in a fatherly way.
    Filming appears to be done for now, at this location at least. The famous American actress is ushered into the Regency, but a transformation has occurred: she’s no longer a girl biking up to the entrance of a hotel; she’s an American movie star once more, and now she’s surrounded by two men who, if you’re not mistaken, must be her bodyguards. They whisk her past the onlookers in the lobby and into an elevator that is miraculously waiting. Is there a third bodyguard inside who timed it so that the doors would open just when she appeared? The swiftness with which she enters the lobby and is lifted up to what is surely the best room is so well orchestrated it makes everything that happened on the film set look like it was done by amateurs—shabbily dressed amateurs.
    You take the next elevator to your room. You can picture the document on the desk. You made copies and brought them back to your room, right? You cannot remember the order of the settings of the day’s events: embassy, business center, police station, Golden Tulip, Regency. They’re just images on a scattered deck of cards.
    A bottle of champagne sits in a bucket of ice on your desk. You read the card, which is addressed to Sabine. “Wishing you a pleasant stay,” the card says. “Warmly, your grateful manager.”
    You search the desk for the document. It’s not on the desk. It’s not near the desk, under the desk. You throw the comforterfrom the bed. You open