Free The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst

table taking up the whole room. This leads to smaller, more intimate groups. We’ve had some nice dinner parties here.” He stops walking and addresses the camera with faux solemnity. “I take my duties as a host very seriously,” he says. “Later I can show you my four-car garage—I like to make sure my guests don’t have to park in the rain.”
    He turns around and leads us into the kitchen. And there, suddenly, is Bettina, chopping fruit at the counter.
    Somehow I’d forgotten she’d be here, though of course I’ve just read that it’s video of both of them. I’ve been so absorbed in watching Milo, this unfamiliar man, this homeowner , that I forgot that this house was more than just his. It was theirs: their love nest; their refuge; the laboratory where they built their particular monster.
    Bettina’s wearing a white T-shirt and black shorts. Her hair is bleached platinum, styled in a pixie cut, shorter than in most of the pictures they’ve been running in the paper. Her makeup is light, natural. She looks very young.
    “There’s my little homemaker,” Milo says. “Always busy whipping up a healthy meal, whenever she’s not darning my socks or scrubbing the floor.”
    Bettina looks up and smiles. She kisses him quickly, on the lips. “Kill me now,” she says.
    I press Pause.
    I need a moment. Besides the inadvertent horror of the exchange I’ve just seen, the unfortunate sound bite that I know will be grabbed up by every morning DJ and gossip column, I’m breathless with the impact of seeing Bettina moving around the kitchen, living her life. Up until now, Bettina has been a creature of my imagination, a cipher to be filled in whatever manner suits me best. At some moments she’s innocent, a tragic victim, someone to be pitied; other times, you can’t believe what a bitch she can be.
    But here she is, slicing mango for a salad, giving my son a kiss.
    All right. All right. Play.
    Milo’s already moving on, leaving Bettina to her fruit. “We don’t have any room called the living room,” he says, crossing the kitchen to a doorway on the other side. As he talks, there’s a burble of sound in the background; it’s a cell phone ringing.
    “Hang on,” says a man’s voice, off-camera. “Bettina? Can you turn that off?”
    The camera turns back to Bettina at the counter, looking slightly irritated, the phone at her ear. “Yeah, just a second,” she says to the man who’s just spoken. Then, lower, into the phone, “Mom, I can’t talk. The Turf Wars people are here. Gotta go.” There she is again, my maternal double, making her presence known. Intruding in ways I’ve only dreamed of.
    Bettina rolls her eyes in Milo’s direction as she turns off the phone. “Sorry,” she says to the room at large, smiling in a way that’s both self-deprecating and disarming. “I could’ve sworn it was off.”
    “Okay,” says the male voice. “Milo, can you go back and walk across the room again?”
    He does. “We don’t have any room called the living room,” he says again. It takes him a minute to get back to the easy, jovial tone he had before. “That’s way too vague. We like to live in all our rooms.”
    He’s talking in sound bites; the repetition of the moment makes it more obvious. Nothing he says is genuine or revelatory. I’m not going to find my child here. I’m just another member of the audience.
    Milo leads us to a room filled with media equipment: a huge TV mounted on the wall, various shiny black boxes for playing music and movies. Instead of a couch, a wavy mass of overlapping cushions, several layers deep, fills the whole floor. He flops down, stretches his limbs like he’s making a snow angel.
    “This is the padded cell room,” he says. “This is where I come when I start to be a danger to myself and others.” He grins widely for the camera.
    I close my eyes. Already this video clip has the aura of a holy relic. Meaning has already shifted, lighting up some areas that