Echoes + Tropes

“Cut!”

The actors relax and laugh at the director’s announcement, and I frown at them from my chair, annoyed at their contentment.

“Hannah?”

It’s my co-writer, Neal, who notices my face. “You’re not happy,” he says simply.

“Of course not,” I say, my voice snappish, which isn’t fair; it’s not Neal’s fault that the actors don’t read what is written on the page. “If Claudia has amnesia, why would she recognize the baker? If Aaron saw that Amber came back from the dead, he’d be shocked.” I point across the room at one of the lead actors on the show. “Was that supposed to be shock?”

I’ve spoken more loudly than I realized, and a flash of fear crosses the actor’s face. I smile, satisfied, flipping my long black hair over my shoulder. I watch as the director looks at me, then at him, and then crosses the room to talk to him.

I sit down in my chair, keeping my eyes on the actor. He’s about to be told that if he doesn’t follow my script word for word, he’ll be fired.

Like many others, he doesn't yet understand how powerful my words can be.

It wasn’t always like this. I started my writing career like many do - as an intern, bringing coffee to the head writer of Echoes Of Desire. I was living in a studio apartment in Brooklyn and my apartment had been robbed twice. I was talented, hungry, and desperate.

I worked harder than any other intern. I stayed late, I smiled big. I flirted with the actors, the stagehands - anyone who could potentially do me a favor. I’d thought the hard work would pay off.

It didn’t. After three years as a script assistant, I’d been overlooked for a promotion five times, always losing the spot to someone who worked less hard but had connections. I was frustrated; I felt powerless. My therapist encouraged me to approach the head writer, a sunny blonde named Juliette, and ask her for advice on how to get ahead.

It took me a year to work up the nerve.

“Oh, you keep working hard, girl, and you’ll have your day,” Juliette said, her voice warm and velvety.

It was as if something broke inside of me when she said the words.

Three months later, I got her fired, and took her chair as the head writer on Echoes.

Everything goes smoothly for the rest of the day of shooting, as I know it will. The actor playing Aaron stops messing around and brings his A game; I catch him staring at me nervously several times throughout the day.

“That’s a wrap for today, folks.”

I wait for a moment after hearing the director’s words, and I smile when everyone else does, too. After a few seconds, I rise from my chair, slipping my bag over my shoulder; then, everyone else begins to move, readying to leave.

No one moves in this world without my tacit consent.

“See you tomorrow?” Neal says, smiling at me suggestively. He’s one of the few people on set who isn’t afraid of me. He will be, eventually. For now, I’ve been enjoying his deep blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and sexual prowess three nights a week.

“Tomorrow, yes,” I say, not smiling back at him. “I'm having dinner with Henry tonight.”

Neal nods. He looks a bit crestfallen, but I pretend not to notice.

Ten minutes later, I’m in the driver’s seat of my Honda CRV, ready to drive home to my husband. When I pull out of the studio’s parking lot, I have to slam on my brakes to avoid a passing car.

I roll down my window. “Hey!”

The driver of the other vehicle doesn’t pause or respond, and I scowl, pulling out behind them and tailing them down the street. When we stop at a red light, I realize that it’s another Honda CRV in front of me, and the same color as mine - ash green metallic, the salesman had told me, and I’d waited three weeks to get a vehicle the right color delivered to my front door.

Suddenly I see the driver’s hand wave at me in the rearview mirror, a gesture of apology. I frown, but wave back - a gesture of forgiveness, I suppose. I can’t see her face, but I can tell it’s a woman with long dark hair.

Like me.

It was easier than I thought it would be to get Juliette fired. It started with me doing what the two things I did best - watching, and writing.

If the head of the network had been more savvy, he would have realized that the document I sent him from a fake e-mail account hadn’t been written or sent by Juliette. It was a manifesto of gossip, secrets, and intrigue - every act of corruption or indecency that I’d observed during my time as an intern, and there were many. I doubt my plan would have worked were it not for the network director’s unseemly affair with one of the underaged co-stars of Echoes.

I was positioned outside his office the day he confronted and fired her. When she left the office, I expected her to be outraged, infuriated at being unjustly accused. But Juliette was simply broken. Her blue eyes were welled up with tears. She actually smiled at me, through her tears, and greeted me. “Hi, Hannah,” she said, her voice trembling a bit. “Nice to see you.” She walked past me - heading, I guessed, to her office to clean out her desk.

Once she was down the hallway, I walked into the network director’s office, just as I’d planned. He looked up; his face was red, and he looked surprised and angry.

“You - you can’t be here right now, ma’am,” he said, turning his computer screen so that I couldn’t see it. “I’m sorry - I forget your name.”

I bristled; we’d been introduced many times. But I forced myself to remain calm and to repeat the words I’d practiced. “Sir - I - I just ran into Juliette in the hallway. She said some terrible things.”

His face paled. “What - what was your name, sweetheart?”

After a few carefully crafted sentences indicating what I knew, I found myself being offered the position of head writer on Echoes.

I take my time driving home, not in any rush, lost in thoughts about the actors and their lack of work ethic.

It's a different show these days; I’ve been head writer of five different shows since Echoes, each one more successful than the last. But the current one was going to be a flop if the actors didn’t shape up.

I slip my phone from my pocket as I drive and activate the speech-to-text function. “Fire Aaron,” I say clearly. I send the message to my assistant and smile, re-focusing on the road ahead of me.

That’s when I realize that the same CRV is still right in front of me.

Everything took off after Echoes. Terrified that I’d reveal his private information, the network director treated me as a golden child, backing me at every opportunity and offering new gigs whenever he could. I found that I excelled at navigating the politics of soap opera sets; I knew when to be charming, when to be terrifying, and when to be completely unpredictable. To me, it paralled what we did with the plots of our soap operas.

We escalated every conflict.

Our words were swimming with subtext.

The emotional stakes were always sky-high.

Other than her favoritism and the lack of promotion, it had been lovely working for Juliette. She was sweet, kind, and friendly - the perfect boss.

I was not.

I noticed right away the effect that fear had on those around me, and I used it.

Well, I didn’t just use it.

I loved it.

Fear. That's what I'm feeling as I follow the CRV - half-tempted to speed up and go past them so they aren’t within my view anymore. I can't do it, though. I have goosebumps on my arms, and it is warm in my car.

There are quite a few red lights between the studio and my home, giving me a chance to repeatedly peer up at the driver of the CRV in front of me. I can’t say I’d realized before how much you can see in someone’s rear view mirror. The driver removes her sunglasses at one light and when I focus, I can see that her eyes are a shockingly bright blue.

Just like mine.

It was fear that helped me to snag Henry as well. He was handsome, successful, a finance guy. He was dating a friend of mine when the two of them arranged a blind date for me and Henry’s best friend from business school, Anthony. I was already the head writer of Echoes and negotiating a contract to supervise writing for a brand-new soap, where I’d earn twice the salary Juliette had earned. I thought of her when I signed the deal, shaking my head.

Nice had gotten her nowhere.

My friend was completely smitten with Henry; he was incredibly good-looking and charming. Anthony was, too - but on that first double date, I found myself gazing at Henry, and caught him staring back at me quite a few times.

Was it the fact that he belonged to someone else that appealed to me? Or was it the look I saw in his eyes - Anthony’s, too - as they both noted the other’s interest? They were clearly the kinds of friends who competed in everything.

It only took me two months to get a diamond engagement ring on my finger. Six weeks after that, we were married. Henry didn’t love me - I knew he longed for my friend, who no longer spoke to either of us - but I didn’t care.

The CRV is still just ahead of me. Right at the corner where I always turn left to head toward home, it turns left.

I am only two blocks away from home. Our house in Scarsdale is located on a cul-de-sac; only two other families live on our drive. I know their cars. There is no way the CRV should be turning onto our street.

Yet somehow I know I’ll see the woman’s blinker flick on just as we approach my house. I slow to a stop, my mouth agape, as the CRV pulls into my driveway, right behind Henry’s car, and the driver gets out.

She looks exactly like me.

She is me.

One of the reasons why I was so succesful as a soap opera writer was that I never tried to stray away from the tropes. There were classic soap opera tropes for a reason.

“We need to evolve,” others would say. “Amnesia, blackmail, secret families - we’ve done it before.”

I’d ice them out with a cold stare. “The people who love soap operas are in it for the predictability,” I said. “They love it when they can see the trope coming. They want characters to come back from the dead. They want the babies to be switched at birth.”

There was a day when one young intern pushed back; she was fired the next day. “But, the evil twin thing,” she said, laughing and winking at me. “C’mon, Hannah, that would never happen in real life.”

The woman is my mirror image. I’m twenty yards away from her, and I can see no differences.

I don’t know if she’s even aware of my presence. She locks the CRV - I noticed a pine tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror, just like mine. She walks up the path to the brick-and-stone Colonial Henry and I have called home for the past ten years and she unlocks the door.

How does she have a key?

She still has her hands on the key in the doorknob when Henry opens the door. I don’t know what she says, but he smiles in a way I haven’t seen in years. She kisses him, one of those deep, sweet kisses that I remember from our early dating days.

She kisses my husband.

My life was pretty much perfect. I could name my salary for any soap that wanted me. The work was engaging and rewarding; I avoided all grunt work. If anyone gave me any pushback, the network director was still cowed by my knowledge of his shortcomings - but it wasn’t an issue. It was amazing the impact a reputation and a culture of fear could have.

Fear.

Is it fear that keeps me in my own CRV, waiting, allowing the woman who is my double to be in my house with my husband? I am parked now, pulled over to the curb in front of my neighbor’s house.

I run through the possibilities in my head. Do I have a long-lost twin? It couldn’t be. Have I entered an alternate universe? Preposterous. Did I have amnesia?

Was I having a psychological breakdown?

Our home has four beautiful picture windows in the front of the house. From where I sit, I can see them in my living room, on the Restoration Hardware sofa I’d purchased. They are laughing; she is touching Henry’s face.

He looks happy.

I only saw Juliette again once after I got her fired, and it wasn’t that long ago. I’d heard through the grapevine about her struggles to find another career path after Echoes; she’d taken a junior writing position at a trashy, low-level soap. When I saw her, it was at an awards show; I was about to receive my fifth Daytime Emmy.

She was chatting with the network director when I saw her. I felt unsettled instantly; their heads were close together, and she was smiling warmly. I was across the room, up front, where the potential winners were seated. I frowned at them, feeling my face getting hot.

What were they talking about?

Did I read his lips correctly? Was he saying I’m sorry?

Her eyes caught mine while I stared. I tried to quickly adjust my features, but I was certain she saw me glaring at her. She looked confused.

The orchestral music began to play, urging attendees to find their seats, and I turned away from Juliette for what I thought was the last time.

I want to run up to the front door of my house, throw myself in Henry’s arms, and demand that the stranger be thrown out.

I don’t know why I don’t.

That isn’t true; I do know. The happiness I saw on Henry’s face, combined with my utter confusion with who this stranger could be - it stopped me. I didn’t like to take action when I wasn’t sure what would happen.

I wait until nightfall, until I can see through the window that Henry has gone up to bed, leaving the stranger who looks like me downstairs on the couch.

It is as if she is waiting for me to knock at the door.

She opens it, a wide smile already on her face. “Hannah,” she says softly.

I don’t know when I realized it, but I know.

“Juliette?” I ask. I hate how my voice shakes.

She nods, her eyes sparkling. It was incredible; every feature, every movement, was mine. How had she done it?

“Plastic surgery?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It had to be done. You ruined my life, Hannah.” She smiles again. I remember her sunny, warm smile; this one is thin and slow, a hint of cruelty in her expression. “Now I’m taking yours.”

My head is swimming with thoughts. Henry wouldn’t allow it - but would he? He’d looked so happy. The network director - had Juliette told him what I’d done? She’d walk onto my set on Monday and be sweet and kind. Who would believe me? Who would help me take my rightful place in my life?

Who would want to?

“You’re not sorry,” I say bitterly.

“No,” she says. “I’m not.”

I watch as Juliette slowly closes my own front door in my face.