The Body Double

fingers over my prone palm in a way that feels intentional. Too close. His sweat presses into my skin. I can feel it burrowing down through the lines of my palm, horrible. Enjoy the show, I say. I smile wide. Even my teeth feel tired. I wipe my hand, once, twice, on the slick polyester of my uniform pants. The man disappears into the theater. Outside, I can sense the summer air pressing against the thin glass of the doors, straining to get in, the pressure around us immense, like water at the bottom of the ocean. I wipe down the counter. I wipe down the case with the candy in it. I think again of the girl in the painting, the weight of her averted gaze, that long-ago light, so thick and heavy around her that it almost seems damp.

The sun is starting to rise when the last customer leaves. Normally we lock up the theater together, Scott and I, standing in gathering warmth, the cracked asphalt cold under our feet. Across the street the windows of the shuttered pet store shine like soap bubbles on dirty water. I like to look at them, waiting for him, noticing the way the sun shifts pink across their surface. This morning I will not have the chance.

Wait, says Scott as I start moving toward the door. One second. I need to talk to you about something. There s someone who wants to speak with you before you go home. He s up in my office. Come on, it won t take long.

I m tired. Too tired for whatever this is. It must be nearing sunrise, and I feel like something has crawled inside of me and died. Even now the light has begun worming its way in through the narrow window in the finished basement where I sleep. Between coming home and waking up I have, if I m lucky, a good hour of solid semidarkness before the sunlight becomes impossible to escape, and now Sco

me." 
Eve Babitz

"Emily Beyda spins gorgeous prose around the black hole at the center of The Body Double. An existential thriller that vibrates at the uncanny pitch where screaming might be laughter, and a haunting portrait of a young woman as she disappears into the sinkhole of the camera. The Narcissus-funhouse of Hollywood, the moonlit windows of Los Angeles, the two-way mirror of consciousness Beyda arrows directly for the crack in the glass."
Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

" A hypnotic deep-dive into notions of female identity and visibility; it s a lyrical nightmare that renders LA a prison, and the self a collapsible construct. The Body Double sucks you in with reflected glamour, and masterfully spits you out the same way Hollywood does transfixed, disposable, wanting more.
Caite Dolan-Leach, author of We Went to the Woods

"The Body Double is a deft, dark, and surprisingly unusual Hollywood story, cinematic in both substance and in style. Beyda's confident debut is both assured and unsettling. It's a noir, sure, but so much more a tale for our times about the dangers of artifice, identity, and fame."
Ivy Pochoda, author of Wonder Valley and Visitation Street

"Compelling and provocative and fiercely intelligent. Emily Beyda's writing is a thrill."
Jennifer duBois, author of Cartwheel and The Spectators 

"The Body Double is an epic read and Emily Beyda is a thrilling writer. Fame, beauty, youth, and artifice have rarely been mined for such narrative gold. Fantastic in every sense of the word."
  Elisa Albert, author of After Birth

"A treat... An exploration of women s identities merging can be fertile ground to play with notions of gender and identity, and never-more-so than in The Body Double."
CrimeReads

"Beyda's moody debut plays on the conventions of film noir, with a special nod to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo Has the potency and sense of inevitability of a particularly vivid dream Absorbing.
Booklist

"Well executed... lush and operatic... As she meets her fate with slow-burning horror, the unnamed woman fades like a ghost in a haunted house, its rooms as hollow as the empty promise of stardom. A nightmarish and unsettling story.  
Kirkus Reviews

"Eerie... Beyda favors a slow-burning, deliberate pace, but her psychological thriller weaves a shroud of menace and anxiety. This auspicious debut will get under the reader s skin and stay there."
Publishers Weekly