Look at me: by Jennifer Egan Page A

working?”
    “Mademoiselle did something, Allure. We’ll see what happens. Meanwhile, Laura has me chasing these two Ukrainian studs she saw on CNN working on an oil rig that capsized. My fervent hope is that these two can inherit my guest room from Miss Korea. But I’m not sure I’ll have the heart to move her—she sobs in there every night, poor angel. She bought this enormous Sunkist orange that she keeps on the windowsill, and I keep telling her, ‘Eat it, darling. There are hundreds of thousands of these in New York City. Eat the frigging orange, already!’ But she just holds it in her hands and looks at it.”
    “Why don’t you send her home?”
    Oscar shrugged. “She’s desperate for money,” he said. “Her family sells kim chi, for pity’s sake.”
    “But how long can it last, this reality thing?” I said. “I mean, let’s face it: most people just don’t look that great.”
    Oscar shook his head. “It would appear there’s a new layer.”
    “The bullshit layer.”
    “Yet it exists,” Oscar said, with a sigh, “and we must contend with it.”
    The lunchtime crowd at Raw Feed was beginning to thin. Now and then I noticed tourists peeking in from outside, cupping their hands around their eyes and squinting through the glass.
    “What kind of work do you think I’ll be able to get?” I said this nonchalantly.
    Oscar was lighting a cigarette. The waiter, I noted, did not intervene this time. “I’ve been watching you,” he said, “asking myself if it’s possible.”
    “I love it! You’re booking five-foot-one Koreans and you have to ask yourself if you can book me.”
    “Two different matters entirely,” Oscar said mildly. “She’s a fad.”
    “And me?”
    “You’re an old dog,” he said, with affection.
    “I have a crazy idea. Want to hear it?”
    “Always, darling.”
    “Relaunch me,” I said. “Pretend I’m a new girl. Because Oscar, no one recognizes me.”
    This revelation did not appear to shock him, as I’d thought it would. “You’re too old for a new girl,” he said.
    “I don’t have a single line on my face! It’s like I’ve had a facelift—I could be twenty-three.” I was leaning forward, raising my voice, thus violating one of my cardinal rules: never let people see what you want.
    “Twenty-three is too old,” Oscar said, exhaling smoke. “And you don’t look twenty-three, dear, much as Oscar loves you.”
    A wave of exhaustion felled me; if I’d closed my eyes, I think I could have slept. “Will you think about it, please?” I asked, as he paid the bill.
    “Certainly,” he said. “But you should think about your alternatives. As I imagine you were already doing, before your accident.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “You’re a reasonable person,” Oscar replied.
    Outside the restaurant, he pulled the lapels of his beautiful coat tight around him. He wasn’t wearing a scarf, and the skin on his neck looked chalky and dry. As his breath appeared in white plumes, the death’s head blinked at me, a tattered ghost escaping from its rictus mouth and melting into the atmosphere. “Where are you headed?” he asked.
    “To the dogs, apparently,” I said.
    I walked Oscar west, in the direction of Femme, along streets that might as well have photographed in black-and-white, so empty were they of color. Car alarms went off in whooping succession, birdcalls in a strange mechanical forest.
    “Have you considered seeing a shrink?” Oscar asked me.
    “Oh, that’s great,” I said, turning to him. “You can’t figure out how to relaunch me, so I should see a shrink.”
    “No.” He sighed heavily. “Because you’re in la-la land.”
    We circled the block where the agency was, yet avoided walking past it. I sensed Oscar’s reluctance to go. “You’ve been through something terrible,” he said. “That’s why people go to shrinks.”
    “Do you? Go to a shrink?”
    Oscar beamed his white smile at me, but the anguished shadow face was