Fake Glasses Real Revenge

The glasses are the worst part. Not the thick black frames themselves, those are fine, they're Warby Parker and they cost me two hundred and forty dollars, but the lenses. I had them made with a prescription I don't need. A real prescription, from a real optometrist, who looked at me like I was insane when I asked him to write it. "You have twenty-twenty vision," he said. "Better than twenty-twenty." I told him it was for a role. He didn't believe me. He wrote it anyway. Four hundred dollars for the exam and the frames and the lenses, and now the entire world looks like it's underwater. That's what I'm dealing with tonight.

The club is called Vesper. It's in the Meatpacking District, which means it smells like a combination of spilled vodka and the Hudson River, and the line outside stretches halfway down the block. I'm not in the line. I'm standing in the VIP section, which is really just a roped-off corner of the second floor with slightly better furniture, and I'm trying not to throw up.

"You look like you're gonna puke," Marcus says. He's my publicist. He's been my publicist for six years, ever since I was nineteen and desperate and willing to do anything, including a reality show about aspiring pop stars that I lost in the semi-finals. He's the one who told me this was a good idea.

"I am going to puke," I say. "You told me this was a good idea."

"It is a good idea."

"It's a terrible idea."

Marcus sighs. He's got a vodka soda in one hand and his phone in the other, and he's been texting someone furiously for the last twenty minutes. Probably his boyfriend. Probably about how his client is having a meltdown in the VIP section of a club that charges eighteen dollars for a well drink. "Listen," he says. "You want out of the contract, right?"

"Obviously."

"And you can't just break it, because then you're in breach, and then you owe them three million dollars, and then you're back to doing commercials for local car dealerships in New Jersey."

"I know."

"So you need them to dump you. You need them to want out more than you do. And they will never, ever dump you if you're the guy they signed. The guy they signed is a brand. The guy they signed sells records and fills arenas and dates actresses and shows up on red carpets looking like he was carved out of marble. That guy is a machine. They love that guy. They will never let that guy go."

I adjust the glasses. They're sliding down my nose, and I've been pushing them up every thirty seconds for the last hour. "So I have to be someone they don't love."

"Exactly."

"So I have to be someone they hate."

"Not hate. Just... disappointing. Someone who isn't worth the trouble."

I look at myself in the mirror behind the bar. The reflection is blurry, because of the glasses, but I can still make out the general shape of me. I'm wearing a button-down shirt that's two sizes too big, tucked into khakis that are one size too small. My hair, which normally takes forty-five minutes and three different products to achieve, is flat and parted on the side. I look like an accountant. I look like someone who's never been to a club in his life. I look like the kind of person who gets shoved into lockers in high school movies.

I look exactly like what I am: a twenty-five-year-old man who's been famous since he was twenty and has no idea who he is without a camera in his face.

The plan is simple. I'm supposed to be a tech nerd from San Jose. I'm supposed to be in New York for a conference. I'm supposed to be awkward and boring and completely out of my depth. I'm supposed to talk about spreadsheets and coding languages and the new season of some show nobody watches. I'm supposed to be the kind of person that a supermodel would never, ever look at twice. And then, when the contract people see me like this, when they see me being this person, they'll realize I'm not worth the money. They'll drop me. I'll be free.

It's a stupid plan. It's the stupidest plan I've ever heard. But Marcus swears it'll work, and Marcus has never steered me wrong, except for the time he told me to invest in a cryptocurrency called DogeCoin, which I did, and which I lost eighty thousand dollars on, but that's beside the point.

"There she is," Marcus says.

I follow his gaze. And there she is.

Her name is Valentina Rossi. She's twenty-three. She's five foot ten without heels. She's been on the cover of Vogue three times, Sports Illustrated twice, and she's currently the face of a perfume campaign that's plastered on billboards from Times Square to the Champs-Élysées. She's got dark hair that falls past her shoulders and eyes that are the color of whiskey and a mouth that looks like it was designed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. She's wearing a red dress that's basically a napkin with ambitions, and she's walking through the club like she owns it, which she probably does, because she dated the owner for six months last year.

She's also, according to Marcus, the key to the whole plan.

"Explain it to me again," I say.

"She's been looking for a way to get back at her ex," Marcus says. "The owner. The one who cheated on her with a nineteen-year-old influencer. She wants to make him jealous. She wants to make him regret it. And you, my friend, are going to help her do it."

"By pretending to be a nerd."

"By pretending to be a nerd who she picks up. By pretending to be a nerd who she takes home. By pretending to be a nerd who she sleeps with, and then posts about, and then never speaks to again. The tabloids will eat it up. 'Valentina Rossi Slums It With Tech Dweeb.' 'Supermodel's Shocking New Man.' And then the contract people will see it, and they'll realize you're not the guy they signed. You're the guy who gets picked up by supermodels as a joke. You're the guy who's not worth three million dollars. And they'll let you go."

I stare at him. "This is insane."

"It's brilliant."

"It's insane."

"It's both."

I look back at Valentina. She's talking to a guy in a suit, laughing at something he said, and even from across the room I can tell she's not actually laughing. She's performing. She's been performing her whole life, probably. I know what that's like.

"Okay," I say. "Okay. Let's do it."

Marcus grins. "That's my boy."

I take a deep breath. I adjust the glasses. I smooth down my shirt, which doesn't need smoothing, because it's already as flat and boring as it's ever going to be. And then I walk down the stairs, into the crowd, toward the most beautiful woman in the world, who's supposed to pretend to pick me up so I can pretend to be someone I'm not so I can finally, finally be free.

I don't know it yet, but this is the moment everything changes. Not because of the plan. Not because of the contract. But because of her. Because the second she looks at me, the second her eyes meet mine through those stupid blurry glasses, something clicks into place. Something I can't name. Something I've been looking for my whole life without knowing it.

I'm about to find out what it is.