I was still Jack. Despite the interruption, I slipped back into it as if I’d never left. And I admit, Rita presented somewhat of a problem when it came to sustaining my full mirage—I eventually began treating her like Janet here and there. Oh, at first it was fairly subtle, but one day I said something rather suggestive, flirtatious, as Jack would have done, and Rita smirked at me. “Excuse me?” she said, and I flushed.

“Sorry,” I said. We were having breakfast in the kitchen. I was reading my morning paper—the date on it was December 16, 1979. Burning with embarrassment, I looked down at it as if it held the secrets of life, my nose inches from the print.

“I’ve seen the show, you know,” she said, and took a drink of orange juice. She was matter-of-fact. “I know what’s going on. The basic idea.”

“You do,” I said. I felt that old hot-cold prickly feeling grab at me, and I resisted the urge to take a butcher knife, plunge it into myself, plunge it into her. “What do you think it is,” I said.

She leaned back and looked toward the ceiling, mulling it over. “Well, at first I figured you just really liked the show, but now . . .” Her eyes squinted in a thoughtful way. “Now I understand that you want to be these people,” she said simply. “You’re playing them. You’re the guy right now—what was his name? Jack?”

“And?” I said. I sat extremely still.

“And . . .” She paused for what felt like a lifetime before letting out a small sigh that ended in a burp. “And I think it’s pretty freaking impressive, if you ask me.” Sitting back in her chair, she waved her hand around. “Just look at all this. You have it down to the last detail. I gotta hand it to you. I mean, I found all the clothes in the drawers and closets in my room, but there’s nobody else here . . .” She shrugged. “I knew something was up. At first I thought you were a little crazy, but you seem pretty normal.” Then she leaned forward. “Are you crazy?” Her voice was soft, mischievous.

I gave a weak laugh. “I sort of have to be, to do it all.”

Rita nodded. “So, what do you do during the day? When you disappear?”

So she had noticed. Of course she had noticed. Calmly, slowly, stuttering at first, I explained to her the basic gist of what my days were like. What my plan was. The project on a macro level. It didn’t feel so terrible now that we had been living in this peaceful arrangement for a few weeks, though part of me still balked at this betrayal of myself. I still wasn’t sure why I trusted Rita. I could have been ending it all, right then and there.

When I finished, she sat back. She sat like a man, knees spread casually, one arm slung over the back of the chair. Her eyes sort of narrowed and she said, “You don’t act rich.”