Arts & Entertainments: A Novel (12 page)

“It will pass.”

“Get out,” she told him.

“We’ve got to stick together on this.”

“Get out.”

He wasn’t sure where he was going when he left. Coming out of the building, he prepared for the flashes and shutter clicks, but the cameras were all pointed upward. He couldn’t help looking in the direction of whatever they were capturing. Susan was hanging out the window, calling down to the street.

“He did this,” she said. “Eddie Hartley sold that tape. If he tries to tell you otherwise, he’s lying.”

When he looked up, she stopped for a moment and disappeared from the window. Eddie thought the onslaught might be over. But she returned with something in her hand. She set it free, and Eddie watched it briefly take flight before beginning its descent. It was one of his old head shots. In the moment it took Eddie to understand the photo’s significance, Susan picked up the entire box of relics and emptied it into the street. The cameras didn’t follow Eddie’s things as they fell or take in his reaction as he watched them hit the ground. They stayed fixed, every one of them, on the woman inflamed above.

THE NEXT MORNING THE
cover of the
Daily News
showed Susan leaning out the window like a madwoman, throwing old photos into the air. “Three Tykes—And You’re Out!” the headline read. “Drake Tape Wife Expecting Trips, Sends Bum’s Stuff for a Fall.” Eddie found the paper in the lobby of the Metropolitan, a cheap hotel above a parking garage just off First Avenue. He’d often passed the place but hardly noticed it, except occasionally to wonder what kind of person stayed there. When he checked in, the man behind the front desk was watching an Entertainment Daily segment about the Drake Tape on a small black-and-white TV. Eddie worried about being recognized, but the man didn’t turn his attention from the screen while accepting the cash and passing over a key.

The calls had started almost as soon as he left the apartment, mostly from blocked or unfamiliar numbers. After settling into his hotel room, Eddie turned off the phone. He
stayed in bed until noon the next day, when the same man who’d checked him in—he seemed to be the owner, or else the place’s only employee—called up to say he needed to pay for another night or else leave. Eddie had no other place to go, but since he didn’t have anything to keep in the room he just left.

He read through the rest of the paper at a diner across the street. Stanley Peerbaum reported that Eddie had been fired, quoting a statement from Luce: “Given the circumstances, we decided it was best for the entire St. Albert’s community, and especially for our boys, if we parted ways with Mr. Hartley.” Peerbaum described St. Albert’s as an “elite private academy on the Upper East Side.” On the facing page there was a brief history of scandals at the school, dating back to the Preppy Murderer. They had dug up random bits of biographical detail about Eddie and still shots from commercials, which might have been collected from the street after Susan emptied the box. The most recent one was eight years old, but Eddie was easily recognizable in it. He closed the paper and put it down on the table. Looking at Susan on the front page, he tried to make sense of what had happened. It wasn’t her anger that puzzled him, but the performance of it. She was not the type for dramatic gestures, but a few cameras seemed already to have changed her. He considered calling the apartment, but he wasn’t sure what he could say, except that he was sorry. He’d already left an apology on Susan’s voice mail the night before. Thinking of it now, he turned his phone on to see if she’d responded. His mailbox was full, but none of the messages were from her. Almost as soon as he turned it on, the phone rang. The call came from a blocked number, but he picked it up. It was more than curiosity; he wanted someone to tell him what was supposed to happen next.

“Is this Handsome Eddie?” a cheerful voice asked.

“Who is this?”

“Eddie, this is Geena Tuff from
Star Style.
I’m calling to see if you’d like to sit down with me for an interview.”

“No thanks.”

“Think of it as a unique opportunity to get your side of the story on the record.”

“I don’t really have a side of the story.”

“We’re willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the exclusive.”

“Ten grand just to talk with me?”

“You’re a hot commodity right now. But it would have to be an exclusive.”

“I’m afraid I’m still not interested.”

“Can I leave you my number, in case you change your mind?”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Eddie said.

A text came soon after he hung up:
Just in case ;) -Geena
, followed by a phone number and an e-mail address. Eddie thought of all the calls that had come in already. Ten thousand dollars was just a starting offer. Once he got them competing with each other, it might become a lot more, and he and Susan needed that money. But he couldn’t go to the press without talking to her first.

HE LEFT THE DINER
and walked a few blocks, until he passed an empty bar that didn’t seem like the kind of place where news of Dr. Drake traveled. It might be a good spot to spend the afternoon while he decided what to do with himself. Apart from the bartender, the only person inside was an old man with a pickled pink face. A muted TV above the bar
played a tampon commercial. Eddie took a seat and ordered a beer.

“Turn the sound up,” the old man said. “Show’s back on.”

They were watching Entertainment Daily.

“Just a week after her release from the hospital,” Marian Blair announced, “a collapse in the studio has friends again worried about Justine Bliss’s weight. Now there are whispers about an addiction to pills as Justine’s father rushes to her side. Meanwhile, executives at the 2True Network discuss canceling
Pure Bliss,
Justine’s Moody Productions reality show.”

“She’s got to eat something,” the old man announced before swallowing the rest of his drink. “It’s not a healthy lifestyle she’s got.”

“I blame the father,” the bartender said. “He pushed her into music at such a young age, and now he enables her. No one gets into that kind of mess alone.”

Eddie put money down for his drink as the show moved on to a story about Rex Gilbert breaking up with Carla Lender. They would get to Martha eventually, if they hadn’t already. He was curious to see whether anything had changed overnight. He wanted to know where the story stood. After a few more words about Rex, Marian said, “Turning now to Drake Tape news, Turner Bledsoe is standing by his girl, but he has a few harsh words for Martha’s onetime costar.”

The screen flashed to Bledsoe, walking alone down an L.A. street as cameras approached.

“How is this affecting your engagement?” an off-screen voice asked.

“As far as me and Martha go,” Bledsoe said, looking straight into the camera, “everything’s great. This was something she did a long time ago with someone she trusted. But I’d like to give a message to Hartley.”

“What would you tell him?”

“I wouldn’t use words. Let’s just say if I ever run into him I’ll leave an impression.”

“That guy sounds like a real dirtbag,” the bartender said.

“Bledsoe?” Eddie asked.

“That Hartley guy.”

“Well, he got his,” said the man at the bar. “Out on his ass.”

His sharp laugh turned into a lengthy cough.

“If Turner is really looking for Eddie Hartley,” Marian Blair told the camera back in the studio, “our spies might have found him. Reports have the erstwhile actor spending his first night away from his pregnant wife at the Metropolitan Hotel just blocks from his home.”

A picture of the hotel appeared on-screen. Eddie hadn’t noticed anyone following him from the apartment the night before, or anyone waiting outside when he left that morning. But apparently he was easy to find.

“That’s right around the corner,” the bartender said. “I know the guy who runs that place.”

Eddie stood up, leaving his half-finished beer. Back on the street, he took out his phone and called the only person he could think to ask for help.

“Congratulations on the triplets,” Blakeman said by way of greeting.

“What have you gotten me into?”

“I gave you an option. The last I heard you weren’t even going to take it.”

“Well, I took it, and I’m in trouble now. I need a place to crash until everything calms down.”

“Sure thing,” Blakeman said. “I’m at the office now, but I don’t imagine you’d want to come here to pick up keys, unless you want to give the
Interviewer
an exclusive. Just drop by the apartment any time after eight or so.”

FOR A FEW YEARS
Blakeman had shared a house on Washington Square with his cousin Charlie, but they’d been thrown out over an incident with the owner’s fish tank—an incident in which Eddie had played a small, forgotten part. After that Charlie left town, and Max returned to the loft on West Broadway where he’d lived right after college. In those days, Eddie and Martha had spent several nights a week there, but Eddie had hardly visited since Blakeman moved back. That evening, he arrived a bit later—and drunker—than he’d intended, having worked his way downtown by stopping in bars.

A men’s clothing boutique had replaced the tobacco shop that once occupied the storefront downstairs. Eddie pressed the buzzer outside and the front door clicked open without a question. A key in the elevator unlocked the button for the second floor, and the elevator opened directly onto the apartment, where a party appeared to be in full swing. Blakeman hadn’t mentioned that he was expecting company, but it shouldn’t have surprised Eddie. Blakeman always expected company. One of his roommates, whose name Eddie couldn’t remember, stood near the door.

“Handsome Eddie,” he said, as if Eddie were still a regular. “Grab a drink.”

Eddie gave a casual nod and walked into the room. The apartment was large and entirely open apart from three small bedrooms in the back, separated by a thin wall of Sheetrock and plywood that Eddie had helped install a decade earlier. There was a kitchen area not far from the elevator, with a wooden butcher block that served as the bar, just as it always had. It was nearly ten o’clock, which felt late to Eddie, though it was barely time for a Blakeman party to be picking up. The place was packed, and even the crowd looked the same as always. Eddie felt the passage of time pressing in on him, just as he had when Patrick spoke about him at the church.

His bouts of chronophobia had begun when he still lived with Martha. Whenever a new actor made a name on television or in the movies, Eddie would look up his date of birth. So long as these rising stars were mostly still older than Eddie, the habit gave him some satisfaction. He could almost see the years that separated them, and he could fill those years with all the things he needed to do to catch up. It all seemed possible. But the span of years slowly shrank, until the day when most new stars were younger than Eddie. Out of habit, he kept looking up actors’ ages even after he’d abandoned his career, and the rare occasion when someone older suddenly gained some attention could still excite him briefly. Then he remembered that it meant nothing, since he wasn’t going anywhere.

Eddie fixed a drink and struggled to find some thought with which he might fight back the passage of time. He remembered the call from the reporter at
Star Style,
who’d called him a “hot commodity.” He hadn’t become “hot” in the way he’d wanted, but who ever did? Martha wanted to be doing Broadway instead of playing Dr. Drake. You didn’t always get to choose. Perhaps it would be possible to get some real work out of this. Susan wouldn’t like it, he knew, but why did it have to be up to her? He remembered the feeling he’d had after depositing the money, that he might do anything now. He had dismissed it at the time, he’d gone straight home, but now Susan had thrown him out. Didn’t she lose some rights for doing that? In the past two days, he’d lost a job he’d never wanted and a marriage that had never been as happy as it should have been. Perhaps life was telling him it was time to start over.

He was still standing in front of the drinks when Blakeman approached, bringing along a small crowd.

“Guys, this is my oldest friend, Handsome Eddie.”

Eddie wished he hadn’t used the nickname, which had already found its way into the press. As he shook hands and introduced himself, he measured the level of recognition on each face. Blakeman had probably told them all that the Drake Tape guy was coming over. Perhaps he was the reason they were there. Eddie could almost tell from their looks which ones had seen the tape and which had only heard about it. It was strange when people you’d never met knew intimate details about you. He’d long imagined the feeling but didn’t much like it now.

It was possible that he really did know some of these people from the last years when he was still in Blakeman’s circle, but that time was a bit hazy for him. He’d been drinking a lot. He wasn’t going out on auditions, because they made him sick. He vomited before each one, and when he got into the room he couldn’t remember his lines. The only words that kept any purchase in his head were Martha’s about his dedicating his life to something for which he had no talent.

Her departure had created other problems, like making his rent, which had doubled when she moved out. More than doubled, in fact, since she’d been covering his shortfalls all those years. For that matter, she’d been paying for groceries, utilities, Internet, and cable. Years of working odd jobs, temping a few weeks at a time while trying to keep up with friends who had proper careers, had left him in bad financial shape. His debts had never worried him while they were piling up. He had the money he was spending, he just didn’t have it on him. It was stored someplace in the future. One of them—admittedly, more likely Martha—would be breaking through at any time, and a few thousand dollars would be trivial. It had never occurred to him that he wouldn’t be brought along when the breakthrough happened.

A few months after Martha left, he got the job at St. Al
bert’s, through the intervention of Blakeman’s father, who was on the board of the school. He accepted it out of necessity, not thinking that he was giving up his acting career. But the job had led him to Susan, and Susan had made him feel that he didn’t need to keep trying to act in order to be happy. Another life presented itself. It would be quieter, but it wouldn’t be such a struggle. In the end, of course, it had turned into its own kind of struggle, one with no prospect of making him a star.