Arts & Entertainments: A Novel (16 page)

The one mention of Eddie was a poll question at the bottom of the page—
What do you think Martha and Susan talked about? A) Prenatal care
;
B) What it’s like to be in the spotlight
;
C) Life after Handsome Eddie.

How many times had he dreamed of seeing her again? Though they’d lived together for years, Martha had since become as unreal to Eddie as she was to everyone else, and he couldn’t quite believe that she’d been in his apartment. Whatever she was doing there, he knew it had nothing to do with “comforting” anyone. Perhaps she’d gotten jealous of Susan’s popularity and wanted to remind everyone who had the real star power. Eddie called Susan almost reflexively, expecting to hear her voice mail, as he had dozens of times in the past few weeks. When she picked up he responded with panicked silence.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“It’s me.”

There were countless things they might have talked about, but the only one that came to his mind was Martha’s visit, and
he didn’t want Susan to think that Martha was the reason he’d called.

“Where are you?” she asked eventually.

“I’m at the Cue Hotel in SoHo,” he said. “I didn’t think staying at Blakeman’s was such a great idea.”

“That didn’t turn out so well.” She seemed almost amused.

“Nothing happened with that girl,” Eddie said.

“Of course. I give you that much credit at least.”

“I don’t like living this way. I’ve barely been outside in a week. I want to come home.”

“Not now,” Susan said. “I’m not ready yet.”

This seemed to suggest she’d be ready eventually. It was the first bit of hope she’d given him. Somehow progress had been made.

“I’ve been watching you on the talk shows,” Eddie said. “You’re really good at it.”

He tried to keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice. He couldn’t justify blaming her for this star turn. The best he could do was keep the feeling from her.

“I didn’t ask for it,” Susan said with a laugh. “But I’ll admit I’m enjoying myself.”

“So you’re going to do this show?”

“It just seems to make sense. It’s like I’m discovering a side of myself I’d lost for a while, and I really like it. Besides, they’re not that bad.”

“The people from the show?”

“For starters. But everyone, really. The press, the photographers and all. They’ve got a job to do, but they’re actually sort of friendly if you’re nice to them. I’ve gotten to know some of the guys who hang around all the time. They run errands and stuff for me, help me carry things upstairs if I agree to give them good shots. Of course you know all about that. I’m sure you’re getting hounded the same way I am.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Eddie said.

“Martha gave me some advice for dealing with it.”

Eddie was glad she’d brought Martha up, so he didn’t have to do it himself.

“I read about her visit,” he said dumbly.

“We wondered what you would make of it.”

The idea of Martha talking about him pleased Eddie, no matter what they might have said.

“There must be something in it for her. She wouldn’t just come without an agenda.”

“She actually seemed really nice. For the first time I understood why the two of you were together for so long.”

“We were different people back then.”

“She said good things about you, as crazy as that might sound. She was surprised that you hadn’t leaked the tape years ago, the moment she walked out the door. She’s been waiting for it ever since, and she’s kind of relieved. This baggage from her past is out there, and she doesn’t need to worry about it anymore. Now she can go about the rest of her career. It wasn’t that bad, she said. It would have been worse if it had happened sooner, when she was just getting started. Or later, once she was married and her baby was born. The timing worked out well. It’s just like you told me, it’s good for her at this point.”

“Everyone seems to have come out all right except me.”

“Don’t sound so bitter,” Susan told him. “You deserve to suffer a little. And she helped you out, too. She’s the reason I picked up the phone when you called. She’s the reason I’m starting to think about taking you back. She told me to give you another chance. I think she’s felt pretty guilty all this time about the way things ended between you. Now you guys are even.”

“However it happened, I’m glad you’re thinking about it. I love you.”

“Stay out of trouble,” Susan said.

EDDIE WANTED TO TELL
CelebNation
or Entertainment Daily or even the people on Teeser that he’d been forgiven. They’d both forgiven him. The story was over, and everyone could leave them alone. But it didn’t work that way. The story would only be over when people got tired of it. Martha wasn’t going to let him off the hook, wasn’t going to go to the press and tell them that she’d deserved it, that he wasn’t such a bad guy. She had said these things to Susan, which was more than she’d had to do, but she wasn’t going to tell the rest of the world. Even if she did, it wouldn’t end the story. Martha lived to have the story told about her. It was her job. Soon it would be Susan’s job, too.

He called Talent Management, and he was put straight through to Alex.

“Did you see Martha going to my apartment?”

“Isn’t it great?” Alex said. “There’s going to be a big dramatic reconciliation scene to begin the show.”

“Susan’s going to take me back?”

“Not you and Susan. Martha and Susan.”

“You’re going to
reconcile
them? This is the first time they’ve even met.”

“Poor choice of words. The point is they hugged and they cried, all that. The business with the tape is behind them.”

“You sent Martha there?”

“Not me, Moody. Everything they say about the man is true. He’s some kind of genius.”

“How did he get Martha to agree to it?”

“It wasn’t all that hard, to be honest. She’s got a big celebrity wedding to plan, and this will help make her more relatable. Martha can come off as a little cold, you know, especially after the way things ended with Rex. But Susan’s got relatable to burn.”

“Listen, Alex, you are still representing me, too, right?”

“Sure thing, Eddie.”

“So do something to get me back into this story.”

“I’ll try my best.”

How could he have thought for a moment that the visit had been spontaneous? He’d made the mistake of imagining that Martha was still a human being, not a carefully marketed product. But Susan wasn’t a product, and he was surprised that she’d kept the truth from him. Perhaps she already took it for granted that everything that happened to her was planned for the show. This almost certainly meant that her encouraging phone call was also staged. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Moody wanted him to be encouraged. And Susan might still have meant what she’d said, even if she was saying it for other reasons. Each event could mean two things at once—one for the cynical producer who orchestrated it, and something else for the people who experienced it.

HE WAS STILL CONTEMPLATING
these possibilities a few hours later when he heard the knock. A glass of melted ice sat on his chest, and it spilled as he sat up from bed and pulled his Cue bathrobe shut.

“Room service,” a voice on the other side of the door announced.

Eddie had no memory of ordering room service, but he knew his memory was not entirely to be relied upon at that point.

“What is it?”

“All of our extended-stay guests get a free meal for each month of their stay.”

Had it been a month? He wasn’t sure. It had been close, certainly.

“Just a second,” he called out.

He stood up, put on his slippers, and pulled his robe shut. When he opened the door a great burst of light filled his eyes. The man in the doorway lowered his camera and they stood face-to-face.

“Motherfucker,” Eddie said as he lunged. But the cameraman was already running down the hall. In his robe and slippers and drunkenness Eddie couldn’t keep up with him. He tripped and his robe came open as he hit the hallway floor. The camera clicked another half dozen times before the man disappeared down a stairwell. Eddie picked himself up and returned to his room, but the door had locked behind him.

He’d lost his belt somewhere, perhaps back in the room, so he held his robe shut with one hand as he waited for the elevator. In the lobby the woman at the front desk smiled.

“Hi, Aimee,” Eddie said, reading her name tag. “I’ve locked myself out of room 341.”

“It happens all the time,” Aimee answered, seeming unfazed by his appearance. “I just need to see some photo ID.”

Eddie waited for a second.

“I’m in my bathrobe.”

“Of course,” she said. “Here’s what we can do. If you tell security where your wallet can be found in your room, they can go get your ID. They’ll bring it down here, and I’ll print out a key card for you.”

“You’re serious?”

“We are committed to security here at the hotel. It causes some slight inconvenience at times, but our guests appreciate it.”

He could tell she had been trained to say just these words in just this way, and there was no sense arguing, but he couldn’t remember where he’d left his wallet.

“I think it might be on the bedside table,” he told her. “Or else on the floor near the bed.”

“That should be sufficient.”

“Do you think I could speak with a manager?” Eddie asked.

A few moments later a tall, thin man in a double-breasted suit appeared at the desk.

“How can I help you?” he asked with a vaguely European accent.

“Did somebody tell the press about my presence in the hotel?”

“Sir?”

“I just opened my door to someone claiming to be room service and a fucking photographer started taking pictures of me in my underwear.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. It sounds very unpleasant.”

“That’s great that you’re sorry, but I’d like to hear what you’re going to do about it.”

“Have you been drinking, sir?”

“As a matter of fact I have, but that isn’t relevant right now. This woman has been telling me about all your security, but then I’ve got paparazzi stalking me.”

“I see,” the manager said. “That’s a real problem, sir.”

“Do you have any idea how that could have happened?”

The manager seemed to consider possible answers to the question.

“To whom am I speaking?”

“Eddie Hartley, from room 341.”

Now the man looked carefully at Eddie, as though he might recognize his face.

“I don’t believe that anyone here at the hotel was responsible for alerting the press to your presence. But I promise you I will look into the matter very seriously.”

They waited together for the security guard to arrive with Eddie’s wallet.

“It was right where he said,” the guard told them. He withdrew Eddie’s license and passed it to the manager, whose face was brightened by a flicker of bemused recognition. He passed the ID to Aimee, and she smiled. It was clear that neither had known until that moment that Handsome Eddie was staying at their hotel. The manager handed over the wallet while Eddie’s new key card was being printed.

“I’m terribly sorry for your inconvenience,” the manager said. “I promise to look into the matter. In the meantime, would you like us to move your room?”

Eddie knew they could find him if they wanted to.

“I don’t really think it matters,” he said.

“
IS HANDSOME EDDIE HEADED
for a breakdown?”
CelebNation
asked when the photos of Eddie spread out in the hallway hit the Internet. “Attacking photogs, making scenes in hotel lobbies—Hartley is hitting rock bottom just as Susan moves on with her life.” “This latest outlandish behavior came just hours after a tearful call in which he begged Susan to take him back,” Marian Blair told Entertainment Daily viewers. “Sources say she was even considering it, but now she worries he’ll be a danger to her pregnancy.”

He’d told Susan where he was staying, and immediately they’d come for him. He remembered what she’d said about making friends with the photographers. You helped them with certain things, and they made deals with you. Martha had given her advice about dealing with things. Was this the ad
vice? Did she want him to look like a fool? There was a cruelty to it that was entirely unlike her, as though she wanted to punish him a bit more before accepting him back.

Eddie considered moving hotels—and not just for the privacy, which wouldn’t last in any case. He was running through the money that he’d thought could change his life forever. In another month, his St. Albert’s salary would stop coming in, and the payment for the video would disappear even more quickly. He’d liked in theory the idea of leaving himself with nothing, as a kind of penance for what he’d done. But now he was faced with the real problem of what to do then. He might easily run through it all before Susan took him back.

The person he needed to help him through all this was Susan. After their one conversation, he’d imagined they would talk regularly again. But he called every few days after that, and she never picked up. Their brief conversation—and the visit from the photographer that followed—felt like some special message to him. But he didn’t know what the message meant. So he waited where he was.

SUSAN’S
SHOW PREMIERED ON
the Tuesday after Thanksgiving with an hour-long episode, which Eddie watched from his king-sized bed. The episode began with Martha’s arrival at the apartment. The scene seemed designed to signal to viewers who Susan was and why they were supposed to be interested in her without the work of lengthy exposition. Something had happened that brought Susan’s life into contact with the likes of Martha Martin, and this was enough to demand the world’s attention. Martha was a stand-in for all the events that had precipitated this premiere. All of this heartened Eddie somewhat. Even if he wasn’t included on the show, the story still required him to connect these two women now hugging each other on his TV. Soon they were both crying. Alex had been right: it humanized Martha. She seemed so caring, like a real person.