Arts & Entertainments: A Novel (21 page)

“I’m back,” she called out as she walked through the door. She carried two suitcases she hadn’t taken with her when she left.

Eddie stood up and rushed over to her, surprised to find himself genuinely happy to see her.

“I missed you,” he said. Perhaps the fact that there was some truth to the statement made him say it a bit too loudly, in a forced tone.

Melissa kissed him on the lips.

“I missed you, too.”

“Fuck,” said Dell, as he walked in from the other room. “Sorry, guys. You both are doing great. We’ve just got a sound problem on our end. Yuri, can you figure out what’s going on with Melissa’s microphone?”

Yuri approached Melissa without a word and pulled her shirt up over her bra. He took the mike from between her breasts and looked at it quizzically. He left her shirt perched up near her neck while he retreated to another room. Eddie wanted to say something to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation, but Dell grabbed his arm and pulled him aside.

“You’re perfect,” Dell told Eddie. “Except that, like I said before, sometimes acting experience can get in the way a little
bit. We’re not looking for you to act here. We’re just looking for you to be you. Just try to be a little more natural.”

Trying to be natural never worked, Eddie knew. Trying was the opposite of being natural.

“I’ll do my best.”

He looked back at Melissa, who suppressed a smile while Yuri stood with his face in her cleavage, reattaching her mike.

“Sound is good now,” Yuri said.

“I hate to do this to you,” Dell said, “but I need Melissa to step back outside with those bags and give everything another go.”

This time she didn’t wait long before returning to the room, dropping her bags, and calling out, “I’m back.”

Eddie made an effort to act more like himself, whatever that might mean. He walked more slowly to the door, and he spoke more quietly when he said, “I missed you.”

He was glad they’d been able to practice their awkward kiss, because when their lips met now it seemed natural enough, at least to Eddie. He couldn’t say how it would look on camera.

“I missed you, too,” Melissa said.

“How was your trip?”

“It was all right.”

Her unhappy look seemed designed more for the camera than for him.

“What’s the matter?” Eddie asked.

She turned away from him.

“You know how my mother is.”

“I don’t. I’ve never met her.”

“She doesn’t think that we should be together. She says it’s not good for me to be with a man who left his pregnant wife.”

“I didn’t leave her,” Eddie said, in genuine frustration. “She threw me out.”

“Don’t get angry with me. I’m just telling you what she said.”

Eddie tried to calm himself. He imagined what he would say if the situation were real.

“The problem is that she’s never met me. She just knows what she reads in the paper. I look like a jerk in the press, but if she met me in person, she’d feel differently.”

Eddie was speaking for the audience now, trying to plead his case.

“Forget I said anything,” Melissa told him. “We can talk about it some other time.”

Eddie was relieved to have the subject dropped, but Dell stepped into the room.

“I think you should stick with this topic,” he said in his most encouraging voice. “We’re getting right to the core of something here, and it would be a shame if you gave up on it. I know this is hard, but just continue this line for a few more minutes.”

He retreated from the room, leaving Eddie and Melissa facing each other. Eddie was somewhat pleased to see Melissa as uncomfortable as he was. She spoke in a soft voice he’d never heard from her before.

“I guess it’s because my own dad left while my mom was still pregnant with me, and we never heard from him again. That’s why she tends to side with Susan when she thinks about all of this.”

When Eddie answered, he hoped that he sounded as sincere as she had.

“I’m going to be there for those girls. No matter what else happens, I’m going to be there to take care of them. I’m not going to be like your father was.”

His voice had cracked toward the end of his speech, and he wasn’t sure how that would sound. He hadn’t intended the effect, but it seemed after the fact like a nice touch.

“That was all great,” Dell said. “I’m glad we stuck with things. That felt really honest.”

While Melissa unpacked, Dell led Eddie into another room for an interview. It had been explained in the contract that he would be interviewed up to three times a day and that the company could use the footage any way they saw fit. Beyond this he didn’t know what to expect from these sessions.

“I just want you to stay relaxed,” Dell told him. “A lot of people on these kinds of shows tell me the interview is their favorite part. It’s a chance to really get your feelings across, to give the action some meaning.”

There was a stool in the middle of the room and a camera on a tripod about fifteen feet away. Eddie sat down and turned toward the camera, though it was hidden now by all the light shining in his face. Eddie had been in plenty of spotlights before. He’d looked out from stages where all you could see were lights above and darkness below and you had to take on faith that there was an audience somewhere in between looking at you.

“Look over here at me,” Dell said soothingly. He was seated just to the left of all the lights. “If you look right at the camera it really creeps people out. Since I’m the one you’ll be talking to, it should feel natural to just pay attention to me.”

As Eddie turned from the lights, his eyes began to adjust, but he still felt the heat coming off them. He was already sweating, and he imagined it would only get worse. Dell reached into his pocket and handed Eddie a cloth handkerchief. It seemed like the kind of magnanimous gesture a captor offers before the torture begins.

“This will take a bit of getting used to,” Dell explained as Eddie wiped his face. “First off, as you probably know, I’m going to be cut out of all of this, so I don’t want you to
speak to me by name. And you need to repeat any question that I ask you before answering it. That part you’ll pick up pretty quickly. The other thing is that I want you to speak in the present tense. We call these interviews ‘ITMs’—in-the-moments. The idea is that we’ll run a scene, and then this will serve as a kind of internal monologue. So I don’t want you to tell me how you feel now about what happened with Melissa out there. I don’t even want you to tell me now in the past tense how you felt at the time. I want you to describe the feelings like you’re having them, like you’re still in the moment. Does that make sense?”

Eddie realized then that all of Susan’s voice-overs—her description of getting an ultrasound or her introduction of some artist at the gallery—were in this present tense. It seemed so natural when he watched it, but it was strange to be faced with doing it. He’d known that they would have access to everything about his external life, but now they wanted his thoughts, too.

“It makes sense,” Eddie said.

“So let’s start at the beginning,” Dell told him. “How does it feel to have Melissa back?”

Eddie considered the question.

“It feels good. I’m happy about it.”

“Don’t forget to repeat the question.”

Eddie wiped his forehead with Dell’s handkerchief. He’d expected to get used to the lights, but they seemed to be getting hotter as the interview progressed.

“How do I feel to have Melissa back? I’m happy about it.”

“Does it bother you to hear what her mother said?”

“Of course it bothers me.”

“Repeat the question.”

“Did it bother me to hear what she said? Yes, it bothered me.”

“Remember, present tense. In the moment. And names instead of pronouns, so we always know who you’re talking about even if we cut a few sentences.”

“Does it bother me to hear what Melissa’s mom said about me?” Eddie tried to put himself in the moment. “Of course it bothers me. The woman has never met me, and she’s passing judgment. Not that I care what she thinks, particularly. But I guess what she’s saying—that I’m a jerk who walked out on his pregnant wife—is something that a lot of people who have never met me think at this point.”

“And you don’t think it’s fair?”

“No, I don’t think it’s fair. I would still be with my wife if I could. That was her decision. Not that she didn’t have her reasons, of course.”

“You’re talking about the tape.”

Eddie hadn’t expected to be asked about the tape. It seemed that great effort had been made to separate their story from its origin, but perhaps that was no longer a goal now that he was going to be on the show.

“Yes, I mean the tape. But I had good reasons. I didn’t just do it for kicks.”

“What were those reasons?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Come on, Eddie. We’re getting at something here.”

Eddie thought about what he could say that wouldn’t get him in more trouble.

“I was broke. We needed money for our family.”

“You couldn’t think of a better way to make some money?”

“It seemed easy. And harmless.”

“You didn’t think it would harm Martha?”

“Not particularly. But to be honest I didn’t really care if she got hurt. That’s not my problem. For years we lived together, we were doing something together, and then I found
out she’d never believed in me. She was just hanging around until something better came along. So when the time came I wasn’t too concerned about whether she got hurt.”

Eddie was amazed at what these lights and Dell’s friendly persistence could do. He’d given them more in a few minutes than he’d intended to give them for the entire show. He needed to protect himself.

“What about Susan?” Dell asked. “You didn’t worry that she would get hurt?”

“Do I really have to answer these questions?”

“Think of it as an opportunity. You were just saying how the press makes you look like a jerk. Now you can set the record straight, and I’ll put it on TV.”

“I shouldn’t have lied to Susan. Not just about the tape. I honestly regret that.”

As he spoke, Eddie realized how Susan must have felt. Just as he had felt when Martha left. She’d thought they were in something together, and she’d discovered he didn’t believe in it. But he did believe in it. He did want things to work. Was this only because he’d seen the new Susan?

“I wanted to start a family. That’s why I did it. I wasn’t trying to get revenge on Martha or to make myself famous. I wasn’t trying to recapture my old life. That life is over.”

Dell seemed satisfied with this.

“Let’s get back to Melissa. Are you worried that she’ll agree with her mother, that she’ll leave you?”

“Am I worried that Melissa will agree with her mother?” Eddie said, glad now for this convention, which gave him time to sort out an answer. It was at once easier and more difficult to answer a question that wasn’t about his real life. “Melissa doesn’t listen to what other people say. She knows the real me.”

“Are you in love with Melissa?”

“Am I in love with Melissa?” There had to be a right answer to this, but he wasn’t sure what it was. “We get along really well, and we have a lot of fun together, but we haven’t known each other all that long.”

“Are you still in love with your wife?”

Eddie remembered what Dell had said, about treating these questions as opportunities. What did he want to say to Susan? It had to be something true. Somehow she would recognize this one truth amid all the lies.

“Of course I’m in love with her.” Eddie wiped the sweat from his forehead again. “She saved my life. That sounds melodramatic, but it’s true. We met at a time when a lot of things had been going wrong, and she was the first good thing to happen in a long time. She came at just the right moment. I resisted that idea for a while. I don’t really know why. I was lucky to meet her when I did. It’s taken all of this to show me that. I’m sorry,” Eddie said, catching himself. “I realize I’ve been using a lot of pronouns here. Do you want me to start over?”

“That’s all right,” Dell said. “I think that’s all we need. You did great.”

EDDIE GOT UNDER THE
covers with Melissa after changing for bed that night, but when she turned the lights off, he slipped out to sleep on the couch. In the morning he woke to find Hal kneeling on the floor, pointing his camera at him. Most of the crew were already in place. Eddie didn’t know where they’d spent the night or how long they’d been back in the room, watching him. Kara, the associate producer, smiled for the first time since Eddie had met her.

“How did you sleep?” she asked.

Eddie was surprised that she would speak to him so openly while they were “in scene,” as Dell had put it. He still didn’t understand all the conventions of this game.

“I slept all right.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kara told him. “You’ve got a full day.”

She didn’t mention the obvious fact that he’d started the night in a different place than where she found him now, but Eddie suspected he’d be asked about it during his interviews.
He could say that he’d been having trouble sleeping, but it might be more dramatic to suggest a deeper problem. He’d been upset about what Melissa’s mother had said. He’d gotten used to sleeping alone again.

Sitting up, Eddie discovered that a morning erection had slipped through the fly of his boxer shorts. When he tucked it away, Kara laughed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ve seen it all.”

Was even this meant to sound reassuring? Eddie got up and walked to the bathroom. It was the one place in the suite where he could be alone. In the warmth of the shower he wondered what the day ahead would bring. Something dramatic, he guessed. Something that would make for good television. They had told him several times now he was just supposed to live his life, but he didn’t know how to do that, since he hadn’t really been living his life for months before the cameras came.

So much of Susan’s show consisted of her doing things— necessary things, like going to work or to the doctor. Eddie had nothing necessary to do. He’d sometimes made his senior drama students read Aristotle’s
Poetics,
and he thought now of a line from the book to the effect that characters exist for the sake of the action, not the other way around. If he’d been having trouble playing his character, perhaps it was because his character needed some action to perform. It would all get easier if he kept busy.