Arts & Entertainments: A Novel (9 page)

This mixed news already put them further along than they’d gotten the first time around, and Susan seemed entirely
encouraged. The next morning, they went back to Hope Springs. Given all they’d been through and the importance of this next step, it was a remarkably simple procedure. Susan was put into stirrups in the surgical room. Eddie held her hand, but he looked away as Regnant brought the catheter between her legs. There was a sloppy, squishing sound while it entered her, and Susan squeezed Eddie’s hand. After it was over, she smiled. There were embryos inside of her, little babies waiting to be born. They would have to wait about two weeks for a test to tell them if any had implanted themselves.

In the recovery room, Susan was punchy from excitement. She looked at Eddie with a silly, loving smile. Once she had regained some strength, he stood her up and helped her to get dressed. Halfway to the elevator, she pointed at a magazine on the coffee table.

“Look, honey,” she said.

Eddie picked up the copy of
CelebNation,
a new issue he’d somehow missed. “Dr. Drake Baby Bump?” the cover headline asked. There was a photo of Martha and Turner walking hand in hand. Martha’s midsection had been magnified within a red circle in the middle of the page. It might have just been the loose shirt she was wearing, but it did look like her belly was bigger than usual. Eddie looked over at Susan, waiting for her reaction. She laughed and put her arms around him.

“I guess we’re not the only ones having a baby.”

INTRODUCTION TO DRAMATIC ACTING
was Eddie’s first class of the year, second period in the theater. Nearly a third of the sophomore class—about twenty students—had signed up, making it the most popular elective. Eddie was under no illusion about this popularity. The creative impulse was meant to be encouraged and critical judgment understood as finally subjective, so any student who showed up in Eddie’s classes and gave some sign of having done the work could expect an A- or, at worst, a B+. The same was true of some of the other electives—fiction writing and art studio—but there were additional advantages to “DramAct,” as the boys called it. Eddie was a lousy disciplinarian, and he was easily led into digressions that took up much of the fifty-minute period. At some point word had spread that you could get away with attending his classes while stoned. He didn’t believe in his own authority, which made it impossible to project it to the boys. At heart, he didn’t care whether they learned anything. His first goal
was keeping himself out of trouble by avoiding any student complaints. His second was making sure he didn’t accidentally inspire one of them to a vocation, which could only end badly. With the exception of Patrick Hendricks, he seemed to have succeeded so far.

“If you’ve ever smiled in appreciation after opening a present you didn’t want, you’ve been an actor,” Eddie announced to the boys by way of introduction. “If you’ve ever told your mother you were cleaning your room when you were really watching the game, you’ve been an actor. If you’ve ever made up an excuse to get out of going out with a girl whose feelings you didn’t want to hurt, you’ve been an actor.”

This was the speech his predecessor, Mr. Carlton, had made at the beginning of this class, and Eddie performed it more or less verbatim, though the examples were hopelessly stale. These boys were not required to put on a smile when they didn’t like something they were given. They told their mothers what they actually wanted and got it the next day. As for cleaning up their rooms, the best of them were minimally polite to the household help. Nor did they care about sparing feelings, based on what Eddie heard in the hall. The attitude seemed to be that the less attractive you made a girl feel, the more accommodating she would be.

But the examples hardly mattered, since the entire speech was wrong. Eddie didn’t know whether Carlton had ever believed it, but Eddie himself certainly did not. He remembered Martha telling him how she had learned to act by being encaged in her beauty, holding herself apart from the world. This conceit had appealed to him so long as he thought he was in on the act, not just another member of the crowd. But what she’d done wasn’t acting. You weren’t actually supposed to lie to the audience. It wasn’t acting when you told a stranger that you were a Russian aristocrat. Acting was when you told
a stranger, “Tonight, I will be playing the role of a Russian aristocrat,” and proceeded to make that stranger believe you in the role anyway. Lying credibly, Eddie had learned, took no talent at all if you were telling a lie that the other person wanted to believe.

He repeated the speech nonetheless, because nothing else he thought to say seemed any better. If he told them that acting wasn’t the same as lying, without telling them what it might be instead, that only confused matters, which wasn’t supposed to be a teacher’s job. Most of what people said about acting was wrong. There was a truth to be learned, but it could only be experienced, not named. You arrived at it through trial and error, and that process couldn’t be taught. This obviously wasn’t a great attitude for an acting instructor to have, which was why Eddie kept it to himself.

When he’d finished, he took a moment to measure the class’s reaction. The boys looked blankly at him, except for a pair talking in the back of the theater, who made no effort to lower their voices.

“Why don’t we go around the room and introduce ourselves. You all know each other, of course, but I don’t know everyone. Say your name, and tell us your favorite actor.”

“I’m Paul,” the first boy said. He was familiar to Eddie, because he’d auditioned for the spring play the year before. “My favorite actor is Rex Gilbert.”

A few of the others laughed at this.

“I’m Peter,” said the boy next to Paul. “My favorite actor is Turner Bledsoe.”

More laughter.

“I’m George, and my favorite actor is Martha Martin.”

Now the entire class laughed.

“Is it true?” someone said.

“Is what true?”

“That you dated Dr. Drake?”

Eddie wasn’t sure how this had first reached the students a few years back. One of the other teachers might have mentioned it; one of the boys might have had an uncle or cousin who’d overlapped with Eddie at the school. Maybe some document linking him to Martha existed in those dark corners of the Internet that they accessed so easily. However it had come into circulation, the story had been reliably passed down each year. Eddie could measure the boldness of a new class—their willingness to cause him trouble—by how soon they mentioned it.

“We’re not going to talk about that,” he said, though he knew they would talk about it nearly every day. In previous years, such conversations were a mild nuisance, but now he felt she was recapturing every corner of his life. He had two more classes that day, and Martha’s name came up in each.

ON THE WAY HOME,
he called Susan to see whether he should pick up something for dinner.

“There’s still no blue line,” she said.

Regnant had told them not to bother with home tests, which wouldn’t be accurate yet. These things took time to develop, and the clinic’s technology would answer the question well before anything over the counter. Susan was going in to Hope Springs the next day, but she’d been peeing on plastic sticks all day.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Eddie said.

“I don’t think I can survive if it doesn’t work out this time.”

“It’s going to work out.”

He had come to believe this with certainty. It had to work out. It was the only thing that could give meaning to what he had done.

After he got off the phone, Eddie ducked into a deli on Second Avenue to pick up a salad and a couple of pieces of roasted chicken. At the register, he saw the cover of
CelebNation.
Amid the confusion of colorful typography he read, “Our Spies Say: Dr. Drake Sex Tape?” It was written in small letters at the bottom of a cover otherwise dedicated to Justine Bliss’s release from the hospital.

Eddie picked up the magazine and found the Our Spies Say feature, a repository for gossip even more poorly sourced than the rest of the magazine’s stories. Items appeared there about celebrity tipping habits, e-mailed in by unhappy waiters. Dramatic, life-altering news was floated that would never be mentioned again. Eddie read the first “dispatch.”

Martha Martin may be planning her future with Turner Bledsoe, but our spies say she should get ready for a visit from the past. Whispers have it that a sex tape from before the TV hottie’s Dr. Drake days has found its way out into the world. This is a story our spies will be following very closely!

Eddie flipped through the rest of the magazine. Martha was featured in both Why Did She Wear It? and Stars Have Zits! There was a two-page spread of speculations about her bump. But there were no other mentions of the tape. Before checking out, Eddie took a copy of each magazine on the rack. He paid and found a stoop outside, where he sat with the deli bag between his legs and skimmed through pages. None of the covers mentioned the tape, and he couldn’t find it discussed anywhere inside
Star Style
or
Peeper.
He threw the magazines out and called Morgan.

“Did you do it?” he asked.

“No time for pleasantries, I guess.”

“You said you’d give me a heads-up first.”

“Relax, it isn’t out yet.”

“I saw the thing in
CelebNation.”

“Just priming the pump, Eddie. I gave them an exclusive tip. Now that they’re spreading the word, people will debate it online for a while—whether or not it’s real, how much it will show, who else is in it. It’s just like any film, you want to get some prerelease buzz. Then we go out with it.”

“Can you hold it a bit longer? I think my wife is pregnant.”

“That’s great news, Eddie. I’m happy for you. But if you think I can sit on this for nine months you’re kidding yourself.”

“Not nine months. Just a little while.”

“This is our big shot right now, and we paid you good money for it. I wish you and Susan all the best. But you need to prepare yourself for the fact that this thing will be out there soon.”

Eddie hung up and went home. Upstairs, he heard Marian Blair’s voice before he entered the apartment.

“Burt Wyman says he’s back on the wagon and ready to talk about his journey. Next on Entertainment Daily.”

Susan was sitting on the couch, half watching the TV, which she muted when the show went to commercial.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m watching crap on TV,” Susan said.

“You hate those shows.”

“I wanted something mindless to distract me. I’m so nervous.”

“Can we watch something else while we eat?”

“I’m actually weirdly enjoying it,” Susan said. “It’s sort of addictive if you give yourself over to it.”

Eddie sat down on the couch and put their food on the table.

“I’d really like to watch something else.”

“Let me just see one more segment.”

The show came back, and Susan turned the sound on.

“In a candid, touching interview, Burt Wyman opened up to Entertainment Daily’s Terri Reese about his recent relapse, how faith has helped him recover, and what’s next for the We
Drink Too Much
fan favorite.”

Now the screen showed Wyman, a fat, bearded man in early middle age, who was crying as he spoke.

“I don’t remember getting into the car,” he said. “I was just having a beer in my trailer, and the next thing I knew the cops had me in cuffs. That’s when I thought to myself, I’ve got a real problem on my hands. And the first thing I did was I just prayed to Jesus. I said to Jesus, I got a real problem here.”

Susan turned off the TV.

“You’re right,” she said. “This stuff is gross. You forget that these are real people you’re watching.”

“I know what you mean.”

Susan smiled.

“I did get some news about your old girlfriend, though.”

“Really?”

“Apparently, she’s confirmed that she’s pregnant. And this Turner guy has proposed. There was a whole segment where people argued about what designer she should choose for her dress. God, that channel is really obsessed with her. Could you imagine if we had to have some publicist talking to the media after we got the call from Regnant? Why do people think this stuff is their business?”

“People like Martha make it everyone’s business,” Eddie said. “She didn’t have to tell Entertainment Daily that she was pregnant. It helps her sell movie tickets. Shows like this have made her very rich.”

“But from what you’ve told me, she was never into this
stuff. She just wanted to be an actress. It seems too bad that she can’t just act without all the other bullshit.”

A few weeks before, he wouldn’t have imagined Susan defending Martha on any grounds. Now things had changed. Eddie was tempted to keep pushing back, but what did he want to convince her of, really?

“I guess you’re right,” he said.

Eddie wanted to join Susan at Hope Springs for the test, but they agreed it was better for him to save his personal days. If all went well, there would be many more appointments to make. Anyway, they wouldn’t be getting the results of the test until that evening at the soonest.

On his way to school, he picked up the daily papers. In the
Post,
Page Six had an item about Martha’s pregnancy and her engagement, but nothing about the tape. Eddie tossed it out and opened the
Daily News.
The gossip page was still written by Morgan’s old boss, Stanley Peerbaum. He also led with Martha’s engagement, but he added more: “It may not be all good news for Martha Martin, though.
CelebNation
is reporting rumors of a sex tape making the rounds, dating back to Martin’s early days as a struggling actress in New York.”

The magazine had never mentioned New York. It only said that the tape was from before the start of
Dr. Drake.
The rest must have come to Peerbaum directly from Morgan. It was all going to get back to Eddie a lot sooner than he’d thought. He’d been with Martha the entire time she lived in the city, and it wouldn’t take long for some devoted fan to figure that out. But there was nothing to be done. Morgan hadn’t even broken their promise, really. What he’d told Peerbaum would be obvious at first sight to the people who followed Martha’s career obsessively on the message boards. Eddie hadn’t thought any of this out.