Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

by Christopher Beha

  In the first year of their marriage, it might have been fair for Susan to accuse Eddie of wishing for another life. How could he not? Plenty of people who’d been a lot less close than he had to becoming rich and famous harbored such wishes. And naturally he’d thought often of Martha. But even then he didn’t want to win her back. He didn’t want to share in her success. He wanted that success all to himself, and he wanted Martha to have his failure. Anyway such wishes could only live so long without sustenance from the outside world. Long before Susan’s accusations started, the sheer corrosive force of time had swept away from Eddie any sense that life could be different. These days it would have been fairer to say that Susan dreamed that he could ask Martha for fifty thousand dollars.

  “I’m sorry you had that attack,” Susan said. “And I’m sorry I made you feel bad about it.”

  So it always went. The flashes of anger and disappointment were just that—flashes. She was always eager to reconcile, because she took for granted that finally they were in it all together. Perhaps this was the reason she’d only started making these claims about Martha after they had stopped being true.

  “I appreciate your taking the day off,” Eddie said. “I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She looked at him suddenly with the old appreciative expression he used to be able to find so reliably on her face. She was still capable of showing that expression at any time, but it was qualified now, bestowed as a gift and just as easily withheld.

  “I can cancel this dinner with Blakeman tonight. We could do something together.”

  “That’s all right,” Susan said. “I told Annie I’d have dinner with her.”

  “We’re going to get this all figured out.”

  “Sure we will,” Susan answered while taking a book down from a shelf. This meant she would spend the rest of the afternoon reading on the couch. Eddie would have to read, too, or else idly browse online; the television distracted Susan while she read, and there was nowhere in the apartment to escape from it when it was on.

  “I really mean it. I just have this feeling something’s going to happen.”

  He wanted to tell her that Blakeman was going to help, but it would have sounded ridiculous. Susan sat down and opened her book.

  “Let’s worry about it in the morning,” she said without looking up from the page.

  THREE

  WHILE RIDING THE 6 TRAIN downtown, Eddie developed some ideas about the nature of Blakeman’s help. He assumed it had something to do with Morgan Bench. When Eddie knew him, Morgan had been a gossip columnist at the Daily News and briefly notorious for something Eddie couldn’t remember, making the lower left quadrant—the bad one—of New York magazine’s Approval Matrix. The last Eddie had heard, he’d quit the paper and moved out to L.A. to work on screenplays. Perhaps something he’d written was getting made, and he had a part for Eddie. Even if it had nothing to do with Morgan, Blakeman’s help might have been in this line. Blakeman had spent several years as a movie critic, and he still knew people in the business.

  The address he’d given Eddie was on the Lower East Side, not far from the apartment Eddie had shared with Martha after dropping out of school. He rarely had occasion to come to the neighborhood these days. The restaurant’s entrance was below street level, and the place made no effort to advertise itself. Experience had taught Eddie that the easier such an establishment was to walk by without noticing, the more expensive it would be. He hoped that Blakeman planned to pick up the check. Inside, the hostess was dressed like the proprietor of a brothel in a spaghetti western, but she had dark, Asian features and spoke with an accent Eddie couldn’t place. She brought him to the table where Blakeman and Morgan were waiting. They both stood up to greet him.

  “I’m glad you made it,” Blakeman said.

  “Of course I did,” Eddie answered with perhaps too much eagerness. For a moment he feared that Blakeman had been bullshitting him, or that he’d forgotten his offer to help, remembering only the dinner invitation.

  “How the fuck are you?” Morgan asked. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I’m good,” Eddie answered as he sat down between them. “How about yourself? Are you still mostly out in L.A.?”

  “No, I’m back here full time.”

  This wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. Plenty of things still got made in New York.

  “And what are you working on?”

  “Have you heard of Jay Rolling?” Blakeman asked.

  “Is that a TV show?”

  “It’s a site I’ve got,” Morgan explained. “Pictures of guys in wheelchairs crossing the street against the light.”

  “I see,” said Eddie. “So you’ve gotten into photography?”

  “No, no, I don’t take the pictures.” Morgan seemed amused by the idea. “Other people send them to me. I just put them up. I’ve got some other projects, too. I’m working on one called Big Slurs. It’s a clearinghouse for racial and ethnic epithets.”

  “A clearinghouse?”

  “Kind of crowd-sourced bigotry. So say, like, you’ve got some kind of behavior you want to attach some slur to, like you’ve got a roommate who washes his balls in the sink or something.”

  “His balls?”

  “You put it up on the site, and then people suggest names. Like, someone calls it ‘The Armenian Birdbath.’ Then everyone votes on it. It’s a democratized lexicon. We’re generating memes, you know?”

  “I think I get it.”

  “How about you?” Morgan asked. “Still acting?”

  “I’m a teacher. High school drama.”

  “Right on,” Morgan said. “Say, do you still keep up with Martha? She’s blowing up right now.”

  “We’re not in touch.”

  Eddie picked up his menu, which was completely illegible.

  “It’s Turkmen,” Blakeman explained. “Big thing right now. Very hardy. I’ll just order for all of us.”

  The waitress appeared with an unlabeled bottle. Eddie wasn’t sure whether this had been requested before his arrival or was simply brought as a matter of course. Blakeman placed their order while the waitress poured shots. After they threw back the drinks, which seemed to be vodka flavored with some kind of mulch, Blakeman excused himself from the table to make a call for work.

  “Let me ask you something,” Morgan said once they were alone. “Not to be weird or anything. But Blakeman says you and Martha used to film each other.”

  Discretion wasn’t among Blakeman’s known qualities, but this particular secret was an old one that Eddie had taken for dead and buried.

  “It wasn’t anything, really. Just line readings, mostly. We were both aspiring actors. We made tapes before auditions and watched them together.”

  “There are people out in L.A. who would pay a lot of money for something like that.”

  “What makes you think I need money?”

  “Everyone needs money,” Morgan answered. “I’m not saying you need it especially. All I’m saying is that I’m in a good position to set something up if you wanted.”

  “I’m not really interested.”

  “No, of course not. It just came to mind, so I thought I’d tell you. Even for just the two of you reading lines, I could probably get ten, twenty grand. More—a lot more—depending on what else you’ve got.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Did you do any fucking around on camera?”

  This Blakeman could not have told Morgan, because Eddie had never told it to Blakeman.

  “Like I said, it wasn’t anything.”

  “Nothing interesting at all?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t looked at the stuff in years. I’m not even sure I’ve still got it. We had a bad breakup, and I tossed most of our old things out.”

  “If you could find something, it would be worth a lot. Even tame stuff. Still, it’s too bad you don’t have anything, you know, more explicit. That would be the real deal. Serious.”


  “Just out of academic interest, what qualifies as serious?”

  “It’s tough to say without seeing it. Some length, where it’s clear that it’s her, maybe full frontal, that could be six figures.”

  “In that case,” Eddie said, “it really is too bad I don’t have anything. But I don’t.”

  “I understand if this is making you uncomfortable. I just heard about the videos from Blakeman and thought it made sense to give you the option. I’ll give you my card.”

  The card showed Morgan’s name and the title Meme Evangelist above an e-mail address and phone number. After accepting it, Eddie felt implicated in something.

  “Let’s have another shot,” Blakeman said as he returned to the table.

  “Have you read Finian’s memoir?” Morgan asked as he poured out drinks. Finian was another member of the old circle. Eddie tried to remember what he’d experienced that might have justified writing a memoir.

  “I’ve read in it,” Blakeman answered.

  “How have the reviews been?”

  “Sickening. Everyone loves it.”

  “And he was already insufferable.”

  “The worst part,” Blakeman said, “is that he deserves it. The book is great.”

  “An unfortunate situation all around,” Morgan concluded.

  The food arrived in a single cast-iron pot, placed in the center of the table along with a basket of flatbread. There was no silverware. Eddie watched Morgan and Blakeman tear strips of bread and drag them through the thick liquid in the pot. They seemed to be well practiced at the method.

  “You’ve done this before?” Eddie asked.

  “Turkmenistan’s really hot,” Morgan explained. “Ever since Berdimuhamedow Rules went on the air. It’s one of the best things Brian Moody has ever done.”

  “I don’t watch a ton of TV these days,” Eddie said apologetically.

  “But you know Moody, right? He does Pure Bliss, that Justine Bliss show. And Huffing and Cuffing, this new one about cops addicted to paint thinner. All the best stuff on television right now has Moody’s name on it.”

  Morgan seemed immediately embarrassed by his own show of enthusiasm, and they all returned to eating in silence. When they’d finished most of the pot, the waitress brought melons for dessert. More vodka was had at each stage. After they’d split the check—as Eddie had suspected, it was more than he’d wanted to pay—Morgan excused himself, saying that he had an early appointment the next morning.

  “Did you tell him about the videos I made with Martha?” Eddie asked Blakeman once they were alone. Blakeman gave Eddie the look he often gave when put on the spot, an expression of frustration that he was fated to spend his life being forever misunderstood.

  “He came back from L.A. about a month ago. He’s had a tough time, to be honest. He started talking about Martha, about when you used to bring her around. Wanted to know whether anyone was still in touch with her. I guess he was looking to get a script into her hands. I told him you guys didn’t talk. Then he started asking if I had any artifacts. That’s his word, artifacts. Old photos, he said. Shit she’d signed. Anything that could make him some money. Since she’s been with Rex Gilbert, she’s the most popular paparazzi target in L.A. People go nuts for anything having to do with them. I thought of those videos, but I didn’t tell him about them, because I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it. When you said that you needed money, the timing seemed perfect.”

  “So that’s your help?” Eddie tried not to sound upset, because it had been his own mistake to invest so much in the idea that Blakeman could save him. “You thought I could sell a sex tape to Morgan Bench?”

  “If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. I thought I’d give you the option. I wasn’t going to make the choice for you.”

  “Well, thanks for the option.”

  “You said you were hard up. And Morgan’s actually a reliable guy. He’s sharp as hell. If he told you he can get something for whatever you’ve got, I’m sure it’s on the level. I’m not saying you should do it, just saying that I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.”

  “It’s not happening.”

  “That’s fine,” Blakeman said. “Let’s get another drink and forget it.”

  FOUR

  ON THE WAY HOME, Eddie thought of those videos, which remained on discs in his apartment building’s storage room. Hours and hours of footage, at least some of it interesting by Morgan’s standards, all of it Martha’s doing. She’d bought the digital camera and set it up on a tripod in the corner of their studio on Ludlow Street, and she’d left it running almost all the time. They acted out scenes for auditions or improvised and critiqued each other’s performances. But they also went about their natural lives. Later they would watch themselves and try to refine certain unaffected gestures.

  She took it all so seriously. She spoke about acting constantly, though not in the pretentious manner of his college professors. People think of actors as egoists, but Martha had the opposite of ego. She’d given herself up entirely. She had always known she was beautiful—the world constantly reminded her of the fact—but she insisted that beauty was worth less than people thought. Her beautiful mother worked the register for ten hours each day at the local grocery store in her hometown upstate before coming home to drink herself to sleep. Martha was attempting to escape this fate by throwing herself into something enormous, and she expected to be challenged. She seemed half surprised that she’d survived as long as she had. Eddie’s own passage from Queens to St. Albert’s to NYU to his handful of professional roles had been a series of adjacent steps, none quite stretching him to the point of peril. Soon the next step would present itself, he was sure, and he would hop comfortably along. Meanwhile Martha proceeded by great leaps, never assuming safe arrival, always aware that an abyss awaited those who fell short.

  He wondered how often she thought now of those days, when he’d been the only certain thing in her life. Did she ever feel bad about walking out the moment she had something else to rely on? She’d never come back to their apartment after the breakup, but he’d put some things in boxes, which her sister eventually came to get. He’d only included items that belonged entirely to Martha, and he hadn’t thought the videos qualified. She’d probably forgotten they existed, or for that matter that he did. More than once Eddie had come close to breaking all the discs, but he could never bring himself to do it. As he arrived home, he decided he would finally throw them out the first chance he got, before he was tempted to make anything of them.

  The apartment’s lights were on when he got home, and a half-empty bottle of wine was on the kitchen counter. Eddie found Susan in bed, surrounded by a tangle of sheets and tissues.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Great news.” She looked up now, turned her tear-streaked face squarely to his, and smiled. “Annie’s having another baby.”

  Eddie sat down on the bed and put his arm around her without saying anything. He was a bit drunk, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy that the situation required.

  “I really am happy for her,” she added. “I’m not a bad friend.”

  “Of course you’re not a bad friend.”

  Eddie was sure that she’d put up a properly brave face for Annie and expressed the appropriate levels of excitement and support before coming home to cry.

  “I just miss my children,” Susan said. “I know that sounds crazy, but it’s like they exist out there somewhere—not just the idea of them—and they’re being kept from us.”

  THIS TALK OF LOST children wandering the face of the earth was only the latest variation on a theme that had been playing out for years. They’d both been in their late twenties when they started dating, and though they’d agreed that they wanted children, they hadn’t spoken about it with particular urgency. But after the wedding, Susan had made it clear that she wanted to start trying immediately. Eddie had been slightly relieved that nothing happened right away. He suspected that once they had kids they
would look back fondly on the brief time when it had been just the two of them. They’d been married for six months when Annie and her husband took them out to dinner and announced that she was pregnant with their first child.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Susan asked in the cab home. “This is the most basic thing in the world. It’s biology. It’s what I was made for. Why can’t I do it?”

  “We haven’t been at it that long,” Eddie said.

  “I’m calling the doctor tomorrow.”

  The doctor had not been concerned. There was nothing unusual about these things taking a few months. If they were in the same position after a year, she would refer them to a specialist. In the meantime, she told Susan to measure out her cycles so they could determine her ovulation days. Since they hadn’t been timing their sex precisely, they really knew nothing.

  “We’ve been doing it wrong,” Susan announced.

  “I thought we were doing it pretty well,” Eddie answered. When she didn’t smile, he added, “That’s good news, isn’t it? It means we just need to do a little administrative work and we’ll be all set.”

  “But if it doesn’t work, we have to wait a year starting now. We’ve wasted the past six months.”

  “It didn’t feel like a waste to me.”

  “You know what I mean.”