Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

by Christopher Beha

  “Can I see you when you get out?”

  This response deflated her.

  “Meet me on the south end of the park at noon,” she said. “I’ll be coming out of class then.”

  As soon as she left, Eddie turned on Entertainment Daily to watch reactions to the previous night’s episode. He was ready to hear people vilifying his treatment of Patrick. He would finally be the center of the story. Instead, Marian Blair announced that Justine Bliss was dead.

  “The beloved singer’s long, courageous struggle ended a few minutes after midnight,” she told the camera. “The nation mourns the loss of a child.”

  A montage of Justine played over her last single, “Gettin’ My V Worked Up.” Eddie had heard the reports in the previous few days—that she’d contracted pneumonia, that her condition was back to critical, that her family had been called to her bedside. He’d assumed these were efforts to revive interest in her story. But this news seemed definitive. He doubted that even Moody was at the point of faking deaths. Eddie felt unable to generate appropriate feelings of sadness and anger. All he could do was wonder how such feelings might be approximated for the camera.

  To avoid overacting in response to his absence of genuine emotion, Eddie turned off the TV. He collected the morning papers from the hallway and brought them into the room. The Daily News showed a candlelight vigil that had taken place outside the hospital when word first broke after midnight. “A Star Burns Out,” the headline read. “Nation Mourns End of Our Bliss.” Eddie brought the paper back to bed and opened it to Peerbaum’s column, expecting an elegy for Justine. Instead he found a photo of himself with his arm wrapped protectively around Melissa. “Enough is enough,” the column began.

  I’m writing this just a few moments after hearing what the whole world will have heard by the time these words are printed, that our angelic voice has been silenced. Like everyone else, I am sad. But I’m also angry, because this child didn’t have to die. We all let it happen. And I want to hold on to the anger, to remember how it feels, so that we might take action to make sure we don’t ever have to feel this way again.

  I will always remember where I was when I got the news. I was finishing the column I thought you would all be reading this morning, a column about the rivalry between Eddie Hartley and Patrick Hendricks. That all seems silly and unimportant now, but I wonder if that isn’t part of the lesson. Last night, during the era that will forever be Before the End of Bliss, I watched Patrick Hendricks stand in a house of God and praise Eddie Hartley, and I watched Eddie dismiss Patrick with a word I can’t print in this paper.

  What does this have to do with Justine? Let me fill in the blanks. Doesn’t the fact that Eddie Hartley was even allowed to teach a boy like Patrick in the first place tell us everything we need to know about ourselves? Isn’t it time we started taking lessons from people like Patrick instead?

  Eddie skimmed to the bottom of the page, more or less taking in the substance of the arguments. He was famous for selling a sex tape, for abandoning his pregnant wife, taking up with an underage girl. These were the things the culture celebrated. Apparently they were also the things that had killed Justine. Eddie hadn’t literally pushed the girl down the stairs, of course, but he might as well have.

  “In the wake of this tragedy,” the column concluded, “America is faced with the same choice facing Melissa: Patrick or Eddie? I hope we all choose wisely.”

  Peerbaum had probably already finished his column about Eddie when the news came in. He was on a deadline, and so he’d repurposed what he had, seasoning it with moral outrage to cover the fact that it was no longer fresh. It might not have been fair, but that was beside the point. Peerbaum had helped to create Eddie; he obviously felt entitled to destroy him. But that wasn’t quite right. It wouldn’t destroy him at all. Peerbaum was building him up even bigger. Even on the day after Justine died, they were talking about him. People were interested.

  The rest of the paper supported Eddie’s interpretation of Peerbaum’s column as a last-minute adjustment. Surprisingly little mention was made of Justine apart from the lead story. The news had come in when it was too late to scrap the issue. The page next to Peerbaum’s described the desperate effort of Melissa’s mother to separate her daughter from Eddie, to get her back with Patrick, who had always been a “calming influence” in her life. The article called Melissa’s mother a “classic beauty” and a “retired actress.” Eddie looked at the photo in a bottom corner of the page, and he remembered the sense he’d had when he saw her on the show, that she was familiar from somewhere. Oddly, the grainy newsprint of the head shot increased the feeling. He imagined staring straight into her eyes, her eyes staring back. A smudge on the page gave her face a dirty complexion, which settled the question. This woman had thrown the eggs at him.

  At first he suspected Melissa’s intervention. It would have been easy enough to recruit her mother to help nudge their story along, push them onto the front page. But the incident coincided so neatly with Susan’s admission that she wanted Eddie back. The timing had been too good. Moody had done it. But why enlist Melissa’s mother? Eddie was still being too naive. This woman was an actor—an extra—hired for two different minor roles.

  The satisfaction of discovery quickly collapsed when Eddie realized how many more questions the discovery raised. Who else was in Moody’s company of players? Not Melissa—they’d met long before Moody’s arrival in his life. Or so it had seemed. But how could he really know when Moody had arrived? Susan had spoken to Alex one day, and that evening she was throwing Eddie’s things out the window in the most dramatic fashion possible. If Moody’s involvement could reach back that far, it could go back much further. Moody found Morgan in Hollywood and sent him back to Blakeman’s apartment. Moody hired Martha Martin to be in that play with Eddie. Moody reached down from the sky to twist Eddie’s ankle on the basketball court during eighth grade tryouts. In all his life, there’d been no chance happenings. Everything had been willed by some invisible source obscure to Eddie, all for the purpose of a story being told. Everything had conspired to bring him to this point.

  Eddie set down the paper and laughed. As he looked again at the image of Justine, it only made him laugh harder. It was a cruel laughter, and it might easily be used against him, but he couldn’t stop himself. Even her death seemed part of the vast web. How did he know Justine was real? He’d never seen her in person, only on TV or in magazines. Supposing she was real, it didn’t seem beyond Moody’s powers in that moment to bring death upon her and resurrect her when the story was done.

  He knew this was all crazy. He had to pull himself together before he met Melissa. But this feeling—that he was walking through a world that had been meticulously constructed only so that he could walk through it—increased when he went outside. People recognized him, looking him over with anger or disgust. Others just went about their day. But even they seemed to be following directions. Eddie was walking through a soundstage. A church bell down the block sounded the hour as he arrived at the building on the south side of Washington Square that held Melissa’s class. Students began to stream out, but Melissa wasn’t among them. After a few minutes, a girl in a navy sailor’s coat and black jeans separated herself from a small group to approach him.

  “You’re Eddie Hartley, right?”

  Eddie nodded, but he gave her no other prompt. She would have to take charge of the scene.

  “Are you here to see Melissa? She wasn’t in class today. She’s never in class, you know. She says it’s because you don’t want her to go, because you didn’t graduate and you’re afraid she’ll leave you if she does. I think it’s terrible what you do to her.”

  A day before, he would have told this girl that she didn’t know what she was talking about, that he’d always encouraged Melissa. If she’d persisted, he would have told her to mind her fucking business. And he would have been on tape screaming at a well-meaning college kid because Melissa stood him up.

  “Y
ou’re sure she wasn’t in class?” he asked instead, in a concerned voice. “She seemed so excited for it this morning.”

  “I’m sure.” But the girl seemed doubtful now.

  “Thank you so much for telling me.”

  She stood restlessly, as though waiting for Eddie to dismiss her from the scene.

  “If you see her,” he said, “tell her that I’m worried about her.”

  Eddie turned away and took out his phone. He had to leave Melissa a message expressing concern. He did wonder, out of simple curiosity, where she’d gone. She was with Patrick, of course. Were they eating lunch at that diner? Were they at some impromptu memorial for Justine? He would find out soon enough. There was no point disappearing on him if she couldn’t make a scene out of it. She would tell him where she’d been, or else tell him some transparent lie. Either way, he would lose his temper and look bad. And that wouldn’t be the end of it. She’d come back to Eddie for a time. She had to, because leaving him immediately would spoil the drama. She’d drag out her decision so long as it remained interesting, until the whole world was clamoring for her to make a choice. By the time it was over, Melissa and Patrick could have their own show. He left a voicemail asking where she was. He tried to make his tone express only worry.

  On the way back to the hotel, he began to develop a plan. To pull it off, he would need to improvise. He passed a luggage store on Broadway and walked in. The salesman inside recognized Eddie and offered him half price on everything. He was the first person in days to respond with real excitement to the cameras. It was as though Eddie had stepped off the set. Eddie picked two large suitcases, which he asked to have delivered to the Cue. Now he would need something to put in them. He hadn’t accumulated many possessions while living at the hotel, but he wanted the effect of carrying overstuffed bags out of the room. He went into another store and bought a pile of clothes, not bothering to try them on.

  Back in the room, he packed everything except a few stray items, which he left on the bed beside the open bags. As he waited for Melissa, he played the next step out in his head. He imagined her possible reactions, and he considered the best way to respond to each one. He felt some of the old excitement he used to get before going onstage, back when he still thought he had some talent, when he expected to convince the audience.

  The part he missed least about acting was waiting around. As an extra or a bit player, you sat for hours on set until the moment you were needed. You were expected to be ready whenever you were called into action. You quickly did your part and sat again. Friendships were built, and occasionally romances began, but mostly these long stretches practiced you in the ways of tedium. Stars might use the time for elaborate practical jokes or to sleep in their trailers, but neither of these options was open to someone as easily replaceable as Eddie had been.

  Now he was the star, and his room at the hotel was nicer than any trailer, but the waiting itself felt the same in its mixture of anticipation and boredom. The only other person in the room was Hal, who almost never made conversation while holding the camera. That wasn’t so bad, perhaps, because it meant he wouldn’t ask Eddie about the suitcases. Three hours passed, and then a fourth. Eddie worried that Melissa wouldn’t come back after all. She might wait until morning, or return in the middle of the night, appearing to take great care not to wake him while making sure to do the opposite. He couldn’t wait until then. He was on the edge of giving up when he heard a key card in the door. He picked up the last of his things and worked them slowly into the bags, so that Melissa caught him zipping one of the suitcases as she came in.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Where have you been all day?” Eddie tried to make his voice express concern. “You didn’t go to class.”

  “I was with my mother,” she said. “I’m a nineteen-year-old girl. I like to see my mom sometimes.”

  Eddie thought she might be drunk, and this seemed to work in his favor.

  “Was Patrick there?”

  Melissa tried to look surprised by the question.

  “How did you know?”

  “I just guessed,” he said softly.

  He could tell she’d expected anger from him. She’d been looking forward to the blowout to come. Now she had to recalibrate.

  “It’s been a weird day,” she said. “For some reason I needed to see him again.”

  “I understand.”

  He left the bag half closed and crossed the room to her.

  “You’re not mad?” she said.

  “I was mad at first. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I know Justine’s death hit us all pretty hard. When a tragedy happens, you learn things about yourself. You wanted to be with the person who matters most to you. And I’m not that person.”

  “Don’t take it that way, Eddie.”

  “This day has put things into perspective for me, too,” he continued. “We both knew this couldn’t last. I’m too old for you. You don’t really want to be with me.”

  “That’s not true,” Melissa said. “What are you doing?”

  She inflected the question as if she meant it to pierce through the veil of their narrative and reach Eddie directly. She wanted him to know he was making a mistake.

  “I’m trying to be honest,” Eddie said. “With myself as much as with you. We should have tried that a long time ago.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” she said. “I went to see Patrick to tell him we weren’t getting back together. I’m a little mixed up right now, but I told you I’d stick it out, and that’s what I plan to do.”

  “You don’t need to say that. You don’t owe me anything. Just follow your heart.”

  “My heart wants to be with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eddie said. “Ever since I heard the news about Justine, my wife and kids are all I can think about. It was wrong for us to do this. I realize that now. We just lost ourselves for a while. I can’t undo all the hurt I’ve caused, but I’m going to try to make things right. You belong with someone your own age, and I belong with my wife.”

  Eddie felt the tears running down his cheeks. He tasted the hint of salt on his lips, and he had to hold back a smile. He was crying on command. He turned from Melissa and finished zipping his bag.

  “Is this really it?” she asked.

  “I love you,” Eddie said. “I want you to know that. You’ve got a long, wonderful life ahead of you. I hope you’ll think of me sometimes and smile.”

  He worried he was overdoing it. But it wasn’t really possible to overdo these things. He put an arm around Melissa and he kissed her forehead in way that he hoped would appear fatherly.

  “Tell Patrick I’m sorry,” he said. Then he picked up his bags and walked out of the room.

  TWENTY-TWO

  EDDIE FELT A PIERCING sense of solitude as he left the hotel. He didn’t regret what he’d done. He wasn’t even sad, exactly— just inexplicably lonely. Had he become so attached to Melissa that the idea of losing her could have such an immediate effect? The audience waiting outside looked disappointed by his appearance, as though they recognized this change in him right away. He headed up the block untouched until he got to the corner, where he turned to make sure Hal had made it safely through the crowd. But Hal wasn’t there. Eddie wasn’t being filmed.

  Hal never fell behind. If he wasn’t there already, he wasn’t coming. Eddie continued walking, his sense of isolation more acute now that its source had revealed itself. He hadn’t meant to be banishing himself from the show. He’d only meant to take control of the story. Moody’s decision to cut him loose didn’t make sense. Eddie was a bit uncooperative, but he was also the most interesting thing about the show. He imagined asking Moody about the decision, and just as he had the idea he stopped at a streetlight to find Moody next to him. For a moment he thought he was imagining it.

  “What’s going on?” Moody asked lazily, as though they were old friends who’d just bumped into each other.

  Eddie tried to
take the same tone.

  “I’m leaving Melissa.”

  “So I gathered. I was hoping there might be something I could do to help you reconcile. Every relationship has its rough patches.”

  “It’s too late. We’re done.”

  The unlit cigarette bobbed in the corner of Moody’s mouth as he sighed contemplatively.

  “Can I give you a ride?”

  “Do you have someplace in mind?”

  “I assumed that you did. You packed those big bags. I imagine you’re taking them somewhere. I’m just offering you a lift.”

  He waved to a black town car creeping along beside them, which pulled over at his signal.

  “I think I’d like to walk,” Eddie said.

  “There’s nothing sinister going on here,” Moody insisted. “I’ve done a lot for you, and I’d just like ten minutes of your time.”

  Eddie might have kept walking if he had anywhere to go. The trunk popped open and Moody took the bags. Eddie took a seat in the back of the car while Moody walked around to the other door. A tinted glass divider separated them from the driver, and the windows—also tinted—were closed. It was like leaving one world for another.

  “Where can I take you?” Moody asked as the car pulled through the light. He smiled at the searching look on Eddie’s face. “You didn’t think it out beyond leaving the hotel?”

  “I guess not.”

  “It’s not too late to turn around. We’re making great television.”

  “If I go back to Susan it would make great television, too.”

  “You can’t do that right now, I’m afraid.”

  “Why not? We both know Melissa is going to wind up with Patrick. Why do you need to drag things out when everyone knows how it’s going to end?”

  “Dragging things out is the whole point, Eddie. That’s all life is: dragging things out when everyone knows how it’s going to end.”