Arts & Entertainments: A Novel (13 page)

But now Eddie felt like a star. He could see it in their faces, in the eagerness with which Blakeman introduced him. He was just making small talk, but people looked at him as though every word was fascinating. They crowded around, and he was hardly surprised when one drunken girl called out, “I know you.”

It took Eddie a moment to realize he really did know her, because he couldn’t immediately connect this figure, in her dark makeup and short leather skirt, to the girl Patrick had introduced to him outside church last spring.

“Melinda, right?”

She laughed.

“Melissa.”

“Right. Sorry about that. How’s Patrick?”

“We broke up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s cool. It just wasn’t working out. He’s so serious, you know?”

Eddie hadn’t found Patrick particularly serious.

“Sometimes that can be good,” he said. “Maybe I should have been a bit more serious when I was your age.”

“How are things at St. Albert’s?”

“Not so hot,” Eddie said, suspecting that she already knew. “I got fired yesterday.”

“That’s a bummer,” Melissa told him. “I got fired from
my internship this summer. My boss caught me doing blow in her office.”

“You seem to have recovered all right.”

“Totally.”

There was a lull in the conversation until one of Melissa’s friends approached.

“Let me get a picture of the two of you,” she said.

Melissa handed the girl her phone and put her arm around Eddie.

“Get closer,” the girl said.

Melissa squeezed up against Eddie. He didn’t mean to move, but her weight unbalanced him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder to straighten himself up.

“It’s totally cute,” the girl said after taking the picture. “I’ll text it to you.”

Eddie told her his number and the girl sent him the photo. He took out his phone to look at it.

“You’re right,” he said. “Totally cute.”

Melissa put her head next to his and looked at the screen.

“I like the way you fuck,” she whispered to him.

“Excuse me?”

“I like the way you fuck in that video.”

She was the first person that night to have mentioned the tape directly, and that fact briefly overshadowed the manner in which she’d brought it up.

“I didn’t really mean for people to see it.”

“You don’t have to act all embarrassed. It’s hot. I’d like to be fucked that way.”

Eddie tried to remember whether girls had spoken this way when he was Melissa’s age. Certainly they hadn’t spoken this way to him, but perhaps they did to the older men who hung around at parties. Under the circumstances he seemed to have lost any grounds to protest.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll meet a nice guy who can, you know, take care of that for you.”

“The world is crawling with nice guys,” she said. “Patrick’s the nicest guy I know. But I’d like to be fucked that way by you.”

“I’m married,” Eddie said, somewhat irrelevantly. “And twice your age. And your boyfriend is a student of mine.”

“He’s not your student anymore, or my boyfriend. It’s not like I’m some kid. I’m nineteen years old. Anyway, didn’t your wife throw you out?”

“Did you read that in the paper?”

“Good one. ’Cause I’m some lame who reads the newspaper. It was on Teeser. You’ve got your own threadhead and everything. ‘Mr. Drake.’ I hear she threw all your shit out on the street.”

“She did.” It still didn’t seem quite real to him.

“That sucks.”

“It sucks,” he agreed.

“But so do I.”

It occurred to Eddie that being propositioned by beautiful nineteen-year-olds was another part of the fame he’d once wanted so badly.

“It’s a little weird talking with you. I mean, knowing you just watched that thing.”

“Because I’ve seen you but you haven’t seen me?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You can see me if that will even the score.”

“I guess you’re not too hung up on privacy.”

Melissa laughed.

“Just to be clear, I’m getting a lecture about privacy from a guy who sold a sex tape for a hundred grand?”

“How did you know how much I sold it for?”

“Morgan told me.”

“You know Morgan?”

“I met him here a few weeks ago.”

“That son of a bitch.”

“If you want my opinion,” she said, “you got ripped off. You could have sold it for twice as much.”

“You should have been my agent. Maybe we can go into business together.”

“No, I’m serious. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s superhot. I’d watch it again even if there wasn’t anyone famous in it.”

Eddie was surprised at how reassuring it felt to hear this. In spite of himself, he was enjoying talking to her.

“So what are you going to do from here?” Melissa asked. “I mean, what are you going to make of all this?”

The obvious answer was that he was going to convince his wife to take him back. That he was going to find a way to return everything to normal as soon as he could. But he knew that answer would disappoint her, and he couldn’t bring himself to give it.

“I have some ideas,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about them. It’s private.”

“Private,” Melissa said, and she laughed again. “Suit yourself. Do you want another drink?”

WHEN HE WENT TO
make a pot of coffee in Blakeman’s kitchen the next morning, Eddie found a note on the counter.

Off to work. Make yourself at home. Aspirin in the cabinet beside the fridge. I left the paper, thought it might interest you.
—
Blakeman

Beside it was a copy of the
Daily News.
“Who Is Handsome Eddie?” the headline asked. It showed a still shot of the video, Eddie’s body leaning into Martha’s. Some parts of the shot had been blurred, but it revealed a lot for the newsstand. Where Eddie had carefully cut out his own face, the paper had superimposed an image from a commercial he’d done years ago. In it, he wore the expression of a man eagerly accepting a stick of cinnamon chewing gum. It was a grotesque contrast, the forced smile on top of the thrusting body. He should have known that he would become part of the story. Now that he had, his efforts to conceal himself were damning. He would have been better off just leaving his face visible.

Below the picture the front page read “Details Emerge of Dr. Drake Tape Bum: See
Pages
.” Eddie flipped to the spread, which attempted to tell the story of his life. It was filled with old head shots and playbills—most of them, it seemed, from the box that Susan had emptied out onto the street. But there were also more personal items, including a photo of Eddie, Justin, and Blakeman standing on a corner in their school uniforms, their arms over each other’s shoulders. It looked to be from about seventh grade.

“At the Upper East Side’s elite St. Albert’s School, where he earned the nickname ‘Handsome Eddie,’” the caption read, “Hartley’s friends included Justin Price, now a megarich hedge fund manager and prominent philanthropist, and longtime lit scenester Max Blakeman.” This might please Blakeman, Eddie thought, but Justin wouldn’t be happy to see it. Although he was a familiar figure from charity boards and benefits, Justin kept his personal life out of the news. He had a very simple metric for success—money—and he didn’t need public approval. He didn’t even want public attention.

But Eddie had wanted attention. Now that he had it, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Did the quality of the attention matter? He remembered Melissa telling him that he could be a star, wondering what he planned to make out of all this. He set the paper on the table and called Talent Management.

“Where were you yesterday?” Alex asked when Eddie got through to him.

“Were you trying to reach me?”

“Are you kidding? I called ten times.”

“I turned my phone off. I was getting a lot of calls.”

“No shit you were getting calls. We’ve got a real story on our hands.”

“I know. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“Before we go any further, what’s this shit about a movie in China?”

“Korea,” Eddie corrected him. “It’s a much smaller market.”

“Now you’re a funny man?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied about that.”

“What do I care if you lie? Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been asked to help out with some domestic deception. But come up with something semi-plausible. Then tell your fucking accomplice, so I don’t have your wife asking me about checks I don’t know about. That’s Bullshitting 101.”

“I was going to tell you. Everything got out of hand so quickly.”

“Water under the bridge. This story has real potential. We’ve got not one but two wronged women, both pregnant. And triplets! The tabloids love these multiple births. I’m going to have a lot of opportunities for you.”

“That would be great. I need some opportunities right now.”

“The first thing we do is get you and Susan on the morning show circuit. Tell your side of the story and whatnot.”

“She threw me out.”

“Don’t I know it. I read the paper. What are the chances you two patch things up?”

“We’ll straighten it out eventually.”

“Eventually is great, but how about right now?”

“I’m guessing it’s going to take a little bit of time. She seems pretty hurt by things.”

“You aren’t going to get many invitations to appear by yourself. People want Susan. They want those triplets. I could get you on one of the twenty-four-hour entertainment channels, but if you want the
Today
show or
This Morning Live,
you’re going to have to get her on board.”

“I don’t want to go on talk shows and talk about Martha or the tape or my triplets or any of that. That’s not the kind of opportunity I’m looking for. I want to act, Alex. I think this is my chance to have a real career.”

“How about celebrity strip poker?”

“Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“You can’t act, Eddie. That’s the truth. You’ve never been able to. You’ve got a shot at fame here, but it’s not going to be Stanislavski or whatever the fuck you’re hoping for. You want to make something of this, I’m telling you, you’ve got to get Susan to go along. Once she’s in, sky’s the limit. Brian Moody wants to talk about a reality show. He’s the best producer out there. You’re not going to do any better than Moody.”

“We don’t want our own show.”

“Everybody wants their own show.”

“Not everybody.”

“Great, so I’ve got a client who doesn’t want to be on television? What am I supposed to do with that?”

“I want to be on television, just not like that. I don’t want to talk about Susan’s pregnancy on
This Morning Live.
She’s embarrassed enough about this whole thing as it is.”

“All right,” Alex said, the energy gone from his voice. “I’ll see what I can do in a more traditional line. I’m telling you now it’s going to be a harder sell.”

“I thought hard sells were your job,” Eddie answered.

Once off the phone, he sat on the couch with his cup of coffee and turned the TV on. He wanted to see if there was anything about him on Entertainment Daily. Despite what Alex had said, he still thought he could get real work out of all this. After a commercial,
ED Morning News
came on, hosted by a woman named Coco Kalman.

“Just a day after leaving his triplet-expecting wife, Drake
Tape star Eddie Hartley was seen out on the town, and even canoodling with an apparently underage girl.” The screen cut to Eddie leaning toward Melissa’s face, his eyes half closed in drunkenness. “This photo was Teesed out last night by a user named SweetMelissa1987,” Kalman continued. “Along with the message ‘Spent the night with Mr. Drake.’ No word yet on SweetMelissa’s real identity or where Hartley’s night with the young hottie went from there. Entertainment Daily will be all over this story as it develops.”

Eddie turned off the TV and called Blakeman at work.

“How do I get on Teeser?” he asked.

Blakeman laughed.

“Where have you been hiding? All the best stars know how to work social media.”

“St. Albert’s always wanted us to be careful about this stuff, with all the students on it and everything.”

“That worked out pretty well for you.”

“I know. So explain what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Blakeman told Eddie where to find his laptop and walked him through opening an account.

“You might as well just use your own name, since no one will believe it’s really you.”

Eddie typed in the user name “EddieHartley” and was told it already existed. He tried “HandsomeEddie” with the same result. Then he tried “HandsomeHartley,” and that worked.

“She said I was a threadhead? Mr. Drake. What does that mean?”

“Go in that search box there and put in an asterisk and then type ‘MrDrake.’ One word, no period.”

The page’s layout confused Eddie. There looked to be about a dozen hits, which didn’t seem so bad, except that when he scrolled down more appeared. He reached the end, and it
did it again. He kept going until he was in the hundreds. Who were these people? What could they possibly have to say about him? “Honey, gonna do you like *MrDrake,” one read. Another said, “Shaping up to be a two rub out mornin *DrakeTape *MrDrake.” Every few seconds another appeared. He searched for the user name SweetMelissa l987, and he found Melissa’s feed. At the top was the post from the night before: “OMG Spent the night with *MrDrake. Photographic evidence.” A link in the message brought up the photo he’d just seen on TV.

“She’s got 5,352 names in her tease circle,” Eddie told Blakeman. “Is that a lot?”

“It’s more than I’ve got.”

Eddie continued scrolling down the page, which showed replies to Melissa’s message. “Thatzz shit hot grrrrrl” was the first, from a user named NoNocaine. The one next said, “Dudes a creep but I’d get on it.” Beneath that was a message that read “Lulz that guy was my drama teacher!” Eddie clicked on the user name, but nothing in the profile immediately established whether it was really a boy from one of his classes.

“By the way,” Blakeman said, “I’m having some people over tonight.”

“Again?”

“More or less always, as you might recall. You might want to clean up a little bit. And try not to get quite so banged up this time. You know I don’t stand on formalities, but I mean more for your own benefit. From an image-management standpoint and all.”