Arts & Entertainments: A Novel (27 page)

“Neither am I,” Eddie said. “If I ruin the show, Susan will have to come back to me. There won’t be anywhere else to go.”

“How do you think she’ll feel about that? She could have come back to you at any time. She’s not chained up. She’s sticking with the show because she wants to be on the show.”

“She’ll change her mind.”

“So let her change her mind. Give her a chance to decide for herself.”

“And what do I do in the meantime?”

“I have a plan for you,” Moody said. “The audience has a plan for you. It involves going back to Melissa and taking on the sins of the world. If you do that your wife and your children will be set forever. And you’ll have a television career for as long as you want one. But we’ve got to get moving on this. I let you out of this car, and you walk back to the hotel. You don’t even take the bags out of the trunk. That never happened. I drive away, and Hal is waiting for you outside the hotel.”

Eddie could see it all playing out. He knew it would work exactly as Moody described. Everything always did. But for all his gnomic authority, Moody wasn’t actually omnipotent. If he were, he wouldn’t bother talking Eddie into anything. He’d just make it happen. And he didn’t actually own Eddie. For all the pressure he might apply, Eddie could still say no. That was still under his control.

“I won’t do it,” he said with as much finality as he could manage.

Moody took this with surprising equanimity.

“Too bad,” he said. “It would have been great TV.”

Though Moody made no sign that Eddie could see, the car pulled over and the doors unlocked.

“Where do I go from here?” Eddie asked.

“You go wherever you want. I can’t stop you. You’ll still be getting your weekly check until the contract expires. The
imperial suite at the Cue is waiting, but if you don’t want to stay there, it’s not my job to find you other accommodations. You’re on your own.”

Eddie had expected to find himself across town, but it seemed they had been driving in circles, because Moody dropped him near Washington Square, not far from where Eddie had waited for Melissa that morning. This time, Moody didn’t offer to help with the bags. Eddie took them from the trunk and placed them on the sidewalk. Before the car pulled away, a window opened.

“One more thing,” Moody said. “You’ve still got a chance to do a selfless act. Stay away when those babies are born. The hospital is going to be covered with security, so you won’t get to her anyway, but you shouldn’t even try. You need to understand that she doesn’t want you there. If you force yourself into the situation, you’ll be causing needless suffering for Susan and the kids.”

The window closed and the car sped off, leaving Eddie alone with his luggage. He felt ridiculous carrying all these expensive clothes he’d bought for show. On the corner, two homeless men were begging for change. Eddie brought the two suitcases over and put one in front of each of them.

“Do you guys need some clothes?” he asked. “All brand-new. They still have tags, so you can sell them if you don’t want them.”

Unburdened, he walked into the park. A crowd of students had gathered beneath the victory arch, holding candles and photographs of Justine, singing a song of hers that Eddie vaguely recognized. He stood on the edge of the crowd and swayed along.

“Here you go, man,” said a girl beside him. She passed him a candle and lit it from her own. She looked like the girl he’d
spoken to that morning outside Melissa’s class, but her hair was cut short. She gave no sign of recognition.

“Thanks,” he told her, putting the thought out of his head. He lifted the candle, watched its flame dance to Justine’s song, and wept.

THE METROPOLITAN HOTEL HAD
not struck Eddie as particularly shabby when he spent his first night there after Susan threw him out, but that was before his months at the Cue. Now the place’s condition spoke of his own declining prospects. The brown paint on the lobby walls was peeling through to a coat of blue beneath. The ceilings were water stained, and half the lights were out. The man at the front desk barely looked up from a televised tribute to Justine to hand over the key to Eddie’s room, which stood at the top of a narrow staircase. It was barely large enough to fit its full-sized bed, and the television on the bedside table looked nearly two decades old.

How had he arrived at this place? Moody had been right. He’d signed everything away a long time ago. Leaving the Cue wouldn’t bring Susan back. Nothing would bring her back if she didn’t want to come back. And, honestly, who wouldn’t choose Rex Gilbert over him, if offered the choice?
So what was he doing here? He’d exercised his freedom, but what kind of freedom was freedom to choose his own banishment?

At least he had money coming until Susan gave birth and his contract ended. After that, he’d need to figure something out, but that might not be so hard. After all, he was famous now. He’d even done a bit of decent acting. There had to be some way to make something out of that. Moody wasn’t the only producer in the business. Eddie would have to wait until his contract ended to sign another deal, but he could start planning right away. He needed to talk to Alex in any case, to discuss the repercussions of what he’d done. But soon after settling in the room, he discovered he didn’t have his phone. He’d packed it in one of the suitcases he’d given away. For the moment, everything was quiet. The sense of disconnection calmed Eddie. He felt a pulse within him, the inner self.

IT WAS AN ODD
feeling to wake the next morning with nothing to do, but not an unpleasant one. He wondered what else would be different about the day. There weren’t any crowds waiting when he went to the corner to buy the morning papers. No one gave him a second look. By itself this didn’t mean much, Eddie thought. There were no cameras to signal his worthiness for attention. Turner Bledsoe could probably walk down the street in New York without being recognized.

Back in his room, he worked carefully through all the papers without seeing his name. All the gossip stories were about Justine, but they found plenty of ways to mention other stars. Martha and Turner would be attending the funeral, to be held that night at the Staples Center in L.A., and Martha said she was especially moved by Justine’s death as a new mother herself. The service would be simulcast at Madison Square Gar
den as part of the Stomping Out Head Trauma Gala, whose celebrity attendees included Susan and Rex.

Eddie watched an hour of Entertainment Daily before changing to a news channel, where a commentator argued that Justine’s death had altered everything. America finally needed to break its addiction to celebrity gossip. Even this man didn’t think to connect Eddie to the problem. It amazed Eddie to see how quickly Moody had written him out of the story. But the real test would come when the next episode of
Desperately Expecting Susan
aired. The show was nearly in sync with real time now. The producers were turning footage into episodes in a matter of days. They couldn’t cut Eddie out entirely—it would be too abrupt, bad television. They would have to make some mention of his departure. He hoped they would eventually use his good-bye to Melissa. It was the best performance he’d ever given, and he wanted to see it aired. It might give him some sense of finality, let him go back to the world as himself and figure out what came next. But all this speculation came to nothing, because that night’s episode was preempted by funeral warm-up coverage.

Guests filed into the Staples Center, stopped along the way by a red-carpet correspondent who asked where they were when they first heard the news about Justine and who had designed their mourning wear. Interior shots showed the arena darkened, apart from a spotlight on the casket at center court. While the seats at the Staples Center filled up, 2True cut to the head trauma gala. Susan sat courtside at the Garden, with Rex’s arm wrapped protectively over her shoulder.

“The story of the night so far,” the New York correspondent reported, “is Rex and Susan. After months of will-they-or-won’t-they, the famous ‘just friends’ have declared their couplehood. ‘In a great tragedy you realize you don’t have
time to waste,’ the pair said through a publicist. ‘You have to show your true feelings.’ That’s a bit of heartwarming news we could all use about now.”

Eddie felt a surprising lack of bitterness as he turned the TV off. Mostly the scene had given him an urge for human company. He wanted to see someone who really knew him, who had known him before any of these changes. He thought of Blakeman and Justin, but without his phone it wouldn’t be easy to contact them. He could go to Blakeman’s place, but there would inevitably be a crowd there that he didn’t want to face. It was just as well. He couldn’t explain things to Blakeman. He didn’t want to answer questions about Melissa and Patrick or Susan and Rex. He wanted to speak with someone who wouldn’t care about any of that. If possible, he wanted to speak with someone who didn’t even know about it.

BY THE TIME HE
woke the next morning, he knew who that person was. He waited for the school day to begin before walking to St. Albert’s, so that he wouldn’t see any of the teachers or the boys. He wore the same clothes he’d been wearing for two days—the only ones he had. It had been impulsive to give those bags away; he could have used their contents now.

Outside the school, Stephen McLaughlin sat on the sidewalk, holding his sign.

“Handsome E,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I got fired,” Eddie told him.

“Doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been trying to tell you for years these people have no loyalty.”

“I should have listened.”

Stephen smiled in recognition.

“How’s your mother doing?”

“She’s good.” Eddie lowered himself down beside Stephen. “She lives in Florida.”

“You get down to see her much?”

“Not as much as I should.”

“She’s a nice woman. She always looked after me when my dad was being tough.”

“I should get down there more.”

“And how about your wife?”

Eddie thought Stephen might know something after all, but his face showed only casual interest.

“She’s pregnant,” Eddie said. “Due any day now.”

“Congratulations. Boy or girl?”

“Girls. Three of them.”

“That’s wild,” Stephen said.

They sat together for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. They didn’t talk about much. But that suited Eddie— sitting quietly next to someone who’d always known him. Nearly every day for three years Stephen had sat in this place, saying almost nothing. His life took place inside his head. What happened on the sidewalk wasn’t nearly as real to him as whatever was going through his mind. This had always seemed a little sad to Eddie, but not anymore. Eddie felt a bit as he had while sitting next to Susan at church. He’d stopped going once she threw him out, and now he realized that he missed it. He also realized that Susan had never gone to church on the show. The new Susan— the champion of Richard Oh’s melted figurines—would have seemed out of place kneeling in a church.

ON HIS THIRD DAY
with Stephen, Eddie bought them each a sandwich, and they ate lunch together. Each day he arrived late enough in the morning and left early enough in the afternoon that he never saw anyone from St. Albert’s who might
recognize him. He wondered what they would make of him in his dirty jeans and old sweater. He had a long way to go before he matched Stephen’s torn clothes and six-inch beard, but he thought he could get there eventually.

When the weekend came, Eddie bought the same sandwich and ate it on the sidewalk alone. After he’d finished, he wandered the neighborhood for most of the afternoon. As evening fell, he arrived outside the bar where he’d gone on the day he got fired. It was crowded now, but the same old man sat at the bar. Eddie took the empty stool beside him.

“Good to see you again,” Eddie said.

The man looked over with neither recognition nor surprise, as though used to being known to people he didn’t remember meeting. He lifted his glass in a silent greeting. Eddie ordered a beer, along with a burger that he ate while watching
Puppy Mill Tycoon
on the muted television. He’d finished his food and ordered another drink when a woman walked up beside him and pointed to the screen.

“Isn’t that just around the corner?”

Eddie looked up to see his old apartment building.

“That’s where Susan Hartley lives,” the woman continued. “Why are they cutting to it live? Do you think she’s having the babies?”

As the woman said this, Susan emerged from the building, supported by Rex. Her face was covered in sweat, and she was breathing heavily. The camera turned to show a black Escalade waiting with an open door. Everything in Eddie wanted to get up and run to her, but he knew she’d be gone before he got there. The best way to know she was all right was to stay there and watch.

“Can you take this off mute?” he asked the bartender.

“What’s she saying?” the woman called out.

Susan’s face filled the screen now, and her mouth was wide
with terror, but she didn’t seem to Eddie to be saying anything in particular. The whole bar’s attention now turned to the TV.

“Can you put some volume on?”

“She’s saying ‘Eddie.’ That’s her husband’s name. She’s calling out his name.”

“No she’s not. She’s just screaming. She’s got three kids trying to get out of her. I’ll bet that hurts.”

“It looked like ‘Eddie’ to me.”

“Turn up the volume.”

Still no one moved. Susan called out again in silence, and Eddie threw down enough cash to cover his tab.

If he was wrong, he would ruin everything by coming for her. Moody would pull the plug and they’d be forced to raise the kids with nothing. That was assuming Susan took him back. Destroying her last chance might prove worse in her eyes than everything he’d already done. But Eddie’s children were being born, and he wasn’t going to watch it on TV.

He ran downtown, in the direction of Walters Presbyterian, the hospital where Susan’s doctor worked. He was still a few blocks away when the sidewalks grew crowded with spectators. They couldn’t have all arrived in the past half hour, Eddie thought. They’d been camped out, waiting for this moment. As he pushed his way through, they pushed back.