Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

It occurred to Eddie that he could spend this money any way he wanted, since Susan didn’t know it was there. For that matter, he didn’t have to go back to Susan at all. He could just walk away from everything. Something in him found the prospect attractive. But Susan was the only justification for what he’d done. She’d needed it so badly. The money would go to raising their child. It wasn’t all that much for that purpose, but to Eddie it felt like a lot.

THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED should have been perfect. For the first time in a decade, he didn’t spend a part of every day worrying about money. Once this sense of insecurity was gone, he realized how he’d lived in it. It had become his atmosphere, or a kind of first principle from which every element of his life emerged. Now it was gone.

Susan was happier than he’d ever seen her, happier than she’d been when they first started dating, before all this trouble began. She was convinced it was going to work this time. They had been given this reprieve; it had to have happened for a reason. There was simply no point in their being disappointed again. They decided to enjoy the time before treatments began. They started having sex again — real, spontaneous sex, with no purpose but pleasure. When they went out for expensive dinners, Susan didn’t ask how they would pay for them.

Eddie tried not to think about the enormity of what he’d done. The video was going to be traced back to him eventually. There was no way that Martha would let him off the hook. Once it did, would Morgan stick to their story? Would Susan buy it? If Martha tried to sue Morgan, it would come out that he’d bought the tape from Eddie. How could it not? Once lawyers were involved Eddie’s cover story about stolen files would be dropped. Either this hadn’t occurred to Morgan, which meant that he’d thought this all out no more than Eddie had, or else he didn’t care, because he had no particular intention of keeping his promise. Eddie could do nothing to make him. If Susan found out what had happened before the treatments started, she wouldn’t let them go ahead. Everything would collapse again. But if the treatment worked out first, she might accept that he’d done it for her.

He called Morgan at the beginning of August.

“I’ve been wondering how this is going to go down.”

“It has gone down as far as you’re concerned,” Morgan said. “You don’t have anything to worry about from here.”

“I’m just curious. When do you think it’s going to break?”

“It’s tough to say, but not immediately. Once it’s out, it’s very difficult to control, so I’ve got to be sure to get the most out of the initial blast. Martha is definitely hot right now, but she could get hotter. If this movie she’s in does well, or if the rumors are true about this new guy and she really leaves Rex. So I’m going to sit on it for a bit. On the other hand, her stock could drop. Say, if Dr. Drake gets canceled.”

“Do you think that might happen?”

“I’m not fucking Nielsen or whatever. I’m just laying out the considerations I’ve got going through my head.”

“So when it goes out, how many people do you think will wind up seeing it?”

“If I do my job right, Eddie, everyone will see it. Fucking everyone. I mean, it’s going to be everywhere.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Of course it’s a good idea. What did you think the point of all this was?”

“I’m just wondering how it will affect Martha.”

“Wrong time to get a conscience, Eddie. What did you think you were getting into?”

“Aren’t you worried she’ll get litigious or something?”

Morgan laughed.

“Is that your concern? We have nothing to worry about. This is going to be great for Martha. At this point in her career, it’s just what she needs. She’ll be thanking you when it’s all over.”

“Can you do me a favor?” Eddie asked. “Give me a heads-up before doing anything. Just a few days, so I can work things out on my end.”

“Let me talk to my investor.”

“It’s just one guy?”

“Do you want to know?” Morgan asked.

“Not really.”

“I’ll see what he says.”

Meanwhile, Eddie and Susan returned to Hope Springs, and the process began again.

The Lupron shots were the easiest ones. The needle was small, and the drugs came from the pharmacy already mixed. Each morning before Susan went to work, Eddie took the vial from the fridge and filled a syringe. He brought it to their bed, where Susan waited with her shirt pulled up. During the first round, they’d experimented with ice cubes to numb her skin, but Susan said the cold was worse than the shot, so now Eddie just wiped a bit of her belly with rubbing alcohol and pinched a quarter of pink skin. When he’d finished pushing the needle, he covered the syringe and put it into the red hazardous waste barrel that now sat in a corner of the bedroom.

As far as Susan knew, Eddie was still looking for work, since their financial problems were far from over. But Eddie knew there was more money, and he was too anxious to go job hunting. He’d started following Martha more closely, looking for developments in her public life that might send Morgan into action. He turned on the TV as soon as Susan left each morning. He bought all the gossip magazines and read them at coffee shops, throwing them out before coming home. There was a lot to follow — Entertainment Daily and half a dozen other channels; Star Style, Peeper, and CelebNation. Martha had definitively split from Rex, and her publicist confirmed that she was dating Turner Bledsoe.

She had left Rex just as his status as Hollywood’s leading heartthrob was coming into doubt. His big summer movie was a box office disappointment, and his new girlfriend, Carla Lender — the head chef on the cooking-and-dating show Butter Me Up —was an obvious step down from Martha. Meanwhile, Martha’s romance with Turner had helped make Life After Laura into a hit. She was bankable now. According to Star Style, she was considering half a dozen new projects, and the upcoming season of Dr. Drake would be her last. Eddie found dozens of message boards dedicated to predicting how the series would end. Would the true nature of Drake’s gift finally be revealed? Would she marry the hospital administrator with whom she’d alternately flirted and fought through the duration of the show? Serious consideration was being given to alternate theories that Drake was either an angel or a space alien. In either case the final episode would close with her ascension into the skies. Eddie spent entire days on this, and there was always more.

When he wasn’t following the intricacies of Martha’s career, he was watching the two of them together on his computer. He didn’t watch the clip he’d sold to Morgan, just the everyday images of their old life. At times he would watch a scene that reminded him of something, and he would go into the closet and search the relics box for an old photograph or script. He would emerge eventually to find that an hour had passed. It had been a mistake to bring the box upstairs, to invite her back into his life. He’d thought it would be harmless to remember from a safe distance what it had been like to be in her thrall, but there was no safe distance.

And he wasn’t just following Martha. Justine Bliss had admitted her problem and agreed to check herself in to the hospital. Entertainment Daily had exclusive access to her first days there. They reported every meal she ate and every morning weigh-in. Meanwhile Sandra Scopes, three-time winner of Scavenger: Urban Adventure Edition , had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“There’s a lesson here,” Sandra told Marian Blair. “If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone.”