Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

Someone had added opening credits, subtitles, and a soundtrack of bad electronic music, edited so that it seemed that they’d been listening to it at the time. Otherwise it was exactly as he’d cut it. He tried to imagine Martha watching the video. Would she feel any emotions besides anger or embarrassment? He watched only a few minutes before closing the computer and calling Susan back into the room.

“It’s me,” he told her, nearly in tears from embarrassment. His shame was real, which at least made it convincing. “You can’t see me in the video, though. I don’t think anyone could trace it to me.”

“We’ve got to do something. People can’t just steal things and put them on the Internet, can they?”

“Probably not. But I don’t think it was stolen from me. I mean, who hacks into a high school teacher’s computer, looking for something like that?”

“I thought they weren’t on your computer.”

“Exactly,” Eddie said quickly. “So they couldn’t have taken them from me.”

“It doesn’t matter whether they took it from you. If it’s you in the video you have some right to stop it. Don’t you? Call Alex and tell him to do something about it.”

Alex was Eddie’s agent at Talent Management. They hadn’t spoken in years. Eddie almost told Susan this, but he remembered that he was supposed to have received a royalty check from the agency only a few weeks before.

“I don’t know how much he can do about it,” he told her instead. “Once something is out, you can’t really make it go away.”

“So we’re completely helpless?”

“We’ll wait for it to blow over. Something more interesting will come along, and everyone will forget about it. In the meantime, we’ll just hope that no one connects it to me.”

This seemed like a real possibility to Eddie. There was no mention of his name in the papers, and no one online seemed all that interested in knowing the identity of the other figure in the tape.

“She probably leaked it herself,” he said. “These things are actually good for people’s careers.”

“Do you really think she would do that?”

“Who can say? I don’t think she’s the same person she was when I knew her.”

WHEN THE WEEKLIES HIT the newsstand on Tuesday morning, Martha was on the cover of every one. Eddie wasn’t mentioned anywhere. In his first class of the day, the boys didn’t seem any more distracted or disrespectful than usual. Near the beginning of his second class one of them raised his hand. This in itself was a bad sign, since the boys just spoke out when they had something to say.

“What is it?” Eddie asked.

“Do you have any advice about acting in sex scenes?”

The entire class burst into laughter before he’d even finished the question.

“That’s not appropriate,” Eddie said. He could have sent him to the headmaster’s office, the last resort for dealing with bad behavior, but he wanted the matter dropped. He didn’t need to bring it to Luce’s attention. He took out a few copies of Twelfth Night and set them to reading aloud for the rest of the hour, which was what he did when he wasn’t interested in teaching.

“If there are no more questions,” he said at the end of the second act, “I can let you go now.”

He watched the boys deciding between getting out of class early and staying to provoke him. They opted to file out of the theater.

“I hope I’ll see some of you at auditions after school,” Eddie called out as he watched them leave.

But there were no auditions that day. Luce was waiting when Eddie returned to the theater that afternoon.

“Mr. Hartley,” he said. “I wondered whether you might come to my office for a talk.”

“The boys will be arriving any minute,” Eddie said.

“I instructed the other teachers to let their students know during last period that auditions for the fall play have been postponed.”

They walked to the headmaster’s office, where Luce closed the door behind them.

“Have you seen this week’s St. Albert’s Canticle ?” he asked as he positioned himself behind his desk. He didn’t invite Eddie to sit.

“I haven’t,” Eddie said.

Luce passed a copy of the student magazine across his desk.

“It seems that some of the boys made some last-minute modifications after Mr. Munroe gave final approval of the issue. The part that might interest you is on page seventeen.”

Eddie opened to a page that read “St. Albert’s Celebrity News”:

Our Arts and Entertainment correspondent is recommending the latest viral video, featuring St. Albert’s own Mr. Hartley. It must be seen to be believed. Luckily, it can be seen almost anywhere online this week. Take a tip from us, and watch it.

“I hope you’re going to harshly discipline whoever is responsible for that,” Eddie said.

“We’ll certainly take care of that,” Luce told him. “But that’s not why I’ve asked you for this chat. You understand this puts me in a very bad position?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can explain.”

“That would be gratifying. To be honest, I found the item slightly obscure, but I’ve had some calls from parents, who have clarified the reference for me and described the video mentioned here. I’d like you to begin by explaining whether you are, indeed, the person in that video.”

Eddie didn’t know what evidence connected him to the tape, but something would come out eventually. Better to help Luce with damage control.

“It’s from years ago.”

“So you acknowledge that you made this tape?”

“I was in a committed, monogamous relationship with the woman. It wasn’t like I worked in pornography. Someone stole it from me.”

“That’s all very unfortunate,” Luce said. “I sympathize with you in many ways. But you have to understand where I’m coming from, which is the position of having fielded more than a dozen calls today from parents whose twelve-year-old sons have paid money to watch one of my teachers have sex on the Internet.”

“I can see why that’s a problem.”

“Yes, I should hope you can. Please understand that I’m the kind of man who holds the well-being of the students in my charge above everything else.”

“Maybe I can draft some kind of letter.”

“A letter?”

“Explaining to the parents what I’ve just told you. The extenuating circumstances. I can write it this evening, and the boys can take it home to their parents tomorrow.”

“I’m afraid a letter isn’t going to cut it here. This is a Catholic school. That might not mean anything to some people who work here, who treat ceremonies like our morning chapel as jokes, but parents pay a lot of money to send their children to a place where they’ll be instilled with certain values.”

“Don’t you see that I’m the victim here? I’m being exploited.”

“There’s a lot to be said for that,” Luce told him, though his voice suggested there wasn’t much at all to be said for it. “But the safety of the boys has to come first.”

“No one’s in any danger here,” Eddie said. “This will blow over soon. I’m sure of that.”

“I’m not the kind of man who spends his time on the Internet, but my understanding is that things don’t just blow over there. It’s all permanent, yes? To put it differently: every student, every current or prospective parent, every alumnus considering making a gift will be able to find this video forever. It will be searchable. It will be the first thing that comes up when they search for your name. It may be the first thing that comes up when they search for our name. Is my understanding correct?”

“It’s an algorithm,” Eddie said.

“Am I correct?”