Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

“Isn’t it great?” Alex said. “There’s going to be a big dramatic reconciliation scene to begin the show.”

“Susan’s going to take me back?”

“Not you and Susan. Martha and Susan.”

“You’re going to reconcile them? This is the first time they’ve even met.”

“Poor choice of words. The point is they hugged and they cried, all that. The business with the tape is behind them.”

“You sent Martha there?”

“Not me, Moody. Everything they say about the man is true. He’s some kind of genius.”

“How did he get Martha to agree to it?”

“It wasn’t all that hard, to be honest. She’s got a big celebrity wedding to plan, and this will help make her more relatable. Martha can come off as a little cold, you know, especially after the way things ended with Rex. But Susan’s got relatable to burn.”

“Listen, Alex, you are still representing me, too, right?”

“Sure thing, Eddie.”

“So do something to get me back into this story.”

“I’ll try my best.”

How could he have thought for a moment that the visit had been spontaneous? He’d made the mistake of imagining that Martha was still a human being, not a carefully marketed product. But Susan wasn’t a product, and he was surprised that she’d kept the truth from him. Perhaps she already took it for granted that everything that happened to her was planned for the show. This almost certainly meant that her encouraging phone call was also staged. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Moody wanted him to be encouraged. And Susan might still have meant what she’d said, even if she was saying it for other reasons. Each event could mean two things at once — one for the cynical producer who orchestrated it, and something else for the people who experienced it.

HE WAS STILL CONTEMPLATING these possibilities a few hours later when he heard the knock. A glass of melted ice sat on his chest, and it spilled as he sat up from bed and pulled his Cue bathrobe shut.

“Room service,” a voice on the other side of the door announced.

Eddie had no memory of ordering room service, but he knew his memory was not entirely to be relied upon at that point.

“What is it?”

“All of our extended-stay guests get a free meal for each month of their stay.”

Had it been a month? He wasn’t sure. It had been close, certainly.

“Just a second,” he called out.

He stood up, put on his slippers, and pulled his robe shut. When he opened the door a great burst of light filled his eyes. The man in the doorway lowered his camera and they stood face-to-face.

“Motherfucker,” Eddie said as he lunged. But the cameraman was already running down the hall. In his robe and slippers and drunkenness Eddie couldn’t keep up with him. He tripped and his robe came open as he hit the hallway floor. The camera clicked another half dozen times before the man disappeared down a stairwell. Eddie picked himself up and returned to his room, but the door had locked behind him.

He’d lost his belt somewhere, perhaps back in the room, so he held his robe shut with one hand as he waited for the elevator. In the lobby the woman at the front desk smiled.

“Hi, Aimee,” Eddie said, reading her name tag. “I’ve locked myself out of room 341.”

“It happens all the time,” Aimee answered, seeming unfazed by his appearance. “I just need to see some photo ID.”

Eddie waited for a second.

“I’m in my bathrobe.”

“Of course,” she said. “Here’s what we can do. If you tell security where your wallet can be found in your room, they can go get your ID. They’ll bring it down here, and I’ll print out a key card for you.”

“You’re serious?”

“We are committed to security here at the hotel. It causes some slight inconvenience at times, but our guests appreciate it.”

He could tell she had been trained to say just these words in just this way, and there was no sense arguing, but he couldn’t remember where he’d left his wallet.

“I think it might be on the bedside table,” he told her. “Or else on the floor near the bed.”

“That should be sufficient.”

“Do you think I could speak with a manager?” Eddie asked.

A few moments later a tall, thin man in a double-breasted suit appeared at the desk.

“How can I help you?” he asked with a vaguely European accent.

“Did somebody tell the press about my presence in the hotel?”

“Sir?”

“I just opened my door to someone claiming to be room service and a fucking photographer started taking pictures of me in my underwear.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. It sounds very unpleasant.”

“That’s great that you’re sorry, but I’d like to hear what you’re going to do about it.”

“Have you been drinking, sir?”

“As a matter of fact I have, but that isn’t relevant right now. This woman has been telling me about all your security, but then I’ve got paparazzi stalking me.”

“I see,” the manager said. “That’s a real problem, sir.”

“Do you have any idea how that could have happened?”

The manager seemed to consider possible answers to the question.

“To whom am I speaking?”

“Eddie Hartley, from room 341.”

Now the man looked carefully at Eddie, as though he might recognize his face.

“I don’t believe that anyone here at the hotel was responsible for alerting the press to your presence. But I promise you I will look into the matter very seriously.”

They waited together for the security guard to arrive with Eddie’s wallet.

“It was right where he said,” the guard told them. He withdrew Eddie’s license and passed it to the manager, whose face was brightened by a flicker of bemused recognition. He passed the ID to Aimee, and she smiled. It was clear that neither had known until that moment that Handsome Eddie was staying at their hotel. The manager handed over the wallet while Eddie’s new key card was being printed.

“I’m terribly sorry for your inconvenience,” the manager said. “I promise to look into the matter. In the meantime, would you like us to move your room?”

Eddie knew they could find him if they wanted to.

“I don’t really think it matters,” he said.

“IS HANDSOME EDDIE HEADED for a breakdown?” CelebNation asked when the photos of Eddie spread out in the hallway hit the Internet. “Attacking photogs, making scenes in hotel lobbies — Hartley is hitting rock bottom just as Susan moves on with her life.” “This latest outlandish behavior came just hours after a tearful call in which he begged Susan to take him back,” Marian Blair told Entertainment Daily viewers. “Sources say she was even considering it, but now she worries he’ll be a danger to her pregnancy.”

He’d told Susan where he was staying, and immediately they’d come for him. He remembered what she’d said about making friends with the photographers. You helped them with certain things, and they made deals with you. Martha had given her advice about dealing with things. Was this the advice? Did she want him to look like a fool? There was a cruelty to it that was entirely unlike her, as though she wanted to punish him a bit more before accepting him back.

Eddie considered moving hotels — and not just for the privacy, which wouldn’t last in any case. He was running through the money that he’d thought could change his life forever. In another month, his St. Albert’s salary would stop coming in, and the payment for the video would disappear even more quickly. He’d liked in theory the idea of leaving himself with nothing, as a kind of penance for what he’d done. But now he was faced with the real problem of what to do then. He might easily run through it all before Susan took him back.