Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

EDDIE GOT UNDER THE covers with Melissa after changing for bed that night, but when she turned the lights off, he slipped out to sleep on the couch. In the morning he woke to find Hal kneeling on the floor, pointing his camera at him. Most of the crew were already in place. Eddie didn’t know where they’d spent the night or how long they’d been back in the room, watching him. Kara, the associate producer, smiled for the first time since Eddie had met her.

“How did you sleep?” she asked.

Eddie was surprised that she would speak to him so openly while they were “in scene,” as Dell had put it. He still didn’t understand all the conventions of this game.

“I slept all right.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kara told him. “You’ve got a full day.”

She didn’t mention the obvious fact that he’d started the night in a different place than where she found him now, but Eddie suspected he’d be asked about it during his interviews. He could say that he’d been having trouble sleeping, but it might be more dramatic to suggest a deeper problem. He’d been upset about what Melissa’s mother had said. He’d gotten used to sleeping alone again.

Sitting up, Eddie discovered that a morning erection had slipped through the fly of his boxer shorts. When he tucked it away, Kara laughed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ve seen it all.”

Was even this meant to sound reassuring? Eddie got up and walked to the bathroom. It was the one place in the suite where he could be alone. In the warmth of the shower he wondered what the day ahead would bring. Something dramatic, he guessed. Something that would make for good television. They had told him several times now he was just supposed to live his life, but he didn’t know how to do that, since he hadn’t really been living his life for months before the cameras came.

So much of Susan’s show consisted of her doing things— necessary things, like going to work or to the doctor. Eddie had nothing necessary to do. He’d sometimes made his senior drama students read Aristotle’s Poetics, and he thought now of a line from the book to the effect that characters exist for the sake of the action, not the other way around. If he’d been having trouble playing his character, perhaps it was because his character needed some action to perform. It would all get easier if he kept busy.

When Eddie got back to the bedroom, Melissa was gone. Some of the crew had left with her.

“She’s taking a shower in one of the other bathrooms,” Roma said after letting Eddie look around in confusion for a moment.

“How many bathrooms are there?” he asked. “It’s a hotel room.”

“It’s an imperial hotel room.”

Eddie wanted to put on Entertainment Daily while he waited for Melissa to shower, but he was embarrassed to watch in front of the crew. He thought he should be doing something better with his time. It was a strange worry to have. These people made television for a living. Before Eddie had decided on a course of action, Melissa returned in a plush Cue Hotel bathrobe.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said.

“What is it?”

“We’re going ice-skating!”

She’d always tried to appear adult and knowing in his presence, but now she was playing up her childishness.

“Why would we do that?”

Dell stepped in from the other room.

“We want you to express some surprise here, Eddie.”

“I am surprised,” Eddie said. “I’m quite surprised.”

“Surprised in a my-girlfriend-planned-something-nice-for-me way. Not a what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about way.”

“I’ll try it again.”

After Eddie had expressed sufficient excitement about the outing, Melissa dropped her robe and dressed to go out. She moved with complete naturalness, not shy before the camera but not aggressive or exhibitionist. Eddie doubted that anyone watching her strategically blurred figure would guess that she’d never shown herself to Eddie this way before, though they might get a sense of the fact from Eddie’s response. She turned to face him as she pulled on her underwear, even speaking to him, as if inviting him to look her over.

“I promise we’ll have fun.”

The SoHo Cue had granted the show complete access, and guests were being asked to do the same as they checked in. The clientele were the sort to be unfazed by such things, or else the sort to aspire to such unfazedness, so things proceeded smoothly throughout the hotel. Only when the camera crew left the lobby did the spectacle begin. Anyone who appeared on camera — even just an elbow or a leg — had to sign one of the waivers that Kara handed out like takeout menus. She didn’t offer money for cooperation, but almost no one refused her. Most of the time it wasn’t even necessary to flag these people down, since they naturally stopped to look as Eddie and Melissa passed.

The crew was small enough to get nearly lost amid the photographers and other onlookers who had taken to waiting for Eddie and Melissa outside the hotel. The minimal setup now struck Eddie as perhaps part of the point. In the past he’d occasionally wondered how these shows achieved the illusion of nonchalance, especially given what he knew about the effect a camera’s presence could have on someone who wasn’t properly trained to be in front of one. But the nonchalance was real, in a way. Not that anyone would ever forget that the cameras were there, but it was easy to forget that the footage being collected would be broadcast to the world. Now that there were onlookers, Dell and the others did less to intervene. Eddie and Melissa weren’t ever asked to repeat a gesture or clarify a statement. They just went about their business. It might almost have been a home movie.

A car took them to Rockefeller Center, where they stood for a minute beneath the enormous Christmas tree while tourists took pictures. A visit to that tree had been an annual tradition in Eddie’s family when he was growing up. Standing under it now, he thought about his parents. He regretted not going down to see them before the show started, and he regretted even more that he couldn’t tell them what was really going on. At least he might say something about his childhood holidays during his afternoon interview. If he expressed it properly, he felt sure it would make the show. It would make him more sympathetic to the rest of the audience, and his parents could hear him say nice things about them, if they watched.

He couldn’t be sure that they would. The last time they’d spoken, his mother had expressed such distaste for the whole thing. Of course, he’d expected her to be upset that he was running around with a younger girl while his wife was pregnant, and he’d done his best to assure her that it was a misunderstanding. But she seemed most upset by something he couldn’t possibly deny, which was that he was on a reality show. She said it was beneath a boy who’d been raised as he was. Beneath a St. Albert’s boy, she obviously meant, though she didn’t put it that way. If she had, he would have told her that it was the striver in her talking. The parents of his rich friends would be happy to watch their sons on TV. Such things were beneath no one anymore.

Skates were waiting for them at the rink, but Eddie and Melissa went through the show of giving shoe sizes and paying for rentals while Hal circled with the camera. Melissa stepped awkwardly onto the ice, grabbed Eddie’s arm, and brought him down with her.

“What happened?” she said, laughing.

“I think I broke my elbow.”

She was already standing back up, still laughing. She skated away, and it was obvious that the fall had been a performance. Melissa was an excellent skater. It was probably why this activity had been chosen. She looked beautiful as she moved, and Eddie thought of her body as he’d seen it just an hour earlier. For whom was she performing? Men watching on TV would envy Eddie for having her. He was near the point of envy himself. After a moment Melissa circled back and helped him off the ice.