Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

Only a few days before, he would have protested this characterization.

“You want to know if I’m scared of losing Melissa? No, I’m not. Melissa knows the real me, and she’ll stand by me.”

“So you don’t think that Susan knows the real you?”

The main effect of these interviews was to make him eager to get out into the world. That was the easy part. Most days weren’t as busy as the first had been, but they had a similar structure to them. Eddie and Melissa slept in each morning, and the crew was already in place when they got up. Sometimes they were told what was planned that day, so they could discuss the activity over breakfast. Otherwise, they speculated instead. After their morning activity, they returned to the Cue. Liquor was provided at every turn — mimosas at breakfast, wine at lunch. The crew’s goal was to get them at least a little drunk for their afternoon interviews. After the interviews, which would have been exhausting in any case, they slept it off and prepared for the evening. They ate out every night. Naturally there was more to drink at dinner. They came home and went to bed, often falling asleep before they’d extracted themselves from their performed embrace.

All the while another order was being imposed, one that Eddie knew about but couldn’t apprehend. All of this was happening in the service of the show. It only had meaning once it was shaped and aired, and he couldn’t know what that meaning was until they appeared in an episode. The crew collected far more material than they could possibly use — enough material to make almost anything they wanted.

They’d been shooting for almost three weeks when Dell told them they would be featured that night. He didn’t say anything more, except that he wanted to film them watching themselves.

“This is so awesome,” Melissa said as the opening credits ran. She seemed not quite to have believed that this was coming, as though she’d been auditioning for a part she’d only now received. The episode began as many did, with Susan seated at the front desk of the gallery, talking with her coworkers. This time, Tomaka was reading the Daily News.

“Listen to Peerbaum’s column,” she said. “ ‘Handsome Eddie Hartley has been making the rounds with his teenage girlfriend. Most recently, the pair were spotted canoodling in a back booth at Paradise Regained, the new hot spot in the Meatpacking District.’”

“Can you imagine being that girl’s mom?” Susan asked.

It was such a perfect segue that Eddie couldn’t believe it had been spontaneous. The next shot showed Melissa on television for the first time. A title at the bottom of the screen introduced her in midconversation with her mother.

“You don’t understand,” Melissa said. “He’s really sweet. He’s just been misunderstood.”

“No man who leaves his pregnant wife is ‘really sweet.’”

Melissa’s mother seemed familiar to Eddie, though she didn’t look all that much like her daughter. He’d probably seen a photograph of her somewhere without remembering it. “I don’t think he’s good for you.”

The argument continued while they drove to the airport. Melissa went through security, and the screen showed a plane taking off before fading to commercial.

“You’re getting a lot of airtime,” Eddie told her, trying to sound happy about it.

When the show came back, Melissa was in a cab to the Cue. Shots of her ride home were interspersed with shots from the interview room.

“Of course I think about these things my mom says,” Melissa told Dell. “About how Eddie is no good. But people don’t understand him like I do.”

Eddie sat in the hotel room with his head in his hands, waiting for Melissa to arrive. Watching the scene, Eddie’s excitement at seeing himself back on television was tempered by surprise at how old he looked. When he pictured himself in his mind, he was twenty-one or twenty-two, as he’d been during the bulk of his television work. Occasionally those images could still be found on TV, and nothing had come along to replace them. He didn’t just look old but also nervous and ill at ease, though this suited the tone of anxious anticipation.

In some ways, the fact that he was watching from the same room he saw on-screen was stranger than the fact that he was watching himself. Eddie almost expected the show to unfold in real time, as though Melissa were out in the hall with her suitcases at the same time that she was sitting next to him.

“I’m back,” Melissa said as she walked through the door.

Eddie watched himself hurry to meet her.

“Welcome home,” he said. “I missed you.”

They kissed, and Melissa said, “I missed you, too.”

“What’s the matter?” Eddie asked as Melissa turned away.

“You know how my mother is,” she said. “She doesn’t think that we should be together. She doesn’t think it’s good for me.”

The screen cut to Eddie in the interview room, looking as uncomfortable as he’d felt at the time. “Does it bother me to hear what Melissa’s mom said about me?” he asked. The fact that he was asking himself the question made him sound defensive, and the sweat running down his face made him look guilty. “The woman has never met me, and she’s passing judgment. Not that I care what she thinks, particularly.”

They cut back to Melissa.

“I guess it’s because my own dad left while my mom was still pregnant with me, and we never heard from him again. I think about what Susan is going through.”

Back in the interview room, Eddie said, “To be honest I didn’t really care if she got hurt. That’s not my problem.”

After a brief shot of Melissa unpacking with tears in her eyes, the show went to commercial.

“I was talking about Martha and the tape,” Eddie called out, knowing that Dell was listening to them from the other room. “I never said I didn’t care if Susan got hurt.”

The show was more than half over, and it had been dedicated almost entirely to them. Eddie thought they would have to go back to Susan after these commercials, but they returned to Melissa telling Eddie that she was taking him ice-skating. They didn’t use the look of excited surprise Eddie had attempted to generate after Dell’s direction. Instead they went with his spontaneous response.

“Why would we do that?”

Then they showed Melissa back in the interview room.

“I know Eddie’s upset about my visit home. It’s been a real strain on our relationship. I thought it would be nice to give him a surprise. Take his mind off of things.”

Melissa skated expertly across the screen with a smile on her face, racing toward Eddie on the ice.

“I think I broke my elbow,” he complained.

Everything was being presented to make him look as unpleasant as possible, until a turn came. Melissa helped Eddie off the ice, and they skated around together. Eddie smiled a genuine smile. The cameras followed them off the ice.

“She saved my life,” Eddie said back at the hotel. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “That sounds melodramatic, but it’s true. We met at a time when a lot of things had been going wrong, and she was the first good thing to happen in a long time. She came at just the right moment. .. I was lucky to meet her when I did. It’s taken all of this to show me that.”

The credits rolled as Eddie and Melissa rode a carriage through the southern entrance of the park. When the show was done, Eddie said nothing about that closing line. They’d taken the only true thing he’d said in weeks and twisted it to mean something else entirely, but that bothered him less than he thought it should. It had been a mistake to think that any declaration to Susan would make it through to her by these means. Anyway, expressions of love weren’t going to get him back to her. He would get back when it was clear that his return would make good television. This episode could only help in that regard. In the meantime, he needed to guard that inner self more carefully. They could only touch what he let them have.