Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

“I guess I should have known,” Eddie said. “I mean, everything happened so quickly between us. I still have feelings for my wife. I can hardly blame her for having feelings for Patrick.”

“It sounds like you would almost be relieved if Melissa went back to him.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that I never expected this to be easy.”

By the time the interview was over, Eddie had his bearings back. He might even have made himself sympathetic, or given Moody the material to make him sympathetic if Moody wished to do it. Of course, there was at least as much material to make him into a villain. Eddie wouldn’t know for another two weeks which option they chose, but this didn’t bother him. All that really mattered was that he was interesting. If the audience came to think it would be a tragic mistake for Susan to take him back, that only helped his chances.

In the meantime, Eddie could see why Melissa had brought Patrick into the story. She wouldn’t allow herself to be left behind. She’d come to depend on the camera, and she wasn’t going to return to unwatched obscurity when Eddie went back to Susan. Introducing Patrick meant that she had a story of her own once Eddie was gone. And he had no objection to that, provided she stayed as long as he needed her. But her native understanding of the world they’d entered no longer struck him as such a great thing. She wasn’t his guide; she was his competitor.

THE NEXT EPISODE BEGAN with Susan at her prenatal yoga class, but it soon shifted to Eddie and Melissa, who were the focus of the rest of the hour. Eddie could see why no one had warned him what was waiting for him outside the hotel. He did so much better this way. The disbelief on his face looked real, because it was real. He clearly saw this development as a nuisance, which made him seem uncaring. When they cut back to the suite, he perfectly played the selfish man, disturbed by the intrusion of the boy he’d hurt, projecting his guilt by yelling at Melissa for something she couldn’t control. Even Eddie felt moved watcing Melissa say that she’d never meant for anyone to get hurt.

“He was my old boyfriend,” Melissa explained, catching up the rare viewer who wasn’t following along online. “Eddie was his high school drama teacher, and that was how we first met. When people started asking about Patrick, Eddie just lost it. I wish he wouldn’t take it out on me.”

They cut to Eddie in the interview room.

“Fuck Patrick,” he said. The first word was censored, but no one would mistake it. “This had nothing to do with him.”

Beside him, Melissa gave an audible gasp.

“You really went for it,” she said.

He should have known they would use that remark. They worked through hours of interviews to capture something like that. The moments when he let his private self out were precisely the ones they would turn against him. But he still suspected that looking like a jerk would help his cause.

His angry face left the screen, replaced by a grainy, shaky video. At first, it was difficult to make much out, but the baroque cross in the center of the shot established the setting for Eddie, and he quickly found Patrick at the lectern beneath it. A moment after Eddie oriented himself, a title at the bottom of the screen did the work for the rest of the audience: “St. Albert’s School Graduation.” The audio was hardly comprehensible, but titles had been added so viewers could read Patrick’s speech, or at least the few sentences about Eddie. The speech had been cut so that the closing remarks, about how much Patrick owed to St. Albert’s, seemed to refer to Eddie as well.

“How did they get that?” Eddie asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” Melissa said. “I was sitting with his family, and no one was recording it.”

The video made a nice endpoint for their side of the story, so Eddie expected the episode to return to Susan after the commercial. Instead Melissa walked down Broadway alone. She had on the same clothes she’d been wearing during their argument about Patrick, which probably meant this footage had been taken while she was on her way to class. It seemed an oddly anticlimactic moment to finish the show. But Melissa continued past the building where her classes were held and walked west through Washington Square. She approached the Washington Diner on Sixth Avenue, and the camera pointed through the window to show Patrick waiting in a booth inside. The window framed a shot of Melissa walking past the counter as Patrick stood to meet her.

While the credits rolled over this ambiguous ending, Melissa shifted expectantly beside Eddie. He realized that the next scene in their drama was meant to play out now. This was one of the strangest things about televised life: you were called upon to respond to the producers’ construction, and those responses then became part of the construction itself. In this case Eddie found it easy to meet expectations, since he really did feel betrayed.

“You told me you were going to class.”

“I can explain.” Melissa stood up from the bed and crossed the room dramatically. “He just wanted to meet, to talk about everything.”

“You could have told me. Did you think I wouldn’t let you see him?”

“I thought it would be simpler this way.”

“Simpler for me to find out by watching it on television? I mean, Jesus, Melissa. There were cameras following you. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

It gave Eddie satisfaction to know that she was stuck. She couldn’t admit that she’d wanted him to learn what she’d done this way precisely so that they could play out this scene.

“I guess I didn’t think about it. I planned to tell you before it ever made it to the air.”

“Have you been seeing him a lot?”

“It was just that once.”

“Did anything happen?”

Melissa looked for a moment like she might respond with indignation, but instead she spoke softly.

“We just had lunch together. You have to trust me.”

As Eddie wondered what his character ought to make of all this, he discovered with some surprise that he genuinely cared whether she was telling the truth. He didn’t want to believe she’d been talking with Patrick all this time. He imagined her calling Patrick after she got home from Blakeman’s party that night, telling him how drunk his old teacher had been, texting him the photo she was about to Teese out to the world. Eddie couldn’t say why this possibility bothered him, but it did. It made him feel like a fool, and that feeling made him angry.

“I’m supposed to trust you?” he asked. “Why on earth should I do that?”

“All we did was talk,” Melissa said. “I promise you.”

He was tempted to push her further, but for once he had the high ground. He was finally in the right. There had to be a better way to use this fact.

“I believe you,” he said. “Let’s forget it ever happened.”

Melissa didn’t seem happy with this answer, and Eddie could tell that she wanted another chance to provoke the scene he’d avoided.

SHE WAS ALREADY DRESSED to leave when Eddie got up the next morning, but she’d waited for him to wake up and catch her sneaking out.

“Where are you going so early?” he asked before he could consider his options.

“I’m headed for the library to get some work done before class.”

She obviously wanted him to object, to prove his jealousy and possessiveness. He felt obliged to offer some resistance.

“Can’t you study here?”

“It’s too distracting with your skulking around. It’s weird how you don’t do anything all day. You’re a grown man and you don’t have any job.”

Eddie could see the whole crew preparing now for a full-blown altercation, but he still meant to play his moral advantage. She was the one sneaking around on him.