Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

The address he’d given Eddie was on the Lower East Side, not far from the apartment Eddie had shared with Martha after dropping out of school. He rarely had occasion to come to the neighborhood these days. The restaurant’s entrance was below street level, and the place made no effort to advertise itself. Experience had taught Eddie that the easier such an establishment was to walk by without noticing, the more expensive it would be. He hoped that Blakeman planned to pick up the check. Inside, the hostess was dressed like the proprietor of a brothel in a spaghetti western, but she had dark, Asian features and spoke with an accent Eddie couldn’t place. She brought him to the table where Blakeman and Morgan were waiting. They both stood up to greet him.

“I’m glad you made it,” Blakeman said.

“Of course I did,” Eddie answered with perhaps too much eagerness. For a moment he feared that Blakeman had been bullshitting him, or that he’d forgotten his offer to help, remembering only the dinner invitation.

“How the fuck are you?” Morgan asked. “It’s been a long time.”

“I’m good,” Eddie answered as he sat down between them. “How about yourself? Are you still mostly out in L.A.?”

“No, I’m back here full time.”

This wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. Plenty of things still got made in New York.

“And what are you working on?”

“Have you heard of Jay Rolling?” Blakeman asked.

“Is that a TV show?”

“It’s a site I’ve got,” Morgan explained. “Pictures of guys in wheelchairs crossing the street against the light.”

“I see,” said Eddie. “So you’ve gotten into photography?”

“No, no, I don’t take the pictures.” Morgan seemed amused by the idea. “Other people send them to me. I just put them up. I’ve got some other projects, too. I’m working on one called Big Slurs. It’s a clearinghouse for racial and ethnic epithets.”

“A clearinghouse?”

“Kind of crowd-sourced bigotry. So say, like, you’ve got some kind of behavior you want to attach some slur to, like you’ve got a roommate who washes his balls in the sink or something.”

“His balls?”

“You put it up on the site, and then people suggest names. Like, someone calls it ‘The Armenian Birdbath.’ Then everyone votes on it. It’s a democratized lexicon. We’re generating memes, you know?”

“I think I get it.”

“How about you?” Morgan asked. “Still acting?”

“I’m a teacher. High school drama.”

“Right on,” Morgan said. “Say, do you still keep up with Martha? She’s blowing up right now.”

“We’re not in touch.”

Eddie picked up his menu, which was completely illegible.

“It’s Turkmen,” Blakeman explained. “Big thing right now. Very hardy. I’ll just order for all of us.”

The waitress appeared with an unlabeled bottle. Eddie wasn’t sure whether this had been requested before his arrival or was simply brought as a matter of course. Blakeman placed their order while the waitress poured shots. After they threw back the drinks, which seemed to be vodka flavored with some kind of mulch, Blakeman excused himself from the table to make a call for work.

“Let me ask you something,” Morgan said once they were alone. “Not to be weird or anything. But Blakeman says you and Martha used to film each other.”

Discretion wasn’t among Blakeman’s known qualities, but this particular secret was an old one that Eddie had taken for dead and buried.

“It wasn’t anything, really. Just line readings, mostly. We were both aspiring actors. We made tapes before auditions and watched them together.”

“There are people out in L.A. who would pay a lot of money for something like that.”

“What makes you think I need money?”

“Everyone needs money,” Morgan answered. “I’m not saying you need it especially. All I’m saying is that I’m in a good position to set something up if you wanted.”

“I’m not really interested.”

“No, of course not. It just came to mind, so I thought I’d tell you. Even for just the two of you reading lines, I could probably get ten, twenty grand. More — a lot more — depending on what else you’ve got.”

“Meaning what?”

“Did you do any fucking around on camera?”

This Blakeman could not have told Morgan, because Eddie had never told it to Blakeman.

“Like I said, it wasn’t anything.”

“Nothing interesting at all?”

“To be honest, I haven’t looked at the stuff in years. I’m not even sure I’ve still got it. We had a bad breakup, and I tossed most of our old things out.”

“If you could find something, it would be worth a lot. Even tame stuff. Still, it’s too bad you don’t have anything, you know, more explicit. That would be the real deal. Serious.”

“Just out of academic interest, what qualifies as serious?”

“It’s tough to say without seeing it. Some length, where it’s clear that it’s her, maybe full frontal, that could be six figures.”

“In that case,” Eddie said, “it really is too bad I don’t have anything. But I don’t.”

“I understand if this is making you uncomfortable. I just heard about the videos from Blakeman and thought it made sense to give you the option. I’ll give you my card.”

The card showed Morgan’s name and the title Meme Evangelist above an e-mail address and phone number. After accepting it, Eddie felt implicated in something.

“Let’s have another shot,” Blakeman said as he returned to the table.

“Have you read Finian’s memoir?” Morgan asked as he poured out drinks. Finian was another member of the old circle. Eddie tried to remember what he’d experienced that might have justified writing a memoir.

“I’ve read in it,” Blakeman answered.

“How have the reviews been?”

“Sickening. Everyone loves it.”

“And he was already insufferable.”

“The worst part,” Blakeman said, “is that he deserves it. The book is great.”

“An unfortunate situation all around,” Morgan concluded.

The food arrived in a single cast-iron pot, placed in the center of the table along with a basket of flatbread. There was no silverware. Eddie watched Morgan and Blakeman tear strips of bread and drag them through the thick liquid in the pot. They seemed to be well practiced at the method.

“You’ve done this before?” Eddie asked.

“Turkmenistan’s really hot,” Morgan explained. “Ever since Berdimuhamedow Rules went on the air. It’s one of the best things Brian Moody has ever done.”

“I don’t watch a ton of TV these days,” Eddie said apologetically.

“But you know Moody, right? He does Pure Bliss, that Justine Bliss show. And Huffing and Cuffing, this new one about cops addicted to paint thinner. All the best stuff on television right now has Moody’s name on it.”

Morgan seemed immediately embarrassed by his own show of enthusiasm, and they all returned to eating in silence. When they’d finished most of the pot, the waitress brought melons for dessert. More vodka was had at each stage. After they’d split the check — as Eddie had suspected, it was more than he’d wanted to pay — Morgan excused himself, saying that he had an early appointment the next morning.

“Did you tell him about the videos I made with Martha?” Eddie asked Blakeman once they were alone. Blakeman gave Eddie the look he often gave when put on the spot, an expression of frustration that he was fated to spend his life being forever misunderstood.

“He came back from L.A. about a month ago. He’s had a tough time, to be honest. He started talking about Martha, about when you used to bring her around. Wanted to know whether anyone was still in touch with her. I guess he was looking to get a script into her hands. I told him you guys didn’t talk. Then he started asking if I had any artifacts. That’s his word, artifacts. Old photos, he said. Shit she’d signed. Anything that could make him some money. Since she’s been with Rex Gilbert, she’s the most popular paparazzi target in L.A. People go nuts for anything having to do with them. I thought of those videos, but I didn’t tell him about them, because I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it. When you said that you needed money, the timing seemed perfect.”