Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

by Christopher Beha

  “I hope I’ll see some of you at auditions after school,” Eddie called out as he watched them leave.

  But there were no auditions that day. Luce was waiting when Eddie returned to the theater that afternoon.

  “Mr. Hartley,” he said. “I wondered whether you might come to my office for a talk.”

  “The boys will be arriving any minute,” Eddie said.

  “I instructed the other teachers to let their students know during last period that auditions for the fall play have been postponed.”

  They walked to the headmaster’s office, where Luce closed the door behind them.

  “Have you seen this week’s St. Albert’s Canticle?” he asked as he positioned himself behind his desk. He didn’t invite Eddie to sit.

  “I haven’t,” Eddie said.

  Luce passed a copy of the student magazine across his desk.

  “It seems that some of the boys made some last-minute modifications after Mr. Munroe gave final approval of the issue. The part that might interest you is on page seventeen.”

  Eddie opened to a page that read “St. Albert’s Celebrity News”:

  Our Arts and Entertainment correspondent is recommending the latest viral video, featuring St. Albert’s own Mr. Hartley. It must be seen to be believed. Luckily, it can be seen almost anywhere online this week. Take a tip from us, and watch it.

  “I hope you’re going to harshly discipline whoever is responsible for that,” Eddie said.

  “We’ll certainly take care of that,” Luce told him. “But that’s not why I’ve asked you for this chat. You understand this puts me in a very bad position?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I can explain.”

  “That would be gratifying. To be honest, I found the item slightly obscure, but I’ve had some calls from parents, who have clarified the reference for me and described the video mentioned here. I’d like you to begin by explaining whether you are, indeed, the person in that video.”

  Eddie didn’t know what evidence connected him to the tape, but something would come out eventually. Better to help Luce with damage control.

  “It’s from years ago.”

  “So you acknowledge that you made this tape?”

  “I was in a committed, monogamous relationship with the woman. It wasn’t like I worked in pornography. Someone stole it from me.”

  “That’s all very unfortunate,” Luce said. “I sympathize with you in many ways. But you have to understand where I’m coming from, which is the position of having fielded more than a dozen calls today from parents whose twelve-year-old sons have paid money to watch one of my teachers have sex on the Internet.”

  “I can see why that’s a problem.”

  “Yes, I should hope you can. Please understand that I’m the kind of man who holds the well-being of the students in my charge above everything else.”

  “Maybe I can draft some kind of letter.”

  “A letter?”

  “Explaining to the parents what I’ve just told you. The extenuating circumstances. I can write it this evening, and the boys can take it home to their parents tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid a letter isn’t going to cut it here. This is a Catholic school. That might not mean anything to some people who work here, who treat ceremonies like our morning chapel as jokes, but parents pay a lot of money to send their children to a place where they’ll be instilled with certain values.”

  “Don’t you see that I’m the victim here? I’m being exploited.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for that,” Luce told him, though his voice suggested there wasn’t much at all to be said for it. “But the safety of the boys has to come first.”

  “No one’s in any danger here,” Eddie said. “This will blow over soon. I’m sure of that.”

  “I’m not the kind of man who spends his time on the Internet, but my understanding is that things don’t just blow over there. It’s all permanent, yes? To put it differently: every student, every current or prospective parent, every alumnus considering making a gift will be able to find this video forever. It will be searchable. It will be the first thing that comes up when they search for your name. It may be the first thing that comes up when they search for our name. Is my understanding correct?”

  “It’s an algorithm,” Eddie said.

  “Am I correct?”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “I’ve spent some time this afternoon speaking with the board, and we’ve already made our decision. I’m not here to negotiate with you, only to explain what will happen from here. You’re going to take a paid leave of absence for the rest of the calendar year, until the semester is over.”

  Eddie thought he could live with that, especially if he kept getting paid. He could use the time to help Susan and manage the damage from the video.

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “At that point, your tenure at the school will be over.”

  “You mean I’m fired? For something I did before I even started working here?”

  “As I said, we didn’t see how we really had a choice.”

  “At the very least, you’ve got to pay me through the end of the school year. I’ve got a contract.”

  “It’s the opinion of our board that we have plenty of standing to terminate that contract based on the personal character and conduct clause. Frankly, there was a lot of sentiment to simply get this all over with now, since we’ll have to start paying your replacement right away. But as you well know, you have your supporters on the board, and they were able to persuade others to pay you through December. I promise that you won’t do any better than that. We have had to give some of the parents reassurances that you won’t have any contact with their boys, so I’d like you to leave the building quickly and quietly.”

  “Jesus, I’m not contagious. For God’s sake, I was having sex with a grown woman. They should be relieved that my proclivities run in that direction. It puts me ahead of most Catholic school teachers.”

  “I really don’t think there’s any reason to be nasty at this point.”

  “Nasty? I’ve spent the majority of my life in this building, since before you’d even heard of the place. Now you’re cutting me loose over something that’s not my fault. If you had any decency, you’d be circling the wagons. You’d be supporting me.”

  “If it makes you feel better to continue yelling, go ahead, but nothing can be done at this point.”

  Eddie needed a different approach.

  “Listen, Mr. Luce. I just found out my wife is pregnant. She’s having triplets. I’ve got three kids coming in the spring. I can’t be unemployed right now. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  Eddie watched the news pass over Luce’s face. He seemed to be considering the possibility that Eddie was lying in an awkward ploy for sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said, and he almost seemed to be. He continued in an unguarded tone that Eddie had never heard from him. “Of course I didn’t realize that. But you’ve got to know that the board and the parents call the shots. They’re paying a lot of money to send their boys to a place where they expect them to be protected. To be sheltered. And if they don’t want you teaching their kids, then you’re out of here. I serve at their pleasure just as much as you do, trust me on that. If they wanted me gone, I’d be done just as quickly.”

  Outside, a single photographer stood talking to Stephen McLaughlin. When the photographer noticed Eddie he started taking shots of him. It seemed a good sign that only one person had come. Nothing connected him to the video besides the imaginative minds of some of his students and his history with Martha. Perhaps the story really wasn’t that big. It might all be over soon. If Eddie couldn’t get his job back, there would be something else. In the meantime, his salary would be paid for three months. But all this hopefulness disappeared when he got home and found a dozen more photographers waiting on his block. They charged him as he approached his building.

  “Can you confirm t
hat it’s you in that tape?”

  “When did you make it?”

  “How did it get out?”

  “Do you have a message you want to send to Martha?”

  “Is it true that your wife is having triplets?”

  The terror that came over Eddie’s face in that moment would be captured from every possible angle and sent around the world within minutes. He dropped his chin and pressed through the crowd.

  “When are they due?”

  “Boys or girls? Or both?”

  “Did you lose your job today? What are you going to do to support the kids?”

  “Are there any other tapes?”

  “Why do they call you Handsome Eddie?”

  He pushed through the door and stood in the hall, catching his breath while they took pictures through the glass. Luce must have gone to the press the moment Eddie walked out of St. Albert’s. Not just about firing him, but about the babies. He might have done it in exchange for some protection for the school, but he could have just as easily done it out of spite. Eddie walked past the elevator and took the stairs to their floor, trying to imagine as he went what he would say to Susan. He wasn’t sure how much she knew, or how much anyone did. Inside she sat on the couch with her head in her hands.

  “You did this,” she said without looking up. “You made this happen.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he told her. “Luce fired me today, and I was begging for my job back, and I told him about the babies, because I thought that would make him reconsider. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Now she looked up.

  “They know about the babies?”

  “It never occurred to me.”

  “You did this,” she said again.

  “I’m trying to explain,” he said. “I didn’t think he’d go telling people. What a hypocrite. He talks about instilling values.”

  “Alex called.”

  “What?”

  “Your agent called the house.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “For starters, he said you never talked to him about the video. He also said that there isn’t any fucking movie playing in South Korea.”

  Eddie sat down on the couch beside her, but she immediately stood and crossed the room.

  “South Korea. Honestly, you must think I’m such an idiot. And the worst part is, you were right. I wanted this thing so badly that I didn’t ask where the money was coming from. South Korea. I should have known right away. Do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you can’t act, Eddie. You couldn’t act sweaty if they sent you on a ten-mile run. People would think it was a rainy day. You couldn’t sell anything to anyone but me.”

  “I just wanted to make you happy,” he said. “I couldn’t do it myself. And then I saw this chance, and it all seemed easy and harmless.”

  “Get out.”

  “Let’s talk about this. Try to see where I’m coming from.”

  “You had your chance to talk about it. You’ve been lying to me every day for weeks. For months. Probably for years.”

  “Not for years.”

  “I’m going to be a laughingstock. There are camera crews staked outside our building. Is that what you think I wanted? You may have wanted that. Martha Martin might want that. But I don’t want that. Get out, Eddie. Get out right now.”

  “It will pass.”

  “Get out,” she told him.

  “We’ve got to stick together on this.”

  “Get out.”

  He wasn’t sure where he was going when he left. Coming out of the building, he prepared for the flashes and shutter clicks, but the cameras were all pointed upward. He couldn’t help looking in the direction of whatever they were capturing. Susan was hanging out the window, calling down to the street.

  “He did this,” she said. “Eddie Hartley sold that tape. If he tries to tell you otherwise, he’s lying.”

  When he looked up, she stopped for a moment and disappeared from the window. Eddie thought the onslaught might be over. But she returned with something in her hand. She set it free, and Eddie watched it briefly take flight before beginning its descent. It was one of his old head shots. In the moment it took Eddie to understand the photo’s significance, Susan picked up the entire box of relics and emptied it into the street. The cameras didn’t follow Eddie’s things as they fell or take in his reaction as he watched them hit the ground. They stayed fixed, every one of them, on the woman inflamed above.

  NINE

  THE NEXT MORNING THE cover of the Daily News showed Susan leaning out the window like a madwoman, throwing old photos into the air. “Three Tykes—And You’re Out!” the headline read. “Drake Tape Wife Expecting Trips, Sends Bum’s Stuff for a Fall.” Eddie found the paper in the lobby of the Metropolitan, a cheap hotel above a parking garage just off First Avenue. He’d often passed the place but hardly noticed it, except occasionally to wonder what kind of person stayed there. When he checked in, the man behind the front desk was watching an Entertainment Daily segment about the Drake Tape on a small black-and-white TV. Eddie worried about being recognized, but the man didn’t turn his attention from the screen while accepting the cash and passing over a key.

  The calls had started almost as soon as he left the apartment, mostly from blocked or unfamiliar numbers. After settling into his hotel room, Eddie turned off the phone. He stayed in bed until noon the next day, when the same man who’d checked him in—he seemed to be the owner, or else the place’s only employee—called up to say he needed to pay for another night or else leave. Eddie had no other place to go, but since he didn’t have anything to keep in the room he just left.

  He read through the rest of the paper at a diner across the street. Stanley Peerbaum reported that Eddie had been fired, quoting a statement from Luce: “Given the circumstances, we decided it was best for the entire St. Albert’s community, and especially for our boys, if we parted ways with Mr. Hartley.” Peerbaum described St. Albert’s as an “elite private academy on the Upper East Side.” On the facing page there was a brief history of scandals at the school, dating back to the Preppy Murderer. They had dug up random bits of biographical detail about Eddie and still shots from commercials, which might have been collected from the street after Susan emptied the box. The most recent one was eight years old, but Eddie was easily recognizable in it. He closed the paper and put it down on the table. Looking at Susan on the front page, he tried to make sense of what had happened. It wasn’t her anger that puzzled him, but the performance of it. She was not the type for dramatic gestures, but a few cameras seemed already to have changed her. He considered calling the apartment, but he wasn’t sure what he could say, except that he was sorry. He’d already left an apology on Susan’s voice mail the night before. Thinking of it now, he turned his phone on to see if she’d responded. His mailbox was full, but none of the messages were from her. Almost as soon as he turned it on, the phone rang. The call came from a blocked number, but he picked it up. It was more than curiosity; he wanted someone to tell him what was supposed to happen next.

  “Is this Handsome Eddie?” a cheerful voice asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “Eddie, this is Geena Tuff from Star Style. I’m calling to see if you’d like to sit down with me for an interview.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Think of it as a unique opportunity to get your side of the story on the record.”

  “I don’t really have a side of the story.”

  “We’re willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the exclusive.”

  “Ten grand just to talk with me?”

  “You’re a hot commodity right now. But it would have to be an exclusive.”

  “I’m afraid I’m still not interested.”

  “Can I leave you my number, in case you change your mind?”

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” Eddie said.

  A text came soon after he hung up: Just in case ;) -Geena, followed by a phon
e number and an e-mail address. Eddie thought of all the calls that had come in already. Ten thousand dollars was just a starting offer. Once he got them competing with each other, it might become a lot more, and he and Susan needed that money. But he couldn’t go to the press without talking to her first.

  HE LEFT THE DINER and walked a few blocks, until he passed an empty bar that didn’t seem like the kind of place where news of Dr. Drake traveled. It might be a good spot to spend the afternoon while he decided what to do with himself. Apart from the bartender, the only person inside was an old man with a pickled pink face. A muted TV above the bar played a tampon commercial. Eddie took a seat and ordered a beer.

  “Turn the sound up,” the old man said. “Show’s back on.”

  They were watching Entertainment Daily.

  “Just a week after her release from the hospital,” Marian Blair announced, “a collapse in the studio has friends again worried about Justine Bliss’s weight. Now there are whispers about an addiction to pills as Justine’s father rushes to her side. Meanwhile, executives at the 2True Network discuss canceling Pure Bliss, Justine’s Moody Productions reality show.”

  “She’s got to eat something,” the old man announced before swallowing the rest of his drink. “It’s not a healthy lifestyle she’s got.”

  “I blame the father,” the bartender said. “He pushed her into music at such a young age, and now he enables her. No one gets into that kind of mess alone.”

  Eddie put money down for his drink as the show moved on to a story about Rex Gilbert breaking up with Carla Lender. They would get to Martha eventually, if they hadn’t already. He was curious to see whether anything had changed overnight. He wanted to know where the story stood. After a few more words about Rex, Marian said, “Turning now to Drake Tape news, Turner Bledsoe is standing by his girl, but he has a few harsh words for Martha’s onetime costar.”

  The screen flashed to Bledsoe, walking alone down an L.A. street as cameras approached.

  “How is this affecting your engagement?” an off-screen voice asked.

  “As far as me and Martha go,” Bledsoe said, looking straight into the camera, “everything’s great. This was something she did a long time ago with someone she trusted. But I’d like to give a message to Hartley.”