“Don’t you think it’s good for the story arc—for me to get back to Susan before the kids are born? People are feeling pretty sad about what happened to Justine. It would be nice to have a wholesome development.”
“You’re a villain right now, the object of everyone’s anger and sadness about Justine’s death, the emblem of everything that’s wrong with us. I can’t send you back to Susan. What’s wholesome about that? You need to be punished, so everyone feels like they’ve learned something. Maybe there’s some justice in the world and we aren’t as broken as we thought we were in our most cynical moments.”
“And how is that supposed to happen?”
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you. You do so much better when you don’t know. To begin with, you go back to Melissa and forbid her from seeing Patrick or her mother. Over the next few episodes, you become more and more controlling and paranoid.”
“Until she leaves me.”
“That’s right. None of this magnanimous older brother stuff.”
“And why would I do that?”
“We were hoping you would do it without meaning to. Let’s face it, Eddie, your judgment isn’t always superlative. But we’re obviously past that now. I’d love to appeal to your better nature, tell you to do it because it’s what’s best for everyone, but I’m going to try the mercenary route instead. You’re going to do it because I’m going to pay you half a million dollars to do it.”
“I’ve got triplets,” Eddie said. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“The half a million is for you,” Moody told him. “That’s the first part of the deal. The second part is that I’ll take care of your wife and kids.”
“But I won’t be there?”
“It’s possible that you’ll work your way back. Right now Rex seems like a much more solid bet.”
“I want to be there when those kids are born.”
“Where’s your sense of justice, Eddie? If you get the big reward, what does that say about the ways of the world?”
“I don’t want to be a villain anymore. I want my life back.”
“You can’t have it,” Moody said. “I bought it, and it belongs to me.”
“It doesn’t,” Eddie said. “What you have is just a fiction. It’s pictures, it isn’t the real thing.”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be running away. The pictures are the real thing. This is the life you wanted. You don’t get to have it both ways. I bought everything. After it’s all played out, I can get some good work for you. I’m sure we can find you a fine story arc. You can be on TV as long as you want.”
“But I have to give up my family first?”
“You already gave them up, Eddie. You signed everything over to me for a thousand dollars a week. This isn’t a choice I’m offering you, some Faustian bargain. We struck that bargain months ago.”
“I can tear the whole thing down,” Eddie said. “I don’t care about some nondisclosure agreement. You can sue me if you want, because I’ve got nothing.”
For the first time that Eddie had ever seen, Moody lit the cigarette he kept forever in his mouth. It was the only sign that Eddie had made an impression.
“How much do you know about my background?” Moody asked after taking a long first drag.
“I read that you used to be some kind of priest, that you escaped from a monastery.”
“That’s slightly overdone,” Moody said. “I was never ordained. And I didn’t live at a monastery. I was staying at a retreat house in Minnesota, run by the Order of St. Clement. Spent the summer there after my first year at the seminary. I understand you went to Catholic school. Have you ever been in a place like that?”
“We did an overnight retreat each year up in Westchester. Mostly I remember being bored.”
“Imagine that, but for a few months. There were about a dozen permanent residents. Maybe another dozen visitors like me, on retreats. Not all seminarians—some parish priests and some laymen just looking to recharge, I suppose. The entire time I was there, I felt intensely lonely. There wasn’t anyone in particular I was missing. I wasn’t especially close with my family. I didn’t have many friends. I kept to myself anyway, so I thought this would be just the thing for me. But I was miserable. Then this film crew arrived. For years the order had been sending a priest around to parishes throughout the state, asking for money and recruiting people to come on retreats, but that was too expensive. They wanted to make a video to send around instead. When the crew got there, something lifted for me.”
He paused as if he had offered Eddie a kind of riddle.
“So you had some contact with the outside world. A bit of normal conversation.”
“It wasn’t really that. The film crew didn’t talk with us. They were big on that. They didn’t want to alter what they were observing. What lifted me was the idea that there was an audience. All my life I’d wanted to do good. I’d been an altar boy. I’d studied theology in college and gone to the seminary, where I was first in my class. But none of it mattered once no one was watching. If I believed in God, I would have believed that he was watching, right? But it turned out I didn’t. Somehow I got that far along without even asking myself the question.”
Moody had kept the windows closed, and the back of the car was filling with smoke. He stopped to flick ash from his cigarette, and he lazily applied it to the floor mat with his foot.
“But the crew had their own problems. The things that were really going on in that place couldn’t be captured on film, because they were meant for God, not for the audience. They happened inside people. I watched all this, and somehow I knew what the audience would want to see. I started to intervene in little ways. When I saw someone praying, I suggested that he look up a bit more, or put his hands in a reverential pose. All minor stuff. I expected some resistance from the priests, but they cooperated completely. The order had cut back their budget, and they were hoping this film would save the place. They would happily tilt their heads a few degrees in one direction if it would make a difference. And it did make a difference. I knew it would.”
“So you found your talent,” Eddie said.
“It’s not a talent, exactly,” Moody clarified, ignoring Eddie’s sarcasm. “It was just good timing. These priests, they wanted the video to lead the audience to God. But I realized they had it all wrong. They needed the audience because there is no God. The more I considered it, the more I saw in the audience everything I’d been taught to see in him. Never visible, but always present. Many and one at the same time. We exist for the audience—on a basic level, it created us. The audience gives us free will, but it expects us to use that freedom in a way that pleases it. If we don’t, we are banished to hell. Do you know what hell is?”
Eddie laughed. “Getting taken off the air.”
“This isn’t a joke,” Moody said. It was the first time Eddie had seen him angry, but he quickly regained his usual calm. “The next week, the documentary crew packed up, and I asked to come with them. I told them I could help in the editing process. I knew what the place was really like, and I knew how to capture it on-screen. They’d seen that the tinkering I’d been doing had given them better footage, so they offered me an unpaid internship. Two years later I was running the production company.”
“So you went from the priesthood to Date Rape Drive-In and Puppy Mill Tycoon.”
“It turns out the audience wanted Puppy Mill Tycoon,” Moody said simply. “They wanted Date Rape Drive-In.”
“That sounds like a story you tell so you don’t have to feel bad about lying to people and making work that isn’t any good.”
Moody dropped his cigarette to the floor of the car and stomped it out before lighting another.
“I don’t know what you mean when you say that word, good. I’m not being facetious. I really don’t. Probably you really don’t know either. In the world I used to live in, good is whatever God wants. That’s it. There’s no other measuring stick.
There is no good before God. When we say that God is good, all we’re saying is that God is God. In the world I live in now, it’s the same thing. There’s only one criterion. What does the audience want? Does the audience want you to be honest? Does the audience want you to be kind?”
Moody paused, and Eddie realized he was once again expecting a response.
“The audience wants us to be interesting,” Eddie said.
“You’re getting there,” Moody said. “But it’s simpler than that. The audience only has one way of expressing its interest—by watching. They might watch because they love you. They might watch because they hate you. They might watch because they’re sick. Doesn’t matter. Is that good or bad? The question doesn’t make any sense. Good is whatever the audience watches.”
“But if the audience is so important, don’t you want to improve them? Couldn’t you train them to want something better?”
“You still don’t get it, Eddie. There is no ‘something better.’ The audience is all there is.”
“It’s a nice little parable,” Eddie said. “But it has nothing to do with me.”
“Here’s what it has to do with you. You think I’ve got no standards. But I do have standards. And I don’t care about the money. The money is just a manifestation. I care about the audience, and I won’t defy them. I want you to know that you can’t threaten me. You want to tell the world it’s all bullshit? If you do that I’ll lose a lot of money, and I’ll never recover that five million from you. But I’d rather lose that money than do something the audience doesn’t want. It’s important that you believe me when I say this. Don’t try to call my bluff, because I’m not bluffing.”
“Neither am I,” Eddie said. “If I ruin the show, Susan will have to come back to me. There won’t be anywhere else to go.”
“How do you think she’ll feel about that? She could have come back to you at any time. She’s not chained up. She’s sticking with the show because she wants to be on the show.”
“She’ll change her mind.”
“So let her change her mind. Give her a chance to decide for herself.”
“And what do I do in the meantime?”
“I have a plan for you,” Moody said. “The audience has a plan for you. It involves going back to Melissa and taking on the sins of the world. If you do that your wife and your children will be set forever. And you’ll have a television career for as long as you want one. But we’ve got to get moving on this. I let you out of this car, and you walk back to the hotel. You don’t even take the bags out of the trunk. That never happened. I drive away, and Hal is waiting for you outside the hotel.”
Eddie could see it all playing out. He knew it would work exactly as Moody described. Everything always did. But for all his gnomic authority, Moody wasn’t actually omnipotent. If he were, he wouldn’t bother talking Eddie into anything. He’d just make it happen. And he didn’t actually own Eddie. For all the pressure he might apply, Eddie could still say no. That was still under his control.
“I won’t do it,” he said with as much finality as he could manage.
Moody took this with surprising equanimity.
“Too bad,” he said. “It would have been great TV.”
Though Moody made no sign that Eddie could see, the car pulled over and the doors unlocked.
“Where do I go from here?” Eddie asked.
“You go wherever you want. I can’t stop you. You’ll still be getting your weekly check until the contract expires. The imperial suite at the Cue is waiting, but if you don’t want to stay there, it’s not my job to find you other accommodations. You’re on your own.”
Eddie had expected to find himself across town, but it seemed they had been driving in circles, because Moody dropped him near Washington Square, not far from where Eddie had waited for Melissa that morning. This time, Moody didn’t offer to help with the bags. Eddie took them from the trunk and placed them on the sidewalk. Before the car pulled away, a window opened.
“One more thing,” Moody said. “You’ve still got a chance to do a selfless act. Stay away when those babies are born. The hospital is going to be covered with security, so you won’t get to her anyway, but you shouldn’t even try. You need to understand that she doesn’t want you there. If you force yourself into the situation, you’ll be causing needless suffering for Susan and the kids.”
The window closed and the car sped off, leaving Eddie alone with his luggage. He felt ridiculous carrying all these expensive clothes he’d bought for show. On the corner, two homeless men were begging for change. Eddie brought the two suitcases over and put one in front of each of them.
“Do you guys need some clothes?” he asked. “All brand-new. They still have tags, so you can sell them if you don’t want them.”
Unburdened, he walked into the park. A crowd of students had gathered beneath the victory arch, holding candles and photographs of Justine, singing a song of hers that Eddie vaguely recognized. He stood on the edge of the crowd and swayed along.
“Here you go, man,” said a girl beside him. She passed him a candle and lit it from her own. She looked like the girl he’d spoken to that morning outside Melissa’s class, but her hair was cut short. She gave no sign of recognition.
“Thanks,” he told her, putting the thought out of his head. He lifted the candle, watched its flame dance to Justine’s song, and wept.
TWENTY-THREE
THE METROPOLITAN HOTEL HAD not struck Eddie as particularly shabby when he spent his first night there after Susan threw him out, but that was before his months at the Cue. Now the place’s condition spoke of his own declining prospects. The brown paint on the lobby walls was peeling through to a coat of blue beneath. The ceilings were water stained, and half the lights were out. The man at the front desk barely looked up from a televised tribute to Justine to hand over the key to Eddie’s room, which stood at the top of a narrow staircase. It was barely large enough to fit its full-sized bed, and the television on the bedside table looked nearly two decades old.
How had he arrived at this place? Moody had been right. He’d signed everything away a long time ago. Leaving the Cue wouldn’t bring Susan back. Nothing would bring her back if she didn’t want to come back. And, honestly, who wouldn’t choose Rex Gilbert over him, if offered the choice? So what was he doing here? He’d exercised his freedom, but what kind of freedom was freedom to choose his own banishment?
At least he had money coming until Susan gave birth and his contract ended. After that, he’d need to figure something out, but that might not be so hard. After all, he was famous now. He’d even done a bit of decent acting. There had to be some way to make something out of that. Moody wasn’t the only producer in the business. Eddie would have to wait until his contract ended to sign another deal, but he could start planning right away. He needed to talk to Alex in any case, to discuss the repercussions of what he’d done. But soon after settling in the room, he discovered he didn’t have his phone. He’d packed it in one of the suitcases he’d given away. For the moment, everything was quiet. The sense of disconnection calmed Eddie. He felt a pulse within him, the inner self.
IT WAS AN ODD feeling to wake the next morning with nothing to do, but not an unpleasant one. He wondered what else would be different about the day. There weren’t any crowds waiting when he went to the corner to buy the morning papers. No one gave him a second look. By itself this didn’t mean much, Eddie thought. There were no cameras to signal his worthiness for attention. Turner Bledsoe could probably walk down the street in New York without being recognized.
Back in his room, he worked carefully through all the papers without seeing his name. All the gossip stories were about Justine, but they found plenty of ways to mention other stars. Martha and Turner would be attending the funeral, to be held that night at the Staples Center in L.A., and Martha said she was especially moved by Justine’s death as a new mother herself. The service would be simulcast at Madison Square Garden as part of the Stomping Out
Head Trauma Gala, whose celebrity attendees included Susan and Rex.
Eddie watched an hour of Entertainment Daily before changing to a news channel, where a commentator argued that Justine’s death had altered everything. America finally needed to break its addiction to celebrity gossip. Even this man didn’t think to connect Eddie to the problem. It amazed Eddie to see how quickly Moody had written him out of the story. But the real test would come when the next episode of Desperately Expecting Susan aired. The show was nearly in sync with real time now. The producers were turning footage into episodes in a matter of days. They couldn’t cut Eddie out entirely—it would be too abrupt, bad television. They would have to make some mention of his departure. He hoped they would eventually use his good-bye to Melissa. It was the best performance he’d ever given, and he wanted to see it aired. It might give him some sense of finality, let him go back to the world as himself and figure out what came next. But all this speculation came to nothing, because that night’s episode was preempted by funeral warm-up coverage.
Guests filed into the Staples Center, stopped along the way by a red-carpet correspondent who asked where they were when they first heard the news about Justine and who had designed their mourning wear. Interior shots showed the arena darkened, apart from a spotlight on the casket at center court. While the seats at the Staples Center filled up, 2True cut to the head trauma gala. Susan sat courtside at the Garden, with Rex’s arm wrapped protectively over her shoulder.
“The story of the night so far,” the New York correspondent reported, “is Rex and Susan. After months of will-they-or-won’t-they, the famous ‘just friends’ have declared their couplehood. ‘In a great tragedy you realize you don’t have time to waste,’ the pair said through a publicist. ‘You have to show your true feelings.’ That’s a bit of heartwarming news we could all use about now.”
Eddie felt a surprising lack of bitterness as he turned the TV off. Mostly the scene had given him an urge for human company. He wanted to see someone who really knew him, who had known him before any of these changes. He thought of Blakeman and Justin, but without his phone it wouldn’t be easy to contact them. He could go to Blakeman’s place, but there would inevitably be a crowd there that he didn’t want to face. It was just as well. He couldn’t explain things to Blakeman. He didn’t want to answer questions about Melissa and Patrick or Susan and Rex. He wanted to speak with someone who wouldn’t care about any of that. If possible, he wanted to speak with someone who didn’t even know about it.
Arts & Entertainments: A Novel Page 21