The One-Eyed Man Read online

  “I haven’t. Had that. Since college,” she said, sitting up a little again.

  “That’s because they stopped making it,” I told her.

  “I know. Where. Did you get it?”

  “Saudi Arabia.”

  “Wha. What?”

  “It’s a very long story, love,” I said. “Would you like some? Before it gets warm?”

  “I would,” she said. “Oh my. God, K. How?”

  “Well, I love you,” I said, still crying in spite of myself as I poured. “That’s how.”

  Droplets alit on my hand as the soda effervesced. Foam climbed the sides of the glass rapidly, like a grade school science experiment, and I paused, waited for the soda to settle, then added a bit more. When I’d finished I placed the bottle on a spot on the nightstand where Sarah could admire it, popped a bendy straw into the glass, and gave it to her carefully, making certain her hands would support the weight before I let go.

  Sarah eased back against the pillow, brought the straw to her mouth, and sipped. After a moment, she pulled the glass away and regarded it the same way one would an old friend who has behaved in a way altogether novel and dumbfounding.

  She was merely disappointed. I, on the other hand, felt devastated beyond all reason.

  Sarah looked up at me. “I. Remember now,” she said, and I had no idea, still have no idea, if she was telling the truth, or if she just saw my stricken face and decided to lie. “I remember. The day. You gave me. The bell.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “That’s good, Sarah, that you remember.”

  She raised the straw to her lips again, pretending that she enjoyed that familiar Orchard Peach flavor, that it was just as she remembered it, that all the poison we’d pumped into her body had not destroyed her ability to taste and, by extension, her ability to go back, with the help of a glass of soda, to a time when she was not here, and this was not happening.

  9

  A THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A KISS, FIFTY CENTS FOR YOUR SOUL

  When my shoulder had healed well enough for the doctors to clear me for travel, Claire and I flew to Los Angeles with Theodore. We went first class, courtesy of 20th Century Fox television, in seats the airline referred to as “suites.” Each suite had its own entertainment system, with which you could choose from an extensive menu of television and films, music and video games. There were noise-canceling headphones and silk-lined sleep masks scented with lavender, a caviar and champagne appetizer upon boarding, and dry-aged rib chops for dinner. What was more, the flight attendants wouldn’t leave us alone with the free cocktails. Claire got drunk and ate four bags of M&M’s in addition to her meal; on approach to LAX she vomited a rainbow of whiskey, food dye, and carefully moldered meat into the aisle, and the flight attendant sopped this up with the same sanguine good cheer with which she’d executed all her other duties.

  The next morning we took a town car to the Fox production lot to meet with a woman named Andrea Clewes. Andrea’s face was all sharp, cruel angles, giving her the appearance of a very pretty concentration camp guard. She had waist-length black hair that gleamed like obsidian. By contrast, all the furniture in her office, including the desk, was stark white. She greeted the three of us at her office entrance and, after exchanging air kisses with Theodore, bade us sit down on several leather chairs that looked like they’d been constructed from giant marshmallows.

  “So exciting to have you here,” Andrea said, taking a seat herself behind the desk. “Before we discuss anything else, I want to ask how you’d like to offset your carbon emissions from the flight out.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “It’s a policy I implemented when I took over as president of production,” Andrea said. “Anytime we fly someone here, we purchase carbon offsets, of your choice, to make up for the greenhouse gases produced by the flight. You can, for example, choose to protect a hectare of rain forest. Or buy shares in an algae bioreactor.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “There’s some paperwork for you to fill out after our meeting, but I want you to be thinking about this now,” Andrea continued. “It’s very important to me, and to Fox.”

  “I’m not sure it should be,” I said.

  Andrea cocked her head, and a smile spread across her face like a crack in a glacier. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “It’s just that many smart people—meteorologists and oceanographers and climate scientists of every stripe, really—think these carbon offsets are pretty useless,” I said. “Even a scam.”

  The icy smile disappeared. “Mr. K., do I seem like the kind of woman who would blithely send her banking information to a Nigerian con artist?” she asked. “We use a company called Carbon Monkey. They’re quite reputable.”

  “Yes, I read about them recently. They were purchased by TD Wells Morgan,” I said. “And it’s just ‘K.’ No ‘mister.’”

  Andrea stared. Theodore pulled a handful of wasabi peas from a bowl on the coffee table and used them to stifle a giggle.

  “Why do you suppose,” I asked, “that a massive multinational investment bank would be interested in a small, purportedly green operation called Carbon Monkey?”

  Claire, still hurting from the excesses of the prior evening, finally spoke up. “Because the enviroguilt of wealthy white liberals is hugely profitable?”

  “That would be my guess,” I said.

  “Just ask the brass at Total Foods,” Claire said.

  “I shop at Total Foods,” Andrea said, turning her gaze to Claire.

  “Then you’re a chump,” Claire said. “Even if you can afford the markup.”

  Andrea stared, and Claire stared back without blinking, her hair blazing red against the white seat back.

  “I mean, for all the good carbon offsets do, you might as well offer to have stars named after us instead,” I told Andrea.

  Theodore began to cough horribly, spewing bits of wasabi peas across the glass tabletop. He leaned forward over his legs and hacked onto the white carpet while Claire pounded him between the shoulder blades with a closed fist. He continued to struggle for breath long after the last of the peas had been ejected, and for a moment I thought he might have transitioned from choking into some sort of cardiac event. Eventually, though, he sat back and heaved several long, ragged breaths.

  “You good?” Andrea asked him, not seeming the least bit concerned about the answer.

  “I am good,” Theodore huffed.

  “Do you need anything? I can ask Grace to bring in some still water.”

  Theodore coughed a few more times, though he was composed enough at this point to do so into his hand. “I’m fine, my dear, really. But thank you.”

  “Good,” Andrea said. She leaned back with her arms crossed so tightly that her wrists blanched as white as her chair. “Then maybe you can tell me what the fuck is going on, here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Andrea said, “that it is not a good idea for people to call the producer they hope to green-light their show a chump.”

  “Coproducer, my dear.”

  “You really want to split hairs about titles right now, Theodore? Because that’s not a good idea, either.”

  “I’m simply wedded to the notion of clarity.”

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Explain,” Andrea said.

  “You shouldn’t take it personally,” Theodore said.

  “Really, you shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m not malicious. It’s just sort of a reflex for me, since my wife died.”

  “Please,” Andrea said, “I don’t care if your wife was drawn and quartered. You’ll get no sympathy from me.”

  “I’m not hoping for sympathy,” I said. “I’m just trying to make clear it’s not personal.”

  “Well don’t bother, Gump.”

  “Hey lady,” Claire said. “You know what? Feel free to take what I said super personally. Anyone who shops at Total Foods is an ass. Of course they just fired m
e, so I have a bias.”

  “That’s it,” Andrea said. “Get out.”

  “My dear,” Theodore said.

  “Out. Theodore, you know I love you, but this is bullshit. You should be embarrassed.”

  “This is the show, darling,” Theodore said.

  “I understand the concept, Theodore,” Andrea said. “I speak English, which is the language you used to pitch me the fucking show. I hardly need to have its working parts demonstrated at my expense.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Theodore said. He reached to his breast pocket and pulled at the button, revealing a small lens attached to a thin black cable. “Smile for the birdie, my dear.”

  Andrea’s eyes narrowed. “You’re filming this?”

  It was news to me, as well. I looked at Claire. She shook her head.

  Theodore popped another wasabi pea into his mouth. It was impossible to know if his composure in the face of Andrea’s growing ire was genuine, or just a part of the calculated risk he evidently was taking with her.

  “I’m tired of everyone on reality TV vamping for the cameras,” Theodore said. “Things have gotten so stale that it’s nearly killed the form altogether. My own projects bore me, Andrea. I’ve made six shows since Pimp House, and I’ve gained over one hundred and fifty pounds in that same period of time. This is not a coincidence. I’m eating for three: myself, Shame, and Boredom.”

  “Pimp House?” I whispered to Claire.

  Her hangover having apparently reached existential-crisis levels, Claire now sat forward with her head in her hands. “Exactly what it sounds like,” she said without looking up. “Six pimps, living in a house. It wasn’t bad.”

  “People have become too self-aware to make good television,” Theodore continued. He cast his eyes to the ceiling, gesticulating with one fat hand as he spoke. “A generation’s worth of reality programming has, ironically, made it impossible to capture anything real. Everyone is a professional now. Everyone feels the eye come open and rest upon them the moment they get out of bed: traffic cameras, surveillance satellites, security CCTV, and, goodness, the phones, the phones, the phones. Everyone knows the tropes by heart. They hit their marks without even thinking about it, overact every minute of every day. And we’re to blame, Andrea, because we’re the ones who convinced people that life is just one massive episode of reality TV.

  “Consider what just happened here with us. How would your reaction have been different if you’d known we were filming?”

  Andrea bared her teeth. “I wouldn’t have let you film it,” she said.

  “Of course. But let’s say you had. Your reaction would have been measured. Calm. You would have played along, steered the conversation in a direction that made you seem easygoing, witty, better-than. But what we got instead—because you didn’t know it was being recorded—was real incredulity. Real confusion.”

  “I wasn’t confused. I was pissed.”

  “Real rage,” Theodore said, shaking both his fists overhead.

  “I’m still pissed, Theodore,” Andrea said.

  “But you’re no longer insisting we get out of your office, are you, my dear?”

  Andrea pointed toward me and Claire. “Lucky for you,” she said, “those two have been quiet for a minute.”

  “We need to go all the way back to the beginning, Andrea,” Theodore said. “Candid Camera. This Is Your Life. Some of the best reality television in history was made by people hidden in vans, around street corners, behind one-way glass. Why is that? Because the success of our business has always been tied to voyeurism. Real, watching-from-the-bedroom-closet-while-your-wife-fucks-another-man voyeurism. And not because it titillates us to be hidden. No. That’s too base. We want to be hidden because we know, deep in our hearts, that to observe openly is to alter. And what we’re all really after—what we’re hardwired to want—is the unaltered. The genuine, the sincere, the pure. No matter how ugly.”

  “The uglier the better,” Andrea said.

  “So on this show, no camera crews or writers,” Theodore said. “No anything. We prep the shot if we can; if not, we send these two in cold with cameras and mics and see what happens. But there’s never any reveal. We go in, we come out, and our subjects are never, ever the wiser. We’re going to put the ‘real’ back in ‘reality,’ my dear.”

  “I like it, Theodore, as I told you earlier,” Andrea said. “But what about security? Mr. K.’s mouth managed to get him beaten up and shot in less than forty-eight hours.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t my mouth that got me shot,” I said. “I didn’t say a word that time.”

  “They’ll sign the necessary waivers,” Theodore said. “Whatever you want.”

  “We’ll sign what now?” Claire asked.

  “It’s not liability I’m concerned about,” Andrea said.

  “Of course it is, my dear.”

  “Well yes,” Andrea said, “it is my responsibility, as president of production, to not expose the studio to avoidable legal risk. But as a human being, I am worried about their safety.”

  “Andrea, let’s be frank. You’d string your grandmother from a palmetto tree by her toenails if it meant you could get a couple extra points during sweeps.”

  “You know,” I said, “the methodology used for Nielsen ratings is so flawed that the numbers might as well be completely made up.”

  “Not now, K.,” Theodore said.

  “I’m just saying, it’s no way to make business decisions involving millions of dollars.”

  “Tell that to the guy whose show I’m canceling at lunch,” Andrea said.

  She and Theodore shared a knowing laugh, and then we were all quiet a moment, except for Claire, who groaned faintly behind her hands.

  “So unless I miss my mark, Andrea,” Theodore said finally, “there’s really only one other matter of business.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We’ll need you to sign this release,” Theodore said, smiling. He reached into his jacket and produced a thin sheaf of papers. “It authorizes us to use the footage recorded today for a new television show that will debut on Fox in the spring.”

  Andrea looked at the paperwork for a moment, then leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Deal,” she said. “So long as you fill out your carbon offset forms.”

  • • •

  After a celebratory dinner of vodka-cured salmon, watermelon salad, and filet mignon in wine sauce at a place called Nic’s Beverly Hills, Theodore excused himself to “seek companionship,” the particular nature of which could apparently be found only in Los Angeles. Before departing, he gave us both new sets of eyeglasses—pink cat-eye frames for Claire, sober Buddy Holly specs for me.

  We sat side by side at the Nic’s bar, which had been constructed from a massive custom LEGO set.

  “So tell me about Sarah,” Claire said.

  “You don’t really want to talk about that, do you?” I asked.

  “Why not?” she said.

  “It’s my understanding,” I said, “that when embarking on a new romantic relationship, discussing one’s ex is considered taboo.”

  “Well, that’s true, generally,” Claire said. She fiddled with the glasses Theodore had given her, which were not just glasses but also a high-resolution video camera and microphone combo.

  “Any talk of cats is also verboten, from what I gather,” I said.

  “Do you have cats?”

  “Just one,” I said. “Now that I think about it, the admonition against discussing cats only really applies to women. Lest they should be perceived as crazy cat ladies.”

  “Yet another double standard,” Claire said.

  “Did you want to talk about my cat?” I asked.

  Claire turned her head to look at me directly. “Why not,” she said after a moment.

  “Well the ‘why not’ would be because the cat actually belonged to my ex. Which brings us full circle.”

  “I’m not sure Sarah qualifies as an ex, K.”

&
nbsp; “For the purposes of this conversation, though, she does. Right? If we are in the embryonic stage of a new relationship?”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake.” Claire lifted her beer and drained it, then motioned to the bartender for another. “Just tell me about your wife already,” she said.

  “She was very pretty,” I said. “Like you.”

  “She looked like me?”

  “Oh, not in the least. Sarah was much taller, for one thing. Her hair was short and black, not long and red. Also, hers was sort of a classic beauty, whereas yours is so exotic you almost, at times, don’t look quite human.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “I mean that as a compliment.”

  Claire waved a hand. “You must miss her,” she said.

  I considered this while adjusting my own glasses, trying to find a more comfortable position for them that apparently didn’t exist, or at least wouldn’t exist until I became accustomed to the fact of them on my face. “Not in the way you mean it,” I said finally.

  “And how do I mean it?”

  “The same way most everybody does: Sarah is dead, never to be seen again, never to be heard from again, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, undifferentiated bits of carbon to undifferentiated bits of carbon, forever and ever, amen.”

  The bartender sidled over with a fresh beer for Claire, deftly laying a fresh cocktail napkin under the glass just as it hit the bar. Claire waited until he walked away again, then said, “Were you raised Catholic?”

  “I wasn’t raised anything,” I said.

  “Secular household?”

  “Depended on the year,” I said.

  Claire smiled, nonplussed. “Are you always this opaque?”

  “Opinions vary. Sarah probably would have said yes.”

  “Finally,” Claire said. “We’re talking about your wife.”

  “We can talk about whatever you like.”

  Claire swirled a fingertip through the head on her beer. “Okay, let’s backtrack and try again,” she said. “You told me you don’t miss Sarah the way the rest of us miss dead people. Care to elaborate?”

  “I would. But it’s my policy not to, anymore.”