He was thinking of the book, and thinking of what Dahlia had said about sleepwalking, and a strange thought came to him: had Arthur seen that Clark was sleepwalking? Would this be in the letters to V.? Because he had been sleepwalking, Clark realized, moving half-asleep through the motions of his life for a while now, years; not specifically unhappy, but when had he last found real joy in his work? When was the last time he’d been truly moved by anything? When had he last felt awe or inspiration? He wished he could somehow go back and find the iPhone people whom he’d jostled on the sidewalk earlier, apologize to them—I’m sorry, I’ve just realized that I’m as minimally present in this world as you are, I had no right to judge—and also he wanted to call every target of every 360° report and apologize to them too, because it’s an awful thing to appear in someone else’s report, he saw that now, it’s an awful thing to be the target.
27
THERE WAS A MOMENT ON EARTH, improbable in retrospect and actually briefer than a moment in the span of human history, more like the blink of an eye, when it was possible to make a living solely by photographing and interviewing famous people. Seven years before the end of the world, Jeevan Chaudhary booked an interview with Arthur Leander.
Jeevan had been working as a paparazzo for some years and had made a passable living at it, but he was sick to death of stalking celebrities from behind sidewalk planters and lying in wait in parked cars, so he was trying to become an entertainment journalist, which he felt was sleazy but less sleazy than his current profession. “I know this guy,” he told an editor who’d bought a few of his photos in the past, when the subject of Arthur Leander came up over drinks. “I’ve seen all his movies, some of them twice, I’ve stalked him all over town, I’ve photographed his wives. I can get him to talk to me.” The editor agreed to give him a shot, so on the appointed day Jeevan drove to a hotel and presented his ID and credentials to a young publicist stationed outside a penthouse suite.
“You have fifteen minutes,” she said, and ushered him in. The suite was all parquet floors and bright lighting. There was a room with canapés on a table and a number of journalists staring at their phones, another room with Arthur in it. The man whom Jeevan believed to be the finest actor of his generation sat in an armchair by a window that looked out over downtown Los Angeles. Jeevan, who had an eye for expensive things, registered the weight of the drapes, the armchair’s sleek fabric, the cut of Arthur’s suit. There was no reason, Jeevan kept telling himself, why Arthur would know that Jeevan was the one who’d taken the photograph of Miranda, but of course there was: all he could think of was how stupid he’d been to tell Miranda his name that night. The whole entertainment-journalist idea had been a mistake, it was obvious now. As he crossed the parquet floor he entertained wild thoughts of faking a sudden illness and fleeing before Arthur looked up, but Arthur smiled and extended a hand when the publicist introduced them. Jeevan’s name seemingly meant nothing to Arthur, and his face apparently didn’t register either. Jeevan had taken pains to alter his appearance. He’d shaved off the sideburns. He’d taken out his contact lenses and was wearing glasses that he hoped made him look serious. He sat in the armchair across from Arthur and set his recorder on the coffee table between them.
He had rewatched all of Arthur’s movies over the previous two days, and had done substantial additional research. But Arthur didn’t want to talk about the movie he was shooting, or his training or influences, or what drove him as an artist, or whether he still saw himself as an outsider, as he’d said in one of his first interviews some years back. He responded in monosyllables to Jeevan’s first three questions. He seemed dazed and hungover. He looked like he hadn’t slept well in some time.
“So tell me,” he said, after what seemed to Jeevan to be an uncomfortably long silence. His publicist had deposited an emergency cappuccino into his hands a moment earlier. “How does a person become an entertainment journalist?”
“Is this one of those postmodern things?” Jeevan asked. “Where you turn the tables and interview me, like those celebrities who take photos of the paparazzi?” Careful, he thought. His disappointment at Arthur’s disinterest in talking to him was curdling into hostility, and beneath that lurked a number of larger questions of the kind that kept him up at night: interviewing actors was better than stalking them, but what kind of a journalism career was this? What kind of life? Some people managed to do things that actually mattered. Some people, his brother Frank for example, were currently covering the war in Afghanistan for Reuters. Jeevan didn’t specifically want to be Frank, but he couldn’t help but feel that he’d made a number of wrong turns in comparison.
“I don’t know,” Arthur said, “I’m just curious. How’d you get into this line of work?”
“Gradually, and then suddenly.”
The actor frowned as if trying to remember something. “Gradually, and then suddenly,” he repeated. He was quiet for a moment. “No, seriously,” he said, snapping out of it, “I’ve always wondered what drives you people.”
“Money, generally speaking.”
“Sure, but aren’t there easier jobs? This whole entertainment-journalism thing … I mean, look, I’m not saying a guy like you is the same as the paparazzi”—Thank you for paying so little attention, Jeevan thought—“I know what you do isn’t the same thing as what they do, but I’ve seen guys …” Arthur held up a hand—hold that thought—and swallowed half his cappuccino. The infusion of caffeine made his eyes widen slightly. “I’ve seen guys climb trees,” he said. “I’m not kidding. This was during my divorce, around the time Miranda moved out. I’m washing the dishes, I look out the window, and there’s this guy balancing up there with a camera.”
“You wash dishes?”
“Yeah, the housekeeper was talking to the press, so I fired her and then the dishwasher broke.”
“Never rains but it pours, right?”
Arthur grinned. “I like you,” he said.
Jeevan smiled, embarrassed by how flattered he was by this. “It’s an interesting line of work,” he said. “One meets some interesting people.” One also meets some of the most boring people on the face of the earth, but he thought a little flattery couldn’t hurt.
“I’ve always been interested in people,” Arthur said. “What drives them, what moves them, that kind of thing.” Jeevan searched his face for some sign of sarcasm, but he seemed utterly sincere.
“Me too, actually.”
“I’m just asking,” Arthur said, “because you don’t seem like most of the others.”
“I don’t? Really?”
“I mean, did you always want to be an entertainment guy?”
“I used to be a photographer.”
“What kind of photography?” Arthur was finishing his cappuccino.
“Weddings and portraits.”
“And you went from that to writing about people like me?”
“Yes,” Jeevan said. “I did.”
“Why would you?”
“I was sick of going to weddings. The pay was better. It was less of a hassle. Why do you ask?”
Arthur reached across the table and turned off Jeevan’s tape recorder. “Do you know how tired I am of talking about myself?”
“You do give a lot of interviews.”
“Too many. Don’t write that I said that. It was easier when it was just theater and TV work. The occasional profile or feature or interview or whatever. But you get successful in movies, and Christ, it’s like this whole other thing.” He raised his cup in a cappuccino-signaling motion, and Jeevan heard the publicist’s heels clicking away on the floor behind him. “Sorry,” he said, “I know it’s a little disingenuous to complain about a job like mine.”
You have no idea, Jeevan thought. You’re rich and you’ll always be rich and if you wanted to you could stop working today and never work again. “But you’ve been doing movies for years,” he said in his most neutral tone.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “I guess I’m still not used to it. It’s still somehow embarrassing, all the attention. I tell people I don’t notice the paparazzi anymore, but I do. I just can’t look at them.”
Which I appreciate, Jeevan thought. He was aware that his fifteen-minute allotment was trickling away. He held up the recorder so Arthur would notice it, pressed the Record button and set it on the coffee table between them.
“You’ve had considerable success,” Jeevan said. “And with that comes, of course, a certain loss of privacy. Is it fair to say that you find the scrutiny difficult?”
Arthur sighed. He clasped his hands together, and Jeevan had an impression that he was gathering his strength. “You know,” Arthur said clearly and brightly, playing a new, devil-may-care individual who wouldn’t sound in the playback like he was pale and obviously sleep-deprived with dark circles under his eyes, “I just figure that’s part of the deal, you know? We’re so lucky to be in this position, all of us who make our living as actors, and I find complaints about invasion of privacy to be disingenuous, frankly. I mean, let’s be real here, we wanted to be famous, right? It isn’t like we didn’t know what we’d be facing going in.” The speech seemed to take something out of him. He wilted visibly, and accepted a new cappuccino from his publicist with a nod of thanks. An awkward silence ensued.