Station Eleven

Station Eleven Page 117

“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.