Station Eleven

Station Eleven Page 121

“Arthur,” the publicist said, “could I speak with you for a moment?”

“No,” Arthur said, “I have to do this.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” she said. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

“I’m a man of my word,” Jeevan repeated. This sounded a little sillier the second time.

“You’re a journalist,” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Arthur—”

“Okay, look,” Arthur said, to Jeevan, “I came here directly from the airport.”

“Okay.”

“I came here two hours early, almost three hours actually, because I didn’t want to go home first.”

“Why didn’t …?”

“I’m leaving my wife for Lydia Marks,” Arthur said.

“Oh, my god,” the publicist said.

Lydia Marks was Arthur’s costar on the film that had just wrapped in Chicago. Jeevan had photographed her coming out of a club once in Los Angeles, bright-eyed and almost supernaturally put-together at three in the morning. She was the sort of person who liked the paparazzi and sometimes actually called them in advance. She had flashed him a winning smile.

“You’re leaving Elizabeth Colton,” Jeevan said. “Why?”

“Because I have to. I’m in love with someone else.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m moving in with Lydia next month,” he said, “and Elizabeth doesn’t know yet. I flew here a week ago when I had the day off from filming, specifically to tell her, and I just couldn’t do it. Look, here’s what you have to understand about Elizabeth: nothing bad has ever happened to her.”

“Nothing?”

“Don’t write that in your piece. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. The point is, I haven’t been able to tell her. I couldn’t do it any of the times we spoke on the phone, and I couldn’t do it today. But if you tell me that this story will appear tomorrow, then that forces my hand, doesn’t it?”

“It’ll be a sensitive story,” Jeevan said. “You and Elizabeth are still friends and you wish only the best for her, you have no further comment and you desire for her privacy to be respected at this difficult time. That about it?”

Arthur sighed. He looked somewhat older than forty-four. “Can you say it was mutual, for her sake?”

“The split was mutual and, uh, amicable,” Jeevan said. “You and Elizabeth remain friends. You have considerable … considerable respect for one another and have decided mutually that it’s best for you to go your separate ways, and you wish for privacy in this, I don’t know, in this difficult time?”

“That’s perfect.”

“Do you want me to mention the …?” Jeevan didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. Arthur winced and looked at the ceiling.

“Yes,” he said in a strained voice, “let’s mention the baby. Why not?”

“Your first priority is your son, Tyler, who you and Elizabeth are committed to coparenting. I’ll make it less awkward than that.”

“Thank you,” Arthur said.

28

ARTHUR THANKED HIM, and then what? On his brother’s sofa in a tower on the south edge of Toronto, eight days after Arthur’s death, Jeevan stared at the ceiling and tried to remember how it had played out. Had the publicist offered him a cappuccino? No, she had not, although that would’ve been nice. (Jeevan had been thinking of cappuccinos a great deal, because cappuccinos were among his favorite things and it had occurred to him that if everything was as bad as the television news suggested, he might never drink another. The things we fixate on, he thought.) Anyway, the publicist: she’d escorted him out without looking at him and closed the door in his face, and somehow this was already seven years ago.

Jeevan lay on the sofa, entertaining flashes of random memory and thinking of things like cappuccinos and beer while Frank worked on his latest ghostwriting project, a memoir of a philanthropist whose name he was contractually forbidden from mentioning. Jeevan kept thinking of his girlfriend, his house in Cabbagetown, wondering if he was going to see either of them again. Cell phones had stopped working by then. His brother had no landline. Outside the world was ending and snow continued to fall.

29

HE’D KEPT HIS WORD, THOUGH. This was one of the very few moments Jeevan was proud of in his professional life. He had told no one about Arthur and Elizabeth’s split, absolutely no one, for a full twenty-four hours after the interview.