Cyclorama, page 24
Declan stared at Franklin’s phone again.
“It’s not on,” said Franklin. “Is this about the diaries? Is that why you broke in?”
“I didn’t break in; I was set up. He lured me there—Tyrus.”
Franklin opened his voice recorder app.
“And I’m not gonna talk about that either,” said Declan.
“What’s in the diaries?”
“Not now,” said Declan. “Later maybe. After I’ve had time to think it all through. But for now, we’re gonna have to kill the story.”
“That’s not on the table.”
“Fuck,” said Declan. “I didn’t have to talk to you. I could’ve brought this story to anyone else. I talked to you because we have a history and I trusted you. Patricia was right: never trust a reporter, even if you were friends.”
“We were never friends,” Franklin said. “We were in a play together once and we didn’t even like each other.”
“You’re still holding a grudge? After all this time? That’s what this is about?”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about, man.”
“Frank,” Declan said, “I know you might still have hard feelings because of the whole Carrie thing, but you’re gonna need to get past that. We’re all married now; we’re all adults.”
“Listen.” Franklin spoke quietly but firmly. “This may be difficult for you to understand, but this story really doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s never about specific people; it’s about what their stories represent, what they mean, why they matter. I know I’ve written stories that have changed specific people’s lives, and that’s not always a good thing. That’s something I live with every day. But every story I write, I hope in some small way it can help make the world a better, safer place. That’s the idea, anyway. I don’t know what will happen after I publish this story, but what I hope is that it will help more people come forward, and they can tell their stories. Maybe it will force someone like Tyrus to think before he does something, so there won’t be more stories like this to tell.”
Declan sipped his tea, then fiercely licked his lips. “How many times have you delivered that self-righteous little soliloquy, Frank?”
Franklin cocked his head and inhaled sharply.
“Do me a favor,” Declan said. “If you’re gonna fuck me over, do it with a little honesty. Don’t give me a speech telling me you’re gonna fuck up my marriage, my family, and my relationships, and tell me to feel grateful. Don’t pretend it’s because you wanna do the right thing. You and I both know that if Carrie or anyone you actually cared about asked you to keep something quiet, you’d do it in a heartbeat, but since you’ve got a problem with me, you’ll do whatever the hell you want.”
“Okay”—Franklin pressed RECORD—“we’re on the record now; I need to know what you’re talking about.”
“I have nothing more to say.” Declan put on his jacket and hat and walked out of the café. He took one more sip of tea, then slammed his takeaway cup into the trash.
Riding the el south to his office, Franklin took out his laptop and checked Facebook to see if Declan had posted anything new, but he had deactivated his account and all his posts were gone.
*
The story took a solid week to write. Franklin worked on it not just at his desk in his office; he wrote on the subway to and from work and at night after the house was clean and Juliana and the kids had gone to bed. Editing the piece took another day and a half—rearranging sections, trimming quotes, removing first-person narrative when he found it indulgent, putting it back when he decided that getting rid of it had been dishonest.
Putting the article into the Tomorrow’s content management system took nearly another day. When he had first arrived here, a team of deputies would have done it for him; now they were all working temp jobs in the gig economy, so he did it himself: cropping pictures; hyperlinking to audio files; choosing and styling pull quotes; writing headlines that would work on the site and on Facebook; scheduling Twitter posts, identifying “influencers” to tweet at.
When he was finally done with all that, he moved his cursor over the PUBLISH button. One click of the trackpad would put it out in the world. So anticlimactic. Just one tap of his index finger. It seemed unjust in a way: out of proportion that something could create such an impact but arrive with no sound any louder than a finger touching a keyboard. Tap—and there it would be on-screen in Densmore’s home, and in Declan’s too. You could do it from an office, from the subway, from your phone, anywhere you had a decent connection.
He tapped his trackpad and, just like that, his story was published, and there was no taking it back. He got up and put on his coat. He walked out through the empty news pen and then he shut off the rest of the lights.
Mr. Kraler
“Did you read it, Dawes?”
“Yo, did I read what?”
“Your email.”
“No, motherfucker. No, I never read my motherfuckin’ email. All I get is ads for dick extensions, boner pills, and come-ons from Nigerian princes offering me less money than I make in a year.”
“Huhuhuhunh. Read your email, Dawes. I’ll wait.”
Snow was flurrying past the window, and Calvin felt his mind once again cueing up the Rod Serling Twilight Zone voice-over: Here is Calvin Bumbry Dawes, sitting in his plush-ass condo smack dab in the middle of New York Titty, on the fifteenth floor of the Harlem Langston with a view of Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and beyond, the snow-dusted trees of Morningside Park and the bell tower of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine . . . Consider the case of one Calvin Dawes, here in his white silk pajama bottoms and monogrammed smoking jacket, because, when he was little and watched old movies on Channel 9, rich dong-pullers like David Niven always wore smoking jackets . . . This is Calvin Dawes, with so many credits on IMDb.com that they don’t fit on one screen . . . Meet Calvin Dawes, who once cracked the Billboard Hot 100 charts with a crossover hip-hop comedy album called “The Lyin’ Bitch in the Wardrobe” . . . This is Mr. Calvin Bumbry Dawes, putting aside a recently polished-off plate of tofu scramble and vegan sausage because eating meat is all kinds of fucked-up if you think too much about it . . . Here is Calvin Dawes with a new show and a development deal with Netflix and a soon-to-debut one-man stand-up show called The Empty Chair based on an upcoming six-night residency at the Beacon Theatre—none of which he really needs to do, he sure doesn’t need the dough, but whenever he isn’t working, his mind latches on to dark, dark thoughts . . . Yes, here is Calvin Bumbry Dawes, talking on his goddamn phone to Todd Merritt . . .
“Fine, Merritt; fine, motherfucker. Get off my ass. Lemme read the goddamn thing.”
“I’ll wait,” Todd said.
Calvin had cut off just about all contacts with his youth, had set foot in his hometown only a handful of times in the past thirty-some years—stepfather’s funeral; mother’s retirement party; half sister’s confirmation; a photo shoot; some bullshit career expo he’d been talked into—and he had little memory of any of those times, since trips back “home” always sent him into such a maelstrom of anxiety that he was usually trashed the entire time. Even if he didn’t drink anymore and now weighed in at a svelte 245—even if he lived in a hotel where he was a part owner and had instructed the staff to refuse him alcohol if he ever asked—whenever he crossed the Evanston border at Howard Street, his imaginary AA partner would be like, “Fuck it, man; let’s get some hooch.”
Todd was the exception, and he didn’t really count because they’d met in New York and had never hung out together anywhere else. But even Todd had fallen out of touch recently.
“Did you find it?” Todd asked.
“Yeah, man, I found that shit.” Calvin opened the link Todd had sent him, and read Frank Lichtenstein’s byline and the headline: THREE AND A HALF DECADES LATER, MEMORIES OF ABUSE LINGER. He skimmed the opening paragraph. “Okay,” Calvin said. “I think I get the gist.”
“Read the whole thing.”
“Yep, reading now.” Calvin put down the phone and went to the john to take a shit. He wasn’t going to read the entire article, just wanted enough time to pass so it would seem as if he had. He had gotten wind of the fact that a story about Densmore was in the works. Franklin had tweeted at him and sent him a bunch of emails—Calvin vaguely remembered the wiry, do-gooding Jewish kid trying to get up on Anne Frank—but he hadn’t gotten back to him. Ditto for Declan, whom he’d avoided ever since he’d gotten his first major guest spot on a TV show (“Lucius” on Hill Street Blues), after which Declan had started leaving him presumptuous messages implying they’d been better friends than they were. Nor had he followed up on a call from Officer Tounslee of the EPD, because what good would any of that do? Had “T.D.” been a disgusting lech? No shit. Why relive all that? You survived hell, you got out, you didn’t go back for a guided tour.
“So,” asked Todd, “have you read it?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“And?”
“And, well, tell me something I don’t know, motherfucker.”
“We’ve got to do something about it.”
“About what?”
“You didn’t read it, Dawes; I’m quoted in it.”
“So what, man? You’re quoted in Variety and Backstage every other fuckin’ day.”
“Did you actually see what Densmore said?”
“A bit, yeah.”
“He got real specific—about heroin, about Calvary Cemetery, about Dyche Stadium. Find that part; read it.”
Calvin scrolled down until he found the paragraph Todd meant: “If they want to tell tall tales about me, I’ll tell true stories about them.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Calvin said. “So?”
“He was talking about me,” said Todd. “It was a threat.”
“Threat to do what? Motherfucker’s gotta be, like, two hundred years old.”
“One of the things he said—he was quoting my character diary practically word for word. There’s a lot in there I haven’t told anybody, not even you.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s fucked-up bringing that shit back up. Granted. But people say all kinds of fucked-up jive. That’s the world we’re living in. You think you got problems? Please, honky. You know what a problem is? Try going into a shop called Big and Tall and still not finding anything your size. Try getting charged for two seats whenever you fly Jet Blue. You know what? Try getting half the accolades of Forest Whitaker even though you’re the same damn size. You wanna talk about problems? Try getting shaken down for an autograph in Indianapolis because some dumbass cracker thinks you’re Refrigerator Perry; try auditioning for a John Hughes flick and learning your character’s name is ‘Fat Black Winston’; try meeting Bruce Springsteen and having him ask, ‘Hey, y’all play saxophone?’ Then come back and tell me your problems, skinny white man. Why does this even matter? You got your Tony Awards, your Obies, house in Cape May, all that shit.”
“That’s exactly it,” said Todd. “This remarkable career, and the first thing that’ll come up when you google me will be what Tyrus said. When you read my obituary, that’ll be the first line.”
“It’s a little early to start worrying about your obituary, my man.”
Todd didn’t say anything.
“Hey, wait—what’s goin’ on?” Calvin asked.
“I’m sick,” said Todd.
“Aww, fuck. Like how sick?”
Todd took a halting breath.
“Shit,” Calvin said. “Bad?”
“Yeah. Bad.”
It was funny in a morbid sort of way: you grew up thinking you were immortal, but then you spent your early adulthood paranoid that anything could take you out; you practiced safe-ish sex so you wouldn’t get AIDS, religiously checked your lymph nodes to make sure you didn’t have meningitis, ducked out of the way of secondhand smoke so you wouldn’t get lung cancer. Then you made it past forty and you started thinking you were immortal again. It was funny to think that things could still kill you.
“Like that kind of sick?” asked Calvin.
“Not even. I wish,” Todd said. “At least that would be manageable.”
“What is it?”
“It’s bone cancer. Same thing as when I was a kid. They told me back then my chances of surviving five years: less than ten percent. That’s why I was such a train wreck at North Shore. And I wrote about all of it in my diary, every messed-up thing I did. Tyrus kept nagging me: ‘More personal; dig deeper.’ I thought he was trying to help, but it was like he was getting me to write an insurance policy so he’d always have something to use against me. I wrote everything and gave it to him; I thought I’d be gone soon enough, and at least there’d be some record I was here. I’d be dead, but in the diary on his bookshelf I’d live on. Somehow I survived, though—more than forty years cancer-free. Then, out of nowhere, I notice I’m getting tired more. And not the tired I’m used to; the tired I remember from back then. Like even lifting your head takes so much effort you’d rather not bother.”
“What’d you do?”
“Ignored it, like an idiot. Then one day I pass out right on the steps at Broadway-Lafayette. Cut my head, eleven stitches. And when I wake up and finally get my bearings, I’m not in the emergency room; I’m in the oncology ward. And it’s like I’ve always been there—you know, never left. And the last four decades or whatever of good health? It feels like something I just dreamed up back in Children’s Memorial. Except my parents are gone, and the only ones left are me and my sister, and we haven’t spoken since my mom’s funeral. Did I tell you what she said to me there?”
“What?”
“ ‘Your lifestyle killed her.’ ”
“Man, that’s some bullshit.”
“I know. And that’s why it’s so fucked: Densmore bringing all this back up, threatening to tell more. Because he knows what I went through. He read every word of those diaries. Then, the New York trip, he pulls that shit on me, knowing how vulnerable I was. Even now, he feels no remorse. He’ll tell everything everyone ever told him in confidence, and he doesn’t care. He is still there; he is still fucking with people, and someone has to make it stop.”
Calvin fumbled for his next question: “Is there any . . . ?”
“Cure?” Todd asked. “Hope?”
“I guess,” said Calvin.
“No. After they started using those words—‘palliative,’ ‘hospice care’—I’m like, ‘Don’t say anything else.’ How much time do I have? I don’t want to know. I’ve got one show opening in April; maybe I’ll make that one. I’ve got two more in the fall; I probably won’t make those.”
Calvin assayed some mollifying bullshit, told Todd he had to focus on things that would make a real impact. “Go knit yourself a Pussyhat, man,” he said. “Donate a million bucks to Amnesty International. Do something that matters.”
“That’s what I’m saying, Dawes,” Todd said. “Little things like this are what actually matter, because they have bigger implications. I don’t like indeterminate endings, you know that—not in theater, not in real life. I believe in people getting what they deserve. I love the classics: you sleep with your mom, you blind yourself; you kill the king, someone kills you. That’s why I got so pissed at John Patrick Shanley, opening night of Doubt. I screamed at him, people were watching: ‘Which is it, John? Did he diddle those kids or not? Which? Fuck your ambiguity.’ Look at Shakespeare; his best plays are the ones where you know it’s comedy or tragedy. Nobody ever does Measure for Measure or Cymbeline because no one knows what the fuck they are.
“Here’s the thing,” Todd continued. “I’m gonna be dead soon. And I don’t want to hear anything about miracles. And after I’m gone, I want people to remember me for what I did and who I was, not what Tyrus said about me. And I want Tyrus remembered for who he really was. It’s like those Nazi war criminals getting tracked down sixty, seventy years later. You think it’s too late? Bullshit. You’re a criminal in Act I, you get punished in Act II. You lead a good life, you get celebrated in Act II and you get a beautiful funeral and a fitting epitaph. That’s justice.”
Epitaph? Calvin didn’t like to think about that shit. If there was some life after death, he’d be so overjoyed that the last thing he’d worry about was what people were saying about him in his old life. Calvin thought of epitaphs he might want: LASTED WAY PAST 27, SO THERE’S THAT; STILL COLLECTING RESIDUALS, BITCHES; I’LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER THIS WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR . . .
“Okay,” Calvin told Todd. “But what do you think I can do about all that?”
“Go public,” said Todd.
“With what?”
“Tell your story. If you tell people about Tyrus—what he did, who he was, what he tried to do to you—that’s what people will remember; they’ll listen to you.”
Calvin started to object, but he knew Todd was right. People did listen to him, no matter what random shit he said. He’d go on Twitter, say, “I had some toast for breakfast,” and five thousand of his followers would like his post and another five thousand would tell him what they had for breakfast, as if he gave a shit. If you wanted to criticize some article or call someone out, there were dozens of Calvin GIFs you could do it with: Calvin shaking his head; Calvin rolling his eyes; Calvin flipping the bird, pointing at his dick, doing some wigged-out dance.
“I don’t know, man,” Calvin said.
“Calvin . . . ,” Todd began, but didn’t finish, because they both knew what he meant: Calvin owed him this much, owed him far more, could have asked him to do anything and Calvin would have had to say yes.
“Lemme think about it,” said Calvin.
“Don’t take too long,” Todd said. “I mean that.”
Calvin lay on his sofa and looked out at the snow; it was falling down harder. On the one hand, given all that Todd had done for Calvin—jump-starting his career, setting him up in New York, not so much saving Calvin Bumbry Dawes’s life as killing off the old C.B.D. and replacing him with a new, super-stock model—he had to go along.
