Faking Life Read online

  “Why are you better than me?” John asked. Paul's fists were clenched, the glass liable to break under the pressure.

  “Because you're nothing,” Paul said. “People like you come and go. You're the fucking flavor of the month. You're a two-page spread in Vanity Fair that everyone will forget the second it's finished.”

  John stood in silence, his heart beating wildly. He could hear Esther breathing silent gasps in the corner. She was trying not to be heard, not to be noticed.

  “You're a burnout,” Paul continued, his finger pointed at John, beer sloshing around at the bottom of his bottle. “You couldn't hack a job serving fucking drinks, so what do you do? You go home and you cry into your keyboard. And because you look good in a t-shirt they're gonna slap you on a goddamn dust jacket. The fact of the matter is, you aren't any good.”

  “Yes I am,” John said softly.

  “No you fucking are not!” Paul thundered. He reared back and heaved the bottle across the room, where it shattered against the refrigerator. Shards of glass raked the back of John's coat. They all stood in stunned silence for a moment before it was broken by a voice coming from the corner.

  “Yes he is!”

  Paul looked like he'd just been slapped sober. He turned to face Esther, who was no longer cowering against the wall. John turned around, confused.

  “Est?” he said.

  “You are good,” she moaned, her arm reaching out to John, only a fraction of an inch away. “Paul's wrong, I know he's wrong.”

  “And how do you know that?” Paul asked.

  “Because I've read his book,” she said. “I've read everything I could get my hands on and I've loved every word of it.”

  “How have you…” came the simultaneous query. She pointed to the pages on the ground, soaking in beer and nestled in between shards of brown glass.

  “I work for Nico Vanetti,” she said, her voice quivering. John felt his jaw slowly drop. Esther saw him and stepped forward, her eyes moist, lips trembling. “I was the first person to read your book. I was the one who saw your letter and told Nico to take you on. Your book is something I've been passionate about for a long time, John. I never wanted to tell you because I didn't want you think I had any other agenda. You've inspired me, and I haven't been inspired in a long time. And I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here and let him say you aren't any good, because I know it's not true.”

  Paul's anger seemed to wither. All John could muster was a soft, “You work for Nico Vanetti?”

  Esther nodded, her eyes downcast. John put a hand to his head and wiped it across his brow. Esther arched her eyebrows and moved towards him. She reached out, choking back tears.

  “John, I didn't mean to hide anything from you, it's just that…” She couldn't find the words. John's eyes fluttered and darted inwards, piecing things together. “Nico wanted me to get to know you. He said he wanted more drama in your book, that we could make you, could change you. But that's not why I came to the bar. You fascinated me, and I just needed to see for myself. And as soon as I met you I knew it was real. But I can see the way you're looking at me and I'd give anything for it to have happened any other way.”

  John could feel blood leaving his body, then a shiver ran down his spine.

  “That guy, the one with the Yankees hat…” Esther nodded, then choked back a sob. “Gloria. That's how he knew.” Esther nodded again, then her body went slack and she began to cry.

  “Jesus,” John muttered under his breath. “That explains a lot.”

  Paul belched out a laugh.

  “Well shit, no wonder she went out with you. Talk about hangers-on, she's waiting till her company sells your book and then she can make her career. You're her fucking whore, John.” Esther shot him a glare that could have cracked paint.

  “It's nothing like that. You,” Esther said, taking her gaze away from Paul and focusing it on John. Her eyes softened. “You're the reason I wanted to get into this business. I wanted to find people I was passionate about. Stories that would inspire me, inspire others.” She walked over to John and laid her hand gently on his arm. Paul watched with sleek amusement.

  Slowly, John took Esther's hand in his, cupped his fingers around her wrist, and removed it. Tears rolled down her check, but she made no move to put her hand back. Paul looked absolutely thrilled, as though his point had been proven without him having to say a word.

  “Now what did I tell you?” he said. John could almost hear Paul's tongue smacking against the dry roof of his mouth. “These fucking people don't care, man. They see what they want and they just take it Just like she took you, you fucking sap.” Paul stumbled over and clapped his hand hard on John's shoulder. He fell forward, nearly driving Esther to the floor with his other arm, supporting his entire weight on their shoulders. “But don't you dare come crying to me after she bleeds you dry.”

  “Fuck you,” Esther said, her eyes cold and bleary.

  “Fuck me?” Paul said, taking his hand off of her. “No, fuck you. You've been playing this game all along. How stupid do you think I am? Walking into a bar and just happening to have read my stuff in some hick magazine. I knew you were up to something.” He looked at John. “It's not my fault she's a fucking Venus flytrap. She'll carve you for dinner, man. That's her fucking job.”

  “That's enough Paul,” John said. He turned to Esther, his eyes unfocused. He felt like he could see through her. She was a mirage, an oasis that only a dying man could see.

  “Enough? John, she played you. And you're fucking blind for not having seen this slut coming from a mile away.”

  John reached forward and drove his forearms into his friend's sternum, sending him toppling backwards. Paul's heel caught on the foot of the coffee table, sending him spinning downwards, his legs kicking helplessly. John watched his friend fell in slow motion, crashing into the coffee table that exploded in a torrent of glass and metal. Paul screamed and Esther followed suit. Then silence.

  Paul lay still, surrounded by piles of broken glass and bent metal. His eyes were open, in shock. Then slowly, he placed his palms on the ground to regain balance, and pushed himself up. John heard a sick crunch as tiny shards cut into his skin. Paul stood up, blood swelling on his skin like moisture through a paper towel.. His palms looked like raw meat, his eyes aflame, his breathing laborious.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Paul yelped. For a moment, John forgot what he'd done and reached out to help. Paul swatted his hands away. “Get the fuck away from me!”

  “Paul, I didn't mean…” John stammered. His mind was whirring at a million miles a second. Paul clutched his arm, his body bent like a crowbar.

  “You fucking asshole,” he said, lurching around the room like an image out of a nightmare. Finally he stopped. His eyes went to John's bedroom. Paul's head jerked around violently until he was facing them again. His mouth twisted into a delirious grin, and then he stumbled into John's room.

  “Paul…” John said. There was no pain evident on his face, as though his nerves were so fried that they'd simply stopped transmitting.

  And then in one swift, terrible motion, Paul ripped John's laptop out of the electrical socket. He held it up, placing both hands on either edge of the screen, and swung it against the bedroom wall. Pieces of plastic and metal sprayed like drops from a shaken soda can. John stood in shock as Paul struck the device again and again, until the screen had detached itself from the CPU, falling to the floor in an ugly gray heap. Like the victim of a grisly accident, the remaining plastic and wires were tossed onto John's bed. Paul absently brushed a sliver of glass off his arm.

  After gazing at the computer's carcass for a moment, Paul opened the closet by the front door and put on his leather jacket.

  “Where are you going?” John asked, his mind in slow motion, a step behind the conscious world.

  “The only place I know you won't follow me,” he said. “I'm going to Slappy's.”

  The glass on the floor chimed as Paul slammed the door behin
d him.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  By the time Esther and John ran downstairs, Paul's cab had sped through a red light and disappeared into the blackness. They heard a siren off in the distance. John stuffed his hands in his pockets. Esther's eyes searched for his. He refused to meet them.

  “I think you should leave,” John said. He shivered, the cold air biting through his clothes. He could feel it swirl around his body, digging through the tiny holes where the broken glass had ripped his sweater. Esther looked at him, the tears freezing on her face.

  He said again, “I think you should leave.” Esther took a breath and nodded. She took a half step towards him, then stopped. Her eyes reached out. John could feel the hardness in his stomach melting.

  “Was that the computer your book was saved on?” she asked, her voice shaking. John nodded. She put her hands in her pockets. “I think I should leave.”

  Esther turned around, her face lingering on his like a doomed prisoner praying for a last minute reprieve. John stood stolidly, his eyes focused on a spot just beyond her. His arms wanted to reach out, but he stopped them, held them to his sides. Then Esther walked away, turned the corner and disappeared. John stood for what seemed like ages, and then went inside to assess the damages. A gust of wind hit his back as the door closed.

  She'd lied to him, and for how long? She'd pretended to be his friend, his confidant. His lover. Taken him into her bed. She'd wanted to know everything about his life, while in reality she already knew everything. She'd deceived him, played him, purposefully withheld information from him. But her touch, she couldn't fake that, could she?

  He stepped through the door, unsure of what to expect. Could it really be as bad as he remembered?

  The apartment looked like it had been witness to a viscous bar fight. Broken glass and empty beers bottles littered the floor. A swath of blood was drying on the wall like a ghastly Rorschach. He found thin rings of dried vomit lining the sink and toilet. Without thinking, John went to the kitchen and wet a sponge. He grabbed the bottle of liquid soap and scrubbed until his hands were numb, soap mixing with blood and vomit, the smell pungent and overwhelming. When he stopped, there were still pink concentric circles staining the wall. He decided to rest his aching tendons and wash them off tomorrow.

  He picked himself up, washed the sponge in the sink and absently watched the swirls of red disappear down the drain. He toweled off his hands and gingerly stepped into his bedroom. He heard a crunch under his shoe. Sighing, John raised his foot. There lay the broken 'I' key. He'd narrowly missed the destroyed CPU that sat by the doorframe like a corpse waiting for the coroner.

  His book was gone. The computer was in a million pieces. Though hardly a computer whiz, John was sure that the heap of broken chips and mangled wires were unsalvageable. Everything he'd work so hard for, his life poured out, his blood in typeface. Smashed into oblivion.

  But then he stopped and looked into the hallway. He'd expected his heart to sink, to be ripped from his chest upon returning to the crime scene. Surprisingly, it beat strong and true.

  So what if he didn't have the full manuscript? He still had his mind, his heart, and even though much of what he wrote would never be recovered, if he worked hard enough he could carve his future out of the remnants of the past.

  But still…

  Esther. He thought, for once, he'd found someone who cared. Someone he could feel alive with. But in the end, it was all a hoax. But somewhere deep down, his heart still ached. How much of what she said was true? He felt a weight on his chest, and John decided he needed to move. And he needed to move now.

  There was no way he could bring himself to use Paul's computer. If he returned and saw John typing away on his prized Pentium 3, seeing that his efforts to destroy John's spirit had not only been for naught but were actually being brought back to life on his dime, the laptop might not be the only thing lying in pieces. And with the cast still on his arm, longhand was certainly out of the question.

  Silently, he picked up all the visible pieces of his computer, attempting to place them back into the spots where they might have fit before Paul's rampage. After he'd scoured the room, the 'Return' key and the letter 'Q' were still missing. The power cord had been severed, leaving the metal teeth sticking grimly out of the wall socket. John knew he'd probably never see the missing parts again. They went to the Landfill of Lost Belongings, to party with his old Star Wars action figures and Elvis Costello LPs.

  John cleared off his bed and lay down. He listened to the rapid beating of his heart and felt a faint thump in his ears. He closed his eyes and squeezed hard, trying to force himself not to think about anything.

  He didn't need to write about it. Who gave a shit what happened to him anyway? Would anyone want to read about how the girl he'd fallen for had lied to him? Or that he couldn't afford to pay this month's rent? Or that his best friend wanted to skewer him with a broken beer bottle? Who would care about that?

  Funny thing was, the harder he thought, John didn't care who wanted to read it.

  The hell with the readers, and the hell with the agency, he thought. I need to do this for myself.

  He marched into Paul's room and flicked on the computer. The machine whirred and the power light blinked green. The first thing he did when the comforting blue desktop materialized was open his email and send a letter off to Nico Vanetti. Then he booted up the word processor and wrote.

  He sat for hours until he could barely feel his fingers, the time passing like streaks on a windowpane.

  When he looked at the screen and reread everything, he could scarcely remember having thought any of it.

  He had nothing left. His veins were squeezed dry, his mind back in the physical world.

  Then the cell phone bleated in his bedroom, nearly scaring John out of his seat. He stopped before picking the phone up, a gasp escaping his lips.

  It didn't make sense…

  He recognized the number displayed on Caller ID, but couldn't understand why it would be calling him. It wasn't possible for Paul to be calling from that number. But there was no other explanation. Why would Paul's parents be calling him at three o'clock in the morning?

  The phone stopped ringing. John immediately picked it up and pressed 'redial'. After three rings a woman picked up. He listened to the choked sobs of Phyllis Shrader as she whispered a timid, “Who is it?” Her tears sounded like they were being forced from her body by lack of air.

  “Mrs. Shrader…is everything alright?”

  For the next three minutes, John felt as though his heart might stop at any moment. He made himself breathe, though his mind didn't seem to want to let him.

  As soon as he hung up, John grabbed his jacket and ran down the steps three at a time. His footsteps echoed as he tried to breathe.

  A vacant taxi sped by as he threw the door open, and John bolted into the middle of the street to flag it down When he gave the driver the address, he heard the high-pitched squeak of the Muppet Elmo reminding him to buckle up for safety. He remembered back to the prank phone call informing him of his mother's heart attack. A glimmer of hope flooded his veins. Maybe this was a prank too. Maybe he'd get to the hospital and there'd be no record of a Paul Shrader…

  Then he remembered Mrs. Shrader's voice, so full of fear, the tears choking in her throat. He knew it was her. He knew it was real. And then John began to cry.

  Chapter Thirty

  On Sunday, Esther was flipping through the New York Post when she came across a blurb on Page Six. It referred to a “prominent New York literary agent whose wife recently left him with nothing but frozen pasta and divorce papers.”

  Later, while online, she stumbled on a Reuters posting about Nico Vanetti, detailing how years of indiscretion and a diminishing understanding of the marketplace had seen this once prominent man disintegrate like a burnt sheaf of paper.

  It was once an agency where promising artists not only saw the figments of their hopes and dreams become reality, but was
governed by a man who could honestly refer to each client as 'friend', who nurtured careers with the hopeful exuberance of a father whose son showed early signs of genius. However, he now demonstrates the detached apathy of the formerly great, sitting at home collecting royalty checks while hungrier colleagues are busy reinventing the industry.

  Esther arrived at work half an hour early on Monday unsure if she wanted to continue her career. The weekend was heartbreaking. Finally she'd gotten close to the man she'd dreamed of meeting her whole life, only to see her dreams dashed by her own deception. How could she continue when John was out there, possibly as broken as she?

  She looked at the stack of unopened queries on her shelf, picked out an unopened piece, and slit it with her letter opener.

  Dear blah blah,

  I'm proud to offer you BLAH BLAH for representation. It is a heartbreaking work of blah blah blah blah written by an author of blah blah skill and blah compassion. With blahs of humor and a protagonist who blah blah blah, we're confident that BLAH BLAH will no doubt make a bazillion dollars.

  Sincerely,

  Blah Blah, author extraordinaire.

  Unable to concentrate, she listened to the loud thumping sound coming from Nico's office. She was fairly certain it had been going on since she walked in. Standing up and composing herself, Esther knocked gently on his door and waited for a response. After three series of increasingly loud knocks, she opened it.

  Nico was sitting in his leather chair, the collar of his blue Oxford shit folded up around his neck. His eyes looked like they'd been squirted with lemon juice, several days of beard growth dotting his jaw line. His hair looked like it had been caught in a wind tunnel. The room reeked of stale booze. Piles of paper clips lay scattered all over the floor, each one straightened out meticulously. Several were sticking vertically out of Nico's desk blotter like thin metal grave markers.