The Dilettantes (20 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I like to pretend he was, anyway. For some reason people tell me these ridiculous stories. I don’t know why. But I always want to believe they’re telling the truth.”

That’s stupid
, Alex thought. But what he said was, “Aren’t you worried they’re just fucking with you?”

“I guess,” she said. “I am pretty gullible. But there are worse things to be. And besides, there’s so much crazy stuff out there that
is
real, you know? Why not go with it, just in case?”

The cynic in Alex’s head had about a dozen answers for her, all of them witty, and all of them cruel. But this time he decided to keep them to himself. He’d spent years cutting people down for the slightest inconsistency, logical or ideological. What had it ever gotten him? A hair-trigger temper and a library full of angry scribblings in the margins. That was the problem with airtight philosophies: you had to spend the rest of your life failing to live up to them. At that moment, looking into those beautiful raccoon eyes, Alex thought a margin of error sounded pretty good.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Claude stumble his way, waving and smiling. Alex had completely forgotten about the kid.
Is he even drunker than I am?
Alex thought.

“Hi!” Claude cried. “I finally found you!”

“Hey, Claude,” Alex said, shouting over the music. “I didn’t even know you came back! Where’ve you been?”

Claude’s beer spilled a little as he shifted his weight to the other foot. “I was just sitting at our table, waiting for you. And drinking.” He snorted. “But who cares? Listen. I was in the office. Suze was down there, doing early layout or something.” Claude’s grin stretched to
twice its previous size. “She’s running all of my
CD
reviews on a full page together, man. She showed me my byline and everything. I convinced her and Rachel to come meet me up here later, to celebrate. I just—I fucking love this newspaper. You guys are
so awesome.”

Alex scrutinized Claude more closely, and for the first time recognized a bit of himself in there, back when his face, too, had been soft and line-free. Before he’d seen behind the curtain and become permanently jaded. Alex realized there were still people out there who had faith. Maybe that was how you really got the good work done. Maybe he should’ve packed it in a long time ago.

“Congratulations,” Alex told him. “Really. We’re all proud of you. It’s about time we had some fresh talent come in and leave a mark on the paper. Lord knows we could use some new ideas right about now.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. The crazier, the better. It just takes a little initiative, you know? Break a rule or two. It’s good for you.” Claude nodded slowly and seriously, repeating Alex’s advice to himself. “And, hey, listen,” Alex added. “Have you ever thought about running for an editorship? It’s not that hard—Suze could even show you where the forms are.” Claude was sprinting back down the stairs before he could even finish the thought.

Alex turned back to the girl. “Sorry about that,” he said. The
DJ
put on the same Animal Collective song again, as anthemic as ever, and this time the entire Pub cheered with recognition. He felt himself click into the next stage of drunkenness, and knew his charisma wasn’t going to stick around forever. “What’s your name?”

She smiled. “Maggie. You?”

“I’m Alex.”

“Nice to meet you, Alex,” Maggie said, slowly blinking her thick black lashes.

“So,” he said, “do you live on campus?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

They held eye contact for a second, each taking a last sip of liquid courage.

Maggie broke the silence first. “You want to come see my room?”

He was immediately back inside his head. Weren’t you supposed to lose yourself in the moment at times like this? But from the second he and Maggie slipped out the front door together, down the stairs and past the coat check, he was aware of each second as it passed, and trying desperately not to fuck it all up. They were going to have sex. Weren’t they? Oh man. She probably looked so good naked. And did he have a condom? Shit. He most definitely did not. Wouldn’t it be weirder if he did? Yeah, that’s what he’ll say. Who was going to instigate things? That was the guy’s job, usually—then again, Alex considered himself a feminist. He was 99 percent sure they were at least going to make out. But he didn’t want to get maced if she turned out not to be into it. Maybe he’d wait, hang back, look suave. Or maybe he should just enjoy this blissful walk down the corridor, their footsteps softly echoing off the concrete.

Oh dear sweet lord, she took his arm.

They talked about nothing in particular. Alex restrained himself to short, clipped jokes. Maggie laughed a lot; she was now making a point of touching him whenever she could. Alex shivered a little, goosebumped and walking at a slightly awkward angle to fight off the hard-on. A smattering of other voices filled the space around them, groups of kids moving in the opposite direction. The girls looked at Maggie, jealous that she was so far ahead of schedule. The guys catcalled.

Inside Shell House, Maggie led Alex by the hand down a hallway and around a few corners, before coming to a door that looked
exactly like all the others. Hers had a couple of photos pinned to it, some concert ticket stubs, all orbiting the same standard-issue mini white board in the centre. Alex marveled at it. If
this
was about to happen here, what was going on behind all the other doors?

Hey
, he thought with a start.
This is it. It’s really happening
.

“You coming in?” Maggie asked from inside. The lights were off, and it took Alex’s drunk eyes a few seconds to locate her in the darkness. The top four buttons on her shirt were already undone, and he could see the traces of a heavenly plaid bra underneath.

He took a few steps in, and closed the door without looking back. Then their lips were connected. Tongues were involved. The air felt warm and sweet. He was so close that he could hear her eyelashes flutter shut.

Then her hand was on his crotch, and suddenly he wasn’t thinking about anything.

Midnight, Maggie Benston Centre.

The only active lights were the ones high up, the second stringers, indented into ceilings and just a little too dim. You never saw these lights, never even thought to look for them in the daytime, but now, without any competition, they happily buzzed their insect song.

A team of janitors glided across the hallway floors, mopping and sweeping and making less noise combined than any one of the lights overhead. Their job was to clean the nooks and crannies that students barely even noticed: forgotten spots behind photocopiers and fuzzy juice stains underneath the few remaining pay phones. The offices behind them were all dark and empty, except for one.

Duncan Holtz sat bow-legged on the floor inside the
SFSS
headquarters. He rubbed his nose and continued gluing dollar-store stars to a big slab of purple poster paper. Tomorrow was the big debate. Mitch had said he ought to have a new poster ready. The campaign is entering its second phase, he’d said.
So make sure the new ad is handmade, or at least looks it. These university types are all about authenticity
.

He put the glue stick down and held up his night’s work, thinking that this wasn’t what he’d imagined when Mitch first pitched him the idea of going back to school. Barely a year ago he’d been coming off the
success of a romantic comedy set at a ski resort that had a one hundred and twenty-four million–dollar domestic take.
(Domestic
here meaning the U.S., of course.) It was no
Gone with the Wind
, but the studio was pleased. His next project, a more cerebral kind of thinkpiece that he’d also written and directed, had gotten the opening night slot at Sundance and what had sounded at the time like Oscar buzz.

He was in the tabloids. He had a growing reputation for punching the paparazzi. He was bankable. How, Duncan wondered, had everything fallen apart so quickly?

He compared this updated poster to the ones he’d used in phase one. On the new one was a cut-out photo of him holding a basketball above his head, wearing a white mesh jersey over a T-shirt. He’d stood a bit too close to the camera, and had cut the photo a bit too close to his head, making his hair look all weird and blocky. The text read, in seventy-two-point all caps,
“ON MARCH 17, SLAM DUNCAN!!!”

No, this didn’t feel right at all.

Acting hadn’t always been the plan. His original dream job, conceived in the split second when he’d overheard his first-grade teacher telling his parents that little Duncan had a talent for memorizing the names of dinosaurs and the order of the planets, was a mix between palaeontology and rocket science—what he’d dubbed
astronauting
. As a rakish prepubescent on family vacations in Tofino, he became convinced that life was best lived in a wetsuit, tied to a neon surfboard. And if the perfect wave turned out to be too shy to reveal itself, there was a sandy beach right there on which to nap the day away. A few years later he gave up the sport but held onto the attitude, so laid back it was practically horizontal. He still hung out at the beach, only now he spent all day blowing spasmodically into a harmonica and kicking his feet out to the side after a cute girl in a green sarong burned him a Blues Traveler
CD
. These were memories he didn’t bring up in interviews.

He uncapped a Sharpie and started tracing over the bubble letters that spelled out his name at the top of the page. Two janitors on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window struck up a conversation in a language that didn’t sound like any he’d ever heard before. Mitch had used pencil for the rough draft in case Duncan misjudged the width of the paper and ended up trying to cram the last few letters against the right margin instead.

Once the acting gigs had started coming in, the summer of his fifteenth birthday, Duncan hadn’t much looked back. His first jobs were small but respectable. The sullen teen in prime-time ads for divorce lawyers. Breakfast cereal commercials where he had to look awestruck while a cartoon logo (which was really an empty spot marked with tape—the actual logo was added in post) came to life in his kitchen. Soccer player #2. Truth be told, when he thought of those early years, Duncan could barely recall the work itself. Instead, he saw a series of increasingly attractive women coming over to introduce themselves. He slept with more of them than he probably should have.

Duncan sat in near darkness because technically, he wasn’t allowed to be in this office. Students were welcome during business hours, obviously, but a non-sitting candidate in there by himself, at this time of night, using it for campaign purposes? Explicitly forbidden. If the
IEC
saw him here, they’d freak. But Mitch promised he’d “take care of it,” just like he’d taken care of everything else so far. Jumping the line at the printer’s, setting up that so-called guest lecture—and probably a bunch of other stuff that Duncan didn’t even know about yet.

The janitors’ conversation started speeding up. They were getting excited about something, and finishing each others’ sentences. Duncan couldn’t help but imagine they were looking at him. His back was to the window, though, and it would’ve been gauche to turn around and check.

His career had skyrocketed so quickly and effortlessly that he’d taken success a little for granted. The
TV
jobs segued into movies; the make-up and wardrobe women segued into co-stars, then models, and then lawyers at the very top. They were still his favourites. He was helpless before their thousand-dollar suits and the way their apartments gleamed spartanly, as if he were the first man ever to set foot inside. There was money, but more importantly there was the constant promise of more work. With
Maximum Death
he signed a seven-picture deal within minutes of walking into the room. He’d gotten cocky. He admitted that. But at least he’d kept his work ethic.

Things started going wrong when
Variety
published its pan of
Volcano Dreams
two hours after the Sundance premiere. It was all over the internet within seconds. His credibility was called into question, as well as, once again, his heterosexuality. Somehow the reviewer from the
Times-Picayune
, notorious prick that he was, snuck his BlackBerry inside the next screening—which was a fundraiser! For
diabetes!—
and liveblogged the whole thing, heckling it moment by moment. Then
CNN
picked up the juiciest phrases and used them in its scrolling newsticker across the bottom of the screen.

Suddenly what had seemed like an easy sell was dead on its feet. Momentum ground to a halt, and a week’s worth of lunches were mysteriously cleared from his schedule. Most of the major studios read
Variety;
they all followed the blogs. Walking back to the hotel on the festival’s closing night, he’d noticed people on the street were already looking at him as if his face were one giant birthmark.

Mitch called him in his suite later that same night, even though he was staying in the next room over. He asked Duncan what the fuck they planned on doing now.

In the dim
SFSS
office, Duncan thought about how this whole reinvention, the heartwarming story of a performer given a second chance to make good, felt like yet another role. He was investing time
and energy into creating a character who was a minor variation of himself but not quite the real thing, and he still had no control over the finished product. It was in the hands of another director, whose goal was to get Duncan back into Hollywood. But this was real life, not
Maximum Death III
. That still seemed to Duncan like an important distinction, even if it no longer bothered anyone else.

He’d already seen some election polling data. (Apparently Mitch knew someone who owed him a favour over at Harris/Decima.) The numbers looked good, too—but it was hard to be sure. A big chunk of those polled admitted they would vote for whoever seemed the funniest. After all, said one respondent, there wasn’t a joke party this year. Or were they just getting subtler?

On the whole, Duncan thought everyone at
SFU
was extremely nice. That was the real tragedy. His professors, the people who stopped for high-fives, even that terribly focused girl from the student paper who’d tried to interview him. They seemed like real fans, or at least real people. And they’d all been far more pleasant to him than anyone in California had for the past year—far more than was necessary. Manipulating them like this, especially when he had no particular feelings for government, or university, or even plans for sticking around Vancouver longer than a couple of months, felt more ethically grey than he’d first thought.

That last night at Sundance, after getting reamed out by Mitch over the phone, Duncan left the hotel to try to calm down and clear his mind. But outside the lobby, he was ambushed by a paparazzo aiming a huge camera at him.
A-ha!
he thought. Here was a chance for some easy press. Time to take
PR
back into his own hands. As the photographer came right up close to him, Duncan wound up and hit the man square in the temple. He fell to the ground with an awful thump. Duncan tried to channel the rage and exasperation of a decent guy who was simply at the end of his rope, dealing with the vultures
of New Hollywood. It was the very same expression that the internet had found so endearing the month before, back at the Houston airport, when he wasn’t faking. The punch felt terrific.

Unfortunately, the man wasn’t a paparazzo. And what the bloggers reported minutes later was not that Canadian indie-heartthrob Duncan Holtz was in fact still on top, critic-proof and feistier than ever. The man was a fan. He was looking for a picture, and maybe one of those legendarily firm handshakes.

Duncan Holtz had punched out the president of his own fan club.

Just as quickly as it had started, the janitors’ conversation in the hallway ended, replaced by the automated hum of their vacuums as they split up and quietly got back to work.

Duncan finished underlining his name and held the new poster up again. It was still too dark to see it very clearly, and his eyes were tired and strained from being awake for so long. He recapped the Sharpie. Finished. He still wasn’t sure the pun worked in his favour, but Mitch told him not to overthink it.