Black Cat Weekly #79

Chapter 7-2

“There was no time this was going to be a good idea, Duff,” I said.

“We’re going to have dinner here tonight, right?”

He looked at me, and I nodded.

“All I ask is that we make it through dinner civilly, and then tomorrow when we have our first session with them you can—”

“Wait a minute,” Eden said, as I watched any sense of calm she’d been able to tap into go up in a flame of rage. “You expect us to work with that—”

work“It’s a good thing you’re focusing on stress relief,” Duff said to me, as if Eden weren’t there. “We can’t let this happen at dinner.”

They were all so much on edge I didn’t see how we’d avoid a huge emotional explosion at dinner—which I wasn’t necessarily opposed to.

“Come on, Duff. Maybe tonight isn’t a great time for a big get-together,” I said. “Let’s push the dinner back a night and give everyone time to get settled in and calmed down.”

“We’ve got a schedule to keep, and if I’m not mistaken, we’re all adults here and should be able to—”

“We’re all humans here. With emotions and fallible energy levels and stress. They’re just kids, really.”

Eden popped up when I said that, and I knew I’d pushed her toward her breaking point.

“We’re not children,” she screamed. “I know exactly what I’m doing and how I’m feeling.”

Duff muttered a curse under his breath, causing Eden to focus her ire back on him. I thought she was going to tear into him, but she just screamed loudly and left the studio. Justin tried to follow her out, but I stopped him.

“Let her go.”

I looked over at Duff who rolled his eyes at me.

“Let’s talk privately,” I said.

We stepped out of earshot of everyone else, and Duff said, “Nice control of your people.”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t think something like this was going to happen.”

He shuffled his feet and looked away from me.

“I had to invite him. I kept reading the stories they were putting out about him, and they were getting worse and worse.”

“You don’t believe what all the women have said about him?”

“It’s more complicated than that. We don’t have all the information and—”

“I believe the women. The stuff he’s admitted to in public is bad enough.”

“It’s not like I’m an unsympathetic audience,” Duff said. “I made it very clear in that interview I gave to the New York Times that I find his behavior problematic. He’s made supporting his art very difficult.”

New York TimesWho was he kidding? Duff and his pals wanted to help Theo Proper, despite everything he’d done, in order to avoid being tainted themselves. Bringing Theo here was proof of that.

“You want to support his art, yet you’re the one who suggested someone should d**g him and give him a taste of what he’s done to women to shock him into changing.”

“That was hyperbole,” he growled. “We can make this all right through art here, Peg. If there wasn’t something still redeemable about him then why would Mary Sue be willing to do this?”

“Because she’s brainwashed. And you’re going to make it worse.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re a woman.”

I bit my tongue and clenched my fists so I didn’t punch him or go off on him about how one day he would pay for underestimating women.

“I can’t do this right now,” I said. “I need to go make sure my staff is ok.”

We made it to dinnertime without any further blowups. Part of that was because Eden hadn’t been seen since she’d stormed out of the black box. We all had assumed she simply needed space and time to cool off, but when we sat down for dinner in the apartment’s dining room she was still missing.

“Peggy arranged for this abundant spread,” Duff said. “I know how much you love seafood, so I put her on it, and I don’t think she could have done a better job if she’d known it was you she was planning for.”

“You even got razor clams,” Theo said in his famous wheezy twang. “Such an unexpected treat. I never get razor clams.” He piled them on his plate.

neverWe all dove into the food and chatted and ate and drank as the wine and beer flowed around the table. Without Eden around, I noticed the other younger staffers, especially Justin, were more comfortable talking to Theo and showing their true fandom for him. That’s what makes guys like him so difficult to deal with. Their charisma is off the charts, and they have the glow of decades of fame around them.

Everyone had seen Theo on the big screen and on late-night shows and on the news. Even when he was in the spotlight for something controversial, it just raised his profile with another generation. The only thing stopping Theo Proper from riding out his career as a legend was the misfortune of having a son from his first marriage who ended up with all of Theo’s charisma and hypnotic charm but who also had the intelligence and stubborn need for justice of his activist mother.

Theo’s son had written a scathing takedown of him, and Esquire had shared it with the world, moving the rumors and warnings that had long haunted the director from hushed conversations and back rooms to the front page. Theo hadn’t been completely excommunicated from the industry though, and factions had formed among people he’d worked with over the years, some of whom were trying to keep him relevant for their own sakes.

EsquireWhen the meal was winding down, Theo stood and spoke to the table.

“Wow. This was quite the scene,” Theo said. “The food was…mmmmm. Just. Wow. But the conversations have been the best. And the conversations are what we want to build around. We want you to ask us the hard questions, and we want to find an engaging and meaningful way to give the hard answers.”

“It’s what Theo and I always talked about in those early days of our careers,” Duff said. “We wanted to change the world through dialogue and develop something like this. With a group, not just one weirdo alone in a room on his computer.”

“I…I have to say I’ve done some good work as a weirdo alone in a room,” Theo said, laughing to himself. “Though I use a typewriter instead of a computer.”

“But you get the spirit of it,” Duff said. “If people want to gossip about you and have their say, they have to give you the same respect and let you have your say.”

Theo was about to answer again when Eden finally showed up, springing through the door holding a tray of tall silver frosted cups with colorful striped straws.

“We all know you don’t want us to really ask the hard questions,” she said.

really“I do,” Theo said. “That’s—”

“But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I’ll be a good girl and instead share my grandma’s recipe for chocolate milkshakes. They’re you’re favorite, right?”

Theo nodded, a bit surprised, as he took the drink she handed him. Nobody else had anything to say either as she went around the table and passed out the rest of the shakes.

“What’s everyone so quiet for?” she said, taking the last shake off the tray for herself and raising it in the air. “We’re theater people. To theater.”

A half-hearted clinking of glasses followed, then everyone drank their shakes as quickly as they could without getting ice-cream headaches. When the shakes were consumed, Duff invited everyone to join him in the main theater and get the conversational exercises started.

I kept my eye on Eden as she engaged with Theo and Mary Sue and seemed genuinely impressed with what they were doing. She was a good actress—there was no doubt about that—but she was exhibiting a level of emotional control I didn’t know she was capable of.

It made me very suspicious.

I also kept my eye on Theo as he walked around the stage waving his hands and communicating almost as much through body language as words. But it wasn’t long before he crept too much into the actors’ personal space, and his light touches to move them through various spots on the stage turned into heavy ones. I knew I should intervene before he crossed a boundary into harassment, but I was transfixed by Eden’s performance.

While Theo Proper’s movements were awkward and crass, Eden was commanding and breezy, easing out of potentially uncomfortable situations without offending Theo. Her confidence was breathtaking, and I wanted to know the source. Before Theo could do any more harm, I noticed a significant drop in his motor skills. It was like watching someone do a bad impression of a slow-motion movie before he finally wobbled off the stage completely and sat down.

“Creativity and inspiration are no match for the ravages of age, it seems,” he said theatrically as he swatted at the sides of his face trying to shake himself back to attention.

Eventually, he gave up the fight and excused himself back to the apartment with Mary Sue. Everyone else dispersed to their own places, including Duff. I had no interest in going home and dealing with my obnoxious landlord and his come-ons, so I bunked on the couch in my office and slept deeply and wonderfully until I was shocked awake by a piercing scream.

I followed the sound into the lobby, where Mary Sue Sun was screaming that Theo Proper was dead.

When Mary Sue finally stopped screaming long enough to tell me what was going on, I called 911, then Duff.

“He just kept getting worse after we left the studio and talked about not being able to remember anything,” she said to me. “We’ve been traveling so much I thought at first it was just exhaustion or maybe the flu, but in the last hour or so he sounded like his brain had been wiped clean of the entire last week.”

“Was anyone else in the apartment with you two this evening?” I asked as she led me up the stairs to the apartment and opened the door to the bathroom where Theo was splayed out next to the toilet.

“No. Just us. I had the doors locked and the security system on so no one could have gotten in. Why does that matter?”

“It probably doesn’t. I’m just trying to stay calm until the police and ambulance get here, and asking questions is how I stay calm.”

I left the bathroom door open and led Mary Sue back down the stairs.

“That’s maybe not the best way to help right now,” she said. “Thinking my husband was possibly murdered is not the way for me to remain calm.”

I was saved from the rest of that awkward conversation by flashing red and blue lights in the windows, which announced the arrival of every emergency vehicle in town. Duff followed close behind and came inside with the police. Justin and Eden arrived soon after. I met them at the door and tried to get them to leave, but they brushed past me and charged to where Duff and the police were congregating near the entrance to the apartment.