Dinner for Two
Emma
So I’m here, sitting at the table that Damian reserved, and I’m checking my watch.
I would call him, but the number he used to call me earlier came up as private. I might do what he did and simply give Dutch a call, but I don’t have his phone number, either.
I’m starting to wonder whether this is some kind of prank.
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m late,” Damian says, rushing around to the empty chair across from me. “I got a bit caught up looking into something.”
“What were you looking into?” I ask.
“Hershel Hansen,” he says. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Hershel Hansen?” I ask. “You mean that computer guy?”
He seems irritated by the question.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” he says.
“I’m just glad that you came at all,” I tell him, and point toward the front of the restaurant. “You see the people waiting for a table?”
“Yeah,” he answers.
“They could see me, too,” I tell him. “You wouldn’t believe some of the gestures and mouthed words I’ve been getting from those people, sitting at this table alone and eating nothing but the breadsticks they keep bringing out. You know, I think the worst part is when they’re refilling the basket and I’m stuck here with just my water to keep me company. I was really starting to fear an uprising.”
“I’m really very sorry,” he says. “So, before we get to dinner, I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“I have a cousin who’s a big fan of yours,” he says. “Would you mind signing a couple of things for him?”
I can feel my face growing warm. I can only imagine how red it must be right now.
I’ve given autographs before, but it’s always been as a cute, kitschy thing, like a headshot for one of my nieces or something. This is the first time anyone’s seriously asked me for my autograph.
I guess I did give a lot of autographs to the sci-fi crowd when I played a role with a particularly plunging neckline, but I’d hardly call that a result of adulation. Most of them didn’t even know my real name and just kept calling me Dr. Tchaikovsky or Mistress Death Head or whoever I happened to be in that particular film.
“Sure,” I tell him.
As Damian reaches into his bag for the items he wants me to sign for his cousin, the waiter arrives at our table.
“I’m glad to see that your companion is here,” the waiter, Nolan, says. “Are you two ready to order?”
“Actually, I haven’t really had a chance to peruse the menu,” Damian says. “Would you mind giving us a few more minutes?”
“Well, we have already been holding this table for—wait,” the waiter stops. “You’re Damian Jones, aren’t you?”
Damian smiles.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” he says. “Take as much time as you need.”
Just to make sure that what I think is happening is actually happening, I look toward the people in the front still waiting for a table. They’re still looking over at my table, but now they’re nudging each other and taking pictures on their cell phones.
Yep. Nobody recognized me.
To them, I was, at first, just a woman sitting in a restaurant, keeping them from a table. Now, I’m the woman sitting in a restaurant with Damian Jones, though, and everyone seems to be interested.
It takes about that long for me to look down at the table at what Damian brought me to sign for his cousin.
“Let’s see,” I say, picking up each of the three items, one at a time, “a partially-used tube of toothpaste, a pair of scissors, and a condom.”
“Yeah,” he says. “My cousin collects all sorts of things.”
“Your cousin collects tubes of toothpaste?” I ask.
“Actually, no,” Damian says. “He doesn’t actually collect any of those. I just picked these because I thought they would be hilarious to give to him.”
“But you still want me to sign all of this?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, “if you wouldn’t mind.”
I look down.
Okay, the little boost I was feeling a few minutes ago is now completely gone, and replacing it is the question of whether or not I’m really so hard up when it comes to getting recognized that I’m willing to sign the first three things Damian Jones happened to grab on his way out of the house.
Maybe I could just use this moment as an anecdote for when I’m on The Tonight Show, if they ever call. I don’t know. I think I’d be too embarrassed.
I swallow any impression I had of my own dignity and ask Damian if he has a pen.
He pulls a Sharpie from the inside pocket of his jacket and hands it over to me.
“Just walk around with that, do you?” I ask.
“You never know when it’s going to come in handy,” he says.
The thing about Damian Jones isn’t that I dislike him for the little games he plays, or that I think he’s an egocentric jerk. No, there’s a much different reason why I’ve got this feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it’s only chance and proximity that it’s directed toward him at all.
Still, that feeling remains.
I sign the scissors and the condom, but the tube of toothpaste is giving me some problems.
I’m a person who prides herself on the aesthetic quality of my signature, but with all the ripples and overall unevenness of the tube, it’s difficult to do anything that’s even recognizable as my autograph.
I muddle my way through, though, and finally get to the question that I’ve wanted to ask Damian since he invited me to dinner.
“So, what am I doing here?” I ask.
“I just thought it would be nice to get to know you a bit,” he says. “We’re going to be working closely for a while and I thought it would be nice if we could be friends.”
“That’s a decent sentiment,” I tell him.
My problem with Damian, on the most basic level, is that he’s got all of this fame and all of this freedom as one of the most highly sought actors in Hollywood, and that he doesn’t seem to appreciate any of it.
It was one thing before I met Damian when I could pretend that he must be that down-to-earth, personable kind of actor who only uses his fame and fortune for good that people always project onto their favorite actors or musicians. Back then, I could at least imagine that he had enough poise and decency that I wouldn’t feel this need to see him fall in the mud.
Ah, the fairy tales we make up for ourselves.
Now, though, he’s said a couple of things here and there that would almost point to a more mature and enlightened perspective, I know better than to expect that as something intrinsic to his character. It’s more like a glitch in the Matrix: chances are, they’re an indication that something bad is about to happen.
We talk a while, but it becomes pretty evident pretty quickly that there’s not much common experience between us other than working on the set of this movie. At one point, he tried to tell me how he had some profound experience on his way out of a remote interview, but he gave up on the story before reaching any kind of point.
We have our dinner and it’s easy enough to see why we’re having such a hard time speaking with one another.
I don’t think it’s that we’re really such drastically different creatures that we’re never going to understand each other. I think it’s more the fact that both of us are staying away from any topic of conversation that could be considered even remotely personal or real.
I can’t prove it, but I kind of get the feeling that he doesn’t really like me all that well. I guess that’s fair, though, as I’m not sure that I like him that well right now, either.
“So, why are we here?” I ask after we’re through the fourth, though surprisingly not final, course.
I don’t really get a satisfying answer.
* * *
I get home and I’m almost certain that Damian just invited me to dinner so he could get me to sign that random bullshit that may or may not go to one of his relatives. It’s hard to say why he wouldn’t just do that on the set, but maybe he was worried it might weaken him in some strange way to be seen receiving an autograph from me in front of the cast and crew.
As for me, I’m hoping for a quiet night where I can decompress and try to reconcile my dreams of being an actress in a major film with the soul-crushing reality of it. Like everything else, though, the night doesn’t go as planned.
My phone rings, and without bothering to check the caller ID, I answer it.
“Is this Emma Roxy?” a man on the other end asks.
Maybe Damian was right about the need for walls.
“Yeah,” I answer. I was hoping I’d never have to hear this voice again. “What do you want, Ben?”
“Hey, look at that,” he says. “You do remember me.”
Yeah, I remember Ben.
Ben is a guy I dated shortly after I graduated high school and dated off and on for nearly a year. He’s also someone who, during the entirety of our relationship, never once took me seriously.
To him, I was always the hot wannabe actor that he was banging. He never believed that I would make anything of myself, not just as an actress, but in general. He didn’t mind letting me know his rather low opinion of me, either.
“It’s been almost a year since we’ve talked, and if you’re wondering, I can tell you that it absolutely has not been long enough,” I tell him.
“I’ve missed our little chats,” he says.
“What do you want, Ben?” I ask.
“No need to take that tone,” he says. “At least not until after I actually tell you what it is that I want.”
“Is there any way we can do this in a way that doesn’t take a lot of time or, you know, interaction?” I ask. “I’ve had a long night, and I’d rather just get back to pretending that you don’t exist as soon as possible. I find that I’m happier that way.”
“This shouldn’t take long,” he says. “I just wanted to call you and let you know that I’m going to be releasing those pictures that I took of you when we were dating. That is, unless you’d like to pay for the privilege of having them disappear.”
“Pictures?” I ask. “What pictures?”
“I think you know exactly the ones I’m talking about,” he says, and it’s not until he says that that I do.
“We had only been going out for a month or two,” I tell him. “I had no idea what kind of slime you were when I agreed to let you take those pictures of me. I’m not going to let you blackmail me with them.”
Yeah, about those pictures…
The pictures are probably about what you’re expecting them to be, though possibly not as graphic as what you’re envisioning.
When Ben and I were first dating, we went on a trip with one another. This was when he was still acting like a human being, though that other shoe wouldn’t take too much longer to drop. At one point, the two of us—well, we went skinny dipping.
I told Ben to leave the camera on the shore, but he grabbed it anyway. After a few minutes spent convincing me that nobody but he and I would ever see the pictures, I relented.
Ironic, huh?
He’s now blackmailing me by threatening to publicize the pictures that wouldn’t have been taken in the first place if he hadn’t assured me that we’d be the only two to ever see them.
“Do you really think some nude photos are going to hurt my career?” I ask. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the world in which we live, but people love few things more than seeing a pair of famous tits. If you’re threatening to take me from accomplished actress to accomplished actress and sex symbol, go ahead,” I tell him. “Do it. See if I care.”
He doesn’t fall for the bluff.
“No,” he says. “I know you well enough to know that having these pictures made public would mortify you. I’m thinking maybe we should start talking numbers.”
“What does it say about you that you’re going through with this even though you claim to know that these pictures coming out would make me miserable? I wonder why things didn’t work out with us,” I tell him.
“Whatever,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll remember that I’m a reasonable man. I think that $5,000 a month should be enough to keep your little secret for you.”
“Five thousand a month?” I ask. “You’re asking me to pay you $60,000 a year just to keep you from showing off a few blurry pictures?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Considering that you’re in that new movie they’re making with Damian Jones, I’d say you should have plenty of cash to spare.”
“And where does it end?” I ask. “I do this and you hold this over my head for the rest of my career or the rest of my life or what?”
“I’m not talking about anything like that,” he says. “I think we can call it quits after 17 years.”
“That’s a really specific timeframe you’ve got there,” I tell him. “That would be when I’m what, past my prime? Is that how long you think I have left in this business?”
“I have no idea how long you’re going to be in that business,” he says, “though I’m sure it won’t be anywhere near 17 years. I just thought that asking you for a million dollars up-front would sound too pushy. I figured a monthly payment plan would be the more civil approach.”
“You’re a humanitarian,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “So, what’s it going to be? Do we have a deal, or are we going to be waking up with an eyeful of you on every website in the galaxy?”
“First off,” I tell him, “I’m not that famous. This is my first big role, and I don’t know how much you think they’re paying me, but it’s probably a lot more than the reality. You let those pictures out and I’ll get a little embarrassed, sure, but all that really happens otherwise is that more people are going to find out exactly who I am, which helps my career in the long term, and more people are going to see this movie, which is going to help my career in the short term. Do you really think I’m going to give up a million dollars just to keep my nipples out of the zeitgeist?”
“Yeah,” he says, “I really do.”
“Knock yourself out,” I tell him, giving my play at indifference one last shot at working.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “I was trying to think of who to send it to first, but I guess it won’t really matter. Everyone’s going to have a copy of it by morning.”
“You really think you’re going to bully your way into a million dollars, don’t you?” I ask.
“It’s actually a million and change, but that wasn’t really your question. Yeah, I really think I’m going to get what I want,” he says. “I know you. You weren’t even that comfortable with just me having these pictures—”
“Looks like I had pretty good reason,” I interrupt.
“Whatever,” he says. “Look, I know that you’re not going to want anyone to see you like that unless it’s for some big role or something, and even in that case, you wouldn’t want to saturate the market with too much of your naked body, otherwise, people are going to start thinking you’re a porn star.”
“Well,” I sigh, “if that happens, at least it looks like I know just the guy to go through for advice.”
Maybe Damian will come in handy for something.
“What?” he asks.
“Five thousand a month?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll give you the account number so you can transfer the money, and this can be the last time we ever speak to each other, assuming you keep up with the payments, of course.”
There are two possibilities in my mind right now. The first is that I can stand up for myself, inform the world of these pictures myself, in order to control the story, and then turn Ben in for blackmail.
I like the idea of him being removed from society. Hell, I like the idea of him being removed from just about anything. The problem with this route, though, is that the pictures are going to get out there.
The same thing happened to Pamela Anderson.
The second possibility is that I keep my public sense of dignity intact, but give a horrible person a horribly large amount of money.
“Can I have some time to think about it?” I ask.
“I’ll give you 72 hours,” he says. “By the way, if you’ve got some idea that you’re going to call the cops and that they’re going to stop me before I can release the pictures, let me just tell you that I’ve got an email set up to send to the LA Times and E! with all of those pictures attached. If I don’t put in a password on a regular enough basis,” he says, “that email goes off on its own and that decision is no longer yours.”
“You do realize that everything you’re saying will happen to me is still nowhere near as bad as everything that would happen to you,” I tell him.
“Yeah, maybe,” he says, “but I have a feeling the way we experience the consequences of our actions—I think you’d have a much harder time with that than I would. I go to prison for something like that, I’m still the guy that hooked everyone in the world up with naked pictures of a hot, young actress who, by the way, I was dating at the time, and you know how that sort of thing turns into interviews and the eventual apology for doing something so ‘outside my character’ that allows me to take a greater role in the public eye. Who knows where all that could lead? Really, all things considered, this could work out pretty well for me. The question you’ve got to ask yourself is how famous do you want me to be?”
Right now, I’d be pretty happy if neither one of us were famous.
“Three days?” I ask.
“Three days,” he says, “starting now. I’ll call you when your time is up and we’ll see what kind of a future we’re going to have.”
He hangs up the phone.
There is actually a part of me that’s actually excited to know that I’m influential enough to be blackmailed, but it’s a small and rather crazy part.