Those eyes couldn’t die. That smile. Those fingers dangling a plastic cartoon turtle over my palm. That boy in an airport, on a beach, by my side. Thatlife.
“Helena called so you’d hear about the accident from me—”
I knew how false the word was. This was no accident. My vision blurred, my lips contorting in a spasm. I was speaking. What was I saying? I was speaking, wasn’t I?
“Luke, it’snotyour fault! This could never be your fault!”
Barnes failed to catch me when I collapsed but he held me after, draping the cashmere blanket from the couch over my naked body. “It’s not your fault,” he kept whispering. People only say that when they love you—and when something is completely, irrevocably your fault.
Arjun killed himself four years and three days after the first episode ofEndeavorpremiered—October 16, 2007. Four years since we’d chatted past midnight about how amazing the show looked, how he was finally starting the Chabon book, how magical our Europe trip would be. Except now I was married to someone he hated, and he was stepping off a hotel balcony into the unformed, newborn hours of the day.
A hotel balcony.
The boom operator, inches from falling off a hotel balcony.
Arjun, inches from jumping off a hotel balcony.
Pulse racing, hands trembling, I thought only of escape. How typical.
I feebly, hoarsely cried, “Help… Help…”
“Luke, don’t you dare quit!” Melange called. “Hang on for Imogen!”
My lips were racing when I saw the footage later, though who knows what I was mumbling. Erika shouted support from the roof, but she was the last person I could look at. Had she been thinking of Arjun earlier,when I’d been so cavalier, so oblivious? Had it looked like this to him, that night in London? The city a puzzle underneath, summoning one last piece from on high to its final, irrevocable place. Had he thought of me, the way I thought of him now?
“Sweetheart, give me your hand!” Melange hollered.
My mind was spinning too fast, my chest burning too hot, to feel her find my palm. Or to notice Imogen win, flying up the building like a champion. I didn’t even see Shawn grab Camdon’s calf at sixty stories up, foiling his last-ditch sprint to beat Imogen.
Troy pressed me about my panic attack afterward, but I whispered the truth to Imogen alone. “I didn’t even think of it,” she murmured guiltily. “The show’s done so many heights challenges since it happened. I guess I just… got desensitized.”
I rubbed my bloodshot eyes. “I can’t mention him on camera.”
“Say you thought about the kids and panicked,” she replied. “Otherwise, Troy will push until you say Arjun’s name. Then it’s the story, and we know who he’ll ask about Arjun next…”
Erika.I’d never drag her into this.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t keep deluding myself that the past was erased. My old crimes still watched from the shadows, waiting to be joined by the ones I had no clue I’d soon commit.
29
2015
SEASON 20, EPISODE 6:
“PB&J Sandwich”
The next morning, Troy pulled me and Imogen to talk about our win, then traded us for Erika. Afterward, we found Melange and Shawn in the kitchen, chowing down on cold pancakes left over from the catered breakfast. Despite Zara’s warning, I hadn’t spoken with Shawn about our situation yet. Maybe it was the specter of Arjun looming after the previous Tribulation, but I just didn’t feel brave enough for a conversation about secret romances. I was still justifying it all in my head when PB swooped into the kitchen, pointing at me. “Your room. All of you.”
We trooped in to find Greta waiting. “Her too?” Melange asked brusquely.
“You’ll be thanking me from the bottom of your Southern-fried heart in a minute,” Greta shot back. She and PB wore the same grim expression, inexplicably unified.
“Mics off,” PB instructed, herding us into the bathroom. Protests ensued, but he was adamant, locking the door behind us. “Aspen bribed Camdon and Royce,” he finally said. “That’s why they flipped on you, Imogen.”
“Bribed them?” she asked skeptically. “Aspen?”
“The Russki said if they helped him win, he’d cut them a commission.”
