“I’ll have the pizza.” Maisie offered a feeble smile; even she felt sorry for him.
Patrick thought back to his years on The People Upstairs. Did he know what he was talking about? In the early seasons the cast would gather at someone’s house to watch the show the night it aired, first with takeout, later with midlist catering like Maggiano’s eggplant parmesan. It was fun, a mini cast party every week for a show with an open-ended run. They were all young, breaking into the business together, and nothing excited them more than being an audience for each other. None of them had ever made money like this, and maybe it wasn’t much by Hollywood standards, not at first, but it bought happiness—temporarily, at least. Especially in those early years. For Patrick it was a second chance. A sign he would survive. A reason to believe there would be life after Joe.
And yet, he stopped attending those screenings, and the others eventually did, too. By the fourth season not one of them copped to watching the show and perhaps they themselves were responsible for the series’ diminishing ratings. But watching a program you were on had a strange effect; it made Patrick nostalgic for experiences he was still in the middle of living. It pulled him out of it. He was both him, living his life, and some ghostly version of himself, floating above his terrestrial self, watching, judging. He stopped feeling present in his own body. Stopped being able to feel this new joy, and it was eclipsed by sorrow again; perhaps happiness was destined to be temporary regardless, perhaps it never even stood a chance. Now he worried about that happening to the kids.
“Grant? Pizza?”
“I don’t want anything!”
Patrick looked back over his shoulder for a way out of this. Three tables over was a party of silver-haired men in tragic Hawaiian shirts celebrating a birthday. At the center of their table was an enormous martini glass containing a mountain of pink cotton candy. He motioned for their waiter as he was passing by. “Excuse me, we’re going to start with one of those.” He pointed to the cotton candy.
“You’re going to start with dessert.”
“That’s right. We can’t seem to decide on a main course, so we’re going to start with dessert. When you have a moment.”
This seemed to get Grant’s attention.
“Look, it’s not right for me to film you and put you on the internet. That’s a decision that your father should be a part of and I don’t want to hear any protest out of you. But let’s see what you got. Okay? When the cotton candy comes, I want you to do as many goofy things with it as you can think of. I will record you on my phone. Think of this like an audition for YouTube.” Patrick sat back in his chair to consider this. Could he use this to their advantage? For better or worse, they were part of a self-documenting generation at ease in front of a camera. Perhaps he could get them to open up by filming them. Get them to talk about their grief in a way that they simply couldn’t manage face-to-face. Maybe they needed the camera between them as a barrier, a neutral arbiter who wouldn’t judge or ask questions or try to define their feelings or shape the way they expressed them. It would simply record their feelings for posterity. Perhaps it was the perfect therapist. “Deal?”
Grant had his elbows on the table and put his hands under his chin to think about this. If only elbows on the table were Patrick’s biggest concern. “Goofy things like what?”
“I don’t know, kid. What would you do on your vlog?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that sounds like a rather dull viewing experience. Two kids staring sadly at candy.”
“Eat it!” Maisie offered.
“Meh.” Patrick shrugged. “I don’t think it’s fun to sit around and watch other people eat candy when you can’t enjoy any yourself.”
“But why do we have to be goofy?”
“People love goofy. Goofy bought me my house. There’s already a first wave of kids with followers. You’re second bananas. Like I was. You gotta ham it up to grab eyeballs.”
“Bananas, ham.” Maisie scowled.
“Eyeballth,” Grant added, grimacing.
The waiter returned with the cotton candy, and when it was placed on the table it towered over all of their heads, a pink Matterhorn made entirely of billowy clouds. “Here you go. I’ll give you a few minutes and check back to see if you’ve decided on dinner.” He winked at Patrick. Flirtatiously, conspiratorially, or just in recognition; it wasn’t clear.
“Here, let’s start with an easy one.” Patrick used two hands to pull at a strand of cotton candy until it came loose. He pinched it in the middle and curled the ends, then held it between his upper lip and his nose like a mustache. Except for its pink color, it looked not unlike John’s.