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A.G. Trimes Onscreen, something like a Welsh Terrier. At a glance an unfamiliar viewer might take it for a stuffed animal, one that had been handled with care but had nonetheless endured the affection of a child. Then the affection of that child's younger siblings, the love of one of those sibling's own children, and so forth. His coat was thinning and worn, and while the hair on Charlie's chest and forelegs might have once garnered sweet associations, graham cracker or honey, say, nothing sweeter than breadcrumb would do now. His right eye, though, was glazed; pastel blue, the icing on Easter cupcakes in a bakery display case. "When Jackie returned from Dallas alone, Charlie was crestfallen," said the VO. "He epitomized the sentiments of an entire nation. And even today, decades later, he remains an avatar of our character as Americans; he is one resilient dog, one persistent dog-" "One mangy dog," interrupted Eleni. She leaned against the counter, her back to Kostas, and flipped through the channels. Clips flitted across the screen: news anchors sit behind a heavy glass table, a woman runs an obstacle course, a stout man in glasses salvages an éclair from a garbage bin. "You okay with baseball?" Eleni said, stowing the remote beneath the counter. "He wasn't always so mangy," Kostas said and took a sip of his beer. "When that dog came on set? You'd never seen a more handsome animal. Obedient, too, and sharp as a knife. Intelligent, I mean." Eleni waved him off, watching the game. "Came on set where? Came on set when, fifteen years ago?" At thirty-three, Kostas was already a consummate reminiscer. He had thick black hair and swiveled on his stool, fidgeted with nervous energy. He picked up and then put back down a small plastic placard. In engraved letters it decreed, NO FREE WIFI. "If we're being honest-if we're being harsh-it was probably more than that. Say, seventeen, eighteen. Look, I'm just saying there was a time. Even then he had to be over forty." "An anomaly!" Clark called from the other end of the counter. "And which set was this, again?" Eleni shot him a look. Clark was a regular. He knew well what set and what show matched the anecdote. He knew all Kostas' stories, but stoked the conversation nonetheless. It filled the time. Just like the way that Clark ate, slowly, functioned to fill his waking hours. He sat there, hunched over a plate of fried eggs, the yolks congealing, his home fries and bacon picked at, his toast untouched. Eleni could not recall ever serving him anything other than breakfast. He sat there and beckoned Kostas to speak. "Come on, Clark. You think they'd let Charlie on that trash? On reality?" "So it was the sitcom?" "Don't Tell Daddy, yes. I-my character-was on a trip down in DC, with the swim team. The team won at their meet and got to take a tour of the White House. In the Daddy-verse, these tours, I guess, were still allowed right after 9/11." Kostas shrugged. "So, of course, he ditches the tour to sneak around the White House, loses his nametag somewhere he's not supposed to be. Right as they're leaving, as they're all filing by the coach-I'm sweating, I'm about to get pinched-Charlie runs up to me with the lanyard and saves the day." Clark sat quietly and nodded. "Of course, that's just the episode arc in a nutshell. When the cameras weren't rolling we got a little more time with Charlie. Like I said." Kostas paused to tap his forehead. "Smart as a whip." Kostas finished his beer and surveyed the dining room. The booths had emptied out. The commotion of the dinner rush had shrunk to a few soft conversations, the occasional clang of cutlery, the sound of the baseball game on the television. "Eleni, I think it's time I call it," he said, pushing himself up from the stool. He noticed he had a buzz going. "Okay," she told him over her shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?" "Yeah." Kostas nodded to Clark and stepped out into the humid night. The diner's stainless-steel siding shone beneath a neon frieze and he checked his watch in the light from the Greek keys above. Unwound, the expensive mechanical piece sat dead on his wrist, displaying a time that slipped by unnoticed at the counter. * * * "I was still a huge name, of course. But you have to remember that I had been out of the game for almost a decade. When the network told Vi-Violet was my agent then-that they wanted me, well, we saw it as this prime opening to get my foot back in the door." Violet had explained the project to him in her office. A dozen former child stars, living together and competing against one another. "Bobsledding races and that sort of thing. If you come in last, you're out. You don't get to go on to the next breathtaking location." She wagged a finger. It was streaked, Kostas remembered, with chocolate from the pastry she had been eating. "Bobsledding?" "Dog sledding, sorry, not bobsledding. That'd be absurd; a track doesn't make for nearly as good television as a race across nature, across tundra." "I get the impression that's not the focus, Violet. How many of the other wash-ups have a record? I'm trying to recuperate my image, you remember? I know you remember." "Then why even ask, Gussy. Besides, I'd hardly call it a record, a few faux pas, maybe. Meltdowns, moving violations, these are rites of passage for a celebrity." She took another bite, chewed slowly. "Look, brass tacks, the paycheck is obscene. And even more importantly," she said, leaning forward, a note of enthusiasm in her voice, "you'll be back on television. That's what we both really want." Now, Kostas sipped his coffee. He turned to the woman beside him at the counter. "I had been an actor. Daddy-sitcom that it was-had morals, it taught lessons about family and about growing up. I couldn't hack reality TV. I didn't fit that mold." He stopped and imagined his words printed across the glossy pages of a magazine. A pull quote in a tell-all interview. "Would you stop whining to our customers?" said Eleni. She turned to the woman and asked, "Is my nephew bothering you?" The woman shook her head and chewed quickly. "Not at all," she said, hiding her mouth behind ballerina nails. "It's not every day I sit down next to a celebrity." "Thank you." Eleni sighed and topped off their mugs. "He was seizing an opportunity. You should've seen him come in for breakfast that morning. He's in this suit, ready to catch the train to meet with executives. I told him, 'Buck up. You're going back there today.'" She swung the coffee pot up toward the television, indicating where Kostas had twice gone. He remembered looking up at the screen that morning. Plasma display. A driveway where a young woman, high school- or maybe college-age, was bathing her child and a small animal in a plastic kiddie pool. The woman was wearing too much makeup and flinched when the toddler beat the surface of the water. "I told him, 'You'll be a star again.'" * * * Kostas was the first to be eliminated from The Race to the Bottom. For a week he slept in an enormous double-gallery townhome, a historic structure propped up by wooden box columns. It was haunted, "noted for its supernatural activity among ghost hunters," one of the producers tossed out with calculated capriciousness. Kostas shuddered at every creak and draught. He was unpacking his shirts-more of them than he would get to wear-and tucking them into the dresser when glass shattered somewhere down the hall. A few doors down Kostas found Corey swaying in the center of a bedroom littered with shards, clutching the stem of an oversized margarita glass. In the corner stood the ornate wooden frame of a cheval mirror, fragments of oxidized glass still clinging to its edges. "I don't know what happened," Corey blurted out. Then, when Kostas returned with a dustpan, "Are you sure you should be handling sharp objects?" Corey laughed and spilled his drink. He rose to fame playing the nerdy sidekick on a show called Highschooled, but had since grown burley. He had a short beard that looked painted onto his face. "You could hurt someone. You could hurt yourself." "I was an ass." Kostas was crouched on the floor, sweeping. He wanted Corey to know he took his faux pas seriously, that he was repentant. "No one needs convincing." Corey laughed and floated out of the room. Kostas swept up the remaining glass and stood. Lauretta was leaning against the doorframe. For a moment Kostas was twelve again. He was on the set of Don't Tell Daddy, standing in front of a shed that was nothing more than a sheet of particleboard supported by stilts, and guest star Lauretta Noor was kissing him. She was giving him his first kiss. The contents of the dustpan were shining from the floor. "Leave it, Gus," said Lauretta. "Corey's talking all about how he's got a maid up here. Just leave it and come outside." "It'll only take a second," Kostas said and bent over once more. * * * A young man stopped midstride on his way to the restrooms. "Damn, you're Gus Kazantz-" "Please, call me Kostas. I go by Kostas now." The young man looked confused. "But that's you, right? Gus. The little brother on-" The man broke off and snapped his fingers a couple of times. "Then on Race to the Bottom." In the aisle behind him stood a waitress, saddled with a tray full of plates. Kostas nodded and motioned for the young man to sit at the stool next to him. "If you have a moment. You know, I wanted Race to credit me as Kostas? No dice, though. You can imagine how complicated it gets, negotiating these contracts." On the phone, Violet had explained that the producers wouldn't budge, "Viewers know you as Gus; they don't understand who Kostas is. Or what sort of name it is, even. It just doesn't have the same appeal." "I thought it was you," said the young man. His eyes were bloodshot and he seemed to have forgotten where he was headed. "And now you're here?" Kostas shrugged. |
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ISSN 2150-6795 |