The third thing that happened-well, it wasn’t as bad, I guess. Certainly no one died, I didn’t lose anyone I loved. I got back to Los Angeles to find out that Jessie had auditioned for a part in a major motion picture, and that the director wanted to see her again.
We rehearsed together. I took the part of the boyfriend, which Jessie told me would be played by Harrison Ford. I barely remember what the movie was about, to tell you the truth. I was numb with grief, still coming to terms with all the holes in my life left by my father’s death. And I was depressed over my career, the way it seemed that everyone was getting ahead but me.
Jessie tried to be supportive, but she was too excited about the direction her own career had taken. I couldn’t blame her, really. The morning of her audition she rented the white BMW and left for the studio. I didn’t hear from her until she called at five o’clock that evening.
"I got the part!" she said, a little breathless. "They all loved me, said I was perfect. I did those scenes we practiced with Harrison -what a sweetie he is!"
"That’s nice," I said. "Listen, I’ve got to go-I’ve got some reading to do."
"Sure," she said. She sounded a little puzzled. Did she really not understand my jealousy? Was she really that naive?
So I got to watch as Jessie became the next hot actress-this year’s blonde, she joked, brushing back her masses of dark hair. Her conversation became thick with the names of famous actors, directors, producers. She rented a condo in Malibu. I thought for sure she would buy that damned BMW she was so proud of but she went one better and showed up at my apartment complex in a silver Jaguar.
"I couldn’t resist," she said. "Do you like it? You know how the British pronounce Jaguar? They say Jay-gu-ar," and she told me which famous British actor had taught her that.
"It is not enough to succeed," someone in Hollywood had once said, I think Gore Vidal. "Others must fail." I tried to feel happy over Jessie’s success, I really did, but I was sunk so deep in misery I couldn’t do it.
It all started with that damn book, I thought. It’s all because I took that book down and opened it. "And he who reads the following words will be plagued by ill fortune for all his life," it had said. "Trogro. Trogrogrether. Ord, mord, drord. Coho, trogrogrether."
You look up a moment. The birds have stopped singing, a cloud has moved in front of the sun. You thought you were reading a story about someone struggling with death, with bad luck, with her own inner demons-Hamlet’s outrageous fortune. You certainly had no idea you would become involved this way. It’s too late, though-you’ve read the words, just as I have.
No, you think. She’s imagined the whole thing. Sure, a lot of bad things have happened to her, but it’s probably all just coincidence. A bunch of words in an old book-how could that possibly affect me?
It can, though, take my word for it. It happened to me. I know my life went downhill just as soon as I read those words.
You thought you were reading about someone going through a hard time. One of two things would happen-either things would get better for her, or they wouldn’t. You were prepared to follow the story from the beginning through the middle to the end, and then you were going to put it down and get on with your life. You were prepared to feel better after it was all over-if it ended happily you’d feel good, of course, but if it didn’t you’d still experience the catharsis Aristotle talked about. You were going to feel good watching me suffer.
And now you’re the one who’s going to suffer. What do you think of that?
I stopped going out. I skipped auditions. I sat on my floor and stared at my carpet, which was a truly hideous shade of brown. I spent a lot of time wondering why anyone would make a carpet that color. And when I wasn’t worrying about my carpet I thought about Jessie.
I couldn’t turn on the television without seeing her. There were ads for her movie, there was Jessie herself being featured on some entertainment show or talking to Jay Leno about what a sweetie Harrison was. And when her movie came out it got worse. I didn’t go see it, of course-there was my carpet to think of-but just about all the critics liked it. The skinny guy on that Sunday evening movie review program practically fell in love with her, though the fat guy didn’t go that far. No one noticed that she wasn’t a very good actress, that she was missing something. I wondered if, in addition to all my other problems, I was going crazy.
Whenever I went to the supermarket, there was her picture waiting for me, on the cover of People or some tabloid. One month she was even featured in a house and garden magazine, with pictures of the interior of her Malibu condo. I couldn’t help myself-I paged through the article while standing in the check-out line. She’d told the reporter that she wanted to create a space filled with light. I doubted it-she had terrible taste, could barely even dress herself. Probably that was something her interior decorator had said.
I’d been invited to that condo, not once but dozens of times. She urged me to come along with her to parties, told me about the directors and producers who would be there. She offered to take me to dinner. I made excuses, stopped returning her calls. All I needed, I thought, was to owe Jessie my career. No, I’ll be honest here-I just didn’t want to see her.
I thought a lot about envy. In college I had been in a production of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, in the scene with the seven deadly sins. I’d played Envy: "I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife… I am lean with seeing others eat. Oh, that there would come a famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live alone, then thou should’st see how fat I’d be!"
If I tried I could remember the six other sins-pride, anger, gluttony, sloth, lechery, and greed. Envy was definitely my sin, though. I thought I would have taken almost any of the others: pride, lechery, even gluttony. Sloth would be good. Here I was, I thought bitterly, envying other people their sins.