Season 20, Episode 12 “Re” #3
Following the broadcast, reporters surround them, and I hear Imogen launch into the talking points she’d already prepared, even before her surprise win. “Passing the baton,” “full circle,” “the reunion I never thought I’d get,” “next chapter…”
Imogen Cuthbert is formally announcing her retirement from Endeavor, with Erika Bhaduri primed to assume her mantle as the show’s newest female champion. “But will we ever get you back?” an intense sports columnist presses. “Is this goodbye forever?”
Imogen considers her words, a smile tracing her lips. “In my experience, it’s best to believe every goodbye is forever. It makes it more special when you’re proven wrong.”
The buckshot of questions persists as Barnes joins me with glasses of champagne. “Imogen’s never going to let me hear the end of this.”
“It hasn’t even been thirty minutes since they won, and already it’s about you?”
“Do the math. Imogen and Erika just won more prize money than either of us.”
“We never had prize money. A legal settlement is not prize money.”
“All money is prize money.”
Before we can further dissect the nuances of game show capitalism, an exasperated Zara finds us. “Guys, I apologize. I thought I’d buried all the hospital footage.”
“No, it’s a win,” Barnes says. “I couldn’t buy that kind of publicity for Alone Together.”
“Speaking of publicity, the network wants you in dressing room 3,” Zara informs him. “One of the evening news guys showed up to get your current take on the 2016 race.”
“Christ, why do they keep coming to me? I told one blog I think he’s going to win, not that I wanted him to win. Next they’ll be asking what cabinet post I’m angling for.” Zara and I stare at him. “That was a joke,” he sighs, and walks off.
“One day your ex-husband is going to choke on his dog whistle.” Zara looks more tired than I’d expect for someone who is off the clock tonight. “Got a second?” she asks.
We pass through the empty soundstage to the vacant control room, monitors rippling across the walls. “So why the tour?” I ask, the cryptic look on her face making me nervous.
She exhales. “You know about PB’s original contract? The hosting gig?”
“That’s the last thing I thought you’d say, but yeah. Looks like Ecklund’s staying.”
“Actually Drew’s set to host the network’s morning show starting in the new year, not announced yet.”
I shift on my feet. “So will they hire PB?”
“The execs say he never achieved the redemption arc he needed.”
“He rushed to his comatose best friend and reunited with the love of his life!”
“And left spitting like a cobra while he did it. Not the best look.”
“Can I help with the optics? He and I could still shoot something for Alone Together?”
She swallows. “The network will only approve PB as host if you return to Endeavor. You’re the biggest fish they have.”
“Zara, it’s a miracle I’m not paralyzed,” I laugh bitterly. “It’s not physically possible.”
“I’d never bet against you… and you wouldn’t just be helping PB.” Her face darkens. “Hartt and Chrissy refuse to appear if Melange does. The network has invested a lot in Hartt. They’ll lose him for you, but not Melange.”
“But she was a superstar this season!” I protest. “Does Melange know?”
Zara shakes her head. “It’s not just her. Erika too.”
“There’s no way the network’s dumping Erika after she won tonight.”
“Gone Bollywood’s been off the air since 2007. There’s no more cross-promotional benefits. The only reason Erika kept getting cast was because Imogen put it in her deal. But she’s not making deals anymore, and I’ve been explicitly told you’re the only one who can.”
She stares at me intently. “Luke, I know I can make this show better with Troy gone, change who’s on it, how it treats people. But I can’t do it alone. I… Well, I need a linebacker.”
Could I do it? Leave the kids again, even briefly? With this wrecked body? There’s no way, and yet I can’t forget someone once made a deal for me. “When do you need to know?”
“Monday,” she says. “Production starts in January. Bolivia, foothills of the Andes.”
“I need to talk with the kids and Barnes, but let’s be clear: this isn’t me saying yes.”
She holds my gaze. “You’re not saying no either.”
“Ugh, I deserve an Emmy for costume design,” Melange gripes, shedding her wings in the green room. I rest the giant red accessories against the wall, wondering if I should warn her that her job is on the line. Or get her blessing to refuse Zara’s offer?
“I barely saw you today you were so busy getting dressed. You really started at 8:00 a.m.?”
She winces. “That might have been a little fib.”
It’s all over her face. “You saw Shawn.”
“I actually met him at his new condo in Woodland Hills.”
“I’ve never been to that part of town.”
“Christ, who has?” she mutters with a smile. “He’s enrolled at Cal State Northridge, studying speech pathology. Apparently there’s a good job market for it. Who knew?”
I know it’s not even a question. “So he’s okay.”
“He should tell you the rest, not me.” She pulls a cocktail napkin from her bag. “I bring gifts from the deep Valley. From someone missing you more than he’ll admit.”
I unfold the napkin to find a phone number hastily written in ballpoint pen. Always napkins with him, it seems. “His new digits,” she confirms. “He clearly misses you like crazy, and since you’re wrapped on the Lukey-Barnesy Comedy Hour and camera-free for a while…”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I say quietly.
She raises an eyebrow. “Luke, when the light turns green? Don’t put the car in park.”
Erika appears at the door, still glowing from her triumph, the victory that might now be her only one. Unless… “Sorry to interrupt, but they need to leave soon.”
Melange hugs me knowingly before departing, and Erika offers a measured smile. “I swear they’re as nervous as you.”
Erika wanted to arrange something before the season premiered, but I’d been adamant: they needed to see the truth first. Erika called last Thursday after the episode with my confession aired; they still wanted to meet.
Not a camera in sight, Erika brings me to a dressing room, where Mr. and Mrs. Bhaduri stand.
I’m struck by how little they’ve aged. Their eyes alone betray the years.
I’m not the only one who lives with regrets, Erika has assured me many times.
“All three of you want forgiveness,” she’s said.
“Maybe when you’re convinced you’ve forgiven each other, you’ll actually forgive yourselves.
And give me new material to discuss in therapy. ”
Mrs. Bhaduri wraps me in her arms as Mr. Bhaduri leans against the counter, his back to the mirror.
Arjun lingers with us in every breath, and I can practically hear him scoffing affectionately at the swells of emotion.
We move past customary small talk and agree to dinner at my house before Christmas.
Mrs. Bhaduri wants to meet the kids, and I promise to invite Imogen.
No mention is made of Barnes, nor would he expect there to be.
“I have something of yours,” Mrs. Bhaduri says gently before we leave. From her purse, she hands me a weathered copy of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Inside, my name is inscribed neatly in my own handwriting. My childhood address is written underneath in another’s.
“The last section was marked,” she indicates, her delicate bare fingers turning pages to the book’s final four paragraphs, where a line extends along Chabon’s prose: When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely dire summer…
And I can’t read any further, for here rests Arjun’s wild writing in all capital letters: “THIS.” Indeed. Forever this.
“Arjun always said you were so academic,” Mrs. Bhaduri murmurs.
“He told me you had more books in your suitcase than he’d read in his whole life.
‘The football player?!’ I said. And he had the biggest smile on his face, and he told me, ‘Mama, you don’t understand.
Luke is a library.’” I struggle to respond as she takes my hand.
“I have thought about that moment many times since. Maybe we’re all libraries, one way or another. ”
After a handful of cordial if brief text messages, Shawn and I decide to meet halfway between us in Studio City, the Monday after the Reunion.
There is a cozy café on Tujunga that I tried with Jenny on her last visit, filled with ample nooks where we can tuck ourselves away.
I drop Andie and Wallace at school, an hour to burn before meeting Shawn.
Imogen rings me first with one last bit of encouragement, followed by Erika and Melange together on speaker after a yoga class.
PB and Jiamin call before their flight to JFK.
Greta texts me kitten GIFs (of course). I hear nothing from Barnes this morning, an aberration from our normal routine now, but I think he means it as a courtesy.
The senator has already made his endorsement of the candidate clear.
I ride the 101 to where it braids with the 405 in Sherman Oaks and take the surface roads back, sneaking up the canyon to Mulholland, those famous lanes whose thin spine snakes across the narrow crests of the hills.
I hug the switchbacks, glimpsing the Pacific on one side and the San Fernando Valley on my other.
The curves are so tight you can’t see what’s coming ahead or what you just left behind.
Calamity could strike any time, but, my God, the views…
Not long ago I would have thought I deserved to careen off the edge, the just deserts for a lifetime sewn together by disastrous choices.
But then I remember I already fell. So many times, so many ways.
Somehow the world still gives me chances to make things right, regardless of whether I deserve them.
How do we receive a punishment when life refuses to grant it?
Or maybe we don’t recognize it when it’s assigned, the loss we don’t realize we’ve been dealt?
There’s certainly no milestone to confirm you’ve atoned for your sins, that the person you were has been erased into the dust of history, both your quest and your community service hours complete.
All you can do is try to be someone better.
When I consider all my losses—every ability, every opportunity, every prestige—the only ones I ever genuinely grieved were people.
Because it’s not you who determines how you’ve changed or how you’ve failed.
It’s not a network or an audience or a country.
It’s the people you love. They are the only truly irreplaceable things you can lose.
How miraculous it is when the rare one returns.
I sit now on the cushioned bench outside the café, five minutes remaining before he arrives.
I’ll know as soon as I see him what my decision is, what I should tell Zara.
At least that’s what I hope, that I’ll instantly know what to do.
Before our eyes even meet, I sense him coming down the sidewalk, and all I can do is rise.