Tom in the Eye of the Storm

Tom Arnold is now working hard at relaxing. The job is murder. "The waiting around was the least natural thing. It was hard for me to be patient," he says of his nine months on True Lies locations in Florida and Washington, D.C. To blow off steam, he boasts, he and Schwarzenegger worked out together — an obsession that seems to have taken the place of Tom's more destructive former addictions. (Indeed, gym equipment has become his fetish. In court papers, Roseanne contests his claim that there isn't enough room for him in his two-bedroom condo: "What Respondent neglects to tell the Court," she drawls in print, "is that he converted one of the bedrooms into an exercise gym containing state-of-the-art exercise equipment for his personal use. Thus, Respondent should not complain that there is 'only one bedroom.' ")

Three or four times a week, around 7 a.m., a hired female hike leader marches Arnold off to nearby mountains for a climb. At night, he works on being Positive. "I lay down on my bed and watch television and I read a stack of magazines — sports magazines, entertainment magazines, magazines with pictures, I like those." The man who surrounds himself with buddies and assistants and support groups is practicing how to be alone. "I used to like being on the phone all the time but I don't like it anymore." He calls his rabbi. (He converted to Judaism before marrying Roseanne.) He says Higher Power things like "I am very positive about what's going on. Things I've got no control over I just accept." He thinks of his new career.

"When I was a kid, I dreamed of being at this point, but my dreams were a little lower," he begins. "When I was a teenager, I wanted to appear in a movie, and I wanted to be best friends with, [someone] like, Robin Williams. That was my goal. Professionally, my goals have been exceeded. I want to do movies. It's already led to a bunch of scripts, and I'm gonna make a decision in a couple of weeks. What I'm gonna do is act in movies and continue to develop television shows." (His newest business entity is called Clean Break Productions.) "I just don't want to act on TV, and I don't think TV wants me to act on it either. It's a mutual decision," he says in one of those charmingly self-aware moments that keep people from thinking of him as a total blowhard. "I was always compared to Rosey and her show, and always would be. No matter what. And that was hard. I'm glad I'm gonna be completely separate."

Lip-licking makes a reappearance as business plans give way to Arnold's thoughts about his new personal life. "The truth is, right now I cannot be in a relationship with anybody. I would be, like, the worst guy." Still, sometimes he projects to a farther future than the one in which the courts will decide who owns what. "Eventually," he says in the closest thing to reflection a visitor is likely to get from a man with a jiggle, "you're done working here and you're back in Iowa and your grandkids are there and they say, 'Oh, you used to live in Hollywood.' And I go, 'Yeah, I did a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Cameron and Jamie Lee Curtis. And I worked on the Roseanne show for many years.' " He pauses.

So he envisions being back in Iowa some day?

"Of course you want to end up back there."

But what about the 21,000-square-foot Iowa farm mansion that Roseanne now wants all for herself?

Everything's fine," he says, sharply.

Will he have access to the house?

"Everything's fine." There's an edge to his voice, the hint of a bark. "I'm just waiting to I'm not waiting I mean. Everything's kinda moving fast because of this movie. That's nice." In the dining room, the cook begins to set the table for lunch.

"I'd like to improve the quality of my life, and that's what I'm doing," Tom Arnold says. Two seconds pass. "All right. Is that it?" He jumps to his feet too fast for it not to be. "Thanks. I'm gonna get out." He's gone, with nothing left behind but empty Evian bottles.