Chapter 21 #2
Oh. Fuck. Someone was looking at her—a man standing at the edge of another big archway, under a truly resplendent garland of greenery. He was watching Cherry.
She froze.
The man lifted his hand in a very minimal wave.
Did Cherry know this guy? Did she work with him? She lifted her hand to wave back.
He stood there staring at her for a second, possibly smiling; it was hard to tell. Cherry let her hand drop.
That seemed to settle something. The guy started walking toward her.
He was big—broad like a football player—and wearing what she could tell from across the room was an ill-fitting suit. No,
it wasn’t even a suit—it was dark pants and a suit jacket. He was in his twenties. Kind of cute. Cherry definitely didn’t
know him.
He walked right up to her. He was looking at her the way people look at you when they think you’re lost—frowning in a nice way. He had squinty blue eyes and very short, light brown hair.
He stood between Cherry and the room.
“Hi,” he said. His voice was soft.
“Hi,” Cherry said.
He grimaced a little more. “Nobody told you that this is a debutante ball for rich people.”
She shook her head. “They did not.”
He smiled, but just with his eyes, and cocked his head. “Do you want me to help you leave? Or do you want me to help you stay?”
“I’m not sure,” Cherry said. “I feel like—if I don’t move, maybe no one will see me.”
He nodded. “You’re tharn. Like in Watership Down. Have you read Watership Down?”
She shook her head again.
“Well . . .” He sighed and glanced behind him, like he was contemplating the situation. He looked even more pained for a second.
“I think you should stay. The food here is really great, and in an hour or two, everyone will be so drunk, they won’t remember
you.”
Cherry stared up at him. He was getting cuter by the second. He had bristly blond eyebrows and full pink lips. She liked the
way his mouth never quite resolved itself into a smile. She liked his diamond-checked necktie.
“Are you still tharn?” he asked gently. “I’ve got to tell you, you’re not invisible.”
“I’ll stay,” Cherry said.
He grinned. Sort of. He kind of clamped it down midway. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“All right.” He nodded again. “Good.”
“But I need to get out of this room.”
“I can help you with that.” He stood taller and nodded toward the archway where she’d first spotted him. “There’s a back room over there where all the reprobates hang out.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“Walk with me. I’ll cover you.”
Cherry let him walk between her and the party. He was very good at looming without actually crowding her.
“I have to say . . .” she said. “You don’t seem like a reprobate.”
“I’m worse,” he said. “I’m an artist.”
Cherry laughed. “I’m an artist, too.”
He smiled down at her. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Well. I work in marketing.”
They turned a corner into a smaller room. It was just as crowded in here—and just as cream-colored—but the faces were younger
and the suits were cheaper. A few people looked twice at Cherry when she walked in, but their judgment felt less consequential.
And she felt shielded by the big guy. The artist.
“Here,” he said. “Stand behind this couch. You’re very presentable from the waist up.”
“Every girl’s dream.”
He blushed. He had a very visible blush. “That’s not what I meant.”
She smiled at him. “I know.”
“Let me get you something to drink. And some of the little sandwiches—that’s what I was looking for when I found you. How
do you feel about canapés, generally speaking?”
“I feel really, really good about them,” Cherry said. She resisted saying, I mean, look at me.
“I’m going to bring you a whole tray.”
“And a Coke,” she said.
He nodded. “Got it.” He was looking down between them and peering up at her. “Don’t go anywhere. I don’t want to find you
standing in the hallway again, glassy-eyed.”
“I know that it’s about rabbits,” Cherry said. “Your book.”
“It’s a great book. You should read it.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Coke,” he said, pointing at her.
“And little sandwiches.”
“I’ll be right back.”
She caught his wrist. “Wait.”
He stopped.
“I’m Cherry,” she said.
“Cherry?” He emphasized the ch.
She nodded.
“Hi, Cherry. I’m Tom.”
That first night with Tom . . .
Cherry was dazzled by him.
By his narrow blue eyes and wide-bridged nose. He looked like a lion. Especially when he laughed. He laughed with his brow
furrowed, like he felt sorry about something.
Tom was a designer. Like Cherry.
But not like Cherry. He’d gone to a school with a real graphic arts program, and his job was much more interesting. He actually
designed things.
Everyone in this room worked for Coates & Branch, the outside ad agency that did all the railroad’s advertising and branding.
C&B was famous for being the best in Nebraska—and famously stuck-up about it. Cherry could never have gotten hired there.
She didn’t have the portfolio.
It felt like a different party back here. A sloppier one. With shaggy creative types and leggy account managers. It was like
everyone in the room thought they were a character from Mad Men.
(But also like everyone in the room really was a character from Mad Men.) People were sprawled out on the expensive suede couches.
They were all holding two drinks—“Because the goddamn waiters take their goddamn time with refills”—and Tom wasn’t the only one who had heaped a pile of hors d’oeuvres onto a napkin.
“Do you have lots of clients?” Cherry asked him. “Or just the railroad?”
“Me, personally?” He was eating a tiny chocolate orange tart. He’d brought Cherry two. “Mostly the railroad. I’ve only been
at C&B a year.”
“Maybe I’d recognize your work . . .”
“I’m not sure you’d remember it.”
“Try me.”
He furrowed his brow. “Okay. I’m the guy behind the signs in your new cafeteria. Heady stuff—‘Place dishes on belt.’ ‘Dispose of paper goods.’ ”
Cherry smiled. “Don’t sell yourself short. Those are some beautiful signs. Very tasteful.”
“The brief called for ‘calming.’ ”
“Mission accomplished,” she said, nodding. “I actually really love the ‘You are where you eat’ campaign you guys did for the dining hall, especially the ads that run in our elevators—you know, with the animated cutlery?
I want to meet the person who wrote those. Are they here?”
Tom was smiling again with his eyes. They were the color of cartoon ice. “This might be a letdown for you . . .”
“No.” Cherry elbowed him excitedly. Her hands were full of canapés. “You wrote those ads? Gosh, if you could tap-dance, you’d be a triple threat.”
Tom was still not-quite-smiling. “How do you know I can’t tap-dance?”
Cherry gazed up at him. Smiling, admiring, possibly expecting him to start.
He shook his head. “I can’t tap-dance.”
She elbowed him again. “Yeah, but you can write.”
“That’s not writing. It’s barely even thinking.”
“Hey . . .” She made a face. “I love those ads. I love the talking fork who crosses his tines because he really hopes it’s pizza day.”
“It’s always pizza day,” Tom said. “The Western Alliance dining area has an organically supplied pizza station.”
“A fact that the ad effectively communicates.”
His lips quirked up. He looked a little embarrassed. “You’re easily impressed.”
Cherry’s voice was faint: “I’m really not.”
Tom didn’t leave Cherry’s side all night long. (Except to get her another drink and more canapés.) He hardly looked away from
her. His head was tilted down for three hours, and Cherry’s was tilted up. She laughed at everything he said, and he smiled
at everything she said.
Tom was drinking beer, but he switched to Coke.
Tom was from Omaha. He was a year younger than Cherry. He’d gone to art school because he loved Donald Duck comics. He read
a lot of books that Cherry had never heard of and was very into “sequential art.”
Tom didn’t care about music. He didn’t recognize any of the pop songs playing over the speakers. (Meg Jones’s house had a
built-in sound system.) He’d never even heard an Adele song—he’d never heard of Adele—but he kept making Cherry sing them all the way through. “Just a little bit more. I think I might know this one . . . No,
I guess not. Hit me with another one.”
Tom was funny.
Funny in a way Cherry wasn’t used to. He dropped his voice every time he made a joke, like he was telling them to himself.
(The boys she knew made sure you caught every punchline—sometimes they repeated them.) Cherry kept leaning in to hear him.
Cherry just kept leaning in.
Everyone thought that the two of them must have come to the party together.
“Who’s your friend, Tom?”
“Tom didn’t tell us he was bringing a date.”
“What the fuck, Tom—why didn’t you tell this poor girl what to wear?”
“It’s okay,” Tom kept repeating in his soft voice. “Nobody really cares what you’re wearing.”
“I hope I don’t get fired,” Cherry said.
“Do you really think you’d get fired for wearing jeans?”
She gritted her teeth and made a consternated noise in the back of her throat. “No. But it’s a pattern of behavior—I’m never
wearing the right thing. My boss wants me to look more corporate. He says I dress like Theresa the Channel 42 Kids Club lady.”
Tom winced. He laughed. His eyes sparkled. “Do you?”
Cherry looked offended. “No!”
“Hmm . . . I might need to judge this for myself.”
Cherry grinned, and Tom looked away. He was smiling. Blushing visibly. Closing one eye and peeking back at her. Scratching
the back of his neck.
Tom had wide, ruddy hands. He had a wide face and a square jaw. He moved like someone who didn’t want to bump into anyone
or knock anything over. Up close, under about a thousand white Christmas lights, his hair was ashy blond, not brown, and you
could tell that he hadn’t shaved. Cherry kept finding new things to like about him.
Fortunately Cherry’s boss didn’t spot her until he was two and a half sheets to the wind. Doug came to talk to the agency
people and saw her hiding in the corner. “For Christ’s sake, Cherry, what are you wearing? Are those jeans?”
“This is your fault!” she shouted over the music. “You didn’t tell me it was formal—you told me to wear black!”
Doug started laughing—hard. “Wallace has gotta see this . . .” He went to find him.
Cherry introduced herself to Doug’s wife. Who was wearing a very slinky dress.
Cherry ate savory cream puffs and sugared fruits. She ate miniature quiches and cakes. Every time the cater-waiters walked
past the back room, the agency people mobbed them.
Doug brought Wallace back to laugh at Cherry, but Wallace sincerely felt bad when he saw her. “I should have told you to wear a dress, Cherry. I just assumed you’d wear a dress—you have a lot of dresses.”
You could tell that Wallace didn’t like the ad agency people. He drifted back to the main room. Doug stayed and drank with
some of the older guys, the younger Baby Boomers.
The agency people decided to leave the party all at once, like a flock of birds changing direction. Cherry found herself swept
up in their exit, standing at the back of the crowd as they thanked the hostess and waved good-bye.
When they all spilled out onto the front walk, Tom and Cherry hung back. He looked down at her. (He still hadn’t stopped looking down at her.) “Can I walk you to your car?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Thank you.”
Half the black SUVs were gone. Cherry’s heels clicked with every step down the driveway. She’d been standing all night. Her
feet were killing her.
“This is me,” she said, when they got to her Hyundai.
Tom stopped. He looked up, past Cherry, and ran a hand through his hair. It stayed ruffled.
“Thanks again for extricating me,” she said.
He glanced behind him. “Anytime. Just call me when you’re in an uncomfortable situation, and I’ll come in with a helicopter.”
“Maybe I’ll see you at work?”
He frowned, squinting out into the street. “Probably not. Our CEO doesn’t trust us in your building.”
“That’s too bad. We have a really nice cafeteria.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I could probably get you in.”
Tom nodded. He’d turned his whole head away from her. His shoulders were turning, too.
Cherry wasn’t sure what was happening. Had some spell broken when they walked away from the house? She’d thought that Tom was as dazzled as she was. (Even if he was only half as dazzled as Cherry was, he wouldn’t want to turn away.)
“Well . . . have a good night,” he said.
“You, too,” Cherry said, leaning in the direction he was turning. “It was nice to meet you.”
“It was nice to meet you. Cherry.” He backed up a step, then pivoted fully away from her and started walking.
Cherry stared after him. “Tom?”
He looked back. “Yeah?”
He was already a car length away.
“Can I give you my phone number?”
Tom winced. His forehead wrinkled. “Do you want to?”
“Do I . . .” Cherry repeated in a confused voice. “Yeah. I mean—not if you don’t want to take it.”
“No, I do. I want your phone number.”
“Okay.”
Tom stayed where he was.
Cherry walked to him. His head slowly tipped down, tracking her, as she came closer. It took him a second to reach for his
phone.
She said her number out loud while he typed it in. It was embarrassing—Cherry had never forced her phone number on a man before.
She’d never even offered it. But she’d never had a night like this. A night that had gone as right as this. Cherry had never liked someone so immediately. And so completely. Her attention still felt tethered to Tom, like
he would drag her behind him if he walked away.
Tom slipped his phone back in his pocket.
“You don’t have to call me,” Cherry said, trying to be brave. “But . . . this was such a great night. And I’d love to see
you again.”
“Really?”
She laughed, still embarrassed. “Yes, really. Why are you acting like I’m being weird?”
Was this about her weight? Tom was bigger, too.
Not as big as Cherry, proportionally. He hadn’t seemed to mind her weight when they were inside, even in front of all his coworkers.
Sometimes bigger guys only dated wraithlike women.
Maybe it was one thing to talk to a fat girl at a party and another thing to call her.
“Do you have nights like tonight all the time?” Cherry asked. She didn’t want to give up. “Do you click with everyone like
this?”
Tom shook his head. “No,” he said softly. His eyes drifted down from her eyes to her mouth . . . and maybe to her breasts.
Back to her mouth.
Cherry lifted up her chin, just in case.
They stood parallel to each other. Looking up and looking down. If Cherry were to draw them, she’d draw their bodies in an
arch.
She felt Tom’s attention on her like vibrating light.
“So call me,” she said after a few seconds.
Tom nodded. “I will.”
He did.