Chapter 24 #2
“I’m sure they have great Indian food in Los Angeles,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows again—again like there was more to say, but he didn’t want to say it. “So what’s happening at work?”
he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You said the other night that things were going your way.”
“Oh . . .” Cherry hadn’t meant at work. “Yeah, things are good. We’re, um, prepping for the grand reopening of the railroad
museum—finally.” It was a massive project. Tom had worked on the early stages, before he quit. He’d designed all the signs;
they were fantastic.
“Oh, geez, that took long enough.”
“You know how Meg is. Everything had to be perfect.”
“I do not miss Meg Jones,” he said.
Cherry laughed. “That’s not saying anything—you don’t miss anyone.”
Tom had never been a great fit at the ad agency. Too independent. Too introverted. Too talented for his own good. By the time
he quit, he’d hated his job so much, even his best work relationships were strained. Thursday had become a hit in the nick of time—Cherry had worried that he’d just walk out of the office someday. Or that he’d get fired.
Tom was smiling down at his food. “That’s not true.”
“Matt brags about you now to new clients.” Matt was Tom’s old boss.
“He brags about me?”
“Oh, yeah. ‘That logo was designed by the creator of Thursday. Do you know Thursday? They’re making a movie out of it.’ ”
“He’s a character in Thursday,” Tom said in disbelief. “He’s Jake That Shitbird.”
“I know that.” Cherry was laughing again. “I don’t think Matt knows that.”
“I swear people don’t see themselves in the comic because they can’t actually see themselves . . . I could quote Matt and draw an uncanny caricature of him, and he’d still think I was writing about some
other asshole.”
“I doubt that Matt has read Thursday . . .”
“I want to say that he can’t read,” Tom said, “but I’ve seen him read his profile in Communication Arts magazine, out loud, several times to several people.”
Cherry laughed through her nose. She had a mouthful of saag. Cherry got along fine with Matt. Better now that Tom was gone.
After her last promotion, Cherry had started managing the relationship between the railroad and Tom’s agency. Everyone on
both sides was painfully aware that her husband was the most valuable and the most difficult person on the team. Cherry’s
job got much simpler when Tom quit. Even though the work suffered.
“I’ve got pictures of the museum setup,” she said. “Do you want to see?”
He looked interested. “Yeah.” He wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. Tom always dug out the cloth napkins.
Cherry got out her phone and found the photos. She handed it over to him. “Scroll to the right.”
Tom looked at a few pictures. “This is nice,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Who did the printing?”
“Garza.”
“It looks great.” He stopped on a photo and zoomed in with his fingertips. “I think this is the wrong red.”
“Where?”
He handed the phone back to her. He’d zoomed in on the Western Alliance logo on one of the signs. The railroad had its own
trademarked shade of red. Whenever they printed anything in four-color ink, the printer had to mix an additional red, just
for the logo.
Cherry flipped between a few photos. “You’re right. Fuck. I can’t believe I missed that.”
“Check the purchase order,” he said. “I’ll bet it was a printer error. Have them make you a new sign.”
“I can’t believe I missed that.”
“No one will notice.”
“You did,” she said.
“The only person who will notice, noticed—and he doesn’t care.”
Cherry sighed.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Tom said. “The exhibits look really great.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Damn your eyes!”
“You should have sent me the proofs. I would have looked them over.”
Cherry raised her eyebrows, like there was something to say there, but she wasn’t going to say it.
“Okay,” Tom said, “but you really could send me stuff if you wanted. It’s not like I’m busy. I’m unemployed.”
She raised her eyebrows again and laughed. “You’re unemployed like Barack Obama is unemployed—you just don’t have to work.”
“Neither do you,” Tom said softly.
Cherry’s voice dropped, too. “I like to work.”
“I know.”
She set down her phone and used a piece of naan to pinch up a bite of chicken. “You said you’re going back to L.A. for interviews—is
the movie premiere soon?”
“Not for a couple months . . . I think they just want me out there all the time. Doing press. So people can’t forget about the project.”
“It’s because you’re good at it,” Cherry said.
Tom scoffed. “I’m not good at it. I’m awkward and grumpy.”
“It comes off charming. You’re very meme-able.”
“It’s always so stressful.” Tom’s face was getting red. “I don’t have anything new to say about the comic, and there’s nothing I want to say about the movie.”
“Have you seen it?” Cherry asked.
“Parts of it.”
“Is it that bad?”
Tom shrugged. He looked miserable. “I don’t know. I can’t tell. When I’m watching it, all I can think about is how hellish
the process was . . . How many times I had to rewrite a scene . . . How many meetings I had to sit through—when the number
of meetings I wanted to sit through was zero. Zero meetings. Zero Zooms. Zero calls with the producers while they were going through security at the Salt Lake City airport.”
“That’s very specific,” Cherry said.
Tom scoffed again. He stuck his fork in his rice, and the tines hit the plate. “The conversations I’ve had . . .” He shook
his head. “Maybe they’ll be funny someday.”
“Like what?”
He looked up at her. “They wanted to give The Guy a name because they said it would confuse audiences.”
“Audiences already know The Guy. He’s the main character of an insanely popular series of books.”
“I guess even an insanely popular book is nothing compared to a movie audience. Nobody reads.”
“So, did you give him a name?”
Tom jerked his head back. “Fuck no. Oh—also, they wanted to take out the cursing.”
“There’s so much cursing.”
“I know. Jake That Shitbird was going to be Jake That Jerk.”
Cherry laughed.
“And they wanted to add all these characters . . .”
“There are already a lot of characters.”
“Apparently none of them are likable.”
“People love the books.”
“See previous note,” Tom said. “And, oh god—Baby was the worst.”
Cherry’s smile froze. “Baby?”
Tom made another miserable face. “I’m sorry, Cherry. I know . . .”
Cherry didn’t want to hear whatever he was about to say. “I heard,” she said in a light voice, “that they fired the first
actress for losing weight on semaglutide.”
“The meetings . . .” Tom said. “The tortured conversations . . .”
He tilted his head and adjusted a pair of imaginary glasses. “ ‘Does she still read as . . . buxom? You know, in the American imagination?’
“ ‘Could we accomplish it with camera angles, like in Lord of the Rings?’
“ ‘Are her . . . assets . . . central to our understanding of the character? I mean, are they really?’ ”
Cherry was laughing again.
Tom dropped the impression. “One producer said we couldn’t cast a white actress, because the character’s butt was appropriation.”
“Yeah, you appropriated it from me! I should charge you a licensing fee.”
“Last I checked, you were getting fifty percent.”
Cherry snorted. Then remembered something—“Oh my god, Tom.” She set down her fork. “Do you know who’s on Ozempic?”
“Everyone who makes more than a hundred thousand dollars a year?”
“Hope.”
“Your sister Hope?”
“Yes. It’s a whole thing. Honny and Joy are freezing her out, like she’s a traitor to the cause.”
“How’s she doing on it?”
“I don’t know,” Cherry said. “She’s skinny, so I guess it’s working? She looks like a different person.”
“She must have really good insurance.”
“Dan probably does.”
Tom nodded. “Firefighters union.”
“I think Joy’s jealous, underneath it all. But Honny feels judged.”
“I get it,” he said.
“I get it, too! If Hope doesn’t like the way she looks, she doesn’t like the way any of us look—and she always seemed so confident! She was our role model for what it meant to be fat and beautiful and happy.”
Tom’s smile had gone gentle. After a second, he looked down at his food.
Cherry looked down, too. “Anyway,” she said, “you must still be excited about the premiere. It’s a big deal.”
“I’m not going.”
“What?” She looked back up at him. “You have to go.”
He cocked his head, peering up at her from the top of his eyes. “Contractually, I do not. I’ve checked.”
“Tom . . .”
“I just want it to be over, so I can get back to my life. Or you know—a life. Whatever my life is now, I don’t want it to be all this Hollywood shit.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t move to Los Angeles,” Cherry said.
Tom laughed, defeated. “Maybe not. I don’t know . . .” He shrugged. “I like the weather. I like the ocean. Good comic book stores. Plus, it’s very, very far
from my dad.”
Tom and Cherry had talked about moving to the West Coast. Before Cherry had been promoted.
She took another bite of saag. It was getting cold. It was still good. “I think you should go,” Cherry said. “To the premiere.
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Even if it all sucks.”
“Pfft.” Tom had gone back to eating, too. “Who would I even go with?”
The saag got stuck at the back of her throat.
Tom shook his head. “Yeah . . . no thanks.”
Cherry wiped her hands on a napkin and started packaging up the leftovers. Tom seemed to take her cue. He stood up and gathered their dirty dishes. They took things into the kitchen together. The dishwasher was full and clean, so Tom started to unload it. Cherry helped.
He opened a cabinet and saw the stack of china there. “Oh,” he said, “I’m glad you’re keeping these.”
“They’re so pretty,” she said. “We got them at an estate sale, right?”
“Yeah, don’t you remember? That was the ‘dimples and freckles’ guy!”
Cherry laughed. “That was for these dishes?” There’d been an older guy running the estate sale, and he’d given them half off
because he liked Cherry’s face.
“‘Dimples and freckles?’ ” Tom quoted, grinning down at Cherry. “‘That shouldn’t be legal.’ ”
Tom had said it to her for years after that—she’d almost forgotten the joke’s origin story. She beamed up at him now, remembering.
Tom was looking in her eyes. He dipped his head down . . .
To kiss her.
And Cherry—so used to his mouth, so used to his hand on her jaw—kissed him back.
For a second.
For maybe a minute.
Maybe longer?
Then she pulled away, covering her mouth. “Tom, I—” She shook her head. Her face pinched up in apology. “I’m seeing someone.”
Tom stood up. And away. “Oh.” He took a step back and nearly fell over the open dishwasher. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry regardless.
I shouldn’t have—”
“Tom . . .”
He held up his hand. His eyes were closed. “Please, Cherry, I—I’m gonna leave.”
He squeezed between Cherry and the dishwasher and out of the kitchen. She let him go.