Chapter 57
“Go to Los Angeles,” Cherry had told Tom. “Stevie and I will be fine.”
They weren’t fine.
Stevie was getting too big to manage, and she didn’t listen to Cherry.
“She will,” Tom texted. “She just sees you as her litter mate right now.”
“Her *litter* mate?”
“She thinks I’m the pack leader . . . which speaks to her limited cognitive ability.”
Tom said that Cherry should read one of the books he’d bought on dog training. Cherry didn’t want to read a book about dog training. She didn’t want to train a dog.
Stevie had been good for Tom. Indisputably. It was like someone had turned on a small light in his everyday darkness.
But even that got under Cherry’s skin—the way Tom walked around dead-faced and sullen, and only came alive for this giant
lunkheaded puppy.
Tom was in California for so long, he rented an Airbnb.
It wasn’t just the movie keeping him away.
He was promoting a Thursday omnibus. (Called Every Thursday.) And he’d launched a streetwear collaboration with Supreme.
(Cherry was the one who told him to say yes.
Tom told Hypebeast that he “wouldn’t wear any of this stuff. ” They loved it.)
His publisher flew his publicist to L.A.
to make sure Tom took phone interviews and showed up for photo shoots.
Rachel, again. Tom liked her. Probably because she bossed him around and made all his decisions for him.
If Cherry asked him what he was having for lunch, he’d say, “Whatever Rachel orders.”
Tom had been in Los Angeles for three months when he told Cherry he’d signed a first-look deal with HBO because Rachel thought
it was a good idea.
“Isn’t Rachel your book publicist?”
“She’s kind of my everything publicist.”
“I’m his consigliere,” Rachel said in the background.
Cherry hadn’t known she was there.
Cherry was very good at her job.
It was the sort of job that would take as much as she gave it. Cherry was never done with work—she never had to be. There was always something else to propose or review. (Once you’d successfully proposed something,
you could then review it.) She spent her days in meetings, selling ideas, then smoothing their progress through the bureaucracy.
At night she replied to email, scheduling it all to send the next morning, so she wouldn’t look like she was working as late
as she was.
Everything Cherry worked on at the railroad was an “initiative.” She liked the sound of that. She liked the urgency.
“I can’t right now,” she’d said to Tom once, when he wanted her to go . . . somewhere . . . with him. On some Thursday-related trip. “I’ve got too much on my plate.”
“You don’t have anything on your plate that you didn’t put there,” Tom argued.
Cherry failed to see his point. Didn’t he recognize what a beautiful situation she was in? She didn’t have anything on her plate that she hadn’t put there. And neither did he!
After a while, Cherry got used to being alone with Stevie. She stopped sending Tom frustrated text messages about it. When
he was delayed, when he apologized, when he was miserable and caught up and still not coming home—Cherry would say, “It’s okay. Do what you have to do.” And, “We’ll be here.” (“We” because Cherry was a “we” now with this stupid dog.)
But Cherry didn’t feel okay . . .
She was lonely. She was resentful. She felt like she’d given Tom everything, and he’d taken it, and then he’d taken it somewhere
else.
The less she saw of him, the more she seemed to see of Thursday.
Tom’s comic was everywhere. It was “having a moment.”
“Is Tom Valentine our Charlie Chaplin?” asked The Atlantic. And The New York Times wanted to know, “Is Anything Better Than ‘Thursday’?”
Rachel was earning her keep.
“Cherry?”
Tom had called without texting first. He almost never called. (He almost never texted.) “I’d rather just get through it and come home,” he’d told her once, when he first started traveling.
“Tom?”
“Hey, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you—is everything okay?” Cherry was walking Stevie. It was already dark.
“What?”
“Tom? Were you in an accident?”
“What—No. No, I’m fine.”
“Oh,” Cherry said, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down. “Good.”
“I was calling . . .”
She waited. “Stevie, no,” she said. “No!” Their neighbors had a row of winter-dead peonies, and Stevie always tried to dig them up. “Stop it . . . Tom? Are you still there?”
“I’m here. I was calling . . . Cherry, why don’t you come to L.A. for the weekend? I could show you . . . I don’t know. Around.”
“This weekend?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t come this weekend. I’ve got the shareholder meeting.”
“That’s this weekend?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve probably got everything ready for it.”
“Well, I have to be on hand anyway.”
“Cherry, come.”
“Why do you need me this weekend? Is something happening?” It wasn’t their anniversary. Or anyone’s birthday. Tom had already missed her birthday.
“No,” he said. “I just . . . miss you.”
“Well, I miss you, too,” Cherry said. It came out defensive. “I could come . . . not next weekend, but maybe next month. Or
you could home this weekend.” That came out as a challenge.
“I’m supposed to meet some actor . . .” Tom said weakly. “Maybe you could come meet him, too.”
“I’ve never missed the shareholder meeting,” she said.
“I know.”
“And what would I do with Stevie?”
“You could board her.”
“We’ve never boarded her. I don’t know how she’d do.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Tom, why are you being like this?” Cherry swung her arm out in frustration. She was holding a bag of shit.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought maybe . . . you would come.”
“When you leave,” she said sternly, “my life keeps going.”
“I know that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” Cherry said. She didn’t sound sorry.
The shareholder meeting went smoothly. And everyone complimented Meg Jones, who graciously gave Cherry most of the credit.
Cherry had overseen the signage, the presentation, the music, the venue. She’d approved everything that was served. She’d
named the signature cocktail and staged a photo op with a vintage “Big Fella” locomotive.
It wasn’t important work.
But it was adjacent to important work.
And Cherry was good at it. She was so good at it.
She could probably leave Western Alliance if she wanted. She could be a VP somewhere. If she stayed, she might get Meg Jones’s
job—Meg had practically said so. Cherry wasn’t sure she’d want to move even further away from the creative work . . . Tom
would say that what Cherry was doing now was creative work—that making something look and feel great was still making something.
She missed Tom. Sincerely.
She was feeling guilty about their phone call. They hadn’t talked since. Which wouldn’t be that unusual, in a normal week . . .
but Cherry didn’t like that that spiky conversation was their last interaction.
She got home late from the shareholder meeting, around one a.m. She’d walked Stevie at five, but the dog still acted like
she’d been alone for weeks when Cherry walked in.
Cherry took off her fancy, low-heeled boots and went to sit on the couch, still wearing a Western Alliance–red cocktail dress
and nude hose.
Stevie brought Cherry an indestructible nylon boomerang, and Cherry played at trying to take it from her.
It was only eleven o’clock in Los Angeles. Tom would probably still be up.
She picked up her phone and pressed his name. Tom (Emergency Contact). At the last second, she decided to make it a video call. Her makeup still looked nice. Her dress showed off her shoulders.
She’d had her hair professionally blown out. She and Tom almost never video-called—she’d apologize. She’d look in his eyes.
She’d remind herself that she loved him, and hopefully vice versa.
It rang a few times.
Cherry figured Tom wasn’t going to pick up . . .
But then he did pick up. As if it was a phone call. He held his phone to his face.
Cherry laughed. “Tom, I’m here. I FaceTimed you.”
“What?” He pulled the phone back and saw her. “I didn’t know you were FaceTiming me.”
“Sorry. I should have texted.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t have to text.” Tom looked . . . off. Maybe he was tired. His hair was longer than usual. And messier.
And his face looked flushed. Maybe he’d been in the sun. It was California—he was probably always in the sun.
He seemed agitated.
“Are you . . .” She wasn’t sure what to ask.
“The shareholder meeting was today,” he said, like he was just remembering. “How’d it go?” Tom’s eyes cut away from the phone,
past the phone, like he was watching television. But she couldn’t hear the television. He nodded. Minutely. (This all happened
in a second.)
“Is someone there?” Cherry asked.
Tom looked at the phone again. He hesitated. “Rachel,” he said. “She was just saying good-bye.”
“Hi, Cherry,” Rachel said in the background.
Maybe . . .
Maybe Cherry would have let it go. On another night.
Tom worked all the time. Tom took late flights. Tom went to awards ceremonies. And charity events. Rachel went with him. There
was always a good reason for her to be there.
Maybe.
If Cherry hadn’t seen Tom’s face.
If Tom hadn’t looked terrified.
She hung up on him.
Her hands were shaking. She couldn’t catch her breath.
Cherry ignored the next three phone calls.
She climbed into her bed, still dressed.
She finally picked up an hour later. It was two o’clock in Omaha. Midnight in Los Angeles.
She was incoherent with rage.
Tom was incoherent with fear.
She didn’t know exactly why she was angry yet, and he struggled to tell her.
Tom said he was sorry.
Cherry said she didn’t want to hear it.
All she wanted were the details. Not even the details—the headline. “Summarize it for me,” she’d say to one of her direct reports. “Lead with the red meat.”
“Tell me that you’re having an affair,” she said.
“I’m not having an affair,” Tom said.
But he was, and he had been, and she already knew. That he was closer to Rachel than he was to Cherry. That they ate together and traveled together. That Rachel knew where
his head was at. That he texted Rachel when he was with Cherry—but he didn’t text Cherry when he was with Rachel.
It was about work. Always.
It was all about work.
But work was Tom’s whole life.
Rachel had made several appearances in Thursday.
Tom said that nothing had happened. And that it had only happened once. He said that Rachel had kissed him.
Cherry wasn’t fooled by the passive voice.
She’d kissed Tom once, too, and look how that turned out.
Cherry told Tom that night, that early morning, not to come home.
(What was there to come home to? His life was everywhere else. His heart was so detached from hers that he’d handed it to
a twenty-eight-year-old in a denim jumpsuit.)
When he tried to argue, she told him not to dare.
“I don’t want you to come home,” she said. “I don’t want to see your face.”
She wouldn’t take his calls after that. She ignored his texts.
She was consistent.
Cherry would have made a great parent; she held the line. Her yes meant yes, and her no meant no.
After three weeks? Tom stopped trying.
He stopped trying.
He was probably on some deadline. He probably had meetings. He was probably jet-lagged.
He was probably sitting in first class with Rachel, planning his next book.
Rachel, Cherry had often thought, looked like the sort of girl a famous artist would be married to. Sexy. Skinny. Interesting.
The kind of hot girl who dated fat indie rockers and homely comedians who eventually won the Mark Twain Prize.
Rachel was a trophy.
Cherry was just barely a first wife.
Tom stopped calling after three weeks.
A month later, Cherry told him she wanted a divorce.