Chapter 70
Cherry wanted to call Tom and crow about the museum opening, but he was out to dinner with movie people. It was a late dinner,
and he was two hours behind Cherry on the clock—she’d be asleep by the time he got back to his hotel . . .
. . . if she could sleep.
Cherry had too much time on her hands again with Tom gone. Too much space. Too much quiet.
The ambient noise about the Thursday movie was getting harder to block out. Cherry couldn’t look at any news sites. She kept getting ads for Thursday on Instagram.
She didn’t like being reminded that Tom was important to so many people whom neither of them had ever met. That he was a titan.
She needed to keep him man-sized in her head.
Seeing Russ at the museum had unnerved Cherry. “That goddamn trailer,” he’d said.
What had Hope said? That the first trailer was so much worse than the second. Specifically so much worse for Cherry.
How was it worse?
Cherry already knew about the actress and the fat suit.
She’d been so disciplined about this fucking movie . . . About not inviting it into her brain. Not giving herself extra content
to obsess over.
“The first trailer?” Hope had said. “Oh no.”
Was there something egregious? A fat joke? (Beyond the walking, talking fat joke that was Baby herself?)
Cherry shouldn’t watch it—she’d regret watching it. The way she always regretted looking at Thursday.
(She had to separate the art from the artist. The husband from the id. Her marriage from . . . whatever Thursday was. Figments. Jokes. Ideas.)
“Oh no,” Hope had said.
“Don’t watch it,” Meg Jones said.
Stacia: “You don’t need it.”
Faith: “You’re so much prettier, Cherry.”
Russ: “It shook me up.”
Maybe it made Cherry more of a fool not to watch the trailer . . .
Not to know how the whole world saw her.
Not to understand why they were laughing.
She went downstairs to get her laptop. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it on a decent-sized screen. Stevie
tried to follow Cherry back upstairs, and Cherry let her—she even helped the dog onto the bed. She’d make sure to change the
bedding before Tom came home. He thought Stevie’s new privileges were a terrible development—“Her hair is already everywhere.”
“So is mine,” Cherry had argued, “and I’m allowed in the bedroom.”
Stevie stretched out at Cherry’s side. Cherry crossed her legs and balanced the laptop on her thighs. She rested a hand on
Stevie’s ruff and scratched it.
“It can’t be that bad, Stevie,” Cherry said. “He wouldn’t let it be that bad.” (Tom wasn’t cruel. Or careless.)
Cherry found the trailer on YouTube. She clicked to expand the window and pressed play.
The screen was black. White type appeared:
FROM THE STUDIO THAT brOUGHT YOU
‘ALL OF OUR DAYS’ . . .
A Christmas song started playing. Bells. Indie piano. A guy singing with a Scottish accent.
White lights twinkled on. A scene came into view:
Women in beautiful dresses swished past the camera, their faces cut off by the frame. Men in black suits drank cocktails.
The camera was moving through them.
A girl appeared.
All in black.
Under an archway of fairy lights and flowers.
Faith had lied—the actress was very pretty. Thinner than Cherry (and Baby), even though she seemed to be wearing padding over
her belly and hips.
The girl was underdressed for the party, but her hair was shiny and her cheeks were flushed. The lights shimmered in her eyes.
She swallowed.
Across the room, under another arch—this house was even nicer than Meg Jones’s—was Jesse Plemons. De-aged. Possibly also wearing
padding. And a cheap-looking suit.
He was watching the girl. He waved.
She looked anxious. She waved back.
The Scottish singer hit a plaintive note.
This was apparently one of those trailers with one long scene instead of a montage or an overview.
Jesse Plemons crossed the room.
The song jangled. The backup singers “ooh”ed.
“Nobody told you this is prom for rich white people,” The Guy said.
Baby shook her head. She looked luminous. They must have made her pupils bigger with CGI to add all those stars.
“Do you want me to help you leave?” he asked. “Or do you want me to help you stay?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe if I stand really still, nobody will see me.”
Jesse Plemons squinted and grinned. He did that thing he does where only his top teeth show. “I saw you,” he said gruffly.
Suddenly a word balloon dropped above them, and the rest of the scene dropped out. It was just the two of them and the balloon and Tom’s handwriting:
I JUST MET THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL.
The indie Christmas song crescendoed.
Jesse Plemons had never looked so quietly full of feeling.
That British actress with the big head had never looked so lovely.
Then the tempo of the song shifted up, and the trailer started shuffling manically through more scenes from the movie. The
Guy and Baby—the two actors—were framed in panels that sped across the screen. Cherry recognized a few classic moments from
the comics and a few memes.
The music got louder and more circular.
Then the title—more of Tom’s handwriting—dropped in over all of the color and movement:
THURSDAY
And the screen went black.
Then, just when you thought it was over, Baby’s face appeared again. In extreme close-up.
She winked.
Cherry closed the laptop.