Maybe everything was going to be okay.
When the lights came up, Cherry didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone else in the theater. What if they recognized her? Cherry had avoided wearing black for a decade—she’d destroyed that black sweater—but sometimes peopledidrecognize her, out of the blue. Tom was a master of caricature.
She and Russ had planned to have dinner in the little cafe in thelobby. It had a bakery that made fresh bread and pastries every morning. Russ had been talking it up.
But when they got to the hostess stand, he said, “Why don’t we go somewhere else?”
“I thought you liked this place.”
He shrugged. “I don’t feel like waiting.”
They were second in line. “It’ll take us just as long to drive somewhere.”
Russ wasn’t looking at Cherry. He hadn’t looked at her for a few minutes. He was squinting out toward the windows.
“What’s wrong?” Cherry asked, sotto voce. “Is there someone here?” She looked around, not sure who or what she was looking for.
She saw the poster.
There wereComing Attractionsposters all along this wall, and Cherry was standing right in front of aThursdayposter. It was Jesse Plemons again, in the sweatshirt, but the world around him was sketched. He wasn’t facing the British actress. He was facing Baby. Thecartoon.
Cherry felt sliced across the middle. Like, in a movie, where a character gets hit with a sword, and they smile at the camera before the top half of their body falls off.
“I guess I didn’t realize...” Russ said.
She looked back at him. He was staring at the poster. He looked fuckingdismayed.
If Baby were a real person, and Cherry were a person with a gun, Cherry would have murdered her right here. In cold blood. Right between the eyes.
If Tom were here, too, Cherry might shoot him next.
“...that you were acharacter,” Russ finished.
“I’m not a character,” Cherry said. She clenched her teeth. Her chin was up.
Russ looked at her, confused. Like Cherry was denying what was right in front of them.
She wasn’t denying it.
She wasdecryingit.
She was denouncing the whole endeavor.
“I...” Russ said.
“It wasn’t a secret,” Cherry hissed.
“No, I know,” he said. He looked up at the poster again.
Cherry looked at it through his eyes:
If you were dating a fat woman, and it was already difficult for you... Like, if you were already struggling a little with the way it looked to other people, and what it might say about you...
Did people think you couldn’t get a hot girl? Did people think you were settling? That you were gay? Did they see you as less hot now? Less attractive, less virile? Less valuable on the open market?
If you were that guy, who always dated objectively, conventionally attractive women, and now you were dating an objectively fat woman, and youlikedher—you liked talking to her, you liked fucking her—but you still couldn’t quite set aside her weight, or look past it...
If it wasreallyimportant to you to look past it...
