October 20
The Present
12:50 A.M.
Madison-and-Lex had been successful in corralling the guests onto the bus, although a few had excused themselves and were headed back to the hotel, which annoyed Ellie. She liked a captive audience, or maybe she should have moved the party up an hour, so that more people would end up at the club.
She found Todd in the back, smoking a joint with Sanjay.
“Your creepy ex-boyfriend still here?” he asked. “Excuse me, ex-husband?”
“Long story,” said Ellie, rolling her eyes. She didn’t tell him about Arnold. One ex was enough for the night.
“Uh-oh,” said Sanjay. “Which one was he?”
“Fat bastard, looked like he came off a golf course,” said Todd.
Sanjay snickered and passed the joint over. She took a hit and exhaled. “Nah, he left. I didn’t tell him about the after-party.”
“Good,” said Todd.
“I should find Monica. We’ll see you at the club,” said Sanjay, who knew the rule for old friends was that old friends were the last to leave. He knew he wouldn’t be allowed to go to bed until the sun came up.
“What’s up?” asked Todd, since Ellie was just standing there, looking tense.
“The deal’s off. Harry’s company isn’t buying Wild & West.”
“Okay,” he said.
“We’re ruined. We won’t make payroll, or the shipment, or anything. We can’t keep it going, we’re going to have to sell,” she said. Somehow, knowing she wasn’t going to prison made going bankrupt that much more palatable.
“So we’ll sell. We’ll sell everything. Start over.” Todd seemed really calm about it, maybe it was the pot.
“That’s it?” she asked. “What about your art collection? The wine? The boat?”
“At least we have things to sell, don’t we?”
“Don’t you hear me? We’re ruined. We have nothing,” she cried. She was back to that girl in the trailer park.
Todd looked at her sideways, put his hands in his pockets. His linen trousers she’d bought from Rubinacci, the finest tailor in Milan, and they still fit him. Okay, so maybe he’d only gained ten pounds. It felt like fifty the way he moped around all year. “We have each other. That’s not nothing,” he said.
Ellie contemplated that. She remembered her earlier hysterics, the anxiety of seeing him flirt with a pretty young girl. She was forty years old now. How did it happen, how did she get so old? Yet he looked at her like she was still the babe in the braless tank top he’d met all those years ago, and she wasn’t even that young then. When they met, she was already a mom, she’d already lived an entire life, many lives.
Everyone cheats, her mom told her. But her mom was wrong. Todd hadn’t cheated. “You weren’t having an affair,” she said.
“And neither were you.”
They both laughed out loud. It was cathartic. They used to laugh all the time.
“So? Are we good?” she asked.
“Actually, I have a confession to make,” he said.
Oh god. He did cheat. He was a cheater. Ellie felt a stab in her heart. They wouldn’t survive this, and they didn’t have a prenup. She would never forgive him. But he wasn’t talking about another woman. He was talking about another job offer.
“You know how I got laid off at the network?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“I wasn’t exactly laid off.”
She inched away from him. “Excuse me? You told everyone you were sacked. It was on Deadline!”
They’d let him go without a golden parachute either, not like all those assholes who were fired only to walk away with bazillions. She hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to it—it was his career; she figured he could take care of it. But she had been surprised to find he was unemployed with nothing to show for it.
“I quit,” he said. “I left. I was sick of it. I was sick of the whole thing. I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“You . . . quit?” she said. “You quit your job?” She stared at him. He hadn’t been fired? He’d walked away on his own?
Todd shrugged. “It was never what I really wanted to do.”
“But you were so good at it!” she said.
“Not really,” he said. “Ratings were down. We couldn’t compete with streaming. If I hadn’t quit, they would have fired me anyway.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shrugged again. “Who knows.”
“So what do you want to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Mostly kind of be there for the kids. I wasn’t around for Sam as much. I want to be there for Giggy, and the twins.”
“So if you quit on your own, why were you so depressed?”
Todd shook his head. “I don’t know, okay? Life is fucking hard.”
Life is hard. That was the fucking truth. Even if you had everything you ever wanted handed to you. She thought of those rich kids she’d gone to high school with; none of them were happy. And even if you earned everything you had, life was still hard.
“So, are you okay? Do you forgive me?” he asked humbly.
“For quitting?” she asked. “I don’t know. I guess. At least you weren’t cheating.”
“On you?” he nuzzled her cheek. “Never.”
She smiled against his cheek and sighed.
“Babe, you sure you’re all right?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled away. “I was just thinking about my old friend. Remember, the one I told you about? My best friend in high school?”
He tapped his cheek, thinking. “You mean Mishon?”
“No,” said Ellie. “Not her. Mishon and I were friends but not that close. My friend who had that thing with my dad, remember?” she said. Sometimes, she still felt like that poor kid from the wrong part of town. Todd had grown up poor too, but they hadn’t been poor the way her family was poor. He’d been shocked when she told him about her dad being in jail, and how he’d died, and what he’d done.
Todd remembered. “Leo, right?” he said.
“Yeah, the one who died,” she said.
“I know, you told me.”
“She died on her birthday.”
Todd nodded, and they were silent for a while.
“I feel bad she died,” Ellie said. “I feel so guilty.”
“Why?”
“Because I got to live, and she didn’t. I got out of that stupid town, and she didn’t. She didn’t even get to do anything, or become anyone,” said Ellie. “It’s so sad. You know, today is her actual birthday. I’ve been thinking of her all day.”
“Well, honey, it’s no use feeling guilty. Guilt is a useless emotion.”
“I guess.”
“Come here,” he said.
She rested her head against his shoulder and let him hold her. She was home. She couldn’t wait until the party was over and all these guests finally went back to their hotel rooms at sunrise, so they could be alone, together, so they could finally have sex.