The song was a string of breathy lyrics as Cherry got out of her cage and retreated behind the stage’s curtain. The tassels on her breasts jiggled in the dimness, her white satin hot pants feeling too tight, and even as she dragged down the hall toward the dressing room, she started to unzip her knee-high boots. She tripped, nearly clambering over beer cans someone hadn’t bothered to clean up.
When she arrived in the dressing room, Mikki Starr, who’d recently chopped her hair as short as Twiggy’s, was ready with a bottle of mezcal from a hippie boyfriend who’d been to Oaxaca. She’d already changed out of her cowgirl costume in favor of a striped miniskirt with a thick white belt and high boots.
“Hey, sugar,” Mikki said, handing Cherry the bottle, gesturing toward some orange slices and salt on her dressing station table. “Drink up and let’s get movin’.”
Cherry didn’t hesitate, slamming down some of the smoky booze and chasing it, keeping her perpetual haze going. Undressing and dressing and doing it all over again every night was rote by now. Another end of shift, another party. It’d been that way ever since Tommy had left.
Nowhere to go anymore. No one she looked forward to seeing.
She dispensed with the tassels and hot pants, tugging on a white lace short dress instead. She was no longer the svelte girl in his painting—the tight material didn’t hide the slight gut she had now, and it wasn’t just from the drinking, it was from not caring. Yet men would still throw money at her, even if the bills weren’t as crisp as the ones she’d gotten from George Diluccio or any of her other sugardaddies. This money was dirtier, like it’d been crumbled in pockets and slid across poker tables that’d never been cleaned.
But cash was cash, and Cherry stuffed a wad of it in her little clutch purse as Mikki pulled her out the exit.
After they were in Mikki’s road-worn Corvette—a relic from a life that’d once treated her better—they wheeled out of the parking lot, nearly swerving into another Corvette as they hit the side streets of Vegas. With the top down on the car, the road a blur ahead of them, Cherry and Mikki just laughed at the close call.
When their open bottle of mezcal tipped over on the seat, spilling on the floor, Cherry let it happen. She laughed again, even though she wasn’t happy. “We’re goin’ the wrong way, Mik,” she shouted over the air as it batted her long blond hair over her face. It blocked her view, but since Cherry didn’t have much of a clear view these days, why did it matter?
“We’re goin’ the right way,” Mikki slurred. “Party’s a little bit . . .” She swerved again, just in time to miss driving on the sidewalk, then licked her finger and lifted it up, cutting the wind with it. She pointed south. “That a way!”
More laughter, but Cherry’s was choked. She wanted Mikki to turn the car west, where Tommy lived with his wife in a well-manicured neighborhood. She’d sat outside his new apartment complex—one in which young couples lived, pushing baby carriages and driving their shiny new cars to and from work. Cherry had seen Tommy—or, as the phone book said, “Tom”—cruising down the street once or twice. She’d even seen his wife with her swollen belly waddling out of the car once Tommy had helped her out of her seat, holding her delicately, just as he’d held Cherry that one afternoon.
She didn’t know what made her sicker, the sight of Tommy’s future baby or the fact that he sold insurance these days. The baby was something Cherry could’ve had with him if she’d only told him that yes, she wanted him and only him . . .
Even now, as she sped along with Mikki in the Corvette, she touched her own belly. Failure, she thought. That’s what she was filled with. And as far as she was concerned, the same went for Tommy’s insurance gig, which she’d discovered when unseen and invisible she’d followed him to his office one morning. He should’ve been an artist, still selling his work, showing everyone else the world the way he saw it. If she had told him yes, would he still be painting?
She blamed this other woman—his wife, Frances—for making him into what he was, for robbing him of his creative soul. Then again, Cherry had a big part in that when she’d failed to love what she already had in Tommy.
Such a failure . . .
As she and Mikki continued toward the outskirts of town, where tonight’s party was supposed to be taking place on some ranch, Cherry folded an arm over her roiling stomach. There wasn’t a night that went by when she didn’t wonder what might have happened if she’d chased down Tommy that day, what might have happened if she had decided that there was no one else for her but him and that he was the love of her life.
Instead, Cherry had a wound she had no idea how to heal, even if she’d told herself that there were still big things out there for her and she would find them, with or without Tommy.
She’d just never anticipated this gap inside of her and the fact that it could never be filled by all those adoring, drunk, leering faces beyond the bars of her go-go cage.
As she and Mikki sped down back dirt roads and into a fenced-off area marked Private Property, Cherry seized the mezcal bottle, noticing there was still a little booze left, then poured every last drop into her mouth. When Mikki slammed on the brakes and sprayed dust into the night with the tires, Cherry lost her grip on the bottle, and it went flying. It landed outside of the car, rolling away like it had places to go and people to see, and the girls laughed again. They fumbled for their door handles and tumbled out of the car.
Inside the ranch house, it didn’t take long to find another drink. Bottles and glasses, full and not full, were all over the place—on counters, on the floor, on the leather furniture—and Cher was singing about her lover shooting her down. People were draped over the couches and chairs, smoking and toking, grooving to the music.
“It’s so dead in here!” Mikki yelled over the music before she spotted a strobe light going off in the hallway and decided to see what that was about.
Cherry suspected an orgy was afoot, and she’d tried a few of those the past year or so, but they hadn’t made her forget what it’d been like to be truly loved by someone.
I had him, she thought, meandering away to somewhere else in the house, anywhere else. I had him and I lost him . . .
Someone caught the hem of her dress, knuckles creeping against her upper thigh, and she was too numb to smack the invading contact away. She only gaped at whoever it was as her vision came into focus.
“You,” said a man who sprawled in a lounge chair. He looked a little like Burt Reynolds, with tanned skin and a smug smile. In the next chair, another guy dozed, sunglasses over his eyes and a cigarette dangling from his fingers. A column of ash drooped from it, reminding her of Tommy that night in George Diluccio’s party suite. Cherry nearly gave into a startlingly sober urge to take the cigarette away before he dropped it on the carpet.
But the first man captured her blurred attention again when he spoke in a voice so mellow that she had to bend closer to hear it.
“I’ve seen you before.”
Now Cherry beamed. Was it in Viva Las Vegas? No, she hadn’t had enough screen time . . .
As he slumped in that chair, she had the feeling that he was low enough to look right up her dress. Did she care? Hardly. She’d been more exposed than that so, so many times.
He kept surveying her, and then snapped his fingers. “I got it.” He leaned down and rested his drink on the carpet. “There was a picture in a bar somewhere around here, and your face . . . You’ve got the same face as the woman in the painting did, and believe me, I remember because she was delicious.”
At first, Cherry’s ego warmed. Then she brushed him off.
“You’re drunk.” The only painting she knew of her was by Tommy. What would it be doing in a bar?
“Actually,” the man said, “I’m stoned. But that doesn’t mean I’m incoherent.” He stuck out his hand. “Don Hawking, producer.”
Producer?
Cherry just a
bout flipped, but instead she calmly shook his hand. “Cherry Chastain.”
“Oh, isn’t that a name. Say, has anyone ever told you that you have a face that ought to be in pictures and not just one in a painting in some dive out in the desert?”
“Maybe.” She smoothed a hand down her lace-covered hip and took care to suck in her belly. “Maybe I’ve already been in a movie. It wasn’t a big part but—”
He was a fast talker. “Boy, I could put you to some real work, baby.”
A gush of joy made Cherry preen more. It almost made her cry in relief, too. She’d lost Tommy, but was karma about to reward her for the suffering?
Was this finally her moment with or without him?
She ignored the feeling of emptiness that remained, just as she’d been trying to do for such a long time.
Don was speaking again. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could definitely find a lot of action for you.”
Even drunk, she could still talk business. “And what movies have you made?”
He waved a casual hand. “Cult classics that have a dedicated audience. Sexy but very classy stuff, perfect for a body like yours.”
Cherry wasn’t drunk enough so that she couldn’t see a red flag. “Cult classics?”
“That’s right. Nice moneymakers. You could have a big following with ’em . . .”
A phrase snaked its way into Cherry’s thoughts. Exploitation film. This man had it written all over him.
Grief seized her so hard that she almost choked on it, and she turned her back on the guy, stumbling toward the door, bumping into a steel table, steadying herself, and putting down her purse. When she regained her balance, she rushed outside, into the night.
If her stomach had been upset before, it was a pool of acid now.
This was what she’d traded Tommy for—an eternal road of failure.
Hadn’t he told her that there was a girl inside of her she’d never found, someone who wasn’t Cherry Chastain? And she’d been so sure that she could discover that woman by herself, on her own, with a little ambition and a lot of what she’d been born with . . .
She headed for Mikki’s car, not knowing where she’d go without keys or . . . Dammit, where was her purse?
So what. So what about anything . . .
When her boot snagged on a rock, it sent her tripping behind a scraggly tree, face down in the dirt. An insult added to injury. The final straw—a white lace dress soiled, palms scraped by her fall.
She clawed at the ground, giving into the tears, hating herself, knowing that all she was good for now were cheap grindhouse films and go-go cages in clubs where Ann-Margret wouldn’t ever have ventured with her dainty feet. And it was only now that Cherry knew she was no Ann-Margret. She wasn’t anybody.
Lying there, she didn’t even have the energy to keep crying. She only gave into the blankness, listening to Bob Dylan floating over the otherwise silent night, listening to the void that followed. She closed her eyes, letting the alcohol spin her around and around until blackness thankfully made her forget . . .
A scream woke her up.
At first, all she saw as she lifted her head were flames, people running, and cars peeling off and away.
A hallucination? A dream?
Fire?
From the back of her mind, an image took form. She remembered the man with a cigarette, ash dripping toward the ground. Had he dropped it?
She pushed herself up off the ground, her heart blasting against her chest, her eyes pounding. Mikki was in there. But as Cherry lurched toward the house, coming out from behind the tree, she saw the Corvette roaring toward her.
Mikki! She was alive, coming to get Cherry out of here!
She flagged down her friend as the headlights swept over her and—
The car zoomed past, taillights streaming away like red lines bleeding into the night.
Stunned, Cherry stepped back, hitting the tree trunk. She reached for it, knowing it was the only thing that could keep her standing.
Hadn’t Mikki seen her?
As the question rotated in Cherry’s mind, the screams stopped, the house engulfed by flames now. Vaguely, Cherry thought that no one could be alive in there, and, for all Mikki knew, she was already dead. For all anyone knew.
A great, hollow space opened up in her chest where that last word echoed.
Dead.
But hadn’t she been that way for a while now? And she wasn’t only thinking about how she felt inside. Cherry Chastain, the dream, the goal, had never really existed.
Always a failure, just as her mom had known she’d be. You’re never going to be a star, Julie. You were such a disappointment to your father and me. You’re the reason for his death, so get out of this house . . .
Now, she started to go into the house, moving toward the flames, her mind still numb. No one would ever know she was gone. Why not do it? Why not get it over with?
But even though her feet wanted to move, there was one thing that had always made her stand out from the rest. It was her survival instinct, and it wouldn’t let her take another step. It forced her back, back until finally she was running away from the house, beyond the ranch as firefighter sirens cried in the night.
She walked the opposite way from them, down the desert road, not knowing where she was going, only that she couldn’t be Cherry Chastain, failure, anymore. She couldn’t be Julie, either, because she never really had been. She’d destroyed Julie a long time ago.
Eventually, she heard a car behind her, and it slowed, keeping pace with her as she continued to walk.
“Miss?” asked a woman.
She slowly looked at the elderly driver. Kind face, wrinkled, normal, and so appealing.
“Are you okay, Miss?” the woman asked.
“I . . . think so.”
“Did you escape from the fire? You look the worse for wear, and if there’s somewhere I can take you . . .”
She was already shaking her head.
“Oh, dear, you’re in shock.” The woman opened the car door, inviting her in. “Please, let me take you home.”
She looked at the woman, stunned that someone could be so good to her, wishing she were the type of person who could be the same.
But . . . why couldn’t she be? Why couldn’t she turn it around and be the ultimate survivor? Why couldn’t she shove her mom’s words back in her face and turn out well after all? There was still time to be anything but Cherry or Julie. She was sick of being what she was or, more precisely, what she wasn’t, and what if . . .
What if she could just be?
She got into the front seat, shutting the door, smiling at the woman with so much gratitude that tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.
The car idled as the woman touched her arm. “What’s your name, honey?”
She thought for a moment, but she couldn’t come up with an answer.
“Well,” the woman said, “you just rest, and you can tell me later. Just sleep now. Just close your eyes and sleep.”
And she did, feeling the car move forward to a new place beyond silver screens and neon-lit stages, somewhere over the horizon.
17
“Where’d your appetite go?” Suzanne asked Rochelle in yet another hotel suite in a city that had lost its light and luster.
“I’m not hungry right now,” Rochelle said from the luxurious velvet sofa next to her.
“But you’re always up for a good meal, my girl.”
Her manager was standing near the window, dressed in an A-line business suit that was perfect for the book expo they were at. Rochelle, on the other hand, was in her sweats, and she’d been that way ever since she’d crashed on the sofa near the window after appearing on a panel and doing a couple of signings. She’d been peering out at the dusky Chicago skyline for the past . . . Well, she wasn’t sure how long she�
�d been peering. Time crawled by everywhere they went, and everything seemed the same—a cycle of images in front of her eyes, hardly registering.
Not when all she could think of was Gideon.
Now that she was a half-country away from him, she felt . . . off. It was as if she had a hole carved in the very center of her, and she’d been the one to do the cutting because she hadn’t done a damned thing to stop him from leaving her. Before, with anyone else, she wouldn’t have thought much about going on the road, living the wonderful kind of life she’d worked so hard for, filled with feather top beds and sophisticated cocktails with her writing friends. But this time, it all seemed so pointless. She felt worthless because she couldn’t forget the sight of him walking out of his own door, never looking back.
At first, she’d told herself that he couldn’t have possibly developed any feelings for her in such a short time anyway. But then again, hadn’t she felt something for the man she’d known as a boy? Hadn’t he been hidden away in a tiny spot in her unused heart for years, suddenly pushing at the walls of it until it’d threatened to burst?
But Rochelle didn’t do bursting hearts, even if it seemed as if hers had already broken, ripped from the inside out.
How could this have happened when she’d built the perfect life, making sure things with men never got messy? How had all this emotion gotten to her?
Suzanne nudged Rochelle’s sofa with her hip. “Come down to dinner. You’ll feel better.”
“Dad’s going to call.”
“Oh, he is?”
Doubt laced her manager’s voice, but Rochelle didn’t even have the energy to get riled up about it.
“Besides,” she said, “I’m still full from lunch.” She’d had meal after meal here with booksellers and publicity professionals and friends, then drinks in the afternoon, drinks at happy hour, all while keeping a smile on her face, trying to show them—and most of all herself—that she wasn’t thinking about Gideon. That she wasn’t missing him until the effort blistered her.
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