Page 37 of Kill Your Darlings

Judy leaned across the table. “Does Thom cheat?”

Wendy sighed, hoping to give herself enough time to decide what to say. “No, not really. But he’s a vain, middle-aged man, so I’m sure he entertains fantasies. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Entertains what kind of fantasies?” Judy said.

“He probably just wants a woman to look at him without knowing all his flaws. He wants a do-over. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Doyoucheat?”

Judy’s questions were being asked with increasing disbelief, and it made Wendy want to shock her a little, so she said, “Nothing serious, of course. Thom and I are solid, but marriages these days last a long time.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“I feel a little shocked right now. I don’t know why, but I just thought that you and Thom were... You’re kind of my couple ideal. You’re so good together.”

“Maybe because we don’t get hung up on who we go to restaurants with.”

“Oh, I’m not saying...”

“Judy, you’re fine. Let’s not let Thom ruin this lunch.”

They changed the subject, Judy going on a long spiel about the girl they’d hired to replace her in the fundraising department. She’d already started and Judy was training her. Wendy listened, and drank wine, and realized that her entire relationship with Judy was based on gossip, both about their coworkers and Judy’s own calamitous love life. She wondered if in the next week Judy would let the rest of the office know that she and Thom were in some kind of open relationship. It wasn’t even true. Thom had had a few flings, of course, and many infatuations, and she’d chalked them up to nothing more than a way for him to keep his life interesting, or hopeful. She knew he dwelled on the past, and that taking out the cute new teaching assistant or whoever it was had helped him to cope. The only thing she ever really worried about was that he’d truly fall in love with someone else and tell them what he’d done. What they’d done. As for herself, she’d had one affair, or sexual encounter, with a man she’d met at a conference in St. Louis three years earlier. He’d been ridiculously handsome, or maybe it was just his English accent. Either way, she’d decided to see what it was like, because she knew at the time that Thom was up to something, showing up at the house every two weeks or so smelling of cheap perfume and alcohol, like some cliché in a country song. The man she’d slept with—Jacob Lambert (even his name was attractive)—had confessed to her after their rather brief coupling that he was struggling with a sex addiction that had wrecked his marriage. It was more than she wanted to hear, and she’d walked away from his hotel room with the knowledge that she would never cheat again. She already had one thin-skinned, needy man in her life. Why would she want another?

“Oh my God, I’m going to miss it here,” Judy said, looking out toward the ocean.

“Judy,” Wendy said, “can you do me a favor and not mention what I just told you to anyone at work. It’s just—”

“God, no, I would never. It’s just between us.”

“Thank you.”

“And since it’s just between us, who was it? Anyone I know?”

Wendy considered making something up, but in the end told Judy about the Englishman in St.Louis, and how he cried afterward because of his sex addiction. It was a nice change to their dynamic, actually, since Wendy was usually the one listening to Judy’s dating horror stories.

“You said he was good-looking, though,” Judy said, then asked if they should order another bottle of wine.

“I should go back to the office, just to show my face. You can do whatever you want because we can’t fire you.”

“Are you going to go say hi to Thom?”

“I don’t think so, unless he’s noticed me. Do you think he has?”

“Definitely not.”

“I think I’ll leave him alone, and see what he tells me this evening about his afternoon.”

“Good plan,” Judy said, again in the conspiratorial whisper. Wendy was suddenly relieved that her coworker would be moving soon.

When Thom finally arrived home that evening, after eight, he was noticeably very drunk, the raw smell of alcohol seeping out of his skin, plus the fainter smell of cigarettes. “You’ve had an afternoon,” Wendy said when he joined her on the front porch, carrying a large water in one hand and some kind of mixed drink in the other.

“Honestly, I’ve only had a few ales,” Thom said in an English accent. He was quoting fromWithnail and I, a movie she’d never particularly liked.

“I saw you today at the Rockaway. With your date?”

“You did? When was that?”

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