“Whose fault, Christopher?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Trisha arrived within the hour. She came through the front door wearing pajama pants, a blazer thrown over a sleep shirt, and the expression of a woman who had been pulled from her couch by a man who could not stop creating crises.
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” she announced to the room at large. “I truly don’t. I left entertainment. I specifically left entertainment because I thought corporate work would be calmer. I thought, Trisha, you’ve earned some peace. No more scandals. No more midnight damage control. No more explaining why a grown man did something unhinged in public.”She dropped her bag on the counter. “I was a fool. A naive, optimistic fool.”
She looked at us, the three feet of hostile space between us.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He dragged me through the hospital and then embarrassed me in front of a security guard,” I said.
“She was leaving,” Christopher said.
“I was hailing a cab!”
“You were breaking the contract.”
“You broke my trust first!”
“You went to see Dominic?—”
“Eleanor invited me!”
“I didn’t approve?—”
“You don’t APPROVE my movements, Christopher, I am a human being, not a?—”
Trisha held up both hands. “STOP. Both of you. Stop.”
We stopped. But the three feet of space between us was vibrating with everything we hadn’t finished saying.
Trisha looked at me. “He dragged you?”
“Death grip on my wrist. Like a caveman. In a public parking garage. He probably knew there were cameras.”
Trisha turned to Christopher. She looked at him the way a teacher looks at a student who just ate glue despite being told repeatedly not to do that.
“Christopher.” She said his name like she had used it too many times in crisis contexts. “Is this true? You caused a scene in a public place like that? Were you not aware there could be paparazzi?”
She delivered each question separately, building her case with the precision of a prosecutor.
“Which part of ‘public image management’ is unclear to you? Which specific syllable of ‘don't make headlines’ failed to sink in?”
“She was leaving,” he repeated, like that explained everything.
“So you went full caveman? In front of witnesses? In front of security cameras? In front of God and the internet?”
I pointed at Trisha. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I said.”
Trisha rubbed her temples with both hands and closed her eyes and stood there for a long moment, looking like a woman who was reconsidering every professional decision she’d ever made.
“I went to business school for this,” she murmured. “I got an MBA. I could be in accounting. Accounting is peaceful. Nobody in accounting gets filmed arguing with their wife in a hospital parking garage. Nobody in accounting goes viral because a security guard accidentally became a marriage counselor. Accountants go home at five and watch television and nobody calls them at nine pm to fix anything.”
“Trisha,” Christopher said.
“Don’t ‘Trisha’ me. I’m mourning the career I could’ve had.” She opened her eyes. Straightened. Put on a professional face. “We need damage control. The video is spreading. The public needs to see a couple, not two people who are one argument away from filing for divorce. They need to see you together. Happy. Affectionate. Convincing.”
