Read Online The Denver Cereal by Claudia Hall Christian - Free Book Online Page B

cosigned on a loan so we could get into our house. My
husband’s never been happier at a job. I . . . I
just wanted to say, ‘thanks.’”
    Valerie smiled at the
woman. Everyone loved her scumbag father. This woman couldn’t help
it if she were fooled by the bastard. Valerie paid for her ticket
and thanked the woman. She wasn’t going to go diva on a poor stupid
airline clerk.
    Looking at her ticket,
Valerie realized she had a few hours before her flight. Walking
toward security, Valerie waved to the bank of paparazzi
photographers.
    “ Val! Val!” they screamed.
“Over here Val.”
    “ Val! TMZ ! Where you goin’?” the
videographer for TMZ.com asked.
    Valerie waved and started
up the escalator.
    “ Where you going,
Val?”
    “ I’m going home, boys,”
she said. Then, without even realizing what she was saying, she
murmured, “I’m going home to my husband.”
    Like any great actress,
Valerie didn’t respond to her own words. She smiled and waved again
as if she hadn’t said a thing.
    While her stilettos
pounded the concrete passageway, her mind returned to
Mike.
    “ I can’t just work for
your father!” the seventeen year-old Mike had screamed. “I take a
job with your father, and I’ll never be my own person. You need a
real man. Day by day, you’ll lose respect for me. I can’t live with
that.”
    “ Please don’t go,” the
fifteen year-old Valerie begged. “I’ll work for my father! I can
take care of your family. Let me take care of your family. Please
don’t leave me.”
    “ Oh, Val,” Mike said. “Oh,
honey.”
    He wrapped her in his arms
and they cried together. When morning came, he left for basic
training. That was the morning Delphie pronounced her fate, her
curse.
    Valerie ordered a
cosmopolitan at the LAX bar. Finding a spot near the back, she
opened a magazine. She slipped in her iPod earbuds so no one would
bother her and her memories.
    She was “Mike’s girl” to
everyone in Denver. UCLA had given her a fresh slate. She started
with UCLA boys, then graduated to producers and movie stars. One
after another, she tried to find love again.
    Mike would arrive at her
dorm room in his dress uniform. He never cared who was there. He
just wanted Val. More than once, he found her in bed with some
random guy, and still he didn’t care. He’d shrug and say, “What can
I expect? I’m the one who left.” But her promiscuity hurt him. He
flaunted his own liaisons in return.
    They went back and forth,
hurting each other until the summer between her junior and senior
year, the summer everything went bad.
    Her precious mother was
diagnosed with terminal cancer. And her mother’s true love? He
fucked his secretary and was stupid enough to get the whore
pregnant. Her childhood home was sold before she had time to
retrieve her things. Mom and Delphie moved into that tenement on
Race Street. Jake, her funny, kind, lovable, partner-in-crime
little brother, had managed to transform himself into a complete
jock asshole.
    And Mike was stationed at
Fort Irwin in Barstow.
    For six months of sheer
bliss, she had Mike every weekend. Her parents’ divorce settlement
included a fourth of the construction company. Jake bought her
portion the very next day. With her new-found millions, she and
Mike bought a tiny house in Monterey. They were married on the
beach by a minister. Jake and Mom received a picture of Mr. and
Mrs. Roper kissing on the beach.
    Valerie was in heaven. She
didn’t make Mike her world. He was her world — her morning, noon,
and night. She graduated a term early to be with him, near him.
While her childhood family burned to the ground, Valerie and Mike
rose like the phoenix from its ashes.
    “ Valerie Lipson?” A short,
thin Hispanic man stood next to Val’s table. “Raphael Acosa
from US magazine.
I’m wondering what you meant when you said you were going home to
see your . . . We couldn’t quite catch the last
word. TMZ is
saying that you are going home to your