Thank You for Listening(30)

There’d been a few men since the accident, all casual, nothing relevant. Sex had been an exercise in nostalgia for her: a way to remind herself she could feel something. It hadn’t been a want. Until Vegas. Until Nick.

“What a pissah!”

The voice was more intrusive than it might normally have been, given where Sewanee’s mind had wandered. She tried to ignore it, hoping it would disappear as quickly as it had arrived.

“Sewanee Chestah! I’d recognize that backside anywhere!”

She hoped it wasn’t who she thought it was. She really hoped it wasn’t.

She turned around.

It was exactly who she’d hoped it wasn’t.

A decade older. Shirtless. Oakleys on the back of his head. Spandex running shorts. “Oh my God,” was all she could say.

“Just playin’,” Doug Carrey said in that smoky trademark Boston accent. And then, predictably, he laughed. Doug had always laughed at anything he said whether anyone else joined in or not. “Damn, girl!” His eyes swept her body. “Look at you!”

She lifted her hands marginally at her sides, an unenthusiastic ta-da. He moved in for a hug, seemed to think better of it. “Ah, I’m all sweaty.” So he kissed her cheek, grabbed her waist, and squeezed. It felt analytical, like he was measuring the reality of her body in this moment against what he maybe remembered.

He stepped back and pulled a voice. “Of all the gin joints, amiright?” It might have been charming were he not terrible at impressions. His Humphrey Bogart was closer to Gilbert Gottfried. “Shit, what’s it been? Five years?”

“I think at least eight.”

“No suh! Really?”

Really. Trust her, Doug.

“Well, you are wearing them well.” That Tiger Beat cover grin resurfaced.

“You too,” she said, then followed the lie with an unwritten law of Hollywood interactions: the stated recognition of an actor’s success. “Tommy Callahan.”

Back when they’d met, he’d been on the fast track to action movie stardom, but he overspent the money he’d made, lost his edge, and, desperate for cash, took a network family sitcom pilot that went to series. And now he would forever be Tommy Callahan, the Reformed Bad Boy Turned Single Dad Trying His Best.

She couldn’t stop looking at him. He wasn’t aging gracefully, was he? He wasn’t getting craggy or jagged or crinkly; he was getting blurry.

And yet: men. They kept working.

“Yeah, it’s a good gig.” He laughed. She didn’t know why, but she laughed along. “But I was sure if anyone was going big league it was you. Where’d you go? You like, peaced.”

“Oh, I, uh . . . I’ve been doing a lot of voiceover.”

He snapped his fingers. “Wicked smaht. Definitely the future. Everyone thinks they can just do it, but it’s a skill. It’s a whole nother talent. I’m getting into it myself.”

Sewanee said, “That’s great.” But Sewanee thought, now we should be laughing.

“Not that you got a face for radio or nothing like that.” He winked. Then he pointed at his eye, swirled his finger. “What happened here?”

“I had an accident.”

Doug winced. “Yikes. I got a mascara wand in the eye once. Makeup girl was all worked up and someone banged the trailer door shut and–” he clucked his tongue “–direct hit. I had to wear one of those for a whole month. How long you in fah?”

Sewanee looked down at her shoes.

Eight years ago, this man had begged his way into her bed. She’d made him wait months. She’d delighted in his every agonized text, the way he’d show up at the lounge where she worked and plant himself at the end of the bar just to watch her, the groans in the back of his throat when she’d let him kiss her. Theirs had been an age-old dance, a chase, a hunt, and its end hadn’t hurt. It had been transactional from the beginning. He’d given her months of feeling worshipped, she’d given him a few nights of what he wanted, and then they were done.

And the whole of that entire relationship had been as exciting as one single thought about Nick.

“Spare a few bucks?”

Sewanee looked up. The man from the bench had made his way over to them, encased in his sleeping bag.

Doug made a show of patting his skintight shorts, “Ah, sorry, brothah.” He looked at Sewanee, was already backing away. “This was dope. You still got my number, right? Give me a bell.” He put his hand up to his ear, pinky and thumb extended. “We’ll grab some Dunks!” He jogged away.

Yeah, no.

Sewanee reached into her jacket pocket, took out a few singles she’d left there for valet tips, and handed them to the man.

“Thanks. That guy on a sitcom?”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

She supposed she didn’t hide her surprise as well as she’d intended, because he preemptively offered an explanation. “I used to be an actor.”

“Ah.”

“He’s a hack.”

“Yeah.”

The man stuffed the bills into his pocket, went back to his bench, and curled up underneath the bag.

Sewanee inched her way back to Hollywood, cleared the studio sink of morning-rush coffee cups, and found Mark in his office. She tapped the doorframe and he looked up, smiling wide.