Thank You for Listening(32)

Adaku looked out at the view again. “Makes sense.”

“I mean, it’ll be, like, eight hours of work. Maybe ten. It’s insane.”

“What’s it about?”

Sewanee set down her glass and pulled out her phone. She’d told Mark to give them the old e-mail address she’d used for Sarah Westholme. The one she hadn’t opened once since logging out of it six years ago. She’d resurrected it on her server and discovered–in addition to pages and pages of spam she was never going to wade through–three recent e-mail inquiries about this project. Which explained why the producer had reached out to Mark. At Mark’s go-ahead, Jason had immediately e-mailed Sarah so they could work out recording details. Sewanee scrolled through the e-mail now, skipping over the “I’m so excited to be working on this together! Thank you so much!” part, then read aloud:

“‘This dual-narration series is about a businesswoman who put her company on the back burner to help her husband while he was dying. After his death, she must now go about rebuilding both her business and her long-dormant sexuality. Five years prior, on the night before her wedding, she met an aspiring artist and, while their attraction had been undeniable, she faithfully refused him. But now she is free to seek him out, only to discover that he has not forgotten her, either. Furthermore, it turns out that bringing women’s sexuality back to life happens to be his thing . . . he’s a famous gigolo descended from Casanova who hosts wealthy women for “rejuvenating” weekends at his ancestral palazzo in Venice. She can’t afford him, but they strike a bargain: he will give her his full VIP package–’” She looked at Adaku, held up her phone, tapped her screen. “It actually says ‘package.’” She looked back down. “‘–if she will use her connections to get his art in front of her very rich friends. It’s a deal! But can these two wandering souls keep their transaction strictly professional?’” Sewanee rolled her eye at this.

Adaku clapped excitedly. “That’s actually cute!”

“Sure, why not.”

“It is! Who’s the other narrator?”

“The alpha male of Romance. At least according to the audience at the panel.” She said his name as if heralding the arrival of a king: “Sir Brock McNight!”

Adaku jumped up. “What?!” she screeched.

Sewanee looked startled. “Not you, too!”

“Swan! Like, ninety percent of my library is Brock McNight.” She heard herself. “And you, of course.”

Sewanee poured more wine, smirked. “But is his guy voice as good as mine?”

Adaku screeched again. “You’ve never heard his voice?!”

“You know I don’t listen to audiobooks. Give me your glass?”

Adaku obliged and then fished her phone out of her back pocket. “I am about to introduce you to the man, the myth, the legend, the voice of my ever-loving dreams, Brock-talk-me-dirty-McNight.”

Sewanee chuckled as Adaku perched on the edge of her chair and set her phone faceup on the folding table. Sewanee looked down to see a book cover that was nothing but a man’s glistening bare torso. “Billionaire” was in the title.

As the audiobook began, Adaku took her glass back and watched Sewanee’s face intently, a kid who’d just handed her mom a new drawing.

The story opened like so many. Man sees woman standing across a room and catalogues her “assets.” She had narrated so many of these opening scenes that for a moment she was distracted by the repetitiveness. But then. The voice hit.

By the time it had carved through the first paragraph, her eyes flicked to Adaku, who was still staring at her. Thirty seconds later, she’d gone slack-jawed and Adaku barely contained her smug mirth. Five minutes later, when the co-narrator started her section, when the voice was no longer present, Sewanee felt tantalizingly unfulfilled. It was a bite of chocolate when she needed the whole bar.

Yes, he had a great voice. Low, of course, and resonant, obviously, and the perfect balance of growl and breath. She couldn’t imagine him narrating anything other than Romance; he’d be too distracting.

But as he described his body’s reaction to seeing this woman, the way her mere existence affected him, he made the listener want to be her. Heat blasted from his vocal furnace.

It was Sewanee who broke the silence. “Who is this guy?”

Adaku pushed her knee. “Right!? You ever heard anyone like–”

“No. No. No, he’s . . . no.”

Adaku cackled and Sewanee could tell she liked seeing her thrown. “See? Lean in, Swan, I’m telling you, this is some hot shit!”

At that moment, Sewanee’s phone dinged.

She deflated slightly and picked it up. “Sorry, but I’m waiting for an e-mail from Seasons’ billing depar–”

Her gasp had Adaku spinning toward her. “What? Is it BlahBlah?”

“No.” Sewanee looked up. “It’s Brock McNight.”





Part 3


We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion. Our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

–Henry James

I don’t know where my ideas come from, but you know where they come to? My desk. And if I’m not there to greet them, they leave. Ass in the chair. Ass in the chair. That’s art.