Thank You for Listening(46)

“You mean Jack?”

“What am I, your manager? I don’t care how you make it.”

Birdie was looking down at the bar, engaged with an imaginary bowl. She placed her hand above it and moved first clockwise, then counterclockwise. She paused. Did it again. Then she looked up at Sewanee, satisfied. “Yes!”

“And what else do you put in it, Birdie?” Adaku asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Birdie said, eyes bugging. “Well, I suppose you could add a touch of salt, but I wouldn’t risk it. My husband, Jerry, loves it. And the boys can’t get enough. They won’t watch a game without it.” Sewanee was pretty sure Birdie’s husband had passed away, that that’s how she ended up at Seasons. Her daughter was an executive at one of the studios and she brought her out here to be closer. Plucked out of Michigan, condemned to spend the rest of her days with Hollywood barracudas like Mitzi and Blah.

A silence fell over them.

Sewanee watched Adaku feel the silence. A different kind of silence than they were used to with their friends. With their friends, a group silence felt as if they were all busy paddling a canoe to an agreed-upon destination. Here, it was more like being set adrift.

Birdie broke in, picking up a paddle. “Mitzi, what’s your husband’s name?”

Mitzi hacked. “Which one?” She took a slug of her Jack and Coke then looked at Dan. “What the hell is in this?”

Birdie now looked to Blah, who was staring at the bar. “Do you have a husband?”

Blah lifted her eyes. And her new glass. “No.”

“Oh. You lost your husband, or did you never have one?”

Blah froze mid-sip. She paused. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Mitzi scoffed, “I wish I could forget.”

Blah didn’t look to Sewanee for an answer, so Sewanee didn’t provide one. She watched Blah stare at her drink and wondered, not for the first time, if forgetting all the things that had made one’s life worth living before one’s life came to an end was a cruelty or a mercy.

“Well, maybe you didn’t have one!” Birdie suggested, cheerfully. “Maybe you were just sleazy!”

A knife-cutting silence as Blah thought about this. “God, I hope so,” she said and drank.

ADAKU AND SEWANEE tucked into a curved red vinyl booth at the back of Smoke House, joining the other early-birders. Adaku ordered a steak salad with oil and vinegar on the side and Sewanee, wanting to be supportive, did the same.

“How’s the training going?” she asked.

“I feel like Mitzi,” Adaku answered. “Everything hurts.”

“Well, you look great. You are officially a badass.”

Adaku grimaced. “I better be if I’m gonna make it through this film.”

“Please tell me you’re not doing your own stunts?”

“God, no! But it’s still gonna be a bitch. Running through the jungle and all the fight choreography. I–” She stopped herself, seeming embarrassed to be heard complaining about starring in a film anyone else would have killed for. That “anyone else” being her best friend sitting across from her. She smiled and chippered up. “I should shut up is what I should do.”

“No, A, you shouldn’t shut up. You have every right to feel the way you do.”

But Adaku shook her head. “Uhn-uhn. I’m not gonna become one of those actresses we both hate listening to.” She mindlessly reached for the basket of garlic bread and snapped her hand back. “I don’t want to talk about me anyway. I want a Brock McNight update!”

Sewanee flushed. “Oh! There’s nothing to report.”

Adaku’s eyes flared with intrigue and she waved her whole hand around Sewanee’s face. “That is not what I’m seeing.”

“I just mean, nothing’s, you know, happened.”

“But you like him.”

“Sure. He seems . . . nice. We have a good . . . working relationship.”

Adaku shook her head slowly back and forth, back and forth, digging a trough with her chin. “Nope. Nope, nope, nope.”

Sewanee threw her head back. “Ugh, fine! He’s great. He’s funny. He’s a hundred times more interesting than I thought he’d be. He writes in complete sentences. Correctly capitalizes proper nouns.”

“Wow, where are you guys registered?”

Sewanee snorted. “You know, more than anything? It’s just been nice collaborating with someone. Makes me feel . . .”

“What?” Adaku again reached for the bread then flagged a passing waiter. “Excuse me?” She pointed at the basket. “Can you disappear this, please? Thank you.” She turned her attention back to Sewanee. “Feel what?”

Sewanee took a moment to sip her water. To make a decision. Voicing what she was about to, especially to Adaku, felt final. Irrevocable. Once it was out, her friend would have something to hold her to. Adaku was a cat waiting to pounce. “Like I’m acting again. Really acting. And it’s made me realize . . . that I miss it.”

Adaku dropped her chin, gazed solidly at Sewanee through the tops of her eyes. “This is new. What are we going to do about this?”

Sewanee flicked her hand. “Nothing. It’ll pass.”

“It is not nothing. I will not let it pass.”