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.
“How’s it feel to be motivated by money?”
AFTER A DAY of billing and a couple of hours in the booth, Sewanee was happy to hear Adaku’s knock on her door. “Come in!” she called, as she finished pouring two glasses of rosé.
“This is why your ass is amazing,” Adaku said from the other side of the kitchen wall, sounding winded. She rounded the corner and took Swan into a yoga hug.
She chuckled into Adaku’s ear. “You work out with a trainer four times a week.”
“And yet these stairs still kill me!”
“Well, here.” She handed Adaku a glass of wine. She was about to ask how the drinks-meeting at LAX had gone, but Adaku launched into the story unprompted.
“So, the meeting started out awkward as shit. He had no desire to meet me let alone have a conversation.” She took a quick gulp. “He says the typical producer stuff, I come back at him with everything I’ve got, and then he finally admits he doesn’t think I’m ‘culturally Black’ enough to play Angela Davis.”
Sewanee stopped mid-drink. “What the hell does that mean?”
“What it always means: nothing. They see you the way they want to see you. Black, white, tall, short, fat, skinny . . . you’re condemned to it.”
Sewanee pursed her lips. “How old is this guy?”
“Too old. Too white.”
“Perfect person to make the Angela Davis story.”
“Well, funny you should say that. I told him maybe he wasn’t ‘culturally Black’ enough to be producing it.”
Sewanee gasped, eye bugging. “OhmygodIloveyou, what did he say?”
Adaku lifted her glass and smiled. “I’m officially in the mix.”
Sewanee laughed. “You are on a roll! Cheers.” They clinked glasses and moved reflexively toward the porch. Unless it was raining, they never confined themselves to Sewanee’s shoebox living room.
Adaku opened the sliding screen door for Swan, whose hands were full with glass and bottle. “Okay, now let’s go! I want the full story! Every detail! No broad strokes, no glossing. I want to know the nitty, the gritty, and what he did to them titties!”
Sewanee guffawed and they sat down in the two stackable plastic chairs she’d secured at a garage sale for five bucks and which were light enough to carry up the hill. Then she spent half an hour telling a story that left Adaku open-mouthed, knee-slapping, and speechless. And Adaku was never speechless.
When she was done, Sewanee topped their glasses off. The silence was unnerving. “Please say something. You know what, actually, don’t say anything. I did what I did and I have no regrets. A little out of character, I know, but . . .” At Adaku’s receding chin, she amended, “A lot, a lot out of character, but A . . .” She put down the bottle, looked at her friend. “It was the best night I’ve had in years and not because of the sex.”