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.”
They looked at each other.
Sewanee prepared to say something, but she wasn’t sure what. Adaku didn’t give her the chance. “You know I think you threw in the towel too soon.”
Grateful to be spared a moment of her own reckoning, Sewanee nodded. “Yeah, I know. You’re wrong, but I know.”
“You were the only one who told you it was over. Even your agent said–”
“He’s an agent. He thought he could capitalize on it. If I’d been more established before the accident, maybe. But I wasn’t.”
She’d wondered: Had she done that show back in high school, had her parents let her, would she have been famous enough to overcome what happened to her? If she’d had fans, and they’d lived through it with her? If the industry felt it owed her something? It would have been a story, at least. She could have–and God, she hated this word–leveraged it. But how could she have a comeback without a place to come back to? As it was, she was simply another actress who disappeared as quickly as she had been discovered. Not a star; a shooting star.
And then Doug Carrey of all people had said, “Don’t give up.” That maybe there was a place for her. And then Brock had talked about his fear of trying to reclaim what he’d had before and she hadn’t been able to sleep that night for thinking.
Adaku still peered at her. “It’s a simple question. Do you want to act?”
“It’s not a simple question. I can’t–”
“Yes or no.”
“I miss it, but I don’t know if I’m just being–”
“Yes! Or! No!”
“I don’t know!”
“You don’t know? Try saying it. Try saying it and see how the truth feels.”
There was an interminable lacuna. “Yes.”
Adaku banged the table so forcefully Sewanee lunged for her water glass and the whole restaurant turned. Adaku was unperturbed. “Then what are we waiting for?! Here’s what we do!”
“A, please. Everyone’s looking,” Sewanee murmured.
“Yes, they are! At two co-stars of The Originator!”
“What, no, A, no–”
“You don’t get to talk right now, you get to listen.” Adaku leaned over the table. “There’s a role in this film and when I read it? All I could think was, I swear to God, I thought: this is Swan. This is Sewanee Chester as I live and breathe. But you’re so stubborn about never acting again–”
“I’m not stubborn, I’m realistic.”
Adaku ignored her. “It’s the best role in the film! Not big. Maybe six scenes. But pivotal and memorable and just”–Adaku groaned loudly, fiercely, garnering more looks–“delicious.”
Sewanee quirked her head. “In this film? Isn’t it chicks in hot pants with machine guns in the jungle–”
Adaku waved her finger at Sewanee’s mouth. “You got to close this up and hear me out, okay?”
Sewanee could have been blinded by the light in her friend’s eyes. She sighed with internal excitement and external caution and said, “Okay.”
Adaku brought her hands together, as if in prayer. “She’s the leader of this resistance group that’s been living in the trees–”