Chapter Two: “The Best Friend”
Chapter Two
“The Best Friend”
SEWANEE ASSESSED HERSELF IN THE GILDED MIRROR OF THE VENETIAN’S
elevator. Unwashed hair, saggy jeans, rumpled T-shirt, zip-up hoodie with some unidentifiable breakfast-y stain near the zipper. No wonder the woman who gave her the key at the VIP lounge had looked confused.
When the elevator doors opened on the thirty-fifth floor, she followed signs to the right. Stopping at the correct door, she slipped her backpack off (carefully–her right shoulder still screamed sometimes) and set it on top of her roller bag. She opened the door with the key card.
A marble hallway beckoned her. She glided down it, passing a powder room larger than her guesthouse bathroom. On the opposite side, a butler’s pantry/bar that could have serviced the entire hotel. Eventually she was standing in the middle of a sunken ultra-modern marble living room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Strip.
“You made it!”
She pivoted left, looked down another long hallway, and saw the bathrobed and barefoot two-time Golden Globe–nominated, one-time Oscar-nominated (they didn’t talk about
that
discrepancy),
L’Oréal spokesmodel, and UNICEF ambassador, Adaku Obi sprinting toward her.
Before Sewanee could respond, Adaku was upon her, wrapping her in a fierce, all-encompassing hug. Adaku’s hugs always began with swaying, moved into meditative stillness, and ended with deep yoga breathing. The girl knew how to stay in the moment. Even if it was only for a moment.
Adaku pulled back and smiled big. “Isn’t this insane?! It’s ginormous! Stupid!” Adaku had always spoken in exclamatory bursts, but the tempo had increased, Sewanee had noticed, in direct proportion to her success. “And guess what?! You’ll never guess so I’ll tell you. There’re two bedrooms!” She gave Sewanee a teasing push.
Sewanee pushed her back. “Only two?”
Adaku guffawed and pushed her again. “That I’ve found so far! Now you have to stay with me!”
Sewanee scanned the sprawl. Shook her head. “Mark already paid for my suite at the Rio.”
Adaku gave her a look. “Aren’t all the rooms at the Rio ‘suites’?” She finger-quoted the last word.
Sewanee reached for her hand, smiling. “I can’t leave Mark with a bill for a hotel I didn’t use.”
“How much is it?”
Sewanee squeezed Adaku’s hand, shook it for good measure. “No, no, no. You know I hate that.” Off Adaku’s pursed lips, she added, “Don’t do the face.”
“What face?”
“You know exactly what face.”
“I don’t know what–”
“A!” Sewanee dropped Adaku’s hand and walked to the window. Dammit. It was a spectacular view.
Adaku was starring in a film based on last year’s number one
New York Times
’s bestselling book. She was doing a main-stage interview with the author, a VIP meet-and-greet, an autograph hour, and some international press junket thing. No sideshow Romance pavilion for her. At BiblioCon, she herself was the main event.
In the window’s reflection, Sewanee watched Adaku come up behind her and spread her arms out, a queen addressing her people far below. “We’re living the dream, Swan! I’ve got bottle service at the club, a limo on standby, a freaking butler at my twenty-four-hour beck and call!”
Sewanee paused. Adaku, born and bred in the white Chicago suburbs, third daughter of two lovely but demanding Nigerian doctors, was finally allowing herself to enjoy her hard-won accomplishments. It had been a long time coming. People thought success happened faster than it did. A best-supporting-actress nomination did not come with a swag bag of private jets, penthouses, and Porsches. Adaku had
just
bought her first house, a two-bedroom bungalow in Echo Park, thanks to the L’Oréal money. This was the first time the red carpet had been rolled out to this extent. Adaku Obi was starring in a film and the studio wanted to make her happy.
So it was earned. And, yes, it was fun. But Sewanee wanted to urge caution. To slow her down a bit. Tell her that life was subject to change without notice. But she squashed the impulse and used a move out of Adaku’s own playbook: when she couldn’t say what she wanted to, she changed the subject. “I’m sorry, why aren’t we drinking champagne right now?”
Adaku barked her signature laugh and squeezed Sewanee’s shoulders. “Because it’s chillin’ in the fancy Sub-Zero fridge!” As she scampered off, she yelled over her shoulder, “They gave me Cristal!”
Sewanee turned back to the window and gave herself a good,
firm, mental shake. She was happy, genuinely, for her friend. This had nothing to do with Adaku. Adaku wasn’t the problem.
She heard the
pop
of the cork, the glug of the pour, and the posh little patter of Adaku’s bare ballerina feet on the marble behind her.
She turned away from the window and Adaku handed her the glass of bubbly, looking Sewanee directly in the eye. “To our dream coming true.”
Sewanee toasted her and took a large swig of the best champagne she’d ever had.
“Okay! What do we want to do? I have that dinner I told you about but I’m free until then. Let’s get this party started!” Sewanee knew, because she knew everything about her best friend, that while anyone who found themselves in Adaku’s whirling dervish of a presence would swear otherwise, she had never done cocaine.
“Whatever you want! I can’t check in until three o’clock so . . .”
Adaku rolled her eyes and Sewanee could see another argument for ditching the Rio forming, so she quickly said, “I have to do some work tonight, so let’s have fun but not too much. Tomorrow night, I’m all in. Speaking of, I brought five hundred dollars and I’m putting it on red or black. Haven’t decided which yet. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“Oh, you’re getting lucky if I have anything to say about it! It’s been way too long.” Adaku held up her glass again. Sewanee clinked it, chuckling, and they both said, simultaneously, effortlessly, freely, “I love you.” They sipped and the bubbles felt like Pop Rocks on Swan’s tongue and, suddenly, she was content. That’s what A did for her.
Adaku set her glass down on a side table Sewanee thought might have been a sculpture and clapped her hands together. “So! I have to do a phone interview in ten minutes, shouldn’t be more
than half an hour–at least my publicist promised it wouldn’t be–and then we hit it!” She refilled Sewanee’s glass while saying, “You take this, go luxuriate in the spa”–she pointed down yet another long hallway–“fix yourself”–she looked Swan up and down–“and get ready to
partaaay
!” She twirled out of the room on the last word like Stevie Nicks, champagne sloshing out of her glass and splatting on the marble.
Sewanee smiled and walked down the other cavernous hallway, stopping in her tracks at the door to the bathroom.
Oh, okay. It was an actual spa. There was a steam room, a sauna, and a massage table all surrounding a Japanese soaking tub. She wasn’t sure where to go first. The tub called to her, so she stripped down–eye patch and all–and slipped into the perfectly regulated 104-degree water.
As she adapted to it, her mind wandered back to the studio apartment in Washington Heights. The one she had shared with Adaku when they were in school. The one where they had huddled together under blankets when the furnace had gone out and played the “when we’re famous” game. Julliard had been sucking them dry, financially and emotionally, but they’d had a bottomless well of optimism that could only come from youth and inexperience. When we’re famous, we’ll eat sushi every night. When we’re famous, people will stop us on the street and say how much they love our work. When we’re famous, we’ll have reliable heating. When
we’re
famous.
Not you. Not me. We.
Sewanee hadn’t known then how quickly a dream could become a thing that mocked you.
TURNED OUT, VEGAS
by day was not as flaccid as Sewanee had thought. She and Adaku had already window-shopped and people-watched, and they were now tucked into two club chairs in a
beautiful bar somewhere in the Venetian’s Grand Canal Shoppes, sipping something expensive. Free, but expensive. Once Adaku had signed a cocktail napkin “To Roy, Always Adaku,” their eager server had upgraded their vodka sodas to something sweet dusted with gold flake. “Do we need to worry about heavy metal poisoning?” Sewanee joked once he’d left. Adaku had sniffed the surface of the drink, said, “But, what a way to go,” and took a sip. Sewanee followed suit.
“So, how’s BlahBlah doing?” Adaku asked.
“Oh, you know,” Sewanee sighed. “Physically, she’s okay. Mentally? You ever seen
Memento
?”
Adaku grimaced. “Is she . . . does she still remember who you are?”
“Oh, yeah. I started bringing her my audiobooks and I think hearing my voice when I’m not there helps her remember me when I am.”
“Amazing. And how about your dad?”
“She remembers him, too. Unfortunately.”
Adaku chuckled. “I meant how
is
the old bathrobe?”
Sewanee guffawed, they set their empty glasses down, and Roy appeared, as if he’d been waiting in the wings for just such a cue. “You guys doing okay? Or do we need some more gold for that?”
“My bartending magician!” Adaku flirted. “Abracadabra, please!” She held up both empty glasses.
“Your wish is my command.” Roy relieved her of the glasses. “Back in a flash.” He made a
whooshing
sound as he left, presumably vanishing.
“Is there anything you can’t get a man to do?” Sewanee marveled.
“Commit?” As Sewanee laughed, Adaku turned her attention
to the room, scanning it, radar looking for a blip. “Speaking of men, see anyone cute?”
Sewanee didn’t look. “No.”
“Come on! We’re in Vegas!” Adaku leaned in, grinning devilishly. “What happens in Vegas, stays in–”
“Only if you use protection.” Adaku chuckled, but Sewanee made a sound like a hissing cat. “I think I have a gold flake caught in my throat.”
At that moment, Roy reappeared, making the same
whooshing
sound, and Sewanee stifled her hacking.
“He appears!” Adaku exclaimed. “Roy the Remarkable!”
“What else can I conjure for you ladies?” he asked, through his Vegas grin.
Adaku caught Sewanee’s eye. A silent conversation ensued.
How about him?
Adaku asked. Sewanee imperceptibly tipped her chin down.
No.
Adaku ignored her, turning to Roy. “By the way, this is my best friend, Sewanee.”
“Shauney?”
“No, SWAH-nee. Like swan the bird and knee the joint.”
Sewanee cringed. “Call me Swan. Like the bird. Forget the joint thing.”
“This is the cool name table, huh?” He offered a little windshield wiper wave. “So, Swaaaan, you somebody, too?”
“Uh, yes.” She cleared her throat one more time. “Aren’t we all?”
“Ha!” He finger-gunned her, making yet another sound. “
Pew pew.
I meant, you famous, too?”
Adaku leaned in. “She’s the greatest living audiobook narrator on the planet!”
Sewanee held up a hand. “That’s not–”
“Audiobooks?” Roy’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude, that’s my jam! You done anything I would have listened to?”
She sipped her cocktail and discovered the secret to dislodging gold flake was, apparently, more gold flake.
Meanwhile, Adaku said, “You’ve heard her, trust me. She does, like, every big book! She’s won every award that can be won! Have you listened to
Them Hills
?” Sewanee had to give Adaku credit for sizing this guy up. If there were any book she’d narrated that he’d probably listened to, it was going to be last year’s hyper-masculinized best-selling Western.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
told from the woman’s perspective.
He lit up like a slot machine. “Dude! Dude! That book rocked! That was you?”
She presented herself awkwardly with her hands.
Roy peered at Sewanee, seeing her anew. “You crushed it! Wait, so did you meet the guy who played Butch and Sundance? Do you, like, record together?”
Adaku and Sewanee looked at each other then back at Roy. Adaku said, “What guy?”
“The guy! The guy who voiced the guys.”
Adaku and Sewanee looked at each other again. Adaku said, “That wasn’t a guy.”
“No, the Butch-and-Sundance-guy guy.”
“Ohhhh, that guy. Yeah, he wasn’t a guy.” Adaku was enjoying this a bit too much.
“
Who
wasn’t a guy?”
“The guy reading.”
“Wasn’t a guy?”
“Nope.”
Sewanee intervened before Adaku short-circuited Roy. “What she’s trying to say is, it was me.”
Roy took a moment with this. An extended moment. He narrowed his eyes. “Oh, I see.” He turned to Adaku. “You think I think she did the whole book,
including
the guys!” Roy guffawed. “No way I would have thought that! But I can understand how you would think I thought that.”
Adaku’s head jerked around on her neck like a malfunctioning robot. “Well. Glad we cleared that up!”
Roy turned back to Swan. “So, who was the guy?”
Sewanee considered making up a name and moving on. Adaku was no help at this point, having submerged her laughing face in her drink. She’d give it one more go. “Roy?” Her tone was kindergarten teacher. “The guy? The guys? Were me.”
Roy threw his head back. “Not you, too! The guy–”
“Roy?” Same tone. He looked at her again. “When I recorded
Them Hills
, the . . . book people? Had me do all the voices. Butch and Sundance included.”
Silence. “All the voices?”
“All the voices,” Sewanee repeated.
Roy stilled. Then tilted his head. He looked like a Labrador waiting for a command.
She dropped her voice to a place that was second nature at this point. “‘Someday, Butch, you’re gonna die and then you’ll realize you never really lived.’”
Roy stared at her.
Sewanee took a sip of her drink, waiting.
Finally: “Dude.”
Adaku banged the table. “Amazing, right?!”
The sound snapped Roy out of his confusion. Now he was awestruck. “How do you do that?”
Sewanee waved him in and spoke quietly, mysteriously. “Keep it to yourself. Know what I mean?”
He looked as though he had been allowed to peek behind a curtain. He slowly bobbed his head. “Riiiight. Totally.” He winked knowingly and headed back to his post at the bar.
Adaku took a moment. Then shrugged. “Okay, so not him!”
“
HIT ME!
”
They’d landed at a blackjack table. Adaku was playing, Sewanee was watching.
The dealer turned over the next card. “Twenty-one.”
“Bam!” Adaku pulled Sewanee down into the seat next to her. “Come on! Play!” She pushed a stack of $25 chips in front of her and said to the dealer, “She’s playing.”
“Not with your money.”
“Shhhh. Ten minutes! Ten little minutes! I’m on a roll. Then we’ll go find your roulette wheel.”
“I have prep work to–”
“The books aren’t going anywhere, Swan.”
The dealer said, “Card change, ladies. It’ll be a couple minutes.”
Relieved, Sewanee sat back.
And sensed two guys skulk up behind them.
“’Scuse me?” The taller one tapped Adaku on her shoulder.
Sewanee watched her pull away from the touch even as she turned to them with her stock yes-it’s-me smile. “Hi!”
“Holy crapolla. It
is
you! We wasn’t sure.”
“
I
was sure,” his shorter companion put in. “Acura Oboe!”
Sewanee sighed audibly and got Adaku’s foot in her shin.
Adaku smiled bigger. “Adaku Obi.”
“Yeah.” The taller one snapped his fingers. “I’m Chuck. This waste of space is Jimbo.”
Chuck had a glassy glint in his eyes Sewanee didn’t like. He kept staring at Adaku. “I gotta tell ya, between you and me?
You remind me of this–” He turned to his friend. “Jimbo, you remember Sheniqua?”
Jimbo snorted. “Do I remember Sheniqua.”
Sewanee would never get used to it, the things some men thought they could say. Roy was harmless. But these two? These two were trouble before they ever showed up, wherever they showed up, and particularly in Adaku’s case. As Sewanee debated whether to step in, she placed their accents. East coast. Not New York, not the boroughs. Definitely not Boston. Jersey. Probably the shore. Badda Bing.
“Hey, so.” Chuck dropped a hand on the back of Adaku’s chair, leaning down. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you like white guys?”
Sewanee stood up and said, “Okay,” as Adaku said, lowly, sharply, “Don’t.”
Chuck lifted both meaty hands. “I’m just sayin’!”
Jimbo chuckled. “We’ve had a little too much of a little too much, if you know what I mean.” They fist-bumped. Sloppily.
Sewanee knew there had been a window, a small window, a few years ago, when being recognized had been enjoyable. Now, it felt like surveillance.
Adaku caught the pit boss’s eye. That was all it took.
Chuck, oblivious, stepped closer to Adaku. “You’re special. That ‘it’ thing. You twinkle. All mischievous and shit.”
“Mischievous,” Sewanee said in that well-trained voice of hers, which, despite its low volume, made people listen. “Miss. Chi. Viss.”
Chuck looked at her for the first time, surprised to find her there. “Dat’s what I said.”
“No, you said, miss-CHEE-vee-us. It’s MISS-chi-viss.”
“So?”
“Mis-chi-viss is a word. Miss-chee-vee-us is not.”
Chuck struck a theatrical pose of contemplation, stubby finger on his scruffy chin. He turned to his buddy. “Hey Jimbo, is ‘bitch’ a word?” He looked back at Sewanee. “I say dat right?”
As they laughed, two large men appeared. One took Chuck by the elbow. “Gentlemen, please come with us.” There were brief protests: We didn’t mean nothing; just having some fun; way to treat your fans; you ain’t hot shit, you know. But they were already on their escorted way toward the nearest exit.
Sewanee sat back down. She looked at Adaku and said, “Okay, so not him!” They were sharing a rueful smile when Chuck took one final, loud shot over his shoulder:
“Yo, bitch, catch ya back at Treasure Island!”
ADAKU HAD INSISTED
on taking Sewanee to the Rio in the limo. She’d checked into her fourth-floor room, threw open the curtains to reveal a sumptuous parking garage view, made a cup of tea, put on the Golf Channel–her favorite source of white background noise–and worked. First, she went over the questions Mark had given her for the panel tomorrow morning.
Then she began prepping a book she was recording in a few weeks, making word lists and finding the correct pronunciations, identifying the emotional arc of the story, marking breath points in syntactically challenging passages, mapping relationships between the characters, and developing voices and accents. Book prep had become as relevant to her as rehearsal had once been for performing a play or researching a character before shooting a film. But Sewanee Chester hadn’t stepped on a stage or in front of a camera for seven years.
After a few hours, she sat back, realizing she was hungry, and absently fiddled with the elastic of her eye patch above her right ear as if it were a lock of hair. In the beginning, she’d taken it off whenever she was by herself. Now it was just another
part of her. She picked up the phone and treated herself to room service.
Then did something she hated: went on Facebook.
She had let her activity lapse after the accident. Too many sympathy posts and then, seemingly overnight, not enough. While people posted photos of their engagements and weddings and first dogs and first houses and first kids and now second kids, the last picture she’d been tagged in had been from the hospital. Adaku by her side, both sporting cheeky thumbs-up. She was frozen in time like that.
But then Mark had gone and said: Romance audiobook fans are insane, you should see the Facebook groups.
So she went to Dixie Barton’s page, a narrator friend who had made a career doing Romance and would be on the panel tomorrow. Her real name was decidedly
not
Dixie Barton, but Alice Dunlop. Alice had chosen the pseudonym Dixie Barton because she’d been a famous burlesque dancer in the 1940s. Sewanee looked at the groups “Dixie” belonged to:
Romance Rosies.
Midnight Riders.
All Things Romance.
She clicked on the one with the most members–twenty thousand?!–and slipped into another dimension.
There were at least fifty posts a day, some heralding new releases (“book 14 in the Katy Totally Did series is out today! Come to mama!”), some espousing love for a specific book or narrator (“I’ve started hearing Joe Kincaid’s voice in my dreams”), and some asking for recommendations (“anyone got a funny m/m/f threesome book? Must be FUNNY”). Authors were members of this group and narrators were, too. But mostly, it was the fans.
Fans who, Sewanee discovered as she scrolled through the page, could listen to a book a day. Fans who made devotional
videos to their favorite narrators. Fans who impatiently waited for a narrator’s next book because they had already
listened to their whole catalogue
.
Sewanee knew how popular Romance novels were (it wasn’t just a category, it was a
pavilion
, after all), but she was surprised to see narrators had their own following. The fans loved the women . . . but they revered the men. And it seemed one in particular, Brock McNight, was the reigning king. The lack of subtlety in the comments made it obvious. “All hail!” and “our resident unicorn” and “Brock McNight! I want you to read this section to me while I go down on you!”
Hokay then.
Sewanee knew there was no way Brock McNight was his real name. The explicit nature of these books led many narrators–much like the books’ authors–to use pseudonyms. It was an industry norm and everyone had his or her own reasons for doing so but, like a society of magicians, they were all sworn to secrecy. A pinned post at the top of the page promised that any listener who “outed” a narrator without their permission would be kicked out of the group.
Good.
Mark was the person who’d first suggested Sewanee do audiobooks. They’d been seated next to each other in a thirty-seat black box theater at a mutual friend’s showcase and seemed to be the only two people in the audience not impressed by the tortured writhing onstage. After a two-minute conversation at intermission about audiobooks, he gave her his card, said she’d have to start in indie Romance, and that she should pick an alias. She’d chosen her stripper name. Using the classic middle school algorithm, she combined her first pet (Sarah, a black Lab as loyal as she was stupid) and the street she grew up on (Westholme, a half mile from the UCLA campus where her father taught). Sarah
Westholme sounded realistic. Some narrators went the other way. Fluffy Foxtrot. Dick Long. And in the case of a very gay, very Liberal narrator she adored who only recorded queer erotica, Lindsey Graham, because “let the bastard come after me, I dare him.”
The industries–both audiobooks and indie Romance–had grown so much since she’d “retired,” Sewanee was sure Sarah had faded into obscurity. But she put her old alias into the Facebook group’s search bar to see if she existed.
Boy, did she. She was an enigma. The White Whale of Romance. The posts told her as much:
Why isn’t she narrating anymore?
What happened to her??
OMG, she was my absolute favorite, why
???
No one does guy voices like her! Shadow Walkers?! It doesn’t get better than SW reading June French!
Shadow Walkers was the last Romance series she’d done and she’d loved those books. But, then, it was June French. What was there not to love? In the ’90s, June had been an iconic Romance author helping to define the category. When she went indie with the Shadow Walkers series, she’d hired Sarah to do the audiobooks and they’d exploded.
June was the one Romance author Sewanee had felt bad about abandoning. They’d worked well together, exchanged thoughtful e-mails that made Sewanee feel they probably would have been friends in real life. She recalled even telling June–in abstract terms–about what had happened to her, why she wasn’t acting on-camera anymore. When she’d heard only a few weeks ago that June had died–a shock wave still working its way through
the audiobook community–the news had hit her in an unexpectedly tender place.
The knock on the door startled her. For a moment–brief, but still–she imagined herself in a June French novel. What adventure might she find on the other side of the door?
Oh, right. Food.
She snapped the laptop closed, popped up, and adjusted her eye patch before opening the door to a man who would never grace the cover of a Romance novel, not even in his prime thirty years ago. He wheeled the food into her room, she signed the bill, tipped him well, and closed the door.
She uncovered the plate and found cold French fries, a day-old bun, a possibly older burger, and garnish she suspected had been taken off another, discarded dinner.
Fantasy over. Reality had arrived.