by Brit Bennett
She worked harder in that musical than she’d ever worked at anything. She tacked bright flyers advertising the show on every storefront and lamppost she could find. She suffered the glares of neighbors when she practiced her songs in the stairwell, where the acoustics were better. In the morning, she soft-shoed across the bathroom tile, rehearsing the choreography as she brushed her teeth. When she wasn’t rehearsing, she rested her voice. Nobody who’d ever met her would believe this but it was true: for weeks, she barely spoke at all. She’d left 8 Ball by then and started at a coffee shop called Gulp, near the theater. The shows took up her evenings, and besides, bartending was a chatty field. Pouring coffee required less conversation. On her breaks, she drank tea and talked to no one. At home, Frantz gave her a small whiteboard where she passed him messages. Dinner? Heading out. Your mother called. He seemed tickled by it all, as if he’d been roped into a piece of performance art.
You’d be amazed by how loud the city sounded when you’d decided to be quiet. She became jittery, as easily spooked as a horse. Even the sudden sound of the coffee grinder made her jump. But when Jude pushed through the door, Kennedy heard nothing, not the bell jingling, not the street noise filtering in with the chill. For three years, she’d imagined what she might say to Jude if she ever saw her again. Now Jude stood across the counter, but when Kennedy opened her mouth, nothing came out. She couldn’t even whisper.
“I thought it was you,” Jude said.
She was still lean and ropy, bundled up in a big white coat that made her skin shine darker. And she was smiling. She was goddamn smiling, like they were old pals.
“I saw a flyer with your name,” she said. “We were walking by and I saw that flyer in the window and—wow, it’s really you.”
By the door, she recognized Jude’s boyfriend—his curly hair longer, beard darker, but still, unmistakably, him. He lingered by the window, blowing warmth into his hands, his shoulders flecked with ice. She couldn’t help it—she was surprised that they were still together. She knew his type—painfully handsome—and it wasn’t the type to love a girl like Jude. Sure, she was striking in her own way, but a pretty boy like him would never fall for a girl who was difficultly beautiful. But here they were, still together and in New York. What on earth were they doing all the way out here?
“How’ve you been?” Jude asked.
She was acting casual, but nothing about their friendship had ever been pure coincidence. She no longer believed in the magic of accidents when Jude Winston was concerned. A white man in a gray coat stepped inside the café, and Kennedy waved him forward. If she was back in Los Angeles, she probably would have sworn at Jude. But here, cocooned in her self-made silence, she could only ignore her. Jude looked startled, but stepped out of line.
The man paid for his coffee and left. Then Jude slipped a scrap of paper onto the counter. “This is where we’re staying,” she said. “In case you want to talk.”
* * *
—
SHE CALLED. Of course she called.
She knew she would even after she slipped the paper into her apron pocket. She didn’t throw it away—that was the first sign. The second was the fact that she kept thinking about it. One tiny slip of paper wedged in her pocket that might as well have been a razor, digging into her side. It made no sense for a piece of paper to bother her this much, and twice during her shift, she resolved to rip it into tiny pieces. But every time she pulled it out, she glanced at Jude’s small, neat handwriting. Hotel Castor, room 403, and the phone number. By the third time, it was too late. She’d already memorized the number.
After work, she stepped into the phone booth across the street and dialed. No one answered, and on the train she thought about calling again once she got home, but she didn’t want Frantz to overhear. How could she possibly explain this to him? That a black girl, claiming to be her cousin, had mysteriously appeared in the city. He’d think she was joking again. She called the next morning, right before work, and this time, Jude answered.
“I’m not supposed to be speaking to you,” Kennedy said.
Jude paused. For a second, Kennedy thought she didn’t recognize her voice, then she said, “Why not?”
“Because,” Kennedy said, “I’m in a musical.”
“I’m sorry,” Jude said evenly. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not supposed to be speaking to anybody. I’m resting my voice.”
“Oh.”
“So whatever you have to say to me, just say it. I’m not wasting time going back and forth with you.”
“I’m not here to fight.”
“Then why the hell are you here?”
“Reese has surgery.”
The whole time, she’d imagined all that Jude could possibly want. Revenge, after that nasty thing she’d said to her at the cast party. Money, like her mother suggested. Well, good luck with that. One look at her life and anyone could tell that she didn’t have any. She could barely afford her rent. She imagined telling Jude this—a little ashamed, a little proud—but it turned out that she hadn’t resurfaced in New York because of Kennedy at all. Her boyfriend was sick—dying, even—and here Kennedy was, assuming Jude was thinking about her. “You know what your problem is?” a director had told her once. “You consider yourself your most fascinating subject.” She’d always thought everyone felt like a lead character onstage, surrounded by sidekicks and villains and love interests. She still couldn’t tell which bit role Jude was playing in her life, but she wasn’t even registering in Jude’s.
“Is it serious?” she asked. “I mean, is he okay?”
“It’s not like he’s dying,” Jude said. “But it’s serious. Yes, I’d say it’s serious.”
“Then why’d you come all the way out here? There aren’t any more surgeons in Los Angeles?”
Jude paused. “We’re not in Los Angeles anymore,” she said. “And it’s a special sort of surgery. You have to find a certain type of doctor who’ll do it.”
She was being vague, which, of course, only made Kennedy want to know more. But she couldn’t ask outright. It was none of her business, Reese’s life or Jude’s. This time, it seemed, their meeting was just an accident.
“Where do you live, then?” she said.
“Minneapolis.”
“What the hell are you doing out there?”
“I’m in medical school.”
In spite of herself, she felt a little proud. Jude was living the life she said she wanted, years ago. Still loved by the same man, on her way to becoming a doctor. And what did Kennedy have to show for all that time? A basement apartment with a man she barely understood, no college degree, a job serving coffee so that she could belt out songs in a half-empty theater each night.
“I’m glad you called,” Jude said. “I didn’t think you would.”
“Yeah, well, can you blame me?”
“Look, I know things ended sort of strangely—”
Kennedy laughed. “Well, that’s a goddamn understatement.”
“But if you’d just meet me for ten minutes, I have something to show you.”
Her mother had called Jude crazy. Maybe she was. But she was already reeling Kennedy back in. She could have hung up. She could have hung up right then and never spoken to her again. She could have tried to forget about her. But Jude was offering her a key to understanding her mother. How could she say no to that so easily?
“I can’t right now,” she said. “I’m at work.”
“After, then.”
“I have a show after.”
“Where?” Jude said. “Reese and I will come. It’s not sold out already, is it?”
The company hadn’t sold out a single show yet, but still, Kennedy paused, as if she were thinking.
“Maybe not,” she said. “Usually there are a few tickets left.”
“Great,” Jude said. “We�
��ll come tonight. We’ve been wanting to see a real show while we’re in New York City and all.”
She sounded unbearably innocent, not like the steely, guarded girl Kennedy knew. She was almost charmed by it, but mostly, she felt like she’d found her sure footing again. She gave Jude the name of the theater and told her that she had to go.
“All right,” Jude said. “We’ll see you tonight. And Kennedy?”
“Seriously, I’ve got to go—”
“All right, I’m sorry. I just—well, I’m looking forward to it. Seeing you act again, I mean. I loved your last show.”
She hated how good that made her feel. She hung up without saying good-bye.
Fifteen
In Pacific Cove, Charity Harris was the girl next door, meaning half the fans loved her and the other half found her a total bore. When she disappeared on a cruise ship during her final appearance, Kennedy even received fan letters rejoicing in her misfortune. At the time, it hadn’t bothered her. She didn’t care if fans loved or hated her, it was attention all the same, and nobody had ever felt strongly enough about a character she’d played to write her about it. Still, she’d hoped, driving off the studio lot, that this wouldn’t be Charity’s last scene.
“This is the soaps,” the director told her. “Nothing’s final but a cancellation.”
Charity deserved a better end, she would drunkenly tell friends at bars, well into her forties, far beyond when it was appropriate for her to still care so much. Even if she couldn’t hope for Charity’s miraculous return—a fate that every actor killed off a soap dreamt about—she at least wanted Charity’s story wrapped up neatly, some bullshit chyron about the girl leaving Pacific Cove, moving to Peru to raise llamas, she really didn’t care what.
“But just disappearing?” she said once. “Into the ocean? And that’s it? I mean, what the fuck.”
“Deserve is a bullshit term,” her yoga instructor boyfriend said. “None of us deserves anything. We get what we get.”
Maybe she felt Charity was robbed because she’d been such a nice girl. A better girl than Kennedy, certainly, who had made her share of mistakes. She’d slept with two married directors, stolen money from her parents when she was too proud to ask for more loans, lied to friends about audition times so she would have a leg up. But Charity was sweet. She’d met the love of her life, show hunk Lance Garrison, when she was rescuing a drowning dog, for God’s sake. Yet when she disappeared, Lance only waited half a season before he was making eyes at the detective’s sultry daughter. Five years later, the two had a big wedding that broke a Pacific Cove ratings record—twenty million viewers, according to TV Guide, which included the wedding in its fifty top soap-opera moments of all time. The episode was even nominated for an Emmy! And in all the glowing reviews, no one even mentioned Charity, or the fact that the happy couple would have never found each other if Charity hadn’t stepped onto that cruise ship, waving gleefully from the deck as she floated out into daytime television heaven.
Perhaps, even more than the lost job, she was peeved that she hadn’t starred in a big soap-opera wedding. She was more upset about that than the fact that she never married in real life.
“I never play the girl next door,” a black guest star told her once. “I guess no one wants to live next door to me.”
Pam Reed smiled wryly at the craft-service table, popping a cherry tomato between her lips. She was a real actor, Kennedy overheard two grips saying. In the 1970s, she’d played a policewoman in a popular action movie franchise until the villain shot her in the third film. Then she’d been a judge on a network legal drama. She would play judges throughout the rest of her career, and sometimes Kennedy flipped on the television and saw Pam Reed on the bench, leaning forward sternly, her hand under her chin.
“TV loves a black woman judge,” Pam told her. “It’s funny—can you imagine what this world would look like if we decided what’s fair?”
She’d played a judge on Pacific Cove that afternoon. Even between takes, she was intimidating in her long black robe, which was why Kennedy, reaching for a cluster of grapes, said the first stupid thing that came to her mind.
“I lived next door to a black family,” she said. “Well, across the street. The daughter’s name was Cindy—she was my first friend, really.”
She didn’t tell Pam that their friendship had ended when, in a fit of childish rage, she’d called Cindy a nigger. She still cringed when she remembered Cindy bursting into tears. She had, ridiculously, started crying too and her mother had slapped her—the first and only time she’d ever struck her. The slap confused her less than the kiss after, her mother’s anger and love colliding together so violently. At the time, she’d thought saying nigger was as bad as repeating any swear word; her mother would have been just as upset and embarrassed had she hollered fuck in that cul-de-sac. But after Jude, Kennedy remembered the look on her mother’s face when she’d dragged her into the house. She was angry, yes, but more than that, she looked terrified. Frightened by her own emotion or, more disturbingly, by her daughter, who had revealed herself to be something so ugly.
She never said the word again, not in passing, not repeating jokes, not until Frantz asked her to in bed. It was like a game, he’d told her, stroking her back, because he knew she didn’t mean it. She didn’t know why she was thinking of Frantz now. Saying that word to him was different than saying it to Cindy. Wasn’t it?
Pam Reed just laughed a little, dabbing her mouth with a cocktail napkin.
“Lucky her,” she said.
* * *
—
THE NIGHT JUDE WINSTON CAME to her show, Kennedy left her body onstage.
Any actor could tell you this had happened to him before—better actors had experienced it much earlier in their careers, she was sure. That winter night was the first time she truly knew what it felt like to step outside of herself. Singing felt like breathing, dancing as natural as walking. When she sang her duet with Randy the Farmhand—a lanky drama student at NYU—she felt, almost, as if she were falling in love with him. After the curtain call, the cast surrounded her with cheers, and part of her knew, even then, that it was the greatest performance she would ever give. And she’d only managed it because she knew that somewhere, in the darkened theater, Jude was watching.
In the dressing room, she changed slowly, the magic from the stage disappearing. Frantz would be waiting for her in the lobby. On Thursday nights, he came by after his office hours. He would tell her that she’d been good tonight, great even. He would notice a difference in her, might even wonder what had caused it. And there, waiting also in the lobby, would be Jude and Reese. What she hadn’t expected was to find all three waiting together, Frantz grinning as he waved her over.
“You didn’t tell me you had friends visiting,” he said. “Come on, let’s all get a drink.”
“I don’t want to keep everyone out,” she said.
“Nonsense. They came all this way. Just one drink.”
She barely remembered that numb walk to 8 Ball. She’d only chosen that bar because she knew it would make Jude uncomfortable. And sure enough, as soon as they walked in, Jude glanced around the dim bar, overwhelmed by the punk music screaming out of the speakers. She gazed at the obscenities scribbled on the tabletops in permanent marker, the bikers crowding the bar, and looked as if she’d rather be anyplace else. Good, then no one would be tempted to stay longer. Stupidly, she hadn’t anticipated these two parts of her life collapsing. She would see Jude after the show for a minute, the girl would show her whatever she planned to. She’d never imagined that Jude and Frantz might end up talking and discover that they both knew her. A friend from school, Jude must’ve told him, because Frantz kept asking what Kennedy was like in college.
“Baby,” she said, “stop bugging them. Let’s just drink.”
“I’m not bugging,” Frantz said. He turned to Jude. “Am I bugging?”
She smiled. “No, it’s fine. It’s just a little overwhelming, being here.”
“We’re not really big city people,” Reese said. It was so folksy and charming, Kennedy could puke.
“I wasn’t either,” Frantz said. “I moved here when I was a boy. The city still does something to me, you know. Say, how long are you two in town? I’m sure Ken would love to show you around—”
“Let’s get drinks first,” she said. “Before we start planning tours.”
Frantz laughed. “All right, already.” He pushed out of the booth, nodding to Reese. “Give me a hand?”
The two men headed to the bar. Now Kennedy was alone with Jude for the first time in years. She’d never wanted a drink more.
“Your boyfriend’s nice,” Jude said.
“Look, I’m sorry for what I said, at that cast party,” Kennedy said. “About you and Reese. I was drunk. I didn’t mean it.”
“You meant it,” Jude said. “And you were drunk. Both things can be true.”
“Fine, but is that why you’re here? Is that why you’re messing with me? I’m tired of all this.”
“All what?”
“Whatever you’re doing. This game or whatever this is.”
Jude stared at her a moment, then reached for her purse.
“I had a feeling I’d see you again,” she said.
“Great, you’re a psychic.” Kennedy could see the boys ordering at the bar, and it dawned on her that she hadn’t even told Frantz what she wanted. A small intimacy but still remarkable, Frantz knowing what she wanted before she even asked for it.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” Jude said. “At the cast party. I didn’t think you’d want to know. I only said something because I was mad. You said that thing to me and I wanted to hurt you. It wasn’t fair.” She pulled something white out of her wallet. “You shouldn’t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it. And I think you want to know now.”