Page 129 of ClickBack

“Rae asked about the crown,” I tell her. “We talked Friday morning. I told her I couldn’t do it then.”

“And since?”

“We’ve talked about Zion. Her work. Everything except what she asked.”

Di watches my face. “She’s asking you. That’s better than getting it from somebody else.”

“She should have gotten it from me years ago.”

“Probably.”

I look up. “You could soften that.”

“I could. You’d hear it anyway.”

The driver says something, and she leans forward to answer him. He has taken her to the theater instead of the costume shop. She checks the address on her phone, apologizes because she entered the wrong one, and sinks back against the seat.

“Apparently I live there now.”

“How is the show?”

“Good. Exhausting. The landlord wants more lines.”

“The actor or the actual landlord?”

“Both, at this point.”

I laugh. She tells me about a woman who came to three performances and corrected an actor from the audience on the third. He had skipped a line. The woman was right, which Di says has complicated her feelings about the incident.

For a few minutes, I am simply listening to my friend. I ask what she did. She tells me she thanked the woman for coming back and moved her seat farther from the stage.

“That was mean.”

“It was a better seat. She could see the whole production she was trying to join.”

When I laugh again, Di smiles at me. Then she asks, “Have you spoken to Jarrett?”

“Not since Friday.”

“Do you want to?”

“I want him here. I also want to shake him.”

“You’ll need help with one of those.”

“Di.”

“I’m available emotionally. Physically, that’s a two-person job.”

I cover my face. She lets me laugh before she continues.

“You don’t have to stop being angry to miss him.”

“I keep thinking I should know what I’m going to do before I see him.”

“Are you deciding whether to see him, or deciding whether to spend your life with him?”

I have no answer ready for that. Di studies me without pressing for one.