Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
When we disconnect, I make a quick breakfast of avocado toast and eat a bowl of berries for good measure. I shower and make sure to take my meds. My blue blouse feels respectable, but I keep on my booty shorts for comfort.
“Business up top,” I mutter to my reflection. “Party down below. They’ll never know.”
I run through the pitch while I scoop my hair into a loose updo and apply a little makeup. I want to be familiar enough that I can go off script if necessary. I want to fully convey my passion for this new idea. Prepared but not rehearsed.
I glance at my phone. Still nothing from Monk. He texted me when he landed in New York, sharing his address in case I change my mind, but no more since, even though I’ve pinged him a few times to check in. I keep telling myself he’s simply busy, but there is a part of me worried he saw through my protests the other night and knows what’s really going on. That it’s exactly what he thought.
And that it will be too much. That I’m too much and he’ll say Fuck it. I’ve seen this show and nobody asked for the reboot, the sequel.
I just got him back. We just restored and restarted and this happens?
God, I’m gonna scare him off.
He thinks he can handle this, but it would devastate me to find out that he can’t.
I set the phone to the side, pull up the video app on my laptop, and place the iPad on its stand in my line of vision so I can refer to the notes when needed.
“Verity,” Sloan, the VP of United’s scripted division, says, smiling into the camera. “We’re all excited to hear what you’ve come up with.”
What we’re getting for that seven-figure deal we inked with you.
She doesn’t say that, but it’s parenthetical. Nobody’s handing out deals like candy in this ever-shrinking market. I better deliver.
“I’m excited to share.” I scan the six faces onscreen, all executives from United. “Um, I don’t see my agent, Sheila, here yet.”
I push down my panic and keep a smile in place.
“I’m sure she’ll be on in a sec,” Sloan says. “But I have a three o’clock. You mind getting started and we can catch her up when she joins?”
“Oh, sure.” I close my eyes briefly and squeeze Mama’s pendant between my fingers to anchor myself, even as the buzzy bravado starts humming in my blood. I can feel it swelling in my veins, trying to break through my skin.
“Sorry!” Sheila says, popping into her little square onscreen, her cheeks flushed. “My last meeting ran long, but I’m here.”
I give her a grateful smile and she winks.
“I have a concept to share today,” I begin, “that encapsulates so many of my favorite things. It’s called Black Pearl.”
My phone screen lights up with an incoming call from Tessa, temporarily distracting me. My thoughts splinter into worry for my best friend and the immediate need to focus on this presentation. I’ll call her back as soon as I’m done.
For the next twenty minutes, I lay out the world that has been forming in my mind since Valentine’s Day. A world set in the black-and-white of the 1940s, but awash in the vivid seaside aesthetic of a Southern oceanfront. A neglected chapter of Black leisure and luxury. A mystery with the highest stakes: life and death. An old love that is as lost as the beloved daughter, but found even as they search. An unexpected connection between two men that blossoms even as it’s forced to hide.
“And that’s what I envision for season one,” I conclude, not straying from what I’ve written, though a thousand more words tremble on my lips and clang at my teeth trying to get out.
“Brilliant!” Sloan says, turning to the team. “You guys have questions?”
Before anyone can respond, the next words tumble out of my mouth without my permission.
“The amazing thing about this series,” I gush, “is the opportunity to excavate memory, while creating something so bingeable and entertaining. It further reiterates that in an era where Black people were being terrorized all over this country, not only through groups like the KKK, but also through state-sanctioned violence, we created havens for ourselves, where culture, our culture, blossomed and thrived. A space that was ours alone and showcased legendary performances from James Brown, Ray Charles, and so many other towering talents. Atlantic Beach was one such place.”
“Love that,” Sloane says. “So if we—”
“Setting the show in Atlantic Beach in that era provides an opportunity to demonstrate leisure as language, refinery as rebellion, rest as resistance. Not merely expensive houses and life of the elite, but that free time was a relatively new tradition for Black folks. We weren’t even a hundred years removed from slavery, the monstrosity of forced labor that is literally this nation’s scaffolding. My ancestors couldn’t have imagined a world in which we frolicked on the beach. Oh, my gosh. The word frolic always does something to me. Ya know? It encapsulates this sense of playfulness and abandonment that can seem antithetical to Black bodies during this era, but I see a real opportunity to project Black joy, even as we explore style and family and, of course juxtaposed with the crime element. This will definitely be—”