“Nothing,” he says, lowering his gaze and watching his fingertip trace the rim of his coffee cup. “There’s nothing I can say or do to make this right. All I can do is apologize. All I can do is tell you that I’ve prayed for you every day. I’ve—”

I bolt out of my chair, my palms slamming on the tabletop and splashing my tea. “You prayed for me? What the hell is that going to help? How the hell is praying for me going to make one fucking bit of difference?”

I’m only vaguely aware that the whole shop just went silent.

His face crumples as if I’d reached out and slapped him. Good. He deserves to hurt. “This was a mistake,” he finally says, standing. “It was wrong of me to open old wounds for the sake of easing my conscience. I’ll go.”

He turns and walks out of the shop, leaving me staring after him. Which makes me want to rip his head off. If anyone gets to walk out, it’s me. I storm after him and when I slam through the door onto the crowded sidewalk, he’s waiting at the crosswalk.

“There’s no fucking way you get to walk out on me!” I shout, charging after him. He turns and starts moving back toward me. “Do you hear me, Alessandro? You don’t get to walk away again!”

I stop in front of him. For several beats of my racing heart, we just stand here staring at each other. Then I reach up, not sure what I mean to do.

What I do is slap him. Hard. And it feels really good.

So I do it again.

He just stands there, taking it. He doesn’t flinch, or reach up to rub his face. He doesn’t step back, or grimace, or raise his hand to defend himself, or hit me back. He doesn’t tell me to stop.

So I slap him again.

His jaw tightens and he closes his eyes for just a second, like he’s relieved. But then I’m pinned in that charcoal gaze again. “Do whatever you need to do, Hilary.”

It’s like he’s asking for more . . . like he thinks he deserves it. But he doesn’t get to call the shots. This is my show, and I’m done.

I spin and stride to the Argo Tea without looking back. Our cups are still on the table, and when I drop into my seat and pick mine up, I realize my nerves are rock solid. No shake. Other than a faint sting in my palm, I’m fine. I’m suddenly proud of myself. If you don’t show weakness, then you’re not weak. First rule of survival.

That makes me the strongest sister around.

I LEFT ALESSANDRO standing on the sidewalk outside Argo Tea five days ago, but I can’t stop looking over my shoulder everywhere I go, thinking I see him lurking around corners or in doorways. I’ve never been this paranoid in my life.

Filthy’s is closed Mondays, so I usually spend my Monday nights at the 115th-Street library with my acting group. I can get lost here; become someone else. And if there was ever a time I needed to be someone else, it’s now.

Everyone in my group is black except for a few guys that come over from Columbia. The group facilitator, Quinn, is a retired professor from the theater department at City College. I’m pretty sure he’s always stoned, but he’s pretty cool, and he keeps the group fresh.

“Irish!” he calls as I step into the room. He thinks a mixed kid with reddish-black hair and freckles is hilarious. “You gonna rock our world with Rosalind tonight? Or is it going to be Katherine?”

It’s Shakespeare night, so we each have to do a dramatic reading of a Shakespearian monologue.

“You know me too well, Quinn,” I tell him, sliding into a seat in the circle. The community room is always freezing in the winter, so I keep my jacket on. There are usually about fifteen of us, and about half the group is already here, chattering in their seats. The Columbia guys, Nathan and Mike, are talking and laughing about Mike’s weekend hookup. Across the circle are two sisters from Harlem, Kamara and Vee, who always come together. They play off each other really well, and always leave me laughing.

I’ve been coming here pretty regularly for the last two years, since I lost my agent. At first, I was hoping for connections, but it didn’t take long to figure out that wasn’t going to happen. I’m probably the most experienced person here, other than Quinn. But I kept coming back for the people. And the escape. I get to come here and be someone else, even if it’s just for a little while. I can put on my character and just forget myself.

“So what you got for us tonight?” Quinn asks, nudging me with his bony elbow as he lowers his scrawny old frame into the seat next to me.

I give him a sly smile. “You’re just going to have to wait and see.”

He reminds me of my grandpa, always joking with me, except he looks nothing like Grandpa did. Grandpa was a fair-skinned redhead. Quinn is black as night, with gray fuzz and a voice like James Earl Jones.

He laughs and pokes my shoulder as a few more of our group trickle through the door. “Someday I’m gonna be able to say, ‘I knew her when . . .’ ”

“ . . . she got blacklisted from Broadway for running down a director during a dance routine,” I finish for him.

“I know you can sing, Irish, but I’m not sure why you think you have to do musicals.”

“You know why. The Idol thing is my only in. If it’s not a singing part, I can’t even get the audition.”

“Dumbass business we’re in,” he grumbles.

When the group is assembled, Quinn stands and gets us started with Theseus’s famous “More Strange Than True” monologue from Act Five of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. Everyone in turn stands in the center of the circle and acts out their monologue. When we get to the Harlem girls, they stand together.

“Monologues are boring . . .” the heavier one, Kamara, says.

“So we’re doing the scene from Act Two of The Taming of the Shrew, where Petruchio is trying to get into Katherine’s pants,” the taller one, Vee, says.

Kamara steps in front of her. “I’m Petruchio.”

“And I’m Katherine,” Vee says.

Quinn rolls his hand in a circle. “Just get on with it.”

Kamara clears her throat and stands straight, holding out her hand to Vee. “Good morrow, Kate; for that’s your name, I hear.”

Vee makes a disgusted face. “Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:

They call me Katherine that do talk of me.”

“You lie, in faith; for you are call’d plain Kate, and bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst.”

Kamara keeps rolling, pouring it on as she finishes the long list of all Kate’s virtues. As they banter back and forth, everyone around the circle is on the edge of laughing. When they finish, they sit with a bow and flourish, and everyone claps. But then the next three girls do utterly uninspired Juliet monologues and bring the whole room down. By the time we get all the way back around the circle to me, everyone is yawning.

“What you got, Irish?” Quinn says, elbowing me. “Time to lay it all on the table.”

“Keep your bony elbows to yourself, old man.” I stand and move to the center of the circle. “So, this is Rosalind . . . or her male alter ego, Ganymede, really, trying to convince Phoebe to love Silvius instead of him . . . or her . . . or whatever. It’s from Act Three, scene five of As You Like it.”

I close my eyes, feeling Rosalind seep into my bloodstream.

“And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and all at once,

Over the wretched?” A tingly rush prickles my skin as I open myself up to her, letting her have me.

“What though you have no beauty as by my faith, I see no more in you than without candle may go dark to bed, must you be therefore proud and pitiless? Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?” I ask, raising my voice and lifting my hand, pressing it into my chest as Rosalind starts to use my body as hers.

“I see no more in you than in the ordinary of nature’s sale-work. Od’s my little life!”