Betsy looked at her old friend. She knew it. “What does he want anyways?” she asked. “Why did he have me dancing like that?”
Roz shook her head. “I don’t know. But if it wasn’t for an audition, and I doubt that it was, he’s going to pay you.”
Betsy’s blue eyes lit up. “He is?”
“Hell yeah he is! We aren’t carnival freaks on display. We’re serious performers. He’s going to pay.”
Betsy smiled. “Thanks, Roz,” she said, as they hugged. “Should I wait in the dressing room? Or can you bring it to me tomorrow?” They lived in the same building.
“What’s wrong with tonight? I can bring it to you tonight.”
“I’m spending the night at Darryl’s.” She said this and smiled. “But tomorrow would be great.”
Since Roz would more than likely have to make good on that promise of payment herself anyway, it was a no-brainer. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow,” she said. “You take off.”
They hugged again. “Thanks, Roz,” she said again, and took off.
Roz didn’t know why she was staying. Like Betsy, she had no clue what this Mick fellow was up to either. But she stayed. She needed to know.
When she sat back down, Mick looked at her. “Pacified her enough?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. But I reassured her.”
“Good.”
“I assured her that you were going to pay her for her efforts.” Roz looked at him. She met him eyeball to eyeball. “If you weren’t auditioning her, it’s only right.” But in looking at him so directly, Roz had a startling thought. This man appeared as if he didn’t have a sensitive bone in his body. As if he didn’t understand the meaning of the word. Could anybody be that hard?
She decided to test it. “You agree with me, right?” she asked him.
“No,” Mick said honestly, confirming her suspicion. “I didn’t tell her I was going to pay her. I asked her to dance. She could have said no. Or at the very least she could have asked for clarification. She didn’t.”
“But you have to understand how she feels. You have to put yourself in her shoes. We thought this might be our second chance. She thought she was auditioning for somebody with some clout. How would you feel if you did all of that dancing for nothing? Not even for consideration of a part. For nothing. How would you feel?”
Mick didn’t know how to answer a question like that. He knew she wanted him to show some compassion. To empathize with her friend. She wanted him to be that sensitive man women supposedly craved. But she had the wrong one if she wanted any of that. “I wouldn’t give a fuck,” he said.
But when he saw that alarmed look in her eyes, he did something he rarely ever did: he softened. Why he cared confounded him. “But I’ll pay her for her time and effort.”
Roz was surprised. She smiled. “Thank you. Wow. You’re not as bad as you pretend to be.”
Mick didn’t pretend shit, but he didn’t let her know that. For some reason she interested him. For some reason he felt an odd connection to her. “So what’s your game plan?” he asked. “Going to keep plugging at it?”
Roz exhaled. “I don’t know. I have a couple auditions already lined up, but if those don’t go anywhere either I’m, I don’t know. I may call it a day.”
“You’re going to throw in the towel?”
“Right.”
“You’re going to quit,” Mick said, and the way he said it struck Roz. It even angered her. Why was he being so cruel?
“If you want to call it that,” she said.
Mick saw the hurt in her big eyes. He could tell her journey on the road to stardom had not been an easy one, and she hated to be reminded of that fact. But truth always needed to triumph. He leaned toward her. “The cruelest thing of all,” he said to her, “is to face a lie and call it truth.”
Roz looked at him. Her heart suddenly hammered against her chest. “What do you mean?”
Mick wondered if she could take it. But people going easy on her was probably why she was still in a game she’d already lost. He didn’t know how to go easy, and he wasn’t about to start now. “You’re an actress,” he said. “The early success you had is proof enough. But maybe you are not a natural. Maybe it is not the ones with the educated, technical ability, but the ones with that natural, God-given ability, that rises to the top.”
Roz didn’t know what to say. Did this man just sum up in a few sentences what she had been unable to figure out for years? Could he be that insightful? She decided that he couldn’t. For her sake, for the sake of the very foundation of her existence, she decided that she couldn’t deal with that right now. “Finally I know who you are,” she decided to say. “You’re Mick the Soothsayer.”
Mick laughed.
“You’re the man with the remedy for all that ails us.”
“Yup, that’s me,” he said with a smile. “What can I say?”
What he knew was that he liked this girl. She was pretty, that was for damn sure, and had a rocking body that he had every intention of fucking. But what was it about her that possessed him to tell Barry to bring her and her partner up to this room? What possessed him to climb those stairs and come up here himself? He had yet to meet a woman he was willing to go all out for. This move wasn’t exactly going all out, but it was far more than he usually did. What troubled him was that he didn’t understand why.
“So what exactly is this about?” Roz asked him. “It doesn’t feel like an audition.”
Mick shook his head. “It’s not,” he admitted.
“What is it then?”
Mick could hardly verbalize it himself. “I saw you and your friend dance. I told the director I wanted to meet you.”
Roz considered him. “Why?”
“Is it so odd that a man would want to meet a lady?”
“Yes, when there were fifty ladies he could have met. Yes, when he had my friend dancing her ass off as if this was some kind of audition. It suggests, not the traditional mode of a man meets woman scenario, but it’s more in the mode of a man concealing real reason for meeting woman.”
Sharp too, he thought.
“Why did you want to meet me of all people?”
“I wanted to meet you.”
“Why?”
Mick gave in. “That’s not a question I can answer,” he said.
Roz was surprised, but pleased by his level of honesty. She didn’t think he had that degree of openness in him at all. “I see,” she said.
“Does that response meet with your approval?”
She smiled. “Yes. And I would thank you for choosing me, but I’m not yet sure if being chosen is a blessing or a curse.”
Mick laughed. “A curse of course. Run while you still have time!”
Roz laughed too. “It’s going to take more than that to get me running,” she said.
That’s my girl, Mick almost said, as if he was proud of her, but he quickly caught himself. His girl? What the fuck was that? “So what will life after Broadway be like for you?” he asked her.
Roz turned serious again, and Mick could tell she wasn’t in a comforting place. “Totally different,” she said. “My baby brother owns this restaurant in Belt Buckle, Tennessee, and he’s---”
She started to continue, but Mick laughed again.
She smiled. “What’s so funny?”
“Belt Buckle, Tennessee?” he asked.
“Belt Buckle, Tennessee,” Roz said. “It actually does exist. And my brother actually owns a restaurant there. It’s a tiny restaurant, like the town, but he wants me to manage the place and help him out. He wants me to become his partner.”
“What will be the partnership split?”
“Fifty-fifty,” Roz said. “I won’t go in for less.”
Mick nodded. “Good girl.” He considered her. “But are you sure that is what you want?”
Roz thought about this. “What I want? No. It’s not what I want. But is it what I need? Yeah. It sounds like a good fit.”
“F
or you,” Mick asked, “or for your brother?”
Roz knew what he meant. But still. “For both of us,” she said firmly. “I can’t keep chasing an illusion. I’m getting too damn old. I’ve got to get on with it.”
Mick studied her. Once again, she couldn’t see the forest for the trees. “You’re going to settle for less, in other words?” he asked her.
Roz looked at him. “You saw me on that stage. You saw me doing what I do. What did you think? I have what it takes to be a star, Mr. Sinatra? Do I have that natural ability you spoke of?”
Mick suddenly didn’t want to be blunt. “I’m no expert.”
“You’re a member of the public. You’re the person who buys the tickets that keep people like me in a job. In your opinion do I have what it takes?”
Mick exhaled. “For that role, no,” he said firmly. “You were one of the worse on stage.”
Roz smiled weakly. “The knife and then the twist. What a gentleman you are.”
“I’m no gentleman,” Mick responded forcefully. “That I will never be. But I can lie to you if you like.”
Roz shook her head. “No. I wouldn’t like. And thanks for not going there. It’s just hard to know that . . . It’s hard to know that your dream may not come true.”
Her words touched Mick in a way he didn’t think was possible. And he said words that were not in his character to speak. “Anything I can do?” he asked her.
Roz was about to say that there was nothing, but then that fateful hope began to swell within her again. “You’re a friend of Barry’s?”
Mick hesitated. If she went there, she would prove herself to be no different than all the other come-uppers he had to deal with on a daily basis. She would disappoint him. “Yes,” he said. “The director is a friend of mine.”
But then Roz didn’t go there. She couldn’t.
Mick pressed the issue. “Why do you ask?” he asked her.
She shook her head. She was in a tough place, but she knew asking for favors would only make it worse. “No reason.”
“Do you want me to speak with him?”
She looked at Mick. “And say what?”
“I will tell him to put you in his play.”
Roz considered him. “But what you saw of my talent didn’t impress you.”
“That doesn’t mean you aren’t talented. You’ve been picked before. You’ve had roles before.”
“But it means I’m not talented to you,” Roz said. “A member of the buying public.”
“One of those I-know-absolutely-nothing-about-talent member of the buying public,” Mick corrected her.
Roz smiled. He was being nice. She appreciated it. “So what are you saying? I shouldn’t throw in the towel? I should keep plugging at it?”
“You should have thrown in the towel years ago.” Mick looked at her. “And you know it.”
Roz stared at him. She never met anybody so brutally direct. “Better late than never, right?” she asked.
“I’ll talk to Barry if you want me to.”
She shook her head. “Thanks,” she said, “but no thanks. It wouldn’t be right.”
Mick relaxed. All was right with the world again.
“If he wanted me in his play,” Roz continued, “he would have chosen me when he had the chance. If he’s forced to put me in, I’ll just be one of those air-headed actresses screwing her way to the top, or at least that’ll be the talk. No thanks. If it happens for me, it happens because of me. And my talent.” She smiled. “Or lack thereof.”
Mick was impressed with her. She had decency to recommend her, and that fact alone elevated her in his eyes. Her body didn’t hurt her cause either, as he glanced down the length of that body. Her legs were now crossed, but suddenly he felt an urge to uncross them, to open them, to taste that sweet silkiness between them. “Spend the night with me,” he said without hesitation. “I want to fuck the shit out of you.”
That kind of in-your-face language was always a turn on for himself and the women he propositioned. They’d blush or smile or just throw themselves on him right where they sat. But however they responded, they would always end up spending the night with him and he would always end up fucking the shit out of them.
But Roz looked at him with an expression in her eyes he couldn’t even read. Was it happiness? Was it anger? Was it fear? All of the above? None of the above? Was she turned on too?
No. She wasn’t. Roz felt more turned up than turned on. She felt a profound sense of disappointment in him. She thought they were making one of those once-in-a-lifetime beautiful connections. Why did he have to go and cheapen it with talk of sex? And to be so graphic about it! As if she was cheap too. And it angered her. That was the expression he couldn’t read. Her anger. “Don’t confuse the fact that I’m out here struggling,” she said to him, “with my being down for whatever. I’m not down like that. I want to be an actress, not a whore. Don’t confuse the two.”
Then she rose. She couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
Mick was stunned. He didn’t mean to insult the woman. But apparently he had. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his thick wallet. When Roz saw what he was doing, she was even more appalled. Was he going to offer her money to sleep with him? Was he going to twist that knife again? She’d never met a man so brutal!
“What is the going rate?” he asked her.
Roz’s big eyes went narrow. And she almost saw red. But she contained herself. She didn’t have enough information to fly off the handle, but that frown on her face made it clear that she was poised to. “The going rate for what?” she asked him.
Mick looked at her. “Dancers such as your friend,” he responded.
Roz almost smiled. She had forgotten all about his promise to pay Betsy. “Oh,” she said, calming back down. “It depends on the part.”
He pulled out a hundred dollar bill. “Will this do?” He held the bill up between two fingers.
A hundred bucks for a few minutes work? Roz nodded. “It’ll do.”
Mick handed it to her. “I’ll give it to her,” she said, and instead of trying to pretend he didn’t proposition her for sex just a moment ago and was really just a nice guy in spite of it all, she went by the side wall, grabbed her satchel, and left. She didn’t look back.
Mick put his wallet back in his pocket and sat there. Still unable to fathom it. He tried to recall the last time a woman turned him down that decisively. But he kept drawing blanks. Because no woman had ever turned him down in any way. Not ever. No woman had ever dared.
CHAPTER THREE
Roz had dared, but her triumphant getaway was short-lived. The rains came during her audition, and by the time she made it outside the downpour blanketed the landscape in sheets of slanted precipitation. She stood under the theater’s portico, as the few folks willing to brave the weather hurried pass, and wondered what in the world was she going to do. It was already getting dark, it looked as if it could rain all night, she had no umbrella, and the subway was four blocks away. She could try to catch a cab, but she wasn’t about to pay that much money to some New York cabbie who was going to try and swindle her anyway. She didn’t have that kind of cash to lose. She was screwed.
And then, to add gasoline to the fire, Mick Sinatra, the man she was triumphantly getting away from, came strolling out of the theater, lifting his collar and buttoning his suit coat. What a day, she thought. What a day!
Mick didn’t expect to see her standing there either. But a part of him was pleased that she was. He thought she could handle it. He thought a woman with her looks and bravado would be far more experienced sexually than she apparently was.
He walked up beside her under the portico and leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets. He stared out at the pouring rain. After a moment, he spoke. “Not accustomed to a guy coming onto you?” he asked her.
Roz looked at him as if he was adding insult to injury. Now she was some idiot because she turned him down, was that what he was implyi
ng? “That’s not it,” she said and then shook her head.
“Then what is it?” He asked the question with such concern in his voice that it threw her. But she wasn’t so thrown that she could forget those disrespectful words he had said to her. She looked away.
“Tell me what the problem is, Rosalind,” he continued. “I obviously offended you. Why? Is it because I have a thirty year old virgin on my hands?”
He didn’t have anything on his hands. What did he mean by that? “Thirty-two,” Roz corrected him.
But when she didn’t say anymore, Mick couldn’t believe it. He’d never met a thirty-two year old virgin in his life, let alone was attracted to one. He preferred experienced women. He was too damn old to be breaking some female in! Was his antenna off by that much?
But then Roz continued. “It’s not that either,” she said, and Mick inwardly sighed relief.
“Tell me what it is then,” he said. “You’re a New Yorker. You’ve been around this town for a long time. It can’t just be the words I spoke, or even the meaning behind those words. Unless you are not accustomed to guys coming onto you sexually.”
“It’s not about a guy coming onto me in a sexual way,” Roz said. She didn’t know why, but she felt a need to explain. “It’s about too many guys coming on to me that way. It’s about my ex-boyfriend, who was so insecure about guys coming onto me that he decided it was my fault for bringing so much attention to myself in the first place. He decided I was to blame for every cat-call, for every time some man thought I was easy, for every time some man put it in his perverted mind that I was the jump-off chick. So my ex took it upon himself to give me that attention he claims I craved and took naked photos of one of our intimate moments and blasted them all over his social media account. If you want her you can have her, was the caption. She’s cheap.”
Mick’s jaw tightened at the thought of some punk doing that to her.
“As soon as I found out,” Roz said, “I was heartbroken. But I was going to dump him with a blast too. But he wouldn’t even give me that satisfaction. He dumped me before I got the chance. I’m out, was the caption, with a picture of his penis coming out of my ass.”
Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life Page 5
