“I know, right? Everybody’s moving their agencies either here to New York,” Evan said, “or to L.A.. I’m surprised you haven’t moved too. Nobody wants their rep in Philly. What the fuck’s in Philly?”
Roz smiled. “You make it sound like Timbuktu.” Then she exhaled. “But you’re right. I’m losing clients hand-over-fist. I may have to make a move if I plan on staying in the game.”
“You haven’t decided yet?”
Roz shook her head. “Not yet.”
Evan looked back at the potentials on the stage. “Between you and me, I’d get out of the game. Lord knows I want to. But it’s in me too deep.”
“Yeah,” Roz said. “Me too.”
“The thing is,” Evan said, still staring at the dancers, “talent is gone. It’s all about the faces now.” He looked at Roz again, at her unblemished, smooth brown skin, her high cheekbones, her big, bright eyes. “You’ve got the face and the talent. That’s what these youngsters lack. You’ve got it. You’ve got the total package.”
Roz didn’t look at him because all of his faint praise meant one thing and one thing only: the news he was about to drop on her wasn’t going to be good. She knew him too well. “I have all of this talent,” she said to him, “but?”
Evan hesitated. He knew it was wrong, but he didn’t produce the shit. He just handled the casting, and when it came to the lead roles they rarely wanted his input even then. “The producers want to go in a different direction,” he said.
That feeling in the pit of Roz’s stomach returned. She’d been getting a lot of rejections lately. She should be used to it. But it was something you never get used to.
“You know how fickle producers can be,” Evan kept talking. “If their life is going well, they love you, if it’s going not so well, they hate you. The least little thing and they worry about their bottom lines. But you had the best audition hands down, Roz.” He looked at her. “Honest you did. You can play that part in your sleep.”
Roz had heard that before too. You were the best. Can sleepwalk through that role. Nobody’s better. Five times in a row she’d heard that before. “If I had the best audition,” she said to Evan, “then why am I not getting the part?”
“I told you why. It’s those fucking producers. They want to go in a different direction.”
“A younger direction?” Roz asked bluntly, and then looked at him.
Evan couldn’t deny it. He respected her too much. “Yes. A younger direction. And I know it makes no sense. You look younger than many of these young girls out here anyways! But you’ve been around for twenty years. That’s the part that scares them.”
Roz shook her head. “Experience scares them?”
“That’s how they are,” Evan said. “It’s wrong, but it’s true. They’re all about the faces now. And the newer and fresher and, yes, younger, the better. But don’t take it personally, Roz.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Roz said with a frown. “How else am I supposed to take it? I can’t change my age. I can’t erase my experience.”
“I’m just trying to soften the blow. Doesn’t work, does it?”
Roz shook her head. “Not even a little bit.”
Evan tried to smile. Then he remembered the other part. “But they did offer you another role,” he said.
Roz looked at him. The fact that she was even entertaining the thought showed just how desperate she was to remain viable in an industry that chewed older actresses up and spat them out. Even once-successful actresses like her. But a supporting role wasn’t the worse thing in the world. It wasn’t the lead. But it was something. “What role?” she asked him.
“It won’t be even the second or third lead I’m afraid,” Evan responded. “Far from it.”
Roz’s hopes were dashed again. Not even the third female lead? “Which role?” she asked.
“It’s just a handful of lines, and three or four scenes.”
“Which role?” Roz asked again.
Evan exhaled yet again. “The maid,” he said.
Roz gave him a look that could melt steel. “What?”
“The role is the maid. That’s what the producers are offering you. That’s what I’m offering you.”
Roz couldn’t believe it. She worked her ass off to get somewhere, struggling for over a decade before she met Mick, and she was still treated in the industry like some newbie who had to take whatever she could get?
“My advice,” Evan said, “is for you to take it. Take it, Roz. At least it’s something. It’s all we got to offer. Take it.”
Roz wanted to slap the shit out of Evan. The nerve he had!
“I’ll try to get the writer to spruce it up a bit,” Evan continued. “Maybe make her a maid with an attitude. How about that? Like Florence from The Jeffersons, or Mammy in Gone With the Wind. What about that, Roz? I know you’re used to playing the sophisticated lady. But think how you can stretch yourself if you play a role with attitude?”
“Oh, I got attitude,” Roz said, standing up. “Kiss my ass. And make sure you tell those producers I said it too. How’s that for attitude?” And she walked out of that stately theater she’d played, successfully, so many times before.
A maid, she thought as she walked up the lane of Shubert Alley. All those years of struggle. All that hard work to make a name for herself. And that was what they reduce her to? A gotdamn maid? And not just any maid. Oh no! A maid with an attitude. Florence from The Jeffersons, he said, or Mammy from Gone With the Wind. Mammy! A character who didn’t even have a real name! Her heart wanted to pound out of her chest she was so angry. A part of her wanted to call Mick and tell him to get his ass to New York and put all of those bastards in their places. How dare they treat her that way!
But as she walked out of that theater into the stiff summer night air, and as Deuce McCurry opened the backdoor of the limo and she got inside, she knew she wasn’t about to go running to Mick. He bailed her career out once before, when she, as a black actress on Broadway, couldn’t pay anybody to give her a decent role. And she was still living that decision down, as if that one break Mick gave her by bankrolling a play she starred in, defined her career. It didn’t. He got her in the door, alright, a door that should not have been that hard for her to get through to begin with. But it was her tenacity, talent, and work ethic that kept her in that door.
But as Deuce drove her back to Philly with yet another failed audition under her belt, she realized a startling truth: if she didn’t get a part soon, it was going to be the third Broadway season in a row where she wasn’t able to secure an acting gig. The third season. And her talent agency wasn’t faring much better, as she was losing clients to more lucrative agencies on a daily basis.
And to make matters worse, Mick wasn’t around like he used to be. Used to be a time she could go to him, and talk out her fears to him. He never let her get too weak on him: he did not like weakness at all! But he would listen to her, and would hold her, and that would be enough. But lately he was up to his old tricks again. Always out of the country. Always had some fire somewhere he had to put out. Always leaving her in bed alone.
And she was about to turn forty.
For Roz, who’d never been that old before in her life, it was the wrong damn time all around.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Billy Lancer laid in bed with the nameless woman beside him. It was another night and another bed partner. And he was so tired of it he could hardly stand it. But his appetite, an appetite only his beloved wife ever learned how to feed, had to be fed.
The woman finally woke up, turned to him, and flapped her arm across his chest. She was gorgeous, he’d give her that. “I’m hungry,” she said, smiling and looking into his eyes, as if she just knew she’d be accorded the privilege of having breakfast with the legendary producer.
But he removed her arm from him. “My driver is waiting,” he said, and then looked at her. “He’ll drop you off.”
The woman, offended, wanted to cuss him out. It was all
in her eyes. But she knew that would spell doom for her career, a career that hadn’t gotten off the ground yet. She got up, and headed for the bathroom.
Billy got out of bed, too, put on his bathrobe, and made his way into the living room of his palatial mansion in the Hollywood Hills. He walked behind the full-sized bar and poured himself a stiff one. Nine in the morning and he was drinking already. But that was his routine ever since his beloved left this earth. And he knew he was going to need more than drinks to survive what was for him the end of his world. And he was still barely surviving.
He looked at the massive painting of Natalie over the fireplace. Beauty couldn’t begin to describe her. And the world loved her too. She was one of the biggest actresses in Hollywood. They were considered the most-powerful couple in town too. But now, thanks to that bastard, it was all over. She was here, and in what seemed like a split second, she was gone.
And he was going to pay.
He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his home. He looked out over the sweeping view of the city. She’d been gone for only one month, and every night since her burial, he’d had a different woman in his bed. All in their early twenties, all with visions of greatness in their airheads. All certain that if they slept with the great Billy Lancer they were going to shoot to the top when he didn’t even bother to ask their names. But that was Hollywood. Everybody wanted to touch his magic. Everybody would sell their mother for a chance to be in one of his pictures. He was as big as George Lucas. Jeffrey Katzenberg. Jerry Bruckheimer. All rolled into one. And when he married Natalie, that took his career into the stratosphere. Although the public thought Nat was some talentless gold-digger who made it to the top on her great looks alone, he knew better. She was the sweetest, kindest human being he’d ever known.
But all he wanted now wasn’t fame or fortune or power. He didn’t even want love. He wanted revenge. Revenge was his milk. Revenge was his cookies. Revenge was his air. And he was not going to rest until he not only had it, but was strangling it.
He was about to perform a twofer. Get rid of the man who killed his beloved wife. That was the absolute essential part of the plan. But the second part was going to be the fun part: he was also going to take that man’s wife, a woman Billy once admired himself for many moons, away from him too. So he would know what it felt like to lose a good woman. If Billy could no longer have his beautiful Natalie, he thought bitterly as he drank more gin, then Mick Sinatra most certainly wasn’t going to have Roz.
And the beautiful part: Roz wasn’t going to see it coming because all she was going to see was a dear, sweet, grieving, but also madly successful, old friend. And Mick the Tick was going to be so distracted by his own problems, the kind of problems only a man with Billy’s reach could ever put in his way, to even notice what would have ordinarily been as plain as day to both of them.
Billy smiled just thinking about it. For the next few months, if it even took that long, bringing down the Sinatras were about to be his obsession.
And within seconds, as if to put a fine point on it, his phone rang.
He walked back over to the bar and looked at the Caller ID. When he realized it was the call he had been waiting for, he answered quickly. “Talk to me,” he said.
“We’ve got the ball rolling,” the voice on the other end said.
“Meaning?”
“The raids have begun, and Sinatra’s been notified.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m certain. I confirmed it myself. Step one is happening without a hitch.”
“Good. Good work.”
“It’s just the beginning, but at least that much went according to plan.”
“Which isn’t always the case,” Billy said.
“Right. That’s why I waited for confirmation before I notified you.”
“Just as long as you’re certain, then I’m satisfied.”
“What’s next?” the voice asked. “Have I fulfilled my obligations?”
“For now, yes. And what’s next? I make my move. That’s what’s next.”
“Sure you’re ready to go there? I know how broke-up you still are about your old lady.”
“Don’t you dare call her that! And yes, I’m sure.”
“Could get dicey.”
“So what?”
“He’s not gonna like it.”
“But will she?” Billy asked. “That’s the only question I’m interested in.”
“And if she doesn’t like it?”
“Then she’ll just have to feel my wrath sooner rather than later. Which I hope is later. I always liked Roz. But even she only gets one bite at this apple. The first sign she’s not all in with me, will be all I need to know. She rejects me again, I’ll show her. Plain and simple. I’ll show her,” he said again, but with bite in his voice, and then ended the call.
And then just thinking about life without his Natalie caused his anger to spike again, and he threw his glass across the room, shattering it against the wall, just as the wannabe star walked into the room.
When Billy saw her, he yelled. “Are you still here? Get the fuck out of my house!”
Horrified and bewildered, she grabbed her tiny purse from the side table, and ran.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The high electronic gate to the Sinatra estate opened, and Roz waved at gate security as she drove her Bentley onto the compound. It was the day after her failed audition and it had been a long day at work, with even more of her clients leaving her Philly talent agency for greener pastures in New York. And she knew the bleeding wasn’t about to stop. Three new agencies opened in New York within days of each other and all three were accepting new clients and offering them above-scale contracts. Which placed her already struggling agency on life support. And she didn’t want to even think about her own acting career. It had been in a tailspin for months.
And nobody seemed to notice.
But as she drove around the massive waterfall Mick had installed and saw his big Cadillac Escalade parked near the curve of the horseshoe driveway, she smiled and felt some relief. Mick was the only person on earth who, just by his presence alone, knew how to ease her troubled mind. But then she looked at the clock on her car’s dashboard and saw that it was barely six in the evening. And her relief was gone. Mick never came home that early, she knew. Unless he came home to pack.
Her valet ran out from the downstairs servants’ quarters still buttoning his uniform coat as she grabbed her briefcase and empty coffee mug. He arrived just in time to open her car door for her. She smiled as she began getting out. “Your timing is always impeccable, Marshall,” she said, and he beamed. As one of the workers put it, Marshall, like everybody on staff in the Sinatra household, loved them some Roz. Of course they’d never call her that in front of Mick Sinatra. Around the boss, and Roz, too, because the boss insisted on it, she was always Mrs. Sinatra. Or ma’am.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Marshall said as he assisted her out of the car. “I hope you had yourself a wonderful day, ma’am.”
Roz smiled but didn’t respond as she made her way toward the steps that led to the front door. Marshall took a sly peep at her as she walked up those steps. She wore her standard office fare: high heels, a skirt above her knees, a silk blouse untucked, and a hip-length suitcoat. But with her curves, he thought, nobody wore standard better. He fully understood how a man like Mick the Tick would have chosen a woman like her based on those curves alone. With those curves, Marshall thought with a grin, she had to be good in bed. “Had to be!” he declared happily, as he drove her wonderful-smelling Bentley toward the garage.
But as Roz entered her home, bed was the last thing on her mind. She headed for the family room where she knew she’d find them. And there they were: Michello Sinatra, Junior, better known as Duke, and Jacqueline Sinatra, her grade-school twins. Joey Sinatra, her stepson and one of Mick’s grown children, was also in the room. Only he was on the phone with one of his lady friends, plotting his evening out.
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br /> There used to be a time when her two children would see her and rush into her arms. Now they were too busy on their iPads or iPhones. But Roz still smiled. No matter how much they were growing up, they would always be her babies. She walked over to them. “Hey,” she said, placing her hands on their shoulders.
Duke did bother to look up at her and smile. “Hey, Mommy.”
“Hey.”
“How was your day?” Duke asked her.
She smiled. “Perfect now that I’m seeing your beautiful face.”
Duke beamed.
“And how are you, Miss Jackie?”
“I’m good,” Jackie said, typing in a few more words. Then she looked at Roz. “Sorry about that.”
“Who are you corresponding with?”
“Just a girl from school.”
“Sending emails in elementary school,” Roz said, shaking her head. “My have times changed!”
“They aren’t ancient like in your days,” Jackie said. Roz pinched her, and she laughed.
“Where’s Daddy?” Roz asked.
“Upstairs,” said Jackie. “He’s in the shower I think.”
“Mommy?” Duke asked.
“Yes, son?”
“When I grow up, will I be rich like Daddy?”
Roz looked at him. “Who says he’s rich?”
“This kid at school. He said it like it’s a bad thing. But I said he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then he says Daddy’s a mopster. I said what’s that? He didn’t know. By then, I wanted to bop him one!”
“You should have,” said Jackie.
“No you should not have,” said Roz, correcting Jackie.
“And the term is mobster, not mopster,” Jackie said, correcting her brother. “But what does kids know anyways?”
Roz shook her head. Yup, they were growing up fast! Especially Jackie. Then she waved at Joey.
Joey waved back but was too involved in his phone conversation to do anything more. He was no longer in the wheelchair, except when the pain was too excruciating for him to walk at all. But mostly, he was now able to just rely on a cane. And he was back on the dating scene big time. Every night, it seemed, there was a different girl he was chatting up. Before the shooting that gravely limited his mobility and that at one time had him paralyzed, he was always a ladies man. He was becoming his old self again, in that regard, and Roz was glad he was showing some signs. Then she made her way upstairs.
Mick Sinatra: Needing Her Again Page 4
