She holds up a hand as if to say she’s retreating. “Then I’ll go to Sardi’s by my lonesome. Because my roommate is out tonight, my best guy friend is with his woman, and I always vowed that if I ever landed a Broadway show I’d go to Sardi’s to celebrate.”
She tips her forehead to the restaurant that’s a Broadway institution itself. The neon green sign flashes, beckoning tourists and industry people alike, as it has for decades. The place is old-school, but it’s venerable for a reason—it’s the heart of the theater district, and a watering hole teeming with history, having hosted theater royalty for dinner and drinks for nearly one hundred years.
She raises her eyebrows playfully, as if she’s waiting for me to acquiesce. A cab squeals by, sending a quick, cold breeze past us that blows a few strands of blond hair across her face. She brushes the hair away and arches an eyebrow. “The breeze is blowing me to Sardi’s.”
She turns on her heels, heads to the door and saunters inside. It feels like a challenge. Maybe even a dare. I shake my head, knowing better, but following her anyway.
She’s not easy to resist.
I find her at the hostess stand, telling a black jacketed maitre’d that it’ll be just one for the bar. I march up to her and place a hand on her back so she knows I’m here. Her eyes meet mine as I touch her, but her gaze is steady and she doesn’t seem to mind the contact. “Actually,” I say, cutting in. “That’ll be two.”
“Right this way then,” the maitre’d says and guides us past tables full of suited-up theatergoers, men in jackets and women in evening dresses, chattering about the shows they’re about to see. There’s a table with two guys who look like Wall Street types dining with their wives. Jill walks past them, and one of the guys lingers on her much longer than he should. The woman with him doesn’t notice, but I do and I give him a hard stare. He turns back to his plate of shrimp instantly.
At the bar, I pull out a stool for her. She thanks me, then shucks off her coat and crosses her legs. Her legs look as good in jeans as they probably do out of them. She has that kind of a figure—athletic and trim. Probably flexible too. Damn, this woman might be all my weaknesses.
I’m grateful for the caricature of James Gandolfini hanging above the mirror behind the bar. I glance at him instead, then give his drawn likeness a salute.
“One of the finest,” I say as I sit down.
“He was indeed,” she says with a nod.
The bartender comes over. “What can I get you tonight?”
I look to Jill, letting her go first. “Vodka and soda. Belvedere, please.”
He nods. “And you sir?”
“Glenlivet on the rocks.”
“Coming right up.”
Then she looks at me, her blue eyes sparkling and full of so much happiness. “I can’t believe it! I scored a Broadway show. Do you have any idea how happy I am?”
“Yeah,” I say, playfully. “It’s kind of written all over your face.”
“Well, I’m not going to hide it. I think I might light up Times Square tonight with my happiness. And now I’m having drinks at Sardi’s with my director!”
“Don’t tell anyone. I don’t want word to get out that I’m consorting with the talent,” I joke.
She leans in closer, makes her lips pouty, and kind of shimmies her shoulders. “Oh, I get to keep your secrets already.”
My breath hitches with her near me like that. Rationally, I know it’s the moment. I know it’s the excitement of landing her first show that’s making her so flirty, so playful, but still, she’s got such a sexy way about her that she could be trouble for my heart. I don’t know that I should even try to keep up with the banter right now. She could reel me in, and I’ve vowed to stay away from actresses, outside of work. They are wonderful, and talented, and often too gorgeous to be real, like this one. But some of them also have a way of using you because of what you can do for them.
There’s the rub, for ya.
“I assure you, I have very few interesting secrets,” I say, trying my best to bow out of the flirting right now, even though I want to take it to many other levels already.
Thankfully, the bartender arrives with the drinks.
“One Glenlivet and one Belvedere.”
“Thank you,” I say. He nods and heads off to take an order at the end of the bar.
I reach for my drink and am about to offer a toast when I see he’s given me hers and vice versa. “I believe this is yours.” I hand her the drink. She takes the glass from my hand, and for the briefest of moments her fingers touch mine. I don’t even have the time to think about something else. It’s so fast, but it ignites something dark in me, the side of myself that she should never know about, the way I like it. But that side is there, and my eyes immediately stray down her body, to the curve of her hips, to the shape of her breasts under her sweater. Then she bends down to reach for her purse hanging on a hook under the bar and I’m watching her, memorizing the way she moves, and it’s as if I can’t stop imagining her bent over, back bowed, ready. The things I would say to her if we were alone like that. The things I would whisper harshly in her ear. The things she’d let me do to her.
I run my hand across my jaw. I need to get it together if I’m going to work with her.
I remind myself that I am made of iron and I can lock up any dangerous thoughts about her and focus solely on work. The matter isn’t helped when she retrieves lip gloss from her purse and reapplies it, so I’m instantly wondering how her lips taste. How they’d look on me. She tucks the tube away then holds up her vodka and soda.
Thank God she’s done touching up her lips.
“To your first show on the Great White Way,” I say and we clink glasses. I toss out a harmless question so I can return to being a cool, collected professional. “What was the first musical you ever saw?”
“Fiddler on the Roof,” she says and then hums a few bars from “If I Were a Rich Man.”
“You make a good Tevye,” I say dryly.
“You’ll keep me in mind for that role if you ever direct a revival?”
“Absolutely. You’ll be top of the list on my call sheet.”
“Can you even imagine what the critics would say?” Jill gestures wide as if she’s calling out a huge headline. “Hotshot director casts chick in iconic dude role.”
“Hotshot director?”
A tinge of red floods her cheeks, and she waves her hand in front of her face. “I didn’t mean anything…”
“It might strike you as crazy, but I’m 100 percent fine with the hotshot title,” I say, and take a long swallow of my drink. “By the way. I saw you in Les Mis.”
“You did?” she asks, and she seems genuinely surprised.
I nod. “Yes. That’s why I called you in.”
“I thought it was the producer who saw me.”
I laugh. “No. Though I’m sure he took credit for it. But I was the one who saw you. And I just want you to know I don’t think I will ever see that show again without picturing you as Eponine.”
“Really?” Her blue eyes widen, and I love the way she seems so truly happy with the compliment. I love that she’s not jaded, she’s not full of herself. She’s still hopeful, and it’s so attractive. It’s part of why I called her in after seeing the off-Broadway revival of Les Mis, where the show had been modernized into a rock opera. She was everything I’d ever wanted to see in an actress. She made me believe. I never doubted for one second that she was Eponine, and that’s the toughest thing to nail, but the one thing I want most to see. No, it’s the thing I want to feel. I want to feel the walls of the real world collapse around me, so I can believe in the illusion.
“Every actress who can sing wants to play Eponine,” I say. “But it’s incredibly hard to pull off the feisty Eponine, along with the love-struck Eponine, and then be dying Eponine on top of it all. Most actresses can handle one of the personas, sometimes two. You’ll see someone who can sing the hell out of “On My Own” or fawn all over Marius
and then do a damn good death scene. But they can’t manage the playful side of her. But you, Jill,” I say and I pause because there’s something about her name that sounds too good on my lips, like I want to say it more, and in different ways, and in different places, and in a desperate voice too, and a hot and hungry one, and…fuck me now. She’s looking at me with the glass held in one hand and her lips slightly parted, and she’s hooked on every word. The moment is more intoxicating than it should be and threatens to cloud my cool head in a haze of heat. I tell myself to turn it off for her. It should be business. It should be a compliment.
Besides, I didn’t cast her because she’s fuck-able. I cast her because she’s fucking amazing. I try to keep it on the level as I finish, “You were brilliant. You were stunning. You were everything and more.”
As I say this, her face lights up. She might not know I’ve failed miserably at being business-like, but I know, and that’s the problem. I pride myself on control, and within mere hours of casting her I’m treading close to breaking the first rule of directing, and the second one too.
I return to the earlier topic—Fiddler on the Roof—as we finish our drinks, knowing a quick chat about that show will help me shut it down. The second she puts down her empty glass I call for the check, pay, and say goodnight.
Then I head to the boxing gym near my home in Tribeca, and I spend the next hour working out all my frustrations on a punching bag.
CHAPTER 4
Jill
The next night my roommate Kat swirls her straw in a chocolate milkshake, looking at the drink with disdain. “Not the same. These milkshakes are not the same as they are at Tino’s Diner.”
“I know. But you won’t let me go there anymore.”
“Well, obviously,” she says, and I can’t argue because the last time we went to our favorite diner for chocolate milkshakes and fries the creep who was stalking her and her boyfriend followed her there. Kat was pretty sure he had a knife in his pocket. Honestly, if he’d pulled that thing on me I’d have kneed him in the crotch so fast he’d have crumpled to the floor. I have two older brothers and they beat me up when I was younger then taught me to fight when I started filling out in the boobs and hips department. They didn’t have the chance to beat up too many boys, because I only had eyes for one boy back in high school. Aaron—he was on the swim team, and we were together my entire junior year, and everything was wonderful for a while. But given how it all ended, I would do just about anything to rewind time and change things. To have stayed away. For his sake.
“So we’ll just have to keep experimenting with all the diners in Chelsea and midtown and elsewhere to find a replacement milkshake,” I say to Kat.
“Obviously. Besides, we’re going to be celebrating every day, right, Miss Next Winner of a Best Actress Tony?”
Narrowing my eyes, I brandish a French fry at Kat, pretending I’m ready to chuck it at her. She leans away. “You think I haven’t learned by now how to avoid your projectile French fries?”
I hold up another one for emphasis. “Don’t. Jinx. Me. You know my rules about jinxing.”
“Yeah, you didn’t even tell me you were auditioning until you got the callback because you were so superstitious.” I look away. The truth is, there are a lot of things I don’t tell Kat. A lot of things I don’t tell anyone. A lot of things I make up. It’s a good thing I can act, because sometimes my whole life feels like one. “And now you’ve gone and won a role in a Broadway show.”
“With Patrick Carlson,” I say excitedly.
“And in a Frederick Stillman show, and I know he’s your fave.”
“And let’s not forget Davis Milo is directing,” I add, suddenly feeling the need to point him out too, especially after the drink with him last night. I’m not quite sure what came over me, asking my director to have a drink and then practically daring him to follow me into Sardi’s, but I was pretty much floating on cloud nine last night, and there he was in my vicinity, giving me the best news of my life.
Not to mention, he’s almost too gorgeous for words. I’d never seen him up close and personal before yesterday. Sure, I’ve seen him while watching the Tonys and the Oscars, and I’ve heard other actresses go dreamy-eyed while talking about him. But there in the bar with him last night, I could feel it. I get why women dig him. He has undress me eyes. He looks like the kind of man who doesn’t ever break your gaze. Who walks across the room, all crazy possessive and marks you with a territorial sort of kiss. Pushes you against the wall, cages you in with his arms, and claims you. I wonder what it would be like to be kissed like that.
“I wonder if he’ll bring his Oscar to a rehearsal,” Kat muses, breaking my naughty reverie. I dismiss the thoughts of Davis, since Patrick is the man I plan to focus on. “I love that movie he did where he won it. Ransom.”
“Want me to tell him you’re a fan?”
“Oh, please do. Anyway, I need all the details about the audition scene with Patrick. I want to hear about the kiss with the love of your life.” Her eyes go wide and she motions with her hands for me to spill the details. “Does he know you’re the same gal who once sent flowers to him and asked him out?”
I blush. “No,” I say, red creeping into my cheeks. “I hope to hell he doesn’t remember.”
When I was seventeen, Patrick Carlson took over the starring role in Guys and Dolls at the Gershwin Theater with forty-eight hours notice. The lead actor had laryngitis and the understudy contracted a bronchial infection, causing the producers to cancel four performances. In one of those classic “The Show Must Go On” Broadway moments Patrick was called in, given two full days to rehearse, learn the staging, and the numbers, and take over the role for one week. I’d done the show at my school the year before and we lived in Brooklyn, so I bought one nosebleed ticket. I was on the edge of my balcony seat the entire time, mesmerized. I was sure he locked eyes with me when he sang that gorgeous duet I knew by heart, “I’ve never been in love before.”
Ironic, that it was that song. Ironic because, maybe, if I’d loved enough, things would have been different with Aaron.
But I could love Patrick in a pure sort of way that wouldn’t hurt either of us.
At the end of Guys and Dolls, I clapped and cheered and shouted “Bravo” during the curtain call, then hung out by the stage door along with other fans. I joined the crowd, waiting patiently in a sky blue dress that matched my eyes, and strappy sandals. When the group of men and women asking him to sign Playbills thinned and it was only me, I said hello.
He flashed me a smile, the warmest, kindest smile I’d ever seen. “Hi. I wanted to say you were amazing. I’m so impressed with how you pulled off this performance in two days. You were simply breathtaking.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
His hair was slightly damp, and his cheeks were red, and there was this glow about him. I knew that glow. I’d felt that glow. It was the mark of a job well done.
I held out a hand to shake. “I’m Jill. I’m an actress, too.” Then I waved a hand as if to dismiss the comparison. He was a Broadway star; I was merely a theater student with only a few high school productions to my name.
He shook my hand, clasping it in his. I wanted to carve that moment into relief, to hold onto the perfection forever. My hand in his. Him touching me. “Jill, I think that’s fantastic. How is it going? Tell me about some of the roles you’ve played.”
My eyes lit up. My insides fluttered as he leaned against the stage door of the Gershwin Theater, looking so relaxed in his jeans and a gray V-neck t-shirt.
“As a matter of fact, I played Sarah in Guys and Dolls last year in school.”
He smiled so brightly, then launched into the opening notes of “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” inviting me with his warm brown eyes to join in. There we were, outside the theater, singing together. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the best night of my life.
Soon, he said he needed to get some rest since he had a matinee and an e
vening show the next day, but he walked me to the subway stop and I thanked him profusely, and he said he’d had a grand time.
Grand. Yes, grand.
I sent him flowers to the stage door a day later. I ordered them online, using money from my job at a bookstore, taking a particular delight in addressing them simply to “Patrick Carlson/Stage Door/Gershwin Theater.”
Then I wrote a note. “Hi. It was so fun meeting you. Would you like to get coffee sometime?”
Nerves aflutter, I hit send on the online order.
And I never heard back.
Maybe he thought I was a stalker. Maybe I was.
I suppose in some world, I wanted to believe the flowers had never arrived.
That’s what I tell myself. Because Patrick—my Patrick—would never have ignored me like that. He loved me like I loved him, right? He just didn’t know me yet, but when he got to he’d have to realize we were meant to be together, just as I knew he was the answer to all my problems. That when my world went to hell, he’d step in. The possibility of Patrick got me through so many nights and days when I was wrecked.
“What if he does remember?” Kat asks, bringing me back to the present.
I shrug. “I’ll improvise. I am a Broadway actress, after all.” Then I wink at her, hoping I’m doing a great job of acting confident.
But acting is really all I’ve ever done. Acting like I’m fine. Acting like what happened back then with Aaron wasn’t all my fault. I suppose now, six years later, I’m mostly okay. People who know me say I’m carefree, laidback, happy-go-lucky. Sometimes I truly am. Other times, I’ve become so damn good at the appearance of moving on that even I believe the illusion. Fake it ‘til you make it, right?
* * *
When I wake up before the sun has risen the next morning, and pull on a fleece jacket and yank my hair into a ponytail and head for the West Side bike path, I do what I have always done. I run off my regret. I picture it unspooling behind me, like a snake shedding, leaving the old behind. All the layers of remorse that I peel away. Someday, maybe even soon, I’ll have let go of them all.
Playing With Her Heart Page 3