Up on stage, as she twirled and lifted and high-kicked, Roz noticed him too. How could she not? The lights were up in the entire theater and, of all the well-dressed, well-groomed men sitting in the audience, he stood out. Mainly because she’d never seen him in the many years she’d been auditioning around the horn. But also because of him. Of the image he projected. From his thick swath of dark brown hair pushed back from a face so symmetrical and strong that calling him good looking didn’t quite capture it, to his green eyes that dazzled even from where she stood, he stood out. Not that he was some perfect looking angel to her. He wasn’t. One of his eyes appeared to be lazy as hell, and he had that Kirk Douglas-Cary Grant cleft in his chin thing going on that she never found all that attractive. But whatever animal magnetism was, and whatever sensuality was: he was it. He was a freaking contrail of sex sitting there, she thought.
He was also the only man in the theater who seemed to be assessing, not just her body, but her. He was actually looking at her. It was unnerving, given that she was trying to perform, but it was pleasing at the same time.
But just as she was getting into her full groove, just as she thought she and Betsy were clicking with their well-rehearsed routine, Barry brought down the hammer. Broadway producers used various terms to get their point across, but two were very familiar to Roz: Wait or Next. Wait was good. That meant they wanted you to stick around. You still stood a chance to get the gig. Next was the death knell. They wanted you to get lost. Your chances were up.
When Barry yelled “Next,” even before their performance was over, Roz and Betsy and their collective hearts sank. They both had so much hope riding on this chance that it hurt to the core when they were rejected. But they were consummate professionals. They knew, if they ever wanted to be a part of another casting call, they could not delay. They thanked the producers, thanked the director, and got the hell off his stage.
Backstage, they made their way to the dressing room without conversation. Rejection had a way of killing good will. They walked pass the Wait girls who still had that gleam in their eyes, and the Next girls like them, who looked stunned and dazed that their considerable talent had been judged, once again, to not be good enough. Some were already dressed and were leaving the theater. Others just hung around. The devastation on their faces was as alive as their heartbeats.
Roz wasn’t devastated. She’d been in the business too long to let one audition get her down. But she was greatly disappointed. She needed this gig, not for the money or even the exposure, but for the validation. It had been nearly a year since she’d received a thumbs up on any gig anywhere. A year. Even off-off Broadway productions were turning her down. It was beginning to feel as if the ship had sailed, and she had already missed the boat.
“Maybe next time,” Betsy said when they returned to the dressing room and began changing back into their street clothes. Betsy had her porn career. She was disappointed, but not nearly as disappointed as Roz. “There’s always a next time.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Roz said, although a part of her somehow knew that this was it for her. She was nearing her last audition.
But by the time they had taken off their leotards and Roz had put back on her skirt, her tucked in sleeveless blouse, and her heels, Greg, the stagehand, was entering the room.
“Ladies room, Greg!” one of the other dressing ladies yelled at him. He ignored her.
“Roz? Bess? Come with me,” he said.
The rest of the Next girls looked at Roz and Betsy enviously, but Roz and Betsy looked at each other with a sudden flash of hope in their eyes. Maybe Barry changed his mind.
“We need to change back into our tards?” Betsy asked.
“No,” Greg said confidently. “Come with me.”
Roz smiled, grabbed her satchel and flung it across her shoulder, and then happily, along with Betsy, followed Greg. He led them through a corridor that led them, not to center stage where they had expected to go, but further backstage and then up the stairs to one of the private rooms.
At the door of the room, Greg turned and looked at them. “It’s not Broadway,” he said, “but at least it’s a gig. Right? Break a leg!”
He left them puzzled.
Betsy looked at Roz. “What in the world?” she asked.
But Roz knew the answer was on the other side of that door. She wasn’t answering any questions that a turn of the knob could easily explain. She therefore turned the knob, looked at her friend as if to silently wish her good luck too, and they nervously, excitedly, entered the private space.
CHAPTER TWO
When Roz opened the door, and saw that it was none other than that dreamboat from the audition, she became even more hopeful. Was he new to Broadway? Or was he Hollywood? Did he see something in them that he could use in his own production? It happened before. Not to Roz. Nothing remarkable like that had ever happened to Roz. But she’d heard about it.
And with that hope in mind, she and Betsy gladly stayed.
Mick sat in one of four chairs that lined the wall of the big, but otherwise empty room, and he sat with his legs crossed and his arms folded on his lap. He certainly looked the role of a Hollywood producer, Roz thought, in his tailored suit and air of arrogance. But somehow, once she entered the room, it didn’t feel that way.
They put their gear down against the side walk and stood in front of Mick, ready to audition whatever he wished them to audition. But his only request was that they dance. Roz and Betsy both thought it was an odd request, given that he had just seen them dancing, but they’d had far odder auditions in their years on the circuit. But as they began their freestyle dance routine, the same one they had performed for Barry, Mick looked at Roz. “Her,” he said. “Not you.”
Roz’s heart sank. Another rejection on top of a rejection? How much was she supposed to bear! Even Betsy, who hadn’t been in the business nearly as long as she had, was besting her. But then again, Betsy was white and blonde and this was how Broadway worked. It was nothing new to Roz. She just would have appreciated not being asked to come up at all, only to be forced into yet another humiliating disappointment ten minutes after the previous one.
She decided not to participate in her own humiliation and decided to leave. She glanced at Mick, to make sure there hadn’t been some mistake and he wanted her too, but he wasn’t thinking about her. He was watching Betsy dance. She therefore headed for the exit. She could have fell down a hole she was so embarrassed.
But then he spoke.
“Come here,” he said.
Roz almost started to turn around and confidently sprout that Robert DeNiro line: Are you talking to me? But after a dance routine that netted her yet another turndown, and then this added rejection, she didn’t have the energy. She just turned.
Mick was still looking at Betsy. Then he looked at her. “Sit down,” he said, and motioned toward the chair beside him. “Please.”
Roz didn’t see the point of a sit down, especially since he had already announced which one of them he preferred to hire, but she walked over to him and sat down anyway. Not directly beside him, but one chair over.
He turned his big body sideways toward her, his eyes staring into hers, and he extended his hand. “I’m Mick Sinatra,” he said.
Roz smiled and shook his hand. He saw that she had dimples when she smiled. Deep dimples on either side of her face. Very sexy, he thought.
But Roz wasn’t trying to be sexy at all. Although she did feel some kind of strange when she looked into his eyes. What she saw while she was on stage was true: one of his eyes was indeed a lazy eye. But what she didn’t see on stage was how damn sexy it was on him. His natural eyelashes were the full, curvy kind women paid good money to plaster on, and they elevated his lazy eye, and his regular eye as well, into that I’m too sexy look. And the intensity of his eyes. They were almost too intense. She almost looked away, but felt drawn not to.
She, instead, continued to shake his hand, a hand that swallowed hers. “I’m Rosali
nd,” she said. “Rosalind Graham. But my friends call me Roz.”
Those eyes again. Up close, Mick saw a freshness in her eyes he’d never seen before. It wasn’t a freshness born out of a lack of experience. She was no wallflower. She was, he would bet, well experienced. But her experience wasn’t tainted like his. Her experience didn’t seem loaded with plots and schemes and hidden agendas like the women he bothered with. He saw an unburdened soul in her eyes, a woman free to be whatever the hell she wanted to be. Unlike him, she still stood a chance. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Rosalind,” he said.
Roz didn’t realize her hand was still grasping his until he withdrew it. She usually had to force her hand from the man’s hand, but this man had to force his hand from hers. She wanted to die. Nothing was going right for her today. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” she said. “But call me Roz. My friends call me Roz.”
But Mick was blunt. “I’m not your friend yet,” he said. “You’re Rosalind to me.”
Roz looked at him. She didn’t know if she should have been offended or amused. But since he behaved as if he didn’t care either way, she didn’t react. And all conversation ceased. Mick continued to watch Betsy dance, Betsy continued to dance, and Roz continued to watch Mick.
In his tailored suit and expensive shoes, he had the look and style of a worldly man, a man of great sophistication. But that was only the outer shell. She saw more than that in him. Not necessarily good, wholesome more, but more. And although he projected the image of a man in complete control of himself and everything around him, there was something about him that defied that control to Roz. Like fire in a bottle, not waiting to ignite, but to explode, he had that kind of tension about him. And it was that sense, that fire in him, that kept her from being her usual nosy self. She wanted to ask him a ton of questions. She wanted to know what was he auditioning Betsy for, and why did he ask her to wait too. But her instincts were telling her to stay quiet. Let him lead this dance. Besides, he might actually audition her next. She had to wait and see.
And she held on, waiting patiently, until he spoke again. “You’re a dancer,” he said, without taking his eyes off Betsy.
“I consider myself an actress more than a dancer, but yeah. I do whatever is required.”
“An entertainer.”
Roz smiled. It was a big title considering her career. But half of the battle in show business was confidence. You had to keep smiling. “Right,” she said with a great smile.
But then the dagger. “You’re not very good at it,” Mick said, and he said it as if it were a fact, not a question.
She looked at him. “Excuse me?”
Mick didn’t know why he was bothering with this. If he wanted sex, there were easier ways to get it than this. But it wasn’t sex. He couldn’t say exactly what it was, but it wasn’t just sex. He continued to watch Betsy dance. “You’ve been attempting to break into the business for a long time, no?”
Roz wanted to show how insulted she felt. Who the hell did he think he was? But she was not the kind of person who could argue against the truth. “It’s been a minute,” she said.
“Minimal success?” He asked this and looked at her again. He saw such pain in her eyes that it afflicted him. She had a story to tell, and it wasn’t the happiest tale. “Or am I being too harsh?”
“No,” Roz said, although the thought of her lack of success did pain her. “You’re not being harsh at all. Yes, I’ve had success. And yes, it’s been minimal.”
Mick appreciated her honesty as he stared into her face. It was a face made remarkable, he thought, not so much in its look, but in its structured, apple shape. The features on her face, from her big, dark brown eyes, her straight, aristocratic nose, to her full, sexy lips, were all perfectly proportioned and complimented each other to rousing success.
If he were to be truthful about it, he was stunned by her beauty. So stunned that he did what he usually did not do to show his interest: he assessed her. He looked down, at her big breasts, at her flat stomach, at her gorgeous legs coming down out of a short skirt. When he looked back up into her wonderfully expressive eyes, his lust for her was on full display. Roz didn’t think it was possible, but even his lazy eye was more hooded than it had already been. She looked away. Because she was suddenly feeling the heat too.
Mick didn’t look away. He continued to stare at her. “How long have you been at it?” he asked her.
Roz continued to look at Betsy. She was no more interested in Betsy’s moves than Mick was. But just looking away from him proved a better distraction. “Ten years,” she said.
“That long?”
Roz nodded. “That long.”
“Tell me about it.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Roz looked at him. “Is this a part of the audition, or just small talk?”
Mick didn’t deal in small talk, and he sure as hell wasn’t auditioning her. “Neither,” he said.
Roz waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t interested altogether. She was. “I graduated from Yale University’s School of Drama,” she said, “and then made my way to the Big Apple certain I was going to conquer Broadway before I was twenty-five. I had a plan, you hear me? I was actually going to conquer Broadway.” Then she paused. “I never dreamed it would conquer me,” she said.
Mick felt a jolt when she phrased it that way. “Is it as bad as that?” he asked her.
It was as bad as that, but Roz wasn’t going to go there.
“Barry suggested that you had some degree of success.”
Roz nodded. “I did. Early on. I received steady roles and earned a decent living doing what I loved to do. It was exclusively off-Broadway success, but it paid the bills and allowed me to build a little nest egg for that inevitable lean time that every actor eventually faces. But it was all good times then. I was a kid chasing her dreams and man was I having a blast. I had eight straight years of at least some kind of acting job, even some off-off Broadway gigs. And I was teaching acting on the side. It wasn’t a dream come true life, but it was a life.”
“What happened?”
Roz hesitated. “By the time I turned thirty, the gigs just dried up. Casting directors that used to know my number and would give me the heads up on roles they thought I was tailor made to play, suddenly stopped calling. I went from the it girl, at least in the off-Broadway sense, to a has-been almost overnight. I got old.”
Mick frowned. “Old? You can’t be a day over thirty.”
“I’m thirty-two about to kick the door down on thirty-three. But I’m talking about show business old. I’m no longer that happy-go-lucky, stars-in-her-eyes fresh face kid anymore.”
A different look came over Roz’s face. A look Mick recognized.
“The years piled up,” Roz continued. “If you want a simple answer. When you’re twenty-two and carefree the way I was, you feel as if you have your whole life ahead of you. But when you’re pushing thirty-three, the way I am now, you start to wonder where the hell did it all go? I used to be the youngest face in the crowd at most auditions. I remember looking at all of those older actresses and wondering why were they still out here hustling, still trying to play a young girl’s game? Didn’t they know it wasn’t happening for them? Now I look around and I’m the oldest at most auditions. Now I’m the one those young girls are joking about. Being carefree doesn’t quite cut it when the landscape looks that bleak. I’m still happy, don’t get me wrong. I refuse to let this town take my happiness. But there are no more stars in these eyes.”
“Long gone?” Mick asked.
Roz nodded. “Long gone,” she said.
Mick considered her. Then he leaned toward her. “Don’t let them fool you, Rosalind,” he said. “Thirty-two is not old by any barometer. Thirty-three isn’t either. Take it from me. I’m much older than you. You’ve still got a whole lot of living to do. It’s absurd to even suggest that you don’t.”
Roz smiled a genuine smile. “Thank
s,” she said. “And I know what you’re saying is true. It’s just a different world in show business.”
“Only if you buy into that world. Because in every other world, including the real world, thirty-three is not old. Hell, you’re just learning how to shit properly at thirty.”
Roz laughed.
“Stop buying into this show business illusion that makes right wrong and wrong right. You’re too old to fall for that.” Then Mick smiled. “Oops,” he said playfully, and Roz continued to laugh.
Mick felt so good by her laughter that he suddenly looked at that dancing fool called Betsy, better known as their distraction, and decided he’d had enough. He waved her off. “That’ll be all,” he said to her.
Betsy, now sweating and tired, stopped dancing and looked at him. And looked at Roz. And both of them were laughing. What was so funny? Why were they laughing? Were they laughing at her?
When Roz saw that changed look on Betsy’s face, she was about to explain. But Betsy was already offended. “Very funny, Roz,” she said angrily, and stormed off.
Roz stood up. “She thinks we’re laughing at her.”
“That’s her problem,” Mick said. He was never the kind of man to correct somebody else’s misperception. “Who cares?”
“I care,” Roz said. “She’s my friend.” She hurried to Betsy, who had gathered up her gear and was heading for the exit.
Mick watched as she met her friend at the door and began explaining herself and consoling her. It wasn’t his style. He had no patience for people that weak. But he found that he liked that sensitive quality in Rosalind.
Betsy smiled. “I thought y’all were laughing at me,” she said, wiping her tears. “I feel like a fool.”
Roz knew where it was coming from. Rejection was the most potent kind of pain to people like them. “You know I wouldn’t do anything like that,” Roz said. “You know me, Bess. I wouldn’t hurt you like that.”
Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life Page 4