Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life (6 page)

“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.
 
“Thanks,” 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.”

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.