Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life (7 page)

“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.”

“For 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.

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
implying?
 
“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 stared
at her.
 
“And what did you do about it?”
he asked her.

“I wanted to
go over to his apartment, boil a pot of grease until it was bubbling, and pour
it all over his insecure ass.”

Mick stared
at her.
 
She would have to be an
impulsive, straight-from-the-heart kind of chick to pull that off.
 
And she wasn’t that girl at all.
 
He’d eat his shoes if he was wrong.

“But I
didn’t do it,” she said.
 
He was
right.
 
“I couldn’t.”

Feeling
satisfied that his antenna wasn’t off after all, he wanted to know more.
 
“Why not?” he asked her.

“I couldn’t
let some loser order my steps,” Roz explained.
 
“I wasn’t going to jail over him.
 
He wasn’t worth it.
 
My only
recourse was to sue him for blasting my image over the internet like that.
 
But my lawyer said those were as much his
photos as they were mine.
 
He didn’t think
I had a case.”

“You had a
case,” Mick said.
 
“You just had a
sorry-ass lawyer.”

Roz
smiled.
 
“Well, it wasn’t just him.
 
Nobody would take the case, and I’m not
exactly made of money to force the issue.
 
So I let it go.
 
At least he was
out of my life.”
 
She looked at Mick,
that anger he saw upstairs still riding her.
 
“That’s why I don’t let any man play me cheap,” she said.

Mick liked
her spunk.
 
He liked her determination,
her drive.
 
She was fragile as hell and
didn’t even know it, but she had some grit about her too.
 
He liked this girl.

A limousine
drove up as they were speaking.
 
The
driver, Deuce McCurry, a man who had been in Mick’s employ for twenty years,
drove up and stopped at the curb.
 
Deuce
was an African-American male pushing sixty, but he was quick on his feet and
even quicker at the wheel.
 
He grabbed
the umbrella and made his way to his boss.

“This is my
ride,” Mick said.
 
“I’ll give you a
lift.”

Roz should
not have been completely surprised that a man like him would get around in a limousine,
especially since even she could see he was a man of some stature.
 
But she was surprised.
 
She’d never met anybody on his level so up
close and personal.
 
But going anywhere
with him, after his proposition, was out of the question.
 
“No,” she said.
 
“But thanks.”

Deuce, who
stood beside his boss with the umbrella at the ready, was surprised that she
had turned Mick down.
 
He looked at her.

“How are you
going to get home?” Mick asked her.

“I’ll get
home,” Roz said.

“I know
you’ll get there.
 
How will you get there
is my question?”

“How I get
there is my business,” Roz said, and then looked at him.
 
She didn’t mean to be cruel, but no man was
going to sell her cheap and then expect all to be forgiven this easily.
 
“Have a nice day,” she added.

Mick wasn’t
surprised by her saltiness. Given her history, it was expected.
 
But his driver didn’t expect it.
 
He never saw his boss go on like this with
any female ever.
 
Or allow one to talk to
him the way this chick was talking.
 
What
was up with this?

Mick wanted
to just leave.
 
That was his usual
way.
 
Fuck’em and leave.
 
But for some reason the idea of Roz making
her way alone in this dreadful weather bothered him.
 
“Don’t be foolish, Miss Graham.
 
My driver will have no problem taking you
home.”

“I told you
no thank you.
 
I’m not going anywhere
with you.”

Mick
frowned.
 
“Why not?”

Roz frowned.
“Because I don’t know you like that.
 
You’re a stranger to me.”

“I know your
name, I know your passion, and I know your brother owns a restaurant in
Brokeback, Tennessee.
 
What else is there
to know?”

Roz almost
smiled.
 
He knew good-and-well that town
was
not
called Brokeback.

“I would
hardly call myself a stranger,” Mick continued.
 
“Now I ask you again.
 
Why will
you not allow me to give you a ride home?”

“I don’t
know what you’re capable of.
 
How’s
that?”

“That’s
fine,” Mick said.
 
“But examples please.”

Roz felt
silly now, but if he wanted examples she was going to give them to him.
 
“You might slice and dice me and eat me for
dinner.”

Mick
laughed.
 
Deuce looked horrified.

“You might
boil me like a lobster tail and have your way with me.”

Mick laughed
even harder.

“You might
chop me up into tiny pieces and make a pot of stew out of me.”

Mick’s
laughter eased.
 
“Alright.”

“You might
grind me down to flour and feed me to your pet pigs.”

Deuce
couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
 
Mick, suddenly realizing that this girl could be serious, was beginning
to lose his humor too.
 
“Okay.”

“You might
saw me in half---”

“Alright
already,” Mick said, unable to bear it any longer.
 
“I get it.
 
I get your point.
 
I’m a murderous
psychopath and you’ll do well to steer clear of me.
 
Got cha.
 
So I’ll steer clear of you.
 
Have
a nice life, Miss Graham.”

Deuce
utilized the umbrella and escorted Mick as he made his way to the limousine.
 
When Mick got inside, he said something to
Deuce, and then Deuce made his way back across the sidewalk to Roz.
 
He reached the umbrella out to her.
 
“Mr. Sinatra said for me to give this to
you.”

Roz looked
at the umbrella, as if she wasn’t sure if she should accept even that little
gesture.
 
She seemed overwhelmed to
Deuce, like a woman so tired of letdowns that she didn’t know good fortune when
she saw it.
 
He considered her.
 
She was young, she was pretty, but she
probably never met a man like Mick in her entire life.
 
Something inside of him felt for her.
 
Something inside of him felt for her the way
he would feel for his own daughter.
 
“Get
in the car and let me take you home, child,” he said.
 
“That man don’t wanna eat you.
 
And I for damn sure don’t want to
either.
 
You’re too salty for me.”

Roz couldn’t
help but smile.
 
She looked at
Deuce.
 
“I’m being pretty ridiculous,
hun?”

“With a
capital R,” he said.

Roz didn’t
have to be told twice.
 
An umbrella in this
kind of rain would probably be useless after one block.
 
And the facts were still the facts: she
couldn’t stand here all night.
 
She
therefore walked across the sidewalk and got into the limo.
 
Deuce opened the door and held up the
umbrella as she sat her small body across from Mick’s big frame.
 
When Deuce closed the door, and she saw the
beauty of his limousine, down to the gold-encrusted doorknobs, and she suddenly
realized the level of man she was dealing with, she felt a little bit
intimidated.
 
But she sat tall and
ignored the trappings.
 
It was only a
ride home.

Mick smiled
when she first got in.
 
“No longer
concerned about being my meal for the evening?” he asked her.