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 Rosalind,” 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.