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.”