“A few years ago I was in--”
“Not the past, love,” Agnes interrupted her. “The past means absolutely nothing in this line of work. You have to know that. What success have you had lately, not years ago?”
Mick stared at Roz. How did she handle hostility? Because it was clear to him: Agnes was gunning for her.
“I have not had any success lately,” Roz said without flinching.
Agnes seemed to wait for her to give an excuse for her lack of recent success, but Roz didn’t go there. Mick was pleased. Agnes was pissed.
Barry intervened. “Agnes can relate,” he said. “When she was trying to make it she stumbled along too. Until she met me, of course.”
“I wouldn’t characterize my career that way,” Agnes responded. “Unlike her, I had success. And it wasn’t off-Broadway either.”
“No, dear,” Barry said, “it was off-off-Broadway.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Agnes said. “I’ve had great success.”
Barry patted her hand. “If you say so, dear.”
Agnes smiled again and placed an arm around Mick’s and her husband’s. “It’s so good to have my two favorite men together again,” she said.
And it wasn’t until she said that did Mick remember their past. And the fact that he and Barry had had a threesome with her once upon a time, before Barry asked her to marry him. It would not have bothered him at all if any other woman was sitting in that chair looking at them. But Rosalind was sitting there. It bothered him mightily.
He remove his arm from Agnes’ entanglement and leaned forward, as if he had to shield Roz from the contamination. It was an absolute rebuke of Agnes, and Agnes and Barry both knew it. Roz knew it too. What she didn’t know was why.
They stayed for dinner, and enjoyed the meal, and Roz even got used to Agnes flirtatious behavior toward Mick. What she couldn’t understand was how Barry was not only allowing it, but seemed to be enjoying it. The sign of a man, she thought, who was doing his own flirting somewhere.
But after dinner, when the Ackers seemed interested in continuing to hang out, Mick said they had to leave. And they knew like Roz knew that when Mick said he was leaving, there was no point in arguing with him. He was already heading for the door.
The drive back was the exact opposite of the drive over. Mick had turned off his phones as they rode in relative silence. She wanted to tell him how much she enjoyed the evening, but that would have been a lie. She enjoyed being with him, but Agnes Acker was a bit much.
“I’m glad you got a chance to spend time with your friends,” she said.
“Thank you. Barry and I go back quite a few years. I own a club he used to manage, before his days on Broadway.”
That surprised Roz. For some reason she never thought of Barry Acker as anything but a Broadway director. “What about Agnes?” she asked. “She seemed very infatuated with you.”
“She’s infatuated with men, it doesn’t matter who.”
Roz smiled. “Really?”
“Really. And I know. Barry seem so enamored with her. And he is. He can fuck any woman he wants, she can fuck any man she wants. They have what they consider a wonderful marriage.”
“They have something,” Roz said, “but I wouldn’t call it a marriage.” Then she looked at Mick. “Were you one of those men?” she asked.
Mick looked at her. To his shock, he didn’t want to admit it. But he was no liar. “Yes,” he said. “Once.” But he quickly added that his taste of her came well before Barry married her.
Roz smiled that dimpled smile he loved to see. “So I don’t have a home wrecker on my hands?” she asked.
Mick smiled too, and then laughed. “No, Rosalind, you do not have a home wrecker on your hands. What exactly you have on your hands? Who knows? But not that.”
Roz laughed too. She liked that answer. And when they arrived back at her brownstone, she was hoping to like a whole lot more. But she knew it had to be up to him. She saw herself as a progressive lady, and it wouldn’t be the first time she made the first move, but she wasn’t that progressive. Not with a man as experienced, as self-contained, as Mick Sinatra. She, in fact, had an almost profound feeling that too much aggression would turn him off. He might enjoy it in his previous ladies. But she had a sneaking suspicion that he would not enjoy it in her.