But as Deuce pulled off, leaving his men behind to clean up his mess, his cell phone rang. When he pulled it out and saw that it was Rosalind calling, his entire train of thought ceased. And he smiled. Rosalind. He was about to answer her call. She was undoubtedly concerned about him.
But just as he was about to answer, just as he was about to reassure her that he was just fine, he thought, not about himself for once in his life, but about her. Because he knew he was not just fine. He looked at his hands, and what his hands just did to a man. He was not just fine. Because he knew, if they continued down this road, it was going to lead to more, not less of a connection. And he was going to plunge her, not only in his world of legitimate high finance, but in his world of trash barrel thuggery. He was going to change her life forever. She was going to rue the day she ever laid eyes on him. And that look of love and admiration will turn into horror and disappointment, the same look his father gave to him, and his mother gave to him, and the world gave to him. And coming from Rosalind? That could be the death of him.
He didn’t answer her call.
He couldn’t.
He let it ring.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next day, Roz was at the acting studio going over line sets with a handful of her students. She wanted to try Mick’s cell phone again, because she was still worried about him, but one of her students, a method actor who was certain he could teach her a thing or two, was getting on her last nerve.
“I cannot do it,” he said, in the middle of rehearsing a line.
“Really, Zack?” Roz responded. “We’re still on page one and you have another issue?”
“Is it my fault these people don’t know what they’re doing? No,” he added, answering his own question.
His reading partner, Pam, rolled her eyes.
“Roll your eyes all you please,” Zack responded. “This is all wrong.”
“What is it your business?” Pam asked. “Nobody’s asking you to marry the script. Just read the freaking line for crying out loud!”
“What’s the problem now?” Roz asked Zack, maintaining her cool. She had the play in her hands as well.
“This line is the problem,” Zack said. “I am sorry, but it is.”
“Which line?”
Zack counted them. “Fourteen.”
Roz moved her finger down to the fourteenth line of the script. She read it, and looked back up at him. “I don’t see what you’re talking about. It’s perfectly fine.”
“That line is perfectly wrong,” Zack said. “It reads, ‘she is been.’ How can they expect me to say she is been?”
Roz looked again. And then read the dialogue aloud. “She’s been there before.” She looked at Zack. And frowned. “What wrong with that? What are you talking about?”
Zack was happy to correct her. “She’s, for your information, Miss Teacher, and I use that term advisedly, means she is.”
Pam shook her head. She couldn’t believe it.
Roz couldn’t either. “She’s means she is. But it also means she has. As in she has been. As in she’s been there before. Come on now, Zack. Work with me, brother. You’re an actor. You know words have more than one meaning. Just read what it says. You’re killing me here!”
“He’s killing all of us here,” Pam echoed, and the rest of the troupe applauded.
But Zack would not let up. The next line was a problem for him too, and the line after that. Then the stage direction was an issue. Then the fact that they were not being trained as method actors. He felt they should all go out and work as janitors and maids in order to play their assigned roles more effectively. Or, as he called it, with more honest integrity. Roz was on the verge of telling him what he could do with his honest integrity, but she held her peace. He was disruptive, but he paid just as all the others had paid. He had a right to complain.
And they managed to get through it. Soon he was in the groove too, and the line sets were actually being completed. But Roz was only barely there. Because Mick was still on her mind. Because Mick left her bed late last night promising to return. But now, in the light of day, he wasn’t even returning her phone calls. She was nobody’s chump. She was not the kind of woman who chased after men. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She was worried about Mick.
After work when her last student (Zack) asked his final question and she was free to leave, she couldn’t see herself going back to that apartment and that bed that still held his scent. She, instead, took the Subway to Broadway. Barry Acker’s play was in rehearsals now and she knew the stage manager. He let her in, but it would be nearly half an hour before Barry could break away and talk to her.
But when they talked, she quickly realized that he knew nothing either.
“So he hasn’t phoned you at all?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Barry admitted. “But he wouldn’t. That’s not his style. The only time I get to see him when he’s in town is if I track him down myself. If I don’t run him down, he’ll be in and out of here without so much as a hello. That’s Mick.”