The gate opened. Calla went through it, turned out onto the sidewalk, and began to walk quickly toward Broad Street. Her feet were moving too slowly for her liking, and soon she broke into a run.
Calla had lied to her father. She was devastated by the review. The paper had told her press agent they wouldn’t be running it until the weekend, so she believed she had time to brace herself for the worst. Calla had planned to scan the paper and, depending upon whether the review was good or bad, either leave it in the kitchen for her father to enjoy or burn it in the marble birdbath in the backyard—something her father had done through the years whenever he received bad press. The only way for her to cope with the humiliation now was to outrun it.
Calla had done her best directing her first play, but of course she had ideas about how she might have done better. She had her own style, but she was very much her father’s protégé, in that she had devised a concept, created an approach, and cast the play, directing it beat by beat, moment to moment, making each scene as visually interesting as she could. She helped the costumer build the costumes stitch by stitch and assisted the set designer as he painted the sets. She had even helped build the island of Illyria with chicken wire, burlap, and buckets of real sand. Had the critic built anything but a tower of bad adjectives to describe what he obviously did not understand?
As Calla ran, her flat shoes began to flap against her heels, and the bottoms of her feet began to burn. She felt like she was in some kind of hell now, consumed in flames of rage, that began at her feet. She was a failure; she had directed a lousy production of a good play. At the library, historians called Twelfth Night foolproof. They hadn’t met this fool, who proved them wrong. Calla’s debut wasn’t a triumph, it was a soft landing, bringing with it nothing more than her name misspelled in the city paper and her gender revoked to dismiss her.
She couldn’t bear the idea of looking into the sad eyes of her crew and actors, who would need reassuring that it wasn’t their work that had caused the negative ink. She would get them through it, she had to, that was also her job. But who would get her through it? Her father wasn’t joking when he said that directing was the loneliest job in the theater.
Worst of all, and this is what stung the most, the bad review meant any hope for advance ticket sales had evaporated. Calla could handle the pummeling of her ego, but not at the expense of the box office. Her father had given her the keys to the theater creatively, but he’d handed her a mess financially. Her eyes were burning at the thought of it when she heard a wolf whistle. Why was it that men always chose the worst possible moment to get a woman’s attention? Calla ignored the whistle and ran faster still.
“Hey, Miss Borelli!” The man shouted as Car No. 4 glided slowly along next to her. She slowed down to a brisk walk when she recognized Nicky Castone behind the wheel.
“Need a lift?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why the sprint?”
“I’m late.”
“Then you need a lift. Get in.”
“No thank you.”
Calla sped up her pace to ditch Nicky, but her shoe flew off her foot when she tripped avoiding a gap in the sidewalk. She stumbled and fell forward onto the concrete landing on her knees.
Nicky pulled over and jumped out of the cab. “I’m sorry,” Nicky said as he retrieved her shoe. “I distracted you.”
Calla sat on the ground, her stocking ripped at the knee. “I told you I didn’t want a ride.”
“Okay. All right. Okay.” Nicky handed her the shoe. He put his hands in the air. “Just trying to help.”
“I don’t need help.” She stood, placed the shoe on the ground, and slipped her foot into it. As Calla walked away from Nicky, he noticed her fine figure, her curves in the simple skirt and sweater. He hadn’t noticed Calla Borelli before, not in this way, or in this light. Maybe his single-minded fidelity to Peachy DePino had kept his eyes in his head, or maybe they had stayed there because before this morning, he had never seen Calla in a skirt and wasn’t even sure she had legs. Besides that, she wasn’t exactly girlish. Calla was either bossing people around, or covered in paint, or struggling to keep a grip on the double-brush buffer on the terrazzo floor in the theater lobby, which bounced like a jackhammer with a short in its cord. She was in constant motion, less like a ballerina than one of the Pep Boys at the service garage.
“Hey Calla,” Nicky called after her.
She turned to him, her impatience clear in her rigid posture. “Yes?”
“Cute haircut.”
She forced a smile. “Thanks.” She waved him off, more a salute than a good-bye.
*
Dom and Jo Palazzini’s middle son, Gio, paced nervously back and forth in the garage below, gingerly peering out the open door from side to side without stepping out onto the sidewalk on Montrose. Gio, in his early thirties, was short and shaped like a packing box; the thick wool of the Western Union uniform did him no favors. What God took away in height, He gave him in hair. His black waves were shiny and thick, tamed twice a day with Wildroot.
Gio stopped long enough to fish the Pall Malls out of his breast pocket, give it a shake and pull a cigarette out of the pack between his lips. It dangled from his mouth as he patted down his pockets in search of matches. When he couldn’t find any, he left the cigarette unlit, buried his hands in his pockets, and continued to pace.
Hortense watched the familiar scene from her office and shook her head. Gio was in trouble again. No matter what measures were taken, the man couldn’t shake his gambling problem. Nothing cured him—not a stint in the seminary in Spring Grove, where he was thrown out for taking bets on who would be elected pope; not his exemplary military service in the Battle of the Bulge, where he’d fought valiantly but postvictory was caught point shaving in intramural softball and confined to quarters; and not even his love for Mabel, who, as a condition of their marriage, made her husband meet with a priest once a week in hopes a force more powerful than the lure of winning the pot of a random pickup game would force him to change.
Every manner of rehabilitation had been offered to Gio, but none of them could keep him from poker, pinochle, blackjack, bingo, and other games of chance. If the swallows were intent on Capistrano, the green felt on the tables of Big John Casella’s Social Club called for Gio Palazzini to return every payday.
Nicky pulled into the garage as Hortense appeared at the top of the stairs with a telegram. “Don’t cut off the motor,” she hollered, waving the envelope.
“I’ll take it,” Gio offered.
“Nicky will take it.”
“I said I will take it, Mrs. Mooney,” Gio insisted.
“You’re not good off the grid, Gio.”
“I can read a map as good as anybody.”
“Since when? You get lost in the garage on the way to the men’s room,” Hortense said impatiently.
“I need to get out of town,” Gio admitted as the tic over his left eye began to pulse.
“Not again.” Nicky looked at his cousin.