“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You haven’t sold any.”
“We’ve sold thirty-three seats.”
“Big deal.”
“It is to me.” Calla went back into the costume shop and began clearing the worktable.
“You’re in over your head, Calla.”
“How would you know?”
“Simple arithmetic.”
“Don’t you have an accountant who does that for you?” Calla queried. “Can you still do math?”
“Can you?” Nicky shot back.
“Let’s see. You took off for the big city, went on the television, began making big money, and who’s heard from you? Oh, there was that article in the paper that showed you in your new digs. Art Deco. All shiny. Leather couch. A big painting by some modern artist, and lamps that look like upside-down feet.”
“Actually they’re modernist Italian.”
“It doesn’t matter. They look like feet.”
Nicky shook his finger at Calla. “There it is. The old bait and switch. You make all this about me and my deficiencies, so it’s not about the theater and how you’ve bungled this enterprise and driven it into the ground like those pipes they’re laying over on Wharton.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Calla plunged the needle into the pincushion.
“The place is falling apart.”
“I hope you didn’t drive in from New York to tell me that.” Calla grabbed her notes and went up the steps. “Because that was a waste of gas.”
“War’s over. No more rations.”
“It’s a waste of your time.” Calla grabbed a basket of props and went up the stairs.
“I’m beginning to think so.” Nicky followed her. “I have my own problems, you know.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“Look. I have enough to do, enough to worry about without a swell-headed television star coming in here and looking for sympathy for I-can’t-imagine-what. I am doing what I can do here. I was in the red when Dad was alive. And it’s only gotten worse. I got an offer on the building, and I turned it down. You see, for me it’s about keeping the theater going, the history, the legacy, the family line. It’s not about the money. If I wanted to be rich, there are ways.”
“You could marry it.”
“Aren’t you a modern man?”
“I can be.”
“Just not right now. Just not with me. Ever.”
“You’re tough.”
“Circumstances made me this way. If you must know, I’m trying to find someone to buy it who will let me rent it so we can continue our work.”
“What work, Calla?”
“The plays of Shakespeare. Performed in repertory. Year-round. With a permanent and professional company in residence.”
“Reaching an audience of tens. Sometimes an audience in pairs.”
“You can’t hurt my feelings by being rude.”
“This is a business, you know.”
“Oh, should we try and get sponsors? Like television? Lux soap? Lucky Strike cigarettes? American Steel?”
“It’s worth exploring.” Nicky followed her through the theater.
“Ugh. You’ve become a snob. The driver is now being driven.”
“I’m going to ignore your jabs. You think you can continue to put out a product however you want, and just because you decide it’s good, the audience should show up just because you say so. That makes you the snob, Calla.”
“I don’t have a fancy apartment decorated by some snooty guy named Ralph in the Sunday magazine of the Inquirer—”
“It was syndicated by the AP!”
“I don’t even know what that means, and I don’t care.”
“Associated Press.”
“It’s telling that you live on the twentieth floor.”
“Twenty-first.”
“High up in some glass building. Your feet haven’t touched the ground since you went on the television. You aren’t a real person anymore. You forgot the groundlings. I live among them. I am one! I create for them!”
“You had your picture in the paper with the mayor.”
“That was months ago.”
“Still, you have a connection to the hoity-toity. Why don’t you ask Big Frank Arrigo to get in here and fix this place? He knows plaster guys and marble people and Sheetrock installers.”
“I don’t ask for favors.”
“You should start.”
“You too? What is it with you guys? If a woman isn’t needy, you can’t relate to her? What’s wrong with a woman who can run the show?”
“Nothing, if she can actually run the show.”
“You know what, Nicky? I don’t need this. I don’t need you coming around here, telling me what to do when you haven’t lifted one finger to help.”
The cast clustered in the wings as Calla trudged across the stage and kicked open the stage door. The afternoon sun threw a bright beam of light across the dark stage. Nicky stood in it.
“You can direct as well as anyone—any man. But you are not good at bringing in money. That’s a different skill. Your father didn’t have it, and neither do you.”
The cast, stunned at Nicky’s barb, inhaled a collective breath. Their eyes turned to Calla, who they were certain would explode. Instead, Calla looked at Nicky. She put her hands in her pockets calmly.
“Maybe he didn’t. And maybe I don’t. But we are devoted to our work. We stay here, we do our best, and we don’t give up. We believe that South Philly deserves a live theater that mounts the classics. We don’t run away, because there’s a certain nobility in serving people. I don’t expect you to understand this, because you’ve made other choices.”
“Hold it right there, Calla,” Nicky protested.
Calla held up her hand. “Instead of badgering me with questions, I have two for you. Who’s seen you? Who’s heard from you?” Calla pointed to Tony, Norma, Josie, and Hambone, who kept their eyes on the stage floor. “Has anyone?”
Nicky looked over at his old friends, who would not look him in the eye. He had thought about calling Tony and having him come into the city to see the show and meet Gloria, but he hadn’t done it. He knew that Norma would have loved to participate in a weekend workshop at the Abbe Theater, but he had never sent her the flyer. Hambone would have enjoyed watching the soap, and Josie would’ve glided for months on one postcard of the Statue of Liberty with a message that read Hope you and Burt are well. But he hadn’t sent it. He hadn’t done any of those things. Thinking about them was not the same as doing them. He was a lousy friend.
“You forgot the people that made you. This theater gave you your break.” Calla looked up into the fly space overhead, where the lines of the cables looked like delicate silver spider webs. What a grand place, if you let your imagination build it so, but Nicky Castone didn’t get it.
Calla continued, “Sam Borelli’s theater. How kind of you to come back to honor my father by insulting him, calling him a bad businessman.”
“He would agree with me.”
“He’s not here to defend himself.”
“Why can’t you admit you need help?”
“If I did, and I don’t, you’d be the last person I’d ask.”
Rosa DeNero peeked through the stage curtain. “Excuse me. It’s time to open the house.”