“Open the house, Rosa.” Calla called off, “Places everyone.” She turned to Nicky. “We have a show to do.”
Calla kept her hand on the handle of the stage door. Nicky walked through the beam of light and out the door, into the afternoon sun and out onto the loading platform, as Calla closed the door behind him.
“She told him,” Hambone whispered to Tony.
The cast took their places behind Hambone and Tony in the wings, looking like a box of crayons in their velvet costumes.
“What do we do now?” Norma said, clipping on rhinestone ear bobs.
“Those lips that love’s own hand did make, Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate,’” Tony whispered.
“What the hell does that mean?” Hambone squelched a bourbon burp.
“It means we won’t be seeing Nicky around here anymore,” Norma said.
*
Nicky lay in his old bed in his basement room at the Palazzinis’. He wasn’t nostalgic for his basement room any longer. He found out he no longer missed the scent of the spaghetti as it dried, or the sweet tomatoes as they were canned. This was no sanctuary. He no more belonged in this room than he did behind the wheel of Car No. 4. His old life was hanging in somebody else’s closet now; he had outgrown the shoes, the pants, and the cap. Nick Carl no longer fit in Nicky Castone’s clothes or his bed or his old life. It felt odd.
Nicky lay on top of the coverlet, shirtless, his belt loosened, and the top button of his trousers undone. His stomach was distended from Aunt Jo’s twelve-course meal, which ended with a round of prosecco followed by a hit of homemade limoncello and a cin cin of Uncle Dom’s bitters that had done nothing to settle his stomach, and in fact, had only made his bloat worse.
Nicky was his own definition of fat and lonely and unlovable. As he drifted off to sleep, he imagined climbing the road to Roseto Valfortore, which unlocked the door to his dreams. He would count the stones until he could no longer, until he had reached the top of the mountain. He hoped to wake in the morning with some direction.
*
Calla adjusted her hat in the reflection of the window outside Frank Arrigo’s construction trailer on Wharton as the sun set behind the city. She had spent the day consulting every bank, builder, and real estate agent in town regarding the theater, and every one of them told her that Frank Arrigo was the man to see. Their romance had ended poorly and abruptly, but Calla put that aside as she had nowhere else to turn as the secretary ushered her into Frank’s office inside the trailer.
Frank looked up at Calla, warmly, at first, surprised to see her. When he remembered his feelings, his eyes narrowed.
“Congratulations on your wedding.” Calla smiled brightly.
“Thanks. We’re very happy.”
“And that makes me happy.”
“I always wondered what did.”
“Frank, you’re the best businessman I know, and I’m in a rough spot with the theater. I’m looking for someone to buy it and lease it to me until I can buy it back.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You’d make a profit when I bought it back.”
“Or I’d lose my investment entirely.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Calla, there’s a reason the banks won’t loan you money. You’re a very bad risk. You persist in keeping a business open that doesn’t make money. At best, here and there it breaks even. A private business is not going to partner with you if a bank, with all the resources in the country, wouldn’t do it.”
“But you know me. You know I’m not a risk.”
“I’ll tell you what I can do.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll buy it from you now. Outright. We’ll set a fair price. But no theater. I want the lot.”
“I don’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that when I was going with you and I don’t want to do that now.”
“Then I’ll wait for the property to go to auction—which, at the rate you’re going, it will—and I’ll buy it for pennies on the dollar. I want you to remember we had this conversation.”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
Calla stood. She was sorry she had put on her best hat and gloves for this.
“Good luck, Frank,” she said as she left his office. He said something to her as she went out the trailer door, but she didn’t hear him; the metal steps were noisy as she climbed down to the ground.
Frank Arrigo said You’ll be back. He was a man who always had to have the last word. What he didn’t know was that Calla hadn’t heard him—but it didn’t matter, she wouldn’t be back. She would find another way to save Borelli’s.
*
Calla took a long walk after meeting with Frank. She stopped to pick up a sack of fresh cookies from Isgro’s and, eating them as she walked, she gave a lot of thought to her situation at the theater. She actually laughed when she saw Freddie Cocozza was here written in chalk on the sidewalk. Only the old-timers knew Freddie became Mario Lanza. She stopped and looked in the window of Ye Old Apothecary, where they had a display of White Shoulders and Golden Shadows in their glistening bottles before heading back to the theater.
Calla exhaled as she pushed through the stage door and made her way down to the costume shop. She flipped on the light and gasped.
Nicky was sprawled out on the worktable.
She recoiled. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Why the good hat?” Nicky rolled over on one side and rubbed his lower back.
“I had a business meeting.”
“How did it go?”
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Poorly, then, I take it. I realize now, years later, that the mattress at 810 was bad from the first moment I slept on it. I didn’t know because I didn’t have anything to compare it to. I’d love a cookie. Thanks.” He took the bag from her and fished out a chocolate and vanilla checkerboard and ate it.
“Why are you telling me this?” She grabbed her cookies back.
“I wanted you to know I didn’t sleep well last night. Did you?”
“If this is your roundabout way of apologizing—”
“I’m not apologizing. Why would I apologize? Why would anyone be sorry about telling the truth?”
“Then let’s shake hands and part friends. I’ve got work to do. There’s plenty of places in South Philly where you can pass the time. Go to the Casella Social Club and get in on one of your cousin Gio’s card games.”
“You’re a cold cookie. You’re impossible. Unfeeling, actually. You turn on and off like a garden hose. And not one of those nice ones with the sprinkler feature that goes back and forth like a windshield wiper. You’re an ice cold gusher. You have to be right. You don’t listen to reason. You know everything about everything. What am I doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. I have a good life in the city. I like my routine. I live in the sky. I get to see clouds float by where I used to see feet shuffle by. Shoes. I use to see pigeon toes, now I see pigeons fly by. At night, I see stars. The moon.”
“Ugh.”