“Thank you. The girls at the Aster and Posy Garden Club won’t believe it.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that. Now you have proof we met.” Nicky handed the lady the autograph and pen. Ethel backed away, elated. “Thanks for that.” Nicky took a bite out of his sandwich.
“You must have the ladies throwing themselves at you constantly, now that you’re famous,” Calla said.
“Here and there.”
“Is it like Roseto?”
“It’s got its similarities. When I was a big, phony ambassador with a cheesy accent, heavy on the parm, the women liked me because they thought I was important. Nick Carl is just another invention. Neither of those fellows is real.”
“I know the real Nicky Castone.”
“Keep the details to yourself. It will kill my love life.”
“No kidding. But, it’ll cost you. The next time the AP wants the story, you tell them to call me.”
“What would you say?”
“A lot. Do you ever hear from Mamie?”
“No.” Nicky’s face flushed. Calla really did know everything about him, and he wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.
“Would you like to?” she asked innocently.
“Mamie came into my life and showed me what was missing. Whatever I lost, she found. She married the beat cop and had a baby. She’s happy. All my exes are happy. ”
“Good for them.”
“How about you?”
“I’m always going to be alone.”
“Don’t tell the AP that. They won’t think you’re a credible interview.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not going to be alone.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
“So what were your plans when I go back to the city tonight?”
Calla shrugged. “I was going to check the want ads.”
Nicky made a face. “Sounds like fun.”
“See what’s out there,” Calla said positively.
“What is out there?”
“Right now? I don’t know. I saw an ad. There’s a new coat factory going up in Germantown.”
“Do you mind if I offer some advice?”
“Please do.”
“The want ads are never a good way to go when you’re looking for a job. I know that from my hack days. I used to clean the cab at the end of the shift, and people always left their old newspapers in the back seat. Two observations: very few people ever finished the crossword puzzle.”
“Fascinating.”
“I thought so. And the want ads—will make you feel unwanted. You’re not somebody who can be described in three lines.”
“I’m not?”
“So you shouldn’t spend time looking through them.”
“I don’t know how else to look for a job.”
“You already have one.”
“Nicky, the theater has to close. I’ve run out of options.”
“All but one.”
“Don’t hold back. I’m listening.”
“Me.”
“Keep your money, it’s a losing proposition. Even the loan sharks turn away when they see me coming.”
“I believe in you.”
“I could never take a dime from you, knowing what I know about the debt, the repairs that need to be done, and the audience that we’d have to build to put the theater in the black. It’s impossible. But thank you for wanting to try.”
“I don’t want to give you any money.”
“That’s wise.” Calla patted his hand and went back to her sandwich.
“I want to give you all of my money.”
Calla took another bite of her sandwich.
“Calla, did you hear me?”
She nodded. “You’re out of your mind.” She took a swig of birch beer from the bottle. “What does that even mean? All of it. Are you dying? Do you have a bad kidney or something?”
“Could you please stop eating for one moment?” Nicky took her sandwich and put it down. He moved the bottle of soda. “I want to be your family.” Nicky leaned across the table and, taking Calla’s face in his hands, kissed her.
When his lips touched hers, the sound around them became louder, more distinct. She could hear the radio inside Sal’s, the roar of a truck engine as it went by, a sprinkle of conversation across the way, staccatoed with laughter from behind Sal’s window. It all made a kind of music that she had never heard before. She forgot all about the sandwich, hungry now for Nicky’s kisses.
“Excuse me, Mr. Carl. This is my friend, Viv. She watches Love of Life too. She’s your biggest fan.”
“I’m in the middle of something here,” he said without opening his eyes, before kissing Calla again.
“I can see that. But we’re kind of in a hurry. Viv has a sodality meeting at her church and is on a tight schedule.”
“I’m in charge of the cake and coffee,” Viv said firmly.
Nicky stood and extended his hand. Viv and her friend were petite Italian ladies in their late seventies. Separate, they were demure; together, they were a pair of tire irons. “It’s a pleasure, Viv.”
An electrical current of desire went through Viv, almost sparking. “My, you’re tall.”
“I was fully grown by my eighth birthday.”
The ladies looked at one another. “I’ll bet.” Viv nodded. “Will you sign my collection envelope? It’s all I have.”
“As long as I don’t have to fill it.”
“Oh, you don’t.”
Nicky signed the back of Viv’s tithe envelope from the church of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
“Thank you! This will never wind up in the collection basket now!” The ladies tottered off like two squirrels sharing a single nut.
“What happens now?” Calla sat back and folded her arms.
“That depends upon your knowledge of Shakespeare.”
“Quiz me.”
“What happened in Act four, scene three of Twelfth Night?”
“Sebastian and Olivia marry.”
“So, we find a priest. That is, if you’ll marry me.”
Calla Borelli looked into Nicky Castone’s eyes. They were at once as blue as the water off the shore of Santa Margherita, a place she longed to know, and as gray as the floorboards on the porch at the old house on Ellsworth Street. He was, in an instant, all the places she dreamed of and the only home she’d ever known. He was the past, and he was the now—the elusive moment her father tried to explain, which could only exist in the theater when the actor and the audience are one. But Nicky was also the love she had hoped for, and waited for, even when she believed it would never be hers. Calla had no idea her true love would appear in her life first as her friend.
Calla didn’t want to be a wife and marry like her sisters or her mother; she didn’t know how. She didn’t want to change her name, and give up her father’s, as though he hadn’t lived and didn’t matter. If she had been born her father’s son, she would have carried it proudly. Why did she have to sacrifice Borelli because she was born a girl? Calla wanted her own life, one that could grow with another, like the dual twists of the lilac’s trunks as they wrapped around the drainpipe over the stage door, the ones she could never cut, afraid somehow, that if she did, she would sever beauty itself from the theater she loved.
“Why would you want to marry me?” she asked him.
“Honestly? All the other girls I asked said no.”
“How many did you ask?”
“Fourteen.”
“Is that all?” Calla asked.
“Not enough?”
“You have a national audience.”
“I don’t read all the fan mail.”
“Maybe you should.”