“We’re all actors,” Tony said wryly.
“You’re all we’ve got,” Calla said with authority.
The next few seconds flew by quickly because Nicky was numb. Enzo handed him the costume. It seemed like a flock of birds descended upon him, pecking away his street clothes, but instead of winding up naked, they were replaced with the costume pieces.
“Let me help you into that tunic,” Josie purred as she began to unbutton Nicky’s shirt. He pushed her hands away.
“Give him privacy,” Calla ordered. The cast turned away—Josie reluctantly—as Nicky slipped out of his trousers and into Sebastian’s with Bonnie’s assistance.
It felt a lot like the moment he was assigned his army uniform at Fort Rucker. If clothes make the man and a uniform makes the soldier, it must be true the costume makes the actor. Did this sack of dyed broadcloth have magical powers? Nicky adjusted the collar and yanked down the hem, hoping the tunic would give him courage, and transform him into the character.
Beyond that, Nicky wanted to save the show. He had never been a hero, but like all men, he aspired to it. This may very well have been the moment where fate and skill collided to give Nicky Castone the opportunity to show the world what he was made of, even though he resisted the notion of being an actor. In his deepest soul, Nicky had the urge to act onstage, but dismissed it. For one thing, the theater didn’t fall in line with his regimented life; for another, he didn’t believe he could rise to the talent level of Tony Coppolella. But now, whether he liked it or not, Nicky would find out. Sam Borelli believed the audience tells you if you belong onstage. Nicky was eager to find out if he agreed with them.
Norma ran up the steps two at a time. Her lustrous brown hair, curled into sausage waves, bounced down her back as she sprinted. “We have a problem!” she whispered. “Cathy went with him.”
“We lost Cathy Menecola, too?” Calla was exasperated. “Couldn’t one person in that family handle a broken hip?”
“Evidently not.” Norma was half dressed herself, wearing only the top half of her costume for Act 5.
“Get her costume,” Calla ordered.
Bonnie, the costume assistant, whose mood usually matched her name, bounded down the steps with the gown. She thrust it at Calla with a sarcastic “Who needs a costume crew?”
“I guess I do,” Calla grumbled.
“You got fired too?” Nicky asked Bonnie.
“I sure did.”
“This is no way to run an arts organization,” Nicky huffed.
“You’re telling me,” Bonnie agreed.
“Can you two wait to rip me to shreds until the show’s over?” Calla ordered. “Everybody turn around.”
“You’re going to play Olivia?” Tony asked.
“Who else we got?” Calla reached back to unzip her dress.
The men’s necks snapped in unison in Calla’s direction, anticipating the fall of the cotton piqué.
“Don’t look,” she barked.
They looked away.
As Calla stepped out of her dress and handed it to Bonnie, Nicky peeked. Calla’s tawny skin shimmered in the low golden cross-beams of the backstage special lights, revealing her lovely shape. For a simple girl who wasn’t prone to fussing, primping, and evidently wearing a girdle, he observed that, out of her clothes, Calla was anything but ordinary. Her neck was long, and her arms were graceful. Her breasts were exquisite, but he didn’t want to miss the rest of her in the short amount of time he had, so he took in her small waist, the curve of her hips, the derrière a little more ample than it appeared in clothes, and, most exciting of all, the pale pink garter snapped onto silver mist stockings, which banded around her thighs like ribbons on a package. The stocking color was familiar—his cousin-in-law Lena hand-washed and line-dried hers in his bathroom every Saturday night in preparation for Sunday mass.
Bonnie formed a circle on the floor with Cathy’s velvet gown, as Calla stepped into it. It was as if the Birth of Venus had sprung to life before them as Bonnie slowly lifted the bodice of a pink velvet gown off the ground like a clamshell and higher around those full breasts before slipping Calla’s arms into the mutton sleeves. The gown was too big for Calla, but it didn’t matter how the costume hid her assets now that Nicky had seen what was underneath.
Calla caught Nicky looking at her, and glared at him. “Really?” she admonished him.
Nicky looked off quickly, directly into the lights, which temporarily blinded him.
Bonnie zipped Calla into the gown as she moved toward the stage, following Enzo the priest. Nicky moved to join them.
“You peeked!”
“It was an accident,” Nicky said apologetically.
“Like driving a cab into a brick wall in broad daylight,” Calla shot back.
“Yeah, something like that.” Nicky was glad he’d seen her almost naked body if she was going to be such a hatpin about it.
“Maybe you’ll rethink my job?” Bonnie whispered to Calla as she flounced the skirt of the gown.
“Not now, Bonnie,” Calla snapped.
Calla pushed Nicky onto the stage and shoved him into position before slipping behind a flat and joining Enzo.
Nicky knew the blocking because he had not missed a rehearsal. He knew the lines because he knew everyone’s lines—the truth was, he could play Olivia or Viola if he had to.
Still, even with all that knowledge, he didn’t have the experience to understudy the role. He could hardly count his performance as a shepherd in a nativity play at Saint Rita’s when he was a boy or his stint as an animal-sound maker in a radio play at WPEN when he was a teenager as theatrical experience. Nicky was about to be in the glare of the spotlight, his skills, however meager, on the line. He had to act the part of Sebastian, but his body was in revolt. He was a tunic full of nerves. His knees began to shake so violently that when he looked down, he could not see his feet, just waves of wool where his joints shook under the costume. His throat closed, his mouth went dry, and his left eyelid began to twitch like a Morse Code key. Calla had shoved him onstage into the dark, and for the first time since he was a boy, he felt unmoored, abandoned, and frightened, his definition of what it meant to be an orphan.
Sebastian had the first speech of the scene in Olivia’s garden, so there was no way to ease into this job. Nicky had to grab the role by the neck and throttle it, squeezing any meaning he could out of what he did not yet understand.