The diehard Shakespeare fan sitting in front of Peachy applauded with one clap as the rest of the audience cooed.
Enzo had thought the scene was dying, but now he knew from the reaction that it was very much alive. Calla’s eyes filled with tears, but Nicky wasn’t sure if they were from relief that the play had been saved, or the emotions of the scene that had been conjured with authenticity. Whatever the truth, Calla couldn’t look at Nicky, nor at Enzo. Out of the corner of his eye, Nicky could see Josie in the wings trying to feed Calla her next line. But their director was lost.
Enzo twirled in front of them in his cassock with his back to the audience, prompted her, whispering her line, “Then lead the way . . .”
A look of recognition crossed Calla’s face. She took Nicky’s hand and said to Enzo, “Then lead the way, good father, and Heavens so shine, That they may fairly note this act of mine.”
Calla and Nicky exited hand in hand stage left. When they reached the dark pool of the wings, Calla released his hand and went to the prop table.
“Good work, Nick,” Tony said before he rushed onstage for placement in the blackout between scenes.
Nicky was tingling from head to toe, and it wasn’t from the pilling of cheap wool of the tunic. He was enraptured, electrified from within. Nicky had a sense of being in his body, but he wasn’t; for the first time in his life, he felt his spirit take precedence over his physical state. He brought himself back into the present by gripping the lectern, afraid that if he didn’t hold on to something, he would float away. The play continued onstage but Nicky was numb to it.
Norma pushed past him to enter the scene, followed by Josie, who mumbled something, but he did not hear them. His senses were shot. It was as if he were underwater, and they spoke to him from the surface. All Nicky heard was the movement of his own blood in his body; every nerve ending pulsed.
Calla said something to him and he nodded, agreed to it, whatever it was. She rushed behind the scrim, on her way to her Act 5 entrance.
In the wings, the fanfare of the finale and curtain call chaos erupted as props were grabbed, wigs yanked, girdles snapped, cigarettes were extinguished, and actors rushed past and into place. Onstage, the errant set piece was rolled into proper position before the final scene—and while Nicky observed the action, he was somewhere else entirely, in another place and time, in the chancery of a good priest by the side of his true love, as Sebastian in Twelfth Night, in a state he would know as bliss.
*
Nicky splashed water on his face at the sink in the men’s dressing room.
“That was some scene,” Hambone commented as he hung his costume on the rolling rack.
“Thanks.” Nicky fixed his tie, smoothed his hair, and checked his teeth.
“You weren’t scared to death?”
“At first, terrified.”
“Acting is like kissing a girl for the first time. The idea of attempting it panics you, but once you do it, you never want to stop.”
“Very astute of you.” Nicky pulled on his jacket. It would take him a long time to try to explain to Peachy what he was feeling. He felt deeply content. At long last he owned the quiet confidence that comes from mastering a challenge after taking a risk.
Peachy was waiting for him outside the dressing room in the hallway. She leaned against the wall like a wilted daisy until she saw Nicky and revived. “Wow!” Peachy threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Wow. Wow.”
“I was a last-minute replacement.”
“It took me until the end of the play to get it. There was another guy in your part in the beginning, and then you were there and the pants were definitely not made for you. On you they were medieval clam diggers.” Peachy was talking fast, which either meant she was nervous, uncomfortable, or horrified.
“There wasn’t any time to find a costume that fit.”
“The slacks were fine. No one noticed. I think it’s sweet that you came up with a way to surprise me after seven years together. Some girls get a bouquet of flowers, or a box of candy, but who wants that stuff from her fiancé; one dies and the other gets eaten which means neither of them lasts. But me? I got something to hang on to. I got a memory. I got a wedding scene in an actual play by William Shakespeare performed by my future husband. Who gets that?”
Before Nicky could explain his role, Calla emerged from the women’s dressing room, pulling on short white gloves to go with her dress.
“You’re the actress.” Peachy turned to Nicky and pointed at him, then at Calla, and back at Nicky again. “From your scene.”
Nicky stepped forward. “Calla, I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Peachy DePino.”
“We had a little crisis, and Nicky and I had to fill in. But I’m actually the director of the play.” Calla smiled at Peachy warmly.
Peachy and Nicky felt awkward with Calla for different reasons.
“Calla takes care of her dad,” Nicky blurted. “Sam Borelli. This is his theater. Or was. When he ran it.”
“That’s nice.” Peachy’s mind was elsewhere. She began to hatch scenarios of Calla—such a strange name—with Nicky onstage, beyond the footlights. She couldn’t tell in the big dress, but now she could see that Calla had a nice shape. Her nose wasn’t too long, and she had soft brown eyes. No myopia. If Peachy saw her in Wanamaker’s going through the racks, she’d think Calla Borelli was a beauty. Peachy felt her gut churn with envy.
“Calla!” Frank Arrigo walked down the hallway towards them, almost filling it with the span of his broad shoulders and height. Frank was a robust Italian, in the pugilistic bent. He had the look of the hardworking men of the heel of the boot of Italy. His small nose had been broken a couple of times, but he had a winning smile and a gregarious manner, and there was, of course, the attractive element of his height. In any nationality, that was a plus.
“You were a knockout,” Frank said, kissing Calla on the cheek. “I guess you have to be able to act if you direct.”
“Only in an emergency. And tonight was an emergency. Right, Nicky?”
“Strictly a five-alarm theatrical situation,” Nicky agreed. “The show must go on.”
“Whether the pants fit or not,” Peachy joked.
No one laughed, so Peachy covered with a low whistle.
“I thought you were going for Elizabethan knickers,” Frank offered.
“No, they were supposed to hit my ankle.”
“Well, they didn’t and it doesn’t matter now because you did such a swell job no one was looking below the tunic.” Peachy clapped her hands together. Relieved that Nicky and she were almost free of this stilted small talk, in this strange situation she had been forced into, unannounced and without explanation, she unsnapped her purse, reached in for a handkerchief, and delicately dabbed the perspiration off her face. “And what do you do, Frank?”
“I’m a contractor.”
“But he wants to be mayor of Philly someday,” Calla added.