“Honestly, Nick? A lot of the play went right over my head. The whole thing was very murky to me.”
“It can be confusing,” Nicky admitted. “I understand why you might get lost. The same actors play two or three different roles in the play, who’s a man in one scene becomes a woman in the next, who’s a woman dresses like a man, it goes back and forth.” Nicky gave up trying to explain the plot of Twelfth Night. He would, however have liked to talk to her about his accidental role in it. He would have liked to share how panicked he was when he was yanked from his position on the crew as prompter from behind the podium and pushed into the play. Nicky would have liked to share what a thrill it was when the scene began and he felt a connection to the words and the other actors, but Peachy wasn’t a fan of the theater. So what? They didn’t agree on everything. She liked pink, he didn’t. She liked white sauce, he liked red. The sound of Jeanette MacDonald’s voice made his teeth ache, while Peachy could watch her movies four times in a row. They were different. Men and women were different, and that was that.
“This was a one-time occurrence, right?” Peachy said gingerly.
“That Enzo couldn’t understudy? I don’t know.”
“What I’m asking, this is a thing where you do it once and then you’re done?”
“There’s nothing to worry about. I got fired tonight.”
Peachy tried not to show how relieved she was that Nicky’s theatrical career was over. “Fired?”
“Calla fired me. There’s your proof that there are no sparks between us. I don’t know how long the theater can stay open. It’s struggling. We’re not selling enough tickets.”
“Well, it’s all for the best, Nicky. You won’t have a lot of time once we’re married. We’ll be fixing our house and planting a garden and taking trips.”
Nicky put his head into his hands.
“Oh, Nick, I’m sorry. You liked working at Borelli’s.” Peachy patted Nicky on the back and rolled her eyes.
“I did.”
“I understand about the pushing scenery and prompting the lines, but the acting part—” Peachy’s voice caught. “Do you want to continue such a hobby?”
“I don’t think I’m any good.”
“From what I saw tonight, judging from the rest of the cast, that’s not really a criterion for participation.”
“Tony is a fine actor. I could never be as good as him.”
“Well, not to compare, but who could tell? You only had one scene.”
“I know.” Nicky didn’t want to admit that he’d felt a charge go through him that he had never known before. And after Peachy’s reaction to the play, his second job, and his having been fired, he figured this wasn’t the moment to share his epiphany.
Peachy shrugged. “You’re better off. Borelli’s is a fleabag joint. It’s on its way out.”
“It needs renovation.” Nicky took a sip of his birch beer.
“It needs more than that. Nobody thinks to go there. Nobody says ‘Let’s go to Borelli’s on a Saturday night.’ No, they say ‘Let’s go see a movie.’ Or ‘Let’s go see Louis Prima and Keely Smith at Sailor’s Lake Pavilion,’ or ‘Let’s go into New York and see a Broadway show and hit the Vesuvio after for a nightcap.’ Nobody says ‘Let’s go see Twelve Nights.’ ”
“Twelfth Night.”
“Whatever it’s called. It’s attracting moths. It’s like the hair my nonna used to collect in a ceramic dish with a lid—now we backcomb. We don’t save our hair. Things go out of style or become redundant. Like Borelli’s.”
“It is old-fashioned. I guess.”
“Whenever a man wears leotards, it’s not au courant. It’s of a time when people rode horses and wore suits of armor. In the program it said ‘Carriage arrives at 9:20 p.m.’ ”
“That’s just a tip of the hat to when the theater first opened. They used to put that on the box-office window so patrons would know when the show was over.”
“Okay, Nick, anything that you have to explain in that kind of detail is out of style. It’s for the history books no one reads because no one cares. We’re young. We can’t live in the past, in an attic full of dust and trunks and musty pantaloons. We belong to the here and the now. When we get married, we are all about the future, about a life together. About our own kids and our own house with new appliances in the kitchen. We’re living on the cusp of 1950. Everything is new. It’s even called new. Think about it. Even the dresses—they’re calling them the New Look. We are going to be the 1950s!”
Peachy took Nicky’s hands into her own. “Do you really want to hang around a place like that? We’ll have a car and go places. We’re modern! On the move! We’ll drive into the city and go to clubs. New York—there’s another new for you, the city—is an hour and twenty minutes through Jersey and over the bridge. It’s nothing for us to go to a museum and get culture and have dinner at Sal Anthony’s and dance at the Latin Quarter! We can see the world top to bottom once we’re married. You can see all the plays you want. Good ones. With real actors like Ernest Borgnine. Not with guys that deliver A-Treat soda to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Labor Day picnic in Twelfth Street Park. You know what I’m saying?”
Nicky nodded.
“I mean, it’s nice that you have a place to go after work, that you have extracurricular activities you enjoy outside of the garage and me. My dad plays cards. My mother? She enjoys the sodality meetings at the church. It’s camaraderie. And I can see where Borelli’s is a social thing for you, with people you wouldn’t normally run into at work or at church. I mean, I’m sure they have receptions and you meet people and make friends and have conversations about interesting topics. But it’s not real life. It’s make-believe—there’s that guy who is an accountant by day and by night he’s in your play in a sword fight wearing tights.”
“Hambone?”
“Whatever. Or that lady with the bosoms playing come-hither to a guy that clearly doesn’t want to hither.”
“You mean Josie.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not authentic.”
“Legitimate, you mean.”
“Not that.”
“Legitimate theater means professional.”
“Then that’s what I mean. This is not professional.”
“But it is. We sell tickets. We’re paid.”
“Okay. So people pay to see it—that doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s the Borellis holding on to a family business that’s obsolete, clutching an old dream like some poor slob hangs on to a frayed rope when he’s dangling over a cliff. Eventually that rope will break and he will plummet to his death on sharp rocks that will rip him into hamburger. But if he holds on, what has he got? Rug burn on his hands. That’s it. Borelli’s is hanging on but it’s not going to be around much longer. That building is about to be condemned.”
“Did you hear something?”
“No, I just went to the ladies’ room and my foot went through the linoleum when I washed my hands.”
“You really didn’t like the play, did you?”
“I don’t want to go back there again, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Never?”