“No one colored ever came to this theater.”
Hortense chuckled. “Not a lot of us in Shakespeare. Forgive me. There’s Othello. Do you have a ticket for me?”
“Yes, we do. It’s the last seat in the mezzanine. Two dollars.”
Hortense beamed as she reached into her purse. “Nicky Castone filled the house.”
“Do you think that’s the reason?”
“Absolutely.”
“I wondered.”
“He’s special,” Hortense said. She laid two crisp one-dollar bills in the money tray.
“Or he runs into a lot of people when he’s driving a cab.”
Hortense made her way up the stairs to find her seat. The usher was taken aback when she saw her, but nodded, checked her ticket, handed her a program, and gently lifted the velvet curtain so that she might slip into her aisle seat. No one noticed her when she did.
Sam Borelli walked through the lobby as Rosa DeNero was closing the auditorium doors. “Mr. Borelli!”
“I’m going to stand,” he said with a grin.
“You look good.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“I’m staging a comeback. What do you think?”
“We sold out the house tonight. I just sold the last seat.”
“Tops my comeback.”
Sam slipped into the theater. He looked over the heads of the audience from the rear of the orchestra. Rosa was right. There wasn’t an empty seat. He filled his lungs with the air of the place, inhaling the scents of oil paint, lily of the valley, tobacco, and the fresh ink on the glossy paper of the Playbill. After all these years, the anticipation of the curtain going up still thrilled Sam Borelli.
Calla hiked up her skirt and took the steps to backstage wings two at a time with Frank following closely behind her. In the wings, the actors were stacked up in a row, like a deck of cards, ready for their entrance in the opening scene. Nicky stood behind Tony, his eyes focused on the stage and the task that lay before him.
Calla whistled softly before releasing the pulley and yanking the stage curtain. Frank took over the ropes, which allowed her to take one final look at her cast before the trumpet sounded. She was confident, but in this moment, she wanted success for Nicky more than he wanted it for himself. Nicky as Sebastian would not make his entrance until the first scene of Act 2. Calla slipped over to him. “You have time. Relax into it.”
“I will,” Nicky whispered without taking his eyes off the stage.
Frank was annoyed that Calla was paying attention to Nicky again. If he could have, he would have lifted one of the stage weights, the heavy sandbags that countered the pulley system that flew the flats up and down from the ceiling, and thrown it in Nicky Castone’s direction. Instead, Frank gently took Calla’s arm. He pulled her close and cinched his arm around her waist, making it clear to anyone who was curious that she belonged to him.
“Let’s watch the show with Dad,” she said.
Frank answered by kissing her lightly on the lips.
Peachy DePino had meant to ask Nicky for a copy of the play, so she might read it before his debut, but she had been so consumed with details of their wedding that she forgot. Besides, the theater had become a subject they avoided. She’d demanded he quit the play, but he’d ignored her request, so she in turn pretended she had not made it.
Peachy slipped her gloved hand into her mother’s. As Connie turned to look at her daughter, she nodded, causing a few ostrich feathers to fly off her hat and dance through the air. The patron seated behind Connie sat up higher on her phone book to avoid the filaments as the opening scene unfolded.
Peachy was grateful to her mother, who was the rudder on the ship of her long engagement, guiding her daughter toward the safe harbor of a wedding ceremony. It was her mother who’d convinced her to ignore Nicky’s weird obsession with the theater. Every marriage is a power struggle, Connie had assured her daughter, and even though she wished to protect her from any agita, Peachy and Nicky would have their struggles too.
Besides, Connie was happy when Jo Palazzini called and invited them to the play; it showed that they were on the DePino side and wanted this wedding to unfold without incident and be as splendid as Connie had envisioned it. It showed that they loved Peachy and wanted the two families to mingle socially. These positive steps were more than that; they were signs that the marriage would be solid and supported on both sides by two good families. Connie felt secure that night; her apprehensions about show business and Nicky’s role in it were put aside as her husband, daughter, and she were safely landlocked by Palazzinis in the center of the row. Connie relaxed back into her seat, confidently if not smugly.
A series of lights rigged to the mezzanine wall were covered in blue gels, the color of the water off the coast of Capri. The beams pulled on behind the various shades of blue, casting a glow that conjured the sea. Nicky followed Paulie out onto the stage, crossing to take his downstage mark. His senses heightened, he heard whispers of Break a leg from the wings, the rustle of programs from the audience, and the familiar murmurs of his family’s chorus of voices as he crossed the stage.
Paulie, playing Antonio, turned and faced Nicky. “Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?”
Nicky looked at him. He knew he had the next line, but he could not remember it. He breathed deeply. Paulie cheated upstage and murmured, “By your patience, no . . . ,” to cue him.
But the prompt did not help. Nicky stood still, engulfed in the blue, untethered, unconnected, and floating.
The Palazzini family and the DePinos leaned forward in their seats, uncertain what was happening but knowing something was terribly wrong.
Sam Borelli mouthed the lines silently from the back of the theater.
Paulie, thinking quickly, gave his next cue, hoping that it would jostle Nicky into the moment. He knew that when an actor went up and the line was gone, it might be gone in that performance forever, so it was best to press on. “Let me yet know of you whither you are bound.”
Frank propped himself against the back wall of the theater, behind the orchestra section, and folded his arms, secretly thrilled that the artichoke in tights was failing, as Calla moved forward, and stood next to her father.
Hortense leaned forward in her seat in the mezzanine. “Come on, Nicky,” she whispered softly. “Come on.”
Nicky turned toward the audience, and soon the blue lights became like waves of cool water that refreshed him and brought him back to life, into the play, the scene, this line, and to the moment:
No, sooth, sir: my determinate voyage is mere
extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a
touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me
what I am willing to keep in; therefore it charges
me in manners the rather to express myself. You
must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian,
which I called Roderigo. My father was that