Monthly productions! A three-hundred-seat theater! Weekly seminars! Nicky could picture the building on Riverside Drive; he drove on that street daily picking up fares, dropping them off. Surely it was fate that he’d found this post, but more so, the five words in the ad that would make it all possible: Accredited by the Veterans Administration. Not only would Nicky be able to study theater, it would be paid for on the GI Bill. If they wanted him. If he could get in. The sacrifices he had made during the war might give him what he most yearned for: a second act.
*
Hortense hid in the Palazzinis’ mud room as Jo ladled Minna’s Venetian gravy onto the fresh penne at the stove in the kitchen. Dom was home for lunch, and Jo had agreed to be part of the dispatcher’s secret experiment. Hortense stood behind a fig tree that was ready to be planted out in the garden. The Spatuzzas had made their annual spring drop-off, and one tree at a time, Jo was planting the bounty.
“Is this how you want it to look?” Jo whispered, showing the dish to Hortense on her way to the dining room.
Hortense nodded.
“Here goes.” Jo went into the dining room with the plate of macaroni and placed it in front of her husband. She scooted the bowl of grated cheese and the red pepper grinder in front of her husband. “What’s new, Dominic?” she asked casually.
“I need a new lift at the shop.”
“Are they expensive?”
“What do you think? Hydraulic. It’s not like the old days. Everything costs.”
Dom placed his napkin over his shirt. He picked up his fork and pierced the penne. He tasted the pasta and chewed.
“How is it?” Jo asked.
“You got more gravy?”
Jo went into the kitchen. Hortense watched as Jo ladled gravy into a small ceramic boat. “He wants more!”
Hortense raised her hands in a silent Praise be! as Jo brought the gravy boat into the dining room. Dom doused his pasta with the gravy. He sprinkled fresh grated cheese on the gravy before spearing several flutes of penne and putting them into his mouth.
“What do you think of the gravy?”
“What do you mean, what do I think?”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s good.”
“It’s different, Dom.”
“You tried something new?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing important.”
“I like it.”
“That’s all that matters,” Jo assured him.
“If that was all that mattered, you wouldn’t change the food around here. I like what I like.”
“If I can improve things, why wouldn’t I?”
“You have a point.”
“Thanks, honey.” Jo gave her husband a quick kiss on the cheek before returning to the kitchen. She joined Hortense in the mud room. “He likes it.”
“Does he know it came from a jar?”
“If I told him, he’d spit it out.”
“Even if it’s delicious?”
“It wouldn’t matter to him. He’s off the boat. They’re impossible. If he could have me pounding cornmeal on a rock in Calabria in the hot sun to make his polenta, he’d be happy. Gravy is supposed to be from scratch. He has to know that I have stood there for hours pressing tomatoes through a sieve. Somehow, in his mind, my efforts translate to love.”
“I understand.”
“I knew you would.”
“I’ve been working for him for over thirty years. He is a man who sets parameters.” Hortense turned to go back to the office.
“I can test it out on the whole family tonight if you want,” Jo offered.
“Would you do that for me?”
Hortense climbed the steps to the dispatch office. She placed her straw hat on the file cabinet before fishing out the ring of keys from her purse. She sorted through them and unlocked her private drawer in the filing cabinet, pulling out a large black ledger marked TESTING. She opened it and made a series of quick notes under the column header Batch 77. She closed it, slipped it back into the cabinet, and looked up to heaven. “Come on, Minna. Give me a sign.”
*
Riverside Drive curled along the cliffs above the Hudson River like a garland. The Beaux Arts buildings along the wide, tree-lined boulevard of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, built of white sandstone, cream-colored granite, and gray fieldstone with bold architectural flourishes, including copper-tipped cupolas and shingled turrets, reminded Nicky a lot of Paris. Over the drive the steep hillside sloped down into Riverside Park, which, at twilight, was filled with children as they finished playing before supper.
Nicky stood on the steps of The Master at 310 Riverside Drive, the tallest building on the street, at twenty-seven floors. He was already nervous about meeting the possible players in his bright future and auditioning for them, and the imposing building, built with bricks in shades of every color from purple to rose to indigo, somehow made his anxiety worse.
A white-gloved doorman opened the brass-plated door, nodding at Nicky. He entered the lobby, an Art Deco masterpiece, elegantly polished in black and silver. Nicky came prepared; he’d completed his paperwork at home, including a résumé for the directors of the theater, a copy of his honorable discharge, his approved application for education entitlement under the GI Bill, his birth certificate, and a document stating that he had not exercised his education option prior to the Abbe Theater course work. Most importantly, he had revisited Twelfth Night, and prepared a monologue.
The doorman directed Nicky to the theater off the main lobby. Nicky poked his head inside, and immediately fell in love with the midnight blue jewel box. The stage floor was painted in black lacquer, reflecting a gold velvet stage curtain. The three-hundred-seat house was modern, and if Nicky had to describe it, he would have called it a Broadway house, north of the grid. He was itching to get on that stage. He could see himself there, feel the floorboards beneath his feet, and the beam of the follow spot on his face.
He checked his watch, on time for his appointment, went up the stairs to the second floor, and rang the bell marked Abbe Theater School. Removing the wool cap he wore when he drove the cab, he folded it in half like a slice of pizza. He took a seat in the hallway on the bench.
Soon a young woman in dungarees and a white blouse emerged from the door of the studio. “Are you Nick Castone?”
“I am.”
“Mr. O’Byrne will see you now.”
Robert F. O’Byrne had been in the movies in Hollywood. Nicky was nervous about meeting him, but he pulled himself together, knowing confidence was at least thirty percent of any performance. Perhaps he was off on the percentage. Hadn’t Sam Borelli taught him about confidence? Suddenly he had no memory; Nicky’s anxiety took over.
When the lanky, bespectacled man in his mid-thirties opened the door to pick up a file from the secretary’s desk, he smiled and looked at Nicky. “Are you an actor?”
“Does one run of Twelfth Night count?”
“Depends on the scene. Depends on you. Come in.”