“Oh, I can sing, mister. Don’t you worry about that. I can dance, too. I just don’t wanna waste my time singing and dancing when I don’t gotta sing and dance. You hear what I’m saying?”
“In that case, I amend my offer,” said Billy. “You’ve got the job, period.”
Well, that got Olive’s attention. She looked up from her paper in alarm.
“We haven’t even heard him read,” Peg said. “We don’t know if he can act.”
“Trust me,” Billy said. “He’s perfect. I feel it in my gut.”
“Congratulations, mister,” said the kid. “You made the right call. Ladies, you won’t be disappointed.”
And that, Angela, was Anthony.
—
Ifell in love with Anthony Roccella, and I’m not going to dillydally around, pretending that I didn’t. And he fell in love with me, too—in
his own way, and for a little while at least. Best of all, I managed to fall in love with him within the space of just a few hours, which is a model of efficiency. (The young can do that kind of thing, as you must know, without difficulty. In fact, passionate love, executed in short bursts, is the natural condition of the young. The only surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened to me sooner.)
The secret to falling in love so fast, of course, is not to know the person at all. You just need to identify one exciting feature about them, and then you hurl your heart at that one feature, with full force, trusting that this will be enough of a foundation for lasting devotion. And for me, the exciting thing about Anthony was his arrogance. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it, of course—that cockiness was how he got cast in our play, after all—but I was the one who fell in love with it.
Now, I’d been around plenty of arrogant young men since arriving in town a few months earlier (it was New York City, Angela; we breed them here), but Anthony’s arrogance had a special twist to it: he
genuinely didn’t seem to care. All the cocky boys I’d met thus far liked to play at nonchalance, but they still had an air about them of wanting something, even if it was only sex. But Anthony had no apparent hunger or longing about him. He was fine with whatever transpired. He could win, he could lose, it didn’t shake him up. If he didn’t get what he wanted out of a situation, he would just stroll away with his hands in his pockets, unfazed, and try again somewhere else. Whatever life offered, he could take it or leave it.
He could even take it or leave it when it came to me—so, as you can imagine, I had no choice but to become completely smitten with him.
—
Anthony lived in a fourth-floor walk-up on West Forty-ninth Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. He lived with his older
brother, Lorenzo, who was the head chef at the Latin Quarter restaurant, where Anthony worked waiting tables when he didn’t have an acting job. His mom and pop used to live in that apartment, too, he told me, but they were both dead now—a fact that Anthony relayed to me with no evident sense of loss or sorrow. (Parents: another thing he could take or leave.)
Anthony was Hell’s Kitchen born and raised. He was pure Fortyninth Street, right to the core. Grew up playing stickball on that very street, and learned how to sing just a few blocks away at the Church of the Holy Cross. I came to know that street awfully well in the next few months. I certainly came to know that apartment awfully well, and I remember it with warm fondness because it was in his brother Lorenzo’s bed that I experienced my first climax. (Anthony didn’t have a bed of his own—he slept on the couch in the living room—but we helped ourselves to his brother’s room when Lorenzo was at work. Thankfully, Lorenzo worked long hours, giving me ample time to receive pleasure from young Anthony.)
I’ve mentioned before that a woman needs time and patience and an attentive lover in order to get good at sex. Falling for Anthony Roccella finally gave me access to all three of those necessary features.
Anthony and I found our way to Lorenzo’s bed on the first night of our acquaintance. After the auditions were over, he’d come upstairs to
sign a contract and to get a copy of the script from Billy. The adults all conducted their business, and then Anthony left. But only a few minutes after he’d walked out, Peg instructed me to run after him and speak to the young man about costumes. I snapped right to duty, yes ma’am. I’d never flown down the Lily’s stairwell faster.
I caught up with Anthony on the sidewalk, grabbed him by the arm, and breathlessly introduced myself.
In truth, there wasn’t much I needed to discuss with him. The suit he had worn to his audition would be perfect for his costume. Yes, it was a bit modern for our play, but with the right suspenders and a wide, garish tie it would do the trick. It looked just cheap enough, and just cute enough, to suit Lucky Bobby. And while it might not have been the most politic thing for me to say, I told Anthony that his existing suit would be perfect for the role, precisely because it was so cheap and so cute.
“You callin’ me cheap and cute?” he asked, his eyes crinkling in amusement.
He had highly pleasant eyes—dark brown and lively. He looked like he spent most of his life amused. Examining him this closely, I could see he was older than he’d looked onstage—less of a rangy kid, and more of a lean young man. He was more like twenty-nine than nineteen. It’s just that his skinniness and his carefree step made him seem a lot younger.
“I might be,” I said. “But there’s nothing wrong with cheap and cute.”
“You, on the other hand—you look expensive,” he said, and gave me a slow appraisal.
“But cute?” I asked.
“Very.”
We stared at each other for a while. There was a good deal of information conveyed across the silence—a whole conversation, you might say. This is what flirtation is in its purest form—a conversation held without words. Flirtation is a series of silent questions that one person asks another person with their eyes. And the answer to those questions is always the same word:
Maybe.
So Anthony and I just looked at each other for a good long while, asking the unspoken questions, and silently replying to each other: Maybe, maybe, maybe. The silence went on so long that it became uncomfortable. In my stubbornness, though, I wouldn’t speak, but nor would I break eye contact. Finally, he started laughing, and I laughed, too.
“What’s your name, baby doll?” he asked.
“Vivian Morris.”
“You free tonight to spend some time with me, Vivian Morris?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Yes?” he asked.
I shrugged.
He tilted his head and looked at me closer, still smiling. “Yes?” he asked again.
“Yes,” I decided, and that was the end of the maybe.
But then he asked it again: “Yes?”
“Yes!” I said, thinking perhaps he hadn’t heard me.
“Yes?” he said one more time, and now I realized that he was asking me about something else here. We weren’t talking about going out for dinner and a movie. He was asking me if I was really free tonight.
In an entirely different tone, I said, “Yes.”
—
Within a half hour, we were in his brother’s bed.
I knew instantly that this was not going to be the same sort of sexual experience to which I was accustomed. First of all, I wasn’t drunk and neither was he. And we weren’t standing up in the cloakroom of a nightclub, or fumbling in the back of a cab. There was no fumbling to be had here. Anthony Roccella was not in a hurry. And he liked to talk as he worked, but not in a horrible way like Dr. Kellogg. He liked to ask me playful questions, which I loved. I think he just liked to hear me say yes again and again, and I was more than happy to
oblige him.
“You know how pretty you are, don’t you?” he asked, once he’d locked the door behind us.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re gonna come sit on this bed with me now, right?”
“Yes.”
“You know I’m gonna have to kiss you now, cuz of how pretty you are?”
“Yes.”
And sweet mercy, could that boy kiss. One hand on each side of my face, with his long fingers reaching behind my skull, holding me still while he softly tested out my mouth. This part of sex—the kissing part, which I always loved—was usually over far too quickly in my experience, but Anthony didn’t seem to be heading toward something more. This was the first time I’d been kissed by somebody who was getting as much pleasure out of kissing as I was.
After a long time—a very good long time—he pulled back. “Here’s what we’re gonna do now, Vivian Morris. I’m gonna sit here on this bed, and you’re gonna stand right there, under the light, and take your dress off for me.”
“Yes,” I said. (Once you start saying it, it’s so easy to keep going!)
I walked to the center of the room and stood—just as instructed— right under the lightbulb. I took my dress off, and stepped out of it, covering up my nervousness by throwing my hands up in the air. Tada! As soon as my dress came off, though, Anthony started laughing, and I was catapulted into shame—thinking of how thin I was, and how small my breasts were. When he saw the look on my face, he softened his laughter and said, “Oh, no, doll. I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because I like you so much. You’re a fast little operator, and it’s cute.”
He stood up and picked my dress up off the floor.
“Why don’t you put this dress back on, doll?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s all right, I don’t mind.” I was making no sense, but I was thinking: I blew it, it’s over.