PART: 1 of ??
RATING: Eventual NC-17 (Explicit Heterosexual Sexual
Activity, Pos. kink, Adult thematic material, language, adult content)
PAIRING(s): S/C; incidental L/L and F/E
DISTRIBUTION: To Myself so far; any other archives are
welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit
me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of
search engine. Please do not submit my
work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as
key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an
archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email
me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of
link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform
me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and
send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Romance, Drama
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: Post-Show canon; takes place in 1978,
when everyone is roughly forty.
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Carmine and Shirley try to pick up the pieces
of their failed romantic lives by returning to what they know best...
NOTES: We need some S/C in this house...
***
Carmine
But that, he grinned to himself, would be sorted out later
in the evening. He had rehearsals to
make, and a bagel to grab on the way down to
A twinge of pain raced down his side as he bent and
retrieved the gym bag and twenty-ounce orange water bottle - shit, he'd better
pop an aspirin before getting into the elevator. It was, he winced to himself, a hell of a
long way to fall - from a venerable lead player and semi-major award-winning
actor to portraying Snoopy in an off-off Broadway production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Though he tried his best to hide it from
the rest of the company, he had at least ten years on the majority - some even
had whispered tales of having seen him at the stage door in their youths. The kid playing Linus
had asked him with fanboy eagerness to sign his
script, prattling on about how honored he was to work with the great Carmine
Ragusa.
"The Great" Mister Ragusa glanced himself again in
the bathroom mirror while he swallowed a couple of Bayer. His "star" face and natural
glibness was persistently elusive this morning.
To enliven his spirit, Carmine paused for a second by the door,
retrieving his New York Theatre Critic's Circle award from it's
honored place atop his TV set. Looking
around at the rest of the two rooms would only remind him that nothing else in
the place legally counted as his possession.
Though he was presently stationed at the "chic"
The pathetic, lonely old man in the mirror gave him puppy
dog eyes. You know what got you here, buddy.
You don't deserve pity. The old Carmine -
He strode out the door, back still aching but a fiery
determination in his gut.
***
"You could be
king, Charlie Brown -
you could be king!"
"All right! And that's lunch, people -
Carmine peered around the curtain. Keith Simpson, his director, stood at
center-stage, among a retreating throng of leotard-clad dancers. Carmine tried not to stare at that line of
glorious retreating behinds and walked over to Keith. "Yes, Mister Simpson?"
Keith reached into the pants pocket of his sweats and pulled
out a Camel, lighting it with what looked like a solid-gold Zippo. After a lung-scorching puff of tobacco-scented
air, Keith fixed his gaze on a starved Carmine. "Rags, how long have you been working in
this town?"
He regretted for the millionth time telling the producer his
"And it certainly shows."
Oh Christ, Carmine
thought, but managed to not to shit himself.
"I've been working out with a personal trainer every day for the
past month..."
"Your body and style are fine. Your voice has seen better days..."
"..I've been seeing a vocal coach..."
"A vocal coach won't heal the damage done to
yourself," Keith gave him a thin smile.
"I have the oca of 'Lucky In Love,' man. I
remember what you used to sound like in your prime - and thanks to Column 6,
everyone remembers what you acted like, too.
The booze killed your voice - it's a shadow of what it used to be and
anyone who watches TV knows that thanks to your appearance on the Lewis
telethon last year."
Carmine felt his spine stiffen as he remembered the
humiliation he'd endured for a croaking, off-key rendition of Climb Every
Mountain. "I was depressed,
Keith. Pal Joey closed after a thirty
performances, and Anne had moved out on me. I know my voice may have its
problems but I can still belt it out.
Just ask Tom." Keith looked
away, and twenty years in the theatre business told Carmine that that spelled
trouble. "Tom asked you to talk to
me."
"He's my boss, Rags.
OUR boss - and he wants to make as much money
off of this show as he can."
"He told you to fire me - he didn't even ask the
DIRECTOR to fire me?!"
Keith - terminally put-together and calm - squirmed under
Carmine's focused glare. "Tom's
been a fan of yours since he was seven years old. He knows you need work..."
"He hired me out of pity?" Keith nodded.
"What about my name, man?"
Carmine hated the pathetic sound of his own wheedling.
A sigh. "That's the big problem. We've been undersold for weeks now. He got a call from Robert Goulet
last night and he's willing to do Snoopy at half the price. If sales don't pick up, he's considering
replacing you with Bob..."
Blindly, Carmine turned away and walked off-stage. "Tell him not to bother. I'll clean out my dressing-room."
"Carmine! You can turn it around,
we've got faith in you..."
Humiliation prevented him from facing Keith's sympathetic
words. He walked all the way back to his
small dressing room, with its tiny bathroom.
Alone in the shower, he allowed hot water to pour over his skin until it
was lobster-red and hot to the touch, until he was sure Keith had left for
lunch so he could skulk out unseen.
***
An hour later Carmine found himself at La Maccio, his favorite cafe, where he had a running tab and a
friendship with the owner. Seconds after
he had settled himself at a white plastic table near the front door a girl had
come by to light his candle and take his order - Italian sub, heavy vinegar, no
oil. She instantly served him his usual
black coffee and left him in peace so that he could admire the little
gold-trimmed brick open-air establishment.
It sat in the shadow of what had been the brownstone he had lived in
with Roger.
Despite his shitty circumstances and La Maccio's
even shittier coffee, Carmine still smiled when he flashed back to the olden
days. He couldn't count the number of
hours he'd spent with Roger bumming coffee off of the La Maccio
wait staff, then returning to their ground-floor one roomer, freezing and
roasting to death all year, bitching about the garbage strikes and dating
chorus girls. They were what he
considered some of the best years of his life - if he didn't let his mind
wander back to
That thrill lost a little of its zing when he remembered
that Roger had landed a soap role ten years ago that had turned into a
two-year-stint; which was followed by a role in a dramatic serial. Now Roger spent half his year in
Roger, the guy who showed him how to roll his first joint, was
"Rags?"
That voice - shit.
Carmine felt instantly wary. He
forced a smile and placed the coffee back on the table, turning around and
meeting the familiar voice behind him.
"Serafina."
His first ex-wife was still, impossibly, beautiful for her
forty-one years. Golden -to-white locks
lay like a nest of angel's hair upon the crown of her head, pinned with a
single brown plastic tie, and the pink and grey jogging suit she wore was all
the rage with the crowd of young feminists she mentored. Her blue eyes flashed at him, and little
dimples popped up when she smiled. It
took him a second to realize she seemed a bit plumper now - when he stood and was
hugged affectionately he felt a small soft rise between them.
He blinked and his smile became even warmer. "Congratulations,
honey. Tell Rick he's a lucky sunavabitch. When're
you due?"
She blushed.
"I'm not with Rick anymore - I divorced him in '72."
Carmine had not been nicknamed 'the king of defense' by his
old trainer at the Golden Gloves for nothing.
"I always said the bum was no good."
She snorted, a sound he'd always
thought made her laugh honest and appealing.
"I've been with Tony for over five years now!" She scanned his
face again, and he noticed the brightness in her eyes dim just slightly. "Have you been getting my Christmas
cards? You've gotten so hard to pin
down..."
"I'm out on calls all day - if you leave a message with
the front desk I'll get back to you by ten."
"You're still at the
He prepared for another, critical "You're too old to be
living at a hotel" speech which Lenny, Laverne and all of his other
friends delivered to him frequently, but Serafina
nodded thoughtfully when he confirmed he was.
"Then you should know what Tony looks like."
Serafina - always so pouty when she felt she wasn't being paid attention
to. "Yes, I have - I just never
look at your old men," Carmine teased.
Another snort-laugh. "You're more jealous now than you were
our whole marriage!"
"Hey, you're my favorite ex-wife."
"I'm proud, really."
"Hey, can you stay for awhile? Have some lunch?"
She pressed her index finger to her throat. "Nope, my heart rate's going down. Brisk walking's
supposed to be good for the baby."
"Okay - like I said, call me any time. Write me when the baby comes."
She laughed," Carmine, you never liked children
before."
"I did!" he called after her. He had just started liking them too late.
He sunk into a thoughtful depression as his hero arrived and
went untouched. Serafina
- another problem Roger had introduced into his life. She'd been one of his colleagues at drama
school and he'd set them up on a blind date at a coffee house. She had been pretty and blunt as a hammer
back then, and they'd hit it off quickly.
The marriage had been a quick, city hall sort of affair. He had told everyone - his mother and father
included - the news from a phone booth near
Meanwhile, life had begun for himself and Serafina in the usual way.
They had moved into a single-room apartment on the other side of the
complex, and thereafter tried to live around each other's possessions. Serafina had come
with a Persian cat named Tinkerbelle who hated Carmine's guts - she proffered
to scratch him whenever he got into a clinch with her mistress,
or worse yet pee under his bed in a show of disdain. But for a few, struggling years he and Serafina had lived a sex-mad, friend-filled life entirely
centered on the burgeoning hippie culture and their mutual art, the theatre.
Oh, they'd had their differences. She didn't understand his obsession with the
past - in those first years, he had no other anecdotes but ones about his
fellow Milwaukeeans - and she had an obsession with her own sense of order that
clashed with his. Carmine had only
recently come to understand that her style of managing their apartment was a
cover for her nerves;
she was a fast mover, one of the new breed who considered her
career more important than children and her homelife
but wanted to please him so much at first that she adhered strongly to her
schedule.
While he was with her, as a rising stage actor, there had
been mutual green hopes and promises, but nothing concrete. Then, while he was still a
bartender-cum-chorus boy, she got the understudy for Mary Magdalene in the
sensation Jesus Christ Superstar. When
she took over the role it was Serafina who became a
star, and he became "Mister Ragusa".
The class distinction strangled him, squashed his ego, and soon became
too great to overcome.
They had argued rarely, but they both knew that the
relationship was headed nowhere. Soon
she wanted children, an idea that petrified him at the callow age of
twenty-eight. He knew she was in the
prime of her bearing years, was sure then that he never wanted to have any, and
realized that it was unfair to keep her tied to him when she would never be
happy unless she had experienced motherhood to something that didn't hock up fur
balls into his new moccasins.
The divorce had been extremely easy on him - she knew he
made less money and desired little from their apartment. For Carmine the trade-off was an immense
benefit - she had taken the damn cat with her, and he could sleep square in the
middle of his big bed. They both agreed
that there would be no hard feelings and got on with their separate lives.
He still saw Serafina socially -
when his star rose they were often required to appear at the major theatre
functions, often asked to present awards together. She had aged amazingly well and had retired
from acting at a successful thirty four.
He'd heard she was a casting agent now.
A casting agent and a mom just ten years
after their marriage. Just what
had he accomplished again?
****
Pulling up the collar on his black dress shirt, Carmine
chanted to himself that he needed to get it together - it wasn't his first
blind date, after all - only the first time he'd been set up by The Village
Voice.
Christ, he really was this desperate.
He eyed the motel room and prayed that it didn't look like
he was trying something. A fresh bottle
of
For the millionth time that day, Carmine instructed himself
to get a grip on his emotions. So what if he'd walked away from a nothing role in a two-bit
fleabag theatre? So what if his
agent wasn't calling him? He'd lived in
worse places and had savings enough to get through the month. Tonight, he decided, was all about love, not
being so lonely anymore. Tonight he would
get on with his life as a swinging bachelor.
A knock sounded at the door and he pasted on his best licentious
grin. Yes, he would get on with that
right now.
"Coming!" he called out musically, singing
"I've Got The World On a String" to himself.
The knocking stopped abruptly. "Carmine?"
That voice. There was
no way...she was in
He grabbed the bottle of Champaign he'd bought for box 18
and unlatched the numerous deadbolts he'd bought.
The face before him had barely aged.
"Shirley?" he muttered, feeling guilty, then
stupid.
She smiled softly, crossing arms over the sparkling red
dress she wore. "Hello,