SERIES: Do You Like Boots?
(AKA:
PART: 3 of 8
RATING: NC-17 (Explicit
Heterosexual Sexual Activity, Pos. kink, Adult thematic material, language,
adult content)
Nothing doing. He needed coffee.
Memories of the previous
night filled his mind and he grinned. Or
something stronger…
Without bothering to find his
robe, he slipped naked into the bathroom and crept up to the shower. Shirley was singing “Tiger” to herself,
oblivious to his existence. On an evil
impulse, he pulled open the curtain and growled to get her attention.
The soap cake she’d been
washing with went flying as she shrieked and he bellowed a laugh. His response aggravating her, Shirley bit
down on her bottom lip and locked her jaw, her little fist socked his shoulder
as she yelled, “are you trying to kill me?!”
“Why would I do that? If I kill you we’ll never do what we did last
night again,” he said, trying on his best Ricardo Montelbon voice-of-suaveness
as he reached out and rubbed the fluffy foam into her skin.
Shirley’s smile froze and her
cheeks began to turn pink. “Are you
asking for us…now…me?” she sputtered, her relative innocence on full display.
Carmine blinked back down at
her – he bent over and grabbed the soap from the bathroom floor and lathered it
between his hands. “You’re telling me
that you and Walter never had sex in the morning?”
Her head shot up, a look of
quiet dignity on her face. “Walter and I had a satisfying love life,” she
explained, her very attitude telling him that it had been.
“But he was vanilla?” he asked,
rubbing the suds into her skin with slow, concentric circles.
“Vanilla?” her eyes fluttered
as she tried to keep pace with his touch and the conversation.
“Yanno – you always did it on
the same day every week, at night with the shades down and the lights off.”
She sighed. “Walter was a tad conventional, but he did
have an imaginative streak,” she reached down and shut off the water, then
wrapped her arms around Carmine’s neck.
“You sound a little jealous,” she teased.
The thought of being jealous
of plain, conventional, square Walter made Carmine bite back a laugh. “Only ‘cause he had you for so long,” he
said, pinching her bottom appreciatively.
She savored the feeling of
his skin against hers for a moment, then reluctantly pushed him away. “I need to get going; I want to change before
I head down to the clinic.”
Carmine pretended to
understand, enjoying the view as she dried off and dressed in her crumpled
evening wear. His sharp mind quickly
reviewed his schedule and, when she handed him a perfumed card with her new
address and number on it, he interjected, “can you meet me for coffee at La
Maccio on your break?”
She pursed her lips. “Mine’s at two. Are you rehearsing?”
“I’m free as a bird today,”
he said, conjuring up the expected Ragusa joviality. As always, he succeeded in hiding his fear
from her.
She kissed his cheek. “I may be a little late – La Maccio’s is
about a fifteen-minute walk from the office.”
Out of instinct he groped
into his back pocket, then handed her five dollars. “Take a cab on me.” Her expression showed a cross-mix of flattery
and confusion. “It ain’t safe to walk
the streets…”
“At two in the afternoon?”
Embarrassment prickled his skin as she saw right through him. “I’ve been living in this neighborhood for
six months,” she scolded, pressing the money back against his palm, “but I’ll
be there.”
He watched her leave and
formulated a plan for the non-Shirley related portion of the day. First to his agent, then to whatever audition
he could find – it was too late to go back to Keith and besides he would never
allow himself to indulge in the fine art of begging.
But first, he thought to
himself for the first time in almost thirty years, it was time for a
shower. A COLD shower…
***
Joey Olivera’s Famous Faces
Inc. had been encamped in the same Manhattan high rise for ten years. Had Carmine suddenly gone blind and been
forced to navigate the structure without help he could have accurately predicted
that the same wall of glossies would greet him at Mona The Receptionist’s desk,
that Joey was “in a meeting but can see you in a minute,” that the coffee would
inexplicably taste like cinnamon-coated rubber cement, and that the velveteen
blue couch would feel a little crusty beneath his hand. He wondered to himself for the zillionth time
if Joey rented the place out for some low-rent porno production house as he
exchanged blandishments with Mona.
In every casting agents’
office, it seemed to Carmine, there was a Mona – the girl who had failed as an
actress, model, singer and dancer and had settled for marrying the boss and
typing his memos. She had given birth to
Joey Olivera the Third two years ago and she had regained her dynamite figure
but, to Carmine’s great astonishment, he only took a quick peek at her
green-tube-top covered breasts as they
peeked out of her navy business jacket instead of staring at them with open
lasciviousness. This was their usual risk-free
game, and she didn’t announce it but she seemed displeased that he wouldn’t
play.
A sudden buzz from her desk
broke the stalemate. “Mona, let Mister
Ragusa in.”
“Okay, Joe.” Mona shot Carmine a look of impatience – his
inertia always irritated her no matter the circumstance - her expression made him stand and rush into
the office, cloistering himself in with Joey.
Joey sat, perennially, at his
desk, the top two buttons on his puce-colored shirt popped and the last three
straining against his enormous gut, his orange toupee limp and glued to his
baseball-shaped head by beads of pinky-sized sweat. He smacked his ever-present
stick of Juicy Fruit and gazed at Carmine disinterestedly. “Rags,” he remarked, offering his palm.
Carmine shook the sweaty,
meaty palm offered him. “Pleasure to see
you, Joe,” he said.
“Pleasure doesn’t have
anything to do with it, boy,” he replied in his best WC Fields impression.
He offered his client a
seat. Carmine settled before him in a
scratchy white chair, irritated by the prickling upon his skin. “I might as well get down to business; you
haven’t been calling,” Carmine blurted.
Joey shrugged. “If I had a reason to call, I would…”
They had run through this sad
conversation more than once. Carmine
leapt to his feet. “I do what I can with
what I got, Joe. I’ve been out there
busting my ass…”
“Keith called me,” Joey
said. “So I know why you’re here. Two months ago I warned you.”
Carmine really didn’t want
the lecture. “Joe…”
“Two months ago,” he
continued strongly, “I told you that your voice still sounds like shit. But you, King of all Egos, decided to go out for a musical two days after you
got out of lock-up!”
His control slipping, Carmine
heard his voice crack and hated himself for it.
“I’m working at it! I put in
overtime with vocal warm ups…”
Joe shook his head. “Rags, I’ve heard you sing. You gotta understand that whatever you had
back then is fucked right now…”
“You don’t know me…Joe,
listen to me, I’ve sounded worse…back when I did Golden Gloves a guy socked me
in the throat, and my doc thought I’d never be able to talk again. I had
laryngitis once and I couldn’t even swallow but I made it back…”
Joe stood up, his knuckles
whiter than the paper on his cluttered desk “You can’t fix a voice that’s as
fucked as yours, Ragusa, and we both know what fucked it ain’t laryngitis!”
Carmine gave his agent a
stone-cold glare. “I ain’t back on the
rails.”
Joe’s fist unclenched, his
knuckles turning mauve as the blood rushed back in. “I didn’t say that. But you gotta face facts – your upper
register is gone.”
“What makes you’re a music
expert?” Carmine knew that Joe couldn’t
tell a vibrator from a voice box.
“I was repping actors back
when you were pissing your pants,” Joe snorted.
Carmine smiled wanly. “Do you have anything for me?”
Joe’s picked through a few
dozen files. “A couple of commercial
shoots….don’t tell me you won’t do commercials, you don’t have a whole lot of
options.”
Carmine frowned – he hated
the local commercial racket and felt it was an easy paycheck for has-beens, but
taking a job on one was better than sitting on his ass waiting to be
evicted. He held out his hand for the
folder, and Joe’s jowly face cracked into an enormous grin.
***
Five hours later, exhausted
and sweaty from ‘jumping for joy’ for the New York State Lottery, Carmine rushed
back downtown to make his date at La Maccio’s with Shirley. Had he a better-developed sense of irony,
Carmine would have laughed at this repeat in routine from his Milwaukee salad
days. But in the bustle of the New York
City streets, Carmine’s sense of irony was the last thing to get a
workout.
She sat on the sidewalk,
sipping a tall glass of lemonade in a white tweed suit. His stomach did a teenaged summersault as he
rushed forward and pulled out a chair.
“SorryImlate,” he said, the words
tripping over each other to be heard.
She looked up and smiled her
satisfied-kitten smile. His stomach
hopped like a rabbit. “It’s all right –
did rehearsals run late?”
“You could say so…” he
realized his suit was mussed and sweat-dappled.
“I didn’t have time to change after the shoot, sorry if I’m ripe…”
“A shoot?” she squeaked. “You’re in a movie! Why didn’t you tell me? Wait until Laverne hears…”
He shook his head and picked
up a menu. “It was a commercial,” he
explained.
Without missing a beat she
said, “a commercial! What’s it for? When will it be on?”
Not to me, he
thought. “It’s for the New York Lottery
– probably in the fall,” he said quickly.
Their waitress – Evangeline, a slim blonde he knew a little too well
thanks to a pre-rehab bender – appeared at his side. “Two more lemonades, a water and….”
“A small roast beef with
potato chips,” Shirley cut in.
“…and a large grilled
chicken, no cheese,” Carmine threw in.
Evangeline smiled. “Wow, you guys know each other pretty well –
did you have a past life together?”
Their eyes locked – Shirley
said, quite pertly as Evangeline bent over the table, “several,” she grinned.
Carmine barked out a laugh as
a confused Evangeline went to place their orders. “Don’t laugh so loudly. If I knew where we were going in this life,”
Shirley replied, “I’d feel a bit less dizzy.”
His jaw dropped; was she asking for a commitment now? His expression betrayed him and Shirley
chuckled. “That wasn’t a request for a
proposal,” she bottomed out her lemonade.
“We’re part of the young generation – commitment’s just a hassle, man.”
He laughed at her
mock-blasé. “Commitment’s a hassle for
everyone but Lenny and Laverne.”
Shirley shook her head. “I still don’t believe that happened…”
“After kid number three it
was a lock…”
Shirley leaned in and
confessed, “Well, you know Laverne didn’t really believe in marriage – her
father’s break up with Edna shook her up, and when he passed a year after she
left Laverne went sort of wild…”
“I know – she used to call me
up from Las Vegas every week…” In the middle of his first marriage, Laverne’s
drunken mumblings at three in the morning were an unwelcome intrusion, but he’d
never let her know that.
“She’d write me the most
outlandish lies. It’s a wonder she
didn’t try to convince me she was working for the Las Vegas Ballet!”
“And you would’ve believed
her.”
Shirley smiled nostalgically.
“I would have. But Lenny, thankfully,
knows when she’s fibbing.”
“Poor Len – I’m surprised he
didn’t cream himself when he saw her dancing in that club.”
She didn’t scold him for his
crudeness. “He had more important things
on his mind – like getting her away from the biker molesting her! Those two started out like an episode of
Payton Place…now they’re the entire run of Father Knows Best.”
“Just what Laverne’s always
wanted.” Their lemonades arrived – Carmine stirred his thoughtfully. “I kept telling her she’s a romantic…”
“Laverne?” Shirley
snorted.
“Yeah, Laverne – she didn’t
want to miss out on Mister Perfect.”
“And her mister perfect was
Lenny – God help her…”
“Lenny’s good for her,”
Carmine defended.
“He is,” Shirley
begrudged. “I’ve come to respect
him. And the children are surprisingly
normal. Considering they’re half-Kosnowski.”
Carmine laughed aloud – they
both loved Len, but were willing to admit he was beyond flawed as a human
being. At that point the sandwiches
arrived, and they finished them apace.
Shirley insisted on paying for
the entire meal, a combined relief and surprise to Carmine. They began walking back in the direction of
Shirley’s office – he following blindly, his direction after dropping her off
unknown. “I have another fifteen minutes
to spare- can I walk you to your next gig?” Shirley asked.
“I’m not coming home,” he
confessed. “I got something else to do.”
She crossed her arms. “Carmine Ragusa, what are you hiding from
me?”
What was the use? She would hear him singing one day and
know. “I’m going to my voice coach.”
“A voice coach? Carmine, you’ve never needed a coach
before…what’s wrong?”
He leaned close to her and
whispered, “my voice is gone.”
She put a hand over her own
throat. “Carmine!”
“It was the partying,” he
confessed. “Once I got out of rehab I
realized my whole upper register’s gone.”
“And you’re still auditioning
for musicals…Carmine, you shouldn’t until you fix it.”
“I can’t fix it. It ain’t coming back, Shirl, I just gotta
face it.”
She reached into her handbag,
pulled out a green glitter-spangled card.
“Go here, and ask for Harlette,” she reached up, pecked him on the
cheek, then rushed up the street, “she’ll know how to help you!”
Carmine waved goodbye to her,
then alone in the crowd, turned over the card and read it:
VOICES IN YOUR HEAD
VOCAL LESSONS BY
HARLETTE
EAST 98th Street,
New York, New York
Appartment 14
Shirley had recommended the
woman – and Shirley was a reasonable, level-headed woman. What did he have to lose by tearing up this
little card and tossing it in the gutter?
His career.
Carmine headed underground
and took the first subway available to 98th street.
***
The building he encountered
as he turned onto 98th Street towered far over Carmine’s compact
body. It was box-shaped but heavily
ornamented, the gothic-style angels
bowing forward and pointing their gold-tipped horns toward the ground.
He nervously re-checked the
address, confirmed it quickly by comparing number, then forced himself to enter
the vestibule and press the buzzer connected to apartment 14.
“Hello?” a bell-clear voice
came through the speaker.
“Hi – I got your name from a
friend of mine,” he bit down his nervousness and finally said, “do you give
voice lessons?”
“For the past fifteen years,”
it replied, sounding quite weary.
Jumping into the void,
Carmine asked, “want to give one now?”
A pause. “You sound very forward,” the door
buzzed. “I like it.”
He ascended two flights in a
claustrophobic elevator, then journeying a maze of oatmeal-colored doors until
he found the right one. The air was
filled with the soft sweet sound of a piano – the tune unrecognizable. Persuaded, he knocked.
The tune stopped, a lock
slipped, the door opened. He was met by
a reed-shaped man in a pair of Japanese Silk pajamas, his short gray hair limp
and curling around the soft fold of his collar but freshly washed. None of this struck Carmine as unusual,
except for the dramatically-worn set of false eyelashes framing his snapping
blue eyes.
“Are you Mister Forward?” he
asked directly.
Without a snappy response,
Carmine thrust his hand out for a shaking.
“Carmine Ra-“
It was ignored. “I’m familiar with your work,” the man
retorted, finding a matchbook in his deep side pocket and pulling out a brown
cigarillo. “Do you smoke?”
“No..”
His teacher-to-be studied
Carmine’s face closely. “How odd. I’d best be blunt – I heard you on the Tony’s
and presumed you were suffering from tracheal cancer.”
Carmine winced. “I took that gig fresh out of Betty Ford,” he
admitted – no shame in repeating what his publicist had said to his hundreds of
fans. “I know it ain’t perfect, but I’m
willing to work…”
“I won’t touch your general
technique,” the man peered into his eyes.
“But you need to improve your control.
Do you understand that your upper register is completely corroded?”
Carmine winced but placed his
most professional smile back into place.
“I know...”
He paced around Carmine’s
rigid body. “We’ll have to lower your
natural range – from a soprano to a baritone – and work on your breath
control….” He sniffed the air. “And if
you have a shower, please use it!”
Carmine seized the first
argument to better avoid the later. “Hey
hey hold it – no one’s every complained about my breath control before…”
Another shrewd look. “You’re whistling on every high note. Damaged nasal cavities?”
Carmine smiled in an
embarrassed way. “It’s an epidemic in
this town.”
“We’ll find a way to change
your breathing technique,” he walked behind the piano and struck a note, then
looked up. “Close the door.”
Hypnotized by his teacher’s
authoritative presence, Carmine did as he was told.
***
Two hours passed by, but his
teacher wasn’t pleased. “Short
bursts! Short! He he he!” he demonstrated.
Carmine copied the sound but accidentally
inhaled a chunk of phlegm and coughed madly – through the noise he heard an
impatient groan. “Drink this,” his
teacher requested, then settled down on the piano bench. “You nearly had it, but you forgot to
swallow.”
He decided against an apology. “Let’s do it again.”
“All right – give me a low
D.”
He played the note and
Carmine followed it perfectly – this finally earned him a satisfied grin from
his teacher.
“You’re coming along,” a
glance at the watch and he put down the top of his piano. “And now you’re going to have to leave – I’m
rehearsing Missus Jacobi’s boy downstairs and it takes an eon to set up his
tuba,” he opened the door. “Are Fridays
and Mondays at three good for you?”
Carmine hated to be bustled
out of anywhere. “Yeah but – hey, what
should I call you?”
A sharp smile crossed his
teacher’s face. “Depends on how
religious you are.”
Carmine frowned. “Uh, I’m Catholic, but I’m not that married
to the church – heck, I can’t even get married in there anymore…What does that
have to do with it?”
“Let me put it this way: on
Sundays, I’m Jonathan Harlette, NYU Drama teacher...but on Saturdays, I’m
Harlette –chanteuse of the Griott Bleu,” he watched Carmine’s reaction
carefully.
Everyone knew what the Griott
Bleu was – a drag club. He battled for a
moment with his old-fashioned ethos before realizing that Jonathan had the key
to his biggest problem. “I’ll see you
around - Harlette,” Carmine said, feeling his new friend’s begrudgingly
respectful gaze on this back.
***
Carmine came back to the
Chelsea whistling to himself. He felt
like a real musician for the first time in a long time.
Better not waste this feeling, he decided – a quick stop home for a shave and a
shower and he headed back out to the nearest Indian restaurant in what he
called full “Rags Drag” – sharp leisure
suit, big dark glasses, freshly-rinsed smile.
Voyage To India was
tragically empty, but the staff humored him with a table up front.
The place hadn’t changed
since his marriage to Serafina, if you didn’t count the occasional ding or that
big rip in the cloth sculpture of Kali. Back
in the 60’s it had been flawless, as had been Serafina and her gold ticket of notoriety. Carmine recalled the hours he’d spent playing
the doting husband while fantasizing about his own big break.
That break had happened for
him, finally, a year after the divorce. A
casting call had gone up at his former agent’s office – they were casting
around for a new Tony in the first run of West Side Story. He
still remembered what it felt like to walk into the Columbia with his back
straight, his lungs fresh and unspoiled.
He had performed his ass off and was rewarded with a chance.
That was what led to his Tony
nomination – what had made him a recognizable face on Broadway.
What had led him to Eve…
He deliberately shook off
that old memory, managing a professional smile when his waiter came to the
table. He ordered something good and
spicy. Two hours later he left without
having given an autograph and a burning stomach, which distracted him from his
aching conscious.
***
Home again, Carmine grabbed another
shower, then turned on the TV. Brainless
sitcoms had never been his favorite kind of entertainment, but they were a
couple of noisy non-events before rolling into bed would make him sleep easier.
He glanced at the phone,
wishing it would ring as his mind drifted to Shirley. Beautiful, flexible Shirley…
It was too early to call
her. She needed a night of rest.
And so did he, Carmine
reminded himself as closed his eyes. He
needed a little time alone to prepare for the next round of auditions, before asking
her out for the weekend. Maybe they
could relive their dates of old and go necking at the movies. There
would be time to decide tomorrow….
And time to wonder how a
student veterinarian knew a queen from an infamous drag bar.