Playing With Her Heart (4 page)

She turns on her heels,
heads to the door and saunters inside. It feels like a challenge.
Maybe even a dare. I shake my head, knowing better, but following her
anyway.

She’s not easy to
resist.

I find her at the
hostess stand, telling a black jacketed maitre’d that it’ll be
just one for the bar. I march up to her and place a hand on her back
so she knows I’m here. Her eyes meet mine as I touch her, but her
gaze is steady and she doesn’t seem to mind the contact.
“Actually,” I say, cutting in. “That’ll be two.”

“Right this way
then,” the maitre’d says and guides us past tables full of
suited-up theatergoers, men in jackets and women in evening dresses,
chattering about the shows they’re about to see. There’s a table
with two guys who look like Wall Street types dining with their
wives. Jill walks past them, and one of the guys lingers on her much
longer than he should. The woman with him doesn’t notice, but I do
and I give him a hard stare. He turns back to his plate of shrimp
instantly.

At the bar, I pull out
a stool for her. She thanks me, then shucks off her coat and crosses
her legs. Her legs look as good in jeans as they probably do out of
them. She has that kind of a figure—athletic and trim. Probably
flexible too. Damn, this woman might be all my weaknesses.

I’m grateful for the
caricature of James Gandolfini hanging above the mirror behind the
bar. I glance at him instead, then give his drawn likeness a salute.

“One of the finest,”
I say as I sit down.

“He was indeed,”
she says with a nod.

The bartender comes
over. “What can I get you tonight?”

I look to Jill, letting
her go first. “Vodka and soda. Belvedere, please.”

He nods. “And you
sir?”

“Glenlivet on the
rocks.”

“Coming right up.”

Then she looks at me,
her blue eyes sparkling and full of so much happiness. “I can’t
believe it! I scored a Broadway show. Do you have any idea how happy
I am?”

“Yeah,” I say,
playfully. “It’s kind of written all over your face.”

“Well, I’m not
going to hide it. I think I might light up Times Square tonight with
my happiness. And now I’m having drinks at Sardi’s with my
director!”

“Don’t tell anyone.
I don’t want word to get out that I’m consorting with the
talent,” I joke.

She leans in closer,
makes her lips pouty, and kind of shimmies her shoulders. “Oh, I
get to keep your secrets already.”

My breath hitches with
her near me like that. Rationally, I know it’s the moment. I know
it’s the excitement of landing her first show that’s making her
so flirty, so playful, but still, she’s got such a sexy way about
her that she could be trouble for my heart. I don’t know that I
should even try to keep up with the banter right now. She could reel
me in, and I’ve vowed to stay away from actresses, outside of work.
They are wonderful, and talented, and often too gorgeous to be real,
like this one. But some of them also have a way of using you because
of what you can do for them.

There’s the rub, for
ya.

“I assure you, I have
very few interesting secrets,” I say, trying my best to bow out of
the flirting right now, even though I want to take it to many other
levels already.

Thankfully, the
bartender arrives with the drinks.

“One Glenlivet and
one Belvedere.”

“Thank you,” I say.
He nods and heads off to take an order at the end of the bar.

I reach for my drink
and am about to offer a toast when I see he’s given me hers and
vice versa. “I believe this is yours.” I hand her the drink. She
takes the glass from my hand, and for the briefest of moments her
fingers touch mine. I don’t even have the time to think about
something else. It’s so fast, but it ignites something dark in me,
the side of myself that she should never know about, the way I like
it. But that side is there, and my eyes immediately stray down her
body, to the curve of her hips, to the shape of her breasts under her
sweater. Then she bends down to reach for her purse hanging on a hook
under the bar and I’m watching her, memorizing the way she moves,
and it’s as if I can’t stop imagining her bent over, back bowed,
ready. The things I would say to her if we were alone like that. The
things I would whisper harshly in her ear. The things she’d let me
do to her.

I run my hand across my
jaw. I need to get it together if I’m going to work with her.

I remind myself that I
am made of iron and I can lock up any dangerous thoughts about her
and focus solely on work. The matter isn’t helped when she
retrieves lip gloss from her purse and reapplies it, so I’m
instantly wondering how her lips taste. How they’d look on me. She
tucks the tube away then holds up her vodka and soda.

Thank God she’s
done touching up her lips.

“To your first show
on the Great White Way,” I say and we clink glasses. I toss out a
harmless question so I can return to being a cool, collected
professional. “What was the first musical you ever saw?”

“
Fiddler on the
Roof
,” she says and then hums a few bars from “If I Were a
Rich Man.”

“You make a good
Tevye,” I say dryly.

“You’ll keep me in
mind for that role if you ever direct a revival?”

“Absolutely. You’ll
be top of the list on my call sheet.”

“Can you even imagine
what the critics would say?” Jill gestures wide as if she’s
calling out a huge headline. “Hotshot director casts chick in
iconic dude role.”

“Hotshot director?”

A tinge of red floods
her cheeks, and she waves her hand in front of her face. “I didn’t
mean anything…”

“It might strike you
as crazy, but I’m 100 percent fine with the hotshot title,” I
say, and take a long swallow of my drink. “By the way. I saw you in
Les Mis
.”

“You did?” she
asks, and she seems genuinely surprised.

I nod. “Yes. That’s
why I called you in.”

“I thought it was the
producer who saw me.”

I laugh. “No. Though
I’m sure he took credit for it. But I was the one who saw you. And
I just want you to know I don’t think I will ever see that show
again without picturing you as Eponine.”

“Really?” Her blue
eyes widen, and I love the way she seems so truly happy with the
compliment. I love that she’s not jaded, she’s not full of
herself. She’s still hopeful, and it’s so attractive. It’s part
of why I called her in after seeing the off-Broadway revival of
Les
Mis
, where the show had been modernized into a rock opera. She
was everything I’d ever wanted to see in an actress. She made me
believe. I never doubted for one second that she was Eponine, and
that’s the toughest thing to nail, but the one thing I want most to
see. No, it’s the thing I want to
feel
. I want to feel the
walls of the real world collapse around me, so I can
believe
in the illusion.

“Every actress who
can sing wants to play Eponine,” I say. “But it’s incredibly
hard to pull off the feisty Eponine, along with the love-struck
Eponine, and then be dying Eponine on top of it all. Most actresses
can handle one of the personas, sometimes two. You’ll see someone
who can sing the hell out of “On My Own” or fawn all over Marius
and then do a damn good death scene. But they can’t manage the
playful side of her. But you, Jill,” I say and I pause because
there’s something about her name that sounds too good on my lips,
like I want to say it more, and in different ways, and in different
places, and in a desperate voice too, and a hot and hungry one,
and…
fuck me now.
She’s looking at me with the glass held
in one hand and her lips slightly parted, and she’s hooked on every
word. The moment is more intoxicating than it should be and threatens
to cloud my cool head in a haze of heat. I tell myself to turn it off
for her. It should be business. It should be a compliment.

Besides, I didn’t
cast her because she’s fuck-able. I cast her because she’s
fucking amazing. I try to keep it on the level as I finish, “You
were brilliant. You were stunning. You were everything and more.”

As I say this, her face
lights up. She might not know I’ve failed miserably at being
business-like, but I know, and that’s the problem. I pride myself
on control, and within mere hours of casting her I’m treading close
to breaking the first rule of directing, and the second one too.

I return to the earlier
topic—
Fiddler on the Roof
—as we finish our drinks, knowing
a quick chat about that show will help me shut it down. The second
she puts down her empty glass I call for the check, pay, and say
goodnight.

Then I head to the
boxing gym near my home in Tribeca, and I spend the next hour working
out all my frustrations on a punching bag.

Jill

The next night my
roommate Kat swirls her straw in a chocolate milkshake, looking at
the drink with disdain. “Not the same. These milkshakes are not the
same as they are at Tino’s Diner.”

“I know. But you
won’t let me go there anymore.”

“Well, obviously,”
she says, and I can’t argue because the last time we went to our
favorite diner for chocolate milkshakes and fries the creep who was
stalking her and her boyfriend followed her there. Kat was pretty
sure he had a knife in his pocket. Honestly, if he’d pulled that
thing on me I’d have kneed him in the crotch so fast he’d have
crumpled to the floor. I have two older brothers and they beat me up
when I was younger then taught me to fight when I started filling out
in the boobs and hips department. They didn’t have the chance
to beat up too many boys, because I only had eyes for one boy back in
high school. Aaron—he was on the swim team, and we were together my
entire junior year, and everything was wonderful for a while. But
given how it all ended, I would do just about anything to rewind time
and change things. To have stayed away. For his sake.

“So we’ll just have
to keep experimenting with all the diners in Chelsea and midtown and
elsewhere to find a replacement milkshake,” I say to Kat.

“Obviously. Besides,
we’re going to be celebrating every day, right, Miss Next Winner of
a Best Actress Tony?”

Narrowing my eyes, I
brandish a French fry at Kat, pretending I’m ready to chuck it at
her. She leans away. “You think I haven’t learned by now how to
avoid your projectile French fries?”

I hold up another one
for emphasis. “Don’t. Jinx. Me. You know my rules about jinxing.”

“Yeah, you didn’t
even tell me you were auditioning until you got the callback because
you were so superstitious.” I look away. The truth is, there are a
lot of things I don’t tell Kat. A lot of things I don’t tell
anyone. A lot of things I make up. It’s a good thing I can act,
because sometimes my whole life feels like one. “And now you’ve
gone and won a role in a Broadway show.”

“With Patrick
Carlson,” I say excitedly.

“And in a Frederick
Stillman show, and I know he’s your fave.”

“And let’s not
forget Davis Milo is directing,” I add, suddenly feeling the need
to point him out too, especially after the drink with him last night.
I’m not quite sure what came over me, asking my director to have a
drink and then practically daring him to follow me into Sardi’s,
but I was pretty much floating on cloud nine last night, and there he
was in my vicinity, giving me the best news of my life.

Not to mention, he’s
almost too gorgeous for words. I’d never seen him up close and
personal before yesterday. Sure, I’ve seen him while watching the
Tonys and the Oscars, and I’ve heard other actresses go dreamy-eyed
while talking about him. But there in the bar with him last night, I
could feel it. I get why women dig him. He has
undress me
eyes. He looks like the kind of man who doesn’t ever break your
gaze. Who walks across the room, all crazy possessive and marks you
with a territorial sort of kiss. Pushes you against the wall, cages
you in with his arms, and claims you. I wonder what it would be like
to be kissed like that.

“I wonder if he’ll
bring his Oscar to a rehearsal,” Kat muses, breaking my naughty
reverie. I dismiss the thoughts of Davis, since Patrick is the man I
plan to focus on. “I love that movie he did where he won it.
Ransom
.”

“Want me to tell him
you’re a fan?”

“Oh, please do.
Anyway, I need all the details about the audition scene with Patrick.
I want to hear about the kiss with the love of your life.” Her eyes
go wide and she motions with her hands for me to spill the details.
“Does he know you’re the same gal who once sent flowers to him
and asked him out?”

I blush. “No,” I
say, red creeping into my cheeks. “I hope to hell he doesn’t
remember.”

When I was seventeen,
Patrick Carlson took over the starring role in
Guys and Dolls
at the Gershwin Theater with forty-eight hours notice. The lead actor
had laryngitis and the understudy contracted a bronchial infection,
causing the producers to cancel four performances. In one of those
classic “The Show Must Go On” Broadway moments Patrick was called
in, given two full days to rehearse, learn the staging, and the
numbers, and take over the role for one week. I’d done the show at
my school the year before and we lived in Brooklyn, so I bought one
nosebleed ticket. I was on the edge of my balcony seat the entire
time, mesmerized. I was sure he locked eyes with me when he sang that
gorgeous duet I knew by heart, “I’ve never been in love before.”

Ironic, that it was
that song. Ironic because, maybe, if I’d loved enough, things would
have been different with Aaron.

But I could love
Patrick in a pure sort of way that wouldn’t hurt either of us.

At the end of
Guys
and Dolls
, I clapped and cheered and shouted “Bravo” during
the curtain call, then hung out by the stage door along with other
fans. I joined the crowd, waiting patiently in a sky blue dress that
matched my eyes, and strappy sandals. When the
group of men and women asking him to sign Playbills thinned and it
was only me, I said hello.