A Little Too Much (4 page)

He splays his long, slender hands on the table on either side of his cup as if to steady them and presses into the back of his seat. “I don’t even have words, Hilary. I don’t have words to adequately apologize for what Lorenzo and I did to you. You were so young . . .” He trails off with a shake of his head. “Too young,” he finally says, lower.

“So what is it you think you can do about it now?” I’m more bitter than I realized, and it bleeds through loud and clear into my words.

“Nothing,” he says, lowering his gaze and watching his fingertip trace the rim of his coffee cup. “There’s nothing I can say or do to make this right. All I can do is apologize. All I can do is tell you that I’ve prayed for you every day. I’ve—”

I bolt out of my chair, my palms slamming on the tabletop and splashing my tea. “You
prayed
for me? What the hell is that going to help? How the hell is praying for me going to make one fucking bit of difference?”

I’m only vaguely aware that the whole shop just went silent.

His face crumples as if I’d reached out and slapped him. Good. He deserves to hurt. “This was a mistake,” he finally says, standing. “It was wrong of me to open old wounds for the sake of easing my conscience. I’ll go.”

He turns and walks out of the shop, leaving me staring after him. Which makes me want to rip his head off. If anyone gets to walk out, it’s
me
. I storm after him and when I slam through the door onto the crowded sidewalk, he’s waiting at the crosswalk.

“There’s no fucking way you get to walk out on me!” I shout, charging after him. He turns and starts moving back toward me. “Do you hear me, Alessandro? You don’t get to walk away again!”

I stop in front of him. For several beats of my racing heart, we just stand here staring at each other. Then I reach up, not sure what I mean to do.

What I do is slap him. Hard. And it feels really good.

So I do it again.

He just stands there, taking it. He doesn’t flinch, or reach up to rub his face. He doesn’t step back, or grimace, or raise his hand to defend himself, or hit me back. He doesn’t tell me to stop.

So I slap him again.

His jaw tightens and he closes his eyes for just a second, like he’s relieved. But then I’m pinned in that charcoal gaze again. “Do whatever you need to do, Hilary.”

It’s like he’s asking for more . . . like he thinks he deserves it. But he doesn’t get to call the shots. This is my show, and I’m done.

I spin and stride to the Argo Tea without looking back. Our cups are still on the table, and when I drop into my seat and pick mine up, I realize my nerves are rock solid. No shake. Other than a faint sting in my palm, I’m fine. I’m suddenly proud of myself. If you don’t show weakness, then you’re not weak. First rule of survival.

That makes me the strongest sister around.

I
LEFT
A
LESSANDRO
standing on the sidewalk outside Argo Tea five days ago, but I can’t stop looking over my shoulder everywhere I go, thinking I see him lurking around corners or in doorways. I’ve never been this paranoid in my life.

Filthy’s is closed Mondays, so I usually spend my Monday nights at the 115th-Street library with my acting group. I can get lost here; become someone else. And if there was ever a time I needed to be someone else, it’s now.

Everyone in my group is black except for a few guys that come over from Columbia. The group facilitator, Quinn, is a retired professor from the theater department at City College. I’m pretty sure he’s always stoned, but he’s pretty cool, and he keeps the group fresh.

“Irish!” he calls as I step into the room. He thinks a mixed kid with reddish-black hair and freckles is hilarious. “You gonna rock our world with Rosalind tonight? Or is it going to be Katherine?”

It’s Shakespeare night, so we each have to do a dramatic reading of a Shakespearian monologue.

“You know me too well, Quinn,” I tell him, sliding into a seat in the circle. The community room is always freezing in the winter, so I keep my jacket on. There are usually about fifteen of us, and about half the group is already here, chattering in their seats. The Columbia guys, Nathan and Mike, are talking and laughing about Mike’s weekend hookup. Across the circle are two sisters from Harlem, Kamara and Vee, who always come together. They play off each other really well, and always leave me laughing.

I’ve been coming here pretty regularly for the last two years, since I lost my agent. At first, I was hoping for connections, but it didn’t take long to figure out that wasn’t going to happen. I’m probably the most experienced person here, other than Quinn. But I kept coming back for the people. And the escape. I get to come here and be someone else, even if it’s just for a little while. I can put on my character and just forget myself.

“So what you got for us tonight?” Quinn asks, nudging me with his bony elbow as he lowers his scrawny old frame into the seat next to me.

I give him a sly smile. “You’re just going to have to wait and see.”

He reminds me of my grandpa, always joking with me, except he looks nothing like Grandpa did. Grandpa was a fair-skinned redhead. Quinn is black as night, with gray fuzz and a voice like James Earl Jones.

He laughs and pokes my shoulder as a few more of our group trickle through the door. “Someday I’m gonna be able to say, ‘I knew her when . . .’ ”

“ . . . she got blacklisted from Broadway for running down a director during a dance routine,” I finish for him.

“I know you can sing, Irish, but I’m not sure why you think you have to do musicals.”

“You
know
why. The
Idol
thing is my only in. If it’s not a singing part, I can’t even get the audition.”

“Dumbass business we’re in,” he grumbles.

When the group is assembled, Quinn stands and gets us started with Theseus’s famous “More Strange Than True” monologue from Act Five of
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream
. Everyone in turn stands in the center of the circle and acts out their monologue. When we get to the Harlem girls, they stand together.

“Monologues are boring . . .” the heavier one, Kamara, says.

“So we’re doing the scene from Act Two of
The Taming of the Shrew
, where Petruchio is trying to get into Katherine’s pants,” the taller one, Vee, says.

Kamara steps in front of her. “I’m Petruchio.”

“And I’m Katherine,” Vee says.

Quinn rolls his hand in a circle. “Just get on with it.”

Kamara clears her throat and stands straight, holding out her hand to Vee. “Good morrow, Kate; for that’s your name, I hear.”

Vee makes a disgusted face. “Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:

They call me Katherine that do talk of me.”

“You lie, in faith; for you are call’d plain Kate, and bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst.”

Kamara keeps rolling, pouring it on as she finishes the long list of all Kate’s virtues. As they banter back and forth, everyone around the circle is on the edge of laughing. When they finish, they sit with a bow and flourish, and everyone claps. But then the next three girls do utterly uninspired Juliet monologues and bring the whole room down. By the time we get all the way back around the circle to me, everyone is yawning.

“What you got, Irish?” Quinn says, elbowing me. “Time to lay it all on the table.”

“Keep your bony elbows to yourself, old man.” I stand and move to the center of the circle. “So, this is Rosalind . . . or her male alter ego, Ganymede, really, trying to convince Phoebe to love Silvius instead of him . . . or her . . . or whatever. It’s from Act Three, scene five of
As You Like it
.”

I close my eyes, feeling Rosalind seep into my bloodstream.

“And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and all at once,

Over the wretched?” A tingly rush prickles my skin as I open myself up to her, letting her have me.

“What though you have no beauty as by my faith, I see no more in you than without candle may go dark to bed, must you be therefore proud and pitiless? Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?” I ask, raising my voice and lifting my hand, pressing it into my chest as Rosalind starts to use my body as hers.

“I see no more in you than in the ordinary of nature’s sale-work. Od’s my little life!”

I open my eyes and move around the circle. Quinn smiles and shakes his head as I glide past.

“I think she means to tangle my eyes too. No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it: ’Tis not your inky brows,” I say, running a fingertip over Nathan’s, “your black silk hair,” I add, my hand raking through his waves. Mike elbows him and I see him blush. “Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream, that can entame my spirits to your worship.”

This is the part I love about acting—when I totally escape into the character—someone who’s not me. I let Rosalind have me, body and soul, as she tells us about how foolish men are. But as she finishes by telling Pheobe to stop pining over her male alter ego and take what she’s got right in front of her, my real life creeps back into my thoughts.

Just like in Shakespeare, when you fall head over heals in love with someone you don’t even know, it’s never going to end well. Love killed Juliet when she was thirteen. I made it all the way to fourteen before it nearly killed me.

Chapter Four

J
ESS IS GOING
to get this one. I can feel it. Chalk it up to karma or whatever you want. It’s just for a tiny, short-run off-off Broadway show, but if it does well, there’s the possibility of going on the road. LA and maybe Vegas. Vegas could be kind of fun. They’re taking three for the chorus and she was by far the best. Me, not so much, but I’m not surprised. It’s the read where I usually shine, and there’s no read for this part. At least this time, I’m spared the humiliation of getting rejected right in front of everyone. They’re not posting callbacks until tomorrow. It’s not until I grab my bag that I notice Brett in the back. He’s talking to the director.

“We’re still on for tonight?” Jess asks me, pulling my attention away from trying desperately to read the director’s lips.

“Yeah. Club Sixty-nine, right? On Ludlow? Ten?”

“Perfect. Mind if I invite some other friends too?”

I give her a quick, sweaty hug, so I can watch over her shoulder without being rude, as Brett knuckle bumps the director. “It’s your party. Invite whoever you want.” I pull back as Brett makes his way to the stage. “Gotta go, but see you tonight.”

I turn and Brett is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “What did he say?” I mutter as I make my way down.

He shrugs. “He might be able to find something for you.”

I can’t help myself. I leap off the last stair onto him and wrap my legs around his waist, grinning like a moron. “Thank you!”

He grins back. “Don’t thank me yet, babe. But I like the enthusiasm.”

He turns for the side door with me still clinging to him like a monkey, but then I see the director giving us a look. I slide off Brett and try to appear . . . something other than crazy.

“See ya, Tim,” Brett calls with a wave as we head for the door.

The director lifts a hand. “I’ll text you about the audition.”

“What audition?” I ask once we’re on the sidewalk.

“Something he thought you might be better suited for.”

Great. “Which means he’s not giving me a part.”

We weave through the crowded sidewalk toward the subway and he loops his arm around my waist. “You don’t know that.”

“So what’s this other thing?”

“It’s a recast for someone who got knocked up in
When You Least Expect It
. Says he’ll get you on the audition list.”

I feel my eyes go wide. “At the Elektra? Are you
shitting
me?”

He grins as he wends us through a swarm of high-school kids in matching orange T-shirts who are clogging the sidewalk. “As far as I know, no, I am not shitting you.”

“But that’s off-Broadway. Open run!”

“Last I looked.” He’s all smug now, trying to hide his self-satisfied smirk.

But then reality comes crashing down on me. “I’m not going to get it.”

He tugs me to his side. “Tim says the dancing is less choreographed for that one so they’re basically looking for someone with a hot body, because there’s a partial nude . . . which you have covered,” he adds, squeezing my ass, “and a voice, which you also got.”

“When is the audition?”

“He just heard about it so he’s not sure. After Thanksgiving, maybe. Said he’d talk to the director and get you on the list, then let me know.”

I’m not even going to let myself believe I might get this. But . . .
holy shit
!

We jump on the subway, but when we get to Columbus Circle, I stand. “I’m gonna get some tea and run an errand. I’ll be home in a while.”

“I’ve got rehearsal in a few hours. Don’t keep me waiting too long,” he says with that sexy smile and raised eyebrows.

I climb the stairs and head up Central Park West to Sixty-second Street, where my feet slow. I stand on the corner and stare at the building. The West Side YMCA is in a really old brick building just up from Central Park. I’ve walked past this intersection a thousand times, but I’ve never had a reason to turn up Sixty-second. I don’t have a reason now either . . . at least not one that makes sense, but I do it anyway.

“What am I even doing here?” I ask out loud, but that doesn’t stop my feet from carrying me over the threshold. Through a second set of wooden doors is a reception area. I almost turn around, but instead, I head to the desk.

A young Asian man is behind the counter, laughing into a cell phone. I wait a few minutes until he hangs up. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“Um . . . maybe. There’s a guy who I think volunteers here . . . Alessandro Moretti?”

He just looks at me a second like he’s expecting more. When I just stare back, he says, “ ‘Here’ is a big place. You’ll have to be more specific.”

I shrug. “I don’t have anything more specific.”

“You can try the gym,” he finally says, looking at the screen of his cell phone. “Take the elevator to the third floor.” He waves his hand at the corridor as he sticks the phone to his ear.

I turn and head in the direction he indicated and find the elevator. When the door opens on three, there is a desk with another Asian guy who could be the last guy’s brother. “Hi,” I say as I step up to the desk. He lifts his face out of the book he’s reading and stares at me blankly. “Do you know if there’s a guy named Alessandro Moretti that volunteers here?”

Finally, something registers on his face. It might be curiosity. “Yeah.”

When he doesn’t elaborate, I ask, “Do you know if he’s maybe here? Now?”

He sets his book facedown on the desk. “He’s here.”

After another awkward beat, I lean on the counter. “Do you think maybe I could see him?”

He points to a staircase. “Up one flight. He’s in the basketball gym.”

I find out that’s not as easy as it sounded when I get up one flight and find a weight room first, and then a pool. I look around both places for someone who looks like they might belong here. I finally see an older Hispanic man who is probably a custodian coming out of a locker room.

“Um . . . hi.”

The man looks up at me and smiles. “Hello.”

Why am I nervous? I force myself to stop fidgeting. “Where is the basketball gym?”

“If you go straight through the women’s locker room,” he says, indicating the door just down from where we are, “you’ll find it on the other side.”

I catch myself worrying my lower lip and make myself stop. “Thanks.”

He smiles again and turns for the stairs.

I weave through the women’s locker room and push through the door at the other end into a gym with a running track on a mezzanine above it. There’s a group of four black kids shooting hoops at one end, and in the corner under the mezzanine is a guy in a wifebeater, loose black athletic shorts, and boxing gloves, punching a hanging bag. His skin shimmers under a sheen of sweat, and I catch my gaze wandering over the ripple of muscles in his arms as he lashes out at the bag, a blistering rhythm of hard lefts and rights. I’m not sure what that bag ever did to him, but he’s clearly intent upon killing it.

As my eyes trace the lines of the veins of his forearm, I realize I’m not breathing. Nothing is as hot as a great pair of man-arms, and these are some of the sexiest arms I’ve ever seen.

The problem is, they’re attached to Alessandro.

The whistle from the group of boys on the court breaks my daze, and I realize I’m on the edge of drooling. It also catches Alessandro’s attention. He turns, and when he sees me standing near the doors, his whole body tenses. After a long beat, he tugs off his boxing gloves, tossing them to the floor near the bag, and walks over. By the time he reaches me, I’m just about ready to bolt . . . or trace my finger down one of those arm veins, pulsing under perfect, sweaty skin.

What was I thinking, coming here?

He stops in front of me—out of my reach, I can’t help but notice—and his lips press into a line.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to slap you . . .” I tell him. “Unless you deserve it.”

“I think we both know I deserve it.” He looks at me a long time and I have to pull my eyes away from his. I’m just now remembering a person could get lost in his deep gaze. “Is there something you wanted?”

I shrug and run my fingers over the dark wooden door frame next to me. “I was in the neighborhood.”

That gets a flicker of a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Then I’m glad you stopped by.”

“Sorry I slapped you,” I blurt, not even sure where it came from, but as I say it, I know it’s true.

“I’m sorry I gave you reason to.” The skin around his eyes crinkles as he looks at me, as if he’s trying to see into my head. “Would you like to get something to drink?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He gestures with a nod of his head back toward the locker rooms. “I’ll meet you at the central staircase.”

I nod and move back through the locker room in the direction I came. A minute later, Alessandro emerges through the door of the men’s locker room, a gray hoodie covering those amazing arms.

He motions with a sweep of his arm toward the stairs, and when we get to the first floor, he directs me into a small café there.

“Help yourself to whatever you’d like,” he says with a nod at the drink case.

I slide open the door and pluck a bottle of Diet Coke off the shelf. He chooses a container of Muscle Milk and we settle in at a table near the window.

He crosses one ankle over the other knee, then just looks at me for a long, uncomfortable minute. “When I left, you were waiting for the courts to award your sister custody,” he finally says.

“Yeah.” I’m not going to tell him that, for half of the time in between, I was in rehab. I don’t really remember much about it anyway, and even if I did, it’s none of his business. “I moved in with her about five months after you left.”

He nods. “You were happy there?”

“She and Jeff have always been great to me.” And that’s all he’s getting. His turn to answer some questions. “How did Lorenzo die?” And that’s it, I realize. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I need to know.

His eyes flash to me, dark and guarded, as he stiffens. It takes him a minute to unclamp his jaw, and when he does, his voice is low. “How much do you remember about Lorenzo?”

I remember he hurt me. I remember he dealt drugs. I remember he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. “He was tough. I remember he hit Ms. Jenkins.”

Alessandro nods slowly. “He was thirteen when our father was killed in the 9/11 attacks, and he’d already been in trouble. Our father was able to rein him in, but after he was gone, and our mother became . . . ill, there was no one he felt accountable to. We ended up in juvenile detention because Lorenzo decided to rob a street vendor. It was a habit he never broke. He was shot and killed in Toulon, France, two years ago during a store robbery.”

“Were you with him?”

His face pulls tight as he shakes his head. “No. He left my grandparents’ shortly after turning eighteen . . . just a few months after we’d arrived in Corsica. We never heard from him again until we were notified he’d been killed.”

“Why didn’t you just move back with your mother when you got out of juvie? Why go to Corsica with your grandparents?”

He spins his drink absently with his fingers and I can’t help notice his hands. They’re strong and sure, and his fingers are long. “Our mother attempted suicide while Lorenzo and I were in juvenile detention,” he answers. “She had never been well after our father was killed. Her parents brought her home to Corsica to care for her.”

“Suicide?” That snaps me out of my sexy-hand daze. Did he tell me that? Back then? There’s so much I really don’t remember. I feel suddenly cold and wrap my arms around myself, shuddering at the memory that surfaces. “But she’s okay?”

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “She survived, but she’s never been the same.”

My guts are in a hard knot and I’m having trouble taking a full breath. This is all hitting a little too close to home. I shift in my chair and veer the conversation away from his mother and her botched suicide. “Corsica . . . Rome. That sounds pretty amazing. Why would you want to come back here?”

He hesitates a long second, and when I look up at him, his expression is guarded. “My life took an unexpected turn this spring. When I left training for the priesthood my—”

“Whoa! Back up a sec. The
priesthood
?”

He rubs his forehead and nods. “I graduated seminary last year. I was days away from my ordination this April when I changed my mind.”

“You wanted to become a priest?” It comes out sharp and cynical. I can’t even begin to get my head around the kid I knew becoming a man of the cloth.

His gaze goes all intense and I swear to God it’s like he’s trying to see into my skull. “I’ve changed since you knew me, Hilary.”

“When I knew you, you were dealing drugs and ruining my life!” It slices out of my mouth like a blade before I even think it, but there’s some satisfaction when I see it hit the mark. His piercing gaze clouds and he won’t meet my eyes.

He picks up his drink and takes a sip. “As I’ve already said, I’m sorry for my part in what happened to you. I’ve always regretted it.”

He’s regretted it. He’s regretted
me
. Fine. It’s not like that’s news.

“So, why did you change your mind? Why aren’t you a priest?”

“I fell in love.”

Somewhere deep inside me, a knife twists. “So . . . you’re with someone?”

He shakes his head slowly as something like chagrin flashes over his face, but it’s gone as fast. “No. We’re not together.”

“Why? I mean, if you gave up the priesthood . . .”

“She was in love with someone else,” he says, watching his finger trace circles on the tabletop. “But she was the pebble in my shoe that made me see what I’d dogmatically pursued for my entire adult life wasn’t my path. She made me question myself and realize I don’t have the discipline it takes for that life. I’ve never had that kind of control,” he adds, his dark gaze locking on mine.

“You love her.”
He loves her
. I can’t explain the sudden burst of bitterness I feel at the thought, except that it explodes out of the deepest layers of my being.

“I did,” he says. “She’s an extraordinary person.”

Suddenly, I want to make him suffer the way I did when he left me, and I know just the thing. I turn back and smile at him. “It’s my friend Jess’s birthday. I’m taking her to Club Sixty-nine on the Lower East Side tonight. You should come.”