Music, from a Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell CD, played softly over the surround sound in the hotel suite, and Roz was in her feelings.  After showering and putting on her shirt-styled night gown, she poured herself a glass of wine at the full-sized bar, walked aimlessly around the spacious suite, and then leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over a panoramic view of the city that never sleeps.   It was late, and getting later, but it was lit up like a carnival.  She usually loved coming back to her suite to relax after a long evening of rehearsals.  The presidential suite was Mick’s personal suite, and nobody was allowed to spend any nights there except she and Mick.  It had been his home away from home for years, and was now hers, too.  She usually loved standing at that same window and enjoying the view.  But tonight, she couldn’t even enjoy her wine.

Instead of forcing the issue, she decided to forget the view and get to work.

She walked back into the heart of the luxurious suite, sat on the sofa in front of the laptop she had on the coffee table, and lifted open the screen.  She pulled her reading glasses out of a case, put them on, and then sipped her wine as she continued where she had left off before she left for rehearsals: reviewing the monthlies within her talent agency; an agency she ran in Philadelphia when she wasn’t committed to a show.

What concerned her wasn’t the amount of money they were pulling in: the numbers were decent.  They now had a few A-list celebrities who were driving up their money totals.  But what concerned her most was the client list.  They had bled nearly twenty percent, year-over-year, of the number of clients signed with the Graham Agency.  That was an incredible drop off.  And Roz knew it was because of her divided attention.  She was the Graham Agency.  Without her hustle, and presence on a daily basis, her agency was suffering.  She leaned back on her sofa and shook her head.  All of those sacrifices she made, to keep her agency going while she immersed herself in her acting career once more, wasn’t panning out on either end.

Early in her career they used to call her Hard Luck Roz: the little lady with the big talent who never could catch a break.  Then Mick came along, with his money and his enormous influence, and kickstarted her career.  But now that she was on her own, working for other people again, she felt as if she was right back at square one.  She felt as if she was Hard Luck Roz once more, trying to prove herself all over again.  And after all these years, to have to prove yourself again and again and again was a terrible feeling.

She sat her wine glass on the table and leaned back up just as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell began singing their Ain’t No Mountain High Enough duet over the stereo.  She strolled through her current client list to get to the bottom, where the names of those who opted not to re-sign with her agency were listed.  But before she could make it to the bottom, she heard the door of the suite began to open.  Her eyes stretched wide over the rim of her glasses and she was about to jump to her feet.  Nobody had carte blanche to barge into her suite like that.  Not even Deuce.  But when she saw Mick’s big, muscular body coming through that door; when she saw that it was Mick barging in, she relaxed.  He most definitely had total access.

But despite his access, Mick entered the suite slowly.  He was staring at his wife the entire time.  It had been just under two hours since he got that call from Deuce.  Enough time for him to tell his daughter to come and stay with the twins, and then hop in his Ferrari and make the hour-and-a-half drive to New York City in about an hour.  He would have flown in his private jet, but for the time it would have taken to alert his pilot, and for his pilot to get to the airstrip, submit his flight itinerary, wait to get the all-clear from the Tower, and then the hour it would have taken to fly into LaGuardia, Mick could drive and already be there.  And given the speed in which he made it there, he was right.

But as soon as he saw Rosalind, staring up at him through those nerdy reading glasses, her beautiful eyes too wide open to be merely curious, he knew it was all worth it.  He knew the trip was needful.

He placed his hands inside his trouser pockets of the same suit he had been sleeping in just a couple hours earlier, as he made his way up to her.  She continued to stare at him as he sat down beside her, leaned all the way back, and stretched out his long legs.  He was going to move at her pace, and not his own.

But her pace quickened when the smell of his familiar cologne, and the sudden nearness of his big body, caused those emotions to bubble back up. And she couldn’t help it.  She turned to her husband, and threw herself into his arms.

Mick pulled her closer and held her tightly for a long time.  He could feel her pain as if it was completely his own.  No words were spoken, and no sound was heard except the music in the background: Marvin and Tammi singing Ashford and Simpson’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough:

“No wind, no rain, nor winters cold

Can stop me, baby.

No, no baby…

If you’re ever in trouble

I’ll be there on the double

                                                    Just send for me, oh baby!”                                 

 

My love is alive

Way down in my heart

Although we are miles apart.

If you ever need

A helping hand

I’ll be there on the double

Just as fast as I can.

 

Don’t you know that there

Ain’t no mountain high enough

Ain’t no valley low enough

Ain’t no river wide enough

To keep me from getting to you, babe!

 

Mick closed his eyes.  No mountain was ever going to keep him from Rosalind.  He’d never admit it aloud, even if his life depended on it, but she was his baby.  She was his soulmate.  She had become the love of his life.

The song ended, and another song, If This World Were Mine, began playing by the time Roz leaned back up and out of Mick’s arms.

Mick missed her as soon as her body moved, but he was determined to keep it at her pace, not his own.  He handed her his handkerchief.

She accepted it, lifted her glasses, and wiped away the few tears that were trying to escape.  She remained leaned forward, on the edge of the sofa, but then she removed her glasses altogether, tossed them on the table, and closed her laptop.  Work, now that Mick was there, was over for the night.

She knew Deuce had phoned Mick, and that was why he had come.  But what blew her mind was the fact that he would come all this way to New York, and for what?  Just because Deuce told him that she was upset?

She remained on the edge of her seat, but she turned back and looked at Mick.  He was no sentimentalist nor a particularly romantic man, but he always found a way to get to her whenever she needed him.  Everybody warned her that Mick could not be depended on.  Don’t put your heart in his hands, because he would surely fumble it, they insisted.  But her life, and her experience with Mick had turned out to be everything they said it couldn’t be.

Besides, Roz thought, he wasn’t just dependable.  He was also a great father to their twins and was attempting to be a better father to his grown children from previous relationships; children he failed in the past.  But he further had that added advantage of being gorgeous too.  And sexy as hell to Roz.  She even looked down, between his legs, before she looked back up into his eyes.  “The children okay?” she asked him.

“They’re fine.  Gloria’s staying with them until I get back.”

Roz didn’t respond.  She knew nothing was wrong with their children.  She knew that wasn’t why he came.

He knew it too.  “Deuce called me,” he admitted.

Roz nodded.  “I assumed as much.”

Mick stared at her with that hard, glassy-eyed look he gave her whenever he was assessing her.  He was getting a hard-on just being near her, which was something he just couldn’t help anymore.  But her sexiness and his constant need to want to fuck her wasn’t what he was focusing on.  It was that look in her eyes that concerned him.  For she had that hard-soft, happy-sad look that he sometimes saw in her.  It was a look that worried him because it only seemed to rear its head whenever she had to deal with the unpleasantries of that dog-eat-dog world they called show business.  Which was, as far as Mick was concerned, the business they showed their asses in.  “He said you had been crying.”

Roz wasn’t going to deny it.  But that didn’t mean it was an easy thing to admit.  She even frowned as she spoke.  “Yes,” she said.  “I was.”

Mick stared at her.  He wanted to pull her in his arms again, but he knew she wasn’t quite ready yet.  She didn’t want his pity.  She would recoil if he pitied her.  “What were you crying about?” he asked her.

The first crack in her armor began to appear as she looked away from Mick and kind of up toward a distant place.  Then she shook her head, unable to verbalize it.

Mick couldn’t help it.  He wrapped his hand around her arm.  She tried to recoil.  She tried to pretend that she had it all in control the way she usually did, but his grip was too tight.  He held on, and she gave up the fight.

She looked at him.  “They called a meeting,” she said.  “The director and all of the producers, including Joe Ranley, the biggest one.  And they placed me right dab in the center.  They told me, in no uncertain terms, that they were letting me go.”

Mick frowned.  “Letting you go?  From the play?”

Roz nodded.

“But opening night is Saturday.  And you’ve been in rehearsal for weeks on end.  How are they going to replace you when you’re the star of the show?  How could they let you go?  What happened?”

“Eva Lourie wants the part.”

Mick frowned.  “Who the hell is that?”

“Mick!  She’s only a two-time Tony award-winning Broadway A-lister.  She’s a superstar on Broadway, on Audra McDonald’s level, while I’m just another star in a galaxy filled with stars.  What Eva wants, they told me, Eva gets.  She decided she wants to play the starring role, and they couldn’t turn her down.”

Roz made a failed attempt at smiling.  “Joe Ranley, the executive producer, was even more blunt.  He said as soon as the ticketholders find out that Eva has replaced me in the lead, he doubted if one person would return a ticket.  They were going to sell out instantly, he predicted.  ‘Nobody cares about you and your wants or needs, Roz,’ he said to me when I tried to object.”

Mick’s jaw tightened to hear that somebody said that to his wife.

“Oh, he’s a smug motherfucker,” Roz said.  “I wanted to cuss his ass out too.”

“But what about your contract?” Mick asked.  “Those assholes know you have a contract, right?”

“They know.  But they don’t care.  They don’t want to buy me out, Ranley said.  But if I force them to they will, but at a price, he said.  He said if I sue, I’ll never work in this town again.  And he can do it, too.  He’s one of the biggest Broadway producers around.”

Then tears appeared in Roz’s eyes.  She loved acting, and Mick knew it.  But vultures like Ranley were ruining it for her.

She continued.  “Ranley was so cruel,” she said as she dabbed her eyes with Mick’s handkerchief.  “It was as if I didn’t matter at all.  It was as if all of my accomplishments were nothing compared to the great Eva Lourie.  Great, they claim, although she’s barely twenty-one. But she’s so great in his eyes.  He even told me, in front of the entire cast, to get my shit and leave the building.  ‘And don’t make me call Security, Roz,’ he added, as if I was that girl.  As if I was some interloper who had no business even being in the same room with them.”

She shook her head.  “It was awful, Mick.  It was as if all of my hard work was nothing in their eyes.  It was so bad that it made me remember why I left the business in the first place and started my agency.  It was this kind of cold rejection.  I thought I paid my dues and was beyond that.  But they bought it all right back to my front door.  And it hurts.  I can’t even lie.  It hurts like hell!”

Mick pulled Roz into his arms again whether she wanted him to or not.  She wanted it.  The fact that she not only allowed him to hold her, but she moved up, onto his lap, and held him, too, proved that.  “It hurt like hell,” she said again, as the tears flowed.

Mick held her as tightly as he could, and rubbed her back.  He inhaled her clean, fresh smell, and felt the bones of her body, and felt her heart beating against his, and he closed his eyes in rage and anguish.  And he was so determined he could hardly speak.  “Don’t worry, baby,” he said to her.  He’ll get his, he wanted to add.