Over the next few weeks she learned that Bobby had his special haunts in this neighborhood. One was the coffee shop at the Hotel Edison because a lot of shows rehearsed in the hotel ballroom upstairs and the actors, writers, and directors would come down to the coffee shop for a break. Another was a Greek cafeteria in Hell's Kitchen called Molfetta's, where unemployed actors hung out to exchange gossip between their classes and auditions.

But his favorite places were the restaurants on Broadway. When he was feeling flush, Bobby took Rose to Lindy's or Jack Dempsey's—both places served great cheesecake and they'd split a slice. As far as Bobby was concerned, Manhattan began and ended within three blocks of the Great White Way. He and Rose would walk past the Mark Hellinger Theater or the Winter Garden, and he'd stare at the cast list and the pictures of the actors encased in glass under the marquee with a hunger that Rose couldn't watch. It was hard to see how badly he wanted the life she'd always taken for granted. And, of course, they both knew she could have helped him get closer to that life. But Bobby kept his word and he never brought up the subject of her mother or his musical.

Instead, Rose asked him about himself. She learned that he was twelve years older than she was. Like her, he hadn't gone to college. For the past seven years he'd been working as a clerk in Hershemer's, a famous music store on Fifth Avenue. The place had been around since the days of vaudeville, and it sold sheet music and records for everything from pop to Beethoven. But the main emphasis at Hershemer's was musical comedy. There was a grand piano in the bay window of the opulent main floor, and the legend was that Richard Rodgers had walked in off the street one day and wowed the customers by playing the score from South Pacific.

“And last week Betty Comden bought three records from me,” Bobby told Rose proudly. Like all the Hershemer's clerks, he was horribly underpaid, but the gig was prized by aspiring young theatrical types because their workday began at a theater-friendly eleven-thirty AM, and the management had an understanding attitude about time off for auditions and rehearsals. And there was always the chance that they'd get to wait on Betty Comden. Sometimes Rose wondered if Bobby and his fellow slaves thought the success of the great ones would rub off on them like Peter Pan's fairy dust. She couldn't imagine wanting anything as badly as he wanted to be in show business—or maybe she could. Because by now, she wanted him.