“She said she couldn't count on God to save her twice, and she was going to quit while she was ahead.” He poked around on the cheesecake plate for a couple of stray crumbs. Rose could tell he didn't want to look her in the eye. “Mom died three years ago. Before she got sick, I took her to see the revue at the Village Vanguard. She said my sketches were funny but she still wished I'd go to college and make something of myself.” He smiled the twisted smile again. Rose wanted to do something, anything, to make him feel better.

“Do you have copies of your sketches? I'd love to read them,” she said.

He shook his head. “That's against the rules. Remember?”

She wanted to tell him that the rules didn't matter. But she couldn't. Not yet.

*   *   *

ROSE STARTED ASKING around about Bobby Manning. Lu's agent had never heard of him, and neither had the producer who always mounted her mother's musicals, although George said he thought he remembered that someone named Manning had once sent Lu a script.

It was a different story with the chorus girls who were working on Lu's show. Rose had never spent much time backstage, but now she went every night to hang around the greenroom and chat. She discovered that Bobby was well known in the off-off-Broadway scene.

“He could have had a show done at the Café Larré,” one of the dancers told Rose. “But he pulled it at the last second because he said the production was lousy. He can be an arrogant son of a bitch.”

“It's not arrogance,” a singer chimed in. “Bobby wants to work on Broadway. That's what he writes for. Off-off Broadway is too small for him. Bobby has a huge talent.”

The first girl snickered. “In more ways than one,” she said.

“I was talking about his writing,” said the second girl, but then she started snickering too. Rose wanted to slap both of them—even though this bit of gossip was nothing more than what she'd already suspected.

“Bobby gets around, does he?” she asked as casually as she could.

“The way I hear it, he gives new meaning to the phrase ‘can't keep it in his pants,’ said the singer.

“Marianne, you don't know that for a fact. It's just people talking.”

“One of my best friends is the friend of his last girlfriend,” said the singer, whom Rose was beginning to hate. “At least that's what she thought she was until she found him in their bed with her sister. The guy's a swordsman.”

Fortunately, at that moment, the stage manager announced the second-act finale over the backstage loudspeaker and the girls had to go onstage.

He can change, Rose thought. I can change him. And then she thought, I can win him.

But what if she couldn't? What if he was unwinnable? There were people like that—her mother was one.