Chapter 5

Rollin

Rollin felt as if he were flying home instead of driving. The girl of his dreams was about to become his wife! Cinnamon had occupied his dreams almost from the moment they met. She was beautiful, elegant and sophisticated. As he got to know her better he found out she had an impressive intellect as well as a beautiful body. It had become obvious, if unspoken between them, that they were mutually attracted to each other, almost from the moment they met. He had been with plenty of women before, but none ever felt so right as Cinnamon Carter did.

He wondered what he would have done if she had said she didn’t want children. Her teasing had surprised him. They always seemed to be on the same wavelength, and he had somehow taken it for granted that being in love, and feeling so right with each other logically led to marriage and family. He thought fleetingly that perhaps she was right to urge caution to go slow. He quickly dismissed the thought. They were made for each other.

He lit a cigarette at a red light and puffed thoughtfully, wondering just how she would get along with his family. His own family certainly couldn’t be any different from hers. They sounded intellectual, elite, cosmopolitan. These were characteristics he had spent much time and effort cultivating in himself, but were certainly the antithesis of his family.

His brothers would be in awe of her. Their wives might be jealous if things were not handled carefully. His parents would simply be happy to see their wayward middle son settle down some. His dad still had doubts about him being an actor. About the only positive thing his father had ever said was that at least Rollin had joined a good strong union. None of the family had any inkling of his other profession. His mother still worried that he didn’t eat properly. She would be frantic to know he had ever ridden a motorcycle, much less through a thunderstorm being chased by an armed security patrol.

He arrived home too keyed up to sleep so he changed into shorts and an old t-shirt and set off down the beach to walk out some of his energy. It was late and the moon was already dipping toward the horizon illuminating the beach and the darkened houses above. It would be full this weekend. How perfect.

His thoughts returned to his childhood, so different from Cinnamon’s. He had grown up in a crowded apartment in Chicago sharing the small space with his parents, grandmother and two brothers. There had never been much money, but his father worked steady in the machinist shop eight blocks away and there was always plenty of food and plenty of other children to play with. He had been in junior high when he first learned the term ghetto and realized he lived in one. Nearly everyone in his building spoke the old language. Most of the fathers had worked at various machine shops or as truck drivers for the nearby shipyards. Many of them didn’t even need English to do their jobs. And many spoke English poorly or not at all, despite the fact they were born in America.

Most of the neighborhood also attended the orthodox church just down the street. Rollin had never thought much about God. He thought of the church as more like a social club. He had sat and wriggled with his brothers and cousins in the pews as a little boy until they were sent out. He had smoked his first cigarette in the basement of the church, kissed his first girl there, even taken his first drink there at a cousin’s wedding reception.

They had grown up talking the old language but listening to the radio that played constantly in the apartment all day and late into the evening. He and his brothers had first started singing to the radio. Both of them still sang with a barbershop quartet. Rollin loved listening to the adventure stories. He and his brothers also made their way to the movie cinema every Saturday afternoon. That became his religion. To miss the Saturday matinee was the greatest torture that could be inflicted on young Rollin. He wanted to live just like those movie stars.

He probably still would have ended up a machinist like his father and brothers if not for the fact that he’d drawn study hall with the head of the English Department who also happened to be the drama club sponsor. It was his sophomore year and he was sitting by the window daydreaming while the teacher coached two of her drama students. They were rehearsing an Oscar Wilde play and the male lead, a senior who was going to be the valedictorian was flubbing his lines over and over again. Rolling began muttering the lines under his breath. The young actor was attempting to sound sophisticated and British and coming across tense and unknowledgeable. When he stammered through a line for the fifth time he noticed Rollin chuckle.

“I’d like to see you do it better, Hand.”

“That wouldn’t take much,” Rollin replied, knowing with all the self-assurance of a teenager that he could do it much better.

The other boy threw the script at him, angrily, “Prove it.”

Rollin met the teacher’s eye and she nodded cautiously.

“The same scene?” he asked.

She nodded.

Rollin glanced down at the script and left it behind. He’d been hearing it all week. Two days before he’d gone to the library, found a copy, and read the entire play just so he knew what happened beyond this scene that was giving the young thespian so much trouble. As he walked to the front of the room he became the character. His walk changed. His look changed. The woman in front was no longer a dumpy old woman in a faded cotton dress, but a beautiful ingénue dripping with diamonds and smoking with a long cigarette holder. She played her part with feeling but he commanded the stage. When they finished the scene, he held her hand to his lips, kissing it as he had seen movie stars on the screen. She was blushing and the room burst into applause. It felt wonderful. Then suddenly he was just a tall skinny kid again.

The teacher didn’t give him the part, but she had him coach the senior, then insisted Rollin try out for the lead in the next play. She also helped him get involved in a community theatre group and Rollin knew he had found what he wanted to do with his life. He hung around the community theatre during all his spare time doing anything he could; building sets, sewing costumes, helping with makeup, cleaning up. When his father told him to get a job, Rollin applied for a janitor’s job at the theatre. His brothers made much more money as machinists but Rollin was doing what he loved. His teacher wanted him to go to college and began pushing him to study harder and apply for scholarships.

At first He didn’t take her seriously, but the community theatre group got behind her and encouraged their young protégée. When his teacher urged him to apply to Columbia University in New York he thought she was mad, but armed with recommendations and financed by his friends in the theatre group he headed to New York to audition.

His father was furious. The family couldn’t afford nonsense like college. His mother was fearful, she didn’t want her little boy so far away. His grandmother stopped the commotion by handing him a battered passbook to her savings account and telling him to do his very best. No one in the family would argue with her.

He threw himself into the pursuit of his chosen profession taking any job available that was even remotely associated with the theatre. He honed his talent for voices, stepping completely into any part he was given. He met an old vaudevillian who took an interest in him and taught him amazing things about showmanship and sleight of hand. He applied himself to his studies as it was the only way to keep his scholarships, but he reveled in the excitement of the theatre.

It was shortly after he graduated from Columbia—major in theatre, minor in history, magna cum laude—that his agent set him up for an appointment with someone who purported himself as a Broadway producer. The man was actually a representative of IMF who explained the country’s occasional need for someone with Rollin’s talents. The pay was lucrative, the travel alluring and the element of danger added an incredible spice to the thrill of performing. Rollin was hooked.

Rollin stood silently, staring out at the silver ribbon of moonlight. He lit a cigarette and watched the sparkling pattern of the waves. He was a long way from Chicago, but oddly, he felt a homecoming in the air—not physically, but on some emotional level.

His brothers still lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same church. His parents had moved to a retirement community in Florida. They spent their days playing cards and shuffle board with other retirees who had migrated from the same small community up north.

Rollin’s homecoming would be to a new home, however; the home he would build with Cinnamon. He wasn’t yet certain how they would consolidate their hectic lives, both public and secret, but he looked forward to the trying.

He tossed the cigarette butt into the foam at his feet and headed back to his place, anticipating the events of the next few days with great pleasure.

End part 5