This is the chapter where you can decide for yourself if I was crazy to fall in love with Tom. There were a few early warning signals I missed, some minor, some major. But as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Love stories can begin in the most mundane places. Tom and I met at an audition for Sure Deodorant at a casting agent located in the theater district of Manhattan on lower Broadway in west forties. Her no-frills office consisted of a couple of rooms off a long corridor full of small businesses. It was the kind of audition I went on several times a day almost every day, when I didn’t have a paid modelling booking.

Auditions for TV commercials were pretty much what you’d expect. At Estelle Tepper’s, you entered her office reception area where there was a sign-in desk and about a dozen chairs for the actors waiting to audition. The audition took place in the other room, fitted out with bright TV lights and one of those huge, expensive, old video cameras to record your performance.

Tom was late. The men's appointments were in the morning; the women were scheduled for the afternoon. However, Tom was a born night owl, which was part of what had attracted him to a career in the theater. If you wanted to see him before noon, you had to pay him. Auditions, like all job appointments, are freebies.

I was sitting in a room full of chattering and primping models and actresses, when this very tall, good looking young man in a blue suit and tie entered and cast a quick glance around the room, presumably looking for a place to sit. I can't say that I really noticed him. To my jaded eye, at first, anyway, I didn't think Tom was particularly handsome. At auditions, I was used to encountering many photogenically perfect, male model faces.

I do remember him smiling with genuine amusement as he noticed there were only women in the room. Since there were plenty of vacant chairs, I had a pretty good guess about what was coming next when he sat next to me. He was going to hit on me. Many male models are vain and self-absorbed, always ready to start talking to a girl, 1) to rehearse their sparkling personalities, and 2) to score your phone number as insurance against ever spending even one moment without an adoring audience. So, I prepared to rebuff the attack. And sure enough it came. As I was filling out my contact card, Tom asked if he could borrow my pen. I was using my favorite purple ink pen. I looked over at him. It must have been the moustache. How dare he be so, so…. Masculine!

"It’s a purple ink pen, does that bother you?" I asked, sarcastically, in a semi witty attempt at a put down of him and his flagrantly masculine moustache. I just wanted him to know that I was onto his game.

"No, I think I can handle it," he replied, with a bemused smile, just like in the romance novels. Tom did have a very quick wit and terrific sense of humor. He was never without his charms. Sadly.

That he got my snide remark and came up with a quick-witted retort must have impressed me, because when I came out of the audition room, looked around and saw he wasn’t there, I remember feeling distinctly disappointed. Not to worry, he was waiting in the hallway to catch me on the way out and talk privately.

Very politely, he introduced himself and asked if I would wait for him so we could have a cup of coffee together. He claimed to be an actor; all male models do. I primly informed him I was studying acting and due at an acting class with Uta Hagen, wondering aloud, with my nose high in the air, if he'd ever heard of her, Uta Hagen being a famous and much admired Broadway stage actress.

Tom was not a bit put off. Of course, he'd heard of her. Not only that, he informed me, he had studied acting at Goodman Theater School, part of Chicago University. Then he added he had worked with a disciple of Polish avant-garde theater director Jerzy Grotowski, and he mentioned a few other theatrical luminaries of whom I, yes, even the Columbia University graduate Marcy, had not heard. I was impressed. Lastly, he informed me that he was taking all his savings and planned to leave for Spain tomorrow and stay until the money ran out, so would I share a cup of coffee with him before he disappeared over the horizon?

Spain? Tomorrow? Had he booked a flight? Was he planning on taking a tramp steamer? Was he putting me on? He didn’t seem like some kind of nut. But clearly, this guy was not playing from the same rule book as the usual male model/actor type. How could I say no? I agreed to wait for him downstairs by the phone booths. (This was in the seventies when phone booths were an absolute necessity for keeping in contact with agents.)

Now, as I waited, I was determined to try to impress him, since he wasn’t the usual lightweight model. I bought a copy of the New York Times to pretend to peruse while standing nonchalantly in the lobby. I never read the Times except on Sunday for the book, movie, and theater reviews. What a little phony I was! But it was prop. Hey, I had to be doing something while I stood by the phones, otherwise I'd have looked desperate.

It took forever for Tom to get through with his audition. All those other women in the waiting room had to audition first. But I hung in there, because he was okay looking, had a sense of humor, was a real actor, and was tall enough so that I could wear high heels if we went out.

At last, Tom appeared and the New York Times I was flashing didn't impress him in the slightest. He read through all those daunting, narrow columns of national and international names, events, and tiresome facts every day, cover to cover. (This I learned later.) We adjourned to a nearby, lower-level cafe and actor’s hangout that Tom frequented, aptly named Beggar's Banquet. It was three steps below street level, a funky place, with oversize, uncomfortable bare wood banquettes. The lighting was dark and the coffee terrible, but it had atmosphere.

We gave each other the short version of our backgrounds, and I remember in response to some of his opinions, which I guess I didn't agree with, I kept saying in exasperation, "Well, you Marines!" after which he'd correct me, saying he'd been in the Army, not the Marines. Sadly, I must report that I didn't know there was any difference between the Marines and the Army. Anyway, he kept talking.

He got my phone number, and we parted. That’s how things worked in those ancient, patriarchal days. Men either had the guts to ask for your phone number, or that was it. But did it take him forever to get up the nerve to actually call the big-time model? Yes. Did I count the nanoseconds the phone remained stubbornly silent until his call came? Most assuredly. Did I know I was madly, completely, out of my mind in love? Not consciously, and not for years to come would I ever guess how much I loved him or that I was even capable of loving that much.