The Exit Coach

by Megan Staffel

  Ava was shocked, but Ruben chuckled. He even gave Justin a little salute. “Right! It’s thin, thin, thin and I’m glad you brought that up. Here’s my take: Musical theater works best when the plot is simple, when the narrative has a predictable arc. The audience can’t be figuring stuff out; they have to get it all quickly so they can give their attention to the textures of what’s happening, that is, the sounds and movements, the great delicious how of the story. The real beauty of this production is that the music and dance happen within the context of street performance. We’re not also speaking lines. We’re only the chorus. Only! Nothing only about it. It’s the chorus that will carry the show.”

  That first night, Ruben taught the men their major combos and Brekka taught the women. She began with the secretary dance, a staccato rhythm, high heels tapping loudly, the steps tiny and repetitive. “You’ll be moving up and down a series of stairs. We’ll get those in here next week. Underneath the stair forms, Ava, as the runaway first, and then as prostitute, will be slinking around. Secretaries, keep going! Now Ava….” Brekka turned to her, her small breasts perfectly outlined by her leotard, her big hands moving as she spoke. “You’re lithe and limber and absolutely free with your body. You’re like a flower blowing in the wind and you’ve got splits and somersaults. I’ll teach you those moves, but for tonight, we’re going to do your major sequence which is this…” She arched her back, thrust her chest out, and made triple step circles leading with the hip. It was a development of the combo she first did with Ruben. “Follow me,” Brekka instructed. “You secretaries, don’t stop. It’s all simultaneous. No Ava, make it more, exaggerate those hips. Yes, that’s better. Sexpot! That’s how the runaway survives. Think sexpot. Your movements can’t be like the secretaries. Your attitude is different.”

  At the end, Brekka gave her a hug and whispered, “You did great. I have no worries. Just make that your definition.”

  “You mean sexpot. . . .?”

  “Yes, that’s your mantra.”

  A few of the others came up and said, “good job,” as Ava was putting on her street shoes, and after everyone else left, Ruben sidled over and sat down next to her, slipping his big feet out of dance shoes and lacing up boots. “Is this going to work for you?”

  “I think so,” she said. She knew she ought to say more, but doubts were surging through her mind. Maybe the praise was really pity. Maybe she had been really terrible.

  “Here’s how I think of it. Each pair of characters presents the dancer with a problem. And yours could be this one. How does a sandal-wearing child of love morph into a hardened streetwalker? I mean, they seem miles apart. Free sex as opposed to sex for a price. It’s possible she gets into drugs, but drugs alone is a boring trajectory. What does she want? What’s her motivating force?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. And then something occurred to her. If the girl was a runaway, things had not been good at home. “Maybe she’s angry?”

  Ruben smiled. “Yes,” he whispered. “I think that’s it. That’s where desire comes from. It’s fury transposed into control. She enjoys having power with men, but when she sees that sex is a business transaction in Times Square, she wants that even more. She knows her youth is the commodity men want and she’s going to give it to them, but on her terms, at her price. That’s the anger, and with every move, it has to be there in her body.”

  His skin gleamed and his hair was darkened with sweat. She saw the redness of his eyes, the roughness of his cheeks, and she felt something inside her that washed the doubt away. “Yes, thanks. I can see how that might work.”

  He patted her arm. “By the way, we haven’t talked business. So hang on and let me find my papers.” He pulled his satchel over to the chair and extracted a folder. There was a tax form that she had to fill in and sign, and then a contract. She wrote her name without reading it and handed it back.

  “Read it,” he said.

  It laid out the number of rehearsals, the number of performances, and then a weekly salary, which was more money than she thought she’ d ever make in her life.

  10.

  “Yes, that’s very nice,” Cleo said, “but I’ll tell you something. The government’s going to take most of it. Better if it was under the table. That’s how my jobs were. Under the table plus the opportunity for tips. There’s no tips in this. See, that’s not good.”

  Ava explained that this was a different kind of dancing, but Cleo didn’t listen.

  “There’s ravioli. It’s on the stove. And if you want more, there’s another can.” She aimed the remote towards the TV, but before she turned up the sound she said, “You’ll like this, by the way. Bring out your plate and we’ll watch it together.”

  “What is it?”

  “Oh something, I forget the name. Something with that, oh, what’s her name, Shirley MacLaine.”

  Under the fluorescents, Ava inspected the left-over pasta. What she wanted was the kind of food she made for Mr. Abram, but the only vegetable in the refrigerator was a stalk of celery.

  The next day she bought ingredients to make her own dinner. This became a habit. Each night, on the way home from rehearsal she’d stop at a market for vegetables and meat or fish. Sometimes she made extra for Cleo, but most often her mother would have no more than a taste and declare that her stomach was too sensitive for new things.

  Before the rehearsals, Ava went down to the laundry room in the basement and on the cement floor, she practiced her moves. She had no clue about anger. How could you be a sexpot with anger? A sexpot was flirtatious. Long looks, slow moves, hip action. Had Cleo been angry? She was certainly angry now. But back then, sequined, stockinged, heeled, she had been in charge. She was young, but when she was on stage she was in control. Nothing could touch her. Same now, on the bus. Nothing could touch her. She was in charge. Maybe that was it, angry people sought control. So what the sexpot did was make her body a weapon. A sword. She flashed it and flung it about because as long as men wanted her she was safe. But how did you put all of that into the moves? She used the washers and dryers as her props. She strutted and draped herself, worked on splits and kicks. She danced for the machines, showing off, pulling away, teasing.

  At rehearsal, they spoke about things she’d never considered: intention, phrase, beat, timing. She didn’t know how to talk that way, but every night, before she went to sleep, she went down to the laundry room and teased the machines to death, doing the new moves over and over until they became easy.

  Her body was changing. She was building muscle. Her scattered, casual energy was focused now: she practiced until the moves became easy and then, automatically, found herself creating a style for each of her characters. That helped her figure out attitude. Attitude was the style of movement. She gave the runaway a restless, naïve abandon. She was always running, leaping, twirling, tumbling because stillness was the ultimate danger.

  The prostitute role required hatred. The five-inch heels she wore helped. She became tall in her mind and the forward, off-balancing thrust of the shoes was torture, one she got used to, but in the beginning, when she was just figuring out how to move in them, they made her feel so robotic it was easy to imagine that her flesh was steel. The iron hooks and pulleys in the rehearsal space suggested the menace of the prostitute’s world and sometimes, when they went off to different corners of the room and practiced moves on their own, their immovability helped her in the same way as the washers and dryers. I will make you want me, she thought, and no matter how hard she worked at it, they never showed emotion.

  During the first weeks they practiced the male and female sections separately. Later, when Ruben put them together, there were lots of mistakes; sometimes they would inspire him to make a change and that would screw things up for awhile. But the excitement was always there, the challenge of creating something with other people.

  Toward the end of the three weeks, they rehearsed with costumes and makeup. Ruben handed her tight red shorts and a black lacey top. He thr
ew a bra on top of the pile. “Hope it fits,” he murmured, “Brekka bought it for you.”

  Brekka and Evelyn changed into their costumes on the floor, in front of the men, everyone standing around in their underwear, but Ava took hers into the little bathroom in the hallway outside.

  “Your costumes are your characters,” Ruben told them. So whenever they wore them, they had to be in their part. Ava sat on the toilet and became quiet. She pictured Cleo in her bar outfit, hearing the jeers and taunts the women endured. Why was it so easy? Why was all of it so easy when she had never done anything like it before?

  “I’d do anything for those tips. And you know what, the music trances you. It makes you do things.” How many times had she heard that?

  Ernie Abbott, the pimp, sidled up and took her into his arms, pulling her into a steamy dance they invented together, pausing when the piano paused, building when it built, and moving as one. At first, Ava pulled away as though in protest, but she was only teasing, only making him want her more, and when he couldn’t stand it in any longer, she closed in with sudden acquiescence and let him overcome her. The piano and horns built to a great screeching moment and the room exploded into hoots and whistles. It embarrassed her. She hadn’t known anyone was watching, but the music did what Cleo said it would do, it put her into a trance and she had known every move, every gesture as though this were the dance she had always done.

  There were problems with some of the costumes. The jackets and skirts the women wore for the secretary dance were too tight to accommodate their moves. Ava, in ragged bell bottoms, had no issues, but she wanted to show off the ridiculously wide bells of her pants legs and couldn’t figure out how. The secretaries pinned the places where their costumes had to be let out. Then a wan, tired looking Evelyn forgot a transition and she and her partner held the others up till they worked it out.

  It was late when everyone left the studio. Businesses had long been closed and the streets were deserted. Ava’s subway station was ten blocks away and Ruben offered to walk her there. But then he said, “Just stay at my place. There’s an extra bed because Jack’s away.”

  Jack was his roommate, Ava knew that from earlier conversations. “If you’re sure it’s okay.” Under her coat she was wearing the prostitute costume though she’d exchanged the heels for street shoes.

  “It’s fine. It’ll be more pleasant for you and we’ll get to visit a little. I can even give you clean sheets because I did the laundry today. Will someone be worried if you don’t show up?”

  “My mother won’t even know. She leaves for work so early she won’t miss me.”

  They were the only ones on the narrow, dark street, Ruben in a long black coat, his great strong stride and moving shape, Ava hurrying under the glare of the street lights to keep up.

  It was an old tenement building; they climbed up and up, the tight stairway and narrow halls taking them past invisible lives till finally, at the top, they reached the place Ruben called home. He flicked on a light and walked through the living room to dump his coat and satchel on the sofa. Ava did the same, looking all around, thinking, these walls see him all the time, these floorboards hold him. He showed her the rooms, Jack’s on the right, his on the other side with a galley-style kitchen and bath at the other end. “It’s not elegant, but we like it.” As he pulled linen out of the closet she went into the kitchen and called, “Shall I make tea?”

  “That would be very nice.”

  His kitchen was not like Harvey’s at all. There weren’t many dishes and in the refrigerator, which she opened out of curiosity, there wasn’t much food.

  He stood at the door, eyes drilling into her. “Darling, you didn’t change.” And then, pulling her into his arms, he whispered softly, his lips nicking her ear, “You sweet little cocksucker.”

  She knew what to do and she realized she had always known. She pressed against him and everything she had been feeling for so long poured into her body. “Can I sleep with you in your room, please?” She whispered it. And then she rubbed against him, back and forth, but he pulled away. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. “Ava, take the costume off. On Jack’s bed there’s some things. Help yourself and when you’re changed, call me.”

  It felt like a slap.

  They sat with cups of tea, looking not at each other but at the cracked and stained plaster of the wall in front of the couch. “I can’t do it, Ava. We have a professional relationship and I never get involved with people I’m doing a show with.”

  “Well, you started it. I was just following your lead. You called me that name.”

  “I did and I’m sorry. It slipped out. The costume works, you know. And all your little moves, they work.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. The outsized, out-of-control feeling had shifted quickly and seamlessly to shame. “After the performance? Could we? When everything’s over? Could you, like, just…..” She couldn’t say exactly what she wanted because it was simply him. She wanted him.

  “I’m too old for you, Ava. You must know that. Isn’t there someone your own age?”

  “Not really. I’m sort of peculiar. Really. I was always separate. Always alone, except there’s my mother.” Another deep shuddering feeling rose up from her body. “You don’t know how it is. Because I think I need a little help.”

  “I’m not the one, Ava. I’m sorry, I can’t be.” He scooted next to her and wrapped her in his strong arms. “We’re fags, Jack and me, didn’t you know that? We’re as good as married. I thought you knew. And I’m sorry, I really thought...”

  “Then why’d you say it, that word?”

  He pulled her even closer, petted her hair, sighed. “I don’t know. And it’s way too complicated to figure out. And it’s late. We both need to get some sleep.”

  11.

  Ernie Abbott’s roles were pimp and banker. He was a short, thick, tightly muscled man with a chin of sandy whiskers and a perpetually surprised look that broke into a grin at unexpected moments. He lived in New Jersey and sometimes when she came to rehearsal he was camped out at the doorway waiting for Brekka to arrive with the key.

  One day Ava too came early, and maybe on purpose. He patted the concrete next to him and said, “Hey! How’s life?’

  She knew the expected answer, but the mixture of surprise and wariness on his face prompted her to say, “I didn’t realize Ruben was gay.”

  “You didn’t? Yeah, well, I guess I sort of assumed it. I don’t think about that stuff much. Each to his own, you know?” He looked up at the grey wintry sky and hunched deeper into his jacket. He laughed. “I’m not. In case you were wondering. I mean, I just thought I would like you to know that.”

  “I do,” Ava said, and then she surprised herself utterly by adding, “and I think you should suggest we have dinner together, but nothing fancy.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “I was kinda thinking that too.”

  “Since you seem to get here so early and everything. I could come early too.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great. There’s this really good noodle place and it’s cheap.” He pointed in a vague direction. “But we should meet here first.”

  “Sure,” she said. But she didn’t even have to say it. He was assuming the answer would be yes.

  “What time?” he asked just as she asked it too. They laughed.

  “Hard to dance on a full stomach. So a little bit early?”

  “Good plan. Six?”

  “Be all digested and ready by eight? Sounds good.”

  Saigon Palace. Tastes she’d never imagined. Ginger, lime, something sweet. A huge bowl of string-like noodles in red, oily broth. “This is so good. Oops, I shouldn’t slurp.”

  “Go ahead. They slurp.” He indicated the other patrons, people she assumed were Vietnamese. They raised their bowls to their mouths and sucked the noodles off chopsticks.

  She laughed. “I’m so happy.” But she didn’t go on because she realized it was private. This place in her life, a man sitti
ng across from her, a performance about to happen, a friend in Ruben and Harvey, and a talent she didn’t even know she had. So she said, “I’m so happy to have discovered this place. Thank you.”

  He lowered his voice. “The other good thing about this place is it’s out of the neighborhood. I never go to Giorgio’s, do you?”

  “Oh, you mean?” She pictured the bar next to the dance factory with its darkened windows. “I’ve never even been inside.”

  “The others go there. For drinks sometimes. You’ve never been invited?”

  “No, it frightens me. Too dark.”

  “It’s not bad. You’d be okay.”

  “Do they drink a lot?”

  “Dancers don’t drink. No. Ruben almost nothing. Selzer for Ruben.”

  They laughed.

  “But they gossip,” he added in a whisper. “They say things about you.”

  “Like what?” It was preposterous that anyone would find the subject of her interesting.

  “And me. I’m sure they talk about me too. We’re like . . .” he opened his hands.

  Ava leaned towards him and in a conspiratorial tone said, “What are we like?”

  “We’re different from them. Younger, not as professional. I mean, I’ve been in five of Ruben’s gigs, but yeah, the others have been at it for years. Hard to tell, though. Like with Evelyn.”

  She nodded agreement, happy to have a secret with somebody. “The way she couldn’t get that transition? I didn’t see what was so hard about it.”

  “Right. Pretty lame. If it was me, I’d of been embarrassed.” He sat up, crossed his legs, head tilted to the side. Then he leaned over the table and said in a low voice, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Our duet, you know. The pimp one? I think what we invented that first time we wore costumes? Remember? It was better than what Ruben choreographed. So much better. Fresh and alive and original. We’re good.”

  She saw a patch of tiny pimples on his chin and a few blond beard whiskers poking up among them. “Really? I love his piece though. Those dips. It’s like I’m elastic.”