by Tonya Plank
“Besides you!” I said, play-slugging him. “We’re competing on Wednesday!” I said to Paulina, motioning toward Sasha.
“Oh really? You don’t say. I didn’t know that,” Paulina said, rolling her eyes.
“You knew?”
“Girlfriend! Why do you think I’m here?”
I shook my head. For Svetlana, I assumed. I motioned to the ballroom floor, that she was now no longer on.
“Yeah, I’m interested in seeing what she can do,” she shrugged. “But she no longer goes to my studio, so I’m not really here to be her cheer-party. I’m here mainly for Maurizio, my pro/am partner. To watch him compete professionally, and cheer him on. And for you, dearie. I’m not kidding.”
I smiled bashfully. This one really knew how to make me blush. I couldn’t believe she came all the way here, and in large part for me.
“Seriously,” she continued. “You’re a legend back in the studio now, my dear.”
At that my stomach did a flip followed by a very loud rumble. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe…well…I’m just so flattered,” I said, trying to talk over my crazed stomach noises.
“Honestly, I used to come to this every year. I love the place. The retro pinball machines, the cheesy Vegas-style shows, the Ferris wheel, Liverpool. It’s all a hoot. And I used to come see the top ballroom dancers I admire. When I started with Maurizio, I’d come to cheer him on. I haven’t been in the past few years because it kind of got old. The same couples winning all the time and all. And the place just hasn’t changed in ages. But when I heard you were going to dance with hiiiimmmm!” She said the last word under her breath, pointing at Sasha like a silly schoolgirl. “Honey, I figured it was time for me to give Blackpool one more look-see.”
“Well, I can’t tell you how happy I am you’re here. You’re my only friend—I mean, besides this one,” I said, squeezing Sasha.
“Uh-uh,” she said shaking her head.
I frowned. “Have you seen anyone else from the studio?”
Her eyes grew wide and her mouth formed into a perfect O-shape. “Ohhhh, I just mean, well, Maurizio is here and you know him. And Bronislava’s going to compete, and you know her.”
“Yeah, but I mean know know. Feel happy and comfortable around. People who make you feel great about yourself and put you at ease.”
She smiled brightly. “Well, thank you, my dear. I’m so glad I do all those things for you. And you to me.”
My stomach rumbled again, this time out of hunger. “We’re headed down to a little Japanese place in the basement. Wanna come with?”
“Actually, I just came from there. Food’s always excellent. Best in Blackpool.”
“That’s exactly what Samantha told me!”
She nodded knowingly. I assumed everyone who went to Blackpool only for the dance competition knew about this little gem. It was an insider thing.
“You two go on and eat and I will most definitely be seeing you around!”
We bear-hugged for real again and exchanged cell phone numbers for texting in case it got so crowded we couldn’t find each other. Which, both she and Sasha assured me, it would.
Sasha led me down two sets of stairs. The restaurant was a long, rectangular room, comprised of a counter running along the back side, and wooden picnic-type tables and benches strewn about in the middle. The kitchen was behind the counter and was open; you could see people with nets over their hair running about. It was definitely a makeshift restaurant, practically a large food truck. So, not fancy, but as long as it had good, well-made food, I’d be happy.
The counter held a plethora of sample plates to choose from. I ordered a vegetable curry and Sasha got a chicken curry. I went to take my wallet out but Sasha stopped me.
“Here’s your credit card from Daiyu. It was one of the things I had to pick up from them today. We’ll charge this to mine since we ordered together. It really doesn’t matter because it’s the same account. But in case you’re alone, you have one too.”
Oh, wow. Very cool. Very, very cool. I could get used to the life of a star! Of course I had to earn it over the course of the next two nights.
The clerk handed Sasha a large plastic number on a stick and told us to choose a table. It was pretty dark in the seating area. There were a couple of people up front, sitting next to each other in a booth, who seemed to be eyeing us. What? I initially thought.
Oh, of course. Sasha.
I still wasn’t used to this. The closer we got, I realized it was a woman and a man, kind of snuggled together like lovers. The man motioned for us to come to them.
Oh no, not again, please. At this point I really wanted Sasha to myself. I know, selfish, but whenever I was confronted with Sasha’s fandom, the stress of the competition came back to me. I didn’t need anything to make me buckle. I shot Sasha a look of desperation, hoping he’d read my emotions. But instead he had a loopy smile I hadn’t seen before. At least not here. He looked back and forth between me and the couple, his smile getting loopier.
“Took you long enough to get here!” I heard Samantha’s voice. I squinted at the dark table. Samantha jumped up and rushed me, arms extended.
“Yeah, we thought you’d never get here!”
I looked back at her companion and realized it was Rajiv. I squealed. Sam and I hugged and bounced up and down in embrace. “What? I thought you couldn’t—”
“Raj found a radiologist conference nearby in the Lake District. So, good excuse for him to get off work. And he got a big discount on the airfare and hotel—for two! So here we are!”
“Oh, oh whoa!” I was speechless. I didn’t know whether my lack of words was due more to my surprise that they automatically came together—were they an item? And how had I missed that little development if they were?—or that they’d managed to keep it from me. Or just that they came all this way to cheer me on, and how amazingly sweet was that? “You don’t know what this means to me,” I said, blinking back tears.
“Yes, we do,” she said. “I put myself in your shoes. And realized you needed people here for you. What are friends for, Rore? Plus, I mean, if you can at all wing it, who can seriously resist Blackpool? Hello!”
What a crazy, twisty, turn-y day. Surrounded by my favorite people, things might turn out okay.
We all walked back to the ballroom, Sasha and I arm in arm, and—yes—Raj and Sam hand in hand. I gave her a raised eyebrow, and she gave me a silent giggle. We’d definitely have to have a nice big chat when we got home.
We found unoccupied seats in the back and watched the end of the Rising Star Latin competition. Svetlana and her partner made the quarterfinals, which Sam said she should be absolutely thrilled with since they were both brand new to the pro circuit. I watched Sasha’s face as she said this. He nodded politely but I could tell he didn’t agree. Sasha’s standards were a world above everyone else’s. He and Micaela won the very first championship they ever competed in, and then went on to take first and second place immediately after they broke up, when they competed in their first world pros. Sasha had never made anything but the finals in his life. Anything lower and I’m sure he would have gone on to do something else with his life. He’d take nothing but the best. And I was overcome with pride. He was my Sasha.
My champ.
Interestingly, we didn’t see Cheryl or Luna or any of Sasha’s Russian students. Certainly they were here to cheer on Svetlana. No Xenia, either. Of course they could have simply been lost in the crowd. But Cheryl and Luna were always so vocal. I guess Sasha was right—there were so many people here, nobodies just disappeared in the crowd.
Chapter 12
I awoke the following morning to a knot full of nerves the size of a knuckly ole fist in the pit of my stomach. This was the first of the two big days. Amazingly, I’d slept well. My fistful of nerves seemed to take away my appetite but I knew I needed to force myself to eat. I didn’t want to go down to the breakfast room, so I ordered up, but asked only for the baked beans, tomato, plai
n toast and fruit bowl. I didn’t need any grease-induced nausea.
We showered but Sasha told me not to wear any makeup or do anything to my hair; the sponsor would take care of all that in the tent before tonight’s team comp. They would also come to the hotel room and transport our costumes for the night to the ballroom. We only needed to worry about showing up. And killing it when we did, of course.
Before practice, Sasha took me to a local market that had a splendid array of fresh fruits and veggies, and other snacky items. We bought a veritable cornucopia of energy food: raisins, dried cranberries, walnuts, almonds, pecans, granola, power bars, peanut butter and crackers, kale chips, apples, bananas, and blueberries. There was no way I’d get hungry.
Greta met us for practice in the same small back room we’d been in before. She gave me an awesome pep talk, telling me basically the same thing Sasha had but in slightly harsher words: dance and don’t think; you wouldn’t be anywhere near here if you weren’t capable of winning; doubting yourself at this point is borderline offensive to everyone who made it possible for you to get this far. Thank you, Greta. My extremely cloying intermittent lack of confidence was downright offensive. I needed to hear that.
“And what is it, you get upset because these women show up? Who are they, Cher and Loony?”
I giggled. She hadn’t meant to call them names. She raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t understand why I laughed. I nodded, deciding not to correct her.
“So you are going to let Cher and Loony ruin this for you and Sasha? For Sasha? This is his chance. You would do that to him? And to you?”
I thought about it, how she’d framed the situation. Of course not. Of course I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Sasha.
“These women are nothing, Rory. They are complete nobodies. They can’t touch you here. No one cares a thing about them. No one knows a thing about them. Don’t do anything to change that, okay? The only power they have over you is what you allow them to do to your mind.”
I nodded. She was so right.
We went through each routine, first marking, then dancing full-out. I felt jittery inside, but Greta insisted it didn’t show.
“When the movement is so entrenched in your muscle memory it has to take a great deal of jitters to cause any harm,” she said. “See, you did your work, and now it is paying off.” She lifted her chin and raised one eyebrow.
***
Before getting ready for the team comp, we went to the Japanese place for an early dinner. It really didn’t seem to have a name, so everyone just called it that—the Japanese place.
“Eat well,” Sasha said. “After this we will only have time to snack the rest of the evening.”
Despite the fact that the place was dark as a cave and we sat at a back table, about halfway through our meal Cheryl and Luna came in. Oh seriously, I thought. Cheryl’s beady eyes shot to me right away. It was as if she was looking for us. She raised her chin, stood tall and began walking toward us, Luna following. Despite Greta’s earlier words, my heart started pounding. I couldn’t stop it. What did they want? I wish I would have asked Paulina and Raj and Sam to eat with us. But I’d wanted to be alone with Sasha before the comp. And anyway, what the hell—did I really need all my friends around me to be protected from these two crazies?
They continued strutting until they were right at our table. When they got up to us, they stopped, then did nothing but stare right down at us.
“Ladies,” Sasha addressed them, with a snicker.
They said nothing. Luna crossed her arms in front of her, shifted her weight to one leg and looked down at us, not averting her gaze. Cheryl looked at us like she might spit in our food.
Are they for real?
I tried to continue where we’d left off in our conversation but I honestly wasn’t sure where that was. And they really didn’t need to overhear anything. So we just stopped talking. Cheryl seemed to be getting closer to me, nearly hovering over me. Sasha continued piling food into his mouth as if nothing was happening. I couldn’t eat. Cheryl’s shadow on the back wall made her look like a witch casting a spell on me.
“Could you please act like mature human beings and leave us alone?” I finally said.
“Excuse me, I am quite a mature human, and I can’t leave you alone no matter how I try, Rory, sweetheart,” Sasha said, shooting me that sly, cocked smile of his that in other circumstances would have sent so much wet heat to my lower belly I’d have been afraid to get up. He was obviously pretending they weren’t there and I was talking to him.
“No, this is ridiculous,” I said, rolling my eyes. “They’re bothering us. We can’t even—”
“Who’s bothering us, sweet? I don’t see anybody.” He looked around, above, through them as if to check. “No, seriously, there’s absolutely no one here.”
Ugh, so what were we going to do? Not talk freely, try to make some stupid conversation? I understood what he was doing, but I was annoyed as all hell.
Though it was early a few more people trickled in, and of course looked at Sasha. A couple seemed to consider walking over and asking for autographs but then seemed to think the better of it. Whether it was because of the crazy women staring angrily down at us or that he was eating and they didn’t want to bother him, I wasn’t sure.
Suddenly a fleet—and I mean fleet—of people entered the room. They were talking and laughing in Russian.
“Hey, hey,” one man said, extending his arm toward us.
It was the group of Russians we’d seen either at the hotel or in the Winter Gardens hall, I couldn’t remember now. But I recognized them. Sasha’s friends and fandom.
“Sasha! Man of the night. Man of Blackpool! Just MAN!” the one in front said in strongly accented English. “And of course, lady of night too!” he said, extending his arm to me. “Beautiful lady!”
I giggled. I remembered now he was the one who’d made sex eyes when Sasha pronounced me “Amerikansky.” He was speaking English for my benefit. He patted Sasha on the shoulder, then me, now speaking in Russian. The others did the same. I’d never had so many strange hands reaching out to touch me before. And it was so comforting. It was clear they were all wishing us luck and giving us encouragement from the way they spoke and from Sasha’s reactions.
Suddenly, I realized they were completely surrounding the table. I tried to look between and around their bodies. I didn’t see Cheryl or Luna anywhere.
“Go on and eat, sweetheart,” Sasha said to me. “You need to finish. Don’t let them bother you while they talk to me. I am done.”
He said something to them in Russian, and they immediately focused all their attention on him. Okay, maybe Sasha’s fandom was not so bad. Definitely not.
***
We walked back to Daiyu’s tent where all of our things were stored. There were three other couples inside who I didn’t know, who were also sponsored by Daiyu. They were amateur, junior division, and exhibition/cabaret champions, Sasha told me. It was customary for a sponsor to have champs from several different categories to build a solid following.
A young Asian woman introduced herself as Daiyu’s assistant, then directed me to sit down at a very brightly lit mirror. A man who appeared to be in his early thirties with spiked blond-tipped hair and dressed flamboyantly in a bright yellow t-shirt with a black leather vest, black leather pants, and biker boots, came up behind me. He set down in front of me a large tray filled with of all different kinds of makeup—eye shadows in every color imaginable, lipsticks in bright shades, blushes, foundations, concealers, powders, liners for lips, eyes, and brows.
“Let’s get to it!” he said with an English accent and a wave of the arm.
I laughed and tried not to fixate on my heretofore plain face in the brutally, blindingly bright mirror. I closed my eyes and let him—hopefully—work his magic. It felt strange but oh so lovely to be pampered.
“Okay, I think we did it!” he said about forty-five minutes later. “Voila!”
I opened my
eyes and looked in the mirror. Whoa. He’d completely changed my face. I honestly looked nothing like myself. My eyes looked very Cleopatra-ish and seemed to extend to my temples, he’d drawn the eyeliner so far out. My lips looked like I’d had a Botox injection on the spot—I don’t know how he accomplished that effect. My cheekbones looked high and switchblade sharp. My eyebrows, which always seemed to disappear a bit on my face since they were so light, were now much more drawn out. My eyelashes looked like Betty Boop. I was transformed. Honestly, close up it was that same prostitute effect as the mambo team comp. But I knew from that, that under the bright floor lights my face would look like I was wearing normal makeup. At least normal makeup for a ballroom dance pro!
“Now, let’s do something with this gorgeous mane,” he said, taking the bobby pins out of my pulled-back hair and running his fingers through the strands, fluffing them up and out till my hair really did resemble a lion’s mane. “Any preferences?” he asked.
I hadn’t really thought about it. I just assumed everyone with long hair would be wearing it pulled back in a bun aka the ballet world. I would have loved to have worn it long and only pinned back from the front or in a whipping, spell-casting, “I Dream of Jeannie”-like ponytail, because that’s how I felt it looked the best. But I knew I couldn’t; it would be smacking Sasha in the face, along with everyone else it happened to come into contact with on the floor. I guessed that’s why so many female ballroom dancers wore their hair in a short bob that made snazzy little shakes with every turn they took.
“An elegant French twist?” I suggested. “Or a French braid? No, maybe the twist would look more classy?”
He smiled. “Perfecto.”
“Can you make it look like Audrey Hepburn in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?” I said, gaining confidence in my vision. This fun makeup artist seemed so on my side, it wasn’t hard to do. “I mean, I know I’m blonde, but like, elegant and classy?”
“Sure thing, honey! Holly Golightly it is!”
Amazingly, he did it exactly as I envisioned. I was so happy. I looked beautiful beyond my wildest dreams. I was definitely back in that fairytale land I’d been whisked off to the first time I saw Sasha and Xenia dance at The Beverly Hilton.