He stared at the fountain giving him the finger. He gave it the finger right back.
He picked up another scotch on his way out of the Met and made for Damrosch Park. Programmes were stuck like bird feed in baskets on the trees. He whisked one loose, stumbled into a chair, and tried to focus.
The stage: pools of light, four figures.
The programme: eight ballets, which the hell one was he watching?
His drink: half empty.
With effort, he lifted his eyes back to the band shell, to what appeared to be—odd—two pas de deux. Interesting.
Why two?
Ivor Noble braced his elbows on his knees, belched, and leaned forward.
Chris watched from the fifth row.
Psyche stood tree-still among the lengthening shadows of dying music. Downstage from her, Endymion—asleep—was kneeling in extended fourth.
Abruptly, movement shattered the frieze.
Diana, the goddess, raised one leg in a long, effortless, breathtakingly straight développé. In a sudden swoop of black and white unitard, she tombé’d onto Endymion’s shoulder in a split jeté. Endymion lifted her. Sleepwalking, moving backward, he carried her to the front of the stage. Still sleeping, he set her down.
Now it was Psyche’s turn. A trembling shook her. Chris sensed it was not fear but effort. Psyche had to resist the instinct of her muscles, the hurrying pull of gravity. Keeping her movements slow, long, sleeping, she développé’d—stretched—held. Chris could see it was harder for Psyche than for Diana: every movement was twice as slow, twice as long, twice as painful.
Psyche’s cinq looked soft. Her fall onto Cupid’s shoulder wasn’t slow enough and Chris could see she was early.
But Cupid the god was ready for her. He covered. His arm arced, filling the gap she had left in time.
The light tightened in a circle around them. He lifted her. She let herself float up through the dusk. He held her aloft five beats.
Then, gently, not waking her, he set her down again.
A moment of fading music.
The gods regarded the slumbering mortals, then turned, drifted in separate directions into the dark. The pools of light dimmed and died.
Out of breath, chest thumping, Ray passed the Lincoln Plaza fountain and the blare of lights at the Metropolitan Opera. As he neared the band shell he saw heads turn and he realized he was running.
He slowed to a tiptoe, moved along the path behind the audience. He stood tall, adjusting his eyes to the layers of light and dark. Anxiously, he searched.
The air was warm and drum-taut and it beat like a heart to the amplified music. The band shell threw a fan of light across the first two rows of spectators. After that they were shadows, each of them caught in shared, secret communion that somehow excluded him.
And none of them was Chris.
After a long, aching moment he gave up hope. She wasn’t there. He pressed a hand to the sudden cold hole in his chest. Flashes of mugging and rape and subway murder went off in his head.
Why did I invite her to my place? Why didn’t I pick her up at hers?
On the band shell stage Chris’s roommate turned and leaped and balanced. The skin-tight black and white costume emphasized the terrifying perfection of her movements. He was struck by the arrogance of dancers’ beauty, by the poignance of its perishability.
Where’s Chris? If she’s not here, where is she?
The stage lighting changed and the spill-over thrust deeper into the audience. Suddenly he thought he saw her. It was Chris, sitting at the far end of the fifth row, a motionless profile with hair that glowed like moonlight.
Thank God, he thought, she’s all right, and then a fog of anger closed in on him and he thought, God damn her, and he wanted to take her in his hands like a tiny white bird and crush her into a fistful of broken bones. Then in a wave of repentance he wanted to gather her up in his arms and beg forgiveness.
He began working his way around the back of the audience to where she was sitting. The stage lights went down and the applause caught him by surprise. When the lights came up again he shouted, ‘Chris!’
She was standing now and she looked in his direction. He grinned and waved.
He could have sworn she saw him. She must have seen him.
But there was no reaction. She stared blankly for a moment and then she turned away, as though he weren’t there at all, and he felt a part of him die.
At first there was only a murmuring of applause. The dancers sprang into position for bows.
Lights up.
Applause up.
The dancers held hands, stepped forward, bowed.
Lights down. The applause stayed up. Way, way up. Bravos. Lights up. Another bow. Lights down.
The applause followed them all the way down to the dressing room. Steph could still hear it, like wind in a forest, as she sat in front of her mirror. Her body was drained even of exhaustion. She heard voices in the corridor. She heard laughter, relief, congratulations.
Chris was at her shoulder, bending down to hug her.
‘My God, it was fantastic. How can you pirouette that slowly?’‘
‘Liar,’ Steph smiled. ‘But thanks. It should have been slower.’
And then she recognized Danny’s voice, fending off congratulations with modest little self-deprecations.
Her heart gave a little sideways leap. She knew she’d done a good job and she knew he was waiting for her. At that moment she wished she were the worst dancer in the world. She wished she could know for sure it was Stephanie Lang he wanted, not her turn-out or her développé or her placement.
Or was it all the same thing?
Her glance flicked up, caught his in the mirror. Neither spoke. Neither looked away.
There was a fresh burst of laughter and Linda and Al came crowding into the cubicle. After a round of kissing and hugging Danny said, ‘Anyone for supper? I know a terrific place.’
Silence. Steph could feel Al and Linda and Chris exchanging glances.
‘Great food,’ Danny said. ‘My treat.’
‘I’ve eaten,’ Chris said.
‘Al and I have plans,’ Linda said. Firmly. After a pause Danny’s gaze flitted down to where Steph sat Kleenexing cold cream from her face. ‘Steph?’
‘Sure,’ she said, and his face went wide with smile.
seventeen
They walked to Seventieth Street, just off Broadway. There were trees and a churchyard and townhouses with neat stone steps and it didn’t feel like New York City at all. They went into a little place that Danny knew. The Frenchwoman at the cash register waved a hello, and Danny led Steph to a quiet table in a corner.
‘There are two types of dancers,’ he said. ‘Type A are so tired after a performance they have to go straight to bed. Type B are so excited they can’t get to sleep for four hours. Which type are you?’
Steph suddenly felt she was not going to be able to manage small talk. She would have been happy just to sit there in silence, happy just to be with Danny sharing the excitement of his success. But people didn’t go to restaurants to sit silently, and tonight she wanted very much to be a person, not just a dancer.
She tried to think of something clever to say. ‘Type C. I can’t get to sleep for six hours.’
‘That must be a hell of a nuisance.’
‘With a glass of hot milk and a soak in a tub, I can usually get it down to three hours. And what type are you?’
‘Type D.’
‘What’s D’s pattern?’
‘Sometimes Type D goes straight to bed, sleeps for days. Sometimes he can’t get to sleep for a week. With Type D it all depends.’
‘On what?’
‘I’ve never found out. Right now I have a feeling I’m going to be up for a week.’
‘Oh, Danny, if I were you, I’d be up for the rest of my life. It went so beautifully.’
‘Thanks to Benjamin Britten. And most of all thanks to you.’
‘No thanks to me. I
just did what I was told. And I loved doing it.’
‘And I loved telling you. And I hope we’ll be doing it again one of these days.’
A waitress handed them menus. She was a large, cheerful woman and she seemed to regard Danny as a son. ‘Bonjour mon petit, ça va?’
‘Ça va just fine,’ Danny said. ‘Estelle, this is Stephanie—Steph, Estelle.’
‘So you have a friend at last.’ The waitress smiled at Steph. The smile was long, examining, and—finally—approving. ‘Always he eats alone, always I say, “Daniel, you kill your digestion eating alone.” Tonight, mademoiselle, you make sure he chews his chicken, not just swallow?’
‘And how do you know I’m having chicken?’ Danny said.
‘Because it is the speciality. Chicken with tarragon. And for you, mademoiselle? The same?’
‘Spaghetti,’ Steph said. ‘With lots of sauce.’
‘Spaghetti! Daniel, what kind of friend is this!’
‘A very good friend and a very hungry one and she needs her carbohydrates.’
The waitress eyed Steph. ‘You are dancer too, mademoiselle?’
Steph nodded.
‘I can tell dancers. Always they want the crazy food. Pasta, cakes, Coca-Cola, cigarettes. It has taken me three years to make this boy eat meat.’
‘And maybe in another three you’ll persuade Steph.’
The waitress considered Steph, as though calculating the years required. ‘And to drink? Half carafe red for you, mademoiselle?’
‘No, thanks. I don’t drink wine.’
‘Come on,’ Danny coaxed. ‘It’s a celebration. And I’m drinking.’
‘All right,’ Steph yielded. ‘A glass.’
‘Half carafe,’ the waitress corrected. ‘It’s cheaper.’
Danny explained that he ate here two or three times a week after performances. ‘There’s always plenty of the special left over, and Estelle would just as soon give it to me as dump it in the stew.’
‘Don’t you ever cook for yourself?’
‘Anything you can make with boiled water I’m a master of. Soft-boiled eggs, instant coffee, frozen dinner baggies, you name it.’
Steph thought: He lives by himself.
The chatted till the chicken and the spaghetti came, and the half carafe of red and the half of white, and then they were alone. Danny filled Steph’s glass, filled his own, and proposed a toast.
‘To the future.’
They clinked glasses. Steph couldn’t help wondering whether he’d meant two separate futures or one combined future. She tried to imagine her future combined with his: soft-boiling his eggs, unfreezing his dinner baggies, dancing his ballets. His hands guiding her through steps. His hands guiding her through love-making. The fantasy appealed to her.
Maybe it didn’t have to be a fantasy. He lived alone. Apparently she was the first girl he’d brought to his favourite restaurant. That had to mean something.
She sipped. The wine stung agreeably, like a finger probing some unsuspected pleasure zone.
‘No one in the company seems to know very much about you,’ she said.
‘You’ve been asking?’
‘No. But I’ve been listening.’
‘What do you hear?’
‘He’s a nice guy, he works very hard, he’s very quiet.’
‘Me in a nutshell.’
‘No one’s ever seen your apartment.’
‘No one would want to. It’s buried under three years of silt and New York Times.’
‘No one knows your phone number. Including directory assistance.’
‘My phone number’s a secret. I pay New York Telephone a dollar a month to keep it that way.’
‘You don’t like to get phone calls?’
‘Only the anonymous raunchy variety.’
‘Does that mean you live alone?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Do you?’
‘Do you?’ he said.
‘I have a roommate.’
‘Male or female?’
‘Female. What about you?’
‘Geoffrey. Definitely male.’
Disappointment stirred in her. Well, she thought, it’s better than if he were living with a girl. I guess. ‘Does Geoffrey dance too?’
‘Geoffrey’s speciality is clawing the upholstery and peeing in the wrong place when I forget to empty his litter pan. With him, peeing is constitutionally protected symbolic speech.’
‘I like cats,’ Steph said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She’d never met a cat she hated. Anyway she loved Geoffrey for being a cat and not a gay boy.
She was aware of tiny disorders on Danny’s side of the table. He lifted his glass and the wine made waves. He set it down and the wine splashed. When he reached for his fork he picked up his spoon instead. When he tried to slice his chicken the chicken dodged the knife. He was like a jittery smoker lighting the filter end.
‘Do you have pets?’ he asked.
Oh, God, she thought. We’re going to get bogged in pet talk. Damn you, Geoffrey. ‘No. My roommate’s allergic, and when I was a child we moved around too much.’ Steph twirled a forkful of spaghetti into her spoon. It glopped back onto the plate. ‘I wouldn’t mind having a dog someday. Maybe a little highland terrier.’
She tried again, glopped again. She smiled to hide her embarrassment. I couldn’t be drunk from half a glass of wine, she told herself. Or could I?
Danny was talking about the cruelty of keeping a dog in the city.
She made a third attempt, turned half a forkful of spaghetti very slowly in the spoon till it made a nice manageable mouthful, lifted the fork very carefully, opened her mouth ... and wound up with a beard of damp pasta straggling down her chin.
She covered with her napkin, glanced at Danny to see the verdict in his eyes on her terrible table manners.
She couldn’t believe it: Danny Gillette, who could orchestrate the movements of human bodies, who could hold a balance for eighteen counts—still couldn’t get his fork into a dead piece of chicken.
‘But it’s hard,’ she said, trying to keep conversation going and running out of things to say about pets. ‘A dancer’s on tour half the year. You can’t pack an animal in your suitcase. You can’t leave it alone. Boarding it costs money. Maybe house plants are safer.’
He was blushing. Not at her, but at his lap. A trail of sauce led from his empty plate to the edge of the table, like the track of a skier gone off a cliff. With both trembling hands he lifted his napkin to table level. A hammock of tarragon chicken moved cautiously back toward the plate.
She studied the mural behind him, an out-of-perspective Eiffel Tower, as though it were the most fascinating thing since Rouault’s sets for Prodigal Son.
He filched a napkin from the deserted table next to them and daubed at his trousers. He tried to smile. ‘Close call.’
She tried to think of something pleasant to say; something to ease his embarrassment. ‘According to the Guinness Book of Records, the leading cause of accidents in French restaurants is chicken.’
His blush deepened.
‘Second leading cause is spaghetti,’ she said, and his blush deepened more.
And then it dawned on her. She was causing his nervousness.
Stephanie Lang, so used to being confused and uncertain, was causing confusion in someone else; and not just any old someone else, but Danny Gillette.
She sat back. Astonishment glowed in her. She had power over him. She couldn’t believe it. But the proof was written all over the tablecloth: spilled sauce, spilled wine, spilled salt.
It was the first time in her life she’d ever done this to a boy. And she enjoyed it. Suddenly she felt strong: not bossy-strong or gloating-strong, but gentle-strong. Pleased. Alive. Stephanie Lang had the power to move another human being. To move Danny Gillette!
He likes me, she realized.
She stared at the wine spots on her side of the tablecloth and something else dawned on her.
I like him j
ust as much.
‘Do you suppose the laundry bill is included,’ she said, ‘or do we add it to the tip?’
He smiled and she could see the tension beginning to trickle out of him. ‘Steph?’
‘Yes, Danny?’
‘Here I am, big choreographer taking rising ballerina out to chic but little-known boîte, trying to impress hell out of her, and all I’ve accomplished is a tablecloth full of tarragon-flavoured goo.’
‘But you have impressed me.’
‘As a klutz.’
‘See my side of the tablecloth? Spaghetti-flavoured goo. That’s because you impress the hell out of me, Danny.’
‘Funny. You impress the hell out of me.’
‘Well, now that we’re both impressed, maybe we can take the tablecloth home in a doggy bag.’
He burst out laughing and reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze.
And suddenly everything changed. Chicken stopped skidding. Spaghetti stopped dripping. Wine stopped spilling. Talk and laughter flowed. Even when he asked about her family she managed to keep her smile up. The best evasion, she decided, was the truth.
‘I have a mother. My father died when I was a baby.’
‘Do you remember him at all?’
‘Once somebody held me against his face and it was very rough. Mom says that was my father. That’s my only memory of him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s better than bad memories, I suppose. At least I never had any traumas with squabbling parents or sibling rivalry.’
‘It was just your mother?’
‘Sometimes just a mother is enough.’
He was smiling at her almost sadly. ‘How well I know.’
‘Your parents are both alive, aren’t they?’
‘They’re kicking.’
‘Are you close?’
‘I try to keep out of kicking range.’
She sensed in him a hurt that was still living, a wound edged in anger and best avoided. But there was one thing she had to know, even if it hurt them both. ‘Linda says you only like Jewish girls.’
He hesitated just an instant. ‘Are you Jewish?’
‘No.’
‘Then I guess Linda doesn’t know everything, does she?’
Ballerina Page 17