Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘As you well know. You gave him and three of our dancers permission to perform at that band shell pass-the-hat business.’

  Lester Croyden’s mind slipped into a higher gear. ‘Dearie, did you happen to see this Lacrymosa yourself?’

  Hannah drew out a long arc of ‘Nooooooooooo.’

  ‘Who saw it besides Ivor?’

  Every hobo in Needle Park, I suppose.’

  ‘Did anyone qualified see it? Anyone in the company?’

  ‘Heinrich saw it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He says the review is idiotic.’

  ‘Dearie, what did he say about the ballet?’

  Her ‘I quote’ tone again. ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’

  ‘You’re phoning Heinrich?’

  ‘I’m phoning Danny Gillette.’

  ‘Not listed.’

  ‘Oh, you tried? Well, where there’s a will, dearie. Talk to you later.’

  It was five-thirty that evening when the doorbell rang.

  The houseboy let Danny Gillette into the penthouse, murmured that Mr Croyden would be with him ‘directly,’ and vanished into the pantry, where Lester Croyden had nearly finished a small Finlandia vodka on the rocks.

  The houseboy nodded, and Lester Croyden understood that his guest was on time and waiting. The wait was strategy. Danny Gillette had to be given time to marvel at the high-ceilinged living room that had been expanded by a knocked-down wall, at the meticulous furnishings reflecting the distinction and taste of Empire’s top designer and no little cash from Empire’s contingency fund.

  Danny Gillette had to be given time to get the message: Play the game Lester Croyden’s way and you too may wind up with a pot of gold, a view, and an étagère full of Sévres.

  At five thirty-five Lester Croyden buttoned his burgundy smoking jacket and made his entrance.

  Danny was standing at the northernmost of the three double windows, staring down at Central Park. From twenty-three stories you couldn’t see details, and the park looked almost clean.

  ‘Excuse the pied-à-terre,’ Lester Croyden said breezily. ‘It’s a mess.’

  Danny turned. ‘If this is a mess, it must be blinding when it’s neat.’

  ‘Just wear your dark glasses when you come to dinner. How goes, my boy, how goes?’

  ‘Fine, and you, sir?’

  ‘Dandy, but let’s skip the trivia. Your ballet’—Lester Croyden was about to say ‘I hear,’ but he decided to omit those two little words—‘was wonderful.’

  Astonishment flashed over Danny’s face. ‘You saw it?’

  An important point to glide over. ‘Enchanting. I can’t find words. Something to drink?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They moved to the bar, a lovely eighteenth-century Ile de France cherrywood peasant’s chest that Empire’s top designer had converted into a home for bottles, glasses, and ice cubes.

  ‘I’m flattered you had the time to come to the recital,’ Danny said.

  ‘It’s important to know what my boys are up to.’ Lester Croyden arranged glasses, napkins, tongs, a bowl of nibblies: a priest setting up his altar. ‘What’s your poison?’

  ‘Vodka tonic?’

  ‘Can do, can do.’

  Lester Croyden stooped and pulled out two splits of Schweppes tonic. One, half full, had been recapped. ‘Wonder if there’s any fizz left in this?’ He shook, detected life, and pried the cap up. Quinine geysered over cherrywood. Lester Croyden grabbed an LC-embossed paper napkin and sopped. Croyden, get ahold of yourself. He fixed two vodka tonics, not scorchers but strong enough to get things moving, and led the way to the sofa grouping at the south end of the room.

  They settled themselves. Lester Croyden stared dreamily at a Chagall.

  ‘In a curious way it reminded me of Nora’s first Pillar. You’re too young to have seen that, of course, but did I detect a Tudor influence? The blend of psychology and myth and dancing that has to be unique.’

  Danny hesitated. He dressed abominably, Lester Croyden reflected, but in the proper light he really was a handsome boy.

  ‘Aren’t we all influenced by Tudor?’ Danny said.

  ‘Very apt observation. Aren’t we all influenced by Tudor.’ Lester Croyden jiggled his glass. There was a certain tinkle to ice on chilled crystal that nothing else quite equalled. The sound was Mozartean, when you thought of it. ‘Aren’t we all indeed. Danny, I would like you to do something for me.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I would like you to stage your work for the company.’

  What Lester Croyden detected gushing from his guest was not so much silence as speechlessness.

  ‘Could you do that for me?’

  Danny Gillette tried to answer but his thoughts were reeling. His head felt weightless and his heartbeat raced. From a great distance he heard himself say, ‘I most certainly could.’

  ‘With the right lighting and a touch of scenery it should make a very interesting premiere. I see something abstract. Pools of white on black. And you might consider which of our principals you’d care to use.’

  Danny hesitated. ‘Do you feel it needs principals?’

  ‘Your work is perfection, Danny. And you’ve done wonders with your dancers.’ Lester Croyden leaned toward Danny. His hand touched the boy’s knee but quickly returned to its owner’s lap. This was, after all, business and not fun and games. Lester Croyden wanted Danny Gillette to understand that. ‘But you might think of someone along the lines of—oh—Victor Topacio. A premiere needs principals. After all, over at the Met, it is a paying audience.’

  Danny walked back to the theatre. Walking helped him think.

  Here was his chance, his breakthrough as a choreographer. And there was the price tag: Victor Topacio.

  Three years ago Victor had won the Varna competition, the second Westerner ever to do so. He ought to have made headlines and his career ought to have soared. But two days after Victor’s gold medal, one of the Kirov’s danseurs nobles had defected to the West. All the headlines, all the career, had gone to the new Soviet sensation. And Victor Topacio had lingered, like a beautiful, embarrassing third leg, at Empire.

  Topacio was a fine dancer. Danny had no objection to using him. The question was, how?

  Danny weighed alternatives.

  He could drop out and give Cupid to Victor. That would leave Al, who was corps—not Victor’s league. It would show.

  Or Danny could drop Al and let Victor dance Endymion. That would be unfair to Al. Worse, it would be discouraging, cruel. Endymion was Al’s best dancing in three years.

  Danny thought the problem through—deliberately, slowly, over and over. Each time he kept finding himself boxed in.

  There was only one solution.

  Danny took Al to coffee the next day after company class. Al was all bubbles and smiles as they slid into their booth and he asked, ‘So how does it feel to be an overnight smash?’

  To hell with the rituals of conversation, Danny decided. ‘Lester wants to put the ballet in repertory next season.’

  ‘Beautiful. Hey. Wow. Then what’s the matter? Why so cheerful?’

  ‘He wants to use a male principal.’

  ‘You’ll be a male principal next season.’

  ‘He wants to use Victor.’

  Al didn’t exactly lose his smile, but it thinned. ‘Which means you’re dropping—eenie, meenie, minie—me?’

  ‘I’m dropping both of us,’ Danny said.

  Al put down his coffee cup. He fixed a disbelieving gaze on Danny, then leaned back against the bench as though to get a clearer view. ‘Can I ask you a personal question? Why both?’

  ‘Because I want to do the best possible job choreographing and I can’t if I’m dancing.’

  ‘Then let me rephrase. Why me?’

  ‘Because you’re a good dancer, Al, but Victor’s a Belgrade gold medalist.’

  ‘And you’re afraid I couldn’t stand up to him?’

 
‘Would you want to try?’

  ‘Frankly, yes.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. You’re not ready.’

  ‘I can get ready. Fuck it, Danny, give me a chance. I worked my ass off on that role. And part of that review, whether you want to admit it or not, was me—silly flitty little Al from the corps, yeah, me. I gave you a break. Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘I can’t do it. David Cummings is dancing the role.’

  ‘Man, you sure move fast.’

  ‘It’s nothing personal, Al.’

  ‘Obviously not to you.’

  ‘Look, do you think for one moment Lester and Hannah would let a boy from the corps dance that role?’

  ‘Maybe if this boy from the corps danced that role he wouldn’t be a boy from the corps any more.’

  Danny had the impression of something yanked up by the roots, helpless, dying in his hand.

  ‘Why didn’t you at least ask Lester and Hannah? Why didn’t you tell them you want me? Hell, I’ve proven I can dance it.’

  Al drew close to the table, staring into Danny’s eyes. Danny fought the urge to look away.

  ‘Danny, you’re breath-taking.’ There were tears in Al’s eyes as he shoved up from the bench. ‘It’s been an education knowing you.’

  twenty

  Anna tried the door of one of the side boxes. It was unlocked. She opened it just wide enough to slip inside and closed it quickly behind her.

  From far across the emptiness of the Metropolitan Opera House came voices and light and laughing, shushing movement. The gold house curtain and the asbestos fire curtain had been raised. There was no set; only a black velvet backdrop and black wings. The girls’ corps was filtering offstage. They must have just finished the run-through of Bayadère.

  Anna felt her way cautiously to the front of the box. The floor took a two-inch dip that she hadn’t seen in the dark. She almost tripped. She caught the railing in time to break her fall. Keeping a tight grip, she lowered herself into a chair and sat rigid, tense, half expecting heads to turn and fingers to point accusations from the stage.

  The orchestra pit was dark. The upright piano stage right with a lamp burning looked like an intruder from a saloon. The pianist—a heavy-set woman wearing a spotted babushka—sat arranging her score on the rack.

  Danny Gillette came springily onstage carrying a director’s chair. He looked trim and lithe in his black leotards and black T-shirt. He set the chair up beside the prompter’s box, made himself comfortable, called, ‘Places!’

  Steph came onstage. She looked small and frail, like a lost little girl who had wandered there by mistake. She sat on the floor, peeled off her pink plastic leg warmers. She did a stretch and a bend, then moved to the centre of the stage. She faced the house, feet turned out in second, arms slightly bowed, fingertips grazing her thighs.

  Now that’s a dancer! Anna blew a kiss, then waited, holding her breath.

  Danny shot Steph a questioning nod. She nodded back, lay down on the floor. ‘Curtain!’ Danny called.

  Anna waited for the first sound, the first movement.

  Nothing.

  Suddenly it hit her: Steph had the stage alone—no motion, no music to distract from her. Anna measured the silence. She counted six adagio beats. Six!

  Two men came on, leading a girl between them. Must be Steph’s friend Linda. Anna wondered if this was a black-leotard ballet or if the men would have costumes. Above all she wondered what Linda would be wearing.

  The pianist struck a chord.

  Ouch

  Was that a mistake or did Benjamin Britten mean it? No matter. The ballet began allegro—high solo leaps along the diagonals with complicated foot- and legbeats—too complicated. Steph’s feet weren’t quite catching the beats. Anna relaxed a little when she saw Linda was no better. Danny would simplify those foot-beats—he’d have to.

  In the assisted lifts Steph pulled ahead. Linda prepared badly, her partner had to work to get her up and it showed.

  Anna couldn’t help feeling excitement. The movements seemed to express an absolute stillness; the sudden long-held freezes screamed with tension and energy. The gimmick was so simple, so direct that even a critic would get it, and what’s more he’d congratulate himself for getting it.

  Anna foresaw good reviews: and the praise was bound to splash over onto Steph. She relaxed in her chair.

  There was a series of alternating balances where the boys assisted and the girls mirrored each other. Anna frowned. She didn’t see why Danny had to have the girls doing the same steps and stretches. It looked cheap, like a contest.

  But in the supported adagio things got better.

  Steph’s line flowed. She looked soft, romantic. Linda looked lanky and staccato by contrast and she didn’t quite feel the music: her movements began slow—which was lovely in itself—and she had to rush every one of them to catch up with the beat. The effect was flow, jerk, flow, jerk, and the jerks killed the flow—which left Steph holding the stage.

  By the time the dancers separated into couples Anna knew that Steph was home free.

  Steph’s couple was downstage, nearer the audience. Good.

  The couples alternated a series of killingly slow, ever higher lifts. Anna’s arms ached just thinking of what those boys were going through. With decent music, strings instead of the barrel-organing piano, the lifts would soar.

  Now Steph’s partner prepared. Anna could see this was the big lift, the topper. She squinted critically.

  Trouble.

  Steph’s plié was shallow, she didn’t bend her knees far enough to help her partner. The lift came out sharp and ragged and wrong. The boy had to shift weight and his foot came out of position. Of course it didn’t look like Steph’s fault but it still looked like shit.

  Once Steph was up, it was beautiful. She leaned out into space and slowly, effortlessly, she dipped—eight sustained beats of slow motion, with never a break. Her head arced down and her feet arced up till her partner was holding her almost upside down.

  Then, with a movement so swift Anna couldn’t believe it had even happened, he was holding her in arabesque. Her position was sharp as etched crystal. The house would go crazy, they’d have to go crazy!

  Now he was bringing her down in a slow sliding movement and just as her toes touched and she found her balance she whipped into a turn—out of nowhere, a turn!

  And then, to top that, a sudden stop motion and there she was in attitude—cool and still and not even out of breath—as though she hadn’t taken a step in the last three minutes!

  Anna almost broke into applause on the spot.

  She checked herself, gripped the railing, leaned forward.

  What next?

  Her heart sank as she saw what was coming next: the other couple, who’d been standing upstage in absolute stillness, began executing exactly the same sequence of movements.

  Helplessly, Anna watched her little girl standing downstage, motionless, while Linda went up into the same lift, Steph’s lift, and the same arabesque, Steph’s arabesque, and then came down into a—

  Anna couldn’t believe it, she didn’t want to believe it.

  A double turn!

  Danny had given that girl a double turn! Why? To make Steph look like some kind of dumdum who could barely creak out a single?

  Anna’s eyes stung and her heart hammered.

  She could barely focus on the four-dancer clover-leaf patterns that followed or the two women alone on the stage, slowly back-bending toward one another. The question stabbed at her: why two, why the hell did Danny Gillette need two women? He could as well have used Steph and a mirror for all that second girl added.

  Anna blinked away the sting and when she opened her eyes Danny was standing close to Steph, an arm around her waist, giving the dancers his notes.

  That was it. That was the ballet.

  Well, at least Danny seemed pleased with it.

  Anna gripped the railing and got to her feet. She found her way out of the box an
d went home. Her resolve was gathered into a painful little nut in the pit of her stomach.

  She told Directory Assistance she was Danny Gillette’s doctor’s nurse and she wrung the unlisted number from them.

  She began phoning at four-thirty. At five-thirty he answered.

  ‘I did something I shouldn’t have. Steph will murder me if she finds out.’

  They were sitting at a back table in the Theatre Pub. It was four o’clock, not yet cocktail hour. The neighbouring tables were still vacant and there was no one near enough to overhear.

  ‘I peeked at a Lacrymosa rehearsal last Thursday.’

  Danny Gillette took a deep breath and his black T-shirt became too tight for his torso. The collar exposed a tensed, pulsing crescent of skin. He reminded Anna of a dancer trying to relax before a difficult entrance.

  ‘That rehearsal was pretty ragged,’ he said.

  ‘You’re telling me? But the way Steph’s been talking about it, I couldn’t stay away. I even sneaked off work early.’

  She made a pretense of sipping her ginger ale, of enjoying it, of inspecting the customers huddled at the shadowy little tables. She sensed Danny waiting for her to go on but she dawdled, smiling and stirring her ice cubes with her swizzle stick.

  ‘Did you like the ballet?’ he asked.

  ‘I was curious about one thing. Is Linda covering for someone else?’

  ‘No, she’s dancing.’

  ‘The way she handled that half turn in mid-air where Victor catches her?’

  ‘It’s a whole turn.’

  ‘Oh, that explains. I couldn’t figure it out. That was the only thing that bothered me.’

  ‘You liked the rest?’

  He looked at her, eager and worried and young, just as Marty Lang had once looked at her. She felt a desire she had not known in years, an impulse to make her hand soft, to reach out and touch a man’s face. She had to remind herself, firmly, that Steph was her concern, not this boy.

  ‘Well, I could see it was rough—there’s so much going on. But it’s all brilliant. You know, it reminded me of Jerry’s first version of Cage.’ So far as she knew, Jerome Robbins had done only one Cage, but Danny Gillette was too young to know the difference. ‘There were so many soloists, so many bits—but he realized that at the dress. He ripped it apart, he simplified, he had a hit.’