She waited, dazed, for the usher to bring out the bouquet. She’d bought an arrangement of red roses and lilies, thirty-five dollars’ worth, and marked it Deliver on stage.
But what the usher brought out was not a bouquet and it was not red and white. It was a basket of black roses, so large he had to carry it in both arms and almost stumbled setting it down.
Black roses—perfect with Steph’s moss-green dress. Now why hadn’t Anna thought of that?
The press agent said, ‘Wow.’
Anna craned forward in her seat. That basket had to hold a hundred dollars’ worth of roses easily. Danny Gillette didn’t have that kind of money. Who could have–?
A suspicion tugged at her.
She turned in her seat, eyes tracking the line of grand tier boxes.
The house lights were still down and that last box in the row was dark. Anna squinted and in the effort of her squinting a shadow seemed to shape itself in the rich, vibrating gloom, some crouching shape bent toward the railing.
She wondered if it could be her imagination. But the curtain lifted for another call and this time, in the reflected light, her eye picked out two hands clasping the rail, not applauding. Dimly she made out a jagged, high-beaked profile, a bald head.
The house lights came halfway up and the face turned suddenly toward her. A jolt went through her. This was not her imagination. Marius Volmar was here, here in the Metropolitan Opera House, staring down at her for one diamond-hard instant.
The gaze travelled back to the stage, to the little girl in moss green who curtsied and smiled and plucked from her bouquet two black roses and handed one to each of her partners.
Anna couldn’t believe it. Her blood was singing like a victorious army. Marius Volmar had come back after all.
He had come back for her little girl.
The tickets cost a week’s food budget, but Ray knew it was an important evening for Chris and he wanted to share it with her, so they sat in the grand tier for Steph’s performance.
When the curtain fell Chris applauded wildly. Ray had not understood the ballet, but he wanted to make an informed comment. ‘Her arms,’ he said. ‘What do you call that movement—port de bras?’
Chris nodded, still clapping.
‘Her port de bras was fantastic,’ Ray said.
‘Her everything’s fantastic,’ Chris said.
There was an avalanche of drinkers at the bar. It took Ray five minutes to get a ginger ale for Chris and a vodka for himself and when he turned around Chris was talking to a stranger. The young man was well built and handsome and he had the smile of a self-appointed god.
Ray’s lips tightened. He didn’t want strangers. Not tonight.
Chris reached out a hand to take her drink. ‘Ray, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine—Wally Collins. Wally, this is Ray Lockwood, from my home town.’
The men shook hands and Ray said, ‘I take it you’re a ballet buff too?’
Chris’s friend smiled. ‘You might say.’
‘What did you think of Stephanie Lang?’
‘Incredible extension.’
Ray tried to think what ‘extension’ could mean.
‘I didn’t feel Danny used her extension at all,’ Chris said.
‘Those arabesques en air weren’t exactly tiny,’ her friend said, and then they were arguing, pleasantly, fluently, technical terms and French words spilling off their lips like running water.
Ray stood and listened and tried to make intelligent grunts. He saw that the young man’s clothes had colour and style and showed his body, and the body held itself with a rippling confidence. Ray was very aware that his own three-piece dark suit had no colour, no style, did nothing to show his body.
‘But could you believe those retards?’ Chris’s friend said.
‘What retards?’ Chris laughed.
Ray felt like a member of the audience, allowed to watch, allowed to applaud, not allowed to break into the dialogue. He pushed his way to the bar and ordered another drink to douse his irritation. He turned and stared at Chris. She was laughing and gesturing and as the intermission bell sounded she kissed her friend on the lips.
The vodka turned sour in Ray’s stomach. He saw that he did not exist for Chris. The evening was lost time, lost money, lost effort.
Walking back to their seats, he said, ‘I take it that fellow’s a pretty good friend?’
She caught something in his voice and looked up at him quickly.
He was still carrying his empty plastic cup and he crumpled it hard. He felt alone, suffocated, like a mole burrowing into darkness.
‘What’s the matter, Ray?’
He stopped and looked at her. He didn’t know what he was feeling and he didn’t know if he could handle it. ‘You kissed him.’
‘Wally partners me,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you recognize him?’
‘No.’
‘And he’s gay.’
He’s gay and you love him, Ray thought. I saw.
She touched him and hope sprang back, nagging at him that success was just one push away. Always just one push more.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’d better hurry.’
twenty-three
Even before the lights were up Anna was excusing her way past knees, pressuring a path out of the house before the intermission surge to the bar could block her or slow her, then not exactly running along the underground promenade but not exactly walking either, arriving a little out of breath at the stage door but not so out of breath she couldn’t shout a ‘Hi!’ and smile at the guard as she dropped into a chair to wait for her little girl.
In the old days—in her day—she could have talked her way past any guard in any house in New York, but nowadays—what with bomb threats and prop ripoffs and sopranos getting mugged in their own dressing rooms—why waste the breath? She took a copy of Dancemagazine from her purse, frowned at the Miss Nobody on the cover, skimmed ads, couldn’t believe the price of leotards, what was going on, an Arab cotton embargo?
Suddenly the loudspeaker overhead sent out a staticky burst. Her eyes jerked to it. Her ears translated. Applause. They were still clapping in there. Hell, did she walk out on one of Steph’s curtain calls?
‘Anna—Anna, my dear.’
She jumped.
Marius Volmar took her hand in his, bent down, came within a breath of kissing it, held it a moment.
She tried to collect herself. She’d heard that people aged but their voices didn’t. In Volmar’s case the manners hadn’t either.
‘You’re looking very well, Anna. How are you?’
She tried to force some kind of reply up through her surprise. His cold, dignified distance of twenty years ago had turned no warmer. There still hovered about him a neatness that did not quite belong to the living.
‘Why, Mr Volmar—’ she stammered.
She had prayed for this moment, planned for it, rehearsed it; but the reality caught her unprepared. Out of nowhere, the past was screaming in her ears, blotting out the present. She smelled a men’s cologne—was it sandalwood?—that she had not thought of in all this time, and she realized now she had never forgotten it.
She sat silent, bursting with memory, hurting.
‘May I sit?’ He fixed a smile on her.
She glanced at the chair beside her. Empty. She tapped it. He sat. Still smiling. He’d smiled like that at her first Lilac Garden, and the smile had told her for sure she was a dancer. It was telling her something else now, something just as important.
‘What a wonderful night this must be for you,’ he said.
‘I’m loving it—but it’s Steph’s night.’ She laughed to ease her tension and the laugh felt girlish and false. ‘Steph did all the footwork. I just did the nagging.’ She shifted her purse in her lap.
‘Then it’s a wonderful night for both of you. May I be the first to say—congratulations?’
Come to think of it, he was the first. And she hadn’t seen him come in, so he must have been here be
fore her. Either it was a shorter walk from the grand tier, or he ran faster than she did. She began to see the outline of his intention.
‘I’d be honoured if you and Stephanie would join me for a glass of wine and a brief chat.’
She pressed her hands down, keeping her purse still. ‘That’s nice of you, Mr Volmar, but Steph doesn’t drink. Alcohol destroys muscle tissue.’
‘Ginger ale and a brief chat then?’
There. It wasn’t just her imagination. He wanted Steph and his wanting showed on the air like breath on a cold day.
‘She’s going to be tired. How brief is brief?’
‘What I have to say won’t take more than three minutes in a quiet place.’
A voice in her whispered: We’ve done it!
‘It’s up to Steph.’ Anna picked up her magazine, wishing it wouldn’t tremble so. She smiled—it was only polite to smile—and pretended to read. She wanted him to see she didn’t care. He sat very still beside her. She could count each coiled tick of his mind.
Crowds flocked by. Dancers, reporters, hangers-on. And kept flocking by. She could see them glancing at Volmar, feel them wondering, Who’s that he’s with? Hands waved and voices shouted and there was almost a fight when a woman in sable tried to get by the guard without a pass.
And then Steph came through the security door, looking darling in her white rabbit hat, like a little Russian princess.
Anna called and jumped to her feet, arms outstretched in a big welcome-home.
‘Mom!’
A flying kiss.
‘Mr Volmar.’ Handshake. ‘Thank you for those roses.’
And my lilies? Anna wondered. Her smile froze when she saw who was with Steph: that Danny kid. He was hanging back a little, but even in shadow triumph glowed on him like a sun tan.
Steph turned, made introductions. The men batted compliments back and forth. It struck Anna as ridiculous, a dwarf trying to waltz with a giant. She pulled Steph to the side and whispered.
‘Mr Volmar wants to talk to us. Now. Private.’ Anna pointed with her eyes, leaving no doubt as to who wasn’t included.
But, Mom, I promised Danny—’
‘Honey, this is important. Danny’s a professional, he’ll understand.’
‘But I can’t just—’
Who was this Danny all of a sudden, some kind of fiancé? Anna looked at the boy and she didn’t like what she saw. He was sharp. Jewish, she’d bet anything. Jewish and handsome, and those were the worst. He was trying to use her little girl.
‘You can just. Mr Volmar’s waiting and he hasn’t got all night, so say good-bye to your friend.’
Steph’s eyes begged.
Impatience flared through Anna. Her whisper hissed, ‘You can see that kid any time!’
Didn’t Steph see that in one swoop Volmar could leapfrog her over thirty ballerinas and three years’ sweat? Sometimes—like right now—Anna wished she hadn’t spoiled the child so. Okay, so it was Steph’s big night, but there were a few things Anna could just call to Miss Overnight-Success’s attention—like a career sacrificed and that drunk of a husband and twenty years’ scrubbing floors and ironing shirts and pinching every penny and what for, to get talked back to by your own daughter in front of the whole ballet world?
‘Do this for me.’ Anna’s hands were coaxing on her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Just this once. Please?’
Steph’s face went through tug-of-war. She was still wearing her stage lashes. She was too young for lashes offstage. She had perfect skin and they made it look breakable, like a doll’s. Her eyes sighed.
‘Danny, I’m sorry. I forgot. I promised I’d have a drink with Mom and Mr Volmar. Would you mind if we put off our celebration till another night?’
Anna had never seen a human face collapse so quickly. Danny was wearing a smile like the window at Tiffany’s, but when Steph said that it was as though a sledge hammer had smashed in the glass.
Anna grabbed Steph by the hand before anyone could start feeling sorry for the kid. ‘Good night, Danny,’ she called, edging the two of them through the mob toward the exit. ‘Terrific job, really terrific, it’s a great pas de trois!’
‘I care about you, Chris. And damn it, I try to care about dance. I try hard.’
The apartment was almost dark. There was a lamp on the table by the sofa and it threw a pale glow on Chris’s face. She was very pale and she looked up at Ray calmly.
‘But you don’t seem to realize there’s a world out there with millions of people who don’t dance or even know what a pirouette is.’
‘I know there are people like that,’ she said softly.
‘They have lives too. A lot of them have good lives. Important lives. Happy lives.’ His eyes clutched at her face like fingers feeling out Braille.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Don’t you even wonder what other people’s lives are like?’
‘I know what other people’s lives are like. I grew up with other people.’
And suddenly all the injustices he had suffered began spilling out of him. ‘Damn it, Chris, I ought to be memorizing cases and decisions and instead I’m memorizing names of steps and ballerinas and choreographers and it doesn’t seem to make any difference to you.’
Her eyes were blue and blank and blameless. ‘You don’t have to memorize things for me.’
‘But I want to. I want to prove I care about the things you care about.’
‘Don’t prove things, Ray. Please.’
He sat down on the sofa beside her. His light brown hair had fallen across his forehead and he was breathing hard. He was thinking: I’ll dare to tell her. Maybe I’m not alone in my secret cave. Maybe in her heart she wants me too.
‘Chris—can’t we have something together, just you and I?’
She stared at his handsome, pained face. ‘I thought—maybe we did,’ she whispered.
He reached a hand to stroke her and then he was gripping her shoulders and she could feel the strength in him holding itself back.
‘Ray—don’t—’
‘Does it bother you to touch me?’
‘No, but you’re squeezing.’
Without warning he pushed her back against the sofa. His mouth crashed roughly into hers. She tasted liquor and his probing tongue and suddenly everything was heat and motion and pain. She felt something jamming against her thigh and she knew it was his erection. Terror shot through her. This was sex, this ripping and clawing and liquor breath, this twisted face trying to smear itself against hers, these hands that bruised and crushed.
‘No!’ she screamed. With a desperate effort, she clawed her way free.
Silence thundered.
He was staring at her, a hand pressed to the red gash on his cheek. He swallowed. ‘I’m sorry Chris. Very sorry. I guess we just don’t understand each other.’ He got to his feet. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m okay,’ she said in a voice that wasn’t okay. Nausea and white, blinding panic were still spinning in her.
‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said, and a moment later she heard the front door close.
They took a table at the cafe in Avery Fisher Hall. The marble and the boxwood made a corner that was almost private and Anna was finally able to catch her breath.
Volmar quizzed Steph about her teachers and Empire and Danny Gillette. Anna sipped and stirred her ginger ale and sipped and finally cut through the small talk.
‘Mr Volmar, you want Steph in your company, right?’
He turned towards her, slowly, and stared. Anna knew there was something she lacked, a knack of dressing or the right accent, something that made people ... hesitate. So what?
‘I mean that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’
‘That’s correct. I would like Stephanie in the company.’
‘Steph has had a long day.’ Anna placed a hand on Steph’s. ‘And she’s dead beat, and if we’re going to talk contract, let’s talk contract.’
Volmar glanced thoughtfully at Steph. ‘
Very well. Let’s talk contract.’
‘What are you offering?’
‘As far as money is concerned, I had in mind—’
‘Money she can get anywhere.’ Anna felt light and springy, as though she were dancing on the tips of her toes. ‘First off, why should Steph give up a brilliant future at Empire to join NBT? What are you offering in the way of roles that she can’t get from Lester Croyden?’
‘Serious roles in serious ballets.’
‘Serious roles in the serious back row of the serious corps? No, thanks. She goes in as soloist.’
‘Very well. She goes in as soloist.’
‘I want it spelled out in the contract and I want a guaranteed minimum. You’re not going to give her one Prayer in Coppélia and bury her.’
‘I can hardly spell out the solos when next season’s repertory isn’t even set yet.’
All right, they’d haggle. Not because Anna intended to budge an inch, but because she understood men and she knew haggling was important to them. ‘I don’t need the names, I need the number. And solo means she does her own footwork, hers and hers alone, no Ribbon Dances or four little swanlets.’
‘How many solos?’
While Anna was spelling out her conditions, she noticed something odd: there was no twinkle at the table, no twinkle in her little girl. It was as though Steph weren’t there at all, but far away in some secret darkness, thinking thoughts of her own.
Anna winked, tried to catch her eye. See what your mom’s doing for you? Toughest agent in the business!
‘Really, Anna, ballet doesn’t work like that.’
‘I got a lawyer who can make it work like that.’
‘Steph has great promise, but you’ll forgive me for saying, she has a long way to go before she’s a ballerina.’
Steph’s fingers lay on the cloth napkin, little and curling like the first tendrils of a vine. Anna touched them again.
‘Fine. She’ll go her long way at Empire. Come on, Steph.’
Anna picked up her purse and made a move as though to rise. Volmar drew a deep breath of resignation, as though to let her, and a chill ruffled Anna’s certainty.
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