by M. J. Duncan
“Now, where…” Devereaux murmured as she shuffled through the papers on her desk, ah-ha-ing softly when she found what she was looking for. “I know we didn’t discuss specifics with regard to salary and whatnot, but”—she handed Mallory the folder—“you can take a look at this, and we can go from there.”
Mallory nodded as she accepted the folded and obligingly opened to the top page. It was a fairly standard contract, far more straightforward than the one she had signed with the symphony a year before. The salary compensation was in the final paragraph, and she arched a brow in surprise when she saw the number. Not that she needed the money, really, she had negotiated a more than generous salary when she had signed with the LSO the year before, but the offer she was looking at seemed painfully low given the amount of work she was sure the project would require.
“I’m afraid we don’t have the budget you’re used to at the symphony,” Devereaux spoke up apologetically. “But that is comparable to what a dancer in our corps makes in a season. And, given the cuts we’ve had to take on for the year, this is, unfortunately, the best offer I can make you.”
Mallory blinked as she looked up at her. Granted, she was the leader of one of the preeminent symphonies in the world, but even first-year second-violins made at least three times this amount. It was clear by the look on Devereaux’s face that she was telling the truth, and Mallory shook her head as she looked down at the paper. “They must love dancing.”
“More than life, most of the time,” Devereaux confirmed softly.
“This is only for rehearsal time and the performances that we talked about? Then the money isn’t an issue for me,” Mallory said, hopefully putting what seemed to be Devereaux’s biggest concern to rest. She nodded when Devereaux’s shoulders relaxed ever-so-slightly in relief and pulled her briefcase onto her lap. The page she was looking for was pinned safely between her tablet and binder of sheet music, and she smiled as she offered it to her. “I printed out a summary of my LSO rehearsal schedule.”
Devereaux picked up a pair of black-framed glasses and slipped them on as she looked at the paper. “You’re dark on Tuesday? How odd…”
“In a way,” Mallory agreed. Most theatre-type companies were dark on Monday. “But working Monday gives us a chance to go over our performances from the weekend while they’re still fresh.”
Devereaux nodded. “No. No. This is great. Sunday is the only day of the week we don’t do class, so it won’t impact our schedule here at all,” she muttered as she plucked a paper from her desk. Her eyes moved quickly over the page, and she smiled as she slipped it behind Mallory’s printout and set them onto her desk. “Okay”—she leaned forward to pick up a pen—“so here’s what I’m thinking…” Her voice trailed off as she began scribbling on the bottom of Mallory’s LSO schedule.
While Devereaux worked, Mallory pulled a pen from her bag and quickly flipped through the contract she’d been offered, marking a few places that she wanted to discuss with Max, who would probably refer her to somebody from the LSO’s legal team. She was especially glad that she did not have to rely on this outside work to make ends meet, though. It was honestly criminal how little dancers were paid given the beating their bodies took.
“All of this is subject to change depending on performances and whatnot,” Devereaux said as she dropped her pen onto the desk and handed back the paper she’d been writing on. “And once the ballet has been learned, we can back these hours down, but these times would fit into the breaks in your schedule, allowing plenty of time for you to get back and forth between here and the Barbican.”
Mallory nodded as she looked over the paper. Two hours of rehearsal every day of the week except Tuesday—which Devereaux had given three—with weekends off. It was more rehearsal time than she had been expecting, but given that Devereaux said the time would lessen once she had learned her role, she couldn’t find fault in the schedule. If anything, part of her was worried that this wouldn’t be enough time for her to learn everything she needed to learn.
“Like we discussed last night, it will be a run of four performances over the back half of the year. The first will be sometime in early January. I don’t have a date nailed down yet, but I’ll talk with Clara and try to schedule each of the performances for a weekend where the LSO is either not playing, or where she would be okay going without you for a night.”
“Both Clara and Max, our Music Director, are keen on the idea of this collaboration, so I don’t envision you getting too much pushback from the LSO.”
Devereaux smiled wryly and took off her glasses. “One can hope.”
“I do need to have this contract reviewed by the LSO’s lawyers, though, before I can sign.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
Mallory nodded. “Once they give me their approval to sign, assuming there aren’t any changes they want to make to the contract, I’ll have them send it back via courier, so you have it before we begin rehearsals.”
“Perfect.”
“Do you have copies of the music?”
Devereaux hummed and nodded as she picked up a thin black binder and handed it to her. “It’s all in here, in the order it will be performed for the ballet.”
“Excellent,” Mallory muttered as she opened the binder and began flipping through the pages.
“How long will it take you to learn the music?”
Mallory blinked as she looked up at Devereaux. “All of it?”
“Say the first three pieces? We can work in stages, of course, so you don’t need to memorize the lot at once, but you will need a working knowledge of the music before we begin so we can match the steps I’m seeing here”—she tapped her temple—“with what will actually work.”
“I…” Mallory looked back down at the binder on her lap. She leafed through the first three pieces of the ballet, and was grateful, at least, that Halonen tended toward symmetry and repetition in her work. “I should be able to get a fairly competent working knowledge of the first three pieces in two weeks. Would that work?”
Devereaux nodded. “Of course.” She grabbed a spiral planner that had been laying open atop a small stack of files. “Two weeks from today would be the fifth of September. I’m guessing you don’t have any performances scheduled that early in the season; are you lot dark on Tuesdays when you’re not performing?”
“We’re not, but I should still be able to get here by three.”
“Brilliant. Do you have any further questions for me?”
Mallory took a deep breath as she glanced at the folder of music on her lap and let it go slowly as she looked back up at Devereaux. “I don’t think so. Not right now, anyway,” she added with a small, wry smile and a little shrug.
“Well, if you think of anything, here’s my contact information.” Devereaux slid a business card across the desk. “I get to texts most quickly, and return calls throughout the day when I have time, but if you need something urgently, call my office number and Serena will handle it. Oh, and if you leave her your shoe size as well, I’ll make sure we get appropriate footwear for you for your first rehearsal. You won’t be en pointe, of course, but you’ll still need a quality slipper.”
“Got it.” Mallory nodded.
“Excellent. And please make sure to leave your information with Serena before you leave.” Devereaux got to her feet and extended her hand. “I look forward to working with you, Ms. Collingswood.”
“Mallory, please,” Mallory insisted as she shook her hand.
“Of course. And, please, call me Nina.”
Mallory nodded. “I guess I will see you in a fortnight, then.”
Nina grinned. “I look forward to it.”
“Thank you all for your work,” Clara said as she laid her baton on her music stand and stepped off the rostrum. “We will meet here again tomorrow morning at ten. Please make sure you’re up to speed on the Bartók piece, as we will be re-visiting it first-thing.” She was addressing the group as a whole, but Mallory was sure the
words were intended for the new cellist who had mucked up enough of the music that morning to result in an extended rehearsal for the rest of them while he worked out his nerves.
As the rest of the musicians murmured some form of understanding, Clara ambled over to Mallory. “Today’s the day, right? You ready?”
Mallory glanced at her watch and sighed. It was closing in on half past one, which meant that she had roughly an hour and a half to grab a quick lunch and get over to Covent Garden. Two weeks had never passed so quickly in her life. “We’ll see,” she murmured as she began gathering her things. She nodded to Charlie Fong, her second-chair, as he eased past them, and wasn’t at all surprised when Will promptly took his seat.
“You ready?” Will asked.
“I just asked her the same thing,” Clara chuckled. She gave Mallory’s shoulder a light squeeze. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. And you should know that the Board is quite chuffed with the whole collaboration idea. Hayes already has them trying to figure out ways to parlay it into increased media coverage for the LSO.”
“Wonderful,” Mallory drawled.
Clara laughed. “Tell Nina that I said hello, and I will see you tomorrow.”
Mallory nodded. “I will.”
Once Clara had left, Will nudged her with his elbow and asked, “So, are you ready?”
Mallory shook her head. “Not at all.” She had thought the fortnight would be enough to let her learn enough of the music to feel prepared, but she didn’t. Her thoughts were constantly haunted by the melodies of the songs she was supposed to learn. She had been seeing the music in her sleep for more than a week now, and any time she was without her violin in her hand she found her fingers working the notes of whatever section of music was stuck in her head against her leg. Her phone. A water bottle. And then there was the evening she’d been idly fingering the pole beside her seat on the tube as she made her way home after an afternoon of meetings that followed on the heels of a particularly tiring four-hour rehearsal, and the guy sitting across from her had thought she was hitting on him.
Part of her felt bad for the way she had laughed in his face when he tried to chat her up, but it was a very small part. Mostly she was still annoyed that he had dared to interrupt her when she had been finally making sense of a transition that had been giving her fits.
“You said it was, what? Like ten minutes of music?” Will dropped into the chair to her left and laid his oboe across his lap as he studied her. “Surely you have it memorized by now.”
Mallory pursed her lips and shrugged. Memorizing the notes was the easy part. Learning the music was another problem altogether, and he knew it. “Eh. I mean, I have it memorized okay, but I don’t feel like I have a real handle on it, and I’m supposed to be able to not just play but also dance while doing it. I just…” She blew out a loud breath and resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. “Why did I agree to do this again?”
Will laughed and looped a brotherly arm over her shoulder. “Because you seemed pretty wowed by the whole thing. I’m pretty sure when you called me after your little meeting at Covent Garden that you said the whole thing was going to be ‘fucking brilliant,’ yeah?”
“If it comes together like Nina thinks, then yes, it will. But I still…”
“Breathe, Mal. You’ve got this.”
“Do I?” Mallory asked, a hint of panic creeping into her tone. “Because music is one thing, but the idea of dancing too…”
“Let Devereaux worry about that. That’s her thing after all, yeah?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“But nothing. It’ll be fine. Honestly, it’s good to be a little unsure about stuff every once in a while. Means you’re pushing yourself.”
“It does, huh?” Mallory drawled.
“Absolutely. Tell me, when was the last time you were this nervous about something?”
“Oh, you know, about a year or so ago when I proposed to Gwen. And look how well that turned out for me…”
Will sighed and pulled her in closer. “This won’t be like that, I promise.”
“You don’t know that. It could be just as big of a flaming failure. Or worse, really, because at least then I was humiliated in private. This will be on stage, for all the world to witness.”
Will pressed a light kiss to her temple. “I have faith in your ability to pull this off, and I’ll wager that when the curtain comes down on your final performance that you’ll have a good laugh at how worried you were about all of this.”
She took a deep breath as his confidence took some of the edge off her panic. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” she whispered.
“So don’t,” Will replied, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “Just go in there and try your best. I’m sure they won’t put on the show before it’s ready, so just have fun with it.”
Mallory sighed and nodded. All of this was an exercise in futility anyway, because she had signed the contract and agreed to do the show. “You can’t laugh at me if I’m awful.”
Will chuckled and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze before pulling his arm away. “Bollocks. I absolutely can. But I won’t have to, because you’re going to be brilliant.”
Nina’s assistant Serena was chatting with the women behind the counter by the stage door when Mallory arrived at the theatre, and she smiled as she asked, “So, you ready?”
Mallory nodded even as she silently wished people would stop asking her that. “I believe so.”
“Brilliant. I’m to show you to your dressing room, and then bring you by the shoe room to try on a few different pairs before your rehearsal,” Serena explained. “Yvette, this is Mallory Collingswood, by the way. Have you met? She’s collaborating on Nina’s new production.”
The brunette Mallory had noticed on her last visit smiled and offered her a little wave. “It’s a pleasure, Ms. Collingswood.”
“Mallory, please,” she insisted.
“Mallory,” the woman agreed with a small nod. “And I’m Yvette. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I will. Thank you,” Mallory assured her.
“Yvette is the secret keeper here,” Serena explained as she began making her way down the hall. “Knows everyone and everything and she’s a vault, so if you have any questions that you don’t want to ask Nina or myself for whatever reason, go to her. Odds are good she’ll be able to help you out.”
“Good to know,” Mallory murmured as she adjusted the strap of her gym bag on her left shoulder so that it stopped bumping against her violin case. She was glad that she hadn’t been left to her own devices to try to find her way through the massive building’s maze of corridors. She usually had a decent memory for directions but, with her head so full of new music and apprehension of what was to come, it was nice to be able to just follow Serena and not have to worry about whether or not she was on the correct path.
Serena waved at a closed door to the left of the lifts as she pressed her thumb to the call button. “That’s the main changing room.”
Mallory nodded. She couldn’t help but wonder where they were headed then, because the slacks, blouse, and sweater she was wearing were not at all appropriate for a ballet rehearsal, but she obediently followed Serena into the lift.
They only went up two floors before the lift stopped and the doors slid open, and Mallory grasped the strap of her violin case as she stepped into an entirely new corridor. There was a window at the end that let in a fraction of natural light to offset the fluorescents overhead, but it was so far away that Mallory couldn’t see out it to gather her bearings. She had a feeling they were on the southern side of the building, but without a landmark to judge from, they could have been on the moon for all she knew.
Serena made her way past a handful of closed doors before stopping at one near the middle of the corridor. “You’re in luck,” she said as she pushed the door open. “One of our principals is out for the year with an injury, so you can use her dressing room for
the length of your run. It’s not much,” she apologized as she motioned Mallory inside, “but it’s private, which is a luxury in this business. Do you need anything?”
“I…don’t think so?” Mallory murmured as she slipped past Serena to take a look at the room. The first thing she noticed was the dressing table that stretched along the wall opposite the door, with a long mirror framed with lights for hair and makeup. There was a small sink opposite the dressing table, next to the door, and a twin-sized bed pushed up against the wall beneath a large square window that, she saw when she got close enough to look through it, overlooked Covent Garden Piazza.
“I’ll let you get changed, then. Showers and toilets are just there”—Serena waved toward the direction they’d come—“so I’ll show you those before we head up to the studio.”
Mallory nodded. “Thank you.”
“Of course. I’ll be right outside,” Serena replied with a kind smile as she backed out of the room and closed the door after herself.
Not wanting to keep Serena waiting, Mallory quickly changed into the black capris leggings and maroon tank she had packed for the afternoon and left the slacks, blouse, and sweater she had worn to the LSO folded on the dressing table beside her duffle bag. She combed her fingers through her hair to pull it back into a simple ponytail, slipped her feet into a pair of Brooks trainers, and pulled on her favorite zippered hoodie. She took a deep breath as she pulled the folder of music for the ballet from the bag and picked up her violin, and gave her reflection one last what the hell have I gotten myself into look before turning toward the door.
Serena was leaning against the wall across from the door, tapping at the screen of her phone, and she looked up with a smile when Mallory exited the dressing room. “Here’s the key, by the way.” She handed Mallory a key on a simple key ring.