by JJ Knight
“Success!” Carla says. “Our evening is complete.”
We watch Fiona and the boy talk until we’re tired of sitting there. We remind her to call us if she needs us, sending the fresh-faced young man, probably twenty or so, a stern look, then head back to the hotel.
In my room, I call Blitz and update him on all the gossip.
“Sounds like you’re having fun,” he says. “Have you sent your parents the tickets yet?”
“Houston is still six weeks away,” I say.
“You should do it soon,” he says. “They might have a very busy social calendar.”
This makes me laugh. “I love you, Blitz,” I say.
“I aim to keep it that way,” he says.
“See you tomorrow before the show?” I ask.
“You bet on it,” he says.
As I curl up in my bed awaiting my third city’s opening night with the ballet, I think of Carla. Her frowns, her preoccupation with men she can’t have. And this interesting emotional connection with a mysterious ex.
I’m glad I have her. And that she has me. I have a feeling Baltimore might be a little tough on her.
Like Houston is going to be tough on me.
Chapter 25
I manage to peek out into the audience before the show and spot Blitz and Ted in the front row. There are fewer patrons hogging the best seats now that we are deep into the tour.
This crowd is different, more laid back, dressed more casually. I pop back to the dressing room. There are only two community dressing rooms, and I can tell Dominika is annoyed. Ivana has curtained off a small section for her, but the chaos and noise are still very much evident.
The heat seems to build as more dancers shove themselves into the space. I start to wonder if this venue is really meant to house a ballet with a cast our size. Carla squeezes past me for the door, her face pale.
“You okay?” I ask her.
She nods and moves out into the hall.
I’m ready for a break myself so I follow her.
She pauses, glancing at her phone, then heads for the back exit to the alley. I wonder what she’s doing, heading outside just ten minutes before curtain.
Carla takes a deep breath, then wrangles with the handle. It pops open finally, a breeze gusting inside. I stop several yards away, partially hidden by a tall wardrobe crate. My concern grows. She really seems upset.
A man comes in, dressed in leather and holding a motorcycle helmet. Then behind him, a little girl about Gabriella’s age.
When she sees Carla, she squeals, “Mommy!”
The floor drops out from under me, and I almost lose my balance. Mommy? This is Carla’s little girl?
My gaze snaps to the face of my friend. She’s so familiar to me after two months of closeness. But she’s never mentioned a child. She’s seemed too young.
Like I would. I see the lines around her eyes in a new light. She’s older than me. And clearly this child of hers doesn’t see her often.
“You’re a ballerina today!” the little girl says.
“I am,” Carla says. “Have you been dancing?”
The child shakes her head. The resemblance between them is clear, the curls, the upturned nose. “Daddy says no dance. I do karate!”
Carla glances up at the man. “Really, Jake? No dance?”
He shrugs. “Dance destroyed us.”
Carla bites her lip. She doesn’t want to argue with him, I can tell. I’ve seen that expression in rehearsal.
I want to back away from the scene. But my eyes are on the girl. So lovely. So sweet. How could Carla not want to be near her every single day? What is she thinking? Children grow up. She’s missing it.
Now I’m angry and turn away to walk rapidly back down the hall. My dance slippers are silent on the polished floor. Carla might see me now, but I don’t care.
I wonder where Gabriella is. I picture her arm outstretched with a ribbon stick. Her smile. Her dark hair crowning her head.
I can’t see her anymore. And my best friend just lets her baby’s life slip through her fingers.
Everything I left behind rushes back. Dreamcatcher Dance Academy. My home. My church. I have nothing to ground me. I’m like a feather dancing on the wind.
I pass the dressing area, the fairies starting to spill out to prepare for the opening number. There’s a green room, the door propped open, the laughter of Dmitri and Ivana recognizable from inside.
What have I done? Why am I not fighting? I just walked away. Maybe Gwen could be reasoned with. I haven’t even tried. I am no better than Carla.
I am no better than anyone.
I want air. I need to breathe.
The lights flicker. It’s time to go backstage.
But I can’t. I have to breathe.
At the other end of the hall is another door to the outside. I pry it open. It leads to an alley that backs a bar. The night is cool, even though the smells assault me. Trash bins. Urine. Broken glass litters the crumbling asphalt.
I step out and immediately feel the bite of something sharp against my foot. I jump back, plucking a shard of a mirror from the side of my slipper.
Frantically, I feel inside the shoe for a cut on my foot. I don’t seem to be bleeding.
I’m okay. I’m okay.
The panic washes out the anger, but I’m wrung out, breathing fast. I could have screwed up everything.
I turn back to the door. It’s locked from the outside. Great. I can walk through broken glass to the front or just miss my entrance. Maybe I should just walk away. It’s what I deserve. I never did make any of the right choices.
I knock on the door, tentatively, not sure anyone can hear me.
But it opens.
It’s Andrew. “I thought I saw you come this way!” he says, taking my hand. “What are you doing out there?”
But when I’m in the hall and back in the light, he sees my expression. “Livia, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”
I shake my head. I can’t say.
Ivana ducks out of the green room and spots us. “Places!” she says to Andrew. “You’re about to go on!” She is incensed and glares at me as if his delay is all my fault. Which it is.
He squeezes my hand. “Talk later, okay?” And he turns to rush to the doors to backstage.
“You should get in place too.” She glances down. “Your shoe is dirty!”
I turn my shoe. There is a wet stain on the side, shiny against the black.
She grabs my arm and drags me back to the dressing room. “Betty!” she calls out. “We need new slippers for Carabosse!”
Betty pops her head from around a tutu for Red Riding Hood, who has at least an hour before she’ll go out. “Right on it.” She glances up at the dancer. “Hold tight.”
The girl nods.
Betty opens a few drawers in her rolling crate and finds mine. It houses a dozen pairs of black pointe shoes, as I go through a pair almost every day. “Here you go, love.” She passes the set to me.
Crap. I always break in my shoes in rehearsal so they are not too stiff during the show. But I’ll have to make do.
I sit on a stool and rapidly remove the shoes. My tights show a small rip and there is no mistaking the circle of red near my arch on my right foot.
I quickly tuck my leg beneath the layers of my overdress and look around to see if anyone has noticed.
They’ll pull me for the understudy if they know. Crap, crap, crap!
“Do you have any black foot tape?” I ask Betty.
She reaches behind her and tosses me a roll.
I listen carefully for the music that is piped in the back to help us hear cues. The fairies are doing their solos. I have two dance numbers until my entrance.
I don’t have time to examine the cut or if it is deep. I have to assume it is nothing and go on. I unroll a length of the tape and quickly wind it around my foot to hold together both the tights and the skin around the cut. Thank goodness everything on my costume is black.
“Tha
nk you,” I say to Betty. I tuck the soiled slippers under my arm and toss them in a trash can as I leave the room.
I feel the twinge in my instep as I hurry to the door to backstage. It will be fine. Just a small cut. I’ll take care of it after the show.
The minions sigh in relief when I arrive in the holding area to go on. The Lilac Fairy is just concluding her second solo.
“We were getting worried,” one of them says.
I just nod and flex my foot. I do a few relevés to make sure everything is fine. It is. It’s nothing.
The dark note in the music begins and I head onstage for the first flashes of black magic. The minions surround me, and I feel the attention of the crowd on me as I take over the stage.
The dance goes well, the anger, the accusation, the curse.
Then I feel it.
Wetness. Sticky wetness.
I keep going. Finally, the scene ends and I hold my position a moment.
But when I move, I see it. A small smear of blood on the floor.
Oh, no.
I exit the stage as planned with my minions. No one has noticed, and likely won’t. It’s small, only slightly larger than a quarter.
It’s nothing. It has to be.
I hurry through backstage, afraid to step with my right foot, not wanting to leave a trail of blood anyone will notice. My adrenaline is high, so I feel no pain.
When I get out into the light, I do the only thing I can think of to avoid leaving blood on the bright white floor. I go en pointe, taking small mincing steps toward the dressing room.
Nobody pays me any mind, rushing back and forth. The suitors hurry past, preparing for their entrance in Act 1. But Dominika spots me.
“Staying warm?” she asks.
I drop down on my left foot, but keep my injured one pointed. “Just a little excited, I guess,” I say.
She nods and walks on, unhurried, poised.
Whew.
I peek inside the door of the dressing room. Only a few dancers are here, since Act 1 uses much of the cast.
Betty sits among her boxes, sorting through a box of ribbons.
I can’t ask for yet another pair of shoes. I pause near the trash can where I dumped my other slippers. They are surely less bloody than these, even if there is a cut in the side.
When no one is looking, I reach in and grab them.
I walk awkwardly, left foot down and right en pointe, until I get to Dominika’s curtained area. It is mercifully empty and should be for a while. I still only have a few scenes until I go out to trick her with the spindle. And it’s the hardest dance, the one where I must match her.
I have to do this. Have to.
The pain hits me then all at once, as if a switch has been thrown. It’s searing and sharp.
I’m done for. I want to cry.
I sink onto a bench, far from the opening of the curtain, and peel off the slipper. Blood has soaked through, seeping through the fabric.
Why did I have to go outside? Why did I let Carla’s child upset me?
When I turn my foot to the light, my tights and the tape gleam red on top of the black. I’m not sure what to do about it. I don’t think I have time to track down new tights and change.
What have I done?
I take a moment to untape the foot and try to spot the cut. The tights are split now after dancing, and I can see the angry line smeared with red. It’s not bleeding now. It’s only when I dance.
I try to think. I know I need to clean the wound and bandage it up. I listen to the music again to see where we are. The suitors are done and the corps dancers have come out. There is only their dance and a solo before I go on.
I don’t have time to mess with this. I take the tape and wind it tightly on top of the cut now that I know where it is. Thankfully it sticks to itself and isn’t wrecked by being bloody. Hopefully that will hold the skin together.
I take the less bloody original shoe. The cut seems so small from the shard of the mirror. I can’t believe it did so much damage. I slip it back on, reaching for a box of tissues by the makeup artist’s case to wipe up the blood. It’s already mostly dry.
“Please don’t bleed like crazy,” I whisper as I quickly tie on the shoe. I’m perilously close to my entrance. I dash through the dressing room when Betty calls out, “Carabosse! Your peasant cape!”
Shoot. I have a costume change.
But Betty is good. She rapidly removes the black overdress and ties on the peasant disguise. I rush out, my adrenaline surging and blasting away the pain, and hurry backstage.
The music cue is already going, but it’s not too bad. I push through and go straight out onstage, then slow down for my menacing walk that gives me away to the audience.
Did I think the pain was gone? As I walk forward toward the bright front of the stage where Aurora waits to be tricked by my spindle, the pain is a jagged force, blasting up my leg with every step.
But the show must go on. I didn’t call in my understudy. I decided to do this myself. I must block out everything but the dance.
I circle her, offering the spindle, but she turns away.
Then we dance, push, pull, forward, back, until it’s time to match our steps, my triumphant deceit.
But when I hold the long, slow turn en pointe on the injured foot, it just gives way. The position doesn’t hold. I drop my pointe before Dominika, and fail to get back up in it.
We take three steps and are supposed to match another en pointe, but my foot simply won’t go. I stay flat-footed to her pointe but keep my composure. The audience won’t know. They’ll assume Carabosse is no dance match for the beautiful Aurora.
But Ivana will.
And Dominika.
I feel sick. My mind races ahead to all the moves. Another right en pointe. I try to force my body up, and it goes, thank God, but holding it makes me feel absolutely faint.
The scene will never end.
I muck through it, knowing I’m not sharp or beautiful but clunky and misfiring.
Finally Dominika, her eyes blazing at me, takes the spindle and pricks her finger. As she falls, I back away, dropping the peasant cape away to reveal my identity.
The court rushes forward as I make my exit. I’m nowhere near as expressive and gleeful as usual as I head offstage. I can barely hold myself together.
I’m instantly caught by Evangeline. “What happened out there?” she asks. To her credit, she sounds more concerned than angry.
Unlike Ivana. As Evangeline and a male dancer help me out into the hall, she storms up to me.
“What was that horrifying performance? What is wrong with you?” She lifts her arm almost as if she’s going to strike me.
The male dancer steps between us. “She’s bleeding,” he says.
Ivana glances down. Then she smiles. “I’ll call your understudy,” she says.
She’s thrilled.
Chapter 26
The second act goes on without me. There isn’t much for the understudy to do in that part. Just be pushed out of the bedroom by the Lilac Fairy. Still, it hurts to be replaced. I text Blitz, who immediately abandons his seat and comes backstage.
The nurse who travels with us cleans the wound and wraps it. “I wouldn’t dance on this for a couple days,” she says. “But it’s a small cut. It only bled so much because you were dancing. It’s nothing that knocks you out for the season. I’ve seen blisters that were worse.” She pats my leg.
“I don’t care,” Ivana says. “She’s out. She was barely keeping up before, there’s no way she’ll do it now.”
I don’t know who she’s talking to. She’s the highest-ranking person back here. Dmitri and Alexei are still watching the ballet in the seats. Maybe she’s getting her argument ready.
But Blitz is here, and he’s pissed at her attitude. “If she’s not in the New York production for the DVD recording, I’m backing out of the deal,” he says smoothly. “The contract explicitly states that Livia must be Carabosse.”
&nbs
p; “I couldn’t care less about your DVD,” Ivana snaps back. “Classical dance isn’t improved by camera angles and close-ups.”
I can’t look at anybody. They’re arguing my fate like I’m the sleeping princess, not the powerful villain. Yet, I say nothing. I don’t want to admit that I went outside after getting upset and let this happen. I have handed Ivana the opportunity she was looking for.
“Protocol will be to call a meeting of the financial backers before you kill a major deal like that,” Blitz says. “You’re cutting out a lot of money for a lot of people, including yourself.”
“I don’t do choreography for the money,” she says. “I do it for love. You television people will never understand that.”
I want to walk away from this scene, but my foot is wrapped and propped on a chair. The nurse has busied herself with putting things away.
Blitz looms over us, his arms crossed.
Ivana leaps from her chair. “I have more important things to do than babysit a silly girl,” she says. “We are almost to the end of the ballet.”
I can breathe easier once she’s gone. The nurse pats my leg and heads for her little corner of the dressing room.
The dancers who serve as my minions come in. They have nothing else to do until the curtain call. I guess my understudy will do that for me.
“You okay, Livia?” one of them asks, a friendly man who leads them. He lifts his crow mask.
“Just a little cut. I’m out for a couple days.”
The rest of them nod, their black beaks bobbing up and down. “Glad to hear it’s not serious,” another one says. I’m not sure which one in all those feathers.
They head back to the stage area to await the curtain call. The big wedding dance is happening. It’s very close to over.
Blitz kneels next to me. “You want me to take you back to the hotel?”
“Okay,” I say. “What about Ted?”
“We have a local driver. We can wait in the limo.”
I heave myself up, keeping my injured foot off the floor. Blitz stands. I lean on him to head to the costume rack to leave my tutu and bodice for tomorrow. After a few awkward steps, though, Blitz scoops me up in his arms, costume and all.