by P. J. Fox
The activity that, were Belle to allow herself to admit it, was her true passion.
The activity that had been discouraged from day one by her mother and virtually everyone else as a nice hobby, but a waste of time. Michelangelo was dead, and he was the only sculptor who had ever mattered. Surely nothing she produced, a product herself of a shallow era where people fell in love with Justin Bieber and obsessed over thigh gaps, could have any value. And, as Belle had noted sadly, the sizes of most people’s dreams were measured in money. Maybe, she told herself as she sketched designs inside of flyleaves and on the backs of napkins, after she found a job. Learned to feed herself. Earned enough stability where she could pursue her dreams without shame.
If such a time ever came, whispered a voice.
Belle ignored that voice. By putting her nose to the proverbial grindstone, she’d found that she could allay fears over her future. Most of the time. She hadn’t gotten to the point of decision yet; she was doing what she was supposed to be doing right at this point in her life. Going with the flow. She was only halfway through college, and there was always graduate school. Surely by then she’d have found a career that gripped her. Or, at least, one that she could bear the idea of pursuing.
Mostly, when Belle contemplated her future, she saw a black hole. Which was why she tried very hard not to do it, only letting her anxiety break through at times when there were no distractions. Like standing in line at the ill-stocked market near her home. Or now.
Gradually, she realized that her anxiety wasn’t solely due to the overwhelming feeling of quo vadis; she’d also, in the back of her mind, developed the distinct sense of being watched.
TWO
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She felt a…for lack of a better term, an almost palpable warmth on her skin. Like the earliest stages of a sunburn, when she pressed her palm to her skin and felt the somehow unhealthy warmth radiating from the damaged tissue.
She’d gone to Prague for the night because Charlotte, in her wisdom, had decided that they needed to get out. That Belle needed to get out or, as Charlotte had joked, she’d grow to fit the shape of her desk and need to be surgically detached from her textbooks. Which was really just an excuse for Charlotte to come to Prague. Only now, instead of being a hedonist who’d planned from the beginning to use TUD as a convenient platform for club hopping, she was a veritable angel of mercy. She’d forced Belle into a terrible dress that made her feel like a stripper ostrich. If dress could even be remotely the right term.
She’d wanted to wear jeans; she’d be studying, anyway, so what did it matter? Instead she’d found herself in what Charlotte had referred to as a bejeweled illusion dress that had cost almost eight hundred dollars. It’s astounding, Charlotte had claimed. The label said so. Astounding bejeweled illusion dress. And so, somewhat bemused, Belle had allowed herself to be zipped in. Fortunately the wisps of flesh-colored gauze came equipped with an internal apparatus because there was certainly no room for a bra. The, er, astounding jewels poured in a spray across her small breasts, then trickled down to another spray that settled around her hips. Like sand from an hourglass, top to bottom. She could see her navel in the mirror. She hadn’t minded much, at first; she’d felt like she was in a dance costume. Before, when she was contemplating Juilliard and a different future entirely, she’d pirouetted in front of a thousand people wearing less.
But now, alone at this sticky table with nothing to entertain herself except half a glass of water and a stack of articles on ancient Sumeria, she felt horribly exposed. She wondered if that was why she felt watched. Probably, she told herself. Examining the feeling, she hoped it’d go away. That she’d realize she was being foolish and get some work done. She hadn’t, she reminded herself needlessly, wanted to be here at all.
Instead, she realized that she’d felt like this almost since she’d sat down. Belle was an anxious person. Took medication for her anxiety, anxiety that sometimes spiraled into panic. And although she hadn’t experienced an episode of true panic since she’d started taking Prozac, she had a lifetime’s worth of practice at ignoring feelings she knew to be irrational. So many times, she’d found herself fleeing stores or lecture halls or even her own room from some dimly understood sense of foreboding. Dimly understood, barely grasped—and baseless.
However real her feelings felt, they weren’t real.
At twenty, a year after starting her medication, Belle was realizing belatedly that she had to learn to feel all over again. She’d become so used to dismissing her feelings, either because she’d been brought up to believe they were wrong—such as feelings of wanting to become a sculptor, which clearly were wrong in everyone’s eyes but her own and in her own, too, after awhile—or because they were crazy. Even though her mother didn’t allow her to use that word, either. It was negative.
She had upsetting thoughts, intrusive thoughts. Thoughts of hurting herself and of saying things she knew she’d regret, even as she fantasized about saying them. Things that, according to the movies, were acceptable in ballerinas. Her mother hadn’t vetoed that choice because Hollywood told her it was legitimate. The fact that it was Belle’s choice hadn’t entered into anyone’s calculus. Including Belle’s, she thought with a stab of anger.
Another unexpected side effect of her medication was that she’d realized just how mad she really was at her mother. Increasingly, her old patterns of thought were becoming a dream: something she could remember, but not relate to. New patterns of thought—such as the uncomfortable and growing sensation that she was treading water and wasting her time—were taking their place.
So that was it, she decided.
Of course she felt like she was being watched. She’d come to a strange nightclub in a strange city and sat down alone at a table half naked with a pile of homework. She was like something out of a sitcom. She’d watch her.
Charlotte, who was dressed in even less than Belle, claimed that Prague was the best city in Europe. Europe! She said the word with such flair. To Charlotte, Europe appeared to be a single homogenous compound. She didn’t seem to see much difference between London and Munich; to her, the entire geographic region was Far Far Away. A fairy kingdom, full of wonder and excitement. And handsome men. Like in Shrek.
In this ridiculous getup, Belle felt like Shrek. She wasn’t used to feeling ungainly and never had before—at least not much. But this…she glanced down at her highlighter and saw herself as others must see her, for the first time. A too-thin, pinch-faced girl in a Rockettes getup clutching a folder of homework. In a nightclub. Where did she think she was, exactly?
Who did she think she was?
And had she really thought she’d get homework done in this place? The worst of the music was muted, up here, but the bass still thrummed through her and made her feel like a plucked bow string. She swore her heart was beating in time to whatever overly made up, dreadlocked white person had produced this latest piece of trash. Or maybe he was a vampire; those were popular in Prague. And Dresden, and everywhere else. They wore colored contact lenses and expensive false teeth, so people could identify them.
She attacked the article with a vengeance, forcing herself to learn about systems of diplomacy between Eridu and Bad-tibira.
The feeling of being watched intensified, almost as though actual fingers, strange and unwelcome, had reached out and grazed the back of her neck.
She continued read.
She’d felt less and less attractive as the night wore on, starting on the train. The fabric of the seat was rough beneath her thighs, itchy, a situation her costume did little to present. She’d tried sitting this way and that, acutely aware that every time she moved she was in danger of exposing herself. She wasn’t a ballerina anymore. She’d realized that, her nose pressed to the glass as she world flew past, perhaps for the first time. Oh, she’d known. But she hadn’t known. Hadn’t accepted the ramifications of what this new life meant. Of what would never happen again. And how whatever claims to
confidence she’d had before, in a costume like this, she didn’t have now.
She wasn’t a dancer. She wasn’t anything. She was a knock-kneed scarecrow in an ostrich costume who’d gone with the flow. A place she didn’t want to be and that made no sense. She was so out of touch with her own life that she’d allowed someone else to dress her in clothing that made no sense and then, further, she’d allowed her own denial to convince her that if she only pretended she wasn’t here then she wouldn’t be. What, had she thought she was going to the library?
She’d vowed, in that moment, to be more present.
Tomorrow, things were going to change. This was the last night of her life as she knew it. Tomorrow, she’d figure out who she was and what she wanted and as God was her witness she’d go for it. She was smart; she was talented. Ballet wasn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Maybe she’d write or maybe she’d sculpt, after all. Or maybe she’d turn in her papers for the Peace Corps. Whatever she did, she’d do it because she wanted to do it.
The 151 kilometers between Dresden and Prague flew past.
I won’t look up, she promised herself, sitting at the table. I won’t look up I won’t look up. She looked up. Her brief flare of bravery on the train seemed very far removed from this current moment. Already, safe in the shadows, she was wondering what she’d been thinking. Chuck her scholarship and join the Peace Corps? That would thrill her mother.
Her eyes found his immediately.
Like a marionette whose every movement was controlled by strings, she had no conscious sense of searching for him. She’d just known where he’d be. Had just looked there, through no will of her own.
She supposed he must have been there for some time. By the looks of his table, since before she sat down. She hadn’t noticed him, or his companions, because she hadn’t noticed much of anything. And she, like the ostrich she so resembled at the moment, had bought into the comforting notion that if she didn’t see anyone then no one would see her. She’d been hiding at this table for well over an hour.
Had he been watching her that entire time?
He looked like something out of a prior century, a dark Prince Charming who’d gone out drinking after he’d finished with his princess. He was about twenty feet away, across the mezzanine, one arm on the rail and the other resting on the table. More or less holding a drink. He was relaxed, or chose to appear so. The same pose on someone else might have been described as sprawling but on him the tableau was merely affected. And tableau was the right word. He’d chosen to appear like this. Casual. Disinterested.
But he wasn’t.
His eyes gave him away. They must be brown, she decided, but in this dim hole of a place they looked almost black. Two pits into nothing. Black holes that absorbed whatever light was around them. Which, of course, was her imagination. Must be.
His hair was dark, too, and straight like hers. An expert hand had cut it in the sort of style that had been popular among Britain’s elite a hundred years ago. What Belle had always thought of as the classic public school look: low part, hair swept across the forehead in an artfully casual fashion. A style that, if done poorly, was fussy. But now, under the present circumstances, was merely affected. Like him.
Belle hadn’t realized until she’d arrived that their destination was a gothic club; she doubted that Charlotte had, either, but Charlotte didn’t care and soon she’d been hip deep in fascinated—if overly made up—men. Belle’s watcher looked the part, his coat a knee-length thing with a high collar that looked like it’d been made for him. The brocade was a muted red. The color of blood, she thought uncomfortably. His shirt was open at the neck, which somehow conveyed the distinct air of exhaustion. A ruffle of lace was visible at his wrist.
One of his companions said something and he replied. His gaze flickered back to the other man, giving him half attention. And then his eyes were back on her.
On someone else the costume would have looked ridiculous but on him—her as-yet unnamed watcher—no. He managed to give the impression, through simple indifference, that he dressed like this every day. The club was full of men who looked like they’d read one too many Anne Rice novels. Or who’d allowed Twilight to convince them that glitter was a cosmetic product. They all had a vague air of desperation about them.
But this man, he was dangerous. He—
“We’re back!”
THREE
Charlotte grinned. “Greetings, homework woman! Able to leap tall papers in a single bound, able to—”
“Charlotte,” Belle cut in, “have you seen that man? No, wait, don’t—”
But Charlotte, impervious to subtlety, whipped her head to the side and gawked. If Charlotte had her own personal soundtrack, it would be written by Steve Jablonsky. Someone below had bought Charlotte a drink and she sipped on it. The glass was still about half full of some alarmingly pink liquid. Charlotte had a policy that she never bought her own drinks, a viewpoint that seemed distinctly at odds with her strident claims to feminism. Charlotte was a women’s studies major.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, “he’s hot.”
“Charlotte, no—”
“What, he’s not hot?” Charlotte, mercifully, stopped staring and turned back to Belle. Belle could only hope that her friend’s voice didn’t carry. “That hair, that coat—it looks expensive, it’s probably couture, cheap brocade looks really cheap—and what is he, Indian?”
Belle’s watcher had pale skin. Pale, at least, compared to his hair and eyes, but with a honeyed cast. He had very fine, patrician features and a long nose. He could be Indian, she decided. The only Indians Belle had met, or at least that she knew she’d met, had been from the south and were as dark as teak.
“I don’t know, Charlotte, but he’s been watching me.”
“Hot.”
“No, not hot.” Belle struggled for the right words. How to explain that this man had frightened her?
Charlotte’s expression turned serious. She glanced down into the undulating mass of flesh below, verifying that their other friends were still well occupied. Charlotte could be, herself; Belle knew that her friend had only broken free to come up here and check on her. Which made her feel both grateful and ridiculous. She knew that Charlotte thought she needed to get out more. Charlotte, refreshingly, made no secret of her feelings. The child of trust fund babies, she’d grown up in an environment where no one had had much of a filter. Money made confidence, and Charlotte had plenty of both.
“It’s all in the fabric,” she said idly.
“I know.”
“Belle, it’s fall.”
“I know that, too.”
“The holidays are almost upon us. Are you going to spend them alone again?”
“Are you going to spend them with that boy from Switzerland?”
“You didn’t go home last Thanksgiving, either.”
“I can hardly go home for this Thanksgiving,” Belle said defensively.
“You know what I mean.”
“Maine is a long drive.”
“It’s a hundred miles to Scarborough from Boston. Less than two hours.”
“I don’t like my mother’s cooking.”
Charlotte sighed. “You don’t like your mother.”
“That’s not fair! She did her best, after dad left and—”
“You still don’t like her.” Charlotte’s eyes met hers. Charlotte had begun to talk seriously about applying to law school and most people laughed, but it was at times like these that Belle saw the steel core beneath the cotton fluff. “I get it, your mother is mean and your family is poor and you wanted to dance but now you can’t dance.”
“But that’s the thing, Char. Looking back on it, I’m not sure I did want to dance. I wanted to be successful, and at something my family—my mother—would approve of.”
“You can’t be alone forever.”
“I don’t want to be alone forever.”
“Since you’ve come here, you’ve isolated yourself.” Belle knew that b
y here her friend didn’t mean this nightclub. And Charlotte was right: since coming to Dresden the month before last Belle had isolated herself. She’d been isolating herself for a long time, since well before she’d left for college. Only now, there was a smaller pool of students so people noticed more. When almost no one spoke English, people found themselves lowering their standards and Belle had found blending into the woodwork harder than ever before.
She said as much.
“Have you thought that, maybe, you don’t stand out because people have lowered their standards but because you’re beautiful?”
“But I’m not beautiful.”
“And intelligent, and even fun to hang out with when you choose to be. I mean, when you pull the pole out of your ass and leave your homework at home.” Charlotte glanced down at the dance floor again, and finished her drink. “I think you need to loosen up. Have some fun, before you die of premature old age.” Her eyes met Belle’s again. “Belle Elizabeth Wainwright, are you still a virgin?”
Belle colored. “It’s not like…a disease you need to get rid of.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Charlotte made a face.
Belle wished devoutly that the earth would crack open and swallow her before the humiliation got worse. And it would get worse. Charlotte was all smiles when she chose to be, but when she fixated on an issue she was like a terrier with a bone. They’d had this conversation before, or versions of it; Charlotte hadn’t come right out and asked, thank God, but she’d asked probing questions. That Belle had, until now, managed to avoid.
“But you like men, right? I mean, you like men. You aren’t—”