Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1)

by Terez Mertes Rose

  She did not feel lucky. Her own anxiety was doubling by the moment.

  “Try and have a good rehearsal, regardless,” Courtney said. “I mean, it’s not like any of this is your fault.”

  Lana tried to smile back. “Thanks. And thanks for telling me stuff. Really.”

  She mulled over everything once she was alone in the studio, stretching out at the barre. Chagrin burned her face as she bent over and pressed it against her extended leg. Poor Gabrielle, who’d been polite to Lana since her arrival, perhaps not overly warm but not mean-spirited in the least. She’d even invited Lana to join them for coffee that horrible morning after the Cinderella night with Gil.

  Gil.

  Her other awkward, painful mess. It had been three days since they’d been together. It felt like trudging through a barren desert, the sun burning down on her, no water or shade in sight. She sensed he would contact her eventually and they’d talk. They were friends, after all. Buddies. In the meantime, she told herself sternly, he was doing her a favor. She’d moved out here to dance. For the first time in her life, it could be all about her craft and nothing more. She didn’t need some sticky romantic entanglement mucking up the equation. She reached over her extended right leg, took her heel in her hand and straightened, lifting, tugging, bringing the leg alongside her upper torso until her calf pressed against her temple.

  It was her less flexible side, and her muscles protested. Too bad. She tugged harder, holding the leg in place, the coolness of her calf against her hotter face, until the muscles relaxed and the tension began to feel oddly soothing.

  This kind of pain she understood. Appreciated, even.

  Denis and Javier returned ten minutes later, followed by a small crowd. If Arpeggio were like a democracy, three lead couples sharing equal billing and Serenade the communist worker-dancer experience, this was like being royalty. And not in a comfortable way.

  There was the accompanist, an in-house assistant to take notes on the choreography, the leads for the second cast, the understudies. Javier had an entourage of his own, which included a photographer on assignment and a biographer (a biographer!) who followed Javier’s movements closely and clung to his every word. Even Denis was deferential toward Javier, although Javier spoke to Denis with equal deference. They were two masters, simply at different places in their careers, and both acknowledged this.

  Javier, Cuban-born and trained, was not just a stellar dancer, he was highly perceptive, intelligent, and picked up steps and nuances lightning fast. He could dance passages full out, after seeing them only once, marking them with his hands, his fingers. Lana herself was a quick study, she knew; it was one of the reasons she’d been so popular with Kansas City in the early years and had been promoted to soloist. She could learn a ballet in a matter of hours, if need be, and perform it well that night. She told herself she could hold her own here, against Javier, but even she saw the absurdity of her words, this overly confident little mantra. She was out of her league in this rarified realm, and the best she could hope for was to not make it too obvious.

  They worked together, she, Javier and Denis, thirty-two-count increments at a time. Every time Denis said, “ready to move on?” Javier responded “yes” and Lana nodded, too intimidated to contradict. Chaîné turns, interwoven movements, step-steps into overhead grand-jeté lifts, everything articulated and intense. The lifts were astonishing with Javier as a partner. So were the pirouettes, the way his hands spun her in the perfect way, so they didn’t slow down her own momentum or throw her off balance. He was a peerless dancer and partner. She wasn’t sure whether this made her feel more relaxed or more rattled. And throughout, the memory of Courtney’s words, the sense that she’d indeed stolen from Gabrielle and might still do so. Which made her freeze up at the wrong moment, mid-lift, which was immediately apparent to all.

  “Stop,” Denis commanded an instant later. “That didn’t work. Take it again, please, from sixteen counts prior.”

  She and Javier paused, panting, and stepped back to the stage left corner. The accompanist started the music and they recommenced, but eight counts into the passage, Lana glanced toward the door and saw Gil.

  Her back stiffened. Her face grew cold. She couldn’t move.

  “Pay attention, Lana,” Denis, his back to the door, snapped. “Your cue. Stay on it. No, stop. Take it from the same spot again.”

  The accompanist began again. This time Lana stayed in focus. She directed her frustration, her hurt toward Gil into her movements, a chassé followed by an outside pirouette, stepping out of it into a high piqué arabesque. Javier pivoted her around in a promenade and Lana finished with a clean partnered pirouette.

  “Better,” Denis said. He turned, noticed Gil at the door and exclaimed in pleasure. She swallowed a sigh. It appeared that Gil, quite literally, knew everyone, even visiting choreographers. Denis gestured for Gil to come in and the two of them chatted for a minute.

  “Lana,” Gil called out afterward. “Alice wanted me to tell you that she’d be waiting for you, after you’re done for the day. What time should I tell her?”

  Lana regarded Gil in confusion. Why would Alice be waiting for her?

  “I’ll be done with rehearsals today at six o’clock.”

  Gil nodded. “I’ll let Alice know.” He held her gaze. “She said something about wanting to have a drink with you.”

  The message was unmistakable. They were not talking about Alice here. She’d be meeting Gil. Relief coursed through her. She drew a breath and affected a businesslike tone.

  “Tell her I’ll meet her out front at six-fifteen.”

  “Will do.” He turned to leave, but first called out hellos and goodbyes to practically everyone in the room. He was like a politician in that way. It served one positive purpose, however: it dispelled the room’s earlier tension.

  Denis glanced down at his watch. “All right, you two step back,” he said to Javier and Lana, “and we run it through with the second cast couple.”

  She’d never been so happy to take the back seat in a rehearsal.

  At six-fifteen, Gil was there, waiting, in his red Audi TT Roadster. Correction, Lana told herself, Julia’s Roadster. He opened the door from the inside. She caught it and spied, on the seat, a half-dozen white roses surrounded by baby’s breath, wrapped in florist paper and tied with a diaphanous gold bow. They were beautiful, clearly from a florist shop and not just one of the ten-bucks-a-dozen type, clustered in buckets, being hawked by vendors around town.

  “Oh, how pretty,” she exclaimed as Gil lifted them from the seat so she could slide in. She hesitated. “Who are they for?”

  “You, of course.” Gil flashed her his most winning smile. “Who else?”

  She refrained from reciting all the names that sprang to mind and instead accepted the flowers, burying her nose in them, which sheltered her from the awkwardness of speaking.

  “How about a drink?” he asked.

  “Sure. All right,” she said, trying to sound as casual as he did.

  She stayed focused on the flowers as Gil signaled and eased the car back into traffic. As he drove, he commenced his apology, the words coming out in a great rush.

  “I am so sorry, Lana. Really. Go ahead and shoot me. You didn’t know anyone there, and I got off in that business mode and I admit it, there were dollar signs in my eyes, weren’t there? But that’s no excuse. I feel sick about it all. That Andy, he was like a spoiled kid who never had to learn to share. When he wanted to talk, it had to be right then. Thank God Alice knows him like I do. I hope it didn’t bother you too much, that she whisked you away like that.”

  He sounded like an actor in rehearsal. She offered no reply.

  He fell silent and focused on traffic, the steep grade of Nob Hill, the taxis that tried to cut him off, the tourists driving too slowly. A right onto California, a left at Stockton, and a block later they pulled up at the front drive of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel so fancy it looked like a palace. The doormen were dressed
as formally as groomsmen at a wedding.

  Once inside the lobby she stopped short. “I’m not dressed right,” she told Gil.

  “Sure you are. And we’re just going into the lounge, besides. It’s not fancy.”

  But it was. It felt like a luxury hotel’s attempt at casual, at a sports bar. There was a big-screen television in one corner of the paneled room, but the volume was muted. The seats were leather and the tables a richly colored varnished wood. A server came up, Gil ordered a double Alberlour scotch and Lana asked for a Diet Coke. The server hesitated for the briefest of moments, making Lana worry that such a plain option wasn’t allowed, that it had to be a wine or liquor, but he nodded and turned away.

  Gil sat back and flashed her another smile. Today he was wearing a blue shirt beneath a grey suit and the effect was spectacular, bringing out the vivid blue of his eyes. His smile, however, did not warm her as it had in the past. It made her wary.

  Their drinks arrived quickly. Gil took a big sip of his scotch and carried on talking, in spite of the fact that Lana had remained largely silent. A few minutes later the concierge stopped by and he and Gil exchanged a joke about Friday happy hours really being happy here at the Ritz. When the concierge mentioned Andy Redgrave by name, Lana understood why she hated this place. It felt like a place he’d spent time in, which, apparently, he had. Which was why Gil was now slipping the concierge a few twenties.

  Lana sat there for another few minutes, observing the Gil show. He never removed his mask of grace and wit and elegance, even after the concierge left. Disdain and something akin to revulsion filled her. She saw the slick character Mom had described, and Mom was right—Lana didn’t need someone like this in her life. If this was the guy the other dancers at the WCBT coveted, they were more than welcome to him.

  She rose, grabbed her dance bag.

  Gil regarded her in surprise. “Wait. What’s up?”

  Anger mixed with adrenaline made her heart bang wildly in her chest, like a loose shutter in a storm. “I don’t like the way this place is making me feel. And I don’t like the way you’re making me feel either.”

  She walked out.

  Gil strode out after her, caught her arm in the lobby. Lana was dimly aware of the way some of the staff had paused to watch them, anticipating a dramatic scene. Lana wanted to snarl at them to mind their own business, but realized this was their business. She was the one who didn’t belong. So she quietly told Gil to please let go, that this wasn’t working. He released her arm and without another word, she turned and hurried out the front doors, being held open by doormen.

  A taxi had stopped on the front drive, disgorging its passengers. She strode over to the driver, ignoring the valet, asking the driver if he was free. When he nodded, she hopped into the taxi.

  She expected Gil to run out, stop the taxi.

  He didn’t.

  Her spirits plummeted to the level of the sidewalk. It’s all for the best, her pragmatic side consoled. And at least you didn’t make a fool of yourself over him. Well, much.

  “Where to?” the taxi driver asked.

  She gave him her address and watched for the next ten minutes as the meter ticked away, spending more of her weekly bus budget with each minute. She thought of Gil, back there, probably having gone back to his drink. She thought about the roses she’d left in the car. The pretty white roses.

  But Gil surprised her. Fifteen minutes after she’d returned to her apartment, she heard the buzzer, followed by the sound of his voice. Elation battled with dismay. Elation won and she buzzed him in.

  “I had to pay for the drinks back in the lounge,” he explained once he was in her studio. “I had to break a fifty and they took forever getting my change.”

  She offered no reply and he made no further excuses. Instead he sized up the room.

  “Yes, I know,” she said tersely. “It’s a dump.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re the only thing in here I care about.”

  He looked at her, his blue eyes vulnerable and trusting, so like Luke that her anger began to fade. Reaching into a grocery bag he was carrying, he pulled out the roses she’d left in the car. With some reluctance, she took them from him. There was food in the bag too, which he set on the nearby table. Chinese food. Pot stickers, which he knew she loved. Moo Shu pork, another favorite. Fortune cookies.

  “I didn’t want to take the risk of hearing you say that no, you wouldn’t let me buy you dinner,” he said. “So I picked up some. Will you let me stay?”

  It was harder to dislike this humbler, more honest Gil. She stood there, trying not to smile. “It would be a shame to waste the food,” she said finally.

  “It would.”

  “Okay. Feel free to stay.”

  “Thank you.”

  It wasn’t ribs, but it was good. She began to relax. By the time they’d finished eating, they were once again swapping stories in a breezy, friendly manner. When Lana mentioned their last take-out meal together, the ribs, Gil was able to laugh at the afternoon’s inadvertent adventure.

  “Boy, that car,” he said. “I love my Roadster, but it’s way too temperamental in low gears.”

  “Julia’s Roadster, you mean.” The words slipped out.

  He regarded her in surprise. “Well, yes. How did you know that?”

  Her cheeks grew warm. “Alice told me. Over coffee, at Denny’s.”

  To her relief, he seemed more shocked about the venue than the subject of their conversation.

  “You went to Denny’s? You and Alice?”

  “We stopped in there on the way home from the party. To talk about things.” She hesitated. “I was in a bad way that night,” she said, and with that, it was out there. The real issue, not the glossy cover-up.

  He looked stricken, chastened. “I’m sorry, Lana. I’m so sorry.”

  This time he seemed to mean it.

  “That party. Us together in that room.” She had difficulty getting the words out. “You told me you’d never felt that way before. You got me to admit it too. Was that just a game? See how easy, how gullible Lana really is?”

  She focused on the table in front of her, the empty carry-out containers. Gil rose from his spot and sat next to her, reaching over to take her clenched hand.

  “Lana. I meant everything I said. Afterwards, God, you can’t imagine how torn I felt about not staying right there next to you. That Andy business was too important not to give it my full attention.” He exhaled heavily. “Alice was right. I shouldn’t have brought you along.”

  This last bit hurt, as if he’d chosen Alice over Lana. Alice, who’d likely play a bigger part in Gil’s life than she ever would.

  “I had to dance to whatever tune he played,” Gil was saying. “I couldn’t afford not to. But under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Please believe me.”

  “All right,” she said softly.

  He moved even closer. Her body responded automatically, which bothered her. She felt too battered by the previous weekend’s extreme high and low to offer him anything besides wariness. Gil seemed to read the situation. With a gentle kiss on her forehead, he rose from his seat and told her he was going to run next door to the store.

  He returned ten minutes later, bearing candles, a tall glass for her roses and a bottle of port. Lana smiled and fetched them juice glasses. After arranging her roses in the tall glass, she sat on the edge of her twin bed, port in hand, and watched Gil. He was setting up candle stations around the room, saying who would have thought a liquor store sold candles? But there they were, right next to the condoms. Lana chuckled over this as she sipped at her port. It was a drink she’d never had before; it was velvety, heady and rich-tasting and seemed to offer a promise of good things to come.

  Gil turned off the overhead light and the room was instantly bathed in shadows and golden flickering light. He poured himself a port, arranged the pillows along the length of the twin bed and settled against them next to Lana. They sippe
d, talked, allowed the dancing candle flames to hypnotize them, and only then did Gil set his hand on her thigh.

  Instant high voltage.

  He said her name once, a soft, cajoling “Lana.”

  Her hands, having hastily set down her glass, went to his shoulders and she and Gil were interconnected before she could even pronounce the word. His mouth covered hers, his tongue slid in, tasting of the port’s spicy sweetness. Her fingers plowed through his thick dark hair as he edged her down onto the bed, pressing his weight into hers. Hands found bare skin, limbs tangled together. Her shirt came off. His too.

  When he reached down to unzip her jeans, however, she stopped him with a muffled gasp. It was as if Mom had come in the room and was now standing there, beaming a flashlight down on them. Lana pushed him off and made her way up to a sitting position.

  “I can’t,” she said between breaths. “My…my mom wouldn’t approve.”

  The moment the words slipped out she felt mortified. She was afraid to see how he’d react. The guys she’d gone out with, the few she’d actually ended up having sex with, had always grown irritated when her straight-laced nature overtook her. And here she’d gone and mentioned her mom? But when she finally mustered the courage to meet Gil’s eyes, there was a softness in them that surprised her.

  “It’s okay. It’s more than okay,” he said. “I admire it. That’s what makes you so special.”

  She wondered if he meant it. She was no longer sure how to read him and what words of his to trust. But at least the awkwardness of the moment had passed. Enough for her to lean back toward him and seek out his mouth again.

  This was a mistake, she knew.

  A mess.

  But what a sublime, exhilarating mess.

  Chapter 11 – Alice all Alone

  Never let them see your pain.

  This, the ultimate mantra for any performing professional. Or perhaps only ballet dancers. Certainly, in sports performance events, things like soccer, an injured player became ennobled by making a spectacle of his injury, his pain. The cameras would pan in on him as he collapsed, rolled around on his back, clutching his ankle/thigh/calf, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted. And at the gym, somehow it was accepted, even looked upon favorably, to groan and make animal noises and faces when lifting heavy weights, as if this proved yes, they were indeed real athletes. Meanwhile, ballet etiquette: make it look as effortless as possible; maintain relaxed, elegant upper-body presentation regardless of what the lower body is doing; wear a serene smile, no matter how your feet/hamstrings/hips are feeling. Hide your pain and preserve the illusion. Or else.