by Lola Keeley
“My company is suffering?” Victoria asks, lurking in the doorway again. She is way too good at sneaking up. “Well, I suppose I should thank you for bothering to come dance with us, then, Anya.”
Anna winces at the return to the wrong name, but she doesn’t dare correct Victoria in front of Delphine.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Delphine and I were just talking about how we can have the best possible season. For everyone.”
“I hear we’ve been graced by a state visit.” Victoria directs that at Delphine. “Anything you want to share, Little Wade?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Delphine shrugs.
Victoria considers that for a moment, then seems to accept it.
“I’ll report back after I have dinner with her tonight, if you’d like?” Delphine says.
“I would like.” Victoria looks impressed by the loyalty. “Do you want to stick around and show your colleague how to do a sissone fermé that doesn’t make her look like she needs a bathroom break?”
“Just show her tape of yours, Victoria,” Delphine suggests. “You know nobody else is ever going to be good enough.”
“That’s sadly true.” Victoria sighs.
Delphine leaves with a small nod, and Victoria turns to Anna. “I had requested Teresa, but she’s gone home with one of her migraines. So we’ll work with just some backing tracks today.”
“You’re still choosing dances? I guess I just assumed…”
“Dangerous thing, assumptions.” Victoria overenunciates the p’’ and it only draws Anna’s focus to her mouth.
How unfair that someone who could dance so well also communicates so clearly with words. Victoria’s cutting sentences and witty rants so often make Anna feel fumbling and stupid by comparison. No matter how much enthusiasm she has for her subject, she never expresses it well.
“Well, I don’t mind what you want me to dance.”
“Oh, I’m so pleased to hear that,” Victoria says with mock relief at Anna’s approval. “You’d get a lot more done if you got those shoes out of your hand and onto your feet, though.”
“I know,” Anna grumbles, pulling up her legwarmers and stomping over to the rosin box in the corner. “What are we starting with?”
It should be infuriating how unbreakable Anna’s spirit is, but there she goes again with bouncing right back. Victoria wonders now and then just how far she can push her, whether it would be satisfying to reach the point where Anna actually loses her temper.
“We can start with those sissones I mentioned,” Victoria calls out, poking at the sound system that’s wired into every corner of the studio. A few experimental prods later and sweet strings fill the air. Almost soothing, compared to the noise that populates the rest of Victoria’s days.
“I was surprised we’re doing The Nutcracker,” Anna pipes up from the floor.
Today she’s opted for a leotard that’s more athletic, something they’d wear in gymnastics, with a racer back. Coupled with running tights, she looks ready for the track, in teal and blue. Victoria’s surprised that she doesn’t entirely hate it. At least the legwarmers and footwear are appropriate.
“You know, since you hate being traditional and all,” Anna adds.
“I don’t hate tradition. I simply live to shake it up. You haven’t seen all of my upcoming productions for this season, remember. The fresh take on Don Quixote, Jewels, whatever else. I can’t burn you out in your first year. But economics dictate Nutcracker at Christmas. If we want to stay in business, anyway.”
“I love it. Maybe I never outgrew it, but it’s the first ballet I ever saw.”
“Okay, enough with the biopic.” Victoria knows it’s a little harsh, but she’s distracted and needs to get Anna through her paces. That will push the world back into perspective and allow Victoria some time to think. She finds herself resenting that she knows yet another fact about Anna. “Ready?”
Anna scuffs her feet through the rosin one at a time. “Yeah. I’ll start with the jumps.”
“Good girl,” Victoria answers, absentminded as she tries to picture any of the men of the company at Anna’s side. Victoria doesn’t mean to say it at all, but Anna lights up like Times Square at the accidental praise. Of course, it spurs her on to complete a series of perfect short jumps as though she’d never been sloppy with them last time out. Victoria stabs at the tiny remote in her hand and skips to a faster piece.
“Fine, so you’ve practiced.” She counts the beats for Anna. “Let’s see if you can fix your wobbly pirouette from the showcase.”
“Oh!” Anna’s elation is wiped from her face at the reminder. “Of course. I know I can do better, I’ve done that many before without—”
“Dance!” Victoria snaps at her. This talking really has to be stopped.
And Anna, always ready to obey and execute orders flawlessly, is up on her toes without another moment of urging. She’s looking to Victoria for approval as she does it, leaning into the turn to weight it correctly.
Only as she completes the first rotation, Anna cries out in pain.
“Son of a—”
Victoria is by her side in an instant, helping Anna down onto the floor. “Ankle?” she gasps, the panic rising in her throat.
“No,” Anna grunts, bending forward and yanking at the ribbons binding her feet. “My toes, they…Jesus!”
Victoria looks down in time to see the blood trickling down Anna’s foot. No breaks, fortunately, the toes just seem to be the regular level of battered and taped. But there’s a sparkle that catches the light, and Victoria snatches up the discarded shoe to confirm it.
Broken glass. It must have been stitched behind the satin, right on top of the box where it wouldn’t be felt until the worst possible time: with Anna’s full weight on top of it.
“Kelly!” Victoria calls out, knowing her assistant is around somewhere handing out new insurance cards.
Anna is fussing with the cuts, and Victoria gently guides her hand away. It’s only then she sees her own hands are trembling, with Anna’s steady one held between them.
“Surface cuts,” Victoria assures her, and she gives in to the urge to smooth Anna’s loose strands of hair from her face.
Anna leans into the gentle touch, eyes closing for just a second. “On purpose?” she whispers, opening those blue eyes again, her expression so wounded.
“We have to assume.” Victoria pulls the Hermès scarf from around her neck and wraps it carefully around Anna’s foot. Giving attention to the wounds lets her stop staring into those blue eyes. “Whoever did this will be punished. I promise you that.”
They wait for Kelly, the only sound passing between them coming from the gentle sobs Anna can no longer hold back.
CHAPTER 18
When Kelly takes too long to show up, Victoria pulls out her phone and summons Kim herself.
As they wait for the physical therapist to arrive, a nosy little crowd forms outside the door, but no one is brazen enough to actually enter while Victoria is crouched between Anna and the onlookers. Focusing on these details helps Anna not wilt under their curious gazes; her tears dry quickly.
The injury doesn’t even seem so bad as adrenaline courses through her system. Shock, probably. Should she ask Victoria if this is shock? Would Victoria even know? Anna wriggles her toes experimentally beneath the expensive-looking scarf. It isn’t remotely absorbent.
It can’t be that bad. Anna has the same bruised toes and bumps as every other professional dancer; she can’t think of a time she hasn’t had some kind of pain in her feet. She’s danced through twists and sprains, flu and fever, and she has rarely fallen other than a slow slide of exhaustion to the floor. Sometimes there’s stumbling in a bad landing, but the reason she’s made it this far is that she does have good balance, and the ability to use her body well.
“What have we got?” Kim pushes through the crowd, muttering something to them that makes most of them scatter.
Anna was sort of hoping for mo
re than just the resident PT. Kim is a fully qualified doctor, and the rational part of Anna knows that, but in the pain and confusion of it all, she just wants to be as well looked after as possible.
The question jars Victoria from her silent fuming. Anna swears her nostrils actually flared at one point. “Fucking glass,” she spits.
“Well, no blood spray,” Kim observes, crouching.
Victoria stands. She looks a little unsteady on her feet and, despite sitting on the floor, Anna leans to offer a steadying hand.
Victoria doesn’t seem to notice.
“So not the worst it could have been,” Kim continues. “All toes accounted for. Not nice, but not the worst. I’ll clean it up.”
“Here?” Victoria demands. “I want her treated somewhere sterile. Get some of these spying vultures to carry her down.”
“I mean, if you want to just wait for a paramedic,” Anna begins, but she’s interrupted by her own hiss of pain as Kim tweezes out some glass. When did she put gloves on? She’s fast.
“Ice and painkillers coming up as soon as I’m done,” Kim promises. “I don’t need to move her, Victoria. I have everything here in my kit. If it looks like any went deep or broke off, I’ll take her for an X-ray, but that shouldn’t be necessary. Best to do it by feel.”
“Oh, then I’m fine here,” Anna says.
Victoria gives her a long, steady look and seems to breathe out fully for the first time in ten minutes.
“It wasn’t nice, but it’s not much worse than losing a nail,” Anna says.
“Don’t play this down,” Victoria warns, and she looks as tense as piano wire again.
Anna would have shrunk back from that just a few weeks ago. Now she folds her arms over her chest and lets Kim work on the cuts, wincing as the antiseptic goes on next.
“You could get an infection,” Victoria says, “cellulitis probably, and then you risk losing—”
“Calm down,” Kim warns, and there’s a look between them that Anna can’t interpret. “If she did get a mild infection, I can handle that too. You might not be familiar with anything outside of the benzo class, but antibiotics do exist, Victoria.”
They’re interrupted by one of the younger male soloists pushing through the bodies at the door.
“Hey, David sent me up to see if you still need a leading man?” He draws himself up, trying to look impressive. “Just have someone mop up the blood, I guess.”
“Mickey, isn’t it?” Victoria sounds sugar-sweet, and the murmurs from the hall pick up. They know what comes next.
“It’s Mike, actually.”
God, he probably thinks that’s a winning smile. Anna wonders if that hair product will smear when Victoria wipes the floor with him.
“Oh.” Victoria does that fake-fascinated thing she does, like she’s really filing away his name as something important. “Thanks for putting me right, Mike.”
“Hey, no biggie.”
Oh God. He actually reaches out to pat her on the arm. Victoria looks at the offending limb as though he just slapped toxic waste directly onto her skin.
“Get. Out.”
“You know what? Let me show I’m a team player and help her down to physical therapy.” Mike heads over to Anna, completely ignoring Kim. He reaches for Anna’s arm and tries to pull her up, as though she’s just resting after a series of lifts. She resists, a dead weight to him, but he still jerks her arm enough to make her yelp at the additional pain.
Kim is the one to shove him aside, but she only just beats Victoria to it.
“Kelly!” Victoria calls out.
“Yes?”
“Security, now. His things will be left by the trash once you have an intern clear out his locker. Tell David we now need a new male soloist as well.”
“Wait, you can’t—”
Victoria turns on him.
“This is my company. She is my principal. And you just jeopardized her recovery from a deliberate injury that, I assure you, more heads will roll over. So consider yourself lucky, Mickey, that you’re just the first to make my list today. Because it will be much, much worse as I work my way down.”
“Whatever,” he says, practically spitting in her face. “With my ass there isn’t a ballet master who won’t find a place for me. Enjoy tanking your season, bitch.”
“By the time you hit the street you’ll be blacklisted with every company in the country, so keep talking and I’ll rack up some international minutes too.” Victoria nods to Kelly, who gives a quiet but long-suffering sigh.
The security guards meet him at the door.
“What happened?” Irina asks as she arrives, munching on an apple and taking in the scene with her usual detachment. “Kick a mirror on your turns?”
“It’s nothing,” Anna mutters.
“I’ll call your sister.” Irina pulls her phone from her bag.
“Enough!” Anna is sick of being babied. She doesn’t need family summoned like she’s been sent to the school nurse. She’s a grown woman and she isn’t made of sugar glass.
The moment Kim finishes taping the gauze in place, Anna is on her feet. Okay, that stings. A lot. “If we’re all done treating me like a toddler who scraped her knee, I’m going to take my stuff and go home.”
Even Victoria is startled, and maybe faintly impressed.
Anna roots through her bag for slip-on shoes that just about fit, even with her toes wrapped. Thank God she always buys a little bigger to allow for the days when her feet swell. With as much dignity as she can muster, she marches out of the studio with fresh tears in her eyes.
She makes it down the corridor and around the corner, out of sight. For all her toughing it out, Anna still feels like her chest might cave in. She just has to make it to the locker room, where she can lose it in private.
Someone did this to her. Her bag had been messed with; those shoes had been planted. Victoria didn’t even blink when considering that the sabotage might be deliberate. Someone hates Anna enough to try to really hurt her, to cause a fall that could have had her out for months. Or the glass could have been driven in deep enough to risk her toes staying attached, maybe even an arterial bleed.
She knows in her gut it was probably Teresa, but due to the nature of a competitive environment like this, she can’t be sure. Anna doesn’t want people to lose their jobs and careers over it, but there’s a heated little knot in the pit of her stomach that wants much, much worse for Teresa if she’s responsible. The mental image of slapping her sycophantic little face comes to Anna just as a hand is laid on her shoulder.
“Irina, please—”
Of course she assumes it’s Irina; after all, Victoria has tried to cultivate that very relationship. Despite whatever millennial drama is going on with the sister, the two seem to be getting closer. None of which matters, because Victoria is the one reaching out to touch Anna.
“Guess again,” Victoria rasps, her throat tight and a little sore from her firing outburst. She’s going to hear about that from Rick as well as the legal team. Her body is still trembling from the adrenaline of the first fight, and she has plenty more in reserve. “Are you sure you should be up and walking?”
When Anna turns, sitting on the locker room bench, she has tears in her eyes. Despite the bravado, she’s wounded far more deeply on an emotional level. The movement has knocked Victoria’s hand away from her, and it’s startling how much Victoria wants to reach out again. She resists, both hands back by her sides with perfect poise.
“Will you find out who did it?”
“Absolutely,” Victoria promises. “There’s nowhere to hide in this building, not from me.”
Anna considers that, blue eyes downcast for a moment before fixing Victoria with a steady gaze. “I want them to be as scared as I just was. I want them to have that moment of thinking, ‘Here goes everything I’ve worked for.’”
“Does that mean you want to watch?” Victoria has never seen this side of Anna before, and it’s as dazzling as it is terrifying.
So calm, so controlled, so utterly sure of her vengeance.
“No.” Anna shakes her head. “But tell me when it’s done. It’s okay that I’m going home?” She’s back to her usual mild-mannered self, pulling her hoodie tighter around her shoulders and then zipping it higher. Protective clothing that can’t protect much.
“My driver is out front. I know it’s not far, but trust me it’s going to feel like a marathon with your toes like that. Let him drive you the few blocks, and he’ll help you inside if you need it.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because someone stuck enough glass in your shoes to land you in the hospital, or out of the season. But I’ve always believed that if at least one person hates you, you must be doing something right.”
“You got pretty mad at Mike.”
No question, not explicitly. Is Anna intrigued by the ways in which Victoria will lash out, so long as it’s not directed at her? It’s impossible to tell, but there’s something beckoning in that wounded expression that makes Victoria want to end the day with heads on spikes, just to cheer Anna up a little.
“That was nothing,” Victoria says. “Let Kelly know if you’re okay to dance tomorrow. No, wait.” She snatches Anna’s phone from her hand. It unlocks without a code, not exactly shocking for Little Miss Sunshine.
“What are you—”
“My cell number,” Victoria explains, adding herself to Contacts with only a slight fumbling to find the right app. “You’ll be one of the precious few who doesn’t come through the office. Do not abuse the privilege, understood?”
“Understood.” There’s a hint of that smile, at last.
Now it’s just a question of those cuts healing, hopefully overnight, and getting back to the studio if they lay off pointe work for a session or two. Victoria leads them out into the hallway, toward the elevator. She even presses the button.
“Go. Heal.”
This time Victoria sees it coming, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Anna throws herself into the hug like she’s being caught in the middle of a pas de deux. Anna has absolute faith that strong arms will be waiting for her, and Victoria is not about to start letting her down on a day like this.