by Kathe Koja
Dust, grains of dirt stuck to her skin, to the skin of her face against the floor. No prince: or not for her: her body said so. “Sure,” she said. “Sure, you can call me.”
When he had gone she went back upstairs, took up Adele’s book, and began again to read it page by page.
• • •
No more ballet classes, dancer’s body or no she was out and now it was too late for tap or modern dance, too late for soccer, and so she spent the summer with her father, dragging up and down the four flights of his walk-up, silent and staring at the TV: “Why don’t you go out?” Lighting up a menthol cigarette, he smoked three and a half packs a day; by the time she was eighteen he would be dead. “Meet some kids or something.”
“There aren’t any kids in this building,” she said. A musical on TV, the Arts in America channel; two women singing about travel and trains. “And it’s too hot to go out.” The air conditioner worked but not well; endless the scent of mildew and smoke, of her father’s aftershave when he dressed to go out: “Keep the door locked,” as he left, to whom would she open it anyway? Sitting up by the TV, chin in hand in the constant draft, the sound of traffic outside. In September he sent her back to her mother, back to school; she never went to a dance class again.
• • •
“It’s a part-time position,” the woman said. She might have been twenty, very dark skin, very dark eyes; severe, like a young Martha Graham. “The students—we have a full class load now—”
“How many?”
“Fifty.”
Fifty dancers, all much younger than she, all fierce, committed, ambitious. Toe shoes and a shower, the smell of hand cream, the smell of warm bodies: glossy floors and mirrors, mirrors everywhere, the harder gloss of the barre and no, a voice like Adele’s in her head, you cannot do this: “No,” she said, rising, pushing out of the chair so it almost tipped, so she almost fell. “No, I can’t, I can’t teach a class right now.”
“It’s not a teaching position,” sternly, “it’s an assistant’s—”
Keep the shower room clean, keep the records, help them warm up, watch them dance, no, oh no. “Oh no,” as she walked home, hands at her sides, what were you in for? Life: a lifer. Edward’s number was still in her book, still written in black ink. She could not keep both the studio and the flat: the futon, the dance magazines, her unconnected telephone all moved downstairs, shoved in a corner, away from the barre. Sometimes the toilet didn’t flush. The young men never seemed to mind.
Adele’s book lay beneath her pillow, Balanchine’s face turned down like an unwanted jack, prince of hearts, king of staves: and upturned black-and-white Adele, pinched nose and constant stare, our lady of perpetual motion.
• • •
“You look awful,” Edward said, stern as the young woman had been, there behind her desk: there in the restaurant, staring at her. “Did you know that? Completely haggard.”
“Money,” she said. “I need to borrow some money.”
“You’re in no position to pay it back.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not. Not now. But when I—”
“You must be crazy,” he said and ordered for them both, cream of leek-and-tarragon soup, some kind of fish. White wine. The server looked at her strangely; Adele could be heard to laugh, a little laugh inhuman, clockwork wound the wrong way. “Where are you living now, in a dumpster?”
She would not say; she would not show him. He wanted to fuck, afterwards, after dinner but she wouldn’t do that either, arms crossed and mute and “Where’s all this from, anyway?” pushing back at the sheets, seemingly serene, not disappointed; his erection looked smaller somehow, fat but weak like a toothless snake, like a worm. The rooms were so warm, the bedroom as hot as a beating heart; the big bed still looked like a galleon, sheets and hangings cherry red, and “All this devotion,” he said. “Suffering for your art. You never gave much of a shit about ballet, about dance when I knew you.”
That’s not true, but she didn’t say it, how explain anything to him? and ballet of course brought up Adele: “You’ve never even read her book on Balanchine,” scratching his testicles. “If you cared about dance at all, you would.”
He was always a fool, advised Adele: find your prince, and “I need the money now,” she said. “Tonight,” and to her surprise he gave it to her, right then, in cash; how rich he must be, to give so much so casually. Putting it into her hands, closing her fingers around it, and “Now suck me,” he said. Standing there naked, his cock begun at last to stir. “That’s right, be a good girl, suck me off.”
She said nothing.
“Or I’ll take the money back.”
The bills were warm, warm as the room around her, warm as his hand around her own and in one motion she brought their linked hands, his own hand topmost to rise, fast and sharp to smash under his chin, hit so hard his hand jerked open, her hand free, the bills falling to the floor and gone then, shoving out the door with her fingers stinging and burning, burning in the cold outside.
Adele was silent.
• • •
“Do you—” One of the young ones, crouched between her legs, her canted knees on the futon with its one wrinkled sheet, its coverlet faded to the color of sand. “Do you have condoms? Because I don’t.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t either.”
His lower lip thrust out like a child defrauded, a pouting child. “Well then what’re we going to do?”
“Dance,” she said. “We can dance.”
• • •
She got a job at a used bookstore, erratic schedule, the hours nobody wanted and every hour, every minute a chafe, an itch, unbearable to stand so still this way, medical textbooks and romance novels, celebrity bios and how-to books—once even Balanchine & Me, which she instantly stuffed into her backpack without thinking twice; why not? it was hers already and this a better copy, the photograph sharper, the pages not bent and soft and torn—taking money across the counter and she knew it was wrong, she knew it was not the right thing to do but sometimes she overcharged for the books, not much, a dollar here or there and pocketed the money, kept the change, what else could she do? The job paid nothing and took so much, stole time which she needed, had to have: no studio would hire her, no company until she was good enough, professional enough to teach, and she had missed so much, lost so much time: she had to make up, catch up, keep working, and there were only so many hours in the day, already she woke at six to dance before work, work all day and then out to the clubs at night for that other dancing that while exhausting somehow refreshed her, made her new again, ready to dance again so what else was there to do?
And sometimes—she did not like this either, but her world was full, now, of things she could not like—she let the young men buy things for her, breakfast, a bag of doughnuts, carryout coffee which she drank later, cold coffee in the cold, walking to work at the bookstore and then somehow they found out about the stealing, she never knew how but they did and they fired her, kept her last week’s wages to pay for what she had taken and that night she danced as if she were dying, flailing arms and her head swinging in circles, she felt as if her neck would snap, wanted it to snap, break and let her head go flying to smash red and gray to silence against the wall: no prince for you, nothing, nothing from Adele even though she asked: what would you do? tell me, I need to know, I have to know what to do and afterwards, alone and panting by the bar from which she could not afford to buy a drink, approached not by one of the young men, no prince but someone else, an older man in black jeans and a jacket who told her she was one terrific dancer, really sexy, and if she was interested he had a proposition to make.
• • •
“Naked?”
“Private parties,” he said. The smell of menthol cigarettes, a red leather couch above which hung a series of Nagel nudes and “They never touch you, never. That’s not i
n the contract, I’m not paying you for that. They’re not paying me for that.” Gazing at her as if she were already naked. “You ever wear makeup? You could stand a little lipstick. Do something with your hair too, maybe.”
“How much?” she asked, and he told her.
Silence.
“When?” she asked, and he told her that too.
• • •
Too-loud music, she brought her own, her own selection, twenty-two different choices from The Stripper to soft rock to thrash, she could dance to anything and it didn’t matter as much as she had feared, being naked, not as bad as it might have been although at first it was terrible, the things they said, they were so different from the young men at the clubs, being naked must make the difference but after a while there was no difference after all, or perhaps she had forgotten how to listen, forgotten everything but the feel of the music and that had not changed, the music and the sweat and the muscles in her body, dancer’s muscles, and she did four parties a night, six on a good night; one night she did ten but that was too much, she had almost fallen off the table, almost broken her arm on a chair’s unpadded back and with that much work she had no time for herself, for the real dancing, alone at the barre, alone in the dark, and the winter, it seemed, would last forever, her hands were always frozen, broken windows in her studio and she covered them over with cardboard and duct tape, covered them over with shaking hands and her hands, she thought, were growing thinner or perhaps her fingers were longer, it was hard to tell, always so dark in here but she thought she might have lost some weight, a few pounds, five or ten, and at the parties they called her skinny, or scrawny, get your scrawny ass movin’, babe or hey where’s your tits? but she had gone past the point of listening, of caring; had discovered that she would never discover her prince in places like this, her partner, the one she had to have: find your prince, and although Adele made less sense these days, spoke less frequently, still she was the only one who understood: the new copy gone to rags like the old one, reading between the lines and while she talked very little about her own life—it was a biography of Balanchine after all—still some of her insights, her guesses and pains emerged and in the reading emerged anew: she’s like me, she thought, reading certain passages again and again, she knows what it’s like to need to dance, to push the need away and away like an importunate lover, like a prince, only to seek it again with broken hands and a broken body, seek it because it is the only thing you need: the difference between love and hunger: find your prince and find a partner, because no one can dance forever alone.
• • •
Different clubs now in this endless winter, places she had never been, streets she had once avoided but she could not go back to some of the old places, too many young men there whose faces she knew, whose bodies she knew, who could never be her prince and something told her to hurry: time tumbling and burning, time seeping away, and it was Adele’s voice in her head, snatches of the book, passages mumbled by memory so often they took on the force of prayer, of chant, plainsong garbled by beating blood in the head as she danced, as she danced, as she danced: and the young men did not approach as often or with such enthusiasm although her dance was still superb, even better now than it had ever been; sometimes she caught them staring, walking off the floor and they would turn their heads, look away, did they think she had not seen? Eyes closed still she knew: the body does not lie but the ones who did speak, who did approach were different now, a fundamental change: “Hey,” no smile, wary hand on the drink. “You with anybody?”
I am looking for a prince. “No,” she would say, surface calm and back at her place—it was the one rule on which she insisted, she would not go to them—the rigor of vision, letting the body decide—
“You got a rubber?”
“No.”
—and again and again the same report, no prince and no partner and indifferent she would slide away, sometimes they had not even finished, were still thrashing and gulping but these owned not even the promise of kindness and so were owed no kindness in return: indifferent she shoved them away, pushed them off and most grew angry, a few of them threatened to hit her, one or two of them did but in the end they cursed, they dressed, they left and she was left alone, pinprick lights through the cold cardboard, sweet uneasy smell from the space-heater coils: bending and flexing her feet and her fingers, all pared far past mere meat to show the stretch and grace of tendon, the uncompromising structure of the bone.
A weekend’s worth of frat parties, at one place they threw beer on her, at another they jeered because she was so thin and would not let her dance, sent her away: it was happening more and more now, she might do two parties a night, one, sometimes there were no calls for her at all. In the office with the Nagel prints: “What are you, anorexic or something? I don’t deal, you know, in freaks, I don’t want that trade. You want to keep dancing, you better start eating.”
What he did not understand, of course, what Adele understood superbly, was that the meat was not necessary, in fact became a mere impediment to motion: see how much more easily she turned, how firmly in command of space, of vertical distance—ballon, dancers called it, that aerial quality also called elevation—how wedded she was to motion when there was less of the body to carry? Why sacrifice that for the desire of fools?
“You must weigh 90 pounds.”
She shrugged.
“Anyway you’re lucky. There’s a party next weekend, some kind of farewell party, the guy picked you out of the picture book. You especially he said he wants.”
She shrugged again.
“He wants you early, maybe a little extra-special dance—no touching, he knows that, but it’s like a present for the guest of honor, right? So be there by eight,” handing her one of the go-to cards, an address and phone number.
Edward’s address.
• • •
“Hey, I need a, I need a rubber or something. You got something?”
“No.”
“Hey, you’re—you’re, like, bleeding down there, are you on the rag or something?”
No answer.
• • •
“You should have taken the money,” Edward said, watching her walk in: the faux library, books unread, shelves full of silly crystal frogs, squat jade warriors, girls with ruby eyes. “You look even worse than you did the last time I saw you, even worse than that ugly Polaroid in the book . . . I can’t imagine you’re getting much business; are you? Is this your idea of professional dance?”
She shrugged.
“Given up on the ballet?” and pouring wine, one glass; then shrugging and pouring another, go on, help yourself. The hired help. Like a maid, or a delivery boy; a prostitute. “The man I spoke to said you don’t have sex with your clients—is that true?”
“I dance,” she said. The room looked exactly the same, same quality of light, same smells; in the bedroom, on the bed the sheets would be red, and slick, and soft. “I show up and I dance.”
“Naked.”
“In a G-string.”
“’Air on a G String,’” sipping his wine. “Can you dance to that? Does it have a good beat? Christ,” with real distaste as she removed her coat, “look at you. You need a doctor, you’re nothing but bones.”
“Is there a party?” she said. “Or did you make that up?”
“No, there’s a party but it’s not here, not tonight. Tonight you can dance for me; if you’re good I’ll even tip you . . . is tipping permitted? or is it added onto the bill?”
She said nothing. She was thinking of Adele, Adele here in these rooms, choosing the bed linens, choosing the bed on which, Edward boasted, the two of them had made love before the wedding, before he and daughter Alice were even formally engaged: the way her body moved, he had said, it was unbelievable, and “Tell me about Adele,” she said, sting of wine on her lips, on the sores inside her mouth. Thread of blood in th
e pale wine. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just tell me,” she said.
It was here, he said, she was in town and we met for dinner, some Swedish restaurant, only four or five tables, best kept secret in town but of course she knew, she always knew about everything. “And after dinner we came back home,” he said. “To our bed.”
“How old was she then?”
“What difference can that possibly make?”
“How old was she?”
“You know, looking at you now it’s hard to believe I ever touched you. I certainly wouldn’t want to touch you now.”
“How old was she?” and he told her, confirming what she had already known: like herself and the young men, the would-be princes, the parallel held true and there on one of the shelves—how had she missed it? a photograph of Adele, Adele at thirty maybe or maybe slightly older, that pinched stare relaxed now into the gaze of the true Medusa, queen of an older motion, sinuous and rapt, and “Finish your drink,” Edward said; his voice came to her as if from far away, the way Adele had used to sound. “Finish your drink and you can go.”
Shall I go? to the picture of Adele who without perceptibly moving her lips said no, no you must not go, that is the one thing you must not do, and bending, she took up the book, Balanchine & Me, from the bag where she kept the music, she had her own music tonight, Adele’s humming voice in her head and “Take a look,” she said to Edward, gaily, almost smiling, “take a look,” and she began to strip, shoes and stockings, skirt and blouse, each piece shed deliberate as a blow, and “You’re sick,” Edward said; he did not want to look at her. “You’re very sick, you ought to see a doctor.”