by Brady Hammes
Maybe this was a mistake, she’d said later that night, as they lay in bed together. She didn’t want to be in a relationship with a drug addict. He’d assured her it was just an occasional thing, something to tide him over until they could find more pills, but there was nothing recreational about what she’d seen. It was a macabre scene, her boyfriend lying unconscious on the floor of their home. But then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, because that’s how these things happen, she too began to slip. The first time was on a Friday night, after returning home from a bar, when she smoked a little with Atticus just to see what it was all about. The verdict: unalloyed ecstasy.
In time, the pills became harder to find, the heroin easier. But never needles. That was what she’d told herself. That was a bridge too far. But then one day she crossed that bridge and that was that. As she and Atticus lay in bed, decoding the grain patterns of the hardwood beams of their bedroom ceiling, she knew that something terrible had been set in motion. The architecture of her life began to crumble. She was soon spending whole afternoons melting on their apartment floor. Calls from her fellow dancers went unreturned. Rumors circulated. Offers of counseling from the company were rebuffed. She was suspended for six weeks, in the hope that she might pull herself together, but when that didn’t happen, she was fired. Two days later, she woke to find Atticus dead on their living room sofa, and the untenability of her savage lifestyle fully revealed itself. Atticus’s father arrived with a U-Haul trailer a week later, and together they packed up his belongings, which were trucked back to Virginia, effectively erasing him from her life. She spent the next three months privately mourning in her apartment. Friends stopped by with flowers and food, but she lacked the stomach for small talk, so she thanked them and accepted the offerings and closed the door to the outside world. She had hoped Atticus’s death might be a turning point, what people referred to as rock bottom, but her sadness only plunged her deeper still.
A few months later, she received a call from Marie, a fellow dancer she’d met when they were both fourteen-year-olds attending a summer dance intensive in Los Angeles. It had been Sam’s first extended time away from home, and the two had shared a dorm room, where they would stay up late discussing boys and their dreams of becoming professional dancers. It was a brief friendship, something akin to a summer romance, but she’d bonded with Marie in a way she hadn’t with other dancers. Marie had recently landed a spot with the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, dancing supporting roles in the old standards. She told Sam about the rich Russian she’d met after a performance of Giselle. The man, Nikolai, was on a tour of North America, poaching apprentice dancers from other companies. She insisted that Sam meet Nikolai when he came through New York, because, she explained, how fucking cool would it be if they were both dancing at the same company, in Russia of all places. There was also the money, she added, almost as an afterthought, a guaranteed salary three times what she was currently making. Sam was intrigued but also suspicious. She told Marie to give the guy her number, that she’d listen to his pitch over dinner.
Nikolai arrived in New York on a Friday and sent a car for her later that evening. They went to a sushi restaurant in the West Village, where she ate a few hundred dollars’ worth of fish while Nikolai explained his plans for the company, crowing about his relationships with some of the most innovative names in contemporary dance. By this time, Sam had become a pariah in the New York ballet world, and while she’d heard murmurs that Nikolai was nothing more than a mildly handsome charlatan, he possessed a desperation she recognized in herself. Their reputations were both in need of repair, and by the time the check arrived, she knew she would follow him wherever he led her, because he at least had a plan, while she did not.
* * *
—
AND THIS IS WHERE it led her, to this bizarre dance company in rural Russia, where she now joined the slow migration to dinner. The dining hall was a cavernous rectangle bisected by a thirty-foot walnut dining table, and the walls were cast in the kind of ornate gilded carvings she associated with European royalty. Marie had disappeared, so Sam took a seat next to an elderly woman draped in pearls.
“You are dancer?” the woman asked in a heavy Russian accent. She had the grave, insistent eyes of someone with many questions and little time.
“Yes,” Sam said.
“I met Nikolai when he was very young. At Vaganova.”
Sam flashed her a curious smile. “Nikolai danced at Vaganova?” She’d known he was a dancer in his youth, but she never imagined his talent being so great as to allow him entrance to such a prestigious academy.
“He was small talent,” the woman said, making a little pinching motion with her fingers. “A favor for the wealthy.”
Sam laughed. “Right.”
The woman smiled back. “He is better off-stage.”
Sam made a face. “Jury’s still out on that.”
A waiter arrived with their food: a breast of duck flanked by butternut squash and grilled asparagus, a dish Sam knew she wouldn’t touch, her stomach churning and unsettled, her mind racing and unmoored. The woman draped her napkin across her lap and began surveying her plate, rendering silent judgment on the meal. Sam downed her second glass of champagne and motioned to the waiter for another.
It was his voice that first caught her attention: North American English with a subtle Canadian accent. He looked a little older than her, maybe mid-thirties, with sharp cheekbones and a rush of black hair. He sat across the table, chatting with a few of the dancers, his gaze alternating among them in the charitable manner of someone trying to pay his listeners equal attention. Through some not so subtle eavesdropping, Sam learned that his name was Max and that he was working on a new piece for the company. Then he laughed, saying he was unsure if that was information he was allowed to divulge. Sam listened closely, maybe a little too closely. After a moment, he interrupted himself to acknowledge her gaze. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Max.”
“I know,” Sam said.
“You’ve been listening.”
“Is that okay? I’m bored.” The other girls eyed her suspiciously, seemingly annoyed by her entrance into the conversation.
“Bored with my story or bored with the dinner?”
“The dinner mostly.” She raised her hand in greeting. “I’m Sam by the way.”
“Yes,” Max said. “I believe we’ll be working together.”
“Something new I hope?”
“Yes, though I’m not sure I should be discussing it.” He looked around the table. “Here at least.”
“Because it’s top secret?”
He smiled. “Something like that.”
“Max’s Top Secret Ballet.”
“It’s a working title.”
“I should hope so,” Sam said, punctuating the conversation with a sip of champagne.
Dinner proceeded slowly. There were five courses, followed by coffee and a toast from Nikolai, who thanked everyone in that disingenuous tone of his, which was really meant as veiled praise for himself, the man responsible for everything around them. When dinner adjourned and the crowd filtered back into the ballroom for another round of cocktails, Sam ordered a vodka tonic and settled into a quiet corner of the room, wondering how much longer she had to suffer through this before making her escape. A moment later, Max wandered over, holding a tumbler of whiskey. “I didn’t mean to be cagey,” he said, “but it didn’t seem wise to get into the specifics with the other dancers around. I know how competitive these places can be.”
“We aren’t a very competitive group,” Sam said. “Mostly because there hasn’t been much to compete for.”
Max finished what was left of his drink. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too.”
They stood next to each other in awkward silence, watching the party swirl around them. Max jostled the ice cubes around his empty glass, then
tried to take a drink.
Sam laughed. “It’s all gone.”
“What?”
“Your drink,” she said, nodding toward his glass. “It’s empty.”
He looked down at his tumbler. “It is.”
“Then why did you drink from it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “A nervous tic, I guess.”
“Why are you nervous?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe you need a refill,” she said, pouring a splash of her cocktail into his glass.
“Za zdorovie,” he said, touching his glass to hers. “It’s the only Russian I speak.”
“It’s all you really need.”
“Has Nikolai told you anything about my piece?” He leaned back against the wall, which seemed to put him at ease.
“Nope.” She looked down at his shoes: black leather cap toe oxfords with white rubber soles. A girlfriend had once told her to judge a man by his shoes, so she was doing it now. She ruled in his favor.
“I’ll explain it to you when we meet tomorrow,” he said. “But I’m excited to get started. I’ve been wanting to work with you for some time.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Of course. Why do you think I came here?”
“I assumed for the cheery weather.”
“There was that, of course, but I’ve actually been watching you dance for years. I remember seeing you in Scotch Symphony a couple years ago and was impressed. But then it seemed like you disappeared for a while. You got injured, right?”
“That’s right.” Injured, addicted, fired, shunned. All appropriate descriptors, none properly capable of articulating her downfall. Word traveled fast in the insular world of dance, even internationally, so she was grateful he’d chosen injury as the explanation for her absence.
“Earlier this year, Nikolai reached out to see if I had any interest in working with the company. We met through a mutual friend—a fellow choreographer in London. I was ambivalent, but then I saw your name and it made me reconsider. You immediately came to mind when I started imagining this particular role. There’s something about you I find irresistible.”
Sam’s face warmed.
“I meant about the way you move—your body,” Max stammered. “Not your body—just the way you dance.” He downed the remainder of his drink. “Sorry, I’m making this super awkward. You know what I mean.”
It had been a long time since anyone had paid her a compliment, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it. But before she had a chance to savor the kind words, Nikolai arrived and broke the spell. “I take it you two had a chance to meet,” he said.
“We were just getting acquainted,” Max said, smiling, quickly recovering his composure.
“Wonderful!” Nikolai placed a hand on Max’s shoulder. “I know Sam is ready to get to work. All of the dancers are. The company is fortunate to have you here.”
“I hope I don’t disappoint,” Max said.
“I’m not worried about that,” Nikolai replied.
“I should get going,” Max said, “but I’ll be in the studio at ten.” He looked to Sam. “I’ll see you then?”
“You will.” She watched Max disappear into the crowd.
“What do you think of our new guest?” Nikolai asked. The faux cheeriness he’d displayed around Max was replaced with the disapproving tone Sam had come to expect.
“He seems great,” she said. “Not sure why he agreed to come here, though.”
“You came.”
“Mistakenly.” For the briefest of moments, Sam had been warmed by Max’s presence, but Nikolai’s arrival brought back the familiar dread that had infected her life in Russia.
“Whose fault is that?” Nikolai asked, staring down at her. In addition to his imposing height, Nikolai had the annoying habit of standing uncomfortably close when he spoke.
“Mine alone.”
“Have you thought about our conversation?”
“Was that a conversation?” Sam asked, avoiding his stare. “It seemed like a threat.”
“Let’s call it an ultimatum.” Nikolai waved to a guest across the room, then turned his attention back to Sam.
“Call it whatever you want,” she said, “but he already told me I’m a big part of why he came here. So I’d say that gives me the upper hand.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. There are a lot of great dancers here. You’re replaceable.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But he’s not.”
“You’re right about that. Which is why you should clean up your act before you ruin what little bit of goodwill you have left.”
Sam finished her drink, then stalked across the room and out into the night. Her relationship with Nikolai had always been contentious, but the animosity between them had intensified. The unfortunate reality was that they needed each other—Sam being one of the most talented dancers at the company, and Nikolai being the only person willing to give her another shot. She’d worked with difficult men before—that wasn’t a problem—but it was the constant harassment that she found so infuriating. She didn’t need to be lectured about her drug use, especially from someone like Nikolai, whose penchant for scotch and cocaine was equally noxious. Besides, she was already planning to stop using. She’d gotten herself into this situation and she would get herself out, and no amount of badgering was going to expedite that process. She would do it on her own terms, when she was ready. Just not today. Or tomorrow. Maybe after the New Year. Maybe that would be her New Year’s Resolution. A resolution for the irresolute.
She hurried back to her cottage, past the frozen duck pond and the maintenance building, where, in warmer months, the gardeners played dominos. It was cold and getting colder. Having grown up in Chicago, she was used to winter weather, but this Russian winter was a whole new thing: the snow deeper, the days shorter, the mood darker. When she arrived at her place, she shook the cold from her body, went to her room, and closed the door. Tomorrow she would arrive at the studio on time and commit herself to the work in a way she hadn’t in a long time, because hope had arrived in the form of a handsome choreographer who believed in her talent. Good things would happen tomorrow, but tonight she needed to regain her equilibrium. She needed to clear her head. She dropped her dress on the floor and changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt, then grabbed her makeup bag from the dresser and arranged her tools on the bed: the spoon, the needle, the rubber tourniquet, and, most important, the drugs she’d spent her afternoon in search of. She set a flame to the spoon and brought a dose to boil, then let the needle drink it up. She tied the tourniquet above her elbow, tapped a good vein, and shot a stream into her arm, feeling suddenly, impossibly pleased.
JONAH
SO FAR TO GO AND so little light to guide him. The sun was almost down, the trail fading quickly. He was returning from town, slightly drunk, enjoying the high of human contact, his first in almost a week. He’d left camp early that morning to recharge the equipments’ batteries at a restaurant owned by his colleague, Laurent, but the drinking had interfered with the mission and he’d forgotten to grab the batteries before returning to camp. This just meant he’d have to go back tomorrow, which would be Thursday. Or would it be Friday? No idea. What are days anymore? he wondered. Long stretches of loneliness, he answered. He then counted the letters in loneliness: 10. One zero. One is the loneliest number, he sang to himself, then laughed because its loneliness was nothing compared to his. “What’s lonelier than a man living alone in the forest?” he asked aloud, but there was no one around to answer. Precisely, he thought.
Jonah had come to Gabon four months earlier to assist Marcus, his thesis advisor at Vanderbilt—a quiet man with tenure and no family, his lifestyle the kind that afforded six-week sojourns into the forests of West Africa. Marcus had spent the past decade studying the vocalization of forest elephants, planting ARUs�
�Autonomous Recording Units—in the trees to capture the elephants’ communication. As his research took shape, he convinced some of his behavioral ecology students—Jonah being one of the more eager—to help analyze the hours of recordings. Jonah spent countless days staring at spectrograms in the lab, extrapolating some very interesting things and relaying those things back to Marcus in the field. They linked the sounds they recorded with the behavior they witnessed, shedding light on the relatively unknown complexities of elephant communication. Jonah and his colleagues drafted what they referred to as The Elephant Dictionary, a compendium of their findings, a sonic key to the elephant dialogue. Their work began garnering attention—articles in scholarly journals, followed by an increase in funding—and Marcus offered Jonah a position as a field assistant, a welcome relief from the grinding tedium of lab work. But shortly after Jonah arrived in Gabon, Marcus contracted malaria and returned to the States, leaving Jonah to spearhead the research. There was talk of sending someone to assist him, but it was difficult to find anyone willing to abandon university life for one spent in the forests of Gabon.
He looked to the sky. Maybe rain? Rain might be nice once he was back at camp, settled in for the evening, drinking what was left of the duty-free scotch he’d picked up at the airport in Paris. He watched a wire-tailed swallow swoop past his head and land on a tree branch. He nodded at the bird, bid it good day. The bird chirped something that sounded like his name. “How can I help you?” Jonah asked, but the bird didn’t respond. He wondered if he misheard the bird. Or perhaps the bird misspoke. Better to pin it on the bird, he thought. Or maybe there was a third option. Maybe the bird just said Jaja, which would make more sense because Jaja wasn’t a word, just a bird sound. “Am I losing my mind?” he wondered aloud. “No,” he answered. “You’re just lonely.”
It was nearly dark when he finally returned to camp, which was nothing more than a two-person tent pitched in a small clearing. He had no electricity, no running water. What he had was a whole arsenal of electronics—laptop, DSLR camera, ARUs—all of which, without batteries, were essentially useless. He powered up the camera to find that he had three bars left, enough for an hour’s worth of shooting at most. He decided he’d get up early tomorrow, make the trip back to town, retrieve the batteries, email his sister. He’d arranged his flight home so that his layover in Paris might coincide with Sam’s, who had planned to fly from Moscow on the same day. They had discussed trying to arrive at Charles de Gaulle around the same time so they could wander around the city together, try to see as much as possible before the final leg back to Chicago.