by Brady Hammes
When the ball reappeared, Max picked it up and cradled it in his hands. “Let’s start with the basics,” he said. “First thing is learning how to handle it properly. It’s not a melon, okay? Ring and middle fingers in the holes, left hand to steady.” He situated the ball in Sam’s hands, then positioned her a few steps behind the line.
She took two large steps and launched the ball down the alley. It started right then leaned back to center, downing all but one pin. Marie and Owen clapped. Sam looked to Max.
“See…,” he said.
“It wasn’t focus,” she said.
“Then what was it?”
“Chance.”
* * *
—
SAM WENT TO GET a glass of wine and returned to find Owen doing a little celebratory dance. Sam told him to stop gloating, then handed her wineglass to Marie and rolled two more gutter balls, putting her total at nine points through the first two frames, a score that prompted Marie to suggest she get another drink. Owen rolled another strike and then one more after that, putting his total at a number yet to be determined, which he explained was due to the machine not being accustomed to such heavy math. Sam rolled her eyes and another gutter ball, then flashed a middle finger at the pins and went outside for a smoke. She was standing under a heat lamp when Max appeared holding a half-empty wineglass. “How’s it going in there?”
“No strikes,” she said.
“How do we fix that?” Max asked, setting his drink on the ground and pulling on a stocking cap.
“Not sure.” Sam took a drag from her cigarette.
“Can I have one of those?”
She pulled the pack from her clutch and handed him one.
Max fumbled with the lighter before Sam stepped in to help. She lit the cigarette, then stepped back and watched as he took a long, awkward drag, which immediately resulted in a protracted coughing fit.
Sam laughed. “You don’t actually smoke, do you?”
“I do not,” Max said, covering his mouth.
“Then why are you out here?”
“Because you are,” he said, tossing the cigarette on the ground. “Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have come.”
“You could have waited inside. I wasn’t trying to escape, though I have been known to do that.”
“No, I mean here,” Max said, motioning to their surroundings, the large, fortress-like buildings, the trees weighted with snow. “To Russia. To this company.”
“Why’s that?” Sam asked. She had her own opinion on the toxic nature of this place, but she was curious to hear a new perspective.
“You don’t find the atmosphere slightly odd?”
“Oh, of course,” she said, motioning with her cigarette to the thirty-foot-tall aluminum dragon standing sentinel in the courtyard, Nikolai’s idea of fine art. “It’s fucking bizarre.”
“I don’t mean to sound unappreciative. Yesterday I got a sixty-minute massage and a two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine delivered to my apartment.”
“Ply ’em with booze and back rubs. That’s Nikolai’s style.”
“It feels more like a resort than a dance company.”
“Like Club Med for the Jonestown crew.”
Max snorted into his drink. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You just got here, Max. Wait and see.” Part of her wanted to tell him to run, to escape while he still could, but the other part, the selfish part, wanted him to stay, because she was so lonely and he was so handsome.
“I already feel strangely disconnected from the world.” He blew into his cupped hands and looked to the wall of trees surrounding the campus. The door opened and Sam watched two female dancers rush out into the cold, dragging with them the remnants of a thumping bassline.
“So why did you come?” Sam asked, turning back to Max.
“My options were limited,” he said with resignation.
“Last night you said you met Nikolai through a mutual friend—another choreographer.”
Max hesitated. “That wasn’t entirely true.”
Sam smiled, equal parts confusion and intrigue. “What’s the entire truth?”
“I had a wife and son in Toronto. I still do I guess, though only technically.”
“Right,” Sam said, because she suspected she already knew the rest of the story. A silence ensued.
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened?”
She shook her head. She didn’t need to, because she could guess. Infidelity most likely, probably with a dancer, probably a girl a lot like herself. In another life, she may have winced at the indiscretions of a man like Max, but not in this one. She too had done some things she wasn’t proud of. “Did you grow up in Toronto?” she asked, attempting to recalibrate the conversation.
Max explained that he’d been raised in a suburb of Montreal, the only son of a welder with no interest in the performing arts. His was a youth of trout fishing and first-person shooter videogames. His father was an amateur hockey player, and most of Max’s boyhood had been directed toward capturing the glory that had eluded his old man. In high school, he began dating a girl who attended the local performing arts high school. She showed him a television production of Pina Bausch’s Café Müller, and he was floored by the recklessness of the choreography, the bodies collapsing onstage. Realizing that dance could be more than tutus and The Nutcracker, his interest grew and before long he traded his hockey skates for canvas slippers.
“And what about you?” Max asked. “What brought you here?”
“Poor decisions.”
He paused, waiting for her to continue. “Care to elaborate?”
“I’d rather not.”
She’d felt a droning unease since arriving here, though she knew the drugs were to blame for most of that. But there was also a lot that couldn’t be blamed on the drugs, the parts of this place that were just weird and insular and way outside any normal person’s notion of a dance company. But what could she do, where could she go? New York was unhealthy, but this place had become unhealthy as well.
“It seemed like you were fast-tracked to become a principal in New York,” Max said. “What happened?”
“I got injured. Then I went through a bit of a funk where I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this anymore. And by the time I snapped out of it, I’d been replaced. I spent some time wandering before Nikolai wooed me here.”
“Are you happier now?”
“Not really,” she said evenly. “Though I wasn’t happy in New York either. I’m not sure I’d be happy anywhere.”
“Are you depressed?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you asking as a therapist or a friend?”
“Friend.”
“I don’t know. Let’s just say that at this particular moment I’m happier than I’ve been in some time.” Which was true. Max had a soothing effect on her, the ability to lozenge the scratchy despondency of her life in Russia. She’d felt unmoored since arriving here, but Max’s arrival had brightened her mood. What she needed, she realized, was a partner, someone in whom she could confide. There was Marie, of course, but Marie was now Owen’s girlfriend, a designation that trumped her relationship with Sam. Almost everyone at the company had paired off in one way or another—as lovers or friends, dance partners or understudies—while she stumbled alone through this foreign land. It was only now that she realized how ill-equipped she was to find her way back, and she wanted to believe that Max could help. “Are you enjoying this?” she finally asked.
“I’m sorry,” Max said, taken aback. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, I mean this bowling shit.” Through the clouded, frozen windows, she could see the outlines of people dancing. “You wanna get outta here?”
“Is that allowed?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.”
Sam flashed him a mischievous smile. “You have a car, right?”
* * *
—
WHAT SAM HAD IN MIND was a dive bar in Yaroslavl, where a handful of local men were watching a drag queen sing a groggy karaoke version of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” A neon sign above the stage read: IMPERIAL DREAMS.
Sam sidled up to the bar. She ordered two vodka tonics and ferried them to a folding table surrounded by plastic lawn chairs. They sat and watched the singer transition to a Linda Ronstadt song while drunks threw popcorn on the stage.
“It must be hard for you to be so far from home,” Max said.
“It was my choice to come here.”
“But still. You don’t get homesick?”
“I miss my family, but that’s about it. You?”
“I miss mine very much,” he said, casting his eyes down toward his drink. “But I don’t think they miss me.”
Sam exhaled something like a laugh, then realized he wasn’t trying to be funny. “Sorry,” she said, composing herself. “So what happened—your wife left?”
Max smiled awkwardly. “She went to Vancouver with our son. And her co-worker. I was not invited.”
Sam felt a pang of guilt for assuming he was to blame for the dissolution of his marriage, followed by another, stronger pang of disappointment that, unlike herself, he was actually the victim of his circumstances.
“I thought I’d bury myself in the work,” Max continued, “but I’m not even sure the work is very good.”
“I liked what I saw.”
Max looked to the stage, where an elderly, balding man was dancing with the drag queen. A chorus of hollers erupted from the crowd. “You haven’t seen much.”
“Isn’t insecurity part of the deal? As my dad would say, this is the life you chose.” Max’s face, in profile, contained a sadness she’d only now noticed.
“I suppose,” Max said, turning back to her. “I’ve been trying to get this ballet off the ground for so long now that I was starting to think it wasn’t meant to be. But then I imagine someone like you performing the moves and it becomes the exact thing I had in mind all along. It’s even more perfect, in fact.”
“You’re probably reconsidering after my performance today.”
“It’s the first day. You’ll get there. It’s Nikolai that worries me. I understand he doesn’t have a great track record.”
Sam laughed. “Let’s just say there have been some false starts.”
“Like?”
“Like the fact that he’s only managed to mount one production, which wasn’t exactly critically acclaimed.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go. Look, I don’t have any illusions about the work that’s being produced, though of course you give me hope. This isn’t New York City. Christ, this isn’t even Los Angeles. But I was promised a second chance, which wasn’t something anyone back in New York was willing to give me.” She finished her drink. “So here I am.”
Sam heard the first notes of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” and looked to the stage where she saw someone grab the microphone from the emcee. Her chest tightened. It was Ivan, her drug dealer. In the dim light she could see the crude spiderweb tattoo scratched across his neck. He motioned for Sam to join him onstage.
“You know that guy?” Max asked, confused.
Ivan stepped off the stage and walked toward Sam, extending his hand.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“Sing with me,” Ivan said, eyes glazed, clearly high.
“Please,” Sam said. “Not now.”
“What’s going on?” Max asked. He seemed unsure if he should intervene.
“Who is he?” Ivan asked, nodding at Max.
The microphone feedback cut through the song, prompting boos from the crowd.
“You need to go home,” Sam said, standing and putting a hand on Ivan’s back, directing him toward the door.
Ivan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small baggie. “I have a gift for you.”
“I don’t want it,” she said, slapping his hand away. She turned back toward Max. “Let’s go,” she said, taking hold of his arm and leading him toward the exit. When they reached the door, she looked back one last time and saw Ivan holding the microphone in one hand, a gram of heroin in the other.
JONAH
HE AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING grateful to be alive. He stepped outside and breathed in the new day, which, even at this early hour, was already choked with a suffocating heat. He ate a breakfast of oatmeal and bananas, then washed it down with a cup of instant coffee. Life here was lived in the singular. He had one bowl, one cup, one spoon. He had a three-foot length of rope that doubled as a clothesline and a belt. He had a dishrag that he sometimes used on his face. He owned twenty-three items, twenty-two now that his camera had been stolen.
He shouldered his backpack and set off for the bai, the forest clearing where the elephants gathered each day. It was a quick layover on his way to the village. A nest of clouds shielded him from the sun and the hiking was easy, almost enjoyable. When he arrived at the bai, he saw a few dozen elephants slurping water from puddles that had sprouted from last night’s rain. There were several familiar faces: Goldie and her youngest calf, an ornery, bowlegged runt Jonah had nicknamed Scooch; Rango and her two babies, neither more than a few weeks old; and Silver Ears, whose semi-translucent ears gave her an extraterrestrial appearance. Jonah climbed the stairs to the observation deck, a wooden treehouse perched thirty feet above the forest floor. Without his electronics, his work would be limited to what he could record with his eyes. He did a quick head count, twenty-three, and noted the attendance in his journal. The numbers had been slowly declining over the past few weeks—fifty-eight on November 27, forty-four on December 4—and he hoped this was a statistical anomaly rather than a fundamental change in visitation rates. Either way, it was an alarming trend and he would have to come up with a way to explain it to Marcus when he got back to the States.
He noticed two new adult female elephants, who, unlike the rest of the herd, did not have tusks. He’d heard about tuskless savannah elephants in Kenya and Mozambique, but he’d never seen such a trait in forest elephants. The thinking was that the lack of tusks was an evolutionary adaptation due to the pressures of poaching. As the larger tusked elephants were killed for their ivory, only the smaller ones were left, which meant that through years of breeding, the size of the tusks continued to decrease until there were significant populations born without them. He couldn’t be certain this was what was happening here, but he wished he had his camera so he could document the animals to show to Marcus, who might know what to make of it.
Once he’d finished his daily count, he treated himself to a midmorning snack and set off for the village. He followed a trail carved by the elephant foot traffic, part of a grid of pathways weaving through the forest. During his first month here, he’d marked the route with cairns, but it wasn’t long until he was able to navigate by memory. It was three quarters of a mile to the giant okoume tree, where he turned right and followed a wide swath of trail leading to the footbridge over the Ogooué River, then the final quick, unbending mile along the logging road that emptied into the town of Franceville.
As he approached Laurent’s restaurant, he heard the metronomic ping of someone beating thin metal. He spotted Laurent and his sole employee, Mateo, pounding away at the bar’s sheet metal roof, the sun reflecting off their hammers. It seemed like every time Jonah visited town, Laurent was at work on some new renovation to the restaurant, and most of the jobs were either half-finished or completed with such haste so as to make the place seem in greater disrepair than before he began.
Laurent had grown up on a coffee plantation i
n the hills east of town. As a boy, he tracked animals in the forest, keeping detailed records of the size and color of each one, the location and time of day. He was the eldest of four boys, and it was assumed that he would take over the family business after high school, but he’d received a scholarship to the university in Libreville and wasn’t about to forgo his own dreams for those of his father. It was while studying for his MS in ecology that he met Marcus, who invited him to assist with fieldwork during one of his initial trips to the area. Laurent’s knowledge of the forest—and the elephants that inhabited it—was unmatched, and he soon became a permanent fixture on Marcus’s team.
During one of their layovers in town, Laurent reunited with Helen, a childhood classmate who now worked at the restaurant her father owned. The relationship progressed, and a year later they were married. When Helen’s parents passed away quite suddenly, she—and by extension Laurent—inherited the restaurant and all the attendant responsibilities. Laurent now lived with Helen and their four-year-old son, Clement, in a two-bedroom house behind the restaurant. For a while, he assisted Marcus with fieldwork, but with a small child and a business to run, his role had been reduced to that of consultant. He still assisted Jonah with data management and analysis, but his life had acquired a new shape that could no longer accommodate weeklong journeys into the forest.
“Bonjour, ami!” Jonah yelled. He’d taken four years of French in high school, and though the version spoken in Gabon was a far cry from his textbooks, he’d acquired a base-level competence that served him well.
“Hello,” Laurent called back, looking down at Jonah from his perch on the roof, his wiry frame backlit by the sun. “Got a bit of a leak in this roof. Mateo’s got some ideas on how to fix it.”
“I thought you did that last week,” Jonah said.
“Apparently, it didn’t work so well,” Laurent said, descending the ladder.