Her mother’s solo performance to the poetry of William Butler Yeats wafted through her mind again. It had been performed on this stage. It had been Ruslana Chekhov’s final performance, a startling marriage of movement from ballet and modern dance. The Oregonian had run a piece in their Sunday arts section.
An idea crept forward and presented itself to Giselle. She was uncertain if it was a good idea. More likely, it was a terrible idea. And yet …
She still knew several Yeats poems by heart. From time to time she recited them. As for the choreography, it was etched in muscle and bone from times she’d danced the pieces by herself when no one was looking. Surely, she would look less a fool dancing while reciting a Yeats poem than standing still while speaking a speech she had no time to choreograph.
She turned to James, a question forming in her mind as applause rang out.
He tipped his head her direction, a lazy smile forming on his delectable mouth. “You’ve just figured it out, haven’t you?”
Giselle’s eyes narrowed. To what, exactly, was James referring?
James continued, voice intimately low and slightly provocative. “Where you’ve seen me before.”
Giselle’s brows, sheltering under the recent bangs, drew together, her head tipping quizzically.
“The underwear ads made me … notorious,” said James. He said “notorious” as though he meant “gorgeous” or “desirable” or even “kissable.”
Giselle swallowed and looked away.
“At least in the Pacific Northwest,” concluded James.
And then Giselle’s eyes flew wide. This was why James looked so familiar. The billboards and sides of busses bearing James’s lazy smile and underwear-clad posterior. Giselle’s babushka had remarked at every sighting, “If they wanted a well-muscled derrière, they ought to have picked a dancer and not a boy with bedroom eyes.”
Giselle suppressed a giggle and kept her gaze on the stage.
“Hey,” murmured James, “Can I ask a favor?”
Giselle heard blood pounding in her ears as she dismissed images of someone smoothing the wrinkles for James’s close up shots.
“Sure,” she whispered.
“I’m thinking, what if I do my sonnet as a scene? With someone else as the woman I’m reciting my poem to, see?”
His smile was irresistible. Giselle wondered how many 3-packs of underwear that lazy smile had moved through checkout stands last summer.
“You wouldn’t have to say anything,” James said, wheedling.
“Like a duet, you mean?” asked Giselle.
James corrected her. “In acting, it’s called a ‘scene,’ not a ‘duet.’ What do you think? Would you be my lady-fair for a scene?”
Yet again, Giselle was grateful the darkness hid her flushing cheeks.
James leaned in close. There it was again, the alluring scent.
“Do it for me. All you have to do is sit there and listen while I ‘speak the speech, trippingly on the tongue.’”
Giselle’s auditory system informed her brain James had just said “tongue” with his practically in her ear.
“That was from Hamlet, Act Three, Scene Two, you know.” James smiled. “So, will you join me?”
With his breath still warm against her ear, Giselle knew she would probably follow him anywhere.
“Uh-huh,” she grunted in the affirmative. “Sure.”
James’s hazel eyes blinked, inches from hers. He took her hand. At his touch, music thrummed through her veins.
“Then let’s get in line,” murmured James.
12
SHALL I COMPARE THEE
Holding Giselle’s hand, James pulled her along to the front row of seats, which she now saw was where students sat right before going onstage. James knew the drill and took a seat at the end of the line. Giselle’s stomach lurched at the thought of going onstage, but she stuck with James, because that was how iron filings behaved in the presence of strong magnets.
James seemed preoccupied with his shoes rather than the girl onstage performing Juliet. The girl’s voice was rich and throaty, a voice that belonged to the catcher on a softball team. She seasoned her monologue with sighs and groans, and they didn’t sound stupid at all. Non-verbal elements could be added, noted Giselle, adding this to the long list of What She Didn’t Know About Drama.
Three seats separated Giselle and James from the stage. Then two. Then one. Another Hermione, of course.
“The Winter’s Tale was our show two years ago, when I was a sophomore,” whispered James. His breath tickled the short hairs beside her ear.
As the third or fourth Hermione began the familiar speech, Giselle realized her mind was made up. She wouldn’t do the Hermione monologue. If choreography was supposed to be part of an audition, she would give them choreography. A smile, small, curved one side of her mouth upward. She felt her confidence returning.
And then James was taking her by the hand and leading her to the steps and whispering something about getting a chair for her. This, she heard with relief because her legs, her strong dancer’s legs, had just turned to pudding.
James dropped her hand and ran to the wings to grab a folding metal chair. The chair squawked as he placed it for her. It looked as though it were having second thoughts about remaining upright, but Giselle sat anyway, her palms sticky as she gripped the seat. Sticky? Her palms were never sticky. But then, she’d never been onstage with a handsome underwear model whose tongue had just been within an inch of her ear, either.
“You’ll be great,” he murmured, his mouth by her ear one last time.
Onstage, the hot white lights hitting her from the front felt all wrong. Giselle was accustomed to the strongest lights coming from the wings, not the front of the house. It had to be a theatre-versus-ballet thing, but it was disconcerting. She felt like a proverbial deer caught in the headlights. How could this be good for performers? She was going to be ill.
James introduced himself and his piece, and then he turned to Giselle.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” he asked.
His voice was sultry. Resonant. Things Giselle didn’t know a voice could be, inviting as a warm afternoon. Her heart pounded and she gripped the seat harder. He was a snake charmer; she, the transfixed cobra. Her inability to see anything past the blinding lights worked to advantage now, helping her to lose herself in James’s words, to believe the fiction that the beautiful and earnest boy before her spoke to her alone. For her alone. She calmed. She listened. She yearned. She could not take her eyes from his. She was a hollow vessel of wanting, and for the first time in five days, the ache had nothing to do with dance.
When James murmured, “And every fair from fair sometimes declines,” he knelt at her side, cradling her face in one hand. The world narrowed down to his voice, his mouth whispering the last two lines of the sonnet with lips so near her own. His forehead angled and then rested upon hers. He breathed an anguished sigh, full of longing. The two of them were alone in a silent world.
And then he kissed her.
His mouth was wet and warm on hers and for a second she was so lost in sensation she didn’t even kiss him back. But then she did, raw and hungry, and then, just as fast, the kiss was over. James pulled away, his eyes fixed on hers. She could see where his lips were shining with the wetness of having crushed against hers. She temporarily lost the ability to form rational thoughts, but when her brain began functioning again, her first thought was: That did not happen.
However, the hoots and whistles assaulting them from the bright space out front seemed to indicate it had happened. James stood, smiled, and took a bow—an overblown obeisance, first to the audience and then to her. His uneven smile and slightly raised brow asked questions in a language she didn’t yet speak.
He had kissed her.
James led her down and off the stage, placing a hand on the small of her back, just where her shirt had pulled untucked. His touch felt warm and feather-light.
He had kissed her.
“Hope that was okay,” he whispered, his breath ruffling her hair. “I just had an impulse and … went with it.”
Giselle curved into a row of seats—any row—and melted into a waiting chair. The howls and clapping subsided. James waved to his admirers and then, seating himself, he turned to Giselle and extended a sideways fist. She stared at his folded hand for a moment before realizing what he was waiting for. Then she raised her hand to meet his fist-bump. After the kiss, the fist-bump was a bit anticlimactic.
Mr. Kinsler spoke. “And on that happy note, we’re going to take ten. Remember, if you want to eat or drink, you keep it outside, or in the Green Room.” His coffee-cup-clutching hand gestured to the door. The no food and drink rule did not, it appeared, extend to teachers.
James jumped over the seat in front of him to bump chests with another actor, leaving Giselle to the contemplation of her first kiss. Her hand crept to her mouth, where her lips still seemed to flame with heat. She tried to bring the kiss back in her mind, to have it a second time. His mouth hadn’t tasted like he smelled—dark like coffee beans and spice. That had been disappointing. It made Giselle wonder if the pleasure in a kiss was, in part, an acquired taste. Well, she would not object to acquiring such a taste.
She shook her head at herself. This was a break and she had an audition to prepare and very limited time within which to prepare it. She exited the long row of seats, aiming for the lobby. Passing groups of students, she overheard conversations about the sirens’ visitations, which had been less and less a popular topic at school. A few students stopped mid-conversation to stare at Giselle as she walked past them and one boy winked, giving her a thumbs up. Her face heated and she walked a bit taller for a moment. Then she considered how walking like a dancer made her look like an outsider and she attempted to slouch.
The lobby, as she had hoped, was empty. The vending machines had lured the hungry; the smoker’s patio, the nicotine-addicted. Giselle knew the building and its environs almost as well as she knew her family’s studio from performing here for long years that spread like growth rings behind her.
Inexplicably, a barre ran the length of the lobby’s exterior wall. During recital rehearsals, the barre never wanted for dancers. The floor was concrete rather than sprung wood, but that didn’t bother Giselle. Slipping free of boots and socks, she placed her feet into first position automatically. Her spine seemed to sigh in relief as she drew herself erect. Moving through an abbreviated set of tendus and pliés, she set James’s kiss and all attendant emotions to the side, to be returned to when she was at leisure.
The work at the barre centered her and brought her heart rate back within a normal range. She extended her left leg into développé and felt a moment of sadness for the flexibility and strength she’d lost in just five days’ time. It didn’t matter for today’s drama audition; she could dance her mother’s piece within the limits her body imposed. The piece was difficult and modern but still less demanding than an ordinary day’s floor work for Ballet 5 students. In any case, a bunch of actors would hardly know if she danced well or not. She could miss half her marks and still turn in a better audition piece than she would with the un-choreographed Hermione monologue.
She finished the abbreviated barre just as Mr. Kinsler’s voice called for students to return to the auditorium. While her eyes adjusted to darkness again, she reached for the memory of that first kiss. It sat waiting for her, fresh and detailed. Perhaps a touch more delectable in recollection.
“Okay, lab rats,” blared Mr. Kinsler, breaking the spell. Although no self-respecting ballet instructor would use such dismissive language to call class to order, Giselle sensed Mr. Kinsler was speaking with affection.
“We’ve got another twenty-four of you to get through in the next two hours. Those of you who have completed your monologue are free to go and enjoy dinner at home like sane teens. The rest of you: keep the food outside or in the Green Room. That means you, Jordan, or you’ll be swabbing down the stage and seats for Mrs. Arnold tonight.
“Sir. Yes, sir!” called out a boy.
“In fact, you can have the honor of starting us out, Jordan,” said Mr. Kinsler.
Jordan moaned. As he made his way to the stage, the students who had decided to get the audition done and go home scurried to take seats in the front row. Giselle ran her gaze over several rows of seats looking for James. She located the row where he had whispered in her ear, touched her face, but his jacket was gone. She felt a hollowed-out space in her belly as the theatre quieted and Jordan hopped onto the stage.
In the sudden hush, a heated argument between a boy and a girl occurring behind a closed door became distinguishable. The voices sounded familiar.
“Rebecca,” said Mr. Kinsler, gesturing to the closed door, “Would you be so kind?”
Rebecca, the stage manager who’d shushed James earlier, ran down an aisle of seats toward the door. As Rebecca opened it to shush the pair in the hall, Giselle caught a glimpse of the velvet-voiced Juliet just as she slapped a tall young man. Whom Giselle recognized. Whose mouth had been pressed to hers ten minutes ago.
It was no great leap to surmise James’s kiss and Juliet’s—no, Caitlyn’s—slap were cause and effect. Had Giselle just earned her first enemy in drama class? Not that she meant to fully enter the sacred society of Thespians, but she would be stuck in the class all year and the thought of having an enemy was not pleasant.
Giselle gathered her roving thoughts and reminded herself why she was here: to enable her to remain at All Arts by taking drama. And to take drama, she had to audition sometime within the next hour and fifty-six minutes. Giselle closed her eyes and began running through her mother’s dance, making certain she could perform the movement and spoken words without flaw.
The piece she would dance had been her favorite from Ruslana Chekhov’s farewell performance, set to the poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole.” Giselle had danced it many times in the intervening years: in the empty studio or the empty lobby or her empty kitchen (resulting in an accidentally kicked-off cupboard handle Katya had kindly repaired.) Her mother’s choreography gave form to words about old men, young women, school-children, insects, swans. As she ran through the piece in her mind, Giselle felt something like love for her mother. Or perhaps the feeling had more the shape of … regret.
She smothered the feeling, pacing out the steps in her mind. Flying leaps, piqué turns, slides, a shoulder-roll into splits. The Swans piece told a story of fluidity, spoken in the language of continuous motion. Giselle knew she would have to resist her ballet-trained body’s urge to pause, to rest in a pose. She felt certain she could never love modern dance as she loved ballet, but she couldn’t help wanting to make her performance as flawless as possible. The performer in her demanded nothing less.
During applause for yet another Hermione, Giselle slipped into the final seat of the second row. The end of the line: the soloist’s place. If she thought of her audition as a sort of grand adage, she did not admit this to herself. In any case, the spot was apparently anathema to students of theatre; within a few minutes three of them had begged to cut in ahead of her. Giselle was both gracious and obliging, channeling a bit of Ykaterina Chekhov of the Kirov.
She counted the chairs ahead of her. Eighteen quickly became twelve. Performing in duets—no, she corrected herself—in scenes was popular. Giselle found some of them very entertaining, although James’s bold kiss was not repeated in any of these. Five chairs to go. Three. Two. One. She was next. Removing boots and socks again, she completed a few seated calf-stretches and shook out her arms. Turning her wrists, she saw her mother’s hands in her own elegant ones, narrow fingers and the prominent ridge where her ulna terminated. She slid her hands under her thighs.
And then her turn arrived, and somehow, she found herself onstage once more.
“Whenever you’re ready,” said Mr. Kinsler.
“I’m Giselle Petrovna Chekhov,” she began.
Ho
ly Mother of Mishaps—who’d given her middle name permission to come out from hiding?
Drawing on years of experience, she calmed her nerves and continued.
“This is ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ by William Butler Yeats.”
Murmured approval amongst the remaining students. A barely perceived nod from Mr. Kinsler.
And then she spoke the magical words.
“The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight, the water mirrors a still sky….”
She had neglected to take into account the difficulty of speaking the words while she was in motion, which was challenging, but she found she could think ahead and throw her voice downstage instead of speaking while her back was to the audience, and if she was a bit breathier than she would have liked, the audience didn’t seem to mind. Her limbs remembered how to push through space and her voice came and went in harmony with her motion. She felt the thrill of matching word to action—something ballet dancers never tasted in their diet of silent motion and occasional pantomime.
And then, much sooner than it seemed three minutes ought to have taken, the swans were moving on, leaving the poet behind to mourn their departure. Giselle lay breathless, prostrate on the stage for a count of one-one thousand, two-one thousand.
It had felt marvelous to dance. It was like the first day of being well after a bad cold. It was January sunshine after weeks of cloud cover. Her heart panged with longing and she was afraid for a moment that everyone could see her thoughts laid bare by the bright stage lights. She pushed the ache and the joy deep, deep, deep inside where no light could find it. And then, precisely at three-one thousand, she rose and dipped into a full prima ballerina curtsey.
Siren Spell Page 9
