Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘Damn,’ she said, thinking out loud. Vases were among the umpteen less-than-necessities they hadn’t yet bought for the apartment.

  She stood on a stool and reached to the top of the cabinet for the white wine decanter. Tonight it would just have to double.

  When she came back into the living room no one was talking. Wally had settled on the sofa and Chris was rocking in the rocker, ten feet across the room.

  Steph cleared her throat and said, ‘There we are!’ and set her work of art down on the coffee table. Not bad.

  She turned brightly to Wally. ‘How about a drink?’

  Chris jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘You two just relax. What’ll you have, Wally?’

  ‘Vodka tonic if you have any.’

  ‘And you, Chris?’

  ‘I’ll have a—’ Chris hesitated. ‘Vodka tonic too.’

  Steph translated the hesitation with no difficulty: easy on the vodka.

  Like hell.

  She half shut the louvered kitchen door and did her dirty work in secret: double shots of vodka for Wally and Chris, a half shot for herself. She angled an ear to the other room. The silence screamed. She switched on the radio, station WPAT in one of its syrupy moods, and turned it just loud enough to work subliminally.

  ‘Here we are.’ Steph set Wally’s vodka tonic on a coaster on the coffee table. ‘Chris, you don’t have a table—why don’t you come over here?’ She plunked Chris’s drink down next to Wally’s.

  Chris came across the room and sat on the edge of the sofa, one cushion away from Wally.

  ‘To your very good health, ma’am.’ Wally lifted his glass to toast Steph, then clinked with Chris and took a long swallow. He didn’t seem to mind the alcoholic strength at all. Steph wondered if he even noticed. She went and sat in the rocker and set her glass on the floor.

  The conversation felt like a clamshell. They exhausted the weather, the high cost of ballet shoes, the impossibility of finding really good leg warmers except the kind you knitted yourself.

  Steph made a second round of vodka tonics and the laughter got louder and talk faster. By the time she made a third round of drinks the kitchen was sending out unmistakable messages of basil and garlic and young, crisp lamb.

  Chris glanced for what seemed the fortieth time at her watch. She could no longer ignore the panic wriggling like worms in her stomach. Partly it was nerves, the nearness of Wally with his laughter and his handsomeness and the hope/terror that he would accidentally stretch out a hand or knee and touch her.

  Partly it was the knowledge that dinner was peaking: in another five minutes it would be ruined.

  She put down her glass and left Wally and Steph debating science fiction movies and went to peek through the oven window. She thanked God that Steph was a talker. The lamb was coming up blisters and the ratatouille at the bottom of the pan was black and thick-bubbling like a tropical swamp.

  Steph came rushing into the kitchen. ‘You get right back out there and entertain your guest.’

  ‘But the meat is scorching and the ratatouille—’

  Steph pried the wooden spoon from Chris’s grip. ‘I’ll take care of it. You take care of him. He’s too damned sweet to leave sitting out there alone.’

  Steph did a rapid check. Well, she figured, what’s sauce for the lamb had better be sauce for the ratatouille.

  She wrestled the cork out of a bottle of Macon and dumped a half a cup of wine onto the vegetables and stirred. She lowered the heat in the oven till it was barely a flicker. Just as she was sliding the pan back in, the front doorbell gave two ding-dongs.

  She rushed to answer, throwing a wave at Chris to stay on the sofa with Wally. They weren’t necking, but at least they had progressed to neighbouring cushions.

  The boy in the corridor was wearing army fatigue overalls. Period.

  Correction.

  Rope sandals and a five o’clock shadow, yesterday’s time.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘You don’t look a thing like the up-and-coming Miss Christine Avery.’

  Steph sniffed and the sniff drove her back a step. You, she thought, are late and you’re marinated in banana daiquiris. ‘That’s because I’m Chris’s roommate, Stephanie Lang. And I’ll bet anything you’re Ellis Watkins. Won’t you come in? We’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘Sorry about that. I had to walk the whole fucking way.’

  She led Ellis into the living room and let Wally stumble to his feet and stutter an introduction. Chris’s smile blanked out.

  ‘We’ll be eating in a minute,’ Steph said.

  Ellis made a pout. ‘Suppose it’d be too much trouble to rustle up a godmother?’

  Steph stared at him. He wasn’t joking. ‘If that’s a drink, I’ll try. If it’s something out of Sleeping Beauty, you’re out of luck.’

  ‘It’s a drink, honey. You take a glass yea tall and three ice cubes—can you manage three ice cubes?’

  ‘For you, four.’

  ‘Vodka to the top of the ice cubes and a half jigger of Amaretto—if you haven’t got a shaker, just stir.’

  Steph had been in ballet long enough to tag the new arrival: a corps-boy brat and a week-end lush; beautiful build, no brains, and in two years he’d be running an antique shop some old man had treated him to. Every company had a couple of Ellises. She saw a choice: she could pretend Ellis wasn’t there, which would upset Chris. Or she could pretend he was human, male, and adult—which would upset Ellis.

  She decided it would be kinder to upset Ellis. ‘I’ll shake and stir.’

  She had a hunch that in his condition Ellis Watkins wouldn’t know the difference between Amaretto and arsenic, and unfortunately she’d forgotten to stock either. She dropped three ice cubes into a tumbler, splashed in enough vodka for authenticity, enough water to slow him down, and enough sherry to colour the concoction. It looked like something a goldfish had had the trots in.

  When she came back into the living room Ellis was sitting on the sofa next to Wally. Chris had moved back to the rocking chair. She gazed at the two young men with subdued eyes, coddling her drink in both hands while Ellis sketched NBT disasters in the air and chattered about missed pirouettes in the week’s rehearsals.

  Steph stopped Ellis’ hand in mid-gesture and deposited the drink in it.

  He shot her a smile and took a kissing sip from the rim. Obviously his taste buds had been dry-iced some time ago, because all he said was, ‘Next time a little easier on the Amaretto, okay?’

  Steph looked at him. His knee was extended across the middle cushion towards Wally’s, not quite touching.

  ‘I’ve never been inside a girls’ dormitory before,’ Ellis was saying. ‘It’s interesting to see how the other half sleeps.’

  Chris laughed nervously. ‘Sleeping’s about all we have time to do around here.’

  ‘Yeah—the place looks it.’

  Steph thought for one moment that he was trying to be clever. She searched his baby face for some hint that the rudeness was a joke, but his lips were unsmiling as a straight razor and his bloodshot eyes nailed hers.

  ‘Do you have two twin beds?’

  ‘The store calls them twins,’ Chris said. ‘It’s a fancy word for narrow.’

  ‘Siamese?’

  Steph could see that Chris wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at. ‘Just identical,’ Chris said.

  ‘With pretty Yves St Laurent sheets from Bloomy’s last white sale?’

  ‘We’re saving for those,’ Steph said coolly.

  ‘Shouldn’t take too long on soloists’ pay. Unless they’re soaking you on the rent. What does one of these boxes go for nowadays?’

  ‘We don’t get soloists’ pay,’ Steph said.

  ‘You mean you’re both common corps members, like me? Like me? From what Wally’s been saying about that pas de deux, I thought Volmar had at least sneaked Chris up a notch.’

  Steph held her best stage smile, wondering how Wally had gotten hooked
up with a beaut like Ellis.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Chris rose from her chair and went into the kitchen to check the lamb. The overhead fluorescent lights dimmed. What’s happening to the electricity, she wondered, another blackout?

  Suddenly she was overpoweringly aware of garlic and oil and cooked fat. She felt a rushing stab of nausea and the room grew so bright she had to shut her eyes. Not Con Ed, she realized: me—something’s wrong with me.

  She managed to grip the edge of the sink, sweating, fighting a dizziness that wanted to suck her down to the floor.

  Steph’s voice came to her, concerned and close. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I just slipped. Guess I put too much wax on that linoleum.’

  ‘How well do you know Ellis?’ Steph asked. ‘Ever talk to him at work?’

  ‘He runs with his own bunch. He doesn’t have time for me. His friends are all very bright and giggly and up on everything. I always feel like a dope when I’m with them.’

  ‘Maybe they’re the dopes.’ Steph took the garlic bread from the oven and wrapped it in a napkin and couldn’t find a plate long enough. She glanced up and saw Chris staring at her.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Chris whispered suddenly.

  ‘What in the world are you talking about?’

  ‘Why does Ellis hate me?’

  ‘He’s drunk. He doesn’t hate anyone but his own sweet little self.’

  ‘When he stares at me I feel the whole corps is there, whispering and hating me. Steph, I haven’t done a thing to him—ever.’

  ‘Maybe you ought to. Something good and swift where it hurts.’ Steph thought of saying more but she stopped herself. When they returned to their guests Ellis was talking about Bobby Baylor, one of the older principals with the company.

  ‘He’s gone back to his wife—can you believe?’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Chris said.

  ‘You’re glad! What about the kids at the school? It’s safe to take a shower again!’

  ‘Why do you always have to exaggerate?’ Wally said.

  ‘Me? Exaggerate? The freak practically stood sentry in those showers. Every time a new kid came in he stared—and stared—and stared. Remember that seventeen-year-old from Colorado—terrific body—the kid went to take a shower after class and there was the Robert Baylor, danseur noble of the decade, staring. Well. Bobby’s got thinning hair. He uses that spray paint, Nestlé’s Streaks ‘n' Tips, to cover the bald spot. He was standing under that shower for so long, staring at this kid, the Nestlé’s started streaking and tipping down his face.’

  Ellis took a huge swallow of his drink.

  ‘Bobby looked like the Black Swan on the hundred twentieth fouetté. I mean evil, mascara to the jowls. The kid was scared stiff. Here was the big star of the company coming on to him like tea for two with Jack the Ripper. Well, the kid got out of that shower and ran for his life and never showed up at another class. Any other dancer but Bobby would know you don’t screw around with the students. The corps boys, okay. They’re adults.’

  ‘Are they?’ Steph said.

  Ellis shot her a glance. ‘They’re as adult as the girls, honey.’

  Chris fought to keep her head clear. She felt Ellis was laying a lassoo of chatter around the evening, waiting for the moment to jerk it tight.

  Ellis got up. Swaying, he leaned over Wally and began massaging his shoulders. ‘Why so tense, sweetheart?’

  ‘Why don’t you just relax?’ Wally said.

  ‘I’ll do that little thing.’

  Ellis walked unsteadily into the kitchen. Chris heard a cabinet door being tugged open and then the freezer door slamming and Ellis came wobbling back with what looked like a fresh tumbler of vodka. He dropped onto the sofa.

  ‘So tell me, Chris—what’s the story about this pas de deux?’

  ‘It’s a sort of Sleeping Beauty,’ she said. His eyes made her uncomfortable. ‘I spend four minutes on the floor and then Wally wakes me up.’

  ‘I hope he’s gentler with you than he is with me. But what’s the story?’

  ‘That is the story.’

  ‘Three weeks ago you were in the corps. Three weeks from now you’re dancing a premiere. That’s the story I want to hear. Are you and Volmar having a thing?’

  ‘Ellis will you lay off?’ Wally said.

  ‘I’m only asking what everyone else is wondering. How did you swing it, Chris?’

  ‘You have to excuse Ellis,’ Wally said. ‘He doesn’t usually drink this much.’

  ‘I always drink this much,’ Ellis shot back.

  ‘And after twelve drinks,’ Wally said, ‘he starts saying stupid things he doesn’t mean.’

  ‘I’m saying stupid things I do mean. I want to know what Chris did to get that role.’

  ‘Maybe Chris didn’t do anything,’ Steph said. ‘Maybe Volmar likes her work. He did hire her for the corps after all.’ Steph couldn’t stand ballet losers. They were always whining that everything depended on your connections. It wasn’t so. Everything depended on work.

  ‘And he did hire sixty other girls after all,’ Ellis said, ‘but when he wants to demonstrate a finger pirouette whose finger is in his hand? Little Chrissie’s. And when he demonstrates a lift, whose little waist is in his trembling paws? Little Chrissie’s little waist. Some of those girls have been with NBT twelve years and they say never, but never, has Volmar come on to anyone, male, female, or poodle—and now he’s making an ass out of himself—over little Miss Chris.’

  ‘He’s not making an ass of himself,’ Wally said. ‘It’s a damned good pas de deux.’

  ‘Thank you, Prince Charming, for making the ballerina look pretty as usual. But now that we’re all offstage, let’s hear the unpretty facts. Tell me, Chris—what does Volmar do in the sack? Is he freaky? Can he get it up?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Honey, you can ease up on the innocence. I’m not an idiot.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Wally said, ‘and a damned rude one.’

  ‘Emily Post, why don’t you go shove it?’

  ‘We’re guests, Ellis, and you’re drunk.’

  ‘Okay, I’m high. But I’m not a moron and I’m not a patsy. I’ve been working my balls off in that company for three years, and little Miss Chris jetés her way into a starring role in three months—not even a season, three fucking months. I want to know how.’ He gave Chris a long stare. ‘Tell me, honey, when did you start studying ballet?’

  ‘Oh—around seven.’

  ‘One class a week?’

  She sensed a shift in his malice: it was blowing from a different direction. ‘One or two, I don’t remember.’

  ‘And by the time you were twelve, a class every day after school right? And in high school two classes a day after school, and weekends doing homework, right?’

  She couldn’t understand what he was trying to trap her into. She threw pleading glances at Steph and Wally, wishing they would say something to deflect him.

  ‘You never had time to date, and even if you were invited to a prom you didn’t go. And of course there was never any time for anything extracurricular like the Student Council or the high school paper, and you were never a cheerleader for the football team. Right? Right.’

  She set down her glass firmly. ‘Look, Ellis I didn’t go to high school. My parents sent me to a private school for girls. There was no football team, no proms, we didn’t have a Student Council and we didn’t have a school paper.’

  She mentioned the private school only as a last resort. She knew he would use it against her, spread word through the corps that Christine Avery was a stuck-up finishing-school snob. But it was the one thing that would shut him up.

  Only it didn’t.

  ‘Oh, in that case your first crush was on—let me guess—Eddy Villella. You took his master class. He was courteous, he was gentlemanly, he knew all about ballet and art and music, he wasn’t like those pimply seventeen-year-old boys that tried to drag you out to football
games and grope you under the blanket. Am I warm?’

  Chris drew herself up stiff in her chair. She felt a premonition as unmistakable as the glint of a steel blade in a dark alley. Before tonight she had never spoken a word to this baby-faced stranger, never exchanged more than two nods with him at rehearsal. Yet here he was in her home, trying methodically, smilingly, to annihilate her.

  Why?

  ‘I never took a master class with Villella,’ Chris said.

  ‘Well then, your first big heterosexual experience was—let’s see—Ballet Theater was touring and you got a backstage pass and Ivan Nagy bumped into you and said, ‘Excuse me.’ Am I getting warmer?’

  ‘Why are you picking on my friend?’ Steph cut in.

  Ellis’ gaze swivelled. ‘Picking on her? Warning her, honey. She’s spent her life commuting from Miss La-de-da’s School to toe class. To her the whole world is Swan Lake and Raymonda and Giselle. Some gay boy from the corps invites her home for Christmas to prove he’s straight, and she thinks it’s the big love, the White Prince. As soon as she’s recovered from that shock, if she recovers, some principal with a wife stashed in Scarsdale invites her to a hotel room and it’s the big love, the White Prince all over again. Between gay dancers using her for a front and straight dancers tearing off a piece between rehearsals she’s going to be a ping-pong ball with one raging case of clap.’

  Steph was angry now, ready to attack. To hell with being a hostess, this tarantula needed squashing. But the puzzled hurt in Chris’s eyes warned her to hold off.

  And then it dawned on her: Chris still didn’t understand about Wally and Ellis. She didn’t see that Ellis was defending his property. Oh, Jesus, Steph thought. And then Ellis said it.

  ‘Look, Chris, I’m gay.’

  The room was silent. WPAT was playing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.’

  ‘Now tell me honestly. Is that news to you or not?’

  Chris stared at him. Cold panic began creeping up from her legs. Why? The word screamed in her head. Why does he hate me? Is it the gay thing?

  ‘I—hadn’t thought about it.’ Her tongue felt heavy, a sour dead weight in her mouth. ‘It doesn’t make any difference. Not to me. Should it?’