Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

Volmar said nothing. She was handing him the opportunity he needed, saving him the trouble of inventing a pretext for dropping her. He knew better than to grab at it. He gave her four beats to retract.

  ‘Very well, Christine. You are excused for the day. And from the role. You will cover for Stephanie. Go have your tears and storms in private.’

  A murmur flashed through the dancers and Chris ran from the stage.

  It took Steph an unbelieving instant to realize what had happened. The role was hers. She sank onto a chair. I wanted the role, yes, but not like this. She felt eight million kinds of confusion and elation and disappointment.

  ‘From the coda,’ Volmar commanded. ‘And!’

  Steph obeyed. She managed somehow to complete the rehearsal, to block out every awareness but the movement of her body. Afterwards, Sasha followed her into the wings. He looked back towards the stage. There was no one. He grabbed the sleeve of her robe.

  They were standing just outside the stagehands’ room. Transistorized disco rock came in pounding waves through the half-open door.

  He stepped nearer, eyes and voice angled low. She knew he was going to try to kiss her. She pushed him gently away and her hand lingered a moment, clinging to the warmth and dampness of him.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I want you to come with me now to my dressing room.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have to explain.’

  A balance had shifted between them. Before, she had been the child. But now it was Sasha pleading and Steph, like a parent, standing firm.

  ‘You do not understand about Christine and me,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t I?’

  He paced to the stage manager’s console. His glance brushed the TV images of the empty stage, the dark orchestra pit. She could feel him gathering his justifications. Maybe there is an explanation, she thought. Please God, let there be an explanation.

  But he ripped that last hope from her. ‘Christine is baby. I felt sorry for her, that is all.’

  For a moment Steph couldn’t answer. ‘But she loved you.’

  ‘Baby love.’

  Steph dropped her eyelids, wishing sleep would come and blot out everything. He must have interpreted the movement as a sign of surrender. He was beside her, an arm coaxing at her waist.

  ‘Don’t let the baby ruin it for us. Please, Stephanie.’

  His finger found a rift in her unitard, stroked the bare skin beneath her ribs as though they were alone in his apartment with only the fire for light. She felt the involuntary response of her nipple and anger flashed through her. She jerked away.

  ‘You take one hell of a lot for granted.’

  ‘Only because I love you.’ His lips were purring along the side of her neck. Breath brushed the inner curl of her ear. Her heart beat shallow and fast.

  Why not, she wondered, why not settle for sex? Other girls do.

  Faultlessly timed, like a leap landing on a downbeat, his mouth glided in for the kiss. Her hand swung back and caught the side of his face in a firecracker slap.

  He recoiled, looking as stunned as if she’d plunged a hatpin into his heart.

  ‘You’re a beautiful dancer, Sasha, and an arrogant lying bastard.’

  ‘All American girls same,’ he spat. ‘Go to bed with man once and think they own him. If you are jealous of that baby, then you are baby too.’

  ‘That baby happens to be my friend—something you’ll never be to anyone.’

  ‘I have plenty friends.’

  ‘Good. You’d better invite one to dinner tonight.’

  ‘You are breaking date?’

  ‘You’re goddamned right I’m breaking date.’

  ‘But why?’ He looked at her in wild bafflement.

  ‘The fact you have to ask why is why. Get this straight, Sasha. I’m never eating with you again or drinking with you again or smoking pot with you again. I’m never going to be alone in the same room with you. I’m never going to be in bed with you again. There’s only one thing I’ll ever do with you again and that’s dance, and that’s the only time you’re going to put a finger on me. Capeesh? Ponimayesh?’

  He stared at her coldly. ‘Okay. Keep your little friend.’

  ‘I intend to try to. Good-bye, Sasha.’

  forty-four

  Steph dashed into the apartment. ‘Chris?’

  She flung open doors: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. Nobody. ‘Chris!’

  The bureau drawers were a pawed-over jumble of panties and chemises. A cyclone had hit the closets. Dresses dangled half ripped from hangers. Overcoats were puddled on the floor with galoshes and spilled shoe trees. Two suitcases were missing.

  Chris was gone. She had stuffed some clothing into two suitcases and fled.

  Steph sank into the rocking chair. She felt very alone in the empty apartment. A thought stirred in her, soft as a warning breeze.

  She went into the bathroom and pushed aside the mirrored cabinet door. Chris’s medicines were still there with their typed labels: the fat three-times-a-day bottle, the skinny once-a-day bottle, and the white plastic for-emergency bottle.

  She felt tumbled and drained and melted. She did not know what she had done. She did not know what to do about it.

  She waited. Chris might come back. Chris might phone.

  She waited. The apartment grew dark. She got up to turn on a light. She had been sitting with her back to the television set and she had not noticed the note Scotch-taped to the screen. Now it hit her like a fist.

  The crazy, slanting letters were spattered in blood-red lipstick. Chris’s lipstick, Chris’s crazy handwriting. I hate you!

  She ripped the note loose and balled it in her hand and broke down helplessly, in tears.

  Ten minutes before she had to leave for the theatre the phone rang. It was her mother, just phoning to say hello and wondering how rehearsals were going and by the way was the cast going to be settled in time to print programmes for the gala?

  ‘I’m dancing Aurora, Mom.’

  There was a gasp. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Chris had a breakdown.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She walked out.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Mom, I’m worried. She’s moved out of the apartment but she didn’t take her medicine.’

  ‘She’s got a key, she’ll be back. Just don’t let her walk back into that role, okay?’

  Seymour Harnett—triangle player and percussionist with the NBT orchestra, chairman of the musicians’ strike committee—called the meeting to order.

  He reminded the men of their grievances. He described Marius Volmar’s fuck-you attitude. He folded his hands across his stomach, settled down in his seat, and let questions and answers whiz past.

  ‘How much we holding out for?’

  ‘Eight per cent annual after the thirty.’

  ‘Risky,’ the second oboe said.

  ‘Bullshit. Show of strength is what counts.’

  ‘And if they say drop dead?’

  ‘Cancel their season? You kidding? They think that Russian’s going to save them.’

  ‘Can you see their faces when we shut down that stinking gala?’

  ‘Ever think they might close down the company?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. They got matching funds from Uncle Sam, grants from Coca-Cola, has-been ballerinas selling pencils on Central Park West, tax write-offs, they make more money losing money than you or me do working our asses off. Who the hell lives in a Fifth Avenue penthouse—you, me, or Madame Dorcas Fuckface?’

  Seymour Harnett said this was getting no one nowhere, all in favour of the strike please raise their hands, only one hand per man and no goofing, please.

  He counted.

  ‘All opposed.’

  He counted. He smiled. Three-vote margin.

  ‘Motion carried. Unless management ratifies the new contract, we walk out the day of the gala. Anyone care to stop at the bar, the beer’s o
n me. And, Harry, you’ll get out the press releases, okay?’

  ‘Wouldn’t go out that way,’ the stage door guard said.

  Volmar peered through the double glass doors at the chaos of illegally parked TV trucks, the milling disorder of reporters brandishing microphones and flash cameras. There was menace in their idleness, like the dammed-up violence of a teen-age gang.

  ‘Better try the front of the house, Mr Volmar. They won’t be expecting you.’

  But they were.

  Volmar had taken barely ten steps towards the fountain when the reporters converged screaming on him.

  ‘Gonna pay the musicians?’

  ‘True you’re gonna hire scabs?’

  Instinct told him to duck back into the theatre, not to meddle with press and publicity and matters he didn’t understand.

  ‘Hey, Volmar, think they timed the strike to hit Sasha’s premiere?’

  The question jolted him. He stood rigid, speechless. His eye sought the face that had thrown it out. The plaza was mined with exploding lights. Reporters jostled like rats in a trap clawing for a hunk of mouldy cheese. Their mikes and their cameras and their scribble pads pressed nearer. Ignorance and beer breath pressed nearer.

  ‘What premiere?’ Volmar shouted.

  The answer came back in fragments: ‘Sasha—the big shindig—the gala—Sleeping Beauty!’

  Anger surged up in him. His heart contracted painfully.

  ‘The prince in Sleeping Beauty,’ he shouted, ‘will be danced by Wally Collins, one of our leading native-born American dancers, as befits a major production of an American dance company funded in part by American taxpayers’ dollars. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have to say to any of you.’

  He sat working at his work. Rehearsal music drifted in through the open door, washing over his half-listening mind like the reassuring sound of waves. He heard someone breathe his name.

  ‘Marius.’

  He looked up. Dorcas stood in the doorway.

  ‘The news said—they said you’re not letting Sasha....’ She bent her head silently and just stood there.

  He rose from his chair. The wings of phantom possibilities brushed him. He could lie. He could hedge. He could go put a hand on her arm. But he was tired. His mind ached.

  She looked directly at him. The uptilted eyes caught the light of his desk lamp. ‘Couldn’t you at least have told me first?’

  ‘I’m truly sorry, my dear.’ And in a way he was. ‘I meant to.’

  She raised a white-knuckled fist to her mouth. ‘You meant to! That’s all you have to say to me?’

  He listened to her heavy-breathing silence. He had done nothing illegal. He was still director till his contract expired. It was his job to make such decisions. What could he say to this weeping woman?

  ‘You hate him so much?’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I hate no one.’ He hated only mediocrity, but he’d never make her see it.

  ‘After all we’ve built together—’

  ‘We’ve been through that.’

  ‘We’ve been through a great deal, Marius, but this—I’ll never forgive you for.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  She tried to cuff the shiny streaks from her face. She looked like a smudged portrait of herself. ‘I’ve spoken to the lawyers. You can have your gala. After that, I’m buying out your contract. You won’t be working for NBT any more.’

  For an instant he felt gravity sucking him down. He took a deep breath. ‘I can talk to lawyers too.’

  ‘You don’t have money. You don’t have contacts. You don’t have friends. You’ll never be able to keep the company.’

  His eyes probed hers. Had he underestimated her strength? No. Her weakness. ‘You’d destroy NBT—because of him?’

  ‘You’ve destroyed the company, Marius. No one else. I’m sick. I can’t discuss it any more. I hope the musicians let you have your gala. I hope it’s the gala of your dreams. Good-bye, Marius.’

  The phone on his desk buzzed. The girl at the switchboard said it was Mr Seymour Harnett of the musicians’ union. Marius Volmar had not planned to do what he did next. The words spat out of their own accord.

  ‘I’ve stated my position, Mr Harnett.’

  ‘Come off it, Volmar. We’ve all stated our positions. Now let’s get down to some real concessions, or you won’t have an orchestra.’

  ‘And your men won’t have jobs. I’ve made every concession I intend to. I’ve had enough of your greed.’

  The voice bridled. ‘You what?’

  ‘I’m negotiating no further. You may take my terms, Mr Harnett, or send your men to the unemployment office where they belong.’

  Confusion settled on the company like twilight on an unknown city. No one knew whether the musicians would strike. No one knew whether the company would survive.

  The dancers of NBT—like all dancers—lived every day of their lives with ailment and injury. They could cope with cramps and strains and sprains, with shin splints and soreness and lost nails and half the itises known to the human body. But uncertainty was a different sort of injury. It attacked the dancer’s most vital, most vulnerable organ: the spirit. And there was no way of massaging it out or bringing it down with cold packs.

  The corridors of the theatre bustled with rumour. There were whispers in the dressing rooms. There were bills overdue, rent overdue, loans coming due. Bee pollen was expensive and brewer’s yeast had gone up again. There were pets to feed and it cost money to soak leg warmers in Woolite. The other companies wouldn’t be hiring till fall and anyway there were never enough openings and those always went to the youngest.

  The dancers were scared. They had staked their short dancing lives on a gamble. For all they could tell, these next few weeks might be their last.

  Marius Volmar gave no sign of caring or even of knowing. Shouting and stamping and business-as-usual, he drove the company through gruelling rehearsals of a ballet that might never be staged.

  He was almost satisfied with his principals and their covers: Stephanie and Wally partnered well; Sasha instead of marking danced full out, as of course he would; and Christine brought a strangely smouldering competence to the role.

  But Volmar was satisfied with nothing else.

  Even though he choreographed every movement and gesture and floor pattern from his notes; even though he tolerated no experiment or accident or deviation—still, in his mind’s eye, there was no complete picture, no whole Sleeping Beauty. This had never happened before in his life. The fire was in him but he could not focus it.

  He wondered if he was getting old.

  He found himself forgetting things. When he wanted the corps to step forward with more accent, he couldn’t find the word. ‘Here we must have a little—’ His mind groped helplessly and finally he had to demonstrate the upbeat with his body.

  Tiny details irritated him horribly. Feet in the rosin box sounded like the runching of broken glass. A girl watched her reflection in the mirror and he stopped the rehearsal and stood on a chair and shouted: ‘You there—yes, you—what were you watching?’

  ‘My sauté en arabesque.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to have a mirror onstage. It’s ridiculous at your age to have to see how you’re dancing. Your muscles should tell you, and if they don’t, you’d better learn something practical, like shorthand.’

  He saw the signs of declining morale: the girls had untidy hair, the boys wore long pouts; the corps no longer moved as one but waited a telltale split second for a leader to emerge and move first.

  Dancers who were covering marked their parts like ghosts trailing twenty paces behind. Dancers not rehearsing played cards instead of watching.

  He heard whispers.

  ‘Volmar’s never been such a bastard before—what the hell’s eating him?’

  ‘He has his notes right there on his lap and he doesn’t even remember the choreography.’

  He knew rehearsals were going badly and he didn’t know the
reason, I’ll pull it together, he told himself. I’ve always pulled it together.

  ‘Unless somebody’s willing to change course,’ the man from the mayor’s office said, ‘we’re deadlocked.’

  ‘You dragged me from rehearsal to tell me that?’ Marius Volmar said.

  The mayor, the governor, the President himself had called the possibility of a strike a scandal, a cultural disaster. What Marius Volmar found scandalous was that he had to attend meetings like this.

  ‘Look,’ the man from publishing cut in, ‘nothing in ballet ever runs a hundred per cent smoothly.’ He was a balletomane and he had volunteered his services as arbitrator. He knows his ballet, Marius Volmar was thinking, but he doesn’t know union musicians. ‘There are always misunderstandings and lost tempers and never enough money, but somehow or other, with a little good will, the show goes on. Come on, gentlemen—and Mrs Amidon. There’s no reason we can’t get together on this. We all love ballet.’

  ‘Do we?’ Marius Volmar said. ‘Do Mr Harnett and his men love ballet?’

  Seymour Harnett sucked at a large cigar. He had the face of a once predatory animal that had roamed indoors and lived too long off heavy cream.

  ‘I’m here negotiating, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’d call it a holdup,’ Marius Volmar shot back. ‘There’s no love of ballet in you or your men, no love of anything I can see except money. Certainly no love of music.’

  The man from the President’s Council for the Arts lifted a hand. ‘Keep it to a dull roar, gentlemen.’

  ‘Mrs Amidon,’ the man from publishing said, pushing back the silence, ‘you haven’t told us your position.’

  Dorcas Amidon stared down at the table. Her voice was carefully controlled. ‘Mr Volmar and I disagree on several points. I’ll probably form a new company next year—in which case I’ll certainly not be hiring Mr Harnett or any of his men who voted to strike.’

  ‘That’s not legal!’ Seymour Harnett cried. ‘Did you hear that, she’s threatening a lockout! That’s intimidation!’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the man from publishing said. ‘Mrs Amidon. Please.’

  ‘Musicians aren’t people? Musicians aren’t supposed to eat?’

  The man from the President’s Council drew in a deep breath. ‘Fellas, there’s a line outside the loo. So either make up your minds to use the potty, or let someone else have it. Now either you reach an agreement, within non-inflationary guidelines, or you lose your federal matching funds. It’s that simple.’