It was lyrical, sensuous, the story of a Greek statue come to life from cold, emotionless rock. I loved my costume, an ivory wisp of a gown that floated and spun when I danced. The piece would probably be performed as part of our next season, but for now, only our most generous patrons would have a sneak peek. Gala tickets were expensive because of this exclusivity, and somewhat scarce, which made them even more desirable. The Galas typically sold out before the previous one was even over. Did I expect Mr. Norris to grace us with his presence? Yes. In truth, I did.
That’s why, the night of the Gala, I was totally stricken with nerves. I paced in my dressing room, hopped and turned and stretched endlessly. I ran through the motions and tricks of the dance in my head, over and over, and trusted in Grégoire to hold up his end. He watched me from the vanity, eating an apple in silence. I’m sure he knew that Mr. Norris was in my thoughts, but for whatever reason, he didn’t tease or badger me about it. Maybe, like me, he was anxious to see him again too. Maybe he still nursed the hopeless crush on him that made him push me his way whenever he had the chance. He was so quiet and calm, so unlike his usual self, that I knew he felt as anxious as me.
Yes, that’s what it was. We were both nervous. How long since we had been nervous together before a performance? I couldn’t remember the last time, and I guessed he couldn’t either. It gave me a full and hyper feeling, like my chest was going to burst from excitement or dread. It took me back to ten years before, when Grégoire and I had been faceless dancers in the corps of the City Ballet. How far we’d come since then, how much we’d accomplished, and how much we’d aged. I started to feel almost wistful on top of all the nerves. Darling Grégoire, my lover of a partner. I couldn’t wait to feel his hands on me, couldn’t wait for us to move together, to bring the music and steps to life. But I couldn’t say a word to him of why I was nervous and shaky, so we sat in uneasy silence and waited to be called to the wings.
Finally, it was time for us to take our places. This piece began on stage, no flourish of an entrance. We padded out behind the curtain and assumed our still positions. He put his arms around me as I arched into the lovely lines of the statue I would play. He looked at me and winked, squeezing my side with the faintest pressure. How I loved him. Help me, G, I said with my wide, frightened eyes. Help me. I’m nervous. I’m scared. What if he’s not here? What if he is?
Then the curtain opened and between the both of us, the dance unraveled in a perfect arc. No missteps, no awkward lifts or late beats. Together we nailed it and it was intoxicating. When I reached for him, he was there. Always, with Grégoire, the perfect amount of pressure, the exact amount of force to propel me where I needed to go. As for me—my every line was perfection. I prayed that he was watching. He had to be. Please. I wanted him to want me again, to find me the thing of beauty he’d described even though I’d been so terribly rude. I selfishly wanted him to want me even though I’d pushed him away.
When the piece ended we received a standing ovation, and armfuls and armfuls of flowers that filled my nose with their sweet scent. These Galas were always over the top. Between graceful reverences, I scanned the small audience for Mr. Norris, but all I saw was a sea of bald heads and tuxedos, and old matrons in garish silk gowns.
After the curtain call, they brought up the lights in the theater. The wealthy guests swarmed the stage and the champagne and hors-d’oeuvres flowed. I went to the dressing rooms with the other dancers to change and tone down my stage makeup. By the time I returned the party was in full swing. Many deferential and polite patrons of the arts sidled up to me and complimented me.
I smiled so much my face started to ache, but I appreciated their words. We had moved them emotionally and that seemed a worthy thing, and their feelings were honest and heartfelt.
Grégoire hovered around me, playing the straight guy, except with the gay patrons, who saw through his act with a wink.
But even amidst all the glamour and champagne, the lovely Greek setting and the flattering praise, I grew melancholy because he had not come after all. Our wealthy patron Mr. Norris was nowhere to be found. Around midnight Grégoire brought me some champagne with a sympathetic smile, leaning next to me on the fake Greek balustrade.
“I thought your beau would be here,” he said.
My beau. What a bizarre word to use for him. It was too gentle a word for what he was.
Maybe Grégoire used it ironically, silly French boy. No, Mr. Norris was not my beau. In my fantasies at night, beau did not describe what he was to me. Lover. Conqueror. Master. Animal.
Even, ridiculously and embarrassingly sometimes, husband. But beau, no. It was far too soft for what Mr. Norris was to me in my dreams.
“No, he’s not here. I haven’t seen him,” I said, shaking myself from my reveries.
“But you wanted him to be here.”
“Yes, and so did you,” I shot back.
He smiled a wry smile. “You were great tonight, Lu.”
“So were you. It was fantastic. It really was.”
He took a deep breath. “I had that feeling I haven’t had in a while, that something I did was truly beautiful. That something between us grew and developed and was...transformed.”
“Oh, G.” I hugged him hard. He held on to me as we hid back in the wings and I thought if I was able to cry, I would have cried in G’s arms, for so many things. For happiness and sadness, for confusion, for disappointment that lodged like an awful lump in my throat until I thought I would choke.
He let me go and we peeked out at the glamorous spectacle from our hiding place. We lapsed back into our usual sneering comments when he returned with more champagne.
“To being dance whores.” He held up his glass up to mine.
“To being dance whores,” I agreed. That was what it felt like, these events, one hundred percent, even if you’d danced better than you’d danced in your life. If you pay for me to dance, I’ll pretend that we’re friends. Poor Grégoire had a suit jacket full of phone numbers, both male and female. I looked around at the blue haired rich ladies and their pompous rich husbands.
Where would I be at eighty years old? At a party like this? Living vicariously through others?
I grew more and more despondent the later it got. I wondered if Mr. Norris had withdrawn his association with the theater. Over me? Silly. But what if he had, because I’d been rude to him, because he scared me? And just as I was mulling over that unpleasant thought, I felt a hand on my elbow, a pressure I remembered. My blood rushed loud in my ears. I turned and there he was, a foot away. He wore that same unflappable, broad smile.
He nodded to my partner first. “Beautiful work tonight, Grégoire.” He pronounced his name perfectly in French, the way I never could.
Grégoire blushed like a boy and stammered his thanks. They shook hands like straight men would do, and I worried for a moment that G might actually faint. But he didn’t, and then Mr.
Norris turned in my direction.
“And you, Lucy Merritt with two t’s. Stunning. I really don’t have words.” I didn’t have words either. I just looked back at him, speechless, sick with embarrassment and lust. He may have been acting like our last conversation never happened but I still burned with mortification over it. He turned from me, made more polite small talk with Grégoire, and then, with a strange subtle agility, he dismissed him. As Grégoire left us, he shot me a warning look. Don’t fuck this up, you little dork.
I turned back to Mr. Norris. Matthew. I’d called him Mr. Norris so many times in disdain.
I’d never remember to call him Matthew now.
“Mr. Norris?” I began. Ugh, you idiot. “Um, Matthew, the last time we talked...please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Yes there is. I was so rude to you. I apologize, I really do.” He smiled, that kind, easy smile, and leaned close to me so my eyes fixed on his lips.
“I apologize for calling you a thing,” he said. “Although in my defense, I did call you a th
ing of beauty.”
I looked up at him and somehow managed a smile. His own smile was infectious, but he still scared me. Why did he scare me so much? I couldn’t put my finger on it. Wild animal male, I thought to myself. Dangerous and unpredictable. And here we were, alone together back in the wings where no one could see us. Mr. Norris, the wild animal, and me, his prey.
But he wasn’t wild. In fact his manners were impeccable. He took my glass and offered to bring me more champagne. He left, fully trusting me to wait there for him, and I did although my brain was pleading with me to fly.
When he returned to me with our full glasses of bubbly, I waited for the typical moronic toast. To dance whores, I envisioned him saying, holding up his glass to me. But no silly toasts or comments were forthcoming. He only sipped his champagne and looked out with me as the room began to thin.
“Where were you?” I asked finally, to fill the awkward silence. “Earlier tonight? When the party began?”
“You missed me?”
I blushed a thousand shades of red.
“Well, you remember that I work,” he said. “I had a phone call I had to take and unfortunately it went on and on. I did see your performance though, and I’m glad for that. It was just lovely.” And the way he said lovely, it wasn’t gushing or fake, just hopelessly kind.
I turned my head away in self-preservation. If he didn’t leave me soon, I would humiliate myself over him.
“How long have you been dancing?” he asked. He had a strange way of talking to me, sort of formal and stern, but his voice never rose above that quiet, calm tone.
“I’ve danced forever. Since before I can remember, I’ve been dancing.”
“Did your parents dance, too?”
“No. Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wonder where this kind of talent comes from. Genetics, nurturing? Or just hard work?”
I stared out at the rows of seats in the theater. “I’ve worked pretty hard.”
“Hmm. I’m sure you have.” He looked at me again like he was looking at a thing. “How long will you continue to dance, Lucy?”
“Until I can’t anymore,” I answered without pause. He looked hard at me then. Was he trying to guess how long I had left? “Have you ever danced?” I blurted out to distract him from thinking about my age.
That made him laugh, loud and hard. “Oh, no. Fortunately for humanity, no, I never have.
And I never will.”
His self-deprecating words made me giggle. “Maybe if you’d had lessons.”
“Yes, maybe.” He laughed with a nod.
I bit my lip. I had no idea what else to say. He rendered me speechless and I can’t say how. I could see how he excelled at business. He had a manner about him that had me at his feet.
“So, do you like these things, these ‘Galas’?” he asked.
I felt embarrassed, as if he’d somehow overheard the snide comments Grégoire and I had made all night.
“No, not really.”
“Why don’t you?”
I wanted to say something cutesy and glib, but the way he stared at me compelled me to absolute truth.
“Because they feel really fake. Artificial.”
“And you don’t like that? Make-believe?”
He didn’t say it suggestively, but my mind flew to the silly make-believe fantasies he’d spurred in my mind. Or maybe he did know. Ugh, why couldn’t I stop blushing? I could feel it creeping up into my cheeks again.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I like make-believe sometimes. When I’m in the mood.”
“Hmm. And what puts you in the mood for make-believe?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I finally shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
“I’m not big on make-believe,” he said, looking out over the crowd.
“But dance is make-believe, isn’t it?” I waved my arm around at the pomp and glitter that surrounded us. “And you’re here, dressed up in your tuxedo and bow tie.”
“Well, sometimes you just play along, don’t you?” And by you, I guessed he meant people in general, but I felt it directed at me. You just play along, Lucy, don’t you?
The champagne was making me warm. I rubbed my cheeks.
“Are you tired?” he asked me in a strangely mesmerizing voice. It sounded like an inappropriately intimate thing to say, because what it really sounded like to me was that he thought I should go to bed. His bed.
“I’m just getting a little drunk. It doesn’t take much.”
“I guess not,” he said, running his eyes up and down my body. “Someone as little as you.”
“I’m not little.”
“You’re smaller than me.” It was true, I was quite a bit smaller than him—the strong, tall, animal man beside me in his expensive shoes and bespoke designer tux.
“I may be small, but I’m strong.”
“Yes. Strong, I believe. Perhaps even stronger than me.” I looked at his broad shoulders, his solid thighs. Even his hands were strong. Stronger than him? Not likely. He moved a little closer to me. He was so virile, so sexy. It had to be the alcohol that made me feel like throwing myself at him. Why had I drunk so much?
“Well, you’re little and strong, and you’re a hell of a dancer,” he said, as if that settled things. I watched him sip champagne, perfect and rich, and I knew he thought for sure he would have me.
“Yes, I do dance,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “But I do a lot more than that. I’m a lot more than just a dancer and I can do a lot more than pretty pony tricks.” He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. I quickly looked away. Why had I said that? “I think I’m drunk, Mr. Norris.”
“Matthew.”
“Matthew, I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”
“Why don’t you let me drive you home?”
“No,” I said too quickly, then blushed red and hot again. “No, um...we’re supposed to stay until the end.”
“That’s a shame. If you’re tired.” He spoke to me sympathetically although I’m sure he knew I lied. Maybe that’s why he looked at me sympathetically. Poor girl. Poor little cowardly liar.
“Well, I won’t exhaust you with more conversation.” His tone was changed, distant and cool. He looked at me with muted reprobation.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted miserably. “I really, really am.”
“For what?”
“For being so rude, when you’re just being nice to me. I don’t know why I do it. I really don’t.”
“Oh, it’s probably just a matter of being tired, and maybe a little nervous and scared.”
“Nervous and scared about what?”
“Nervous and scared about me, I suppose, and what I might want from you. Yes?”
“I’m not nervous and scared,” I protested without much conviction, because he was scaring me to death. His gaze pinned me and again I squelched the urge to flee. “I have nothing to give you, honestly. So, I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Norris.”
“Matthew,” he said again. He looked at me, cool and thoughtful. “Okay, Lucy. Okay.” He rubbed his lips, the first nervous gesture I’d ever seen him do. “Okay, Lucy,” he repeated again, and then he turned and walked away. I fought the urge to follow him, to run after him apologizing. Again, I’d repelled him. Why? Why was I such a mess around him?
Why did he make me so afraid?
As soon as I thought he wouldn’t see me, I ran all the way back to my dressing room and slammed the door. I sat at the table where Grégoire had lounged earlier and put my head down in my arms. I couldn’t face Grégoire or Mr. Norris or any of them. I couldn’t face anyone out there in that crowd. I hid in that dressing room long past midnight, until I was sure every single one of them was gone. I waited and hid and trembled, coward that I was.
Chapter Three: Coffee
When I finally left the theater, the cleaning staff had to let me o
ut. It was late, dark and quiet. I think it was probably almost one. The bars hadn’t closed yet so I decided to chance the short walk home. The way that I felt that night, I dared anybody to come my way. I felt the way I felt when I woke up from my nightmares, like I desperately had to cry and scream when I couldn’t do either.
I stalked down the empty sidewalk thinking about him, trying to understand why I felt the way I felt. And what on earth must the man think of me? That I was a train wreck, unbalanced and weird. That I was an immature bitch, not the talented dancer he thought I was at all. All the things I hated about myself, I was sure he saw them quite well.
I wrapped my coat more tightly around me. It had been a hard few weeks for me. I wondered about Joe, if he had married the love of his life yet. Kim, his ex. Did Kim know what love was? Joe said she did. Did she really love Joe? Kim and Joe both seemed like grown-ups, so much wiser and smarter than me. I could dance and I guess I was pretty, but what else was I?
A liar. A coward. A mess.
I heard some voices then, male voices, low and nasty. Dangerous laughter. I lifted my head to see a few men standing by a stoop between me and my house. I put my head back down. I wouldn’t let them scare me, I wouldn’t, but my body rebelled. My body felt fear. My heart pounded fast because of the way they looked at me, like they were going to do something. Like they were on the edge of action, making a decision. When I passed by them they fell into step behind me. My blood whooshed almost painfully in my ears.
“Hey,” said one of them.
I kept walking.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, bitch.”
My breath backed up in my chest. Should I start running? They would catch me in an instant and probably have a good laugh over it. So I didn’t run. I just kept walking.
“Hey, you little bitch. You too good to talk to us, you skinny little whore?” I just kept walking, one foot in front of the other. I might have shaken my head, a pointless gesture. If they were going to do something, so be it. I wasn’t going to run and I wasn’t going to scream. I was just going to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, because I’d survive this or not, just like everything else.
Mercy Page 3
