by Tonya Plank
She scrunched herself up farther into a ball, seeming to bask in the sensation of being cocooned by me.
“Mmmm, this is my profession, not yours. And yet you’re so right. So wise. I feel like nothing can hurt me in your arms. I haven’t ever felt like this before with anyone, Sasha. Except my dad. And that was a long time ago.”
I squeezed her harder. I wanted to know more about her dad. She had a wound that hadn’t completely healed. But I seemed to be helping with that. “Your clients are so lucky to have you, Rory. You really care about them.” I rocked her gently back and forth.
Chapter Four
My beautiful, brave Rory was resilient, and the very next evening she was back at it. She slugged down a glass of kale-apple juice, then declared she was ready to work her ass off.
“I feel soooo out of shape and I know I’m out of practice. I’m ready to make up all that time I lost. I’m ready to nail this!” she declared.
Greta shot me her customary one-raised-eyebrow look as if to say, What’s really going on?
“Was work okay, Rory?” I finally asked.
She shrugged. “Gunther has me working on other stuff. Says he doesn’t need me for the trial.”
I scoffed. “Yes, he will.”
“I know. He’ll throw it at me right before and I won’t be able to prepare in time and I’ll stress out and it’ll ruin our Blackpool and we won’t win Jamar’s case anyway because he’ll sabotage us.” She said this all in one breath, her words coming out in a rush. “So you know what? I’m just not going to care. I’m not in charge and there’s nothing I can do about it. I have no control. The only thing I have control over is this. Doing well. Winning.” She held her arm out to me. “So come on. We can do this.” She ended on a genuine smile, with another shrug.
I took her offer, took her arm. I didn’t want her giving up on her client. And I knew she ultimately wouldn’t. We had to work hard now, be as perfect as possible, for when she did get busy again.
Our rehearsal went the best it ever had. Rory knew what her problem areas were. I didn’t even need to tell her what was off because she knew it already. And when she made a mistake, she wouldn’t continue with the routine until she got it perfectly. She was reminding me of myself, for better or for worse.
And we continued like that for a good three weeks, improving by the day, by the minute. I attributed it at least partly to the psychologist. Of course I wanted badly to ask what decisions they were making about her job, but didn’t. That was between her and the shrink.
Rory was also improving on the nutrition front. She consistently drank at least two of my juices per day, and made sure she had at least two meals that included vegetables and protein. I cooked one at night, and sometimes even packed her a little lunch for the next day.
“You’re like my mommy,” she’d said, laughing. “Well, the mom I never had.”
She’d laughed but there was pain in her eyes and I wondered how often she spoke with anyone in her family. Jacqueline seemed more intent on bossing her around and judging than showing her she truly cared. I wondered if she ever followed up after the hospital. But I didn’t ask. I figured Rory would take the initiative when she was ready. It wasn’t like I’d opened up about my family either.
***
But when we drove up to my designer’s office in Malibu to order our Blackpool costumes, I realized that even though Rory’s eating had improved, her self-confidence regarding her body was not fully there yet. Perhaps. Or perhaps our fight was about something else.
“You’re going to love Daiyu,” I told her in the car, cruising our way up the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway along the beach.
“Pretty name. Is it Russian?” Rory asked.
“No, Chinese. She’s young, and she has a great aesthetic sensibility. You’re going to love her,” I repeated.
She laughed and shook her head, and this time I knew what about: my use of English.
“She does have a great aesthetic sensibility.” I laughed back. “Seriously, that’s why I chose her as our sponsor for Blackpool. And probably the Worlds.”
“Sponsor? What does that mean?”
I kept forgetting Rory didn’t know the world of professional ballroom comps.
“It means she pays for us—our airfare, our meals, our room and board, our competition fees, fees for hair, makeup, and bronzing, massages, waxes—you name it. Well, along with our shoe designer—they pay a little as well. Daiyu will give us two costumes. Actually, three—”
“Whoa, that’s a lot of money.” Rory raised her eyebrows. “A lot.”
I laughed. Rory was a sweet novice. She didn’t know just how vast the world of the ballroom-obsessed was. “It’s nothing compared to what she’ll make back.”
“Really? How?”
“Because of all the adverts and PR we do for her. Every major ballroom store you go into for the next year and beyond, you’ll see a big poster of us in her clothes, with her watermark etched over us. You know how many people competing in the student or amateur pro/ams want to be dressed by the costumer to the stars?” Rory burst out giggling. “Yes, okay it sounds cocky of me to say. But you gotta get used to it, Rore. You’re a star dancer.”
She sobered, took a breath.
“You’re up to it, believe me,” I said, giving her thigh a squeeze. “Come on, you wanted a pro ballet career.”
“Exactly. I guess I’ll see now what that would have been like.”
I realized her sobering wasn’t about her thinking she wasn’t up to it, but her reflecting on the past. I gave her thigh another squeeze.
“Wait, so you said three costumes?” she asked, lifting herself out of her reverie.
“Yes, finalists—and we are definitely expected to final, of course—wear one costume for the first several rounds, then change at the semifinal point, into another costume.”
Another deep breath. “Wow. That’s very cool. I’m starting to feel like Cinderella.”
I squeezed again. “No one deserves this more than you.”
She giggled again. My favorite sound in the world. “So, what’s the third costume for?”
“What? Oh, the team match.”
“The team match?”
I kept forgetting how little Rory’s exposure was, all that she didn’t know. If I wasn’t careful I was going to forget to tell her something major. “Yeah, that’s just a little thing at the beginning. They invite the four countries with the most top-ranked dancers to compete in a little team match. It means nothing but it’s fun for spectators and it’s good for the dancers because it allows you to warm up and kind of see how the judges are judging, what they’re thinking. And, for you, it will be important so you can dance on the big ballroom floor before it really counts. I wasn’t sure we were going to be asked to participate since we are a new partnership, and thus without a ranking. But the new judges have changed the rules so that one very high-ranked partner would mean the partnership’s inclusion on the team.”
“Of course, I can’t imagine a big competition of any sort and you not being asked to participate,” she gushed.
“Well…true,” I said, laughing. Maybe cocky of me to admit, but true.
***
“Wow, they’re…expensive-looking,” Rory said in a dreamlike tone, as we entered the store. She fingered the costumes on display, looking like a little girl in a candy store.
“Hello, hello,” Daiyu said, emerging through the red velvet curtains that led to her back room. “So nice to meet you. I am Daiyu,” she said to Rory, giving her a slight bow. “Welcome to my store, Daiyu Dance.”
“So nice to meet you too,” Rory said sweetly. “I just love your designs. The fabric’s so plush and rich and the embroidering and the stones are so… Just divine.” My girl was in heaven.
“Oh, you’re so nice. Thank you so much,” Daiyu said. “Sasha,” she said, turning to me.
“How have you been?”
“Great, thank you. Very busy! Very, very busy! Than
ks to you!”
“No, no, thanks to your immense skill,” I said, nodding at Rory. She raised her eyebrows in return.
“Thank you,” Daiyu said with another slight bow. “So, you have ideas? Or you want to see catalog?” Daiyu’s tone was always so animated, her eyes so bright and wide. She actually reminded me of Rory. They both saw the world with an almost childlike wonder. Not childish, but innocent-like.
“A catalog would be gre—” Rory began, just as I said, “I think we know what we want.”
Rory and I looked at each other.
Daiyu laughed.
“Okay, why don’t you take a flip through some of the catalogs, then, and I’ll point out anything that looks like what I’m thinking,” I said. I didn’t want to be there all day, but I saw how Rory was eyeing the large books. I was enjoying her girl-in-the-candy-store delight too much.
“Wow,” Rory said, her eyes widening as she turned the first few pages. “I mean, oh my gosh, some of these are so…skimpy.” She laughed nervously. “I think maybe, uh, I need, uh…”
“You okay?” I asked her. She looked on the verge of hyperventilating, making me realize those body issues were not completely gone. It had only been a few weeks.
“Um, yeah. I just need something a little more…”
“Subtle?” Daiyu said with a light laugh. “Yes, yes, I understand. We just put these up front because they are, how you say…flashiest.”
“Oh, good,” Rory said, exhaling.
Daiyu took about an inch of catalog pages between her fingers and flipped to nearer its middle. “These are a little more covering,” she said.
“Thank you,” Rory said, flipping slowly through the pages. “Yes, yes, these are definitely more my style. I like the fully covered, um, chest area, you know?”
Still the breast issues. All over again I wanted to wring the necks of the people who’d once put it in her mind that she was flawed there. The ballet mistress, fellow students, whoever the fuck it was.
“Yes, I can see you in some of these, like this one,” Daiyu said pointing to the very one Rory was admiring. It had a sexy low-cut back, but was very covering in the front.
“Your name is so pretty,” Rory said to Daiyu. “What does it mean?”
“Thank you. It means black jasmine.”
“Oooh, very cool. I love it. It’s like complex beauty, beauty with shading, with a strong sense of mystery. Like Sasha,” Rory said with a little giggle.
Daiyu laughed. “Yes!”
“That’s actually not too far from what I was thinking,” I said. I didn’t want Rory to get too attached to something before she saw my idea. “Can we go into the back and do a sketching?”
“Of course!” Daiyu said.
She led us to the far wall, parted a thick, red plush curtain with gold trim, and brought us into her back room, which I loved. It was spacious and had floor-to-ceiling windows on each side that opened out onto a grassy green lawn.
“Wow,” Rory said. Always on the same page. Well, except when it came to her body.
We sat across from Daiyu at a large metal table covered with sketch paper, charcoal, pencils and drawings.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a drawing. “Here is the one I was working on, based on what you had told me.” She began to hand the paper to me then looked back and forth between Rory and me. She placed the paper between us.
Rory glanced down at it, just as I picked it up to look more closely.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you’d already talked,” Rory said.
“Just briefly,” I said, focusing on the design. Rory leaned toward me and looked over my shoulder.
Again, Daiyu had done an excellent job of sketching exactly what I’d described. The woman was a miracle. The top part was sleeveless with thin straps and a cute, tube-like top. It connected to the skirt through swaths of fabric on the sides, leaving the front and back midriff areas bare. The skirt was asymmetrical, slit on one side to the upper thigh, and on the other to just above the knee. It was hot without being too revealing. The tube top didn’t show any cleavage and at least one side of the skirt wasn’t slit high. Daiyu, as always, made it look way better than the image in my mind. I really thought Rory would go for it. But I was wrong.
“Sasha!” she shrieked. “That looks absolutely nothing like the design I just admired in the catalog. The bra is exactly what I was saying in the first costume I saw that was so not me.” There was panic in her voice.
Bra? What bra? “What do you mean? This is perfectly covering.”
“No. It’s not at all, Sasha,” she said, shaking her head, her voice getting shakier by the second. “I really like the one I saw in the catalog. Can we have her sketch one like that?”
“The other design was from a few years ago, Rory. This is more in the current style.”
“But shouldn’t we be original? Do we have to wear what everyone else is wearing?”
“Tired and old is not the same as original. And, yes, we do have to fit in, to an extent. We can’t go with whatever we want.” Rory didn’t understand the politics of ballroom competitions. Nor should she. I kept having to remind myself she was new. “We have to wear a certain amount of bronzer, for example,” I continued when she shot me a bewildered look. “You have to wear at least a three-inch heel, myself a one-inch. There are standards. I’ve seen good couples go down because they didn’t obey the standards. They thought they were above them. That’s how the judges look at it, Rory.” I was getting defensive.
The more I spoke the more I realized how it sounded, like competitions were about a lot of things that didn’t involve actual dancing. It was true. It was politics. It was what it was.
“The judges are looking for a creative take on something currently hot. We will be laughed at if we wear something several years old, believe me.”
“Fine,” Rory said after a lengthy exhale. “But can we modify it? I just won’t be comfortable in that, Sasha, I won’t. I won’t be able to dance well—”
“Allow me to add please that all of our designs are costume-malfunction-worry-free,” Daiyu piped in. “Believe me. We use triple layering and stitching, with many invisible straps. It won’t expose anything you don’t want it to.”
“I understand. But…that’s not the problem,” Rory said.
“What is the problem, then?” I asked. “She said nothing’s going to show.”
“It’ll expose my disproportions, Sasha.”
“What disproportions?” I laughed, though her completely distorted body image was not the least bit funny. “Rory, you are a beautiful woman. Please be proud of your body.” I tried hard not to sound irritated. I was getting really sick of this. I’d worked so hard to make her proud of her body. Her brain and her body. I wished she’d listen for once.
Rory breathed deeply. “Sasha, my goal is to be happy and comfortable with myself. But I’m not completely there yet, and pushing it is only going to hurt. Especially at such an important thing. This is huge. Please listen to me. I know.”
I could feel her rapid pulse from across the table. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to push her. But she seriously couldn’t dance in a sack, like in the olden days. My design was simply not very revealing.
“Look, why can’t we just keep the design but keep the whole thing attached? I mean, no bare midriff?” she said.
“But that would look so plain, Rory. It would just be like a sack or a frock or whatever it’s called.”
“It would not be like a sack,” she insisted, nearly pounding the table with her fist. “It would still be form-fitting. Maybe it could be cinched at the waistline.”
I shook my head. “That’s similar to the catalog. And as I said, that look has been done. I’ve been at this a long time, Rory. I know the styles that have come and gone.”
“Can’t we somehow update it, then?”
I sighed. She wasn’t going to give in. I looked at Daiyu for help.
“Sasha, is this seriously that huge of
a problem? Isn’t my comfort more important than whether a look has been done at some point in the past?” Rory’s voice was raised and her fist was hitting the table with practically each word.
“Of course your comfort is important. But there’s no point in doing this if we’re going to do something weird and not…jump through all the hoops, so to speak.”
She looked at me square on. “The judges honestly care about something as superficial as the costume? Isn’t that majorly judging a book by its cover?”
I tried not to lose it. I couldn’t help how Blackpool judges thought. I knew what I knew. You had to play certain games there. It was part of the package. “I’m not kidding, Rory.”
Her face reddened. We were getting nowhere. One of us had to budge.
“Isn’t there some kind of stupid rule against newcomers competing in the pro division or something like that anyway? I mean, you keep saying with the changes in the judging, having me as your partner should be okay. Or something like that.”
She was searching. But she had a point. Perhaps with the change in the judging this year, with the committee not allowing coaches to judge, the new arbiters wouldn’t have the same focus. But then again, maybe they would. I didn’t know and I didn’t want to take chances. Not now. “It’s just…” I looked around the room, my frustration at my failure to get her to understand me growing by the second.
“It’s just what?”
I threw my hands up. My costume was so much better than what she wanted. And she only wanted the more covering crappy one because of her self-esteem. “This design is so sexy and fun. Confidence comes from within, not from what you are wearing, Rory.”
“Sexy and fun. That’s all you care about. That I look sexy.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You care more about the way I look than the way I dance.” Her face was now tomato red. She was fuming. And she was ridiculously wrong.
“Don’t be ludicrous. Of course I—”
