by Tonya Plank
“If you didn’t, you’d want me to be comfortable so I could dance as full-out as possible, not hold back.”
“Might I make a suggestion?” Daiyu said, sitting upright and holding her hands up as if in surrender.
Her voice actually made both of us jump a bit. As if we’d both forgotten she was there.
“Yes, please,” Rory said.
“I think that toga-style tops are soon going to be very in. I’ve seen them on the runway in Milan just last month and they looked very sharp. I mean at a regular fashion show. Trends in ballroom follow general trends. That kind of top would give you more support and cover. And then I could make the costume one piece, and it wouldn’t be plain at all because of the remarkable cut. And we could still have the asymmetrical bottom. That way, it would not be rehashing a tired style. It would be, if anything, updating a classic.”
“You mean, like a Greek toga?” Rory said.
“Yes, like that.” Daiyu smiled.
Rory considered it for a moment.
“I could make a weaving-like motion with the fabric so that there are waves,” Daiyu continued, sounding more excited the more she spoke. “And it would be form-fitting, not like a typical, loose toga. With the skirt, we could coordinate the higher cut side with the strapless top so that side would have the shorter leg line. Yes, that’s unique.” Daiyu’s eyes were bright. She was definitely excited about her new concept. And with Daiyu’s proven brilliance, it was hard not to trust her.
“That sounds fun. I think I’ll be comfortable,” Rory said, finally lightening.
“We can play around with the fabrics and colors too, for two different but similar looks for the regular competition and the finals. Don’t worry, I’ll throw together a sample and then you can try it and see what you think,” Daiyu said.
“Sounds good to me!” Rory chirped. Daiyu’s excitement was contagious.
They both looked at me. Daiyu was Wonder Woman. I was definitely in. But I was still disturbed by Rory’s continuous lack of confidence. I could see her getting this costume, trying it on in the fitting and freaking out over something. Or over every little thing.
“Come on, we need to compromise, Sasha.”
I shook my head. “That’s not it. I just want…I just want you to be happy. Self-confidence comes from within. If you’re not confident in general, you’re not going to be comfortable in anything, Rory. Including this.”
Rory looked down and I immediately felt badly that I’d ruined her excitement.
“Well, let’s give this a try. Okay?” Rory said.
I nodded. “Yes, it sounds like a good design. Let’s.”
“Oh, good,” Daiyu said, peering back up at us hesitantly, as if she was afraid to ask the next question—which was about which colors we wanted.
“Black,” Rory said just as I said, “Gold.” Gold was brilliant, radiant. The color of winners. Black? Was this a funeral?
Daiyu laughed but heartily this time, not nervously. “Colors are always an issue,” she said, emphasizing the ‘always.’
“Okay,” Rory began. “How about I wear a dark tan/dark golden hue for the finals and you let me wear the black for the first several rounds. That way I’ll have my confidence up when I wear the flashier color?”
I closed my eyes and exhaled. “Rory, I don’t want to fight. But black is way too basic for this kind of dress. And depressing. We need a color that stands out a little more and says something.”
We ended up with a deep rich magenta for the first dances—a color that wasn’t basic but would still hide what Rory insisted were flaws on her perfect body. And I got my gold for the finals. But with a clever twist. Leave it to Daiyu. She’d gone into her back room and unearthed a gold pattern with an intricate black embroidery weaving through it. It resembled the dress the female lover in the Klimt painting The Kiss wore.
“It’s like art,” Rory squealed with delight. Finally, we were back on the same page.
I told Rory and Daiyu I’d have to get back to them on the color for the team match. That would be up to the team captain. Rory shot me a dubious look. “I’m serious,” I said. “He decides. That part is out of my control.”
***
“Skinny, skinny,” Daiyu’s assistant said as she took Rory’s measurements. Rory looked at me, but I remained closed-lipped.
“I’m trying to lose weight. I mean gain. Gain weight,” Rory told Daiyu with a nervous laugh. “Hopefully eight to ten pounds.”
“Very good that you tell me,” Daiyu said. “I’ll make everything a size bigger. We can take the lines in if you don’t gain what you expect. That’s good?” She looked at Rory.
Rory took a breath and forced herself to nod.
Yes, a commitment! I winked at her, and blew her a kiss.
Chapter Five
Things were going well. Rory was seeing her psychologist and her nutritionist and she was eating much, much better. There were no crises at her job—Gunther was giving her little things, leaving us plenty of time to work hard. And work crazy hard we did. She was just as determined as I, and we were making serious progress.
“You actually look like a true Blackpool couple,” Greta had told me in private. And she meant it.
But of course something had to go wrong, to put a dent in our progress.
It was Gunther again.
Rory called me at four o’clock, from her office. I was supposed to see her at seven. My heart sped up, as I initially worried Gunther was pulling last-minute shenanigans again, hystericizing over Rory’s lack of preparation for a trial he’d completely forgotten to tell her about. We’d been doing well, but we couldn’t stop now. We had to keep it up or we’d lose what we’d accomplished before Blackpool. If the trial was starting now, we were screwed.
“Hi, honey,” I said, hoping the panic in my voice wasn’t obvious.
But there was no response.
“Rory?”
She breathed deeply. Something was very wrong. Worse than before if she couldn’t even speak. “What’s wrong, Rory?”
“I just, I just got fired,” she stuttered, her voice nearly a whisper.
“What? What are you talking about?”
No answer.
“I’m coming downtown. Stay in the lobby and wait for me.”
This being work hours, there was nowhere to park in front of her building, so I parked in the lot across the street. She stumbled out of the lobby when she saw me. She had five huge bags strapped around her shoulders. She really was leaving.
I simultaneously hugged her and took her bags. She gave me a weary smile and I could tell she was doing all she could to hold back tears.
She said nothing for most of the ride back to my place. She didn’t cry. She just looked out the window. I could tell how devastated she was. This was her dream. Or at least had once been. I knew what it was like to feel like a dream had died. But she would be better off. Whatever the future held for her would be better. I was sure of that. But I didn’t say anything. I held my hand over her knee, caressing it with my palm. I didn’t ask questions. She’d talk when she was ready. She pressed her hand over mine, but continued to watch L.A. pass by.
Once we were settled in my kitchen, a tall glass of pomegranate-blood-red-orange juice in front of her, she started to tell me what happened.
“So, this woman named Melinda Berenson from a small firm called Berenson and Fredericks called me. I had no idea who she was. She said she was representing Patrick Warren on appeal. That was my first pro bono client, remember?”
I nodded. She’d spoken a lot about him. She’d been convinced he was schizophrenic and without treatment was decomposing. Gunther had insisted everyone pretended to be crazy to get out of going to trial and she was simply naïve for not knowing that.
“Well, this new lawyer called to tell me his conviction was overturned and a retrial was tentatively ordered, depending on the outcome of his mental competency examination. She said after her dealings with him and reading the trial proceedings, she
couldn’t agree with me more. He’s totally schizophrenic. Can you believe it? They’re finally going to have a psychiatrist evaluate him! I told her how hard I’d tried to get the judge to order that exam. All in vain. She said, yes, I’d preserved the issue on record so well and that’s why she was able to prevail on appeal. And then she faxed me the court’s decision. My name was mentioned by the presiding justice who authored the opinion!” Rory’s face was aglow. She fumbled in her bag and pulled out a couple sheets of paper. “Here it is—Aurora Laudner from Vanderson, Rickels, and Edelstein, the law firm representing Mr. Warren pro bono, made numerous, specific, detailed, and timely requests for a competency exam, each of which the court below denied. We find she well preserved the issue for appeal and that those requests should have been granted… She was so nice to me, Sasha. She told me what a great job I did preserving the issue and trying so hard to get the judge to examine him. And, I mean, it’s recorded right here, the court said so too.”
“Intelligent people recognize your skills,” I said, kissing her hand as I took the paper and read it. I now knew exactly what had happened. This had shown Gunther up. To be the ignorant asshole he was. Rory deserved so much better. She’d see soon how good it was that she was free of the bastard.
She took a deep breath and looked down. I continued pressing my lips to her knuckles.
“So, I was so happy. I skipped down to Gunther’s office to tell him the good news. I mean, it was a victory not just for me but for the whole office. The firm’s name was right there in black and white…” Her voice broke and she took a breath. “I mean, the second I saw his angry, frustrated face, I began to lose my nerve. But then he was like, ‘What’s in your hand,’ almost accusingly, you know. He hates it when I bother him. His frown grew deeper and angrier, but I told him, ‘No, it’s good this time!’ I told him the whole thing. I couldn’t decipher the look on his face. It was a combination of shock, anger, confusion, and relief all at once. The mass of emotions so contorted his features, I actually took a step back from him. He held out his hand, and snapped his fingers when I didn’t immediately hand him the decision. I just stood there shifting my weight nervously while he read the whole decision. I was hoping he’d perk up when he saw the firm’s name mentioned. But…he didn’t. Instead, he looked up, blinked hard, and said he’d been meaning to talk to me. He told me to sit down and shut the door. Then he smiled. I knew something was up at that point because I’ve never, ever seen that man crack anything even mildly approximating a smile. I always blabber, out of nerves. So I asked if I had a new pro bono assignment. He said no, unfortunately not. ‘There will be no new assignments for you, Rory. I’m sorry.’ That’s what he said.”
Now the tears came and she let them. I moved across the table and sat beside her, wrapping my arm completely around her.
“Two weeks ago I thought he was ready to fire me because I went to the competition instead of working all weekend. But then he had me help him with Jamar’s hearing. I just had the biggest victory of my career so far. I mean, I made the firm look good, and it’s in an official appellate decision. Why would he fire me now?”
“Because he’s a jealous fucking dickless asshole,” I answered.
She looked at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed for several moments, then broke into laughter. She laughed for a couple of minutes. Then she sobered. “Thank you, Sasha. That felt good.”
“I’m being completely serious,” I said.
“I know you are.” She bit her lip, in thought. “But what made me so, so mad was the reason he gave for firing me. He said my work has been under par and I’ve shown a clear lack of passion for the law. He said I wasn’t taking my cases seriously, mainly with important cases like Jamar’s. Which is so profoundly not true. He said I’ve only been working forty to fifty hours a week and he called them secretarial hours. ‘You want to work those hours, you should have been a secretary.’ To say I lacked passion? I worked so hard on Jamar’s case and on the Warren case that I ended up in effect winning.” She started to cry then stopped, as if it wasn’t worth the effort anymore. She took a deep breath instead.
“He’s jealous of you, Rory. He’s jealous you have a life, and you’re obviously able to balance your work and life well if you won this appeal. What a fucking, fucking asshole…” I murmured through tight lips, clenching my fists. I forced myself to calm down. She needed comfort, not anger bordering on violence. “He’ll get what he deserves someday. He’ll lose cases and clients. It’ll come back to him and he’ll be sorry.” I wrapped my arms more tightly around her. I felt her muscles finally relax.
As I sat there cocooning her in my arms, I realized we’d now have a lot more time for practice. We’d have all day, every day.
I was immediately ashamed of myself for letting my thoughts go there, to me.
“Well, I guess in the end I didn’t have to make my hard decision. I had it made for me,” she said, completely on the same page as me, as always. “Now we can totally concentrate on Blackpool.” Her muscles tensed again. “I mean, I think. I don’t have a lot of money saved up. I can’t take off very much—”
“Rory, no.” I rocked her in my arms, trying to get rid of the tension. “The absolute last thing you should worry about right now is money. I will pay for everything for now, even your rent.”
She shook her head. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, listen,” I insisted. “It will be payment for you spending all day every day training with me. You’re a professional dancer now. The big pros are compensated by their sponsors. I am simply paying you your portion of our sponsorship payments. Think of it as a kind of advance. You are a professional dancer now,” I repeated, trying to get it into her brain. She was; she needed to think that way. “You can go back to law in the future, but for right now, you have the dance career you’ve wanted.”
She took a breath, swallowed.
I had to admit I didn’t want her to return to her law career. I wanted her to dance with me. Permanently. But I knew there were those cases that impassioned her, despite what the asshole said. That she might not be whole without this aspect of her life. So I added something. “Not that I want you to, but if you decide to return to law, you can use your illness as a reason for taking a leave of absence. Your anorexia caused health problems—both physical and mental—you can say, and you needed a little break for your health.”
Again, her muscles relaxed and her whole body went limp in my arms. In a good way. Like she wasn’t on her guard. “Oh thank you so much for that, Sasha. I’m the lawyer, and you’re the logical one who thinks of everything.”
I pressed my lips to her forehead.
“I actually thought about what Gunther said on the way home, in your car. About my supposed lack of passion. And I realized that I did lack passion—when it came to helping the rich clients find loopholes in the tax laws so they could get out of paying their due. I didn’t go to law school for that. So he wasn’t entirely wrong. I’m definitely most passionate about helping the down-and-out, like Jamar, you know.”
I nodded. “I do.”
“So, if I go back, it’s not going to be the same type of place, anyway. And that’s another thing I’d tell a potential employer—that I left to do something I was more impassioned about. And that would make sense to a public interest employer. But I’ll figure out the rest of my life after Blackpool. I need to focus on that now. So we win. Because we are going to win!” She squirmed out of my embrace to pump her fist in the air.
I kissed her again, this time a long, slow kiss, on the lips. That was what I so needed to hear from her. Her certainty. It was contagious. We were going to win.
Chapter Six
Over the next few weeks, Rory and I practically lived together, she was over so often practicing. It felt good. It felt like it should be. Like I could definitely do this with her, permanently. But we didn’t talk about that right now. We were too focused on training. Plus, she’d told me how much it meant to her to live o
n her own for the first time in her life. Before, she’d been in college or law school, with roommates, and then lived with James. She wanted to savor this time in her life, her independence. I wanted her to savor it as well, before she became mine forever. Plus, we needed some time apart and space of our own or our nerves would easily fray. So she spent most weeknights at her apartment.
While I was at Infectious Rhythm teaching, she’d use my home studio for her own practicing and the barre for stretching—sometimes with Greta, sometimes on her own. As I knew there would be, there were a bazillion applications for the many private lesson spots left vacant by Cheryl and Luna’s departure. I’d managed to convince Alessia to agree to fill the majority of them once Blackpool was over; I compromised with her and let her fill two of them in the meantime. We’d told the remaining students desirous of one of the few slots that, come June, there would a lottery held. To put it mildly, despite Cheryl, I was very much in demand.
Rory returned to the studio, taking all of her regular classes while I was at work on my privates. The studio was a much nicer place for all of us now that Cheryl and Luna were gone. Rory still worried they had something “up their designer sleeves,” as she called them. She was sure they were planning some way of sabotaging us at Blackpool. I told her to stop thinking such thoughts. I promised I wouldn’t let anything happen. And I wouldn’t. I had Sadie, along with lots of friends in the ballroom world on our side. Some from Russia, some from here. We didn’t see each other a whole lot, but we often ran into difficulties like this in the competition world. We had an unspoken agreement that we’d look out for each other when requested. So several of my ballroom friends at the studio Luna and Cheryl had transferred to were keeping an eye on them. My friend Maurizio, a standard ballroom champ, told me they were both training like crazy with the top Latin dancer there, Nikolai, for the upcoming Vegas Pro Am, which she’d wanted to do with me. I knew of Nikolai. He hadn’t made it to the general pros yet in the big comps but he’d placed very well in the Rising Star category at last year’s Blackpool. Good for them. Train with Nikolai and forget all about me, please, ladies.
