Hidden Worthiness

by Susan Fanetti

  “I love you, Jule. You’ve always got my back. But Bax has never liked my look, and I’m not perfect. I don’t have the artistry that Dev does.”

  “Okay, yes, that’s true. But still, there’s nobody else close to you, technically or artistically. Jessi looks like she’s run a marathon at the end of an act. Carijean makes the boy work way too hard in lifts. And they’re the best girls after you and Dev. If Bax puts either one of them in the lead, that’s nothing but an attack on you.”

  They’d reached the door, and Julian dropped her hand to open it. Ari felt an odd, paranoid tickle up the back of her neck, like she was being watched. It was strong enough to stop her in her tracks.

  With the door open, Julian turned to see that she was a couple steps back. “What?”

  Ari looked behind her; there was no one around. The afternoon was getting a bit old, and the shadows were long, but she could still see clearly down the sidewalk, to the parking lot. They were running almost late, and she recognized the cars of the rest of the company. A few others as well, but nothing that stood out. The typical bland sedans, a couple dark SUVs, Baxter’s bright yellow Corvette.

  “Ari?”

  The feeling of being watched persisted, but she spun back to her friend and smiled. “Sorry. Goosed by a ghost, I guess.”

  Her own words kicked a memory into the open, from a few weeks back: when she’d had the thought that being with Donnie Goretti in that hotel room had been like being fucked by a ghost. She turned and looked back again, but still nothing.

  “Ari, what?”

  She was being ridiculous. And she was supposed to keep all thoughts about coldhearted Mafiosi stuffed in the back of her mental closet. “Sorry, sorry. Baxter’s got me all kinds of paranoid, I guess.”

  “Well, come on. Let’s work out, and then we’ll see what he does in the meeting.”

  ~oOo~

  Between ballets, dancers worked out regularly but a bit more lightly. Rehearsal schedules were grueling, so in those few weeks that they weren’t rehearsing or performing, dancers took it as easy as they could while staying sharp and in shape.

  From choreography to rehearsals to costume design to set design, it took weeks to prepare a ballet. The Providence company put on seven ballets every year: two each in spring, summer, and fall, and an extended run of The Nutcracker in December. Each normal run lasted about a week; The Nutcracker ran two and a half weeks. Each non-holiday season’s schedule included one classic, crowd-pleasing ballet, like The Phantom, and another production that was more obscure, or experimental, or a brand new piece by Baxter. In the fall, they did the regional showcase.

  The Nutcracker was one of those ballets that was like a fast-food burger. Wherever you went in the US, if you ordered a Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s, you knew exactly what it was going to taste like. If you were someone who went into a McDonald’s and ordered a Quarter Pounder, you probably did so because you knew exactly what it would be. If somebody at the grill decided that brown mustard instead of yellow would really make that burger sing, or added a couple of jalapenos, the person who bit into that burger would likely be very unhappy.

  People who went to The Nutcracker had similar expectations. For many families, the ballet was part of their Christmas traditions. They came every year. For matinees, children came dressed in character. They had every step memorized, and they were not happy when any step deviated from their expectations. They wanted the sets the same, the costumes, everything.

  Ari thought every dancer in the company could probably dance The Nutcracker in a coma, even the parts they hadn’t danced. They all knew every single step. This was why Baxter despised it. But it was their chief money-maker. Every single performance sold out within a week. Their press coverage doubled. Season-ticket sales spiked. Producing The Nutcracker every December kept the Rhode Island Ballet solvent and paid for Baxter’s poorly attended experimental productions.

  But he was always in a sour mood when it was time for The Nutcracker.

  About twenty minutes before the meeting was scheduled, he came into the rehearsal studio, where the company had been gathered for about an hour, in their own tradition of working out together before the big season meeting. He sat on a chair in the corner, crossed his arms, and glowered.

  Ari’s neck prickled with that sense of being watched, and now she knew she wasn’t being paranoid, but she tried to ignore him and do her thing. She and Julian were playing around with the parts of Clara and the Nutcracker Prince. She hadn’t admitted it, and didn’t want to really believe it herself, but she was kind of hoping it would serve as an audition.

  She knew the part. She was the best choice to play Clara. She hadn’t embarrassed herself as Christine—she’d gotten close once, maybe, but she’d recovered, and she’d been truly brilliant once.

  The second the clock hit the meeting time, Baxter stood. He clapped loudly and called the company together. They all stopped their stretching and dancing and chatting and sat on the studio floor.

  He started as usual, with a debrief of the season that had just ended. Reading from a paper, he gave ticket sales information, read excerpts from reviews—which all the dancers had already seen, of course; they all read their notices, and all told other dancers what a bad idea it was to read your own reviews—and other financial minutiae Ari didn’t have much interest in. Then he gave out praise. The company called these his ‘crumbs’—he didn’t give spontaneous praise often, and this time in meetings was set aside as if it were something he’d been forced to do. He read his praise from a piece of paper as well. Sergei and Julian got a monotone sentence or two. Travis, who’d played The Persian, got a nod. A few girls from the corps, including Jessi.

  Ari wasn’t mentioned. She knew then that she’d have to audition for Clara.

  So did everyone else. When he set aside his paper of crumbs and moved on to talk about the holiday season, Julian grabbed her hand. Other dancers looked her way. Maybe they all did; she looked straight ahead, at Baxter Berrault, and tried not to see anyone outside that field of vision.

  “Okay,” Baxter said. “So, no great shock, but we’ll be cracking nuts for Christmas. The holiday gala the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Premiere performance the first Friday of December. Set design is on the usual short schedule, just buff everything up. Costumes are designed; we just need measurements and fittings for the cast. Four-week rehearsal schedule, starting week after next. Julian, you’re our Nutcracker Prince. Sergei, the Cavalier.” He looked straight at Ari then. But she was prepared, so he didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing hurt or shock or shame or anything else when he said, “Auditions for all other parts start Monday.” The corners of his mouth sharpened into a nasty grin.

  Ari only nodded, keeping her disappointment and anger pressed down deep inside her, but the rest of the company reacted. Gasps and murmurs and more looks.

  Dissatisfied with her flat reaction, Baxter put away his sneering grin. “If you’ve got questions, find your own answers. If you don’t know how things work around here by now, I don’t know what to tell you.” With that, he turned and left the studio.

  Julian squeezed her hand. “I mean it, Ari. You should talk to a lawyer.”

  “He’s being an asshole, but he hasn’t done anything wrong. I don’t have some sanctified right to the lead. If anybody does around here, it’s Dev. If I don’t get a named part, then maybe.”

  “I don’t know why he’s being so shitty to you. He’s still with her, isn’t he?”

  Dancers gossiped like any group who spent hours in close proximity together, but Ari hadn’t heard that their director and prima ballerina had broken up. It didn’t matter, though.

  “I don’t know. Bax has always been shitty.”

  “Yeah, but you’re getting a double dose lately.”

  Ari shrugged. Before she could decide if there were words to add to the gesture, Jessi came up to her, smiling sweetly.

  “Hi, Ari. I just wanted to wish you good luck next week.”
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  Frenemy bitch. Ari smiled back just as sweetly. “Thank you. You, too. Merde.”

  “Merde!”

  How fitting that the ballet world’s wish for luck was the French word for ‘shit.’

  ~oOo~

  Julian took her out to a tiny, dark cavern of a bar that night and got her very drunk. Legless. Snockered. Pissed. Ankled. Rubbered. Plastered. By the time she was back in his car, leaning on the window and watching the streetlights swirl and sparkle, she didn’t give a flea’s rashy butthole about Baxter Bonehead Berrault and his stupid cracked nuts.

  When Julian opened her door, the seatbelt got stuck or something and wouldn’t let her go. He leaned in and fixed it, then helped her to her feet. The sidewalk was squishy, and it was hard to walk, but Julian was there, his arm around her, making it easier.

  “I love you, Jule. Julie. Julian. Julius Caesar.”

  He laughed. “Okay. I love you, too. But I think we’re going to put tequila on time out for you for a while.”

  “It was good. You get a lime. And people cheer.”

  “They don’t normally cheer, love. You were giving them a show.”

  “Oh. Was I good?”

  “Brilliant as ever.”

  The skin on the back of her neck prickled, and Ari pushed Julian off. She almost fell off the sidewalk, but she caught herself and turned around. “BAXTER! FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKER! GO AWAY!”

  “Ari! Ari, what? Calm down.”

  “He’s here! Creepy fucking creeper. He’s following me.”

  Julian hooked his arm around her shoulders and squinted out into parking lot and around the grounds of their apartment building. Ari squinted too, but things were all sparkly and hard to make out.

  “I don’t see anybody.”

  “He’s out there. Creep. He makes my neck all prig-pric-puckery.”

  “Okay. Well, let’s go in and lock up snug, okay?” He pulled her around. The ground heaved, and she almost fell, but Julian swept her into his arms.

  She dropped a grateful head onto his shoulder. “I love you. You got my back.”

  “And you’ve got mine. Let’s get you inside.”

  ~ 13 ~

  Donnie got back into the passenger seat of the SUV and pushed his hood off his head. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “I don’t like it when you go off on your own like that, boss. Not the way things are right now.”

  “It’s not your place to have an opinion about what I do.”

  “It’s my job to protect you, though.”

  Donnie turned and leveled a look at his bodyguard and driver. He let that look be his rejoinder.

  With a terse nod, Dre went back to his driving. He eased the GMC out of the corner parking space and pulled to the exit. He left the lights off until he was back on the road. “Does she need a detail on her?”

  With that image of her in Trewson’s arms, the sound of her voice saying I love you, he was tempted to say no. Four times before today, he’d found himself driving alone to Providence, checking on her, each time thinking he’d go up to her, confront her, get her to listen.

  If only so the last thing she’d done with him wasn’t run away from him. Maybe then he could stop thinking about it. It burned, that she’d run from him.

  But each time, the thought that he’d scare her, showing up out of the blue, had stopped him. He couldn’t take it if she ran again.

  Why it mattered—he wouldn’t let himself think much about that.

  He just wanted her to know he hadn’t meant her harm.

  It shouldn’t matter, but it did. He should forget that night as he’d forgotten countless others, but he couldn’t.

  “Boss?”

  He was tempted to say no. She’d lied to him. Julian Trewson was obviously more than a friend. She’d lied to him, and she’d run from him, and there was no reason at all he should feel the need to protect her.

  But he thought of that thick envelope of photographs, left at the desk at PBS, so that Nick’s poor assistant was the first to see them. Surveillance shots of Bev, and of their kids. Of Angie’s sister and her kids. And of Arianna. Their one night turned into a weapon. Their dinner on the riverside had been surveilled.

  Far worse than the surveillance shots were the doctored images that accompanied them. The heads of the women and girls, superimposed on violently defiled bodies. Not skilled photo manipulation. Barely better than taping one head over another. But the point was made.

  Since the Bobbo and the others had been killed in August, officers and their families had been under constant guard, and the Paganos had been on high alert, paying close attention to New Jersey. The only move the Bondaruks had made since August was to try to flip one of their runners, but Alex had withstood their pressure, and Angie’s. The kid hadn’t swung out. He was solid, and he was therefore still breathing.

  Clearly, the Ukrainians had grown frustrated at the lack of movement. They wanted a war.

  Now Arianna had gotten caught up in it.

  Nick thought the envelope was full of a lot of bluster and provocation. The images were vile, and the don had been enraged, but when it came time to decide how to respond, he was calm and thoughtful. He said if the Ukrainians could do what those photos threatened, they wouldn’t have bothered with doctored photos.

  Donnie agreed. But his chest had frozen solid at the sight of Bev’s head on a naked, bloody, broken body. He’d seen her body bloody and broken before; he’d spent years reliving her screams in his dreams. They’d been muffled by the phantoms of his own maddening agony, but he remembered.

  To see her like that again, even falsely? And the others, too, all of them innocent? Elisa. Lia. Carina.

  Arianna. Photos of her at dinner with him. Entering and leaving the theatre. Her headshot from the Rhode Island Ballet’s website. And her head, her hair in its ballerina bun, with a little cluster of dark flowers on one side, affixed on a naked body, bound from shoulders to ankles and whipped to bloody stripes.

  Nick had doubled the details on the women and children. He’d seen the images of Arianna and him at dinner, and the fake images of her torture, and demanded Donnie explain who she was. After he had, Nick had left it up to him whether she needed protection.

  “Yeah, we’ll put a shadow team on her. Until they get here, park out front so I can see her windows.” There was no good way for him to tell her of the possible danger, so it was best she didn’t know she was being watched. He pulled his phone and dialed Angie.

  ~oOo~

  Nick handed Donnie a manila folder. “Lara finished the new codes.”

  Donnie opened the folder and flipped through the few pages. Trey’s wife was the Pagano Brothers’ master cryptologist. She created codes to obscure their night work, and she broke the codes of their enemies. She herself was the key to their empire, though they kept that fact quiet and let her father appear to hold the position.

  Every couple months, they changed codes throughout the organization. Shylocks, bookies, and bagmen had to keep up, learning whole new languages in a few hours. When the key to a new code was on paper, the organization was at its most vulnerable; anyone who got their hands on the paper could learn enough to bring Nick to his knees. So it wasn’t on paper long, and everybody had to have it down.

  Donnie, in charge of all the men who worked directly with money, tapped the sharpest minds for the work, from capos all the way down to the lowliest errand boy.

  Lara provided decryption to Nick, and he shared it with Donnie and Angie. But that was even more precious, so only the officers had access to it. Everyone else had to memorize.

  “I’ll get this out to the capos this afternoon.” Before he did, he’d get to know it himself. He wasn’t anywhere close to Lara’s freakishly genius level, but Donnie was pretty good with numbers and patterns. Despite his access to Lara’s decryption program, he memorized all the codes he required his men to know. After years of working with Lara, he had a sense of the different arrays of patterns in her coding. She called it the
‘grammar’ of the code and said all coders had a grammar, because they only had one brain.

  “Don,” Angie said when Nick returned to his chair. “Can we talk about those pictures?” At least once a week, sometimes once or more a day when things were tense in the underworld, Angie and Donnie sat like this, before Nick’s desk, and discussed any big organizational issues. When it was business as usual, the meetings were brief and pro forma—sharing new codes, updates about new business or changes to old business. When there was trouble, sometimes the meetings got tense. Angie and Donnie were the only people who could push Nick and expect to be heard.

  Now, Nick nodded, but it was clear Angie had a short leash. “We can talk. But you better have a new angle. You know my feelings.”

  “I do. And you know you have my undying respect. I will follow your play. But are you sure it’s the best thing to pass this by? The things in those pictures! If they act ...” He stopped and let them fill in the rest themselves.

  Nick had decided not to respond at all to the envelope of incendiary photos. They were meant to enflame, and he had decided not to take the bait, except to increase the security coverage on families.

  “Do you have new intel for me? Is there a Bondaruk son on the ground in the States? New Jersey or New York or New England?”

  Angie shook his head. “No, not that we’ve seen. They got two advance teams now, laying pipe to get their business back up. But no Bondaruks yet.”

  “Cannon fodder. That’s all they’ve put in play. You know how I felt seeing my wife and daughters in those filthy images. I know how you felt seeing Tina. I will not forget. Ever. But if we react to this, when there are no targets of value on the ground yet, we make ourselves look weak and foolish. I hope you agree that I am neither of those things.”

  “Of course not, don.” Angie eased from his assertive lean forward. “I’m sorry if I offended.”

  “You didn’t. I know what you’re feeling. I feel it, too. When I get my hands on a Bondaruk, he will feel the full consequence of our outrage. Until then, we will show them that they are beneath our notice.”