Dance of a Lifetime

by Frank Downey

  * * *

  "We've got the press conference scheduled," Warren said to Sophia as she entered his room.

  "Good. I've talked to Jessie. That whole thing never happened, and if the few people that know about it bring it up, Jess and Crash will deny it. Outside of that, we're going to more or less tell the truth."

  "Well, sort of. We're going to leave Alexa and Liz out of this, because nobody but the two of us, Alexa, and Liz know."

  "Right," Sophia agreed. "Warren, do you think Liz had anything to do with the Enquirer finding out I had a lesbian affair on tour?"

  "I'd be surprised."

  "So would I, but who else knew?"

  "Evan and Shawna."

  "But I had the affair with Shawna? Why would she tell?"

  "Notice no names were mentioned, Sophia? They only said you had a lesbian affair, not who with."

  "True."

  "Plus, Liz has no motive, not even potentially."

  "And Shawna does?"

  "Sure. Jealousy that she couldn't steal you away permanently, or trying to throw us off stride competitively."

  "Aaah."

  * * *

  As it turned out, when Sophia and Warren changed planes in NYC for the flight to Switzerland, Liz ended up sitting right behind them.

  "Guys, I'm glad I ran into you," Liz said. "I want you to know I had nothing to do with that article."

  "I hope not," Sophia said.

  "Really," Liz said. "I like you guys too much for that. Both of you. Whoever did this sucks."

  "That it does, but we've been through worse," Warren smiled at her.

  "That is true, isn't it, Snugglebear?"

  "It is true," Liz agreed. "And you've survived, every time."

  "Now we get to see if we can survive a rabid press corps, and trying to skate in the Olympics with morning sickness," Sophia said to her with a wink.

  "Morning sickness?" Liz asked. "You're pregnant?"

  "Yup. We wanted to wait until we saw you in person to tell you," Sophia said, beaming.

  "We've only known for a couple weeks," Warren said.

  "Congratulations!" Liz said, then looked at them. "Um... should I be saying that?"

  "Yes, you should," Sophia told her. "After much agonizing, we've decided we're happy about it."

  "Great!"

  Evan Pogdar walked up the aisle just then, and plopped down next to Liz. "Hi guys. Glad this seat is free. Warren, Sophia, I need to talk to you. About that article."

  "Sure, Ev, what's on your mind?" Warren said.

  "Can I talk in front of Liz, here?"

  "Yeah, she's the only other person that knows, as far as we know."

  "Good. Look, Shawna's the one that told the Enquirer about Sophia. I know that for a fact. I overheard her telling someone, and then I confronted her with it."

  "Why would she do such a thing?" Sophia asked.

  "Partially to throw you guys off stride, like that's going to work, and I told her that. But, mainly, even though you told her you were just experimenting and loved Warren, she still thought she could get you permanently. She's jealous."

  "Uh huh," said Warren.

  "Very nice," said Sophia. "Everything I do, I get bit in the ass. Damn."

  "This wasn't your fault, Sophia," Evan told her. "I do not know what is wrong with that girl, but she's been flaky for months now. And this was long after the tour ended, so it wasn't like she was holding a torch for you from the get-go. She just recently discovered it, or something."

  "Hmm," Sophia said. "Evan, why are you telling me what she did?"

  "Because it drives me nuts."

  "You must know that I'm ruthless enough to use this against her if I'm pissed--and I am." Sophia told him.

  "I know. She deserves what she gets."

  "She's your partner!"

  "Yeah, but it's not like she's my lover, or anything. We're friends, but even I can't defend this. She seduced you, you made it plain it was only going to be a temporary thing, and then she turns on you and uses the press to do it. You do with the information what you need to do, Sophia." With that, Evan got out of the seat and walked back to his own.

  "Very interesting," said Liz after Evan had gone.

  "You don't know how relieved I am to know for sure it wasn't you, Liz," Warren smiled at her. "Of course, I knew anyway."

  "Of course you did," Liz grinned.

  "Damn, damn, damn. I should know better," Sophia said, half to herself.

  "Don't strangle yourself over this, Pookie," Warren told her.

  "I won't. It's not worth it. But, let's face it, except for you, I am an abysmal judge of character."

  "Not true," Warren told her. "Jess has character. Caitlin has character. Liz, here, has character. Alexa has character. Alexa is a character." Sophia laughed at that, which was the objective.

  "I suppose you're right," said Sophia. "But, damn, I misjudged Shawna."

  "So did I," Warren conceded. "I'm surprised at this, I really am."

  * * *

  They landed in Switzerland and were taken to the Olympic village in Sion, the Swiss town that was hosting the games. To their consternation, there were no provisions in the Village for couples--all suites were single-sex, with three bedrooms attached to a common area. Very luxurious, but Warren and Sophia were not pleased to be separated. Luckily, they were in good roommate situations--Warren was in with Jack Garrison and Steve Coleman; Sophia was with Liz and Andrea Wallach.

  "At least we each have our own bedroom," Liz told Sophia. "You and Warren have a place to be alone, if you don't scream too much," Liz joked. And then she blushed, "and Rich is coming here too, you know."

  "He is?" Sophia said. "Great! You didn't stay in the village last time, did you?"

  "No, which is why I wanted to, this time. Staying in a hotel four years ago didn't help, so, this time, I'm determined to enjoy myself. Of course, it's easier if you're a pairs skater."

  "How so?" Andrea, who had been listening, asked.

  "You go first!" Liz laughed. "Four days into the Olympics, and you're done, and you get to enjoy the rest."

  "True," Andrea agreed.

  "And, as an added bonus, you don't have to call a press conference to discuss magazine stories about your sex life," Sophia muttered.

  "Well, at least you get that out of the way early," Andrea told her.

  "True. Tomorrow. Oh, I can't wait..."

  Chapter 96 - Beat The Press

  Sophia and Warren walked into the press center and sat down at the table that had been set up for them. Stephanie Langson from the USFSA was already there, as was George Gullick from the USOC. Both of them were nervous. Sophia and Warren were charming, and the figure skating press loved them, but not everyone here was from the figure skating press.

  "Just give us a minute to get settled," Stephanie said, as Warren and Sophia settled into their seats behind the table. However, just as soon as Sophia settled in her seat, she closed her eyes and reeled. Then, she was out of her seat in a flash, imploring to Stephanie, "Bathroom!!" Steph pointed to a door behind and to the left of the table, and said, "Turn left, second door on your right." Sophia sprinted out of the room.

  The press corps, of course, wondered about this. Warren sat there, by himself, smiling at them. "Is she that nervous?" Tina Bowman of USA Today finally asked good-naturedly?

  "No, she's not that nervous," Warren said with a smile.

  "Is she that sick?" Tina persisted.

  "No, not if you mean ill," Warren said mysteriously.

  "Then what was that?" Fred Rausch of the Chicago Tribune asked him?

  "When she gets back," Warren said. Just then, Sophia walked back in.

  "OK, folks, sorry about that," Sophia said to the assembled press corps. "Morning sickness is a real pain in the ass."

  It took the press about ten seconds to realize what she had just said. "Did you say morning sickness?" Tina Bowman asked her.

  "Yup. Geez, the Enquirer is incompetent, aren't they? They di
g up all this dirt on me, and they can't even find out that I'm two months pregnant. Would have been a fitting end to their story, don't you think?" Sophia smiled and sipped from the water that had been given to her.

  "Pregnant?" Tina echoed.

  "Yup."

  "Do you know who the father is?" some reporter she didn't know asked her.

  "I only sleep with one man, contrary to published reports." Sophia snapped at him.

  "She only skates with one man, too. Coincidentally, it's the same guy," Warren quipped, to the laughter of at least the regulars in the press corps.

  "Are you keeping the baby?" Jim Pitman of the Boston Globe asked.

  "We most certainly are," Sophia told him.

  "I hope I don't have to ask you if you've consulted with a doctor about competing while you're pregnant," Tina Bowman said to Sophia.

  "Of course not, Tina. I've been cleared. There are no complications that they can see, and ice dancing is low impact, and I'm still in the first trimester. Plus, one of the USOC medical staff is an OB-GYN, Doctor Millar. I've already talked to her. I'm going to be monitored."

  Jared Hurstell of the NY Times raised his hand. "Does the pregnancy affect your skating?"

  "Only in the morning," Sophia said dryly. "My morning sickness is an accurate description, I only get it in the morning. We have a few morning practices, but no competitions in the morning. As long as I eat right, I should be just fine."

  "But it is one o'clock in the afternoon," a foreign reporter said.

  "Not in Wisconsin, it's not, it's 6am there, and I'm still on Wisconsin time. I get the sickness about an hour and a half to two hours after I wake up, and that's just about right. I got up at quarter past eleven. Which was quarter past four Wisconsin time. I want to go back to bed," she said, drawing amused giggles.

  "And she's the morning person in this team, if you can believe that. I'm desperately seeking coffee," Warren added, to more amusement. To Warren's amusement, Stephanie rapidly produced a cup. "Look at this. What service. I love the USFSA!"

  "OK, now that I've given you the unexpected tidbit of my condition, I'm sure you all have tons of questions about how our long program is coming along, am I right? I mean, there's nothing else we could have to talk about, right?" Sophia baited them with a huge smile on her face.

  "Well, there was this little article, you know, about you..." Jim Pitman said, playing along.

  "Oh that. It was in the Boston Globe, wasn't it?" Sophia teased, drawing laughter around the room.

  "We generally don't print stuff like that, no," Jim said.

  "No, Jim, you wait until some rag like the Enquirer prints it, so you can conduct the follow-up," Sophia said pointedly, drawing an embarrassed look from Pitman. She liked Jim, but someone had to take that bait. "Having made my point..." she paused..."ask away."

  "Well, let's start with the biggie," a reporter asked. "Are you gay, and is your relationship with Warren a sham?"

  "Well, if it's a sham, how in hell did I get knocked up?" Sophia said amusedly.

  "You don't need to be with a man for that nowadays. Babies can be conceived in a laboratory," the reporter said.

  "Well, this particular baby was conceived in a hotel room in Nagano, Japan. In the shower." Warren interjected helpfully. Sophia cracked up laughing, and the reporters looked at him in amazement. "Hey, look at Jim, taking notes. I want to see that printed in the Boston Globe," Warren joked. Jim Pitman just smiled at him.

  "Anyhow, to get back to the question," Sophia said, "My relationship with Warren is not, has never been, and will never be a sham. I love him completely. He loves me back. And our relationship is not platonic. This is his baby. As for whether or not I'm gay, I am not. I had a few bisexual feelings at one point, and I explored a little bit, and Warren knew about it. And that's all I'm going to say about that. But I'm not gay, and I finally decided I really wasn't bi, either. I don't regret finding that out for sure, but I would have rather not have to have read about it in the Enquirer. I don't think it's anybody's business."

  "Don't you think you're a role model and should behave as such?" a reporter she didn't know asked.

  "NO. I do not think I'm a role model, unless you're talking about skating. If some young skater, or team, wants to take our skating career as a blueprint, I'd be fine with that, because I think we've done it the right way. But as for anything else--no, I'm not a role model."

  "But there are a lot of young girls that look up to you, I know that for a fact," Tina said. "What are they going to think when they read that article?"

  "Hopefully, that I'm human, not perfect. They'll also learn, hopefully, to watch their back."

  "What do you mean by that?" Tina asked.

  "Let's get to the question that everyone wants to ask but is too polite to. 'Hey, Sophia, are you a slut?'" The press looked sheepish at that one. "I had boyfriends before Warren, and I started pretty young. I never slept around, so I never considered myself a slut. But, what I meant about watching your back is this--be very, very careful who you trust. I wasn't, and it almost destroyed me," Sophia said, and then took a breath. The press corps was listening with interest now.

  "First of all, that story about my dabbling with another woman over the summer on tour? That story was given to the Enquirer by that other woman, and I know that for a fact."

  "Who was it?" a reporter asked.

  "I'm mad enough at her to tell you, but I don't think I will. She knows who she is. However, that wasn't the part of the story that really bugged me. It was the thing about my past. I only have one boyfriend before Warren that ever met Warren. I can't prove he was the source of this story, but it doesn't matter, because all of my boyfriends before Warren did the same thing to me, the last one was just the worst."

  "What do you mean?" Tina asked.

  Sophia took a big huge breath. "I was coerced into sex by every boyfriend I had before Warren, and out and out raped by more than one of them. As an added bonus, they all beat me up. The last one even beat Warren up, because we were friends, this was before we became a couple. He put me in the hospital. He just got out of jail. I have a picture, if you want visual proof. However, it's not pretty."

  The press corps stared at them, as did Stephanie, the USFSA press liaison--she hadn't known this.

  "You were battered?" Tina Bowman asked.

  "Oh, yeah. From the time I was twelve until I was fourteen, by a number of different guys. The last one was the worst. I had the self-esteem of a slug. It was ugly." She took another deep breath. "Now you know why I don't feel like much of a role model. The drink and the drugs part of the Enquirer story, by the way, that part was true. I was blasted out of my mind most of the time. That made the punches and kicks hurt less. It also made the sex hurt less, if you want the whole gory details."

  Jim Pitman raised his hand. "Don't you think overcoming something like that makes you something of a role model?"

  "Maybe. I've worked with other kids it's happened to, trying to give them some of my wisdom, if you can call it that," Sophia smiled. "But, really, the only way you overcome something like that is not to let it happen in the first place. Girls, if someone you think you love tries to talk you into doing something you're not comfortable with, or raises his hand to you, RUN. Because, if it happens--even if it's six years down the road and you think you're recovered, you might have your past thrown back at you by a sleazy tabloid." The press corps looked chagrined. Sophia looked up, and offered them a slight smile. "Hey, I'm OK, I just had to let that one out once, because I know the Enquirer is in here, skulking about somewhere. Not the rest of you people's fault. I've made mistakes. Hey, I broke up with Warren for two months last year--biggest mistake I've ever made--and that's where the other part of that story came from. However, except for those two months--which I won't talk about further than that, because they're just a depressing blur--but, except for that, Warren has been my only guy, for almost six years. Believe me, when I was getting beat up, I never thought I would find someth
ing like this."

  "What about the Enquirer saying you had been under psychiatric care?" a reporter asked.

  "I was beat up by boyfriends, of course I was under psychiatric care!" Sophia snapped at him. "I also saw someone last year, after our break-up, to try to make sense of certain things. I do not apologize for seeing a shrink. It helped immensely. I needed it to get better."

  "We saw the shrink together, also, when we were getting back together," Warren said. "There was a lot of a relationship counseling kind of thing."

  "So what are you going to do about all this?" Fred Rausch said.

  "Nothing. I did this press conference, and that's it. My focus for the next couple weeks is going to be solely on kicking Olga Bradochkina's ass right back to Moskva," Sophia quipped. "After that, I've got this baby to birth. It's over, my past is over, and the Enquirer knows where they can stick it."

  "But now you'll have Olga Bradochkina gunning for you," Jim Pitman smiled.

  "Better Olga, who's a friend of ours, than the damn Enquirer!" Warren interjected.

  Chapter 97 - The Olympics Begin

  "I got on my laptop and read a lot of the articles from the various papers," Warren told Sophia at lunch the next day. "They were great. You got them back on our side, I think."

  "Even though I am a pregnant nympho?" Sophia teased.

  "Even though. You know what? I love you."

  "I love you, too, Snugglebear."

  "I hope that took care of everything. I want to enjoy the Olympics."

  "We will."

  After they ate, they took a little walk around the Olympic Village. It was a lot of fun. They saw athletes from all kinds of sports.

  "Hey, isn't that Liesl Schraeder, the Austrian skier?" Sophia asked Warren.

  "Yeah, it is. She's great. Best slalom and giant slalom skier in the world," Warren confirmed.

  "And look, over there, that's that new American downhiller, Shannon Gentry."

  "This is great. I'm so excited," Warren admitted. They strolled through the village, meeting and introducing themselves to athletes from all over the world. Lots of them knew who Sophia and Warren were, which was neat.