Last Dance

by Renee Fowler

  I laugh, and roll my eyes. “It sounds like you’ve got it all planned out.”

  “Need me to hang out for this next class?”

  “Nope. I got it.”

  “Good, because it’s a friday night, and if I have any hope of finding that lawyer, I’ve gotta keep putting myself out there. Especially now that you have Jack to keep you company.”

  I give her what I hope is a believable smile, but I don’t know if I really have Jack. I have parts of him I guess, but sometimes I fear the best parts of him are still with someone else. He was as upfront and honest with me as a person can be, but I can’t help but feel… second. Slighted somehow, which is ridiculous. I knew from day one he was a widow, but I guess I never let myself think too deeply about what that might mean for us.

  It’s starting to feel a little like my first solo role, the one I actually didn’t get to begin with. I was Camille Rosen’s understudy for the lead role in Swan Lake, and when she came up with a stress fracture in her tibia three weeks into the season, I took over for the remaining performances.

  I was obviously excited, although I tried my best to hide that from Camille when I went to visit her. But the circumstances that led to that part tinged the whole experience bittersweet. The applause from the audience rang a bit hollow. They came to see her, not me. I was nobody back then. I was the stand in they had to make due with since the one they’d bought tickets to watch in the first place wasn’t available.

  As parents and children start trickling in for the next class, I shove the doubts out of my mind. There are only six in total, which is plenty considering the age range for pre-ballet. The youngest is three. The oldest is four and a half. They are spirited, rambunctious, and almost impossible to coerce into doing anything in unison, but I don’t try very hard. For children this young, it’s all about moving and having fun.

  First we start off by getting rid of the wiggles. They all giggle a bit as we give our arms and legs a good shake. Then I have them sit in a circle, legs stretched out front. “Say hello toes. Say goodbye toes.” After brief stretching, they all pop up to their feet. To the tune of cheerful music I lead them in a wide, prancing circle, flapping my arms in slow arcs, and they follow suit. One of them squawks like a bird briefly, which I don’t chide her for. When I hold a finger to my lips, then tiptoe creep with their arms held above their heads. I lead them through some of the fundamentals, plie, echappe, arabesque, but they are interspersed with silliness.

  Twenty five minutes into that forty minute class, the door opens and a familiar figure glides inside. For a split second, I freeze.

  What the hell is he doing here?

  He doesn’t take a seat, but chooses to stand near the window with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He smiles, and I don’t return the gesture. I turn my back on him, and continue on as if he doesn’t exist, which is exactly what he did to me.

  I can feel his eyes boring into me as I lead them at the bar. “I see beautiful, pointed toes,” I say, which is only true for two of them, but we’re not there trying to achieve perfection. Surprisingly a few more pick up on the cue and point at the positive encouragement, a little trick I picked up from Laura.

  Mikhail was always brutally quick to point out the smallest flaw or shortcoming, which I appreciated in practice, but not when it began to spill over into our personal life.

  Who knows what he is thinking of my teaching technique as I lead them through those last ten minutes. I don’t really care what he thinks, but I am curious to find out what he came all this way for.

  As class concludes, he makes no motion to come to me. Instead he waits silently, with perfectly rigid posture. A few of the parents give him curious glances as they gather up their children, but he doesn’t pay them any mind. His eyes are glued on me the whole time. They follow me like a hawk, tracking my every movement.

  “Bye, Miss Anna.”

  “I’ll see you next week, Paige,” I call out to the last of them, waving as she files out the front with her mother. As soon as the door slides shut, I let the smile fall from my face, and I finally address Mikhail directly. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Chapter 13

  Jack

  I arrange the flowers in the little, bronze vase beneath her gravemaker. Claire would’ve despised flowers for her birthday. She was notoriously hard to shop for, and I never knew what to get her for special occasions. She didn’t like any of the normal girl shit like jewelry or perfume. Jaime got her these scented candles one year, which Claire accepted graciously, then sort of laughed about later. “Now the whole house smells like fucking cookies. I would’ve rather had actual cookies.”

  A bitter wind sweeps through the graveyard, and I hug myself against the chill. I look around at the empty hillside littered with grave markers, and a few small tombstones. It’s overcast and dreary out. The sky is cloudy and threatening rain, or maybe snow if the temperature dips down anymore.

  “Happy birthday, Clairebear.”

  When we were kids she hated if I called her that, but I guess it grew on her as we got older, after that summer we went from friends to a bit more than friends.

  “I didn’t bring Sarah this year. She’s getting a cold, and…” I pinch the bridge of my nose. Staring at a spot in the distance, my vision grows blurry. I swallow a few times, tasting tears at the back of my throat. “I met someone. I think you’d like her.” I pause to laugh, and shake my head. “Nah, maybe you wouldn’t. She’s not a bad person. You wouldn’t hate her, but she’s not someone I can imagine you being friends with.”

  Most of Claire’s friends, were our friends. She was always sort of like one of the guys in a lot of ways, and she didn’t have much patience for prissiness. Claire was pretty, but she never tried very hard to be. I don’t think she owned a single thing that was pink, and I bet she would’ve found all of Anna’s weird food habits ridiculous.

  “Sarah likes her, but she doesn’t know yet. It feels a little soon.”

  The truth is, I don’t know yet either. I like Anna. I think I’m falling in love with her, but she’s so damn skittish.

  “I never had to guess shit with you, huh? You’d tell me exactly what you were thinking. I liked that.” Wiping my eyes, I bark out a short laugh. “Sometimes I fucking hated it.” Claire never hesitated to tell me when I did something to piss her off. We fought like cats and dogs about all kinds of dumb shit, but we’d make up just as fast. We didn’t hold grudges, and we never stayed mad long.

  I rake my hands back through my hair, and try to get a handle on myself. I can’t remember the last time I cried, but it’s been years since I’ve come here and actually spoke out loud to her. “I don’t know, Claire. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wish...”

  Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and tell me which one fills up first, Jack.

  She’d say things like that sometime, when I would bitch about whatever nonsense Jamie was getting herself into, or when I came home upset and moody over something I’d seen at work. I wished people weren’t so shitty to each other, or they used some common sense. I wished I could get off nights, so the two of us could actually fall asleep next to each other. I wished my mom would stop crying about my dad, and pretending like he was a saint now that he was dead.

  I stood there for a long time not really wishing for much, but remembering. Or trying to. So many of those memories are faded, and washed out. They barely feel real anymore.

  “I wish you could see Sarah, and I wish… I wasn’t standing out here talking to myself like a fucking lunatic, that’s what I wish. You really would hate this, wouldn’t you? I bet you’d call me a pussy if you could hear this shit.”

  “You might be right about that,” a gruff voice says.

  I startle, and whirl around. “You scared the hell out of me. How long have you been standing there?”

  “Not long,” Adam says, shoving his hands in his pockets. He stares away while I wipe my face.

  Claire got her eyes from he
r father, his general stoic nature, and his foul mouth. Maybe Adam never called me a pussy out loud, but I’ve got no doubt he thought it occasionally, like when I didn’t want to roam around the forest slaughtering woodland creatures with the two of them. The one year Claire actually convinced me to tag along, I about lost my lunch as I watched them field dress a deer. “You’re awfully squeamish for a cop, ain’t ya?” he had asked, with no real animosity, but the hint of an amused grin playing across his mouth.

  I’d seen some shit by that time, come across some bad accidents, been called to one homicide, and a few suicides, but it still didn’t mean I wanted to stick my bare hands, up to the elbows, inside the carcass of an animal I’d just watched die.

  Claire was an only child, and it was plain as day Adam wouldn’t have minded a son. I have no idea why they never had any more, but it’s obviously not the sort of thing I would ask now.

  “Where’s Evelyn?”

  He scratches absently at his greying beard. “She don’t come out here much anymore.”

  I mumble under my breath.

  “How’s Sarah?” he asks after a long moment of silence.

  “She’s got a little cold, that’s why I didn’t bring her today,” I explain.

  “You don’t need to be bringing her out here anyways. There’s no sense in it. There’s no sense in you being out here either.”

  I scoff. “It’s her birthday.”

  “No shit.” Adam snubs the toe of his work boot in the ground. “Evie told me you were seeing someone.”

  I nod a little towards the ground, not quite sure what to say. I guess Jamie told mom, who told Evelyn, none of which should come as much of a shock.

  “Then what the hell are you doing out here talking to a box of bones?” Judging by his taciturn tone, it’s hard to imagine Adam is speaking about his daughter’s remains, but that’s just how he is. “I don’t think she’d want either one of us out here,” he adds. “Not a day like this. It’s fucking miserable.”

  “Yeah it is. It doesn’t know what the hell it wants to do,” I say, holding out a palm to feel the cold drizzle that might turn to ice any moment.

  “It’s a good thing, Jack. Good for Sarah, and good for you too.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so.” Adam claps me on the back of the shoulder. “Now get the hell out of here so I can say happy birthday to my little girl,” he orders in a thick voice.

  Not trusting myself to speak, I nod again and turn to go. Once I’m seated inside my cruiser, I stare back in his direction through the windshield. His head hangs down below hunched shoulders. From this distance I have no idea if he’s speaking, crying, or just standing silently. But I can still remember that anguished, wounded noise he gave when he first learned Claire was gone. I think I was in shock at that point, but the inhuman sound he made cut something loose inside me.

  That was the first, and probably last time the two of us shared any kind of grief together. I guess it’s not in either of our natures.

  But he was right about one thing, Claire would’ve hated the thought of either of us out here getting all emotional, today or any day. Especially this many days after the fact. I’ve got to stop hanging on to the past. It’s gone. She’s gone, and nothing can change it.

  If I’m going to wish for anything, it should be something that might actually come true.

  Chapter 14

  Anna

  “How did you even know to find me here?” I ask, not bothering to mask the annoyance in my voice.

  Mikhail gives me a weak smile. “You weren’t too difficult to track down.”

  “But what are you doing here?”

  He blinks at me a few times, like he’s actually surprised by my anger. “Bella, you’ve been on my mind, ever since-”

  “Don’t call me that! No one calls me that anymore.” No one I knew personally ever did besides Mikhail. It was his idea to use the moniker for stage. He said Anna sounded too plain, and Bella Bishop had a ring to it. “Mikhail, I have no idea what you’re here for, but I’m in a relationship,” I point out, choosing to keep my fears that it’s probably going no where to myself for obvious reasons. “And from what I hear, you are too. Even if not, what makes you think I’d want to see you now?”

  He shakes his head, and swallows thickly. “I want you to come back.”

  I laugh bitterly. “Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”

  “I mean back to Riverside.”

  “I can’t.”

  Mikhail’s eyes sweep around the cavernous studio. “This isn’t where you belong.”

  “This is exactly where I belong.”

  “Everything would be different. I understand I pushed you too hard. I demanded too much of you.”

  “No you didn’t.” After we first got together I made him swear that he wouldn’t go easy on me. I didn’t want any special treatment, which he never gave. If anything he was harder on me than everyone else, but I improved more in that last year than I had in the five years previous. “I just can’t do it anymore. I don’t have the range of motion, or flexibility, and it’s not because I’m lazy, or I don’t want it bad enough, so save it. Even if I could, what makes you think I would ever want to work with you again?”

  Mikhail’s mouth gapes. I’m not generally an angry person, but what does he expect? The way he ended things was unforgivable.

  “I’m no good to you the way I am now,” I continue. “So fuck off. I don’t want you here.”

  “I understand you have limitation now,” he says carefully. “but we could work around them.”

  “I don’t need any favors from you.”

  “Good, because I’m not here to grant you any. One show, Bella. The spring charity gala. You returning to stage would get Riverside’s name out there again. You would draw in a crowd. It would keep that place running for another year. If anything, you’d be the one doing me a huge favor.”

  Now his sudden and unwelcome appearance in my new life makes a lot more sense. “No thanks,” I say firmly. “I’m not interested in a bunch of people coming to feel sorry for me. It’s bullshit.”

  “I want to choreograph an original piece for you. It would be custom tailored to your abilities. No one would walk out of there feeling sorry for you. I swear it. Don’t you want one last chance to shine? ”

  I have made my peace with the way things ended so abruptly, or so I’d thought, but suddenly my heart is beating a little faster. “I can’t,” I say after a long pause. Even one show would require weeks of practice. “I can’t just up and abandon this place, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. This is my life now, and… I’d appreciate if you leave.”

  “We could find someone to take over while you’re away, and I would make it worth your while, Bella.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “Okay.” He rubs a hand over his chin. “Will you show me what you can do?” he asks softly, and it is a question, not a harshly worded demand like I’d grown accustomed to from him. This is not the Mikhail I remember at all. “Please, Anna. Let me see what I’m working with.”

  I start to shake my head.

  “Can you still dance en pointe?”

  I huff. “Of course.”

  “Show me.”

  Silently debating, I stare down to a scuff on the floor. It wouldn’t just help the Riverside theater. I’d probably make enough to keep this place up and running for another year too. It would be a huge weight off my shoulders. And maybe I have no desire to work with Mikhail again, but the thought of one last show is rushing to my head as well.

  Wasn’t that what I wanted for so long, one last goodbye?

  I’m still feeling conflicted as I turn and go to change into the proper shoes. When I return Mikhail is standing in the exact same spot I left him in.

  I don’t see any point in beating around the bush. I assume first position so he can see how uneven my stance is now. “This is as far as I can turn out on my right side, and I can’t correct it.” />
  Mikhail nods, and he begins to issue commands as gently as I spoke to that pre-ballet group, which I hate, but I bite my tongue and show him what I’m still capable of.

  I can correct for the imbalance just fine when I walk, and to some degree when I dance, but I don’t come close to achieving the same level of technical precision I had in the past. So much of my focus is turned to compensating for the weakness on the one side, I lose that little bit of extra something too. My movements aren’t fluid or graceful, and they hurt. My hip, leg, and knees scream because I’m not warmed up, and I push myself to the limit.

  “That was excellent.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” I say, breathing hard.

  “I’m not.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re doing, and I don’t want it. I don’t want your pity.”

  “This isn’t pity. You do better than a few of the dancers in the corps right now. You could come back for real, full time.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” I have no interest in returning as one of the worst of the lowest ranking dancers in the company, and how long would I really be able to handle it? Another year perhaps, if I’m lucky.

  “But you’ll do the gala, right?”

  Wishing he had never come here and put this nonsense in my head, I run a hand over my sweaty forehead. I was happy and at peace with everything before he walked through that door. “I-I don’t think so, Mikhail.”

  “We have months,” he points out. “At least consider it. I don’t need an answer right this second.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I say quietly. He makes a motion towards me, and I point a finger in his direction. “If I actually do this, we’re nothing. Not even friends. Do you understand?”

  He holds his hands up. “Obviously. We’ve both moved on, and this is just a mutually beneficial arrangement. It would all be strictly professional.”

  I suddenly feel silly. He dumped me in the most callous way possible. Of course this is all business, but he’s looking at me with this faraway, almost reminiscent gaze. It’s probably just my imagination. He has Brooke now, who is young, pretty, and fully functional. Even if not, I would never be interested in revisiting that mistake again.