On What Grounds cm-1

by Клео Коул

  “The straight little boys start their pub crawls there,” Tucker explained to me, “because if they don’t manage to get lucky during the course of the night, then at least they’ve got a female form or two to fantasize about in the wee hours.”

  I decided to see for myself if there was any truth to that particular rumor—and, unfortunately, there was.

  Directly across the avenue from Dance 10 were the tall front windows of Mañana, a little dive of a bar with a fake south-of-the-border motif—the prerequisite sombreros, horse blankets, and piñatas dangled from hooks on its walls and over its stained wooden bar.

  Mañana survived for four reasons, according to Tucker:

  It caught the overflow from the much bigger Caliente Cab Co., a huge bar/restaurant with its most memorable characteristic being a giant-size margarita glass hoisted over its doorway.It served the cheapest beers in the area. (The stuff tasted like “piss,” so said Tucker, but it got you drunk for far less money.)The name Mañana meant “tomorrow” and was sometimes used among college freshmen who enjoyed showing off their knowledge of high school Spanish. Consequently, “See you Mañana” would confuse their half-drunk friends who hadn’t studied the language and they’d end up stumbling into this eponymous dive. And last but not least—The view.

  Standing outside the little bar, I pretended to be a twenty-one-year-old college junior with a frosty mug of urine bought during half-price happy hour. Looking up, I could see a clear-as-crystal view of Dance 10’s large third-floor practice room. In the early evening with the lights blazing inside, I figured those young men probably fogged up Mañana’s front windows pretty good.

  This opened up yet another possibility for a motive and a suspect. If college boys were using this vantage to drool from a distance at the beautiful girls in the window of Dance 10, then what were the odds one of them might have become obsessed with Anabelle from afar?

  Perhaps one of them had tried to make a pass and failed, and somehow Anabelle ended up falling down the stairs when she tried to get away.

  That theory would hold water if the front or back door to the Blend had been left unbolted, but it hadn’t.

  No sign of a window escape, either.

  Someone had obtained a key—or made a copy. I sincerely doubted that any of Anabelle’s coworkers had any real motive to hurt or kill her. Which sent me right back to Dance 10, where Anabelle rehearsed for hours and a jealous codancer might have slipped the girl’s key ring away to make copies.

  I climbed the stairs to the studio, bribe in hand—a cardboard tray snugly filled with four double tall lattes (who doesn’t like lattes?).

  According to the schedule posted in the lobby, Jazz Dance had just finished. Anabelle had attended this class religiously. Typically, she would open the coffeehouse at 5:30 A.M., leave at 9:30 to make the 10 A.M. jazz class, and continue taking dance classes for another four to five hours. Then she’d come back to the Blend to put in another three to five hours.

  That’s why I’d promoted her to assistant manager. The girl was working the equivalent of a full-time schedule for the Blend, and in the short time I’d known her, she’d been a reliable opener.

  “Can I help you?”

  A woman in her late twenties with an abundance of good posture spoke to me with the sort of sharp-edged tone that really means, “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”

  She wore a large burgundy sweater over black tights, and her light brown hair had been pulled back into a tight bun. She sat alone at a small wooden desk inside a tiny office covered with schedules, announcements, and show posters. The back wall was lined with old file cabinets and a tall column of stacked chairs.

  This must be the second floor “reception and registration office,” I decided. According to the building directory in the lobby, this floor also held practice rooms A, B, and C. I could hear piano music filtering out of one closed door, a hip-hop beat out of another.

  “I’m looking for the teacher of the ten A.M. Jazz Dance class,” I told the young woman.

  “You can leave your delivery here,” said the young woman. “What do we owe you?”

  “I am not a delivery person,” I said with just enough haughtiness to cow her attitude (a fraction anyway). “I’m the manager of the Village Blend, where Anabelle Hart works.”

  Her eyes grew wide—as I had expected. Tucker assured me that gossip among show-people traveled “faster than Louisiana lightning.”

  “What do you want?” asked the young woman, all curiosity now.

  “I told you. I want to speak with the teacher of the ten A.M. Jazz Dance class. The one Anabelle attended daily.”

  “You’ll find her in the large recital room. Third floor.”

  “And her name is?”

  “Cassandra Canelle.”

  An array of leotards and leg warmers thundered down the squeaky wooden staircase as my black boots climbed up. Lord, I thought, these girls may have been light on their feet when it came to performing on stage but off they sounded like a herd of buffalo.

  Giggles and chatter receded as I stepped onto the landing. The walls were stark white, as they had been downstairs. Framed black-and-white photographs of dancers leaping and posing hung in a level line. I followed that line to a single doorway. Strains of contemplative classical music grew louder as I moved closer, and I expected to find another class in progress.

  To my surprise, I found a single dancer in motion.

  She was graceful, lithe, and as elegant in appearance and bearing as Anabelle had been, though her skin was mocha rather than milk-pale, and her age was closer to forty than twenty. I didn’t know much about dance, but I knew enough to know her movements were not modern, hip-hop, or jazz. In her violet-blue leotard and skirt, she appeared to be performing the pirouettes of traditional ballet.

  Hesitant to interrupt her, I simply watched. The composition accompanying her was tuneful, lucid, and emotional. The opening strings were sad and brooding, the dancer’s movements heavy and posed, then came a flurry of almost manic energy. Leaps and twirls matched the tempo with astonishing speed and grace. A bluebird on the wing. An orchid spinning madly.

  She seemed so focused in the dance, I was utterly startled when, amid a final high leap, she looked straight at me and sharply called—“What do you need?”

  From the doorway I held up the tray of cups. “I hoped we could sit down and talk about one your students—Anabelle Hart—”

  The dancer stopped. Her body sagged. A weeping willow.

  In the background, the music played on, reaching an emotional intensity that was almost unendurable.

  “That’s Schubert, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “What do you want?” The accent had a slight Jamaican lilt.

  “I want to know who from this studio might have been angry enough or jealous enough to push Anabelle down my service staircase.”

  EIGHTEEN

  CASSANDRA Canelle glared at me. Then, with light, even strides, she crossed the polished hardwood floor, placed hands on hips, and inches from my nose, said, “How dare you! What evidence do you have for such a charge? Who of my girls are you accusing?”

  “No one. Yet,” I said. “I just know that Anabelle’s fall was not an accident, and I know dancing is a competitive arena. Do you care about Anabelle?”

  “Of course I care about her. She is one of my star students! I am devastated she is lying in hospital. How dare you come here and—”

  For the next five minutes, the dance teacher balled me out to the strains of Der Tod und das Mädchen (Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”).

  Boy, did I feel like a heel.

  My blunt approach had yielded me useful information—with the young dancers. But it sure as heck was the wrong approach with their teacher.

  “Please understand,” I said when she finally let me get a word in. “I also care about Anabelle, and I’m determined to find out who did this to her. That’s the reason I’m here. And I’m sorry I’ve upset you. I just
need your help to get to the bottom of this. To find out the truth of what happened.”

  The anger slowly left Cassandra. Her crossed arms relaxed, her wrinkled brow smoothed. She sighed and rubbed the back of her long, slender brown neck. With her dark hair cropped close to her scalp, the perfect swanlike line of it was shown to advantage.

  She closed her eyes, shook her head, and murmured, “All I want out of life is perpetual music and an unending expanse of smooth and level floor.”

  It sounded like a mantra. One I understood. “Don’t we all,” I told her.

  She looked up, spied the cardboard tray in my hand. “How ’bout you give me some of that coffee.”

  We sat on folding chairs in the corner of the recital room. Her next class was due in ten minutes, and she gave me that time to answer questions.

  “How badly did your students want that spot in Moby’s Danse?” I asked. “The spot Anabelle won.”

  “Very badly, Ms. Cosi—”

  “Clare.”

  “Fine, Clare. Moby’s Danse is a prestigious modern dance company that tours nationally. They have auditions only a few times a year for the troupe’s Young Dancers’ Program. If a dancer makes the cut, she has the chance to participate in some of the most exciting choreography being produced in the world today.”

  “That sounds like a strong enough motive to try getting rid of the competition.”

  “You’re crazy. That’s not how dancers operate.”

  “Am I? I spoke to five of Anabelle’s fellow dance students yesterday, and a few of them struck me as capable of pretty ruthless tactics.”

  Cassandra laughed. “Let me guess. You spoke with Petra and Vita, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Do you suspect them, too?”

  “Only of being Russian émigrés who’ve had a very tough life. They’ve got a street attitude and they’re brutal competitors, but they would never do that to Anabelle.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “For one thing, hurting Anabelle would have done them absolutely no good. Neither of them was even in the running for the spot in Moby’s Danse.”

  “What do you mean? They told me they were—”

  Cassandra shrugged. “They lied. Wanted to make themselves look good in front of their friends. Score sheets are private, so they could say what they like, but I know the truth and so do they. Their scores were far too low to get them even among the top ten of the fifty who auditioned.”

  “Well, who did have something to gain?”

  “You talkin’ ’bout Courtney now?” said Cassandra, her surprise bringing out the Jamaican lilt. “That slight girl! The sweetest girl I’ve ever had take a class here?”

  “Sweet girls can have a dark side,” I pointed out.

  “You think that little girl pushed Anabelle down a flight of steps to get her spot in Moby’s Danse?” Cassandra asked.

  She stared.

  I stared back.

  She burst out laughing. “You’re crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “Ms. Cosi—Clare, these are dancers, not mobsters. With the exception of maybe that Tanya Harding ice dancer nut who hired a brute to knee-cap Nancy Kerrigan before the Olympics, there is no sense in hurting your rival physically. There are far too many good performers to think hurting one will help you in any way. No, the way to win this game is to perform to your very best. To achieve excellence. As competitive and as catty as dance sometimes is, these girls know that.”

  I sighed. Cassandra made sense, but I hated giving up a good theory.

  “You’re sure Courtney couldn’t have done it?”

  “When was she supposed to have done it?”

  “Two nights ago. On Wednesday evening. Anabelle would have been closing up about midnight. It most likely happened around that time.”

  “Well, I can tell you that Courtney was with me all evening right up until midnight. You see, Moby’s Danse loved Courtney, but they didn’t like the choreography she chose. She scored so high that they agreed to consider her for a very rare standby spot if she reauditioned with a modern piece, and she hired me to tutor her privately. We quit after midnight, and I dropped her at her home myself in a cab.”

  “And where does Courtney live?”

  “In Brooklyn, not far from my mother. I have an apartment here in the Village, but my mama needed help with some shopping the next morning.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s preposterous what you suggest,” said Cassandra. “You cannot tell me the girl rode all the way to Brooklyn in a cab after an exhausting class, then turned around and took a subway all the way back to the Village to try pushing Anabelle, who is taller and stronger, down a flight of steps.”

  I sighed. Cassandra was right. On all counts. She’d provided the answers I’d come for, and yet I was still full of questions. Mostly about Anabelle. I had known the girl only four weeks—but Cassandra had been teaching her for twelve months.

  “What can you tell me about Anabelle, then?”

  “The girl is a natural talent,” said Cassandra as proudly as any mother. “She simply never got the training she deserved. The girl’s father died when she was twelve. After that, her stepmother moved her from town to town so often there was never any way to have a consistent course of study. Anabelle told me she had gone to see Moby’s Danse when they’d been on one of their national tours. They’d given a performance in Miami, and Anabelle waited at the stage door, naively asking if she could join them. Can you imagine? A teenage kid with little formal training? She had guts.

  “Well, lucky for her they didn’t laugh in her face,” Cassandra continued. “Instead, a kind member of the company explained to her that she was too young to join and that the troupe only took members by audition. They suggested she study here in New York at Dance 10, which is where the troupe rehearses, and perhaps one day she might audition on an open call.”

  “And that’s why she traveled to New York,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Cassandra. “She borrowed money from her stepmother, came to New York a year ago, enrolled here, and worked her ass off. She auditioned twice in the last year, but third time’s a charm, and last week she got the spot she’d wanted so much—a Cinderella story.”

  “Except for the trip down the castle steps.”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “What did Anabelle tell you about her stepmother?” I asked.

  “Oh, that one’s a piece of work!” Cassandra blurted. She rose from the folding chair. Latte in hand, she glided across the smooth wood floor and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched the length of the room.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Anabelle’s stepmother was a nude dancer,” said Cassandra. “Anabelle didn’t want anyone to know. And neither did her stepmother. The nude dancing brought in enough money for them to buy nice things, you know? So she’d do it in one town, then move to another, try to pretend she was classy, hook up with a man with money. When that didn’t work out, and it never did, she’d move along to another town, where they didn’t know her. She’d go back to nude dancing again, to get the cash built up once more. Then they’d leave again—and so on. You get the picture?”

  I nodded. After personally experiencing the costly façade and classless behavior of Darla Branch Hart, I got the picture in living color. What kept me silent a few moments was the sadness I felt on behalf of a talented little twelve-year-old girl being carted from town to town without regard to her well-being—

  A thought suddenly occurred to me. An ugly thought—

  “Did Anabelle’s stepmother encourage Anabelle to…you know, do the nude dancing, too?”

  “She did, I am sorry to tell you. About six months ago, Anabelle broke down during an evening class. She had noticed the college boys in the bar across the street. Saw them gawking up at the dancers as they sometimes do. After the class, she confided in me—”

  “I was wondering if you knew about that bar,” I interrupted. “Why don’t you install
shades or drapes up here?”

  Cassandra waved a dismissive hand. “Dancers must learn how to concentrate before an audience. Any audience.”

  “But you said the gawking boys bothered Anabelle.”

  “Only because they reminded her of another audience. A much baser audience.”

  “I don’t follow—”

  “They made her feel as if she were up here nude dancing. That feeling led her to admit to me how conflicted she felt. I urged her to quit the nude dancing, and she did. The next week, she took the job at your coffeehouse to make ends meet. She told me it was harder work for the money, but it was honest work, and it allowed her to stop debasing her talent.

  “You see, the nude dancing forced Anabelle to put up walls between her outside self and her true self. Art does not do that. Art brings you closer to your true self. As Anabelle progressed in her studies here, she came to that awareness.”

  “I think I understand,” I said.

  “The things that exploit you—they are the things that harden you. Anabelle had seen such things harden her stepmother, and she confessed to me that she would do almost anything to avoid that kind of life. She wanted her dancing to mean more—as she remembered it meant to her when she first saw Moby’s Danse—to uplift the spirit, bring it closer to the true self, not alienate it, bring it down.”

  I rose and stood with Cassandra. We looked at the darkened windows of Mañana below us. “Life is like that, isn’t it?” I said, “Filled with base brutishness as well as higher callings. The vulgar and the sublime.”

  “Yes,” said Cassandra. “And the sooner these girls understand that, the better. The choice is ours to make.”

  “Not always,” I said. “Sometimes the choice is forced down upon us.”

  “In my view,” said Cassandra “that is what art is for: To lift us up again when we are pressed down.”

  I nodded.

  Outside the door, the sound of eager feet echoed down the hall then swarmed the rehearsal room. Leotards and leg warmers: my cue to depart. After a thankful wave to Cassandra, I did.