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Annalisa heard the last chords fade and stilled her body.
Inwardly, this was worse than opening night in New York. She had believed in herself then. But getting dismissed from three separate companies did damage and for the first time in her dancing career, she doubted her talent.
Since she was twelve, there had been one goal: make principal dancer. Be the dancer chosen for leading roles, the one whose name appears in bigger and bolder font on the program. All the hard work teachers threatened it would take did not scare her. She saw herself in the mirror. She saw her motions, her turns, her leaps, compared to her classmates; she was good.
And doors had opened. Dutifully, she started in the corps de ballet each time, once or twice, given the opportunity to guest dance a solo, but not keep the promotion or paygrade.
Generally, things started well. Yet a quarter of the season through, she’d get called into the director’s office. Being on time for classes and rehearsals was being late. Company members complained about her. It didn’t seem like she noticed they were present in the room. Her attitude when taking corrections was aloof. The quality of her performance never improved because she half-assed her way through rehearsals and class.
In New York, she hadn’t believed it. After the first company in Minneapolis, she thought one of her co-workers had it out for her, intimated by how quickly she might surpass her in the ranks. However, the third dismissal was a gut punch. She had come ready to prove herself, but it was too late.
When she left Minnesota, she’d been bitter but honest for the first time.
Upstairs, in the office with the ballet teacher she had respected, she had been honest, too. She needed a job. This job. Doing anything else, without dance to temper it, was unbearable and she had started to rely too heavily on sleeping medications, homeopathic though they were.
Trained breathing allowed her to look at Joel without a heaving chest. His arms were folded. She let her posture slump back into human form and put her hands on her hips.
It was ugly to ask for favors.
“Well?” she asked, meeting the stare of his deep-set, dark blue eyes.
“You’ve improved.”
“That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
From behind the piano, he stepped. “You’re putting me in a difficult position, Annalisa.”
“I’m already in one,” she stated, flatly, thinking about the lone grocery bag lining her cat’s litter box back at the hotel, where she had been living since returning to Chicago.
“I expect a lot.”
She pressed her fingertips deeper into her hips. “I’ve got a lot to give.”
“Classes start tomorrow at nine. Rehearsal for Angels is at noon. Don’t say anything to the other dancers. Act like you’ve always been here.”
The tension she’d been holding herself under snapped. She jumped, rushing towards Joel like she was fourteen again.
“Oh, my God! Thank you!” She slammed into him, hugging him tight. “You’ll see. I’m the dancer I’m supposed to be. Thank you!”
“Annalisa.”
The hug was not returned. His arms were at his side and the rigid shot of his back matched the way he said her name.
She let go and stepped back. “Right. Sorry.”
“No more calling on memories. You’re not my student anymore. You’re my employee, a corps dancer in Ballet Le Faire.”
“Got it. Thank you, Joel. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
***
WITH A MEASURED STEP, she left the rehearsal space and returned to the bathroom to change. On her way out, she thanked the woman at the front desk and fished a pair of sunglasses from her purse, lightly streaked with sweat from her leotard and tights.
She made it to the car, got in, and locked the doors before she slumped forward and dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel. With a shuddering inhale, she coughed and let the tears spill.
There was no sleep last night. She’d had no appetite for even dry cereal, but there were body shakes until she pounded two energy drinks, lukewarm, because there wasn’t space in the hotel’s mini fridge.
If this didn’t work, it would feel like a death sentence she wrote on her own dreams.
Following her old habit of ignoring the rules when she promised she had changed, the rules had been broken in her favor. Gripping the steering wheel, she felt the heft of that exchange. This was Rumpelstiltskin type stuff. No room for error or everything precious vanishes.
She couldn’t take a steady inhalation yet. This week and the next at the hotel were paid for. She’d make a run to the dollar store for bread, canned green beans, and tuna. The last trip to the food pantry had left her with too many perishables but the cereal, instant oatmeal packs, and industrial size jar of peanut butter would tie her over until the first paycheck.
Things were going to be okay.
However, sitting in a running car was not okay for her gas tank’s levels. With an unattractive sniff, she straightened and drove off the parking lot.
Chicago traffic was worse than anything in Minneapolis and more aggressive than New York. In Minneapolis, people shook their heads at you when a traffic faux pax was committed. In New York, they yelled and flung middle fingers, but she never worried someone might get out of their car and key her window.
Blinking repeatedly to better clear her vision, she homed in her focus on the buses that didn’t care about traffic lines and cyclists who didn’t care that it was illegal in Illinois to ride the white line markings. She’d cry the rest of the tears cuddling Smidge.
The orange tabby, with a bobbed tail from a vent fan accident, had come into her life shortly after she moved to New York and happened across a live adoption event. Smidge had fur like a creamsicle ice cream bar and diluted amber eyes. The little face, with rumpled whiskers, meowed like a congested harmonica.
He hadn’t gotten any sleep last night either, with all her thrashing and pacing. Maybe they would have an early dinner and call it an early night. Her stomach was growling now, and dry cereal sounded wonderful.
At one of the last left turns before the small parking lot of the Hotel Inn, she shook off memories of what she thought her life would be like as a ballerina. Matinees and late-night rehearsals. Dinners with the cast, lingering over drinks. Coming back to a luxe apartment, soaking in a whirlpool tub, and then massaging Tahitian vanilla cream all over her body before piling her hair in a silk sleep bonnet and getting under sheets with an astronomical thread count.
Ha!
At the hotel, the first time she turned on the shower head, the water ran cold for ten minutes. Convinced something was wrong, she went down to the front desk but the attendant on shift shook his head. There was nothing wrong. The water heater was old. Let the water run for twenty minutes.
With towels that had never known the touch of fabric softener, she’d dried each night and apply whatever off-brand Vaseline lotion the dollar store had in stock. Sectioned into two braids, she’d wrangle her hair and then crawl under bed sheets that might have started their life as construction paper.
The bright point in the night was if one of the twelve free channels on the television had a movie made after 1992. Sure, there was free wi-fi, but she had cancelled all her streaming services; hotel connection made dial-up seem reasonable.
Most nights she left the TV on after turning off the lights. Smidge didn’t snore loud enough and the quiet was oppressive.
It was gonna change. It was gonna get better. Within the year, she’d have enough saved for a studio apartment and she would use fabric softener on both her towels and sheets.
Parking and double-checking her car was locked, Annalisa entered the small lobby of the hotel and asked if there was any mail for her. The now familiar and strangely comforting smell of burnt, cheap coffee greeted her, followed quickly by the power-packed, artificial, floral punch of disinfectant. The hotel manager, an older, heavy-set woman, had been kind about letting her use the business as a forwarding address.
The current body behind the desk was a woman, oddly young and old at the same time.
She shook her head to Annalisa’s question. “Didn’t come yet.”
“It normally comes by now.”
“It didn’t yet.”
“Can you check?”
The woman, wearing a different name tag every other day, shrugged, and looked back down at her cell phone. “I just checked a minute ago.”
Whatever. Miguel worked later. She’d ask him.
In front of her room door, battling with the electric lock to recognize her plastic key card, she thought about the next day. She’d wear her favorite leotard, the forest green one, with a deep back and black lace detailing.
Tomorrow, in class, she’d stand at the barre, under unadorned piano music, and let her body meld back into the routine of ballet. In her thighs, she would feel an increasing burn as her muscles warmed. Sweat would dribble towards the small of her back and she’d be alive.
Really alive. Not groping through her days, without direction. The regimen had returned. The chase for perfection. The heady rush getting just close enough to touch the spark before being met with human limitation.
Annalisa had never ridden a horse or ice skated, but she imagined the rush was similar. Thundering hooves in a race with the wind. Gliding like flying, each turn of direction connected to the other in potential infinity. Dance was a series of elastic moments where the body becomes rays of light, visible yet untouchable.
She threw the deadbolt behind her.
“We did it, Smidge.”
Liquid eyes, glazed with slumber, looked at her.
“We’re gonna be okay.”
A rippling, cooing sound came from the pudgy feline, and she got on the bed next to him, pressing her face close.
***
PEARL STUDS IN HER ears, joggers, and a fitted vest covering her leotard and tights, she walked into work the next morning.
Swiveling in an orthopedic chair, Melinda handed her a company badge and a stack of papers to be filled out before the end of her shift at five o’clock. These and the badge Annalisa slid into her crossbody bag. However, she fished the badge back out when she realized its magnetic strip was the key to the women’s locker room.
Inside, it looked like a dozen other locker rooms she’d seen in her life. Rows of tall lockers with benches in the middle. There were three showers and industrial sized dispensers of soap.
Women dotted the rows of blue lockers, in varying stages of preparation. All of them looked at her as she threaded through, searching for the number and letter combination printed on her badge.
Annalisa smiled tightly at each of them. Only one of the women, unfortunately tall for a ballerina, returned the smile with more warmth than it was given.
“Hi. You must be guest dancing for this production?”
Though her tone was pleasant, Annalisa noted the way the woman assessed her, as if she could garner the reason for her sudden appearance in the dressing room.
“Hi,” Annalisa countered. “No, I’m not a guest dancer.”
Opening her new locker, she turned her back to the woman and let the ripe silence hang heavy.
“Oh. Well, I’m Kristy.”
There was a beat where Annalisa could have been a real bitch and not replied with introducing herself. However, she knew there was going to be hostility enough in the upcoming weeks about the dancer Mr. Dvorak hired out of, seemingly, nowhere.
She set her sneakers on the bottom of the locker. “Hi, Kristy. I’m Annalisa.”
Offering that it was good to meet her and asking if she was new to the area, the woman extended her hand. And even though it was small talk, it was pleasant enough, until another woman with the body choreographers and dancers dream of, stepped into the narrow space.
“Len isn’t putting up with anything for Angels.” She sliced an icy glare at Annalisa. “Better get to class.”
The perfect one. Annalisa knew the type. She’d been ejected from her mother’s womb with long legs, long arms, a long torso, long neck, and everyone peed their pants when she took center stage. All her life, she had been told she must dance. The stage needed her, and she believed it. It was her whole personality.
She would know that gal’s name soon enough. She looked at Kristy and asked if things ran on a tight schedule here, not believing the Joel Dvorak she knew years ago would function any other way. His classes had been structured to the nines.
Kristy nodded and offered to show her which space they rehearsed in.
Unlike the small studio she had auditioned in, the main rehearsal space was long, and wide, and filled with natural light. Skylights patched the ceiling, flooding the pale, sprung, wooden floor with warmth. Dotted between the overhead windows spun three industrial sized ceiling fans. Company colors of cream and forest green decorated the walls, in an ombre effect. Mirrors lined one wall. Wooden barres lined the opposite.
Annalisa inhaled. This. This was where she belonged, and she’d fight hard for it every time.
Although every ballet company was different, professional dancers don’t change. There’s the one who arrives earlier than needed. This person was always identifiable by the overly nonchalant way they leaned on the barre. There was the dancer with a hangover, generally seated under the barre, mimicking stretching positions, but truly trying to ingest as much caffeine and water as possible. There was the one who hated class, like they hadn’t been taking classes all their career. Amid others who rolled in, haphazardly attired, and those who were late, were the few normies who got to class ten minutes early.
At one point, Annalisa had been all of these and hoped she could settle into being one of the normals.
At length, the class’s pianist entered. Shortly after, Joel walked in behind another man who bore a vague resemblance to him. Inwardly, a prickle of excitement and nerves ran through her. She’d show him; he would have zero reason to regret doing her a favor.
The man ahead of him moved to speak with the accompanist. Joel pulled a folding chair out from against the wall and sat down, crossing one leg over the other. There was a ripple of hushed conversation that zipped between mouths and Annalisa knew Joel didn’t usually observe class. This was unusual.
He’d come to check in on her.
Did you think I was gonna be a brat the first day? You think you know me so well. Well, it’s been years, Mr. Dvorak. I’m not the girl I was.
The man by the piano clapped three times and the rest of the room took their spots at the barre.
So, this was the teacher named in the locker room. Len. He stood several inches shorter than Joel and was of a leaner build, teetering on lanky. No doubt, it had served him well during his active career years, giving the illusion of height on stage. With dark hair and a clean-shaven face, he wore black athletic slacks, open at the ankle, sneakers, and a hoodie much too heavy for the temperature of the room.
The snit in the locker room was right. Len wasn’t a friendly choreographer. The chill peer who just happened to make more than you and was also technically your boss. Nope. He spoke with his hands. At the end of a performance night, he left ahead of the cast, alone. If he drank anything more than black coffee and sparkling water, it was wine. A tannin packed red.
In keeping with her educated guess, Len did not demonstrate the first combination of plies. With a light touch on the side of the piano, he pantomimed the motions, without any indication of timing. They were professionals who should be able to follow the music and not need a guide through movements most had been doing since they were seven.
Standing with her heels together and her toes turned out to nearly one-eighty, Annalisa lengthened her spine and rolled her shoulders back. Her quadricep muscles she pulled upwards, tucking her tailbone without tilting her pelvis forward. She closed her ribs, as if the bones could be braided together, and pulled her belly button back towards her spine. Poised, she took the first notes from the piano and eased into the combination.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Joel stand and exit the room. She held back a smile.
Like I said, Mr. Dvorak, I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m here to work.