Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1) (17 page)

“Boy, that car,” he said. “I love my Roadster, but it’s way too temperamental in low gears.”

“Julia’s Roadster, you mean.” The words slipped out.

He regarded her in surprise. “Well, yes. How did you know that?”

Her cheeks grew warm. “Alice told me. Over coffee, at Denny’s.”

To her relief, he seemed more shocked about the venue than the subject of their conversation.

“You went to
Denny’s
? You and
Alice
?”

“We stopped in there on the way home from the party. To talk about things.” She hesitated. “I was in a bad way that night,” she said, and with that, it was out there. The real issue, not the glossy cover-up.

He looked stricken, chastened. “I’m sorry, Lana. I’m so sorry.”

This time he seemed to mean it.

“That party. Us together in that room.” She had difficulty getting the words out. “You told me you’d never felt that way before. You got me to admit it too. Was that just a game? See how easy, how gullible Lana really is?”

She focused on the table in front of her, the empty carry-out containers. Gil rose from his spot and sat next to her, reaching over to take her clenched hand.

“Lana. I meant everything I said. Afterwards, God, you can’t imagine how torn I felt about not staying right there next to you. That Andy business was too important not to give it my full attention.” He exhaled heavily. “Alice was right. I shouldn’t have brought you along.”

This last bit hurt, as if he’d chosen Alice over Lana. Alice, who’d likely play a bigger part in Gil’s life than she ever would.

“I had to dance to whatever tune he played,” Gil was saying. “I couldn’t afford not to. But under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Please believe me.”

“All right,” she said softly.

He moved even closer. Her body responded automatically, which bothered her. She felt too battered by the previous weekend’s extreme high and low to offer him anything besides wariness. Gil seemed to read the situation. With a gentle kiss on her forehead, he rose from his seat and told her he was going to run next door to the store.

He returned ten minutes later, bearing candles, a tall glass for her roses and a bottle of port. Lana smiled and fetched them juice glasses. After arranging her roses in the tall glass, she sat on the edge of her twin bed, port in hand, and watched Gil. He was setting up candle stations around the room, saying who would have thought a liquor store sold candles? But there they were, right next to the condoms. Lana chuckled over this as she sipped at her port. It was a drink she’d never had before; it was velvety, heady and rich-tasting and seemed to offer a promise of good things to come.

Gil turned off the overhead light and the room was instantly bathed in shadows and golden flickering light. He poured himself a port, arranged the pillows along the length of the twin bed and settled against them next to Lana. They sipped, talked, allowed the dancing candle flames to hypnotize them, and only then did Gil set his hand on her thigh.

Instant high voltage.

He said her name once, a soft, cajoling “Lana
.
”

Her hands, having hastily set down her glass, went to his shoulders and she and Gil were interconnected before she could even pronounce the word. His mouth covered hers, his tongue slid in, tasting of the port’s spicy sweetness. Her fingers plowed through his thick dark hair as he edged her down onto the bed, pressing his weight into hers. Hands found bare skin, limbs tangled together. Her shirt came off. His too.

When he reached down to unzip her jeans, however, she stopped him with a muffled gasp. It was as if Mom had come in the room and was now standing there, beaming a flashlight down on them. Lana pushed him off and made her way up to a sitting position.

“I can’t,” she said between breaths. “My…my mom wouldn’t approve.”

The moment the words slipped out she felt mortified. She was afraid to see how he’d react. The guys she’d gone out with, the few she’d actually ended up having sex with, had always grown irritated when her straight-laced nature overtook her. And here she’d gone and mentioned her
mom?
But when she finally mustered the courage to meet Gil’s eyes, there was a softness in them that surprised her.

“It’s okay. It’s more than okay,” he said. “I admire it. That’s what makes you so special.”

She wondered if he meant it. She was no longer sure how to read him and what words of his to trust. But at least the awkwardness of the moment had passed. Enough for her to lean back toward him and seek out his mouth again.

This was a mistake, she knew.

A mess.

But what a sublime, exhilarating mess.

Never let them see your pain.

This, the ultimate mantra for any performing professional. Or perhaps only ballet dancers. Certainly, in sports performance events, things like soccer, an injured player became ennobled by making a spectacle of his injury, his pain. The cameras would pan in on him as he collapsed, rolled around on his back, clutching his ankle/thigh/calf, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted. And at the gym, somehow it was accepted, even looked upon favorably, to groan and make animal noises and faces when lifting heavy weights, as if this proved yes, they were indeed real athletes. Meanwhile, ballet etiquette: make it look as effortless as possible; maintain relaxed, elegant upper-body presentation regardless of what the lower body is doing; wear a serene smile, no matter how your feet/hamstrings/hips are feeling. Hide your pain and preserve the illusion. Or else.

When this mandate proved too challenging for Alice on Tuesday morning, she called in sick, took three ibuprofen and a Valium, and slept the entire day. The mantra sprang like a default into her mind as she entered the offices Wednesday morning and pasted on a determined smile. All it took, however, was one look at Gil, his goofy smile, so reminiscent of the one she’d worn after her first night with Niles, and her own smile dropped from her lips.

Gil, undeserving Gil, had won his special thing in the time she’d lost hers.

Her gut gave a vicious twist. She swayed and clutched at Gil’s door frame.

“You look like shit,” Gil commented. “You’re still sick, I can tell. Go home.”

She didn’t need a second invitation.

Home provided no relief from her torment, however. She couldn’t fight the hurt and she couldn’t make it go away. She couldn’t talk to Montserrat about it, who’d left for her East Coast tour. Calling Niles himself was forbidden, a sure recipe for disaster. In the end, there was only one place she could productively vent out her mood.

The gym it was.

The gym: an unpretentious, warehouse kind of structure, exposed beams on the second-story ceilings, a broad stretch of floor holding Nautilus equipment, Cybex Strength Systems, bikes, treadmills and racks of free weights. Pop music blared over the continual thud of various barbells and clanking weights, the buzz of conversations. Most people were like her, working out to keep in shape, but the floor was crowded with gym rats too, buff creatures of all ages, muscles bulging, who seemed to spend half their waking hours there.

She took the late-afternoon kickboxing class, which she tried to do twice weekly. Here, it was all about noisy boom-boom music and parallel position. She, who’d relished the advantages her naturally turned-out hips had given her in ballet, now struggled eternally with the mule kicks to the side, hips turned in, knees pointing straight ahead. She was the only one in the class who couldn’t kick that way. She saw in the mirror, every dancer’s best friend and worst enemy combined, just how stupid she looked. But this afternoon it didn’t matter. She punched viciously at the air, she kicked and jumped until she was breathless and spent. By the end of the hour, sedated by endorphins, she decided life was tolerable.

Saved, by the gym.

She hurried back to the gym after work on Thursday, as well, striving to find the same comfort. Toward the end of her workout she noticed something out of the ordinary was going on, accompanied by a buzz of speculation. The word raced through the gym: there was some famous ballerina there. No one knew her name, no one there knew a thing about ballet, only that she was “hot” and “gorgeous.”

Alice craned her neck and saw, with a sinking sense of disbelief, Lucinda, of all people, at the front desk, talking to the manager. Next to her was Katrina, principal dancer with the WCBT, the one whom Alice, in another life, had competed with and beaten.

Alice could only stare dumbly as the two of them, accompanied by the gym manager and the WCBT publicist, began walking through the gym, which created an even greater stir. Katrina, tall, willowy and blonde, didn’t walk, she wafted. She was so thin, so milky-white, she looked like a different species next to the straining, grunting, sweating gym rats. None of the aging dancer showed today; she’d applied her makeup with great artistry and looked beautiful, fresh, much younger than Alice.

Lucinda tipped her head, murmured something, and Katrina nodded obediently, tucking herself in between the publicist and Lucinda. Alice resigned herself to the fact that it was too late to run and hide. Reluctantly she made her way over to their group. Lucinda recognized her first and smiled, pleased.

“Alice. So this is how you can eat all those muffins and ice cream bars and still look so good.”

Lucinda had the unerring ability to toss out an inadvertent insult with any compliment she doled out. Then again, maybe they weren’t inadvertent. Alice smiled back at her.

“Oh, that’s me. A daily exerciser. Helps me cope with the stresses at work.”

And the bitchy females I have to work around
, she wanted to add. Instead she plucked at her too-small exercise shirt. Both the vee-neck shirt and the sports bra were too low cut and revealed too much. That she’d chosen to wear this old, overstretched outfit today only served to prove that the fates were having a good time with her this week, chortling over each new misfortune.

Katrina was even happier to see Alice, someone familiar amid this place so far from her own milieu. She offered Alice a warm greeting and asked what she’d been up to, outside the WCBT offices. In reply, Alice gestured around them. Katrina glanced around with the nervous, guarded expression of a covered-wagon pioneer surrounded by unseen Indians.

“So you really lift weights?” Her voice was hushed. “Alongside all these men?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

Lucinda cut in to direct Katrina’s attention to something the gym manager was telling them. Apparently this was a dry run before a photo shoot the following day. This PR ploy of Lucinda’s was part of an effort to make the dancers appear “just like anyone else,” thus forging a connection with the elusive 22- to 30-year-old age group. It certainly was effective here; every male from that age and up could not stop staring at Katrina.

The gym manager called over two of the men, who, apparently, were to be in on the action tomorrow, serving as a backdrop for Katrina while she struck some everyday pose by the weight machines. The gym manager and the publicist conferred and the manager suggested having one of the guys lift her. One of them stepped forward eagerly and Lucinda pressed closer to Katrina.

“No one lifts the dancer!” she cried in the shrill tone of a little girl harboring her best Barbie from her playmates.

Alice couldn’t hide her amusement. It was Lucinda’s job to protect the dancers from the wrong sort of PR, to guard the mystique that was the WCBT. She didn’t, however, appear to recognize that this was at odds with the very thing she’d set out to do in bringing a dancer out into public. Alice’s hand towel slipped to the ground and she bent to pick it up. When she straightened, she saw that Katrina’s eyes had dropped to her chest. The too-small sports bra and the shirt had apparently once again collaborated against her. Katrina raised her gaze.

“Alice,” she exclaimed, “you have
cleavage
.”

Alice hid her sigh and instead offered Katrina a polite smile. “Well, of course. It was part of the severance package I negotiated with Anders, eight years ago.”

Katrina regarded Alice, her face a tableau of elegant confusion until a moment later, her eyes widened and she laughed, a lilting, musical sound. “Oh, Alice.” She laid a delicate paw on Alice’s arm. “I’ve forgotten how funny you can be.”

She herself had forgotten how easily entertained Katrina could be. Part of her seemed to be eternally frozen at the nine-year-old girl stage, the obedience, the gullibility, the sweet, somewhat confused smile. She was beautiful, like a fairy-tale princess, and still at the top of her game. Alice, looking at her, didn’t know whether to worship, envy or hate her.

The ringing of her cell phone in her pocket jolted her.
Niles
, she thought.
Please, please.
She fumbled for the phone, her heart pounding so hard she could hear the whoosh of it in her ears, but one glance at the incoming caller’s number dashed her hopes. It was her stepmother, Marianne, not Niles. Lucinda and Katrina were watching her, however, so she hid her disappointment.

“Ooh, goody,” she said, with a coy smile. “Gotta take this call.” She offered Lucinda and Katrina a farewell with a flutter of her fingers.

“Why, hello there,” she cooed into the phone as she walked away from them. “I was hoping you’d call me.”

“You were?” Marianne sounded confused but pleased.

“Well, yes. It’s been a while.” Once out of range from the others, her voice returned to normal. “How are things going?”

“Oh, busy days, busy days.”

Alice found herself lulled by Marianne’s chatter, its soothing, predictable cadence. A humorous encounter during her shift as a gallery volunteer at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Adventures with the garden and the presence of rabbits. Considering signing up for the ceramics class her friend Lolly had. Alice murmured an affirmative reply from time to time but otherwise kept quiet. When Marianne finished her rundown she asked, with a laugh, why Alice was acting so complacent today. Was she fishing for a favor?

No favor, she told Marianne, she was simply glad to hear from her, that autumn seemed like a season for family. All of which she meant, she realized. She found herself proposing a Sunday dinner at the house, an idea that seemed to please Marianne as well.