Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1) (30 page)

The first movement was epic, dramatic, like a full concerto in itself. The second movement, the lush
adagio di molto
, was beautiful, bittersweet. Just as Montserrat had said, it seemed to encompass a wintery longing for something nameless that could never be found. She could almost feel it, the challenge that Montserrat had endured that night, performing the concerto in her exhausted, traumatized condition.

Could she have done what Montserrat did? Gone over there and straddled Andy, while wanting only Niles, grieving his indifference? Unzip Andy’s trousers and lower her face to his lap, take him into her mouth, not out of desire but out of obligation? And Andy was an attractive man. Montserrat’s benefactor, from the sound of it, had been no Andy Redgrave. Hairy and overweight, she remembered Montserrat saying, probably decades Montserrat’s senior.

Could Alice do that?

No.

Could she fathom it, what propelled people like Montserrat or Gil, comprehend where their journeys and challenges had taken them?

No.

This thought cut her unexpectedly. Or perhaps it was the music. She felt bereft, as if she’d lost something precious, or seen something stark and unforgettable that would forever redefine her life. Feeling the beauty of art right there alongside something unspeakably dark, and discovering that the two coexisted. That they were necessarily intertwined.

How fitting that a Finnish composer should have so aptly illustrated the beauty of light amid so much dark. Listening to the music’s lament, her throat constricted. She felt one tear slide down her cheek, a lone rebel, leaving a cool damp trail behind as it made its way to the corner of her mouth, where she licked it away.

She wondered what Andy thought when he heard the Sibelius, and why it was one of his favorites. It was doubtful that it soothed him; it was not that kind of music. Perhaps it stirred his soul, or compelled him with its contradictory beauty. Or perhaps he was just a bored billionaire who liked elegant music with an edge.

Another tear slid down. She was glad it was dark.

The concerto ended and silence fell over the room.

“Another?” Andy’s voice floated over to her. He hadn’t raised his head from its spot on the couch’s back cushion.

“Yes, please.”

He didn’t clarify whether he meant Courvoisier or another concerto. It didn’t matter. Tonight, they were equally intoxicating.

Although the Program I run had now ended and in less than thirty-six hours Program II would open, the buzz on everyone’s lips that morning before company class was Dena and her astonishing performance the previous night. She’d drawn a crowd backstage, fellow dancers alerted to the drama. When an understudy takes on the lead role with only a day’s notice, after all, anything can happen. Rebecca Lindgren had stood beside Lana in the wings through the performance, her body tense, watching every move her sister made, sighing with relief whenever Dena managed a particularly tricky passage, or completed clean triple pirouettes.

Dena had excelled in every way possible. She’d been on fire, and, further, she’d been enjoying herself. Lana could feel it, the way Dena’s enthusiasm ratcheted the energy and quality ever higher, the audience responding to it all. At the end, they’d gone wild with applause.

After the final triumphant curtain call, Dena, calm and controlled up to that moment, had walked up to her sister, said, “Oh, Becca,” in an anguished voice, and burst into tears. Rebecca had pulled Dena in for a fierce hug, murmuring, “You did it. What did I tell you?” It had been so touching, observing their closeness, this built-in support system these sisters had. Lana had thought of Annabel, her sneers and defensive posturing, their distance, and felt a twinge of envy for all Dena seemed to have.

But like any Cinderella story, the clock struck twelve and one returned to the real world. This morning Dena was subdued, not jubilant, warming up quietly in a corner, back to being a first-year corps dancer. When barre began, so did the work, every dancer focused on technique, their taxed bodies, working out the kinks, the aches, the reluctant muscles. This was their chance to fine-tune their machinery after four performances and a new set of five performances commencing the following night. And this was merely a warm-up to their three-week, three-city tour, their holiday season. The WCBT offered thirty performances of
Nutcracker
through the month of December. Rehearsals would start the Monday after they returned from tour; there would be three casts for the production, multiple new roles for Lana to learn and perfect. It would only get more challenging from here.

The increasing pressure was apparent everywhere. Gabrielle, always on the emotional side, seemed even moodier than usual today. In the studio dressing room after class Lana heard Gabrielle’s voice rising in dissent. “Oh, give it a rest, Courtney,” she said, loud enough for Lana, approaching her locker, to hear. “God, I get so sick of you sometimes.” She stalked off, passing Lana without a word. A row away, Courtney and Charlotte, heads together, were grumbling to each other. When they saw Lana, they stopped talking.

“Don’t mind me,” she told them. “I just need to grab something from my locker.”

“So.” Courtney gestured in the direction of the now-departed Gabrielle. “You heard that.”

“Well, not what you were talking about. Just Gabrielle’s end bit.”

“Her lovely, calm farewell.” Courtney exchanged wry glances with Charlotte.

“Is everything okay with her?”

“Oh, she’s just being Gabrielle,” Charlotte said, with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Courtney stepped toward the aisle that led to the exit and looked around. Satisfied, she turned back to Lana. “Actually, there’s more.” She and Charlotte exchanged another one of their private looks. Charlotte nodded, a
go ahead
gesture.

But before Courtney could speak, they heard April’s voice.

“Is Dena Lindgren in here?” A moment later, April appeared. “Have you seen Dena?” she asked them. “Anders wants to talk to her.”

“No, it’s only the three of…” Courtney started to say, but fell silent as Dena appeared from the back row of lockers. As Dena passed, Charlotte said, under her breath, “Eavesdrop often?”

Dena offered her a polite smile. “Don’t worry. Your gossip goes in one ear and out the other. I didn’t retain a thing.”

No reply. Courtney and Charlotte kept quiet as Dena and April made their way out of the locker room. Afterward, they both exhaled.

“Was that, like, a totally bitchy comment, or what?” Courtney asked.

“No kidding,” Charlotte said. “One success and she thinks she can talk that way to senior company members.”

Again, both of them stopped, glancing uneasily at Lana.

It was getting irritating. “Stop tiptoeing around me with what you say,” she burst out, and to her surprise, they laughed. The tension in the room eased.

“So,” Courtney said. “Where were we?”

“Gabrielle,” Charlotte said.

“Do you want to hear about Gabrielle?” Courtney asked Lana.

She felt flattered to be included in on gossip. “Sure. Go ahead.”

Courtney lowered her voice. Charlotte leaned in, and so did Lana. “The truth is,” Courtney said, “I don’t think things are going well with her and Javier.”

“Oh, no. I haven’t noticed. They seem fine,” Lana said.

“Well, she’s going to hide it, of course, especially from you. If you went over and asked her about it right now, she’d act like she didn’t know what you were talking about. But actions speak louder than words, and after I saw what I did yesterday afternoon.”

She let the words trail off.

“What? What did you see?” Charlotte asked.

“She was in the back hallway, next to the café, talking with someone.”

A frisson of unease traveled up Lana’s back. “Who?”

Charlotte stifled a laugh. “Oh no.”

“Everybody’s favorite male friend,” Courtney told Lana.

“Gil.” The name caught in her throat.

“Bingo,” Courtney said. “They were just talking, but I have to say, they were standing awfully close. I didn’t want it to look like I was listening in, so I just turned and went the other way. But I’ll tell you what, when I saw her twenty minutes later, she had a much bigger smile on her face.”

Charlotte seemed to find this hilarious. She was spluttering with laughter. Lana felt sick. Courtney took one look at Lana and contrition replaced her own grin.

“Oh, shit, I forgot you were good friends with him, that you really like him and stuff. I totally put my foot in my mouth there, didn’t I?”

“God, Courtney, you’re awful,” Charlotte exclaimed, still laughing. “Why didn’t you think before talking?”

“It’s all right.” Lana forced a casual expression. “I know what Gil is like. Everyone does.”

Courtney relaxed. “Oh, good. You see that about him. You know, I have to say, I really kind of pity his girlfriend Julia. She’s up against so much.”

“No kidding,” Charlotte added. Her phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her bag, glanced at the screen. “Boyd’s waiting for us,” she told Courtney. “We gotta run.”

“We do.” Courtney turned to Lana. “We’d invite you to join us for lunch, but Boyd’s the one taking us out. And he’s still a little irritable about getting dropped from
Arpeggio.”

“Oh, sure,” Lana said through numb lips. “No problem. Enjoy.”

“Thanks. See you later in rehearsal.”

Forty minutes later, she was leaving the café by way of the building’s lobby after lunch when she spied Gil, standing outside with another businessman in front of the WCBT building. Gil was listening in rapt attention to something the man was saying. A moment later Gil began to laugh. He clapped the man on the shoulder, who shifted so that Lana saw his profile.

Andy Redgrave.

Gil glanced up and saw her. Quickly he returned his attention to Andy, keeping his eyes locked there, ignoring Lana. It was terrible, like Andy’s party all over again. A rush of cold washed over her, followed by aggravation, even a perverse sense of the comedy of the situation at hand. Gil and Andy, Gil and Gabrielle, Julia, Jewel, the countless others in the company whose lust-glazed eyes followed Gil’s every movement—would the list ever end?

But she didn’t have to meekly accept it, watch Gil conduct his flirtations, his manipulations as she crept away, letting it undermine her confidence.

Enough of playing victim.

She headed over to the front double doors and marched right outside. Gil looked over at her in alarm. It was indeed a perfect duplicate of his reaction at Andy’s party, only this time she wasn’t going to allow it to stop her.

“Hi there,” she exclaimed, walking up to the two men. Andy turned to face her, puzzled. Gil began to stutter a hello, but Lana ignored him. She thrust out her hand to Andy.

“I’m Lana Kessler. I met you at your party, about a month ago. I was there with Alice.”

At the mention of Alice, Andy’s puzzled expression cleared.

“Yes, of course I remember you. How are you?” He shook her hand.

“Oh, great. Never been better. I’m a soloist with the company here, you might remember my telling you. And Alice tells me the three of you”—here, a careless gesture toward Gil without glancing his way—“have been working together.”

“Yes,” Gil started, but Andy spoke over him.

“Yes indeed, with an agreement signed, sealed and delivered. Alice will be my main contact now, in fact.” He studied her closer. “The two of you are still…friendly?”

“Oh, my goodness, yes. In fact,” she said, lowering her voice in a conspiratorial manner, “I’ve moved in with her.”

“Really!”

“Yes, really!” Lana beamed at him. She wagged a finger at him in a mock-disapproving manner. “And if I’m not mistaken,
you’re
the reason she got home so late last night.”

Andy laughed. “Guilty as charged.”

She could see Gil trying to send her a message with his eyes, but she ignored him. He did not want her there; he did not want her speaking to Andy, mentioning Alice or anything at all.

Too bad. She was doing this, she decided, for Alice, who’d helped her so much, to whom Lana had been unspeakably rude to the previous evening. Alice, another victim of Gil’s manipulation. Not to mention his hostility: he’d left two messages on the answering machine last night for Alice, the latter one stating, “You bitch, you’d better not be sleeping with him. Call me the minute you get home.” It had shocked Lana, hearing the harsh message, particularly since he’d left a message on her cell phone at roughly the same time, in a sweet, loving tone.

“And I must say,” Lana continued, “I wasn’t the only one wondering what she was doing out so late, was I, Gil? I heard the messages you left her.” She turned toward him, her and Andy both, and watched his mouth open and close in surprise. An instant later his eyes lit with relief as he gestured to the curb.

“That looks like your driver pulling up,” he told Andy.

“Well, I’ll let you boys say your goodbyes,” Lana told Andy in her best Courtney imitation. “I just wanted to stop and say hello.”

“Thank you,” Andy said, smiling back just as broadly. “Nice talking to you again.”

“Bye, Gil,” she sang out. “See you around.”

She turned and headed back toward the lobby. Yes, she’d be seeing Gil around. Soon. Because she could tell she’d made him very angry, which was a shocking, disorienting feeling. It frightened her, jolted something deep inside her, something that had thought it was safe.

Gil didn’t disappoint; he strode into the lobby two minutes later and came right up to the corner she’d planted herself in.

“I just want to know what that was all about,” he said, trying to keep his voice controlled. “Why you had to go barging in like that. Do you realize he just signed a letter of agreement for a quarter of a million dollars? That’s how much we’re getting from him. And you could have put it at risk.”

She angled her head at him as if in confusion. “If you’d already received his signature on an agreement, how could my greeting him have put things at risk?”

He glared at her. “Jesus. You sound just like Alice. What’s gotten into you?”