Corpse de Ballet (27 page)

Although the pas de trois occurred before the scene she had tried and scrapped earlier that day, Ruth had not yet made much headway with it. Juliet watched as she slowly worked through the measures of the music, which was grave, hypnotic, and extremely beautiful. The beginning was fixed: In an allusion to his having been hired to entertain her, Pip bent and loaded Miss Havisham up onto his shoulders, then straightened and carried her a few steps before gently allowing her to slide down and onto her feet. But after that, the trio was pretty much up for grabs. Ruth felt her way along, drawing heavily on the contributions of her leading dancers, especially Lily (Juliet was surprised to see), who seemed of the three the most focused this afternoon. Elektra was plagued with sneezing fits and complained, as the session wore on, that she didn't feel quite well. Hart seemed uncharacteristically distracted. But Lily Bediant was full of ideas, even suggesting steps for the other two that would express Pip's ardent admiration and the languid sufferance Estella returns. Behind her, the second Havisham, Mary Christie, worked hard to keep up, while Kirsten Ahlswede and Nicky Sabatino longed for Ruth's attention in vain.

At a certain point, working with Lily and Patrick, Ruth devised a lift in which Pip was to seize Estella by the waist, lower her almost to the ground as if he would ravish her, then turn with her still in his hands and raise her high above himself, so that he looked up at her as if in worship instead. Estella was to remain rigid throughout this, indifferent, emotionally beyond reach. It was a typically Renswickian reversal, a sequence of moves that created momentum for the dancers as well as an expectation in the audience, then turned everything on its head. Ruth had created several like it in
Wuthering Heights.
But they had not been easy to work out and this one promised to be a lulu. There were a dozen different physical conundrums to solve: how Pip should hold Estella at each moment, how he could handle the load of her weight as he slowly raised her above him; how Estella could cheat by imperceptibly helping to propel herself up, then position herself so that his hands would help keep her body rigid, how her weight could be distributed to take the least toll on Pip. There was intricate footwork, too, lest they step on or trip each other, and precise timing vis-à-vis the music. Juliet watched, torn between amazement and absolute boredom, as each instant of the maneuver was painstakingly planned, practiced, retooled, retried. Elektra was gleaming with sweat and (throwing away delicacy) had taken to grunting loudly whenever Hart grabbed her, lifted her up, or set her down. By the time Ruth was satisfied enough to move on, Hart, too, was drenched with perspiration and breathing in hard, short gasps.

So it should not, perhaps, have come as such a complete surprise when, having been asked by Ruth to return to the start of the pas de trois and do the whole thing, to music, so that she could see the new lift in context, Hart began the scene as required by lifting Lily Bediant to his shoulders, straightened, carried her some steps away, then lost his grip and dumped her onto the floor behind him.

There ensued what Juliet now learned was the usual pandemonium following a dancer's fall. Victorine (who had been at work with some Wilis in the studio next door) was summoned, as was the physical therapist, who happened to be on site that day. Lily had broken her fall with her hands, but her chin had banged on the floor and the underside of her jaw was bleeding a little. Still, she kept saying she was okay and could everyone just please go on working without her? Juliet thought her quite valiant. At the least, falling head first from a height of five feet or so must shake a person up. Hart, meanwhile, was beside himself with mortification and regret. To drop a partner, while far from unheard of, was a violation of the most basic kind of trust.

“I don't know what happened, I had her and then I just—” he kept sputtering, while those around him tried not to look at him as if he were a criminal.

“It happens,” Patrick told him repeatedly, putting an arm around him, patting his shoulder.

“Not to me. I've never dropped anyone.”

“It happens, buddy.”

Ruth, though dismayed, professed herself relieved that the fall had not been worse. Lily would have to go see Dr. Keller. But the bleeding had stopped almost at once and she seemed to be more or less herself.

“They do get dropped,” Ruth whispered to Juliet. “If you looked under the chins of ten ballerinas, you'd probably see scars on five. She's lucky, considering.”

The physical therapist had arrived and had sat Lily down to examine her. Hart knelt beside her chair. When the therapist had given his opinion that nothing too awful had happened, he breathed a sigh of relief that was audible throughout the studio.

“Lily, I am so sorry—”

Lily shook her glossy platinum mane, which today was only loosely bound with a ribbon. “Stop. It was an accident.”

Juliet's estimation of Lily rocketed skyward. Hitherto, all she had seen of the prima ballerina was peevishness, tantrums, and vanity; here, finally, was part of what had enabled her to become great. Patrick was calling for a car to take her to the doctor.

“Let me go with you?” Hart said.

“It's really not necessary.”

“Please. Unless you can't stand me.”

Lily smiled, an act of kindness that had the unfortunate effect of causing her chin to bleed again. “If it makes you feel better,” she said. She stood, wobbled, and quickly sat again.

“Let him go with you,” ordered Victorine, who had been glowering at Hayden but saw that he would make a more useful escort than she would. She produced a handkerchief from within the long sleeve of her leotard and handed it solemnly to her favorite.

Looking as pale as his victim, Hart knelt beside her while Patrick fetched Lily's purse and some street clothes for her to slip on. By the time she limped out on Hayden's arm, it was past seven and all the studios were emptying out. Dancers could be heard in the corridors; doors opened and shut all over the building.

“Be very careful with her,” Victorine warned, as Lily moved cautiously away. Victorine watched them down the corridor, then said good night and herself went slowly out the door, her back as straight as ever, her steps visibly hesitant, almost trembling.

Meanwhile, predictably no doubt, Ruth had had a few further thoughts about the new lift that she wanted to try out with Patrick. Juliet watched, ready to leave but determined to have a quiet word about the threatening note upstairs before she went.

Ruth had begun to trace out a new pattern of footwork with her assistant when she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, damn! I meant to see if I could have the Pips and Magwitches tomorrow between three and four to get started on that new…” She broke off for a moment, then resumed, “Juliet, do you know who Amy Egan is? The woman who does the schedules, do you know her office?”

“Yes.”

Amy Egan was a middle-aged former dancer who spent most of her day trying to reconcile the conflicting needs of some eighty-odd dancers and dance masters. She and Juliet had introduced themselves to each other one day in the second floor ladies' room when Amy was looking desperately for a tampon, which Juliet was able to supply.

“Would you mind very much running up there to see if she's left or not?” Ruth asked. “If she's there, could you ask her? If I could just have Hart and Ryder, even that would be okay. Three to four is our lunch break tomorrow,” she went on to the exhausted but always stoical Patrick, “but we can work right through.”

Patrick's blue eyes widened briefly, but he said nothing and Juliet left on her errand. Amy Egan was not in her office—indeed, the whole second floor was silent and seemed to be empty—but Juliet took a photocopy of the next day's schedule from a stack always kept on her desk. At least Ruth could see where Ryder and Hart were expected during that hour. She was passing back along the corridor to the stairs when a voice caught her ear. It was Victorine.

“
Mais comment cela se peut-il?
” she said; or at least, that was what Juliet thought she said. The door to her office was closed, but Victorine's voice was loud and quite clear.

There was no answering voice, and Juliet surmised that she was talking to herself. That same sound of a drawer being opened and shut which she had heard in the afternoon was now repeated, and the voice went on distractedly. “
Mais—où sont-ils, mes mistenflûtes?
” it said.

“How wonderful my French really is!” exclaimed Juliet to herself, pausing in the hall to preen herself on this fresh evidence of her brain's superior powers. She had minored in French at Radcliffe, a circumstance that had come in handy while researching
The Parisian Gentleman,
which Angelica K-H had written some seven or eight years ago. She clearly recalled encountering “
mistenflûte
” in the
Mémoires d'un Officier de l'Armée de Napoléon.
“To remember that, after all this time!” she now marveled. Silently, she translated the whole of Victorine's spoken thoughts: “‘But how can that be? But—where are they, my thingamajigs?' I wonder what she's missing. Maybe
I
could help her,” she reflected, with a final touch of vanitas.

However, she decided on reflection that the even nobler thing to do was to move tactfully away, leaving Mademoiselle her illusion of privacy.

She went back downstairs and was about to enter Studio Three when a slender figure in street clothes darted up beside her.

“Miss Kestrel-Haven?”

Juliet looked around to find Teri Malone's brown eyes fixed beseechingly on her.

She laughed. “Please, call me Juliet.”

“Of course.” Teri's apple-cheeks began to flush. “I'm so sorry—I mean, I hope you won't mind—” She bent her head and started to burrow into a large leather bag slung over her shoulder. “If you don't want to look at it, of course I completely understand.”

She looked up again, holding out perhaps twenty sheets of paper clipped together.

“It's only a rough draft, of course. But it's Chapter One, and I hoped…” She lost courage and her voice faded away.

“I'd be delighted,” Juliet lied, taking the proffered pages. “I'll let you know as soon as I've read it.”

“Oh, you are so—Thank you!” breathed Teri, and scampered away.

Juliet tucked the chapter under her arm and reentered the studio. Ruth had finally stopped torturing Patrick, she found, and let him go home. Now she had gathered up her own things and was on her way out the door.

“You were absolutely right about that nightmare scene with the corps,” she greeted Juliet, taking her arm and moving her back out the door, then swiftly down the corridor toward the locker rooms. “This pas de deux is going to add so much depth to the Pip–Magwitch relationship, and when you think about it, that's the pivot of the whole story in some ways, isn't it? How brilliant of you to see it. I'm starting to think we'll have to cosign this ballet. Did you find Amy?”

Juliet shook her head and handed Ruth the schedule. Pleasant as it was to be fulsomely thanked, she did not want to wait another second before raising the matter of the mysterious note.

“Ruth, have you been up to your office today? Did you see what's on your desk?”

Sweaty and newly aware of a hundred aches, Ruth did not slow down but continued to hurry along the hall, bringing Juliet with her. “Why, what's on my desk?” she asked.

“Then you haven't seen it.”

“Haven't seen what?”

“Well, I hate to tell you, especially when you've got your creative juices flowing again, but—” The two women now entered the locker room, which gave every sign of being deserted. Still, Juliet circled the double bank of lockers in the middle and stuck her head into the shower room before going on in a low tone, “There's a handwritten note on your desk that says ‘Lighten up on the dancers or else.' No signature, of course.”

Ruth started to laugh.

“What's funny?”

Ruth only laughed more, then hugged Juliet. “I wrote that, you dope, after you lectured me this morning,” she said. “It's a reminder from me to me.”

*   *   *

Juliet decided not to read Rob's letter—or Teri's chapter—until she had had dinner and a chance to rest. Sitting all day in a rehearsal studio full of people was very trying to her, never mind the various tensions and tasks she was there to try to address. In the ordinary course of things, she was alone most of her waking hours, albeit with Ames often in the next room. And this, as a rule, was all the company she liked. Whatever Rob had to say, she would receive it better when she was more refreshed.

She had stopped on her way home from the Jansch at a Korean market, where she collected a small mountain of lettuces, bell peppers, mushrooms, avocados, and other oddments. The sight of Elektra Andreades piteously savoring her little raisins lingered in her memory, and she tossed a packet of raw cashews, some croutons, half a dozen kiwis, and a cantaloupe into her basket as well. For a few moments, she hovered by a flat brimming with Bing cherries, dark and firm and almost intolerably tempting. But “pesticides, pesticides,” she admonished herself, hardening her will by envisioning a fresh squirt of toxic chemicals glistening on each luscious mouthful. She would ask Ames to call Whole Foods and find out if they had organic cherries. Forbidden fruit, indeed.

It was now almost the end of July, and the summer had been ripening beautifully. The sultry heat of a few weeks ago had been replaced by a less humid, more genial warmth. The equinox was far enough behind that the evenings were noticeably shorter, but there was still plenty of light at eight o'clock when she took her salad (now washed, cut up, dressed and tumbled into a gigantic porcelain bowl) up to the terrace and sat down to look at the river and eat.

Reading at dinner was a habit she tried to avoid, since it took away half the taste of the meal. Instead, she let her eyes rest, now on the fresh, gleaming salad, now on the rosy horizon and violet water. She marveled, as she often did, at the variety of food, its fantastic shapes and colors, its pleasantness to the mouth. She marveled likewise at the beauty of the river and the horizon, wondering why it should be that a vista of trees, river, and sky could so deeply comfort the soul. Not long ago, in the lobby of the Met, between the second and third acts of
La Traviata,
she had overheard a young woman remark to her companion, “Nature is the screen saver of life.” Now she remembered this and sighed. She supposed nature really had become the screen saver of life—and life, for many, the screen saver of television.