Corpse de Ballet (9 page)

By now, Juliet had realized that chatting with Teri would give her a fine opportunity to get a little background dope on life at the Jansch. Teri was a corps member and, as such, Juliet reasoned, more likely to know of petty grievances among her colleagues than, say, Hart, or Anton himself. In the three days since it had been circulated, Greg Fleetwood's notice regarding the “malicious incident” had still achieved exactly nothing, nor was there any reason to think it would do more in the future. No one had come forward, and by Saturday the whole business seemed to have been forgotten. But the fact that it remained unsolved and unpunished irked Juliet. If nothing else, it offended her sense of her own mental acuity (a sense that often verged on intellectual arrogance). And it worried her for Ruth.

Sunday had dawned dense with a heavy, noisy summer rain, and the women were eating lunch in Juliet's dining room. The room was lofty and long, and the table sat twelve, but Juliet thought the kitchen, though convenient, lacked the appropriate sense of occasion. The dining room was the one part of her apartment with which she had never felt quite satisfied. A thick Persian rug covered the floor, and the table was made of dark, highly polished oak. Hunter-green velvet curtains framed the two long windows, outside of which the steady rain now made a second curtain, veiling the river view. The effect should have been inviting and luxurious, yet the place always struck its owner as too stiff for the homely pleasure of eating. She never sat at this table without thinking about changing the decor.

With regard to the lunch, it would be more accurate to say that Juliet was eating, while Teri was sitting near food.

“You don't mind if I just … pick?” the dancer had asked apologetically, when Juliet sat her down before the lavish meal Ames had laid in before going home on Friday. “I got a notice from Max last week. Two pounds.” The girl's cheeks crimsoned as she specified the shameful number, and she gave a nervous, unballerinalike giggle.

Juliet politely waved away any concern about how much or how little her guest consumed; but now, as she chewed squid salad, and as Teri watched her chew squid salad, Juliet could not help furtively eying the girl's figure and trying to guess which square inch of her would prove susceptible to reduction. She also could not help considering how she would have felt had Max Devijian told her to lose two pounds of body weight or risk losing her job.

“… So then I thought of writing a book about Eau Claire, because hardly anyone ever sets a novel there, you know?” Teri was saying. “I actually wrote the beginning, almost a chapter. But then I started worrying, maybe there's a reason people don't write novels about Eau Claire, because maybe no one wants to read about Eau Claire. You know?”

The question appeared to be rhetorical, and Juliet contented herself with murmuring, “Mm.” So far, Teri had needed no encouragement to talk about her aspirations as a novelist, nor had she asked for advice or information. She seemed to be on autopilot, and Juliet was inclined to let her talk herself out. Teri's small voice had a sort of whistle in it. Her vowels were distinctly Midwestern. The afternoon was a quiet one, with most people in Juliet's building out of town for the weekend, and Teri's voice flowed peaceably on, a bit like white noise.

Juliet had no plans after lunch, and she thought she might just spend a few hours at her desk, seeing as how she had played hooky at the Jansch three afternoons this week (she had gone in on Friday as well). She was just toying with the idea of a comical love scene set in the Pump Room at Bath when something Teri said caught her ear.

“… but even if they didn't win the lawsuit, you know, it would be so awful to have to go through it. And it isn't just the Jansch that could take me to court, any dancer who thought a character was based on him could sue me. A friend of my dad's is a lawyer, and he said it's not libel if it's not unflattering. But you can't write a novel and make all the characters friendly and good and nice, even I know that. You have to have conflict. Right?”

Juliet smiled vaguely. With mechanical precision, “The conflict between one good and another good is often the most interesting kind,” she said. “But let me understand you. You think that if you write a novel based on your experiences in the Jansch, someone from the company might take you to court?”

“Don't you?”

The older woman pushed her chair back—it hadn't been much fun eating in front of her abstemious visitor anyhow—and absently ran a splayed hand through her curly blond hair. “Give me a f'r instance,” she said.

“Well, f'r instance,” Teri replied willingly, though her cheeks began to color again, “suppose one of the dancers in the novel stole another dancer's purse? Then everyone would think I meant Graham Barr. Even if he was different in other ways.”

“Would they?”

“Well, I would. Graham stole three purses before they caught him and threw him out of the company.”

“Hm. It seems to me, you'd be protected in that case by the Small Penis rule.”

Teri giggled, but Juliet went on placidly, “The Small Penis rule states that, since a man is reluctant to come forward and announce that the character with the small penis was based on him, if you give someone a humiliating trait, you're likely to be safe. Anyhow, as I understand it, it's not libel if it's true. Have there been any thefts since he left?” As casually as she could, she added, “Could that be what Greg Fleetwood meant by a ‘malicious incident' the other day?”

If Teri knew anything about the talcum powder, she hid it very well.

“I don't know what that was about,” she said, looking very much as if she would have liked to know. “I don't think there've been any more thefts. But I mean—what if I just show a dancer who's really selfish, or someone with a very nasty temper? We have them,” she said. “Or someone who sleeps around a lot, or a married dancer who's having an affair? There are so many reasons someone could get pissed off—Excuse me, could be offended and claim I've damaged their reputation.”

“Do people sleep around a lot?” Juliet inquired, at the same time pretending great interest in the rainy view.

“Not everybody, of course, but sure, lots of people. I mean,” she gave a shy smile, “maybe not lots, but people do have affairs.”

“Oh. Like who?” asked Juliet, feeling wildly uncomfortable. ‘Like who?' indeed. What a question.

To her credit, Teri Malone looked uneasy. “I'm not sure I should…” she mumbled.

“Anton Mohr, do you mean?” offered Juliet, thinking fondly of a good, long scrub in the shower. “I've heard about him.”

Relieved, “I guess everyone knows about Anton by now,” Teri said.

“I guess.” Juliet grinned. At least, she tried for a grin.

Teri, unfortunately, continued silent. Juliet decided she would have to take a stab in the dark.

“I've heard he and Kirsten Ahlswede have been partners off stage,” she hazarded, making her tone as insinuating as possible.

“You have?” Teri looked astounded. “That's one person I never—I'll have to tell Lily,” she finished.

Hurriedly, “Maybe I got the names mixed up,” Juliet corrected herself. “Could it have been Lily Bediant I mean?”

“Yeah, that makes much more sense.” Teri, her guard down, nodded. “But that was almost a year ago, just after Anton joined the Jansch. Lily broke it off. She kind of—” The girl faltered, then went on with pleased embarrassment, “I guess Lily really likes me, because she kind of confides in me, you know?”

Juliet tried to imagine what would draw that taut, prickly creature to this teenaged mass of wistfulness. Probably, she judged, it was the combination of a sympathetic soul with an unthreatening body, a body incapable of competing with hers on the stage. Even at forty, Lily Bediant could literally dance rings around Teri Malone. Teri knew it herself. She had already told Juliet that she knew—even at twenty—that she would never get out of the corps. That was why she was so interested in writing. Juliet did not think writing a very good fallback plan for anyone, but she supposed it beat ballet.

“Anyway, Lily walked in on Anton one night in bed with—” Teri's wholesome cheeks went into full flush. “You do know—?”

“With a man?”

Teri's voice dropped as if a hushed tone would make her revelation more discreet. “Greg Fleetwood. Anton had told Lily they had a thing in Germany, but ages ago. The way he said it made Lily think it was all over.”

“Maybe he thought it was,” said Juliet charitably, at the same time wondering how long exactly “ages” could be, especially given Anton's youth.

“Maybe. But you really aren't supposed to sleep with the management. And Anton's been sleeping with everybody. Administrators and principals and soloists and even corps members—Olympia Andreades, you know her?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Well, Anton slept with her, and with—But actually,” Teri broke off abruptly, “I'm not really sure I should be talking about all this.”

Hearing in her voice a new note of wariness, “Of course,” Juliet said demurely. “Let's change the subject.” It would not do for Teri to feel she had been grilled.

“I just know I wouldn't like other people to talk about me that way,” said Teri primly.

“Certainly not,” Juliet agreed, though she wondered at the same time what kind of lurid past Teri could possibly have to be discreet about. Disappointed as a sleuth, but more relaxed as a person, Juliet stood and moved toward the kitchen. “Would you like some iced coffee? Tell me about how you think
Great Ex
is going. Don't you think Kirsten makes a wonderful Estella?”

Teri stood also and, picking up her pristine plate and silver, began to follow Juliet from the room. “Coffee would be terrific, thanks.”

“And
Great Ex?
” Juliet persisted, beginning to move around the spacious kitchen. It still had the original glass-fronted cabinets, installed when the building went up in 1928, though a huge Sub-Zero covered up the dumbwaiter. Ames sometimes joked (at least, Juliet thought it was a joke; it was hard to tell with the dour Ames) about reconnecting the bells for the servants to the indicator box here.

“Kirsten's all right,” Teri said.

“But?” prompted Juliet.

“But I think Lily would have been better.”

Juliet's eyebrows shot up before she could rein them in. “Lily?”

“She would have been better,” repeated the girl loyally. “And it's not just that we're friends. Victorine was furious when Ruth cast her as Miss Havisham.”

“Was she?” Juliet busied herself at the refrigerator to avoid making eye contact with the girl at this delicate moment. “Why?”

“Lily's much too youthful to dance Miss Havisham,” said Teri, with the nearest approach to passion Juliet had yet heard from her. “There's no reason on earth she should be cast in a character role like that. I mean, she's going to be Anton's Aurora in
Sleeping Beauty
this season, you know!”

“A character role?” Juliet echoed, perplexed. “What's that?”

“Oh, you know—the kind older dancers get, the kind where you don't dance much. The Princess's mother. The Bridegroom's father.”

“Dear me. I hadn't thought of Miss Havisham as that kind of part,” said Juliet. “I wonder if Ruth does. Was Lily upset herself?”

“Lily is much too professional to protest something like that officially. But between you and I, it did give her a jolt. She actually thought of refusing. But she's too professional for that, too.”

“Between you and me,” Juliet corrected the would-be writer, then, as the girl reddened, wished she hadn't. Know-it-allness was Juliet's besetting sin, one that annoyed friends and demolished intimacy. At the same time, another part of her brain noted that Lily had not been too professional to throw a tantrum during Wednesday's session. For a moment, a vivid image filled her mind: Lily Bediant as a sort of first wife, forced to watch and smile while the Jansch moved on to a second marriage with a younger lover.

Having now filled two glasses with ice and chilled coffee, Juliet smiled an invitation at Teri and led the way to her library. This was a place of modest proportions, with corner windows giving on both the river and Eighty-fourth Street below. Unlike the living room, which was lovely but inalterably grand, this was a cozy room, lined with books and filled with overstuffed furniture. A glass case in a far corner housed a small collection of Regency treasures: an ivory snuff box; a heart-shaped locket whose glass front enclosed a braided lock of reddish hair; a “moral” board game called “The Mirror of Truth” (its squares labeled Passion, Hypocrisy, Envy, Lying, Levity, and so on); a dueling pistol made by Manton himself; a cravat tied à la Byron; a mourning card, and other bric-à-brac.

Teri took a wordless glance at these, then sank gracefully into one of the two wide leather armchairs that flanked the bricked-in fireplace. Her loose, white sundress fell softly against her, revealing the tiny frame within, and Juliet wondered again how she could spare two pounds.

“Were other people disappointed by the casting?” Juliet asked lightly, settling herself in the opposite chair.

Teri shrugged. “You bet. Everyone in the company wanted to be in
Great Ex.
It's for sure the most interesting project we have going this year.”

“I imagine the auditions were fierce.”

“Oh, there weren't any auditions. Ruth just came into the studios and watched us work, and then she made her decisions.”

“Really?” Juliet's surprise was genuine.

“Some people thought she should have had a trying-out period at least, to even up the playing field for people who didn't know her. Some of the soloists are really great, and for sure they could dance principal roles. But Ruth knew Anton from when she worked with him in Frankfurt, so—I don't want to say anything rude about her,” she interrupted herself, abruptly turning prim. “I know you're friends.” She flashed a practiced stage smile quite different from the bashful item she had been exhibiting till now. “And you are so nice to have me over.”