Page 31 of Pas de Don't
“How was your weekend?” she asked. Had he also spent the last two days trying, and failing, to pretend nothing had happened on Friday?
“It was fine, thanks,” he said neutrally. He placed one hand on the barre and bent his knees slowly, first one and then the other. He moved tentatively, and Heather felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Of course he hadn’t spent the weekend thinking about her, and of course he wasn’t anxious about seeing her thismorning. He had more important things on his mind: it was his first morning back at work in a year, a day he’d been working towards for months. He was focused on that. He was here to dance, and so—she reminded herself yet again—was she.
Alice, who had lowered herself into a plank, twisted toward Heather.
“So, what’s your favorite part of Sydney so far?” she said, her voice a little distorted by the strange angle of her neck.
“Uh, well,” Heather said, racking her brain for a bland answer.Marcus’s forearms, she thought. Not the bland answer she needed. “The people,” she said, instead, and was surprised to realize it was the truth, if not the whole truth. “Everyone’s really friendly and welcoming, and I already feel so at home here. And the harbor is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had no idea how beautiful it would be. Being able to dance on top of it every day is such a privilege.”
Alice walked her toes up to her hands and stood folded in half for a few seconds before rolling up and smiling at Heather. “Yep, it’s pretty special. But there’s plenty of Sydney that isn’t on the water, and you should see that, too. And the mountains. The harbor’s nice, but you can’t beat the Blue Mountains for views.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Heather said. She should start a list, she thought, of all the places she wanted to go, if there was time between rehearsals, performances, and whatever press commitments Peter and the company were lining up for her. She reached into her bag and retrieved her phone, intending to write herself a note, and saw Carly had texted.
Carly, 9:47AM: Casting email for the first half of the season just went out...Mr. K cast Melissa in a bunch of dances with Voldemort.
Heather stared at the screen. Even Carly’s new nickname for Jack—apparently she’d tired of “Asshole McGee” and “Dipshit von Fuckface”—couldn’t soften this blow.
“If it weren’t for me,you’d still be stuck in the corps with Carly.”
Well, it seemed Melissa wouldn’t be stuck in the corps for long.
Carly, 9:48AM: And his goons have been talking shit about me under their breath in class...But my meditation app says I should inhale deeply and think of a tranquil forest or something
Heather sighed. She knew exactly who Carly was talking about. Samuel and Brett were Jack’s closest buddies, and if Jack had been badmouthing her and Carly to them, it was hardly a surprise they’d taken matters into their own hands.
She shuddered, then glanced around her to see if anyone had noticed. Marcus stood at the barre rotating his bad ankle in slow, careful circles, and Alice was on the floor putting on her shoes and catching Marcus up on her Ikea ordeal. Marcus grinned as he listened to Alice’s animated story, but, Heather realized with a jolt, he’d been watching her, too.
Their eyes met again, and he gave her a questioning little frown.
You okay?he mouthed.
Gratitude filled her chest. She gave him a tiny nod and an even tinier smile, then turned back to her phone and tapped out a hasty response.
Heather, 9:58AM: Well, I hope Melissa’s up to it.
Carly, 9:59AM: Really? Because I hope they both fall into the orchestra pit
Heather chuckled. As she typed, Peter and the pianist arrived, and the chatter in the studio tapered off.
Heather, 9:59AM: As long as Samuel and Brett go too. Hang in there, I love you. Gotta go, class starting.
She hit send and stashed her phone in her bag.
Heather stood, took her place at the barre, and arranged her feet in first position. Peter began the class, and she fixed an attentive smile on her face, trying to chase Jack’s voice from her head.
That was over. She was here now. And she was here to prove what she could do on her own.
“Good morning everyone,” Peter called, and received a murmur of greeting in response. Marcus faced the front of the room, and his thrumming anxiety, which had receded while he chatted with Alice, came rushing back.
He had thought about this day for months. Longingly, sometimes despairingly. When his scans revealed he’d completely ruptured his Achilles, when his surgeon told him what kind of recovery time he was looking at, Marcus had wondered if he was ever going to dance again. A tiny part of him still did. Plenty of men didn’t come back from this kind of injury, even when the surgery went well. In the exhausted, grief-stricken days and weeks after his surgeries, and after his dad’s death, he’d wondered whether it was worth trying to come back. Maybe it was enough to walk again, to get enough functionback to jog and swim and live a normal, active life. Maybe he didn’t need to spend months getting back into ballet shape, especially in his early thirties. Even if he did manage to regain his dancing strength and range of motion...how long would he really need it?
When he tried to reconstruct those first few months now, Marcus could only conjure a swirling blur of physical discomfort, punctuated by occasional spikes of anguish and stretches of blank numbness. He had a few firm memories that stood out, sharp and crisp against the fog. Most of them were inconsequential—a too-salty canapé at his father’s wake, or the first time he’d laughed out loud at a sitcom joke after a week of mindlessly watching Netflix in bed—but one of them was not.
A few weeks after the funeral, he’d ventured downstairs to the mailboxes in the lobby of his building, where his mail had been piling up for who knew how long. As he’d stood there, balanced awkwardly on one leg and one crutch while he fumbled with his keys, one of his elderly neighbours tottered past, leaving the scent of her hairspray in her wake. It smelled like childhood ballet concerts, Marcus had thought, the moment the smell reached him. Like letting one of the backstage mums lacquer him with Aqua Net as he squirmed against a scratchy rented costume in a crowd of similarly restless kids. Like creeping into the wings and peeking at the audience even though his ballet teacher had forbidden them to. It smelled, he had realised with a hard swallow, like his parents greeting him in the theatre lobby after the performance. It smelled like a tight hug from his dad, beaming with pride and awe at watching his younger son on stage.
It wasn’t like Marcus had decided, in that moment in front of his mailbox, that he would dance again no matter what. It wasn’t nearly so dramatic. But when he looked back on it now, he realised he had been looking for a reason to at least try.You only fail if you never try, his dad had told him before his first ballet competition, when Marcus was beside himself with nerves. And he knew how proud his father would be to know Marcus was, in fact, trying.
Now that the day had arrived, though, he was antsy with doubt. The pianist began a slow tune for their pliés, and Marcus took it gently, not bending his knees too deeply, and doing a demi-plié when the rest of the company went down into a deep grand plié. Over their heads, Peter caught his eye and gave him a nod of approval. Clearly, Sharon had talked to the boss and told him Marcus would be back in class but was under her very strict instructions to limit his range of movement for now.
