Page 64 of Pas de Don't
“Such a shit stirrer.” She grinned up at him.
“I think you like it,” he replied.
“I think I do, too,” she said.
Marcus’s palms were clammy, and no matter how many times he wiped them on his tracksuit pants, they stayed damp and prickly with anxiety the entire bus ride to the Opera House. He and Heather had done their secret agent routine, taking different buses from different stops a few blocks apart, so Marcus was alone as he walked to the end of Bennelong Point, where the Opera House sat waiting. Unignorable in its hugeness, its strangeness. He wished Heather could have been with him, so he’d have something else to look at and think about instead of the building and all that lay inside. By the time he arrived at the stage door, his heart was racing.
Deep breaths,he told himself as he made his way along the concrete hallway below the stage. Around him, his colleagues were arriving, and theatre staff went about their work. Just ahead, a member of the stage crew pushed several large plywood crates along the hallway on dollies as Julie, the costume mistress, jogged alongsidehim, unwilling to let the company’s expensive costumes out of her sight.
Marcus was still trying to marshal his breath when he arrived at the dressing room he used to share with the other half-dozen men soloists. He noticed the absence of his nameplate on the door and found a few dancers already inside, unpacking shoes and hoodies and plastic boxes full of makeup and Band-Aids. Marcus wasn’t performing this season, so his usual spot at the mirror would either sit empty or become storage for everyone’s stuff. Otherwise, the simple room looked just as he remembered: dressing mirrors and chairs along one wall, a slightly tired looking couch, and a clothes rack on the other. It smelled just as he remembered, too, a mix of hairspray, body spray, and sweat.
Marcus wiped his hands on his pants again, trying not to remember the nightmare that unfolded the last time he was surrounded by this scent.
But he could do this. He was ready. He’d spent the year preparing to come back here. Still, he lingered in the doorway, unwilling to step inside. He didn’t feel ready. He glanced down the hallway at the dressing room for women principals. Heather had taken the earlier bus, and she’d already be inside. He wanted nothing more than to be back in bed with her, inhaling her scent instead. He’d settle for a smile or a brief squeeze of her hand, anything to reassure him that he could get through this and out to the other side. But they couldn’t risk it here, not with every member of the company and half the artistic and administrative staff running around.
“You coming in, mate?” Ricky asked, and Marcus realised he’d been standing there a while. He was about to answer when the loudspeaker mounted over the door dinged, and Peter’s voice crackled into the room.
“Dancers, welcome to the Opera House, and welcome to tech week. Please make your way to the stage. Company class will begin in ten minutes.” There was another ding, and the room went quiet, but the hallway filled with dancers heading to the stage. Ricky gavehimself a quick once-over in the mirror, seized his water bottle, and squeezed past Marcus with a nod. Marcus dropped his bag hastily on the couch, pulled out his ballet slippers and, little though he wanted to, joined the throng.
Alice was already there, helping to arrange the barres in neat lines across the stage. She then sat and began putting on her pointe shoes. When she saw Marcus hovering anxiously in the wings, she gestured for him to join her.
“You okay?” she asked as he sat next to her. “This is probably a lot.”
Marcus nodded gratefully. “I’m fine, just...nervous.”
“I know,” Alice said quietly, adjusting her padded pouches before sliding one foot into a shoe. “But remember, it’s just class. Same as you’ve been doing these last few weeks. Just in a different place.”
“Yeah,” Marcus sighed, pulling on his own shoes. He tried to muster the same excitement he’d felt when he’d come back to class, but it was futile. Whatever he told Alice, he wasn’t fine. This place felt haunted, or cursed, even though he didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. Alice then gestured someone else over, and a moment later, Heather dropped her pointe shoes next to her and sat down with a friendly smile.
“And how are you feeling, Miss America?”
“I’m nervous,” Heather admitted, keeping her eyes on Alice. “The first run-through always makes me jumpy. And I didn’t get to do my usual warm-up routine today.”
“Well, you two make a fine pair,” Alice said, and Marcus just managed to keep his face impassive. Heather looked at Alice with confusion on her face, then a flash of panic, before Alice added, “Marcus is nervous, too.”
“Oh,” Heather replied, her relief audible to him, though hopefully not to Alice. She met Marcus’s gaze, and the side of her mouth lifted in a tiny, almost imperceptible smile. “She’ll be right, mate. Isn’t that what Australians say? She’ll be right?”
He returned her smile, grateful for an excuse to look at her. “She’ll be right,” he repeated, hoping it was true. She lowered her head and busied herself with her ribbons.
“Are you going to stick around when class is over?” Alice asked him, rolling over onto her back and pulling one knee into her chest.
Heather lifted her head and gave him a brief, hopeful look.
He didn’t want to stay. He wanted to get through company class and then get the hell out of here. But he couldn’t refuse Heather. And if he took a seat in the audience, he’d be able to watch her dance the ballet in its entirety. As if he’d miss a chance to watch her closely, to take in her every movement without having to invent an excuse to look at her in public.
“Yeah,” he said in Alice’s direction, watching Heather’s face relax into a smile from the corner of his eye. “I’ll stick around.”
When company class ended, Peter gave them an hour’s break to eat and rest. In her dressing room, Heather pulled on a knee-length rehearsal skirt, the kind she’d wear in both acts ofGiselle. The costume mistress had taken her measurements last week, and by the time she’d arrived at the theater today, her two costumes waited for her in the dressing room she shared with two other principal dancers. For act one, a brown and yellow peasant style dress, and a long white tutu for act two. Later this week, they’d do a full dress rehearsal with the orchestra in the pit.
Heather’s heart fluttered with nerves as she checked her makeup and low bun in the mirror one last time. Something about performing an entire ballet in front of the company always seemed more nerve-racking to her than a performance for an audience of strangers, no matter how well-versed in ballet they were. It was one thing to perform in a theater packed with admiring ballet-goers, but it was another, much more vulnerable thing to run through a two-hour ballet in front of your eagle-eyed peers, who were close enough to see every tiny wobble and every finger out of place. Whoknew exactly what the steps were meant to look like when done right and could tell instantly if you’d done them wrong.
Gathering up the pointe shoes she’d need for the run-through—a pair for each act, plus a spare pair just in case—Heather slipped from the dressing room and headed for the wings.
The stage was full of dancers, some stretching and chatting, some pulling on their shoes. She spotted Alice in the corner with her headphones in, running through snippets of act two choreography. She kept her eyes shut as her hands waved around her face in small, flittering approximations of the larger steps. Out in the audience, Peter sat a few rows from the orchestra pit. With him were two members of the artistic staff Heather recognized and two suits she didn’t.
The whole place buzzed with excited chatter, anticipation heavy in the air as she nervously pulled a few pins from her bun, tightened them between her teeth, and pushed them back into place. She had to be careful not to stick them in too tight. Halfway through the first act, she would remove most of them, and then during the mad scene, she would throw herself on the floor and the dancer playing her mother would discreetly pull out the rest. When Heather stood, her hair would fall down, and there she would be: a mad, heartbroken woman.
Heather didn’t feel heartbroken today. Anxious about the run-through in front of the full company, yes, but not heartbroken. On the contrary, when she’d woken up this morning to find Marcus awake and gazing at her, she’d felt her heart swell in her chest and give a pleasant, almost painful squeeze of longing.
