I know he brought the DVD to make us watch the bonus features. We're about halfway through the movie when Melinda says “I fucking hate her mother. What is wrong with this woman?”
“Oh, I know!” Henry says.
“Cue fragile emotional meltdown and stereotype of the uptight repressed ballerina,” Melinda says, sounding dramatic and distressed.
“Drink!” I say. Because we all drink every time this girl has some meltdown. “Where does that myth even come from? Like bitch, please, try living one day in my life and tell me ballerinas are these delicate fragile flowers about to fall apart every second.”
“They do that to the men, too,” Henry says.
“Not really in this movie,” I say. Which is probably why he likes it. The stereotypes are all on the girls this time.
“I mean in general. Like there is this assumption of weakness in men who dance ballet. And that we're all gay.”
“You are gay,” Melinda says throwing a handful of popcorn at him.
“Yeah, but I'm one of only three out of the whole company! I want a refund. I was sold a lie!”
In spite of the fact that tomorrow is Wednesday and all that may mean, I can't help laughing. I can't help trying to hold onto this moment where everything seems good and normal.
“Besides, the male dancers are always touching the female dancers pretty intimately,” Melinda says.
“If we had any other job, and our male co-workers touched us like our partners do for some of these lifts, it would be a sexual harassment scandal,” I say a little loud because I always get a little loud when I drink.
By this point, the movie has been drowned out with our rants about dance politics and how non-dancers will never understand us.
“When is Conall coming home?” Melinda asks suddenly, completely killing all the joy in this night—even though she doesn't mean to or even realize she did it.
My mind goes to the grout in the master bathroom. I'm like a hamster in a wheel with this grout issue. And I feel like I've got a guilty look on my face, but we're all drunk and nobody will notice. Right? “He said a few weeks.”
“Has he called?”
“He never calls when he's out of town.”
“I bet he's with that whore he named the boat after... what's her name again?” Henry asks.
“Stella,” I say. “And probably.”
“The Delectable Stella,” Melinda clarifies, as if this clarification needs to be made. “What kind of piece of shit takes his mistress on a not-so-secret vacation on his wife's birthday? And at the start of the dance season.”
“Conall does,” I say. “Anyway, I hate for him to watch me perform. He makes me nervous. He doesn't get ballet, and he gets weird about Henry. He thinks we've got something going on.”
Henry rolls his eyes. “Must be that magical sexual orientation altering vagina you've got.”
I laugh out loud at that and punch him in the arm, causing him to slosh tequila onto the sofa. I'm glad we're off tomorrow. We all know we can't be drinking like this during performance season. We have to be focused, but it's a last hoorah before everything kicks off. It's not that we never have alcohol or go to parties during the season; we just try to keep it to a minimum. We need to be in top performance condition—like any professional athlete—which is ultimately what we are.
“I don't understand why you're still in the corps,” Melinda says. “You're one of the best dancers in the entire company. They're idiots for not promoting you. Who did you piss off?”
I've often wondered the same, but it's nice to hear it from someone else, to know I'm not delusional, thinking I'm better than I truly am.
I wake on Wednesday morning with a jolt and heart palpitations. It's like my body knows even before I'm fully conscious that I have to go back to the old opera house tonight and confront my blackmailer again. I wish it was money. I wish I could just drop some amount every week in a paper bag and leave it by the back door.
I take several long, slow breaths and try not to cry, but the tears come anyway, sliding down the sides of my face onto my pillow.
What is he going to do to me? Who is he? Is he going to hurt me? And in all honesty what I mean here is: is he going to hit me? Is he a violent man? I don't really have the mental real estate right now to berate myself for my physical reaction to that voice. I know I shouldn't have this sick attraction, but a part of me is grateful for it and hope it lasts because that's better than the alternative.
There’s already so much that weighs me down that I'm not going to blame myself if some part of me wants this man. I killed my husband, and I don't feel especially guilty about that. So I've pretty much left the realm of normal socially acceptable behavior. I'm already a stranger to the world and to myself. What's one more thing?
But I am afraid he'll hurt me, like Conall hurt me. Kicks and slaps and punches—always in places no one can see the bruises—aren't a theory to me. I know what it feels like, and if this man is going to do those things... if I freed myself from one brutal monster only to be abused by another... would prison be better? I don't know the answer to that. I just want to dance. And I don't understand why that has to be so fucking complicated.
His threat of punishment Monday night surges back into my memory. What does that mean? I know what it meant when Conall did it. Though Conall never said he was going to punish me. He didn't use those words. He just flew into a rage and yelled, and threw things, and hurt me. And he was never calm about it. This man—this stranger—was so calm that even when he used that word, even as my terror climbed, there was a stillness running through me under everything because I could feel the same stillness running through him.
I make bacon and eggs and sit quietly in the kitchen nook staring out the window at the birds crowding around the bird feeder as I eat. Then I try to scrub the grout in the bathroom again. Nothing I do matters though. Not even bleach. I can still see the faint stain of the blood.
Sometimes I think maybe I'm hallucinating it. But it's not as if I can ask someone to come over and tell me if they see the blood, too, or if it's just me.
I finally give up and leave the house. We're lucky to have a huge dance supply warehouse in the city. Yes, people can order stuff online, but some things—as a dancer—you really want to try on. Even if you know your size in a certain brand of leotard, unless the straps are exactly the same and the back is exactly the same, you want to try it on so you can get a feel for how you'll move in it. If something pinches or digs in somewhere, you don't want to spend hours dancing that way.
Trying on shoes is also smart because all the brands and styles are a little different. And I like to try on leg warmers personally because some of them are just way too thick—and then I'm too hot. I like a lighter material—enough to protect joints and muscles until I warm up, but not so much that I have to get rid of them in the middle of class or rehearsal to not feel like I'm going to catch on fire.
I worry the entire drive to the dance warehouse that despite the size of the place they won't have the exact things I've been ordered to wear. But then I reason it's unlikely he'll call the police just because the leotard is the slightly wrong shade or cut. Right? I don't know what this man is capable of or how he defines the word reasonable. A reasonable person wouldn't make any of the demands or threats he's made.