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