pen.”
There’s a dance notebook in the array of contents on the floor. I sit down like he'd previously asked me to and open the notebook to a fresh page. I keep choreography notes and corrections in there. A lot of dancers have these. It's what you do as a professional. I also write down schedules and other various company notes that might slip through the cracks of my mind.
“Make a note. When you arrive each Wednesday night, I want you clean and ready to work. I want you in either a medium gray or plum-colored leotard with a low open-scooped back...”
This is the point where if not for my ballet training, I would interrupt and say I don't have leotards in those two colors, to which he would no doubt tell me to get them. But I don't interrupt him because it just isn't done in my world. When the ballet master speaks, you simply listen. You never interrupt. And somehow my brain has clicked over into dance mode, and I can't bring myself to interrupt his list of orders.
He continues. “Pink tights, pink leg warmers. You may wear black hip warmers if you need them, but no ballet skirts. I want your hair up as you would wear it for class. No makeup. No jewelry. Bring both pointe shoes and ballet shoes. Canvas, not leather. And not dirty. Canvas shoes can be washed, and I fucking loathe when dancers don't take advantage of that fact.”
He stops. I wait. Finally he says, “Behind you on the barre is a blindfold. I want you to pick it up, go sit at the table, and put it on.”
There is, in fact, a black strip of cloth hanging off the edge of the barre. I hadn't noticed it when I first stepped onto the stage. I was too hyper-aware of all the spaces he could be hiding. Finally, all my etiquette training fails me.
“Please...” I say. “Please just let me go.”
“You can go if you like. Expect the police at your door in less than an hour.”
The tears slide down my cheeks.
“Shhh, Cassia, I'm not going to hurt you. I realize that's impossible to believe right now, but you don't have a lot of choices, so I suggest you take the risk.”
I push myself up off the floor and go to the barre. I don't want to go to prison. I want to dance. And this man could make all those dance dreams just stop... forever. There are a lot of other things he could do if I put on that blindfold, but he could do them anyway for all the reasons I've already acknowledged.
My only chance to have a life still worth living tomorrow is to do what he says. I take the scrap of soft black cloth and go sit down at the table. I put the blindfold on.
“Good. Now, place your hands on the table, palms down. And wait.”
I wait. Forever. Fall turns to winter and then spring in the space of this eternity. But then I sense him in my space. I feel the brush of air beside me, hear soft footsteps, and I long for the return of that eternity wrapped up in the brief few minutes I waited.
I want to run. I want to rip the blindfold off. But I'm afraid if I see his face, he'll pick up that gun—the weapon I stupidly hand-delivered to him—and just kill me.
Something heavy is placed on the table. Metal or glass, I can't be sure. But then I smell it. Food. Steam is rising up off the dish, wafting to my nose. Then something else, a lighter sound, then something like a glass. A cork pops. Liquid is poured into the glass.
“I'm sorry you missed your birthday dinner. Let me make it up to you. I made lasagna.”
I freeze. The tears start to flow down my cheeks again. “Please... don't...”
“Don't what? Don't feed you? You have to eat. And you haven't had dinner.”
He sounds so reasonable as he says this. As if any of this were reasonable. But I can't stop the tears. They only come harder. Lasagna is what I made last night for Conall. It's the food I poisoned. Why would he give me lasagna? Is he poisoning me? Maybe he's just a psychopath who wanted to toy with me for a little while and then kill me.
“This is a pretty strong reaction to lasagna,” he says mildly. “Why? Is it because that was Conall's final meal?