Another damn encore? How many do these bigheads need?
The strains of a violin begin. A melancholy melody lifts high to the rafters of the auditorium. A shiver passes over me, some strange portent of things to come. I shake it off and tell myself not to be stupid.
Ballet dancers enter the stage from the right, ten of them, all regal like a row of swan queens. They dance and pirouette, bend and leap. I’m so bored. The opera got to me in places, but this is boring.
The lights dim, except for the center of the stage, and dramatic music comes from the orchestra pit. The dancers all bow down as one, and a new dancer walks onto stage.
She’s doing that strange ballet walk; there must be a name for it, but I don’t know it. She stands in the center of the huge stage, hundreds of eyes on her as she lifts her arms above her head, a doll in a music box, and looks up.
My heart stops.
It can’t be. I lean forward and stare, and then turn to Maya who has some of those little opera glasses.
“Give me those glasses,” I demand, reaching for them, gripping her hand as I try to get them. I’m not even thinking, unable to.
A hard smack to my hand has me looking up into the livid features of Damen. “Don’t fucking touch my wife or talk to her like that,” he growls.
K swivels in his chair to look back at us and shoots me an annoyed glare. Shit, I need to dial the aggression back.
“Sorry,” I say to Maya. “Really. It’s just… I think I know that girl, on the stage.”
K’s expression turns from irritated to curious.
“Please, may I?” I gesture to the glasses.
“Of course,” she says with a smile.
Damen is still looking like he wants to rip my head off, but I ignore him and take the opera glasses.
I focus on the stage, and everything fades away. I can’t hear what Damen is saying to K. The music is all I hear swelling to a crescendo as I stare at the face of a woman I both love and hate.
Dasha.
**
“You could have started a fucking war with that shit. What the fuck were you thinking?” K asks in a whisper as we stand to leave, the final curtain drawn.
“K, I’m sorry. Like I say, I recognized the dancer. From the past. From St. Petersburg. I’ll make it right with Damen, but can I have ten minutes?”
“Ten, no more. We’ll wait by the bar.”
He’s clearly still pissed, but fuck me. Dasha. I need to see her. It’s as if an invisible string is pulling me to her. I need to see her like I need to suck in my next shaky breath.
She’s the past colliding with my present in a way I never expected. All those old ghosts are stirring, and it makes me uneasy. I can’t believe it’s her, or this is real. I need to know for sure.
I head backstage, pushing roughly past the security guy who tries to stop me. He moves to come after me, but I hear the low murmur of conversation and turn back to see the man who let us in talking to him.
There’s a group of people up ahead. I see the opera singer, a slender woman, nothing like the big fat soprano I imagined. There is a man with people fawning over him, and who he is, I don’t know. And then I see her.
Petite and slim, so very slim, and regal as if she’s the queen of all she surveys. My Dasha.
She’s covered in a sheen of sweat and signing a few autographs. People tell her how wonderful she is. What an incredible dancer she is. She has a smaller crowd around her than the opera singer, but she’s still got plenty of adoring fans, it seems.
A man approaches her from down the darkened corridor. He’s tall, probably around six-foot-four or so. He appears older than Dasha by a lot of years, in his fifties possibly, and he’s slender. Refined looking. The opposite of me. He stands by her side and says something to her. He must be her manager, telling her to hurry this along.
Then my world stops for a second time in one evening. The old fucker slips his arm around Dasha’s impossibly slender waist and pulls her to him. A gold wedding band glints on the long finger at her waist, and my eyes immediately go to her