seemed an eternity to push through the sea of bodies, and despairing at the slow trickle exiting the theater, Victoria resorted to her most demanding mode and found the front of house manager to demand a quicker route backstage. Luckily, as a ballet fan himself he recognized her right away. Johann chattered to her in slightly broken English as he led her down a hidden corridor, one which opened up into the wings, stage left.
“Danke,” she bid him, following the noise of the company straight toward their dressing rooms. The place had the palpable energy of a giant elastic band just snapped; raised voices and slamming doors and blasts of music all competed as the dancers let off so much steam. The responsibility of performance became entwined with their muscles, and Victoria nodded in acknowledgment to a few of them as they raced around, smacking chests or bumping fists or dangling from the fixtures and fittings. There were shouts of recognition, but most of the company were too weary to stroll up and hug her the way Irina did. A few years of Victoria’s toughest teaching had that effect on people.
“Aren’t you a long way from home?” David asked, appearing from one of the dressing rooms with a clutch of tutus in one hand. “It’s damn good to see you, Victoria.”
As her second-in-command, Victoria had been closer to David than anyone else, at least until Anna showed up two years ago and turned her world upside down, and inside out for good measure.
“You’ve kept my company up to standard then?” Victoria replied, pulling him into a brief hug. She felt people stopping mid-step to watch the spectacle. Dancers did love any opportunity to gossip amongst themselves. “Irina seems to rely on you as much as I did.”
“We’re getting there,” David said, his smile a little tight.
Victoria felt less than generous about someone reserving their gushing praises for her replacement but enjoyed it all the same.
“No question who you’re here to see. She tries not to talk about you too much, but that girl is pining. I thought she was going to plead with the pilot to reroute the plane to Charles de Gaulle on the way here, you know.”
“Oh, shush.” Victoria batted at his arm with her purse, still more pleased than she had any intention of showing to anyone. “But since I’m busted, perhaps you can direct me the rest of the way?”
“Follow this corridor right around. Prima’s dressing room is closest to the stage, just on that side of it.”
Victoria did exactly that, taking her leave with a little wave and racing around the curving corridor at a pace that made her wish she’d skipped the heels and not been so vain as to leave her cane back in her hotel room. Some lessons she’d proven spectacularly slow at learning, but it didn’t matter as the adrenaline of seeing Anna again took over.
Where once she would have barged in to put the fear of God in her newly promoted principal, this time Victoria raised her knuckles to the wooden door and gave the prima her due deference by knocking and waiting. The wait felt like a few small eternities, all crashing into each other as Victoria slowly combusted out there in the hallway. Then finally, finally the universe took pity on her, and the small mercy of the door handle’s being turned was given to Victoria’s impatient soul.
“You came!” Anna’s words were almost lost to the squeal that rose out of her, unbidden. Fresh from the shower, dressed in just a tiny silk kimono, she launched herself at Victoria until she was pressed back against the opposite wall.
The white-painted brickwork scratched at her jacket, but Victoria could barely feel it. She had her arms full of Anna, which meant she could do the one thing she hadn’t been able to in months.
She kissed her.
Anna was sure her knees buckled the moment Victoria’s lips touched hers. Whether just from the kiss or over two hours of dancing was hard to tell. Either way, it felt beyond fantastic to be caught and held up and kissed so damn thoroughly that it seemed as if the kiss might never end.
“Get a room!” came the shout from somewhere on the balconies above, where the ensemble mostly had their dressing rooms higher up the open staircase.
Anna paused in her effort to reclaim every inch of Victoria’s mouth just long enough to flip them off, drawing scandalized howls of laughter. Then it felt prudent