she was willing to do anything to save her children. She remembered suddenly her audition for the Ballet Russe thirteen years before in Paris.
“Let me try … just once … I can learn … please …” Her eyes filled with tears in spite of herself, as a small round man with a cigar walked past, glancing at her only briefly and then shouting at two men carrying scenery between them.
“Stupid jerks! You're gonna break that thing!” And then, in obvious annoyance he waved the cigar at the woman talking to Zoya. “Goddamn girls got the measles … can you beat that? I've got myself a bunch of old hoofers on my hands and they get sick like a bunch of goddamn kids … three of them out last week … seven more now … shit, what am I supposed to tell people paying good money to see the show? That they can watch a bunch of broads with spots waving their asses at them. I'd even do that if they'd come to goddamn work.” He waved the cigar at Zoya and then beyond her, as though she didn't exist, and to him, she didn't.
Without waiting for him to address her directly, she spoke up for herself, “I'd like to audition for a job as a dancer.” Her accent was slight now but still obvious, but neither of them recognized her as Russian. The woman had thought she was French, in her expensively cut black dress and her elegant airs. That was one thing they didn't need at Fitzhugh's Dance Hall.
“You a hoofer?” He turned to look at her appraisingly but he didn't seem impressed.
“Yes.” She decided to spare him the explanation.
“A ballerina,” the other woman spoke up with obvious disdain.
“You had the measles?” he asked her. That was far more important to him with ten dancers out sick, and God only knew how many exposed and due to come down with it in the ensuing weeks.
“Yes, I have,” she murmured as she prayed that she could still dance. Maybe she'd forgotten everything. Maybe …
He shrugged, and stuck the dead cigar back into his face. “Let her show you her stuff, Maggie. If she can stand up and do anything, she can stay till the others come back.” He left them then and the woman named Maggie looked annoyed. The last thing they needed was some fancy-assed, pale-faced broad who thought she was too good for a burlesque show. But he had a point, with the others sick, they were in big trouble.
‘Okay,” she said reluctantly, and then shouted backstage. “Jimmy! Get your ass out here and play!” A black man with a broad smile appeared and looked at Zoya.
“Hi, baby, what you want me to play?” he asked her as he sat down at the piano. And she almost laughed in nervous terror. What could she say to him? Chopin? Debussy? Stravinsky?
“What do you usually play for an audition?” she asked him, and he smiled into her eyes. It was easy to see that she was high-class white folks fallen on bad times, and he felt sorry for her, with her big green eyes and wistful smile. She looked like a kid as she stood there, and he wondered if she'd ever danced before. He had heard of others like her who'd gone to work in nightclubs, doing acts they made up themselves, like Cobina Wright and Cobina Junior.
“Where you from?” Maggie was momentarily talking to someone else as they chatted. And Jimmy decided that he liked her.
She smiled openly at him, still praying that she wouldn't make a fool of herself, but even the risk of that was worth it. “From Russia, a long time ago. I came here after the war.”
And then he lowered his voice and glanced nervously over his shoulder. “You ever danced before, baby? Tell me the truth, while Maggie ain't listenin’. You can tell Jimmy. I cain't help you if I don't know if you can dance.”
“I was in the ballet when I was young. I haven't danced in eleven years,” she whispered back, grateful for his assistance.
“My, my, my …” He shook his head in distress. “The Fitzhugh ain't no ballet …” That was surely the understatement of the year, as two half-naked chorus girls wandered past them. “Look,” he said to her in conspiratorial tones, “I'm gonna play real slow, you just roll your eyes and smile, hop around a little bit, shake yo’ bum and show yo’ legs, and you gonna