Bunheads (12 page)

Blah-blah-blah
, Zoe mouths, and I can’t help but giggle.

“Oh, hey, you guys,” Daisy says. “Did I tell you what Caleb got me for Christmas?” She’s practically clapping her hands in glee.

Zoe leans over to me. “Seriously? They’re still together? I thought she was just a layover on his way to Gaytown.”

I stifle a snort while Daisy tells us about the clothes Caleb picked out for her at Barneys. My phone buzzes again:
Trattoria Dell’Arte
lunch by stage door. Enjoy!

Wow—Matt left me lunch, which means I get to eat something besides yogurt and a banana today. I’m flattered and pleased, but it also makes me feel a little strange—like I can’t
tell if he’s trying to hit on me or be my mother. Instead of responding to Matt, I text Jacob, who’s still in Puerto Rico for his brother’s bachelor party.

So how much fun are you having?

I stare at the screen, waiting for a reply. But apparently he’s having too much fun to write back.

That afternoon Zoe and I enter the studio along with Adriana, Olivia, and a handful of understudies, who linger in the back of the room. We’ve been called to learn a new piece by a guest choreographer named Jason Pite. I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never seen any of his ballets; supposedly, he’s some kind of choreographic genius.

Zoe pinches my arm when Jason walks in. He’s a former dancer, as most choreographers are, and he’s tall, with sandy hair and chiseled features. He’s barefoot and wearing green cutoff sweatpants and a threadbare T-shirt with the neck stretched out and the arms cut off. Jason looks me right in the eye and smiles. I’m caught off guard and have an embarrassing coughing fit. Zoe giggles prettily and then swoons as he introduces himself in his charming Australian accent.

“I watched one of your performances this past fall,” Jason says, “and it got me really excited to work with you guys. What a strong group of dancers. I thought I’d play the music for you first and then teach you some phrases I’ve been working on.”

Zoe’s tongue is practically hanging out of her mouth as Jason
walks to the stereo and puts on a CD. The music is a scherzo from one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas; it’s bright and fast.

He nods along with the beat, and after a few moments he asks us to spread out in the studio. The movements he begins to teach us feel more like modern dance than classical ballet. “Can you move your weight down?” he asks Zoe, who bats her eyelashes at him. “I want you to feel connected to the floor.”

Some of the movements he teaches us resemble African dance: We isolate our ribs, quake our pelvises, and buckle our knees. Some movements are sharp and quick, while others are languid. At first I feel pretty stupid and self-conscious trying to mimic him, but after a while the dance begins to feel liberating. I’ve never moved like this before, and I like it. We’re not pulling up and turning out as if trying to defy gravity, the way we do in ballet. We even get down on the ground!

Above us, Jason is smiling and nodding his head. “Yes, you,” Jason calls out, pointing to me. “You’re feeling it, I can tell.”

When rehearsal is over, Zoe comes to my side, panting. A stray piece of blond hair is stuck to her cheek with sweat. “I thought I liked him, but maybe I don’t,” she whispers. “Those last five minutes with the weird hand gestures? What was that all about?”

“Oh, you’re just jealous because he said I was feeling it,” I tease.

Zoe sniffs. “All I can say is I would never date a modern dancer. I just wouldn’t be able to respect a person who devoted his life to rolling around on the floor.”

“Hey, at least it’s not
The Nutcracker
.” We head down to the
Green Room, where we change into costumes for our dress rehearsal.

Onstage, Otto perches atop a stool and motions us into our places for
Violin Concerto in D
, which we will perform tonight. The corps in this ballet—there are sixteen of us, in belted leotards—pose in horizontal rows while Mai Morimoto throws herself into high jump after incredibly high jump on center stage. Almost imperceptibly, Otto nods his approval as Mai does a crazy layout. Her jet-black hair slips out of its bun and seems to almost float in the air.

Zoe and I are doing a series of poses in the back, and we happen to be next to each other at this point in this ballet. We’ve danced
Violin
so many times that we can carry on a conversation between steps, though we try to keep our lips still, like ventriloquists, so we don’t get yelled at.

“Whoa, did you see that? Mai is fearless,” I murmur through my clenched teeth.

“Shut up, I’m concentrating,” Zoe teases. “Han, wouldn’t it be awesome if we were cast in the duet in
Temperaments
? I’m mad for that part,” she whispers.

We lunge away from each other and then piqué back together again.

“You know that Emma understudied the duet last year,” she whispers, “but she’s still out, and Leah’s gained so much weight that I doubt they’d ask her to learn it.”

Since
Temperaments
is coming up in a few weeks, we’ll start rehearsing it soon. We switch our weight, then piqué into an attitude and pose in B-plus.

“I mean, I would so much rather do classical than Jason’s weird modern stuff,” Zoe says, posing with her arms jutting forward.

“Oh, loosen up,” I whisper. On the count of six, we kneel with our heads down, and Zoe and I are practically touching. (Conveniently, this makes it easier to talk.)

“Listen to you,” she says. “Ms. Goody Two-shoes, you’re one to talk. Unless that musician of yours is becoming a bad influence?” We stand and thrust our hips forward and then shift our weight again.

“Hardly,” I snort. “Considering I haven’t seen him since, like, November.”

“Are you thinking about Matt, then?”

“No!”

“Well, you should keep your options open,” Zoe says. “I’m sure Jacob’s keeping his open, if you know what I mean.”

I shoot Otto a look, but his attention is on Mai, whose pale skin now glistens with sweat. “What?” I ask Zoe.

“If he’s as cute as you say he is, there must be another girl out there.”

It’s not as if I haven’t wondered about other girls before, but hearing Zoe say it makes me feel terrible. “Oh yeah? Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“All right!” Otto calls, his voice echoing in the empty theater.

Zoe and I freeze, ready to be reprimanded for chatting. But instead Otto is simply offering that half smile of his—the most we ever see—and motioning us off the stage.

“Okay, thank you,” he says. He touches Mai’s arm protectively. “Save a little for tonight.”

Back in our dressing room, Leni is doing some insane yoga pose in the corner. She’s balanced on her hands, with her feet tucked behind her neck.

“God, how do you
do
that?” Zoe mutters, flinging herself into her chair. “You look like a pretzel.”

“It opens up the hips,” Leni says calmly.

I collapse onto the floor and then sit up so I can stretch my hip flexors. I tell myself to stop worrying about Jacob, to focus on the upcoming performance and the rehearsals tomorrow and the next day. But then I call him anyway, and this time I reach him.

It’s bitterly cold, and the sidewalks have hillocks of old ice. As I walk to meet Jacob, the wind whips around the buildings so fiercely it seems to get under my clothes. I blow my nose, and I swear I can feel it getting bright red and swollen. (All of us in the dressing room have colds now; the debris on the floor includes tissues and nasal-spray bottles and cough drop wrappers, in addition to the normal piles of clothing and corn pads.)

Jacob said he’d be waiting on the steps outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I find him leaning against the massive face of the building, thumbing through a book. He’s bundled up in a navy blue peacoat and a scarf that looks like something my grandma might have made. My heart does a tiny leap in my chest, then settles. He leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

“Long time, no see,” he says with a grin.

I smile up at him. “So how was your trip?”

Jacob chuckles as we turn to walk inside. “If I never see another bottle of rum in my life, I’ll be happy. And I’d like to never hear another karaoke version of ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise.’ ”

I nod understandingly. My dad plays Jimmy Buffett once in a while, and his music always makes me want to bury my head under a pillow. “I promise not to burst out in song,” I say. But I hum a few bars anyway, and Jacob ducks away, covering his ears.

“Please stop,” he moans, and I can’t help but laugh.

Inside, the great hall is thronged with people. The sound of their collective voices echoes in the marble space, a murmur amplified into a wordless roar.

“I love the Met,” I sigh.

“Me too,” Jacob says. “It’s one of my favorite places in Manhattan.”

“I came here in August,” I say. “Before fall season. I stood for, like, an hour in front of
Madame X
. You know, that John Singer Sargent painting?”

Jacob nods. “I do. I love Sargent.”

“I read that Madame X—I don’t remember her real name—was so spoiled that she almost couldn’t even stay still for her portrait. Sargent called her a woman of ‘unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness.’ ”

Jacob laughs. “Laziness! You wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you?”

I shrug. “Hey, I sleep in on Mondays. Like today—I got up at nine thirty!”

“If that’s your definition of laziness, the world could use more lazy people like you.”

I put my hand in the crook of Jacob’s elbow as we wait in line to pay admission. “So where do you want to go?” I ask him. “I bet you’re the modern-art type.”

“I like my Picassos and my Duchamps,” Jacob says, handing the cashier a twenty. “But I have another place to take you first.”

“I hope it’s not Arms and Armor or the American furniture wing,” I say. He hands me a little purple button, which I affix to my coat. “Because I don’t really care about axes or Tiffany side tables.” I glance at the museum map on the wall. “And I hope you’re not thinking of taking me to the Degas ballerinas, because, believe me, I’m familiar with those. Degas and his dancers are practically the only art a bunhead knows.”

“Nope. Hang on.” He pulls out his phone and sends a quick text to someone. There’s the beep of a reply, and then Jacob nods and takes my hand again. “Okay, we have to hurry.”

“Hurry where?” I ask as he pulls me toward the elevator.

But Jacob doesn’t answer; he only smiles as we enter the car. When the elevator stops, we’re on the top floor of the museum, which, compared to the crowded hall below, seems almost deserted. Our footsteps echo as we walk down a corridor lined with black-and-white photographs of exotic birds.

A guard is standing by the doorway to the roof garden. “Hey, Frank,” Jacob calls, and Frank, a young but balding guy wearing thick hipster glasses, raises his hand in a salute.

“Don’t know why you want to go out there on a day like today,” Frank says, “but whatever, dude.” Then he opens the door with a key from a ring of them and motions us through.

Jacob steps into the chilly, pale sunlight, and I follow. The
roof is empty and bare, and I turn to him, wondering why he’s brought me here. If he wanted fresh air, we could have just stayed on the steps outside the museum.

He reaches down for my hand as we walk to the edge and look down over Central Park. Far below us the ground is brown and strewn with rocks. The trees, with their bare gray branches, look like skeletons of their summer selves.

“Ever been up here?” he asks.

I shake my head, my teeth chattering a little.

Jacob clucks his tongue at me and pulls me closer; he opens his coat and tucks me inside it to protect me from the wind. “And you’ve lived here for five years?” he asks. “I figured you hadn’t been up when it’s closed, but never? They have exhibits when the weather’s nicer: Frank Stella, the sculptor, and Claes Oldenburg, the pop artist. There’s even a café.”

Maybe I should be embarrassed by my failure to frequent the Met and its apparently fabulous roof, but all I can think about is how warm I am standing near him. I wish I could live in the folds of his coat forever. It reminds me of the soft velvet of the wings. “I don’t have a lot of time….” I murmur.