You in Five Acts(73)

“It will look more phallic in silhouette, not less!” Ms. Adair was shouting. It was only noon—way too early to hear that shit from anyone, let alone a teacher.

I shook my head, trying not to smile, but then I looked at you and lost the battle. You were wearing your tailor-fit Kitri dress for the dress rehearsal, a fiery red flamenco number that Ms. Gaspard had reinforced with a tight, plunging black leotard top that left very little to the imagination. Not that I had to imagine anymore.

“Don’t stroke out on me, Basilio,” you joked, threading your fingers through mine. “Forget my foot, you’ve got my life in your hands with that lift, boy.”

“I got you,” I said earnestly. I meant it every way there was to mean it.

? ? ?


The dress rehearsal went OK. I wish I could say we tore it up, the way we had over break with Mr. D, but with Ms. Adair standing at the front of the stage and Lolly literally waiting in the wings, there was tension that was hard to ignore. It was the feeling of someone waiting for us to make a mistake. I knew if the screw-up was on me, it didn’t matter . . . but Adair was watching you like she was looking for a fight. So we were both too careful; we danced like we were afraid to let go.

“It’s feeling a little stiff,” Ms. Adair said once we hit our final fish dive. “It feels like you’re holding back, Joy. Could I see it with Lolly, just for comparison?”

“What?” you said. I set you back upright and you put your hands on your hips, still catching your breath. In the bright stage lights, I could see the beads of sweat on your temples, straining inward as your brow furrowed. “No, really; I’m fine. I can do it again.”

“She hasn’t run the whole thing yet,” Ms. Adair said evenly. “It’s a practical matter, not a personal one.”

You stood there for a minute, sucking in your cheeks like you were debating whether to fight her on it, before turning and walking off backstage. You went slowly, but there was no mistaking the way your left hip jutted out, the way your right foot dragged. I pressed my lips together and closed my eyes, sending up a quick prayer. Please, God, just let her last through tomorrow night. I wasn’t an altar boy or anything—me and God were casual acquaintances at best—but I figured it couldn’t hurt. It just had to hold long enough so that everyone who mattered could see what I saw every day—how there was no one else who even came close to you.

After I went through the motions with Lolly, Ms. Adair dismissed her and then rushed Mr. D off to one of the studios so they could “confer privately.”

“Not personal, my ass,” you said, wincing and propping your leg up on my lap while I hung my feet over the lip of the stage. “I don’t know why she didn’t just cast Lolly in the first place.”

“Uh, maybe because you practically did a mic drop at the audition. No one could have voted you down.”

“She did.”

“Yeah, well, she’s wrong.”

You sighed. “You wanna tell her, or should I?”

“I’m serious,” I said. “Some people are on the wrong side of history. There are the real obvious, crazy racists, who want to build a wall between us and Mexico, and then there are the people so scared and lazy they’ll defend the rules set up by the old-school bigots because that’s how it’s always been done.” I turned up my nose and adopted my best Ms. Adair voice. “Ballerinas are supposed to be white swans,” I drawled.

You smirked. “And even the black swan gets played by Natalie Portman, so I’m screwed either way.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” you said. “And thank you.” You tipped your face up and I leaned down to kiss you, my heart racing a mile a minute the same way it had on the Cyclone. It still didn’t feel real.

“You’re blowing up,” you murmured after a minute, pulling back.

“Huh?”

“Your phone.” You pointed to my bag, which was vibrating crazily.

“Oh. Sorry.” My heart kept going, but for a different reason. I didn’t get many texts during the day, but unless I was in dance class I always kept my phone on, because if anyone would need to reach me, it would be Mom. And it would be because he’d shown up again.

My dad had been gone for nearly eight years, but gone like a bottle cap slipped down a subway grate is gone—still there, just hidden close by, buried in some filth no one wants to think about. When he lived with us, he drank and yelled, didn’t hit much, but only because his coordination was bad after a case of Presidente. Finally she kicked him out and changed the locks, and after a few days of pleas and threats, he went on a bender and disappeared for months. Eventually we found out he’d moved in with my uncle a few blocks away. He refused to sign divorce papers but still came around, either in a stupor or an angry rage. He’d gotten Mom fired from two different clinics already. Mostly, though, apparently not remembering that most people had jobs, he’d come over to bang on the door of an empty apartment in the middle of the day, and our elderly neighbors would call Mom on her cell to complain about the noise.

My hand closed on my phone and I steeled myself for the semiannual routine: Leave school, call my uncle Luis—my mom’s brother—and meet him at top of the stairs at 103rd, northeast corner. Luis owned a hardware store, so he’d bring hammers, and we’d climb all seven flights through the back of the building, ambushing dad from behind and telling him to leave so we wouldn’t have to call the cops, which was basically a joke since the cops would probably arrest all three of us if they ever showed. The last time it had happened, over the summer, Dad had stared at me, watery-eyed, for a minute, and just when I thought he was going to show some kind of remorse he just grunted, “Which one are you?” Which pretty much summed up our relationship.