The Immortalists(19)

One Monday afternoon in July, he returns from Academy to find Klara sitting on her mattress, playing with silk scarves. Taped to the window frame behind her is a picture of Gertie’s mother, a curious woman whose diminutive size and fierce gaze has always made Simon uncomfortable. She reminds him of witches from fairy tales, not because there is anything sinister about her but because she seems to be neither child nor adult, woman or man: she’s something between.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

‘I’m quitting.’

‘You’re quitting,’ says Simon, slowly. ‘Why?’

‘Because I hate it.’ Klara packs one of the scarves down into her left fist. When she pulls it out the other end, it’s turned from black to yellow. ‘Obviously.’

‘Well, you need to get another job. I can’t make rent on my own.’

‘I’m aware of that. And I will. Why do you think I’m practicing?’ She waves a scarf at Simon.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Screw you.’ She grabs both of her scarves and stuffs them in the black box. ‘You think you’re the only one who’s entitled to do what you want? You’re fucking the whole city. You’re stripping and dancing ballet, and I haven’t said a thing. If anyone has the right to discourage me, Simon, it isn’t you.’

‘I’m making money, aren’t I? I’m holding up my end of the bargain.’

‘You Castro gays.’ Klara sticks a finger at him. ‘You don’t think of anyone but yourselves.’

‘What?’ he says, stung; Klara never speaks to him this way.

‘Think about it, Simon – how sexist the Castro is! I mean, where are the women? Where are the lesbians?’

‘What’s it to you? You’re a lesbian now?’

‘No,’ says Klara, and when she shakes her head, she looks almost sad. ‘I’m not a lesbian. But I’m not a gay guy, either. I’m not even a straight one. So where do I fit in here?’

When their eyes meet, Simon looks away. ‘How am I supposed to know?’

‘How am I? At least, if I start my own show, I can say that I tried.’

‘Your own show?’

‘Yes,’ Klara snaps. ‘My own show. I don’t expect you to understand, Simon. I don’t expect you to worry about anything but yourself.’

‘You’re the one who convinced me to come here! Did you really think they’d let us go without a fight? You thought they’d just let us stay?’

Klara’s jaw is tight. ‘I wasn’t thinking about those things.’

‘Then what the hell were you thinking about?’

Klara’s cheeks have turned a sunburnt coral that only Daniel usually provokes, but she keeps quiet, as if indulging Simon. It’s not like her to censor herself. It certainly isn’t like her to avoid eye contact, which she does now, latching her black box with more focus than the task requires. Simon thinks of their conversation on the rooftop in May. We could go to San Francisco, she said, as if the idea only just occurred to her, as if she didn’t know exactly what she was doing.

‘That’s the problem,’ Simon says. ‘You never think. You know exactly how to get into something and you know how to bring me with you, but you never think about what the consequences will be – or maybe you think about them and you just don’t care, not until it’s too late. And now you’re blaming me? If you feel so bad, why don’t you go back?’

Klara stands and strides into the kitchen. The sink is full of so many unwashed dishes that they’ve begun to stack more across the counter. She turns the water on and grabs a sponge and scrubs.

‘I know why,’ Simon says, following her. ‘Because it would mean that Daniel was right. It would mean you have no plans – that you can’t make a life for yourself, away from them. It would mean you’ve failed.’

He’s trying to trigger her – his sister’s restraint disturbs him more than any of her outbursts – but Klara’s mouth remains set, her knuckles white around the sponge.

Simon has been selfish, he knows. But thoughts of the family hum throughout his days. In some way, he continues at Academy for them: to prove that his life is not all excess, that it also contains discipline and self-betterment. He takes his guilt and turns it into a leap, a lift, one perfect turn.

The irony, of course, is that Saul would have been appalled to learn that Simon is dancing ballet. But Simon is convinced that if he were alive and came to watch, his father would see how hard it really is. It took six weeks to figure out how to point his feet, even longer to grasp the concept of turnout. By the end of the summer, though, his body has stopped hurting so much, and he’s earned a larger dividend of Gali’s attention. He likes the rhythm of the studio, likes having somewhere to go. In fleeting moments, it feels to him like home, or like a home, as it does to so many of them: Tommy, seventeen and breathtaking, a former student at the Royal Ballet in London; Missourian Beau, able to pirouette eight times in a row; and Eduardo and Fauzi, twins from Venezuela, who hitchhiked their way north on a soybean truck.

These four are all in Academy’s company, Corps. In most ballet companies, male dancers act as bland fairy-tale princes or offer furniture-like support – but Gali’s choreography is modern and acrobatic, and seven of Corps’s twelve members are men. Among them is Robert, the man Simon saw while retching and with whom he hasn’t made eye contact since. Not that Robert seems to have noticed: before class, the other men stretch together, but he warms up alone by the window.