The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(10)

“All right,” Erik said, his eyes on the stage, one ear on Kees and the other taking notes from Leo.

“See how she comes out of the turn. Now look how Daisy does it. Watch. Did you see?”

“I think so. It looked smoother? I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry if you can’t say what it was. I just care if you noticed something different.”

They were watching the girls’ quintet. Daisy was good, no question, but Erik hadn’t the means to articulate why. Like a benevolent Svengali, Kees was giving Erik a crash course in dance appreciation. Erik might have resisted had Kees not been such an excellent teacher, and had Daisy not been so relentlessly compelling. He needed help if he was going to speak this girl’s language.

During the alternating runs of the Siciliano pas de deux, Erik strove to take apart the mechanics of partnering and peppered Kees with questions. “How much is the girl balancing and how much is the guy holding her? How does he spin her? Or is she spinning herself?”

Kees was delighted. “He supports her. Watch their hands. She nearly always takes his, not the other way around. He’ll throw her off balance if he grabs her. No, she’s turning herself. He’s there to make the turn come to an attractive finish and possibly coax another revolution out. If he’s any good, that is.”

Then the lifts fascinated Erik, provoking more questions about how much these girls weighed and if the male dancers did any weight training.

“All of them do,” Kees said. “Mandatory.”

“Still, how much is lift and how much is the girl jumping?” Erik asked. “They are jumping, right? They can’t just give dead weight to be hoisted.”

“The trick is all in the plié, how she bends her knees before the lift. It’s the springboard.”

“But they’re dancing slow,” Erik said, a corner of his mouth twisting up in doubt. “How do you get spring without speed?”

“You just do,” Kees said. “Lot of power in a plié if you do it right. And anyway, with lifts it’s not the going up that’s so hard. It’s the coming down.”

On a break, Daisy came and sat down in the aisle by Erik’s seat. She took off her pointe shoes to rest her feet. Erik picked one up.

“Careful, those are pretty gross,” she said.

“I just want to see how they work. Is there wood in here?”

Just as patiently as Kees, she showed him how the shoes were made, with layers of canvas, satin and glue. More terms for him to absorb: box, shank, vamp and binding. He watched her re-tape the toes on her right foot. Most girls wore full-footed tights or socks, but Daisy went barefoot in her shoes, saying she could feel the floor better. She did put a gel spacer between her big and first toes to take the pressure off the bunion joint. Re-shod now, she stood up and rolled through her strong, bare feet, onto her pointes. He watched, mechanical curiosity satisfied.

The more dire interest in her legs, however, had yet to be assuaged.





Entre Nous


Erik got to watch the dancing from several vantage points: the stage catwalk, the ceiling catwalk, the balcony, the wings. It was here he found himself watching the Prelude and keeping a low profile, trying to disguise how for once, he wasn’t doing much of anything.

He noticed Will was standing by him, watching as well. They both raised chins in silent acknowledgment but said nothing until the dancers reached a passage Erik particularly liked. He stepped closer to Will and asked, “The step they just did, when their leg whipped around, what’s it called?”

“Renversé,” Will said. “I love this part, they repeat the same phrase but in a round, and when they do the renversé, here it is, look. One leg after the other. Looks like a windmill.”

“It does.”

“We met but we didn’t. I’m Will.”

“Erik.” They shook hands and Erik noticed both Will’s arms sported a number of tattoos.

“David calls you Fish.”

“It’s what my last name means.”

“Ah.” Will gestured to the theater at large. “First time at the rodeo?”

“Yeah. In between Leo running me ragged, I think Kees is trying to graduate me from Neanderthal 101 in one week.”

“It’s a good course. Chicks like going to the ballet, you can’t go wrong if you know how to talk a little shop at intermission.” Will’s accent was interesting. His English was natural and slangy, but some of the words seemed to shimmy through his nose or get breathily stuck in the corners of his mouth.

Erik turned to the stage again, watching Daisy in her solo passage. Her leotard was pale green today, again with the black tights pulled over. She also wore a short black skirt, thin as a tissue. It flew up with her jumps and floated down against the high, tight curve where the back of her thigh met her—

“Dude,” Will said. “Is that not the sweetest ass you ever saw in your life?”

Almost angrily, Erik flicked his eyes to Will, but Will wasn’t looking at the stage. He was looking off in the wings to a girl with crazy spirals of blonde hair, a little compact body in jeans and a T-shirt, the clothes clinging to hourglass curves, full breasts, full hips, tiny waist.

“Who’s she?”

“She’s called Lucky Dare,” Will said. His eyes were intent, a little smile played around his mouth.