The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(39)

“So are you definitely going down this road now, Luck?” David asked. “Do you have the stomach for it?”

“I don’t,” Lucky said. “There are stories I’m not going to tell you guys. Suffice it to say, I saw some horrible shit. And I discovered I’m not one of those people who can un-see things. I would not make it. If I did it for a living I’d be institutionalized within a year.”

“We can’t have you locked up,” Daisy said. She held out her arms. “You had her all day, Will. Share.”

Lucky extricated herself and went over to squeeze next to Daisy in the easy chair. “I missed you,” she said, kissing her friend. “I missed you guys so much. I was bummed about missing the fall concert. What’s the gossip for spring?”

Will had news. Powaqqatsi had been such a triumph, Kees was recommending it be expanded and reprised at the spring production. Will was already going through the entire score and picking which segments he wanted. “Definitely the second section,” he said.

“‘Anthem’?” James said, stubbing out his cigarette. “You add it onto the original and you have a good ten minute ballet.”

Will nodded. “Dais, the part I played for you, where the tambourine comes in? I see a pas de deux there. I thought about making it for Aisha Johnson.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Daisy said. “Aisha and who else?”

“Me.”

Daisy pointed at him. “It’s your graduating concert. You better be dancing something with me.”

“I will. But there are no senior boys in contemporary this year. I know Kees will let me dance in my own work.”

“See, I knew you walked both sides of the line, Will,” David said. “Nobody believed me.”

Loud laughter except, Erik noticed, from James.

“Dais, you’ll help me?” Will said. “I have a bunch of stuff I need to try on you.”

“Why don’t you try it on Aisha,” Lucky said.

“Because if it doesn’t work on Dais, it doesn’t work at all.”

Daisy arched her neck, smiling. “I’ll help you,” she said.

“Good,” Will said. “I need it.”

James looked up hopefully, but if there was a need for his help, Will didn’t voice it.

Spirits and energy were high as the semester began. The weather was unusually mild with plenty of sunshine, which kept at bay the customary mid-winter blues. Will was on fire with “Anthem,” the new section of Powaqqatsi. In contrast to the fiesta feeling of the opening section, “Anthem” was stately and majestic. A winding, synthesized baseline in five-four time set an almost foreboding tone, like the rumblings of a volcano. Then the brass erupted in the refrain, echoed by flutes and tambourines.

Aisha Johnson wrapped her six-foot, sinewy body like a python around the sensual choreography. She coiled her limbs about the music and squeezed every atom of oxygen out. You couldn’t take your eyes off her.

“Dude, she is smokin’,” Erik muttered to Will, after peeking at one of the rehearsals. “Like Tina Turner.”

“More like Grace Jones,” Will said. “She either gives me a total hard-on or scares the living shit out of me.”

Over in the ballet division, Marie Del’Amici was staging a work called Who Cares? A collaboration between the famed choreographer George Balanchine and the composer George Gershwin. It was a light-hearted ballet—jazzy and schmaltzy, pure spectacle. David would be lead set and lighting designer for the production, which would serve as his senior project. He envisioned a New York City skyline across the full length of the stage. They’d go all-out on the lighting, David planned, wiring up eight full boom stands and all of the overheads. Plus the set itself would have built-in lights.

“No fish in tanks,” he said, sketching out his idea in the set shop of Mallory, surrounded by his crew. “These are people dancing as people.”

Daisy had a solo, and was cast with James in a pas de deux to the song “The Man I Love.”

“Great, you get to babysit again,” Erik said.

Daisy exhaled and shrugged.

“Why wouldn’t Marie cast you with Will?”

Her smile was tired and resigned. “Because this is ballet, honey. A lot of times it’s not how well you dance but how well you deal.”

Will, besides dancing in Powaqqatsi, was featured throughout Who Cares? But his main pas de deux was with a girl named Taylor Revell. He and Daisy were crushed not to be cast together, but they wisely opted to be professional about it. “Man up and dance,” Will said, sighing.

“James is a wild card,” Daisy said. “And he’s taking anatomy this year and already flailing. Anything could happen.”

“Yeah, and anyone with half a brain can see your boy Johnny learning James’s part.”

“No stupid boys are in ballet,” Daisy said.



*



Erik was out running one Sunday afternoon in late February when a car slowed on the other side of the street and tooted its horn. Erik squinted and saw it was James. Checking traffic, he jogged across as James rolled down the window.

“Where you off to?” Erik said, panting.

“I gotta go home a couple days.”

“Everything all right?”