Corpse de Ballet (10 page)

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That night, Juliet phoned Ruth to relay what scraps of information her lunch with Teri had yielded. Except for the fact that Anton's promiscuousness suggested a discarded lover as the culprit, however, they didn't seem to add up to much.

Ruth was not surprised to hear the casting of
Great Ex
had caused distress and grumbling among the dancers. Wanting roles and not getting them was a fact of the dancer's life, she said flatly. With regard to the business of Lily Bediant being young enough to dance Princess Aurora, and therefore too young for Miss Havisham, she suspected that pairing Lily with Anton Mohr had more to do with publicity than any exceptional youthfulness in Miss Bediant. Lily Bediant represented the old guard of the Jansch, the tradition of American classical ballet. Anton carried the luster of the best of the new European companies. He was young, still new to the troupe, and relatively untried in the classics. Presenting him as Lily's partner in a favorite like
Sleeping Beauty
was just plain good marketing. People would be curious to see them paired, to see how Mohr handled the role of the Prince, and to watch the way he and Bediant—youth and age, innocence and experience—worked together.

As for Miss Havisham being a character role, said Ruth, Teri had probably misunderstood her older friend. Lily might be spoiled and temperamental, but she was smarter than that. Even if she hadn't realized initially that Miss Havisham would be a central character, she certainly knew it now. And so (for all her annoying overprotectiveness) did Victorine.

More intriguing to her was the fact that Anton Mohr had been carrying on with so many members of the company. It hardly startled her, Ruth said: Mohr had been known as a hedonist even when she met him in Germany, when he was barely seventeen. In her experience, she went on, some dancers went all ascetic, pouring their sensuality and sexuality into their work and living rather narrow lives offstage. Others threw themselves into the life of the body, exploring their capabilities, limits, and sensations in every possible way. Small wonder if a magnificent creature like Anton chose the latter path.

But the fact that Greg Fleetwood had been among his lovers might be significant. Of course Ruth had wanted Anton as her first Pip—anyone would be thrilled to have him—but when she and Greg had initially talked about casting, she also felt a distinct pressure from him to pick Mohr. This, perhaps, was the explanation. In any case, Juliet ought to try to nose out who else among the company might consider him or herself spurned by Mohr, then review the pool for possible rosin vandals.

Juliet listened to all this meekly enough, apparently accepting Ruth's assessments and agreeing to continue what she called the “nosing out” of possible culprits. But she wondered privately if Ruth's frequent tone-deafness in the matter of human relations might not be playing her false. Even setting Lily aside as a special case, Juliet had seen the looks on the faces of the dancers when her friend clapped and corrected them, or gave them a tart reminder of some nuance stipulated yesterday but forgotten today. During the villagers' first scene, she had heard Ruth reprimand the corps for standing as if they were “waiting for the bus.” And she had heard corps members quietly refer to Ruth as Ruthless. They might respect her, but they did not like her. Why shouldn't one of them want to rain a bit on her parade? Moreover, it crossed her mind that Ruth's very familiarity with the world of dance might blind her to circumstances an outsider would find suggestive. Later, she was to wish very much that she had paid more attention to this line of thought.

Chapter Five

On the next day, Monday, Dr. Keller pronounced Anton Mohr fit to return to work. During his few days off, he had developed a massive head cold; but that only made him one of many. Otherwise—providing he kept his ankle well bandaged—he was as good as new.

On Tuesday, Ruth asked Hart and Patrick to coach him on the newly devised lifts and leaps he had only been able to watch while his injury healed. The postponed run-through was scheduled for the following day, Wednesday, at three o'clock.

“And it's going to be a disaster,” whispered Ruth to Juliet, when the latter arrived, late on Wednesday morning. She found Ruth already in the studio, about to start her first rehearsal hour. The full ensemble had been called and dancers were filing in all around them.

Ruth drew Juliet into a corner. “You watch,” she went on fiercely. “Anton barely knows the new steps. I'm missing three transitions. Max is going to see what a mess I've made and change his mind about the gala. He'll hire a new choreographer. He'll— Let me see, what else can I think of to make myself totally crazy?”

Juliet took her hand. “It's going to be fine.” She nodded hello to Teri Malone, who had come in and given her a quick, friendly smile, going on, “You're creating wonderful new work here. That's what Max will see.”

“Right.”

Juliet pushed her gently toward the dancers. “Go make a ballet.” She seated herself near the front of the room, where she could quietly cheer Ruth on.

And cheering was needed. The first hour of the day did not go at all well. Even before Ruth could clap to bring the dancers to attention, Victorine Vaillancourt approached her, standing beside her at the front of the studio.

“The new lift you created yesterday for Miss Havisham,” she said, quietly but loud enough for Juliet to hear, while all the dancers sat and watched. “When she raises and swings Estella.”

“Yes?”

“Our ballerinas are not accustomed to such—such acrobatics. I am afraid you will have to change it.”

Alarmed, Juliet sat up straighter. Even to her ear, the word “acrobatics” had an insulting ring. The dance mistress was probably only trying to protect her aging protégée. But Ruth would be sure to resent the term.

Yet Ruth, to her credit, kept her temper. “There is no reason why one woman can't lift another,” she replied evenly. “The story requires it and I require it. If it is difficult for—for the Estellas, I can have Patrick coach them.”

But Victorine glowered. “All the same,” she said, “it will have to be changed.”

“It will not be changed,” Ruth answered. “But since that pas de deux is not part of this afternoon's run-through, may we set the matter aside for now?”

Victorine gave a graceful nod.

“So long as it will be changed,” she murmured maddeningly, and sat down. Juliet noticed the conspiratorial glance she then sent to Lily Bediant, who had preserved an impassive silence throughout the altercation. Juliet felt a surge of dislike for Lily, who still allowed this aging protector to fight her battles.

Ruth raised her hands together to clap and was interrupted at once by the pianist, Luis Fortunato.

“Signorina. Measure six in the ‘Peeping Pip.'”

Fortunato crossed the room to her, sheets of music in his hands.

“Sometimes you seem to want ta-ta-ta-TA, sometimes ta-TA, ta-TA.” He shoved the pages toward her, scowled and beckoned her back to the piano. “The composer has written it ta-ta-ta-TA,” he went on as, unwillingly, Ruth followed him. “But the steps you have now say ta-TA, ta-TA. Either way, I don't mind. But I must know what you want, and so must the dancers.”

Ruth's face went grim with frustration. She needed every minute she could get to coax the production together around Anton before the guests arrived. But she dared not ignore such a problem if it really existed. Patrick joined her at the piano, and for ten minutes they went over that phrase and various others Fortunato claimed she'd been reading inconsistently, marking the steps and counting them out while the ensemble watched and waited.

And when, at last, the actual rehearsal began, things got worse. As Ruth had said, Anton Mohr had only an elementary grasp of the new steps, and he danced them without authority. He sneezed and sniffled and blew his nose. He made frequent mistakes in the choreography, and bungled one catch so badly that Kirsten spent a full minute doubled over before she could dance again. More than once, Ruth had to ask Hart to step in and show him how something was to be done. And although Anton picked it up quickly, it was clear even he was frustrated with his progress.

“Yesterday you did not say it so,” he muttered darkly to Hart on one occasion when Ruth had summoned the latter to demonstrate a move.

Juliet saw the choreographer and her assistant exchange the same skeptical glance they had traded a week ago, when Anton claimed something had caused him to slip. Ruth, Juliet knew, had told no one about the talcum powder, not even Patrick.

“Did I say it more clearly today? I'm sorry,” Hart answered mildly, and Juliet could not help but admire the generous, face-saving diplomacy of the reply. True, it left Anton still sullen; but he soon picked up the steps.

Ruth restarted the act from the top, and this time Anton danced the entire new sequence correctly, if not with spirit.

Gloomily, Ruth looked at the clock and thanked the dancers. “Take ten.”

She turned to Juliet, but had time for no more than a despairing glance before Gretchen Manning came clicking in, hands full of lists, and carried her off. Rather relieved, Juliet spent the break on the fire escape with Olympia Andreades.

For better or worse, as of two days ago, Juliet had something in common with the ladies and gentlemen of the Jansch: a messy head cold of her own. Much as she loathed colds, this one had already had three beneficial effects. For one thing, it inspired her to give Fitzroy Cavendish a similar cold, which was helping immeasurably to create comedy in that love scene at Bath. It also provided a point of shared affliction to bemoan with members of the Jansch. She might not be able to execute a pirouette or launch a grand jeté but, by God, she could sneeze with the best of them. Finally—the good side of any cold—she did not need to smoke, her hyperosmia being sufficiently dampened by nature. But for the sake of picking up gossip, she had come out here anyway.

Olympia being a fellow sufferer, the two spent their first minutes on the little metal platform sharing Kleenex and heartily blowing their noses. For the moment, at least, they were alone. The weather had taken a sudden turn toward the sultry, and such sky as they could see from this pocket among the buildings was a curious yellowish gray. Truck horns sounded from Columbus Avenue, where a movie was being shot this afternoon. Remembering that Olympia had been among Anton's lovers, and also that she had been hovering near the rosin box just before his distressing slip, Juliet was determined to sound the ballerina out on the subject of her former beau. Her sly remark that Mohr was a man's as well as a lady's man was also in Juliet's mind. It suggested some familiarity with the roster of her rivals (if she considered them to be rivals), a list Juliet would like to have.

After a little small talk, therefore, and the requisite Lighting of the Cigarettes, Juliet stretched out her arms, yawned and commenced lying.

“God I'm tired,” she said, letting her head roll back across her shoulders. She emitted a soft, sensuous gasp.

Just as she had hoped, “Didn't you sleep last night?” Olympia asked. She smiled, her lush lips parting to reveal white, even teeth. She was beautiful, but for some reason she reminded Juliet of Amabel Edwards, a peripheral character in
Present Love.
Amabel had been rather spiteful, at one point deliberately clinging to a “friend” to prevent her from being alone with the object of her affections.

Juliet produced a sleepy grin. “Not enough. Seemed like a good idea at the time…” she added, as suggestively as she could. “You know how that is.”

If she expected the other to respond with a detailed accounting of her own recent sexual activities, she was disappointed.

“Mm,” was all Olympia said. She dragged on her cigarette, then released the smoke in two streams through her struggling nose. What a perfectly disgusting habit smoking was really, thought Juliet. Who would ever have dreamed it could become popular?

Silence, or what passes for silence in Manhattan, reigned.

At last, in desperation, “Anton Mohr seems to be picking up what he missed last week pretty quickly,” she said.

“Oh, Anton can do anything,” Olympia said carelessly, for once without double entendre. “He's sensational.”

“I gather you know him pretty well?” Juliet hazarded.

Olympia shrugged and looked suddenly world-weary.

“He's not an easy person to know,” said the dancer. She certainly didn't sound madly jealous, or cruelly betrayed—but, then, what would that sound like?

“I understand Lily Bediant had an affair with him at one time,” Juliet ventured.

“Who didn't?” asked Olympia casually. But the look she gave Juliet made a change in tack seem prudent.

“I was in the studio that day when he fell,” Juliet confided quickly. “It was awful. You don't realize—I mean, I didn't, while I was watching you all, how much gravity dancers are always fighting. But when he went down, boy, then I saw it.”

“Mm,” Olympia nodded.

Juliet had watched her narrowly throughout her little speech for any sign of glee or excessive distress, but the other was merely businesslike.

“I can't imagine what made him fall,” Juliet added, still scrutinizing the dancer. “Nothing that I could see.”

Olympia shrugged, her face blank. Then suddenly, “He was actually quite lucky,” she said. “Ryder had a fall like that a couple of years ago. Wrenched his back and had to take three months off. He was livid.”

“Oh, the poor man. It must be awful for a dancer to be immobilized.”

Olympia raised an eyebrow. “Oh, he managed. Didn't stop him from giving Elektra a good belt now and then,” she said blandly.

Juliet's mouth went dry. By now, she had recognized a perverse streak in Olympia: She was the kind of person who enjoys dropping provocative, unexpected information into a conversation. And clearly, her relationship with her sister was badly strained.