Corpse de Ballet (2 page)

Since then, there had been translations, book club sales, and several television movie options. Miss Kestrel-Haven was regularly asked to speak to groups of Anglophiles and futurophobes, aspiring writers and Societies for the Preservation of the English Regency. There was even a Kestrel-Haven Fan Club, complete with Web site and quarterly newsletter. Juliet seldom met a soul in Manhattan who had read or even heard of her, unless it was somebody's mother visiting from out of state, yet somehow the thirst for escape to the world of Jane Austen so greatly afflicted the nation that book after book could not slake it. She purchased a duplex penthouse on Riverside Drive and hired a personal assistant. To share the wealth, she agreed to chair a committee at the Authors Guild, recorded books for the blind, and donated a healthy slice of her earnings to various causes and cultural institutions.

The abrupt explosion of a car alarm on the street far below coincided exactly with Ruth's next words, so that Juliet had to ask her to repeat them.

“I said, will you come in tomorrow?”

Ruth's tone was briskly impatient (for her, the nearest thing to imploring), yet Juliet hesitated. She herself could not have said why. Most days, she would jump at an excuse to escape her desk for a few hours. That very morning, she had reordered her sock drawer, written four thank-you notes, and alphabetized her “future ideas” file rather than get to work on
London Quadrille,
her current novel. Writing was interesting, but it was never easy, and Juliet now knew herself to be one of those many writers who will do almost anything rather than sit down to the terrifying, blank sheet of paper: run errands, make phone calls, pay bills, polish silver, chop vegetables, even scrub the floor.

At first, being Angelica had been illicit fun, a quasi-decadent escape from her real-life job as a professor. But as Angelica had become her professional identity, writing had begun to feel like work. It was the difference between an affair and a marriage. Now, whole months sometimes went by without Juliet writing a page, months when the thought of whipping up even a dollop of literary froth made her want to go to sleep. At such times, almost anything seemed pleasant and easy by comparison. While avoiding
Duke's Delight,
she had picked up a working knowledge of spoken Chinese.
Present Love,
one of Angelica K-H's earlier novels, provided an occasion to learn how to sight-sing. Juliet felt guilty and furtive about these apparent detours, but she preferred not to term them writer's “blocks”—an ugly word, she thought. Instead, she tried to see them as necessary bends in the circuitous, mysterious road to achievement. And, as she often argued to herself, she did almost always find inspiration in her absences, as if invention were a pot that could not boil while watched. She worried—worried constantly—about meeting her deadlines. Yet, somehow, she always did. Writing down a hundred thousand words did not take very long in and of itself, she sometimes observed. It was choosing the words that was time-consuming.

She squinted at the translucent shrimp tails on her plate and tried to block out the racket of the car alarm. It was the kind that sounds like a German klaxon alternating with a fire siren, and she had been a little depressed to notice a few months ago that she'd gotten so used to the pattern, she'd almost come to enjoy it. Surely a visit to the Jansch studios would be rather fun?

Besides, it was Juliet Bodine's general policy to help friends in need immediately and without stint. Her mother having died when Juliet was three, friends had become her family. She had no siblings. Her father was a freewheeling, high-flying, mercurial cad who probably ought never to have married in the first place. Always successful in business, Ted Bodine had provided his small daughter with a capable nanny, a plush room in a handsome apartment over Park Avenue, and the best private schooling available. But he had given her little in the way of personal contact. For personal contact, Ted Bodine preferred a series of women in their twenties. Juliet grew up feeling herself a cross between Sara Crewe and Eloise, with a soupçon of Christie Hefner thrown in for irony. Her father still lived across town, and they met for dinner now and then. But for her, the Upper East Side of Manhattan was a haunted place. The alley formed by the tall buildings along Park Avenue was her Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the very epaulets on the doormen threw a cold chill into her heart.

But as a grown-up, nesting in her own roomy, airy place on the Upper West Side—a region she considered a different city from the Upper East Side—Juliet had collected a family of her own. Her agent, Kimmy Lauer, her neighbors June Corelli and Suzy Eisenman, her dear e-mail correspondent and fellow connoisseur of unfamiliar words (naumachia, anarthria), Simon Leff, her writers' group, her former classmates (Ruth being one) and academic colleagues, as well as various others formed the core of a virtual cult of friendship by which she lived. The world, she believed, was cold and hard; the least friends could do was work to be kind to each other.

And yet, petitioned by Ruth for aid—Ruth, who would have chewed off her own paw if Juliet had needed help—she hesitated. She had a funny feeling, a notion that going into the Jansch would mean crossing a boundary into a world that was … that was what? She couldn't possibly think ballet was dangerous?

Her hesitation lasted only a few seconds, and she hoped it had not troubled her friend. With a smile at her own ridiculousness, she shook herself mentally, looked up, and said, “Absolutely. Don't worry. We'll fix you up in two little shakes.”

*   *   *

At exactly 11:55 on the morning of the next day, Juliet stepped out of the elevator and into the sleek little lobby of the Jansch Repertory Ballet Troupe headquarters. After some thought, she had decided not to change out of her habitual jeans and T-shirt for this visit. But as she gave the receptionist her name, she regretted the decision. She felt out of place in this stylish bandbox of chrome and leather and hoped the receptionist—Gayle Remson, according to the nameplate sitting on her desk—would wave her on at once. But alas, instead of pointing her straight to Ruth, Ms. Remson (petite, fortyish, dressed in a neat summer sheath and crowned with a shining helmet of apricot-colored hair) asked her to sit down, then told an intercom, “Miss Bodine is here.”

Eight seconds later, Max Devijian, executive director of the Jansch, sailed down the hall and into the lobby, his arms raised, his carefully tended hands stretched before him, as if Juliet's head were a particularly gorgeous hat he could not wait to try on. Juliet, familiar with his habits, attempted to turn away strategically, so that he could salute only one cheek. But, as was his way, he seized her skull regardless and soundly bussed her left and right.

Max Devijian was a slender, compact man with huge, dark eyes, a receding hairline, and that effusive, embracing sort of energy which can neither be fully resisted nor entirely trusted. As executive director of the Jansch, it was his job to kiss and cozy up to people like Juliet, New Yorkers with money who were well disposed to the lively arts. And he was very good at his job. In the four or five years since his arrival at the Jansch, he had transformed it from a large, shabby, second-rate company—a company with excellent dancers but a musty repertory that had barely changed since the late Florence Jansch founded the group in 1934—into a large, revitalized, increasingly first-rate troupe. Like all good fund-raisers, he took it as a given that people wanted to hand their money over to someone; they just didn't know who. In his former post, at Lincoln Center, he had been known for efficiency, zeal and—his only weakness, perhaps—a certain impatience with those whose good opinion he did not need. Since that included the company's artistic director, support staff, rehearsal pianists, ballet mistresses and masters, even most of the dancers, Devijian was a more popular man outside than inside the organization he served.

“Miss Bodine,” he now pronounced, his tone implying that it was a tremendous satisfaction to him simply to say her name. He had an odd, distinctively raspy voice, a little high for a man. He released her head, but took hold of her arm as he drew her toward a nearby sofa.

Juliet stiffened involuntarily. She had cut her work short to be here today. Of course, it was lovely to be out of her office and in such an unfamiliar setting—an unearned release, like cutting high school or getting out of jury duty early. But now that she was here, she was eager to go in to Ruth, not sit and have her favor curried.

But Max was adamant. “When Ruth mentioned you were coming, I insisted on having a moment with you. I must fill you in on our new season,” he said firmly.

Juliet tried to make herself relax. She had known Max for some years now, ever since she volunteered some money to rescue a failing arts-in-the-schools program he had initiated. Once he had made up his mind to “fill you in” on something, nothing stopped him.

“It's going to be marvelous,” he declared. “Best ever.” He then presented a flowing summary of each planned production, oozing on about this dancer and that set designer. He crowed about grants he had managed to get, then backtracked to make sure she knew the Jansch could still use more funding. He asked what she was writing, whether she planned to travel this summer, how she knew Ruth.
Great Expectations,
he said, would not only open the season, it would be the centerpiece of the Jansch's year, the focus of all possible attention.

“The music is splendid, you know,” he added. “Have you heard it?”

Juliet shook her head. She knew that the composer was Ken Parisi, an Englishman known mainly for composing the music for various Masterpiece Theatre productions. Ruth had been dubious about his ability to write for dancers, but it turned out he had experience in that area as well, and in fact the music pleased and excited her very much.

Inevitably, Max burst out in a string of superlatives describing Parisi's music, ignoring, as he went on, a youthful man who had hesitated as he entered the reception area, then come to within a few steps of Juliet. Here he stood, clearly waiting to have a word with her. He was slight and graceful, about thirty-five years old, with a long face, small blue eyes, and a short, thick mass of kinky red hair. Juliet recognized him as Ruth's assistant, Patrick Wegweiser, whom she had met at performances of Ruth's work once or twice before. With a dancer's poise, but something also of a human being's impatience, he stood listening quietly to Devijian's vague description of music he himself, as Ruth's aide-decamp, had been listening to and discussing for the past six months. When at last Max paused for breath, Juliet hopped up from the sofa and firmly took Patrick's arm. An instant later, Max also jumped up suddenly, as if at a pleasant surprise—as if Patrick had been invisible until Juliet touched him. With a faint feeling of disgust, she finally extricated herself from Devijian's chatter, said good-bye, and turned to follow Patrick down a corridor into the mazy studios.

The Jansch troupe was headquartered in three floors of a former upholsterer's warehouse on Amsterdam Avenue, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. South lay Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, north the great food emporia of Fairway, Citarella, and Zabar's. From the polished uppermost floor, where the lobby and executive offices were located, spindly metal staircases at either end of the building spiraled down into the grimier works of the place. A dancers' lounge, small offices, and rehearsal rooms occupied the middle story; on the lowest floor were the company's big rehearsal studios and the dancers' locker rooms.

Though the architects would seem to have had plenty of space to start with, the various rooms on all three stories felt jumbled and crammed in, as if they had been modeled on dice spilled at random. Dim, narrow corridors ran at peculiar angles among them, and the staircases seemed to Juliet, as she descended first one, then the next, in Patrick's wake, unnecessarily slender and rickety.

Devijian had so delayed her that now, as Patrick explained, the first hour of rehearsal was in full swing. (The dancers' mornings were devoted to warm-ups and classes.) Piano music drifted from behind doors along the hallways as she and Patrick reached the first floor, bits of
Sleeping Beauty
and
Giselle,
but the windows in the closed doors were too high and small for Juliet to see through without stopping.

“Ruth's in Studio Three,” Patrick murmured, pointing her to the left as they came to a four-way intersection of halls. A dancer apparently dressed in rags leaned against a wall here, her eyes closed, her slim right leg extended, foot severely pointed before her. Juliet hurried by, all of a sudden acutely aware of the comfortable cellulite pouches on either side of her own thighs. She was relieved when Patrick interrupted her thoughts.

“I'm really glad you're here,” he said. “Ruth's kind of been losing momentum, and I'm afraid it's infecting the dancers.”

As she replied, Juliet noticed, not for the first time, that there was something about Patrick that made him a natural helper, some quality in him that seemed to want to set aside his own agenda in favor of another person's. He was a happy server. She was soon to learn that this quality of being able to lend oneself, physically, emotionally, and intellectually, to another's purpose was exactly what a choreographer needed in a dancer.

Aware that he had worked for Ruth for years, “Have you ever seen her flounder this way on a new project?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Anything new is a challenge,” he allowed, “but—no, not like this. She's really rat—Oh, excuse me—” He stopped walking suddenly, raised a cautioning hand, turned his face away from Juliet, then sneezed explosively. “Sorry,” he said, over Juliet's automatic blessing. “I have a summer cold. We all do, it's germ warfare in there. I was about to say, she's really rattled.”

Put off by the prospect of an hour in a studio full of cold germs—Juliet hated colds, and what was it about “summer” colds that seemed to make people think they were charming?—she nevertheless said gamely, “Well, I stayed up all night rereading
Great Expectations,
if that's any help.”