Corpse de Ballet (31 page)

Savoring the dispute, Ruth suspended her spoon above the table. “Other people they respect?” she asked.

“Any people. People they fear, people they admire, their mother and father, even people for whom they have utter contempt.” Juliet stood and went to the fridge to put the remains of the trout away. “It's an alarming business, ambition. Think of a person who—I don't know, who writes advertising copy. He wants to hoodwink his audience into buying things they don't even need. Does he admire them? No. Does he feel a yearning to manipulate them, to vanquish them, to make them line up in droves? Yes.”

“That person feels a need to buy a second home in the Hamptons,” Ruth objected. “That's not ambition. Nobody's driven to write advertising copy.”

“I disagree. I think that's exactly what does happen. People get in a job and they're given a challenge and—by God, that becomes the way they show their worth. They'll sell more paperclips than anyone else in the world, or issue more parking violations, or wash more lepers' feet, whatever it is. The house in the Hamptons is part of it, but it isn't the whole picture, not at all. Do you want more coffee?”

“I'm fine. Do you feel that way about Angelica Kestrel-Haven? Is writing her books the way you show your worth?” Ruth asked.

“Hardly,” said Juliet. “If anything, I write them in spite of the way they make most people I know perceive me. Do you have any idea the contempt I get at dinner parties? How many people call my books ‘bodice rippers' and ‘Gothics' and ask me how long it takes me to ‘grind one out'? I don't feel driven to be Angelica Kestrel-Haven at all. I just enjoy writing.”

“You do?” Ruth asked, apparently shocked.

Juliet, sitting down again, answered, “Yes. Why are you so surprised?”

“Well, for one thing, you seem to be willing to use pretty near any excuse to get out of it.”

Juliet, who had just returned from giving her lecture at the Association of University Departments of Folklore and Mythology annual meeting in Boston, laughed. The lecture was a good example of a junket she had said yes to just because it provided a dignified reason to desert her desk. “I didn't say it was easy,” she answered. “I said I enjoy it. I do get—” Her voice dropped. “You know, I do get … the B word.”

“Bored?”

“Blocked,” Juliet whispered.

In retrospect,
London Quadrille
hadn't gone so badly—only a few weeks here and there spent at the Jansch to interrupt it, a few days of playing—oh, might as well say it, playing Nancy Drew. And she had only two more chapters to go. During
The Parisian Gentleman,
she had actually learned to program in HTML.

“But I usually like it,” she took up again. “Most of the time, it's fun. Whereas being ambitious is not. Being driven to achieve is not fun.”

There was a silence while Ruth took this in. Finally, “So?” she said.

“So doesn't it make sense to do something you enjoy?”

“Make sense?” Ruth repeated dubiously.

“Since you only live once? If you have the choice—not that most people do, but if you do—shouldn't you do the things that bring you pleasure?”

“Since you only live once, you should make it count,” Ruth said firmly. “You should work your hardest and give your all. You should strive to be the best whatever-you-are that you can be. Give back to the field you love. Before you die, make the finest contribution you possibly can to whatever you care about. That's what you should do.”

“No matter the personal cost? I don't see that.”

“No matter.”

Juliet shook her head. “You've spent too much time in ballet studios,” she said, then instantly regretted it. It had been a relief to discuss something other than dance with Ruth.

“If people weren't driven, there would be no dance,” Ruth said.

“Sure there would. It would just be different. Different kinds of dance. Like folk dance. You'd have that.”

“There certainly wouldn't be any ballet.”

“Sure there would. Or could. It just wouldn't be so insanely perfect.”

Now Ruth shook her head. “Ballet is perfect. That's its nature. It's extreme, and it requires extreme effort. In your world, there would be no ballet, no
ballets,
no brain surgery—at least, no successful brain surgery—no rocket science, no hunger strikers, no—”

“No supermodels, no Green Berets, no religious fanatics, no burnout—” Juliet broke in.

“No achievement—”

“No uncomfortable achievement.”

“No striving—”

“No unhappy striving—”

“It just wouldn't
work,
” Ruth erupted in frustration, as Juliet rose and took the dregs of their ice cream away.

“Wouldn't work because—?”

“Because people
are
ambitious,” said Ruth, “that's the way people are. They want to make their mark in the world, they want to shine, they want to be remembered. They want to make something worth making.
And
they want everybody to say, ‘You made that? That is valuable! I couldn't have made that.' That's what people want, and they want it more than they want to be happy or comfortable or good or loved or any other thing. That's what I think.”

“In other words, they want recognition.”

“That's a piece of it. But it's mainly the thing itself.”

“Some people.”

“Some people, of course,” Ruth allowed. “A lot of people would be happy to get by with whatever drivel gets a rise from other people. Of course not everyone is driven to excel. But for those who are, there is no choice but to do it. To try and work and push and claw and try some more until you drop. That's the way.”

Juliet poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “That's the way because we define it as the way,” she said. “If our children were brought up differently, if society placed a greater value on happiness and less on achievement—”

“Then you'd have Polynesia,” said Ruth scornfully.

“And what's wrong with Polynesia?”

“If every place were Polynesia, no one would know there was a Polynesia. There would be no one to find it. No explorers, no clipper ships, no astrolabes, no maps…”

Juliet shrugged. A scarcity of astrolabes did not trouble her.

“You shrug now, but you'd be crying when your period came and no one had invented Tylenol.”

Juliet laughed. “Oh, that reminds me. What's the name of that medication people use for a yeast infection? It used to be prescription only?”

“Monistat?”

“That's it. Thank you. I've been so…” Juliet wriggled demonstratively. In the past four weeks, she must have gone through three gallons of yogurt, but it had only dampened, not eradicated the itch.

“Speaking of”—Ruth stopped and wriggled in imitation—“how's your love life?”

“Love life?” Juliet echoed, as if the concept were unfamiliar.

“You ever see Murray Landis again?”

“You know, I'm kind of pissed off at Murray Landis,” Juliet said, with sudden energy. She had phoned him right after her second visit to Elektra at the hospital, left him a voice-mail message summarizing what she'd learned. But she'd never heard back from him. She didn't think he disliked her, so she had concluded he was afraid to see her. That didn't raise him in her estimation.

“Still?”

“No, again. A month ago, he said he'd call me and have me over to see his sculpture, but he didn't. I think there's something wrong with that guy.”

“There usually is.” Ruth laughed. “You know that old definition, that a novel is a work of fiction of a certain length with something wrong with it? Could we say that a man is a boy of a certain age with something wrong with him? Or is that horribly sexist?”

Juliet was about to suggest all adults were grown children with something amiss when the phone rang.

“I'll let the machine get it,” she said. The machine was in the kitchen, noisy and impossible to ignore, and they sat waiting in silence through three rings till it clicked on.

Juliet's businesslike voice regretted her inability to get to the phone and invited the caller to leave a message.

Another click.

A bit of masculine throat-clearing.

Then, “Jule?”

Juliet jumped.

*   *   *

Except for the health-destroying ozone level, it was a perfect summer evening, the heat of the day peacefully rising as the twilight gently fell. Juliet entered Central Park as part of a gathering stream of playgoers flowing eastward between the tall, lush-leafed arcade of trees.

When he had phoned earlier that day, Murray explained that a friend of his who worked the park had just given him a pair of tickets to
Macbeth
for the evening at the Delacorte. He wondered if Juliet would like to come.

“I'd be delighted,” Juliet said, wondering hard why the invitation had come now.

“Great,” said Landis. “Unfortunately, I can't meet you ahead of time. I caught a murder yesterday. I'm going to have to work.”

“That's no problem.”

“Look for me at the Delacorte box office just before eight, okay?”

“Sure,” said Juliet, and hung up.

“Catching” a murder, she took it, was a term of art meaning that a homicide had taken place in the precinct and it was a particular detective's turn to investigate it. She had dined on a slice of pizza on a bench near the Planetarium before strolling into the park.

In the Diana Ross Playground, near the entrance, a few children still squealed as they dashed through the sprinkling fountain in the dusk. A handful of cut flowers marked the site of the brutal attack, years before, on a young woman pianist. Tired dog owners, nannies, elderly strollers, quarreling couples lolled on the benches along the path to the theater. Farther in, hundreds of bicyclists and in-line skaters zipped along the park drive, forcing the accumulating throng of pedestrians to wait for a red light at the crosswalk near Belvedere Castle, then scurry over ASAP, lest some velocity-delirious rollerblader run them over. Juliet, scurrying with them, caught herself wishing she could politely hitch her underpants down. Tomorrow, absolutely, she would give in and buy a box of Monistat.

And then she was there, where the fantastic gray stone blocks loom over the little lake, where Romeo and Juliet, a bronze tangle of lean, adolescent limbs, keep watch for Shakespeare. A hum of theatrical excitement mingled with the burble of cicadas. No one here had paid for a ticket: they were all free, given away to those (and only those) who had stood in line this afternoon, two tickets per customer, no more. It was as democratic, as pure a cultural event as the city affords, and the feeling among those gathered was correspondingly heady.

Landis rushed up to the box office a minute or two late, wearing a rancid sweatshirt and an expression of exhausted satisfaction. Juliet stood on tiptoe, meaning to peck at his cheek. At the same instant, he put out his hand to shake hers. There followed a moment of living cubism, a dizzying macedoine of hands and lips in closeup. Finally, Juliet grazed Landis's sweaty cheek with her temple, while he clutched a handful of her forearm.

They stepped back and smiled at each other, both a little pink.

“How's your case?” Juliet asked.

“Got him. Vicious little punk.”

“Congratulations.”

Murray carefully took her arm and guided her toward one of the theater's entrances. “It was a pleasure,” he said. “Piece of crap took a knife to his sister because she was making it with a member of a rival gang.”

“He killed her?”

“No, the boy she was making it with. But he carved her up pretty well. She'll be sleeping alone for a while.”

Juliet was silent a moment. Then, “How did you find him so fast?” she asked. “How did you know it was him?”

“Talked to the victim's mother. She couldn't be more than thirty herself. The killer's fourteen. The mother was scared to say anything, of course, because they will come after her. But I never went to her place, so hopefully…”

Murray's words trailed off as he gave the tickets to an usher and was led to their seats. Juliet followed behind.

“How lucky that you were able to get him so quickly,” she said, as they settled in. Their seats were ten rows back and dead center—suspiciously good. Juliet began to wonder if Murray's friend, being a police officer, had gotten special treatment after all.

Murray shrugged. “Most homicide cases, if they're going to be solved, you're going to make an arrest within forty-eight hours,” he said. “After that, unless a new lead happens to come up, the case kind of gets shoved aside. You run with the fresh homicide, that's the rule. It probably shouldn't be that way, but—”

Murray shrugged again and Juliet knew he was thinking of Anton Mohr. It crossed her mind, as it had once or twice before, that she had never really thanked him for the exhaustive care with which he had conducted his investigation. She didn't want him to think she faulted his technique or zeal. Indeed, in the last month or so, even she had stopped believing that someone had committed murder.

But the lights were going down (and the moon coming up) and they hadn't even had a chance to look at their programs. She opened hers to glance at the cast list. Duncan, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth … And in a flash, that strange, intense, rage-filled little dance she had seen Hart Hayden perform so many weeks ago alone in the tiny rehearsal room returned to her vividly. Then, she had known it was familiar but couldn't place it. Now, suddenly, she recognized it: It was Iago's first-act solo in Lubovitch's
Othello,
a dance of furious frustration, thwarted ambition, and lethal envy.

Juliet returned her attention to the program, her mind relieved by this answered question, then puzzled all over again a moment later.
Othello
wasn't being danced by the Jansch this season.