Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1) (14 page)

“Whoops, sorry.” Sam looked at her notes, checked off an item and posed the next question.

Ten minutes later they finished. Alice shook Sam’s hand, escorted her to the elevator, and with a sigh of relief, returned to her own, safer work.

Monday evening was the dinner party at Montserrat and Carter’s. She’d had the inspiration that morning to walk the two miles into work and take a taxi over to their place, so Niles could drive her home afterward. She hadn’t, however, factored in the futility of trying to catch a taxi at rush hour. Taxi after taxi had whizzed past, full of attendees from nearby Moscone Center, which clearly had disgorged thousands of conventioneers around the same time.

Finally she arrived at their house, tired and stressed. Carter met her at the door with a broad smile. Montserrat’s husband was much like Niles, minus the ponytail, and brown eyes instead of grey, but with the same breezy sense of humor and intelligence.

“You’re late,” he said, relieving her of the bottles of wine she was carrying. “And someone’s been very insistent about seeing you.”

Carter shut the front door and a moment later Niles was there, sidling up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, whispered hello against her neck. The tactile pressure of his body against hers, the scent of him, made the tight, anxious knot in her loosen.

He gave her a squeeze, a soft kiss on the cheek. “I just met your friend,” he said.

“My friend?”

“Lana, I think Montserrat said her name was.”

She turned to face him. “I’m confused,” she said slowly. “My friend,
Lana
?”

“Surprise!” Montserrat cried as she stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room. Alice pivoted around and there she was, right beside Montserrat.

Lana.

Everyone laughed at Alice’s gape-mouthed expression, her stuttered words that she didn’t expect to see Lana here, what a surprise, indeed. A timer went off in the kitchen and Montserrat hurried back in.

“Ladies, have a seat,” Carter said. “Alice, what can I get you to drink?”

Niles patted the seat next to him on the couch. She sat, still in a daze. “Oh, whatever Niles is drinking.”

“Coke,” said Niles, gesturing to his glass.

Alice frowned. “Coke?”

He looked guilty. “I’m still sort of on the clock. Need to put in a few more hours of work tonight when I go home.”

“Oh, Niles.” Alice was too disappointed to say anything more.

Carter held up his own glass of red wine. “Alice, am I safe in assuming you’d prefer this?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “Super-size me. Please.”

Once Carter had poured her a glass, she left Lana and the men in the living room to seek out Montserrat’s company in the kitchen. “Anything I can do?” Alice asked Montserrat, who was measuring the ingredients for her vinaigrette into a mason jar.

“Oh, thanks, but I think we’re all set. Lana pitched in. She’s quite the little helper.”

“Um, I guess so.”

Montserrat glanced at Alice. “You don’t mind, do you? That I invited her?”

“Of course not,” she lied. “It’s just rather out of context seeing her here, in your house.”

“She was over at the performing arts library—we saw each other in the foyer.” Montserrat screwed the jar onto the vinaigrette mixture and began to shake it. “She was done with rehearsals for the day, so she’d been killing time all afternoon watching archived ballet performances and taking notes. Anything besides going back home. The poor thing seems rather out of sorts in her new life still. From the sound of it, she’s made no friends except Gil and you.”

“Whoa.” Alice held up her hands. “She’s not my friend. Not like that.”

Montserrat’s brow furrowed. “But when we talked last night you told me the two of you had a long talk on Saturday night.”

“Well, yes. We did.”

“Uh, oh. Did I get things wrong?”

“No, I told you it’s okay.”

“She was afraid you would mind.”

“Why would I mind?”

“That’s what I told her.” Montserrat set down the jar and surveyed the kitchen. “Well, that’s it for prep work. Let’s go join the others.”

When they entered the living room, Niles and Carter were each examining one of Lana’s pointe shoes, turning the peach satin shoes this way and that. In spite of her grumpiness, Alice smiled.

“Oh, look at that,” she said. Lana glanced up at her hesitantly. “You wear Freeds.”

“I do,” Lana said. “The guys were asking about them, and I had a brand-new pair here in my bag.”

“I wore Freeds, too. Pretty much everyone in the company did.” She moved over to Niles, sat and peered closer at the torpedo-shaped shoe in his hand. “God. It’s been years since I’ve seen one of these up close.”

“Does it make you nostalgic?” Niles asked.

“Not really. I had such a love-hate relationship with my pointe shoes. I don’t think my feet were ever completely free of pain once I started dancing en pointe.”

“I’d have to say the same,” Lana confessed.

Niles tapped the side of the shoe on the coffee table. It gave a hollow
thwack
in reply. “Boy, it’s no wonder,” he said. “These are like plywood. I never would have guessed.”

“You have to break them in,” Lana said.

“How?”

In response, Lana reached into her dance bag and pulled out a ball-peen hammer. “Using this on them, or slamming them against a wall.”

“Or sticking them in a doorjamb and closing the door on them,” Alice added.

Lana nodded. “Sometimes I’ll pour rubbing alcohol over the box while I’m wearing them, too. That helps break down the glue in the area around my bunions. At least temporarily.”

“And these shoes, once they’re broken in, how long do they last?” Carter asked. “I’ll bet you go through several pairs a year, don’t you?”

Lana and Alice exchanged amused, superior glances and began to chuckle.

“Okay, so I’ve proven I know nothing about ballet shoes,” he said. “Care to enlighten me?”

Lana made a “you explain” gesture to Alice, who told the others how the shoes, once properly broken in, could last anywhere from twenty minutes onstage to a full night of performing. After that the toe, the spot that the full body weight rested on, got too soft and the shoe was only good for class or practice.

Niles shook his head. “That has to get expensive.”

“Sixty to eighty bucks a pop,” Alice said. “Although in a professional company you don’t have to pay. What does the current contract give you?” she asked Lana.

“One hundred twenty pairs a season. Twice as many as I got in Kansas City. I’m in heaven.”

This astounded the others. Carter leaned closer. “So, how does a dancer come up with that kind of money if they’re not in a professional company?”

“You wear them a lot longer,” Alice said. “Wince through the too-soft spots where your toes make contact with the ground. Pour shellac into the toe spot of the box to try and avoid that. Tell your parents you really, really need to buy another pair. Oh, the wars I had with my father when I was a teenager. I kept telling him the soft ones were hurting my toes, but I still had to make do with only one or two pairs a month.”

She turned to Lana. “What about you? Were your parents that stingy?”

Lana abruptly shifted her gaze downward. Her shoulders rose and fell in a noncommittal shrug. “Oh, I found a way to get by.”

No one spoke. Lana, realizing the others were waiting to hear more, looked up. “Well,” she said, “the thing is…” She faltered.

This time the pause was distinctly awkward, as if they were all rehearsing a play and someone had forgotten their lines, important lines, lines that were required for the rest of the scene to make sense.

“Go ahead, Lana,” Montserrat said. “We’re all friends here.”

Lana studied the ball-peen hammer she’d set on the coffee table. “They didn’t have money for pointe shoes at all. We weren’t poor, really, it was just considered an unnecessary expense, especially after my little brothers were born and there were six of us kids. So I had to earn it myself.”

“By babysitting, or something?” Alice asked. “That’s what I ended up doing.”

Lana laughed, a hollow sound devoid of mirth. “Oh, I did that in my own house. Without pay. No, I, well, cleaned houses.”

“You cleaned houses,” Alice repeated carefully, and Lana nodded.

“I was doing it at home anyway, to help out my mom, and I learned how to do it fast. If I worked hard and was organized about it, I could do one right after school, before that afternoon’s dance class.” Lana spoke in a dogged fashion, still focusing on the hammer. “Another house I did first thing in the morning, once a week, before school started. Summers, I could pick my own hours. And that’s how I paid for my pointe shoes. My leotards and tights. A car to get me to and from classes.”

Lana, a cleaning lady. Alice didn’t know what to say.

Montserrat did. She rose and went over to where Lana was sitting. “I did something very similar,” she told Lana. “No financial support in the least from my parents. They thought taking violin lessons was frivolous. So, from an early age, I ran my own little laundry service. I came in, changed out the sheets, the towels, washed my clients’ dirty stuff, ironed and starched their shirts.”

Lana stared. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. Like I was telling you, we’re not as different as you think.”

Alice was speechless with shock, not just about hearing this facet of Montserrat’s life, but that Montserrat had divulged more to Lana than she ever had to Alice. Much more. How could Lana have simply marched in and won over Montserrat, her own special friend, so quickly?

“Cleaning up someone else’s mess,” Lana said to Montserrat, “it paid great, but it felt demeaning. Especially knowing some of the other girls in my ballet classes had maids in their households. I was in the studio on scholarship and they knew it. I was a total outsider. If they’d found out about my work, they would’ve ostracized me even more.”

Montserrat was sitting close to Lana, her arm around Lana’s thin shoulders. “Working hard to support your craft is one of the most noble, powerful things you could have done. It will always define you and your artistry. Sure, it was hard, definitely humbling, but you should feel nothing but pride about it now. You alone made your success happen.”

Lana offered Montserrat a tremulous smile. “Rich people,” she said. “They just don’t get it. They’re all self-centered and spoiled.”

Montserrat glanced at Alice and so did Lana. Her eyes widened. “Not all rich people are like that, though,” Lana added hastily. “Some are really nice. The greatest.”

“Nice try,” Alice said, and the others laughed. Alice and Lana didn’t.

“Alice has a great family,” Niles said. “Good people, wonderful hosts. And, all right, they happen to live in a rather nice house.”

“I’ll second all of that,” Montserrat said, laughing.

“They’re here, in San Francisco?” Lana asked.

Alice nodded.

“What neighborhood?”

Why on earth was this girl making her feel ashamed? “Pacific Heights,” she said, studying her wine glass.

“I know where that is,” Lana said. “It’s in movies and such. It’s nice.”

Another nod; she couldn’t very well deny it.

“Did you grow up there, in that same house?” Lana asked.

“Yes.” Alice set the glass down and met Lana’s gaze.

“So, if I can ask. Did you have a nanny?”

“Excuse me?”

“What I’m wondering is, did someone besides your mom drive you to your ballet classes and pick you up? Like, did your family have hired help?”

The flash of spirit in Lana’s eyes surprised her. The girl knew how to hold her own, after all. It was both affirming and disconcerting to observe.

“Yes,” she admitted. “For a few years, my family had a nanny.”

“I thought maybe so. You look like you grew up around wealth. I mean that in a good way,” she added. “You’re so elegant and polished and together.” She offered Alice and the others a self-deprecating smile, a helpless shrug. “I’m jealous. I would have given anything to have switched places with you.”

She could have replied in a variety of ways, most of which would have produced the same uncomfortable silence Lana’s cleaning-lady admission had. But she was a Willoughby. Willoughbys didn’t expose, or attempt to explain, those kind of things. “No,” she told Lana. “Trust me. I don’t think you would have wanted that.”

An uncomfortable silence ensued anyway.

“Alice?” Montserrat spoke up. She caught Alice’s eye. She knew this part of Alice’s past; she and Niles both, but only Montserrat seemed to have figured out the chronology. “Maybe you want to…”

“No.” Alice cut her off. No, she would not elaborate to Lana and the others why she’d had a nanny from age eight to thirteen. She would not rehash her young girl’s trauma in order to solicit their sympathy.

“Sure,” Montserrat said. “Okay.” She nudged the appetizer tray in the direction of the others. “All right, people. Eat my fine cheeses and prosciutto,” she commanded. “Do it, or there’ll be no dinner served.”

The tension eased. Even Alice could join the laughter this time.

But in spite of Montserrat’s efforts, the rest of the evening seemed tainted for Alice. Every little breezy exchange, about families, careers that were exhausting in spite of your success in them, work that consumed you, seemed to offer the other four people a connection and a chance to chuckle, nod in commiseration. Everyone except for Alice. On the surface, she could fake it. After all, she had a career, the “much better suited for me” one outside of the other, destroyed one. She had the mom she even called “my mom” so it didn’t stand out—she’d been doing that since age thirteen, with Marianne’s permission and encouragement. But her spirits were working opposite of everyone else’s, as if she were a pulley and by pulling her side down, she was hoisting everyone else’s level higher and higher.

Lana, in contrast, grew more animated, encouraged by the others’ interest and Montserrat’s warm smile. Over coffee she told them about the WCBT’s fall schedule. There’d be a pre-season series of local performances before heading out on a West Coast tour for three weeks. Upon their return, they’d start preparation for
Nutcracker.