Struck By Lightning: Slow Satisfaction Part 20

Once in the green room, I changed into dancing clothes, black tights and bodysuit with a wisp of a light blue gossamer skirt around my hips.

When I got to the stage I found Ferrara terrorizing Alicia, or trying to.

"You've got to be kidding me. You hate my guts, Bogovich." Ferrara was wearing a black leather jacket over a catsuit studded with rhinestones. "You think I'll accept you as an impartial judge?"

"Ferrara, contrary to your self-centered fantasies, I don't give a f.u.c.k about you," Alicia shot back. "All I care about is how the show looks. If Jasper wants my opinion, he's going to get it, no matter what you think."

"I want all of your opinions," came a voice from the balcony box immediately to the right of the stage. James stood at the railing, looking down at us all. "Chandra. Give everyone a score sheet."

Ferrara looked like she was shooting laser beams out her eyes at him. "This is not a democracy!"

"No, it isn't. Because my decision will be the final one." His voice, and the authority in it, carried easily through the auditorium. He turned on his heel, then disappeared through the archway. A moment later he reappeared at the foot of the stage in the orchestra. "Now, let's get this under way."

But for Ferrara, the argument wasn't over. She loomed over him from the edge of the stage. "I'm the producer. You need my input."

He looked up with a mild expression on his face. "No, I don't. A producer might have some say if she threatened to pull her financial backing, perhaps, but I don't need your money, Ferrara."

"You're being ridiculous."

"I'm not the one who insisted on a ridiculously strict interpretation of our recording contract." He lifted himself onto the stage with his arms and swung his legs like a gymnast onto a vault horse, then stood close enough to kiss her. She refused to back away. "Why don't you try reading the production and performance agreements I signed? Auteur clause. I get complete creative control of all sight and sound in the production. Every detail."

"You-"

"Right down to the length of the false eyelashes on your face." He knew exactly how to push her b.u.t.tons.

She snapped. "You're a monster! You put the freak in control freak!"

"Of course I do," he said mildly. "Now, come on, people. Everyone into the seats." He looked up into the catwalks overhead. "Hey, Barnaby."

"Yeah?" came a voice from above.

"You know anything about dancing?"

"A little."

"Can you even tell my dancers apart?"

"Not really."

"Excellent. Get down here and serve as an impartial judge."

"A'right."

Everyone but me, Natalie, and Ferrara took seats in the VIP section of the orchestra, the posh tables closest to the stage, James included. Ramon went back to the sound board. Ferrara looked at me, then, examining me. I think until that moment she couldn't have picked me out of the group of dancers. Now she was looking at me with an expression of hate and disgust, like she couldn't believe she was even bothering to sc.r.a.pe me off the bottom of her shoe.

I tried to keep my chin up. But the sheer force of her disdain for me brought all my worries to the surface. What if I really was about to make a fool of myself in front of everyone? What if I was kidding myself and James was just besotted with me, he was no judge of whether I could do this, and everyone was going to see how pathetic a dancer I was?

Then I remembered that was the point of this audition. To find out. To prove to myself that I could hold my own, or to find out that I had no business there. That was why James wanted everyone to see it. Because if I really, truly sucked, he would know from the reactions of the others.

He cleared his throat. "Karina, why don't you go first? Natalie, take a seat."

"I'm happy to go first," I said.

"Fine. Ramon?" James called as Ferrara went into the wings.

"Almost ready, boss. Karina, don't forget your stool."

"Ah! Right!" I ran into the wings where it was stored.

Of course, when I found the stool, Ferrara was sitting on it. I decided to try the polite approach. "Excuse me, but I need that."

She had a compact in one hand and was putting on a fresh coat of lipstick, focusing on herself in the tiny mirror. She looked up at me slowly, her gaze taking a leisurely path up my body, her nostril flare increasing the longer she looked. "Who. Are. You? I don't recognize you."

"I really need the stool now."

"What are you? Are you his latest f.u.c.k toy? Is that it? Am I being tossed aside for a new piece of trash?"

I'm sure I blushed.

"Ahh, I'm right, aren't I?" She brightened suddenly. "He is a master of manipulation, isn't he? So that's why he insisted on this charade. I know what he's doing now. This is all some kinky humiliation game, isn't it? He's going to make you go out there and make a spectacle of yourself, and then what, spank you for doing a terrible job? Or just f.u.c.k you raw in the restroom? f.u.c.k you until you're so sore you come out bowlegged and everyone knows what you've been doing?"

The longer she talked the more desperate I got, my face redder and my breath shorter. "Please," I begged. "I need the stool."

She uncrossed her legs and stood with deliberate slowness. "You're not the first little chickadee he's ravaged," she said. "I know you think you like it. I know you think you love the attention. Maybe you even like pain. But just you wait until the day you say no to him."

She stepped aside and I grabbed the stool.

"It'll happen. He'll keep pushing you until you say no, and then he'll get what he really wants. Then he gets to rape you."

I clamped my mouth shut tight and wished I could do the same with my ears.

"He'll rape you and then leave you by the side of the road, and his money will shut you up..."

I hurried back onto the stage, banging my shin on the leg of the stool as I did. I put it down where I wanted it, panting and trying to keep from crying. She was full of it. She had to be. She was saying any outrageous thing she could to mess me up.

I remembered Stefan telling me once that he'd seen James do that, f.u.c.k a woman and then leave her.

But that had been a lame attempt to scare me off. And you know what? Ferrara was trying to do the same thing. Had to be. Had to be.

I heard Ramon's voice through the PA. "Whenever you're ready. Take your mark."

Right. The performance. I took a deep breath. I had to put everything out of my mind. Remember what the dance in London had been like. The whole audience had been rapt. And the audience of one I'd intended it for had reacted just as I'd hoped, cracking his sh.e.l.l and giving in to his l.u.s.t for me.

I could do this.

I went to the back corner of the stage, opposite the stool, and nodded to Ramon. The music began, and I crossed the stage almost in a ballet-like pa.s.s, coming to the stool, dancing in front of it and around it as if James were sitting there. As the drums kicked in, my moves became more sensual, as if I were teasing the man sitting there. I flowed across the stool with two kicks in the air as if I had taken a quick pa.s.s on his lap, and then straddled it with my back to the audience for a circular hip grind that Sabine would have called "stirring the cake batter." I'd made an edit of the music so that it was exactly two minutes long, and the ending slipped into another minor mode, almost a mournful one. Here's where I had to sell the idea that the stool wasn't only empty; it was permanently so. Maybe I relied on too much mime, but I hugged myself and wiped a tear, then danced away from the stool, and back, away, and back, until finally running off the stage entirely as if too grief-stricken to even look at the stool anymore.

They clapped. Hard. A few of them even whistled! I tiptoed back onto the stage and they got louder. I took a small bow, then ran down into the audience to sit next to Annika, who hugged me.

"It was great!" she whispered. "You're really good!"

Then it was Natalie's turn. Her music began before she was even on the stage, and she came bursting forth from the wings into a leap and a split in the air that defied gravity. She came down and went directly into a slide along the stage, effortless and mind-blowing, as she flowed right into the next upright spin and then another leap. I heard dancers around me gasp. It was a serious "wow" opening, and it kept up like that for the full two minutes, ending with her all the way at the front of the stage, as she slid into one final dramatic pose.

There were claps and a couple of male voices in particular shouted "yeah!" as she hit that last pose. But I think the clapping had been louder for me. It was hard to tell.

I brought her a towel and we hugged. "You're really an acrobat!"

Natalie grinned. "I figured I may as well go all out. You were really good, too. Good luck."

"Good luck," I said. I knew if James was picking on his own, he was picking me, but I really wasn't sure how this was going to go.

Chandra collected the score sheets. James did not look up at me. He appeared to be checking something on his phone.

Chandra handed him the score sheets and whispered something in his ear. He began to look through them. Now that I was closer, I could see the dark circles under his eyes. He had been traveling for what, fourteen hours?

Ferrara walked to the edge of the stage. "You can't seriously be trying to choose between them based on that alone."

James looked up from the scores. "Why shouldn't I? Is there something in particular you wish to see?"

"Well. If one of them is going to be a princ.i.p.al, we need to see what kind of compatibility she has with you."

James sighed.

"Don't you agree? If you're going to do this mad idea of a production, you don't need a soloist. You need a partner. You remember Sabine's exercise she calls 'pa.s.s de deux'? The one with the cross-stage improv?"

"Ben, Pascual," James said, calling for his two look-alikes.

Ferrara clucked her tongue. "You should do the pa.s.ses yourself. You're the one the girl needs to be compatible with."

James glanced at me, but I couldn't read his expression. He addressed the group then. "I've come directly from the airport. I had to be on the shuttle to Heathrow at five in the morning, London time, and it's, oh, almost midnight there now. But, she's right. I should do it. Who's got a dance belt to lend me?"

There were laughs, but then someone threw one that landed on his head, and that set the entire troupe laughing, James included. He took it and held it up to examine it, and nodded as if he approved of it. "Thanks for your support," he quipped, and that prompted more howls of laughter. "Be right back."

He went to change clothes, and the dancers and crew fell to chattering among themselves. Ferrara stalked off, probably to harangue him. I wanted to text him a quick warning, but my phone was still plugged into the sound board. By the time I reached it, she'd have found him anyway. Well, I might as well get it, I thought. I went up to the board and found it.

The phone was blinking to get my attention: a video call coming in. I clicked it.

On the screen I saw the green room. James had set the phone down and was changing his clothes. At another time I would have thought it was him winding me up by showing me his body, but this time I got the feeling he wanted a witness for the conversation he was having.

"James," Ferrara said. "I really think it's time to abandon this insane course."

"I know you do," he said. He wasn't visible in the frame now. I could hear rustling sounds.

Her voice was smooth and reasonable. "There simply isn't time for the company to learn an entirely new show."

"Ferrara, I'm tired, I'm at the end of my rope, and I didn't come back here so you could hara.s.s me about it one more time."

"And I told you you're being ridiculous, dear. In fact, it seems you're being even more ridiculous than we first discussed. What is this new music you sent to Bogovich without my knowledge? We don't have time to learn a whole new production. The whole point of returning here, returning the same cast, and doing the same show, is that it's doable in two months' time."

"You underestimate how talented this group is." Something flew past the camera. His shirt, perhaps.

"And you forget who is in charge of your career."

"Would you excuse me, please?" He cleared his throat.

She clucked her tongue and then purred, "I own you, James. I have every right to look at what's mine."

He was silent, and so was I, my hand over my mouth. Although she'd probably seen him make costume changes plenty of times, this was open ogling, open hara.s.sment. My cheeks burned scarlet again as I imagined how mortified James might be. When he was relaxed and open with me, like at his house on the Upper East Side, he wandered unselfconsciously naked. But I had almost never seen him like that. He was always covered, always discreet.

Maybe this was why. Had she been getting an eyeful of him since he was eighteen years old and too young and powerless to say no? Was this why he was so controlled, so closed, so wary? It might be why he was so touchy about certain things.

He picked up the phone and the video cut off. A few moments later the two of them came onto the stage.

"Karina," he said, gesturing for me. "You first again."

He was in plain white spandex tights that only came to below his knee, his chest bare. Under the tights I could clearly make out both the outline of the borrowed dance belt and the sizable package it held in place. As I made my way to the stage, he called out to Ramon for some appropriate music. "Five pa.s.ses. Make each one faster than the previous."

"No problem," Ramon said, hurrying back to the board from where he had been sitting.

The first piece of music was some kind of soundtrack, the music swelling and sweeping but without much rhythm. I followed James's lead and we floated across the stage, circling each other like two leaves on the eddies of a lazy river. Next came a cla.s.sical waltz, and we zigzagged back to the other side like two marionettes being made to dance in time. The third pa.s.s was some kind of funk, and though neither of us was really a hip-hop dancer, we clapped and strutted and popped our way. James was easy to dance with. It was like the music suggested the same ideas to us both, and then it was a matter of staying in synch, reading each other's cues. On the second to last pa.s.s the music was worldbeat, with bursts of horns and washes of marimbas, and James lifted me on a horn hit, then spiraled me around him as the marimbas took over again. And the last pa.s.s was to a rousing section of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, the part with the cannons going off. James swept me off my feet and let go of me at the top of the lift, my arms flying wide like a swan, and then he caught me, and swung me around, almost like ice skaters do. We were both grinning as we ended, and took bows to the enthusiastic clapping of the company.

Then it was Natalie's turn. I sat down with a sinking feeling. What if they could do so much more? She was such a daring, athletic dancer, and they had danced together before. Would it be obvious to everyone that James was choosing me only because of how into me he was?

On the very first pa.s.s, though, I could see they weren't in synch. She tried too hard to keep control of what they were doing, to show off her athleticism, and they had some moments of disconnect. As the music got faster, she pushed harder and that only made it worse. On the final pa.s.s she took a leap and he tried to catch her, but the catch wasn't completely clean and they both went down.

Thank goodness as the music cut off they were laughing. James was flat on his back he was so exhausted, and Natalie was cracking up. "Oh, that wasn't how that was supposed to go!" she said, poking him. "Karina, you win! You can have him." She kicked him playfully and climbed to her feet.

James got up more slowly, looking exhausted but still smiling. "Very well. I would say we have a definitive winner."

And it's not Ferrara, I thought, as I stood and took a bow, to the applause of the rest of the company.

Ferrara, who had been standing at the edge of the stage, shook her head and left.

James spoke to the group, still seated in the tables. "Thank you, all, for being here. I know I said good-bye last time, and I truly meant it. But circ.u.mstances are such that here I am, here you are, and the opportunity to put on a d.a.m.n good show is in our laps."

He hopped down and went to the sound board, then continued. "We're not doing Bride of the Blue," he said. "We're going to do a new rock opera that incorporates my greatest hits, with a few new songs and a new storyline. Ferrara was afraid we wouldn't have time to learn it, but the band is already cranking on the new material, and we have two months, people! That's more than enough time to work up the numbers where the whole ensemble is needed. There will also be opportunities for each of you to feature if that's something you want. Alicia and I will both be working with you..."

A huge yawn cracked his face then, and he had to wipe sudden tears from his eyes. "... Tomorrow. I'll be working with you tomorrow. Right now... it's been almost forty hours since I slept. I was in the recording studio all night, on the plane first thing this morning..." He sat down on the stool at the board. "I'm sorry. Alicia."

Alicia clapped her hands for attention. "Listen up, everyone. Take the rest of the day off. It'll be your last one for a while, so enjoy it."

Chandra was already moving to help James to his feet and push him toward the van back to the hotel. I grabbed my bag and joined them, as did a few others. As the van crept through the backstreets toward the hotel, James slept with his head on Chandra's shoulder and I couldn't help but feel envious. But now wasn't the time to reveal our relationship to everyone. I knew that.

I consoled myself with the thought that when he woke, no matter when it was, Chandra wouldn't be the one he turned to. I considered whether I should sneak into his room, and into his bed, entirely naked, to wait for him to wake up. It seemed a good bet.

I took a shower. As I closed my eyes under the flow of the water, moments from our dance improvisation played in my mind. We really were great together, so in synch, so perfect. I remembered dancing with him in that Cinderella dress at the society mansion, how perfect that had been, too. What would the first dance at our wedding be like? I wondered.

I could almost hear my conscience in Becky's voice: First dance at your wedding? Really? Karina, aren't you getting ahead of yourself?