He muttered something in French as he left us alone. It sounded like he was giving Scarlett more praise.
“Come with me,” she said, taking my hand and leading me onto the stage. “I only have a little time. This was a favor.”
I’d never been on this stage before. It was vast, able to hold four hundred performers or more. The view beyond was almost astounding, or at the least, daunting. This was a place where two worlds were separated only by the line of the stage, but somehow they were connected through the performance.
Seven life-size mirrors, props from a performance, maybe, were lined one next to one another, mirroring our reflections.
“Do you ever get nervous, baby? This is—” It was enough to freeze a grown man in his tracks, and there was no audience. How would it be to have over a thousand people anticipating your performance? I had asked her this before, but not in the actual place.
She hesitated before she answered. “Yes and no. That’s why I take some time to be alone before, to do my makeup and hair. It calms me.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was the only one she allowed in, had ever been allowed in during those moments. “But this is different.”
“My body is good at what it does, Brando. I have trust in myself, in my abilities, and I give myself over to the performance. It’s me up here, but not. There’s something in control, and it’s bigger than I am. I’m just the vessel—which means that I prepare the shell but the soul does the rest.”
She said this without an ounce of vanity, only absolute fact and conviction. Other than her love for me, it was the one area of her life that I had never truly sensed doubt from her, only certainty, yet she constantly strived to be better than she had been the day before. The only time she shied away from her success was when someone else paid her a compliment.
It wasn’t until I heard the fabric of her jacket hit the floor that I turned around to face her. She was in all black—long-sleeved leotard, her waist shaped by a diamond-encrusted belt, and a sheer material that moved with her, flowing like water around her legs.
She had sewn herself into black pointe shoes at the apartment, the satin laced up around her ankles.
Something about the outfit—no, costume—gave me a feeling of unease, but I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t overtly sensual, but the way she looked in it almost made it seem indecent.
She used her foot to draw a line between us. “I wore this—” She bit her lip. “I wore this the first time I danced at the underground club. Before you came back for me.”
A rush of blood surged through me, the anger inside of me pushing its rush. Was this some kind of joke? The mirrors made sense. She had danced in the underground club once before I came back to Paris to collect mine, her. The second time she took me there was to hurt me.
She held a hand up. Her skin was so fair that I could easily see all of the veins snaking underneath her skin. Her weddings rings glimmered under the stage lights.
“Dammi la possibilità di spiegare, mio marito. Per favore.”Give me the opportunity to explain, my husband. Please.
A nod was all she got from me. I didn’t trust myself to say another word.
“Stay there. I need you up here with me.”
She put a hand to my chest and then took slow steps backward, closer to the mirrors. No matter where she moved, I could see her from every angle.
The music began and I almost growled. It was the same song she had danced to.
At the exact moment the beat played out, she became it. Music was her muse, and she was its conductor. If the melody didn’t exist, she could still string you along to it. Her interpretation left no doubt about the meaning.
The movements were familiar, almost identical to her dance years ago, but with one gaping difference: the anger behind the intention was missing. She had been so fucking angry at me before for my absence in her life. There was something else she wanted me to see and feel now—something to take the place of the feelings then.
She dominated this stage, and me, and it was so simple to understand how the audience assumed she was much taller than she really was. Up here, she commanded, and the audience followed without thought.
She could twirl so fast that I expected whirlwinds to follow in her footsteps. Then she could stop on a dime, and without missing a beat, smoothly transition into another breathtaking move. Her limbs reminded me of silk ribbons in partnership with the air, each playing a part in a flawless performance.
A legend. I always knew she would be. She had more natural talent that any natural law should’ve allowed.
The mirrors refused us the right to escape each other, and as she passed me on a twirl, I could feel the ghost of our past run a cold hand over my heart. She came back, her hand running along my chest, warm compared to the memory, and in that moment, I was part of this performance, more than a prop on the stage of her life. I was her partner.
Drunk on the dance, on whatever she took from me, her eyes were hooded, almost closed. When her mouth came close to mine, so close that her tender breath washed over my face, the song changed course, and she flung herself away from me, backward running on her toes to the mirrors.
This is the war between lovers. You stab me first, and I’ll stick the knife in even deeper. But if you love me like this and I love you like that…
She came back for me, this time giving herself to me fully, and as the end of the song played, she stood en pointe to reach my lips, and then kissed me—long, deep, and languorous.
“Ti perdono,” she whispered against my mouth. “Perdonami per questo.”I forgive you for all of that. Forgive me for this.
