Three
It's Tuesday night, and I'm exhausted. Part of it is rehearsals. Part of it is the emotional drain of what I did the other night, accompanied by last night's introduction to my blackmailer and jailer. It's putting a lot of extra strain on me, and I'm pretty sure I didn't get more than four hours’ sleep last night.
I spent all day today at rehearsal trying to figure out who this guy is. The principal dancers cluster together and keep to themselves, but I need to know if one of the male principals is my blackmailer. Or is it one of the instructors or choreographers? It's not Mr. V. Obviously. I know his voice. And this guy is younger.
All day I wondered if my blackmailer was right in front of me, quietly mocking me.
Henry pops in a DVD, pulling me from my thoughts. The movie starts. We're sitting in my living room: Me, Henry, and Melinda.
“Oh God, no, not this one again. I hate this one!” I whine.
“Nope, you have to. It's the start of the season, and we have to watch this movie. It's the ballet movie we all love to hate. It is our forever frenemy,” he says.
“It's like a hate fuck,” I say.
“YES!” Henry exclaims, shoving a bowl of popcorn onto my lap. “You hate it, but at the same time, it's so good.”
I know he brought the DVD to make us watch the bonus features. We're about halfway through the movie when Melinda says “I fucking hate her mother. What is wrong with this woman?”
“Oh, I know!” Henry says.
“Cue fragile emotional meltdown and stereotype of the uptight repressed ballerina,” Melinda says, sounding dramatic and distressed.
“Drink!” I say. Because we all drink every time this girl has some meltdown. “Where does that myth even come from? Like bitch, please, try living one day in my life and tell me ballerinas are these delicate fragile flowers about to fall apart every second.”
“They do that to the men, too,” Henry says.
“Not really in this movie,” I say. Which is probably why he likes it. The stereotypes are all on the girls this time.
“I mean in general. Like there is this assumption of weakness in men who dance ballet. And that we're all gay.”
“You are gay,” Melinda says throwing a handful of popcorn at him.
“Yeah, but I'm one of only three out of the whole company! I want a refund. I was sold a lie!”
In spite of the fact that tomorrow is Wednesday and all that may mean, I can't help laughing. I can't help trying to hold onto this moment where everything seems good and normal.
“Besides, the male dancers are always touching the female dancers pretty intimately,” Melinda says.
“If we had any other job, and our male co-workers touched us like our partners do for some of these lifts, it would be a sexual harassment scandal,” I say a little loud because I always get a little loud when I drink.
By this point, the movie has been drowned out with our rants about dance politics and how non-dancers will never understand us.
“When is Conall coming home?” Melinda asks suddenly, completely killing all the joy in this night—even though she doesn't mean to or even realize she did it.
My mind goes to the grout in the master bathroom. I'm like a hamster in a wheel with this grout issue. And I feel like I've got a guilty look on my face, but we're all drunk and nobody will notice. Right? “He said a few weeks.”
“Has he called?”
“He never calls when he's out of town.”
“I bet he's with that whore he named the boat after... what's her name again?” Henry asks.
“Stella,” I say. “And probably.”
“The Delectable Stella,” Melinda clarifies, as if this clarification needs to be made. “What kind of piece of shit takes his mistress on a not-so-secret vacation on his wife's birthday? And at the start of the dance season.”
“Conall does,” I say. “Anyway, I hate for him to watch me perform. He makes me nervous. He doesn't get ballet, and he gets weird about Henry. He thinks we've got something going on.”
