‘Some words, like… Okay, I’ve thought of some:exquisiteandcaressandgleam– well, you don’t have to ask them twice. They love being written into poetry and they jump right into the lines, snuggle down between the commas and coo. Other words, likemudandwaterandbabyhave to be, like, cajoled and teased and tickled. But—’
He holds out a finger to her and she tries not to be impressed because she is still –still– trying to figure out if this poetry thing is good or bad.
‘If you can settle them there, tuck them inside a metaphor or something, let them get comfy. Well, then they’ll sing the sweetest song you’ll ever hear.’
She cocks her head, not sure if she can tease him yet. ‘Is that one of your poems?’
He laughs. ‘The Crow isn’t keen on me writing. I’ve lost every single notebook I’ve ever written in, the notes app onmy phone crashes constantly and any time I ask to borrow Mackie’s laptop he says yes but it never works out.’
She winces in sympathy. ‘It does that sort of shit, doesn’t it?’
She’s just about to tell him how the Crow used to trick her in the first month after her pledge, moving her cabin up and down the corridor after the show, until she got fed up and went to sit in the caboose one day after ballet class. She waited with a five pound note in her fist until the Crow showed up and put the money in front of it, told it to stop dicking about, she loved the show, the other dancers were complimentary about the way she’d covered for some injuries and Belinda had just put in an order for fifty pairs of pointe shoes for her so give it up, she was staying, when Kavi speaks first.
‘So what about music?’
‘What about it?’
‘Does it strive for perfection or is it a jumble like poetry?’
She considers that for a few moments. ‘Music is like ballet,’ she says. ‘More like ballet than like poetry. There’s the note, the precise pitch of the sound that was created along with everything else in the instant of the Big Bang, but any time you make a noise it falls short of that perfection, which only just exists, like the way a quark or whatever is kind of there and not there at the same time.’
‘You know, I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘Music is more like poetry because we make sounds all the time, we’re constantly hitting things and moving air and causingvibrations to ricochet everywhere but only some of those sounds are music. The rest is just Belinda arguing with Mackie and the curfew bell and, like, Zach farting.’
‘Fine.’ She laughs. ‘Music is like poetry and dance is a world apart from everything. You win.’
‘Or you win. Your art is further from the mundane and closer to the impossible than any other art.’
She grins. ‘You’re right. I win.’ She slides off the props table with one fluid movement, and as she moves she catches sight of a wolfish hunger in his eyes and her skin fizzes with pleasure.
‘Alors, les filles!’ Cecile calls from her stool at the front of the stage. A quick mark through of the Pearl waltz for spacing, please!’
He smiles at her. ‘See you later.’
She lifts a hand lamely to wave as she hears the patter of too-hard pointe shoes on the stage behind her. Does he mean see you later as in,Bye, probably won’t chat to you again until we next bump into each other, or does he mean it as in,If you’re in the dining car after the show tonight let’s get a drink together? The logistics of this seduction suddenly escape her. How exactly is she meant to seal this? Just knock on his cabin door after curfew and hop into his bed?
No time to figure it out. She mumbles ‘see you later’ and trots on to the stage to take her place among the ten girls dressed in their woollen leggings and baggy jumpers. Cecile counts them in and when she passes the prop table a few moments later, her limbs moving automatically through thechoreography to Cecile’s croaks ofand a one and a two and a threeto keep them all in time, she glances into the wings to see if he’s still there, watching her as she swoops and bends and stretches, but he’s gone.
***
In the stage left wing Zach and Lara stand on either side of a small flight case markedPEARL.
‘The thing to remember is never to touch it. Mackie and Belinda are the only ones allowed and really, I’m only supposed to show you because Mackie thinks new people should see it at rest, so to speak, on their first day so they don’t come over all funny during the show.’
‘What happens if I do touch it?’
Zach sighs. ‘Belinda fines you three days salary.’
‘Three days?’
Zach grins and flicks open the latches. ‘I told you she’s harsh.’
They lean over it, faces illuminated by its fluorescent glow. It’s about as big as a beach ball, teardrop shaped, with a smooth and glossy surface. It smells a little like the acrid smoke of singed plastic and Lara rears away from it. She’s never wanted to touch anything less in her entire life.
‘Can you imagine the size of the oyster that made that thing?’ she murmurs as Zach shuts the case. He shrugs.
‘Makes sense that monsters live in the sea. It’s the monsters that share the land with us that keep me up at night.’ Zach wheels the flight case over to the wall next tothe props table and shoves his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot.
‘All right. I need to visit the – uh – little boy’s room and then we can get something to eat. You be okay here for a minute?’
