Chapter 8 #2
They ate their bagels at a counter looking out onto the street, and Ivy couldn’t stop watching the people.
Construction workers and suits and school kids and artfully tousled creative types, all of them New Yorkers, all of them walking past her with purpose, hurrying to wherever it was they needed to.
Even the dogs seemed to move quicker here, like they had somewhere important and interesting to be.
Ivy leaned forward on the counter and followed a laughing clutch of high school age girls with her eyes, watching as they disappeared down into the subway, brushing shoulders with the people coming up the stairs and spilling onto the street.
“What are you looking at?” Justin asked beside her.
“All of it,” Ivy smiled, not taking her eyes off the street. “It’s incredible. I love it already. Don’t you love it?”
“Not really. What’s to love? It’s crowded and expensive, and fucking freezing by the way. And too noisy to think straight, and there’s nowhere to go to escape it all.”
“I think it’s perfect,” Ivy sighed, popping the last bite of her bagel into her mouth. She wiped her hands and stood, then smiled at him. “On to our next stop, Liesl.”
As she led him out of the shop and back into the biting cold, she was sure she heard him mutter something that sounded like that’s going to stick, isn’t it?
Justin strode into company class, very nearly late.
After the bagel shop, Ivy had dragged him along several long crosstown blocks until they’d reached Central Park.
It was drab and leafless, but she’d waxed rhapsodic about it anyway, about how it looked just as she’d imagined it.
At one point, a pair of fellow tourists had stopped them and asked if they knew how to get to Battery Park, and Ivy had blurted out, “the subway’s up and the Battery’s down!
” The tourists—German, Justin thought—had looked at her like they had questions about her sanity, and she’d tucked her hair behind one ear and said, “I mean, I think it’s downtown. South.”
She’d insisted on wandering for so long around the park that he had to rush back to the hotel, frozen to the bone, shove all his stuff in his dance bag, and half-jog down to the theater to make it in time.
When they’d arrived at 64th Street, she’d stopped dead, staring at the soaring white-pillared buildings that flanked the wide plaza on three sides.
Justin headed for what he knew was the stage door of New York Ballet’s theater, down a flight of stairs on the side of the hulking white marble building.
But when he arrived at the top of the stairs, he realized she was still thirty paces behind him, standing and looking at the theater with wide eyes, her mouth slightly agape.
He let out a little groan of frustration and hustled back to her. “Come on, I’m going to be late, and I can’t go in there without you.”
She didn’t say anything, she just stared up at the building, apparently unbothered by the prospect of lateness.
“It’s just a theater.”
“It’s not just a theater, it’s the theater. Didn’t you dream about this place as a kid?”
“I—no. Did you?”
She finally looked away from the building and seemed to give herself a little shake. “No.”
“Okay, so it’s just a theater.” Justin couldn’t have dreamed up a place like this as a kid if he’d tried.
Growing up in the country, the huge airy ANB studios on the wharf seemed improbable enough.
But the idea of coming to work every day at this theater, in the middle of a teeming, exhausting metropolis on the other side of the world, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to dream about that.
He wanted out of Hillstone, but at the time, Sydney was about as far away as he could fathom.
“Come on, class is starting in a few minutes,” he said, touching her upper arm lightly.
Again, the soft, plush weave of the coat.
Despite the frigid air around them, he could have sworn he felt her body heat warming the fabric.
He dropped his hand and shoved it back in his pocket, then turned and strode back to the stage door, this time with Ivy in tow.
The underbelly of the theater was a warren of concrete corridors that gave no hint of the resplendent red velvet beauty that awaited them all upstairs.
Searching the crowd of his colleagues, he hailed down Ricky, who directed him to the dressing room down the hallway that had been assigned to the principal men.
Ivy waited outside as he claimed a seat at the lit mirror and grabbed what he needed for class.
Then they both followed the crowd of dancers down the winding hallway and into a large rehearsal studio that was half underground, with windows high in the walls permitting some weak afternoon light to filter in.
Peter was already at the front of the room, along with the few members of the artistic staff who had made the trip.
An accompanist sat at a glossy baby grand Steinway.
Ivy took her usual seat in front of the mirror, and class began.
Peter took it easy on them, giving them plenty of slow pliés and ports de bras to ease their jetlagged bodies back into movement.
Justin found he wasn’t nearly as stiff as he expected to be after the long flight and a fitful sleep, and it occurred to him that might be because he’d spent his morning walking around the city.
He’d never tell Ivy so, but she might have done him a favor by dragging him out into the cold to eat bagels and look at bare trees.
His hip felt tender, but nothing he or Shaz would worry about, and by the time barre ended his body felt surprisingly pliant.
Peter gave them all a good long time to stretch, and let the women know pointe shoes were optional for center today.
Justin heard Kat let out a long, thankful-sounding sigh, and they all arranged themselves in the middle of the room for adagio.
When class ended, Peter briefed them all on the schedule for the next few days.
They’d have two days to rehearse on the stage upstairs, and then on Friday night, it was curtain up.
They’d have performances almost every night next week, with the closing night gala at the end.
Besides morning class, performances, and a few press interviews for select principals, their time was their own.
“But I expect you to remember that you are representing ANB everywhere you go,” Peter said seriously, looking around the room. “We are here to make the best possible impression as a company.”
Justin nodded along with the rest of his colleagues, even though they all knew that warning was directed mostly at him.
Peter dismissed them, and the dancers who weren’t needed for rehearsal this afternoon trooped out of the studio.
According to the schedule the company had emailed out a few days earlier, Justin and Alice would rehearse tomorrow afternoon. He was free for the rest of the day.
Well, not free, he thought half an hour later, as he followed Ivy down the steps off a crowded bus onto an equally crowded footpath.
He was free to go wherever Ivy wanted to go, which this afternoon was to the Museum of Modern Art.
Unfortunately, everyone else in the city seemed to want to go to the same museum, and the glass-walled lobby was hardly less mobbed than the street.
Justin took a deep breath, trying to dispel the all-over itch that had come over him halfway through the short bus ride from the theater.
As they stood in the queue for tickets, he reminded himself that if this was the price he had to pay to come on tour, to keep his career alive, it was a bargain.
Ivy handed him a ticket, her face shining with anticipation just as it had this morning.
She unfolded a museum map and studied it, then gave a decisive little nod and walked away, leaving him to trail after her, dodging a group of rowdy school kids who were being corralled by an exasperated-looking teacher.
He needed to look where he was going, but he was distracted by the huge metal sculptures that hung from the ceiling of the giant atrium, rotating slowly above their heads as they made their way further into the museum.
One whole side of the building seemed to be made of glass, and out the huge windows he could see an orderly sculpture garden, almost empty thanks to the cold, a striking contrast next to the busy street beyond.
“Do you think you can stay out of trouble for an hour or so?” Ivy asked, as they rode an escalator to the second floor.
Justin frowned, remembering Peter’s words this morning. “I think I can handle that. Why?”
Ivy shrugged. “Figured you might want to wander around on your own a bit. Or that modern art might not be your thing. So if you want to go sit in the cafe, and wait for me, or something…” She trailed off as they stepped off the escalator.
“Oh. I guess I could do that,” Justin said, feeling a little let down for no good reason.
“It’s just, I’ve got things I want to see here, and you probably won’t enjoy them,” Ivy said quickly. “Wouldn’t want to drag you along if you’d rather just hang out.”
“No, for sure,” Justin agreed vaguely. Except that the giant mobiles hanging from the ceiling had looked pretty interesting. Why did she assume he wouldn’t be interested in modern art?
“Okay, so I’ll just come find you in the cafe,” Ivy said, looking relieved and pulling her map out again. “I won’t be long.”
“Take as long as you want,” Justin said. “You seemed pretty keen to get here, and there’s no point in rushing it. We’ve got nowhere else to be.”
Ivy fumbled slightly with the map and looked up at him. “Okay,” she said slowly, drawing the word out. She studied the map for a moment. “The cafe’s that way, and around to the right. I’ll see you in—I’ll see you when I’m done.”