Note: I am so disgustingly out of practice, it's been months since I've written anything longer than a page. Tear this to shreds for me-- be brutally honest.
Dancers in the Darkness
The dancer stumbles out the back door and into the alleyway. He leans against it, and as it closes the sounds of music and voices backstage die away. It’s dark outside, in the early hours of the morning, and the wind blowing through the alley is cold. It seems to go right through him, like there’s nothing there.
He fumbles in his bag for his pipe and lights it, cupping the little flame with his hand to protect it from the wind. He takes his thumb off the carb and inhales, doesn’t feel it. He tries again and sighs as the tangy smoke fills up his lungs.
He pulls one knee up to his chest and puts a chilly hand to his hot forehead. The tiredness is in his muscles and bones, between his ligaments, spread across his skin, it’s so heavy. He turns up his collar and takes another drag. It smolders red, then goes out again, leaving him in inky darkness except for the thin rectangle of light coming from under the door.
When he was fifteen he’d entered a dancing contest as a joke and won a six hundred dollar scholarship. This was with no practice, no instruction. After that his mom had rushed him into classes and lessons, and he’d excelled. He was lithe and flexible, and when he heard the music he had an intuitive sense of what would be beautiful. Ballet, tap, ballroom, tango, modern: nothing was beyond his grasp. By the time he reached adulthood he was supporting his mom almost entirely; they’d moved from living in a trailer park to a well-furnished apartment in the city.
“You should go to New York,” she said, a few weeks before his high school graduation. “You could be on Broadway.”
“I’m not sure,” he said. They sat at the kitchen counter, sorting his admission letters. Once again on a dance scholarship, he’d been accepted into various schools all over the country. Juliard, Harvard, Emerson, Chicago… “I might want to do something else.”
“What do you mean, something else?” she asked, opening yet another envelope. “You’re a dancer, Peter. It’s what you do.”
“Yeah, but maybe I wasn’t meant to be one. There are other things that sound really neat. Like architecture, or fashion. Some kind of design.”
“Of course you were meant to be one!” she said. “Look at you. You’re beautiful!”
“Tell me more about what Dad did.”
“Your father was a soldier for most of his life. Before that he just did odd jobs. He never went to college; never got the chance, though he always said he would’ve after he got discharged. Baby, he would have been so proud of you.”
Peter squirmed, uncomfortable. “I don’t know about that.”
“He would have. You got talent, Baby. You’d be a fool not to put it to good use.”
He'd done as she'd told him to. As she’d predicted he’d been accepted into Broadway starting the week he arrived in New York. He’d been Billy Flynn, Billy Elliot, The Phantom of the Opera, Simba, Prince Phillip, Prince Charming. And his mom had been there for each opening night, as long as she could. She’d take the train down from Connecticut and sit as close to the front row as she could. Even after all her hair fell out and the circles under her eyes grew so dark she looked like a skeleton.
“You don’t have to come to all of these,” he told her after another successful opening night—Wicked, this time. She’d fallen asleep in her seat, her breath choking and ragged. Janitorial had recognized her and instead of kicking her out had gone and found him. “I could come home and stay with you for a while.”
“Baby, you gotta stay right here, where you belong. This is your destiny, and of course I’m gonna come see you. You’re my star.”
She’d died a few weeks later in a hospital bed, hundreds of miles away, as the dancer bowed to a thousand hand’s applause. He’d gone on to star in many more shows, delighting strangers with his movement and grace. But he is older now, almost thirty which in show business was middle age, and thus less desirable. His knees creak when he stands up and his toes have a permanent curl from being tied up in ballet shoes. And he is so tired, and his whole body aches.
Something hits him from behind; the door to the backstage dressing room he is leaned against.
“Is that you, Peter? Move.”
Obediently he slides out of the way. Emily joins him in the alleyway. She is still in costume mostly, though she’s pulled on some leggings over her tutu. Her hair is down and oily from the gel, and she looks equally weary. Emily is his age, and has been in a few other productions with him. She does alright, though never quite makes the leading role. She sits down next to him, and cuddles up close. He is grateful for her warmth.
She sniffs the air. “Peter…”
He offers her the pipe.
“They’re gonna start testing for that soon. You could lose your job.”
“Good!” the dancer exclaims, lighting up again. He sucks in the smoke, ignoring Emily’s exasperated sigh. “Finally, a reason to leave this hell. I’ve been wanting to for years but I’m too much of a coward to do anything about it. Someone should make me.”
She puts her arm around him. “I know,” she says. With her fingers she traces circles on his bony shoulders, down the bumps of his spine. “They won’t really kick you out, I was just tryin’ to scare you. It’s fat soluble. That means it’s stored in your adipose tissue. Someone like you? You don’t have any. Goes right through.”
“Lemme guess. You wanted to be a scientist.”
“Yeah. What did you want?”
“I wanted to be an architect.”
“You know, probably even if you did test positive they wouldn’t kick you out. They’d find some way to keep you. Some fluke or loophole. Anyone with talent like yours is in here for life. I’m not nearly as good as you and I know I couldn’t leave.”
“We could get fat.”
“I doubt it. I’m too nervous, can barely keep anything down. And you?”
“Yeah, it’s the same.”
“You look like you’re dying.”
“Thanks, Emily.” The dancer rubbs his eyes, creating a smear of black mascara on his palm. They sit in silence for a little while. He listens to her breathing, soft and shallow, and feels her hand make little circles on his back. She slides it down lower, until it was on his leg, then his thigh, then higher. The dancer coughs and moves away from her a little, disappointed. He’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.
“You wanna go home with me?”
“No thanks, Emily. I’m so tired.”
“You a queer?”
“Does it matter? You’re my best friend.”
“It does a little bit," Emily said. "I don’t get turned down that often.”
“Then yes.”
“I’m really your best friend?”
“Baby,” the dancer says, “you’re my only friend.”
When he was twenty three he’d met Emily back stage for Les Miserables, curled up like a cat in the costume closet. He thinks back about the time: he’d seen her around, and was pretty sure she was a Cosette understudy, but they’d never spoken. But here she was, drooling all over his boots, looking so small and pitiful that he didn’t know what to do. Cautiously, he tried to pull them out from under her without waking her up, but she jerked and grabbed his shirt, pulling him to her.
“What—“ she stammered. “Where!”
The dancer leapt back. Emily looked around, her eyes big and terrified. Slowly, though, she calmed. She put her head in her hands.
“I think you were having a nightmare,” the dancer said.
“You can say that again. I was at my parents’ house and my sister and her baby were up on a ladder… never mind. Shit, did they call noises off?”
“Nah, we’ve got another twenty.”
“Alright. Sorry, Peter. These must be your boots.”
The dancer was taken aback, embarrassed that she knew his name and he didn’t know hers. He was Valjean and she was mostly backup unless Cosette had a problem, but it felt wrong to him anyway.
“You sleep here a lot?” he asked, sitting down next to her to lace up his boots.
“Only place I can. My apartment’s too cold and even if it weren’t I doubt I could.”
“You always have nightmares?”
“Always have. There’s a science behind it, I heard an article on NPR. Your unconsciousness talks to your consciousness while you’re asleep, and mine seems to only speak nightmare. Never two the same, either. People talk about their reoccurring nightmares and I get jealous.”
“You think that would be better?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe. We always want what we can’t have.”
And it’s true, the dancer thinks. Now, more than ever. He leans up against Emily in the alleyway, pulling her close to him. She is so warm. She smells like sweat and hairspray and chalk. Another gust of wind blows through him and he shivers.
“You know how many kids would kill to have our jobs?” he says. “To have our lives?”
She remains quiet, her hands still now. The light behind them shuts off, the theater is finally empty and closed for the night. It will be just a few hours, though, before it fills up once again with crowds of talking, dancing breathing people. The thought makes him feel sick.
He flicks the lighter on and off, watching the little blue flame dance. It’s so dim, and yet in the alleyway it’s the brightest thing there is. The shadows sway and flicker along with it. Click—light. Click—dark again. Click. Click. It’s out of fuel.
“We should run away,” he says to Emily. “Get a truck and just drive somewhere, just go and not ever come back.”
“You’re high.”
“Yeah, but I’m serious. You and me? We could find somewhere to stay and just sleep, sleep for like a year.”
“You know I can’t.”
“We gonna stay here ‘till we die?”
Emily thinks about it for a minute. “Probably,” she says.
The dancer closes his eyes, and wonders what it would be like to live somewhere peaceful, do something different. He imagines a body free of aches and pains, no more ballet shoes. He thinks about how nice it would be to get fat and sleep in and maybe even go to college for architecture. Eventually he dozes off, not waking up ‘till morning when the other dancers, stagehands and musicians begin to file in through the back door.
“Alright, baby,” Emily says, in his dream. “Let’s run away.”
)
(Note- I haven't read any other reviews so pardon if I repeat anything)