untitled piece cont.
the next installment I suppose? again, everything I'm posting here is rough, just my word vomit/drafting/character-building but might as well dump it somewhere, right?
gracelynn.
O’Brians was Evan’s favorite bar. It was loud and Irish, just like him. I considered not showing. He’d understand. He’d have pouted and held it over me for weeks, but he’d have forgiven me. He always did. In college, he directed the senior showcase. It was a big deal, probably the most prestigious thing a theatre major could get. It was one night only, a review featuring numbers from the best of the twentieth century. He begged me to come, and I promised. I mean I pinky swore. Then my professor got me an audition in the city. It was a big opportunity. Huge, actually. I was graduating in a month, going out into the world where I’d probably have to waitress for years before a company director found me fuckable enough to hire me. This could’ve changed all of that. How could I say no to that?
I should have told him I wasn’t coming. I guess I thought it would be easier if I just didn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t even know – all those people, I’d have just been another face in the audience. He’d never know I blew off the most important night of his life to date to chase the miniscule chance that I’d be hired as a dancer straight out of college. Wasn’t that every ballerina’s dream? I felt like my body was a time bomb, always counting down. It would only hold out so long. I had so little time to do this. That’s how I rationalized it, I suppose. Blame my body, blame my teacher, just not myself. Not my self-centered instinct. Not the part of me that didn’t even care Evan had reserved a ticket for me in the front row. No, it was my fragile, aging dancer’s bones and the teacher who pulled one of his million strings for me. That’s why I abandoned my best friend’s directorial debut.
“She showed! It’s a goddamn Christmas miracle!”
I wrinkled my nose and responded sarcastically, “It’s October, you absolute bastard.” I hung my purse over the back of the tall chair and slid into it. “A cosmo, please,” I sighed to the bartender, reaching across Evan for a peanut. I hadn’t eaten anything but a banana all dau. It was 8:30. I was starving, sure, but I needed to shave off a few more pounds before this audition. It had to be perfect, every bit of it. I could stand to stay away from the chocolate for a few weeks anyhow.
“Dare I ask how the audition prep’s coming along?” Evan teased, leaning in so he could hit me playfully on the arm.
“No, I don’t think you do,” I replied, eating another nut. I nodded my thanks to the bartender as she set the cocktail in front of me. God, did I ever need one. Evan was at least right about that.
Evan downed the last of his scotch and waved for another. For an exuberantly gay man, he didn’t mess with fruffy drinks. “Gracie, I’ve know you for… fuck I don’t know like eight years now? Nine, shit. Anyway, it’s going 110% better than you think it’s going, okay?”
I stirred my drink absently. “Sure.”
He was probably right. He usually was which pissed me off to no end, but I couldn’t stop the noise in my bones. There’s always something to fix. Your arms are sloppy. You sickled just there. You lost your spot. Not good enough. Never good enough.
“Yoo-hoo, earth to Gracie.”
I snapped out of it. “Hmm?” I responded, taking a swig of my drink and squinting.
“I didn’t invite you out so you could obsess over your twirls some more.” As habit permitted, I opened my mouth to correct him.
“And I swear to god if you try to tell me they aren’t twirls they’re some French word right now I will tell every man in this bar about the time you got sloshed and tried to do that turny thing on the roof of the dorms.”
“Fouettés,” I replied without so much as a breath.
“This is what the fuck I mean Gracie!” Evan smiled even as he chided me. That’s what I mean – he always forgave me. Sometimes I wondered why.
alicia.
My apartment was fucking freezing. I paid the heat, though sometimes I wonder why. The building’s so old it never works right. It’s always either boiling or frigid. I decided cold was preferable to the alternative. At least I could put on a sweater and have some kind of excuse to sig in bed for the rest of the night. Except I didn’t because working out and then sitting in the cold is terrible for your muscles. So, I dragged myself into a hot shower. Getting in a hot shower after dancing felt almost like torture, even if it was cold as a snowman’s ass cheek in the apartment. Something about being sweaty under steaming water felt wrong. My fingers sank into my skin, into the tissue and cartilage, all that flesh that made my bones move and my skin brush the air with such violent precision. The fingertips grazed my collar-bone, lowered down until they reached my hips, my thighs, my ankles, the scar on my left foot where a shard from a Jim Beam bottle had cut me so deep I needed stitches. I drew a face in the fog on the shower door. I stared at it, imagining it was me, that the fat lines of my finger on safety-glass were sculpted into tired eyes and cheekbones, imagining I saw somebody with someplace to go. The steam erased it before I found anything, though.
My bathrobe had a hole in the side-seam. It was black terry-cloth, nothing terribly elegant, but it served me fine. I let my body fall into bed like some ragdoll I’d have been too scared to touch in my grandma’s house. The ache in my joints was familiar now. In fact, it almost soothed me. The pain served as a liquid reminder that my body was still there as it seeped into every crevice of my figure. I pulled the sheets over me, then the quilt. The clock on the night-stand had been six minutes fast for as long as I could remember but I was too lazy to fix it. It read 9:57. If I slept now I’d be awake by six, and if I woke up at six in the morning I might kill myself. Instead I opened my laptop, letting the blue light stain my eyes. Social media tired me. My aunt had stopped trying to tag me in facebook posts about my childhood years ago. I guess she finally took the hint that I wasn’t interested in living out some fantasy where her brother didn’t stomp around my house with clenched fists and a bottle of whiskey. I didn’t play the pity game. It tired me. I didn’t need her trying to form a relationship we’d never had. I wasn’t a doll with which she could play out a better life.
Sebastian meowed softly, the bed shifting as he leaped on to it and curled by my side. My hand found his side. It was warm. He was a wimpy little thing, probably could lose in a fight with a subway rat. He was Joanna’s, though, and when she left the city for god knows where she just up and left him in the empty apartment in Queens. I’d never considered a pet before, probably least of all a cat, but some part of me couldn’t leave him. His eyes were like mine: green and sharp against his black fur. Or maybe I was just crazy. That was possible too.
“I know I fed you today,” I announced, scratching his head. He wasn’t always a cuddler, but I figured the cold had led him to my pile of blankets and deflated pillows. Outside a siren wailed as it passed. The late autumn wind seemed to sob as it met the sharp edges of brick. Somewhere, Madame Ivankov slept in a bed entirely of silk sheets and velvet drapery. I snorted at the thought of her in some lush, fifth-avenue penthouse wearing fine jewelry with her bathrobe. I fingered the hole in my own sad robe, Sebastian vibrating against my skin as he slept. “You are not suited for ballet, Ms. Beckett. I simply cannot mince words with you. Perhaps you might try musicals?” I grinned as her voice scratched my temples and opened the calendar app on my computer.
November 19th: Cinderella.
I hated fairytales. Once, when I was six, my mother gave me a collection of them. It was beautiful, actually, the pages were rimmed with gold so they sparkled when the book was closed. But inside the illustrations lied to me. Sleeping Beauty lay smiling, her cheeks rosy as if in a cold wind, and she awoke to some fair prince who’d slipped into her bed. I remembered that weight, those painted grins, the cursive font of happily ever after. Once, after dad left my room and the clock burned 11:43 into my weeping eyes, I took the book from my nightstand and threw it at the wall. It made a horrible, sick thud as it fell to the vinyl floor, its pages bent and twisted under it. They were ruined, those beautiful gold edges. I stared at its shape in the darkness. At some point, I fell asleep.
But I had been waiting tables for three years now, exhausted by the scent of cheap cologne and cigarettes and poorly executed pick-up lines. If I could get paid to show up and dance until my body screamed, I would. If that was Cinderella, then that was Cinderella. Maybe I’d be a mouse or a terrible step-sister, something dark and brooding that could be anything but pretty. Madame Ivankov was right about one thing: I was not suited for ballet. My posture lacked grace and every step I took was markedly heavy. My feet warred with the spring floors. Everything was a battle. I was no princess, no dainty thing who danced as though it were a thing of ease. I danced with fury and anger and the scent of those men’s voices in my mouth.
Sebastian stirred when the radiator kicked on. I let my hand drift off the edge of the bed. The room smelled instantly of hot metal and dust. I inhaled it like campfire smoke and closed the lid of my laptop. The clock shone 10:38. My hand twitched as I pulled the lamp cord, listening to the city breathe underneath me. Sleep felt like a ghost lying on top of me.