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“Michelle’s going to do it,” Sadie told him, and his mouth dropped open.
“She’s good too,” I added. “Then there’s Sun, Sadie, me.” I put grievances aside and added: “Simone?”
The latter looked disdainfully across the table at us.
“I’m sure you’d be beautiful in it,” I told her.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, turning away. Of course she joined us, and Holly completed the lineup magnificently.
The murderous rehearsals stretched us further; legs grew more tired and the nights later. Justin’s demands and pernickety criticisms exasperated everyone, but the song was becoming a truly polished and professional part of the show.
At the top of the tower, Aleks and I lay in bed and talked. We discussed everything from the day’s rehearsals to our childhoods. He’d broken his nose falling out of a tree when he was seven. I kissed the beloved indentation.
“What is this ‘ghastly’ thing he keeps saying today?” asked Aleks, Justin’s antics often finding their way into our conversations.
“It’s what Simone said when she saw our costumes for Will’sCirclepiece,” I explained. “She has a point, actually. We’re wearing glorified sticky-tape. I can’t believe Michelle is allowing it, but she ordered the stuff without question. My mother is going to spontaneously combust when she sees it. TheSarabandeis bad enough. This will finish her off.”
“No, surely she will be proud. Your solo is to be the highlight of the night. You, yourself, will be the star of the whole show.”
It had been a bad moment when I discovered, during a horror-laden phone call, that my parents were coming to the performance, Michelle having invited everyone she found in our files. Happily, the constant bustle of practice left very little time to worry about parental dismay, though it also kept me from dealing with another issue, as Justin pointed out the next day.
“Isn’t it about time you told Hearst he’s not going to be getting his leg over anytime soon?” he asked after a particularly gruellingCirclerehearsal.
“I told you. He’s got something going on with Sadie. There’s nothing like that between me and Will.”
“That ample ship sailed long ago. It’s you he gets hard for.”
“Oh, stop bleetering rubbish.” I had seen Will and Sadie in close conversation several times, so knew they were still together.
“Bleetering? Is this some Scottish word you’ve picked up? You need to tell him you’re wintering in Ukraine this year.”
“Will and I are friends.”
“Yes, and he’s very keen to consummate your friendship in carnal fashion. With the frenzied palooza we’ve just worked through, I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to dry hump you against a wall.”
“Justin. You know as well as I that Will has had lots of girlfriends, and I was never one of them.”
“Do I detect some remaining resentment over that?”
“No.”
“So tell him. I know, Sun knows, even jolly Holly knows, but old friend Will? Fumbling around in the dark, isn’t he?”
He was right. Will, my friend, should know who my boyfriend was. “I just need to find the right moment,” I told Justin. But amid the mad rush of rehearsals, that moment didn’t appear.
I loved the continual honing of choreography and technique, the discovery of small nuances that made huge changes, and the ongoing pursuit of perfection. The hurtle towards Christmas was too fast to think much about the goal, the show, the fear. Then Aleks had a meeting with Michelle late one evening from which he returned distraught.
We sat on the bed, and he told me what ‘she,’ a word hatefully said, had planned. The monitoring of our brain activity was to be displayed on a giant screen behindCircle.
“Will won’t want that,” I said at once. “The choreography is all very primitive. Justin’s been winding him up by putting in modern moves, and it’s not gone down well at all.”
“This, he will have to learn,” said Aleks. “Dancers, choreographers, we all take second place to whoever controls the money. She is to give a talk at the start about the research. I am her test subject for the therapeutic side of things.”
“What does she want you to do?”
“Ah, nothing. She has film, always is film everything. I don’t know what exactly she will show: my operation, recovery using her techniques? She has it all. I just say fine and walk out, not to let her see she has get to me.”
I suspected he didn’t want me to see this footage of Michelle’s. “We’ll all be backstage,” I reminded him.
