“Cue sound.”
Out floated the lush, measured tones of the introduction to “The Man I Love.” From the upstage left wing came Daisy and Will. She in her pink dress, bourréeing in fifth, her hand tucked in Will’s elbow, her head tilted toward but not quite on his shoulder. Tall and tender in black, Will walked beside her, his maimed hand covering her fingers.
And then the auditorium erupted.
Both Kees and Erik jumped in their seats, reared backwards, open-mouthed in shock as the applause came roaring down from the balcony and met with the ovation coming from the orchestra seats, whirling together in a thunderstorm of clapping, stamping triumph drowning out the music.
“Jesus,” Kees said, stumbling to stand up, his hands on top of his head.
Erik stood up as well, leaning over the console to peer out at the audience. “What is happening…?”
He scanned the crowd: on their feet, applauding and whistling.
Will and Daisy reached center stage. She turned on her toes, bourréeing backwards, still with the choreography, but the music was lost.
“Oh boy.” He could hear David exclaiming low in his ear. “Holy shit. Holy shit. I don’t believe this.”
Daisy kept moving, her feet lightly gathering up the inches of the stage floor, her arms liquid patterns. She turned under Will’s arm, his other twining around her waist and she fell back, languid, melting, her eyes never leaving his. Will caught her, but clumsily, he was breaking down, breaking out of the dance, his face crumpling. Instead of bringing Daisy up into the next phrase, he brought her up and crushed her to his chest. She came off pointe, stood in her flat, pedestrian feet. Her shoulders were heaving, shaking and she buried her face into Will’s shirt. The intensity of the applause rose up another level. People were yelling now, as if at a rock concert.
Erik’s hands closed up his mouth and nose as the enormity of it dropped onto his shoulders.
Kees put an arm around him. “Good Lord, I haven’t seen an ovation like this since I watched Cynthia Gregory in Swan Lake. And that was after the show, not before.” His other arm joined the first, hugging tight as Erik cried into the steeple of his fingers.
Neil Martinez, stationed stage left, called over his headset. “Dave, what do we do?”
“Kill the music. Just run it back to the start. Stand by, everyone, stand by, let’s just let this pan out.”
Erik didn’t think it could possibly last any longer, yet on and on it went. Will was whispering to Daisy, coaxing her head up off his shoulder, and finally he got her to turn around. They stood there then, clasped in each other’s arms, stood and faced it, accepted the moment as rightfully theirs. Will was shaking his head over and over, laughing, wiping his eyes. Daisy’s face had bloomed with her full, bright beautiful smile.
Erik leaned and put one hand flat on the glass of the booth, palm to the stage. He usually did this at curtain call, but tonight everything was out of order, upside-down and unbelievable. Daisy wormed one of her arms free from Will’s embrace. She touched her fingers to her mouth and turned her palm out back to Erik.
He thought his heart was going to explode. He needed no other high. This was enough.
This is my life.
A whole minute went by before David spoke again. “Erik, can you hear me?”
Erik ignored the tissue Kees held out and roughly wiped his wet face on his upper arm as he sat down. “Yeah, I can hear you.”
“Start taking the stage lights down. Leave the cyc lit.”
“Lights going down.”
As the stage dimmed, Will and Daisy retreated into silhouette, disappearing through the upstage wing. The applause petered out as the audience sat.
“One day you’ll tell your grandchildren about this moment,” Kees said.
David waited another fifteen seconds of murmured shuffling and blown noses, and then gave the cue. “Sound up.”
And they began again.
Torqued and Shadowy