“Why not?”
They’d reached the lounge with its cracked leather furniture, mismatched tables and chairs. Will sat down on a couch and lit up. “I love Daisy. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to pieces. And I was born to partner her. End of story.”
Erik chewed the inside of his lip, unsatisfied. He needed the beginning of the story. He needed a lot more story about this girl.
Exhaling a ribbon of smoke and setting his slippered feet on the ottoman, Will looked relaxed and expansive. Erik decided to probe a little.
“How long have you partnered her?” he asked.
“Two months. Back in September she came into auditions, which are a brutal freshman ordeal, especially for the girls. You know anything about the world of ballet?”
“Zero.”
“It is the most competitive, catty universe you’ll ever encounter. The upperclassmen girls scrutinize the new kids like a pack of bitches. And Daisy’s good, which they hate—freshman talent is a threat to their existence. So anyway, Marie wants to see some partnering work so she points to me and Dais, you and you, together. All right. Hi. How are you?”
“What was she like?” Shy and nervous, he imagined, paired with Will’s confidence while being stared at and sized up by the other girls.
“Dude, she was the most poised person I’d ever met in my life.” Will’s eyes squinted against the smoke. “You know she’s still seventeen, she won’t turn eighteen until December. I’d just turned twenty so you know, I’m feeling my decade. She definitely seemed young to me but there was this incredible stillness to her. Anyway, we were practicing the steps and finding a groove, but always when you pair up with someone new, it’s awkward. Hands go the wrong way, you bump into each other, you topple. It takes time to figure each other out, it’s like any relationship. But she had this quiet confidence. She made jokes but she wasn’t giggly or apologetic. She was calm and…it was no time at all. We started going to class together. Marie paired us up to understudy the Siciliano—for a freshman to cover a senior duet, dude, that just doesn’t happen. And we turned into something. I don’t like dancing with anyone else now. I can. Sometimes I don’t have a choice. But it’s the best with Daisy. She speaks my language.”
“French.”
“French?” Will picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue with his thumb and ring finger and flicked it away. “French has nothing to do with anything. I can shoot the shit with David or Kees if I’m homesick. With Dais, I’m talking about a language that doesn’t even have words.”
“All your chemistry onstage… None of it’s real?”
“Of course it’s real. Look, I know what you’re asking, let’s be honest: Dais is beautiful. She has an amazing body. I’m a mortal male. It doesn’t suck to look at her. But at the same time, I know we’re not alike and we wouldn’t work as a couple. If I started something it would crash and burn, then it would be sad and awkward, and I’d be out of a partner. And I want her as my partner. I’m not fucking with it. I couldn’t bear to lose it.”
Erik chewed on that, with no small amount of relief, while Will smoked. He rolled “Dais” around his mind a few times and found he liked the shortened version with its hard S. It was a more evocative sound. Intimate. It fit her better. Dais.
“You like her?” Will said.
Erik looked at him a long moment, trying to formulate an answer to encapsulate everything he had been thinking, feeling and contemplating since meeting this girl. Only two days ago.
Will cocked his head. “You looked her in the eye, didn’t you?”
Erik smiled, feeling the heat rise up in his face as he nodded.
“See, it’s weird, everyone has a thing about her eyes. Her eyes freak me out.”
“Her eyes are beautiful,” Erik said.
“I don’t know. Something about them isn’t right. It took me like two weeks to be comfortable looking at her when we were partnering.”