Night’s Edge Read Online Free PDF Page A

costumes,” Julie said. Rue had decided Julie was a good-hearted girl, and almost as practical as Sylvia.
    “This was what she suggested,” Sylvia said. She held up a drawing. The women’s costume showed belly button; it was a short flowered skirt, wrapped to look vaguely saronglike, with a matching bra. The long black wig was decorated with artificial flowers.
    Rue tried to imagine what she would look like in it, andshe thought she’d look pretty good. But then she re-evaluated the low-rider skirt. “It would be that low?” she asked.
    “Yes,” Sylvia said. “Showing your navel is in right now, and Connie wanted a sort of update to the island look.”
    “Can’t do it,” Rue said.
    “Something wrong with your button?” teased Thompson.
    “My stomach,” Rue said, and hoped she could leave it at that.
    “I can’t believe that. You’re as lean as you can be,” Sylvia said sharply. She wasn’t used to being thwarted.
    Rue had a healthy respect for her employer. She knew Sylvia would demand proof. Better to get it over with. Dancers learned to be practical about their bodies. Rue stood abruptly enough to startle Sean, who was leaning against the wall by her chair. Rue pulled up her T-shirt, unzipped her jeans and found she’d worn bikini panties, so she hardly had to push them down. “This would show,” Rue said, keeping her voice as level as she could.
    The room was silent as the dancers gazed at the thick, jagged scar that ran just to the left of Rue’s navel. It descended below the line of the white bikinis.
    “Good God, woman!” Karl said. “Was someone trying to gut you?”
    “Give me a hysterectomy.” Rue pulled her clothes back together.
    “We couldn’t cover that with makeup,” Sylvia said. “Or could we?”
    The other two couples and Sylvia discussed Rue’s scarred stomach quite matter-of-factly, as a problem to solve.
    The debate continued while Rue sat silently, her armscrossed over her chest to hold her agitation in. She became aware that she wasn’t hearing a word from Sean. Slowly, she turned to look up at her partner’s face. His blue eyes were full of light. He was very angry, livid with rage.
    The dispassionate attitudes of the others had made her feel a bit more relaxed, but seeing his rage, Rue began to feel the familiar shame. She wanted to hide from him. And she couldn’t understand that, either. Why Sean, whom she knew better than any of the other dancers?
    “Rue,” Sylvia said, “are you listening?”
    “No, sorry, what?”
    “Megan and Julie think they can cover it up,” Sylvia said. “You’re willing to take the job if we can get your belly camouflaged?”
    “Sure,” she told Sylvia, hardly knowing what she was saying.
    “All right, then, two Fridays from now. You all start working on a long dance number right away, faux Polynesian. You’ll go on after the jugglers. Julie and Thompson are booked for a party this Saturday night, and Karl and Megan, you’re doing a dinner dance at the Cottons’ estate on Sunday. Sean, you and Rue are scheduled to open a ‘big band’ evening at the burn unit benefit.”
    Rue tried to feel pleased, because she loved dancing to big band music, and she had a wonderful forties dress to wear, but she was still too upset about revealing her scar. What had gotten into her? She’d tried her best to conceal it for years, and all of a sudden, in front of a roomful of relative strangers, she’d pulled down her jeans and shown it to them.
    And they’d reacted quite calmly. They hadn’t screamed, or thrown up, or asked her what she’d done to deserve that. They hadn’t even asked who’d done itto her. To Rue’s astonishment, she realized that she was more comfortable with this group of dancers than she was with the other college students. Yet most of those students came from backgrounds that were much more similar to hers than, say, Julie’s. Julie had graduated from high school pregnant, had the baby and given it up to the