Strings Attached Read Online Free PDF Page B

huh?”
    “Doesn’t everyone?”
    “I’ll tell Ted you’re here.”
    A tall, thin man in horn-rimmed glasses and khakis walked out onstage. He looked like a professor, but I could tell he was a dancer from the way he moved, elegant and easy. “This the girl?”
    Yeah, I was the girl. I was used to being
the girl.
I was used to the look he was giving me right now, sizing me up. Not in a personal way, in a way you’d size up a horse if you were a jockey.
    “Did you bring rehearsal clothes?”
    I nodded.
    He hadn’t introduced himself, but he was obviously Ted Roper, and I was expected to know that. “Let’s see if you can dance. You can change in the dressing room.”
    I knew about nerves, and I could make them work for me, but I felt rattled by Ted Roper’s obvious irritation. Maybe he was ticked off that Nate had pulled strings to get me in to audition early.
    In the dressing room, an ashtray full of cigarette stubs sat beneath a NO SMOKING sign. The lightbulbs in the wire cages washed out my skin. I fumbled in my purse for rouge. I pushed aside bobby pins, a comb, and a lipstick to clear a space on the counter. Quickly, I wriggled out of my skirt. I was already wearing my leotard. It was cold, so I kept on my sweater and tied a scarf tightly around my waist.
    A stout woman with iron-gray hair came in, her broad hands full of an explosion of tulle. The wardrobe mistress, I guessed.
    “Audition?” she asked in some kind of European accent. I nodded while I patted on a little rouge. She dumped the skirts on a table next to a sewing machine. “You should wear higher heels. What are you, a seven?”
    “Yes …”
    She walked over to a shelf full of shoes — pumps, sandals, gold and silver and an array of colors. She slammed a pair of black pumps on the counter. “Use these.”
    I slipped out of my own scuffed shoes and into the higher heels. I straightened my shoulders and looked at myself in the mirror.
    Back in Providence, Florence Foster, my dance teacher, had taught me everything, including how to walk. I’d been studying dance since I was eight. By the time I turned fourteen, she was telling me that I’d have to leave town. “You’re not getting anywhere in Providence, dolly,” Flo had told me. “Shake the dust of this town off your shoes and get yourself to Manhattan. White mink and diamonds, kid. That’s the big time. Don’t ask me if I thinkyou should. And don’t come by and say good-bye. Just drop me a postcard.”
    Now I heard her croaking voice in my head.
It’s not just the feet, it’s the arms, it’s the neck, it’s the goddamn elbows and the goddamn knees. Keep your face strong. Don’t simper like an idiot beauty queen. You’re a dancer. A dancer. Got it? You can’t forget about your pinky finger, for godsake, you’ve got to know what every muscle is doing, even your eyebrows. You’re a dancer.
    I’m a dancer,
I told myself.
    “No time to be late,” the heavyset woman said. “He’s waiting to see how fast you dress. Around here, the clock hands move for Ted.”
    “Thanks. And thanks for the shoes.”
    I hurried back onstage, but I was careful to slow down as I got close. I knew he’d be watching how I walked.
    The trick to auditions? You’ve got to not mind that they’re bored, or that they’re thinking about the last girl, or that they’re dying for a smoke. You’ve got to think about your own joy.
    So I danced. He threw combinations at me, and I kept up. It was like he wanted a reason to flunk me, just like old Mrs. Babbitt back in American History.
    But he couldn’t.
There’s nobody I can’t please. Nobody.
    Finally, he signaled for Greg to stop playing.
    “So,” Ted Roper said, “you can dance.”
    I waited.
    “Three shows a night — I presume you know that? You come at six thirty and you get out at three a.m. And you have to be available for promotional pictures during the day, or special shows. You’re a replacement, so you’ve got to catch up fast.