The Four Temperaments Read Online Free PDF

phone book's worth of sexually transmitted diseases that she didn't want any part of.
    Her first lover was her ballet teacher, Wesley Landham. Wes had danced to standing ovations in Europe before he tore up every single one of the ligaments in his left knee and had to retire from the stage. Since he was a local boy who'd made good, he was something of a celebrity in New Orleans, and the studio he ran—upstairs from a perfume shop in the French Quarter—was filled with the daughters of the city's oldest and proudest families. Ginny was a better dancer than any of them, she knew that, just as she knew that she was not beautiful or smart in school. But she took to dancing right away, even though for the longest time Mama maintained that she had only sent her there so she could improve her posture and meet the right kind of girls.
    Not that the right kind of girls would have anything to do with her. There she was, Rita Darcy's little bastard. This was somehow common knowledge and it didn't make Ginny too popular with the other girls who came to Wes's studio, girls like Deanna May Dixon and Violet Morgan, who were brought to class by black maids who hung up their pleated skirts and matching cardigans on hangers, and rolled their socks neatly into balls, while the girls changed into their fresh-from-the-package pink tights and black leotards.
    Ginny came to class by herself because Rita worked afternoons at the mall and since she had to take two buses, she was always late. Her shucked clothes were left in a heap on the dressing room floor while she ran to find her place at the barre, still putting the last pins in her hair as the pliés began. But once class had started, she was happy: she knew she could dance circles around those snotty brats. They disliked her as much for that as for anything. She had a real gift for turning, Wes said so, and he always made her demonstrate first. While the others were still fumbling with double pirouettes, Wes had her doing fouettés, first two, then four, and soon enough eight in perfect, spin-like-a-top succession. At the Christmas recital, she brought down the house with that particular little trick.
    She knew they made fun of her. They called her “fire engine” because of the bright colors she wore to class. She hated that pink-and-black look ballet dancers were supposed to wear. When she tried on her very first pair of pointe shoes, she looked down at the pink satin and frowned. Pink was such a sissy, spineless color. She wanted red, like Moira Shearer in
The Red Shoes,
or, at the very least, indigo blue.
    â€œNo one has ever, ever complained about the color before, miss,” the salesman said coldly.
    â€œWell, someone is complaining now,” Ginny said, ignoring Mama's not-so-subtle fingers pressing on her shoulder. “Don't you have anything else?” With a disgusted sigh, he disappeared into the stockroom. Ginny could feel how the two other girls in the store looked down at the carpeting to avoid staring. The salesman returned with a dusty box that he laid on the floor.
    â€œBlack,” he said, gesturing to the dark satin shoes in their nest of white tissue. “Take them or leave them.”
    She tried them on and rose up on her toes. They weren't red, but they weren't bad either. Once she sewed the ribbons on, they would be better. Like a Spanish dancer. She began to imagine flouncy skirts; the shoes improved as she mentally added a fringed silk shawl, castanets and a real rosebud pinned to the front of her V-neck leotard. “We'll take them,” Ginny said. Mama sighed loudly, as if she had been holding her breath.
    Whatever the other girls said, it made no difference to Wes, who recognized that she had something special and did his best to nurture it. Extra classes, special coaching, partnering lessons; Wes saw to all of it. “Your talent is the redemption for your mama's sins,” he told her often enough, though he was always