The Four Temperaments Read Online Free PDF Page B

smiling when he did. After a while, he refused to let her pay for her classes. “Every serious school needs a scholarship student,” he told her. “Virginia Valentine is mine.” When it became too hard for Rita to pick Ginny up after class (she didn't want her riding the buses alone after dark), Wes started driving her home. She liked the rides because she liked him. He was as good-looking as his name promised, with thick, prematurely white hair, blue eyes and white, white teeth that he confessed to having had capped.
    â€œWhen you're onstage, your smile has to count. Mine never did before I had my teeth done,” he told her.
    She nodded, self-conscious about her own teeth. Rita didn't have the money for braces. Wes saw her discomfort and said, “Now don't go worrying about your teeth. Those big white beauties will look just wonderful under the lights. Rub a little Vaseline on them before you go on. Makes 'em look even shinier.” That's the way Wes talked to her—as if her success were a sure thing. But Ginny didn't entirely share his confidence. Not because she wasn't good enough, because she really thought she was. But New Orleans wasn't exactly the place for a girl to make a name for herself as a ballerina; the city didn't even have a resident company. How in the world was she going to succeed while living there? And how was she going to get out?
    It was Wes who showed her the way.
    He told her that every couple of years, the School of American Ballet held a regional audition in Atlanta and there was one scheduled for the next month. Ginny knew that the school was the godchild of the New York City Ballet, the company she'd wanted to dance in ever since Rita had taken her to a performance on her tenth birthday. They danced
Serenade
that night, and when she saw that girl who lets down her hair and dies for her dancing, she was stunned. She pored through the program notes to see who the choreographer was and saw the name George Balanchine. Well, obviously he was someone who understood the way she felt about dancing and she knew that she would have to find a way to audition for him. It turned out he was dead, but he'd choreographed dozens of ballets and, along with someone called Lincoln Kirstein, started the company besides. She swore to herself that she would find her way to New York City to dance in it.
    For the next four weeks, Ginny practiced constantly for the audition. Mama even let her miss school so Wes could give her special coaching during the day, before her regular lessons. He offered to drive her to the audition because it was so hard for Rita to take off from work. Wes and Ginny would have to stay overnight in a motel, but Rita wasn't worried; she had this idea that Wes liked boys, not girls, and Ginny saw no reason to tell her otherwise. So it was in a room at the Peach Tree Palace that Wesley Landham carefully and cordially deflowered her. She let him do this because she understood that Wes was a gentleman. Once he had become her lover, he would feel more than interested in her career. He would feel obligated.
    Afterward, she felt a little shaky, but it was more because the reality of the next day's audition had set in—what if she didn't do well? then what?—than the shock of losing her virginity. But Wes was very tender and sweet; he filled the motel's peach bathtub and carried her, still naked, to the bathroom. He left her soaking while he went out to buy a cold six-pack. Cigarettes were forbidden but Wes thought that the beers might take the edge off her nerves.
    He was right. The next morning, Ginny got up feeling calm, centered and ready to dance as she had never danced in her life. She did, too. She could hear the whispers of the other girls at the barre as her feet beat their way through a tricky entrechat quatre combination; by the time she got to the fouettés, the girls were silent. Though the official word didn't come for several days, it was clear to