Pas de Deux
by Thalia
Rating: PG-13
The audience watches spellbound over his head as Wilhelmina Newberry
flits across the stage in a cloud of white gossamer and feathers and
ethereal grace. The prima ballerina's movements are reminiscent of
dandelion fluff, light and delicate and seemingly effortless. Her eyes
shine under the headlights, her soul lost in the music, carried to
exalted heights by the muses that she serves.
Kevin's storm-gray eyes flicker towards the stage a split second before
his fingers hit the piano keys with a renewed vengeance and the
orchestra behind him springs into a crescendo of music, soaring violins
and horns punctuating the beat. Minor key. On-stage, Odette changes from
swan to girl and it is barely short of magical.
Kevin Mayfield knows that every wealthy patron in the audience paid the
price of diamonds for the privilege of watching her dance. It gives them
the illusion that for a few hours, they own her-- they own her grace and
her beauty and if they could, they'd bottle her up, golden hair and
china-doll features and limbs that move like sunlight dappling through
trees. And Wilhelmina is amazing, really. She'd danced since she was all
of four years old, and he can almost see it in his mind's eye, a tiny
cherub in pink frills smiling as she hummed along with the classical
music playing on her mother's radio, twirling to an unseen audience.
She's twenty-two right now and the latest sensation of this world, a
world of satin-wrapped illusions and pretty lies and curtain-red velvet
skies studded with bright, evanescent stars.
The young man who plays the role of the Prince lifts her up and Kevin
barely spares him a glance. He knows that the audience sees the fellow
just the way he is: simply there as another enhancement of Wilhelmina's
beauty. Their eyes are glazed as they focus on her lithe, slender form
as she is lifted, then lowered again.
When the ballet is finished the audience breaks into loud, roaring
applause, and the pianist remains hidden in the shadows as he gazes up.
The prima ballerina, along with the rest of the corps, take their bows.
Wilhelmina smiles a blinding, dazzling white smile and sinks gracefully
in a curtsey, all arms and legs and white chiffony skirts. Roses of all
colours soar over Kevin's head and land around her feet, and she doesn't
change expression.
He can't hate it, because he knows why they love her. It's different,
though, their love. They won't ever understand. They won't ever see.
It's why he barely watches her dance on stage these days. It's the
outward girl they see, the tinsel-shine and the gilding on the fleur-de
-lys. Wilhelmina Newberry, ballet prodigy. It's what they SHOULD see,
perhaps, but he knows so much more.
They've never held her while she cried after a particularly long and
grueling practice, her tears making her look all of ten. They've never
gotten up late at night, woken by a phone call from a friend whom not
many truly understand, who suddenly felt the hankering to work on the
pas de deux from Giselle. They've never let her in, then, playing the
part that would be expanded and filled up by orchestra with a simple
upright piano as she practiced in a gray leotard with a pink band in her
hair. They've never watched her laugh after a show, face flushed from
happiness and champagne, busily unpinning her hair from its bun into a
relaxed, mussed shower of gold.
They've never handed her cloths as she soaked her bleeding feet in warm
water, feeling more pain than she did because that's the way it is with
loved ones, isn't it? They've never watched her stretch and practice
until she was so sore she couldn't move, and then carried her out as
gently as possible, watching her try her best not to wince.
They don't know that she prefers to be called "Mina" and that she
actually hates roses.
Kevin waits a few minutes and waits for her backstage, and finally she
emerges from the changing room. She's wearing an old brown trenchcoat
and no makeup and the audience would not recognize Wilhelmina Newberry
if they saw her right now. She smiles and takes his hand and they walk
out the back door, fingers entwined.
And it's just right. Wilhelmina Newberry is a legend and an ideal, and
she shines like the sun, unreservedly and indiscriminately. People glory
in her and never, ever come too close.
The girl whose hand he holds is just Mina to him, whose beauty came from
familiarity and respect and friendship and genuine smiles that are more
mischief than elegance. She lights up his black-and-white ivory life
like a vanilla candle and throws colour like a bouquet of sunflowers.
He couldn't love her any other way.
~fin
(
geocities.com/wyse_k)