Dance of Shadows (14 page)

He led Vanessa across the street, down the stairs, and into the subway, where they squeezed onto a crowded train. Music and chatter filled the car, along with lipstick, high heels, big
earrings, backpacks, and high-top sneakers. People pushed in behind them, pressing Vanessa to Zep’s chest.

The car shuddered to a start, and suddenly Vanessa felt alive. She gripped the pole as they sped downtown, the wheels screeching against the rails, making everyone in the car sway back and forth in a slow, choreographed dance. The doors chimed open, and three men with guitars and sombreros boarded and began to croon in Spanish, their music slowing as the train threw everyone around a bend. Vanessa toppled into Zep, who caught her just before she fell, his hand firm around her waist as if they were paired in a duet.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his lips so close she could almost taste his words.

Vanessa was about to nod when a jolt from the train pulled them apart, pushing her into one of the guitar players. “Sorry!” she said. Zep closed his hand over hers on the pole, holding her steady until the train around her seemed to blur and the last vestiges of Justin slipped from her mind.

They got off in the West Village, where the winding, narrow streets were lined with restaurants and bars and food trucks, the sidewalks crammed with people. Everyone seemed happy.

“This is
nothing
like Lincoln Center,” Vanessa said.

“I know. There are as many different New Yorks as there are neighborhoods,” Zep said, and took her hand. “Come on!”

The warmth of his fingers closing around hers made her legs go weak. She willed them to move as he pulled her through
the maze of streets. After the fourth turn she gave up keeping track of where they were going. He finally slowed when they reached a charming street that branched off from the main avenue, its quiet sidewalks dotted with streetlamps.

“This is it,” he said, leading her to a tiny pizzeria with a line of people out the door. “It’s the best in New York.”

Surprised, Vanessa gazed up at the neon sign and then through the windows at the red counters, the stacks of napkins, the shakers of oregano and red pepper, the men in aprons working dough in the air and manning the oven, sweat beading on their temples.

Zep looked at her nervously. “What do you think?”

The smell of tomatoes and cheese and rising dough wafted outside, making Vanessa swoon. “It’s perfect.”

They sat on a stoop by the corner and ate pizza, watching the city move past them. The subway vibrated beneath their feet; the cabs screeched as the traffic lights turned red. People rushed to cross the street, only to rush back when the light changed amid the sound of car horns. “Shut up!” someone yelled from a window, making Zep and Vanessa laugh. Beside them, queues of people waited outside the bars and restaurants, music spilling into the night every time the door opened.

“I think I like New York,” Vanessa said.

Zep cast a satisfied eye over the crowded streets. “Me too.”

He turned to Vanessa, taking her in as if he were seeing her for the first time, and a smile spread across his face.

Vanessa blushed. “What?”

“You know, most girls wouldn’t be okay with this. Sitting
on a dirty stoop with me in the West Village and eating a greasy slice of pizza from a paper plate. You’re different than all the other girls I’ve taken out.”

Vanessa shrank back at the mention of other girls. In her mind, Zep’s past was composed of a never-ending succession of tall, waifish beauties. In comparison, she was this inexperienced freshman who had barely even kissed a boy. What did he see in her?

Zep must have realized how she felt. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding nervous. “That was a compliment. What I meant to say is that I’ve never met a girl who I could sit with on a stoop and still enjoy myself as much as if we had gone to a show and an expensive restaurant. It sounds absurd, but I never feel comfortable at those places. I’m always waiting for them to escort me out.”

Vanessa let out a soft laugh. “I know what you mean.”

Zep touched her hand. “You’re real,” he said, pushing a lock of hair from her face.

Vanessa melted beneath his touch. She gazed up at him. “Are you?”

Zep clutched his chest as if her words had stabbed him. “Of course I am. How can I prove it to you?”

Vanessa bit her lip, pretending to be deep in thought. “You could get something caught in your teeth. Or say something embarrassing.”

“I can do those things,” he said, the smile fading from his face. “But first, I have a very serious question to ask you.”

Vanessa swallowed. “Okay.”

Zep leaned toward her, his face so grave it made her worry. Then, in a low voice, he said, “Do you have any soda left? Because I’m all out.”

Vanessa laughed and handed him her cup.

“Thanks,” he said with a grin, and sipping from one straw, they shared her drink, no longer staring out at the city, but blending into it until they were just another couple sitting on a stoop, enjoying a warm autumn night. Afterward, Zep took her down the street to a cozy patisserie with hammered-tin ceilings and a long glass counter filled with trays of colorful cookies and petit fours. Cakes and meringues stood on tall platters by the register, where an old woman was arranging mugs and teacups. She smiled as Vanessa leaned down and peered at the cakes in awe.

Zep bent down next to her, amused. “Does anything look good?”

“There are so many choices,” she said. “I can’t decide.”

He glanced from Vanessa to the cakes beyond the glass. “I think I know exactly what you want.”

“Oh really?” she said with a daring look. “And what would that be?”

Zep searched her face, as if trying to read her thoughts. “Do you trust me?”

Vanessa hesitated. “I think so.”

“Good,” he said, and stood up. “Why don’t you grab us a table? I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Okay,” she said with a skeptical smile. She watched him from afar as he leaned over the counter, talking to the woman
behind the register until she nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.

Zep ordered a café au lait for himself and a mulled cider for Vanessa, carrying them to a corner table where they shared a slice of almond cream cake, with frosting so delicate it melted away just as it touched Vanessa’s tongue.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“How did you … ?”

“I’ve had my eye on you for a while.” He touched a strand of her long hair, letting his hand drop down to the pale freckles on her shoulder. “It’s hard not to notice you. You aren’t like the other girls here. Or anywhere, for that matter.”

Vanessa gave him the beginning of a smile. “That’s not true,” she said, shying away. “There are a lot of girls like me.”

Zep smiled. “See, that alone makes you different. Not everyone would say that.”

Vanessa knew a lot of girls who would say that—Steffie, TJ, Elly—but she didn’t mention it. Instead, she inched her fingers closer to his until their thumbs were touching. “What about you?” she asked. “I don’t know anything about you.”

Zep raised an eyebrow. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” Vanessa said, pulling her hair over one shoulder. “Where are you from?”

“A small town in Minnesota,” he said. “All snow and ice and factories. That was my childhood. Long, bleak winters and hard work.”

“What do you mean?”

“I grew up with my mom and my three younger sisters. My
mom was a nurse, always working the late shifts, so we rarely saw her. All I remember of my dad are his hands—big and rough and chapped from the wind. He worked at a factory, I think, but he left when my sisters and I were really young.”

Vanessa listened, licking her spoon, as he told her about growing up, how there was never any food. Once their heat got turned off in the dead of the winter, and their pipes froze. He had to drag his sisters a mile down the road to their neighbor’s house so they wouldn’t freeze in the night.

“That’s what it was like, more or less. Even as a kid, I worked a part-time job after school at the local diner, cleaning floors and washing dishes. It was the worst job ever,” he said with a laugh. “You really don’t want to know what turns up in public bathrooms. But late one night, when all the customers had left, I turned on the radio and accidentally flipped to a classical station. The music blasted through the place, filling the air with Tchaikovsky, and suddenly everything changed and I felt the life seep back into me. My work passed by so quickly that I turned it on the next night, too, and then the next. The music became the only way I could get through the day. I remember looking out the window, the snow blowing across the ground in swirls, and thinking that it looked like an elaborate dance.”

Something inside Vanessa’s chest swelled as she listened to him. He told her about how he had started dancing at the gym by himself, how the kids at school had ostracized him. “They’d call me ‘Billy Elliot’ and kick my ass, but I didn’t care. I asked around until I found a woman who was holding ballet classes in her basement. It was all girls except for me, and I think my
sisters were mortified, but I had no other choice. Dancing was the only way I could be happy, the only chance I’d have to be successful and eventually support my family. There was nothing for me in that small town. So when I discovered the New York Ballet Academy, I knew I was going. I had to. There was no other option.”

Vanessa leaned closer. She had never met anyone who loved dancing as much as Zep. Even Margaret hadn’t talked about ballet the way he did. It was as if it held answers for him, that ballet wasn’t just something he did, but it was the way he moved, the way he understood the world.
Beauty
, Vanessa thought, listening to the sound of his voice until the café slowly emptied and they wandered out into the street.

“Do you ever get … nervous, though?” Vanessa asked.

Zep glanced at her strangely. “What do you mean?”

“Like you’re not good enough, no matter how hard you try. Like you’ll never be … enough.” Vanessa wasn’t sure where exactly that question came from, but there it was. She couldn’t take it back now.

Zep paused for a moment, his face still. Then he touched her cheek. “You
are
enough, Vanessa. More than enough.”

Vanessa felt herself blush. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she hadn’t thought about her family and Margaret, about Elly and ballet and Josef and
The Firebird
. But walking with Zep beneath the streetlights, Vanessa didn’t feel like a ballerina or a sister or a daughter or a friend. She just felt like a girl walking with a boy in the West Village, hoping that by the time they got home, he would kiss her.

Zep hailed a cab, but just as it pulled over something caught her eye. A girl with a blond bob stepped out of a restaurant, her back turned. She wore a pale-pink dress, Elly’s color. Vanessa froze.

Zep held the cab door open for her, but she didn’t step inside. “Is that—?” she said to Zep, just as the girl turned.

Vanessa’s heart sank when she took in the face that was older and far more jaded than Elly’s. She watched the girl bum a cigarette from a man, leaning on a mailbox while she took a drag.

“From the back, she looked just like Elly,” Vanessa explained, embarrassed, while she climbed into the cab.

“I know,” Zep said, trying to make her feel better, though it didn’t help. There were probably thousands of girls in the city who looked like Elly from behind.

“You were friends. You miss her,” Zep said gently. “I would feel the same way too. It’s a shame what happened to her.”

Something about his tone made Vanessa pause. “What do you mean?” Vanessa said. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just that she disappeared so suddenly. It’s like she fell off the face of the earth.”

“Disappeared,” Vanessa repeated thoughtfully. “It is like that, isn’t it?”

The mood had become somber by the time the cab pulled up at Lincoln Center. Seeing it, suspended in the sky, Vanessa suddenly felt guilty for not thinking about Margaret all evening. And even though she hadn’t planned on telling Zep anything about Margaret, she somehow felt that she could trust him.

“Did you know my sister?”

“Margaret,” Zep said, as if he’d been waiting for Vanessa to feel comfortable enough to bring her up. “She was a beautiful dancer.”

Vanessa stared at her feet, unable to look Zep in the eye while she told him about the day they got the phone call. The months of searching, of the police calling, telling her parents they had no news. Zep listened intently.

“Did you think she was crazy?” Vanessa asked him, thinking about what Justin had told her.

“I barely knew her,” Zep said. “I thought she was talented and passionate about dance. She seemed fragile, but who isn’t before a big performance?”

Vanessa nodded, somehow relieved. She didn’t want to think that her sister was crazy. “Elly’s disappearance reminds me of hers. Do you think that’s insane?”

“No,” Zep said. “They both dropped out suddenly, and they were both close to you.”

Vanessa bit her lip. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t just the circumstances that seemed so similar. It was something more intangible, a bad feeling she got every time she looked at Elly’s empty half of the room. But she said nothing. And while they walked back toward the dormitory, Zep took her hand. “Wait,” he said, and pulled her to the fountain.