She's Not There (22 page)

A door banged open and Amelia looked over to see a tall thin boy emerge from the locker room. It was the boy who had danced the Cavalier. He shoved his arms into a red sweatshirt with
S
IOUX
C
ENTRAL
R
EBELS
across the chest and gave her a shy smile as he passed.

Amelia followed him out into the cold night. She paused, looking up. The sky was huge and black and star-pricked. But for the first time that she could remember, Amelia didn’t feel alone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The Impala died in El Cerrito. Amelia managed to get the car off Interstate 80 and into a parking lot before it gave out.

She got out of the car, and for a moment, she just stood in the morning sunshine, looking around. Blue sky, green trees, and a cool wind that smelled of the sea and eucalyptus. She closed her eyes. After the emptiness and cold of Iowa, this place felt like a balm for her senses.

An acrid smell made her open her eyes. Smoke was pouring out from under the hood of the Impala. She was lucky the car had made it this far. It had taken her a day and a half to get to California and she knew she was somewhere in the East Bay, not far from San Francisco.

She looked around, considering her next move. People with briefcases and backpacks were streaming toward a blue sign that said
B
ART
. With a final look at the old red Impala, Amelia grabbed her duffel and followed.

The map inside the subway station was easy to decipher. She knew where she was going—301 Van Ness Avenue, War Memorial Opera House. She just wished she knew what was going to happen when she got there.

Her search of the Internet revealed that Jimmy was still with the San Francisco Ballet. But she hadn’t been able to reach him. When she had called the San Francisco Ballet offices, a woman told her the company was on break until rehearsals started for
The Nutcracker
. No amount of pleading on Amelia’s part had softened the woman’s heart enough to get Jimmy’s phone number or address. She still couldn’t remember her password to unlock her e-mails, so there had been no choice but to just show up at the theater. Today was the first day of rehearsals.

After a half-hour subway ride, the escalator deposited her back up in the sunshine on a busy boulevard—Market Street, just a short walk to the opera house.

Her heart was beating fast as she walked, with anticipation but also anxiety. Memories, she had come to believe, were such fragile things, so easily damaged, erased, or even distorted into whatever you needed them to be. She needed Jimmy to be here for her now. What if he wasn’t? What if she was expecting too much from him after all this time?

The opera house loomed before her. She circled around until she found the stage door. It was locked. There was no point in knocking. She remembered how the stage doors at the Miami City Ballet’s theater had always been locked, guarded inside by security guys. You either belonged or you didn’t.

The door swung open. Two young women came out, swathed in sweats and wool scarves, tote bags over shoulders, hair pulled up in tight buns. Amelia grabbed the door before it closed.

There was no one inside, just a mug of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich on the sign-in desk. Amelia hurried up the stairs and into the dim backstage area. It was all so foreign yet familiar, a warren of hallways made even more narrow by rows of huge wardrobe crates. There was music coming from somewhere, faint but sweet, the snowflake waltz from the second act.

Two stout men were coming toward her, stagehands most likely, and she pressed against a drinking fountain to let them pass. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the fountain.

Her gray sweater coat was dirty and shapeless. Her dark hair was spiked up around her face and the big purple plastic glasses . . .

God, she looked like a crazy street woman.

She tore off the sweater coat and stuffed it in the duffel. She wet her hands in the drinking fountain and slicked back her hair, then slipped the purple glasses into her jeans pocket.

When she squinted at the mirror, this time she saw a tall thin woman in a black T-shirt and jeans carrying something that looked like a dance tote—someone who might belong.

Slipping the duffel strap over her shoulder, she straightened her spine and headed toward the music.

She made her way through the shadows, past the stacks of scenery flats, scaffolds and ladders, the coils of ropes, and a curtain of cables. Past metal racks of jeweled costumes and an open wardrobe crate filled with flat yellow tutus arranged on shelves like pizzas in an oven.

The music stopped, and she heard voices and someone hammering. She was nearing the right wing and when she squinted, she could make out willowy bodies bending and stretching on the stage.

The pounding started again. Amelia looked down to see a young dancer sitting in the corner on the floor, whacking a pink satin shoe with a hammer. And suddenly she was seeing herself, going through her own ritual—bending rock-hard new pointe shoes until their spines cracked, coating the insides with Fabulon floor wax to make them strong, slamming them in doors so they would be beaten into submissive silence on wooden stages.

Amelia closed her eyes.

It was all there. Her past life as a dancer was all there in her memory and it was all coming back, just like Dr. Haskins had promised.

“Amelia?”

She opened her eyes.

He was just a blurry silhouette against the lights but she knew his voice.

“Jimmy,” she said.

He came forward and folded her in his arms.

“My God, you’re here!”

She wrapped her arms across his back and buried her face in his neck. His smell came back to her, sweet-sweat and smoky-clove. Djarum Blacks . . . that was the name of those things he smoked. She didn’t want to break from his embrace but finally he pulled back, his hands on her shoulders.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked. “I’ve been calling you and e-mailing you for more than a week. I’ve been worried sick. Where the hell have you been?”

How did she answer? How could she explain?

“Something came up,” she said.

He was looking at her intently, scrutinizing her face. “Are you all right? You look—”

“I’m just tired. I had to drive.”

“Drive? But the last time we talked, you said you were picking up your dog and getting a flight out here on Monday morning.”

Amelia was quiet, thinking. It was coming back now. She was planning to leave Alex and fly out here. She and Jimmy had been talking about it for months, but it had taken her time to put aside some money, siphoning off cash from the allowance Alex gave her. Where was it? Had she hidden it somewhere? Yes, she could see herself tucking a wad of money in a cosmetics bag and locking it in a suitcase. She felt a small wave of sadness that her life had led her to such a low point. And her marriage—what had she and Alex been playing at for all those years?

That last Friday back in Fort Lauderdale was also re-forming in her mind now. How she had packed one suitcase and left it in its usual place in her closet so Alex wouldn’t notice. How she had dropped Brody off at the spa that morning intending to pick him up the next day. How on Monday morning she had planned to wait for Alex to leave for the office, take a taxi to the airport, pay cash for her ticket and leave.

But then . . .

She had changed her mind. She had a sudden stab of memory, sitting on the edge of a bathtub, reading Jimmy’s e-mails and crying because she had decided that she couldn’t just run away like a coward, that she needed to tell Alex in person that it was over. She owed him that much. But what had happened after that? How had she ended up alone and hurt in the Everglades?

“Amelia?”

She looked up at Jimmy.

“What’s wrong? It’s like you weren’t even here for a moment.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll explain everything later.”

He hesitated and then smiled. “Okay, love, okay. It doesn’t matter. You’re here now and everything is going to be fine, just like I promised.”

Promised? What did you promise me, Jimmy?

“Hey, Jimmy.”

They both turned. A young man in practice clothes was coming toward them, wiping his face with the towel hanging around his neck.

“Do you have a moment to show me that lift?” the young man asked.

“Yeah, Victor,” Jimmy said. “I’ll be right there.” Then he gave Amelia a gentle nudge forward. “I’d like you to meet someone special, Victor. This is Melia Worth of the Miami City Ballet.”

Amelia blinked.
Melia Worth
.
Her stage name. She had forgotten it. No wonder she couldn’t find anything about her dancing on the Internet.

“I was her favorite partner in Miami,” Jimmy said.

She looked up at him. He was smiling.

“Good to meet you, Miss Worth,” the young man said. Then he left, rejoining the other dancers on stage.

“Miss Worth,” Amelia said. “That made me feel old.”

“You
are
old, love. We’re both old in dance years.” He gave her a hug. “Go have a seat. I’ll be done in twenty minutes and then we’ll go home.”

Amelia made her way down to the front row and took a seat. She pulled out her glasses and slipped them on. All the dancers had retreated to the wings or were sprawled on the floor at the back of the stage. Jimmy was standing center stage with Victor and a blonde woman wearing a lilac leotard and tattered white practice tutu. Her thin pale face was sleek with sweat and she looked upset.

“He’s pinching me, Jimmy,” she said.

“I have to. You’re sweaty,” Victor said.

Jimmy held up a hand. “Okay, time out.” He looked to the young man. “Victor, you can’t just grab her like a football. Watch me.”

Jimmy positioned himself behind the woman and put his hands firmly at her waist just below her rib cage. “Use your palms, not your fingers,” he said. “Feel her weight before you push off to lift her.”

Jimmy and the woman began to move in unison, his hands at her waist, but he stopped just before the lift, grimacing.

“See the difference?” he asked Victor.

The young man sighed. Jimmy pulled him away from the woman, toward the lip of the stage.

“Victor, this is the grand pas de deux,” he said. “It’s not a solo. It’s not about you being a star. It’s about a man and a woman, about trust and connection and telling their story.”

Victor looked down at the stage, hands on his hips.

“To be a good partner, you have to sense her center of gravity,” Jimmy went on. “You have to support her, make her feel secure, pull her back when she gets off balance, help her get through a difficult turn. And when you lift her, you must make her feel like she can fly.”

“I feel invisible,” Victor said.

Jimmy shook his head. “No, no. It’s two of you appreciating what the other can do and trusting that everything will be all right. It’s almost a spiritual thing. You feel each other. That’s what creates beauty.”

Victor glanced at the young woman and then back at Jimmy.

“Okay,” he said.

“Good.”

“She’s still sweaty.”

“Go rub some resin on your hands.” Jimmy clapped his hands and retreated to the back of the stage. “Okay, Fred and Ginger, let’s try it again.”

Amelia watched as Jimmy coached the two dancers through the pas de deux, but she wasn’t seeing the steps or hearing the music. She was seeing herself and Jimmy, years younger, dancing together, but someone was there with them, like a hovering shadow. It was a man, and slowly his face appeared, almost like he was stepping into the spotlight and she was . . .

His name was Neil. He was a writer, and Jimmy had loved him, too. Loved him more?

No, Amelia thought as she watched Jimmy on stage. Just
differentl
y
. That was how Jimmy had explained it to her that night as they sat in an empty lifeguard stand on a moonlit Miami beach. That was how he explained that he was bisexual.

You own a piece of my heart forever, love. But I can’t fill that empty spot in yours, not like you need me to. You want marriage. You want children someday. I can’t be there for you in that way.

They decided to end their affair that night. The next day they went back to being partners on stage, and they had remained good friends. She felt that in her bones. But there was a gap in her memory, a huge black looming gap that kept bringing her back to the same questions: Why had she quit dancing? Why had she married Alex?

Amelia took off her glasses, turning Jimmy into a blur, overcome by a swell of emotion: an ache for what they had once had, but relief that she had not lost him completely. Jimmy’s promise to her, in the end, was that he would still be there for her. As a friend. It was enough, she thought. It had to be.

“Amelia?”

She looked up at Jimmy. He was crouched at the edge of the stage, staring at her.

“Why are you crying, love?”

“Because I’m here,” she said softly.

Amelia was quiet on the short bus ride to Jimmy’s apartment, thankful that there was no chance to talk. Fatigue from the long drive, her reconnection with Jimmy, and the tension of not knowing if Clay Buchanan was still on her trail. It was all weighing heavily on her. But as she unpacked her duffel in Jimmy’s small guest room, there were other emotions at play.

And they centered around Alex.

He had been on her mind constantly during the last two days. With nothing to do but think as she drove from Iowa to California, things about their past began to come into clear focus. Some of the memories were good. How flattering and exciting it was in the beginning to be relentlessly pursued by a rich handsome man. How beautiful the wedding had been and how sensual their honeymoon had felt. How good it felt to create something of
beauty
—
a house, a garden, her own image in a mirror or magazine—that made Alex so happy. But it hadn’t been until this morning, listening to Jimmy coach the young dancer, that she realized what had always been missing.