The Last Dance
Loose Id Titles by Kierney Scott
THE LAST DANCE
Kierney Scott
www.loose-id.com
The Last Dance
Copyright © September 2016 by Kierney Scott
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Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
eISBN 9781682522196
Editor: Kierstin Cherry
Cover Artist: April Martinez
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For my “life partner” Gina Calanni because you know my secrets and you still love me.
And for Alistair because you laugh at my jokes and tell me I’m pretty.
The throbbing in Georgina Fairley’s knee pulled her out of a deep sleep. The worn cotton of the sheets clung to her, soaked through with cold sweat. She winced as she rolled over to reach for the ever-present supply of painkillers on her bedside table. The slight movement sent burning shards of pain through her. They started in her knee, but her whole body convulsed as the sensation ricocheted up her spine. She swallowed two pills without the aid of water. She didn’t need to check the time; her body always woke her up when it was time for the next dose.
If a ballet dancer doesn’t feel pain when they wake up, they’re dead
. She was certainly still alive.
The room was still pitch-black, but that meant nothing. It could be almost any time of day. This was St. Petersburg in January: the sun was only out from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and most of those hours the sun was covered in dark clouds anyway. At least the streetlights lit up the snow—that was pretty. Well, until dogs pissed in it and the ash from the fires turned it black.
Georgina rubbed her knee again before she turned on the light. She didn’t bother looking at it; she didn’t need to know how bad it was. It didn’t matter how swollen it was; she needed to be in rehearsal at 10:30. If she wasn’t there on time, there was always her understudy or want-to-be soloist ready to push her way out of the corps de ballet and offer to stand in.
When Georgina moved to Russia from the States, she spoke no Russian beyond “
da
” and “
nyet
.” She was fluent now, after twelve years, but she kept that secret to herself so she could listen to the dancers in the chorus openly bitch about her. Of course they bitched; they wanted her job. There were always a hundred girls in the company wishing they were her and hating her at the same time. She liked to listen to them complain; it kept the fire stoked. The only disadvantage to being the best was there was no one to chase, so now the drive came from the knives in her back.
She pressed her palms into the mattress to prop herself up without moving the lower half of her body and further agitating her leg. The effort was in vain because her knee still cried out from the small movement. She held her breath as wave after wave of piercing heat stabbed at her knee.
Georgina squeezed her eyes together until she could control her breathing and quell the wave of nausea that crashed against her. She could ignore the pain. She always did. She was a master at ignoring painful things. She took in a deep breath, pushing it down until her lungs burned as much as her knee before she opened her eyes to examine the massive bouquet of roses she had thrown down at the foot of the bed; she had to deal with them sooner or later. The end of every performance was always met with bouquets thrown onstage for the star. In Russia, being a prima ballerina was like being royalty. Georgina had no fewer than twenty vases, and during the season every one was filled with fresh flowers. She appreciated every bouquet—in a perverse way they were payment for the bloody toes and torn muscles—but not this bouquet. These roses were entirely different.
It had been five months since she received two-dozen long-stemmed peach roses at the end of a performance. Five glorious months. Georgina limped to the end of the bed. She leaned over and scooped them up, twenty-four roses wrapped in green cellophane and a black velvet ribbon. She knew which rose it would be: always the one in the dead center. She pulled out the center rose and dropped the rest of the bouquet to the floor like the trash it was. She stared down at the single rose and shook her head. Anyone else would think it was beautiful, but Georgina knew just how ugly it was. She let out a stream of air and then ripped the flower clean from the stem. Slowly she peeled back the petals. Under the furry, antennae-like stamen she found it, the rolled-up scrap of parchment. She unrolled the miniscule piece of paper and took it to the bathroom and soaked it with two drops of ammonium hydroxide she kept in a contact lens solution bottle. Slowly a name appeared:
Roman Zakharov
. She sucked in a sharp breath.
She knew this target. Everyone knew Zakharov; he was in the papers most weeks. He was one of Russia’s richest oligarchs and the shadiest. He had a reputation for being cruel, even by Russian Mafia standards. And he was ugly—a hideous scar covered half his face and chest, a gift from an assassination attempt. Zakharov’s car had been parked in Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St. Petersburg, when it happened. A bomb detonated as soon as the engine started. The explosion had brought the city to a standstill. He’d survived the car bombing, but his driver had been decapitated and Zakharov’s lover blown in half. At least that was what the papers reported. She was a model, swimsuit or lingerie. Georgina couldn’t remember. She did remember at the time thinking even the fourteen billion dollars he was worth would not have been enough for her to fuck Roman Zakharov.
Georgina tossed the scrap of paper into the toilet and silently swore at the man who sent the flowers, Pavel Ivanov. He would get her killed, then what would he do? Stupid, myopic prick. He needed her as much she needed him.
She checked the time. It was almost 7:00. That gave her plenty of time to get across town to her drop spot and then give Pavel the signal that everything was a go. She turned off the light in her bathroom. The narrow room was just large enough for a bath and toilet. The previous owners had installed cobalt-blue fittings and painted the walls neon yellow. The color combination was an assault on the eyes, but it had been the height of sophistication when the iron curtain came down. It was like the country had just discovered color and needed to use every shade all at once. Georgina had intended to redecorate, but it had never happened because she was either dancing…or doing this.
The heat had gone off again in the middle of the night, and condensation had formed on the inside of the single-paned windows. Georgina pulled on her wool long underwear and jeans. She topped it with three sweaters and a maroon down jacket that reached her ankles. She zipped up her fleece-lined boots and pulled on a wool hat over her long red hair. She had been too tired after last night’s performance to wash off her makeup. She had not even taken off the two sets of false lashes. Her grandmother always warned her about sleeping with makeup on. It aged a woman, but so did living in the Baltic.
Georgina muttered under her breath as she locked her door and stepped into the black morning. She gasped when freezing air hit her face; it was like dipping her head directly into a pale of ice water. Twelve years in, and the winters still brought her to her knees. There was no acclimating to this; quite simply, people should not live this far north.
The snow had turned to ice during the night, so it was safer for Georgina to glide along the hidden pavement rather than try to walk the mile to Bolshe Coffee. Oh, the irony if she broke her leg like this. She had managed twelve years as principal for the Kirov with no injuries. Well, none that stopped her from performing. She was always injured. That was the one constant of a dancer’s life.
Georgina took note of every face she passed. If she passed the same one more than once, she knew she was being followed. There were fewer people than normal on the streets: an old man with a red, bulbous nose, yellow-vested workers salting the roads, and a woman with a purple quilted jacket and a long black braid.
She knocked the snow off her boots at the door to the coffee shop. She ordered a black coffee to take away before she headed to the bathroom. She took off her leather gloves and turned on the hot water. It would take time to warm up. She locked the door before she moved to the toilet. The walls and ceiling were painted scarlet. Presumably the look was supposed to be chic, but the paint was too old and cracked, so the result was more like an abandoned cave. She took off her jacket and rolled up the sleeves. She took the back off the toilet and reached in, blindly searching. She shivered as soon as her hand hit the frigid water, but it did not take long to find the vial. It was always in the bottom left-hand corner. Georgina shoved the brown vial in the inside pocket of her coat and then rinsed her hand under the warm water. She could not suppress the sigh that bubbled up from her core as her skin warmed. It was the small pleasures.
Georgina bundled up again and began the walk home. Again she scanned the streets, looking for familiar faces, but the only people she passed were businessmen on the way to work. She kept her head down in case someone recognized her, but they shouldn’t. Everything except her eyes was covered.
Finally she arrived back at her apartment block. The outside of the building was covered in a pastel-orange render. Rows of large sashed windows dominated the front. She glanced up to see her neighbor Mrs. Bobrova staring at her, her mouth pursed in disapproval, but that meant nothing. Her mouth always resembled a cat’s bottom. The real shock would be if she saw her neighbor smile. Georgina made a show, holding up her coffee cup and taking a sip to show her why she would be out this early. The old woman was nosy but quiet; she kept to herself and that was all Georgina could really ask for at this point.
Georgina unlocked the door. On the polished walnut floor she found the mail: a manila envelope with no return address. She took off her gloves and ripped open the letter. Inside was a ticket to a charity event at the Hermitage. She loved the Hermitage; it was her favorite museum in the world, but tomorrow was her one day off. She had grand plans of soaking in a hot bath and taking twice the recommended amount of ibuprofen. Nothing came between her and her day off.