Skin and Bones (8 page)

Bones knew what she meant. “Yeah.”

“Have you ever seen a ballerina with an ounce of body fat?”

“You’re the first real dancer I’ve met.”

“A virgin.” She smiled again, teasing him.

When she smiled at him like that it looked like a master had painted her. “The lighter we are—the higher we sail,” she said. “How else can our partners lift us?”

She picked through the tiles and set G-I-S-E-L-L-E on the board. “This is the role that defines all classical ballerinas.”

Nicole walked by sucking an orange wedge.

“Completely lacking self-control,” Alice muttered.

“No willpower,” Bones agreed.

“At least we have clear goals.”

He nodded. “No one can call us quitters.”

Nicole pretended like she hadn’t heard them. “Bones,” she said, ripping pulp with her teeth. “Your shoe is leaking.”

Bones shrugged, trying to act nonchalant.

Nicole sauntered off.

“I was wondering,” Alice said, “can you meet me in my room? Say in an hour?”

He was ready, willing, and able—for whatever she wanted.

Bones showered and changed into clean sweats. He sprayed Lard’s aftershave on his shirt, then changed his mind. He was in the middle of swapping shirts when Lard came in.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” Bones said. “But Elsie isn’t worth it.”

“You can put up with some of the people some of the time”—Lard parked his lunchbox on his desk—“but not a domesticated ungulate.”

Bones laughed. He’d called her a hoofed animal yet again. He went to the windowsill to check his shoe. Still wet.

Nancy appeared in the doorway, a bottle of Ensure in one hand, and a plastic cup in the other. Bones tried mild surprise. “What’s up?”

She shook the bottle and her head in unison before unscrewing the cap. “This is to make up for the milk and cereal you dumped at breakfast.”

Busted!

“How’d you know?”

Nancy poured, measuring carefully. “Do you mean besides the trail you left?”

Bones stepped backward, panic gnawing at him. “The milk I have for breakfast is nonfat,” he said urgently. “And fifty calories from Ensure is from
fat
.”

“Sorry, Bones. You made the kind of choice that didn’t leave us with one.” Nancy handed him the cup. “Dr. Chu ordered four ounces.”

“BUT THE SCALES ARE SCREWED UP!”

It was handy having Alice’s room so close. Classical music filtered through the door, which was only open a few inches. Bones rapped softly, eased the door open, and knocked again.

“I’ve been waiting,” Alice said.

Bones stepped inside.

Alice was sitting on the floor cutting strips of adhesive tape off a roll. Her hair was still in a shiny bun but now ribbons were woven in. It was the first time he’d seen her in pink tights. They were as sexy as her ripped pair.

“This might seem like a crummy little hospital room,” she said with a warm smile. “And, of course, it is. But it’s also my studio while I’m stuck here, so I treat it like a temple. You know?”

“Sure.”

“Lard told me about Elsie,” she said. “I try to leave that kind of negative garbage outside.”

He nodded again.

Bones didn’t know why he was there or what to do with his hands. He shoved them in his pockets, playing with his gloves. Being alone with her like this was the closest he’d ever come to sex, even if they were both fully dressed.

Alice slipped a pad over her toes. “Gel pads,” she explained. “I can’t afford to lose any more toenails. After a while they don’t grow back.” She put on a pointe shoe, winding the ribbon around her ankle. Then she tied a knot and tucked in the loose ends. “At least I don’t have bunions.”

If she did, he’d kiss them away.

“With auditions coming up it’s more important than ever that my technique is solid,” she said, standing up. Her skirt moved restlessly around her thighs while she showed him how to use her video camera.

“Does Dr. Chu know you have this?”

“Yeah, a small concession.” She shrugged. “Now try to keep it steady. Vertical, on my whole body.”

“No problem,” he said.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Bones hit record and watched through the viewfinder in wonderment and admiration as she defied the laws of physics. Her spine was straight as a shish kabob skewer, but when she bent her knees, she appeared to grow taller.

“
Pliés
,” she explained the exercise. “Think of ballet as a play, but instead of learning lines, I memorize steps. I still have to act though, only as a dancer I use my whole body.”

Bones thought about her actor parents. “Has your mom or dad been in any movies I’d know?” he asked, still filming.

“They’re not famous, if that’s what you mean. Except for being temperamental. Yelling and screaming to get their way or perfecting the cold shoulder. More of a cliché than a stereotype.”

Alice balanced easily on one foot. “In ballet the audience sees one thing—the dancer. But they hear something else—the music.” Her free foot made quick little flicks. “
Dégagés
,” she said.

Bones squinted through the lens. “Sounds like a foreign language.”

“It means to disengage. Like this, see? My foot releases from the floor. The terms are French, like the kiss.”

Bones was grateful to be behind the camera. He wasn’t used to this kind of attention. And it was definitely getting his attention below the waist.

“The audience brings its own energy, and that creates a whole new message,” she said breathlessly, rising on her toes and turning gracefully. “I’m not just training to be a ballerina—I’m training my body to do whatever’s asked of it.”

Bones was lost in the sweat on her exquisitely sweating body. He was jealous of her sweat. He wanted to be her sweat. Even through the viewfinder he could see her ribcage pressing against her leotard like a musical instrument. He wanted to play her long into the night.

“What’s going on in here?”

Bones nearly dropped the camera, turning to see Unibrow’s massive head plugging the doorway.

Alice faced the brute, hands on defiant hips. “Did you even knock?”

“No exercising until—”

“I’m not exercising.” She cut him off with a glare that could take down a gladiator. “I’m rehearsing.”

“Not without permission from Dr. Chu.” Unibrow glared right back. He was nothing but a no-neck jerk who thought he was better than them because he went home at night and slept on his own grimy sheets. “You know the rules better than anyone.”

With that he left.

“I’d be so out of here if I had someplace to go.” Alice worked pins from her bun, shaking out a tumble of strawberry blond. “The upcoming audition—that’s my ticket.” She poked his shoulder. “Come on, let’s look at the video.”

They sat side by side on the bed, her head tilted close to his. Escaped strands of hair brushed against him. It was
amazing
, more
amazing
than anything he’d ever felt. He watched her eighty-something pound presence on the screen. It was everywhere at once. “Amazing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was looking down?” She scolded him in such a way he had to sit on his hands to keep from shoving her backward on the bed and kissing her face. “That totally messes up my alignment. And look at that lousy extension.”

Bones leaned in closer.

“I was lifting my hip during the
grand battements
. Even a three-year-old knows the hip is a ball and joint socket. It shouldn’t move just because I raise my leg. All those days stuck in ICU and that stupid wheelchair.” She sighed, pushing the envelope of impatience. “God, it’s like I’m starting over.”

He had to say it. “I think you look amazing.”

And there was that smile again.

“Most people don’t realize how strong ballerinas are because we look so fragile.” She snapped the screen closed. “But we have to be strong, really strong, and I’m not just talking about physical strength. It takes a different kind of stamina to listen to someone scream at you hour after hour—”

“Your parents?”

“Well, yeah, like nonstop.” She laughed. “But I meant the choreographer. Sometimes it’s for the slightest thing, like a finger that isn’t held just right. He’s god—the creator and ruler and source of all power—the supreme being of the stage. Dancers? We’re his puppets.”

Bones was starting to realize that dancing wasn’t just something she did; it was who she was.

Alice took his hand and pressed it on her chest just above her breast. “It comes from the core.”

He tried to stay focused. “The heart?”

“Precisely.”

Alice lifted one leg, untying her shoe.

“Need help taking the other one off?” he asked.

She leaned back on her pillow, holding her leg in the air.

Bones untied the satin knot carefully, until the ribbon fell, all crimped. He smoothed the wrinkles as best he could and set her shoes on the dresser.

It was time for Sexuality Group Therapy.

Alice had pulled a sweater over her damp leotard and was combing out her silky hair. Tape was still wrapped around her toes. Unfortunately, the arrangement of chairs didn’t let them sit together. Lard was against the wall, rocking on the back legs of his chair. He sucked a toothpick, bored. Bones knew he’d rather be in the kitchen.

Bones avoided eye contact with Elsie, who looked like she’d spent the night under a train. She was talking to Sarah. “Once I was so sick I forgot to flush the toilet,” she said. “Anyways, my mom saw the blood and figured out what I’d been doing.”

That meant Elsie had ruptured something—probably her esophagus or stomach lining, Bones knew—because only a person sticking her finger down her throat several times a day threw up blood. He wondered if she had scars on her knuckles like the other VIs he’d met in groups like this.

“Our toilet kept overflowing,” Sarah put in. “Pipes couldn’t take whole chunks of food.”

Lard’s chair slammed the floor. “Can’t you at least try to whisper?” he said, all edgy.

Elsie stood up ready for a fight and sat back down when Dr. Chu appeared. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being on time.” Then he made a lame joke about the topic getting their attention.

“Anyways,” Elsie said. “I’ve been on the pill since I was thirteen and my boyfriend uses condoms if that’s what this is about.”

Dr. Chu said something about responsibility being a sign of maturity and opened his briefcase. He passed out photographs of men and women of all ages. Some were in swimsuits, others in regular clothes. “Alice? How would you describe the women in these pictures?”

Except for a cute girl, Bones would have said fat, ugly, and lacking willpower. He wondered if Dr. Chu was going to hand out childproof scissors so they could cut out paper dolls to hang over their beds, a reminder of what normal should look like.

Alice was cool as a chilled cucumber. “Are you totally satisfied with your body, Dr. Chu? No, of course not. How do I know? Because no one is.”

“That isn’t the—” he started.

“Let’s face it, you suffer from male pattern baldness, which explains the ponytail, and have an extraordinarily large nose.” She stretched her amazing legs out in front of her. “Face it again, you’d like to lose those ten pounds you’ve put on since I saw you last summer.”

“You’re definitely a candidate for the lap band treatment,” Mary-Jane told Dr. Chu.

Bones thought Dr. Chu may have seemed as calm as his Hallmark smile, but experience with shrinks told him the doctor was probably as uncomfortable as the rest of them.

Sure enough, Dr. Chu cleared his throat. “We all have target areas we’d like to change. But there comes a time when we have to look at ourselves in the mirror, smile, and say, ‘Thank you for standing by me. For hanging in there after all the crap I’ve put you through.’”

“Explain this,” Sarah said. “Anorexics think they’re fat, right? Then why don’t the rest of us think we’re skinny?”

Lard snorted at that. “Cosmic injustice.”

Alice looked up from braiding her hair. “Don’t believe everything you think.”

“I once had a shrink give me a piece of string and ask me to guess the size of my waist,” Nicole said. “Then she measured me. I’d guessed my middle was fifteen inches smaller than it was. Talk about a wake-up call.”

“Does anyone really have a healthy body image?” Mary-Jane asked.

“Our whole society is distorted,” Nicole replied.

Elsie leaned forward with an expression that let them know they should pay attention. “Like this guy I know who dwells on his dangling participle, because he thinks it’s larger than normal.”

Mary-Jane and Nicole slapped high-fives.

“Anyways, take my boyfriend—” Elsie wouldn’t give up.

Lard cut her off. “Sex addicts meet down the hall.”

Dr. Chu let them talk, sort of like verbal free-writing. When things wound down, he gave them a bullshit assignment to sketch their bodies. “Just a simple outline,” he said and dismissed the meeting. Then he asked to see Alice in his office. “Privately.”

Crap.
Unibrow must’ve ratted her out for rehearsing.

Bones watched everyone file out. Alice and Lard were the only people in the program with clearly defined goals. Alice would be a famous ballerina someday and Lard would have his own restaurant. Mary-Jane, Elsie, Nicole, Sarah, Teresa? They couldn’t see past their next burger.

Bones admitted he hadn’t had any aspirations about his future before checking into the hospital. Now he had one: Alice.

“I need your help in the kitchen,” Lard told Bones in the hallway.

“Kitchens make me sick,” Bones said.

“You’re sick no matter where you are.” Lard laughed and punched him in the arm.

Bones rubbed his wound. “Do I have to
eat
anything?”

“Nope.”

“Touch anything?”

Lard shoved him toward the elevator. “Sure is tough being your friend.”

The doors opened onto a world of aluminum appliances, all reflecting Bones’s wavy image, a regular house of mirrors. The floor and counters looked like they’d gone through a carwash. You could eat off them if that was your thing.

Gumbo wore a bloody apron. He probably would have shaken Bones’s hand, but he held a dead fish in one and a cleaver in the other. “The kitchen used to serve five floors,” he said. “But now we only handle the EDU, obstetrics, and sometimes cater staff meetings.”