The Pas de Deux by Erin Bomboy

Author:Erin Bomboy [Bomboy, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Curtain Call Press

15

Balancé

(rocking step)

Peri locked eyes with herself in the bathroom mirror as she prepared to begin her morning ritual, something that had once taken a few minutes but had since expanded to close to an hour. She’d always cared about her appearance, but now, with Mark in her life, she took special pains.

Under the harsh fluorescent light, she guided her face toward the mirror’s silvery surface to confront her reflection.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she said. “How far will my face doth fall?”

She smiled. Pitchforks of delicate lines radiated from the corners of her eyes. She frowned. Furrows sprung up between her eyebrows. In neutral, her face was wrinkle-free and blemish-free.

It wasn’t bad for almost thirty; it was good even. She looked younger than her actual age, thanks to spending her days in the studio rather than the sun.

But for how long?

She could hold time at bay, but it would come for her sooner or later. She would wrinkle and go gray and gain weight, no matter how hard she tried, because gravity would always be stronger than her will.

Peri sighed and reached for her moisturizer. It was expensive and probably not much better than what she could buy at a drugstore, but she’d been seduced by its promise to reverse aging. She shook the slender tube, squirted a globule on her finger, added another spurt for good measure, and then massaged it into her skin, using the gentle strokes the woman at the cosmetics counter had shown her.

It was less than forty days until the premiere of M+M, and everyone was excited. Or, if you were Peri, on edge. It was the first piece Mr. D had choreographed in years, so the company had caught a second wind. Ticket sales were strong. Expectations more so.

A reporter from the paper had swung by the studio to chat with Mr. D and to take pictures of Peri and Mark. Although she paid perfunctory attention to Mr. D and Peri, she spent most of her time sniffing around Mark. At the end of rehearsal, she steered him toward a quiet corner, so she could interview him personally.

“Are you the son of Mark Maroulis, Sr., the baseball player?” she asked as Mark threw a please-help glance over his shoulder.

Peri gave him a thumb’s up. You’ll do great, she telegraphed to him.

And he had. Mark might be eighteen, a fact she forgot regularly, but he hadn’t flinched from any challenge thrown his way.

She examined her face. She looked the same as she had before applying the moisturizer. If anything, the moisturizer emphasized the mauve half-moons under her eyes and her pale cheeks.

Because she, unlike Mark, was flinching. Specifically from Mr. D, who was placing more and more demands on her. He took her to dinner with him after rehearsal, insisted she come over after lunch on Sunday for tea, escorted her to his office to look at costume samples and mock-ups of props. She dug in her heels, made up excuses, pleaded exhaustion, but more times than not, she found herself stuck with Mr.

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