He skimmed his eyes over the rows of seats, looking for the number. Even number. Left side of the theatre. 16F. It’s right around the middle, not too far front and not too far back. He sits down, glancing quickly at the usher, an old woman with big wrinkles and bigger earrings: large costume earrings that hung on her earlobes and pulled down on the soft, saggy flesh. A matching costume ring was on her right hand, and her left ring finger had a thin, simple gold band. It was oddly out of place, and her bright red lips pulled up in a smile. It would have looked like a grimace of old age, but her eyes were kind, and held a soft light in them. The young man smiles tentatively back, blowing out a breath and tapping nervous fingers against his bony kneecaps. He taps out a rhythm, looking around as the theatre fills up slowly.
“Back again angel?” The old woman hands him a bill, though he’d already memorized the cast and their bios, the acts and scenes and who was in each. He shifts his gaze to a young girl who sits down next to him, she rustles around in her seat, twisting and calling her friends over.
“You know me, Gloria,” he said. The girl next to him jumped up and grabbed two other young girls, pulling them into the aisle. They giggled and popped gum and chatted with high hilarity, and he couldn’t believe his misfortune in the seating. They were going to ruin this. The old usher gave the girls a wink, handing them playbills.
“Girls if Dominic here bothers y’all, just holler and I’ll set the boy straight.” Gloria whirled away, her smooth southern accent talking up a new couple that needed seats and playbills. The girls tittered nervously and the blonde sitting next to him eyed Dominic with new interest before popping her gum loudly and turning to answer a whispered question. Dominic felt decidedly old, though he was only a couple of years older than the excited group next to him.
He tapped his feet, taking up the rhythm that he’d tapped out on his knees before. Looking around, Dominic saw that it was almost a full audience tonight, and when the lights dimmed a hush fell over the theatre, a blanket of silence smothering the chatter, leaving only the occasional squeak of a seat, the rustling of the playbill as it got folded up and shoved into a purse. The girls next to him each pulled out a cell phone, and he rolled his eyes. A giggle escaped from the girls before they settled down, then giggled, then settled down. When the girl next to him snapped her phone shut, Dominic breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed when she finally put the thing away.
The red curtains opened and dancers were already on the stage, frozen in their places. The audience took a collective glance upwards as the lights in the theatre went out, and the stage lights came on. Music started, contemporary stuff that Dominic wasn’t fond of. But he wasn’t here for the music. The dancers began to sway slowly, arms swinging back and forth, stomachs contracted so that each dancer was hunched over looking down at the ground. All ten arms swung up and around, legs pushing out from behind each dancer, and they moved into the next movement. They were sliding together, but it just wasn’t there. He wanted more. Come on, come on, he whispered to himself and hoped the moment would come again. It only happened a couple of times in any performance. Dominic lived for that moment. Each girl turned her head up to the audience, tilted it and cupped her face as her body made odd, undulating movements, each dancer lowering herself to the ground. Almost. It was almost there.
The girl next to him shifted in her seat, caught herself chewing her gum loudly and snapped her mouth shut again, sighing a little. Dominic almost sighed too. The girls on the stage broke apart, each one leaping out to a different part of the stage. The girl next to Dominic found herself thinking that the choreography could have been better. Just when the music heightened to crescendo, the dance picked out a slower downbeat so that the girls were out of sync with the feeling of the music. Dominic was just thinking the same thing, frustrated. The girls on stage were now contorting themselves around each other, pushing on each other and pulling, using gravity to create motion. Every once in a while, he caught a twitch in a calf muscle, a shake in the hamstring, and he knew the dancer was pushing her abilities. Every once in a while, a girl leapt with a profound ease that had her high up in the air, almost impossibly high for an impossibly long amount of time. He held a breath for this, and his hands clenched, but that’s not what he was looking for either.
At intermission sweat dripped down the back of his neck and his shoulders ached from the anticipation. The girls left giggling, came back as the bell rang that intermission was over, trying to hide candy wrappers and failing miserably. They sank laughing into the seats next to him, and Dominic just wanted the show to start again. He started counting how many times the blonde next to him used the word “like” in one sentence. He lost count and tried to lean further away from her in the seat. She put her feet up on the back of the chair in front of her, reclining as the lights in the theatre dimmed once again.
This time the stage was empty when the curtain opened. Quiet music came on, and a couple entered from the left. Dominic sat up straighter. The pas de deux started out slowly, and the couple danced around each other, each one circling the other. When the man lifted the woman into the air and spun her, pulling her down and sweeping her towards the floor, the audience clapped enthusiastically. The woman stood again, and they each took steps in the same direction, the music fading away just at the moment that the two launched into the air, hand extended outwards, reaching towards either end of the stage. There it was. Dominic hitched a breath as each limb of the couple seemed to stretch endlessly outward, extending muscles as far as possible. The couple reached the height of the jump together, and time stilled, as the couple seemed to stop together in mid air, muscles taut with equal amount of tension, and the air almost rippled as each leg pushed out towards some invisible goal. The girl next to Dominic became still, her feet fell to the floor. She bit her lip as they let go and relaxed into a fall to the ground at the exact same time.
Dominic let out a breath, blinked, and the moment was over. Music continued as the dancers writhed on the floor of the stage. Dominic sat back, tension gone from his body, and he glanced over to see the girl swallow her gum. When the show was over, Dominic waited for the girls to leave, and kissed Gloria on the cheek.
“Bye angel, you take care. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She left bright red lipstick on his cheek when she pulled away, winking at the girls once again as they left. When the next day came, Dominic smiled slightly when he saw the blonde outside the theatre.
“Hey,” she said, pulling her hands out from the back pockets of her jeans.
“Hey,” he replied, and pulled the door open for her, and they walked to the ticket window together.
