The Quickening

Sam Phillips was a dancer. He’d always been a dancer, even before he knew what a dancer was. His mom had a lot to do with it, no doubt about that. She’d had something of a career of her own, back in the day. Dropped out of school to join the Dutch National Ballet, on invitation from Lucas Hoving, after he saw her in a high school talent show that just happened to also feature the child of some old friends. The next year she switched to the Netherlands Dance Theater in The Hague, the premier modern dance company of Europe, probably the whole world. She was there maybe five years. What happened? She fell down and broke her foot, that’s all. But in the world of professional dance, it’s more than enough. Technically, she could still do anything she could do before, but not every night and twice on Sundays.

She came back to Cincinnati, got a kind of sinecure position in some museum, then ended up marrying the director of the museum, a British guy who knew about her European career. Sam came along, and his mom, Nadia was her name, poured all of her frustrated talent into him, a spigot of later-day hippie Luddite theology, carrot juice, love, and an understanding of dance on the highest level that had no OFF position, and no other way to go. Except Sam.

Now, before you start feeling too sorry for him, the regular kid pursued by a stage-mother shrew that spoils his childhood to feed her own frustrated dreams, know that, first of all, he wasn’t a regular kid. The boy was truly talented, a natural, blessed with a body and a grace of movement that no teacher, however talented, could ever train into existence. And Nadia was no stage-mother shrew, either. At times she would chide herself for not pushing him harder. She had been on the masochistic side when it came to her own practice, but this did not seem to easily convert to the sadism that she could see might be necessary in the case of her more relaxed, more naturally easy-going child. Fortunately, Sam didn’t really need that much pushing to develop into a performer who, in his last years of high school, won virtually every talent contest he entered in a four-state area.

After he graduated Sam took a job for a few months, lived at home, and saved enough to finance his long-time fantasy, a run at New York City, the Big Apple. He said goodbye to his mom at the bus station, which was actually a big deal, since he had never been away from home in his entire life. His mom’s last words had been: “Be careful, Sam, gay guys are going to hit on you.” Sam thought it was a weird thing to say, but it probably predicted an inevitable occurrence. Sam, as well as sporting a near-perfectly developed physique, was frankly handsome as hell, and certainly used to girls hitting on him, one in particular, a plump little thing who had literally followed him around in high school.

He boarded the bus and crawled over a fat lady to slump into a seat by the window. When the bus rolled into Port Authority in New York at around eight in the evening, he was snoring loudly enough to compete with the noise of the engine, and to have made the fat lady seek refuge elsewhere. The trip doesn’t take that long, but he had been so excited the previous night that he hadn’t slept. Still groggy, he pulled down his duffel from the overhead rack and left the bus.

He had prepared well for this trip, determined to spend as little money as he could manage in order to hold out for the longest possible time. He took the subway down to the Village and started walking, past Cooper Union and on to Tompkins Square Park. On a nearby street he pulled a paper out of his pocket to recheck the house number and walked about half a block, stopping finally at a run-down looking building and going inside.

MANAGER said the sign on one apartment door. Sam knocked on it. After a minute a vaguely annoyed looking middle-aged man cracked it open.

“Yes?”

“Are you Mister Orville?

“I am.”

“I’m Sam Phillips. I wrote you about renting an apartment.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. You cashed my check, remember?”

“Right. So you’re here.”

“Yeah, I’m here. Is the apartment ready?”

Mister Orville closed the door for a moment, then emerged with a key in his hand.

“It’s on the second floor.”

They went up a flight of stairs and through a door off the hallway that led to a typically sleazy-looking New York City apartment living room. There was a small kitchen with a bathtub on a raised pedestal and a toilet stuck into something that was probably a closet forty years ago. A separate bedroom had room for the king-sized bed inside and not much else.

“This is it.”

The manager didn’t seem to care one way or another about what his new tenant thought about it all. Sam opened a couple of cabinets in the kitchen and didn’t see any cockroaches.

“Fine,” he said, nodding.

Orville dropped the key into his hand and turned to go.

“One more thing,” said Sam.

“Yeah?”

“Is there a pay phone here?”

“First floor. Nobody ever uses it any more. I was going to take it out.”

“Don’t just yet.”

“You don’t have a cell phone?”

“No. I think they give you cancer.”

“What doesn’t, these days,” said Orville, laughing.

“Just humor me, okay?”

After Orville left, Sam did the usual stuff, flushing the toilet, putting the blinds up and down, checking the mirror on the closet door, the crack running across one corner. When he decided to test the mattress and sat down, he went over backwards at a crazy angle and fell asleep with all of his clothes on. It was the very early morning hours when he woke up. He went out and walked around some, then stopped at an all-night grocery for supplies. In the check-out line there was a selection of “entertainment” tabloids, and Sam bought a few of them. Back in his room, he looked for notices of upcoming dance performances, marking them in red and then entering them in his calendar. He was hoping to defer the cost of classes by finding a company that might accept him as a potential company member.

For the next two weeks he saw as many performances as he could squeeze into his day, and ended up with a list of a few companies that might be reasonable prospects. One close by, over on Spring Street, was having an audition coming up, and when the day came, he was there. A line of forty or fifty dancers snaked away from the entrance to a studio on the third floor, some nervously working their jettes and plies, others stretching and doing yoga, already in their dance clothes. Every twenty minutes the door opened and ten sweaty bodies emerged, while ten more entered. They were allowed five minutes to warm up, then a dancer showed some choreography, which they were required to repeat, while a stern-faced older man looked on. There was a door leading to a small office, and the audition leader gestured for two of the dancers to follow him inside. When Sam left the guy at the door said:

“We’ll call you if we need you. Thank you for your time.”

It wasn’t the rave reception that Sam had hoped for, certainly a far cry from the gushing reviews of his amateur performances found in the Sunday Leisure section of the Cincinnati Sentinel. After a few more similar experiences, he realized that the problem was really pretty basic.

“You there!” one particularly militaristic instructor had yelled after a few minutes, “You’ve got the body of a boy but you move like an old man. Pick it up, pick it up!”

Later he had called his mother from the pay phone on the ground floor.

“Hi Mom.”

“How’s it going, son?”

“It’s pretty tough slogging, Mom.”

“I warned you it would be tough.”

“Mom you’re a great teacher, but the level here is almost super-human. I’m just not strong enough to really compete.”

“I told you I could never work you as hard as I should. It’s too damn sadomasochistic. If you want it you’re just going to have to push through by yourself. Find the hardest working company you can and take classes. It doesn’t matter if you hate their stuff. You can do any choreography. You’ve got the talent, I promise. I wouldn’t have encouraged you if I wasn’t sure of that. But now comes the hard part. Find somebody who can drive you. You have enough talent - but - do you have enough desire?”

Unfortunately, Sam was having some trouble feeling particularly inspired by anything he saw, at least, not enough to start draining his carefully accumulated capital reserves. He had been crazy, he reflected, to think he was already good enough to come to the Big Apple, one of the world’s greatest dance centers, and just get a job. He was coming to the end of his list of prospective companies, getting more discouraged by the day, when something happened on the subway that changed everything.

He was taking the crosstown train at Fourteenth Street, heading for the West Village. The novelty of the big city had worn off, and he was starting to suffer from the particular perception of Hell that connects it with ever-repeating acts of familiar futility. Something brushed past his knees and he looked up from his self-imposed funk of looming despair to see a flash of orange and a bare white arm move swiftly past him. What the bare white arm was attached to, and the flash of orange covering, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She took a seat opposite and halfway down the car from his.

Sam had spent his whole life in a world of bodies, beautiful ones, so he was not likely to be seduced merely by a beautiful face. The woman he was watching, as she stared straight ahead with Zen-like attention, radiated strength and physical awareness like a lighthouse on a stormy night, ruthlessly cutting through the malaise of tired New Yorkers on that late evening train.

Sam watched her as they braked for the next stop. The doors opened and the seat next to her became conspicuously empty. Compelled by a force genuinely foreign to his nature, he got up and took the empty seat. The woman’s eyes shifted in his direction for a fleeting moment, her body maintaining its statue like immobility. Summoning up a reserve of unexpected courage, he turned his head to face her.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Without a second’s hesitation, the woman stood up and began to move away.

“Wait!” said Sam, raising a hand but carefully avoiding touching her. “I only want to know if you’re a dancer.”

She turned with a scowl of annoyance.

“Why?” she said, the scowl fading only slightly as she regarded him.

“You look so strong. I just want to know where you study, where you dance.”

“Is that for real, or are you just hitting on me?”

Sam found her voice as magnetic as everything else about her. He grinned sheepishly, raising both hands in a gesture of apology.

“Well, shit. Little of both, I guess.”

She appraised him a bit more carefully, seeming to appreciate his candor.

“I’m performing tomorrow night,” she said, taking out a piece of paper and scribbling something on it with a pencil. “Come to this address. Eight o’clock.” She took a step to catch herself as the car lurched into the next station. “I’m getting off now.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sonia.”

“Sam.”

She turned quickly, not seeming particularly interested.

“Sam Phillips,” he continued meekly, to her retreating back.

He spent a restless night, unable to get her out of his mind, and not really wanting to, either. He decided to blow off his scheduled studio stalking and spent the next day soaking in the big clawfoot tub that dominated the kitchen from its pedestal like some sort of symbolic throne.

At seven-thirty he arrived at the address, an inconspicuous set of double-doors with a small sign above them. THE QUICKENING, it said, in equally unpretentious lettering. The once-dangerous Lower East Side location still seemed to evoke its sinister history, on a street with only nondescript doorways and darkened upstairs windows, the only sign of life a bistro and bar across the street, O’Rourke’s. There were people outside, but no line to the ticket booth. As he brought out his wallet, Sam felt he was doing something somehow out of the ordinary and the look on the face of the ticket-seller seemed to lend credence to that possibility.

There was a lobby inside, with a coat room that had few coats, the late-summer weather rendering even the lightest clothing regrettably required. The people in the lobby were almost disturbingly homogeneous, a mostly elderly group of clearly immigrant origin, their clothing evoking a Tartar-like feel, or possibly Greek. They seemed rather quiet for a theater-going crowd, what conversation Sam did overhear moving freely back and forth between English and some language that he didn’t recognize. The auditorium itself was a theater-in-the-round, the seating sloping gradually downward to a circular stage that featured a raised dais in the center. There was no seat number on his ticket, open seating, but the patrons seemed to have no compelling preferences, small groups scattered randomly around the stage. Sam easily found a place in the very front row. As the seats around him filled up, he turned to see that the house was near capacity, the crowd still seeming, to Sam’s experience, unusually quiet and subdued.

The lights dimmed and the sounds of electronic music, slow and out-of-tempo, began to fill the room. A doorway to the auditorium opened with a dramatic shaft of light framing the heavily robed, hooded figure who emerged. The figure moved with exaggerated slowness, as if decrepit with age, and Sam realized that the performance was already underway. Reaching the stage, the hooded figure turned to the audience and, with painfully exaggerated slowness, began to dance. Somehow the slowness did not mask in any way the aura of pain and agonizing decrepitude that surrounded the dancer, almost too uncomfortable to endure watching. The stage was darkened, but the dais brightly lit, backlighting the dancer regardless of where he stood on the surrounding circle. As he slowly removed his hood, and then his robe, in some obscene parody of a strip show, he appeared too old to be even walking, much less dancing. His solo seemed endless, although Sam could appreciate the extreme control and delicate sense of balance that lay behind the deceptively decrepit movements. Sam’s perception was confirmed when the dancer, now stripped to little more than shorts, ascended the central dais. His movements had become more lively, and, under the bright center spotlight, he clearly seemed to have transformed himself into an athletic young man.

From multiple doorways around the auditorium, other figures, robed and hooded, began to appear. They moved similarly to the soloist, and when they reached the stage, they all began to move in a circle about the center. The music became more rhythmic and less abstract. The dancers began to disrobe, seeming, as the greater stage lights came gradually up, to be undergoing a similar transformation to that of the soloist. As the soundtrack began to speed up and become more rhythmically urgent and powerful, the parade of the dancers also accelerated, sometimes reversing direction, sometimes punctuated by unintelligible chants, echoed by members of the audience.

The robes were totally discarded, and Sonia was there, her movements somehow making her appear to be old in the beginning, but soon, as the lights raised, showing the same beauty that had reduced Sam to little more than a stammering twelve-year-old on the train. But her beauty was dwarfed by her impressively powerful performance. Sam had never seen anything like it. This girl, he thought, can dance rings around me. Tearing his eyes away from Sonia with difficulty, he was forced to come to the same conclusion about the entire troupe. They were monsters, every one of them; complete monsters.

The music was reaching a rhythmic crescendo, the crowd now seeming to sway and breathe with the dancers, the most perfectly tuned and supportive audience that Sam had ever witnessed. Then they flew from the stage, vanishing into the exit doorways, and the figure in the center, who it seemed to Sam would have to be exhausted after the intensely athletic choreography that he had just witnessed, proceeded with a super-human solo performance that left Sam wondering how he had ever thought himself a dancer, how almost anyone could, in the face of that.

The performance ended when the soloist fled the stage and the house lights came up. There were no curtain calls, no opportunities for applause, the crowd quiet, almost reverent, as they headed to the exits. Sam found the stage door entrance around to the side, and waited there for a moment, letting Sonia get only a couple of yards before confronting her.

“Please. Can we talk? Maybe a coffee somewhere, just for a minute.”

Sonia let slip a fleeting smile before answering.

“No. I need to get home.”

“Let me see you home.”

“No. You wanted to see me dance. You saw. Now stop hitting on me.”

“Hey, right now all I want to know is how your whole company got so fucking strong. I mean, where do I sign? Can I join a class? I’m serious.”

“We have no classes,” said Sonia, with a speculative look.

“Come on. How do you survive? From tickets? In that little theater? Impossible.”

“We’ve got funding.”

“Who’s going to fund a show that weird?”

“None of your business.” She paused, apparently reconsidering. “Alright. I’ll tell the Master about you. Be at the stage door at seven tomorrow night. If it opens we’ll give you a chance. If not, don’t try again. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Sam faintly, as he watched her retreating back.

At seven the next evening, Sam was dutifully back at the stage door. Two minutes passed, three, and he began to suspect that nothing was going to happen. He presumed that the “Master” that Sonia had mentioned was the powerful soloist from the last night’s performance. Had he noticed Sam in the front row? Did it matter?

He was about to give up when the door opened. One of the troupe from last night’s performance beaconed him silently inside. As they walked through the foyer, he turned slightly to speak.

“You’re Sam?”

“Yes.”

“Carlo.” He made no offer to shake hands.

Inside, the troupe seemed to be waiting for them, but the sweat on their bodies indicated that they might have been working out for some time already.

“You have your dance clothes?’ asked Carlo, nodding to the small bag Sam was carrying.

“Yes.”

“Get changed.” He pointed to a dressing-room door.

Sam emerged a moment later.

“Okay.”

“Just follow along with what we do.”

Somewhat hesitantly, Sam took the space that the others seemed to make for him in the circle.

“No bar?”

“We’re not doing ballet here, Sam. Balance is essential to our system. Follow what you see and try not to get in the way. Are you ready?”

“I guess,” answered Sam, trying unsuccessfully to catch Sonia’s eye.

“Don’t guess,” said Carlo.

“Ready,” said Sam, mustering up a little more self-assurance.

An electronic soundtrack began, and the dancers started a slow procession. Every few minutes they would stop and execute some challenging balance poses, which found Sam occasionally stumbling into the nearby dancers, they registering no reaction. As the balance exercises increased in difficulty, the movement around the center became faster and more athletic. There were no breaks, and Sam started to feel more and more intimidated by the amazing strength and stamina of the company. Periodic chants in a language that he couldn’t understand did little to alleviate his apprehension. When the music finally stopped, he was almost staggering to keep up, and stood sweating from near exhaustion.

“Sam,” said Carlo, gesturing to the dais, “take the center.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing.”

Somewhat hesitantly, Sam took a cross-legged seat, trying again to catch Sonia’s eye, without success.

“Okay?”

“Fine,” said Carlo, and the music started. The procession began, and accelerated more quickly to a highly athletic pace, the music now louder and more rhythmically aggressive. Despite the higher level of energy and noise, Sam found trouble keeping his eyes open. The troupe’s swirling circumambulations, changing direction without warning, seemed to make him dizzy. He found himself struggling to sit up, and finally collapsed backwards onto the dais, almost comatose.

The music stopped and the dancers gathered around Sam’s unconscious form, exchanging knowing looks.

“You did well, Sonia,” said Carlo, the others nodding in assent. “You did well.”

Sam awoke to find himself alone on the stage. The dressing room was deserted, but when he went to the door Carlo was there, waiting for him.

“Well,” he said sheepishly, “I guess I fucked that up pretty bad, eh?”

“Come back tomorrow,” said Carlo, ushering him out, “same time.”

“Seriously?” said Sam, in frank amazement, “did you say come back?”

“That’s right. Tomorrow, seven sharp.”

Sam stood bewildered as Carlo closed the door.

“Son of a bitch.”

Later that night Sam was soaking in his bathtub throne, thinking about how incredibly difficult the class that day had been, and how exhausted he must have felt to have passed out before the damn thing had even ended. Well, he was thinking, find somebody who can push you, Mom said. If this isn’t that, I don’t know what would be. Why had they accepted him? He suddenly realized that no one had even mentioned money for classes, or when those classes would be. He knew they had met earlier, before he arrived, and it was reasonable to assume that the “Master” was putting them through their paces at that time. Did he leave? Or was he still there, watching? If that was a class, then Sonia hadn’t been kidding about them having no students.

Sonia. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. It would seem that he might be seeing her every day now. Surely she would be more friendly after he was making a regular appearance at the Quickening Studio. He squeezed a sponge over his head and felt the water trickle erotically behind his ears and down the back of his neck. He had never experienced this before, this instant infatuation. In fact, he hadn’t really ever experienced any kind of infatuation, instant or otherwise. His only love had always been with dance. He was close to his mother, as any only child of a single mother might be, but he wasn’t looking for another one, either in style or substance. It might be said that if he was in love with anyone, it was with his uncreated, infinitely potentiated future self. With his looks he had been in no danger of languishing as a virgin, more than one “older woman” twenty-something being more than happy to help him avoid that fate. But nothing like this, nothing even remotely like this.

If I were a woman, he thought, squeezing another sponge, that’s the woman I would want to be.

Suddenly, as he gingerly lifted himself out of the tub and onto the narrow supporting pedestal, his left knee seemed to fail him, and he stumbled off and down to the floor, almost falling. Wow, he thought, that class was a killer. He reached out over the sink and pulled a towel from the rack. When he flipped it over his shoulder, a powerful rush of pain shot through a few vertebrae in his back and he held onto the edge of the sink to steady himself.

“Well, I don’t think I move like an old man,” he muttered under his breath, “but I sure as hell feel like one.”

He got used to such sudden evidences of frailty in the coming weeks. No more had been said, and he had asked no questions, just started showing up every night at seven. No one ever mentioned money. The “class” was clearly just a creative rendition of the weekly performance, which was also Sam’s only night to rest. The company, it seemed, had no nights off at all. They seemed to have no social life, or at least none that Sam had ever been invited to participate in.

As the weeks became months, Sam could see that he was developing tremendous capabilities, more than enough to justify the intensity of the process, and the time. He had to conclude that he was being groomed as a company member; why else would they be giving him lessons for free? He still was nothing compared to the rest of the company - all of them. He didn’t attend every performance, sometimes relishing a complete night off, but they were his only opportunity to see the Master. Sam still felt certain that he spent the early afternoons with the troupe, and almost as certain that he was still there, hiding, when Sam had his class. He was willing to wait, but he was itching to perform.

Not that the Quickening performances were that different from the classes. They were all variations on a certain ritual, clearly. This was not the way that Sam had visualized his career. But as likely as it was that, in spite of this, he probably would have stayed, there was a more compelling reason than any technical regimen, no matter how productive, could ever provide.

Sonia.

In all this time, he had never succeeded in getting her to meet him outside the studio, not even once. But he could not shake off his infatuation. There is perhaps nothing more powerful than sexual obsession, and his was a serious case. So, he was waiting. To perform. And for Sonia.

One day, early in the spring, he experienced one of his periodic episodes of unrequited lust, highlighting the unbearable severity of his non-relationship with Sonia. As they exited the stage, he grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.

“Sonia. Why are you being so cold? I just want to get to know you. Can’t you lighten up a bit?” He shook his head in frustration. “Do I have to speak this crazy language of yours just to talk to you? Come on.”

“I told you to stop hitting on me.”

“Alright. But why? Are you married? Got a boyfriend? A girlfriend? And I’ve got some questions. Why isn’t the Master ever here? Am I ever going to meet him? “

“You’ll meet him,” said Sonia, in a more conciliatory tone. “Don’t worry.”

“When? I’ve been here almost six months.”

“Soon, perhaps. You are doing well. How are you feeling?”

“I know I’m getting stronger,” said Sam, sighing. “But I feel like shit a lot of the time.”

“That’s normal.”

“Then that’s the only thing around here that is.” He gathered himself for one more try. “Look, give me a break, will you? Let me buy you some coffee or something.”

“No. At some point you’ll understand.”

“What the hell does that mean? You just don’t like me?”

“I like you fine,” said Sonia, touching him lightly on the arm. “Just hang in there.”

With that, she turned and walked resolutely away.

Later that same night, while brushing his hair after a bath, he spied something strange in his brush. A grey hair. Puzzled, he bent towards the mirror and inspected the top of his head. No more grey hairs. But when he straightened up, he noticed the faint beginnings of crow’s feet between his eyes. Somewhat frantically, he rubbed vigorously on the spot, but to no avail. Scowling, he crawled into bed. The next morning, he checked apprehensively in the mirror. No more grey hairs, and even the crow’s feet seemed to have disappeared. Shaking his head, he put it out of his mind and went about making his breakfast. This was a performance night, and he had decided to be a bit bolder concerning the company’s plans for his future.

Later, leaving before the performance had quite ended, he hurried over to the stage door, where he knew that the Master was in the habit of exiting before anyone else. Apparently he was trying to avoid mixing with the crowd, so Sam followed him discretely for a few blocks before approaching, as he waited for a traffic light to change. Removing his hat in an effort to convey a measure of respect, he stepped up and mounted his planned confrontation.

“Excuse me. Can I talk to you for a minute? I’m Sam. I’m your new dancer, or student, whatever.”

“I know who you are,” said the Master, showing no surprise or offense.

“Look,” said Sam, shuffling his feet a bit. “I know this is not a normal dance company. I mean, it’s - it’s …”

“A cult?”

“I guess.”

“Not a bad guess,” said the Master, with a hint of a smile. “Do you have a question?”

“Well, mainly, I wanted to meet you. Do you ever come to class?”

“They tell me you are doing fine,” said the Master, ignoring his question.

“Oh,” said Sam. “Why am I the only student?”

“You are not a student. These are not classes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It would be strange if you did.” The Master was silent for a moment. “The company has been looking for a new member,” he said, going on. “Someone with the right ...... potential.”

“And that’s me?”

“It would seem so”

“When will I be in the regular performance?”

“When you’re ready.”

“Well,” said Sam, after a moment, “I really hope it’s soon. I confess, I’m only here because I want to get stronger, and you have the strongest company I’ve ever seen.”

“Was that a confession?”

“What I mean is that I’ll eventually want some exposure, because I don’t want …..” His voice trailed off.

“To be part of my cult?”

“I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. So I want to perform. Soon.”

“At times I want it even more than you do.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You will stay with the company as long as it gives you what you need,” said the Master, again ignoring his question. “That will never change.” He turned back to the street, seeming to indicate that their conversation was over. “I have to go.”

Sam watched as he crossed the street and vanished around a corner. Feeling a bit short of accomplishing anything particularly meaningful, he made his way back. As he passed the theater en route to the subway, he saw Sonia emerge from the stage door across the street. Seized by a momentary impulse to resolve something, anything really, he decided to follow her. Christ, he thought, I’m fucking stalking this girl. She caught the subway and he boarded the car at the other end. After a couple of stops, he saw Sonia open her gym bag and pull out a long robe. Shortly she was fully covered, finally pulling the hood over her head. Still unnoticed when they got off, he continued to follow her to a line of brownstones, where, using a key, she let herself into one of them, and he saw a light go on inside. He paced back and forth for a bit, then marched across the street and up the small flight of steps to the porch. His knock got no reaction. Debating the matter with himself, he knocked again. No answer. He knocked again.

The door opened a crack, and he saw a terribly shriveled and decrepit old woman peering out from the darkened hallway within.

“What do you want?” said the old woman, her voice cracking slightly.

“I .... I would like to speak to Sonia, please,” said Sam, slightly taken aback.

“There is no Sonia here,” said the woman, in an annoyed tone.

“I just saw her come in this door,” said Sam, his frustration growing steadily by the second.

“What you saw was not real,” said the woman, seeming to dismiss the entire idea.

“I know what I saw.”

“Go away,” said the woman, then, seeing Sam show no signs of leaving, “go away or I will call the police.”

The door slammed in his face, and Sam stood on the doorstep a moment more before descending the stairs to the street.

The next day at class, after his regular finish in the center, during which he never fell asleep any more, but instead seemed now to find himself feeling actually energized and somewhat empowered, he saw Sonia approach, a look of annoyance on her face.

“You followed me home last night.”

“Yes, I did.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m starting to ask myself.”

“Well,” said Sonia, “whatever the answer is, you’re going to have to park it somewhere else.”

“Are you gay?”

“No. I’m not gay.”

“Who was that old woman?”

“My grandmother.”

“Why did she pretend you weren’t there?”

“She’s very protective. And she hates men.”

“And you’ve decided you want to be just like her.”

“Anything I might have decided or not decided is no concern of yours. You’re obsessed.”

“I guess I am,” said Sam, a feeling of stubborn determination coming over him.

“It’s not appropriate.”

“Why? Why is it ‘not appropriate?’”

“In time you’ll find out.”

“Oh, yeah? What time is that? When I get to perform?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Give me a break.” He paused, shaking his head wearily. “Listen, Sonia,” he said, suddenly tired of non sequiturs, “Did it ever occur to you that this devotion of yours to the Master is maybe just a little bit sick? I mean, my ‘obsession’ is actually pretty fucking normal, when you get right down to it. And it’s backed up by half a million years of evolution, besides. I’m not sure you could say the same thing about your trip with ‘The Master.’ Hell, he admitted to my face that it’s a cult you’ve got here. That pretty much trumps a little innocent sexual obsession, don’t you think?”

“This is not a mental illness contest, Sam.”

“Sonia, don’t you see that you could have a pretty spectacular career? Hell, any company in the city would make you a god-damned star of the show. You’re one of the strongest dancers I’ve ever seen. All of you are. But god, you’re such a bunch of fucking weirdoes. There’s no camaraderie, no real group except for these rituals.” He paused again to shake his head in frustration. “The Master said they weren’t classes. They’re just another version of the performance, aren’t they? Some kind of ritual. I don’t know, maybe this shit really works. I do know I can do stuff now I never could before. But I’m not sure it’s worth it if it sucks up your whole life.”

“Be careful before you start passing judgements on other people’s lives.”

“My god, Sonia, I’m just -“

She suddenly put a finger to his lips, stopping him in mid-sentence.

“Listen to me, Sam. And trust me. It is inappropriate. Find yourself another girl-friend. That’s all.” As if to underscore these last words, she turned on her heels and walked away.

Sam felt more tired than usual on the subway ride back, as he clung to a strap to keep his balance, the periodic stops and starts of the car seeming more jarring than usual. It was a toss-up which was more exhausting, the classes or his unrequited obsession with Sonia. He glanced briefly behind to see if the car was possibly clearing, but it was a late commuter crowd tonight, several women holding packages still struggling to stand up, while able-bodied men seemed oblivious, some confidently man-spreading their occupation of almost two seats. Sam had been raised better than that. Turning back, he saw a middle-aged fellow in a blue jogging outfit and Nikes gesturing in his direction. He appeared to be offering his seat. Sam looked to either side, finally realizing the gesture was meant for him. I must look as tired as I feel tonight, he thought. It was the first time in his life that anything of that sort had ever occurred. Smiling feebly, he gave a little wave of rejection, and was surprised to see a look of annoyance come over the other man’s face. Standing up completely now, he sternly reenacted his offer, and Sam was surprised to see his fellow passengers on either side nodding their approval. Embarrassed, but grateful nonetheless, Sam wearily dropped into the offered seat. Leaning back, he closed his eyes, which is why he failed to see his reflection in the window across from him, the reflection of a bony and decrepit old man, his face as lined and furrowed as a Shar-Pei.

Later that night, looking and feeling more his normal self again, he called his mother from the pay phone downstairs. Nadia was just finishing her solitary dinner, her cell-phone on speaker next to her plate.

“Hi Mom,” said Sam when she answered.

“Hello, son. I was a little worried.”

“I’m sorry I missed our regular call last night. I was out very late, even by your time.”

“Are you okay? You sound tired.”

“I am tired. And I guess I look it, too. On the subway tonight some old guy gave me his seat. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. But there’s a reason for it, I suppose. You should see the things I can do, Mom; you’ll be really impressed.”

“Are you still not performing yet?”

“Yeah. But I finally confronted the Master and voiced my complaint. Something might happen now.”

“You’re paying your dues, son. How big the bill comes to is a matter of your karma.”

“You never give up on that old hippie shit, do you Mom?”

“That ‘old hippie shit’ is why you are as healthy as you are today, Samuel.“

“And yet you’re talking to me on a cell-phone, aren’t you? What a hypocrite.“

“Got to flow with the times, my son.”

“It’s going to fry your brain, Mom.”

“I thought I taught you to avoid negative thinking.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too. Now get some sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Oh, I almost forgot. You have a surprise on the way.”

“A surprise? What surprise?”

“Never mind. You’ll see. Goodnight.”

He hung up the phone and stood there for a moment, staring absently at the wall.

“Sam?” The voice was from behind him, at the foot of the stairs. There was something familiar about it. He kept staring at the wall for another moment.

“I’ve been waiting by your door, Sam. I thought I heard your voice down here.”

Slowly Sam turned. Staring, he raised one finger in the air and brought it down to bear on the athletic, corn-fed, beautiful blonde girl-next-door in the sharp, slightly out of date sophisticated big city girl-on-the-move day dress.

“Ah .... Is that ….?”

“Leila, Sam. Don’t you recognize me? Oh, yeah - I cut my hair. And I guess I lost a little weight, too.”

“Leila. Jesus, Leila,” said Sam, stepping forward a bit hesitantly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on assignment, Sam.” She straightened a bit as she said this.

“What does that mean?”

“Remember how I wanted to be a reporter? How I always wanted to interview you about your dancing?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well I am one now, Sam. A real one. I work for the Sentinel in Cincinnati.“

“That’s really nice,” said Sam, suddenly feeling a bit trapped. “What’s this assignment in New York?”

“It’s you, Sam. I convinced my editor to let me come here and do a piece on you and your career.”

“Leila, I don’t really have a career.”

“Sure you do. You were always the star back home; even the phis-ed teacher said you had the strongest legs in the school. I interviewed him. “

“Look, Leila -“

“Sam, could we sit down? I’ve been waiting here a long time.”

“Sure,” said Sam, with a touch of resignation. “Come on.”

He led her up the stairs and down the hall to his door. Sitting in front was a small suitcase.

“You haven’t found a place to stay?” said Sam, with a slight sense of foreboding.

“I wanted to find you first. Your mom gave me your address, but I had to be sure you were really here.”

“Well,” said Sam, opening the door. “Come on in.”

He sat Leila down on the couch and stepped around the corner to his minimal kitchen, the existence of which his mother had insisted he make certain before he came. He wasn’t sure she realized that the kitchen was going to also be the bathroom.

“You want some tea?” he called, as he put on a kettle to boil.

“Thank you,” Leila called back. “That would be so great.”

“How about some chamomile?”

There was no answer. Sam washed a couple of breakfast dishes while the water boiled for the tea. When he brought it in Leila was passed out on the couch, her body slumped over the pillows. Sam picked up her feet and put her lengthwise on the cushions. He took off her shoes and put a pillow under her head, then covered her with a blanket from the closet. He stood for a moment looking silently at her sleeping form before turning out the lights and going wearily to bed.

The next day Sam got up and, it being a chilly spring morning, put on a robe before heading for the kitchen/bathroom. While his bathtub throne was filling, he went to the sink and lathered up, replacing the shaving soap in the medicine cabinet over the sink and closing the cover to reveal the face of a white-bearded Santa in the mirror. He shaved the right side first, carefully trimming his jet-black sideburns. Rinsing out the razor, he started on the other side.

Something was wrong.

As he continued to shave, the hair at the edge of the white shaving foam was no longer jet-black, more of a grayish tone. He put down the razor and splashed some water on his face. The unshaved parts of it were turning gray, no, even as he watched, not gray - white. He bent over slightly to see the rest of his hair - also white. Frantically, he whipped open his robe and looked down. He had the body of an eighty-year old, saggy and flabby and discolored, with tufts of white hair. Startled, he leaped away from the mirror and fell over backwards. He lay there for a moment, stunned. Slowly he began to sit up, gradually rising to see his reflection in the mirror.

He looked perfectly normal.

He finished shaving, trying to understand what had happened. It had been so real. He kept looking down to reassure himself that it was only a kind of bad dream, though he had never heard of a bad daydream. He decided to forego his bath, actually just wanting to get out of that room. When he did, he found Leila poised to greet him, a radiant smile on her face.

“Good morning,” she said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“Dancers are always hungry.”

“Oh! I like that. That’s how I’ll headline my first installment: ‘Dancers are always hungry.’ My editor will love it.”

“At the ...... Sentinel.”

“Yes. That’s right. The Sentinel, in Cincinnati. “

“Leila, this seems like a pretty expensive trip for a human-interest story about a kid barely out of high school, especially one from the god-damned suburbs.”

He shot a skeptical look in her direction.

“What’s your editor giving you to live on while you’re here?”

“Eighty dollars a day.”

“You won’t starve, I guess. And for your hotel?”

“That’s for everything,” she said sheepishly.

“No wonder he let you go,” said Sam, with a look of mild disgust. “But he’s pretty naive to think that would be near enough.”

“Well ..... I told him I might be able to stay with you.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“From your mom. She suggested it, actually.”

“Marvelous.”

“She said it would help your career; get you some exposure.”

“You don’t see a lot of Sentinel readers on the A Train these days,” said Sam, with a wry smile.

“Don’t be mad, Sam. It’ll just be for a few days. Your mom said you sounded like you needed a little ‘grounding,’ she called it. I’ll sleep on the couch and shop for food and cook and clean up and you’ll see, I’ll be no trouble at all.”

Going to the table, she ceremoniously poured Sam a cup of coffee.

“See? Your morning coffee, all ready.”

“All right, Leila, but just for a few days. I really don’t want a roommate.”

“Okay.”

Sam, still in his robe, went into the bedroom to put on some clothes. As the door closed, Leila’s face broke into a smile. She gave a little pump with both of her fists.

“Yes!”