James Gardner - Space Inc (collection)

BALLET INSTRUCTOR

Preprofessional ballet program requires a fully-accredited dance teacher. RAD syllabus or equivalent classes. Pas de deux & repertoire. Beginner to professional students. Applicant should be a member of the Dance Educators of America (DEA), and have trained in a national-caliber school such as the School of American Ballet, the National Ballet School, or the Royal Academy of Dancing. Preference given to teachers who have demonstrated success working with younger students of unusual ability. Submit applications, with letters of reference, to R. Mombatu, Liaison Office, United Nations Interplanetary Division.

When my brother dropped me off at Lincoln Center on his way down to Wall Street, the alien landing craft again blocked the plaza and Security swarmed everywhere. “The Mollies are back to see the ballet again,” Cal said.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to call them that,” I said, making a face at him.

“Octopi, then.”

“Squidi.”

“Calamari.” We giggled at each other like ten-year-olds. I suspect that morning both of us wished we were ten again. Then Cal wouldn’t have to deal with Sally and I wouldn’t have to make my meeting with Alvarez.

“Well,” Cal said, “at least the aliens’ being so fond of ballet is good for you,” and I didn’t tell him different. Nothing was good for me just then. I knew what Alvarez wanted to see me about.

“See you and Sally tonight,” I promised as I closed the car door, and his face clouded. I shouldn’t have mentioned Sally. His sixteen-year-old daughter was tearing Cal’s heart apart, even though he hadn’t been—wasn’t—exactly the ideal father himself. “Bye, twin-boy.”

“Be good, twin-girl.” But his heart wasn’t in it. I wished we’d ended on that other note, making fun of the aliens.

I threaded my way though their weird craft and our security barriers, concrete and electronic and human. From not too close, I glimpsed one of the aliens being escorted into the New York State Theater. God, probably it was going to be permitted to watch class again. It was creepy, taking class with a Mollie watching. It sits in that plastic cage with its own air, looking for all the world like a six-armed octopus (“mollusk,” “squid”) with a soft, salmon-colored shell, and it balances on two tentacles and waves the other four in time to the music. “Can it keep good time?” Cal asked, and I had to admit that, yes, it could. But its presence didn’t help the timing of the rest of us.

No. It wasn’t a Mollie that had been hurting my timing.

No one knew why the aliens had fallen so in love with ballet. They’d landed on Earth eighteen months ago and had been in communication and translation and negotiation and transubstantiation, or whatever the UN did with them, for all that time. They’d been polite and cooperative and non-threatening and appreciative and benevolent. But nothing had lit their fire until they were taken, as part of an endless round of cultural outings, to see the New York City Ballet dance Coppelia. Then something had unaccountably ignited and they were back, in singles or small groups, every night they could be there. Why ballet? No one knew. “It is beautiful,” was all they’d say.

It was the only thing they’d said that I found interesting. Most of their mission, which apparently involved trading things and ideas I couldn’t pronounce, was as impenetrable to me as whatever Cal did with such passion down on Wall Street.

“Go on in, Celia, Mr. Alvarez is waiting for you,” his secretary said. No reprieve.

“Celia,” Alvarez said from behind his big, cluttered desk, not smiling. My stomach tightened.

“Hello, Diego.”

“Sit down,” he said in his soft Spanish accent. So of course I did.

Twenty years ago Diego Alvarez was perhaps the best male dancer in the world He partnered Greta Klein, and Ann Wilcox, and Xenia Aranova. He never partnered me, of course; I hadn’t risen above the corps de ballet, that unheralded background to stars. Only once in my life had I even danced a solo performance, Io in Jupitor Suite , and then only because both principal and understudy had the flu.

When Alvarez retired from dancing, he took over as Artistic Director of NYCB, a position for which he’d been openly groomed for years. He was a decent, not great, director, and the company struggled along under him as ballet always had, supported by a small percentage of the population, paid cultural lip service by a larger percentage, and ridiculed by the rest. An intense, exquisite, marginal art—until me Mollies changed everything.

“Celia,” Diego said, “I think you know why I called you in.”

I did, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I stayed mute.

“There comes a time in every dancer’s life—”

“Diego, I can take being fired for being too old, but I can’t take pomposity.”

Oh, fuck, now I’d done it. But after a moment of blinking astonishment—I doubt any corps member had ever spoken to him like that before—Alvarez leaned back in his chair and spoke levelly.

“I’m not firing you, Celia. I’m offering you an alternate position. As a teacher.”

Now it was my turn to blink. Second-rate corps members did not become teachers or coaches at NYCB.

“They asked for you, specifically, after watching several performances and studying with me the structure of the company and the usual promotion paths. They understand that there is a ceiling, and you—”

“Who?” I blurted out, but I already knew. Incredibly, I knew.

“The aliens. They want someone to teach their offspring classical ballet, or at least a modified version of it that—”

“Noooooo,” I moaned. “Not… possible.”

“I wouldn’t have said so,” Alvarez said, and for a second I saw his distaste for this whole enterprise, turning his beloved art over to a bunch of slack-tentacled monsters, and I knew that Diego had steered their choice toward me. Second-rate, overage, never be missed even from the corps, at least don’t legitimize the travesty by assigning a good dancer to it. Diego had never liked me.

“No,” I said firmly.

“They’re offering a salary larger than mine. And, Celia, it is the only way you can continue dancing.”

“But—”

“The only way. Here or, I’m afraid, in any professional capacity at all.”

I was silent. We both knew he was right. I could open a dance studio for little girls—little human girls—somewhere in a garage in Iowa, but that was about all. And I didn’t have the money for a garage in Iowa. Corps members live on air, hope, and a pittance that barely covers Manhattan rent.

“I have, Celia,” Diego said with unusual gentleness, “seen you try to help the young girls who have just joined the corps. I think you will be good at your new job.”

I told Cal at dinner. No one else knew yet. The Mollies wanted to keep it out of the press until I had safely left Earth for their huge orbiting ship.

“For their what?” Cal said. He looked stunned, which was understandable. I felt pretty unstable myself.

“Their ship.”

“To teach ballet to young squid,” he repeated, squinting at me.

“We’re not supposed to call them that.”

“But why do they want—”

“God knows!”

“And so you’re going to teach them to turn out their toes and… and…”

“Point and flex. Arabesques .”

“Those little running steps across stage—”

“ Bourées. And ports des bras. That means ‘arm movements.’”

“With four arms.”

We both collapsed into hysterical laughter. It was hilarious, it was terrible, it was going to be my life. As soon as one of us started to recover, the other would curve an arm overhead or point and flex an ankle, and we’d be off again. It went on and on. Finally I staggered upright, wiping my eyes. “Ah, Cal…”