The Last Dance

Zita shivered as she looked out at the bleak November landscape, the trees bare as skeletons, reaching up to the dark sky. Outside it was cold, with a penetrating damp wind. Despite the warmth of the apartment, she wrapped her shawl more closely around her. Soft from much use, it had been a gift from Alexei to keep away the chills of backstage areas. The apartment smelled of roses, which Alexei made sure were always there. Her thoughts turned darker as she heard Alexei coughing in that wracking way that pierced her heart like a blade of ice. He hadn't been well since his last bout with bronchitis. They had been dance partners, then lovers, then ex-lovers, and now partners, but of course those labels were meaningless. They were friends, and had been since the first time they met at the International Ballet School.

She was on a scholarship, like a number of other promising young dancers scouted through ballet schools. The rigorous, year-long program weeded out the less committed. Daily ballet classes began at 10 a.m. sharp and continued all day, with brief rests and a short lunch break. She'd already changed her name to Zita, thinking how much better it would look on programs and posters. Mary Ellin Devlin from Des Moines, Iowa had ceased to exist.

She lived and breathed dance, ignoring blistered and bleeding feet, sore muscles, grueling hours. From the time Zita had climbed the stairs to her first ballet school and smelled the unfamiliar but oddly pleasant odors of rosin, sweat and damp young bodies, she had fallen in love.

Her intense focus got her noticed. Alexei came over to her one day after class. Exhausted, she had sunk to the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her, her head bent to her knees. She looked up into startlingly blue eyes.

"I am Alexei Rostov," he said, unnecessarily. Everyone knew the principal male dancer in the company. He spoke softly, taking her hand gently and pulling her up. His English was very good, although the Russian accent still came through. He was a few inches taller than she, and when she looked in the big mirrors opposite the barre, she saw how closely their bodies matched. Both slim, taut, they could almost be the same sex, except that his legs were strongly developed, while hers were long and slim, the muscles stretched lengthwise through years of training.

He drew her to her feet and said softly, "Dance with me."

It seemed completely natural to her to be dancing with the best male dancer in the company, so perfectly did their timing and bodies mesh.

"I watch you since you come. You have very good technique, Zita." he said. "You are not perfect of course. That will come with time. But more is needed. Right now, you have no heart. You need to feel it in here." He thumped his chest. "Is all you lack, but is vital. A dancer must have a connection with the people beyond the footlights. You must make them feel what you feel. I will teach, yes?"

He partnered her in class, worked outside regular hours to bring her technique up a notch. The other girls gave her cold looks and whispered behind her back. Not subtle, but then the ballet world has never been known for its good sportsmanship.

Alexei often called for her at her cheap rooming house. Sometimes they walked the streets of Manhattan, ending at the East River where the gulls swooped and the tugs lent their bulk to the liners that set out across the Atlantic. From Alexei she got a first class education in art and music and history and began to understand the emotions behind the masters, what drove them beyond their obsession with paints or violins or pianos. She understood what the soul and heart did for a work of art.

He taught her to drink tea the way Russians did -- hot, strong, sweet, served in thick, squat glasses, although he was Americanized enough to add a dash of Jack Daniels to top his off.

They became lovers without any preliminaries or flirtatious games. He was Zita's first, and he was kind and gentle, drawing her out slowly, letting her emotions play and dance on their own. The director of the company remarked one day how mature her dancing had become. She struck a receptive chord with audiences, too, pulling them into the ballet stories, making them believe in swans who turned into maidens and princesses who were bewitched. Her roles increased in size, as did her billing in the program listings. It was heady stuff for an Iowa farm girl, but Alexei never let her forget that her reputation was earned day by day. Once, he had asked, "You know why you are a star?"

"Because I'm better than the rest," she'd said.

"Not that, no. Although you are very, very good. But there are hundreds of very good dancers out there. No, my darling Zita, is because you want it so bad. You allow nothing to stand in your way. You have the killer instinct."

When Alexei confessed to her he was gay, she was shocked and hurt. They'd slept together for several months, and she was just starting to fall in love with him. It put a stop to that side of their relationship and her half-formed fantasies. Angry, she'd accused him of deceit, using her to cover up his sexual bent. As if it mattered in the ballet world.

She took out her fury by drinking too much and staying out late with a motorcycle-riding lover. Her discipline fled. When she did show up for class, Alexei was stinging in his criticism of her technique and form. She in turn was defiant, but she could not talk back. As the leading male dancer in the company, his word was law.

Her new lover was violent. One night he attacked her in a drunken frenzy. She grabbed a heavy glass ashtray and hit him as hard as she could across the head. He went down, his eyes rolling back.

Zita stared at him, breathing hard, thinking she might have killed him.

She ran out the door, straight to Alexei's.

He didn't remonstrate with her. He settled her on his sofa and handed her hot tea laced with whiskey.

"You will stay here until we find you a new apartment," he said.

"But my stuff -- it's all at Bobby's. He may do anything -- come after me, make me go back ..." she stopped when she saw Alexei's face.

"Not to worry. I will take care of everything."

She heard him on the phone in the kitchen. He went out and returned some time later with a bag of her things.

Alexei found her a reasonably priced apartment not far from the ballet school. He and his new friend, Gregory, helped her get settled. Gregory was not at all what Zita expected. Alexei kept his private life very private, even from her, and she'd never met one of his lovers before. Gregory was big with a strong, lined face. When he took off his coat, she saw the shoulder holster and the gun. She gawked at him, her eyes questioning Alexei.

"Gregory is one of New York's Finest," Alexei said with an amused smile. "Detective First Class. Not many people cross him."

Her career continued to soar. As the years went by, she was in demand as a guest artist as well as being prima ballerina of the International Ballet company. So when she told Alexei she planned to retire, he balked.

"Why?" Alexei said, "You're thirty-five years old, at the top of your powers. There are still more roles out there for you -- what are you thinking?"

"Thirty-five, sure, and it's just luck that I've had no serious injury, nothing to slow me down. But we both know I'm on borrowed time. And then what? Watch the offers shrink, watch all those nimble youngsters take over my parts? No, Alexei, I refuse to be shunted off to the ranks of former divas."

Alexei saw the resolve on her face and held his peace. What she said was true.

She had laid her plans carefully. She married Peter Barovski, because of his substantial fortune and what his money could do for her and Alexei and the ballet school they planned to start. She had ambitious plans for a company all their own.

"Think of it, Alexei," she told him, "We can choreograph our own ballets, just the way you've dreamed of doing. And choose the best dancers in the world."

Barovski indulged her because he loved the cachet of having this beautiful, aristocratic looking woman on his arm.

"The Barovski Ballet!" she said dramatically to him. Peter was entranced, both with her and with the idea of naming a ballet company after him. He would be a star himself, he said. She frowned. She had no intention of letting him get his plebeian hands into her company. But that confrontation would come later when she had what she wanted.

And it did come. One day, rummaging through his desk, a big file opened, spilling horrid, graphic sex photos across the desk. Many of the pictures featured Barovski with extremely young girls.

So. Her upstanding husband had hidden vices. Not something that could stand publicity. Zita knew suddenly there would be no problem with a settlement when the time came.

With her large divorce settlement, she and Alexei developed a first class company. It was everything she had wanted. Aging didn't seem so bad with their successful school. She continued to work out in the early mornings, though, before any of the students arrived. She was stretching in the studio one morning, one long leg placed firmly on the high barre. She looked up and saw Alexei standing in the doorway, watching her.

She smiled at him. "Are you dancing with me this morning?" she asked, noting the clothes he wore -- soft black character shoes, loose black pants and a long-sleeved, black T-shirt. He looked very thin.

"Maybe, for a bit."

"Come on, then, let's get started."

She flicked the switch on the tape recorder and started her barre exercises. Alexei joined her for awhile, then sat down on the floor as she finished, wiping her face with a white towel.

He rose, took her hand and led her out to the center of the floor. She followed him in a small circle, acknowledging him with a slight bow of the head, as if they were on a stage facing a thousand people, the spotlight on the pair of them.

Together they danced a brief allegro, moving in unison across the floor in a tempo that matched the sprightly piece on the machine. They both laughed when the tape stopped, hugging each other.

"Not too bad for a couple of oldies," Alexei said, but she noticed how pale he was, how labored his breathing. When she'd hugged him, she could feel his ribs like sharp spokes.

"Alexei, are you all right? Really, I mean?"

He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes meeting hers levelly.

"We have never had lies between us, have we, Zita?"

She was suddenly cold and a pain seized her somewhere between her heart and her throat.

"No, Alexei. Never lies."

"Well, then I will tell you, if you have not guessed already. I am ill, Zita, very, very ill. I have AIDs. The prognosis is not good."

The pain came up through her mouth and she exhaled sharply.

"Oh, my love," she said softly. "Oh, my Alexei."

She nursed Alexei all through that long, cold winter. She insisted that he come to her apartment and she installed a hospital bed in the middle of the living room where he could look out at the sky and occasionally, when helped to the window, see Central Park far below.

Alexei hated every minute of it, she knew, but he never lost patience or railed at his fate. He was resigned, as she never could be. He allowed her to sit with him and make him tea and talk about the old days, but when his personal needs had to be met, the male nurse took over. He had always been so fastidious, she had to allow him his dignity.

One quiet evening, when he had been readied for the night, she sat by his bed, preparing to read aloud some of the Russian poets he loved. From Pushkin to Akhmatova, she read words she barely understood, but they seemed to soothe him.

She put on a mask of a smile and sat close to him. "Shall I read more?"

Before she could start, he took her hand gently.

"Zita, the pain is getting worse. I'm slipping away, but slowly, oh so slowly."

There was something in his voice that stopped her. Her hand in his turned clammy and cold.

"We have been everything to each other," he said. "I shall miss that most of all, I think."

She nodded, the tears blocking her throat.

"But my darling, there is something I must ask you to do."

"Anything, Alexei, you know that."

"I want you to take this and help me go soon." He held out an exquisite copy of a Faberge egg that opened into a little treasure receptacle. "I do not want this to drag on and on."

He turned his beautiful blue eyes, full of pain, to hers.

"I can't, Alexei, I can't be the one. Don't ask me, please."

"But who else loves me like you do? Who else could I trust to help me? I have been saving pills for some time now, pretending to swallow them, but hiding them here. No one will ever point a finger at you."

She felt faint. How could she do this? But then, how could she not?

"Oh, Alexei, let's wait, let's see what happens. I can't do this to you. It will be bad enough when it happens eventually." Her voice broke. "Oh, Alexei, I don't know what I shall do without you."

"You will go on, Zita. You are tough and a survivor. You have that instinct I told you about, remember? It does not mean you do not care about others. It just means you know where you are going and you won't stop for obstacles." He pressed the jeweled egg into her hand. "Please, my love, put it away somewhere safe."

On an evening when Alexei was alert and in good spirits, they dismissed the aide early. They talked comfortably for a while, and then sat quietly, content to be with each other. The haunting strains of Khachaturian filled the air. The adagio from "Spartacus," the music rising in ecstatic crescendos. Alexei had revived the rarely performed pas de deux, and it became a signature piece for both of them.

Zita sat, remembering how the music lifted them up, echoing the passion and depth of their love as they moved effortlessly through the intricate steps. There was no conscious thought, not even an awareness of the audience sitting beyond the footlights, just the soaring music and Alexei responding with his body to hers, their souls intertwined.

"Would you like anything, darling," Zita asked. "Some soup?" He shook his head. "Well, then, tea. How would you like some real Russian tea with lots of sugar and lemon?"

"And a spot of whiskey?"

" Of course! I'll be right back."

From the kitchen she brought a tray with two glasses of strong Russian tea and a plate of prianik medoviy, the little honey cakes he loved.

They drank companionably, the windows reflecting the pearl grey February sky as twilight receded and darkness approached.

"Thank you for the whiskey," Alexei said, raising his glass to toast her. "Is very nice."

"I'm glad," she answered. She adjusted the pillows behind his back, leaned over and kissed him very gently on the cheek. "Finish it all, my darling. It's good for you."

Blue eyes locked onto black ones for a long moment. A brief smile touched his lips.

"Thank you, my love, my Zita." he said.

The memorial service was held in the small chapel adjoining the funeral home. The urn with Alexei's ashes sat prominently on a table, flanked by two vases of white roses.

A couple of close friends gave short eulogies, a nondenominational clergyman offered words of comfort to the bereaved. Some of Alexei's students were crying. Zita said nothing, sitting dry-eyed and calm in the front row, her eyes staring straight ahead.

The service was mercifully short. Not like all the days that would follow. Afterward, she moved purposefully through a sea of well-wishers, thanking them, nodding at their condolences, agreeing that it was good that Alexei had gone peacefully in his sleep.

She walked along the East River, breathing in the February air, cold, but with a hint of spring somewhere beyond the Atlantic, wafted on winds from Spain or Portugal. Her hands were jammed in the pockets of her black cashmere coat, her head held high.

Proud, confident, commanding, as Alexei had trained her.

"When you walk onto a stage, you must look as if you owned the world. If you believe it, they will believe it. They will belong to you."

She smiled at the stars that slowly pierced the black night sky.

"Hello, Alexei. My world, my love, my friend. Now and forever: We belong to each other."