The air in the windowless corridor was heavy with competing smells; hairspray, saccharine body mists, ballet chalk plus something sharp and acidic; nerves.
“Do you know what happened?”
“No, do you? My agent got a call; they want everyone who made it to the final round back so they can replace her.”
“Didn’t she have an understudy?”
“Yeah, but apparently she has crabs.” Chirps of embarrassed laughter bounced along the hall. “I’m not kidding. She got caught itching like crazy in Wardrobe. I heard she can only come back with a doctor’s note. ”
“Oh my God, that’s so gross.”
“Right?”
“I heard the prima tripped.”
“Slipped is more like it. You know who it was. I bet it was vodka.” The “v” is pronounced as a “w” and the chirps crescendo quickly and become snickers.
“Really? You think it was her? That’s terrible.” A stage whisper, chins tilt towards that ballerina, the one whose face was hidden as she leaned over the phone that rested in her lap.
“For the prima it is. Not for her.” Now there was a gesture, a subtle jolt of a fist with the thumb arching backwards, in that ballerina’s direction.
“I guess.”
The ballerina in question, straw-yellow hair perfectly glazed to her skull, bun tightly pinned below her crown, unfolded her long pink-clad legs and rose from the floor along the wall.
She tightened the belt of her black wrap sweater and asked, “Tуалет?” The chatter faded; the foreign word hung in the stale air of the crammed hallway. No one answered.
Turning her bird-like neck to the right, she looked down at a young woman seated next to where she now stood. Bending at the waist, she leaned down, loudly exhaling the offensive word: “Tooo-a-lee-yet?”
“Toilet? You mean bathroom? Downstairs, by the front door.”
“Spasiba.”
The ballerina lifted her bag. She picked her way through the minefield of legs, duffels and water bottles to the door that opened onto a grimy staircase. The fresh air from the street door below cooled her flushed cheeks.
At the bottom of the staircase she turned, colliding with a short stocky woman pushing a janitor’s cart, thick dark hair wound tied loosely at the nape of her neck. The woman’s broad forehead ricocheted off the ballerina’s sharp sternum. She read the tag above the woman’s breast: Milagros - Liberty Cleaning. Milagros moaned, rubbing her brow with one chapped hand. “Oh my gosh,” the ballerina whispered in perfect English, “I am so sorry. Come here, let’s see.”
She herded the stunned woman into the restroom, wet a paper towel and placed it on the woman’s forehead. From her bag, the ballerina pulled a small pouch and from it, an unmarked bottle. She popped the lid, knocked two pink pills into her palm, swallowed them dry. She grimaced into the mirror, then towards Milagros. “I need this lead so bad, but I think they know.”
“Qué?” Milagros looked up the stairwell. The stick-limbed shellacked girls from the first floor made her nervous.
“It was me, I spilled water onstage. I’m so screwed.”
“Someone iz eslipping? Where? I go clean.” Milagros reached for her mop.
The ballerina from Brighton Beach stared down at the concerned woman whose forehead wrinkled. Regret spread under the ballerina’s black leotard, prickling her skin. Playing Confession with this random cleaner in the bathroom, in English? She pulled her thin shoulders back, recovered the swanlike angle of her neck. “Nyet, spasiba,” the ballerina said harshly. In a flash of scissoring legs and pink tights, she flew up the stairs and back to the claustrophobic lycra-filled hallway.
Olivia Stanfield is an author and mother of three who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Originally from Manhattan by way of Middleburg, VA, she is querying her first novel and preparing to start her second in addition to occasional bouts of poetry and flash fiction. You can find her in all her bilingual bizarreness online at www.oliviastanfield.com or @buenosairesmonamour.substack.com
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