Page 35 of Reverence

“As for me, well, my dears, would you at least allow me to dance a few parts before you banish me to the old people’s home? My teeth will be falling out any day now anyway. Old age and all that.” Katarina’s laughter was quiet, sardonic, and cruel. And attractive. Juliette’s stomach clenched, the muscles spasming with one and only one sensation, and she wanted to smack herself over the forehead. Desire.

Really? What the hell is wrong with me?

A wave of Katarina’s fingers and she turned away from the shivering dancers. “Now, shoo. Adults are talking.”

The ballerinas were instantly gone, scrambling off, dropping shoes and water bottles in their haste to get away, before she’d even finished the last sentence, and despite having her back to them, Katarina’s smirk widened the farther they got from her. Now both corners of that sinful mouth were upturned, the perfect set of upper teeth on display, as was the tiniest of imperfections—a slightly crooked lower left canine—and Juliette wanted to upend the entire water cooler sitting in the corner over her head.

Katarina, smile still on, a rarity that had the whole room staring at her, simply lifted Juliette’s chin and held it up with two fingers before whispering, “Never let them see you down. Sensing weakness, they will stomp you into the ground.”

Katarina settled into her place to begin the rehearsal and Juliette was left with only the feeling of warm, callused fingers, lingering on her skin, distracting her from things that mattered. Or perhaps becoming the only such thing.

13

OF BUTTERFLIES & LONG OVERDUE CLOSURE

Maybe she did have a concussion. Maybe that was the reason she was reacting like a smitten schoolgirl to a simple touch? All Katarina had done was brush her chin with her fingertips, and Juliette felt as if the entire population of butterflies from the National Museum of Natural History suddenly took residence in her stomach.

It was embarrassing. Yes, she had always been honest with herself, at least, that she found Katarina attractive. One might have said she’d maybe even entertained a few fantasies if not for two small—tiny, in the big scheme of things—details.

First, Katarina was straight to the point of being obviously disturbed by the displays or mentions of homosexuality. Her seemingly easy friendship with Gabriel didn’t mean anything. He was a man, after all. He didn’t count.

And the second detail, the one that was perhaps even greater than Katarina’s heterosexuality, was that Juliette simply did not trust her. They weren’t enemies, not in Juliette’s eyes. Not anymore. But the ice incident. And the constant looking over her shoulder that Juliette felt she had to maintain due to Katarina’s mere presence.

It could be argued that the latter was not the former Soviet ballerina’s fault. Juliette allowed Helena, Gabriel, Agent Ivanov, the whole damn world to get into her head. She could still hear the slimy little man’s words echo in the Place de l’Opéra all those days ago. Juliette chose to ignore them then. She fervently wished she could go on ignoring them.

“She danced over plenty of cadavers on her way to the crown. She will yet execute one of those grands jetés over yours.”

Juliette sighed and tightened the jacket around her shoulders. Surely the shiver was caused by the chill of the late evening air and not the dreaded sense of premonition that had not left her since the summer.

She walked in the dark, her steps quick and sure, Rue de Rivoli as familiar as London’s streets once had been. Juliette lifted her eyes at the signs of fancy stores and bakeries along the way.

She had become a creature of habit, her haunts, her routine, her little pleasures in life, more and more predictable. Like the same route she took every morning on Rue de Rivoli, Place du Marché Saint-Honoré, and then Place de l’Opéra.

Juliette had to smile at herself that the way back always took her through Place Vendôme and toward Rivoli. If she was entirely honest with herself, she knew exactly why she always returned home that way. Her own windows, the kitchen one especially, were on full display if she approached her building from that angle. And the little pink beacon light shining in her home was one of the few pleasures of returning to an empty apartment.

It had not been empty this past month. Yet the light still gave Juliette that warm, comforting feeling.

Like it did now. The butterflies fluttered their wings all at once, and Juliette felt she could fly. Katarina had left the light burning for her.

Juliette climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, avoiding the temperamental elevator, and carefully opened the door. The place was silent, the door to Katarina’s room closed. It was just past nine p.m., but that was typical for her roommate.

Silently placing her bag and jacket in the hallway by the door, she washed her hands and stepped into the kitchen, still enveloped in the pink glow of the little lamp.

Her thoughts were chasing each other, so maybe it was the butterflies that they were after, but the chaos in her head matched the unsettledness she felt everywhere.

Her face hurt, and a pack of frozen peas did little to soothe it. The knee was sore, but Thierry was helping there, even if he kept admonishing her for favoring it too much when she didn’t pay attention. And her heart? Her heart was in a world of its own. She didn’t even want to examine it too closely. For goodness’ sake, she had lost her breath over a chin lift. Such a damn cliché.

When the kettle boiled, Juliette poured water over the mint leaves in her mug and shook her head. She thought back to Ivanov’s words, since they were another cliché. It was such a manipulative and dramatic speech to deliver to someone who had bested you. And she knew his purpose was to needle her, to plant a seed of doubt. But despite her own understanding of human psychology, none of it mattered. Those clichés were effective for a reason, and the one where ballerinas were at each other’s throats and backstabbing one another for parts, for prominence, for attention and applause, was old as the ballet world itself.

“If Francesca thinks that staging that relicversion ofSleeping Beautywill somehow go over better than herrevamping that fossilized version ofDon Quixote, she is mistaken.”

Juliette almost dumped the hot contents of the mug in her lap. Only a last-minute hand from Katarina, catching it and scalding her own fingers in the process, prevented a new set of wounds.

There wasn’t even a hiss as the now-empty cup was placed on the table, and Katarina just dropped into the opposite chair cradling her palm, which was turning red by the second.

Juliette stared dumbfoundedly at her companion. One second… Two… A breath… Another one, this one a touch labored, and then her brain finally caught up with her and she jumped up, grabbed Katarina’s wrist, and dragged her to the sink where she opened the cold water, and now the labored breathing was accompanied by a whimper—only one, but it tore at Juliette’s heart nonetheless. And that tear in her beating flesh allowed all the damn butterflies to find their way through. Sure, they vacated her stomach but found a home in a much more dangerous place.

And yet, looking at the pained features, at the lips contorted in agony, and at those always inscrutable eyes now full of suffering, Juliette felt that it was too late for her to mind this latest development. She’d learn to live with them and maybe even return the butterflies to the Museum of Natural History someday. But this look, this pain, she’d give anything to erase from the beautiful face.

---