In the morning, Carol woke up first, showered and dressed and went down to get some bagels and cream cheese from a bagel shop. By the time the coffee finished brewing, Joe and Jenny had wakened. They showered together, more sensual than sexual, though Joe showed proof of the latter with his near erection, but insisted not to make their host wait and it was mostly ignored, Jenny giggling while cleaning it the exception. They dressed in yesterday's clothes and joined Carol at the dining table. A stack of paper sat on it.
"The poem," Joe remarked.
"A copy," Carol smiled.
He read through it while they ate, letting Jenny read it too. It was one of the few poems he had published, in a little known poetry magazine, and the copy had been xeroxed from the magazine. It was surprising Carol had found it.
He either enjoyed reading his work, even thinking it brilliant, or he was hypercritical. This was the latter, every word or line, every clumsy phrase exposed in his mind like some rude exhibitionist.
"This inspired you?" Joe asked.
"I think it's great!" Jenny decided.
Carol chuckled. "Inspired the name of my group," she said.
"Egress," Joe nodded. He'd used it for the basement window in his childhood room, a narrow means of escape.
"I'm just glad I'm rewriting it," Joe smirked.
Carol insisted Joe take the copy, even though he told her he had the magazine and the original already, when he and Jenny left after hugs and kisses, none lingering. All felt the hangover from the night before, though Joe's and Jenny's was worse, a coke hangover.
The two headed uptown via subway, to Penn Station terminal where Jenny had stashed her large, heavy bag of luggage. More subways brought them to Joe's apartment, and he lugged the thing up three flights of stairs and finally to his room. While Jenny changed, Joe enjoying the view, he checked his message service without success. He got few messages.
"What do you want to do?" Jenny asked.
"I need to get some film," Joe replied.
"Is Carol helping with that?" Jenny asked.
"I should have asked," Joe realized. He called Carol and she was home.
"Miss me already?" she laughed.
"This is a bit more mercenary. We never talked about money."
"Like I said the grant was substantial since the show is multi-media. You'll be paid to make the films, actually three you documenting the performances, and for your poem."
"You researched..."
"Two sixteen millimeter films, though I thought it would be transfers from eight millimeter, but I did add in the filming of the event, so there's that. Any material you buy and any rental of equipment and the lab transfer or whatever you should keep the receipts. I'll advance you some money."
"I can afford the sixteen millimeter film for tonight, but..."
"I'll pay you back. I got some grant money for the Cocktail Party, though less substantial. I pay my dancers too, though not a lot, just enough to get by in this city really."
"I imagine dancers don't dance to get rich."
"Neither do poets or filmmakers."
"True."
"I should probably talk to Jenny. Is she there?"
Joe handed Jenny the phone. Jenny mostly responded monosyllabically, not giving Joe much clues as what was said. She used the pen and pad of paper by the phone. She finished with "Okay, we'll see you then," and hung up.
"So?" Joe asked while changing clothes.
"Okay, so Carol wants us to meet her at her studio in Tribeca at two. She wants to see how I move, so I should wear comfortable clothes which I have as a sort of audition."
"You worried?"
"I'll be fine."
"It's not ballet."
"One thing about ballet, it makes you flexible. It also makes you able to learn moves quickly. I think what made those prestigious schools pass on me makes me think I've always been meant for modern dance."
"How so?"
"A couple things. A lack of rigidity, a sort of softness in my movement. Like my body rejected the old fashioned conventions. And, partly because of that and partly because of my expressiveness, made me stand out a bit too much, which would be fine if I was prima ballerina, but I don't have the presence they want for that, my height mostly and the length of my limbs. And it wouldn't work being in the corps de ballet. My height was a problem with that too. But modern isn't about lining up in even rows, it's about how the body expresses emotion in a much more organic and natural way."
"Sounds good."
"Yeah. So rehearsals would be ten to four Monday through Friday. I guess a lot of the company work nights, waitressing or whatever, but the jobs would need to be flexible enough so we could do our shows and tour. You think you could talk to someone at Max's to get me a job there?"
"I'm thinking of seeing if I can get my job back too."
"Really?"
"The problem is I got paid under the table, so officially I haven't worked for a year. And I have no experience in office work, and I'm not even sure I want any. And I sort of miss it, the sort of dance sliding through customers on weekend nights. But the problem is the flexibility thing, able to get time off when I needed, and maybe working less nights so I have the energy to work on my writing and filmmaking. It's a lot to ask."
"And the temptation."
"That too, but yesterday I was definitely tempted."
"Heroin, sure, but what about the cocaine?"
"It isn't as bad."
"Isn't it? My body and my brain might disagree."
"Yeah, I'm feeling a bit out of it too."
"Waking up like this every morning? It was fun, but I don't know."
Joe laughed. "With all the shit your parents put you through, I'd think you'd just want to get wasted."
"My folks are mean drunks. All your friends seem to want to do is get wasted, Johnny, one of my fucking heroes the worst of them. How do I want to get revenge? By being better than my mom. By dancing the way I want to dance and being great at it. But dancing takes discipline. It takes focus and concentration. It takes a healthy body. Maybe not taking drugs is my rebellion."
They kicked back for a while, Joe, probably inspired by reading his poem, going through some of his other poems and then pulling out a notebook and writing a new poem about fate and coincidence and their correlation, using the fateful day before as detail. Jenny looked through Joe's collection of books and chose Stranger in a Strange Land with Joe's emphatic recommendation and began reading it.
They stopped around noon, heading out to eat sandwiches at the corner diner and then heading uptown to the store Joe knew would have his film. He went with fast color stock because of the low lighting. Then they headed downtown to meet with Carol.
Maybe half her company were there, stretching and warming up which Jenny also did. The pianist was there too, and when Carol showed Jenny the moves she wanted, the pianist accompanied Jenny. Since it was all new to Jenny, different ways of moving her body than she'd been trained at for many years, she didn't get it right away. But Carol gave recommendations, specific movements of parts of the body, ideas and images to work off of, and Jenny improved greatly, enough to satisfy Carol. Part of it, Joe decided, was Jenny's attitude. Despite the struggles he saw no frustration. In fact the opposite, every problem she had she worked to solve, and solving it excited her.
"Let's make it official," Carol concluded, bringing Jenny a W2 form to fill out.
"So I passed the audition!" Jenny gushed.
"You did great for a first time," Carol told her.
"It's so much more fun than ballet!"
