I’m the Grandma Moses of the chorus line.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tess said again. “You work all the time. You’re never out of a job. How many dancers can say that?”
“I’m never out of a job because I always show up, I’m never sick, I never screw up, and I never leave the show in New Jersey to get married.” Gina stretched out her legs, the pain reflected in her face easing a little. “But that’s not gonna carry me forever.” She shrugged. “’Course, neither will my legs.” She stared at them as if they were something she’d picked up on sale and now regretted. “I don’t think I ever want to do another plié again.”
“You’re joking.” Tess fell silent for half a second and then regrouped. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to get married,” Gina said.
Tess sank back into her chair. “Married? This is new.”
“Not really. I always wanted to get married,” Gina said wistfully. “I just wanted a career first.” She smiled a little. “Big career I got. Now I want some peace and quiet. Some security.” She looked at Tess, suddenly vulnerable. “You know, some love. I never found anybody on the road, which is no big surprise when I think about it. But now I’m ready. I want a house and kids and the whole bit.”
“Is this because you never got out of the chorus?” Tess said. “Because think about all the people who never got in…”
“I never wanted out of the chorus.” Gina flexed her legs again and winced. “I never wanted to be a star. I never wanted all that attention. I just wanted to be part of the show. And that’s what I want now. I don’t need some big, important guy. I just want to find a nice, unimportant guy and be part of his show.”
“As a feminist, I should probably say something here,” Tess said. “But I won’t, because it’s your life.”
“Thanks,” Gina said. “I appreciate that.”
“I know some nice guys from the Foundation,” Tess said. “Of course they’re out of work now, but they’re…”
Gina shook her head. “I can do this on my own, Tess. Forget about fixing my life.” She shot another look around the apartment. “You got your own to fix first, anyway.”
“Me? I’m not ready to get married. I never even think about it.” Tess looked around the apartment, too. “Well, I hardly ever think about it.”
Gina’s eyebrows shot up. “Hardly?”
“Well, every now and then I have these fantasies where I wear an apron and say, ‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’ to somebody gorgeous who immediately makes love to me on the kitchen table.”
Gina looked confused. “Sounds like Betty Crocker Does Dallas.”
“I know.” Tess frowned. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a wife. I mean, I get lonely sometimes, and I start thinking about how nice it would be to be a homey sort of person and bake cherry pie for somebody, but then one thing leads to another and I’m having fantasies about somebody ripping off my apron and licking cherry juice off my body, and I lose my grip.” She focused back on Gina. “Besides, I can’t bake pie. So I don’t think about getting married much.”
Gina scowled at her. “How could you get lonely? You think it’s your job to save everybody in the world. You gotta know more grateful people than—”
“Well, sometimes it would be nice not to save everybody,” Tess said. “Sometimes I think it would really be nice to be taken care of and live in a house, instead of an apartment, and to have great sex every night.” Tess stopped. “I’ve got to get off this sex thing. It’s clouding my mind. The career, Tess, concentrate on the career.” She shook her head. “Now I’m starting to sound like Nick.”
“Speaking of Nick, why’d you shut the door on him? That’s prime home-building material there.”
Tess laughed. “You obviously don’t know Nick. The only reason he’d build a home is for the equity. In fact, that’s the reason he did build a house.” She leaned her head back against the chair, remembering. “The skeleton of the place was up about the time I left him. We walked through it once, and I was trying to figure out what it would look like, and he was trying to figure out how much it would appreciate in value the first year.” Tess grinned. “It was not a Kodak moment for us.”
“Did you have Kodak moments?”
“Yeah,” Tess said, her grin fading. “We did. Quite a few actually.” She stood up suddenly and went into her bedroom.
“Tess?” Gina called.
“Here,” Tess said when she came back. She sat beside Gina on the edge of the couch and showed her a snapshot. It was Nick, a smudge of dirt on his chin and his hair in his eyes, in an old sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around Tess from behind, his chin buried in her shoulder. Tess was even more of a mess: her red hair stood straight up and her face was dirty, and she had no makeup on at all. Her smile took up her whole face, and she looked about ten.
“What were you doing?” Gina asked, mystified.
“This is the first day we met.” Tess smiled at the picture. “At a picnic. Playing touch football. He was wearing these really ratty jeans and a sweatshirt that was older than my sweatshirt, and I thought he was poor and cheerful, like the prince in my fairy tale.” She laughed. “Boy, was I wrong.”
Gina took the picture and looked at Nick more closely. “Even messed up, he’s gorgeous, Tess.”
“I know,” Tess said. “But looks aren’t everything. It was those damn crinkles he gets around his eyes when he smiles that threw me off, but he was definitely the wrong prince.” She shook her head and sighed. “It wasn’t long before I caught on, though. I mean, we were obviously not the perfect couple. We went to this opera thing the night we broke up, and the press took our picture.” She grinned at Gina. “Actually the press took Nick’s picture and got me because I was standing beside him. It finally made the society page a couple of days ago.” Her grin widened as she remembered the picture. “Nick looked like a Kennedy cousin. I looked like a rutabaga with hair. All over Riverbend, people looked at that picture and said, ‘What does he see in her?”’ Tess shook her head again. “We definitely do not belong together.”
Gina handed the photo back. “I still don’t get the prince bit.”
Tess moved back to her own chair, looking sadly at the print. “Remember I told you I lived in a commune when I was little?” she said, her fingertip stroking the edge of the photo. “Well, my mother wouldn’t let me read Cinderella and the other fairy tales. She said they were patriarchal and sexist, and I was really disappointed, so a friend of hers at the commune, this guy named Lanny, made up this story for me that he called CinderTess.” She laughed at the sound of it.
“Cute,” Gina said. “But I still don’t get the prince.”
“Well, CinderTess got to the ball on her own without any fairy godmother by rescuing people and animals who turned out to be able to help her,” Tess explained. “But she felt responsible for them and their problems, so when she got to the ball, and she was the best dancer there—”
