“He was in the National Ballet School during my last year,” he said at last. “That was in ninety-one, the year before I came to Adelaide to join the ACDE. He was a late entrant. He said he was eighteen, a year older than me, but I reckon he was into his twenties. He boasted the way little kids do, but all the same there was something sort of very adult about him. He was always talking about forming his own company, or taking one over. ‘Whatever’s necessary,’ he’d say. He was going to be director, principal dancer, and choreographer.”
“Well, he can certainly dance, and he seems to have something as a choreographer.”
“He just turned up at the school in Melbourne and somehow wangled a special audition. Brilliant, as you’d expect, but he didn’t last long.”
Bridget felt that Danny had said enough to respond to some gentle prompting. “What happened?”
“There were stories he was flogging drugs to other students, the juniors, and making some pretty heavy threats when they got behind with their payments.”
“Nasty.”
“A couple of students were hauled out of the school by their parents, quick smart,” Danny said. “It looked like there was going to be a bloody great scandal, but somehow it was hushed up.”
“And Twinkle Toes?”
“He disappeared. I suppose he got the shove, but maybe he just went.”
“Where did he come from?”
“Who knows? He called himself Mikhail Oblonski, would you believe! Or something like that. Whatever, he’d have to have made it up. Quite a few of the kids at the school gave themselves stage names. They wouldn’t answer to anything else.” Danny frowned. “Why’s he come to Adelaide?”
“To dance in Six of One, obviously.”
“Yeah. But I wonder if he’s got anything else in mind.”
By ten o’clock on the morning after the thirteenth dancer’s “audition” there had been more than twenty calls to the ACDE’s office, all congratulating Bronwyn Baker and her ensemble on the performance of Six of One, although no one appeared to have spotted the extra dancer onstage.
Bronwyn responded politely to the congratulations, but they only made it more difficult for her to stop worrying about the thirteenth dancer; about the possibility that he might appear again, about the ridicule if the word got out that the ACDE’s finest performance had occurred because of something beyond her control. She decided to escape into work. “Keep all calls away from me, Bev, if you value my sanity,” she told her office manager.
At ten-thirty, when a caller demanded to speak to Bronwyn Baker, Bev said, “I’m afraid you can’t; she’s taking class.”
“It’s very important and very personal.” The caller refused to state his name (“It wouldn’t mean anything to her”) or business, but his tone persuaded Bev that she should interrupt the class.
When the call was transferred, he told Bronwyn, without preliminary, “I was hoping to join your company.”
“As what?”
“As a dancer, of course.”
“I’m afraid there are no vacancies.” Right around the country, there were far more dancers than places for them in companies. Bronwyn, instinctively sympathetic to anyone in search of a job, tried to soften rejection by explaining, “I never have more than twelve dancers. It’s exactly the right number for our sort of choreography.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Still wrung out, mentally and physically, by the previous night’s drama, Bronwyn did not pick up the innuendo in the caller’s voice. “And on our budget,” she said, “we couldn’t afford even one more than twelve, even if I wasn’t superstitious. So I’m afraid there’s not even any point in giving you an audition.”
“Well, in my case, an audition’s hardly necessary.”
There was now an unmistakable edge of sarcasm to the voice at the other end of the line, and Bronwyn knew who the caller was when he demanded, “What more do I have to do to persuade you to hire me?”
Flustered, not sure how she should respond to such a question from a man she knew must be mad, Bronwyn could think of no reply except, “Hope for a vacancy, I suppose.”
“You said it, not me.”
There was a click at the other end. Bronwyn, trembling, held on to the receiver for a few moments before hanging up.
A café in Hindley Street gave a clear view of the door of the ACDE’s office and rehearsal rooms. The thirteenth dancer, back in his overalls and wig and moustache, sat there drinking coffee, smoking, and pretending to read a paperback, Great Dancers of the Twentieth Century. He was prepared to be patient — now, as he waited for Danny to appear, then later, when... First get into the company, then work out how to take it over.
At five-thirty Danny Harkness and Bridget James and other dancers came out onto the street.
“I suppose you really have to go?” Bridget said, knowing it was mean of her to try to persuade him out of it.
“He’s the only relative I’ve got in Adelaide, and it’s his birthday.”
“When you come from a small family like mine,” Bridget said, “it takes getting used to someone with aunts and uncles all over the place.”
“You wouldn’t want too many uncles like my Uncle Gareth. But if you fancy a taste of what it’s like, don’t forget you were invited.”
“I really don’t enjoy boozy parties.”
“It’ll certainly be that, the old bugger turning sixty.”
“And it’s not as if I’ve met him.” Bridget sighed. “I’m not trying to be a misery-guts. But it’s only a month since I moved in with you. I feel like I’m still on the honeymoon.”
“Me too,” Danny said, pressing against her.
“You’d better get going.” Bridget kissed him, hard. “Before someone comes along with a bucket of cold water.”
“I shouldn’t be too late,” Danny said over his shoulder, and winked.
Watching them from the café as they set off in opposite directions along Hindley Street, the thirteenth dancer said under his breath, “You had me worried there for a minute, Danny boy. I thought she wasn’t going to stop at kissing you. Whatever that little tiff was. about, you still should have invited her home to bed. She was really asking for it. But you can still do the right thing by me. Make sure you’re safely tucked up and sound asleep by midnight. I want it neat and tidy. No mess.”
He’s a bit girlish, but still a good-looking guy, the thirteenth dancer thought, as Danny, long hair swinging in time with his stride, disappeared around a corner, presumably heading for the tram that would take him to his flat in Glenelg.
The thirteenth dancer imagined dark hair spread out, like a shadow, against sheets... features in profile softened, made more feminine, by moonlight through curtains... a smoothly muscled back exposed.
There was nothing about it in the newspaper that came with the breakfast delivered to his motel room. Too soon for there to be anything on the radio, either. He wondered — it was a crazy idea, he knew, but, all the same, it would be great if it worked out that way — he wondered if he could time his arrival at the ACDE’s office to coincide with some broadcast announcement by the cops...
Two hours later, rattling towards Hindley Street in the Holden, he turned on the radio for a last check for any news.
There were good cooking smells, unusual in his mother’s house, when he walked through the back door into the kitchen.