Chapter 16: Paola Dances

The Montanari Theatre had eleven hundred seats, and they were all full.

Everybody wanted to see whether the dancer would fall.

I sat in the front row in my blue dress with the ticket in my fist.

Leone sat three rows behind me with the nurse and the baker, who had brought a hat.

Donata and Fabrizio sat in the box above the stage.

I could feel them there.

The lights went down, and the orchestra started.

Paola came out in white.

She wasn't the woman from the alley or the woman from the gala.

She moved across the boards with her arms lifted and her back long, and for two minutes she was so perfect that people forgot to cough.

I hated how beautiful it was.

I had massaged those calves.

I had walked beside her in a hospital corridor with my hand under her elbow.

On the second pass she turned, and I saw her face.

It was wet.

She was dancing, and she was crying, and she didn't stop either.

Then in the middle of a long leap she landed and stood still.

The music went on without her for four bars.

The conductor lowered his baton, and the orchestra faltered into silence.

Paola walked to the edge of the stage.

A stagehand came out of the wings with a microphone, saw her face, and put it into her hand without being asked.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Her voice shook, and it carried to the back of the house.

"I'm not sorry about the dance. I'm sorry about the legs."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Took My Love 99 Times. The 100th Time, He Lost Me Forever. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.