That’s what they did in Russia.Ībove the March grid of the calendar was a black-and-white photo of Gelsey in rehearsal. But maybe it could be a kind of reverse jinx, like whispering “Merde” before going onstage, or grabbing your partner in the wings and screaming “Go to Hell!” beneath the opening chords of the overture. Symbols of explosions might not lend themselves naturally to good luck. It all looked a bit like the kind of flammability warning you’d find on a hairspray bottle.
March 27 needed to be distinguished from its meaningless neighbors, so I drew a green border around the date and added jagged diagonal strokes that tied like a knot in the middle of the square. I muttered patchy sounds under my breath, little words like yes and good. I observed what I’d written as though I didn’t trust it, staring, squinting, trying to look at the ink askance. I read the time and date of my audition aloud and recorded the information on the Gelsey Kirkland calendar above my desk, filling the March 27 box with tiny handwriting. My fingers were stupid with adrenaline, and as I ripped off the top, I tore the letter too. There was a logo in the corner, the curving, antique script of the Royal Toronto Ballet Academy. It was white, flat, ordinary as any envelope except for the strange look of my name across the front. I found the envelope in a pile of letters on the hallway radiator.
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