From eight o’clock that morning until nine-thirty that night Cypress was in and out of dance classes, from one end of Manhattan to the other. Whatever she had learned with that honey-lipped hornplayer was working for her today. She had started out at Clark Center with a morning ballet class that kicked her ass. She’d been neglecting her technique in the freestyle Southern improvisations of The Kushites Returned & Company. At the barre she smiled at all those pelvic muscles, hearing her mama whispering that she had better work hard, because the white folks didn’t want to see a colored woman fly of her own powers. She knew the muscles in the top of her thighs were crying for relief, but between a full night of Leroy and a morning of advanced intermediate, relief was out of the question.

Cypress was truly inspired. She moved like she had never dared move on her own, without Ariel or Idrina there to watch and give approval. She was free of something that had been holding her back, something that set limits to what she could do, how she could move. She felt so much the diva she decided that for the rest of the day she’d wear her red leotard with the embroidery round her backside and up her crotch. That’s the one she’d take her place in, and the first teacher who called her out, saying, “If you are going to look like that, Miss, I hope you can dance like that,” would get such a performance from her that she’d be asked to join a company immediately. And if she joined a company, she could stay in New York with Leroy. But Leroy didn’t know she wanted to stay. And she hadn’t known she wanted to stay with him. She was working herself into a panic, when she heard a voice she knew too well.

“Listen, girl, I’m telling you Lilah James, Eleo Pomare, Rod Rodgers, Royal Brown, Sounds-In-Motion all gonna be in this special gala for that grand lady of black dance, Savilla Forte. Plus the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ailey’s Junior Company, and us, Azure Bosom.”

“You serious?”

“Would I lie to you about our coming of age, our first real break in the City?”

“Oh, Idrina, that’s so wonderful. I’m so happy for you. I guess I got back just in time to see my lady strut ’cross that stage.”