Cypress remembered all those nights in $1.00 cover/2-drink minimum discos and after-hours bars she’d been in with Ariel and his fellas. The quick pick-ups of boys still childlike, yet mean. She saw Ariel fussing over these illiterate, dressed-up hustlers, fawning over them, while they spent his money, snorted his coke. They had laughed at him: “Shut up, old man” . . . “Suck me, old man” . . . “No, honey, let me wear that.” Cypress wanted to scream. They had no right; they had no right. Even if Ariel was a fool, thinking anyone could be bought and paid for without some fetid, vicious aftermath, Ariel Moröe was still gifted. He’d trained her to perform; to make her body speak. And now he could barely walk without revealing the cruelty of the company he kept.

Cypress left Ariel on the corner where he’d caught up with her. She had to cut her conversation short when some young thug, in clothes she recognized as Ariel’s, sidled up, tapped Ariel on the behind and gave her that “Well bitch, don’t you have something to do” look. Cypress moved right on. There was no need to think about The Kushites Returned. The Kushites were destroyed.

Two-thirty jazz class; studio A, Cypress did her warm-ups with a vengeance. She couldn’t get away from flashes of Ariel’s beating, his wounds, the glory his company had known. She pulled her head toward her knees, through her legs. Stretch. Release. Again. Stretch. Release. And toe-ball-heel, toe-ball-heel. Point. Point.

“On the floor. Ladies. On the floor. Now, off. And one-and-two, and that’s it. Pick up the tempo, would you?”

Cypress was working her body so obsessively she didn’t realize Idrina was teaching class, until it was time to go across the floor. Idrina called her for the first line, lustily.

“Cypress, give it all you got! Lay-ups into parallel turns as many as you can handle.”

Idrina demonstrated. Cypress followed, triumphant. She arched her back to the floor, opening chest, arms reaching for the windows, head at her heel, leg pulling toward the farthest corner. That breath, as all her body expanded in different directions, that moment was for Ariel in his prime. The impulse to turn, catch her shadow still in preparation, was so accurately executed the eloquence forced Idrina to step back. Cypress had learned so well, there was nothing more for Idrina to teach her.

Cypress danced like there was no tomorrow. No kicks were high enough for her; no triplets crisp enough. Why didn’t Leroy come home, so she could stop living inside paintings? Why did she have to know Ariel? Or Idrina for that matter, who was apparently smitten with some red-headed wisp of a girl who’d studied ballet too long?