And Idrina winked, as Cypress turned back to the barre and pliéd and pliéd, trying to make her leg her own again. From one class to the next Idrina filled Cypress in on the idiosyncrasies of all the teachers:

“Alfredo is gonna hit on ya, right away. He is the one teachin’ Angolan dance. And Pierre Aubignon teachin’ Congolese doesn’t like inhibited Afro-American dancers. So let your hips go in there or he’ll be on your case from now until. And Miz Wilson’s jazz motto is: ‘loose thighs, women,’ so wear your sweat pants and plastic leggings if ya go to her. And don’t let anyone get you down.”

“But Idrina. You don’t believe in all this pressure and ‘professionalism,’ do ya? I mean, that somebody should not be able to dance ’cause they can’t remember steps quick, or ’cause they weigh ten pounds more than someone else. And all that hostility. You’ve seen Ariel, haven’t ya? He doesn’t do nothin’ compared to these snotty, nose-in-the-air teachers here.”

“Well. No. I love dancin’, that’s all. If somebody knows somethin’ that’s gonna make me dance more and better, I wanna know what that is. And yeah, I guess I do wanna be as close to perfect as I can be, but I want as many people to dance as want to. I want the whole world to dance, but dancers are a strange breed, Cypress—don’tchu know that. We are compulsive-obsessive, I think that’s the phrase. We dance all day, move round dancers, in our spare time go see other dancers and for fun we go dancin’. There’s no way to make us less intense, unless we fall in love . . . but not with another dancer.”

So Cypress learned to see other people as themselves, and not as threats to her person. What somebody was doing was what they were doing, but not necessarily to her. And she waited for Idrina every morning at the 14th Street station, so they could go dance together all day. Eat a light supper. And fall out in each other’s arms at night.