I Left My Heart in Moscow but My Love Waits in Pittsburgh

Three days since I last slept. It showed. Three days since I last ate a proper meal. It showed.

“You've lost weight,” Wendy commented as she retook my measurements. “Are you sick?”

Lovesick. I shook my head, “Just putting in a lot of hours at the barre, I guess. I always get anxious when a show is coming up.” I didn't like to look at my reflection in the large mirror, the stark lighting highlighting just how much weight I had lost. The fluorescent ceiling lights making the dark shadows under my eyes even deeper.

“I'm also assuming that the lumpy mattress at the Double Tree can't be treating you too well,” Pin here and a tuck there.

I stared at her with wide eyes, “How- who? Does anyone else?”

“No and I have my ways,” Wendy smiled mysteriously as she finished her work. “Please, baby, gain the weight back. I didn't make this costume for a waif. I made it for a woman. A strong, independent woman.”

I smiled a small smile, “I'll try.”



“Pull it together, Staal!”

“What the hell was that?”

“Where's your head?”

I groaned and held my head in my hands as Coach's words echoed in the corners of my mind. Where was my head? I found myself thinking of the golden eyes. I squinted my eyes shut, forcing the image out of my head.

I rolled my tense shoulders, feeling the muscles stiffen and relax. I need to tell Tyler to get a new couch. I reached down to untie my skates, gripping the ratty laces. I paused and did something I haven't done in a while.

I went back out onto the ice. The one place that wasn't tainted with her memories.



I gripped the barre with my hands, my fingers wrapping around the smooth, polished wood that I know so well. My fingers cramped from holding the barre too tight. The barre is where it begins and ends for many ballerinas. The unwise dancers, when losing out on a part, blame the choreographer, the director, the ballet master. 'She didn't like me.' 'He's unfair.' The smart ones return to the barre. The place that separates the soloists from the corps. The barre is unforgiving. You can't hide behind the barre- all your flaws are revealed. Crooked hips, sickled feet, poor technique.

For me, the barre is home. It started with the desire to perfect the basics and to make my technique flawless but slowly it became my place of refuge. In the past, it took me away from the pressure of having to succeed, away from the fights at home, away from the world. It didn't matter what happened or how I did in the last performance, the last class, or even five minutes ago. Here at the barre, I was free.

The rehearsal room filled with bright orange light as the sun faded into the horizon, igniting the sky in fiery reds and yellows and then quieting into the pale, dusty blue of dusk. I left the barre and worked on combinations of leaps and turns, dancing to the music in my head that I couldn't help but hum. I lifted my leg into the long, sweeping arabesques, arching my back and head to form the pliant, almost melting line that is Odette's signature.

“I always knew Swan Lake was your favorite. That magazine got it wrong.”

His voice cut through me like a knife.

I didn't even turn around from where I was.

“People change. Things change. You of all people should know that, Evgeni.”

“I suppose I should. I never understood Swan Lake. The scene at the ball, how does Siegfried not notice Rothbart, who is sitting there in his reptilian glory, watching him dance with Odile." Evgeni wandered around the bare studio. It wasn't one of the glamorous ones that offered sweeping views of the city. This was austere and stark white.

“It depends on the production. Some have him disguised, others have him in 'his reptilian glory.' I like to think that it's because in that moment Siegfried believes he's dancing with Odette, his one true love. And in the face of love, all evil disappears.” I was sitting on the floor now, undoing my pointe shoes, with my back still to him.

“But the whole message of the ballet and how it portrays love. That love is the deadliest of all deadly things. That love kills you both, when you have it and when you don't.”

“I know all about that, don't I?” I mocked, for the first time I raised my eyes to the mirror to see his reflection. He looked as haggard and tired as I've been. “I like to think that the message is that love will kill you and save you both.”

“Now that- that I know about.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Don't- just don't! Don't make light of the situation, of how I'm feeling. I'm hurting just as much as you are, if not more. I lost a lover and a teammate. I too am a victim of the past.”

“Why are you talking like the world is ending? You could find another Oksanochka anywhere on the streets here. What do you guys call them puck fucks? I'm sure there is no shortage of blonde and buxom here, especially for you.” In that moment all I felt was anger and spite. Oksana was just another plastic, bleach blonde Russian doll. They were a dime a dozen. Jordan- well there was only guy with that crooked smile, those messy blonde waves, those gentle blue eyes, that sweet laugh which could anyone smile, those lips- oh those lips- and there was only guy who could make my heart skip a beat at the sound of his name, who knew exactly what to say and when to say it, who made me feel like there was no one else in the entire world I could safer with.

“I never understood why everyone finds it so hard to understand that I love her. I had her come here in the beginning so that I could have a piece of Russia with me. I'm not denying that there haven't been others on the side. But I love her,” Evgeni, the man I had loved once upon a time, looked at me with those eyes and I understood. “I love her.”

Not only did I understand, I was jealous.