The Stardance Trilogy Read Free

what the record industry pays top dollar for: a mix-man with savvy enough to know which ax is wailing at the moment and mike it high—and the sense to have given the heaviest dudes the best mikes. There are few others like me. I’m the best.”
    She took it the way she had the compliment to herself—at face value. Usually when I say things like that, I don’t give a damn what reaction I get, or I’m being salty and hoping for outrage. But I was pleased at her acceptance, pleased enough to bother me. A faint irritation made me go brutal again, knowing it wouldn’t work. “So what all this leads to is that Norrey was hoping I’d suggest some similar form of sublimation for you. Because I’ll make it in dance before you will.”
    She stubborned up. “I don’t buy that, Charlie. I know what you’re talking about, I’m not a fool, but I think I can beat it.”
    “Sure you will. You’re too damned big, lady. You’ve got tits like both halves of a prize honeydew melon and an ass that any actress in Hollywood would sell her parents for and in Modern dance that makes you d-e-d dead, you haven’t got a chance. Beat it? You’ll beat your head in first, how’m I doing, Norrey?”
    “For Christ’s sake, Charlie!”
    I softened. I can’t work Norrey into a tantrum—I like her too much. It almost kept us living together, once. “I’m sorry, hon. My leg’s giving me the mischief, and I’m stinkin’ mad. She ought to make it—and she won’t. She’s your sister, and so it saddens you. Well I’m a total stranger, and it enrages me.”
    “How do you think it makes me feel?” Shara blazed, startling us both. I hadn’t known she had so much voice. “So you want me to pack it in and rent me a camera, huh, Charlie? Or maybe sell apples outside the studio?” A ripple ran up her jaw. “Well I’ll be damned by all the gods in southern California before I’ll pack it in. God gave me the large economy size, but there is not a surplus pound on it and it fits me like a glove and I can by Jesus dance it and I will. You may be right—I may beat my head in first. But I will get it done.” She took a deep breath. “Now I thank you for your kind intentions, Char…Mister Armst…oh shit.” The tears came and she left hastily, spilling a quarter-cup of cold coffee on Norrey’s lap.
    “Charlie,” Norrey said through clenched teeth, “why do I like you so much?”
    “Dancers are dumb.” I gave her my handkerchief.
    “Oh.” She patted at her lap awhile. “How come you like me?”
    “Video men are smart.”
    “Oh.”
    I spent the afternoon in my apartment, reviewing the footage I’d shot that morning, and the more I watched, the madder I got.
    Dance requires intense motivation at an extraordinarily early age—a blind devotion, a gamble on the as-yet-unrealized potentials of heredity and nutrition. The risk used to be higher in ballet, but by the late ’80s Modern had gotten just as bad. You can begin, say, classical ballet training at age six—and at fourteen find yourself broad-shouldered, the years of total effort utterly wasted. Shara had set her childhood sights on Modern dance—and found out too late that God had dealt her the body of a woman.
    She was not fat—you have seen her. She was tall, big-boned tall, and on that great frame was built a rich, ripely female body. As I ran and reran the tapes of Birthing , the pain grew in me until I even forgot the ever present aching of my own legs. It was like watching a supremely gifted basketball player who stood four feet tall.
    To make it in Modern dance nowadays, it is essential to get into a big company. You cannot be seen unless you are visible. (Government subsidy operates on the principle that Big Is Better—a sadly self-fulfilling prophecy. The smaller companies and independents have always had to knife each other for pennies—but since the early ’80s there haven’t been any pennies.)
    “Merce Cunningham saw her dance, Charlie. Martha Graham