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17 Audition Small was all she felt like, outside the green door, and going through it, too, when her name was called and she stepped away from the other applicants there in the corridor, who were giggling in a muted way, chatting with one another. She had not said anything. The smiling assistant, blond and thin in her leotard, let her slip through the door. There before her he stood, coming forward, stopping, looking from a chosen distance. He was ugly. His legs, hipbones, thighs, arms, chest looked chipped patiently out of stone by someone who knew the effect sought for. But it was he, the famed Arthur himself, who had slaved and starved in New York, launched a new dance movement, traveled through the Midwest, had his big chance in Paris, and brought them stunned and wondering to his feet. "An entirely new formality has come to the dance." So said the articles. She had an idea what it meant, but now was the moment to begin to know, and her brain had gone blank. Then he smiled. The wonder was his facial planes didn't splinter and clatter to the floor, but instead warmth was all that fell out. It landed on her. "Small," he said. "I'm sorry," she got out, wondering if that was right. Anything might be wrong. He came and picked her up carefully, as if she were some object in a shop he could decide to buy. His large hands were under her armpits. He turned her neatly, pushing her shoulders so that her head slanted forward. He looked down the length of her, all the way to her heels. She kept them neat, together. She remembered her 92 The Home Scene 93 uncles, checking over bird dogs they might want to get for hunting. He put her down. "Good things come in small packages." It was better than calling her a runt. What would she do for her classical choice? There had been a list. Debussy. Tones to interpret. He sat far in the dim back of the small auditorium, its stage plain. The assistant set the tape going, a rising tide of sound, "La Mer." Good or not? She finished on time, anyway, but how to tell? He did not speak except to ask, "Next?" "Just sound a note," she said. "Any note?" She nodded. The assistant went to the piano. It was her own idea, devising something like freehand writing of no known language, the rise and fall of distant speech lifted from sound into body motion. She circled forward, sweeping down, hair brooming the floor, then heels lifting in a graceful arc like a wheel. Fleeing, returning . . . flight and trust following one another. Finishing after a backward hinge hard to imagine doing without a show of defiance, she came calmly to her feet at dead center, thinking with more confidence, If he's as good as they say, he'll know it's good. But even thinking that, it was the dance she meant, not herself. He had risen slowly and was coming toward her. He stepped on the stage and carefully, as though improvising a new series of steps, he took her hand. He nodded to his assistant. "Strike a note," he said. "Any note?" He nodded. Gravely, they began to dance together. She was hardly aware of being led, yet she must have been following. "Mother! He's taking me! I'm in! ... Well, no, he doesn't say things, you see, he just does in such a way that you know. . . . Thank Aunt Sally . . . should I call her? Can you call up Al?" Well, thought Kate, hanging up the phone. So that is that. ...

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