ASTONISH ME - MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD

Astonish Me - Pg 257

 She must be a real dancer, this girl. She had the cursedness, the insatiability, the doom. Other girls, many girls, have wanted him, but their desire was always playful or sultry. Her desire was like a whip at her back. When he looked into her eyes, he could see she was suffering from it, the wanting, and for a moment, they understood each other. Tu m'étonnes, she said. You astonish me.

Astonish Me - Pg 252

   At the end of the act, he dances alone, the speed and difficulty of his steps increasing as he goes. His concentration is so absolute, his body so close to the breaking point, that darkness contracts around him. There is nothing outside himself. He turns grandes pirouettes a la seconde at center stage, spotting off a red light at the back of the theater. Somewhere his parents are sitting together, watching him. His head whips around and around. Sweat flies from him like spray from a fountain. He can't turn anymore, but he does, his stomach and back aching, his leg burning. His lungs, which have always looked after themselves, now need to be reminded--ordered--to fill with air, then begged to fill again, one more time. What confusion of fate and electricity will one day tell his heart to stop? Could you live forever if you had enough will? He turns and turns until his leg drops of its own accord to retiré and he is spun through two final rotations before he falls to his knees and the lights go off. The fall is planned, but he would not be able to stay on his feet anyway. A breath, and then the applause crashes onto his back as the curtain comes down. He gets to his feet; the curtain flies up, and he bows. He can see the conductor, a few rows of faces, and then nothing, a roaring emptiness. He bows again.

Astonish Me - Pg 249

 "Nothing has changed," he told Jacob a thousand futile times. "Please, Dad, don't let things change. I'll never think of anyone but you as my father.
   "Please still be proud of me," Harry had begged. "Please."
   And that plea was why Jacob had endured the news that Arslan and Harry were going to appear together on 60 Minutes to tell their story, why he had tried not to be demolished by Harry's participation in this ballet, why he had taken Harry to the Bahamas after Chloe and Arslan had gotten married and kept him company while he stared at the ocean in silence, why he didn't miss his flight, and why he is now sitting in the dark with thousands of glittering people waiting to see his own life be danced by a man name Georges Lazaresco.

Astonish Me - Pg 247

   "I know why you married me," he told her later, following her up the stairs. "Because I have dark eyes. Because I'm not tall. Because you knew you could pass his son off as mine."
   Joan stopped and turned, slowly, deliberately, her elegant head swiveling on her slender neck, and the grace that had once made him proud now made him want to sweep her feet violently out from under her. "I married you," she said, "because I wanted a life with you."

Astonish Me - Pg 244

 Then he is though the airport, and a taxi is pulling him past the deteriorating flying saucers of the World's Fair, past row houses and a cemetery and neighborhoods that mean nothing to him, over the Queensboro Bridge among secretive Town Cars, Midtown standing up like a waiting bully. Then a rushed shower, three attempts before his bow tie is tied, cursing his clumsy fingers and his sweating, miserable face in the mirror, wishing  for Joan to help him, remembering not to wish for Joan. A minibar bottle of Jim Beam, and he hurries through the city with all the other hurrying people.

Astonish Me - Pg 244

   The plane's engine is the audible rush of hours passing, time pushing him to New York even as he braces against it. He tries not to think, only to surrender to the flow of obligation.

Astonish Me - Pg 242

 She wonders if their shared childhood, spent hearing bizarre stories of love and devastation and enchantment, women dying from heartbreak, women turning into birds, prepared them for the tangling of their lives, if this ballet is a form of therapy.

Astonish Me - Pg 241

   Chloe feels the presence of Arslan's body as if it were her own ghost. She won't disrupt her form to look down, but she is peripherally aware of his leg in black sweats sliding out and in, out and in. When they turn to face the other way, she listens to him breathing behind her, the scrape of his slippers on the floor. In the mirror on the far wall, she sees his face over her shoulder and knows from his inward look that he is not aware of her in the same way. He focuses on his dancing so completely that there is no room for anything else.

Astonish Me - Pg 239

 They must know it's true. Neither had laughed. The man had said No, but more like someone who sees the reaper sliding in under the door than someone who disbelieves.

Astonish Me - Pg 238

   The look Arslan and Chloe give each other is full of the kid of solidarity that can only come from love and conspiracy, if those are two things and not one. She sees they have already thought of a solution to this problem.

Astonish Me - Pg 232

   "Oh, Chloe," he says, putting an arm around her shoulders. His grasp is gentle, but she can feel his strength. "You make me so sad. We are both sad tonight. Okay. Come with me anyway. We need someone to keep us company. I have a guest room. I have milk and cookies."
   She wants to be proud, to say no. At least she wants to ask why he has suddenly focused on her, but she knows if his answer is not perfect (and what would the perfect answer be?), she will have to go home to her cheap futon in her tiny bedroom partitioned from a windowless corner of her shared apartment. So instead she asks, "Why are you sad?"
   "I am sad because I am an old man, and nobody wants to sleep with me. And because I am Russian, and we are always sad late at night."

Astonish Me - Pg 225

   Then they are in their seats, and the back of Arslan's head, his real head, the head she has held between her hands, is six rows up, tilting sometimes to catch whatever the woman beside him is saying, and then he is a precisely identified bit of darkness that never fades into the rest of the darkness as the gala begins, never stops itching at her attention.

Astonish Me - Pg 221

 Her body is rigid, but at least that makes her easy to lift. He practically tosses her up into the air. From her new height, she glowers at the audience, at Harry in it. She is not a fairy; she is an avenging angel. The counterfeit sparkling, smiling prettiness she has worked so hard to stick to herself like sugar has been swept away. She knows what she is doing is wrong for her role, and she feels sorry for her cavalier, but she is burning. The consuming pain she felt after her father died had burrowed into her center and still smolders there like a coal fire. In New York, the teachers told her to try not to feel, to just work with the music, or to think of the movements as cold, crisp tasks her body must carry out. But she can't. Feeling is what allows her to dance at all.

Astonish Me - Pg 209

   When Joan reads in the newspaper how thousands of people were arrested for looting and arson and running wild in the dark streets, how people ripped the grates off storefronts with chains attached to the bumpers of cars and smashed the windows and took everything inside, how muggers mugged one another, stole what had already been stolen, she is not surprised. Darkness is permission, if you want it to be.

Astonish Me - Pg 197

 He sees his arms and legs, the sweat on his face, Arslan moving toward the other side of the room, and, ghosted over all of it, he sees himself and Chloe as they had been on the floor. They were so used to watching themselves in the mirror, neither could keep from looking. In sex, as they never would in dance, they had looked perfect.

Astonish Me - Pg 196

 He knows he could not replicate the feat, not for a million dollars, but somehow that time when Chloe flew at him, eyes blazing in her tiny face, he had snatched her out of the air in a perfect fish dive, as good as the Russians', maybe better, maybe more ferocious and brilliant and dangerous. After, as it dawned on them that they had not gone down in a heap, his arms, which had locked around her of their own accord, refused to lift her up and set her back en pointe, and instead he held her, almost upside down, her arms open and relaxed, and they watched themselves in the mirror, winded and bloodied and full of disbelief. In fact, he never put her on her feet but instead lowered her to the floor of the dreary basement studio. Things had proceeded rapidly, unstoppably. He had peeled off her leotard and tights like one long snakeskin, exposing her imagined flesh, her familiar shape.

Astonish Me - Pg 195

 It had begun to rain, and she dropped off the windowsill and replaced the ferns. Harry helped her close the windows. Rain tapped politely, asking to be let in, and then started hammering and hammering against the glass.

Astonish Me - Pg 185

   He rubs her back the way his mother rubs his when he  is sick or sad, feeling the sharp edges of her shoulder blades through her tank top, the bumps of her spine, the flat wings of muscle. her grief makes her distant despite the nearness of her body; her vertebrae slide under his fingers like worry beads. He wants to wipe away some of her sadness. "Chloe?" he whispers. "You know I love you."

Astonish Me - Pg 184

 He is sure he knows her body better than anyone else, much better than the boys who get to touch it everywhere, probably better than she know it. When she walks toward him in the halls at school, he prepares, without thinking, to lift her. He knows the exact weight of her body, the limits of its strength, the smell of its sweat. His fingers have left bruises on her inner thighs, her hips, her arms.