Swim or Sink

The website said the key would be somewhere on the porch. I scratched around the mailbox’s open mouth and flipped over stone animal statues. I walked around the house, peeked inside dark windows. My last effort was sliding my finger along the top of the door frame. With nothing but a splinter to show for that, I tried the doorknob with little hope. It opened easily, like it hadn’t been fully closed.

In my stops to several cities over the previous months, I’d stayed in rooms rented out in people’s homes. They always had a lock box for the key, or told me where to find their hidden cranny. This one, Kat, had not messaged me once.

I entered under a steepled ceiling striped with wood beams. Stuffed chairs crowded around a cluttered coffee table, taking up most of the living room. Dark wood shelves filled with books shadowed the tight space.

The listing said it was likely no one would be home during my week-long stay, that there would be space for me to rehearse and be alone, and that seemed true. The only signs of humans were newscaster’s whispers that trickled out of a radio in the corner. But a cluttered adjoining dining room, where a long table was covered with mountains of paper and arched books, said otherwise.

I checked upstairs and peeked into rooms along the narrow hallway, there were only three including a tiny bathroom. Kat wasn’t in his open bedroom, shoes were lined up neatly along the end of his bed as if they hadn’t been touched for a while.

A small chalkboard with my name scrawled on it dangled on the only shut door. I put my bag on the bed and sat on the wood floor to warm up. With my back flat against the bed, my outstretched legs reached the dresser. I folded my torso over my legs, bending in half to stretch my muscles coiled after the car ride.

I shoved my earbuds into place and lightly moved my arms with the melody. My upper body swayed while my eyes stayed shut, like I was meditating, and I almost was. In my head I was sitting front row watching myself on stage performing the steps completely. I kept stretching on the floor and reading through each step while I played the song on repeat.

Above rows of scribbled notes in the spiral, twenty red tally marks glared. Each told a story of harsh critiques and failed auditions. My jumbled handwriting detailed placement of different body parts, time stamps for the song and their connected movements.

I rolled out kinks in my neck, rotated my arms in large circles to loosen my shoulders. I imagined boiling lights glaring at me and an empty, large space. I grumbled, rubbed my eyes with my back of my hand. I started the song over, went back to the top of the page twenty more times before my phone’s alarm went off.

I slipped a thin sweater over my fitted halter top and combed my hair back before leaving my room. I breathed and rolled my shoulders back with one last glance at the mirror. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard shuffling in the dining room. A man with dreadlocks tied together at the base of his neck bent sifted through papers in the mountain of notes.

“Kat?” I said.
He looked at me, surprised. “Which one are you?” “Oh, I’m Mae. I’m staying here just for the week.”

“Ah, right, right,” he wiped his glasses off on his shirt. “Kat. I’ve got a project I’m working on downstairs, I’ll be outta your hair.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m headed to my audition anyways.” I walked further into the living room to get a closer look of his project plans.

He clapped his hands together and threw his head back like he’d been punched. “That’s right, you’re the ballerina. Don’t break a leg!”

I let out one nervous laugh, brushed off the bad luck. “Thanks,” I said.

I stepped toward the door and it opened before I touched it. A man carrying an armful of silver cylinders stepped inside. A beer belly stretched out his grey t-shirt, his tall height covered his face from my view. He balanced the supplies in his arms and walked toward the kitchen. The duo exchanged a few words then headed to the basement, sketches in hand.

“Just wait one minute,” I said to my cab driver as she parked near Loyola University’s visitor center.

I jogged to a statue twice my size of the school’s mascot, and took out my phone. I made sure the lion’s barred teeth were in sharp focus behind my fake smile in the camera’s shot. I snapped pictures of the campus, it’s flowering trees and old brick buildings, from different angles

I made my way to the backseat of the cab and directed the driver to head downtown.

LOVE Loyola so far, I texted mom along with the photo of myself. Their dance theory program seems great. Campus is beautiful. Maybe Chicago is it?

The cab swerved to the curb from the middle of a crowded street, my driver and exchanged honks and middle fingers with other yellow car drivers. Brown street slush painted my tights, making them look filthy compared to the studio’s powder blue and white walls inside. A rainbow of leotards bent and floated in every open space available in the lobby, like fishing lures bobbing together in a lake.

I found a cranny in a side hallway and stretched my legs out to each side, bent over one leg then the other. Other dancers scrutinized me and each other like prey challenging others and targeting the most vulnerable. Twenty minutes later, a woman wearing all black, her temples stretched back and tense in a shellacked bun. She called my name along with a dozen others.

A tall, scrawny man faced us, his back to a wall of tall mirrors. Instantly his ropy thighs executed steps we were meant to follow. We ran through the sixty-second combination of rapid poses and smooth movements dozens of times before another director joined and split us into trios. We performed for the other groups. I rested my sweat-soaked back against the mirror, but no sitting.

The first trio was made of three women who had loosened their buns into half-up styles or dangling braids. They moved in unison to the heavy bass, like they’d danced together for years, knees and elbows bent at the exact same angles in sync. Their faces were relaxed. They were the music, they breathed the steps. It was like their minds were empty and the notes pulled their bodies in whichever way it wanted.

It was my group’s turn; the other two took their hair down while mine remained pinned up. Several pulsating notes counted down the first few seconds of song before the choreography came in. My partners moved softly, slight neck rolls or lifts of a heel, moving with the music. I stood still, hands on hips, mind fixed on remembering my movements. I stared at myself in the mirror, smoothed my hair. When the song swelled in a prolonged note we extended our right legs to the sky, our arms splitting apart to reach for the floor and ceiling. I’d catch myself a count or two behind the others when I looked over to compare my placements to theirs, or check myself in the mirror. Their faces were gentle, subdued, while mine was hard and focused. We bowed after the final step, the resting dancers courtesy clapped and avoided eye contact when they walked to join us in center.

Next was a ballet technique portion, and a brief interview with the wrinkled woman, the artistic director Diana. I entered her office, sweaty and warm from the movement still. I handed her my portfolio. She looked skeptically at my resume, then at me.

“Why are you here?” she asked in a tone bordering on annoyance, like I was wasting her time.

“I’m sorry?”

“Graduated top of your class, but your performance repertoire is minimal. This resume tells me you’re a scholar, not a performer. So I want to know, why are you here, auditioning for just that?”

I grew aware of my shoulders creeping close to my ears. I inhaled and pushed them back, lifting my chin.

“I earned a degree studying dance,” I said. “I studied the meanings, the history, behind it all so I can be on a stage dancing. My brain knows and why the body moves in dance the way it does, and because I spent the time doing that, sure, there wasn’t space for a few ballet classes. But who are we to say theory can’t translate as performace?”

Diana smirked and nodded slowly, her eyes locked on mine. “Very well, then,” she said.

After several brief questions, she thanked me with a cold handshake and promised to call me within a couple weeks.

I spent the cab ride back to Kat’s with my eyes squeezed shut, replaying moments from the past several hours like a song I couldn’t get out of my head. The front door was still unlocked once I got back at dusk. A woman lounged in lawn chair across the street in a multicolored, drapy sundress with a cigarette wedged in her lips, the same spot she’d been a few hours before. The house was still and empty again, but space on the dining room table had been cleared of books to make room for metal scrapes and a couple power tools. I picked up what looked like that rubber previously hugged a bike tire.

I scanned the spines of books spreadeagled on the table. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Ultimate Ocean Book. The basement door screeched open.

Kat came out with a burst of muffled rock music, which muted once he shut the door. He lifted the welding mask that covered his face.

“Ballerina! How’d it go?” He wiped grease off his hands with a dingy rag.
I shrugged, shook my head. “We’ll see. I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”
He filled a glass with water from the kitchen sink, I said no. “I don’t about that whole

keeping your hope down idea. That stuff right there is one fat pile of hope,” he said, gesturing to the heap of notes and metals I stood next to. I glanced at a boat propeller drawing and nodded.

“I guess I just don’t think about it. I’m going to go up to lie down, thank you again for—“

“This little dream is all I think about, what’s your secret? I fail, I go back to the drawing board, I succeed, I keep going. How do you step away from it all, Ballerina?”

I stalled with several “um, wells.” Kat grabbed an orange from the counter and bit into the skin. I faked brushing something off my tights to hide my twisted, disgusted face.

“Come check her out,” Kat waved the orange hand toward the basement door, like he was marshalling a grounded plane into position with a neon baton. I stood at the top of the stairs, hoping to glimpse what was coming before I continued. He waited for me at the middle and told me it wouldn’t bite.

Stay on the stairs, I thought. Be ready to run back up.

A purple octopus curled its painted tentacle down the sloped ceiling leading to basement. The stairs squeaked with each slow step I took, the smell of cat litter and burning metal, like a mechanics shop when my car got fixed, grew stronger with each sound. Close to the end, something shiny glinted out of the corner of my eye. A boat of jagged steel sheets took up most of the cement room, situated between shelves of paint cans and tool boxes and plastic boxes.

“This is Ophelia,” Kat said as he shifted materials around to form a path for me. He continued talking in an animated way like he was divulging this information for the first time. “I always loved fish, so I wanted to sail, you see. Then I went scuba diving and, all the fish, wow. They blew me away. I realized then if you sail you only see the fish when you’re eating ’em.”

I grazed the edge of one massive propeller, which looked like it had been filed down from the size of one attached to an airplane. “So, it’s a boat?” I asked.

“Too easy,” Kat chuckled. “Nah, a submarine! ever been down to the sea? Like, really in it? There’s eels, stingrays, jellyfish, fish with eyes barely in their sockets. It’s beautiful. You can’t hear much but there’s so much to see, and that’s how I like it. Busy but quiet, vibrant but peaceful. After 40 years I’ve had it with this loud, loud city.” He looked at the grimy window as several car horns blared blocks away.

Kat searched for a spare welding mask for me to wear as I tried to makes excuses to go back upstairs. He babbled over me nonstop. I gave up and looked at metal scraps covering the floor, a jumble of findings from a junkyard dive it seemed.

“There! She! Blows!” Kat proudly pulled up another mask and handed it to me. “You want to dance under some spotlight on a stage, Ballerina? Put that on and I’ll show you some real exciting lights.”

He knelt beside the submarine skeleton and pulled his face shield down, dreadlocks falling over his shoulders. Sparks flew and steel screamed as Kat’s drill punctured deep into it.

“Wanna help?” He mumbled under the mask when the squeals stopped. He held a blowtorch out to me.

“I don’t know how to,” I said.
“Just give her a shot.”
He came over and slid the mask over my hair, quickly showed me blowtorch basics. He pointed to some gaps in the submarine’s curved hull me where to melt the metals together on the submarine’s curved hull.

I flared the torch and watched the metal molded together like the dancers at my audition. Silver and brown liquid metals pushed one another and warped as the flame told it to, coming together in a final bow, one line sealing the gaps. I laughed gently beneath my welding mask.

Kat spent the next hour showing me through the blueprints, reading off notes he’d written about the ocean and engineering from his textbooks. He didn’t have a degree past high school, I learned, and had just began thinking about Ophelia a couple years before.

The next four mornings of my stay, I woke up and we’d spend time with Ophelia. I had two more auditions in the afternoons, where I was met with the same “why” question during the interview. I wondered slightly if Diana had notified other companies in the city.

On the last day at Kat’s house, the house was dam as usual, but entirely the silent, not even the tinny radio reporters chatted. Kat wasn’t around, the basement was dark. Tools surrounding Ophelia were cleared away, but a lightbulb taken from a car’s headlight rested on the workbench. I remembered Kat saying this would be the final touch, something about a beacon of hope like a lighthouse. If I couldn’t say goodbye to Kat in person, I wanted to do something for him. I grabbed a mask, screwdriver, ladder and the lightbulb. I climbed to Ophelia’s top and held onto the thick metal antenna. There was a hole cut just for the bulb, like a socket waiting for a new eyeball. I situated it in place and drilled it in. I looked at wires in the cockpit, wanting to turn on the light, see the eye blink after it came to life. My phone buzzed in my pocket; the cab driver was outside.

I picked up Elsie, my fat grey cat, after unlocking my apartment. The Minnesota cold had leaked through the windows. I clicked my phone on and a notification from Diana popped up.

Dear Mae,
We appreciate you taking the time to audition for our company. We regret to inform you you will not

be joining our class of apprentices during this round. We encourage you to continue your practice and audition again in the future.

Kindly,

Diana Girard

I threw my phone on my bed, grabbed my laptop, cued the first audition song. The next four hours I floated through the combination, thinking of the warm metal fighting against the flame before giving in and becoming goo. My muscles burned but the movements yielded to the adrenaline.

Close to midnight I picked up my phone once again. There was a voicemail from Kat.

“Today’s the day! Better watch the news. Thanks for your help, Ballerina,” he said, loudly with the giddy voice of a child.”

I pulled up Chicago’s TV news station my laptop. A breaking news video rolled at the top of the page. A metallic cylinder wading on the shore. People in multicolored jackets filled the beach, like birds flocking to see what fish they could catch that day.

“A local man built this submarine on his own with no education beyond high school,” a slender news anchor with bright red lipstick smudging her yellow microphone stepped just in front of the metal mass. “Now, that he’s going to test run it himself by sailing not on, but under, Lake Michigan.”

The camera focused in on Kat waving as he pulled opened the door. He waved blissfully to the onlookers, who didn’t wave back. Some laughed, others shouted “don’t do it, idiot!” but most just stared. He slid in and shut the door. I felt like I was watching the first astronauts touch the moon.

The submarine gurgled and puttered before sliding into the dark water, like a sea monster going home. It gradually sank into the depths as it inched forward while me and the crowd and the camera watched. The lightbulb lingered at the surface for some time, the camera slowly zoomed in on it. In a second it sank with the rest, leaving the water flat and quiet.