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perfectly mobilized in an ice pack, and peel off fake eyelashes. Whatother professions engage in this difficult form of multitasking? Glamorous but aging discus throwers? Transvestite violinists?
    Okay, I was wearing her perfume.
    But it’s just that I used up all my perfume when I was hosing down Andrew’s linens. And I hate not having perfume on. It feels like going into battle without armor. Hers was there. I’m surprised that Neil could smell it. You would think after sweating though a four-act ballet I’d be back to smelling like me again. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Everything about Gwen is so distinctive.

3.
    Mara asked me today if it was strange not having Gwen around and I said, “Yes, a little bit.” In truth, I feel very close to her right now. Possibly because I’m using all her products in the shower and wearing a lot of her clothes. So she’s on me. Well, when hasn’t that been the case?
    Today in class I bit the inside of my cheek during adagio because my neck hurt so badly.
    Today in class I bit the inside of my cheek during adagio because I inhaled and felt a vertiginous exaltation at all the space around me that isn’t Gwen and I needed to ground myself. Grind myself.
    After class I had an unexpectedly rehearsal-free day, so I came back to the apartment with the intention of maybe unpacking a few things, or at least organizing my boxes. Instead I crawled under the covers of Gwen’s bed with an ice pack.
    There has only been one year when Gwen and I were separated. My first year in New York. Up until that point, we haddone all our training together. It was during a summer intensive in Boston that a guest artist teacher approached me and said I should absolutely think about auditioning for the company school in New York.
We
should think, of course. The teacher spoke to Gwen and me as a unit. He offered to talk to our parents for us. Do they understand about these things? he asked. That the company school was the most prestigious in the country? That studying there significantly enhanced your chances of getting hired by a good company, maybe even
the
company? That it was absolutely the most elite training?
    Our parents did understand about these things, but the thought of us trooping off to New York City was pushing it a little. All alone: two teenagers? There was no academic program affiliated with dance training, how would we finish high school? And where would we live? Other kids do it, we explained to them on the phone from Boston. Well,
I
explained. Gwen and I had a system for getting what we wanted, playing to our strengths. I would lay the groundwork with diplomacy, reason, and conviction. Gwen was the closer. At the critical moment she would step forward with something about “achieving our dream.”
    “They may not want us, but if they do then we can’t pass up the opportunity,” I explained. “This is about our whole careers.”
    “It’s just like tennis,” I said, firmly. “This is like … junior Wimbledon.”
    At that time our parents were largely occupied with our younger brother Keith, at twelve a bona fide tennis prodigy. (“Such gifted children!” people would say to my parents, who would respond with “We’re just happy they are finding things that interest them,” in this mildly corrective way.) Keith’s talentstook more parenting than ours. Not only did Mom and Dad have to constantly shuttle him around to tournaments and clinics, but every two months or so Keith would decide that he hated tennis and would quit in some very theatrical way (like, on court during the middle of a match). Gwen and I, of course, were paradigms of dedication and self-discipline. Neither of our parents could understand disinclination to perfectionism. They were truly baffled by Keith. They never told him he had to stick with tennis, but I think Keith was mostly upset by the clear inference that tennis would have to be replaced by something else, and whatever that was would