The Performer

 The stage door, heavy with dust and peeling paint, complained on stiff hinges as she pushed it open. Her slight figure slipped behind its black bulk, disappearing from the roar of the city. As the door closed with a thunk behind her, she stood in the comparative darkness, the thrum of the traffic quiet.

Hoisting a heavy bag higher up on her shoulder, she reached out a hand, her nails painted in lurid orange, and flicked on a grubby light switch. A bar of fluorescent, yellow light, hanging on chains, clicked and flickered high above her. A black painted corridor, narrow like the tunnel of a rabbit warren, appeared before her, luminous vinyl tape spewed all over the floor. She stepped forward, and walked past walls littered with call sheets, casting sheets, rehearsal schedules, phone numbers, photographs. She turned abruptly into a door marked ‘Dressing Room 5’. The click of the light switch this time revealed a clothes rail heaving with tulle, lycra, ribbons, feathers and sequins. A floor heaped with pointe shoes. A shabby poster, scrawled with a whole bunch of signatures, hung framed on a wall. A dressing table was loaded with makeup, brushes and several glass vases heaving with vastly expensive flowers.

She moved across to the mirror, ringed in blinding light bulbs that gently buzzed in the silence. She contemplated her reflection, her pupils small in the light. Curls of hair, painted red, snaked out from under a pretty headscarf. A cropped denim jacket, festooned with drawings and badges, concealed her tiny frame. After a moment of stillness, she shrugged the jacket to the ground, and dropped the cumbersome bag with a thud. She pulled her T-shirt from the band of her tracksuit bottoms and tied the front of it into a knot that sat at the centre of her chest, revealing a belly of smooth, toned muscle. She leaned forward over the table, and picked up a lipstick tube, shiny and gold. She plucked off the lid, and twisted up the stick of red paint. Carefully, she drew it across her lips, and pursed them at herself in the mirror. Then she flashed a smile – mega watt beams bounced about the room for an instant.

Her hands fell to the back of the chair that sat at the dressing table, and she leaned back, her spine curved like a flying fish. She straightened, then dropped her head and arms to the ground in front of her, feet splayed, hips high in the air. She sucked in a calming lungful of air, then straightened again, bending her head first one way and then the other. She clapped her hands together once, and exhaled sharply. Without another glance at the mirror, she turned and swept out of the room. The sound of her own footsteps seemed to cheer her on as she continued down the narrow corridor. She passed through a backstage area, past a crowd of flight cases, a parked van, coils and coils of cables. A hum was filtering through the air. Voices, shouting and calling, ignited flutters in her gut. Light, stained with pink, shone up ahead. In the next moment she had stepped onto the stage, and, it seemed, all lamps swung in her direction.  A cheer went up from the collection of people who stood about, stretching, warming up, twisting. ‘She’s here! The star of the show!’