Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

The next day Georgia and the company went home. She was tired and broken, but more than anything she was glad she could finally leave the hotel. The place where it happened, the room where they slept on her couch together, the bed where they had sex in only a few doors down the hall. She longed for home, a place where everything would be normal again and where it would be easier to forget. But it seemed as if they were everywhere, even back in New York. Songs on the radio, tour advertisements in the papers, even one of his goddamn movies on television. And she even tried Googling him, but when two pictures of him and his wife popped up amongst the first twenty hits she decided that was not a smart thing to do.

So to forget she concentrated on rehearsals. They were doing Sleeping Beauty this summer and even though she had done that piece a million times before, she managed to push herself to another level. Every morning she was the first to arrive and at night she was the last to leave. Because at home there was no one and that, for the first time in her life meant there was silence. No matter how high she turned up the volume on her radio or tv. For the first time in her life she really hated that there was no one she could share her life with.

There wasn’t even anyone she could talk to about her feelings, whatever they were. She had been very close to telling Yasmin a couple of times, but then she remembered how starstruck her friend had been in the lobby that day and that was enough to stop her. She just couldn’t take the risk, because if anyone found out it could get him in some serious trouble.

It was early April, almost a month since Chicago when Lodinski asked her to come to his office after rehearsals. That wasn't usually a good thing but Georgia knew for sure that he admired her new found dedication, even though he could never guess the reason behind it, so it had to be about something else.

When she walked in he sat behind his tacky polished wooden desk that was probably supposed to make him look even more powerful and mighty then he already was. He pointed at the dark blue velvet chair on the other side and she sat down on it. Not comfortable to be alone in a room with him. The amount of times he had tried to hit on her in that place…

“Georgia, I don’t have much time so I’ll keep it short. The thing is that we finally know how much our benefit raised in Chicago the other month and we invited Jon Bon Jovi and some of his people over for dinner at the Plaza on Friday and I expect you to keep me company as you seemed to get along with him at the benefit.”

He pulled a meaningful face at her and for a moment Georgia believed he knew everything. But then she realised she had other things to worry about. Dinner with hím in a few days, for example.

“What day is it?” she asked, not able to think of a better question.

“It’s Wednesday Georgia, and you better show up, this is not an invitation you can turn down, I demand that you will be there, it is part of your position. You are the face of the New York City Ballet.”

Georgia raised a hand to stop him. She knew all this but even so he loved to remind her.

“Who else is coming?”

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed as if she annoyed him with her questions. “You, me, Martha Bachman, Jon Bon Jovi and I believe he’s bringing two of his people. And we also invited some photographers for when we present the cheque to him, of course.” 

Even though he hadn’t told her to go, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Dinner for six, she thought and tried to picture them at a table together with four people who had no clue of what happened between him and her.

“Well, I just hope we raised a whole lot of money then,” she said as she walked to the door. He didn’t stop her.

“Two million dollars should be enough to get him out of bloody Jersey, shouldn’t it Georgia?”

It was and she knew it. And despite the fact that she already dreaded to see him, she kind of liked that he had to spend dinner with her, because that would force him to think about her again.