From

The Manager

A new novel by Christopher Shaw, due from Miller Pond Editions, Spring, 2025.

"My closet was useless—an old blazer, one new pair of jeans, bad chinos, wrinkled bad ties from the sixties, one white oxford shirt for funerals. I patched together a costume that I knew would never pass Sally's judgment, who had the strange notion that somehow because of my job I must have had access to deep venerable monies and proper bourgeois effects. Alas, my only shoes at the time were a pair of fine Italian hiking boots which took a wonderful shine. In the context of the place and time they would have to suffice.

  Before the ball, Sally told me to meet her at the Olympic Arena, where she had seats for Olga Zakova's solo exhibition. On the opening evening of the games the Russian diva had skated a similar pairs exhibition with her sometime second Yuri Blasimov, which in my oblivious state (per Sally) I had missed. The exhibition took place at seven, and the ball would begin immediately afterward.

Olga's music was Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," a bold choice. Her leotard, as Denis had made clear, was bold as well. She swept onto the ice from the tunnel in turquoise skates and stood, stately, long- and high-necked, like a wonderful crane. Then she stepped out on to the ice on her points, dancing so tentatively, respectfully, contemplatively, before giving her body over to Coltrane's modal flow and McCoy Tyner's percussive piano.

"Oh, my god, Walt," Sally said.

"I know," I said.

Her physicality, her spins and axels and jumps recalled Nureyev in their altitude

and athleticism but held other dimensions of expression including the melancholy I had seen in her face as she got up and left the Rexall with the manager, as I was now calling him, this Chernyenko character with the topcoat and the watch. The audience gasped and clapped at every move. She embodied the famous Coltrane track and its wild flights and runs with her own wild flights. When it was over she went around bowing gratefully and elegantly for the uproarious ovation, collected some of the roses being thrown out on the famous ice where two years earlier her nation's hockey masters had been humiliated by an American team cobbled together from college kids, minor league players, and has-beens. Finally, donning a cape brought by an aide, she turned and departed through the tunnel back into the women’s' lockers."

Miller Pond Editions

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