The Sky is Changing by Zoë Jenny

Sometimes she crashed into bed, sore all over, thinking of the many strained ankles and broken bones of the past years, the discipline and sacrifice, all the sweat, the travelling and failed relationships.
    There had been dancers, choreographers and musicians, all men she had met through work. They were ambitious and full of energy just as she was, and it always followed the same pattern: after the physical attraction came the power game, and even when she tried to make it work it always failed, because ultimately their careers were more important. Too much hard work had been put in to give it up for so mediocre a thing as a domestic life.
    Then, of course, there was the exhilaration, the passion of being on stage, performing in front of hundreds of people, the attention, the limelight; although the light was cold and harsh. That’s what the dancers universally agreed upon – performing was better then sex, better then an orgasm and better then anything they had experienced. It was the one thing Claire missed most and found the hardest to accept, the fact that she would never be able to perform again.
    During her last year in the company, the fights and bitchiness between the dancers started to get on her nerves. The competitiveness of the everyone-wants-to-be-the-best atmosphere, which used to drive her on, was suddenly wearing her down. Younger dancers appeared, ambitiously fighting their way up the career ladder, and dancers of her own age dropped out, settling down to have babies or become teachers in favour of a slower-paced life.
    One of her best friends had to stop dancing for good because, after years of jumping up and down on hard surfaces, her hip was so badly worn out that she needed a replacement. But for Claire, there would be another show, another night, another round of applause. Surely, with her willpower, she could have gone on for a few more years and maybe, with some luck, become a principal dancer.
    It was around the events of September 11th 2001 that something changed. She had just broken up with a choreographer the night before. Anne had taken the week off to be in Hamburg with Karl and, without her, the flat they shared seemed big and empty. Anne and Karl had been going strong for several months and Claire sensed it was something serious. This was despite Anne having promised to never marry a German, as they regarded German men as unromantic. Once Anne had had a fling with a German who was completely silent and didn’t even move his facial muscles when he made love to her. “It was like being with a ghost!” Anne had told her, horrified, when she came back home the next day. From then on, they always made jokes about German men being somewhat inept showing any kind of emotion, let alone passion. In the international surroundings of the company, Claire had had liaisons with Russians, Eastern Europeans and Americans. Morgan was a choreographer from Boston. He was 45 and madly in love with her – too much in fact. He wanted to take her back to New York where he had an assignment. In bed he was slow and peaceful, like a grazing cow. She liked his plump belly, the cosiness of his imperfect body, so refreshingly different from the hard, sinewy physiques of the male dancers who surrounded her. She could throw herself onto him, with plenty of space to rest her tired head, and sink into his soft consoling roundness. After they made love he used to smoke a cigarette and talk about them living together in a brownstone house somewhere in downtown Manhattan, surrounded by arty friends, having a fabulous life in Greenwich Village. Claire never responded; she was just happy to lay her head on his broad chest, listening to his deep voice and looking at the smoke rising, slowly disappearing in the air. However, his desire to take her with him became ever more insistent.
    Finally, eating dinner at a cheap Italian after a show, the adrenalin still running high, Claire told him that there was no way