So he decided to play a stolid bourgeois gentleman today, Sophia noted, though his choice of words granted a bit of satisfaction. He should play as cool as he liked, she decided. This would only make it all the more gratifying to see what wipes that impassive look from his face later.

“Oh, I promise to make it very enlightening,” she agreed smoothly, lips twitching into a smirk. The brunette then moved to coyly slip her left arm under his right, so that they might walk arm in arm about their tour. It was as much a bold gesture as it was a claim on her territory, and she didn’t much care who saw (there would of course be people who saw, though hardly anyone with an opinion of consequence to either of them). She guided them together up the steps to the stage, rounding to face the audience for a moment so that Mister Dempsey might enjoy a change of perspective. From here, he could see across the full theater - and the direct line of sight it afforded performers to his box seat from a few weeks ago.

They moved leisurely backstage then, to the left wing where Sophia paused to point out various points of interest. She was more knowledgeable than perhaps most performers about the inner mechanics of how things worked. But then, she was the only performer with her own share of investment in this business. This theater felt as much her property as any home ever did.

Sophia released Ozy’s arm when they rounded to some of the set pieces for Giselle, grinning over the tomb she descended into during the finale. The brunette flitted around it in a variation of the steps that turned her into a small circle in position in front of the cross, the back of her left heel almost imperceptibly tapping against a designated point on the grave marker. The move caused a small platform to appear, marking the space where a dancer could stand and descend gracefully into her tomb. From the perspective of only those on stage, the platform led to a small sitting room that even had a vanity for a mirror, powder and lipstick for touch-ups, and an empty cup for tea. Here she would wait, comfortably resting until the end of the performance. “There’s room for only one of us in there,” she teased quietly, waiting patiently for the gentleman to have his look.

While she did, her eyes alighted on what she had been working towards - a sliver of a spiral staircase, built so vertically that it very nearly was a ladder. “Are you afraid of heights, Mister Dempsey? If not, I must insist that this is very much worth the trouble,” she had moved from the tombstone to the base of the staircase, indicating their next adventure with a graceful gesture of the hand. This is what led to the catwalks above.

---