"Sleeping Beauty" by Gerald Elias, in Noir at the Salad Bar, edited by Verena Rose, Harriette Sacker, and Shawn Reilly Simmons, Level Best Books, 2017.
A long way from noir, but an interesting piece of work. The nameless narrator is a classical musician and, while eating at an elegant restaurant in Manhattan, he witnesses a woman attacking a waitress for no obvious reason. It turns out that she is a former star ballerina.
By coincidence, our narrator meets the ballerina a few years later and learns the reason for the attack. This is a subtle little story, more about nuance and emotion than action, which seems somehow fitting for the professions involved.
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