Amour Amour

by Krista Ritchie

  “Every day,” he says lowly, “I hold a person’s life in my hands. The circus is based one-hundred percent off trust. I give it all to someone, and they give it all to me. I’m asking you, right now, to trust me.”

  His words seem genuine. His eyes seem confident. And somewhere, I begin to calm. Somewhere I reach into the furthest places of my mind and rewire the responses that say stay cautious. The ones Shay tightened before I left.

  I nod for Nikolai to continue, my hands heavy on his muscular shoulders.

  “Inhale,” he orders. And I feel the cold metal of the gun. My ribs lift in a deep breath, and before I exhale, a sharp pain stabs my nipple. I stifle a wince, a foreign pressure lingering on the sensitive bud. Throbbing.

  He wipes a trail of blood with a nearby towel, and then he retracts his hands from my shirt. I’m not sure if I should roll down my bra, but I do anyway, ignoring the pain that wells. Nikolai lifts me from the chair and sets me on my feet as he stands.

  The crowds cheer and drunken girls hop up and down, waving their hands sloppily to be picked next. My mind whirls in five different directions.

  “Keep that clean,” he tells me. His gaze already starts to break from mine, to focus on other girls, on more people.

  But I hone in on his red glow necklace before we part from each other. I can’t hold it in. I say, “Will your girlfriend be mad?” He just fondled my boob, and if the red glow necklaces mean in a relationship, then she might not be happy with him.

  He cocks his head again, strands of hair falling over his forehead. He pushes them back. “Myshka,” he says, “I don’t have a girlfriend.” He watches me inspect his red neon necklace for another second. “Green means taken.”

  “And red?” I ask.

  “It’s complicated.” It’s complicated. He takes a few steps away from me. “Enjoy your time in Vegas, Thora. I truly hope that you swallow it before it swallows you.”

  Act Three

  Good luck, honey :) – Mom

  I scroll through my texts after I fold up all the fleece blankets from Camila’s couch, which was surprisingly comfortable last night. My left nipple is still sore, but the barbell piercing is perfectly even. Nikolai didn’t miss. Thankfully.

  Now I’m rested and ready to go. Auditions. Day one.

  Don’t forget to bring your pepper spray in the taxi. – Dad

  I smile, glad that they’re being supportive now that I’m here. I click into the last of my texts.

  Don’t fall. – Shay

  I roll my eyes at that, but I feel my lips pull higher.

  Kick ass, sis. – Tanner

  My thirteen-year-old brother has been too excited about the prospect of his older sister working in this city. He’s already planning trips here, as if he’s legal to drink. I keep reminding him that he’s eight years and fifty pounds away from enjoying the thrills of Vegas.

  He flipped me off.

  I’d like to say that I took the mature approach, but I returned the gesture.

  I stuff my flannel pajamas into my suitcase and then zip it closed. Camila sluggishly emerges from her bedroom, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her palm. She yawns and her long kimono flutters as she walks to the refrigerator. “What time is it?” She squints at the microwave clock.

  “Almost noon.”

  “Damn.” She lets out a breath. “I could have stayed in bed an extra hour.” She yawns again and begins to pour a glass of orange juice. Without the colorful makeup, she still looks beautiful, her bold features popping. “I gotta fix my bedroom clock.” She nods to me. “When’s your audition?”

  “In about an hour. The taxi should be here soon.” Her one bedroom apartment isn’t far from the Vegas strip.

  “How’s the nipple?” Camila smiles into a sip of orange juice.

  There was no way to conceal what happened. John told her the minute we returned to the bar. “Sore.” I’m afraid to take the piercing out, but in my black leotard, it’s barely noticeable. I mean, the barbell pokes at the material, but the dark fabric disguises it enough.

  I just hope no one stares at my boobs.

  “You chose right,” she says. “Nikolai Kotova isn’t kind when it comes to tattoos. Last week, he inked the words suck it on the inside of a girl’s lip. And then drew a question mark on another’s ass. If he did that to me, I would’ve decked him in his face.”

  Yeah, I’ll take the piercing. I try not to think too hard about him groping a girl’s ass either. I’m glad I didn’t see that.

  “Oh, and John can’t shut up about you,” Camila adds. “He says you’re one of the stupidest people he’s ever met. Which, from him, is a high compliment.” She laughs and takes another sip of her juice.

  I find myself smiling again.

  And then a car honks outside.

  I inhale deeply, like it may be the last one I take for a while.

  This is it.

  “Knock ‘em dead,” Camila tells me with the raise of her drink.

  With the added boost of confidence, I feel better. More invincible. Shay would tell me that it’s only going to make me fall harder. But I don’t want to believe that today.

  I’d rather soar.

  * * *

  The gym rests in the back of The Masquerade, behind the globe auditorium where performances for Amour happen twice a night, five days a week. A total of ten grueling shows. It’s a lot of work, my dad said.

  But it’s all I want. So it’ll be worth it. I hope.

  It takes the taxi driver an extra ten minutes to find the employees only entrance, and when I arrive, a woman in a blue Aerial Ethereal polo introduces herself as Helen, one of the AE artistic directors for Amour.

  She hands me a large sticker with the number three, and I press it to the collar of my black leotard.

  Without speaking, Helen guides me to the main floor of the spacious gym, filled with different aerial apparatuses: teeterboards, bars, the Russian swing, red silk dangling from the eighty-foot ceiling and more. I’m out of my element, slightly overwhelmed, but one of the apparatuses is familiar to me. Aerial silk. I’ve practiced with it since I was fourteen.

  “Here we are.” Helen motions to six other young girls. They stretch on blue mats. “Wait right here and we’ll give you further instructions in a few minutes.”

  I watch her depart briskly, aimed at the long table by the concrete wall. A few other AE directors already sit there, passing papers and tablets, as if reviewing our profiles before we begin.

  I redirect my attention on the other hopefuls and notice that they all share a similar body type. Broad shoulders, short, no hips, no boobs. Perfect proportions for elite gymnasts. I spot a girl with white-blonde hair, a splattering of freckles along her cheeks.

  She stretches her quads, earbuds in, her eyes narrowed with determination. She catches me staring and glowers. Intimidating is a weak word.

  I feel new. Lesser, somehow.

  “Elena seems to like you,” a brunette tells me with a laugh. She sits beside me, her hair fastened in a tight bun like she’s preparing for a ballet recital.

  “Do you know her?” I ask.

  “Elena Galkina? Yeah, sure.” She nods. “Mostly from reputation. She made the Olympic team for Russia when she was sixteen, but she had to drop out due to an injury. Looks like she’s fine now.”

  I steal another quick glance at her. Maybe she’s only eighteen. I thought about auditioning for the circus as a teenager, but I chickened out. My father constantly hounded me about “going to college” and “getting a degree” that it seemed silly to do anything else.

  I try not to regret my decision of sidelining my goals. I don’t think I was emotionally prepared or ready to venture to Vegas alone right after high school anyway.

  It really would have swallowed me whole.

  I introduce myself to the brunette, and she says her name, Kaitlin Black, before Helen returns to the mats.

  “Alright ladies, the audition process will be completed in two cuts. One each day.
” She glances at her clipboard. “First, I’d like to give a little background on the role.”

  My chest tightens, remembering Shay’s concerns. Is there partial nudity? What if they ask you to strip on stage?

  Helen’s gaze redirects to the seven of us. “Amour is about six different types of love: obsessive, destructive, friendship, gentle, teasing, and passionate. Most of the acts are in pairs, but we have a few group acts as well.” She taps her pen to the clipboard. “It’s Aerial Etheral’s most sensual and sultry show, and we’ve employed artists from eighteen to thirty-five.”

  Kids are in Viva and Seraphine, so it’s rare to have an “above eighteen” stipulation. I know this at least.

  “One of our artists sustained an injury, and you’re all here to replace her. Well, one of you,” Helen says. “You’ll be auditioning for the passionate pairing. It’s considered the female lead since the role includes two additional group acts. We need someone who can pick up multiple disciplines quickly and someone who has spark on stage. None of our substitutes did, so we’re hoping that one of you will.”

  Elena pulls back her shoulders and raises her chin. And I thought I had pretty good self-confidence. I think she’s in a league of her own.

  Helen continues, “We’ve had to skip the aerial silk act due to Tatyana’s injury, and it’s sadly affected the quality of Amour. We want to find a replacement as soon as possible so we can put it back in the show.” She checks her watch. “When I call your number, you’ll be asked to come forward and dance. You’ve been chosen this far for your technique, but now it’s about your stage presence.”

  I can’t dance.

  I shake the thought out of my head the minute it sprouts. I want to blame Shay for planting the seed, but it’s not his fault entirely.

  As Helen returns to the table, the gym door bursts open with raucous noise. “Perfect timing, Nik,” Helen calls. “We were just about to start.”

  I turn to see who stole her attention. And I immediately recognize his face. Nik.

  As in Nikolai Kotova.

  My nose flares and my heart plummets ten-thousand feet below. I never even entertained the idea that Nikolai would be in Amour, let alone attached to this role. I couldn’t…I couldn’t have known. There are three shows in The Masquerade. That’s one-hundred-and-fifty artists.

  One out of one-fifty.

  That’s how unlucky I am.

  The supremely tall Russian acrobat saunters forward with a yellow Gatorade in hand, a bagel in the other, his dark brown hair hangs over a red bandana like he just stepped out of a nineties movie.

  Dressed in black gym shorts, shirtless, I accidentally hone in on his washboard abs. I force my gaze to his running shoes, to his unshaven face and his lips. He has that powerful stride, sexy and smooth like he knows each muscle intimately.

  I hate that he has a great entrance to the gym. I just hope my future isn’t bleaker by his arrival.

  Nikolai gives Helen a charming smile, not even acknowledging the seven of us on blue mats yet. “I’m just happy we’re finding a replacement.” He stops by the table, pressing the rim of his Gatorade bottle to his lips.

  And it’s this moment that he chooses to turn and assess his prospective partners.

  He coughs on his drink. Literally choking for a second, his stunning gray eyes fix right on me. My stomach twists, and my face contorts in that pained scowl. Any suppressed nausea starts to build tenfold.

  “Is something wrong?” Helen asks, glancing between me and Nikolai and back again.

  I open my eyes bigger at him like please don’t say anything about last night.

  But this only drops his concentrated gaze to my chest, staring like he can see through my black leotard, at the nipple he pinched between his fingers and stabbed.

  I’m in trouble.

  Last night, after he pierced me, he might as well have patted me on the shoulder and said hope you have a good life. There was no intention or expectation that he’d ever see me again. Ever. In my entire life. I wonder how many people traverse through his world. How many he eats up and discards like fodder for his performance.

  He screws the cap on his Gatorade, collecting himself, but I can’t tell if he’s enraged by me or indifferent. I discount “happy” as a possibility. His stern, hard features are far, far away from any overjoyed sentiment.

  “Nikolai?” Helen asks.

  “It’s nothing,” he immediately says.

  I inhale strongly, relief trying to surface. But for some reason, my muscles just constrict more. Nerves are trying to overtake me. With the brush of his hand, he wipes the sticky stream of Gatorade off his chest. And his eyes dance from Elena to Kaitlin and the other four girls, pretending like he wasn’t completely caught off guard.

  Helen follows his act to ignore the slipup. “Meet Nikolai Kotova,” she says to us, rising from her seat. “He’s the male lead in Amour and the second half of the passionate pairing. This show won’t work if you don’t have chemistry with Nik. Partnerships take years to cultivate, and we’re asking you to grow comfortable within five months. It’s a lot, we realize, but this has to work. Aerial Ethereal has millions of dollars in this show.”

  I mentally list off the perks. Land the job and I’ll be awarded a one-year contract for Amour, complimentary room and board within The Masquerade, and if the show does well, Amour could be renewed for a twelve-year run. It’s stability, something my parents want for me. Something I need.

  But more than that, it’s a dream.

  It’s a wonderful, faraway dream that I crave so desperately. I’m willing to work as hard as I can to live it.

  Nikolai rotates abruptly, his back to us, and he starts speaking in hurried Russian to some of the art directors, choreographers, and whoever else is lined at the table. He grabs a few file folders and urgently flips through them. Only once does he glance over his muscular shoulder—and his eyes land on me again.

  “Did you sleep with him?” Kaitlin asks me under her breath, anger wrinkling her forehead.

  “What?” I frown deeply. “No. No.” This isn’t like that…but maybe it is. I don’t know. Is it that bad? Rare negative thoughts latch onto me. He’s going to throw me out. Tell me to pack my bags. My one shot is gone before it’s begun.

  These jumbled fears jolt me to my feet, a string of excuses popping into my head. “I can explain,” I start. The room tenses, the silence deadened, my voice echoing in the cavernous gym. Everything is heavy and uncomfortable.

  Nikolai says something rapidly in Russian to the directors, and then he sets the folder on the table.

  I continue, “I didn’t know who—”

  “Be quiet, Thora,” he says, spinning around and walking straight towards me with a lengthy stride. His eyes narrow like shut the fuck up.

  That look has permanently ripped out my vocal cords.

  He steps onto the blue mats, only a couple feet from me. And then his voice lowers. “You’re up first.”

  “What?” I gape in confusion.

  He puts his fingers underneath my chin, physically pushing my jaw closed. My plump bottom lip meets my top. “You’re up first in the audition.”

  A short, round man with glasses and peppered hair lingers off to the side, arms crossed, and he interjects with a flurry of Russian words.

  Nikolai replies back easily, still staring down at me. Then he breaks into English. “Do you want to audition, Thora?”

  I nod.

  “Then bark like a dog.”

  What. The hell? I feel my eyes darken. “Is this a joke?” He’s planning to humiliate me, for payback or something?

  He wears a new expression, one full of severity. No curved lips. No theatrics. His tough exterior intensifies by ten-thousand degrees.

  I can’t shrivel. I’m solidified to stone by his change in demeanor.

  “I take my job seriously,” he says with force behind each word. “You want to be a performer? Then bark like a dog.”

  I hesitate, my gaze flicker
ing to the table of directors. Some of them share furtive whispers, but for the most part, they watch us, poker-faced. They won’t intervene then. He’s taken over my audition and turned it into a crazy one.

  I step forward once, closer to him, and say under my breath, “This isn’t a game to me.” This whole audition is so much more important than a bet.

  His hand flies to my mouth, silencing me. His large palm practically fits across my entire face. “How badly do you want this?”

  Badly.

  What am I willing to do then? Barking like a dog isn’t that horrible, in comparison to other things he could’ve said. Okay. Okay, Thora. When his hand falls, he waits for me to do something more. We’re only a foot apart now, and I look up at him, silently hoping he’ll give me a reprieve, an out at the last minute.

  He doesn’t.

  I clear my throat. “Woof woof,” I say, sounding as awkward as I feel.

  Nikolai stares without a single ounce of humor. No one laughs. He just says, “A dog that has rabies.”

  I bite my tongue, hopefully suppressing a scowl. Then I think for a second. “Grrr…arh arrhhhh…” I find myself actually crinkling my nose too. I wonder if this is being videotaped. In the back of my head, I hear Shay laughing hysterically at me.

  “Now,” he says, not missing a beat, “crawl on the mat and pretend you’re a cat in heat.”

  Kneejerk reaction, I shake my head.

  “No?” he questions with a deadly stare. “You’re going to quit.” It’s a statement. An assumption. I don’t want him to be right.

  I swallow a lump. “I meant yes.”

  “Get on your knees then,” he commands.

  The older man observing the audition suddenly points at me and speaks in rapid, hasty Russian. It flies in one ear and out the other.

  Nikolai replies back gruffly, gesticulating with his hands as he talks.

  The older man waves him off, his thick brows pulled together in a giant one. My stomach twists as I stare between them. The way the older man jabs his stubby finger in my direction—it makes me think he’s not pleased by me. That he hasn’t been on my side since the start.