Amour Amour

by Krista Ritchie

  A degree above stupid must be a fairly good compliment from John.

  Nikolai’s biceps flex, a sign that he’s ticked off. “And what’d I do to you?”

  John never backs down. Not even shrinking in place. Even if Nikolai is taller, broader, and a year older—John is angrier, moodier, and tapping into the I hate this fucking world vibe with expertise.

  “For starters,” John begins, “you turn a perfectly good club into an idiot fest every Saturday night. And the rest of you Kotovas are all the same. Thinking you’re above the rules. Your little brother practically pisses everywhere he goes—”

  “You can leave,” Nikolai interrupts, his jaw hardened severely. His muscles coiled, on offense.

  They have some sort of staring match that I can’t make sense of. John unflinchingly stays his course, as though he expected that type of reaction from Nikolai. He breaks the eye contact first, not in defeat really. He just hands my suitcase off to me, and I grab the handle.

  “Camila told me to tell you not to ditch her just because you’re not crashing at her place anymore,” he says. “She doesn’t have many friends who stick around here.”

  I nod, my heart swelling that she’d even want to stay in touch. “I’ll text her. Thanks for this.”

  He shrugs. “Camila made me do it. Don’t think I’m a nice guy.”

  “That’d be impossible,” Nikolai says, his voice deep and threatening.

  John rolls his eyes dramatically before giving me a half-wave and exiting out the main door. When he shuts it behind him, Nikolai spins back to me. As if nothing happened, he says, “Get dressed. We have practice.”

  Right.

  Practice with the God of Russia.

  I wonder if I’m about to see why he’s called that.

  Act Fifteen

  Aerial Ethereal’s gym within the hotel & casino seems different now that I’m no longer auditioning. I still feel like an interloper, but not quite as much as before. Sunday morning, only a few coaches and choreographers linger by the glass office doors. Barely any artists practice now, and I have a feeling their main source of training comes from ten live shows a week.

  Nikolai has spent the past fifteen minutes giving me a tutorial on circus equipment, probably waiting for my hangover to subside. I stumbled into his body three times, still slightly intoxicated. I’ve never been that black-out drunk before, so this is all new to me.

  I’m just proud of myself for not vomiting.

  He places his hands on my shoulders, rotating me towards the apparatus. I’ve been staring at the wall for two minutes. Dear God. He gestures to the red aerial silk that’s rigged on the eighty-foot ceiling.

  “I know this one,” I tell him. “I had a makeshift silk in my garage.” My dad helped me rig it when I was fourteen. At the time, I think he believed it’d stay a hobby. If he thought it’d turn into a career aspiration, I wonder if he’d still lend a hand or allow it.

  Nikolai pinches my chin and turns my head to face him. “That’s dangerous, Thora.”

  “It was secure,” I defend as he releases his grip, my attention now his. It’s harder to capture when I’m hungover, and I can tell it’s frustrating him. “I never got hurt.”

  “You could have,” he refutes. “You’ll work on this equipment. Don’t go to a different gym or build your own apparatuses.” I catch the concern in his voice, and I guess his paranoia comes somewhere fresh. Tatyana, his old partner, was injured for reasons unsaid.

  Honestly, I’m too nervous to ask why. He’s been more than generous, and I’d rather not scare him off with my insensitive curiosity.

  “This way.” He rests a hand on the small of my back, guiding me across the gym to a new apparatus, the aerial silk already out of view. We barely spent any time there, but maybe it’s awkward. It’s the discipline I lost out to Elena. It’s the one they’re using together, not me.

  After showing me around the Russian swing, a large apparatus that oscillates front to back, allowing the flyer greater height, he brings me to a new kind of structure. Something built specifically for a show. It looks like a metal jungle gym, or metal cubes stacked together, bars and bars. And a teeterboard lies underneath.

  “That’s dangerous,” I point out. I imagine someone jumping on the end of the teeterboard, catapulting an artist at the other end, like a springy seesaw. If they’re off, even a degree, they could smack into a metal bar. Hit their head. Land wrong on one—this is a death trap.

  “It appears that way,” he says, “but there’s enough room for a triple layout. Every movement has to be precise and calculated, but that’s with anything here.” He takes a few steps to the side and watches me. “When you stare at this, what do you see?”

  I take a deep breath and inspect the bars from afar. “A jungle gym?” I’m not sure if this is the right answer.

  “What do you feel?” he asks.

  I open my mouth, unsure of what I’ll even say. But I hesitate as he sits on the blue mats, his forearms resting on his knees. “Show me,” he says, about ten feet from the apparatus.

  I look at him uncertainly and he nods in encouragement. Okay. I try to smother drunken, hungover Thora James as I approach the metal structure. Up close, it dwarfs me, looming like the bare bones of a futuristic house. I rub some chalk on my palms and grip one of the cold bars, a vertical beam.

  Nikolai says a few Russian words to someone by the glass office, and they slip back inside. Melodic, sweet sounds fill the cavernous gym, the main speakers playing a familiar song that simultaneously soothes and quickens my pulse. I recognize it as “One Day I’ll Fly Away” from Moulin Rouge.

  What do I feel?

  I exhale another breath and use my upper-body strength to lift my torso horizontal. I concentrate on the angle and then reach out for another beam, this one like monkey bars. I jump onto it and then swing my body out, gaining more momentum.

  There’s another bar in sight.

  I think I can reach that and do a handstand or a double (unlikely).

  “Drop down,” Nikolai suddenly says, the music cutting off. I obey his command instantly, my feet hitting the mat.

  He’s beside me in seconds, his hand on the bar above my head. “That’s what you feel?” He says it like I might as well have been a soulless ghost.

  “I’ve never been on this apparatus before…” I throw out an excuse.

  He shouts a few Russian words at the lady near the office again. The song replays, and I watch him closely. He breathes as though he’s inhaling intangible things. Love. Magic and beauty. And then he climbs up one of the vertical beams with ease, standing on the top of the structure.

  He saunters across it like a tightrope, and his gaze—it never leaves my body. As though he’s performing for me. As though the music is mine.

  And then he drops straight down, my stomach plummets like he just fell from a forty-foot-height, but he catches one of the bars, channeling the power to do a double between the rungs. It’s effortless, like he’s slicing through air. He comes to an abrupt stop on top of a bar, squatting.

  He slowly stands, power radiating in this one action, and his stormy eyes bear down. He walks closer on the bar. So swiftly, he drops again. He clasps another beam, and I soak in his dominant, precise movements—that fill with life and…something greater.

  When he finally lands on his feet, beside me, the song is near its end. He’s trounced my mind with carnal, euphoric things. He pulls me strongly to his chest. Like whiplash, my head floats off my body. My lips part, and his hands cup the back of my head, his muscular body welding against my small frame.

  I melt in ways I never have before. Beneath that look.

  Beneath his passion.

  “That,” he says lowly, his eyes dancing across me, “is what I feel.” As soon as the music shuts off, he drops his hands from me, steps back. Demonstration over. He just balled my emotions and fucked them, hard.

  I can’t even speak. I just shake my head like I’m not sure I can ever be l
ike that. And I wonder if he’s able to do this with any girl. Every girl. Not just me. I don’t want to picture it.

  “You have to leave your heart and soul here,” he tells me. “Every night. Every time. It’s your job to make the audience feel something.”

  I definitely felt something. Mission accomplished—for him at least. “How?” I ask. I’m used to being instructed on my technicality, not the sentiments behind my movements.

  He rests an elbow on a metal rung, and his deep gray eyes penetrate me, a mystery behind them. The kind that leaves me unprepared for what’s to come. “The easiest way is to draw upon personal experiences,” he says. “Think about the times you were in love.”

  I sway uneasily and unglue my eyes from his. I wait for it…

  “You’ve never been in love,” he states. There it is.

  “I’m only twenty-one,” I defend. “I still have plenty of time to fall in love after I pursue my career.”

  He nears me, only a couple steps closer, but his body heat radiates and warms my skin. “Then evoke the same passion you feel when you have sex.”

  I internally cringe.

  As if the times I had sex were filled with wild, hot fervor. “I’ll try,” I say under my breath. That’s all I can do.

  Awkward silence gathers between us, and I sense him reading my features. I just wonder how outwardly I’m cringing. I attempt to relax my facial muscles, but it’s too late.

  “You’ve never had sex,” he deduces.

  “No,” I say with the shake of my head. “No, I’ve had sex. Twice, actually.”

  “Twice?” His brows rise like that’s it?

  Why did I give him a number? I would face-palm myself if I wasn’t frozen solid. “They weren’t memorable.” Just lame stabs at crossing off “to-do” lists. It took me some time to realize the list shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

  He remains quiet, mulling this over, maybe. His lips in a thin line, his eyes more narrowed.

  It dawns on me. “You’ve never had terrible sex, have you?” My heart pounds, and a light bulb triggers. “Is that why they call you the God of Russia?”

  His expression morphs into an unamused, don’t be ridiculous one. “If your past relationships aren’t enough to help you, then you’ll need to find something that will. An image that’s moved you, a book, a song—anything that you can focus on while you perform. If you’re too concentrated on your actions, on the next move, that’s all the audience will see.”

  I have passion for the circus. It’s my greatest, life-long love. Even if it’s a figment, a dream—more than reality. I still feel from it.

  I’m just not sure how to show what’s in my heart.

  And I can’t take forever to learn this skill. I have a deadline.

  “We’ll work on it,” he tells me.

  My pulse jumpstarts, and I watch him watching me. “You…want to help me feel passion?”

  “I want to help you express passion. I’m sure you feel it. You’re here, aren’t you?” It’s strange how one person can see the hidden parts of you in a short amount of time that others don’t even understand in years.

  He rests his warm hand on the back of my neck. “This way, myshka.” As he says it, he’s looking straight through me. This way. To him.

  His hand slides to my spine, and he redirects me to a new apparatus, as though nothing really transpired. But my body is tight. My muscles bound together.

  Be professional, Thora, I tell myself.

  I think back to our first few encounters. When he said, “Our relationship is unprofessional.” Even though he’s training me, I have a feeling that still stands. There is a line that cannot be uncrossed. We’ve leapt over it from day one, and now I just have to bury this tension.

  Or draw upon it.

  Act Sixteen

  Tuesday night and I’m in the air.

  Lights flicker around me as I twirl upside-down, my body supported by the aerial hoop. I tuck my legs around the steel and continue to spin and spin and spin, all the while maneuvering my torso, contorting into long lines and elongated shapes.

  When the music hits a faster tempo, I grip the top of the ring, stretching out as the hoop rotates in quick circles. Being high, in the air, frees me completely. The slight prick of fear heightens my adrenaline, setting a fire beneath me.

  Who can explain the drum of their heart or the burst of their lungs? Give me that person. I need them because words fail my senses.

  A second passes before whistling breaches my serenity. It pricks my ears and pulls me out of the moment.

  “Show us your splits, baby!”

  “Yeah, spread your legs!”

  Phantom isn’t a strip club, but some of the drunker patrons act like it is. I ignore their catcalls and do the opposite of the splits in spite, tightening my legs together. I drop to the bottom of the hoop, hooking my arms around the frame. And I twirl faster and faster, speeding my momentum with my strength.

  Proud clapping fills my head, not the room. I don’t much care if I’ve imagined applause for myself. I’m still my biggest cheerleader and possibly even my biggest fan.

  When I slow, my mind dizzying, the lights blanket me in a dark purple hue, my one minute cue. I gather up the last of my momentum to hoist my legs outward, as though I’m sitting down in the air. I release one hand and support my entire weight with my right bicep.

  I let out a breath from my nose, keeping the line straight and steady and symmetrical.

  The purple light blinks to white and the aerial hoop begins to descend. Faint, almost bored applause trickles in the room. What can I really expect from this crowd?

  My heels hit the stage, and I take a quick bow, trying my best to cold-shoulder the two men in the front who howled for splits.

  “You didn’t even show us your pus—” Ignore. I tune him out and hightail it behind the stage, slipping through a black door. Some of the waitresses, in lingerie costumes, decompress with cocktails while others reapply makeup at vanities.

  I’m about to head to my wooden locker when I run straight into the manager, his mop of red hair and sinewy arms. Fantastic.

  Roger’s green eyes become lasers, burning holes in my forehead. “Virgin Mary,” he calls out and gestures me over with a plump finger.

  As much as I dislike Roger, if I have any chance to move to an apartment and support myself, I need this job. I’m sure people can smell my desperation a mile away.

  I approach him at a safe distance. My corset lifts my boobs, nearly spilling out. It’s not a look you’d talk to your boss in, but he has no problem loitering back here while girls change.

  Roger’s eyes flit from my breasts to my face. “Look,” he snaps, his throat scratchy like he smokes a pack a day or yells far too often. “I know you’re fucking flexible. I see it out there. And that’s exactly what I want. Men love flexibility.”

  I can feel myself scowling. I don’t want to listen to Roger generalize the entire male population, picking out their likes and dislikes.

  “It’s what they rub one out to,” he continues. “Girls doing the splits on their faces and all of that.” He lets out a heady breath, like the image turns him on. Okay, I did not sign up to hear Roger’s personal fantasies.

  I internally cringe. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, hoping to end this here.

  He points that plump finger again. “You need to stop trying to make it so artsy. Make it more sexual, Mary. This is fucking Vegas, not Kansas.”

  “I’m from Ohio,” I mutter. I’m also pretty positive he no longer remembers my real name.

  “Same thing.” He waves me off, and he hones in on my breasts. “And I’m tired of seeing this same costume. Go buy more. I want a different one every night. Change it the fuck up.” He glances at his phone, the screen glowing from an incoming call. “Also, try a red lip next time. The pink is too virginal.” He walks off at that, leaving me to calculate the price of seven more costumes in my head.

  My teeth ache from cl
enching them.

  At least…he didn’t say that I completely sucked. There were some positives there, right? Layered beneath disgusting comments, sure.

  I exhale slowly.

  Temporary. I have to repeat it over and over in order to retain my sanity.

  This is temporary.

  * * *

  I swipe the keycard into the slot above the door, entering Nikolai’s hotel suite. Yes, I have a key to his place. Yes, it feels weird. But after our marathon night—chasing Katya and chaperoning Timo—Nikolai feels less like a stranger and even less like an acquaintance.

  Still “friends” may be a strong word. Maybe he’s more like my trainer. A trainer that’s hot enough to bang.

  “Unprofessional, Thora James,” I mumble under my breath. I walk further into his place, setting my purse on the barstool and slipping into his bedroom. Then the bathroom.

  I’m also using his shower.

  “And as far as unprofessional goes,” I say to myself, releasing my boobs from the corset, “this has to be high up there.” I try not to waver or second-guess my actions.

  I’m here, right now, and I need a shower, no matter if I’m naked in my somewhat-friend’s or trainer’s bathroom. So what. Right? “He already pinched your nipple,” I mutter. This is a good fact to keep me moving.

  I swing open the glass shower door and turn on the hot water. I step in, the hot liquid raining on me. In a couple minutes, the steam mists the mirror.

  Soothing. Until I catch sight of the male body products—the men’s shampoo and soap. If I wasn’t being doused with hot water, I might’ve frozen again.

  “Thora.”

  I jump. And knock over the shampoo bottle and a washcloth. I carefully set them back in their proper places. My heart performs a death-defying acrobatic routine without my permission.

  “Thora,” Nikolai calls again, muffled behind the door. The shower is loud enough to drown out most noise, including him returning from Amour tonight.