by R. Cooper
“Chico, isn’t it?” an unfamiliar voice asked, and Chico flinched. He twisted the straps of his canvas bag around his fingers, which only made the curtain rods stick out even more awkwardly, then slowly inclined his head toward the other two. “You’re volunteering at the studio too, aren’t you?” The baker smiled at him and didn’t seem to notice Chico frozen to the spot. “Sewing or something?”
“Right. Sewing,” Chico agreed and swung his gaze over to Rafael, only to note Rafael had on a shirt with actual sleeves and buttons. Even covered up he looked good, too good. Chico wanted to see him in a suit. He wanted to put the suit on him with his own hands.
Chico shifted his attention to something less dangerous to his equilibrium, like the potted plant.
Those were date clothes, his mind informed him helpfully. He vaguely remembered dates—nerves and dressing to impress, putting on something nice. That, naturally, was what Rafael had done, for his date. His date with that baker. Because the baker had asked him out, and he’d had no reason to say no. He’d had no reason at all to say anything but yes.
“Are those curtain rods?” Rafael asked. The question was unexpected enough to make Chico glance to him again. “Are you decorating?” Rafael wasn’t smiling, which was somehow unfair. He should be treating this as the joke it was, not regarding Chico seriously.
But he saw the tension in Chico’s posture, Chico was sure of that. His baker might not, but Rafael did. He was smart, not just good-looking. That’s why people asked him out. Not Chico, not fragile, afraid-of-bad-choices, afraid-of-being-crushed-by-someone-else-again Chico. But other people.
Chico nodded without forming an answer to the question.
The two of them were standing close. Close enough that, possibly, as they walked home or back to their cars or to the baker’s door, their hands might touch. The kind of touch that was electric and comforting at the same time, making mouths go dry and hearts race.
When things were good, according to his parents, touch could stay like that.
Chico wouldn’t know.
“I’m Jase,” the baker introduced himself. He was starting to frown, as if just now twigging to Chico’s frozen expression and trembling hands.
Chico forced himself to smile. “You bake or something, don’t you?” he heard himself saying, spiky with heat and embarrassment and annoyance at being looked down upon for sewing.
If Rafael was smiling about that, as Chico assumed he was, he shouldn’t be. Even if his dating pool in Brandywine was limited, he could do better than a condescending guy like this.
The waitress appeared with Chico’s bag of food. Chico accepted it and added it to his awkward bundle in one hand. He regretted ever deciding to eat out. He regretted it even more when the waitress paused to ask Rafael if she should get him a table for two.
Chico was supposed to be harmlessly indulging in a crush after months of feeling numb. He had no right to get territorial or jealous, to think, in a distant yet urgent way, that he ought to make a scene. He hadn’t even made a scene when John had announced it was over. It hadn’t occurred to him. He hadn’t argued or fought or even hit him with a pillow. Chico had always thought he’d go ballistic if a boyfriend cheated on him. But he’d frozen. He’d had exactly one thought at the time—there was no point in fighting for someone who didn’t want you.
“Table for two?” he said suddenly, brightly. He was hot inside where he should have been empty and cold. “First date?”
He turned on autopilot, without waiting for the answer, and pulled a slip of paper with a phone number on it from one of the fliers. He waved it around to signal his equally busy social life before he stuck it in his pocket.
“You’re volunteering somewhere else?”
All Chico could see in Rafael’s smile was polite interest. His posture was straight, but it always was. His gaze was always warm. Meanwhile, he probably knew Chico was about five minutes from crawling into bed and never getting out again because he’d seen Rafael on a date.
Chico hummed in a vague sort of way because he had no idea what he’d put into his pocket. “Can’t hang around the studio forever,” he informed both of them, so they wouldn’t think he was going to make a scene there either. Because Jase was going to figure out what Chico’s flush meant pretty soon if he hadn’t already.
“Yes, but you—” Rafael began to argue.
Chico wasn’t in the mood to hear about unfinished costumes or what good it would do him to take a jazz tap class. He shook his head and started moving like he had someplace important to be.
“Night!” he called out without turning around. He made it all the way down the street before he remembered he’d parked closer to the restaurant. He waited until he was absolutely sure Rafael and Jase had been seated before he walked all the way back to his car.
CHICO’S HEART wasn’t broken. Not even bruised, as he had insisted to Davi. He had a stupid, fledgling crush. That was all. And crushes always felt terrible, which was why they were called crushes.
Somewhere in the middle of thinking about it, Chico began talking about it. He thought it was a good, positive change that he was comfortable enough to examine his feelings and considered it a bonus that he hadn’t discovered that by venting at Rafael.
Possibly because he hadn’t seen Rafael.
Like the mature adult, or scared baby deer, he was, Chico had been avoiding him. Rafael was supposed to be an indulgence. Like ice cream. Like starlight. Not something he needed.
He didn’t know why he’d ever thought nurturing this attraction would be a good idea. There ought to be an age limit on crushes, he decided aloud, something that the irritated teenager in his clutches was oddly okay with. This was likely because that teenage boy stared with moony eyes at one of the girls during rehearsals.
Chico sympathized, he truly did. But he also needed Travis to quit squirming and hold still. He couldn’t feel like crap and be expected to be patient with a teenager at the same time.
“How the hell can you hold a position for as long as you can, but I ask you to stay put while I pin these damn epaulets into place, and suddenly you’re all over the place?” Chico didn’t believe in pretending teenagers didn’t swear.
Travis rolled his eyes. He was the weirdest combination of an athlete who was sure of his body and complete insecurity whenever Chico asked him a question about his role in the ballet. He also was striving to act bored and jaded with his fitting, or maybe with life, but at least he wasn’t giving into any “no homo” dramatics.
Travis was dancing the role of the king. This apparently meant epaulets. Chico’s problem was ensuring they would stay on. So he had Travis move, then he’d add a few pins, then they’d do it again.
To be honest, while Chico understood saving money on the costumes, he didn’t get why the king would wear something turn of the century unless that was when the ballet was set.
“All right, move your arms,” he mumbled. He rolled his eyes in return when Travis waved his arms around as though being asked to do it was a huge burden. “I’m seriously considering ‘accidentally’ sticking you with a pin,” Chico told him as meanly as he knew how, which only meant Travis rolled his eyes again.
“Doesn’t everyone, when dealing with Travis?” Rafael inquired from outside the door. Chico had partially closed the door to give Travis some privacy, although he hadn’t really gotten undressed. Travis calmly flipped his teacher off and seemed amused when he got the bird in return through the crack in the door.
Chico waved Travis away after extricating him from the heavily pinned jacket, then headed back to the table he’d claimed as his. He heard Travis leave and then nothing else for a while.
“How’s he move in it?” Rafael finally asked. The sound from outside was muted, as if he’d closed the door again. “How’s he feel in it? If he’s not comfortable, it will show.”
“He’s fine, as far as I can tell.” Chico toyed with his thread selection, although the stupid jacket was gold and white, so he
was going to end up using white. Anyone could do this part; Chico didn’t have to. But what had Davi said? They’re counting on you, Chico. At least go back in and finish the costumes you started. He’d made Chico feel so guilty that even lying in bed hadn’t made him feel better. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. All I do is sew or something.”
He didn’t know where his snippy tone had come from, but it was too late to call it back.
“You know it’s more than sewing. You know you’re good.” Rafael raised his voice ever so slightly. “You snapped back at Jase for the sewing comment. What’s different now?”
“Everything. Nothing.” Chico briefly lifted his hands, then let them flutter uselessly to the tabletop. “Everything,” he whispered.
“Chico Silva.” Rafael said his name like a plea and startled Chico so much he nearly raised his head. “You don’t get to look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you,” Chico pointed out, calmly, he thought. His hands were trembling, but he was an emotional boy and always had been. He’d gotten in the habit of acting as though he could control his feelings. He was even starting to realize why he’d done it. But it was all a lie. Chico had strong feelings and a reckless heart. Pretending he didn’t led to his head under a pillow and days of nothing. No, it had led to an entire relationship of nothing. He was more agitated in this moment than he’d been in response to anything John had ever told him.
Spools of thread went flying from his hands, scattering across the table.
Rafael let out a sound so rough Chico raised his head. “Last night—” Rafael started.
Chico tried to cut him off. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Is that a restaurant you’d recommend? Davi likes their fries, even cold.” Needless to say, Chico had lost interest in his sandwich, although he’d made himself eat it. A part of him was pissed about that. He should have gotten to enjoy his victory sandwich, not stared at it and thought how it might have tasted if he’d ordered it on a date.
“You know,” he went on in a rush, “I don’t get why the king is wearing epaulets. Is late nineteenth and early twentieth century when the ballet is set, or is this a cost-effective decision? I’ve never heard of The Clockwork Dancer, and I keep forgetting to look it up.”
Rafael made another exasperated sound but stepped farther into the room. “It’s based on a short story. You never read it?” He waited until Chico shook his head before he took another step. “The story was published anonymously around that time. So that’s what we chose for the setting. But the actual ballet was composed a few decades later. Our version is even more changed from the original than the ballet. For obvious reasons, our version is family-friendly.”
That gave Chico something to focus on that wasn’t how cautiously Rafael moved around him today. “What did you take out?” He tracked Rafael moving along the edge of the room, how he stopped to examine the finished or nearly finished costumes on one rack.
Rafael glanced over at Chico a few times before he cleared his throat. “In our version, there once was a king who saw a beautiful dancer and decided he was in love with her. He brought her to the palace to be his, since no one could say no to the king—which is implied in our version, although it’s surprisingly clear in the original that the dancer has little choice and the king is a brute. Shocking, for its time.”
Chico blinked at him as he took that in, and Rafael continued his strange, slow circuit of the room. He smiled when he saw the finished purple court dress tutu Chico had been working on before. He trailed his fingers over the simple silver embroidery as he spoke. “But the dancer isn’t happy. The jealous king won’t let her dance, and none of the gifts he offers her can bring a smile to her face.”
“Well, she’s a prisoner,” Chico whispered. “Of course she’s miserable.”
Rafael glanced to him again, his attention briefly as fierce as his mother’s. “When the dancer becomes listless, the unhappy king sends out for all kinds of fantastic inventions to delight her. Which is when he stumbles across an inventor and clockmaker of extraordinary skill. This is where the fantastic element comes in—steampunk before it existed as a genre. The clockmaker makes moving figurines, and one, a tiny spinning ballerina—little Maggie gets that part—at last gets the dancer’s attention.
“Ecstatic, the king claps the inventor in chains and demands he make something to please the dancer. You’ll note he doesn’t ask the dancer what might please her. He orders the inventor to create a life-size, animated figure of the dancer and then leaves him to it.” Rafael approached the table. Chico had to tilt his head back to hold his gaze. “And the little clockmaker, who is crippled in the book but obviously not in the ballet, has to spend time with the dancer to capture her likeness. And as always happens in these stories, he falls in love with her.”
Chico put his hands to his mouth in horror because that couldn’t end well for the inventor.
Rafael’s expression softened. “The inventor decides to save her from the king, even if he can never be with her. So he creates the clockwork dancer, but he makes this dancer how the king wishes her to be—always smiling, always happy to be with him—and the king falls in love with it the moment she begins to dance for him. He instantly forgets the real dancer, with her inconvenient human emotions, and she is discarded.
“But, being a jealous king, and the villain, he pauses in his moment of rapture to realize the clockmaker must have fallen in love with the dancer in order to create such a thing and, furious, sentences the clockmaker to death at the stroke of midnight.”
“That damn clock tower,” Chico protested heatedly.
Rafael couldn’t seem to take his eyes from Chico’s face. He lowered his voice even more. “In the last scene, it’s revealed the dancer had fallen in love with the inventor as well, although she’d hidden her feelings, presumably out of fear for the inventor’s life. She dances desperately before the king in an attempt to win his favor once more and convince him to spare her love. Then the clock strikes twelve, the king leaves, still besotted over the clockwork dancer, and the dancer collapses. Probably dead, since it’s ballet.”
He swept a thumb over Chico’s cheekbone and pulled back before Chico could think to be startled. Only a child would cry over a story, but Chico’s eyes were misty. He blinked the tears away although Rafael hadn’t said a single mocking word.
“That is stupid,” Chico announced, his voice thick and emotional. “Ballet is stupid.”
“That isn’t the real story, though.” Rafael didn’t seem offended at Chico’s insult toward his family’s calling. “Maybe if instead of being locked away in here you came out once in a while to watch the rehearsals, it might give you a better idea about The Clockwork Dancer and ballet.”
“Locked away in here is right.” Chico ducked his head while he made sure his tears were gone. “I’ve been tricked. I notice the other seamstresses are all long gone.”
“Seamstresses?” Rafael echoed the word and quirked an eyebrow.
“Stitchers. People who sew.” Chico shrugged. “Whatever they call themselves, they’ve disappeared.”
Rafael pointed to the embroidery on the purple tutu. “I think your interest and talent intimidated them.”
“Oh.” Chico put a hand to his throat and tried not to stare upward, or look helpless and touched and twitterpated. “Flattery.” He dismissed the remark after a while of internally thrilling over it. “I suppose you know all about talent intimidating others. A lot of those awards in the foyer are yours.”
“When I was a kid.” Rafael shrugged. “Then I realized I didn’t live for it the way my parents do. At least, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice what they did, what my sisters do. I didn’t love it that much. I came back here to the old business and, through a long, slow process of me being an idiot and coming to terms with my own ego, realized I preferred teaching, and…. You thought it was a big dramatic story or something, didn’t you?” He cracked a grin. “Everyone does.”
Emulat
ing Travis and flipping Rafael off seemed reasonable. Chico crossed his arms. “Well, the people in town act like it’s something they can’t talk about. So I assumed it was bad. Like….”
“I’m the embarrassment to my family? Or that I couldn’t stand the pressure of competition? Maybe that I had some terrible injury?” Rafael left Chico’s side to take a seat on the sofa. “I don’t really like competitions, but I competed without any real worry. In fact, I cared less than my sisters did, so it wasn’t that big of a deal for me. Dancers give up a lot, and I didn’t love dance enough to make those kinds of choices. My joints already ache enough on cold days, thank you. That doesn’t mean that my parents weren’t disappointed, or that I don’t get snide remarks when I venture into a big city to see my sisters perform. But I like it here.”
Chico wasn’t certain what to say to that. If Rafael was telling him that, while he liked Chico, he wanted someone in his life who would be happy in this town, then Chico couldn’t blame him for going on his date.
He wanted to, however. He thought about being selfish and demanding that Rafael only flirt with him. That sounded like something someone else would do. Chico wasn’t the type to demand anything.
“That must be nice,” he said at last, unable to keep his gaze up. “Knowing what you want. Having it. Not being fooled into thinking the things you want are stupid and boring for the sake of what someone else wants, but embracing them.” He fidgeted with the king’s epaulets. He ought to make them obnoxious, he decided, loud and dripping with gold fringe.
“The king,” he began carefully, watching for Rafael’s reaction. “I ought to cover the king’s jacket in medals the king hasn’t earned, make it full of the kind of false achievements a king like that would have. As many as I can get away with without weighing Travis down. That’s what the king is like, right?”
“That’s the fun part about ballet or any kind of storytelling,” Rafael told him, with a wide smile. “It means whatever you want it to mean and can become whatever you want it to become. It’s personal to everyone.”