by Mia Madison
“I was trying to keep him awake, you know from blacking out.”
The cops eyed each other dubiously I knew they didn’t believe me.
“Make sure you stay available in the city in case we have more questions,” the older one said.
“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’m here until the first week of January, on a contract.”
Shit. The way he looked at me, you’d have thought I meant a mafia kind of contract. Is everyone in the city so mistrustful?
At Fiftieth Street I stumble into the theater, hoping to see the girls between shows and tell them what happened. Get a hug. But of course the lobby is absolutely rammed with people pushing to get to their seats, dragging small children along with them. And there are no chairs anywhere outside of the auditorium. It’s a little early to go to the bar although I sure could use a stiff drink.
I make my way through the throng to the stage door area, my head is spinning, the world rushing past me. The only time I’ve ever experienced this sensation is when the man I was madly in love with, a visiting choreographer that had pulled me out of the corps de ballet and made me a soloist, abruptly broke off our affair. For the first time in my life I drank way too much, with the same effect as now of the world circling me faster and faster.
“Whoa, are you okay there little lady?”
A pair of powerful arms grab me in their hold just as my nails gripping the edge of the counter slip off the edge. He lifts me inside his security office and sets me down on the wooden seat, before pushing my head down between my knees.
The world stops spinning and the blood rushing at my brain slows down. I sit back up and mutter thanks.
“Lana?” He says, recognizing me as one of the troupe. I nod. “I didn’t recognize you at first under all that muffling.”
“I’m not used to this intense cold.”
“Ya, this is a snap all right,” he agrees. I wonder where a backstage doorkeeper got those huge biceps.
“Thank you,” I murmur. “For catching me.”
“I recognize a girl about to faint. I see a lot of it from back here. Girls overheated by those heavy costumes, standing under the lights, not eating properly.”
I nod again.
“I’ve felt like I’m about to pass out myself trying to get through all those high kicks.”
“You get used to it,” he says. “Apparently. I wouldn’t know obviously but the girls tell me the first week or two is the worst. Then you’ll be high-kicking through the whole year easy as walking down the street.”
“You’ve been here a long time?”
“Worked at the theater fifteen years now,” he grins. “I was - away for a while. But now I’ve got the best job in New York - a real city institution. But enough about me - are you feeling okay?”
I nod and then somehow find myself telling the backstage doorman, who intros himself as Brad, everything. He listens to my story in its entirety without interrupting, like the girls at the apartment do constantly. We’re all always talking over top of each other.
“You did a good thing,” Brad tells me when I’m done.
“Not really. Anyone would have done the same in the situation.”
I had left out the part about the guy being the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, so handsome he should have been on a movie screen. That had actually occurred to me that they were shooting something. Or even one of those set-up reality shows where they try to make people look bad. I’d of course left out the part about kissing him - a complete stranger lying helpless on the ground.
“But how you acted, taking care of him, with your hand on his body - that saved him.”
“Oh no I don’t think so,” I feel the color rush to my face.
I hope Brad can’t detect that I wasn’t being a savior - I literally couldn’t keep my hands off the guy. Stroking the hard bulge of his bicep, the rough contoured jaw and especially burying my fingers in his hair. He was like a magical being. Too gorgeous to be real.
“Believe me, I know about PTSD,” Brad interrupts my dreamy state.
“Isn’t that just a thing for army vets?”
“No, that’s a mistaken belief. It’s a thing for anybody to experience under traumatic circumstances. But we were taught that giving physical support, touching someone with calm and caring, allows them to reset the adrenaline reaction.”
“Wow. That’s something everything should know how to administer - seems as vital as that Heimlich maneuver and maybe more frequent these days.”
“Watch out, early shift is over,” Brad laughs. “Here come the dancing girls.”
The girls come blasting out of their changing rooms, red lipstick and falsies still in place, still pumped up with performance adrenalin.
“Lana, you’re here, squee,” Lois says. “Hi, Brad,” she flutters at him as she grabs my hand and yanks me out of the chair.
“How was the show?”
The other girls go clattering out the door and I’m almost envious that I wasn’t performing today. They seem so filled with energy and happiness. Perhaps us dancers are always like that observed from the other side.
“The houses are packed now. It’s amazing. Let’s go, I’m dying of thirst enough to murder ten margaritas. Bye Brad.”
“Lolo, it’s not even five o’clock,” I say, shocked.
“This is New York City baby,” she says. “It’s always Happy hour.”
We get a good table at Luna and are three in when the suits start emerging from the corporate offices on Sixth Avenue and fill the bar to standing room only.
Our table is soon surrounded by guys offering to buy drinks and tossing out corny lines about us being Amish or Mormon or coming from huge cult families. I guess we do look odd, twenty girls all with the exact same French pleat hairstyle, same make up, same height within a couple of inches.
I feel like the ugly duckling, without my stage make up and glamorous presence.
“Are you the weird cousin visiting from out of State?” A guy in a dark gray suit asks me across the table.
Charming.
“No, it’s her day off today,” Kaila answers for me, fluttering her eyelashes. It’s so easy to do with falsies. “She’ll be back strutting her stuff tomorrow, won’t you Lana?”
She gives me a look, stretching her eyes so I know I’m supposed to join the party.
“What?” Oh yes,” I mumble. I was a thousand light years away.
She tugs my beanie off my head so my dark hair falls around my shoulders.
“There you are,” the dude says, making me feel like a Christmas ornament for him to gaze on or cup in the palm of his hand.
I’m irritated being here. I can’t stop thinking about the guy on the ground, wondering how he is. Where he is. Wishing he was here chatting me up with some corny lines. I can’t see anyone else but him which is ridiculous because I’m never going to see him again and I can’t go through life on fantasies. Well maybe I can for a little while longer because they’re more delicious than the reality I’m currently facing.
4
Noel
There’s a girl dancing around my hospital bed. The room is private, of course. The girl from the street is for my eyes only. She’s wearing a pair of knee high boots, a knitted hat pulled over her ears, hiding her hair and a swathe of different scarfs wrapping round and round her neck until her chin is buried.
And nothing else.
She has the most amazing body. A real dancer’s body, lithe and supple. Her legs are impossible long - yeah I remember being surprised when she rose to stand on the sidewalk, at how long her legs were and very shapely in the skinny jeans. Her breasts are perfect, uplifted and perky, just big enough to bounce provocatively as she dances around the bed.
The long tails of her knitted scarf trail over her mounds giving delicious peaks at her bare nipples when she moves. She crouches down into a squat. Jeezus, her legs splay open as she slides all the way to the ground to perch on her heels, without even the assistance of
a pole. She’s spread wide open to my gaze, all pink and glistening. The most inviting sight I’ve ever seen.
“You’re very lucky,” a voice from somewhere else says.
I agree.
I’m amazed that the girl has sensed our connections powerfully as I did the short time we’ve known each other. She smiles and her tongue reaches to the corner of her red lips. I stretch out my hand to pull her up from the floor onto my bed. Once she’s seated with her knees either side of me, I pull her up the length of my torso. I want her straddling my face and my tongue sliding along the length of her swollen wet flesh.
“So lucky, this could have been so much worse for you,” the high-pitched male voice repeats. My eyes bat open.
The doctor standing beside the bed has a gaggle of white-coated newbs around him all gaping at me like I’m a being from another world.
I look down the bed and see my leg in a cast, raised up in a pulley. At this moment I do feel very lucky - that the mechanism lifting my limb stretches the sheet into a tent that hides my rock solid wood standing straight up, hard and pulsing. Jeez, what kind of painkillers are they giving me?
I may be lucky and grateful but don’t feel exactly fortunate right now. Having just been yanked out of a dream I’d have paid to remain locked in indefinitely.
Instead the doctor rambles on and on to his captive audience, describing my potential concussion, the cracked ribs, intracranial hematomas and hemorrhages.
“Headache, confusion, vomiting, slurred speech, or coma may appear immediately or could go unnoticed for weeks after a head injury,” he announces pompously to the nodding kids.
“So I’m a goner?” I put in, pushing him to give me some details. Because I feel fine aside from the leg in traction. At least my libido is undamaged so my injuries can’t be terminal. “If so,” I continue, stealing the physician’s limelight as the med students all look at me, “I want to get out of here as soon as possible to indulge in my final pleasures.”
That gets a laugh from some of the women. I’ve always known how to charm them, ever since grade school. The main man frowns, irritated by my humor I’m guessing.
“Near death is hardly a jovial matter,” he scolds.
“I don’t agree,” I tell him.
“As I said, you’re extremely lucky to have a fracture of the femur. No internal injuries although you’ll have to be watched for signs of cerebral trauma.”
“When can I get out of here?”
“As soon as someone comes to claim you,” the doctor replies. “You’ll need some assistance. Any wife?”
Funny he should mention Samantha.
“Not one that wouldn’t be happier if I had perished in that fall,” I quip and receive another disgusted grimace from my caretaker.
Maybe I do have a humorous view of death but isn’t it true that society takes it way too seriously? I mean it’s going to happen to all of us sooner or later and there are no guarantees that it’s going to be later. I’m glad to have reached the advanced age, physically if not mentally, of thirty nine without bigger mishaps than being pushed out of a window. Not considering some of the asshat stunts I’ve pulled in my time, especially in running out on women that expected something from me. I count that as a New York disease though.
“I need to get out of here soon,” I inform him. “I promised to take my daughter to a show.”
The doctor shrugs then he and his ducklings move on to the next specimen. A nurse bustles in to smooth down my sheet.
“I’m going to give you a sponge bath,” she says. Her eyes widen as she pulls back the cover and sees the remainder of my still stiff cock. She must be accustomed to guys getting stiff when a woman in a nurse’s uniform stretched too tight across her full breasts uncovers him. Her mouth opens a little and I know from the glimmer in her eye when she looks up at me that I could have my naughty nurse fantasy become reality any time I want.
And in previous times, not that long ago, I would have been all over it. But having Hallie changed me. Not immediately, it took a few years for me to grow into the dad role. But now I’m dedicated to it, my ex seems to be more vitriolic with me than ever. After all her complaining about me being a total ass, now that I’ve stepped up she’s mad that she has nothing to complain about.
My current state of arousal has nothing to do with the nurse’s hand bath though. It’s because I still can’t get the girl on the sidewalk out of my head. She was such a mix of power and fragility. Her soft hands and red lipstick are fixed in my thoughts, even when I’m out cold apparently. What I’d give to have a woman like that coming to the hospital to take me home.
“Is anyone coming to visit?” the nurse asks, reading my thoughts. “You must have someone to take you home and look after you.”
“No one,” I say and she gives me a look that says she’d be up to offers.
“How can a handsome guy like you have no - um - family?”
“Divorced dad,” I say. “And I’m not from here originally. West coast.”
“Ah,” she says, like that explains my complete lack of friends.
“LA.”
“Ah. I thought maybe you worked in Hollywood.”
“I have done,” I tell her.
“I knew it. Have I seen you in anything?”
“Only in back of various sets. The ones I create.”
“You aren’t an actor?”
“God no.”
She looks disappointed, then bored.
“I have a daughter too,” she continues and moves up my chest, lifting an arm up to get to the pit. “It’s hard raising kids alone.”
“Harder on them I imagine. Especially being stuck with two parents who make the child feel bad for wanting the other parent.”
She nods and I can tell she’s thinking about that. Maybe she’s been bad-mouthing her ex to her daughter.
I’m relieved when she finishes with the sponge bath and especially that my cock gave her no more reason to think I was attracted to her charms.
5
Lana
I’m right back to work the next day. I’m relieved to have something to take my mind off the guy that fell at my feet. The girls are still talking about it so I regret mentioning it.
“That’s about the only way you’ll ever meet a guy in this town,” Eloise said when I told the girls about my experience. “He’s gotta fall right on top of you.”
The others laughed in agreement. Even the ones not from the City. I’ve really been sequestered from the real world. I know nothing about dating. The one affair with Christian was my only one.
“That didn’t work out so great though,” Ruby says, “Not when he disappears into the back of an ambulance before asking for her number.”
“We could call the police,” Lolo says “and ask where he’s at.”
“They won’t tell her, she’s not family.”
“How many hospitals are there in Manhattan.” They’re all talking so fast it makes my head whirl. “It shouldn’t be that tough to locate him.”
“Sixty-two,” Sarah says, looking up from her phone.
“I’m not stalking a guy around sixty two hospitals,” I laugh. “That looks desperate.”
“I thought you wanted to know if he’s okay.”
I feel my cheeks burn bright as Rudolf’s nose, or the stick-on red cheeks we use for a scene in the show.
“You’ve got a thing for this guy,” Lolo squeals.
“I don’t,” I insist. “Really. I mean he was amazingly handsome but I’m sure he’s a player. Out of my league.”
“Girl, no one’s out of your league when you’re a Rockette.”
“Yeah you’re a queen in Manhattan for the next six weeks.”
“Make the most of it though, because come January second you’re back home and the fairytale magic is over.”
“Like Cinderella.”
“Yeah, you’ve got six weeks to find a rich man.”
“Or go home to your parents until next year.”
>
These girls know the routine. Half of them come back every year to dance in the show. It’s a New York institution and hard to give up I imagine.
It’s also exhausting.
While most dancers on Broadway work eight shows a week, we give that many every day. There are even two shifts of dancers, five shows in the morning then five in the afternoon. It’s exhausting but also exhilarating, the packed houses are open-mouthed at the spectacular. I’m told it’s even more amazing this year with new digital scenery and effects that make the sets even more realistic, transporting the audience to the manger in Bethlehem and Santa’s workshop at the blink of an eye.
I’m on the ten o’clock performance, in full theatrical make up. Although I feel sluggish for the first ten minutes, the oohs and aaahs of the kids in the audience soon invigorate me. I’m running into the wings between numbers for the dressers to help me with my quick change routine.Then it’s back onstage for the finale. Our three hundred high kicks always bring the house down with the kind of applause that sets my heart racing.
In the evenings we have to attend a cocktail party for the Angels - the producers of theatrical shows. Stupidly, I look for my angel that fell out of the sky but there are only gray-haired men making boring small chat.
Two weeks of frantic days fly past. I’m fit and accustomed to our routine now, just as the other girls said. Still. I wish I’d somehow mentioned where I work to flying guy so he’d know where to find me. If he was interested of course. Even when it occurs to me that perhaps he was depressed, a broker that had lost all his money even, and jumped from some window on the residential street, I still can’t stop romanticizing our meeting. While I tell myself I’d like to find him, just to know that he’s okay, I also secretly fantasize about his amazing body pulling me close.
I don’t have time for wistful thinking and it’s ridiculous to have dreams about a man I met for ten minutes. That time spent sitting on the frozen sidewalk beside him, is vivid in my memory. I was only trying to keep him from dropping into a coma state and somehow ended up telling him all about my life back in Louisiana. My years as a soloist with the ballet company and the realization that I’m washed up at twenty seven. I’m considered old and there are teenagers clawing at my back to fill my shoes. I feel disposable.