Strip. Andrew Binks

sure you’ve discovered something more apropos to call him.”

      “Monsieur Tremaine.”

      “Oh, s’il vous plait.”

      “Okay, Daniel.”

      “Daniel. My sweetie. Mon amour.” She smooched into the air.

      “Great lips for a blow job. No wonder hubby sticks around.”

      “You pig. Cochon.”

      “Seriously. I can feel it—in my knees especially. Can’t you? The Company forces everything—arches, knees, ankles. I’m surprised I can still walk.”

      “That’s ballet, for shit’s sake! I don’t believe a word of it. You’re just repeating a bunch of stuff he’s told you.”

      I looked at Peter, who just stared open-jawed. People get antsy when they see someone genuinely happy. He finally spoke. “Maybe you just don’t have a natural turnout.”

      “I think we’ve been down that road of me not having natural anything at this point, o perfect one.”

      “If the ballet slipper fits…”

      “Of course Captain Bohunk here—and notice how I emphasize the hunk, dear—and his knees of steel from years of shumka-ing.”

      “You’re just not as sturdy.”

      “True.” I had to somehow prop Peter up, as if I were betraying him, which was absurd: we were all in it for ourselves and no one else. “Now if only we could get you to keep your shoulders down when you turn.”

      “So all of a sudden you’ve become Monsieur Tremaine’s secretary? My shoulders are just fine without your help.”

      “Maybe you should relocate your tension.”

      “To my butt, like you?”

      “You have such potential.”

      “Maybe Daniel is making you weak at the knees.” He sounded deflated now, and distant. I would miss him, no doubt about it.

      Rachelle picked up the slack. “Poor thing! You’re letting this Daniel brainwash you. When you stop hurting, your joints I mean, you’ve stopped being a dancer. When your nuts have stopped hurting, which I’m sure they haven’t since we got here, he’ll break your heart. Trust me. Peter, tell him I’m right.”

      “She’ll say anything to keep you.”

      “Of course I will.”

      “He sounds like a trophy, that’s about it,” Peter spoke, barely moving his lips.

      “You’re saying he’s too good for me?”

      “Get him to un-blank that stare of yours, then we’ll talk.”

      “That blank stare is called concentration. Maybe you should try it.”

      “Yeah? Well you should be concentrating on your audience—or maybe you are—yourself and your big ego.”

      “Hey! No nut-cracking. Grow up. Both of you!” Rachelle turned to me. “The broken heart? It will make you a great dancer.”

      That night I phoned Daniel from the stage door, between acts.

      He said, “Just talking to you gives me a boner.” And I danced act two with as much of an erection as a dance belt will allow.

      I was hooked like Juliet, believing nothing would keep us apart. Not even the warring dance factions of the West versus the East, the Vaganovas versus the Cecchettis. It was a dream, me fleeing the Place des Arts fortress in a cab, through the lighted boulevards of Montreal. Prokofiev’s music finally making sense. The ebb and flow of the lover’s pas de deux went over and over in my head all the way to Daniel’s place, where he met me at the door. He kissed me. “How was the show?”

      “Fine. Peter was Paris. They loved him. He’s on top of the world.”

      “He’ll go far.”

      “He might,” I said, but Daniel was already on his way up the stairs and all I could do was follow his broad smooth back, semi-naked ass in loose pyjama bottoms, and wide feet up the narrow stairs to the rooftop for Campari and soda mixed with foreplay. Why had he said that about Peter? Was I too easy? Or stupid? But Daniel’s grasp reassured me. We had a hot nightcap and our own twisted pas de deux until the sheets of his bed were wet with sour Pierre Cardin–scented sweat. In the times to follow, it started with him heavy on my chest. The pressure of his growing erection would press up between us. I can’t sit still when I think of it. (Evidently I have no trouble separating a broken heart from the sex.) Or he’d press his torso just below my rib cage, arch his back, raise his head and we’d wait and wait and drip and then he’d go tight and his thighs would tremble just before exploding—shooting up between us, onto my neck, the odd times stinging my eye. After, I wanted to own him; do something to show this was mine; write I love you with my tongue, tracing the silhouette of his back and spine, over his tailbone and into the softness of his dark barely hairy crack, down his thigh, back of the knee, vein-wrapped calf, the scar that had made him a legend, over heel to the rough part of his tarsal where the years of dancing could be counted by the shades and toughness of the skin. I wanted to devour him.

      “Stay.” He had said the magic word.

      “Where?” I had acted surprised.

      “Here, in Montreal. The Conservatoire isn’t great, but it’s not the prairies.”

      “It’s been on my mind—six weeks of forty below zero, then the tour—besides Kharkov has gone off me.”

      “He’ll use you up. Now is your chance. I’ll find you work.”

      Somewhere there was a Romeo waxing poetic to the sun rising in the east as I got back to the hotel. As usual, Rachelle had built a giant nest of pillows in one bed with herself, the not-quite-dead dying swan, unglamorously earplugged, eye-masked, propped sound asleep and snoring with the tv still flickering. Prince Charming, even beautiful in his sleep, was in the other bed, which we normally shared. I was exhausted, confused and getting tired of listening to myself around these two, knowing they weren’t convinced of my decision. My body ached, but I did something I hadn’t done in ages. I crawled under the covers and held Peter tight.

      He whispered, “Kharkov kissed me.” Peter was awake.

      “What?”

      Peter turned. “He kissed me when I got back to the hotel. I was hoping for a new contract, to be honest, but he closed the door to his room and…”

      “Fuck. That pig!” I surprised myself with my own feelings of jealousy. What was it I did not have? Peter always had admirers, and he never seemed moved by it.

      “He was decent. Not piggish. Coy, I guess.”

      “Then?”

      “I left. I mean what do you talk about with a Russian masochist whose English is limited?”

      “Sounds like you’re up next for soloist.” So thrived Kharkov, and his habit of making appointments with the certainty of being thanked in a big way. Two of the principals had spent several years of their prime thanking him. Kharkov would find Peter delicious.

      Later that morning my resolve was even greater. It was true: Daniel was showing me the way to my dreams, and reminding me not to sit back on the comfort of a Company contract. At the same time, I had fallen for him and all that goes along with it; it joined me to humanity, the universe and everything in between. Walls fell and I discovered a hidden energy. I became a greater dancer than I had ever dreamed of—jumped higher, turned faster, balanced longer. There was a completion to my technique. I believed in myself, one hundred percent, for the first time. In laymen’s terms, if I were a secretary I’d type faster, burn through the filing system; a house painter, I’d end up with the Sistine Chapel in fifteen shades of neon; a bricklayer, I’d redo the pyramids with a smart Egyptian faux