Amour Amour (5 page)

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.”