Dead on Your Feet

by Grant Michaels

  “You come for Rafik?” Her heavy accent sounded like a bad parody of a Russian spy.

  I blushed and found myself speechless, a rare event for me. I glanced nervously at the slender willow shaft that quivered in her hand, ready to strike. I straightened up to military attention and forced a polite smile.

  “Yes, for Rafik.”

  She responded with a sly grin and murmured, “Then I will not kill him today.” She turned abruptly on her heels and screeched, “Eye-gaaaaaaain!” causing the piano music to surge with renewed passion. Madame strutted back onto the studio floor, and I felt a strange relief, as though I’d survived a surprise attack. How did the dancers endure this kind of treatment every day? If Madame Rubinskaya’s tactics were any indication, the abuse went far beyond muscle and bone. Perhaps a dancer’s training required the unconditional surrender of the personality as well?

  With the threat of Madame’s switch gone, I focused back on the activity in the studio. I scanned the bodies and saw Rafik stretching carefully at one of the portable barres in the center of the floor. Like a Persian prince or an Egyptian Fayumic portrait, Rafik has fine dark features whose chiseled familiarity is one of my life’s pleasures. But I noticed some unfamiliar lines on his face too. Experience and disillusion were already marking Rafik’s countenance. But his body remains supple. Like a cat he is long-legged and equally clever with all four limbs. Sometimes during sex I can’t tell if it’s a hand or a foot or a knee or an elbow that he’s plying on me. And his male organ is like a fifth limb, one fluent in a unique kinesthetic vernacular. He can even make it dance—but then, he is a choreographer.

  To reduce the strain on his injured hip Rafik was working his leg on the portable barre’s lower level. He slid the raised leg along the barre and stretched his thighs open to the limit of his split. He claims that it had once been perfectly open—an easy one hundred eighty degrees—but now it stops short of one hundred twenty. Perfect split or not, Rafik still possesses the lithe, sculpted muscles of a performing dancer. Besides, in the everyday world what practical use is a perfect split?

  From far across the floor Rafik caught my admiring gaze and replied with a wink. All was well between us. My crotch stirred too, the proof that I was still infatuated. Since hooking up with Rafik I was generally in a semi-turgid state. In fact, to help check my newfound spunk I’d even developed a new mantra—“Quell the swell. Quell the swell”—but it rarely worked. Before my shameless arousal became noticeable to anyone in the studio that morning, I aimed my attention away from Rafik.

  Working opposite the barre from him and facing him was a young male dancer. I immediately noticed the similarity of his body to mine, though his was devoid of any fat. Still, I could see by his frame and flesh that he shared my tendency to retain weight. Someday, when he stopped dancing, he too would be plagued with those same twelve or so pounds that refuse to leave my hips. Right now though, his haunches looked fine—full and round and tight. His legs could have belonged to my twin, if he existed. Relative to his trunk they were extra long, and plump with muscle, especially the calves. And like me, he had small feet that were broad as a brick and had an aggressively high instep. There was however a major difference between me and my dancing doppelganger. His entire musculature was obviously rock hard, while mine is just pleasantly firm. With a little longing I wondered if that young dancer represented my own body if I had ever pushed it to the ultimate conditioning that ballet produces. But a sudden bark from Madame Rubinskaya snapped me out of my reverie the instant the music stopped.

  “Take away barre!” she commanded.

  Perhaps a finely tuned body wasn’t worth the sacrifices required to attain and maintain it.

  Long before I’d met Rafik I’d learned from other dancer friends that all ballet classes comprise two distinct parts: barre and center. The barre, pronounced the same as the place where you can get a drink, is the first part of class, when the dancers perform their movements next to a stout wooden railing called a barre. The barres are usually attached permanently along the studio walls, but they can be portable and freestanding on the studio floor as well. The barre exercises warm up the dancers’ muscles and develop their strength. The center, or centre, if you want to be absolutely French about it, takes place on the studio floor proper. The center resembles actual dancing, when the dancers travel across the floor and through space, and they must rely on their own stability and strength. This is where the jumps and the turns happen too, along with the thrills and spills of classical dance.

  Rafik and the young dancer were about to move their portable barre off the floor, but another dancer, a lissome blond ballerina, was still executing her personal version of the stretches. While the class disbanded for a short break, with most of the dancers pouring out the doorway and roughly pushing me aside with a kind of mob momentum, that singular ballerina blithely continued her graceful movements, bending backward like a contortionist to touch the back of her knee with a softly held wrist. Rafik and the young male dancer watched her intently. Then their eyes met and … Did Rafik just wink at him? Couldn’t be. It was my insecurity at work again, misconstruing a wink and weakening my belief that I could be loved by someone like Rafik. His wink was more likely a wince of pain from the recent stretches. But then the young man made a remark, and Rafik responded with a generous smile and a comment that caused both the young man and the blond ballerina to giggle. The ballerina pulled herself upright from her bent back position and retorted sharply, which caused both Rafik and the young man to laugh out loud. And throughout this brief vignette, to my shame, I found myself feeling alienated and jealous of their easy, playful camaraderie.

  Madame Rubinskaya, still holding the willow switch in one hand, stopped beside me upon leaving the studio. She looked down at my feet, then directed her gaze back into my eyes with a cold stare.

  “Is rubber?” she said accusingly.

  “Excuse me?” I replied.

  “Your shoe is rubber?”

  “Ah … yes,” I said with another forced smile. I inverted one foot to show her the spongy white sole of my sneakers. She approved with a sharp nod.

  “Then you can go in studio.”

  Her permission granted, she moved brusquely on. My eyes followed her down the bright wide hallway. She paused and turned back toward me in half-profile. She tucked the willow switch under one arm, then fetched a package of cigarettes from a pocket of her cardigan. She lit up and inhaled deeply while she put the pack away. Then she exhaled a voluminous cloud of smoke. I watched her grasp the cigarette between her thumb and index finger and pull it smartly from her lips, as though portraying a tough from the old movies. (I’d once seen John Garfield hold a fag just like that, with his palm curled protectively over the glowing tip.) Madame retrieved the switch from under her arm, then resumed her deliberate pace toward a closed door a short distance away, arrived there, opened it, and vanished within. A blue-white cloud of smoke was all that remained in her wake.

  Meanwhile numerous dancers had settled themselves on the carpeted floor of the lobby. Some of them lay belly-down and stretched into wide open splits, some of them lay belly-up with legs propped up against a wall, and most of them, as though imitating Madame’s example, had lit up and were smoking freely. Here were specimens of the most extraordinary physical development engaging in—if you could believe the surgeon general—one of civilization’s most hazardous pleasures. Even I had tried many times to smoke as part of my image as a hairstylist, but had failed. I could never achieve that cool, elegant poise that comes from truly enjoying a cigarette. I generally coughed and gagged, and I always got teary, like an oversensitive wimp.

  Just as I was heading inside the Grand Studio, Rafik emerged with the young male dancer alongside him. They both wore big happy smiles on their faces. However, when Rafik saw me his easy smile changed to a look of surprise, and not one of pure pleasure. The young dancer who’d come out with him eyed me cautiously, then moved away from Rafik and settled down on the
carpet to stretch some more. Rafik approached me.

  “You are not at work?” he said with his French accent.

  “The day is so beautiful I thought of you.”

  Rafik smiled cynically. “You are romantique.”

  “So are you,” I said, hoping for a hug or a touch.

  He shook his head. “Non. I feel now—how you say?—pragmatique.”

  “Maybe you’re working too hard again.”

  He shrugged. “Work. Life. Is all the same.”

  Right then and there, at that horrible lapse of understanding, I wanted to hold Rafik close to me and make him tell me that it mattered to him that I loved him, that I wanted to be with him forever, that I wanted to save him from the pit of pragmatism that he was plummeting ever deeper into. But he spoke first and stole the moment from me.

  “We must change our plans tonight.”

  I sighed heavily, a sigh of exasperation. Rafik had already postponed twice an “anniversary” celebration we had planned to mark our first year together. Tonight was to be the third try, and I was beginning to sense that he didn’t share my enthusiasm about our togetherness.

  He went on. “I have important meeting with Max Harkey. He is director—”

  “I know who he is.”

  My gruffness surprised him. It did me too, but I had to resist his charms. Otherwise I’d passively accept yet another cancelled date with him. Rafik continued quietly.

  “It is dinner,” he said, then added, “You are invited.”

  “Oh,” I said with chagrin.

  “It is business. Maybe you have no interest.” (Rafik pronounced the word “mebby.”) “The new conductor for this season has arrived. We will talk about the music for the spring program.”

  “Well, I don’t mind, as long as I’m with you.”

  “There will be much ballet talk. You will be bored.”

  I had to concede a point there. For a nondancer, there’s almost nothing duller than being around dancers talking about dance. They’ll blab endlessly about muscles and ligaments and body placement, like an open forum in anatomy. At least when hairdressers socialize, they exchange juicy gossip, all sex and money.

  “Rafik, I’ll even listen to dance talk if it means we don’t have to cancel our anniversary again.”

  “You think I do not have grief from that? I want to celebrate, Stani, but I must do my work.”

  He had cleverly used the nickname bestowed by my Czech grandmother. Rafik always said it correctly too, accenting the second syllable: “Stuh-nee.” Only three people ever called me by that name, and they all seemed to do it when they wanted to gain a point during an argument.

  “Rafik, would you rather I didn’t come?”

  It was Rafik’s turn for a heavy sigh now, but his was a sigh of deference. “Max Harkey has asked for you. We are dining at eight o’clock at his home. He expects us at seven-thirty.”

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “Chez Harkey.”

  “Why don’t we go together?”

  Rafik set his mouth tensely and replied through his tightened lips, “I will depart from the studio.”

  “Then I’ll meet you here.”

  “You should go there yourself,” he said firmly.

  I wondered why he was being so difficult. Was it so much to expect that my lover might want me along on a social event, even if it was affiliated with the ballet company? I mean, were we a couple or not? I pulled out the small pad I always carry with me and asked Rafik for the address, then wrote it down. Just as I finished, Madame Rubinskaya arrived in the lobby where we were standing outside the studio. She was about to resume class.

  She said to Rafik, “You will do adagio?”

  Rafik replied no.

  “Is most important part,” she said, and glanced at me as though I would keep him from class.

  “I know, Madame,” Rafik said. “But I must prepare for rehearsal.”

  Madame Rubinskaya seemed to accept this reason. “And I must prepare your dancers,” she said, then Madame re-entered the Grand Studio. Immediately followed a flurry of cigarettes being extinguished in the lobby. Then all the sprawled-out, split-open, curled-up or twisted dancers’ bodies were on their feet and then back in the studio at attention. During the break Madame Rubinskaya had exchanged her whip-like switch for a sturdy walking stick of ebony topped with a silver finial. She used the stick to support herself in the center of the floor while she set the first combination of steps, the Grand Adagio.

  Standing next to me outside the studio, Rafik watched her intently as she filled thirty-two counts of powerful music with space-filling poses and unexpected turns of body, eternal balances, and sweeping circles of the upper body and arms. In spite of her ancient body, Madame had captivated Rafik’s attention. He was lost in her movements the way I wanted him to be lost in my presence. When Madame had marked all the steps and poses, the large class split into groups and performed the difficult adagio.

  Rafik said, “I must go. I have rehearsal.”

  “Can I watch?”

  He became almost violently defensive. “Non! I have told you already. Not this piece.”

  Rafik was keeping his most recent work a complete secret from me. Since its conception many months ago he had discussed neither title nor subject nor music with me. I was to experience this choreographic event along with the rest of the viewing public on opening night, in a few weeks. Until then I was to wait patiently and loyally, to tolerate Rafik’s moods and his despair, and to love him unconditionally through it all because he was a great artist who had to do this great thing. Well, I’m just an ordinary mortal. I want a flesh-and-blood man as my lover, not a creative demon.

  Rafik continued, “Today I am working with Toni.”

  “Tony?”

  “The conductor, from Italia.”

  Tony? Could it be true? Could my old flame Tony, the former church organist and choir director, now an internationally acclaimed opera conductor—could he be in Boston to conduct for the ballet? Then why hadn’t he called me? And why did Rafik’s eyes twinkle at the mention of his name?

  “I know him,” I said.

  “Is not him,” replied Rafik. “Is she,” he said emphatically and with correct grammar, even if he had chosen the wrong gender. Then he pointed behind me. I turned and looked in the direction he indicated, expecting to see a sexy man, which my Tony certainly was. But instead I saw a radiant and voluptuous redheaded woman approaching us. She sure wasn’t a ballerina, not with that frame and that bosom and those hips, and certainly not with that walk. Everything—hair, head, shoulders, hips, thighs—all of it was moving in fluid figure eights. No ballerina ever reveled in her own flesh that way. A ballerina’s body was an instrument of artistic expression, while this woman’s was obviously used to pleasure—big pleasure and lots of it.

  My suspicions that Rafik was hanging out with my former fantasy man were unfounded, and I felt stupid to have doubted him. Rafik introduced us. Her name was Toni di Natale. Then he explained to her—a bit glibly, I thought—that I was a “friend” and I was just about to leave. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?

  Toni di Natale extended her big hand toward me. “How do you do?” she said with a husky voice that bore no trace of accent.

  “Hi,” I said taking her hand, which matched mine in size and strength. “I don’t hear the sunny Mediterranean in your speech.”

  She smiled broadly and replied with her dry contralto, “I was born in New York, but I spend most of my time abroad. If anything,” she said, and then changed her vocal inflection as she continued, “I occasionally lapse into high Brit.” Then she laughed heartily and shook her head and shimmied her shoulders and tossed her mane of lustrous red hair, all with exaggerated playfulness.

  I replied, “My friend Nicole does that too—the Brit bit.”

  Rafik interrupted us and said to her, “Shall we go to work?”

  “Sure,” replied Toni, but her hips did most of the talking with the
monosyllabic answer. Then she asked me, “Are you coming along too?”

  Rafik intercepted her question before I could answer myself. “No,” he said sharply.

  All at once I understood how a woman might feel if her husband ever related to another man in a vaguely sexual way, and then proceeded to exclude her from their company. Rafik and I were lovers, yet this woman was attempting to arouse Rafik’s interest, and was very possibly succeeding. And now he was trying to keep me out of it. Already the two of them treated each other with a familiarity that I had assumed was mine alone with Rafik. For the briefest moment I wondered if Rafik might be bisexual. After all, Ramon, the shampoo boy at Snips, claimed to be bisexual, and he was from Paris, which is where Rafik was born and lived before going to Montreal. Maybe bisexuality ran higher among Francophones?

  The awkward moment that followed Rafik’s blunt “no” was broken by the voice of Madame Rubinskaya braying from within the Grand Studio. “Straytch, straytch, straaaaytch! Stay! Finish!”

  The music stopped and there was silence.

  Toni di Natale remarked offhandedly, “She’s a living relic.”

  To my surprise, Rafik glowered at her. “Her family was favored by the czar,” he said in staunch defense of the old woman.

  Toni replied firmly, “The czar is gone. The arts world needs people like you now.”

  Flirtation disguised as fact and flattery.

  A tense frown creased Rafik’s brow. Perhaps her adulation bothered him? Or did he sense my uneasiness that they might have already done the horizontal tango?

  “Nice to meet you,” Toni said to me. Then she hooked her arm into Rafik’s and turned to lead him away. He looked almost helpless in her power, and no part of Rafik is ever helpless.

  “See you both at dinner tonight,” I blurted.

  Toni di Natale turned back toward me with a big swirl, using Rafik’s body as her pivot point. “Are you going too?” she said. “How nice!” But her enthusiasm, like everything else about her so far, was veneer.

  Rafik told her to go and wait in his small office, just down the hall, where he’d meet her in a few minutes. “Don’t keep me waiting too long,” she said. “I still have jet lag.” She laughed noisily, and Rafik nodded back with a big grin, one that I recognized from when he first seduced me.