Dead on Your Feet

by Grant Michaels

  Toni di Natale continued on toward Rafik’s office, leaving us alone outside the Grand Studio. Rafik waited until the music for the adagio started again, then he said to me, “I see what you are thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You think of sex.”

  “That’s right. Especially sex with me, and how long it’s been since that happened. I wouldn’t mind a little more interest from you. We are still lovers, aren’t we?”

  Rafik stared directly into my eyes.

  “You hurt me with these words,” he said.

  “I miss you when you are so involved in your work.”

  “It will pass.”

  “But I want you now ”

  “Tonight, Stani. I promise. After dinner at Max Harkey’s.”

  Again the nickname. I never liked the idea of making an appointment or a promise to have sex with someone I love. But I was lonely for Rafik, and he seemed to be spilling his affection everywhere but on the home front.

  “You still want to meet chez Harkey?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  Why was he insisting on separate arrivals? So we wouldn’t be perceived as a couple? Or was it just another odd way of punishing me for not living with him?

  “I’ll see you later then,” I said coolly.

  Then, as if to belie all our misunderstood words, we suddenly embraced there in the hallway, holding each other close and hard. I listened to his breath, felt his lips graze the side of my neck, absorbed his moistness, took in his scent. Rafik’s skin exudes miraculous scents—the lively citrus of bergamot, the cool green of clover, the pungent bite of nutmeg, the sweetness of vanilla—an olfactory smorgasbord that challenges me to keep my lips and tongue and teeth to myself when I’m near him. Holding Rafik for those few seconds outside the Grand Studio of the Boston City Ballet made everything in the world fine again. Never mind the axiom that says electrical vigor between two bodies must diminish with time; if Rafik was giving me a manicure, I’d probably climax three times.

  “You’d better go change,” I whispered. “I don’t want you catching cold in these sweaty duds.”

  I left the studios and headed back across town to Snips. I was mildly disgusted by all the jealous turmoil I’d just put us through. I knew it was all irrational. If Rafik wanted to play around with anyone—the male dancers, or the females, or even Toni di Natale, for that matter—he’d have plenty of time to do it at the studios. So his suggestion that we arrive separately at Max Harkey’s place must have been a matter of convenience and nothing more. I’d do better to focus my obsessions on the nature of Rafik’s secret choreography—the new work he refused to share with me—than to fret about his love.

  2

  My Little Corner of the World

  SNIPS SALON HAS THRIVED ON NEWBURY STREET since the day Nicole Albright opened its doors. From the very beginning Nikki never let on to the clientele that she owned the place. Instead she has always portrayed the resident manicurist, which somehow gets her customers to talk more openly with her. I don’t quite understand why the ploy works, but it does.

  Last winter Nikki officially promoted me to salon manager. It’s mostly a paper title, since I’ve always helped manage the shop. But these days she wants even less to do with running the business, so she’s passed the major part of management on to me. The change is good for me since I earn more money and spend less time on the shop floor. When I do work out front, I see only the customers I want—no more anonymous walk-ins unless I find them irresistible.

  That morning, after my visit to the ballet studios, I breezed into the shop around eleven o’clock. My nostrils flared at the familiar sharp tingle as I inhaled the vapors of the myriad and sometimes noxious chemicals used to beautify our clients. I often wonder if the thousands of beauty salons around the world might be in Olympic competition with the heavier industries like petroleum or nuclear energy in terms of creating ecological disharmony. True, the newer beauty products are more considerate of Mother Nature, but many of them still reek of destruction. Perhaps the only saving grace is that stylists and estheticians exercise their environmental wantonness in the name of beauty, unlike the energy cartels. I mean, when was the last time you filled the tank and felt sexy? When were you last enraptured by a flawless meltdown?

  I saw Nicole manicuring a client. She looked up for a moment and scanned me quickly with her bright blue eyes, peering over the top of her half-frame magnifying glasses like an ever-alert feline. She smiled softly and nodded to me, missing not one surgical swipe of her cuticle trimmers. Nicole’s usual boisterous mood was somewhat subdued these days, ever since her young lover Chaz had gone off to Hollywood to make millions practicing entertainment law. I thought his departure a blessing, since I saw only his ego-ridden and obnoxious side. I never trusted him either, probably because he was young enough to be Nicole’s son. She’s on that side of fifty and Chaz wasn’t yet thirty, which put him just younger than me. Besides, he was good-looking and well-built and cocksure of himself. But then, goodlooking, well-built men usually are cocksure of themselves, probably because they so rarely experience the rejection that we pedestrian types do. But Chaz had been good for Nicole’s libido, even if his sexual tenure did cause a rift between us. Fortunately, Rafik had come along and had partly filled the emotional gap I felt during Nicole’s affair with Chaz. But once her lawyer-lover departed, Nikki became the one who incurred a void in her life, and our feisty big sis—little brother relationship had easily resumed.

  On the way to my office at the back of the shop I passed by Nicole’s manicure table, where she keeps a tumbler full of emery boards at hand. They always remind me of the afternoon Rafik used one so inventively on my tender body parts.

  “Sorry I’m late, doll,” I said cheerfully.

  “Tied to the bedposts again?” she replied, keeping her cool gaze on the gnarly ancient hand that writhed in her grasp.

  “I went to the ballet studios,” I said.

  Nicole didn’t respond, but her elderly client looked up and spoke to me in a voice overcome with tremolo.

  “Are you a dancer?”

  I recognized her as one of our generic dowager clients who kept a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. This one’s hair had recently been modernized from silver-blue to silver-blond. The new color job was probably the work of Ramon, the once-upon-a-time shampoo boy who had stepped up to part-time stylist after I accepted the mantle of salon manager. As for the old woman’s question, I wondered if she was legally blind, since anyone with sight and half a brain would know that I do not have a dancer’s silhouette. I’m tall enough with a leggy five-foot-ten-inch frame, but I carry several extra kilos around my middle that would drive a dancer to liposuction if not to suicide. Fortunately Rafik doesn’t care about the fat-to-muscle ratio around my midriff. Perhaps he even gets a perverse thrill from it, since vanity still forbids such a mortal flaw on his body. Or maybe it’s simply the Jack Sprat syndrome, where opposites attract: He is dark and sinewy and hairy, while I am pink and porpoise-sleek.

  “No, ma’am,” I said to Nicole’s elderly client. “I’m not a dancer. But my husband is.”

  She gasped slightly, as though the idea of two men together had never occurred to her, not even here in Snips, one of the gay strongholds in Beantown, Massachusetts. She may have been sporting the moderne Brahmin look, but her thinking was as calcified as ever.

  Nicole said, “The office awaits you, Stanley.”

  Even my salon name, Vannos, had vanished like an old actor’s mask when I assumed the position as salon manager. Thus dismissed, I headed toward the little chamber in the back of the shop, formerly one of the storage rooms, which Nicole had converted to an office where I could tend my managerial duties. On the way I saw Ramon, who was happily chatting up one of his new customers. He gave me a big smile as I passed by. Ramon had become a lot friendlier since he started doing his own creative work, and especially since he began receiving his tips directly from his own customers instead of fr
om the other stylists. But despite the new improved Ramon, my client list remained sacrosanct, as did any customer who explicitly requested me. Ramon would have to cultivate his own following, just as we all did in the beginning.

  I entered the office and surveyed my domain. The tiny cubicle is equipped with all the essentials: a luxurious mauve leather chair, a European coffeemaker, a small refrigerator, a multiline telephone, and the usual desk and computer. The other accessories include a sisal floor mat and a darling but useless little side chair of anodized pink steel tubing with seat and back surfaces of narrow satin ribbon, all multicolored and interwoven. Everything combines synergistically to create a look of relaxed urbanity, distinctly cozy and gay.

  Among the debris on my desktop is the usual gallery of framed photos that grace any good executive’s office: a color snapshot of my mom lounging with a frosty cocktail during a summer barbecue at the New Jersey homestead, while my father is in the background, enveloped in clouds of smoke wafting from the meat-laden grille; a sepia-toned studio portrait of my sister and her husband and their two princess daughters, all of them reeking of the complacent bourgeois life they desperately seek and seem to have attained; and finally a photo-collage of my Burmese cat, Sugar Baby, in various endearing poses throughout her idyllic life with me. Rafik’s likeness is not on the desk among the other family portraits, but instead holds a place of honor all its own. On the back of my office door I’ve mounted a life-sized poster created from a photo of him, a full-body shot taken during his glorious dancing days. When the dramas and intrigues of salon life become too distracting—usually on a daily basis—I cloister myself in this private sanctuary and let the icon transfix me.

  My dominion surveyed, I launched into my morning ritual: Fill the coffeemaker with bottled spring water; scoop in excessive amounts of freshly ground, custom-blended coffee; set out one of the homemade pastries my mother sends every week; start up the computer; sort and open the mail; and that’s about as far as I got for the next ten minutes. I just couldn’t settle down. I opened the window that overlooks the back alley and also keeps me connected to the weather, which in Boston can be a full-time preoccupation. I thought some fresh air might help me get down to business, but the cool breeze carried the scent of young green growth from outside, which only distracted me further from the dull paperwork awaiting me. I filled my mug with coffee and then took a big forkful of poppy-seed strudel. The buttery pastry and the sticky black seeds tasted extra good that morning.

  I closed my office door and gazed at the poster of Rafik that hung there. He was standing beside a barre, one elbow placed on it and the other on his hip. The classic dance attire—white T-shirt, black tights, white socks, and white kidskin ballet slippers—belied his suggestive stance. His weight was on one leg; the other was slightly bent to give a rakish tilt to his hips. His head was cocked to one side, and he grinned directly into the camera lens. The look was an open invitation to pleasure. My heart pumped a little faster. I wondered, Was it true? Were Rafik and I really together? Had we actually met and connected? Of all the available men in Boston, why had Rafik chosen me? He is complex, almost Byzantine, where I am simple and direct. His paradoxical self contains youthful spontaneity, guru-like wisdom and acceptance, compulsive creativity, martial destructiveness, lustful joie de vivre, and even despair. He is demon and angel, teacher and student, lover and enemy, child and father. I sometimes worry that an ordinary person like me might obstruct the potential of someone like him. But he claims that I provide a lightness and a humor that refresh him and revitalize him. So why do I feel that gnawing inside me? Perhaps the equations that finally explain us are simple: Rafik is gorgeous and I worship him; he expends creative energy and I replenish it; he lives in the tradition of grand opera while I run a sudsy sitcom parody of it.

  Nicole opened the door and broke my daydream.

  “Wake up, darling.” Nikki often entered my sanctum without knocking—a forgivable intrusion since she owns the place. On her five-foot-four-inch physical self she wore a classy skirt-and-blouse ensemble. The long-sleeved silk blouse had been screened with big blocks of dense color—blue, red, and yellow—all outlined in black, like a Mondrian painting. The fitted skirt of charcoal gray worsted had a curiously slimming effect around her hips. Alas, “svelte” had left Nicole years ago, after she stopped modeling on the Paris runways and began eating and drinking whatever she wanted. These days, her idea of exercise and dietary control is to walk a few blocks to the health-food store and buy a package of rice crackers. She might nibble at one or two, but the rest becomes bird food while she telephones for Italian take-out. Fortunately, her metabolism keeps her just this side of plump.

  “I wasn’t napping,” I said. “I was ruminating.”

  “You do too much of that,” she said. I offered her some of my strudel. She shook her head no. “You know I’ve cut out sweets this month, but that coffee smells heavenly.”

  “That’s as close as either of us will get there,” I said as I filled a mug with the steamy beverage and poured a dollop of heavy cream into it, just the way she likes it.

  “Thank you, darling,” she said and took the mug, then tried to settle herself in the little side chair. She scowled and winced for a few seconds, squirming and fussing with her hips, trying to get comfortable in the tiny seat of slippery satin ribbons.

  “Just set your butt down and leave it there, doll.”

  “It’s a horrid little chair,” she said. “I’m going to replace it.”

  “But it’s the objet piquant of the room.”

  “And you can’t sit in it.”

  If Nicole really hated the chair, she never would have bought it. I think what she wanted that morning was the comfy leather that was cushioning my fanny at the moment. Fat chance.

  She sipped her coffee then asked me, “Is everything all right with Rafik?”

  “Sure,” I said happily. “Why?”

  “You went to see him at the studio this morning.”

  “The beautiful weather inspired me to seek my beloved.”

  “So you weren’t together last night?”

  “Everything is fine, doll.”

  We sat quietly for a few moments, sipping the rich coffee and breathing in the moist lively air that wafted in through the open window. A little bird in one of the bushes outside fluttered nervously among the branches and cheeped noisily. The very peacefulness seemed to unnerve me.

  “Okay, doll. You guessed right. Rafik and I are on another bumpy patch.”

  “Jealousy again?”

  I nodded. “I feel so juvenile I’m ashamed.”

  “What brought it on this time?”

  “The same old thing. He’s in one of his creative periods, which means we’re not having sex. And when that happens my old insecurities come home to roost and I think he’s having sex with every young thing at the studio, and then I realize that my whole concept of love and partnership is based on sex, and then I hate myself.”

  Nicole shook her head and clucked her tongue quietly.

  “Stanley, why don’t you just move in together? What are you waiting for?”

  “Our domestic temperaments are too different. He has that old-world attitude about marriage. He expects the homey comfort and security of a wife to keep things smooth. And I know I’m not exactly a model of virility, but I’m certainly not a homemaker for somebody else.”

  “There must be some middle ground.”

  “We try to spend three or four nights a week together, but he still argues how impractical it is to keep separate apartments. I figure the separateness is precisely what keeps us together.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t want to know everything that goes on backstage in his life.”

  “Are you afraid of intimacy?”

  “Cut the psychobabble, doll. I just wouldn’t want to stumble home early some afternoon and find him, well, with a guest.”

  “Darling, you’re sounding Victorian. What difference w
ould it make as long as he’s being safe and discreet about it? Rafik adores you and he wouldn’t do a thing to hurt you. I think you expect too much from people.”

  “That’s a platitude, Nikki. Besides, rationalizing about love is like wearing sensible shoes. It fills a need, but it completely discounts the emotions. None of it matters anyway, since I can’t be or think anything other than what I am.”

  “What you are is fatalistic and lazy. We all have control over our lives.”

  “Doll, no one creates his or her own reality, unless you’re referring to things like hair color, or hemline, or heel height. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty stuff, about how we feel and act and respond with each other, I don’t think any of us has much control over any of it. It’s all genetically determined, sperm meets egg, the luck of the draw, including the ability to overlook or endure sexual infidelity from a spouse.”

  “Stanley, please—”

  “It’s true, Nikki. My rational side knows that promiscuity, even by my lover, doesn’t really matter in the grand chaos of things. But my romantic side cares only about love and all other things irrational. So, I’m a mess, and it’s all controlled by my DNA, not by any learned response. No matter what I might want to do or try to do about it, my life is rooted in Slavic melancholy, and I’ll probably never be truly happy or content as long as I’m alive.”

  “Rubbish!” replied Nicole. “You have too much idle time, and you’re whining.”

  “Maybe I need a corpse to distract me.”

  Nicole’s long-lashed eyelids opened wide at my flippant remark. “I should think you’d had enough of that,” she said. Then she pushed her coffee mug toward me. “Do something useful and pour some cognac in this.”

  “So early in the day?”