“No. It’s not that. I wasn’t raped. I thought I had a good night. I thought it was good. It was just ... he was different this morning.” No he wasn’t. He was the same. Last night, telling you what to do, not letting you touch him, not letting you look at him, doing what he wanted. It was all the same. She shuddered and put her face in her hands, pressing her fingertips into her eyelids as if she might push the thoughts out of her head.
“Different how?”
She shook her head.
His hands closed gently around her forearms. “You’re scaring me, love. Please talk to me.”
She looked up, into Julian’s worried eyes. “Last night, I thought he was kind. This morning, he was just ... cold. And I’m humiliated. That’s all it is.” She felt like an idiot for letting it happen, and a fool for being so upset about it now.
“That’s not nothing. Fuck anybody who makes you feel like this. Is there any reason you ever have to see him again?”
He was a season-ticket holder, but she’d never noticed him before. “No.”
“Is there any point in my asking his name?”
“No. It doesn’t matter. I just want to pretend it never happened.”
“Okay, then, we will. Let’s do this: We don’t have to be at the theatre for hours yet. Let’s open this bad boy”—he slapped his hands on the futon pad—“and bring in all our pillows and blankets. We’ll cuddle up and watch crappy TV until we have to go. Sound good?”
She was going to cry again, but now because she loved this man, who was truly kind, and truly cared for her. “Sounds perfect.”
~oOo~
“Goddamn it!” Baxter roared and threw his water bottle. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you get hit on the head last night?”
“Chill out, Bax,” Julian snapped back. He pulled Ari, who’d just nearly broken his nose flubbing—no, destroying—the entrance to a one-armed seat press, over to the barre.
The entire cast of the second act was in the rehearsal room, witness to the most embarrassing rehearsal of her career. They were about to be witness to the most embarrassing breakdown of her career as well. She clutched her arms around her middle, trying to hold herself together.
“You’re in your head, Ari,” Julian muttered. “Hey, hey.” He grabbed her chin and tipped her head up. “Just look at me. We’ve done this hundreds of times. Just be with me. Like we were last night. You and me and nothing else.”
Except she wasn’t in her head. She was in her body, and her body was sore. A one-armed seat press was a complicated lift, and incredibly intimate in any case—the boy lifted the girl with one hand between her legs, high above his head. The entrance required perfect timing, and Ari had just kneed Julian in the nose—which was a ridiculously clumsy, amateurish result. Julian, ever the professional, hadn’t dropped her like a hot rock.
And that was simply the latest and worst of five failed tries, each one more calamitous than the one before.
He was right: they’d done it hundreds of times, in rehearsals and performances alike. Last night, on stage, they’d executed the lift so flawlessly Ari felt like she’d soared, and the whole audience had reacted in gleeful awe.
The problem was his hand. He put his hand between her legs and lifted her, and it hurt. A lot. She felt all the ache of the night before, doubled. And then she was in her head, remembering how intense Donnie had been, how much she’d liked it. How he’d turned that all to shit this morning. Her humiliation exploded in a bright burst of pain, and then she was a total fucking mess.
Looking away from Julian, from Baxter, his contempt reflected in the mirror, Ari closed her eyes and pressed her fingers in. The night’s performance was in two hours, and this rehearsal had been an absolute nightmare. Her confidence was shot. Everyone’s confidence in her was shot.
“Maybe we should cut that lift tonight,” Sergei suggested. He sat on a stack of mats in the corner.
“Absolutely not,” Baxter snarled. Ari could sense him stalking toward her, but she still jumped when he grabbed her arm and wheeled her around. “You will not fuck up my ballet. I will cut your fat ass before I cut that lift.”
“Jesus, Bax, come on,” Julian muttered. The boys could get away with a lot more lip than the girls with Baxter Berrault.
Baxter ignored him and squeezed Ari’s arm just a little bit harder. “If you can’t do it, tell me now. Should I call Jessi over? I’m sure she’s ready to step into the role.” He looked across the room. “Aren’t you, Jessi?”
Ari didn’t hear the answer, but she had no doubt it was in the affirmative. She straightened her back and took a deep breath. “I can do it.”
“Good. Show me.” He let her go and stalked away.
Julian cupped his hands around her face and smiled down at her. “I always got you, Ari. Fuck him, fuck that guy last night, fuck everybody everywhere but us. I got you.”
The music started up again. Julian kissed the top of her head, and they walked back to the center of the room.
~oOo~
As she’d done hundreds of times before, she made the lift, in rehearsal and on the stage. She made all her steps, all her moves. The transcendence she’d felt the night before was gone, and once again, as usual, she was Arianna, dancing. On this night, however, she didn’t feel even her usual sense of immanence, of deep presence in her own body, no sense of the art in her power. All the memories of last night were still alive in her mind and crashing into each other, keeping her too much in her head.
The recollection of a perfect performance. Of her excitement to have Donnie want to see her. Her enchantment with him at dinner. The intense, nervy desire she’d felt in his arms, with his hands all over her, controlling her, commanding her, overwhelming her. The next morning, with the sun shining harshly and throwing shadows over it all. His chilly, distant calm.
Distant. That was the thing—he’d been distant from the start. Detached. Even when their bodies were joined, he’d been nothing more than a shimmer on the glass. He’d given her nothing at all, and like a fool, she’d filled in all his gaps with wishes and fantasies.
She’d thought his reserve was caution. She’d thought he was self-conscious. She’d thought he’d been hurt so much, and felt empathy for his pain. So she’d offered him everything he’d take.
Naked against a window with a stranger, exposed to the whole city of Providence, and he hadn’t even taken off his damn tie.
No wonder he wanted to make her his whore. She’d let him use her like one.
Her body danced, remembered its movements, but her mind could not let go of these truths. No transcendence. No immanence. She was only Arianna, dancing.
When Sergei carried her off the stage at the end of the second act, he set her down just in the wings with a huff.
“I’m sorry,” she said at once, though neither of them had made a wrong move.
“We dance with a robot tonight.”
“I know. I just can’t get into it.” The house lights were up, and the soft rumble of an audience freed to speak and move rolled into the wings. Ari turned from Sergei and went to the front. She looked out and saw the usual stream of people heading leisurely to the exits for their break.
The box she’d been so interested in last night now held three middle-aged couples. Of course he wouldn’t be there. He didn’t own that box. He had a premiere-night subscription. And why would she want to see him if he were there? Why was she even looking?
To know it and be warned. Just that.
She felt a hand on her hip and looked over her shoulder at Sergei.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Come, Ari. Costume change.”
A bad date. That was all it was—a bad date. Donnie Goretti was a jerk, but he certainly wasn’t the only jerk she’d ever known. Or even the worst jerk. Just a jerk. It meant nothing. He meant nothing. And she was being even more stupid and weak than she’d been last night to let him ruin her art like this.
She took Sergei’s hand and let him lead her awa
y from the stage.
~oOo~
Ari sat at the mirror of her dressing table and smeared a third coating of Pond’s over her face. Her wedding dress costume was off and ready to return to the costume department for cleaning and any repairs it might need. Wearing only her fluffy pink robe, open so she wouldn’t get cold cream on it when she cleaned her neck, she wiped away the last of the stage makeup. The usual, musical chatter of dancers and staff in their post-performance bustle fill the hall beyond her closed door.
She’d wanted a star’s private dressing room for as long as she could remember, from the days of tiny pink leotards and tutus and soft shoes. But now that she had it, she was a little lonely. The other dancers shared a room, boys and girls alike, and chatted and laughed and complained together while they prepared or unwound.
She was alone here, with nothing but her thoughts.
The third act had gone better than the first two. She’d gotten hold of the stupid, swoony chick who’d taken over her brain, and she’d stuffed that flighty little twat in a trunk in the back. In the third act, which was mostly her and Sergei, Christine and Erik, the ingenue and the Phantom, she’d homed in on Sergei’s portrayal of Erik as the villain of the piece, and she’d used her own emotions to fuel her Christine.
She wasn’t perfect in the third act, but she was present. She’d done well enough for the audience, and her fellow dancers, to forgive her for the automaton she’d been for the first two-thirds of the night.
Donnie Goretti got exactly this: one day to fuck with her. Now, it was over, and she was over it.
When her face was clean, and she’d started pulling pins from her hair, the door behind her swung open, and Baxter stepped in. Ari dropped her hands and drew her robe closed over her chest.
He closed the door, came the tiny distance to her table, and leaned on it, facing her, his leg against hers. Ari held her robe close and looked up at him.
“Do you need something?”
His grin was slight, and probably meant to be friendly, but she saw predation. “I do. I need to understand you.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means in the past day, I’ve seen about six different Arianna Lucianos. I’ve seen a competent dancer. I’ve seen an abysmal failure. I’ve seen a clockwork doll. I’ve seen an angry shrew. And I’ve seen a true star. Last night, you were sublime. Watching you dance, I was so hard for you I hurt.”
She flinched at that, and his grin became openly feral. A snarl of bared teeth.
“Ah, you don’t like that? That right there is your problem. You’ll never be a star until you understand that. It’s what the ballet is, darling. It’s visceral. It’s pure, untrammeled emotion. You should want me to be hard. You should want every cock in the house to be dripping with the need to fuck you. And every pussy, too.”
“Stop, Bax. Please.”
Ignoring her, instead he hooked his foot around her ankle and turned her toward him, forcing her legs to spread. Her robe fell open, and she knew he could see what he wanted to see.
The way Baxter treated her was nothing new, not for her, and not for most girls. And boys, too. Harsh teachers, abusive directors, predatory choreographers—the whole culture abounded with stories about them, so many that nearly every book or movie set in the world of ballet showcased just such a character. It was a profession in which people entered at a very young, tender, naïve age and were shaped to adulthood within it. It was a profession about the body, in which those young, tender, naïve children, all of them beautiful and graceful and scantily clad, were expected to accept the gaze and touch of nearly any person in a position of power over them, a profession in which they were called ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ throughout their dancing careers, no matter their age or experience.
It was a profession in which the people in power were used to being obeyed, to having dominion over young bodies, in which those people had also come up in the same way and now believed they’d earned the right to do the same to others.
From the time she was three years old, people had claimed possession of Ari’s body, controlled it, demanded it do their bidding, berated her until she could make it obey. Shaped her body to their will with their hands and their voices.
She did not know how to have a will of her own in the face of her director’s abuse. Not only did he hold her whole career in his hands, but she’d been trained for nearly thirty years to take what men like him gave. Men with power. Men who saw her as a thing to be shaped to their vision.
Men like Baxter Berrault.
And Donnie Goretti.
She wanted to be strong, to be her own person, to be Arianna, dancing. She’d told herself she was, that she was the dancer she wanted to be. But she was only wet clay, waiting for a man’s hands to make her what they wanted.
In the past day, men had shaped away most of her sense of self. Maybe it hadn’t ever been anything but a delusion anyway.
All she could do now was pull her robe closed and look away.
He leaned close and set his hand on her knee. “You only have this part because Devonny’s injured. You’re nothing more than her understudy. You’ll never be anything more than an understudy, Ari, until you accept what dance really is. And you’re running out of time. You only have a few years left on your toes, and then you’ll be nothing at all.” His hand began to inch up the inside of her thigh. “I can show you. I can make you feel it.”
She put her hand down to block him. “Bax, please stop.”
He set his hand on hers. “Do you understand that I can save your career? Or end it?”
Before she could understand if she had the strength to resist him, to put everything she’d worked for her entire life on the table in the balance against her sexual autonomy, Julian knocked briskly on the door and opened it.
“Hey, love. You about—oh. Bax.” He stepped in and took in the scene. Ari caught his eyes in the mirror, and tried to send him an SOS. Baxter had removed his hand, but his posture was still intimately close. “Everything okay?”
“Sure,” Baxter said, standing up. “Ari and I were chatting about tonight’s performance. I’ll see you both tomorrow. Don’t stay out too late.”
He walked out of the room like a man with no conscience.
Julian closed the door and locked it. He spun around. “Okay. You’re in my dressing room with me for the rest of the run. You’re not alone with him ever until he moves on from this sadistic twitch he’s got for you. Once Dev’s back, he’ll behave himself.”
Ari could only nod.
~ 11 ~
The timer on the treadmill flashed the end of his forty-five minutes, and the belt began to slow down. Not ready to stop, Donnie pressed the ‘up’ arrow and added another fifteen minutes.
He worked out at least five days a week, more than that if he could find the time. When he was young, he’d had the kind of physique and metabolism that was effortlessly fit—not obviously muscular inside his clothes, but lean and strong, and decently defined, no matter what he ate or whether he worked out. The long stretches of stillness after his injury had changed that, and he’d had to work more conscientiously since. After he passed forty, he’d had to work even harder to keep the same results.
Where he could, Donnie did what he could to be pleasing to the feminine eye. When he was a young man, a fresh Pagano soldier, he’d been pretty good looking. He’d been told often enough to see it himself. He’d gotten plenty of tail. But then he was scarred. After that, until he was made underboss, he’d dated only one woman, and she’d taught him well the lessons of the limits of his appeal.
That he’d been alone except for hired company from then until he stood at Nick’s right hand had set the lesson in stone.
Power and money blurred women’s vision. Since Nick had brought him up to underboss, he hadn’t lacked for female company, but he understood quite well that when they looked at his face, they had to overcome it—he could see the struggle, even in the women he was with for som
e time. They built up a habit of looking at him in a certain way. So he kept his body fit. He wanted to give them somewhere to put their eyes that he’d see true attraction shining in them.
When he’d bought this house, one of the first things he did was build this gym in the cellar. He’d designed it to be a real gym for one person—a place where he could work out in private, and do anything and everything he wanted. A couple times a week, he lifted and did a little work with a heavy bag and a speed bag. At least three times a week—and every day if he could—he ran on the treadmill.
That was by far his favorite workout. In the rhythmic beat of his feet on the belt, the steady pace entirely in his control, the complete lack of unexpected stimuli, Donnie could free his brain to lift the heavy weight of hard thoughts. Whatever was pressing on his mind or heart, he could explore it and know it, master it and set it aside.
Usually, his heavy thoughts were about his work. He’d never had the taste for violence and blood that Angie had. He did what he had to do because it was his job, and because he would always do anything for Nick. He’d die for his don. He had certainly killed for him, and he would again. And again. He understood the need for the dark work, and he did it. But even against their bitterest enemies, when the taste of vengeance was pungent on his tongue, he got no enjoyment from the work. Satisfaction, perhaps, but not enjoyment. It always weighed heavy.
On the treadmill, he could lighten the load.
For the past few days, his heavy thoughts had been about himself, and they leaned on him harder than any death he’d caused. They weighed on him now. So he kept running. When the next fifteen minutes timed down, he added ten more. Then he really had to stop and get ready for work.
In all his years in the Pagano Brothers, in all his years as a man on this earth, never had a woman run from him before. Women had acted as if he’d hurt their feelings before—and he might truly have; not all of his breakups had been gentle. They’d been angry before. They’d stormed out. But Arianna had fled. She’d run barefoot out of the room, so desperate to get away from him she hadn’t taken a moment to put on her shoes.
Hidden Worthiness Page 12
