Act Five
Baylee Wright
My Aunt Lucy once said that I’m unnaturally predisposed to shitty situations. That, and I’m far too obsessed with grilled cheese, a boy who is trouble, soca music, and dancing barefoot in living rooms. Sometimes all four were tangled together—in a whacky, just right kind of way.
Three days ago, right after the hellish moving day for all Aerial Ethereal artists, I found myself in another shitty situation.
I thought I’d be able to pull myself out of the quicksand. I groveled to Aerial Ethereal and complained to Human Resources, all to be met with your thousand-dollar fine still stands.
So I’ve succumbed to my shitty fate.
Technically it wasn’t my fault. Someone stole my last cardboard box, after I already made eight trips upstairs to my new suite. Then after I ran around searching for the box, it somehow turned up in another person’s suite on the 42nd floor at midnight.
The floor that AE were desperate to have cleaned by 5:00 p.m.
“The box has your name on it,” they said. “Therefore, you were late on moving and incurred a fine. It doesn’t matter if your suite had been empty. You cluttered another room.”
Cluttered. It was one neatly packed box.
Still, the thousand-dollar fine stands.
I cringe thinking about the depletion in my already low bank account. It’s not like artists make loads of money. Aerial Ethereal tries to justify pay cuts with “oh but you live in a Vegas hotel and casino for free. It’s worth more than your salary”—yeah, but I’d like money to eat too.
I stand on the carpeted casino floor and wait for my brother.
Inside the heart of the Masquerade, slots ping all around me. And even though people gamble at velvet card tables and at flashing machines, I’m alone with my sad thoughts.
“Where are you, Brenden?” I mutter and crane my neck beyond the casino floor. I try to spy my older brother through the hoards of people. Some wheel their suitcases towards the elevators. Others meander along the Masquerade’s indoor cobblestone walkway, which leads to bars, dance clubs, gift shops, and the ginormous pool.
Everything you could ever desire is at the Masquerade, or so the brochure says.
I check my phone for any missed texts. My Facebook app is currently up, clicked into a closed group.
INFINITE LOOPHOLE – TOP SECRET (cast only)
Description: if you’re a part of this group, then you know what’s up. Narks will suffer severe consequences. Don’t be a nark.
*pinned post* Meet up at 1842 (for all newbies, 1842 is the name of a bar in the Masquerade hotel. First floor, red disco balls line the hallway it’s on) and arrive no later than 10 p.m. IMPORTANT: do not verbally spread this event to anyone else. Not unless they’re in the same show (refer to post title).
“Bay.”
I jump at my nickname and turn around to my tense-faced brother. Usually he wears mirth like another layer of skin. Always friendly. Constantly smiling.
Then he sees me upset, in any way, and he stiffens to rigid attention. Like he’s a soldier reporting for duty.
Black hair cut short, he runs a hand over his head, and I watch as he assesses my features for answers. We tell each other almost everything, so he was the first to hear about my plan to beg Human Resources one last time tonight.
Now he’ll be the first to hear how poorly it went.
I open my mouth, but he speaks first.
“No,” he groans, absorbing my dejection. “No, no. They can’t just fine you a grand for doing nothing.” Wearing a green V-neck, charcoal pants, and a spritz of cologne—which suggests a “night out” not confronting HR—he spins towards nowhere really. “I’m going to talk to these idiots.”
“No you aren’t,” I tell him seriously.
Slowly, he faces me again.
I respect his great show of brotherly valor, but I’d never let Brenden sink his reputation or career. Mine is already bruised, so one more complaint from me won’t make much of a difference.
“Baylee,” he forces my name like I’m being unreasonable.
“Brenden,” I shoot back. I may prefer to stand in the shadows over commanding the spotlight—I’m not loud or brash and I don’t really like being the center of attention in my personal life—but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a backbone.
“You’re my little sister,” he argues.
I always tell him, you’re only one year older.
He always replies, a year is plenty of time.
I don’t have the heart for that banter. Honestly, I’m too upset about the situation, and even if I bottle most of the sorrow, it still enlarges a hollow pit inside of me.
A cavernous hole that I have no idea how to fill.
“So I’m your little sister,” I say, shrugging tensely. “It won’t change anything. Aerial Ethereal won’t listen to anyone but themselves. You could even have evidence, and they’d still fine me. Can we please just go?” I wave him towards the cobblestone walkway.
Brenden lets out an incensed breath and then scans my wardrobe.
I threw on a red cotton dress for Infini’s secret cast party. The outfit is simple like the rest of my wardrobe, and I didn’t even bother fixing my hair. Long and loose curly strands mold my oval face and splay over my A-cups.
I’m not exactly slender like a contortionist or ballerina, but I’m not muscular and stalky like a typical gymnast either. I have wide hips like my Aunt Lucy and a flat chest like my mom. As a juggler, I have more leeway in how I look than other artists. I’m lucky in the sense that I only need to be fit and in shape.
Brenden shakes his head at my dress. “That thing is ancient.”
“What? No it’s not.” I touch the short hem. “I bought it…two years ago, four years…” I stretch my mind. “Oh.” I had this dress when I was fourteen, at least.
“Yeah. Oh.” He’s not amused. “You should buy new clothes. If you’re worried about money—”
“It’s not that,” I interject but then go quiet.
It’s hard to part with things that still have a place in my life. If I’m not being forced to say goodbye to this dress and it still fits, then why wouldn’t I just keep wearing it?
I touch the fabric, and I remember a moment with a boy I’m not supposed to name. I wore this dress when we were together, traipsing around Brooklyn on a brisk, fall day.
I try not to picture the moment. I try not to visualize him at all.
I can’t start walking down a road that has an eighty-foot drop-off into a rocky ravine. There’s only danger at the end of his name. At the end of us.
I have to remember this. Constantly.
Before Brenden offers to pay for a shopping spree or cover half of my fine, I speak up.
“I’m nineteen,” I remind him, “and if I need a new dress, I can always buy it on my own.” I also add, “Aunt Lucy sends me new clothes almost every month, so you really don’t have to worry.”
Our aunt is a brand & marketing executive for a major NYC and Philadelphia-based fashion company. She’s at the very top of her career, but it wasn’t always that way. When my parents died, a lot changed for my mom’s little sister Lucy. At thirty, she paused her goals, moved to Vegas for us, and took her new role in our lives very seriously.
I love her more than she may even know.
Brenden stares at me for a long moment. Maybe he feels our past inside my words. Quietly, he says, “Let’s go.”
* * *
“It’s dead in here,” I say to Brenden.
We step inside 1842, a bar that resembles an old timey speakeasy: dark-green velvet booths, wooden high-top tables, and mood lighting thanks to gothic chandeliers.
It’s almost completely empty. A bored bartender scrubs the already-shined counter.
Brenden smiles. “Pessimist.”
“I’m just calling it how I see it.”
He lifts up my wristwatch to my face. “We’re also ten minutes early. Do you see that too?”
I shove his side, playfully enough that my lips start to rise with his. “You’re annoying.”
“You’re more annoying,” he teases and then nods towards the array of high-top tables.
I spot a very familiar person in the nearly-empty bar.
Zhen Li places little card holders on each table. The note reads: infinite loophole. I’m not surprised that Zhen, my brother’s aerial straps partner, created the private Facebook group. Besides it being a very Zhen thing to do, I was there when it happened.
After two bottles of wine and wild theories about who our co-workers might be, Zhen whipped out his phone and concocted the bizarre plan.
And I like bizarre things.
So of course, I helped where I could. I spread the news about the Facebook group to two artists who we were sure would be shifted to Infini, and hopefully they told others about the secret party.
Zhen notices us and flashes a dazzling smile. He was born and raised in Beijing and started touring with Aerial Ethereal at fourteen. Now twenty-six, he has a lean build and dreamy, picturesque features that melt most of the females in AE. Sunglasses are perched on his head and push back his thick black hair.
Zhen jokes, “What do you think of the turnout?” His accent inflects his words.
“Horrible,” I say seriously.
He smiles wider and then greets Brenden with a hand-grab and hug-pat. “About thirty-five joined the group,” Zhen tells us.
My brows jump. “Almost half the cast?” I was expecting about ten people out of a cast of fifty. Maybe I am too pessimistic, but I’ve lost a lot in the span of seven years and met way more roadblocks than passageways.
Zhen tilts his head. “No hope.”
Brenden chimes in, “Hopeless.” Also tilting his head at me.
I take a seat on a stool while Zhen says something in Mandarin that probably means some form of no hope and Brenden mimics him perfectly.
They’re way too in sync. On and off the stage.
Not to mention, Brenden switches to more languages that I don’t know: Spanish, German, Russian.
I cringe at him. “It’s less impressive when you do this every day.”
My brother is a polyglot. Able to pick up languages fluently and effortlessly. Jealousy bites me. I still struggle with Russian, which floats around AE’s gym hourly.
Granted, I’m not hopeless. In seven years, my Russian has improved, and I understand Patois, a dialect I hear mostly over the phone from my Jamaican grandparents. They immigrated to Brooklyn before they had my mom and Lucy, and even though my mom always had an American accent, her parent’s lilt stayed.
“You mean more impressive,” Brenden rephrases.
“No, I’m pretty sure I meant less.” I can’t help but smile, especially as Zhen wiggles his brows, eyes pinging between us. He pretends like he’s lost in the banter, but if anyone can keep up with a million different personalities and stay on course, it’s Zhen.
Brenden backs up towards the bar. “Beer?” he asks my drink order. I may be underage, but fake IDs and saying I’m an Aerial Ethereal artist at the Masquerade goes a long way.
I hesitate though. Beer is my go-to, but after the meeting, I could use something stronger. “Whiskey straight.”
Sympathy softens his gaze, and he nods before turning to Zhen.
“Pinot Noir,” our friend says, and then he rests his forearms on my table. “It was that bad?”
It. Brenden must’ve told him about my Human Resources meeting. I’m not surprised since they’re best friends. “HR won’t budge.”
He sighs sadly. “I’m sorry.”
“The good news is that I at least found the box.” Even if it was in the wrong room.
Zhen straightens up. “What was in it?”
Everything that means something to me. “All of my juggling equipment, Rudy—”
“Rudy?”
Brenden calls out, “The deformed cactus.”
I look over my shoulder, seeing my brother leaning against the bar. Waiting for our drinks. “Rudy has character,” I tell him. The pincushion succulent traveled from New York to Vegas, and on very, very rare occasions, a pink flower will bloom upon Rudy’s bulbous build.
“That’s what you call the wart-looking thing on its backend?”
I flip him off.
He air-catches my middle finger and pretends to toss it at Zhen.
Zhen chomps the air and swallows.
I give him a look. “Did you just eat my fuck you?”
“I did,” he says, wiping the corners of his lips. “It was quite salty.”
Brenden laughs, and I shake my head again, my smile returning. Performers. Dull isn’t in their vocabulary.
“So the box contained your juggling clubs and Rudy,” Zhen says.
“And my dad’s books.”
“You still have those?” Brenden asks, his voice tight.
I risk a peek at him, his face even tenser than his voice. Brenden has a hard time talking about our parents, but he hasn’t erased their memory anymore than I have.
My gaze drops to his V-neck, and I spy lines of black ink against his warm brown skin. His tattoo is artsy topography of Dad, Mom, Baylee in the shape of a heart. It rests right over his actual heart.
Our parents died in a four car pile-up on a New York freeway. A fluke accident that involved a tractor-trailer popping its front wheels and spinning out of control.
My mom would’ve found light in the unpredictability of her fate.
My dad would’ve loved knowing he was right beside my mom when it happened.
About a year after they passed, I cried when I saw Brenden’s tattoo. I was thirteen. He was fourteen. Then I punched my brother’s arm and said, “I didn’t die with them.” Still, he included my name.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t love you too,” he told me.
I’m nineteen now, and heaviness still clings to their memory. Sometimes it’s a good nostalgic weight, but other times, it makes it hard to breathe.
I watch my brother collect a glass of wine, whiskey, and tequila.
“I kept the novels,” I affirm as he sets our drinks on the table. “Do you remember Two Summers of Rage & Delight?”
Brenden lets out a short laugh while he squeezes lime into his drink, but I think he’s too choked up to explain the memory to Zhen.
I sip my whiskey. “Brenden was six,” I explain to our friend, “and he told our dad to rename his novel Two Summers of Rashes & Doo-doo.”
Zhen coughs on his wine and then starts laughing with my brother.
If it weren’t up to his publisher, I think Neal Wright, New York novelist of contemporary literature, would’ve without a doubt titled his book Rashes & Doo-doo.
Just because he loved his kids that much.
I stare off and take a bigger swig. I find myself reminiscing way too often. Not just about my dad, but my mom—she’s everywhere here. As a music composer for Aerial Ethereal, she still lives in the circus. In me.
Shit. My eyes water, and I wipe the creases. I sense the concern in their sudden silence, so I don’t meet their gazes.
Thankfully, my phone pings.
“AE email notification,” I tell them, and they start checking their phones.
Date: January 25th
Subject: First Practice - IMPORTANT
From: Geoffrey Lesage, Choreographer
CC: Baylee Wright, Brenden Wright, Dimitri Kotova, Zhen Li
Good Evening.
We’re less than a month away from the first meeting / practice of Infini. I need you four to arrive twenty minutes early. You’re the only artists that weren’t recast in the recent shakeups—and there’s a likelihood that you’ll carry over bad habits from the previous choreography.
So I’d like to discuss my methods.
Also, if you think being an original Infini cast member carries prestige, think again. IT CARRIES A BURDEN. You’re a burden to me and the clean slate that I asked Aerial Ethereal for. This is your opportunity to prove me wrong. Don’t waste it.
Twenty minutes early.
No exceptions.
Geoffrey Lesage
Infini Choreographer
“He has a bad attitude,” Brenden says, pocketing his cell.
Zhen swishes his wine. “And a love of caps-lock.”
“He’s supposed to be a genius,” I remind them. “If he saves Infini from being retired, then his prickly personality will be worth it.” I hate uttering the words retired in the same breath as Infini.
My heart, my soul—it’s in this show and this show alone. I can’t imagine losing it too. I’d do anything possible to save it from extinction. Including putting up with a stubborn choreographer.
Zhen fixes his sunglasses atop his head. “He’s beyond prickly.”
“Thorny, then,” I offer.
“Only if you’re referring to him being a thorn in our asses.”
Brenden chugs his tequila and licks his lips. “A deep, agonizing thorn. He just told us we were burdens, and he hasn’t even met us yet.”
“And what a shame,” Zhen adds. “We’re very likable.”
“The most likable.” Brenden raises his glass. “Everyone likes us.”
“If Aerial Ethereal had a congeniality award, they’d have to split it in half to give us both a piece.” Zhen clinks his wine to Brenden’s tequila.
I love bursting their bubble. “I doubt a congeniality award would go to two guys who occupied an eight-person booth at Angelo’s. You let a family of six wait two hours to be seated.”
Brenden shuffles beside Zhen, just so they can do this we’re-older-than-you-and-staring-darkly-down-at-you thing. It’s ineffective on me, and I usually just laugh in the end.
“She doesn’t think we’re likable,” Brenden tells Zhen.
“Unbelievable,” Zhen teases.
“You realize, Bay, that we’ve been eating our pre-show meals at that booth since we arrived in Vegas.”
“It’s tradition,” Zhen confirms.
“You mean superstition.” I laugh because eighty-five percent of the cast is superstitious in some way. Before a performance, one of the clowns eats ten green jelly beans and does five jumping jacks backstage.
“And,” Brenden continues, “the restaurant gave us that booth. Now what do you have to say?”
“You tipped the hostess. If you’re waiting for me to say you’re the most likable in the entire universe—and to bow at your feet—it’ll never happen.” I like this back-and-forth too much to ever concede.
Zhen turns to Brenden. “Got to love your little sister. Always keeping our egos in check.”
“There’s a word for that,” Brenden says, looking directly at me.
“What?” I wonder.
“Prickly.”
I shove his arm lightly while they both laugh. After a few moments, our humor dies out, and I notice something on my brother’s mind, a darkness shadowing his face.
He actually acknowledges Zhen and physically blocks me out.
They start speaking in Mandarin, and I’m guessing their conversation is about me. The easiest way to make them switch to English is to try and change topics.
“Shouldn’t everyone be here by now?” I ask, half expecting the door to whip open, but it stands still. I check my watch.
It’s almost ten.
“Baylee,” Zhen says, capturing my gaze. “Brenden thinks that Luka was the one who stole your box.”
My jaw drops, and my heart palpitates and clenches. I haven’t heard his name out of my brother’s or Zhen’s mouth in a long, long time.
“What?” I breathe.
Luka. Luka.
Luka.
His name blasts in my head like fireworks spelling out L.U.K.A.
It sends my pulse into a worse tailspin. I can’t say anything more than what. I shouldn’t feel all of this after years of silence.
Brenden clutches his glass tighter. “I’m not the only one who thinks it.”
I frown at Zhen. “You too?”
“It makes the most sense. He has a history of stealing.”
“Useless things,” I emphasize, suddenly guarding someone I haven’t seen in forever. Luka would’ve known how much that box meant to me. I truly believe this. For context, I add, “Aerial Ethereal gave him a warning for stealing a chess set when he was thirteen, and he didn’t even play chess.”
“Maybe he thought your box was useless,” Brenden retorts. Off the hurt on my face, he says, “He’s a bad guy. So why the hell are you defending him?”
Because he’s not bad.
I’m not trying to support theft by defending Luka. I just wish I could tell Brenden that there’s so much more complexity to Luka’s issues. But I can’t really talk about him.
I shouldn’t even be having this conversation.
I shouldn’t even be thinking about his name.
But in one moment, Brenden cracked the floodgates of my mind, and the surge of memories gushes through—I doubt I’ll be able to stop them that easily.
Luka.
Luka.
I wonder if Brenden can tell I’m fixated on his name. On this “bad guy” who’s not as bad as he seems.
When my brother heard that AE nearly suspended me for using cocaine (allegedly), he directed all of his anger towards the person he believed corrupted me. That hate hasn’t extinguished.
It still boils in his eyes.
The worst part of everything: I can’t tell my brother the truth. I risk the jobs of every minor in Aerial Ethereal, and so I have to lie to his face. Over and over.
Plainly, I say, “I just know he wouldn’t steal my box.”
“We’ve been living with him for three days,” Zhen tells me, “and he’s already stolen my carton of egg whites from the refrigerator.”
I don’t believe that, I want to say, but how can I know the truth? Years and a stringent contract have separated us, and maybe in that time Luka Kotova changed. Maybe he’s less the boy I loved, and he’s now become a man I’d hate.
No.
I don’t want to believe it.
The thought alone hurts. I swallow and then sip my whiskey, the liquid burning my throat. I glance cautiously at my brother. “Did you…you didn’t fight with him, did you?”
Brenden bears down on his teeth.
Last time Brenden and Luka spoke, fists were flying. My brother may be a couple inches shorter and a few pounds lighter, but he busted Luka’s lip and left bruises.
Luka didn’t even try to block him. It almost looked like he wanted to be hit.
Zhen pulled Brenden off of Luka, and Dimitri stepped in and grabbed the back of Luka’s shirt. That was over four years ago, and ironically, now those four guys are roommates.
Whoever created the room assignments obviously has no clue about everyone’s workplace rivalries and drama. They stuck me with Nikolai Kotova, his girlfriend, and his little sister. I’ve already endured the most awkward hello from Nikolai, and the coldest shoulder of all shoulders from Katya Kotova.
Brenden continues to silently glower.
“You’re just going to let me guess whether you fought with him?” I question.
“You still like him?” he asks me point-blank.
“No,” I say instantly, my face twisting. My pulse vibrating.
I feel hot all of a sudden.
Brenden nods, believing me somewhat. He still ends up sulking off to another table, and before Zhen joins him, he tells me that there’s only been uncomfortable silence between Luka and Brenden. Nothing more.
I’m left alone.
I don’t mind. By the time I order another whiskey and return to my high-top table, stool hard beneath my ass, the door blows open.
Zhen and Brenden do the meet-and-greeting. Both are incredibly welcoming to newcomers and old friends.
I stay put and just watch. My mom used to call me the director of life—someone who’d rather observe and take in the scene than be a part of it. The next year, I dressed up as a Hollywood director for Halloween, and my dad gave me his old Super 8 video camera and everything.
I was six.
In the bar, I spot three Asian girls, all extremely thin, and they speak to Zhen in Mandarin. I peg them as contortionists based on their builds. More artists of varying ethnicities and backgrounds flood inside.
The circus is made up of so many people and cultures. I love being here, and it makes me even more proud to be biracial and Jamaican.
As 1842 fills, I keep thinking about Luka. I heard rumors that he was transferring to Infini a while back, and I had trouble believing the news. I still can’t understand why?
Why would Aerial Ethereal ever allow Luka to transfer to this show? The company has been hell-bent on separating us, which was why he ended up in Viva. Now, all of a sudden, our names are attached to the same cast sheet.
And he’s rooming with my brother.
Someone I spend most of my free time with. I worry that I’ll need to start avoiding Brenden in order to avoid Luka, and I don’t want that.
Brenden is my go-to person in my life. He’s the one I confide in—the one I text about my dating failures, the one who binge-watches Netflix shows with me, the one who has my back on hellish work days.
I wish I knew AE’s reason for putting Luka in Infini, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
And I really need to stop thinking about him.
I already feel myself whirling backwards in mindset. In thought. I need to just move forward with my life. I can’t be yanked back to the past and to my choice. Because it hurts.
It hurts to touch, to think about—to relive. I don’t go there.
It’s pain that I’m not revisiting today. I try to cement this fact.
I scan my surroundings, and for whatever reason, my gaze plasters on a guy for two or three minutes. I’ve never seen him before, but plenty of the artists here are not only new to Infini but to Vegas. So it’s not that he’s new that entraps me.
Maybe it’s because he’s way past six-feet tall, a characteristic that really only fits Nikolai and Dimitri Kotova. I scrutinize him more. Broad-shouldered, dark brown hair cut short, gray eyes that sparkle, and a sculpted face—he’s a Kotova.
He has to be.
Then his eyes lock onto mine.
Usually I’m so invisible that no one ever catches me staring. His lip tics upward, and he pushes away from the wall.
He’s approaching me. It’s most likely that he’s a distant, distant cousin of Luka’s, someone he’s never met or even spoken to before.
I’m buzzed, I think as my fingers tingle against my second empty glass.
And the guy is at my table in a flash. Towering up above. He’s white, dressed in a snug-fitting black shirt and black jeans.
“Can I get you another?” He nods to my drink.
I pause to consider his offer.
Where guys are concerned, I’ve made a pack with myself to try and not close off to any possibilities. I wouldn’t actually pursue a Kotova romantically, but I don’t want to make an excuse just to avoid chatting at a bar.
It’s not like I’m not terrified or that everything works out in my favor. It doesn’t, but I can’t stop trying to open myself up just because I’m scared.
Take the risk.
I will.
If anything, it’s what Luka and I were always good at. Until the very end, at least. When the risk was too great to take.
“Sure,” I tell him. “Whiskey.”
“Whiskey,” he repeats with a smile. “I’ll be right back.”