Act Eight
Luka Kotova
Passing many sets of blue double doors—right outside of Aerial Ethereal’s performance gym—I aim for the end of the long hallway. I always enter the last door.
It’s as much superstition as it is procrastination.
I feel invisible.
No one notices me; no one really cares, not even as my torso and shoulders move to the beat of a song, blasting in my earbuds. My head bobs, and I lock eyes on the dead-end ahead of me, double doors to the left.
I see the wall and my lips lift. Quickly, I toss my gym bag aside and then I sprint. Straight at the ivory-painted concrete wall.
I run up it. Two huge steps, I gain height, and then I backflip.
Midair, I sense the double doors opening beside me, someone exiting the gym into the hallway. I land on my feet. Startled, I stagger backwards into the incomer.
Our shoulders collide.
“Fuck, sorry,” I immediately apologize and stabilize my balance. I hold out my hands towards a guy I’ve never met, afraid I hurt him.
He fixes his gray blazer, his beady brown eyes narrowing at me. I sweep his features quickly: slicked-back ash-blond hair, goatee and slight mustache. Yeah, I’ve definitely never met this guy before. He can’t be any older than thirty.
His mouth moves, and I realize that I can’t hear him.
I pop out my earbuds. “Sorry. I didn’t get that.”
“Your name,” he snaps.
I stiffen and eye his shirt beneath the blazer. No Aerial Ethereal paraphernalia. No sign that he’s with Corporate. My guards still skyrocket. “Kotova,” I answer.
“First name.”
I shift my weight. “Luka.”
“Luka,” he repeats like he’s filing this moment for life. “What does that say?” He points at a sign above the blue double doors behind him.
I don’t have to look to read it. “No running, tumbling, or acrobatics in the hallway.” My face is stone. “Sorry.” (I’m not sorry.)
His pinpointed gaze drops to my right leg. I wear white gym shorts over black compression shorts, but I’m positive he’s not staring at my clothes.
“Problem?” I ask, my voice easygoing.
“Your tattoos.” The dude gestures to the black ink that runs up my right leg, more designs beneath my shorts. Decorating my thigh.
My whole right leg is completely covered.
Most of the time, I forget I have tattoos. Especially since almost all of my cousins and siblings have them somewhere on their bodies.
Timo even has a tattoo on his ribs. Small script from the film The Red Shoes:
“Why do you want to dance?”
“Why do you want to live?”
“Well, I don’t know why, er, but I must.”
“That’s my answer too.”
My tattoos aren’t as poetic. Since I was fourteen (young, but not to me, not in my world), I literally walked into the same shop and told the same artist, “Do what you want.” He added more and more to my right leg, until I had to find a new artist in Vegas, and by eighteen, there was no room for more to be added. It’s not really about what designs I have.
It’s the moment. The time I went there. What I was feeling.
Who I was with.
A Cheshire Cat is inked on the back of my calf and I’ve never been a diehard Alice in Wonderland fan, but Bay was with me when I got it. Sat right beside me, cross-legged on a stool. She ate a beef patty from her favorite Jamaican restaurant, and she smiled when I looked over at her.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, trying to stifle her smile. “You’re hurting my face.”
Lying on my side, I sat up more and kissed Baylee.
Her lips pulled beneath the kiss. “You’re making it worse,” she whispered.
I held her cheeks. “I wasn’t trying to make it better.”
She groaned into a wider smile. “You’re awful.”
My nose flares in the present. Here.
Now.
The memory gnaws at my gut, and I swallow hard and plant my gaze back on the goatee guy.
“What about my tattoos?” I ask as gently as I can.
“The last show you were in, did you cover them?”
(He has to be with Corporate.)
I shake my head. “Viva was fine with them.” Though I was given multiple warnings to stop adding more, but I didn’t listen. One of my cousins was suspended for filling out two sleeves, and now Aerial Ethereal tries to relegate him to the background.
“Buy flesh-toned makeup as soon as possible. You’ll need to cover them for every live performance.”
I have no reaction. It is what it is, so I just nod.
“And Luka? This will be the last time you break the rules.” He motions towards the double doors. “After you.”
Tensely, I grab my gym bag, my phone buzzing, and I look stone-cold ahead, not at him. Pushing into the noisy gym, I unbury my cellphone from protein bars, extra clothes, IcyHot, and my water bottle.
As I head to the locker room, my gaze remains plastered on my phone. What.
Dazedly, I cram my bag into my assigned blue locker. One of my cousins says a greeting in Russian, and I just nod at him.
The email notification is from Marc Duval.
I click into it.
Date: February 15th
Subject: keep it professional
From: Marc Duval, Creative Director of Aerial Ethereal
Bcc: Luka Kotova, Baylee Wright
Luka & Baylee,
Because of certain underlying circumstances that we could not work around (i.e. casting you both in the same show), the company recognizes that you will be sharing space & time together.
Do not misinterpret this action. You are still to uphold the contracts to the best of your ability. Do not take this small amount of leash and run wild. You can speak to one another but only about professional matters.
Anything else is strictly forbidden. Remember there are two company members watching you. Remember what is at stake if you break the contracts.
Keep it professional.
Marc Duval
Creative Director of Aerial Ethereal
I can speak to Baylee.
I rest my palm on the cold locker, blown over.
I can speak to Baylee.
Like I care that there’s a stipulation attached. Professionalism. It doesn’t matter. The thought of being allowed to say hi knocks me forward. I can have a work friendship with Baylee.
I can look at her and not fear the “no minors policy”—I sit down. I have to sit down.
(Holy fuck.)
I put my hand to my mouth, overcome with too much at once.
And then Dimitri lets out a long groan, making sure his presence is known. I watch him slip around the corner into my row of lockers.
Drenched in sweat, he puts his foot on the bench and leans his weight on his knee.
I raise my brows. “What happened to you?”
“The motherfucking fart-face.” He groans as he stretches his arms towards the ceiling. “New choreographer made the four OGs do burpees for twenty minutes.” OGs—he means the original cast: Zhen, Dimitri, Brenden, and Baylee. “If we slowed down past his ‘required tempo’—which was butt-ass impossible—we had to sprint the length of the gym twenty times.”
It’s not a small gym. It resides in the back lot of the Masquerade with eighty-foot ceilings, big enough to house all the apparatuses for each act.
I start imagining Baylee being pushed by the choreographer, and I tense up. I can’t ask Dimitri how Baylee is. I can’t even ask if she’s okay.
I comb a hand through my hair. Trying not to picturing some new guy screaming at her to “run faster” or “push harder” while she’s already giving her all. I know Baylee. I know that she hates being called out in front of people, for any reason: negative or positive.
“He also told me to bulk down.” Dimitri glares. “I can do what I need to do at this size. I’ve done it for twenty-six years.”
“Did you hear that?” Zhen quips from one row over. “Dimitri Kotova was six-foot-five in the womb.”
Nikolai comes around the bend, rolled bandana wrapped around his forehead. “Did he have enough room in there for a double layout too?” he banters.
The rare time that I see my brother loosen up—it’s with Dimitri or his girlfriend, Thora.
Dimitri hooks an arm around Nikolai’s neck and purposefully wipes his sweat all over him.
I hate to ruin my brother’s good mood. I normally wouldn’t intentionally try, but I have to show him this. “Hey.” I approach both of them.
They break apart. Towering over me.
Nik’s face instantly becomes serious, tapping into his stern big brother side.
I flash them my email. “Okay?” I need them to not intervene if I talk to Baylee.
Dimitri just looks to my brother for how to react.
Nik hardly relaxes. “It’s safer if you try not to talk to her.” His gray eyes never soften.
I knew he’d tell me to stay responsible and be serious about what this means, but I’m not floating in some fantasy. I understand my fucked-up reality better than him. I’m the one living it.
“I just wanted you to know,” I say easily and return to my locker, zipping my phone in my bag. When I pass them to leave the room, Nik clasps my shoulder.
I wait for him to say something.
He struggles to speak. To say what he feels. Lowly, almost beneath his breath, he tells me, “Don’t hang yourself with the slack you’ve been given.”
“I won’t.”
“I know you, Luk.” He pauses. “I know that if someone gives you an inch, you’ll go five feet.”
“I won’t.” It’s all I can tell him. If he doesn’t believe me, then he doesn’t believe me. There’s not much else I can do. So I add, “I’m not a kid.”
“I know that.” He releases his clutch on me.
I don’t let Nikolai trounce the fraction of good news. I pocket it. I carry it, and what should be happiness transforms into apprehension. Concern.
What do I even say?
Will she even want to speak to me?
Does she even like me anymore?