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my face started to ache, but I appreciated their words. We had moved them emotionally and that seemed a worthy thing, and their feelings were honest and heartfelt. Grégoire hovered around me, playing the straight guy, except with the gay patrons, who saw through his act with a wink.
    But even amidst all the glamour and champagne, the lovely Greek setting and the flattering praise, I grew melancholy because he had not come after all. Our wealthy patron Mr. Norris was nowhere to be found. Around midnight Grégoire brought me some champagne with a sympathetic smile, leaning next to me on the fake Greek balustrade.
    “I thought your beau would be here,” he said.
    My beau . What a bizarre word to use for him. It was too gentle a word for what he was. Maybe Grégoire used it ironically, silly French boy. No, Mr. Norris was not my beau . In my fantasies at night, beau did not describe what he was to me. Lover. Conqueror. Master. Animal. Even, ridiculously and embarrassingly sometimes, husband . But beau , no. It was far too soft for what Mr. Norris was to me in my dreams.
    “No, he’s not here. I haven’t seen him,” I said, shaking myself from my reveries.
    “But you wanted him to be here.”
    “Yes, and so did you,” I shot back.
    He smiled a wry smile. “You were great tonight, Lu.”
    “So were you. It was fantastic. It really was.”
    He took a deep breath. “I had that feeling I haven’t had in a while, that something I did was truly beautiful. That something between us grew and developed and was...transformed.”
    “Oh, G.” I hugged him hard. He held on to me as we hid back in the wings and I thought if I was able to cry, I would have cried in G’s arms, for so many things. For happiness and sadness, for confusion, for disappointment that lodged like an awful lump in my throat until I thought I would choke.
    He let me go and we peeked out at the glamorous spectacle from our hiding place. We lapsed back into our usual sneering comments when he returned with more champagne.
    “To being dance whores.” He held up his glass up to mine.
    “To being dance whores,” I agreed. That was what it felt like, these events, one hundred percent, even if you’d danced better than you’d danced in your life. If you pay for me to dance, I’ll pretend that we’re friends. Poor Grégoire had a suit jacket full of phone numbers, both male and female. I looked around at the blue haired rich ladies and their pompous rich husbands. Where would I be at eighty years old? At a party like this? Living vicariously through others?
    I grew more and more despondent the later it got. I wondered if Mr. Norris had withdrawn his association with the theater. Over me? Silly. But what if he had, because I’d been rude to him, because he scared me? And just as I was mulling over that unpleasant thought, I felt a hand on my elbow, a pressure I remembered. My blood rushed loud in my ears. I turned and there he was, a foot away. He wore that same unflappable, broad smile.
    He nodded to my partner first. “Beautiful work tonight, Grégoire .” He pronounced his name perfectly in French, the way I never could.
    Grégoire blushed like a boy and stammered his thanks. They shook hands like straight men would do, and I worried for a moment that G might actually faint. But he didn’t, and then Mr. Norris turned in my direction.
    “And you, Lucy Merritt with two t’s . Stunning. I really don’t have words.”
    I didn’t have words either. I just looked back at him, speechless, sick with embarrassment and lust. He may have been acting like our last conversation never happened but I still burned with mortification over it. He turned from me, made more polite small talk with Grégoire , and then, with a strange subtle agility, he dismissed him. As Grégoire left us, he shot me a warning look. Don’t fuck this up, you little dork.
    I turned back to Mr. Norris. Matthew. I’d called him Mr. Norris so many times in disdain. I’d never remember