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audience—or maybe you are—yourself and your big ego.”
    â€œHey! No nut-cracking. Grow up. Both of you!” Rachelle turned to me. “The broken heart? It will make you a great dancer.”
    Â 
    That night I phoned Daniel from the stage door, between acts.
    He said, “Just talking to you gives me a boner.” And I danced act two with as much of an erection as a dance belt will allow.
    I was hooked like Juliet, believing nothing would keep us apart. Not even the warring dance factions of the West versus the East, the Vaganovas versus the Cecchettis. It was a dream, me fleeing the Place des Arts fortress in a cab, through the lighted boulevards of Montreal. Prokofiev’s music finally making sense. The ebb and flow of the lover’s pas de deux went over and over in my head all the way to Daniel’s place, where he met me at the door. He kissed me. “How was the show?”
    â€œFine. Peter was Paris. They loved him. He’s on top of the world.”
    â€œHe’ll go far.”
    â€œHe might,” I said, but Daniel was already on his way up the stairs and all I could do was follow his broad smooth back, semi-naked ass in loose pyjama bottoms, and wide feet up the narrow stairs to the rooftop for Campari and soda mixed with foreplay. Why had he said that about Peter? Was I too easy? Or stupid? But Daniel’s grasp reassured me. We had a hot nightcap and our own twisted pas de deux until the sheets of his bed were wet with sour Pierre Cardin–scented sweat. In the times to follow, it started with him heavy on my chest. The pressure of his growing erection would press up between us. I can’t sit still when I think of it. (Evidently I have no trouble separating a broken heart from the sex.) Or he’d press his torso just below my rib cage, arch his back, raise his head and we’d wait and wait and drip and then he’d go tight and his thighs would tremble just before exploding—shooting up between us, onto my neck, the odd times stinging my eye. After, I wanted to own him; do something to show this was mine; write I love you with my tongue, tracing the silhouette of his back and spine, over his tailbone and into the softness of his dark barely hairy crack, down his thigh, back of the knee, vein-wrapped calf, the scar that had made him a legend, over heel to the rough part of his tarsal where the years of dancing could be counted by the shades and toughness of the skin. I wanted to devour him.
    â€œStay.” He had said the magic word.
    â€œWhere?” I had acted surprised.
    â€œHere, in Montreal. The Conservatoire isn’t great, but it’s not the prairies.”
    â€œIt’s been on my mind—six weeks of forty below zero, then the tour—besides Kharkov has gone off me.”
    â€œHe’ll use you up. Now is your chance. I’ll find you work.”
    Somewhere there was a Romeo waxing poetic to the sun rising in the east as I got back to the hotel. As usual, Rachelle had built a giant nest of pillows in one bed with herself, the not-quite-dead dying swan, unglamorously earplugged, eye-masked, propped sound asleep and snoring with the tv still flickering. Prince Charming, even beautiful in his sleep, was in the other bed, which we normally shared. I was exhausted, confused and getting tired of listening to myself around these two, knowing they weren’t convinced of my decision. My body ached, but I did something I hadn’t done in ages. I crawled under the covers and held Peter tight.
    He whispered, “Kharkov kissed me.” Peter was awake.
    â€œWhat?”
    Peter turned. “He kissed me when I got back to the hotel. I was hoping for a new contract, to be honest, but he closed the door to his room and…”
    â€œFuck. That pig!” I surprised myself with my own feelings of jealousy. What was it I did not have? Peter always had admirers, and he never seemed moved by it.
    â€œHe was decent.