Read Online Strip by Andrew Binks - Free Book Online Page A

males—two from Texas and two of our apprentices. He has to start rehearsing them immediately for the coming season. I’m sorry.”
    Miss Freezin’ was still so full of it. She couldn’t have been happier to take my call. Kharkov would use it as an example to the Company as he had in the past. He’d gloat, then they’d gloat, thinking they had landed in the biggest pot of ballet honey around, but it just wasn’t the truth. The truth was that they had a job.
    I called Rachelle after finishing all the wine. Her voice grounded me. “Hello prodigal son. We miss you like stinkweed. You’re drunk. Are you with your hubby? Are you coming back?”
    â€œThat’s optimistic.”
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œAll of the above, although I am quite inebriated.”
    â€œA little game of hide and seek?”
    â€œGood news travels fast.”
    â€œNever mind. Your big plunge has caused a wave of self-doubt. Three have taken offers to dance in Atlanta. You probably could have gone with them or negotiated something. And the empty spaces have all been filled in. It’s all up-and-comers and new blood. Speaking of blood, Gordon and I are getting a divorce. Do you want an invitation to the un-wedding?”
    â€œIf I were married, we could have a double divorce.” It’s funny how the memory of replacing the receiver of a phone into its cradle lasts longer than the feeling left by the call. I have this long internal list of post–hang-up-the-phone feelings. Someone tells you they are sick, someone accepts an offer, someone says goodbye, maybe for the very last time. That moment after stamps itself forever onto your consciousness. It could be filled with silence, or a clock ticking in an empty room, or the swirl of life still continuing around you in a train station or an airport. The echoed ring from the receiver being slammed down. In this instance it was the sight of gob and tears that dripped from my face onto the floor, as I had a drunken weep. I was still on the same patch of floor the next morning, shivering, when Hugues took pity and actually brought me a café au lait and wrapped me in a comforter.
    September’s cold, clear blue skies shone over everything: the city, the mountain—forcing everyone to be happy about good weather for sleeping, and a fresh start at school or work after their vacation. And me, hungover on a Monday morning with nothing to start. What now? Shop around? Find a small company? Which one? Les Ballets Jazz? Eddie Toussaint? I looked too desperate. I was dancing like a fucking broken nutcracker.
    Things have been a little too stop-and-start recently for me to be a big believer in fate; doors slam in front of you or behind you. It ends up meaning the same thing. I wouldn’t have described what happened next as luck, not then. In retrospect it brought a crazy dancer, Bertrand, into my life, to save me from my ennui, unclog the cogs and get the next part of my story unstuck. But it’s not what it sounds like—not another man for my dance card. Yes, I found him attractive, but only because he was the only person I’d ever met who was as crazy and as cockeyed-optimistic—a truly nutty look in his eyes—as me.
    He was passionate about dance, had a gorgeous big muscular ass and a generously loaded crotch. He was a tight package of male body odour and lean muscle ready to burst. I only mention these qualities because that is how he danced, with a suppressed energy, as if he and everything in his tights would explode in a second. His face was Depardieu before food—the meandering nose, slightly crooked teeth and wide jaw and a kind of indefinable handsome wild aura. He had studied at the Conservatoire for the summer and we exchanged glances and nods in the hall from time to time. I wondered if he was gay—he wasn’t—and he probably wondered why the hell I was staring at his crotch. We shared a pas de