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Only I knew, I thought with a shiver that trailed down my spine.
She was looking for me. Blinking through the lights that blinded her there on that big stage. She was looking for me.
The single spotlight shifted around her like it, too, was growing impatient. Eager for something. Eager for her to perform. Just like the audience who had come, paid for their tickets, waited in line.
I understood: she wasn’t going to perform for them. For the audience. For the spotlight that circled her the way I wanted my tongue to circle her. She was going to perform for me. For me alone.
The girl stared into the blinding floor lights and a hiss came from the side of the theatre. We were careening toward a breaking point. She’d strained the audience too thin. People were going to start complaining. Walking out. Demanding refunds. The manager of the show was seconds away from storming the stage and animating the girl’s frozen limbs like a puppeteer. “Look, everyone, no, look! She’s performing! She’s performing for all of you!”
Only I would know it was bullshite. She was here for me. And I was here for her.
Another hiss from the eaves of the theatre. More shifting. More creaking of the chairs.
Rian leaned over to whisper, “I want whatever she’s on.”
I thought I heard a name hissed this time from just out of sight. But I couldn’t quite catch it. It was like a passing breeze. Perfumed with flowers. Beautiful, but quickly gone.
“You might get your strip club after all,” Conor grumbled next to me, folding his big arms over his bearlike chest.
“Shut up,” I whispered, eyes still transfixed on the girl.
The whole audience went silent when a short man in all black stalked down the centre aisle toward the stage with balled fists and a sweating forehead. The girl eyed him, saw how fast he was approaching, searched once more futilely against the stage lights, and then almost angrily threw back her head.
From the band in the orchestra pit came a snare. The director paused mid-step. The snare went on. Soft. Low. The audience held its breath. We all watched, transfixed, as the girl, in time to the building snare, lifted her top hat, slowly, slowly, slowly. When it was all the way over her head, she shook it as the snare went faster, faster. She was beautiful, her figure graceful and elegant, but there was frustration in the lines of the muscles of her arms. Her knuckles were white, trembling where she gripped the edge of the black top hat. With a sudden clash of symbols, the girl dropped the top hat onto her head and mounted the chair.
The theatre was once again silent as she stood up there, facing us. The director still hadn’t retreated. He wasn’t sure yet what she was going to do. How much money he was going to have to give back that night. What her next move would be. No one did. No one but me.
I was the only one not on the edge of my seat. The only one not turning my head from neighbour to neighbour, asking confused questions with the lift of an eyebrow, with the widening of dilated pupils. The only one unsure whether this was planned or not, a part of the show or not.
Because I understood. Just like I understood the sun would rise in the morning. Just like I understood storms would come and storms would go. Just like I understood that fire should not, ever, be touched, no matter how beautiful. No matter how alluring.
I understood she was going to dance for me.
The brim of the top hat shadowed the girl’s face, but I knew her eyes even then were still searching. I knew from the tremor that shook her frame. She was still angry. Still frustrated. She still wanted to find me. And she still couldn’t.
The girl’s foot collided with the stage floor in time with a bang of the gong. As her hands rose over her head, she slowly slid her heel forward, extending into the splits. At the sight of this the director spun on his heel, probably cursing low under his breath. The theatre audience sank back against their seats, assured that everything was fine. Everything was the way it was supposed to be. Nothing had changed.
I alone leaned forward. I alone knew that nothing was as it was supposed to be. I alone knew the truth: everything had fucking changed.
The girl began her routine. She shocked the audience, content in the silence, by kicking the chair over. By sinking all the way to the floor as its rattling echo filled the theatre. Shocked everyone but me. I leaned even further forward as she spun her back leg around to meet the front. I was transfixed as she slumped over her legs. A broken doll. Eyes concealed by the shadow of her top hat, crooked on her shining curls. Again the silence fell over the theatre like a heavy blanket. Suffocating. Inescapable.
No one else around me was breathing like I was. Heart pounding. Somehow both panicked and assured. No one else was struggling to keep from gasping, because the director had gone backstage. The girl had begun her performance. The band was following her cues. Everything was alright for them. But nothing, absolutely nothing, was alright for me.
When the music started and the girl arched her back, pushed up into a bridge, kicked her legs over, caught the top of the fallen chair with her toe, hoisted it up into her waiting hand, spun it round, and came to sit on it with a coy smile, forearms folded across the back, the audience cheered because this was what was supposed to happen. Only I saw the girl’s eyes. Searching again. Their intensity not matching at all the sweetness of her smile. That was for the rest of the theatre. Her eyes. Her eyes were for me.
The dancer drummed her feet in time to music as the chorus girls in sparkly, glittery costumes filed in from the sides of the stages, dragging behind their measured steps chairs of their own. The stage was soon busy with spinning chairs, with fingers sliding slowly, seductively down outstretched legs, with feathered butts wiggling against one another, with music and singing and chorus lines. But at the peak of it all, always in the forefront was her.
I remained leaning forward. Elbows on my knees. Heart pounding. And she, always, remained separate from the rest. Not just because she was the showrunner. Not just because she was the most beautiful, the most magnetic, the one that sparked with a special kind of energy. But because she was the only one not performing for several hundred people. The only one not sharing her bright eyes with the whole theatre. The only one not going through the motions, not aware that this was a show in Vegas.
The only one who was dancing on an empty stage. In front of a theatre of empty chairs. Empty all save one.
The one I was sitting in.
The burlesque show went on. In a whirl of bright colours, of flashing sequins, of billowing feathers, she was the only fixed spot. She was the North Star that all the other constellations spun and twirled and dashed around. Or maybe she was Mars. Burning red. Angry. Frustrated. Furious. Because she hadn’t found me again against those blinding lights.
But I would find her.
I was sure of it. Just like I was sure that when the girl bowed at the end of the show, just before the curtain swallowed her whole, she already hated me. Hated me the way I would one day hate her. Because I’d been there in the first place. And to be there and then be gone, gone forever, was always worse than to have never been there at all.
Another blank face in a sea of blank faces.
That was my sin without even knowing it.
And it would one day be hers.
