“No,” Jordan says, cutting him off. “She’s here because she likes this.” Ah, they are discussing the details of some kind of contract with me. “Aren’t you, Nadia?”
“Yes, sir,” I say out loud. But that’s not what I say in my head.
“Why are you smiling, Nadia?” Jordan asks.
“Because I’m a dirty whore and this is payment enough,” I reply in my demure submissive voice that I’ve curated over the past few weeks.
“See?” Jordan says.
“Well, fuck that,” Bric says. “I’m only playing if she gets paid. I like to keep it all professional.”
“Whatever,” Jordan says. “So pay her.”
“You’ll pay her too. You know how this works. Nadia,” Bric calls. “What do you need from us to play?”
“I don’t need—”
“Nadia,” he barks. It’s a loud bark. Loud enough to echo off the ceiling. “I’m not interested in your opinion on the payment. I’m interested in how much you think you’re worth.”
How much do I think I’m worth? Is he fucking serious?
“Answer him, Nadia,” Jordan says.
“I’m worth more than you can afford,” I say, biting back my anger.
They both laugh, like this is funny.
“We’re very rich, Nadia,” Bric says in some calm, professional voice I haven’t heard from him before. “Trust me when I say we can afford you. Now tell us how much you think you’re worth.”
How do you put a price on yourself?
“I’m worth something dear to you,” I say. I’m still on my back, eyes closed, legs open. “So why don’t you tell me what’s dear to you and then I’ll tell you that’s what I want.”
I can practically feel the eyebrows rising up on their stupid caveman foreheads.
They laugh. For a good long time, too. They sip their drinks and chuckle some more.
“Or not,” I say, opening my eyes, closing my legs, pointing my toes, and sitting up. I smile at them. “I can walk out, I guess.”
“Nadia, shut the fuck up and lie back down,” Jordan says.
But you know what? I don’t feel like shutting the fuck up and lying back down. I still want to win this game, which means I have to play. So I’m not going to be dramatic about this. But I want them to, at the very least, take me seriously.
“No,” I tell Jordan, getting to my feet. “Your friend is right. We need a contract. And until we have one, I’m going home. I’m going to soak my aching feet, stretch my aching legs, and then give myself the orgasm the two of you were incapable of delivering. And tomorrow, I’m going to do some research. I’m going to figure out what it is you don’t want to lose, and then I’m going to ask for that as payment.”
They stare at me, open-mouthed. Silent. Maybe stunned. Maybe pissed off. I don’t care. I straighten my dress, ignore the dried come down the front, and walk out the door.
I walk home and I don’t even mind that my toes are bleeding in these stupid high heels. I’m used to it. I can take it. I hold my head high, do not limp like a lame horse with a missing shoe, and do what I do best. Manage.
When I get home, I fill the tub with hot water, add in some bubbles, then take off the disgusting dress and throw it in the trash.
My phone buzzes in the bedroom where I left it, just as I’m pulling the Band-Aids off my toes, but I ignore it. I step into the hot water. I hiss out the sting of pain when the half-healed blisters on my feet hit the heat. And then I sink under and let the world slip away.
I let that phone buzz a voicemail notification over and over on the nightstand until the water cools and I get out. I dry off and go to my workout room. It’s a ballet room because this is a company apartment. I wonder if the principals have an apartment like this too? No, they will have something much nicer. Not that this place is shabby. It isn’t. It’s professionally decorated and has lots of high-end finishes like soapstone countertops and amazing hardwood floors. But come on. I might be somebody to a junior dancer like Chris, but to the stars of the Mountain Ballet I’m no one.
I stand naked in front of the mirrors in the ballet room. They run the entire length of one wall.
My body is typical ballerina. My breasts are not small, but they are not large either. Ample might be a bit too strong a word to describe them, but they are close. My legs are long. Like a baby racehorse’s. My face is sweet and pretty, my arms are willowy and graceful, and I am nothing but well-honed muscle. You don’t get far in this art if you don’t have the body for it. It’s genetic. Something you have or don’t. Not something you can shape yourself into with diet and exercise.
I shift my feet and arms into fifth position, gather myself from my core, and go up on my toes. The hot water has soothed them, but they still hurt, even though I’m not actually on the tips.
I am used to hurting.
I hold my position, then begin to dance. I transition into different steps leftover from old performances to feel normal again.
It’s holiday week at the school. And the company is off after a grueling Nutcracker schedule. I am bored there. The little girls are not enough to fill my desire for work. But after the New Year things will be back to normal. My days will be filled with dance, and pain, and mental stress.
All the things that get me through.
But for now, I’ll play with Jordan. It’s only a week. This stupid game they think they’re playing will only last one more week, I’ve decided. They will keep me busy during holiday week, I will get what I need, and I will win this game and leave them both behind.
My phone buzzes again in the bedroom. Another notification. Another voicemail.
I stop dancing and breathe hard, hands on hips, bending over as I crunch my feet and stretch them out.
When I’m done I walk into the bedroom and check my voicemail.
I smile into the phone as I listen.
Fucking men.
They are so predictable.
Chapter Five - Bric
“It’s like life, Nadia. What you get out of it is directly impacted by what you put into it.”
Jordan was pissed when she walked out. Left a very threatening voicemail on her phone after fuming around my apartment for thirty minutes. Which, if we want to play a game—and I’m not sure I’m on board yet, but I like to keep my options open—wasn’t going to cut it.
So I made a call and left a voicemail as well.
“Did you call Jordan back?” I ask while she thinks about what I just said.
“No,” she says.
Interesting. He’s the one who found her, yet she called me and not him.
“Look,” she says, sighing into her phone. “Obviously, I’m getting something out of this… arrangement I have with Jordan. I’m just not sure I need to play two games at once.”
This isn’t the first time she’s used the term “game” while we’ve been talking. And even though it is a game, it strikes me as unusual for her to be calling it that. So easily.
“It’s just one game, darling,” I tell her back. “We’re all playing the same game.”
“But a game with two men is not quite the same as a game with one.”
I’m silently frustrated. But she’s a good enough distraction.