Rise Again

Chapter 1 The music is so loud the walls are vibrating, and Arkady is surprised no one has called the cops yet. He can’t afford to be arrested again. It’s unlikely he’d be able to keep avoiding charges, and his boss will kill him if he’s late for tomorrow’s photo shoot. Making his way into the kitchen, he grabs a beer from one of the ice buckets and cracks it open. A drunken party girl he’d been introduced to earlier, but whose name he can’t remember, comes prancing over to him. “Dance with me!” the girl demands, and Arkady notices she has a daisy drawn on her cheek in face paint. And it clicks, her name is Daisy. “I don’t dance,” Arkady tells her. “Liar, Kris told me you’re a dancer.” Daisy pouts. “I’m not that kind of dancer.” Arkady sips his beer. People don’t get that just because he’s a ballerino, and he loves it, doesn’t mean he’s good at, or likes, other kinds of dancing. “I can show you how, if you want? I’m a good dancer,” Daisy says, shimmying her hips. She’s cute as hell, but unfortunately, she’s barking up the wrong tree. Arkady hasn’t faked interest in girls since he was fifteen, and he’s twenty-five now. “Sorry, I really don’t dance. I just want to drink my beer. Then I should head home. I have work early,” Arkady replies. And he thinks everything would be fine. Daisy is a nice girl and can take a no, but some asshole guy lumbers over. “Don’t be a d**k. Just dance with the girl. What are you, a fag?” the meathead slurs. “Yes, actually, I am,” Arkady says coolly, trying not to bristle, but he has a bit of a temper. His manager calls him a hothead. His father says all real Russian men are fiery, and living in the states since he was six hasn’t changed that. “Didn’t realize this party was a goddamn sausage fest. Why don’t you f**k off to the gay bar, dude?” The guy sneers. Arkady knows better. He should walk away, but seeing how embarrassed Daisy is makes him angrier. He’s a ballet dancer. He’s used to homophobic slurs before he even confirms his sexuality, but he doesn’t like to see people upset, and Daisy looks like she’s blaming herself for this confrontation, judging by the guilt on her face. “Why don’t you suck my d**k?” Arkady says with a wicked grin, and Daisy snorts a laugh. Arkady’s attention is caught by her giggle, so he doesn’t see the punch coming till it’s too late. He takes a shot square to the jaw and drops his beer. The bottle shatters on the floor, spilling beer and glass everywhere. His mother always taught him to stand up to bullies, to hit back if someone hits you, or they’ll think they can beat you down whenever they feel like it. So Arkady is used to fighting, to standing up for himself. Growing up gay and Russian, he’s been in more than a few fights, so if this guy thinks he’s going to run away with his tail between his legs, then he’s mistaken. Arkady has a good right hook that he’s perfected in street fights and boxing classes. And even though the asshole really should have expected it, he looks surprised when a fist hits his face. He drops to his knees as blood pours from his broken nose. No one had stepped in when the homophobe had hit him, but as soon as Arkady lands a blow, people jump in, pulling them both apart. People are yelling. Daisy is crying and trying to explain that Arkady didn’t start it, but he still finds himself being dragged outside by three guys. They look like they’re tempted to give him a beating on the guy’s behalf, but Arkady is braced and ready for a fight, and they seem to realize three on one won’t go as smoothly as they’d like. Left on the street, Arkady rubs his jaw. It’s aching a little, will probably bruise, but he broke the other guy’s nose, so he’s pleased with the outcome. Starting to walk to a busier area so he can hail a taxi, he pulls out a packet of cigarettes from his leather jacket. He keeps saying he’ll quit. They want him to at work, as they worry it’ll impact his performance. But so far it hasn’t. He doesn’t smoke enough to counteract how much he works out and trains. He’s still one of the best. He smokes, letting the steady and repetitive action of filling his lungs with smoke and then releasing it calm him. By the time he’s finished, he’s shaken off the fight a little, and his mood is improved a little by the fact he gets a taxi easily. Letting himself into his apartment, he’s greeted by his pit bull, Lou, who comes straight over, tail wagging, sticking his nose everywhere, and Arkady has to push Lou around a little so they can both get in the apartment and close the door behind them. “You want food, boy? Yeah, me too.” Arkady walks further into the apartment, ditching his jacket on a hanger near the door. Lou licks his hand as he walks toward the kitchen. Lou is never overly demanding. He loves to eat, but always waits for permission. Arkady gets out a can of wet dog food and puts it in Lou’s bowl, wanting to feed Lou before he feeds himself because he’s not the kind to leave his dog hungry while he eats. “Dinner,” Arkady announces, setting the bowl down. Lou gives a small woof, almost like he’s thanking Arkady, before he starts devouring his food. It’s after ten, and it would be easier to eat junk, maybe a pizza, but Arkady works hard on his body. He’s five-foot-seven of muscle, toned stomach, the works, but then you have to be strong to hold a grown woman above your head. Dancers are no weaklings, and Arkady doesn’t stay in that shape by eating take out, so he makes some chicken and rice. Arkady cooks with the practiced ease of someone who lives alone, checking on Lou every now and then. He dishes his dinner into a bowl and goes to the couch to eat it, putting the TV on for some background. Once he’s finished, he puts the bowl in the sink to wash later. Lou looks up, licking his chops and he seems to have finished, because he follows Arkady back to the couch. He kicks off his shoes and gets more comfortable, Lou’s head in his lap, and scratches at Lou’s ears. Arkady watches TV, looks through his phone, trying to ignore the ache in his face. He gets comfortable with Lou, and not for the first time, ends up falling asleep on the couch to the drone of the TV and the sound of his dog snoring softly. * * * * “What’s that on your face, Arkady?” Jason, the head of the ballet company he’s working for, yells as Arkady is helped into a harness. Jason has him doing a photo shoot for the company to advertise them, and that requires he look like he’s flying. “A bruise,” Arkady replies. He thought the makeup girl had covered it when she did his dramatic stage makeup. “Have you been fighting again? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just don’t do it again. And someone get the makeup girl. Get it covered up,” Jason orders. At over six feet, he can seem a little intimidating at first, and he loves to shout, but that’s as far as his temper goes, whatever racist bullshit people occasionally spew about a large black man being in charge. Someone gets Tracey, and she manages to do magic as people bustle around them both, covering up the purple on his jaw, muttering in Spanish. Arkady can’t help thinking of the man who’d hit him, and feels a surge of anger. He hates homophobes and bullies. He wishes they weren’t a part of his life, but they are and always have been. He knows that it’s at least better here than it would have been if he’d stayed in Russia. Finally, after adjustments and safety checks, Arkady finds himself in the air, doing ballet poses, like fourth position, en haut of the arms with feet in the fourth position croisee. He shows the Attitude pose in a terre, sur la pointe. He does port de corps and en coux. Not all the positions they have him doing are technically perfect ballet poses. They ask him to make his body look like it’s flying, and he does, keeping his toes en pointe. They bring him down for breaks, to give him water and let him pee because, in Jason’s words, he doesn’t want Arkady to have ‘I need to tinkle face’. They have him up for the last time. He’s stretching one arm above his head and leaning his head against it as they ask, legs out to the side as if he’s mid leap. “Look to the heavens, my dove,” Jason yells, and Arkady looks up, up into the walkway above him. There’s only one person, when there should be at least three, and Arkady notices the man’s face is covered with a red scarf. Arkady opens his mouth, ready to ask what’s going on, when he sees the knife. He yells, but the man slashes through the cords keeping Arkady in the air. He thinks he screams as he hurtles to the ground, but he’s not sure he even breathes. Pain bursts bright like a supernova, only to be replaced by a darkness more dim than any he has ever seen. He has strange thoughts that the darkness will last long after he opens his eyes.