She’d been browsing too many BDSM sites, that was the problem. She’d been curious. Maybe too curious. She touched her throat, remembering the firm feel of his hands on her neck. He used the same firm touch when he danced with her. Strong, capable, with the threat of great force or great tenderness.
What did she want? Force or tenderness?
Ugh, these stupid thoughts. Damn the front desk for waking her up. She dressed for work, throwing street clothes over her leotard and tights. Her alarm blared to life and she silenced it.
Yep, already up. Thanks.
She liked her new building, because it had a doorman and good security, and a lobby with marble floors. She looked around her neat and spacious “flat.” It was a great, old, oddly shaped space with high ceilings and textured walls. The only reason it was so neat was because she’d barely unpacked anything yet.
Tonight. Tonight she would unpack, before the season started in earnest and things got crazy busy. The premiere was next week and the London arts scene was buzzing with excitement. She and Rubio had posed for professional photos in their
Romeo and Juliet
costumes, for the publicity department to use on posters and advertisements all over town. They’d done interviews and profiles for TV news programs, during which Rubio was faultlessly polite. They’d even managed to stay out of the tabloids, aside from a few candids outside the theater. In one of them, Ruby had been holding the door for her, his head thrown back in a laugh. She remembered that day because they’d happened to be leaving at the same time, and joked about who got to take the company-hired car. He’d suggested they share the ride, and she’d said she was afraid to be alone in the back of a car with him.
She kept a copy of the picture in the drawer beside her bed, because she liked the way they looked in the photo. It was something about their body language—it painted a picture of two close friends, even though in reality they mostly avoided each other. He’d put her into the company car and ducked into a taxi, because he got followed by female fans. All the lurkers outside the theater doors queued up to see him, not her, and she definitely preferred it that way.
Petra headed down to the lobby and asked at the front desk for her package. It was from New York, somewhat large but very light. She received a lot of promotional materials, free shoes and bags and leotards, although they usually came to the theater. She went upstairs and opened the box, pushing aside the packing peanuts. Underneath, she uncovered two fuzzy ears of a gold-colored stuffed bear. Her confusion gave way to goose bumps as she pulled it out.
It was a mess. The eyes were gouged out, threads hanging shorn and bare. The middle was also torn open, with bits of stuffing visible, along with a note. Her first reaction was to drop the thing on the table. It couldn’t be meant for her. She poked inside the stuffing and pulled out the crumpled pieces of paper. The first was a printed-out photo of her and Rubio, the very one of them sharing a laugh at the stage door. The second was a note, written neatly in black pen on lined paper.
Why are you doing this?
You’re tearing me apart.
Ugh. Why did freaky, stalky people have to exist in the world? Who in their right mind would send a ripped-up bear like this to another person? Scary Gary, that’s who. The man had developed some weird obsession with her, and with this “gift” he’d shown her that moving an ocean away wasn’t quite far enough.
*** *** ***
One week later, Petra sat in an office at the local precinct. Not an office, actually, but a cubicle, which was the first sign that she was going to get absolutely no help. The second sign was the age of her assigned officer, who appeared to be just out of high school.
“I don’t know what to say, Ms. Hewitt. Gary Paulsen has no criminal record, no known mental illness. Is he behaving badly? Yes, of course he is. Can I do anything to help you stop him?”
His expression said everything.
No.
“So what do I do?” she asked, trying not to sound like a whiner. “He’s writing me, bothering me, sending me packages. He’s been doing it for months now. I feel...endangered.”
He gave her a patronizing smile. “I don’t think you’re endangered. He’s not even in this country.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The IP address of his emails, for one.”
“Can’t those be manipulated?”
She could tell his patience was wearing thin. “Aren’t there laws against harassment here?” she asked.
“There are laws against harassment, but they require a degree of menace. Your guy isn’t making overt threats. He’s not in a position to confront you or attack you. You can change your phone number and email and refuse anything he sends through the post. It’s an annoyance, of course, but his actions aren’t significant enough to merit international legal action. Not at this point.”
“So if I was in the US, you could do something. But since he’s an ocean away he can harass me all he wants?”
“Until he presents a credible threat, yes.”
Petra sighed, looking around the shabby police station. Coffee rings stained a pile of reports on the young officer’s desk. His girlfriend, or perhaps his wife, grinned at her from behind a crooked frame.
“So I wait, then,” she said. “Until he says something threatening or scary.”
“There’s always the possibility he’ll move on to some other obsession. Have you considered...” He shuffled his feet under the desk. “Would it be possible to take a break from the stage? Temporarily retire, so to speak?”
“Temporarily retire? Now? At the height of my career?”
“I know it’s not ideal, but if it’s the dancer he’s attracted to—”
She stared at him. “I
am
the dancer. Ballet is my whole life. I can’t stop, I can’t retire just because some wacko is obsessed with me.”
“It was just a suggestion.”
She shouldn’t be yelling at the kid. None of this was his fault. He was obviously the poor schlub who got all the cases no one else wanted to handle, and she was one more headache in his day. “Could you send him a cease-and-desist letter, on some kind of official police letterhead?” she asked. “Do you think that would accomplish anything?”
“It would only reassure Mr. Paulsen that he’s getting through to you. Ignoring is your best option. Return his packages unopened. If you don’t want to change your email, change your filters so you don’t have to see the things he sends. Whatever you do, don’t engage with him. If you don’t respond to him, eventually he’ll give up.”
“You promise?” she asked, chewing a fingernail.
He gave her a weary smile. “I can’t promise, although I understand your frustration. I know this will sound strange, but try not to get too worked up about the whole thing. Put him out of your mind and perhaps he’ll come to realize there’s no point in continuing to badger you.” He stood and fished a card out of a plastic holder. “And if he shows up here in town, or if his overtures to you become violent in nature, by all means, let us know.”
“Okay,” she said out loud, pocketing his card.
Thanks for nothing
, she thought to herself.
You suck.
It was opening night of a new season. Not just a new season, but a new era at City Ballet. When he and Petra performed the kiss at the end of the balcony
pas de deux
, Rubio fell in love with her a little, as Romeo should. The audience broke into gleeful, impromptu applause. He felt her smile against his lips and then compose herself.
As for him, he felt transformed.
Rehearsals were one thing, but this opening performance had raised them both to new heights of inspiration. Petra brought bright, light innocence to the role, the needed balance for his dark Romeo. She was vivacious as young Juliet, and later dramatically mournful. During the death scene he was pretty sure she cried real tears. That scene was one of his favorite places to cop a secret feel, but he didn’t, not this time. Petra was far too invested in the character, so he laid still and stiff while she sobbed over him, keeping his perverted fingers to himself. Instead he focused on her closeness and her sweet scent.
Petra always smelled so pretty. Her hair smelled like
sonhos
, like vanilla and sugar and good things, even at the end of a long, exhausting day. He liked that about her. He wished she wasn’t such a hard ass bitch. He wished she was a horny, cowering, deeply masochistic submissive, so he could run amok all over her delectable body until she broke down and cried. But no, she wasn’t. Too bad.
At the final curtain call, the audience went wild. Flowers, whistles, yelling and screaming, a tidal wave of appreciation. When he held her hand and led her forward to take their bows, a stagehand trotted out with a massive bouquet of roses. The bright pink roses symbolized welcome and affection for a new partner, and Rubio presented them to Petra with a fleeting kiss. The already-crazed audience exploded into hysteria.
She smiled up at him in the midst of the furor. It was impossible not to grin back. As he gazed into her pretty, almond-shaped eyes, he felt an attachment to her beyond duty and performance. He felt in solidarity with her.
We can make perfection together.
Afterward, instead of heading off to his own dressing room, he followed her to hers.
Yves joined them, grinning ear to ear. “I have no words. I don’t know what to say, how to express my emotions. I felt like I was watching history being made.”
“Yes, well,” said Rubio, rolling his eyes. “You can watch history made again tomorrow. And the next night. And next week.”
Yves ignored him and turned to Petra. “How did it feel? How was the stage, the production? The sound of the orchestra?”
“It was all wonderful. But the partnering...” She winked at Ruby, her eyes dark with an ebony outline of stage makeup. “Horrible. Can I still get out of my contract?”
Yves feigned distress, which wasn’t too hard since he was almost always stressed out. A stagehand wove past him with two vases of roses and Petra gestured him to the table beside her vanity where the pink ones already lay. One of the vases overflowed with white roses and the other, significantly larger, with red. He knew the white ones were from Liam and Ashleigh.
Rubio had ordered the red.
He had second guesses now. Was that the expression? Second thoughts? The flowers seemed too garish in her cramped dressing room. Five dozen roses was probably too much. He would have left the room with the stagehand and Yves, but she’d already grabbed the card.
Muitos abraços
, he’d written.
Many hugs
, in Portuguese. He had signed it “R.” He had not written
I think you’re marvelous
, or
You smell like vanilla and sugar
, or even
I wish you were a horny, cowering, deeply masochistic submissive
, and he was glad for that now.
She read the two handwritten words aloud with an awful accent. He repeated it to her the right way.
“What does it mean?” she asked. “It’s from you, right? These are from you?”
Before he could answer she buried her face in the bouquet, taking a deep breath. It was the same thing he wanted to do to her hair. “My goodness,” she said. “They’re so beautiful.” She turned and threw her arms around him. They touched all the time but this felt heightened. Different.
“It means many hugs,” he said against her hair. He smelled it furtively. Someday he would ask what shampoo she used. “It’s a usual Portuguese greeting or whatever, to be nice.”
“But you’re only being nice because this was our first time dancing together, huh?”
“Yes,” he said. He thought he might be blushing. It wasn’t good. To his relief, she turned away to read the card on Liam and Ashleigh’s bouquet, which was more reasonably sized. Ruby thought he should leave her goddamn dressing room and go hide, but then the Wilders appeared.
“We came to see the stars of the hour,” said Liam.
Ashleigh didn’t say anything, just enveloped Petra, tutu and all, in a smothering hug. “Oh my God,” Ash cried. “I know we haven’t met before, but oh my God, Petra, you were
so
good.”
“Petra, this is Ashleigh Keaton,” Ruby said over Ash’s babbling. “And her husband Liam. They are my good friends.”
Petra grinned when Ash let her go. “Thank you for the beautiful flowers.”
“You were amazing,” Ashleigh sighed. “Both of you were amazing.” She hugged him next, an affectionate squeeze.
“Everyone loved it,” said Liam. “There was this...” He waved his hands around, almost knocking Rubio’s bouquet off the table. “This energy, this buzz. There was this sense of seeing a really momentous thing.”
“A really special thing,” Ash chimed in, nodding. “The balcony scene, my God. The kiss. Even Liam cried.”
“I did not cry.”
“You had something in your eye then. I see.”
“No, I was laughing because
you
were crying.”
Petra watched the couple banter back and forth with a charmed look on her face. Rubio didn’t want to like her. He didn’t want to want her but he did, with a growing intensity. He wished he could shoo Ash and Liam out of the room and peel Petra’s costume off and fuck her fast and rough against the wall. “Hush,” he’d say if she tried to stop him. “I need to be inside you.”
The chatter in the room fell silent, and for a moment he was afraid he’d said it out loud rather than in his fantasies.
“Well, we’ll get out of your hair then,” said Ashleigh with sideways look at Liam. “Congrats again for an awesome first show.”
She nudged her husband until he said, “Yeah, I think Mem’s probably got the car.” He shook Ruby’s hand and then the two of them left the room. Again, Ruby thought he should flee, get the hell out of there. He had Liam’s party to get ready for, his usual Saturday night craziness, but he lingered, not wanting this premiere night to end.
“What are you up to now?” she asked in the lengthening silence.
I wish I was up your pussy
, he thought. “I am up to nothing,” he said aloud. He wasn’t telling her about Liam’s party and he definitely wasn’t inviting her. But perhaps he could take her for a drink first? What would she say if he asked? The words stuck inside his mouth, reluctant to come out. If he asked, she’d probably say no, which would be really embarrassing.