Last Dance

The theater angel was close to climax and Kirk was riding him hard to a finish. The fifty-three-year-old Theo Aristades, Greek trucking magnate, in New York for the closing of the yet-again Broadway revival of Hello Dolly that he was financing—thus designating him a theater angel—lay on his back, letting Kirk, twenty-eight, with movie-star looks, blond, blue-eyed, frosted hair, and the body of a dancer, straddle him. The younger man undulated on the hirsute, solid, if a bit paunchy Greek’s hips in a cowboy ride. Up, down; back, forward; all around the town, Kirk rode the thick, hard erection, panting and moaning. This was the angel—the financial backer—for the play he was in. He knew to give the man a good time and top billing. He didn’t mind in the least riding a cock this old as long as it could maintain an erection and build a line of credit.

He had agreed to let Aristades wine, dine, and bed him for the financial benefit to the show he was in, but once there, Kirk was enjoying what the old Greek could do.

Kirk leaned forward, facing the Greek’s head, his fingers buried in the salt-and-pepper curls swirling the man’s beefy pecs. Under a magnificent head of wavy hair, the Greek was so craggy-faced and weather-beaten that he was commanding. He made no excuse for his shaft, even in the need for some help from pills. He didn’t need any excuse for how big it could get hard. He obviously had earned his billions the difficult way. He took his pleasures hard as well. He held Kirk’s waist between his hands and assisted in rising and lowering the young man’s smooth, dancer’s body on his cock.

Kirk was nearly half the Greek’s age and Theo was making him shudder and moan. He’d make the honey cum hard too.

“Ah, I do believe your moan and shudder are genuine—that you are finding this Greek not so bad,” Aristades said.

“Yes, you’re fuckin’ good.” Kirk moaned deeply. “Yes, yes. It’s so big. You are the master.” He’d made the mistake in an earlier fuck to call the man “daddy.” That didn’t go over very well. Aristades was not acknowledging getting old. Theo had made Kirk pay for that. He’d ridden the young man into the sheets and kept on riding after Kirk was exhausted.

They’d been fucking this time for nearly twenty minutes. The man had remained in rock-hard erection and Kirk rode him with abandon. It was amazing the Greek held the erection this long. Kirk assumed he’d taken a pill to manage that, but he didn’t care. He loved being stretched and reached at great depth, and he liked riding older men. This was doing it for him. He wasn’t just doing it just to please the play’s angel—and thus the show’s producers as well.

But he was doing it to please the play’s angel and to keep the support money for the production coming. He knew this meant he’d have to keep the angel coming as well.

Aristades cried out, “Aftó eínai. Erchetai!—This is it. It comes!” and then, making Kirk hold motionless, leaning back, arms dangling at his side, in surrender mode, the Greek, throbbing cock buried deep in the anal passage, tensed, jerked, came; tensed, jerked, and filled the bulb of the condom.

Immediately after coming, the Greek rolled Kirk off to the side, held him in close embrace with one arm, grasped the young man’s cock with the other beefy hand, and jacked him off vigorously and mercilessly. The bed had bounced and its springs had screamed while Aristades pounded the young man. It did it again as the man jacked Kirk off. Kirk panted, groaned, and writhed as he could in the man’s embrace to his own ejaculation.

After Kirk came, the Greek released him and jerked the spent condom off with one hand, while moving up in the hotel bed to lean against the headboard. He reached for a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand and lit up. He dropped the condom off the side of the bed, not showing any care for who would be disposing of it and where. It wouldn’t be a shock for the room attendant to find it on the floor in this hotel, which Aristades had picked for being near the New York theater where Hello Dolly was in the last gasps of its performances and because the hotel would rent rooms by the hour.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that?” Kirk murmured.

“What? Get you off so fast?”

“No. Smoke. In bed.”

“Poio eínai to próvlima?—What’s the problem? I paid for a smoking room.”

“That’s not the point. It will kill you. And you’ll burn the hotel down.”

“You Americans. You’re here to save the hotel from fire. Why do you think I let you come into my room and have your way with me?” He laughed. Kirk managed a smile. “I always smoke after sex.”

“I’ve noticed.” It wasn’t the first time the two had left the theater during preparations for a performance to come to this hotel for a quickie. Aristades demanded continuous servicing for his investment.

Aristades wrapped an arm around Kirk and brought the younger, smaller man into his body, but he continued enjoying his smoke. Kirk lay there, contemplating, his right hand making little swirls around the curls on the Greek’s left nipple, waiting for the cigarette to be finished, not particularly pleased that it took time away from sex. Kirk was highly sexed. Getting it from Theo was fine with him.

After a few moments of silence, he spoke. “It was six years ago today. Valentine’s Day. In a better hotel room than this one, I must say. It had snowed nearly a foot. I think maybe I came here with him because I liked the reindeer-hide boots he was wearing.”

“What? Valentine’s Day six years ago. What about that?”

“You asked me when I last danced on stage in a play. That was when it was. A Valentine’s Day performance. The last performance of another revival. Brigadoon, I think. They didn’t have to replace me. There at least was that. Not nearly the tough dances and acrobatics as in this production—but more than for plays previous to it. With each production, Claude and I were adding more complexity in the dance. But that was long ago and far away—well, not so far. It was in a better theater than we have now, though.”

Without letting the Greek pursue the point further, Kirk was off the bed and in the bathroom. When he returned, shuffling a bit, he was dressed in his white cotton, long-sleeved shirt above skinny jeans and reindeer-hide boots, looking oh so fuckable, and reaching for his jacket.

“It hasn’t snowed as deep now that it did then, but the city is in white, looking clean. I love New York in the snow.”

Aristades had stubbed his cigarette out but was resting his back against the headboard of the bed.

“I love young, willing men, with holes that stretch quickly,” Aristades said.

“How romantic for Valentine’s Day,” Kirk said, with a small laugh.

“At my age, romance has become a thing for the past—for memories.”

“It needn’t be that way,” Kirk said.

“With a honey like you, I can almost believe it.”

“I’m not doing this—with you—for the production support,” Kirk said. “Perhaps the first time, but not the times after that.”

“I won’t ask for more.” This sex with the young firecracker who worked on the production he was backing was an indulgence he didn’t want to give up, but, at his age, it took a lot out of him. He was still in erection and was stroking it with one hand, half hoping Kirk would come back to bed and ride it again. The pills were expensive. He should get the most work out of them he could. But he was only half hoping for another round. He wasn’t happy about having to use pills now to keep it up. And, with them, the erection was able to take this longer than his heart would. But, what a way to go. And you couldn’t get any better than Kirk. What a sweet, tight ass—and the sounds of surrender he made during sex were very satisfying for an old man.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost missed Kirk, standing by the door, providing an answer to the momentous question Aristades had asked him before they had sex.

“Just like that, you can so definitively answer a question that important?” he asked.

“Just like that, yes,” Kirk said. “I gave a lot of thought into what I’d say if I were asked that question again. I made a mistake when asked that question once before. I don’t want to make that mistake again. Now I’ve got to get over to the theater. Last performances and Sal’s still making changes that affect the dance routines. I’ll have to reblock some of them, I’m sure. He has no idea how hard that is.”

* * * *

Eight Years Earlier

I came to New York at nineteen from Philadelphia, giving myself what I thought was six months of financial backing to be able to do more on stage than I was doing where I had been training in dance, music, and acting for a decade. I misjudged the reality of the New York theater. I hadn’t been innocent enough to think being willing to go under men wasn’t a plus—because it was. At every corner I reached, there was a man who was willing and able to give me a little boost for a bang. But I misjudged the cost and the opportunity.

What I thought would be enough backing cash to last for six months would, I quickly could see, only last for three in New York. I could stretch that by finding a sugar daddy offering room and board, I reasoned. But there was so much on offer in the New York theater that I was only finding men good for a meal or two and a bit of cash. Besides, if I was going to make it in Broadway, that would take all of my effort and concentration; sugar daddies demand attention in exchange for their sponsorship. I could sleep in a hotel room or a man’s apartment, but that didn’t negate my need for someplace to call home myself. I quickly learned that four guys could—and did—live in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan together, but that didn’t change the three-month-limit reality.

And then there was opportunity. I worked up my way to doing well with dance in Philadelphia. There were, like, a million good women dancers to each man, especially men who could do Broadway as well as classical dance, in the Philadelphia theater. I was especially fortunate because I’d gone to a special high school, one with a nationally competitive gymnastics program. The American musical theater was entering what we called a “Circ du Soleil” stage, where spectacular gymnasts were sought for stage productions, even—or especially—for revivals of musicals from the 1940s through the 1970s. The number of men who could do these gymnastics as well as having training in dance, singing, and acting was limited. I could do it. If you could do backflips across the width of a New York theater stage, you had an advantage.

So, living in the theater in Philadelphia was doable, if not lucrative enough to make a guy rich. In New York, though, I found this was not so much so. I found that one reason I could have clear sailing in Philadelphia and other cities at this arts level was because the real talent was going to New York. And in New York, the competition was fierce—very fierce indeed. It favored the New Yorker who had lived, trained, and networked there from the beginning. Nearly everyone I saw achieving a breakout role on the New York stage was closely related to someone who blazed the trail for them.

Out-of-towners needed something more than excellence in the basics to make it. I did have the gymnastics background. I could do either backflips or cartwheels across the width of a New York theater state. That helped tremendously. But there were two advantages, plus extraordinary good luck, that saved me from beating a retreat to Philadelphia with my tail between my legs at the end of three months. I was incredibly good-looking and fit and I was willing to take the cock of any man who could and would give me a leg up in the New York theater. In particular, I could take an older man and convince him he was the best cocksman in Manhattan—and genuinely enjoy the coupling. An erection was an erection.

I was within a week of needing to pack it in and head back to Philly when I went to the party at the dance studio I’d hooked up with in Manhattan, the New York Fine Arts Theatre School, and met a man on the make in more ways than one. Claude Plautier, a play director, the highest man up in the business I’d met since coming to New York, had come to the dance studio looking for a male dancer to fill in on the back line for a robust, gymnastics-filled revival of Oklahoma, which was already on stage with some very athletic numbers, but he was also looking for a lay for that night. Panicked to be able to stay in New York, I stepped up to take care of both of his needs.

One of the instructors at the NYFA Theatre School who was bonking me was very helpful in introductions to Claude Plautier.

“He’s both shopping for a dancer for his production and cruising for young tail for tonight,” Lyle said. “Wear something Western and form fitting but not too obvious. He has a fetish for cowboy boots. I’ll talk up your dancing ability—not beyond your capability; there isn’t much beyond your capability. You can do his job or I wouldn’t recommend you. And I’ll try to get you together. Be prepared to leave with him.”

“You’ll tell him I’ll take cock?”

“You don’t want me too? It probably will make the difference.”

“Oh, no. Go ahead.” I’d seen photos in the theater media of Plautier. He was fuckable.

“He has a legendary one,” Lyle said, as he called everyone together for a rehearsal.

The room where the party was held was in the school’s Battery Place headquarters building overlooking the Hudson River on the west end of the tip of Manhattan. When Lyle guided me over to Plautier, he was standing at a window he had cranked a bit open overlooking the river and was smoking a cigarette, directing the ashes out into the void. That’s how I’d always remember Plautier—unfortunately—somehow getting in just one more of his European Gauloises cigarettes. There was no smoking permitted in the room, of course, but that didn’t apply to a man of the theater at Plautier’s level. No one was going to call him on his flouting of the rules. He was a power in the business, a man who commanded every aspect of one of his productions, which was why he was showing interest in filling in a back-line male dancer spot in a musical that only had three more weeks to run.

“Mr. Plautier, this is the young dancer I talked to you about. Kirk Damon. He might be the answer to your need.” Lyle didn’t mention which of two needs I’d heard about I might answer for Plautier. Quite clever of him. Just as clever that he melted away immediately and left me alone with a man with a half-smoked cigarette who was anchored to a split-open window to take the smoke and ashes away.

He was an imposing man—French, but so cosmopolitan that there was no pinning him down. His English was, of course, impeccable, with only a slight, intriguing French accent to it. He was tall—pushing six feet, and trim. He was elegantly dressed and, though in his fifties, still the regal-bearing male model and actor he’d been. He had a lion’s mane of silver-white hair, a short mustache and beard, and emerald-green eyes that arrested and commanded. There was no question that he was the most important and commanding man in the room.

His first look at me indicated that I had been right in what I had chosen to dress in—a close-fitting long-sleeved cotton burgundy Wrangler Western work shirt, top three buttons unbuttoned, with sliver stud buttons over worn skinny jeans, and brown suede cowboy boots with subtle tooling on the sides. It also indicated that—frosted blond, blue-eyed, trim, and five-foot-seven, I fulfilled his interests in natural looks.

He was wearing finely tooled cowboy boots himself, and his eyes initially went to the ones I was wearing. So, the comment on his fetish about boots panned out.

He reached out and took a gentle grip of my arm above the elbow with the hand not ferrying the cigarette back and forth to his mouth. It was a small gesture, but it was an immediate sign that he didn’t want this to be a quick greeting in passing at a party. He already was interested.

He became even more interested.

“Lyle tells me you are a dancer,” He said. “I could see that by the way you walked and have carried yourself at this party.”

He had been watching me.

“Yes, but it’s hard to find work in New York,” I said. Let him know right off that you are available for a dance gig. Let him know you are available for more. I pulled in closer to him, willing his hand to take a more intimate position to hold me there. He complied, the hand going to my waist. “I’m flattered that you have been watching me.”

“You are an easy young man to watch,” He said. “Stage presence.”

I told him where I had trained for a decade in Philadelphia and that I took both ballet and modern dance. And I told him I’d gone to a high school specializing in gymnastics and had trained at the Circ Du Soliel acrobatic school. He showed most interest in the latter.

“It’s something the musical theater has moved toward,” he said—with an almost-regretful note to his voice. He grimaced and gave a little cough. “I’m afraid the theater may be passing me by. It’s changing. It’s tough getting old.”

“You don’t seem old to me,” I said. “You are a very charismatic man. Full of vigor, I’ll bet.”

“Yes, I am a vigorous man,” he said. “I’m told I’m still hard to keep up with that.”

“I can certainly believe that. A very interesting man, I can tell.”

“An old man. A man who now lives largely on pills.”

“A man is only as old as he lets himself be. There is no old age for a man of substance and vigor,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with pills as long as they do the job.”

We both knew we were talking about a man being able to get it up, keep it up, and make effective use of it—and that we were reaching an accommodation already on the other interest that had brought the man to the party. He was looking for a dancer. But he was looking for a dancer to lay. And he was looking for one who wouldn’t belittle him for needing enhancement pills to get it up.

I was more than willing to be that dancer.

“I trust this school and Lyle’s recommendation on dancers. If he tells me that you could fill in the slot I have open in the men’s line and chorus for the last few weeks of the Oklahoma run, I think that you may be my answer. He tells me you don’t have work at the moment. Would you be interested in auditioning?”

“Yes,” I quickly said. I didn’t know how broadly the “auditioning” question was, but I had done what I could to register sexual interest and willingness. His hand was still on my waist and I had left it there. He was finished with his other cigarette and that hand went to my waist as well, both hands moving down over the hips.

“Hmm. Narrow hips. You have such narrow hips. Good in a dancer.”

And there it is, I thought. Since I did have narrow hips, with deep hollows below them and pert little buttocks, I was aware of a fetish that some men had with a fantasy of splitting them and making their sex partner suffer. So, the man had another fetish—one I fulfilled.

“Yes, I keep in shape. You have to to be able to dance.” I also had the small body that looked good prancing across a stage, bare-chested and in a leotard—and doing backflips. Not that there would be any of that in Oklahoma. The costuming would be more like Lyle as advised me to wear tonight.

“Yes, I’d love to audition for your play. I understand that the run is nearly over. But I hope I can do well enough—in everything you want—to be considered for future productions. I’d love to be able to stay in New York.”

“I wish I had brought the blocking plans for the scenes you’d be in,” he said. “You do read blocking plans, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. I’ve been in several productions in Philadelphia. I know how it works.”

“I have them at my apartment, up in the theater district. I really need someone who can go on stage in the next day or two.”

“Do you want me to come to your apartment now and look at the routine setups—and maybe show you I quickly can learn to dance them?”

“That would be wonderful,” he said. He looked down into my eyes and I looked up into his. His hands went to my butt cheeks, and he pulled up and he leaned down. I went up on my toes. Our mouths met and we kissed, him taking hungry, tongue-in possession of my mouth, there in the frame of the window overlooking the Hudson River. I let my arms dangle at my sided, signaling surrender to whatever he wanted. I’d learned how to speed this along. I didn’t have time to dawdle.

* * * *

He lived in a roomy artist’s loft apartment at the top of an old building near the theater district. The living space soared two stories, with a line of large, industrial windows overlooking the city. The living and dining area spanned the window wall. Behind them was an open mezzanine level with his work area at one end and a king-sized bed at the other, with a bath between them. Under them was a much smaller bedroom and bath at one end, a kitchen in the middle, and a bookshelf-lined study at the other.

It was a masculine space, a bachelor’s pad. But it was also the space of a confident, wealthy man. I felt comfortable and safe here.

He pulled me to him inside the door and we kissed again. He was much taller than I was and pulled me up into his body in an embrace. As we kissed, his hand roamed. It slid into the slit of my shirt, where I had the top three buttons unbuttoned, and he found and played with my nipples. He pulled the shirt off my back and let it fall to the floor. He was going to fuck me, and in this space I was comfortable with that.

“Nice,” he murmured, but then he broke away, and said, “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a few moments.” He went upstairs to the bathroom up there.

While he was gone, I roamed the large living space he had. The furniture was sumptuous, with a deep-cushioned sofa in front of a glass-topped coffee table, facing a tall fireplace between the windows overlooking the city. There was a wide swath of bare-wood floor. Papers were laid out on a dining table and I saw that they were from his current production. I found the schematics for the dance numbers and scrutinized them. Difficult, but nothing I hadn’t trained to do.

When he came downstairs, he was wearing a silk robe, with matching sleep shorts under it. I could tell he was in full erection. He was a good eight thick inches in erection. He must have taken pills while he was in the bathroom. My thought was that he’d be hard for the whole night and that I was going to get a night of it. I had a vision of him on his back, his erection standing proud and straight up from his body and me riding it for hours while leaning back and grasping his knees. That was fine with me.

I had already seen that there were small spray bottles of lube and packets of condoms—Trojan Magnums—on both the coffee table at the sofa and here on the dining table.

He came over to me at the table and stood close behind me. His hands went to my hips, which he stroked with this thumbs, and he nuzzled his face into the hollow of my neck.

“I had my eyes on you from the moment I saw you this evening,” he murmured. “I hope you are going to give you yourself to me.”

I moaned and leaned back into him, letting him know he could have what he wanted and when he wanted it. “I came here hoping you would want me. Take what you want,” I whispered. I reached back with a hand, grasped his erection, and slow stroked him.

He wanted it—all of it—the first time, almost immediately.

He did look down at the papers I was holding in my hands. “You’ve found the dance number plans. You think you can—?”

“Yes. Easy,” I answered.

“How easy can you be beyond that?” he asked. It was the only hint of asking if he could fuck me.

“As easy as you want, whenever you want it.”

He already was unbuckling my belt, zipping my fly down, pulling my jeans and boots off my legs.

“I think your boots back on, please,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Such narrow hips,” he murmured as I bent over to pull my boots back on. His hands were gripping my waist, his thumbs reaching to try to meet over my spine. His two fetishes. I could hear his heavy breathing. As I pulled my boots on—the only things I was wearing now, his hands moved. They went to my buttocks, separating the orbs. The thumbs pressed into my hole, stretching my opening apart.

I moaned for him. The bulb of his erection was rubbing against my buttocks, seeking and finding my spread hole.

“Shit. Fuck,” I whispered as I felt him in place, the bulb pressing in between the stretching thumbs. Lodged in position, he moved his hands, gliding them up my body, one hand palming my belly and the other going up to cup my chin, pulling the back of my head into his chest.

“Fuck!” I cried out as he penetrated and moved slowly, but relentlessly up into me. Nearly ten inches spreading the channel, moving toward my core.

“Yes! Yes, screw me!” I declared.

He did.

* * * *

The pills did their job. He was ten-inches erect through the night, no matter how many times he fucked me. After that first time, he stripped down to the cowboy boots he was wearing. He didn’t let me take my boots off.

I was naked under him, belly down on the papers on his dining table, and he was on his knees behind me, grasping my waist, thumbs stretching to meet over my back, his face buried in my crack. I writhed and groaned under him, my arms stretched out, my hands grasping opposite edges of the table, holding myself as steady as possible as he feasted on my hole and my cock and my balls.

And then he was standing, hovering over me, putting his erection in position a second time and whispering, “Such narrow hips.”

I panted and groaned and scrabbled at the edges of the table and cried out, “Oh, shit. Oh, fuck! How hell the long is it?” as he penetrated and ran it up inside me.

“Quite long enough,” he answered.

I recalled that Lyle said the man had a legendary cock. That turned out to be in length. It was nearly a foot long. He got it all inside me, with considerable effort each time, to where he was tickling my ass with his curlies, and then he fucked me in long, slow, slides. Somehow he’d gotten himself crowned. He felt different from other men. I only later found out it was because he had a godawful big bead pierced in the head of his godawful long shaft.

He fucked me and fucked me and fucked me, leaving me panting and shimmering afterward, belly down on his dining table, while he went to the window, smoked one of his European cigarettes, and then went and poured a couple of glasses of wine at his kitchen bar looking out into the vast living-dining area.

“I can do the dances easily,” I said, calling over to him from the table. I wanted more than a night of sex from the man. This was my chance to make a mark for myself on stage. “But they look a little tame. I thought you said the play was incorporating fancy acrobatics.”

“It is. It’s meant to be. But I’ve heard criticism of that from others. Tell me what you mean.”

I picked up one of the dance routine plans and carried it over to where he’d poured the wine. I was naked other than the boots, and I moved sultry, knowing I looked good. I wanted more than a couple of fucks out of this man. I wanted a job—a position; a career. “This dance is too static,” I said. “You need something spectacular to end it.”

“Spectacular? Like what.”

“This dancer down here in the back corner of the stage.” It was a more prominent dance position than the back line where Pautier was looking to fill a spot. “At the end of the number, this dancer should do back flips from here to here, diagonally to the front far corner of the stage, where he should end up doing a slow-sink, full split-leg position right here. Then he should jump up, put his arm around the waist of your Laurie figure, and swirl her off stage. Curtain and applause.”

He looked stunned. “A dancer can do that?”

“He sure as hell can do that,” I said. “I can do that. I’ll show you. There isn’t room for more than a few flips in here, but I can show you. Move that ottoman there.”

And then I showed him. Doing two flips in the nude from one end of his living area to the other, ending with legs extended, on my heels, and slowly, ever so slowly, descending into the full splits. I’d managed it even in boots.

“Oh, my god,” he exclaimed. “That was incredible.”

“You want to see and experience incredible?” I said, slowly moving into a new, sexy position, sitting on my butt, fully facing him; spreading and bending my shapely legs; digging the toes of my boots into the floor and raising my hips; reclining back, both fists pressed into the floor behind me. I gave him a lustful look. “Come here and fuck me, Daddy.”

He did, kneeling between my thighs, running an arm under my waist, both of us grasping his long, long, long cock. I thrust my hips forward and up, taking him inside me, and we moved together in the fuck.

“Oh, shit, does it never bottom?” I cried out as he entered, entered, entered me before he began the dance of the slow withdrawal and long, long slide.

“FUCK. The bead. It’s killing me!”

Killing me good.

* * * *

Today

“You said you’d made a mistake when you answered that question six years ago on Valentine’s Day,” Theo Aristades said, watching Kirk preparing to leave at the hotel room door. “I thought you’d been in the business longer than that.”

“I was in the business longer—I moved in with and danced in Claude’s production for two years before that. But that was the day—Valentine’s Day six years ago—that my work in the business changed forever.”

“Because of how you answered this question when Claude Plautier asked it?”

“No, not completely, but maybe it had a connection.”

“He asked you to leave New York and go away with him, just like I have done—what you’ve agreed to do. To go to Athens with me, where I will set up a dance studio for you?”

“I didn’t tell him yes. I turned him down.”

“I don’t understand. You said you didn’t want to make the same mistake you did before. Are you telling me you are only saying yes to me because you said no to him? You went with him, though. You worked in London for nearly four years before coming back to New York.”

“When Claude asked me that day if I’d give up New York and go to London with him, where he was relocating, I said no and flounced out of the hotel room. He knew how much I liked working in New York. I’d seen him with a new dancer, one younger than I was. I was sure that Claude wanted me to say no. He didn’t know that I had fallen for him and would have followed him to the end of the earth if he genuinely wanted me to. I didn’t think he really wanted me to. So, I said no and stormed out of the hotel.”

“And so, what was the regret? You didn’t really leave him. The two of you became a team in London. You were the choreographer for his plays.”

“That’s because I couldn’t be a dancer anymore,” Kirk said. “I left so angry and grief-stricken that when I got down to the street, I wasn’t watching, and I walked off the curb into the path of a taxi cab. That last performance of Brigadoon at the Valentine’s Day matinee was my last dance.”

“And thus a change of career,” Aristades said.

“Yes.”

“And you’d left Plautier.”

“Yes, but he hadn’t left me. He stayed with me in New York through several surgeries to save my leg. And they he took me to London and gave me a new career as his choreographer. I’d been completely wrong about him leaving me. It took us a long time to recover from my no to his question, though, and we didn’t have a long time. Just two more years.”

“He died in London.”

“Yes. Of lung cancer. Those damn European cigarettes. He was already too far along when we met. My last dance. His last cigarette.”

Kirk gave Aristades a piercing look. “I’ve said yes to going to Greece with you. New York isn’t as important to me as relationships are. But I also said there was one proviso. That proviso is that you give up smoking. I don’t want to go through the particular nightmare again.”

The two held there for a few moments, their eyes locked. Aristades rolled over to a sitting position beside the bed. Then he stood, picked the pack of cigarettes up from the nightstand, walked over to a trashcan, and dropped the pack in.

He turned and smiled. “Well, I forgot to get you a Valentine’s Day present,” he said. “Will this do?”

“Let’s hope it’s a Valentine’s Day present for us both,” Kirk said.