“Listen,” Derek said, “I hear your worry. But I’m gonna do you right, friend. That’s a promise. I’m gonna do you right. And your wife. And, of course, your sister-in-law. All of you.”
It felt like a sucker pledge, a con man’s guarantee. But then also something else.
And your wife. And, of course, your sister-in-law.
Charlie didn’t say anything. Dara thought she could hear him through the door, breathing.
* * *
*
We have to fire him,” Dara said later. “You see it now. How he is. We have to fire him.”
Charlie looked at her, then leaned back into his chair.
“In the middle of Nutcracker season?”
“That’s exactly why we need to fire him,” Dara said. “Fires, floods. Why wait for the locusts? We can’t get through the season like this.”
“I’m not any happier about it than you are, but I don’t see what choice we have. Do you want to spend the day calling up new contractors? Getting bids? Starting from scratch?”
Dara didn’t say anything. She was looking at the new raft of Nutcracker bills on the desk. The costume rentals, the tailoring services, the backdrop rental, the photographer, a new sound technician this year, the heaping mound of pointe shoes and on and on.
“He says he’s going to front us all the expenses,” Charlie said.
“To pay for the damage he did?” Dara said. “And why would he do that?”
“Because he quote-unquote trusts us,” Charlie said wryly. “That’s what he said.”
Dara’s head was still throbbing from last night’s yellow-and-green pills, from Marie’s impish laughter all day, that mood she’d been in, flittering around her six-year-olds like she was one of them, loud and silly as she showed them how to scurry, paws in the air, as the Nutcracker mice.
Marie, who seemed elated at the setback that would keep her lover on-site for even longer, for what seemed to Dara to be an infinite time. She could nearly picture Marie taking the hammer she used to demolish her pointe shoes and punching it into that pipe itself.
“He trusts us,” Dara said coolly. “Lucky us.”
* * *
*
The flood became an excuse for chaos, for falling behind. For a huddle of Level IVs dawdling in the changing room, for the Neuman sisters sneaking out for a donut from the deli, for the contraband gum Dara found stuck to her studio floor, purple and obscene looking and leading to a fruitless sweep of all students’ cubbies that took another twenty minutes from their day.
This was why you needed routine, rigidity, timeliness. One slip, a wrist turned too far, a pointe shoe sliding from a dancer’s heel, a faulty space heater, and everything could change in an instant. Everything could fall apart.
“Eyes in front! Attention!” Dara said firmly, her ten-year-olds distracted, whispering to one another between exercises. Grave looks and rolling eyes.
“Is this it?” Dara said, folding her arms, giving them all a look, walking alongside them, their legs like pink pistils trembling. “Is this what you intend to do onstage, with hundreds of audience members, all dressed up in suits and ties and holiday velvet? Because I have a studio full of Level Threes who would be happy to take your spots.”
“No, Madame Durant,” they all said.
As if on cue, they all heard the faint screech from the changing room. Dara moved quickly to the doorway and, amid the piles of coats and backpacks, denim and purple corduroy, saw Bailey Bloom bending down in front of her cubbyhole, her hands trembling, her face stricken.
The dead rat inside looked waterlogged, its fur quilled.
* * *
*
Huddling around Bailey with sympathetic coos and paper towels from the powder room, the girls had many theories—too many, really. The rat must’ve arrived with the flood, washed from some secret eddy in the building into the cubbyhole, so low to the ground. Or the rat, fleeing the flood, found safe harbor in the cubby only to die there.
“Maybe Bailey was keeping food in her cubby,” Iris Cartwright speculated. “Some people like their snacks.”
“Gross,” Gracie Hent said, shaking her head. “That’s nasty, Bailey.”
* * *
*
You’re telling me,” Charlie said after, “a rat emerged from the subfloor in Studio B and climbed into this cubbyhole two feet off the ground?”
Dara made a note to call Mrs. Bloom, or to have Charlie do it.
It was all very unfortunate and Marie spent an hour calming Bailey in the back office, the girl’s face green and her hands still shaking.
“Clara suffered too,” Bailey said. “She had to face the Mouse King. This will only make my Clara better.”
“That’s the spirit,” Marie said, stroking Bailey’s hair in that way Marie had that made everyone feel like a most beloved dog. “That’s the way.”
* * *
*
Dara didn’t have time for the escalating Clara drama. She had bigger problems.
She had the contractor, who seemed to grow larger every day. Not his girth, which was not insignificant, but his presence. He was never not there, from when Dara arrived until, it seemed, after she left—Marie taking his hand and slinking up the spiral staircase with him to her attic hovel.
* * *
*
That night, Benny and Gaspar worked late, their arms sunk deep in polyplastic. Derek was nowhere to be seen.
“You two should go home,” Dara told them finally.
They looked at her dubiously, pulling the masks from their faces.
“I won’t tell him,” she added discreetly. “Go home.”
Benny nodded knowingly, but Gaspar, sliding his mask back on, added, under his breath, “He comes back sometimes. You know.”
Dara let out a tangled cough and wished suddenly that she had a mask too.
* * *
*
It was after eight. Dara had sent Marie and Charlie to the Ballenger Center to meet with Madame Sylvie and the set designer and prop master to get approvals on the Christmas tree preparations. Neither appeared too eager about their task. They increasingly seemed to avoid each other lately. Shouldn’t Dara go, they both said, not me?
“You know all the important things,” Marie said glumly. “And I have plans . . .”
“I have a private session tonight,” Dara said. “Faites votre devoir. Do your duty.”
Marie looked at her, her shoulders drawing back in surprise.
“You sound just like her,” she said, her voice suddenly small. “Mother.”
Dara paused. “No, I don’t,” she said. “You better get moving.”
And so Marie left.
If Derek returns, Dara thought smugly, he’ll be out of luck.
* * *
*
I hope I make you proud,” Corbin kept saying, blinking nervously.
“I hope so too,” Dara said, eyes on his port de bras, his arms droopy, weak. The simplest things were always the hardest.
She’d promised some extra time to Corbin, her struggling Nutcracker Prince. He came back to the studio late, his face ruddy from the cold, and pled with her.
How could she say no? It was a challenging role. He had to do battle and to woo and, in that famous moment when the Nutcracker costume, attached with cables, is whisked away to reveal the Prince behind the festive carapace, he had to make sure he wasn’t swept away with it.
But, as always with the Nutcracker Prince, the big moments were never the problem. It was the small, the elemental things. The port de bras. The movement of the arms, fluid, elegant.
“Watch those hands,” Dara said, shaking her head. “I want to see a pocket of air between the thumb and fingers. And straight spine, please.”
“Yes, Madame Durant,” he replied, half-breathless.
* * *
*
He lifted his arms again and immediately over-rotated, his shoulder blade jutting unnaturally. Chicken wings, Charlie had said earlier that day, watching him. Tsk tsk.
“Can you—might you show me?” he said.
Dara shook her head dismissively. Because you didn’t touch students. Not past eleven or twelve. Other than rotating or softening a hand. It was a shame because the boys in particular would benefit from it. Many had a tendency to be too hard, too rough. To compensate, overcompensate for the fact that they were boys who were dancing, who stretched tights over their bodies and strapped on dance belts. It was so difficult anywhere, anytime, to be a boy who wanted to dance.