*
I’m telling you,” she told Charlie the minute he woke up, “he was in her car and he was watching us. Spying on us.”
“Or the house,” Charlie said, rubbing his temples. He walked over to the window, drawing back one of their mother’s French-pleated drapes, the damask gray with dust.
“What do you mean?” Dara said, the Nutcracker head still in hand, the way little girls held baby dolls, resting on their forearms, their alarmed baby-doll faces forever staring up, eyes painted open, wondering, fearful.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, his brow furrowed. “He asked me some questions about it. What year it was built. Had we ever thought of selling it. That kind of thing.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Dara said.
“I didn’t think . . . I mean, it’s his field,” Charlie says. “Maybe he . . .”
But Charlie’s voice trailed off, a slightly puzzled look on his face.
He has something he wants. That’s what Mrs. Bloom had said. The house. The things he seemed to know about it. And then there’d been Marie, just the day before: People have cars. That’s what they do. They move away. They buy a car, buy a house.
“It was just strange because we also got a call yesterday,” Charlie said, more awake now, more alert. “Some woman called for you. Something about the house.”
“What about the house?” Dara said. “Wait—”
“She was from the city or something,” he said. “I wrote her number down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t important. I mean, it didn’t seem important.”
“Where’s the number?”
“At the studio.”
Dara sat down beside Charlie, the Nutcracker head between them. Both saying nothing.
* * *
*
She couldn’t tell what Charlie was thinking. She couldn’t tell how he felt. His eyes were cool blue and empty. It was how he’d always been as a dancer. All those years, all those bone spurs and labral tears, the stress fractures and torn tendons. Grinding his body to a fine powder. He didn’t let himself feel it, or anything. Or at least he never showed it.
You’re dancing yourself to death, his doctor said once, under his breath.
But Charlie wouldn’t stop. Until his body stopped for him. Until the hangman’s fracture that, surgery by surgery, forced him to stop dancing at all.
But it wasn’t that he didn’t feel things. When their parents died, Charlie was the one who broke the news to Dara and Marie. The state trooper punted it to him. And Charlie, older than his years, told them so gently, so cleanly.
A day later, while Dara and Marie were upstairs dressing for the funeral, he drove his hand through the kitchen window. He still had a scar the shape of a seashell in the meaty bit between his thumb and forefinger.
And, once a month, he still put lilies on their mother’s grave.
RICH AS CREAM
I need to talk to you later,” Dara said as she watched Marie slip down the spiral staircase that morning, her face blurry with sleep.
“Sure, boss,” she said, brushing past Dara. “But do we really have time? Don’t we need to get cracking those nuts?”
Insolent, Dara thought.
Even her voice didn’t sound like Marie’s voice. It was more gruff, throaty.
It was the things he was saying to her. The ideas he was putting into her head.
He’s like a mesmer, Dara thought. It’s like mind control.
It reminded her of those ads they used to have in the backs of her father’s magazines.
want the thrill of imposing your will on someone?
how to control women’s minds!
* * *
*
The only succor the day offered was that Derek didn’t appear at all.
“Where is he?” Dara asked Benny, who shrugged, his face dark with sweat.
“He makes you do all the work,” Dara added.
Benny took off his cap, wiping his face.
“Madame Durant,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Dara asked.
Gaspar, working the belt sander in the corner, looked at Benny, who then paused. Taking a breath.
“For this,” he said, shaking his head.
And it was unclear if he was referring to Studio B, a space that now looked as if it had swallowed itself, the floor sunken and the air above heavy with grit, or something else, something larger, and deathless, of which Dara could only see the dark corners, the creeping edges. The growing thing that had sunk its claws into the studio, into Marie, into everything.
* * *
*
All day, Dara waited for a chance to get Marie alone, but they were both consumed with rehearsals, with the one-on-one and small-group work as they slowly stitched the ballet together.
The older ones were truly Dara’s now, giving themselves over to the throbbing feet, the blistered blood, the smell everywhere of bandages, rot.
Mademoiselle, entendez! Swiftly, Dara moved from correction to correction. Tailbone down! Over toes, not over heels! There was no more room for error. They were all hungry for correction. Desperate to be stretched, yanked.
All eyes on her all day, all those eager faces, those plaintive expressions, those hungry looks. The twitchy neediness of the girls, their bodies never leaner, never stronger, but a darkness hovering behind their eyes. This is what happens, Dara thought, when you’ve entered the ballet. When you’ve finally gone beyond your old ideas of your body’s limits, of what you would push yourself through.
The pain is real and abiding.
The pain is bracing and makes you feel alive.
The pain is your friend. The pain is you.
* * *
*
The pleasure came later, when Dara brought out the Nutcracker head, which she’d set on the windowsill all day to air out the mold, the basement funk.
Its painted face was slick with condensation.
“Madame Durant,” Corbin Lesterio said, taking it from her, holding it in his hands like an enormous gem. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Dara said, trying not to smile. “Like everything else in ballet, it’s hot and it smells.”
Corbin lifted it over his head with trembling fingers. Remembering all the young men who’d worn it, Dara felt a heat behind her eyes.
That was when she heard the faint sound of laughter. In the far corner, several of the Level IVs had gathered to watch, a few hiding giggles behind their hands.
“What’s funny here?” Dara said. “I’d like to know.”
Everyone went quiet, heads down, except Pepper Weston, who said, “It’s just . . . it’s silly.”
“No, it’s not,” someone said.
It was Bailey Bloom. A rare interjection from their Clara, who was mostly mute these days, avoiding the wrath of her rivals.
Pepper looked at her, clicking her tongue malevolently.
“I think,” Bailey said, more shyly now, “it’s beautiful.”
Corbin turned his bobble head toward her. The painted grin seemed to smile at her.
Dara watched as Bailey blushed.
* * *
*
It was nearly two before Charlie finally found the phone message he’d jotted down from the day before. It was just a phone number with “House?” scrawled next to it.
The noise from Studio B a constant rumble, Dara ducked downstairs to sneak a smoke in the narrow space between their building and its neighbor while she returned the call.
But after she punched the number into her phone, she was met with a tinny message announcing the user’s mailbox was full.
Sighing, she put the phone away and plucked the cigarette she’d tucked beneath her tank strap.
“Spying on me?”
Dara looked up, startled. It was Derek, lurking behind a dumpster, vape pen in his hand like her emaciated sixteen-year-olds.
“Who’s the spy?” she said, whipping around. “Asks the person sitting outside our house this morning.”
His eyebrows lifted. She’d surprised him.
As if stalling for time, he pulled a handsome brass lighter from his pocket and extended it to her. Reluctantly, she took the light.
“This is what I miss most about cigarettes,” he said, looking at the lighter. Then, gesturing to his vape pen. “No class.”