They’d already had appointments with two other contractors, one of whom was ninety minutes late before staying for ten minutes only to jot down a series of astonishing figures on a Post-it and slap it in Charlie’s hand. The other never showed at all, then requested they send him photos of the damage first, making some joke about them needing more space for tutus.
“Third time’s a charm, right?” Charlie said nervously, lighting a cigarette in the back office, waving away the telltale smoke.
He was coming, the contractor was on his way. Derek something. Someone recommended him. Dara couldn’t remember at first, but wasn’t it Mrs. Bloom? Bailey’s mother, more vested than any other parent, given her daughter was this year’s Clara and thus was everything.
“She said he’s the only honest contractor she’s ever worked with,” Charlie had said. “Which probably means just honest enough.”
All they wanted was someone to repair the blackened floor, to ferret out any mold, to get rid of the soot and the ash that burned in their throats constantly, but first to deliver a fair estimate to their insurance company, to their claims adjuster, a humorless woman named Bambi, who was immune to any charms.
“Mrs. Bloom said he can do anything,” Charlie said. “She was extravagant in her praise.”
Dara thought about Mrs. Bloom, her crested blazers, her impeccably manicured nails, perfect half-moons, her bountiful donations to the annual Nutcracker fund, the care taken over her daughter Bailey’s immaculate bun, never a hair loose, not even a slim tendril.
She thought, He must be good.
* * *
*
Do I have to be there?” Marie asked, calling down the spiral staircase from the third floor. “I don’t think I need to be there.”
Charlie made a face to Dara, a face that said, Maybe she doesn’t have to . . .
“You have to be there,” Dara said, standing at the foot of the stairs, Marie’s face hovering above. “Because you nearly burned us all down.”
* * *
*
The contractor arrived on time. His name was Derek something, a big man, maybe fifty, fifty-two, with a face and neck tan as a butterscotch candy, in an ill-fitting blazer with chalk marks on both sleeves, belt pulled too tight, giving him the overall look of a former high school athlete gone to seed. On his feet were a pair of natty Chelsea boots caked with mud that he tracked through the studio like a deer hunter.
He held two phones in one outsize hand—a bear paw but fuzzier, Dara thought—and extended the other immediately to Charlie, all the while raking his eyes across Dara and Marie once, then twice, before smiling with hundreds of teeth.
“Nice place, nice place,” he said, striding through their mirror-lined space with its pointe-shoe posters and graying walls. Arriving in Studio B, its floor charred, its walls soot-scattered, he looked around and sucked his teeth. The spot where the space heater had sat was a mean scorch Marie kept stroking with one foot.
“It’s a damn shame, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head, looking at Marie. “What nature can do.”
* * *
*
The fire, brilliant and bright, had gnawed its way through Studio B and the storage room behind it, eating the floor and spitting out kindling shards in its wake. It had mercifully been extinguished before it reached the changing room, where, every day, hundreds of little girls with bobbing buns slipped in and out of downy wool coats and softly fraying leg warmers, rubbing their palms anxiously on puckered leotards and scratchy tights.
They needed it all fixed, Charlie explained to the contractor, they needed it now. They couldn’t cancel any more classes, couldn’t hang tarps and open windows and hope they weren’t giving their pin-thin students, their tender-lunged kindergartners emphysema.
I think it smells nice, Marie had whispered that very morning, and Dara had wanted to smack her.
“I get it,” the contractor said, rolling back on his natty heels after he’d walked through the entire studio once, clicking his pen, clicking his tongue. “Short-term, quick fix. You gotta; you’re small businesspeople. You want to be fully operational as quickly as possible. I can do that. I can do that for you. But first . . . can I ask you a question?”
“Okay,” Charlie said warily.
“Have you ever heard the one about the Phoenix rising from the ashes?”
“Sure.”
“Why can’t that be you?”
He explained that he could remove and replace the sooted drywall, the blistered floorboards, the burned window casings, the radiator covers now melted to the crumply black of a tin ashtray. He could clean the HVAC system ducts of smoke, have the whole studio smoke-lacquered. These were easy things. Surface solutions.