But, given the ample check sure to come from the insurance company and given his own estimate, which would be fair, of course, but that would obviously point out various concerns （These old buildings, they’re tinderboxes, aren’t they?） . . .
. . . why not think bigger?
Had they thought of expanding? Knock down that wall and get rid of the storage room behind it, make Studio B nearly twice its size. Even raise the ceiling. There were so many possibilities.
“Why sell yourself short?” he said, clicking his pen. “Grab that brass ring.”
* * *
*
My, what a big voice you have, Dara thought. Big and booming. And the way he stalked their careworn, dust-moted space with his pointy, muddy boots, leaving mud membranes across the soft-beaten floor.
Marie didn’t even seem to be paying attention, forever tugging at the cuff of her sweater, fingers tangling in its fray. Such a child, Dara thought, forever a six-year-old girl.
* * *
*
I know it’s your job to upsell,” Charlie said. “But even with the insurance—”
“You make the money back twice over,” the contractor said, spinning around the space on one heel. Squinting at the pocket doors that didn’t pull shut and up at the spreading brown stain on the ceiling, the one Marie thought looked like a king rat. The rat, she said every snowfall, is collecting more followers.
“You have a little inconvenience, but after, you throw a big champagne-busting, get a little notice in the local paper, you got more new customers than you got tutus.”
He smiled at all three of them. Dara folded her arms.
He paused a moment, eyes on Dara. Then he began talking again, but this time he looked only at her.
“I’ll be honest: What I know about ballet you could fit on the head of a nail. But I do know this: Every little girl loves it. They’re all born with it—the same big pink dream. And their mommys have it, too, and will pay big bucks to walk into a place that feels special. That feels, well, magical.”
Charlie cleared his throat, sneaking a glance at Dara.
“You’re not just businesspeople. You’re artists,” the contractor continued, eyes still flickering on Dara. “I’m just a guy who works with his hands, but I like to think there’s a creativity to what I do. An art, maybe.”
Charlie nodded politely. Dara was looking over at Marie, whose eyes were fixed on the ceiling, the king rat stain.
“Bottom line,” the contractor continued, “I don’t think artists should have a limit—a timeline, a dollar figure—on their dreams. I don’t think you should.
“So why not dream bigger?
“I can give you all the things you want.”
* * *
*
As he talked, their Studio B—the smallest of the three—seemed even smaller. Maybe because he’s so big, she told herself, twice as thick as each of them and dwarfing even Charlie. And now that he’d directed their eyes to the ceiling’s brown weeping corners, it reminded Dara how, the prior year, the eaves leaked into the studio all winter long.
He knew how to talk. He knew how to flatter, to play the humble service worker, the clumsy male amid a space so . . . female, he noted, nodding respectfully at Dara and Marie. Dara, who kept her arms folded across her chest.
Marie, who turned her head away.
Marie, who seemed even quieter than usual, more recessed, head bowed, like an empty bowl.
* * *
*
They ended up in the back office, the strong smell of the cigarettes all three of them snuck there between classes and at day’s end, the rickety wooden desk, its blotter studded with errant scorches. Mingling still with the distinctive scent of their mother’s Gauloises, like burning tires on a black night, she once said. A relief from the contractor’s aftershave, like pressing one’s face into a bucket of limes.
“This,” the contractor said, reaching out, wrapping his hand around the rail of the narrow spiral staircase that snaked up to the third floor, the dormer space. “This should be the first to go.”
“No,” Dara said immediately. “Absolutely not.”
He looked at her, and then at the staircase—iron, spiky, relentless.
Dara could feel Marie watching her intently.
“We’ll get you a new one,” he said. “With a warm wood, real nice. Smooth on your feet, smooth like a baby’s bottom.”
“No,” Dara repeated. “That stays.”
Charlie cleared his throat, shifting his feet uncomfortably.
“It’s unsafe,” the contractor said, sliding his finger along the slender rail, the pad of his index finger landing in the sunken dent that had been there a decade, more. “And busted.”