Dara didn’t say anything. Her eyes were on the spiral staircase behind him. He was leaning against it. It was like the other day, his hand on its railing, the way he’d yanked it, the feeling she had like he might yank one more time and bring everything down.
“Kinda sounds like you were a vulture,” Charlie said, reaching for his coat. “Licking the bones of the dead.”
Derek smiled, showing all his teeth. “Except we didn’t lick them. We sold them.”
* * *
*
Dara stayed late, arranging a ride home for Bailey Bloom, whose mother failed to appear at pickup.
“I guess she forgot,” Bailey said, her brow pinched. “My dad can come. Or something.”
When Mrs. Bloom finally answered her phone, she sounded frazzled, teary.
“I’m so sorry, Madame Durant. Is it just you two left there?”
“Yes. But—”
“I’m on my way. Please forgive me. I thought her father . . . well, I’m sorry.”
Dara assured her it was not a problem. At least not yet. It was the first week of Nutcracker season. The hand-wringing, tears, drama, had only just begun.
* * *
*
She’s always been an odd one,” Charlie reminded Dara later. “Remember last year? The hair?”
Then Dara did remember. For a few weeks, Mrs. Bloom had gone from a sleek brunette to an icy, near platinum blonde. How embarrassed she seemed, her locks pulled back tightly, slicked with spray to hide their brightness.
The girl at the salon had talked her into it, she swore.
It reminded Dara of something their mother, whose hair fell nearly to her waist, always said: Never let anyone under thirty touch your hair.
The worst part is the name, Mrs. Bloom had confided to Dara, blushing and tucking phantom wisps into her chignon.
Hot Buttered Blonde, she whispered, blushing again.
* * *
*
As she was leaving, Dara spotted Marie lingering in the darkened Studio B, creeping along the tarp, her bony feet coated in dust.
She watched as her sister knelt down and ran her finger along the snaky seam where the wall had stood, the one the contractor had torn through, like a sideshow dare.
“Boo,” Dara said, sneaking behind her.
Marie looked up, her face aflame, that morning’s lipstick on her teeth.
* * *
*
I think Marie’s got a crush,” Charlie said that night. “On the contractor.”
“What do you mean?” Dara asked, shaking loose Charlie’s vitamins and herbal remedies, setting out his daily allotment.
Charlie shrugged. “Just the way she looks at him.”
“That’s impossible,” Dara said. Marie was a person who kept to herself. After a few semi-tragic romances with fellow dancers in her early twenties, after a prolonged fixation on a married cellist of some note who passed through town a few times a year and dallied with her heart, Marie was a lone wolf.
“Marie’s bored,” Dara said. “Or something.”
“Marie,” Charlie said softly, “is lonely.”
Dara looked up from the pile of pills and said nothing.
THE PINK
Within a few days, it was quieter, the initial demolition past and the air heavy with new smells, sulfurous plaster, chalky dry wall, the tang of mildew.
Dara was sure the parents would protest, but there were few complaints. They were too consumed with The Nutcracker, when they would receive the rehearsal schedule, whether or not last year’s sound system issues would be resolved, and isn’t it time to replace the mouse heads? That glue is definitely toxic.
She smoked restlessly between classes and marveled at Marie, who seemed to be unaffected, leading her four-year-olds through hops and jumps. The endless plonk-plonk of the piano and Marie’s faint, high voice, arms up, fingers, fingers to the sky.
“He’ll move fast,” Charlie kept saying. “He’s in high demand.”
But Dara didn’t see how that was possible based on the state of Studio B, which resembled the scooped-clean inside of a volcano.
“I promise,” Charlie said.
The plonk-plonk and Marie flitting from corner to corner with her little girls, and not noticing the clouds of dust wafting in, or the occasional trills of the drill, the sharp punch of the hammer.
And poor Bailey Bloom, her eyelids covered with dust, approaching them. “My mom can’t come here anymore,” she said dolefully, which was how she said everything. “Construction makes her sick.”
“Well,” Charlie said, “she can start coming again when rehearsals start at the Ballenger.”