There was a clamor of voices from Studio B, Charlie’s low tones and Gaspar’s hurried apologies, and the whir of Benny rushing past to the circuit box.
Finally, the lights rose again and Charlie left for the hardware store to buy a new fuse, or maybe just to leave, to have some respite. Dara could hardly blame him.
“Vite, vite,” Dara called out, quickly directing the Mouse King, Oliver Perez, his sword the largest but its tip creased and bent, to the center of the space for his dramatic fall after Clara hurls her slipper at him. “Take your positions.”
“Madame Durant,” Bailey said and Dara turned, exasperated.
“What now?”
Bailey pointed to the doorway, where a trio of seven-year-olds stood, clutching one another, shaken by the gravity of stepping over the threshold into Studio C, the older-girl studio, the forbidden space for which they longed.
“Why aren’t you in class?” Dara asked them. “You three should be in Studio A with Mademoiselle Durant.”
The seven-year-olds looked at one another before pushing forth the tallest one, a bowlegged girl whose name Dara couldn’t recall.
“But, Madame,” she lisped, her arms interlocked with the girl beside her, “where is Mademoiselle Durant?”
* * *
*
Dara pushed past the students entering for her three o’clock class. Pushed into Studio B, through the plastic curtain, which tangled her arm.
Benny and Gaspar looked up, surprised, a pneumatic tool of some kind shuddering in Benny’s hand, both their faces covered in masks.
“Where is he?” Dara asked. “Your boss.”
But Benny only gestured at his ear guards helplessly and Gaspar looked away.
* * *
*
She wouldn’t dare, Dara thought, her head tilting up to the third floor. She wouldn’t.
* * *
*
Running back through Studio A, past her whispering, eager pupils, Dara took long breaths. She pushed into the empty back office and pinned her hand on the railing of the spiral staircase that led upstairs. One foot on its bottom step. But she could feel it. The iron rail vibrating, its steps vibrating, slithering up to the third floor, where her sister was fucking the afternoon away with this stranger in their mother’s private-most space.
* * *
*
Ms. Durant, we need to talk.”
It was only moments later, and Dara pretended to not quite hear Dr. Weston, keeping her gaze on her students across the room, warming up in what seemed an appallingly lazy manner.
Upstairs, she could hear Marie moving, could hear her little cat feet.
“Ms. Durant.” Dr. Weston lowered his voice discreetly. “I can’t be the only one concerned about what’s going on in there.”
Dara pursed her lips, her eyes on Chlo? Lin’s sickled foot.
“Mademoiselle Lin,” she called out, poker-faced, “inside of your heel forward, s’il vous plait. Do not give me ugly feet.”
Inside, her mind raced. Had Dr. Weston heard? Had one or more parents—and they all talked, ceaselessly in that gossip nest of a waiting room—spotted Marie and Derek together? Caught them in one of their slippery and grotesque ruttings.
That would be the end of it, of course. The school, everything.
“Ms. Durant,” Dr. Weston said again, his neediness so insistent, so abrasive.
Putting on her parent face, Dara turned to him at last.
“Dr. Weston,” she said quietly, moving closer to him, “now is not the time.”
In her head, she was frantically conjuring excuses. （My sister’s become deranged, she’s having a psychotic break . . .）
“But tomorrow’s November first!” Dr. Weston said, more loudly now, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
“Pardon?”
“And how will my Pepper—or, of course, any of her fellow dancers—have time to truly prepare the Waltz of the Snowflakes when one studio is unusable?”
The Nutcracker. The goddamned Nutcracker. Dara took a sharp breath of relief. That’s all it was about. Of course. That’s all they cared about, these parents.
They were relentless and Dr. Weston, a dermatologist with the tight, tan face of a stock photo dad, was one of the worst, worse even than Mrs. Cartwright, almost never missing a chance to explain why his ungraceful twelve-year-old daughter, Pepper, would be the Clara for the ages. （Innocent but spirited! Refined yet feisty! Pepper has all those qualities, Ms. Durant.）
Marie could be running a whorehouse out of the third floor as long as the show went on. . . .
“I assure you, Dr. Weston,” Dara said, “it’ll all be over very soon.”