“Imagine a string tied around your sternum,” Dara said, watching Bailey raise her leg. “Someone is gently pulling that string. Lifting your chest upward and out. Back wide. No shoulder blade creep. Keep breathing.”
The other girls watched, waited.
“Rotate that hip,” Dara said. “Give yourself over.”
Bailey’s body steadied, her arms outstretched, the paper towel roll damp in her hand. Dara moved closer.
“Shut them out,” Dara said, her voice low and stern at Bailey’s ear. “Listen to me. They don’t exist. Listen only to me.”
* * *
*
Dara and Marie had done well enough as dancers. Both had been in the corps of the same small regional company. Once, Marie accepted an offer from a larger touring company—only to return three weeks later after fainting in a hotel lobby, her body whittled down to wishbone. （I forgot about eating, she told Dara. I couldn’t remember to do it.）
Their mother once confided to Dara that Marie was not a lovely dancer—not like you, my dear—but she was a memorable one. She danced, their mother said, with the intensity of a bad dream. You did not forget her.
Dara had known she was more technically skilled. That her body—two inches taller （all of it in the neck, Charlie used to say, stroking it, long ago）—was more “ballerina” than Marie’s coiled frame. But she had not known until that moment that their mother thought Marie was the real dancer. It was better, after all, to be memorable than lovely.
* * *
*
Later that day, Dara peeked in her sister’s studio, Marie again seated on the floor, her legs splayed wide, the bruise a ring of fire.
Leaning forward, her face resting on her elbows, she was talking, low and slow, to two of her seven-year-old girls, both sitting cross-legged across from her and listening intently.
The hammering from Studio B was loud, the plastic curtain vibrating, so Dara couldn’t hear what Marie was saying, but she couldn’t stop watching.
Suddenly, a shadow appeared behind the curtain, large enough to fill the frame.
Dara knew who it was and knew he was watching Marie, her legs spread wide, the bruise, like an open mouth, red and hungry.
Marie, who was posing for him, showing herself to him, exposing herself, laying herself bare.
Dara would not stand for it.
She charged across the studio, Marie’s head lifting, watching as Dara stalked over to the plastic curtain, pulling it back.
Derek giving her a look, a whiff of dismissal, one finger pressed against his ear, pushing a plug back into place.
* * *
*
I don’t understand why it’s taking so long,” Dara said.
Derek nodded vaguely, infuriatingly, a long copper pipe in his hand, holding it like a baseball bat, twirling it like a baton.
“All these weeks,” Dara continued, voice scraping now over the noise, “and I’m still standing on plywood.”
“Subfloor,” Derek clarified, smiling a little. “We hit a few stumbling blocks. Some surprises with the pipe grid. You own an old house, so you know. It’s always something with those big shambling places built before the code—”
“This has nothing to do with our house. I’m talking about the job we hired you for,” Dara said, her voice so loud she surprised herself, a stirring from Benny in the far corner unrolling plastic sheeting. He and Gaspar exchanged looks. “You may be fooling my sister, but you’re not fooling me.”
“I would be disappointed if I did,” Derek said. His tone, his demeanor felt new, felt smug, less salesman, more something else. Dara watched as he choked up on the copper pipe, gripping it like a bat, swung it casually, like a ballplayer on deck.
“You know what my old man used to say?” he said, the whir of the pipe in his hands. “Watch out for a bad woman, and never trust a good one.”
* * *
*
Derek was gone by lunch, disappearing for the rest of the day, leaving everything to Benny and Gaspar, who spent the afternoon working with what felt like heightened velocity, their baseball caps damp with sweat.
Dara felt badly, except she didn’t.
* * *
*
Later, Dara came upon Charlie and Marie arguing near the electrical kettle.
All day, Charlie had been enmeshed in some low-level disagreement with Marie over her failure to keep attendance, which made it hard for him to bill.
“Why don’t you just admit,” Charlie was saying to Marie now, “you took that box of Assam red. The one I special-ordered.”
It didn’t make sense. Marie never drank tea. Only canned coffee that looked like tobacco spit.