Take an extra half hour, he said. The studio will go on without you.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, ma’am,” Benny said as Dara walked in, an even stronger swampy stench in the air. He and Gaspar were ankle deep in brown water, working a utility pump and wet-vac over the half-finished floor, the freshly installed sprung panels submerged, waterlogged and buckling.
“Where is he?” Dara said, covering her mouth and nose.
“Ma’am, please, don’t be alarmed,” Benny kept saying as she stood in the corner of Studio B, her shoes filling with warm, murky water.
The feeling came over her.
“He’ll be here forever,” Dara said, to herself, to anyone. “We’ll never be rid of him.”
* * *
*
In the back office, she found Charlie on the phone, his face white.
“What happened?” Dara asked. “Why didn’t you call?”
“Busted pipe,” Charlie whispered, hand over the mouthpiece.
Derek had explained everything. It turned out someone—though both Benny and Gaspar denied it and Dara believed them—must’ve driven a nail into a pipe in Studio B. It must have been leaking all night, the subfloor now a sponge beneath their feet, an adjacent floor panel water-buckled. They would have to drill holes into it to dry out the cavity inside.
“And where is he now?” Dara asked, leaning against the door.
“Off to rent an industrial dehumidifier,” Charlie said miserably. “Before we get mold.”
Pipe repair, parts, and labor. Time. More time. Starting over with the new floor installation, waiting for a replacement panel. There were overruns already. And twelve hundred dollars for the permit Derek said they wouldn’t need but did and then had to pay a penalty too.
“This is what they do,” Charlie said, reaching for the stack of bills they’d been avoiding: equipment rental, concrete sealer, special adhesive specially ordered, something called polyplastic. “Con artists, all of them.”
Then, one by one, Charlie began impaling them on their mother’s ancient bill holder, its rusty metal spike.
Something has finally turned for him too, Dara thought.
“We made a mistake,” Charlie said, leaning back in the chair. His face so pale it looked like stage makeup, his eyes dark blotches. “With him.”
At last, Dara thought. At last he sees.
He looked at her. “We made a terrible mistake.”
* * *
*
Mrs. Durant, we are very sorry,” Benny told her later, pulling up the subfloor with a crowbar. Everything smelled marshy, waterlogged. “We did everything we could.”
Dara said that she was sure he had.
* * *
*
Marie didn’t want to talk about it.
She told Charlie that Derek had nearly been hurt while trying to stanch the leak, a pipe hitting his head, spraying scalding water over him, his arm pink and blistered.
“What a shame,” Charlie said dryly. “You would think a contractor would know better.”
There was something thrilling about Charlie’s new chilliness.
But Marie didn’t seem to notice, plundering the ancient metal first-aid kit for ointments, salves.
As the day wore on, however, Dara noticed a new contentment on Marie’s face as she led her students through their barre work, through sur le cou-de-pied, Marie crouching beside her seven-year-olds, reaching over and manually adjusting their pink feet, squeezing the toes around the ankle.
“Wrap that leg, that foot. Like a scarf, you see? Rotate from your hip to your toenail. And no sickling, mes anges. Pristine pointed toes, s’il vous plait.”
Of course, Dara thought with a chill. She thinks now he’ll stay longer. She’s trapped him here in her sticky Marie web.
* * *
*
These things happen,” Derek explained to Charlie later. “But that’s what insurance is for.”
Dara could hear them in the back office, Derek’s big-man voice, his reassurances. She stood at the door, listening.
“Is that so?” Charlie said. “Because we don’t have that kind of insurance. We’re just a small business.”
“Don’t you worry, friend,” Derek said. “Between my liability insurance and your policy, we’ll be rock solid. I’ll talk to your adjuster myself. Bambi and I go way back. Hasn’t everything worked out so far?”
“What, like the flood?”
“Listen,” Derek said, “I hear your worry. But I’m gonna do you right, friend. That’s a promise. I’m gonna do you right. And your wife. And, of course, your sister-in-law. All of you.”