THE COUNT
It was the same one from before, from that first morning, wearing the same tan trench coat like a Hollywood private eye.
He moved toward her as arriving and departing parents swirled past, trailing winter scarves, grabbing sparkly backpacks abandoned in the lobby’s corners, as their daughters and the few scant sons, exhausted, struggled to put on their heavy coats, unbearably hot against their sweat-stuck bodies.
He moved swiftly, easily, as if no parent could touch him, as if he didn’t even see them, not even the half-dozen with the enormous mouse heads hooked under their arms, handing them to Madame Sylvie’s assistant for safekeeping.
“Ms. Durant,” the detective said.
Another man, slightly younger, with a brush cut and a ski vest, joined from a nearby water fountain, rubbing his mouth on the back of his sleeve like a teenage boy.
“Can I help you?” Dara said as they approached.
“Maybe,” the detective said. “Let’s see.”
* * *
*
Everything about it felt wrong, the way the older one, a Detective Walters, was looking at her, tapping his pen on a flip notebook in his hand. His face, up close, reminded Dara of a baked potato.
His partner, Mendoza, looked uncomfortable, eyes darting from the older girls, a few stripped down to their dance bras as they waited in the overheated lobby.
“We went by your studio first,” Detective Walters said. “Finally tracked you down by the trail of tutus.”
Dara didn’t smile. Trying to avoid the eyes of any stray parent.
“We’re very busy right now,” she said to Walters. “The Nutcracker.”
As if on cue, both men looked up at the towering statue behind her, suddenly more sinister-looking, its clownish colors, the hard spikes of its gold crown.
“You know,” Detective Walters said, tapping his pen again, an old Bic with a chewed blue top, “I never really got the Nutcracker thing until I had a daughter. Girls love that shit.”
“So is that what this is about?” Dara said. “Comp tickets for your daughter?”
Detective Walters grinned, his potato face crinkling.
* * *
*
They had a few more questions, that was all. Some clarifications, mostly. Maybe there was a quiet place they could talk?
Dara led the way, vining them through the swarm, the air muzzy with that familiar studio mix of sweat, funk, hairspray, camphor oil, urine, vomit, this grand and stately theater completely contaminated by the Durant School of Dance in just six hours.
She used the three-or four-minute walk to try to center herself. To bring herself together the way one did before performing, drawing all one’s energies and spiky fears into one sharp point, a mighty saber, an immutable and unfeeling thing.
Everyone loves a pretty dancer, their mother used to say. But strong is better.
* * *
*
They crowded into the lighting booth, away from the whir of the custodial staff working below. Through the window, you could see them clearing away all the dirty Band-Aids, the browning apple cores, the frills of torn elastic straps, errant toe pads and toe pouches like pale rose petals gathering, the stray ruffs of lamb’s wool like the aftermath of an animal fight, a beast and prey standoff.
“We told you all we know,” Dara said. “But go ahead if you must.”
Walters and Mendoza exchanged looks.
“Most people,” Walters said, a grin back in his voice, “are a little intimidated by the police.”
“Most people are guilty,” Dara said. “Of something, at least.”
Walters looked at her, that pen out again, the mangled cap. “Clean living for you, huh?”
“That’s the way our mother raised us.”
* * *
*
Below, onstage, one last custodian swirled a giant tentacled mop like a sailor swabbing a deck. The puddled remnants of Bailey Bloom’s fluorescent vomit, like a gasoline rainbow, disappearing. The creamy brown of the stage turned dark, luminous.
The two detectives were asking her the same things as before, the contractor’s schedule, his comings and goings, and was it typical for him to be there at such an early hour and alone, and why might he have ended up in the back office, the staircase. Wasn’t that all a bit strange?
“Maybe,” Dara said. “I didn’t know him.”
Mendoza threw Walters a look, but Walters didn’t blink, his eyes on Dara.
“I just don’t see the point in all this,” Dara said. “The insurance investigator already came by.”
“We know.”