Dara was watching Marie at the barre, stretching, her skin ruddy with heat.
“We’ll all be living with it,” Dara said. “We’ll have to rearrange our whole schedule around it. We might have to rent space at the Y to cover classes.”
The parents wouldn’t like it, and the younger girls—the five-, six-, seven-year-olds Marie taught—would use it as an opportunity for laziness, every disruption an excuse to giggle and play rather than practice.
“So then,” Marie said, “why do it?”
Marie watched herself in the mirror. Her body pulling itself into long, stretchy pieces of taffy. Not very elegant, Marie, Dara thought.
“Don’t you want more space,” Dara said. “Isn’t that why you moved here to begin with.”
Neither of them were questions exactly.
“Maybe this way,” Dara said, staring at Marie, bent over at the waist now, the whiteness near her scalp, so white against the ruby face, “we can avoid any more fires.”
Marie didn’t say anything. What could she say?
* * *
*
Later, Dara was tidying the changing room, collecting abandoned sweaters, twirls of toe tape, curls of elastic ribbon, scruffs of lamb’s wool popped loose from pointe shoes.
She could hear Charlie talking to Marie in the back office.
“It’s time,” Charlie was saying.
“Is it,” Marie said.
There was a pause, Dara leaning closer, trying to hear.
“It’s time for something,” Charlie said finally. “We need something.”
* * *
*
In the middle of the day, their claims adjuster, Bambi, a petite, solidly built woman of indeterminate middle age, arrived to review the damage.
She moved quickly, taking pictures with her phone.
“Have you hired someone yet?” she asked Charlie.
“No,” he said, but then he mentioned Derek and that maybe the adjuster knew him.
“Sure,” Bambi said, blinking. “I’m surprised you can get him. He’s in high demand.”
“Really?” Charlie said.
“He must’ve liked you,” Bambi said, handing Charlie her card as she began to leave. “He must’ve seen something he liked.”
* * *
*
That evening, Dara stayed late with a few students, including her Clara and her Nutcracker Prince, Bailey Bloom and Corbin Lesterio, both of whom wanted extra practice.
But even with all the windows open, one by one, they started coughing, Bailey’s peashoot body shaking from it.
The smoke was gone from the air, but it had tunneled in deep, sunk itself into the wood, the drywall. Corbin’s big dark eyes blurred with tears. The fire was gone, but it wasn’t.
It made Dara think about a story their mother told them once. About the famous ballerina in the nineteenth century, a gas lamp catching on her skirt, enveloping her in flames before the entire audience’s eyes. How she spun and spun, the blaze consuming her until she was rescued.
She lingered a few months after, her corset melted to her ribs.
The surviving scraps of her costume still hung in the Musée de l’Opéra in Paris.
That, their mother told them, is love.
* * *
*
The following morning, Dara and Charlie arrived to find Marie sitting on the floor of Studio B, her face sweaty, her long neck and chest glistening, her legs tangled up.
Spread around her were the proposed plans. The design layout, the sketches, Derek’s scribbled estimate, his slashing hand, the frill of the schoolbook paper.
She was still catching her breath, palm pressed on the papers.
“Marie,” Charlie said, “what say you?”
She looked up, bewildered somehow, as if they had appeared suddenly from inside her own head, her own dream. She turned her face up, staring up at the skylight, and whispered something softly.
“Yes, Your Highness?” Dara asked, looking down at her sister.
“I say it’s time,” Marie said softly, tapping her toe once on the scuffed floor. Dara nodded and Marie lifted her head, her face pink and decisive. “It’s past time.”
* * *
*
There was a toast with champagne—the bubbly pink kind from the corner store, in paper cups with blue flowers—and cigarettes on the fire escape. Those pink sugared biscuits their mother ordered in bulk from France and stockpiled in the pantry, these at least a decade old.
Charlie kissed them both on their cheeks, his lips cool and lovely.
Dara watched Marie enjoying her bubbles, her moment. It was infuriating. Why had she given Marie such power? Marie wasn’t a full partner anyway. Marie was squatting here, a non-residential space not fit for living. But was Marie living at all, or merely burrowing in?
Marie, that foxlike face of hers, running her tongue along the waxy rim of her cup.
When Charlie went inside to get fresh matches, Dara said, “What are you so happy about?”
Marie looked at her a moment, then leaned closer, her lips smelling like Dixie-cup wax.
“Just remember,” she whispered, a quiver in her voice, “you’re the one who invited him in.”
* * *
*
The next morning, when Dara and Charlie arrived at the studio at seven thirty, Derek the contractor was already there, standing in the middle of Studio B, legs astride like the figure on the cover of their mother’s copy of The Fountainhead.
In the corner, Marie stood, watching. Watching as Derek gave instructions to his crew: two young men with heavy tool belts and tape measures, one with drop cloths looped around his arm, his arm braided with muscles.
Dara squinted. Something was different about Marie.
And then Marie turned and she saw it. Marie’s forever-pale mouth was painted fire engine red. Like a warning, a five-alarm.
Dara pictured Marie strolling to the drugstore late the night before, or early that morning, trying on lipsticks under the fluorescent, fly-specked lights.
“Good morning,” Charlie said, nudging Dara forward, moving to shake hands with Derek. “Looks like things have already started.”
A HAMMER OVER MY HEART
It was fast, so fast. Faster than the fire even.
They were watching the walls come down.
Dara and Marie wore the safety goggles and dust masks he handed them, though Derek himself went barefaced. They stood at the spot on the floor he dictated, a safe distance.
The two workers, Benny and Gaspar, watched too. Stood back and observed. Benny, lithe and goateed, and Gaspar, thick and sinewy, saying things to each other in Portuguese under their breath.
Derek lifted a long-frame hammer from the floor.
“It only hurts the first time,” he said, winking at Dara and Marie.
Like a caveman and his club, he began swinging the hammer, punching starter holes into the wall.
Punching again, nearly bursting through his shirt, wiggling the drywall back and forth.
The holes looked like dark pinwheels. Looked like bruises.
Marie covered her ears with the heels of her hands.
Next came the saw. The one with the long blade—how he hoisted it up high, making a long vertical cut from the ceiling down, down, down, splitting the wall. Tearing the bisected panel with his big catcher’s mitt hands.
It was as if, somehow, the saw were sinking down her own spine, Dara thought. That was how it felt.
Beside her, Marie was breathing so hard, her dust mask puffing up, then disappearing into her mouth.
* * *
*
Next came the crowbar, prying the baseboards and trim free, great splintering sounds that made you want to scream. Made Dara want to scream.
Knocking the studs free, the veins in his arms straining.
The long hammer back, its claw tearing a monstrous hole, his hands plunging inside, ripping, rending. Tearing again, tearing everything. Everything. Until there was nothing left.
Until Derek set down the hammer to answer his phone—one of his phones—disappearing into the stairwell, shaking the dust from his hair.
Dara looked where the wall had been moments before, now only an ugly seam on the ground, the subfloor thick with sawdust sneaking through.
Her safety goggles fogging, Dara thought for a second she might cry. What is wrong with me? she thought. What is wrong?