*
The contractor arrived on time. His name was Derek something, a big man, maybe fifty, fifty-two, with a face and neck tan as a butterscotch candy, in an ill-fitting blazer with chalk marks on both sleeves, belt pulled too tight, giving him the overall look of a former high school athlete gone to seed. On his feet were a pair of natty Chelsea boots caked with mud that he tracked through the studio like a deer hunter.
He held two phones in one outsize hand—a bear paw but fuzzier, Dara thought—and extended the other immediately to Charlie, all the while raking his eyes across Dara and Marie once, then twice, before smiling with hundreds of teeth.
“Nice place, nice place,” he said, striding through their mirror-lined space with its pointe-shoe posters and graying walls. Arriving in Studio B, its floor charred, its walls soot-scattered, he looked around and sucked his teeth. The spot where the space heater had sat was a mean scorch Marie kept stroking with one foot.
“It’s a damn shame, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head, looking at Marie. “What nature can do.”
* * *
*
The fire, brilliant and bright, had gnawed its way through Studio B and the storage room behind it, eating the floor and spitting out kindling shards in its wake. It had mercifully been extinguished before it reached the changing room, where, every day, hundreds of little girls with bobbing buns slipped in and out of downy wool coats and softly fraying leg warmers, rubbing their palms anxiously on puckered leotards and scratchy tights.
They needed it all fixed, Charlie explained to the contractor, they needed it now. They couldn’t cancel any more classes, couldn’t hang tarps and open windows and hope they weren’t giving their pin-thin students, their tender-lunged kindergartners emphysema.
I think it smells nice, Marie had whispered that very morning, and Dara had wanted to smack her.
“I get it,” the contractor said, rolling back on his natty heels after he’d walked through the entire studio once, clicking his pen, clicking his tongue. “Short-term, quick fix. You gotta; you’re small businesspeople. You want to be fully operational as quickly as possible. I can do that. I can do that for you. But first . . . can I ask you a question?”
“Okay,” Charlie said warily.
“Have you ever heard the one about the Phoenix rising from the ashes?”
“Sure.”
“Why can’t that be you?”
He explained that he could remove and replace the sooted drywall, the blistered floorboards, the burned window casings, the radiator covers now melted to the crumply black of a tin ashtray. He could clean the HVAC system ducts of smoke, have the whole studio smoke-lacquered. These were easy things. Surface solutions.
But, given the ample check sure to come from the insurance company and given his own estimate, which would be fair, of course, but that would obviously point out various concerns (These old buildings, they’re tinderboxes, aren’t they?) . . .
. . . why not think bigger?
Had they thought of expanding? Knock down that wall and get rid of the storage room behind it, make Studio B nearly twice its size. Even raise the ceiling. There were so many possibilities.
“Why sell yourself short?” he said, clicking his pen. “Grab that brass ring.”
* * *
*
My, what a big voice you have, Dara thought. Big and booming. And the way he stalked their careworn, dust-moted space with his pointy, muddy boots, leaving mud membranes across the soft-beaten floor.
Marie didn’t even seem to be paying attention, forever tugging at the cuff of her sweater, fingers tangling in its fray. Such a child, Dara thought, forever a six-year-old girl.
* * *
*
I know it’s your job to upsell,” Charlie said. “But even with the insurance—”
“You make the money back twice over,” the contractor said, spinning around the space on one heel. Squinting at the pocket doors that didn’t pull shut and up at the spreading brown stain on the ceiling, the one Marie thought looked like a king rat. The rat, she said every snowfall, is collecting more followers.
“You have a little inconvenience, but after, you throw a big champagne-busting, get a little notice in the local paper, you got more new customers than you got tutus.”
He smiled at all three of them. Dara folded her arms.
He paused a moment, eyes on Dara. Then he began talking again, but this time he looked only at her.
“I’ll be honest: What I know about ballet you could fit on the head of a nail. But I do know this: Every little girl loves it. They’re all born with it—the same big pink dream. And their mommys have it, too, and will pay big bucks to walk into a place that feels special. That feels, well, magical.”
Charlie cleared his throat, sneaking a glance at Dara.
“You’re not just businesspeople. You’re artists,” the contractor continued, eyes still flickering on Dara. “I’m just a guy who works with his hands, but I like to think there’s a creativity to what I do. An art, maybe.”
Charlie nodded politely. Dara was looking over at Marie, whose eyes were fixed on the ceiling, the king rat stain.
“Bottom line,” the contractor continued, “I don’t think artists should have a limit—a timeline, a dollar figure—on their dreams. I don’t think you should.
“So why not dream bigger?
“I can give you all the things you want.”
* * *
*
As he talked, their Studio B—the smallest of the three—seemed even smaller. Maybe because he’s so big, she told herself, twice as thick as each of them and dwarfing even Charlie. And now that he’d directed their eyes to the ceiling’s brown weeping corners, it reminded Dara how, the prior year, the eaves leaked into the studio all winter long.
He knew how to talk. He knew how to flatter, to play the humble service worker, the clumsy male amid a space so . . . female, he noted, nodding respectfully at Dara and Marie. Dara, who kept her arms folded across her chest.
Marie, who turned her head away.
Marie, who seemed even quieter than usual, more recessed, head bowed, like an empty bowl.
* * *
*
They ended up in the back office, the strong smell of the cigarettes all three of them snuck there between classes and at day’s end, the rickety wooden desk, its blotter studded with errant scorches. Mingling still with the distinctive scent of their mother’s Gauloises, like burning tires on a black night, she once said. A relief from the contractor’s aftershave, like pressing one’s face into a bucket of limes.
“This,” the contractor said, reaching out, wrapping his hand around the rail of the narrow spiral staircase that snaked up to the third floor, the dormer space. “This should be the first to go.”
“No,” Dara said immediately. “Absolutely not.”
He looked at her, and then at the staircase—iron, spiky, relentless.
Dara could feel Marie watching her intently.
“We’ll get you a new one,” he said. “With a warm wood, real nice. Smooth on your feet, smooth like a baby’s bottom.”
“No,” Dara repeated. “That stays.”
Charlie cleared his throat, shifting his feet uncomfortably.
“It’s unsafe,” the contractor said, sliding his finger along the slender rail, the pad of his index finger landing in the sunken dent that had been there a decade, more. “And busted.”
He gave it a hard tug, the railing rattling in his hands.
A gasp—quick and high—escaped from Marie’s mouth. Marie, who had not said a single word since the contractor arrived.
And one more tug, as if he might tear the whole staircase loose like a fairy-tale monster.
“The staircase stays,” Dara said.
It was the only time she saw his mask drop, the contractor. That little slash of something—overreach? Irritation? Anger?—stamping his brow.
It was there, then it was gone, the smile returning. The big teeth.
* * *
*
Dara excused herself. Said she needed to take a call.