The Turnout(80)

Onstage, all the little girls bobbing against one another, the mouse heads too big for their little bodies. Follow my voice. She remembered what it was like, your big moment and you’re missing everything.

“Me too,” Dara said into the phone, her eyes unaccountably filling. “Bye.”



* * *



*

It was over, everything. For the day. Until tomorrow, the stakes higher, higher every day until after opening night.

The students were packing up wearily, their limbs loose and lifeless. Backstage, Madame Sylvie was nipping at her annual “Nutcracker nog,” a pint tucked in the pocket of her tunic. Parents were arriving, the parking lot glowing with headlights.

The Level IVs carpool had, mysteriously, left without Bailey Bloom.

“It’s okay,” Bailey said. “My mom will text me back eventually.”

“No,” Marie said, sweeping her arm around Bailey, shepherding her through the darting mass of wool and fleece. “I’ll take you, honey. But first, ice cream.”



* * *



*

    I never knew Marie drove,” Madame Sylvie said.

“She’s full of surprises,” Dara replied as they watched them disappear inside Marie’s creamsicle of a car.

Marie being so helpful, Marie being a grown-up, responsible. Was this what it took?

“Seat belts!” Dara called out. Then, more softly, “We need our Clara alive. We need both of you alive.”



* * *



*

Back in the lobby, Dara found herself stopping in front of the giant Nutcracker. The one Marie had been so transfixed by that morning.

He was so jolly, the brightly colored uniform, the handlebar mustache hanging over the tidy row of chunky teeth, its hinged jaw, the heavy lever of the mouth.

But her eyes kept landing on that black slash of his eyepatch. She’d never thought about it before, how his eyepatch matched the eyepatch of Drosselmeier, the sinister and seductive godfather who gives the Nutcracker to Clara and sets her on her adventure.

The eyepatch dominant, his other eye was colorless, the pupil swimming in the milky white.

There was something almost familiar about it, and then, the longer she looked, something upsetting. But she couldn’t put a name to it.

Until the picture came to her: of Derek, at the end. The dark pinwheel of Derek’s iris, red swirling from the center, filling his eye. The pupil punctured, the spike of the metal bill holder snug in its center.

“Ms. Durant. At last. We’ve been looking for you.”

Dara turned and saw the detective approaching.





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.