The Turnout(94)

Even empty, the studio was full of noises, buzzing lights, a scurrying mouse or two, birds flapping against the gutters, clanking pipes, the furnace wheezing.

Even now, there was that whistling sound that had to be from the radiator, though the pipes were cold to the touch.

“The thing is,” Randi said, “if there’s one truth you learn after fifteen years in this business: People mostly behave in completely explicable ways. Until they don’t.”

“Maybe the power went out,” Dara continued, her voice speeding up, taking on a tone. “Maybe he thought the fuse box was up there. Maybe he just wanted to snoop, to pry. Who can say what went on in that man’s head.”

Dara closed her mouth a sentence too late. She was so tired, so tired.

Randi’s eyes were fixed on her now.

“He was just another contractor to you—someone to take up your time and take your money. But I knew him back when he was eleven years old, that great curly mane of his. All the girls loved him. I remember my friend Carla Mathis telling all of us how he’d accidentally touched her hip in gym class and she nearly passed out.” Randi laughed. “An ache that was not an ache. That’s what she called it.”

Randi seemed, maybe, even to be blushing.

“Look, Ms. Jacek,” Dara said, “I’m sorry you—”

“But he chose me. Briefly, but he chose me. One long summer day a bunch of us ran into each other biking around town in our bathing suits, like you used to do. And somehow we ended up behind my cousin’s house. Derek had stolen a Popsicle from the fridge inside. One of those twins, you know.”

Dara didn’t know. Dara doubted she had ever had a Popsicle in her life.

“Broke it in two with one hand! And gave me half. Midway through, he leaned in and kissed me right on the mouth. Tasted like grape soda. The Popsicle melted all over my hand. I still can’t drink grape soda and not think of him.”

Dara was listening, but she wasn’t listening. She was thinking of something. Of Charlie, the year he was the Nutcracker Prince. Age fourteen, cheekbones like knives. That feeling when she first saw him in the costume, so unbearably handsome in the crimson tunic with the brass buttons, the epaulets, and their mother draping the gold sash across his chest, pressing her palm on the velvet. Look, she said, seeing Dara in the mirror. Look. And Dara understanding, somehow, that their mother, like Drosselmeier in the ballet, seemed to be giving him to her. Passing him to her, the most special gift. An ache that was not an ache. And yet now it was.

“When you know someone before,” Randi said and she had moved to the spiral staircase now, her hand resting on the railing. “The Big Before. Before things happen. Before all the adult stuff—the disappointments, the broken hearts, the missteps, the scars. Then you know the real person. Before everything happened to them and they became what they became.”

“You don’t have to let it change you,” Dara said. “The adult stuff. That’s a choice. These are all choices.”

“Maybe,” Randi said. “But the thing is, how often do you realize something’s a choice when you make it?”

Dara started to open her mouth, but no words came out.

“Sometimes,” Randi said, shrugging, “choices feel a lot like surviving.”



* * *



*

She only knew the second before she saw him.

Oh, Charlie, her voice a whimper.



* * *



*

    Do you mind?” Randi Jacek was saying, starting up the stairs, her breath little puffs now.

“The police said it’s dangerous,” Dara warned, moving toward her. “They’re not safe.”

But Randi was already heading up the steps and there was that sound, that lonely whistle she kept hearing, hissing harder now as they ascended.

“I just want to get a look up there,” Randi said, reaching the top as Dara stood tentatively on the bottom step, “to understand what he might have . . . Maybe that’s the sound he heard? Do you hear it?”

The rafters squeaking, squeaking and popping so loudly, and what was that whistling sound and why was it so loud here?

“Ms. Jacek, it’s not safe. . . .”

But Randi Jacek was already disappearing into the dark at the top of the stairs. Dara followed quickly now.

As she made that last turn onto the third floor, the cold coming hard as an ice sheet, Randi started screaming, really screaming, even as her mouth let forth only the smallest sound.

Her lips gone white and Dara pushing past her, and knowing suddenly, and how hadn’t she known before?



* * *



*

Oh, Charlie. Beautiful Charlie.

Charlie, hanging there, long and lean, his blond head dipped, his face hidden.

An orange cord was lassoed around one of the heating ducts and around that lissome neck of his, his weight dragging the duct to a silver V, dragging his body down so far his knees nearly brushed the floor.

When Dara put her hand on his neck, cool and smooth as ever, and impossibly lovely, it reminded her of the snowy neck of a swan, exquisite and impossible.

Behind her, Randi was on the phone and the bent heat duct was dipping lower and lower, the cord squeaking and Charlie’s body turning so Dara couldn’t avoid his face, a white smudge.