The Turnout(95)

She was thinking of that moment in The Nutcracker, the book. The part that made her stomach tighten, that gave her an ache that wasn’t an ache. How the heroine sees a spot of blood on the Nutcracker’s neck and begins rubbing it with her handkerchief until he suddenly grows warm under her touch and begins to move. How she brings him back to life.

But Charlie wasn’t going to move at all and was only cold, colder than ever before. Cold as the radiator below. Cold like marble church steps, Midnight Mass. Cold as a star.

Randi was saying something beside her, reaching out, then stopping, wanting to touch Dara, something.



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*

But Dara didn’t want to talk, to move. She only wanted to stay in this space a moment longer with this boy, this poor broken boy, the red-rimmed furrow she’d see on his neck once they lifted the cord loose, once they let her touch him, that swanling neck. He’d given her so much, after all. More than he had to give. But he’d ruined everything all the same.





A DISPUTE


Everything happens three times. Three times, the wicked queen tries to kill Snow White. Three times, Christ asks Peter if he loves him. Three times, Rumpelstiltskin spins the wheel.

Three times, police officers filled the studio. The fire, the fall, and Charlie.

Detective Walters, this time in a thick shearling overcoat, and Detective Mendoza talking to Randi and all of them talking to the medical examiner, wheezing and whistling once more into a mask clamped over his face.

Dara watched through the doorway as a gloved woman slipped the orange extension cord into a paper bag. The same cord that, the other night, they’d unplugged from Marie’s lamp and Charlie had wrapped it around and around the lamp base, like bright circus taffy, before hiding it away.



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*

It turned out there was a note. Shoved in Charlie’s pocket, written on a Post-it, a word more than a note, written in Charlie’s cramped hand: Guilty.

The detectives were puzzling over the reverse side, another single word: Snow.

Only Dara knew that it was Charlie’s to-do list. More snow for The Nutcracker. Always more snow.



* * *



*

Is it possible your husband had a confrontation with the contractor?

They were trying to be gentle, respectful. She was the grieving widow, after all.

Inside, though, she had such clarity. The grieving, complicated as it would be, could come later.

In the end it was Randi and the police who gave her the head start.

Earlier, she’d overheard Randi saying that in the end it’s always two men throwing themselves at each other. An accidental shove at a bar. An argument over a bill.

Aren’t there some states, she’d heard Detective Mendoza joke to Walters, where murdering your contractor is a misdemeanor?



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*

We were both frustrated,” Dara admitted. “Everything was taking so long. Charlie was very upset. The tension kept building.”

“That morning, did your husband say he was going to confront the contractor?”

“No. He was just going to work.”

“Can you guess why one or both of the men might have been on the third floor?”

Dara paused. “Charlie suspected the contractor was using the third floor, maybe to entertain a date. You know. We were concerned. The students . . .”

It all came naturally, like smoke ribbons from her mouth. It was true, after a fashion. Nothing was ever simple.

“We found cigarette butts up there,” one of the deputies said, as if on cue.

“If they’d caught fire . . .” Dara said, shaking her head.



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*

Yeah, I like it. It tracks, she heard Mendoza saying to Walters. Fella’s pissed. Work’s not getting done. Can’t even find the contractor. Thinks the guy’s up to no good.

So maybe he gets here, tries to catch him in the act? Walters said. Or hears him and charges up the stairs— —just as the contractor’s coming down. They struggle on the stairs, a do-si-do and BAM . . .



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*

There would be more questions, she knew. They asked for samples of handwriting, they took more prints, put things in bags, took fibers from her shirt and Randi Jacek’s, scrapings under nails. They still wanted to talk to her sister. But at the end of it, they let her go home, Detective Walters offering to drive her himself.

She declined.

It never crossed her mind to tell them the truth. Telling them about the contractor’s wife would mean telling them about Charlie and about Marie, all the private things.

It wasn’t their business, any of it. It was hers and Marie’s, all of it.



* * *



*

She called Marie at the Ballenger and told her to go home immediately. To lock up the house and wait for her.

Then she told her about Charlie.

The call was brief and awful.

Marie kept crying. She couldn’t stop crying and Dara had to hang up or she’d never make it.



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*

    I’m so sorry,” Randi Jacek said, touching Dara’s arm as she moved to leave. “If I hadn’t made you come here, you wouldn’t have had to see—”