Page 40 of Ice Dance

I leaned back in the chair, folded my arms, and looked up. “Sure.”

“Good, we begin tomorrow.”

He left. Just walked off. No good night. Nothing about how well we’d done to not throw drinks at each other. I hadn’t really expected any feedback, but some kind of acknowledgement would have been reassuring.

I dragged my hands down my face and sighed into my palms. What was I doing? Hasegawa was either going to be my route to being taken seriously in the sport I loved, or he’d destroy my career, because I just might be arrested for attempted murder partway through training.

“Fuck my life.”

SEVENTEEN

REN

The taxi left the clean, glass-fronted parts of Montreal behind and carried me into a neighborhood that seemed to have been assembled from loading bays, cracked pavements, and abandoned cars.

The early morning sunlight did nothing to brighten the run-down aesthetic of the place. It caught on the rusted edges of fire escapes, the faded paint of old warehouse signs, the weeds growing between the splits in the curbs. Graffiti ran along brick walls in bright, aggressive strokes. Beautiful in places, vulgar in others.

The taxi pulled to a stop. This could not be the right address . . . This looked like the kind of place you drove through quickly and didn’t stop.

“This is it?”

“Sure is.”

I peered through the window. The taxi had stopped outside what appeared to have once been a garage. A metal loading door had been rolled up and was rusted into position at head height. Above the garage door, a handwritten sign declared SAGA STUDIOS.

What kind of DIY establishment was this?

Navarro trained here?

Not an academy, or a performance center, or even a respectable private studio with sprung floors. This was someone’s enthusiastic attempt to turn a failed mechanics unit into a dance space.

I paid, climbed out, and breathed in the smell of hot asphalt. Music thumped from inside. Laughter trickled out. I ducked under the door and clocked the handwritten sign.

NO OUTSIDE SHOES ON THE FLOOR. NO EGO PAST THIS POINT.

This was absurd.

I was absurd for being here.

I adjusted the strap of my bag and headed inside. The building went back deeper than it appeared from the frontage. A wide corridor traveled the length, front to back. The door at the back was open too, so a warm breeze funneled through. The dance rooms were all on the left, each one more interesting than the last. Torn matting, filthy mirrors, no air conditioning or security. A young man in leggings and not much else stumbled out of a small, cramped kitchen, apologized for bumping into me, then bolted, as though he’d stolen something.

I had no idea what was happening. Or where I was going.

A woman appeared, tight smile, cropped black hair. “You looking for someone?”

“Uh, yes. Camden Navarro?”

“Cam? Sure, last door on the left, before you go out the back.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Her smile beamed. “Nice accent.”

“Uh, thank you. I was born with it.”

She laughed and ducked back into her room.

“I was born with it?” Good heavens. Where had that come from? I approached the last room on the left and heard talking inside. One sided. Navarro, on a call. I entered, caught his eye. He nodded, and held up a finger, signaling he was almost done. I set my bag down on the bench and tried not to cringe at the eclectic surroundings. All the high windows were wedged open, trying and failing to vent the room of heat, and it wasn’t even ten a.m. yet. The lower windows were frosted, so at least passersby couldn’t look in. One window had been boarded up. Lovely.