Page 6 of The Dangerous Dance

I find this, unexpectedly, a relief.

I move through JFK with one carry-on and a checked bag that I collected seven minutes ago, which is faster than it should have been and is a small private victory. My coat is wrong for November here — right weight, wrong cut, too European, the kind of thing that marks you if you know what to look for — and I make a note to fix it before the week is out. Details matter. My father said that to me so often it stopped sounding like advice and started sounding like weather.

Details, Nadenka. Anyone can see the large things. The large things are for the lazy and the dead.

I spot Dara before she spots me, which is how it usually goes. She stands near the far end of the arrivals barrier in a yellow coat that is absolutely a choice, her dark red hair loose around her shoulders, scanning the crowd with the focused squint of someone trying very hard to look casual. She is not good at looking casual. It's one of her most endearing qualities and, professionally, one of her most challenging.

I come up beside her before she finds me.

She startles. Then laughs, short and genuine, and pulls me in by both arms. "You did that on purpose."

"I would never."

"You always." She steps back and looks at me the way old friends do after months apart — a quick inventory, checking for damage. "You look good. You look tired."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"No, but they're not ideal together either." She takes one of my bags without asking. "Car's outside. I'll drive, you decompress, and then I'll tell you about the apartment."

"Is it terrible?"

"It's New York. Terrible is relative." She glances at me sideways as we push through the doors into the cold. "It has good light."

"That's what people say when there isn't enough space."

"There's space. Just not wasteful space. Efficient."

I put on my sunglasses against the flat grey glare and breathe in cold that smells like exhaust and concrete and something frying from a cart we pass on the way to the car. "I'll manage."

"You always do."

She says it lightly. We both know what it means.

She is right about the apartment. It is efficient.

The building is in Astoria — close enough to Manhattan to be practical, far enough to be anonymous, which is the only thing I asked for when they told me where I'd be stationed. The elevator takes forty-five seconds longer than it should and makes a sound on the third floor that I decide immediately to stop thinking about. The apartment is on the fifth floor, east-facing, two bedrooms, a kitchen with new counters and fixtures original to about 1987.

But the light is, as Dara promised, good.

I stand at the window and look out at the city while she makes tea — she found the kettle within thirty seconds, which tells me she's been here already, familiarizing herself — and I do what I always do when I arrive somewhere new. I orient.

Two exits from the building I know of already, likely a third through the service entrance at the back. The street below has moderate foot traffic, the kind that provides cover without providing chaos. The building across has a doorman who was not at his post when we came in, which is useful information. The fire escape is accessible from the bedroom window if the bedroom window is the one facing east, which I'll confirm once I unpack.

Details, Nadenka.

"Studio is four blocks north," Dara says from the kitchen. "Small. Good floors. The director is a woman named Petya, she's expecting you Tuesday, and she knows nothing beyond that you're a trained dancer looking for a place to practice while you're in the city." She brings two cups. "She seemed pleased. Apparently they don't get many serious students."

"Good." Ballet has been my cover and my sanctuary in roughly equal measure for as long as I can remember. My mother enrolled me at four because she thought it would make me graceful. My father took one look at what it did to my body — the discipline, the spatial awareness, the ability to hold absolute stillness — and decided it was the best training he hadn't thought to arrange himself.

He was not wrong.

"And the other thing?" I ask.

Dara wraps both hands around her cup. She has a tell when she's choosing her words — her shoulders go still, like she's bracing. She does it now. "You received the briefing packet. I assumed you read it on the flight."

"I read it on the flight."

"Then you know what they want."