Like all dynasties, having one location isn't good enough for the Manhattan Dance Company.
Grumbling my complaints to nobody particular, I clench the poster in my left hand and shield my eyes from the sun with the other.
In the summers, whoever owns this dance empire decides to base operations out of a building nestled into Times Square. Not in the heart of it, but close enough for there to be a steady stream of people and cars along the streets. I've passed by this place plenty of times before, but never paid it a bit of attention, deeming it just as marvelous as everything else on the block. But now-now it takes my breath away, knowing what it is and who the people are inside of it. Dancers.
Eleven stories tall and more than wide enough, the building must be ancient compared to the skyscraping glass and steel monuments overhead. But along with the hints of its age, modern architecture has taken over a good part of it, making it... classically advanced. The long panes of glass creating beautiful windows have a golden tint to them, like Cal's eyes, but there's nothing on the other side of them, just the reflection of the city street and cars and revolving doors leading to a taller building across the street, where I stand. Or so it appears. One-way mirrors for the dancers' privacy, I suppose.
It doesn't follow the code of the shimmering blue skyscrapers that litter the city. It's composed of warm colors, rather than icy gray and blue, but manages to loom nonetheless. Where the stretching panes of glass aren't, there are bits of red brick and steel.
There is only one column of bricks and supporting metal between each pane of glass, and a couple of rows to separate stories from one another, forming a tidy and elegant grid. The stories about entire glass walls are nearly true. The last two stories at the top are older, not adorning that same magnetizing glass the others have. There is more brick to them, coupled with cement to alternate between red and beige. Balconies too narrow for actual use are sewn into every other window, a quarter of the size compared to the ones below.
On the ground level, a single revolving door sits under a black marquee, and the words, Manhattan Dance Academy are embedded into its front, red and silver in a large and ornate font.
Seeing the traffic light turn red at the intersection, I make a move to cross. Now or never, I told myself with an exhausted and near-shattered body after dancing up on the roof for hours yesterday afternoon.
The dancing helped, whether or not my body's happy about that decision. Made me forget about Kilorn and the Street Fighters, Cal and my sister. Shade.
At a closer look, the windows are trimmed with ebony frames and hooked lanterns protrude from the thin brick margins.
The street under my feet is hot in the midday sun, and I silently wonder if this heat wave will end anytime soon. The security guard under the marquee takes note of me before I finish crossing to meet the opposite sidewalk, his black eyes always watching and in wait. Though I wouldn't consider myself very threatening, I'm flattered that he takes me seriously as I approach him, the poster steadfast in my hand.
"This poster," I say, unraveling the darn paper, "was found taped to my local grocery store window. I'd like to be interviewed for the job."
He looks me up and down, from the light makeup I bothered with to the rundown Converse I've worn every day this summer. "Great. The job's yours. Just go inside and they'll set you up."
I quirk my brow at him. "That easy, huh?"
"Believe it or not, but people aren't lining up to get a cleaning job for minimum wage," he says with a touch of sarcasm I appreciate. I might just turn out to not hate this man, who isn't older than thirty-but is entirely bald.
It's not about the money, though we definitely need it. This place, even if it's as the lowest of the pyramid, is the closest to professionally dancing as I'll ever get. "Thanks," I mutter, casting an equally derisive smile onto him.
I step towards the gilded revolving doors that graze a fine marble floor, but the man stops me from entering by putting a hand around my wrist. Somebody else did that to me recently. "Workers go in through the side," he grunts, nodding down the street.
"Oh," I say, not in the mood to fight him. Fine. Their territory, their rules. I'm just here for the experience.
"Yeah," is what he responds with.
I turn around to face the intersection, rolling my eyes.
Though the Manhattan Dance Company is barren of the electronic screens and billboards every other place around here seems to adorn, it fits in just fine with its grandeur. A block or two one way or another, the crowds would be really bad, but here, I find my way to the intersection easily enough.
The glass and steel high rises advertise makeup and the latest movies, but none of it interests me, at least not in the way the Company does. They're all the same, so colorful my eyes would start bleeding should I stare too long. And had I grown up with any money, I might be interested in the boards, might find myself comparable to the people looking at them with such a hardcore adoration.
I always forget about the green gated stairs that lead to the subway as I turn the corner, the yellow of taxis and rainbow of cars running past, though not very quickly.
Something beautiful and grayscale flashes in my left eye. This place has never deigned to post advertisements on their buildings, even though every other building has them. I can't begin to imagine how much it costs to own a building in Times Square, but between their dancers' tuition expenses and the great wealth of whoever the owners are, they seem to keep the Company thriving.
Yet that doesn't mean they don't find other decorations for the walls.
No. Not decorations. Masterpieces.
Photographs like the one taken on my ripped and crumpled poster are written across canvases that stretch double my height. Their backgrounds alternate between pitch black and a medium grey. The dancers on them are beautiful creatures, sporting lavish costumes in the midst of flawless leaps and turns. Some of their costumes are on the order of traditional wear, the kinds of outfits that the ballerinas and dancers use in the annual ballet, but others are severely modern, women clad in tight jeans and heaping dresses that could never actually be danced in.
A shadowed male is portrayed on the last canvas, with jeans, and without a shirt or shoes. His face is turned from the camera, alluding to a mystery that I doubt I'll ever solve. A muscled back exposed, and arms with the same power splayed straight out to the sides, his left leg is stuck outward to be parallel with his arm in an effortless a la seconde.
I used to be that good. Maybe I still am. I didn't fall out of a single turn yesterday on the roof, though my body feels like it.
Assuming they wouldn't be stupid enough to keep their side door unlocked, I rap my knuckles on it three definite times.
Because of the constant noise echoing throughout the intersection and adjoining streets, I don't know if anybody is coming to the door. Thirty seconds go by, and prepared to knock again and then try twisting open the thing myself, I take a step backward as somebody approaches, the handle turning
Even the side doors have to be glamorous. The double set of doors have that same gilded framework encompassing them, and a couple of golden bars strike through the middle of the fogged over glass.
I should be spitting on their floors, not mopping them.
The woman who invites me in isn't incredibly young, but by no means is she an old prune. Just by her appearance, I can tell she isn't one of the wealthy. She must be another cleaner, or secretary, or something. Her hair is washed out, maybe from dying it too many times as a teen, but her eyes are bright, and she smiles at me as I step through the door.
"Ah, yes. They told me to be on the lookout for a wannabe cleaner. Nice of Security to send you to the side, eh? Name's Walsh. Ann Walsh."
"Mare Barrow," I say, extending my hand.
But she doesn't take it. "Are you even out of high school?"
"Obviously," I say, prepared for the question. Even with the grey at the end of my hair, there's no mistaking me for anything more than a teenage girl. "I graduated last spring."
Past the doors reaches a long and wide hallway made of the same marble I glimpsed at through the front.
But Ann cuts me off from any exploring I might've gotten to do, when she stops in front of an elevator, just as modern as the next. Given how it's tucked away back in this side hallway, I bet it's a worker's shaft. She presses the down arrow at its side. "The basement," I say. "Really?"
She says, "What? Did you think this job, clocking in at a stunning ten dollars and forty cents per hour, was going to be all glitter and rainbows?"
No. It's just... "No. I was just hoping to a have a second glance before you guys threw me in the basement."
The bell to the elevator rings, and the steel doors glide ajar. The inside is bland and tasteless, and somehow I bet the regular elevators in the main lobby are far more appealing.
Ann taps a button before turning to me. "Listen. I'm sure you could go and find work at a lotta' other places, places that pay more than this. McDonald's must offer more, for Heaven's sake. So if you want to leave, then leave. Otherwise, buckle up and listen."
I have to swallow my pride and knot the stream of words I want to say to her, but none of this is her fault. She's just another maid-or something like that-who obeys orders.
"I honestly don't know why we need another one," she begins, looking me up and down. "I thought we had enough workers, but apparently one of the big guys said we should hire another one or two. So now you're here. I'll show you the ropes over the next week, but if you can handle a mop, then you're all set." The elevator comes to a halt, and the doors open. "If you thought this place looked big on the outside, think again. It's bigger than big. Though now we're technically overstaffed, you'll still be expected to work fast but thoroughly, and cover lots of space."
The elevator leads to one room, and one room alone. A large, wooden supply room, compiled of shelves lining two walls. Nope. Not the ritzy, high-end start I was looking for. The shelves contain all sorts of cleaning products: industrial containers of soap; buckets of sponges; rags for dusting; and too many chemicals I'm not familiar with. Vacuums and brooms and mops are balanced on the third wall, and a floor polisher is tucked into the corner. In the room's center, carts like the ones maids use at hotels lie in wait to be brought up the main floors.
"The cellar is the one part they didn't renovate, so they decided to stick an elevator into it and call it the "Maids' Quarters. Soon enough, that sound of the floorboards creaking will be the worst sound there is.
"The top two levels are residential," she continues, grabbing one of the carts and wheeling it into the elevator. "Though it isn't one of those places that schools and houses students, they like to have us keep up the rooms. The dancers rent them out when they want, and a couple stay here all the time." she squeezes past the cart to fetch something left on the far shelf.
"Almost forgot. Here's your uniform." She hands me a basic scarlet shirt, kept together with three large black buttons, short-sleeved. The collar is black, and so are the folds of the sleeves, which will reach halfway to my elbow.
"Bright red?" I question but undo the buttons and pull it over my shirt for the hex of it.
"Dunno," she shrugs. Ann's outfit makes more sense. Black pants and the same garment I have, but in a light brown color. "They're all different colors, though not as...loud as that one. If I had others left, I'd offer."
I try to let it flow off me, like water off a duck's back. Besides, there'll be worse situations I deal with at this place, if I don't decide to quit after day one.
"I expect you have a pair of black pants?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"Just checking," she says, returning the elevator. "Come on."
I follow her into the small box, having to suck my stomach in between the doors and the cart like Ann did. "So how did you wind up here?"
"Same as you. I needed work, and I figured why not work at some rich-as-shit ballet company? We get free tickets to their performances, too."
As great of a deal as it is-the tickets to any of their performances cost well over one-hundred a seat-I don't know if I could bring myself to go and watch them. I even removed myself from the street festivals East Harlem put on this summer, though the dancing wasn't more than a bunch of drunks violently shaking. Watching others dance, live out their dreams on that stage, is a nightmare.
The electronic number at the elevator's top flicks from B to 1, but it doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop until we arrive at floor ten, the lift at last coming to a stop. "They don't like us being on the main floors during the morning or afternoon. Either come in early to get your assigned studios done, or wait until late at night."
I almost cough up my own spit. Classes go on for hours on end at professional companies like this one. I won't be able to bet on cleaning until midnight. Dawn, then.
"There's a subway near my apartment," I say, walking by her side as she pushes the cart. Though I've done it plenty of times against rational thought, I don't like the idea of walking the four miles to work every day in the dark."I'll come in early. What time do you come in?"
"Four-thirty. I get my work done in the morning, too. My shift would be about done if I wasn't training the newbie cleaning girl." She winks at me. "Just so you know, they pay you for eight hours a day. You can get it done in the morning or the middle of the night, spend a half a day cleaning or fifteen minutes. The pay doesn't change. But I advise you, Mare Barrow, that you do a good job of cleaning."
I nod, getting her insinuation.
This floor is no different than that of a nice hotel, and I suppose that makes me no different than Mom, who's been working as a maid for years.
I won't let it last that long. Just for a little while, to get a glimpse at the life I could've had, and to make some cash.
Gulping, I trail Ann as she pushes her maid's cart into the first room.
