Free Roses and Rot by Kat Howard Page B

was still too pissy to want to be alone with myself.
    The studio buildings were loosely organized according to need, so the large, open ones for dancers were clustered together, separate from the musicians and the visual artists. Most people had decorated their doors or hung signs, some sort of expression of who was in there. Marin was tying all of her worn-out pointe shoes to the tree in front of her door. They danced like a corps de ballet of ghosts when the wind blew.
    I circled past a door covered in painter’s palettes and another with glass mosaicked on the front steps. The paths seemed to loop back on themselves, and even trying the labyrinth trick of only making right turns didn’t work—I knew I had passed the same doorway three times now. It was covered in crinkled silver foil, reflecting the light, scattershot, everywhere. There was no one out working, no one I could ask for directions. My head ached with frustration.
    I turned again, and there he was. I knew his walk, that shade of red-gold hair. “Evan!” I called, running after. But he kept walking, turned a corner.
    And was gone. No one in front of me, and only the same shiny foil door. Again. I shook my head, pinched the bridge of my nose, hard. Home. Sleep. Coffee. All of these things would make it better, and make me brave enough to send Beth my pages, and to pretend that her response didn’t matter.
    Having decided that, my head cleared, and I found my way out of the maze of studios. Past the empty tables of There, and through the open Commons, dodging a game of what looked like musical tag—the players switching instruments when tagged, making a glorious cacophony. I waved away the offer of a spare trumpet, if I wanted to play, and made it home.

    “Something weird happened while I was in my studio today.” Marin’s hair was still damp from her shower, and the heavy scent of her lilac lotion mixed with the menthol and eucalyptus from the oil she had slathered on her strained muscles. The combination should have been off-putting, but I found it strangely comforting instead. It smelled normal, companionable.
    “Weird like how?” I asked.
    “Like surreal, almost.” She sat on the floor and folded herself into a stretch.
    I turned away from my desk, from the night shining through the window. “Well, that sounds exciting. Tell me.”
    “I like to keep the windows uncovered in the studio when I’m working. When else am I going to get to dance in the middle of a forest, right? So I had them open tonight.”
    I didn’t tell her that I already knew that she danced with thewindows uncovered, that I had seen her, seen Gavin, through them. That moment was theirs.
    “It’s been long enough that most of what’s outside of them is background noise. Like, I noticed the fox that went wandering by last week, but I don’t jump every time a rabbit hops past, or the turkeys come to hang out, at least not anymore. Have you seen the turkeys? They’re enormous.”
    “I saw them when I was running the other day. And detoured around them because, yes, enormous.”
    “Anyway, tonight, I kept catching movement in my peripheral vision. So I stop, and it’s birds. A whole flock of them. Flocking back and forth, in unison, just outside my windows.”
    “That sounds beautiful,” I said.
    “It was, sort of. But also weird, because when I stopped to figure out what was going on, they took off into the trees. Then when I started dancing again, they came back.”
    “They wanted to dance with you.” I laughed as I said it.
    “I know it sounds crazy, Imogen, but that’s kind of what it felt like.” She shifted the pose again, walking her hands out in front of her.
    “What did Gavin think?”
    “He wasn’t there. I work on my own at least once a week. I figure if I’ve come out here to get away from a company and the influence of other dancers, that I ought to take that part seriously.” She bent herself flat to the floor, held the stretch.
    “It’s