The Man I Love (24 page)

The winter was cold, bleak and relentless. The sun never seemed to break through the veil of sickly grey clouds pressed down over Lancaster. All ice and slush and mud, a dirty film on the sidewalks and windows. A dull malaise permeated the student body. The whole campus seemed to be shivering, sunken in on itself, looking for warmth within instead of reaching out to build a fire.

Since the miscarriage, Erik could not deal with blood. Of any kind. A cut or scratch made him queasy. One of the stage techs suffered a nosebleed in class and Erik almost passed out. He had never been bothered by Daisy having her period, now he couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t revulsion, it was fear.

Life had become tenuous and bloody.

He wasn’t doing well.

In the apartment on Jay Street, nobody was doing well. Lucky was withdrawn, a shadow of herself. Even her curls lost their spring—they gave up, and unwound into sad, mournful tendrils.

Will looked haunted. Nobody had ever seen him so subdued and distracted, even as he wrapped himself in work and preparation for the spring concert.

Daisy chain-smoked and lost weight, her body diminishing back to ballerina fragility. She was jittery and frenetic, prone to weeping for no reason. She lost her stillness.

Erik was smoking regularly, too. He buried himself in work, buried the struggle against constant anxiety and the never-ending visions of blood. The nightmares came regularly. He woke up Daisy. She woke him. Sex was infrequent and unremarkable.

David’s mean streak was back. He regressed into old ways, like a child acting out, looking for love by asking for it in the most unloving ways. But everyone was too consumed with their own wars to pay much attention.

They gathered together in the evenings, yet each struggled alone. The winter was hard and long. One night, as they sat around watching TV, David brazenly cut cocaine out in the open, razoring the snowy powder into neat snakes on a little mirror on the coffee table.

Had the color of cocaine been the irresistible temptation? The pristine whiteness? Its seductive purity?

Erik flinched at the harsh, sucking sound of David doing two lines.

“Anyone?” David said.

They stared. Not a glance was exchanged. Everyone was making up their own mind.

“I’m good,” Will said. A beat of silence. Then he stood up. “On second thought, fuck everything.” He went over.

“Fuck this fucking world,” Lucky said, and crossed.

Daisy got off Erik’s lap. “I don’t care anymore.”

Erik followed. “I could get shot tomorrow. Screw it.”

They knelt around the altar of the coffee table. Will patted David’s head, and David smiled like a well-praised puppy. He was the high priest now: King David, singer of songs, bearer of gifts and bringer of comfort.

In later years, Erik viewed that night as the beginning of the end of the world. The descent into hell.

And he never forgot David had opened the gate.

The night of the spring concert, Daisy and Will’s comeback, Kees asked Erik if he would mind having company in the lighting booth.

“I need to be somewhere soundproof so I can cry in peace.”

“You just want to be with me, Keesja.”

“Yeah. And if anyone tries anything the least bit cute, you and I are gonna take their asses out.”

Erik who was a bit of a controlled wreck, could think of no one he’d rather have in the booth with him than Kees, who was a blatant wreck.

Fate was kind, putting the anniversary of the shootings, the nineteenth of April, on a Monday. The ceremonial recognition wouldn’t overlap with the concert, which was scheduled for the following weekend.

The contemporary division had the first act. Daisy and Will’s pas de deux would be the first number in the second act. During intermission, Erik sought out Joe and Francine Bianco, standing with them at the back of the theater, pressed on all sides by the crowd. The space buzzed with conversation and anticipation.

They chattered nervously at each other, laughing too hard and too loud. Adrenaline kept flooding Erik’s chest as the minutes ticked by. It seemed it would never be time. And then it was nearly time. His heart was pounding. He caught Kees’s eye and tapped his watch. Joe tugged his earlobe. Francine kissed him.

Erik went back into the booth and Kees followed. They drew on their headsets. Erik rubbed his cold hands together, chafing his fingers, blowing on them.

“Wat denk je, mijn vriend?”

Erik smiled. “I’m dying. How about you?”

“I am an emotional hamburger.”

Erik’s headset crackled. “Five minutes,” David said. “Flash the houselights.”

Erik reached and slid the master switch down, dimming the house, then up again. Once more. The murmur of the milling audience intensified, then people began filing back into seats. Erik and Kees fidgeted relentlessly, tapping pencils and fingers, jiggling knees, spinning in their chairs, inhaling and exhaling loudly, over and over, trying to whittle away these last, agonizing minutes.

“How we doing back there, Dave?” Erik asked.

“Nobody’s thrown up yet.”

“Great, I get to puke alone,” Kees muttered.

“Where’s Dais?” Erik asked.

“Warming up.”

“Tell her I love her.”

“Tell me first,” David said.

Erik smiled into the headset. “All my enemies whisper together against me,” he said.

“They imagine the worst for me, saying, ‘He will never get up from the place where he lies.’”

“Raise me up, that I may repay them.”

“For my enemy does not triumph over me.”

“Amen,” Kees said.

“Now tell her I love her,” Erik said.

“And grab both their asses for me,” Kees said.

“With pleasure.” Another crackle and David was gone. Erik stared at his own reflection in the booth glass, fingertips rubbing his chin.

“Tums?” Kees offered him a couple from the bottle kept in the booth.

“Thanks, I’ve already had eleven tonight.”

“You guys keep booze back here?”

Erik smiled, but his eyes slid away guiltily. David had cut a couple lines before coming to the theater. Erik had passed. Barely. The idea of being high at Daisy’s return to the stage was unthinkable to him.

But damn, it was hard to pass up.

She was a sick mistress, Lady Cocaine. The rush to the brain, the dizzying clarity, the euphoria of everything being all right. But she got bored of you so quickly, and then left without saying goodbye. In her cold, slushy wake, you crawled, a strung-along, anxious mess. Erik was starting to hate her.

And he was starting to need her.

“Bring down the house,” David said over the headset.

Erik’s chest tightened, released fiery hot waves into his stomach and arms.

Kees held out a formal hand. “Merde.”

Erik shook it. “Merde.” He brought down the master switch with his left hand while his right hand hovered, fingers poised over a section of levers as if he were about to play a chord on the piano.

The curtain rose with a velvety hum.

“Lights up,” David said. Erik pushed the levers forward and the cyclorama began to glow a rich, twilight blue.

“Cue sound.”

Out floated the lush, measured tones of the introduction to “The Man I Love.” From the upstage left wing came Daisy and Will. She in her pink dress, bourréeing in fifth, her hand tucked in Will’s elbow, her head tilted toward but not quite on his shoulder. Tall and tender in black, Will walked beside her, his maimed hand covering her fingers.

And then the auditorium erupted.

Both Kees and Erik jumped in their seats, reared backwards, open-mouthed in shock as the applause came roaring down from the balcony and met with the ovation coming from the orchestra seats, whirling together in a thunderstorm of clapping, stamping triumph drowning out the music.

“Jesus,” Kees said, stumbling to stand up, his hands on top of his head.

Erik stood up as well, leaning over the console to peer out at the audience. “What is
happening…?”

He scanned the crowd: on their feet, applauding and whistling.

Will and Daisy reached center stage. She turned on her toes, bourréeing backwards, still with the choreography, but the music was lost.

“Oh boy.” He could hear David exclaiming low in his ear. “Holy shit. Holy shit. I don’t believe this.”

Daisy kept moving, her feet lightly gathering up the inches of the stage floor, her arms liquid patterns. She turned under Will’s arm, his other twining around her waist and she fell back, languid, melting, her eyes never leaving his. Will caught her, but clumsily, he was breaking down, breaking out of the dance, his face crumpling. Instead of bringing Daisy up into the next phrase, he brought her up and crushed her to his chest. She came off pointe, stood in her flat, pedestrian feet. Her shoulders were heaving, shaking and she buried her face into Will’s shirt. The intensity of the applause rose up another level. People were yelling now, as if at a rock concert.

Erik’s hands closed up his mouth and nose as the enormity of it dropped onto his shoulders.

Kees put an arm around him. “Good Lord, I haven’t seen an ovation like this since I watched Cynthia Gregory in Swan Lake. And that was after the show, not before.” His other arm joined the first, hugging tight as Erik cried into the steeple of his fingers.

Neil Martinez, stationed stage left, called over his headset. “Dave, what do we do?”

“Kill the music. Just run it back to the start. Stand by, everyone, stand by, let’s just let this pan out.”

Erik didn’t think it could possibly last any longer, yet on and on it went. Will was whispering to Daisy, coaxing her head up off his shoulder, and finally he got her to turn around. They stood there then, clasped in each other’s arms, stood and faced it, accepted the moment as rightfully theirs. Will was shaking his head over and over, laughing, wiping his eyes. Daisy’s face had bloomed with her full, bright beautiful smile.

Erik leaned and put one hand flat on the glass of the booth, palm to the stage. He usually did this at curtain call, but tonight everything was out of order, upside-down and unbelievable. Daisy wormed one of her arms free from Will’s embrace. She touched her fingers to her mouth and turned her palm out back to Erik.

He thought his heart was going to explode. He needed no other high. This was enough.

This is my life.

A whole minute went by before David spoke again. “Erik, can you hear me?”

Erik ignored the tissue Kees held out and roughly wiped his wet face on his upper arm as he sat down. “Yeah, I can hear you.”

“Start taking the stage lights down. Leave the cyc lit.”

“Lights going down.”

As the stage dimmed, Will and Daisy retreated into silhouette, disappearing through the upstage wing. The applause petered out as the audience sat.

“One day you’ll tell your grandchildren about this moment,” Kees said.

David waited another fifteen seconds of murmured shuffling and blown noses, and then gave the cue. “Sound up.”

And they began again.

Daisy could barely get out of bed after the concert.

No more driving force toward a goal, nothing to work for or look forward to. She had relentlessly pursued recovery, then rehearsal and finally performance. The curtain was down and the theater of her heart sat empty. She went around empty-eyed and depressed, wandering lost in the vast, dark cavern of her dreams. The light came back into her face when she was on cocaine, but only for interludes growing more and more fleeting and requiring more and more juice.

David brought new offerings for the coffee table altar at Jay Street. As if bestowing communion, he laid ecstasy pills in each of their palms. They locked eyes and swallowed. In a few minutes, Erik felt as though he were swimming in caramel. Everything was wonderful. He and Daisy practically floated upstairs. Her eyes filled with green swirls, her smile wide open, giggling and carefree. They kissed with laughing tongues and lips, deep in one another’s mouths. He dug his fingers into her hair, clenching his fingers through it, pulling tight then releasing.

“Do that again,” she murmured in his kiss.

He pulled on her hair, sucking gently on her tongue. She moaned in her chest. “Harder.”

All he did was kiss her and clasp the lengths of her hair hard in his fists and pull. She straddled his thigh, grinding down. He dragged her until the pain revealed itself in her liquid eyes and she came against his leg. It was gorgeous. She came like a goddess. Wild and terrible. He let go and was mesmerized by the strands wafting free. Later he was slightly disturbed. But only slightly. The intensity of Daisy’s orgasm overcame revulsion, filled his veins with a sick need to do it again.

And do it harder.

From there it spiraled out of control. With no more sweetness to be found in their sex, they delved instead into a vein of bitter gratification. They unplugged the Christmas lights and drew the curtains, pinning the edges so not a chink of light penetrated. A rolled up towel along the bottom of the door and the room went pitch black. The infinite cavern of Daisy’s nightmares. A thick, tangible darkness where they went at each other, scratching and clawing, balanced on the edge between enjoyable discomfort and outright violence. Distilling the pleasure out of pain. It felt good to hurt. It was normal to hurt. Joy was fleeting and treacherous but pain was dependable. It sucked, but you could trust it to suck.

In the dark Daisy yanked Erik’s head back and kissed him hard enough to draw blood. It should have repelled him. Instead, as soon as he tasted it, he was like a shark tracking wounded prey. He took her down to the floor and he was on her, high and crazed, torqued and shadowy. He pinned her fast and took her hard. His teeth on her bones, blood in his mouth, his weight holding her down in the endless dark.

But hurt required feeding. Like a drug habit. It slid around corners of the bedroom and demanded more. Hurt was the lord God and they would have no other verbs before it. Hurt stood over their beds, exacting devotion and sacrifice.

“Tie my hands,” she said one night. And he did.

“Pretend you’re raping me,” she said another night. And he did.

Then there came a night when Erik, higher than he’d ever been in his life, heard his own harsh whisper in the sludgy dark. “I want to fuck your ass.”

She didn’t say a word. He only heard the scrape of a drawer, some rifling around and then a condom was in his hand. His drugged brain could barely keep up with his body, registering what was happening five beats after it had happened. In this surreal fugue state, he was stretched out on her back, pushing into her unyielding body.

“Let me in.” He didn’t recognize his own voice. “Let me hurt you.”

Her fingers twined with his beneath the pillow, clenched to the breaking point. Her neck arched in pain. He took a small, reverent taste of the tight, hot agony and had to fight not to come. He moved further into her and she moaned. With his mouth he moved her hair away from her neck, set his teeth at her nape. “Let me.”

“God it hurts,” she whispered, her voice thick with arousal.

He dug in with his teeth, admiring his own controlled skill. He slid one hand beneath her body. She spread her legs for him, opened up slick and swollen. Her lips caressed the tattoo on his wrist. “I feel alive when it hurts.”

“So do I. Only when it hurts”

“I want to come.”

“Come. Let it hurt. Let it come.”

“Hurt me.”

“Come, Dais. Come for me. Come until it hurts.”

He came just as she did. Brain joined body and he came so hard he saw the rear side of his skull, saw back to yesterday and out into next week. He lay on her, breathing hard, wondering if he had pushed himself too far and he was cut loose in space, his sanity roaming lost around the universe, never to return.

It wasn’t such a bad notion.

Gradually a tingling returned to his limbs and a dull ache between his eyebrows convinced him he was indeed present.

“Get out of me,” Daisy said drowsily, as if asking for an extra blanket. Erik carefully got out, chucked the condom, then lay down again and didn’t move. They sprawled there, passed out, sated and spent.

They woke up and turned to each other, fingers seeking each other’s faces in the dark. They couldn’t see, but by touch they knew no joy was in their eyes.

“We make love and it’s horrible afterward,” Erik whispered. “We’re sweet to each other and it makes us physically sick. But if you bite me or scratch me or draw blood, it’s fine. If I pin you down or pretend to rape you or fuck you in… We go right to sleep. It’s peaceful then. And I don’t understand.”

“What’s happening to us?” In the dark, her voice was small and lost.

“We’re better than this.”

“We used to be.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” Erik said. He got up and flung open the curtains, flooding the room with weak light from the street. “No more. I’m not hurting you in bed again. I won’t.”

He plugged in the Christmas lights and Daisy began to cry. Erik drew her out of bed and into the shower. She cried as he washed her hair and her body. He cried over the welts he had raised on her back and the fingerprinted bruises on her upper arms and thighs. Back in her room they stripped the linens off her bed and remade it. Lay down in the clean sheets, weeping tired, defeated tears.

He held her all night. She slept all the next day. Erik could not get her out of bed. He came downstairs after his third attempt, sat on the bottom step in the living room with his head in his hands.

Will and Lucky came in the front door. Lucky took one look and squeezed past Erik to go upstairs. Will sat on the step next to Erik. Put arms around him.

“It’s all right, Fish,” Will whispered. His cheek moved against the top of Erik’s head. His hand rubbed circles between Erik’s shoulder blades. Squeezed the back of his neck. “It’s all right.”

“I feel like it’s all falling apart,” Erik whispered.

“It’s this place,” Will said. “I can’t stand being here anymore. We all need to leave. And we will. Soon. It’s almost over, Fish. You’ll get out of here with Daisy and go somewhere new.”

Whatever Lucky said or did, Daisy got up. She pulled strength out of some hidden, bottomless reservoir and rose to do what she had to do. Her mouth was set and her eyes flat blue. She was in the war room. She went to class and studied for finals. The curtains of her room remained open. She and Erik lay in bed at night, clasped in each other’s arms and staring. It was all they had left. They stopped feeding the hurt and found they weren’t hungry for anything else. So they stopped having sex.

Just stopped.