The Man I Love (4 page)

Erik got to watch the dancing from several vantage points: the stage catwalk, the ceiling catwalk, the balcony, the wings. It was here he found himself watching the Prelude and keeping a low profile, trying to disguise how for once, he wasn’t doing much of anything.

He noticed Will was standing by him, watching as well. They both raised chins in silent acknowledgment but said nothing until the dancers reached a passage Erik particularly liked. He stepped closer to Will and asked, “The step they just did, when their leg whipped around, what’s it called?”

“Renversé,” Will said. “I love this part, they repeat the same phrase but in a round, and when they do the renversé, here it is, look. One leg after the other. Looks like a windmill.”

“It does.”

“We met but we didn’t. I’m Will.”

“Erik.” They shook hands and Erik noticed both Will’s arms sported a number of tattoos.

“David calls you Fish.”

“It’s what my last name means.”

“Ah.” Will gestured to the theater at large. “First time at the rodeo?”

“Yeah. In between Leo running me ragged, I think Kees is trying to graduate me from Neanderthal 101 in one week.”

“It’s a good course. Chicks like going to the ballet, you can’t go wrong if you know how to talk a little shop at intermission.” Will’s accent was interesting. His English was natural and slangy, but some of the words seemed to shimmy through his nose or get breathily stuck in the corners of his mouth.

Erik turned to the stage again, watching Daisy in her solo passage. Her leotard was pale green today, again with the black tights pulled over. She also wore a short black skirt, thin as a tissue. It flew up with her jumps and floated down against the high, tight curve where the back of her thigh met her—

“Dude,” Will said. “Is that not the sweetest ass you ever saw in your life?”

Almost angrily, Erik flicked his eyes to Will, but Will wasn’t looking at the stage. He was looking off in the wings to a girl with crazy spirals of blonde hair, a little compact body in jeans and a T-shirt, the clothes clinging to hourglass curves, full breasts, full hips, tiny waist.

“Who’s she?”

“She’s called Lucky Dare,” Will said. His eyes were intent, a little smile played around his mouth.

“Seriously? That’s her name?”

“Her name’s Lucia, they call her Lucky. She’s Daisy’s roommate.”

“She’s not a dancer though, and she’s not tech. What does she do around here?”

“She’s a sports medicine major, studying to be a physical therapist. They all have to do a dance rotation at some point. God, would you look at that body. And her hair, Jesus. A hundred years ago she’d be burned as a witch.”

“You go out with her?”

“I don’t know about going out but she gave me a toe-curling blow job last night.”

Erik’s eyes widened. “Thanks for the visual.”

His eyes not leaving Lucky, Will put up a hand and ruffled Erik’s hair. “Entre nous.”

Erik looked again to the stage, watching Daisy and feeling Will’s palm print lingering on his head. Unrelated men weren’t supposed to touch each other with such casual intimacy. At least those were the rules in Erik’s small universe. His eyebrows wrinkled, remembering David’s conviction of Will’s bisexuality—a murky concept. Erik expected to feel uncomfortable at least, disgusted at most. But the sense memory loitering on the crown of his head was benign and unthreatening. It had been a brotherly touch. Unquestionably masculine and friendly. Almost like a secret handshake.

Michael called fifteen minutes for everyone. Will turned back to Erik. “I’m going to have a smoke, come with.”

Erik didn’t smoke but he went. As they passed by Lucky, Will tugged one of her spiral curls and she grabbed his ass in return.

“Funny, I thought you and Daisy were a thing,” Erik said, once they were clear of the auditorium

“Everyone does,” Will said, sounding bored.

“You can’t blame them. You guys have sick chemistry onstage.”

“Onstage, sure. Offstage? Not happening.”

“Why not?”

They’d reached the lounge with its cracked leather furniture, mismatched tables and chairs. Will sat down on a couch and lit up. “I love Daisy. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to pieces. And I was born to partner her. End of story.”

Erik chewed the inside of his lip, unsatisfied. He needed the beginning of the story. He needed a lot more story about this girl.

Exhaling a ribbon of smoke and setting his slippered feet on the ottoman, Will looked relaxed and expansive. Erik decided to probe a little.

“How long have you partnered her?” he asked.

“Two months. Back in September she came into auditions, which are a brutal freshman ordeal, especially for the girls. You know anything about the world of ballet?”

“Zero.”

“It is the most competitive, catty universe you’ll ever encounter. The upperclassmen girls scrutinize the new kids like a pack of bitches. And Daisy’s good, which they hate—freshman talent is a threat to their existence. So anyway, Marie wants to see some partnering work so she points to me and Dais, you and you, together. All right. Hi. How are you?”

“What was she like?” Shy and nervous, he imagined, paired with Will’s confidence while being stared at and sized up by the other girls.

“Dude, she was the most poised person I’d ever met in my life.” Will’s eyes squinted against the smoke. “You know she’s still seventeen, she won’t turn eighteen until December. I’d just turned twenty so you know, I’m feeling my decade. She definitely seemed young to me but there was this incredible stillness to her. Anyway, we were practicing the steps and finding a groove, but always when you pair up with someone new, it’s awkward. Hands go the wrong way, you bump into each other, you topple. It takes time to figure each other out, it’s like any relationship. But she had this quiet confidence. She made jokes but she wasn’t giggly or apologetic. She was calm and…it was no time at all. We started going to class together. Marie paired us up to understudy the Siciliano—for a freshman to cover a senior duet, dude, that just doesn’t happen. And we turned into something. I don’t like dancing with anyone else now. I can. Sometimes I don’t have a choice. But it’s the best with Daisy. She speaks my language.”

“French.”

“French?” Will picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue with his thumb and ring finger and flicked it away. “French has nothing to do with anything. I can shoot the shit with David or Kees if I’m homesick. With Dais, I’m talking about a language that doesn’t even have words.”

“All your chemistry onstage… None of it’s real?”

“Of course it’s real. Look, I know what you’re asking, let’s be honest: Dais is beautiful. She has an amazing body. I’m a mortal male. It doesn’t suck to look at her. But at the same time, I know we’re not alike and we wouldn’t work as a couple. If I started something it would crash and burn, then it would be sad and awkward, and I’d be out of a partner. And I want her as my partner. I’m not fucking with it. I couldn’t bear to lose it.”

Erik chewed on that, with no small amount of relief, while Will smoked. He rolled “Dais” around his mind a few times and found he liked the shortened version with its hard S. It was a more evocative sound. Intimate. It fit her better. Dais.

“You like her?” Will said.

Erik looked at him a long moment, trying to formulate an answer to encapsulate everything he had been thinking, feeling and contemplating since meeting this girl. Only two days ago.

Will cocked his head. “You looked her in the eye, didn’t you?”

Erik smiled, feeling the heat rise up in his face as he nodded.

“See, it’s weird, everyone has a thing about her eyes. Her eyes freak me out.”

“Her eyes are beautiful,” Erik said.

“I don’t know. Something about them isn’t right. It took me like two weeks to be comfortable looking at her when we were partnering.”

Erik had to laugh. “Why?”

Will blew a few smoke rings. “Dais doesn’t talk a lot but she watches everything. She comes off aloof at first, but when you get to know her, it’s… She’s insanely passionate but it’s all behind this thoughtful exterior. She doesn’t miss anything with those eyes. They look through you. It was like she was going to put the juju on me, I don’t know. I’d be, like, ‘Bianco, cut it out. You’re looking at my
soul.
’”

Which may have been the most accurate description of what Erik had experienced when Daisy first put eyes on him in the lighting booth. Still, he said nothing, firmly in his home base mode, which was watching, taking apart and figuring out.

Will formed another ring in the air. “You want me to say something to her?”

Erik shook his head vehemently. Though he’d never been particularly bold with girls, he hadn’t ever felt the need to work with a wingman. “No. I mean, I just met her. I’m still feeling it out.”

“You got a funny look on your face, my friend.”

“When I met her it…felt like finding something I didn’t know I was looking for. My head’s kind of spinning so I think I’ll just go about this in my own inept way.”

Will stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “Well for all your ineptness you’ve definitely made an impression. Bunch of the guys already asking me who the fresh meat is in the lighting booth. It’s always the guys. The girls are more discreet.”

“Shut up.”

“Hand to God.” Will stretched, cracking his neck and grinning. “Wait, how did Matt Lombardi put it, it was funny… Oh yeah, he said you were the love child of Bryan Adams and Sting. Not bad for a first conquest.” Will wrinkled his eyebrows and touched Erik’s shoulder. “It is your first conquest, right?”

“Please stop talking.”

Will laughed and gave Erik a shove. As they left the lounge, his touch lingered, easy and fraternal. Like fragrant smoke from a tobacco pipe.

Halfway up the stairs Will stopped. “Oh. Word to the wise. Entre nous? David Alto set rather a large cap for Dais in the beginning of the year. And he took it rather badly when she rejected him.”

“I kind of picked up on that.”

“She wasn’t mean to him. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. But he took it hard and the way he deals with it is by teasing her.”

“Teasing her.”

“Sometimes it can be just short of nasty. She can handle it, but I didn’t want you to see it and feel you had to come to the rescue. Really he’s just licking his wounds.”

“He’s an interesting guy,” Erik said carefully.

Will shrugged and started up the stairs again. “I can only take him in small doses. You don’t get many genuine moments with Dave and the sad thing is he only wants what he can’t have. If Dais had accepted him, he’d have chewed her up and spit her out.”

“You think?”

“I’m positive. She’s a novelty to him. I think he just wanted to bust her cherry for the experience.”

Erik winced and stopped walking. “What?”

Will turned around and for once, looked sheepish. “Nothing.”

Erik looked at him a long moment. “What does entre nous mean?”

“Between you and me.”

He nodded. “I’m glad we had this little chat.”

“Welcome to the jungle.”

* * *

After one more run-through, the ballet dancers were excused. The contemporary dancers had arrived and were getting ready for their focus session, the whole mess to repeat all over again. Erik was exhausted, sitting in the back row yawning and rubbing his face. The rest of the evening stretched before him like a desert, parched and barren without the entertainment of Daisy’s presence. He was getting hungry again. And a ton of homework was waiting for him later.

A hand brushed his shoulder. Daisy smiled at him as she passed, trim and pretty in a silver-grey down jacket. “Goodnight, Fish. See you tomorrow.”

“Night, Dais,” he said, turning in his seat, watching her walk out the auditorium doors. Pleased she had learned and used his nickname. Bereft she was gone.

He turned back in his seat, and now David was coming up the aisle. “Fishy, fishy in the brook,” he sang to the ceiling, “into Fish, she put her hook.”

An hour later, Erik was up on the ladder rearranging one of the booms, when, once again, a soft touch settled on his calf, but this time she called his name. He twisted around and from the foot of the ladder she gazed up at him, holding a paper bag.

“I brought you a snack.”

“I still owe you for the sandwich,” he said, his heart splashing against the wall of his chest.

“Oh, and coffee, do you drink coffee?”

He was actually a tea drinker but he would’ve gladly accepted a cup of warm piss from her. “Thank you,” he said.

Her eyes and nose crinkled, then she set the bag at the base of the boom. “Don’t tell David.”

“Entre nous,” he said.

Tuesday, he was due at the theater at four. His accounting class let out at three, and he decided to just grab something at the campus center and kill time at the theater. Possibly he could sit in a back row and power nap for twenty minutes.

He was at one of the condiment stations, getting napkins and packets of mustard when someone nudged him in the ribs. He looked left, as the trickster ducked around to his right, but by then he’d already smelled her sugar-soap perfume.

“Hey,” he said happily. In her grey jacket and purple scarf, Daisy looked criminally pretty. Her hair was down, something he’d not seen before today. It fell down her back in rippling waves, a bit of it caught beneath the straps of her dance bag.

“Going over to Mallory?” she asked.

“I am. Come with?”

They were the only ones there. The auditorium was quiet and dim with a hallowed feeling, like an empty church. Erik went to the circuit panel in the wings and flicked on a few of the stage lights. Daisy plopped down by the leg of the grand piano and from her capacious bag drew a pair of pointe shoes and a sewing kit. It seemed the ballet girls were always working on their shoes, sewing or re-sewing ribbons, bending them in half, banging them on the floor. And then lamenting they wore out too quickly.

Hopping down from the apron of the stage, Erik did a double-take as Daisy threaded a needle. “You sew them with dental floss?”

Breaking off a length with her teeth, she smiled up at him. “It’s stronger than thread, and you only need a few stitches per ribbon. Goes faster.”

“I am learning something new every day from you dancers.” Impulsively he opened the piano bench to see if there was any sheet music. There was, including a book of Bach.

He closed the bench and sat, thumbing through the pages.
Let’s see how big an ass I can make of myself.

“You play?” Daisy said.

“I used to. You might want to back up a little, this could get ugly.” He settled on the Prelude in C Major, the friendliest key. He shook out his suddenly cold fingers. “Let’s see, every good boy does fine…”

She laughed. “It’s more than I know.”

He dug deep, shrugged off his nerves. He was a good sight reader. At least, he’d been told he was a good sight reader way back when. And he knew how the Prelude was supposed to sound, which made it easier. Still, he was clumsy, and stopped after a few plunking measures, embarrassed. “God, I haven’t used this part of my brain in years.”

“Try again. And go slower, it’s a lullaby.”

He started over, played slower. Upstairs his brain finally realized he was serious about this, and quickly sorted out the staffs. Bass clef, treble clef, the notes began to tell him their names. Little by little it came back to him, came together. His shoulders relaxed, his foot sought out the pedal. He stopped, flexed his fingers.

“Don’t stop,” Daisy murmured, bent over her work.

“No, I got it now, I got it.” He went back to the beginning and played it straight through with only a couple clunkers.

“Nice,” she said, as he made the last notes of the arpeggio die away. Her sewing done, she was wiggling one foot into her shoe then wrapping the ribbons around her ankle, her hands deft and sure. “Play another.” Something about her quiet composure gave him confidence. If she had been gushing praise and batting her eyes at him, he would’ve known she was full of shit, and he would have stopped.

He shuffled the sheet music around and picked through a couple Mozart minuets, then movements of the Beethoven sonatas he’d learned years ago. He found a groove, and began to enjoy it. Daisy warmed up, first stretching on the floor, then getting up and using the piano as a barre. Realizing she was timing her movements to his playing, he slowed down or sped up, following her, trying to keep a steady tempo. She smiled at him, her face growing pinker, a fine mist of sweat across her throat and chest.

“All right,” he said, flattening the spine of the Bach book with his fist. “Here’s the real test. Prelude in F Minor.”

“My prelude, really?”

“Don’t get too excited. F minor is…four flats, Jesus.” He tried a few measures and then abruptly bailed, making a mosh on the keys with his fists.

“You’re doing fine,” Daisy said. “Keep going.”

“No, forget it.” He went back to the Prelude in C, now the old friend. Daisy stretched, holding onto the piano, the other hand holding her long leg straight to twelve o’clock high. With difficulty Erik kept his eyes on the music.

“Who else is musical in your family,” she asked, breathing into the stretch.

“My mom played most of her life,” he said. “And she used to give lessons in our house. She’d put me in the playpen next to the piano, and then my brother, too.”

“How old is your brother?”

“Sixteen. He’s deaf. I mean, he’s a lot of things but, incidentally, he’s deaf.”

“Was he born deaf?” She was holding her extended leg behind her now, slowly inclining forward.

“No, he had meningitis when he was a baby.”

“Oh.” Her head and shoulders disappeared from view as she pitched enough to put her hands on the floor. Just her foot in its pointe shoe left in the air. Her voice floated up. “It must have been hard on your parents.”

“Well, for my mother it was. My father left us and she had to go back to work.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a nurse. And now she’s getting her Master’s in speech pathology.”

She resurfaced, ponytail askew, face flushed from being upside-down. “I see.”

“Anyway, my father leaving was the end of her giving music lessons, and we were so broke, she ended up selling the piano.”

“So how did you play, who gave you lessons then?”

“I went to the Y after school until sixth grade. A woman there worked with me, and I could play every day. Then I would just hang around the school music rooms and bang on the piano any chance I got. I kept up with it until maybe sophomore year, then I got more into guitar.”

Daisy put her foot onto the piano and extended her torso over her leg. “Your father left you?” she asked, forehead on her knee.

He nodded. “Went out one night and never came back.”

She looked up. “After a fight with your mother, you mean?”

“No. He just left.”

Slowly she took her leg down and put both hands on the piano lid. “How old were you?”

“Eight.”

“You haven’t seen your father since you were eight?”

He shook his head.

“No word. No contact. No nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Daisy’s eyes looked right and left before coming back to his. “Is he alive?”

Erik turned a page, then he looked over at her, looked into the blue-green eyes studying him so intently. He was surprised he had revealed this to someone he barely knew. Normally this was the card he kept closest to his chest. Yet something about Daisy looking at him, her expression calm and interested, sympathetic but not pitying, tactfully curious, seemed to be reaching into the tangle of emotions comprising the experience of being so cruelly deserted, and gently drawing out a thread.

“My mom still gets child support payments for my brother,” he said, sliding his fingers up and down the slick keys. “But they come through a lawyer’s office. I suppose if they’re still coming then he’s still alive. But I really have no idea.”

“He doesn’t send money for you?”

“Not anymore, I’m nineteen.”

Her delicate eyebrows wrinkled. “That is,” she said slowly, “such a violent thing. For a parent to disappear. Emotionally violent. It just stops a story dead in the middle. Like you turn the page and there are no more pages. What do you do with the story?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “It becomes a different story.”

She nodded, her delicate eyebrows raised. “Your story.”

He had stopped playing, and a hush fell over them. For a long moment, while she was leaning her chin on her hand atop the piano lid, and his hands rested lightly on the keys, they stared at each other. The stage, the wings, the maw of the theater and its rows of seats and ornamental moldings, all receded. The air about them shimmered, drew in, coalesced into a bubble. They looked at each other, breathing together, long past a socially acceptable interval. It was far beyond the border where Erik normally would have dropped his gaze, cracked a joke or at least a smile.

She’s peaceful,
he thought, and her eyes widened slightly, as if she had heard him. He leaned a little further into her stillness, found he trusted it. And the trust coaxed from him yet another secret:

“My real name’s Byron,” he said. “It’s his name, too. My father’s. Byron Erik.”

“You probably didn’t want to be his junior anymore.”

“No.”

She smiled, and the blue of her gaze deepened. “My real name is Marguerite.”

“Is that why David calls you Marge?”

She nodded, then held up a warning finger.

He put his palms up, indicating he wouldn’t dare. “Where does Daisy come from?”

“Marguerite means daisy in French. It’s what they call the flowers.”

“Your family’s from France?”

“Both my parents. I was born here.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“Only me.”

“Only you,” he said. He wanted to kiss her.

She put a foot up on the piano. “Try the Prelude again,” she said. And she kept stretching her long limbs as he picked his way through it once more. Not perfectly. But a good boy doing fine.