The Man I Love (40 page)

The text went on for pages, but the pictures now caught Erik’s eye. Children rehearsing. Stagehands constructing the tree. Then shots of Daisy and Will, dancing together in college: one from the Bach variations, another from
Who Cares?
Daisy in her poppy-pink dress.

Skimming the text, Erik turned the page. A beautiful black-and-white picture of Will and Lucky Dare. Lucky seated at a desk, poring over some papers with a chubby toddler boy on her lap. Will stood by, looking over her shoulder, a little girl on his hip. The caption read “A Family Affair: Will and Lucky Kaeger, with their children, just another day behind the scenes at NBBT.”

Erik turned the page. And there she was.

“This is now?” he asked. “This year?”

“Right now,” Kees said, his voice low and kind.

Daisy. Right now.

A full-page color shot of her rehearsing, or perhaps teaching. Daisy in a practice tutu. Posed in a long, leaning arabesque, supported by Will. Behind them clustered pairs of dancers, some mirroring the pose, some simply observing. Will’s head was turned back toward them. Daisy’s head was turned forward and her mouth was parted—clearly she was talking through the reflection in the mirror to the couples behind her.

Without being aware he was doing it, Erik’s finger traced the line of Daisy’s pose.

Line,
Kees had taught him,
is the picture the body makes in the air.

Daisy’s long legs, feet arched and curved in their pointe shoes. Her black tights came down mid-shin, and Erik could see part of one scar along the top of her left calf. Her feet bare inside pointe shoes. Will’s hands at her waist, his left hand nearest the camera, with its two missing digits. Erik noticed he wore his gold wedding band on his index finger.

He continued the path of his own finger, up the song of Daisy’s neck and shoulders. Her hair pulled up with those same small curls falling out. Her face was more angular, her eyes a little circled. But beneath the twin arches of her brows, those impossibly blue-green irises blazed with a passion. She was in her element, vibrant and alive.

She was beautiful.

Erik traced her arms, slim and curved, reaching out and away from her, extended without break to the ends of her nails. Her left hand nearest the camera: a bracelet encircled her wrist but her fingers were bare.

“I said look at it. Don’t eat it.”

Erik looked up, blinked.

“You talk to her?” Kees asked.

Erik shook his head, closing the pages.

“Ever?”

“No.” Lightly he tossed the magazine back onto Kees’s desk. Kees stared back at him, calm, relaxed, arms crossed.

“Why not?”

Erik stood up. “I need a couple of beers for this conversation. Are you still buying?”

“What if I wasn’t?”

“Then I’d buy.”

Kees released an arm and gestured to the door.

They went into town, got beers and burgers, sat and ate at the bar.

“Wat denk je, mijn vriend?”

“Did you know Daisy slept with David?”

“Of course I knew.”

“You did?”

“I’m the gay dance teacher. I know everything. Except, for the life of me I can’t figure out when you became such a stubborn, vindictive, unforgiving ass.”

Erik stared. Kees calmly chewed and swallowed, took a pull of beer and stared back. “Quite the déjà vu,” he said. “Day after the memorial ceremony I took Daisy to lunch. She’s made a beautiful life for herself but didn’t take a genius to see her guts are still shredded up over you. Then I had to take Opie out to dinner and hear his sob story. I tell you, Fish, if I keep up this free counseling, I’m going to end up broke and fat.”

Erik put his burger back down on the plate. “What’s your hourly fee?”

“You’re cute so I’ll take you on pro bono. Talk to me, Fish. What are you really doing here?”

Erik took a long sip of his beer. He was approaching a crossroads. Daisy occupying every waking and sleeping thought. Everything in him knew it was time to stop clutching his pearls and start living the truth. And yet he was frozen. He was waiting for a comet in the sky or the tea leaves in his mug to arrange themselves into a guide. He needed something. Someone to show him.

Or bless him.

“Lately, Kees, I’ve been thinking a lot about the first dance concert I worked. All those nights of tech week when I sat with you, and you taught me about dance. And about partnering.”

“You were like a sponge, I remember. Watching Daisy and Will, you were consumed with knowing the mechanics of everything, how they did it, how it worked. So why is it coming back to you now? What’s the grand lesson within the art of partnering, my friend?”

“I was watching lifts, and you told me going up was easy, coming down was hard.”

“True.”

“And you said Daisy was a generous and forgiving partner.”

“Also true.”

“And I’m not.”

Kees looked him up and down. “You’re better than this.”

“I don’t think I ever got over her,” Erik said.

“Of course you didn’t. You never finished it. You just left.”

“She—”

Kees pointed a long finger at him. “You left,” he said again. “You chose to leave. Just sit there and own it.”

“You sound like my ex-wife.”

“She sounds like a smart lady.”

“She’s black.”

Kees’s nostrils flared. “And? What, are we brothers now or something?”

Erik’s face burned. “Sorry.”

“You are still a kid. Jesus. A mature man would’ve fixed this with one phone call.”

“Hey, I made that call and Opie answered the phone.”

“When? Eight, nine years ago? Come on, enough with the excuses, Fish. You were hurt, it’s not up for debate. But your marriage fell apart, you look like death on a stick and you’re sitting here putting your heart on my plate. I’m not hungry for what went wrong. I wanna know what your next move is.”

“I don’t know what it is. I just know I can’t move, period.”

“What can’t you move on from—the infidelity? Or her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, from what I can put together, she didn’t cheat on you because she was an uncaring slut. Or hell, what do I know? She probably was a raving bitch in heat who would fuck anything in pants.”

“Jesus, she was n—”

“Forget it. She’s a cunt. Don’t waste your time.”

He flinched. “Knock it off.”

Kees pointed at him. “See? That tells me you’re willing to dissect the situation. Look, Fish, it sucks when someone cheats on you, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be an unforgivable offense.
Certain
mitigating circumstances apply here.”

“I know.”

“Do you? What are you holding onto? What can you just not let go of?”

“I don’t know.” He wanted to arm-sweep the bar, send plates and glasses flying out of sheer frustration.

“Do you miss her?”

“Yes.”

“What do you miss?”

“I don’t know, Kees, I just know I can’t find it.”

“Bullshit. This is Daisy. You know damn well what it is.”

Erik pulled his hands along the crown of his head. “I cannot find the peace I had when I was with Daisy. When I was with her, my
cells
were happy. I miss looking in her eyes and everything else just disappearing. No other woman I’ve met can look at me and make time stop the way Daisy did. No other woman can talk to me without saying a damn word. Daisy was my soul mate and I miss her.”

“What if she were back in your life a little bit? What if she knew where you were and what you were doing and you knew where she was? And you were both just in touch and up to date with each other? Maybe not best friends but friendly.”

“I guess,” he said. A grudging concession.

“Or is it all or nothing, you sulky infant?” Kees said, smiling.

Erik looked at him, then sank his head into his hands. “God, growing up sucks.”

Kees laughed deep in his chest and ruffled Erik’s hair. “Do you want to tell her how badly you were hurt? Have her witness it? You know, like it or not, Fish, she’s made you the man you are. Do you want to tell her?”

Erik lifted his face out of his palms. “I think I do.”

“And when she asks for your forgiveness—and she will—can you give it? Is it forgivable?”

“I don’t kn—”

“Goddammit, stop saying that. Tell me what you know. You turned your back on her, now what the fuck do you
want,
man?”

“I want…to turn around.”

Kees’ hand circled in the air, encouraging him. “Turn around, good. Face her. Confront the issue.”

“Yes.”

“Not even confront. Have a conversation about it. You can’t have the screaming match you were entitled to twelve years ago. But you can talk like two adults.”

“Yes.”

“Do it then.” Kees put his hand on Erik’s forearm. “What are you waiting for? You of all people know how tenuous life is. Five memorial plaques are hanging backstage, another one for Marie in the lobby. Any one of them could have Daisy’s name on it. Or how would you have felt listening to the radio show and hearing Daisy had cancer? What if she died, Fish, and never knew you thought about her all these years? How would a bowl of regret taste to you?”

Erik took a deep breath. “You’re right.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? She tells you ‘Hit the road, I couldn’t care less what you think of me or how often. It’s too late and oh, by the way, I’ve become a lesbian? I’m married?’ What, Fish? What would be the worst thing, tell me.”

“Wait. Go back to the lesbian thing?”

Kees balled up his napkin and bounced it off Erik’s head. “You are a child. Grow up, Fish. Call her. Call her or I will fucking kill you. There’s your motivation. Now finish your damn lunch. Good Lord, when I grab a man’s ass I want to feel something.”

“I swear, nobody makes me blush like you.”

“Shut up and eat.”

Dutifully, Erik started eating again. It was cold.

“Bowl of rejection,” Kees was saying. “Or bowl of regret. That’s what it comes down to, those are your choices. Which will taste worse? You ask me, rejection sucks, but you can choke it down. Regret will give you food poisoning for the rest of your life.”

Erik returned to New York with a gnawing, insatiable hunger. A grandmother’s delight. He ate all day long, putting on the good kind of weight. Gearing up for a fight.

Miles and Janey Kelly hosted him for Thanksgiving. Not three hours after the feast, he was trawling through the bag of goodies Janey had sent him home with. He was making himself a turkey sandwich, slicing it across when he miscalculated and cut himself.

He hated cutting himself. Even after all these years, the reaction to blood remained a visceral thing. Normally he’d work quickly to staunch and bandage a cut, averting his eyes to just the bare minimum of attention needed, but tonight, for some reason, he didn’t. He stood over the sink, bleeding quietly. And watching. He just let it flow. Thought about what was happening microscopically under his skin. The infantry charge of platelets. The ambulance corps of white blood cells. The endorphins coming in on the flank, so actually, no, it didn’t really hurt.

What was he so afraid of?

Miles’s panting words as they jogged:
At some point you just gotta start living the truth of who you are and what you feel.

Kees’s encouraging voice at the bar:
What are you waiting for? What’s the worst that could happen?

Melanie’s cry of rage as a plate smashed in pieces on the wall:
You don’t fight for anything you love.

The minutes ticked by. He set down the knife and stared at his finger, at the blood now making small, watery rivulets in the sink. An empty white plate was on the counter, patiently awaiting its snack. He reached toward it, and with the red ink of his wounded finger he began to sketch the letters of his name.

She’s made you the man you are.

He looked at the
Erik
written on the plate. He reached his finger again and wrote, just above it,
Byron.

You did to her what your father did to you.

He zig-zagged through the names until they were just streaks of blood.

All the major events of his life were marked by blood: the blood of gunshot wounds, the blood of Lucky’s lost baby, David’s blood spraying from under his fists. And one more. A last treasure lay buried back in the fortress of sexual memory. Whole, intact, preserved in golden amber: his name in red letters, written in blood on Daisy’s leg.

The night he slid into her body and sealed his fate.

The night he marked her in blood.

“I marked her,” he said. “But I didn’t fight for her.”

You don’t fight for anything.

When he fought David, there wasn’t a prize. It was punitive damage. He beat him up on principle, just to soothe his wounded pride. He fought for himself, not for Daisy. And then he left.

You chose to leave. Just sit there and own it.

You walk out, shut the door, shut it down and never look back.

You stubborn, vindictive, unforgiving ass.

You spineless victim.

You sulky infant.

“I’m too late,” he whispered. “It’s too late. It’s got to be too late.”

Rejection or regret, that’s what it comes down to.

What if it were Daisy with cancer?

What if she died?

He paced the kitchen, his heart pounding. What if Daisy were nowhere? He had toyed with the idea once, thinking it would make things easier. Now he dug into the image, played it out. Daisy dead. Gone from the earth, erased entirely from existence. A plaque on the wall or a stone in the earth. He saw it then—saw
Marguerite Bianco
chiseled into pink granite, a bouquet of daisies lying beside.

And she never knew you thought about her all these years.

He bandaged up his finger then switched on his PC, searching phone listings. It didn’t take long to find Joe and Francine were still in Bird-in-Hand.

He picked up the phone.

His chest felt flayed.

You’re a hero, not a victim.

He had left the lighting booth. When everyone ran away from the stage he left the booth and went toward it. When people screamed, he spoke calmly, calling James’s name. And when James held up a gun, Erik held up a penny.

He could do this.

You marked her. Go fight for her.

Because you can’t breathe without her.

Slowly he drew air into his aching lungs, distilled the strength from it, then let go what he didn't need back into world. He did it again, filling the reservoir, tossing the ballast overboard.

Going up is easy. Coming down is the hard part.

You’re a hero, not a victim.

He had this.

You’re good. Your heart is huge. Your love is amazing.

You are generous and forgiving.

He dialed.