The Man I Love (12 page)

John Quillis was twenty but looked fourteen. He had copper red hair, a wholesome Boy Scout expression and to his everlasting torment, the conservatory had christened him “Opie.” To compound the pre-pubescent image, his voice was still making up its mind about changing. It cracked when he got excited or upset, or just decided not to show up at all.

He appeared in the doorway of the set shop in Mallory one afternoon, waving at Erik to come over. “Daisy’s hurt,” he said, his voice skittering.

“What happened?” Erik said. “Where is she?”

“In the training room. It’s her ankle.”

“Leo, I gotta go,” Erik called. Still wearing his work gloves and safety goggles, he headed out the shop door. “What happened?”

John was pale under his freckles as he trotted to keep up. “James dropped her.”

“On purpose?”

“I don’t know what the hell to think. She was jumping and turning into arabesque. It’s a blind leap and she has to trust he’ll be there to catch her. Dude, he wasn’t even looking. Two of us yelled his name and then Dais was on the floor.”

Erik stopped. “Hold up. Let me ask you something.”

“What?”

“Do you think he was high?”

John opened his mouth, then shut it and looked away. “I can’t go to court with anything but I know he’s been hanging with a crowd who does a lot of pills. Uppers. Ecstasy. That kind of thing.”

“Great,” Erik muttered. He started walking again. They reached the second floor and headed down the hall where the training room was. “Is Lucky working today?”

“Yeah. She’s got Dais’s foot in an ice bath. But she needs to get it x-rayed. Plus she took the weight of the fall with her hand. Her little finger might be broken.”

“I’ll fucking kill James,” Erik said. It was out of his mouth before the thought was finished in his head.

“Well, take a number,” John said. “I wouldn’t want to be him walking home tonight.”

Daisy was sitting in a chair, her left foot in a deep basin filled with ice water. Her left hand was cradled in her lap, also wrapped in ice. Will was sitting next to her but he got up when he saw Erik. “Give me your stuff,” he said, holding out a hand. Erik pulled off his gloves and goggles, handed them over.

“Hey,” he said, sitting down and sliding his arm around Daisy’s back. She tilted her head against his kiss but didn’t look at him. She didn’t look at anyone or anything, just straight down at her foot. Her eyes were steel blue and her lips pressed into a tight line.

Lucky came over with Max Tremaine, who ran the athletic training department. “I want her in the ice another ten minutes,” he said. “Then let’s take her over to the health center and get it x-rayed. I don’t think it’s broken. Probably a bad sprain. Who’s got a car?”

“I do. I’ll take her,” Erik said.

“I’ll go with,” Lucky said.

“Does it hurt bad?” Erik asked Daisy.

“I’ll be all right,” she said dully. Her jaw twitched a little. Erik could see how hard she was thinking, calculating recovery time and contingency plans. He kept his palm flat between her shoulder blades, not patting or stroking her. Such caresses would only make her crazy. Everything and everybody just needed to be still so she could think.

He watched as Lucky unwrapped the ice pack from Daisy’s hand. Her little finger was red and swollen. A bit of bloodied gauze fell away and Erik winced when he saw the nail torn to the quick. Lucky whisked the gauze away and wrapped a fresh one around the fingertip. “Put the ice back on, honey,” she said.

Erik kissed Daisy’s head again. “I’ll get the car. Be right back.” He stood up, motioning to Will, who followed him out into the hall.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m gonna kill him.”

“I’ll handle it.” Will’s arms were crossed, the fingers of one hand drumming nervously on his bicep.

“I thought you were handling it.”

“Fish—”

“Don’t ‘Fish’ me, all right? I’ve stayed out it. I’ve been sympathetic. I’ve minded my business. But now he’s screwed up over you to the point of coming to rehearsal high and injuring my girlfriend. Now the sympathy ends and it starts being my business.”

“I’ll take care of this.”

“I don’t want him anywhere near her.”

“I don’t either but I can’t control this, Fish. Thinking he was high doesn’t prove he was. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. What he’s going to dance or who with.”

Erik looked at him a moment, at the crossed arms and twitching fingers, knowing Will didn’t fidget unless he was upset. “You gonna rough him up?”

Will didn’t look away. “I’ll do what I have to.”

“Jesus.” Erik exhaled, rolling his eyes. “I gotta get my car.”

* * *

The ankle wasn’t broken or sprained, just badly wrenched. Ice and a week’s rest were prescribed. A bone in her little finger had a hairline fracture. All they could do was tape it tight to the ring finger to stabilize it. The torn-off nail was more painful.

Everyone waited to see what, if any, disciplinary action would be taken against James. It turned out to be unnecessary: four days after Daisy was injured, mid-semester grades came out. Once again, James came in under the required 2.0. No appeal this time. He was dismissed from his roles and put on academic probation. Shunned and shamed, he skulked from class to class, head down, hugging the wall. Erik didn’t know if Will had roughed him up or not. He didn’t care. He was too worried about Daisy.

The fall had spooked her badly. John was going to learn James’s part in “The Man I Love” but rehearsals didn’t go well. Daisy was tentative on her ankle, hesitating at key moments. She couldn’t mesh with John and it made him nervous and balky. He zigged and she zagged. Then he was terrified she would fall and he would grab at her, throwing her off. After an agonizing and frustrating week, John knocked at the door of Jay Street, looking for Daisy.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he said. “And I’m going to Marie tomorrow and telling her what everyone already knows.”

“Which is?” Daisy said.

“You need to dance ‘The Man I Love’ with Will.”

Will got up from the couch. “Ope, come on. You can dance it.”

“I know I can dance it, but it won’t be what it should.” He saw Daisy about to get up and pointed at her. “You sit. Stay off that ankle.”

Daisy’s lips twitched as she suppressed a laugh. John had matured considerably the past few months. He was standing taller, exuding confidence. Looking and acting a lot like Will, Erik thought.

“You worked hard,” Daisy said. “I feel terrible you keep getting all these chances taken away.”

“One chance got taken away last fall. But I got a matinee out of it. And now I am gifting this chance to the person who should have it. Look, Dais, I have years ahead of me. This is Will’s last concert and it’s your last concert with him. Let me do this.” The plea was impassioned, but John’s voice didn’t skitter once. Like John, it had made up its mind.

“Opie, you’re a prince,” Will said. “But I don’t know if Marie will—”

John held up a finger. “One, don’t fucking call me Opie. Two, I got this. What, you think you’ve cornered the market on charm, Kaeger?”

“The puppy bites,” Erik said under his breath.

Will crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. “Well. I’ll just sit my schooled ass down.”

“And I’m getting up,” Daisy said, rising from the couch. “Come here and hug me, Opie.”

John blushed. “Fine, you can call me Opie,” he said, going over and hugging her. “Next year, no more Richie Cunningham bullshit.”

“Next year you will be the fucking Fonz,” Will said.

“Damn right, bucko.”

John went into Marie’s office with charm and a solution. He and Will switched roles: Will would dance “The Man I Love” with Daisy and John took Will’s place with Taylor Revell.

“Was Taylor all right with it?” Erik asked. He was walking Daisy up to the studios for rehearsal.

“She was,” Daisy said. “She was a complete sweetheart. Plus…” Daisy checked back over her shoulder and leaned in confidentially. “I think she digs Opie.”

“Win-win.” He slid his arm around her, brushing his mouth along her head. “Are you happy now? Happier?”

“Much.” They lingered outside the studio door, kissing, until Will came out and broke up the clinch.

“Ease off, Fish,” he said. “Excessive snogging makes her stupid.”

“I’m just getting into character,” Daisy said, smiling and letting herself be led away.

At Marie’s invitation, Erik sat on the floor to watch a few minutes and John sat by him.

“The Man I Love” was an elegant, romantic piece. Sensual, but in an understated way. While first rehearsing it with James, Daisy had said the partnering was a bitch. John had agreed. Now Erik watched as Will wrapped his body around the steps. It was odd to see him struggle. Both he and Daisy were struggling. As they deconstructed one particularly difficult lift, Will’s brow kept twisting in concentration and Daisy had on her war room expression. Erik looked on, fascinated, as they worked it out with Marie, flailing, dismantling physics. Gradually they stopped talking, and then stopped thinking.

Erik watched Daisy poised in the far corner of the studio. She was in her soft slippers, an elastic brace on her left ankle. She gathered her body and ran to Will and caught his hand. He lunged, weight low, as she threw her leg over his back, rolled like a cartwheel and came to a dead stop, poised on his shoulder in arabesque. In previous tries she held his hand for support. This time she let go right away. Her arms free, she relied completely on Will to turn momentum into stillness, convert the roll over his back into a pose on his shoulder. And he did it hands-free.

“How do you do that?” John said, holding his head. “How do you stop her right there? Jesus, I wanted to shoot myself with this lift.”

Will bent his knees and put Daisy down, not letting go until she had both feet on the floor. “I feel it,” he said. “She’s got those sharp hip bones. I feel them roll over my back and I catch the left one with my shoulder blade. Come here, Ope.”

John went into the lunge and Will picked up Daisy as if she were a pillow, put her precisely on John’s back, fitting her like a puzzle piece. “Feel her hip bone?”

“I do,” John said. He raised and lowered his weight a few times and Daisy moved up and down with him easily, the pose unwavering. John looked over at Erik and his expression turned sly. “Now you, Fish. C’mere.”

“You’re not picking me up,” Erik said, laughing.

“No, dumbass. Put Daisy on your back.”

“Go on,” Marie said. “Try it.”

Erik crossed his arms. “I already know how her hip bones feel.”

Daisy’s head whipped around. “Don’t give away trade secrets, Byron.”

To loud laughter, Erik got up from the floor. “And that’s my cue to exit,” he said with a wave to all. “I’ll be down in the shop.”

As he walked down to the basement, he whistled the refrain of “The Man I Love.” He felt suffused with relief. Knowing Will was partnering Daisy made the pieces of the universe shift back into proper place. Still, once in the shop, helping David wire the tiny lights outlining the buildings of the Manhattan skyline set, Erik wanted to double the number of bulbs. He wanted a ton of light in pink and red and blue to flood out the past couple of weeks.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Erik and Daisy were startled off the edge of sleep by Lucky. She was calling out her lover’s name but not in the throes of passion. “William,” she said, from the hall right outside Daisy’s door. Her voice was a blade, slicing the peace of the slumbering little house.

“The hell?” Erik muttered, picking up his head.

“William, can you get up and explain to me why James is standing out in the backyard?”

Daisy picked up her head. “What?”

“What?” Will’s voice came from Lucky’s room, slurred with sleep.

“Mom?” Erik said and Daisy giggled against his back.

Lucky wasn’t amused. Her footsteps stomped down the hall and back again, in and out of the bathroom. “Your little friend is standing in the backyard, looking up at the windows.”

They stumbled into their respective doorways, half-dressed and blinking. Lucky stood outside the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, dignified and furious.

“What is he doing?” Erik asked.

“Well he’s not holding up a boom box playing ‘In Your Eyes.’ I would find that quite romantic. Right now it’s just creepy.” Lucky pushed her tongue into her cheek and looked daggers at Will. “Plus I like being able to walk naked through my kitchen without worrying about peeping Toms. I know he’s gay but I’m rather particular about who sees me in the altogether.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” Will said.

“No,” Erik said, holding up a hand and making a sudden decision. “Let me.”

“You?”

“You’ll make it worse. I’m human valium.” Before Will could protest or debate, Erik went downstairs. He unlocked the kitchen door and stepped onto the little back porch. The air was soft with the first breath of spring. A few peepers were having a late-night conversation.

He squinted into the yard. “James?”

A rustle by the hedge. Erik went down one step. “It’s Fish. Come on, James, I know you’re there. Come talk to me.”

James stepped out of the shadows. Hands thrust deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. He looked small. Lost and forlorn. A stray dog.

“You all right?” Erik asked.

“No.”

Feeling an odd sense of responsibility, Erik decided to take the time. Everyone had turned against James. Erik, too, was angry with him, but at the same time something in his heart couldn’t shut down completely. He knew James felt abandoned now. And it was the worst thing for him. Erik owed him nothing, yet he felt compelled to guide James back to a safe place for the night. “You want tea or something?”

James looked up, eyebrows wrinkled in shock. Then his face softened into teary disbelief, as if the act of kindness were too much. “No, I… No. Thank you.”

Erik sat down on the steps. He didn’t beckon to James, but made his body language inviting. James came closer and took a seat on the bottom step, wiping his wet face. He felt in his pockets absently. “I forgot my smokes.”

Erik went back inside and got the communal pack of cigarettes and lighter from the kitchen window ledge. Just in case this went long, he lit a burner on the stove and pushed the teakettle onto it.

Outside again, he gave James a cigarette and took one for himself.

“You don’t smoke,” James said.

“I save it for special occasions.”
And it levels the playing field,
he thought.
Come sit and share a bad habit. We’ll be as one in the same vice.

James closed his eyes as he pulled in the first drag, distilling the hit of nicotine. He exhaled a cloud. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You can’t come prowling around here at night. It doesn’t help to scare the shit out of Lucky and piss her off.”

“I know. But Will won’t talk to me.”

“Look, I know you care about him a lot—”

“I am in love with him, Fish, you don’t understand.”

“—but you can’t… I do understand.”

“You don’t,” James said, his eyes flaring. “You’re a baby, Fish. Yeah, your old man left, but so what? You grew up loved. You had a solid foundation to walk on. Now you live a fucking fairytale with Daisy and you tell me you understand? You never got beat up and abused for loving who you loved. You never got chewed up and spit out. You never had your heart broken. Wait until you lose Daisy one day then you come tell me you understand, all right?”

Erik kept his face neutral. He closed his heart and his pores, letting James’s words bead up on him but not penetrate. James was angry and ranting. Erik was a convenient target.

“I’m sorry,” James said, rubbing his forehead. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“It’s all right. You’re hurting. I know I don’t understand completely but I know what you’re feeling is real.”

James took a few more drags, exhaling raggedly. Tears tracked down his face and he made no move to wipe them away. “Thanks for coming outside.”

“No problem.”

“I always liked you, Fish. You don’t pretend to be something you’re not.”

“You think Will is pretending?”

“Don’t you?”

Erik shook his head. “He loves who he loves.”

James looked at him, squinting through smoke. “I think you’re the only man he loves.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“I do. You’re good, Fish. I know you’re pissed at me for letting Daisy get hurt and I don’t blame you. You had no reason to come out here but you did. You’re one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever met. And forgive me for saying this, but your old man’s an asshole and he doesn’t deserve you for a son anyway.”

Now Erik’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. “Damn, James. Heavy shit.”

“Well, it’s true shit.” James stubbed out his cigarette beneath the toe of his boot. He reached behind his head and drew out the ball chain with his sister’s dog tags. Erik could see his hands trembling. It took him a minute but he slid off the flattened penny and held it out to Erik. “I want you to have this.”

“No.”

“Take it.”

“This is yours, James. It’s your… No.”

“Please. You gave me the best of you tonight. This is the best of me.”

Catering to the moment, Erik took the shining copper oblong and put it in the pocket of his sweatpants. He wouldn’t keep it but he’d accept the gesture tonight. Hold it a few days and then return it once James realized the foolish drama of it. He’d keep the sentiment, not the token.

“I feel better knowing I’ll be in your pocket,” James said. “And I don’t mean that in a gay way.”

Erik smiled. From inside he heard the whistle of the teakettle. “You want a drink?”

“No.”

“Need a lift back to campus?”

“No, no. I’ve already bothered you enough. I’ll go away now.”

James stood up and Erik did likewise, stubbing out his own cigarette.

“Thanks, Fish.” James held out a formal hand and Erik shook it.

“You’re safe?”

“I’m good. Sorry to trouble you. All of you.”

“Well, you got to see Lucky naked. Night’s not a total loss.”

James chuckled. And with a wave he loped down the porch steps and out through the hedge.

Erik shut off the burner, locked the kitchen door, killed the porch light and went upstairs. He brushed his teeth and got into Daisy’s bed. She rolled up against his back, curling an arm around him, pressing her palm flat to his heart.

“All right?” she whispered drowsily.

“All right,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

“You’re so good. I love you.”

“I love you.”

And I am good.

He reached in his pocket and closed his fingers around the penny. He almost drew it out to put on the bedside table. But then he left it where it was and soon fell asleep.

The next morning, April 9, James was found unconscious on the bathroom floor of his dorm. In his hand was an empty bottle of prescription codeine belonging to his roommate. He was rushed to University Medical Center and survived the overdose. Then he was taken home to Greensburg.

It was ten days before Erik saw him again.