The Man I Love (23 page)

Without fail, the Biancos always cut down their Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving.

Snow was in the forecast. Already a cold snap had moved in with a nasty wind chill. Daisy decided to bail. Being outdoors on such a day would make her leg miserable. If she weren’t going, Erik didn’t want to either. Francine, with a mysterious expression, said she had errands to run. Everyone else bundled up, piled into Joe’s truck and headed out. The tree farm was by Sadsbury, which meant they’d be driving through the infamous village of Intercourse. David was beside himself and Joe promised to pull over by the signpost so a picture could be taken.

Daisy went into the kitchen to wash up the lunch dishes. Erik sidled up behind her, slid his arms around her waist, hugging her.

“You’re such a mush,” she said, rubbing her cheek on his head.

“I am,” he said. He moved her hair, kissed her neck, hugged her against him again. He was only having a moment, wanting to hold her, but then Daisy started unbuttoning her shirt. She tilted her head, giving him more of her neck, her fingers finishing the last button and parting the lapels. He slid his palms over her soft skin, unhooking her bra. She turned in his arms and they kissed, groaning open-mouthed with their hands everywhere, seizing it.

She unbuckled and unzipped him, put a hand down his pants. Those strangely disconnected wires came together with a sizzle and he was hard, closed up tight in her fist and wanting. His fingers yanked her jeans open, slid deep and found she was wet, spreading for him, ready.

They kissed and clutched, writhing in a fevered celebration. It hadn’t been this way in a long time. This was good. Possibly this could be great.

Holding their clothes together, they ran through the cold to the carriage house. The little rooms were frigid, so they went into the shower and steamed the hell out of the place. Erik’s hands ran in soapy strokes all over Daisy’s body, with its new weight and the hard curves under wet, silken skin. Within the grappling passion they were relaxed, completely turned on, turned further and further into each other. They were themselves again. Finally.

Erik picked her up, pressed her up against the tiles, her butt resting on the soap ledge and her toes braced on the other wall. He pinned her high so he could lick her breasts. He moved in her. Out of her. Water and desire crashing on his skin. Perfect.

“Oh God, that’s good,” Daisy said. A little hitch in her voice as he thrust deeper. She held his wet head, turned his face this way and that as she kissed him. She touched his mouth and he sucked on her fingertips.

“You’re so tight,” he whispered.

“It’s so good.” The air was falling out of her voice. She was going somewhere. He could feel it. Her eyes were filled with green.

“Come,” he said against her mouth. “I want to see you come.”

“I feel you,” she whispered. “I can feel you again.”

He was pure grace. A master of her body again. It was like throwing a line out, feeling the hook catch the edge of her climax and reeling it in. Poised on the lip of his own desire, he pushed further into her as he slowly wound the line tighter. Listening for it, feeling for it, waiting for her edge to touch his. It was almost there. Just right there.

“Erik…”

“Come, Dais. Come to me.”

Through her mouth like a distant wind blew the sweet sound of no sound. Usually Erik jumped, following it. Now he just let their joined edges crumble away from his feet, let himself dissolve and come with an exquisite slowness. Hard and loud he moaned into her neck as she clung to his shoulders, riding out the tremors.

“Jesus,” he said between the aftershocks.

Her fingers dug deep in his wet hair and she kissed him, laughing deep in her throat. “Now that was us.”

“Totally us.” His arms were spent and he set her down. She took the bar of soap and started working a lather over his body, her hands warm and slippery along his chest and stomach and limbs. He soaped her, then, and they wound arms around each other, sliding and kissing, sending tiny iridescent bubbles through the damp air.

“Now I don’t feel bad missing the trip to Intercourse,” Erik said as they dried off. Daisy laughed and popped him with the towel.

Sleepy and sated, they peeled open the covers of their bed and slid in. They lay on their sides, Daisy up against Erik’s back, her hand on his chest.

“Oh, look,” she said. Outside the window, it had started to snow, little icy flakes like glitter, not yet sticking.

Perfect peace. No anxiety. Not a wolf in sight. Pressed tight between Daisy’s body and the palm of her hand, Erik felt his bones melt away. A sweet sleep, sweeter than he’d known in months, began to creep over the crown of his head. It laid soothing fingers on his eyes, wove a gorgeous warmth through his muscles.

This,
was his last wakeful thought.
This moment. Right here.

Right now.

This is my life.

* * *

They napped a long time. Everyone zonked out in the snowy afternoon, and eventually wandered back into the kitchen for another laughing, boozy dinner.

“Can’t we just stay here,” Lucky said yet again. She sighed happily, tucked in Will’s arms and peeling one of the little clementine oranges from a bowl on the table. His chin rested on her shoulder as he ate the sections she fed him.

“I’m in,” David said. “Screw the theater, I’ll raise chickens.”

They joked around, elaborating the fantasy, but Erik felt serious about it. Still high from sex and refreshed by good sleep, he was firmly under the spell of this wonderful house. He was shaping a dream, a sweet vista unfolding before him. A house like this, a kitchen like this, dinners like this with friends like these. A lifetime of fuck-the-turkey Thanksgivings.

With Daisy.

After dinner they set up the tree. Will built a fire and Joe put on Christmas music. He had an ironclad rule forbidding any holiday songs produced after 1959. The living room filled up with the scent of pine and all the vintage, old school standards. Daisy sang and smiled as she passed ornaments up to Erik on the ladder. When Nat King Cole came on, David serenaded them with his version of the Christmas Song:

Roast nuts chesting on an open fire.

Nipfrost jacking off your nose.

Yuletide Carol getting laid by the choir…

The smell of baking began to waft as well. “You remember the errand I ran today?” Francine said. With a flourish, she brought a book out from behind her back and showed the title to Erik—
Lights of the North: Swedish Christmas Traditions.

“Does it have pepparkakor?” he asked, flipping the pages.

It did, and they were in the oven. Before anyone else was allowed, Francine and Erik tasted them carefully.

“Yes,” Francine said.

“I remember these,” Erik said. “Wait. Something else. You’re supposed to break them. Everybody take one, don’t eat it yet.”

He remembered. You held the cookie in the palm of your hand, made a wish and pressed down on the center. “If it breaks in three pieces,” he said, “your wish will come true.”

“What if it doesn’t break in three?” David asked.

“You still have cookies.” Erik looked around the room at his circle of loved ones, then down at the treat in his palm. Happiness pulled his chest apart. He threw it onto his growing vision of the future. How every Christmas, Francine Bianco would make pepparkakor for him, a tin of rounds flecked with citrus and heat, golden and crisp with memory.

This,
he wished, and pressed his finger onto the cookie, which broke cleanly into three pieces. Daisy moved by his side, eyes shining as she held up her hand and showed him her own triumphant thirds.

Later he lay in bed, Daisy’s head pillowed on his heart, his hand resting on her cheek. They had made love again and it was gorgeous. Sweet and spicy like the cookie flavors lingering in their mouths. The night was gentle around their spent bodies. And Erik whispered, “Do you ever think about marrying me?”

The curve of Daisy’s smile filled his palm. “If I marry anyone, it’ll be you,” she said.

He scooped up a handful of her hair and held it to his face. He smiled into its damp softness, his tongue tingling with orange zest and pepper and Daisy.

“I want to dance ‘The Man I Love’ again,” Daisy said.

Erik was startled, thinking it was the last thing she’d want. “Why?”

A ripple of defiance along Daisy’s jaw and her eyes flared. “Because fuck him. That’s why.”

It was early January, the beginning of another semester. The two couples were at Jay Street, having pizza and discussing the advent of the spring dance concert.

Will stopped chewing, looking at Daisy. Then he slowly swallowed his food, nodding his head. “Three months,” he said. “We have three months.”

“You’re physically ready?” Erik asked.

Daisy nodded. “I can do it.”

Lucky was only picking at her dinner. She didn’t seem to be feeling well. “Are you mentally ready?” she asked.

“I am.” Daisy looked at Will. “I need to dance it. Otherwise, it’s…”

Will put his hand on her head. “I’m in,” he said. “I want this. And you’re right. Fuck him.”

“What does Kees say?” Erik asked.

“He’s on board with the idea,” Daisy said. “But he has to get permission from the trust.”

Who Cares?
was copyrighted and could not be performed anywhere without express permission of the Balanchine Trust. Marie Del’Amici had gone to great lengths to secure permission last year. All Kees could do was ask again.

“We got it,” Daisy told Erik a few days later, coming down to the basement set shops to jump in his arms. “The trust will let us do it. Kees had a meeting with Michael Kantz and it’s final, we’ll dance it.”

“Nothing else?”

“For me? No. It’s enough. No heroics, just the one pas de deux with Will.”

“Well, I call it pretty heroic,” Erik said.

He was busy with his own project: an art student wanted to present his senior portfolio in the Black Box Theater, making an interactive, multi-medium experience of art, poetry, music and light. Erik was commissioned as lead designer. It felt good to be immersed in the creative process, getting his hands dirty, getting his mind dirty, helping someone build a dream.

Class. Rehearsals. He worked, and Daisy worked. They came home at night to Jay Street where the two couples were living all the time. David came over almost every evening. John Quillis was a regular visitor. They took care of each other.

“Lucky’s pregnant,” Daisy whispered in bed, one night toward the end of January.

“I know, Will told me. Said the condom broke over Thanksgiving.”

“Lucky doesn’t want to have it.”

“And Will does.”

“It’s the exact opposite of what I expected. I thought she’d be the one to…”

“So did I.”

She sighed, moved closer up against Erik’s back. Her fingers played with the charms on his necklace. “I guess it’s one of those things where you think you’ll feel one way, and then it happens, and it’s all different.”

“I think it’s the shooting,” he whispered. “Life is so tenuous. Lucky’s afraid of it and Will wants to fight it.”

“You’re right.”

“I feel terrible,” he said in the dark.

“I feel helpless.”

“Nothing we can do. Except just be here. Be ready to do what they need when they need it.”

A week went by, a week of tense, whispered conversations and the sound of tears through thin walls. Will was spending nights alone at Colby Street. Jay Street felt immobilized for war. Poised and braced, balanced on a single eggshell. Wolves paced on the horizon, primed for the hunt.

Erik woke up one night, not to tears or wolves, but a warm thickness in his blood, a pleasantly familiar feeling in his lap. Daisy had a hand down his sweatpants, stroking a very cheerful erection.

“Good evening,” she whispered against his temple.

“What’s up,” he said, his eyes closed.

“You.”

“How ‘bout that.”

“This is impressive.”

“Thank you,” he said, his voice still slurred with sleep. “I worked a long time on it.”

She was pushing his pants down his hips, and pulling him toward her. “You should put that in me.”

“I should, right?”

“Yes.”

They rolled. She was pulling her own clothes away and aside. Half asleep, he took her by the waist and languidly worked himself into her heat. Her breath left her chest with a dry little puff as her butt settled into his lap. Sweetness radiated off the nape of her neck.

“I love when you wake me up,” he murmured. He slid his hand under her shirt, filled it with one warm breast. She sighed and pushed further back into his lap.

And then a startling noise from outside their door, a knocking into the wall. A human sound. They flinched a little, then froze in the embrace. Daisy looked back over her shoulder guiltily. Erik put a finger to his lips.

Footsteps. Another thump. Silence.

More silence.

Erik touched his fingertip to Daisy’s lips.  She drew it into her mouth and pushed back hard on him. He started to move in her again. Throwing out the hook, looking for her edge. Hot, wet, squeezing pressure all around him. Sugar. Skin.

Noise again, just beyond their door, and now a cry.

“Daisy.”

Daisy pushed up on her elbow, looked over at the door. “Luck?”

“Daisy.” Louder. Urgent. An edge of panic.

“Stay here,” Daisy whispered, pulling her shirt down and her pants up and hurrying out. Erik sat up, strained to hear something even as the sound of his own quickening heartbeat filled his ears.

“Oh my God. Erik, help me…”

He exploded out of bed, tying his own pants, tripped over something as he burst into the hallway. Daisy came flying out of the bathroom. “She’s having a miscarriage. I need to get Will, stay here with her.”

“Wait.” But she was down the stairs and seconds later, the back door slammed. Erik stared at the floor. The drops of blood on the scuffed wooden planks. A trail leading to the bathroom. His heartbeat grew louder, heavier, a sledgehammer against the inner wall of his chest. He had to go in there. He had to.

Do it. Now.

Blood like a constellation of stars across the white-tiled bathroom floor. Lucky sat on the toilet, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, hunched over, her face in her hands. Erik reeled back, hesitating. This was a bathroom. A private, insanely intimate place of bodily function and his entire instinct screamed at him to get out of here and leave the lady alone. Don’t embarrass her.

But this was Lucky. The same Lucky who got down in the blood on the stage floor and saved Daisy’s life.

Erik knelt down on the lilac shag rug and gathered her into his arms. She was weeping. “I changed my mind.”

“I got you, Lucky. I got you, hold onto me.”

“No, please, I changed my mind. Don’t let it—don’t let it happen, please, I changed my mind.”

But then a slow and steady dripping in the water beneath her, and she screamed against Erik’s shoulder, not in pain but in despair. Her whole body contracted desperately, trying to hold it back, hold onto the baby.

Erik yanked a bath towel from the rack, wrapped it around Lucky, hiding the bowl and her legs, trying to shroud this in some kind of dignity. He held her tight, she hung on his neck. It was too late.

“You gotta let it go, honey,” he whispered against her hair. “Let it go, Luck, hold onto me. Hold onto me, I got you. Let it go.”

Her body relaxed in his arms, he felt her surrender. Another cascade of drips, muffled beneath the towel, and Lucky buried her face in his neck, moaning like a wounded animal.

A commotion of footsteps up the stairs and Will was there then. He slid in on his knees, and Erik carefully handed Lucky off to him, scooting back and out of the way.

Will rocked her, holding her head safe on his chest. Lucky was sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Will picked up her face, kissed it all over. He was crying too, whispering, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, it’s all right.”

“I changed my mind, I wanted it.”

“I know. It’s all right. I just need you to be all right. I just need you. I just need you. It’s all right, Luck. I just need you…”

Erik helped Will put Lucky in his car to take her to the campus health center. He stood on the porch, watching the red tail lights disappear down the street and turn a corner.

They always leave in the middle of the night,
he thought.

He went back inside.

Daisy was in the little front hall, wrapped in a throw blanket and shivering. Erik shut the door, then lurched into her. She opened her arms and caught him. They slid down to the floor, clutching one another.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for helping her. You were so good. You were so good to her.”

He was shaking so hard his bones hurt. The thought of the blood in the bathroom was making him feel sick. “I can’t go back up there,” he whispered, filled with shame about it, feeling cowardly and weak but he couldn’t, he could not go back in there.

“What’s the matter? Tell me.”

“The blood. I can’t, Dais, I can’t do it again.”

“I’ll take care of it. No, no, it’s all right, I understand.” Her kisses on his face, her hands soothing on his head. “I’ll clean it up. It won’t upset me.”

The wolves were on him. They had him by all four limbs, one tearing open his chest, another devouring his belly, a third at his throat. They had him. “God, Dais, what’s happening to me?”

She wrapped him in the blanket, in her arms and legs, and her hair. “It’s all right. It’s all right…”

They leave in the middle of the night.
He couldn’t shake the foreboding thought, couldn’t discern who he meant by “they.” They left. It left. Everything left. Nothing would stay in place. It was a constant clutch and grab and fight like hell to hold onto anything good anymore.