The Man I Love (28 page)

“It’s a colleague of mine. She’s excellent with PTSD cases.”

“All right.”

“In both my personal and professional opinion, you’d benefit from counseling. Traumatic events can stick around in the folds of your brain for years afterward, and the most innocuous of things can trigger them.”

“I know.”

“You have quite the arsenal of two-word responses, don’t you?”

Janey was no fool. Her eyes swept him head to toe, front to back, and he nearly cowered, feeling exposed.

But she was kind. “You’re an adult, Erik. I’m giving you this card, and I won’t check on you. But…” She stepped to him, and cupped his chin in her hand. “Promise me.”

“What?”

“If you ever feel you are going to hurt yourself, you call me. You wake me up at two in the morning. You bang on my door. If it ever comes to that. Do you understand?”

“I will,” he said, then smiled sheepishly. “I will call you if it gets to that.”

“Promise me.”

He promised, and with the best of intentions he tacked the card on his bulletin board.

But of course the next day he felt better, and when you feel better, it no longer seems as urgent to take steps to maintain feeling better. He began to string better days together. A week of feeling good. It was so much easier to be reactive than proactive. Two weeks. The episode was long ago and far away now, no longer meant for him.

He left it behind.

He pumped up his basketball and hit the court. He sat down at the piano, picked up his guitar. He whistled. It was getting lighter in his head. He’d dodged another bullet. He was fine.

Soon enough the business card was tacked over with layers of this and that, buried on the bulletin board, and Erik was back to letting the months go by.

Erik graduated in December of 1994, the same time the Kellys left Geneseo—Miles had landed a new job at SUNY Brockport.

Erik braced himself for a bereft depression after they were gone. Truly Miles had been his closest friend. Perhaps, he had to admit, his only friend. But instead, time went into one of its surreal elastic phases. Erik was busy. He was now working full-time at the playhouse.

Besides doing set and lighting design for the seasonal productions, he was the mastermind behind a partnership with the public school districts, devising a student theater program. Classes and workshops ranged from elementary through middle grades, with internships for high school students.

Erik taught lighting, set design, basic stagecraft. He coached basketball at the Y, gave guitar lessons, played piano at a few watering holes. He had a few girlfriends. Nothing serious, just females to keep company with. He kept his thoughts and feelings at bay. Most of the time. Occasionally he went through cycles of depression and anxiety but he did his best to ignore or tough out the dark spells. On a couple of bad nights he toyed with the idea of going for counseling. Inevitably the light came back around and the need for help was dismissed.

Time left him alone. It passed quietly if he didn’t pay too much attention.

Two years passed. And one April night, Daisy called.

She hadn’t reached out by phone in a long time. Long enough to make him relax the vigilance on the caller ID, plus he was distracted tonight, too much on his plate. Getting home late from a rehearsal, combined with burning dinner, no clean gym clothes, and a broken shoelace making him late for a basketball game. The phone rang and he didn’t check the little box, he just picked up.

“It’s Daisy.”

While the calls had tapered, the written communications stayed steady—little notes, a scribble on his birthday. A Christmas card. When her return address changed abruptly from Philly to New York City, he opened the envelope to read about her new gig with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Then he chucked it.

“Are you there?”

He was caught off guard by her voice. Usually it was tentative and submissive. Laced with apology. Tonight it was soft, but confident. Conversational.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Hi,” she said.

Say hello,
he thought.
It won’t kill you.

“Hi,” he whispered.

“It’s the nineteenth,” she said. “I was thinking about you.”

The nineteenth of April, the fourth anniversary. “That’s right,” he said. He slid his fingertips along the side of his nose, his face melting into his palm. Eyes closed, he tested his memory. Was it still there?

Yes, it was still there.

She was still there—rolling on top of David with her hair a tangle.

“How are you?” she asked.

Shattered,
he thought, one helium balloon rising above the bunch crowding his mind. “I’m fine and I have to go,” he said. “I’m late for a game.”

“Erik,” she said. “It’s been almost three years. Are we ever going to talk about this?”

Three years and she was still linked to David in his mind. He couldn’t even have a conversation without seeing them in bed. It was ruined. He couldn’t do this. Without another word, Erik hung the receiver back up, and went to his game.

Days later, UPS knocked on his door, needing him to sign for a large box. The return label read
D. Bianco
with a Manhattan address.

He slit the tape with a kitchen knife, and opened the flaps to find a veritable time capsule of his belongings. Things obviously left in Daisy’s room at Jay Street.

My necklace,
he thought.
It’s in here. She had it.

He unpacked the box, stacking everything carefully, sure the next item retrieved would be his lost treasure. He took out a pair of jeans, two button-down shirts, and his Mickey Mouse T-shirt. All the clothes were folded nicely and smelled of fabric softener. Daisy must have washed them. Next he found his Leatherman and Swiss Army knives, a plastic baggie with a capo, guitar strings and picks, another baggie with his ring of allen wrenches. His hardcover book of Swedish folk tales, his zippo lighter.

He unpacked it all and the box was empty. Taped to the inside was an envelope with a note. Not a card, nor her nice stationery, but a scrawl on half a piece of loose-leaf paper:

I’m sorry, Fish. I regret what happened more than you will ever know. I will always regret it. I think about you every day and I’ll love you until I die. But I’m done now. I won’t contact you anymore. Dais.

He stared at the
Fish
, not recognizing his own moniker, not coming from Daisy. She had never called him Fish.

He put down the note and inventoried the items again, went through them twice, including the pockets of all the clothing.

His necklace was not in this box.

He sat on the floor, surrounded by bits and pieces of a past life, and wasn’t sure what it all meant.

“Directory assistance, what listing please?”

“Last name Bianco,” Erik said. “First name Daisy. On West Eighty-Sixth Street.”

A brisk tapping of keys against a background hum of voices and more tapping.

“I show no listing for Daisy Bianco.”

“What about Marguerite Bianco?”

“Margaret?”

“Marguerite.”

“Spell that, please?”

He did, and waited through more tapping.

“I show a listing for Marguerite Bianco on West Eighty-Sixth. Hold for the number, please.”

A click and a crackle, then a chopped, automated voice began intoning digits. Erik wrote them down and hung up.

He was falling apart.

It had begun a month after Daisy sent back his things, when it dawned on him he was waiting to hear from her. She’d said she was done, but so what, she couldn’t have meant it.

I’ll love you until I die,
she wrote. She wasn’t done. She’d never be done.

Month after month passed, and nothing in his mailbox.

He realized he wanted to hear from her. As painful as the communications were, he had looked out for them. Even with no intention of responding to her, he must have subconsciously needed the regular bit of assurance the bridge wasn’t totally burned.

More months passed, and he realized the depth of his reliance. The streak of cruelness at its bedrock. He had been punishing her. She was full of guilt and remorse and he sucked on that like a piece of candy. A gobstopper of spite set like a sticky, snarling pitbull at the door kept slammed shut in her face. Knowing damn well her unrelieved chagrin meant she would hold her end of the structure up, no matter how much firepower he threw at it.

But then she had enough.

I’m done now.

Daisy let go and the world collapsed. Erik was buried in rubble and ruin. Buried alive. His chest torqued tight around his heart. He couldn’t get food down his throat. Couldn’t get words to come up. Tonight he was pacing his apartment, riddled by an agitated depression and filled with a shamed remorse over the loss of his necklace.

It was the loss of his necklace making him ashamed and depressed, wasn’t it?

He was more than certain Daisy didn’t have it. She would have sent it to him by now. He knew her. She would not keep something so precious, simply out of… He couldn’t even formulate a motive for keeping it. She would not have sent back his things and kept just the necklace.

She doesn’t have it.

But it’s an excuse to call her.

Just call her.

Because you can’t breathe without her.

Her number now in hand, with a need to stop the insanity and take drastic action, Erik dialed.

One ring.

Two rings.

“Hello?”

It was a man. A crossbolt of confusion went through Erik’s mind, pierced the mental sheet of paper with his scripted lines and pinned it to the opposite wall.

“Hello?” An edge of annoyance in the voice.

“Yeah, hi,” Erik said. “Is Daisy Bianco there?”
I must have dialed wrong. I was nervous, I switched some digits.

“No, she’s not, can I take a message?”

Open-mouthed and stunned, Erik couldn’t think what to say. “No. I mean, yes…”

“Who is this?”

“It’s… I knew her in college, I was just calling to—”

“Erik?”

His eyes widened as his stomach turned inside-out. “Yes?”

A chuckle in the voice now. “Fish, it’s John.”

“John?”

“Quillis.”

Erik stood up, a hand to his head. “Opie?”

An exasperated sigh. “Oh for fuck’s sake, will that name never die? Yes. Opie.”

The face, with its red hair and earnest expression, parted the fog of confusion like a ray of sunshine. “Holy shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“How did you know it was me?”

More low laughter. “I took a wild guess.”

“How are you?”

“Not bad, how about yourself?”

“What are you doing there?” Erik said. And then a coldness swept over his limbs.

“I live here,” John said.

“You live…”

“I live here, Fish.”

Erik’s mouth fell open. Closed. Opened again. “Oh.”

A long pause.

“Well,” John said. “This is awkward.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik said. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t.” John’s voice was friendly, but unapologetic. Authoritative. He wasn’t overtly challenging Erik. Rather he was calmly staring down a potential threat. Sizing up this new buck on the scene who wanted to fight for breeding rights.

He’s the alpha male.

“Ope, I’m sorry,” Erik whispered. “I was just…”

“It’s all right, Fish. Do you want me to give her a message?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, pulled himself together. “Daisy sent me back some of my things she had with her.“

“I know. Was everything there?”

“I’m looking for my necklace. I don’t know if you remember it but it was—“

“The gold one? With the fish and the boat? Sure, I remember it. You lost it?”

“It’s been lost since school and I thought it would be in the box but it wasn’t. It was valuable to me and I thought she wouldn’t want to send it in the mail. If she even had it, I mean. I’ve looked everywhere and this was kind of my last—”

“I gotcha. I don’t know, Fish. I haven’t seen it but then again, it’s not exactly something she’d show me.” John cleared his throat. “I’ll let her know you called and asked about it.”

“I appreciate it. Thanks.”

“You doing all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. How about you?”

“I’m good.”

A pause. Erik licked his dry lips. “How’s Daisy?”

“She’s fine,” John said. “She’s fine now. She was pretty bad for a while.”

Erik closed his eyes. “Bad how?”

“She was cutting herself, Fish.”

Erik sat down and said nothing.

“It was bad. And it’s only just started to be better for her. So I’ll let her know you called. But… I don’t want to sound like a douche or anything, but I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t make a habit of it.”

The words felt like a reprimand. A beat down. Erik’s face burned and stung. His fists curled in rage and then loosened in impotent helplessness. It was over. He was being dismissed. Stripped of his medals and drummed out of the ranks.

“You understand, right?” John said.

“I understand. Thanks, Ope. John. Sorry.”

He laughed. “You can call me Opie. It’s fine.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“You too, Fish. Bye now.”

Erik depressed the end button with his thumb and let the phone drop onto the floor. He sat. Staring. He didn’t know for how long. Then he pulled on a jacket and went out.

He walked. Hours. No destination other than a corner store to get a pack of cigarettes, his first in years. He chain smoked, one after another, leaving a trail of butts. He leaned against walls like a hoodlum. Sat on park benches like a homeless man. Tried to think.

She was cutting herself.

Erik couldn’t even grasp what that meant. Had she tried to slit her wrists? Had John saved her from a suicide attempt? His gut twisted as he screwed up his eyes, dodging his head away from a vision of blood running down Daisy’s arms.

It was bad. It’s only just started to be better.

He walked and smoked. Waited to feel something.

Daisy was bad for a while. Now she was living with John Quillis. And she was better.

Erik thought her motivation to send his things back was simply reaching the bottom of her well of sadness. She mailed the box, said goodbye and made to carry on, empty and alone. Above all, alone.

Not the case.

She returned him because she had found someone else. She said goodbye, shut her own door and now John stood there as a sentry. The alpha male. A line drawn in the sand. A perimeter of piss around his territory.

The man she loved.

Don’t make a habit of it. You understand, right?

He could. He had always liked John. He was crushy on Daisy but in an innocent, non-threatening way. Part of the conservatory lore. He had been down in the blood with Will the day of the shooting. Making his bones. Initiated into the circle. One of Erik’s pack. If anyone was going to take Erik’s place…

He stopped, turning his face into the wind, letting memory blow over him. A rehearsal for “The Man I Love.” Him and John watching Will and Daisy. Will had picked Daisy up and set her on John’s back, advising him on how to catch her hip bone in his shoulder and stop the roll into the arabesque lift.

“Now you, Fish,” John had said, turning his head and looking at Erik with a sly, conspiratorial expression.

Not me,
Erik thought.
Not me now.

Now John slept with Daisy against his back. Her hand over his heart.

Or maybe he spooned her. Holding her all night and keeping her safe from the wolves. He’d wake up and put his face into the curve of her neck. Run his tongue up the bumps of her spine. Grow hard against her legs and butt until she…

Erik started walking again, lighting another cigarette. John Quillis. It made sense. Another dancer. Someone who spoke Daisy’s language. Earnest and kind and devoted. Protective. Appreciating if Erik wouldn’t make a habit of calling.

John holding her in the dark.

Partnering her in the day.

Daisy’s face pressed to the back of John’s neck. The hip bone he had learned to catch with his shoulder now lovingly pushed up against him. The hollow by the bone where red letters were inked. Erik’s fish swimming in the shadow of another man’s body.

Again.

He chucked the rest of the cigarettes and went home. He ran a low-grade fever for two days. Then he ran an emotional fever for a week, alternating between impassioned conversations with himself or crying in the shower.

A postcard showed up in his mailbox. The front was a panorama of the Metropolitan Opera House. Daisy’s pretty handwriting filled the back.

John told me you called. I was out of town at an audition. I’m really sorry, but I don’t have your necklace. You were wearing it last time I saw you. I’m sorry, Fish, I know how important it was to you. I feel terrible it’s lost. I hope you find it. D.

Bewildered, Erik sat down and stared at the card.

She didn’t have it. He knew she didn’t but he had hoped.

Not even
Dais,
this time. Just her initial. The bare minimum.

D for dismissed.

Twice she had used Fish in her notes to him. She had returned not just his things, but his name.

She was gone.

You will feel nothing.

His necklace was gone and Daisy was gone now. Really gone.

They died. You are left. It is time to go.

He boxed it up tight, took it to the backyard of his heart and buried it.