The Man I Love (33 page)

He slept well and woke up smiling and stretching the next morning. Lazy and smug, he combed through last night’s images. It had been, in his opinion, a spectacular first date. A crazy good, touchy-feely time, culminating in ice cream and a walk along the canal.

Kissing Melanie on the Main Street Bridge, their mouths sweet with chocolate and butterscotch, Erik had felt flammable. It had been a long time since he had kissed like that: slow and soft, letting it unfold of its own accord, following where her embrace led him. Feeling her kiss go from sweet cold to even sweeter warmth. The way his mouth felt in hers. He was dialed into her, and it had been an eternity time since his sexuality had extended feelers beyond his own selfish needs and into a woman’s experience. An immeasurable age since he’d been caught up in a woman like that, caught up tight with her, engaged mind and body to the point of wanting to be inside of it all. Feeling young. Feeling great. Great to be alive with nowhere else to rather be.

Nowhere else to rather be?

Erik bolted up from the pillows, noticing his bedroom was suspiciously bright with sunlight. He seized the clock: it was ten after one.

Ten after one?

He checked his watch. It was right.

“Shit,” he muttered, falling back.

He considered screwing it. He’d already come this far. He could call in, claim a debilitating stomach bug and go back to sleep. But his conscience wouldn’t let him do it. He got up, dressed and drove to campus.

It was April 20, 1999.

The theater was quiet and eerie. Hurrying down to his office, Erik passed the student lounge where a crowd had gathered, students and faculty huddled together on couches, standing in close groups. People were holding each other. Some were crying. Everyone was focused on the television.

Erik moved into the lounge, cautious. Like a hunter approaching a kill he wasn’t sure was quite dead. Something was going on. Something big. He gazed at the anchorman on the screen, began assembling a picture from the fragments.

Some of the students released from the high school have been reunited with their parents. Now let’s take a look at the live coverage from Littleton where an arrest has been made.

Officials are preparing a briefing there for parents.

I wish I could give you more information but we don’t know. It’s extremely chaotic out there.

A graphic flashed up, the state of Colorado. A dot for Denver. Across the top of the screen:
School Shooting.

No confirmed fatalities as of yet as police have not completely secured the building.

Continuing to find victims throughout the school.

We have to point out the gunmen have not yet been found.

These gunmen, wearing black trench coats.

Columbine.

A hand in his, cold fingers and rough, dry skin. He turned his head. It was Melanie, her eyes enormous, her lips pressed into a tight line.

On the screen, groups of students being shepherded by police across a parking lot, their hands on their heads.

Helicopters. SWAT teams. Dogs. Ambulances.

You may have noticed the word on your screen “Lockdown.”

SWAT teams in position.

Students still trapped inside.

“Unbelievable,” Melanie whispered. She moved closer into him, seeking comfort. He stayed motionless. A small trickle of sweat dripped down his back.

Conflicting stories.

Calls from within the building.

The gunmen have not yet been found.

His legs were prickling now. Maybe he should sit down.

Students inside.

Sound of gunfire.

The edges of his vision began to fade out. He was looking at the TV through a pinhole.

911 call from the library.

Still trapped inside.

The gunmen.

Erik opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor in a forest of legs, Melanie kneeling beside him. “Get back,” she said. “Get back, give him some air.”

Her fingers unzipped his jacket and undid some of the buttons on his flannel shirt. She laid her hand flat on his chest. His heart pounded against it. He was on fire. His blood had turned to electric, molten lava, crackling along his limbs.

I’m dying,
he thought.

“Erik.” Melanie’s hands on his face now, smoothing his forehead. “Talk to me. Are you having chest pains?”

It wasn’t pain, exactly. More a slow, ripping sensation. Something had a hold of his heart and was pulling it through his ribcage. But he wasn’t in pain. He was just quite exquisitely terrified.

Someone knelt by his other side and put a hand on his shoulder. “Erik.”

It was Miles. He was pale behind his horn-rimmed glasses, but his melodious voice was calm and unwavering. He shifted to sit down, cross-legged, and took Erik’s hand in his. “Erik, look at me.”

Erik struggled to focus.

“Fish, it’s Miles. Look at me. Come back to me.”

“It’s happening again,” Erik whispered.

“But not to you,” Miles said. “You’re not there. You’re here with me. Look at me.”

“What’s the matter with him?” Melanie said, her voice cracking with fright.

“He was at Lancaster,” Miles said.

A murmuring gasp of recognition rippled through the lounge.

“Oh, Jesus,” Melanie whispered.

“Daisy,” Erik said. The panic intensified. It had happened again.
No known fatalities,
the news said. But in his constricted, writhing heart, Erik knew it wasn’t true. Someone’s son died today. Someone’s daughter would die tonight. Kids would lie in hospital beds. Blood would be all over their lives. Dreams and fairytales in bloody pieces on the floor.

“Squeeze my hand,” Miles said. “Stay with me.”

Erik nodded, breathing hard through his mouth, squeezing Miles’ fingers hard. He started to shake.

Squeeze my hands, Marge. Go ahead and break my fingers…

“I’m cold,” he whispered. How could he be cold with this fire in his veins?

“Let’s get him off the floor,” Melanie said.

“No,” Erik said. “No, don’t.” Though cold, the floor was good, pressed all along the backs of his legs and shoulders and head, grounding him.

But blood was all over the floor.

“Daisy.”

“People, please back up, give him some room,” Miles said. “He was at Lancaster, this is upsetting. Let him have some air. Can someone get some water, please?”

“Think we need an ambulance?”

“No, I think we’re riding a hell of an adrenaline wave here, it just has to run its course. Hang onto me, Erik, just hang on. This is now. You’re with me.”

“Erik, think you can sit up, baby?”

He sat up. Comforting hands on his shoulders and back. His head was pounding behind his eyeballs and he felt a little sick. His limbs burned. Someone handed him a bottle of water, icy cold and dripping condensation.

“Just a sip,” Melanie said. “Hold it in your mouth and swallow slowly.”

“Nice and easy,” Miles said. “You’re all right.”

“It’s all right, baby.”

Erik sipped, water dripping down his chin. “It’s not all right.” He slumped and put his forehead on Melanie’s shoulder. “It’ll never be all right for them again.”

“Is there someone I can call for you?” Her arms were strong but he could not trust them. Nothing could be trusted. Sweat dripped down his neck. Desperation swirled in him like an evil vortex. The only ones he could trust were lost to him. He had driven them away, set the world on fire and now he was alone. And forgotten. They wouldn’t look for him anymore.

“Nobody,” he said. “There’s nobody left.”

“It’s all right, baby. I’m here. I’m with you.” Her hand pressed against the back of his head, her lips brushed his face.

He was about to lean further into her comfort, then recoiled again.

I already leaned into her,
he thought.
I left the penny behind and leaned into the joy, and now he’s making me pay. This will always happen when I lean in and trust the moment.

“I can’t,” he whispered.
Blood is all over everything, blood will always follow joy. James will never let me be.

Melanie brought her body to his, pulled him into her. “Feel me,” she said. “I’m here. This is now. I’m right here.”

His hands clutched the back of her sweater. The trembling intensified.

“Mel,” he whispered.

“It’s all right.”

“Mel, I can’t do this again.”

Because I never did it the first time.

She took him to her place. Once inside, hunched in one of her kitchen chairs, he couldn’t stop shaking. He was cold to his bones. Melanie pressed maternal hands to his forehead and claimed he wasn’t running a fever. She put her teakettle on and while waiting for it to come to a boil, gave him a pill. “Take it. You’re going bye-bye now.”

He swallowed it without question. If she had handed him a cyanide capsule, he would have taken it quietly as well. Anything to make it stop.

He followed her, willing and docile as a duckling, to her bedroom, where she took his shoes and eased him into her bed, piled the covers high on top of him. She sat, holding his hand, until the sides of his mind folded in and the roof came gently down.

And then, nothing.

When he awoke, the windows were dark. Melanie was sitting beside him, propped up against a mountain of pillows, reading. He was curled up tight against the length and warmth of her legs, his face pressed to her hip. Her hand was quiet on his back.

“Hey,” she said.

It was an effort to pry his tongue off the roof of his mouth. Without a word she passed him a mug from the bedside table. It was tea, hot and sweet with a lot of milk. He drank a few gulps, then she took it away and he lay back down.

“Feel better?”

He nodded. His hands and feet were warm and dry, his chest open, his stomach calm. The relief of the terror having passed was indescribable. He breathed in the peace. “Thank you,” he said against her leg.

“Don’t give it a thought. You just rest. Go back to sleep.”

But he wasn’t sleepy. Melanie had laid aside her sheaf of papers and now he picked one up. As he suspected, they were printouts of archived news stories from Lancaster.

“I didn’t want to ask you too many questions so I did my own dirty work,” she said. “Miles said you were there but he didn’t say you were in the fucking thick of it.”

Erik was skimming the blurbs. Chunks of the past on paper.

Lancaster University remains in lockdown tonight after a shooting incident at the Mallory Theater. Five students and one professor were killed and more than a dozen injured after a student opened fire on the conservatory’s spring dance concert rehearsal.

His hands turned pages. Melanie’s hand stroked his head.

The injured were taken to University Medical Center, except for three who were rushed to Philadelphia Trauma Center. Senior William Kager and junior Margarete Bianco are listed in serious but stable condition.

“Did you know them?” Melanie asked, touching the paragraph.

He nodded, eyebrows wrinkled at the misspelled names. “Will Kaeger was my roommate. And Daisy Bianco was my girlfriend.” The words were ordinary in his mouth. As if he were merely saying the sky was blue.

Melanie picked up his hand then, turned it over. “I see,” she said, tracing his tattoo. “You said daisy in the lounge this afternoon. I didn’t realize it was someone’s name.”

Instinctively he made a fist, as if to hide, then he relaxed his fingers. Relaxed into his history. It was all right. Lancaster was his past. Daisy was his past. This tattoo was part of that past. It could all be ordinary: the sky was blue, he was a Lancaster survivor and Daisy was his ex.

He turned another page.
Officials said at that moment Dow, still in the aisle, lowered his weapon and was approached by Erik Fiskare, a junior.

Melanie’s fingernail, painted a deep raisin brown, made circles on the paper. “What an insane thing to do,” she said. “You fool cowboy.”

“I know.”

Fiskare attempted to speak with Dow and sometime during the exchange, Dow turned the gun on himself. Fiskare was unhurt.

“Unhurt, my ass.” Melanie’s hand caressed his head. “You weren’t just there,” she said. “You were a hero.”

Erik closed his eyes, loving her touch.

“‘Fiskare attempted to speak with Dow’,” Melanie read. “My God, baby, you could’ve been killed.”

“Yeah.”

“What in hell could it have been like? I can’t imagine.”

Nestled against her lush body, he told her. Thanks to all the work he had done in therapy, it was easy now to tell it as a concise story. And thanks to the Valium, it was easy to detach.

As he spoke, Melanie lay down, her knees touching his, holding his hands. “Go on.”

When he was done, they both lay still and quiet. Tears from Melanie’s eyes ran down into the smooth, soft pillowcases. She brought the clump of their woven fingers up to her mouth, her breath warm on his knuckles.

“You’re a hero. Why don’t any of these news stories say so?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think much about…”

Her fingertips shushed him. “You stopped him from killing more people. You saved lives.”

He started to automatically dismiss her words. Downplay his role and brush it aside. Then he stopped. Remembering the work he had done with Diane, learning to look at certain things and call them what they were.

Your loved ones were shot.

It was a horrible experience.

He moved closer into the circle of her arms. Let her look at him.

“You’re a hero,” she whispered.

* * *

Again he was sitting at her kitchen table, now suffused with hunger instead of fear. She had opened a bottle of wine but wouldn’t let him drink any, keeping him on the tea. It was chamomile, which he didn’t care for, but it was good to sit still and let someone fuss over him, deciding what was best. He lounged, chin propped on the heel of his hand, quietly keeping her company.

She was busy with cutting board and knife. She dipped below his field of vision then reappeared with a skillet. The rapid click of the gas burner being ignited, the swish of flame, the skillet went down. She reached over here for a decanter of olive oil, over there for a pat of butter, what she wanted never far from reach. He watched her pull apart a head of garlic and competently smash the cloves one by one, under the flat blade of her knife. The papery skins were tossed in the sink. She brushed her fingers off on the dishtowel tucked through one of her belt loops. Gathering the pale yellow spheres into a pile she began to run her knife through them, quick and crisp, the tip of the blade steady on the board, her wrist rocking the handle in a precise rhythm. Once sliced, she gathered again and began to chop crosswise. Rock and run the blade through, gather the pieces, rock and run again. In the pan, olive oil and butter began to sing.

“Was your girlfriend all right? Did she ever dance again?” she asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

He didn’t. “She did. Months of rehab. A lot of hard work, but she did.”

“Where is she now?”

“She danced with the Pennsylvania Ballet for a while.” Erik rolled his lips in, considering his next move.
Keep it ordinary,
he thought.

“Last I heard she was in New York. We’re not in touch anymore. We broke up rather badly.”

“I see,” Melanie said. “I imagine the shooting messed you guys up nine ways to Sunday. That sucks, baby. I know it’s an understatement but I just have no words.”

She scooped up a pile of minced garlic with the knife and dropped it into the skillet, which gave up a satisfying, oily crackle. She shook the pan a little, reached for a wooden spoon. The smell of butter and olive oil and garlic was making Erik woozy.

“It’s nice here,” he said.

Melanie took a drink from her glass as she stirred, put it down and ran the back of her wrist across one eyebrow. “Do you think you’d like to stay tonight?” she asked.

He watched her swift, experienced hands without answering. He wanted to stay. He wondered if they would make love, and he wanted it as well. But what about the aftermath? What if it happened again, that awful death spiral of anxiety?

“What do I do about that?” he had asked Diane.

“What do you usually do?”

“Get the hell out of there.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s… I don’t know.”

“No, push it a little. Finish the thought. Because it’s what?”

Erik flailed around for words, dropping his hands into his lap. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Nobody would understand is what I hear you saying.”

“Right. It’s insane.”

“Have you ever tried explaining it?”

“No.”

“What if you did?”

He blinked at her. “How?”

“Tell the story. You don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty intimate details. You could simply condense it down to its most elemental parts.”

“What, so I say one night I had an intense sexual encounter with my girlfriend, and the next day I watched her get shot? And it irrevocably linked sex and anxiety in my mind?”

Diane nodded slowly, a corner of her mouth twisting. “That works,” she said. “But I’d leave out the irrevocable part.”

“I can’t say that.”

“Why not, it’s the truth. And if she can’t handle it, there’s no emotional future with her anyway. You can fuck, leave and save yourself the anxiety.”

So infrequently did Diane curse that the exchange had stayed firmly planted in Erik’s mind. And if ever there were a time give the advice a field trial…

What the hell, keep it ordinary,
he thought, swallowing hard.

“I’d like to stay,” he said. “But there’s something about… Something might happen to me. I just need to let you know something.” He put his face into a hand, laughing. “I’m sorry, Mel, I’m not good at talking about this.”

Melanie handed him a head of broccoli. “Rinse this off, please. And cut it in florets. You can talk and be busy. Sometimes it helps if you’re a little distracted.”

It did help. Occupied with this little bit of business, he did his best to sketch out a coherent, generalized story of what transpired in therapy. Then he braced himself to be politely shown the door.

“So,” Melanie said, “what I hear you saying is one minute she had the proverbial hand down your pants in the lighting booth. And the next minute it was Armageddon.”

He nodded, rinsing broccoli bits off the blade of the knife and setting it in the sink. “Something like that.”

Melanie wiped her hands off and poured herself another glass of wine. “You know, I’m no shrink, but if one minute you’re making out with your girlfriend and sporting wood and feeling good and dying to get her back in bed. And the next minute the place erupts in gunfire, a man blows his head off in front of you and your girlfriend is all but bleeding to death… I don’t know, baby, I think my mind would keep all those things tied together for a real long time. Wouldn’t surprise me if you two were messed up afterward to the point where you couldn’t make much love.”

A humbling gratitude took him by the throat. He thought he would cry from the sheer sweetness of being understood. “We couldn’t. I mean we could, but it was just…messed up.”

“And you were so young. God.” Melanie scraped the garlic, golden-brown and fragrant, into a small bowl, then took the skillet and spatula over to the sink. “So what made you guys break up eventually?” She flicked the faucet on. Clouds of steam wafted up and fogged the window.

“I found her in bed with one of my closest friends.”

Melanie shut off the water and looked over her shoulder at him. She reached down the counter to her block of knives, selected one, considered it then solemnly offered it to him.

Erik burst out laughing. Her expression was so dry, so perfectly ironic and beautifully timed, and he began to love her.

She put the knife back into the block. “I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna feed your ass,” she said. “And then I’ll either take you back to your car tonight, or I’ll take you back to it in the morning. You decide.”

“All right.”

“And if you stay and those wolves of yours end up coming, well you know what? I got a baseball bat and a whole lot of Valium. So bring it.”

He reached for her then, pulled her into him. Her neck was damp with steam, her hands redolent of garlic, her body’s lush, soft curves warm against him. “Thanks for taking care of me,” he said.

She leaned back in the circle of his arms. “I had a good time last night,” she said. “It was one of the best dates I’ve ever been on. And frankly, you should give a seminar on kissing.”

Erik smiled at the floor, a pleased heat rising up into his face.

“I’m glad I could be here for you tonight. I’m touched you shared all this with me. And I hope you’ll stay.”

“I’m thinking I might.”

She rested her hand on his jaw. “So much blood. So much pain, baby, and you were so young. I’m sorry.”

Her thumb ran along his cheekbone. Then it glided across his lips. He closed his teeth on it, gently, but held it there. The moment swelled in electric silence as he felt something in him unwind, uncoil. A gate opened and desire coursed through his body, bright, hot, purposeful. He took her head in his hands, brought his mouth to hers. She reached around his waist and with a definitive twist, turned off the burners of the stove.