The Man I Love (9 page)

When alone with just Erik and David, James wasn’t flamboyant or flirtatious. But he still seemed embarrassingly grateful to be included in their company, even if they were only sitting around playing video games at Erik and Will’s place. They had moved off-campus, choosing to rent in a quaint, slightly run-down residential neighborhood marked by narrow, two-story houses. Their place was on Colby Street, while Daisy and Lucky’s little house was on the adjacent Jay Street. The two backyards bumped together, divided by a hedge.

David had his own place around the corner. James was in a dorm but spent as little time there as possible. “My roommate’s such a douche,” he said. “I gotta find new digs before I shoot the guy.”

They were sitting around one September night. The Nintendo was broken—fingers of blame pointing in all directions but Erik suspected David had thrown it across the room in a fit of poor sportsmanship. Erik was taking it apart on the coffee table. Not to fix it. Just to tinker. It had been a long week. His schedule this semester was heavy with academic classes—statistics, especially, was a bear. Now his tired brain needed the meditative zone working with his hands always brought.

Will was at judo class. David was sketching set designs for the fall production of
Death of a Salesman.
James wasn’t doing anything, just sitting and watching Erik, so intent it was unnerving. But he stayed unusually quiet, and after a while Erik forgot about him. Piece by piece he took the console apart, lining everything up in careful order on the table. “Leave it,” he murmured when James reached to fiddle with something. James withdrew his hand. The gesture was so immediate and obedient, his expression so rapt and kid brother-ish Erik felt a surge of liking for the guy, mixed with the quiet pleasure of being admired.

“How do you know what you’re doing?” James asked.

“I don’t.”

“You’re just taking it apart for pure enjoyment.”

Erik smiled a little. “I like to,” he said.

James lit a cigarette and offered the pack to Erik, who shook his head. “My brothers do shit like this all the time,” James said. “But with cars. They’ll take an engine apart and put it together. Just for kicks.”

“How many brothers you have?”

“Three. All older.”

“Any of them dance?”

“Shit, no. My brothers are just like my father. They like sports, they like hunting, they like cars. Then there’s me. Their personal embarrassment. They used to tease me about being adopted except I prayed for it to be true. I’d have fantasies there’d be a knock at the door and it would be my real parents come back to claim me.”

Erik smiled, not knowing what to say. He bent his head back over his project, whistling through his teeth. He gave a start when James reached a finger to touch his necklace.

“This is cool. What’s it about?”

Erik told him its history, explained each of the charms. When he was finished, James sat back, looking thoughtful. He drew from the neck of his shirt a silver ball chain. From it dangled a set of dog tags and a copper pendant. He drew it over his head and handed it to Erik.

Erik put down his screwdriver and took the necklace carefully, knowing a talisman when he saw one. The dog tags were stamped KORODOWSKI, MARGARET C.

“My sister,” James said.

“Korodowski?”

“My real last name. I use Dow for the stage.”

Erik nodded. He looked closer at the copper pendant. It was a flattened penny.

“We called her Penny,” James said. “My mom had three boys and always wanted a daughter. My father said one would eventually turn up. Like a bad penny. And she did turn up. With me.”

David had come over and was looking at the tags. “You’re twins?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” Erik asked quietly.

“She was in the 14th Quartermaster Detachment,” James said. “They were deployed to Saudi Arabia last February. They were only there six days and a scud missile destroyed the barracks.”

“I remember seeing the story on the news,” David said. “I had no idea your sister was… Dude, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik said. “That’s horrible.”

James took the chain back from David and put it over his head.

“Is it why you transferred here?” David asked.

James lit another cigarette. “My mom went off the deep end. Penny was her baby. She was everyone’s baby but for Mom she was…” James sighed, exhaling the smoke through his nose. “Mom was always fragile. Meek. Put on earth to serve my father and my brothers. Penny died and something in Mom just turned off. Went out.”

David flicked the lighter, held the flame a moment and then released the tab.

“Exactly,” James said. “And I was fucked up over it. I came home destroyed. Came home thinking people would be sympathetic about me losing my best friend, my twin. I actually thought grief might make us all closer. Fat chance. My dad never knew what to do with me. It was like I was the price he had to pay for a daughter. Now Penny was gone and she was the only thing standing between me and him. And my brothers. It turned into a free-for-all. Whatever grief they had, they took it out on me. And my mother was checked out. She started drinking her pain away. It was a mess. I needed to get the hell out but I felt New York was too far away. So I came here.”

David looked grim. Erik couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It’s funny. Abandonment takes all forms, doesn’t it?” James said. “David’s father died. Fish, your old man took off. Mine was present, but made a campaign of not being there. Which is worse? Having no male influence in your life, or having the wrong male influence? I mean, who was your father figure, Fish? Your go-to guy?”

Erik ran a hand through his hair. “My uncles, I guess. My mom’s brothers. No, actually, not really. They were there but I can’t say they were my substitute father figures. Maybe my basketball coach? He was definitely an influence but pretty much when I had a problem, I went to my mom.”

“Do you still? Is she still your first phone call?”

Erik smiled. “Daisy’s my first phone call.”

David snorted. “Or you just roll over in bed.”

“Well, who do you call, Dave?” James asked.

“These days?” David scratched the back of his neck. “Leo. Or him.” He pointed at Erik.

“Shut up,” Erik said, laughing.

“Yeah, you laugh,” James said. “But I already know if I need a body buried or a secret kept, I’m calling you, Fish.”

Will arrived home then, his hair damp with sweat and his face red with exercise. “What’s up, assholes,” he said. He tossed down his backpack and chugged the last of his pineapple juice. Then gave a hearty belch.

“What’s with you and the pineapple juice?” James said. “You suck that shit down twenty-four-seven.”

“Vitamin C,” Will said, walking into the kitchen. “Keeps you from breaking out.”

Erik chuckled. “Among other things.”

“Don’t give away trade secrets, Fish,” Will called.

“What?” James said, looking from the kitchen to Erik and back again, eyebrows wrinkled.

Secure in the privacy of a private joke, Erik shook his head with a smile and went back to tinkering.

Will chose not to dance in the fall concert. Instead he put all his energy into his senior project. Challenged by Kees to step away from classical ballet and create a work for the contemporary dancers, Will was struggling to come up with an idea. All through September he spent long hours listening to a variety of music, either loaded into his Walkman while working out or running, or playing on the stereo at the apartment.

He sat motionless or sprawled on his back in front of the speakers. He sighed and cursed a lot. Occasionally he jotted something in a notebook, only to tear out the page and throw it in a crumpled ball at the wall. Erik sensed the clouds of creative frustration releasing the first drops of creative terror and, he had to admit, he was more than a little fascinated. This was the eternally self-assured Will on the verge of panic. What would he do?

Then one evening James burst into the house on Colby Street, breathless and panting, waving a tape. “I got it,” he said. “Listen.”

He popped the tape into the stereo and tossed the empty case to Will, who looked and passed it to Erik. It was Philip Glass’s soundtrack for the movie
Powaqqatsi.
Out of the speakers blasted, of all things, a coach’s whistle. And then an explosion of joyful sound made Erik’s eyebrows first fly up, then wrinkle as he took in what sounded like an indigenous drum-and-bugle corps. First a hypnotic, repetitive foundation of acoustic percussion, followed by a cavalry charge of trumpets over fat tuba bass notes. Then a children’s choir layered a simple melody on top of the rhythmic cadence of constantly changing time signatures.

Will unfolded his tall body and stood up.

“How do you count this?” Erik asked, losing the beat and finding it again.

Daisy got up and helped James push the coffee table aside. Will continued to stand still.

“It’s straight eights,” Daisy said.

“No,” James said. “This section is two sets of eight then a set of six. But then it changes.”

“I count ten beats in every phrase,” Erik said.

“You can’t count,” James said, his eyes shining. “You have to sing it.”

“I like this,” Will said, both hands on his head. “Holy shit, I like this a lot.” He looked visionary. His chin nodded in time to the drums. His head tilted, his eyes closed. Fingers dug in his hair as his feet moved in a simple pattern. Three steps forward, one back. Three forward, one back. The back step became a hop. Then a hop with a half-turn to repeat the sequence facing the other way. Eight steps against ten beats in the music.

“It doesn’t match up,” Erik said.

“It’s not supposed to,” Will said.

Rapt, Erik watched as Will kept building on the theme. It had started as not much more than walking—literally steps. But by changing levels and changing dynamics, it evolved into a phrase. Will turned Daisy in one direction while he and James faced the other. The phrase became three dimensional. Will added arm movements, picking up the sharp percussion. “Wait, what did you just do?” he asked Daisy. “Do it again. I like yours better.”

“Are you writing this down, Erik?” Daisy said, smiling at him. Her cheeks were growing pink.

“Write it? I can’t even count it.”

“Don’t worry, I have it,” James said. “Wait until you hear the next section. It’s in five-four time. It’s sick.”

“Look out, you almost hit the TV,” Erik said.

“I can’t do this here,” Will said. “I need to get into a studio. Can I get into a studio? What time is it?” He popped the tape out of the stereo. “Who’s coming with me?”

Daisy sat back down on the couch, but James couldn’t get out the door fast enough. He and Will were gone three hours. When they came back Will looked positively feverish. His notebook, so pathetically bare before, was three-quarters filled with scribblings, the whole ballet sketched out in its pages. Will took the idea to Kees who both blessed it and sunk his teeth into it.

Will went into rehearsals with James as his assistant. James was perfect for the job. He possessed near total recall when it came to choreography. Not only every step committed to memory, but the spacing of every dancer at any given moment in the music. Even more valuable was his ability to catch Will’s improvisations on the fly and repeat them back, a human camcorder. He patiently coached the dancers who couldn’t grasp the difficult time signatures. He stepped in for anyone who was absent. If Will couldn’t run a rehearsal, James did, and was careful to be humble and self-effacing about it.
Powaqqatsi
was Will’s baby and James was smart enough to be unobtrusive even as he became more and more indispensable. Will needed him. Publicly depended on him. James had hitched a ride on a comet and was on a trajectory to the popularity he craved.

He was ecstatic.

The contemporary dancers went crazy over
Powaqqatsi.
Like a benignly infectious disease, the excitement spread through the conservatory. Ballet dancers showed up at rehearsals either to watch or to learn the choreography. Even the stagehands found time or excuses to wander by the third-floor studios.

“I still can’t count this music,” Erik said, watching.

“I’d kill to dance this,” Daisy said. “I’m serious. I’ll trip someone and not even feel bad about it.”

“It’s brilliant,” James said. “I can’t stand it, it’s so brilliant. Fuck ballet, I’m going to the dark side.”

Kees turned around, grinning. “Better not let Marie hear you.”

“I meant it lovingly.”

Daisy checked her watch and sighed. “We should go, James. Our rehearsal starts in ten minutes.”

James didn’t answer, he was deep in concentration. Daisy tapped his arm. Then pulled it. Finally Kees helped her peel James’s fingers off the barre and she dragged him out.

The classical section of the fall concert was no throwaway. A guest choreographer from Atlantic Dance Theater had come in to stage his ballet
No Blue Thing
to the music of Ray Lynch. Daisy had a gorgeous solo piece and a pas de deux with James. The program was shaping up to be one of the conservatory’s best. As they moved through October, the creative energy in Mallory Hall shifted from carefree to industrious. The strong pulled ahead and the weak began to flail.

No Lancaster conservatory student could shirk their academic studies. Those pursuing a Bachelor of Arts had to complete eighteen credits from the liberal arts program. A Bachelor of Fine Arts required twenty-four, plus another twelve in dance history and anatomy. Students had to maintain a 2.0 GPA or they couldn’t perform in main stage productions.

Both Daisy and Will were getting their BFA. Over the years they arranged as many classes together as possible. Not surprisingly, their dance partnership applied itself well to academic study. Working together, they sailed through the coursework with little difficulty. Except for anatomy. Every dancer dreaded the notoriously grueling course. Only rote memorization, a hundred mnemonics and Lucky’s tutoring got Will and Daisy to a pair of C grades last year.

This year their nemesis was dance history, with heavy reading and papers due every other week. James was in the course too, and struggling to keep up. Oddly, the photographic memory he possessed for movement didn’t translate to written material. He admitted he had never been a strong reader. Half the problem was sitting still. Will loved to read and regularly practiced meditation techniques through his martial arts training, but it was an effort for James to focus. Will didn’t mind chatty people, but people with the fidgets drove him batshit.

“Hold
still,”
Will said one night at Colby Street. “Good Lord, man, you’re like a two-year-old.”

“Put something heavy in your lap,” Erik said.

“What, Fish?”

“When I was a kid and couldn’t sit still at the dining room table, my mom would put the phone book in my lap. Something about the weight makes you settle. Try it. Do we have a phone book?”

“No. Come over here, James.” Will was lying on the couch reading. He moved his feet so James could sit down, and then he put his legs across James’s lap. “There. Think heavy.”

Will returned to reading, engrossed, the fingertips of one hand rubbing along his hairline. From the easy chair, Erik watched James become silent and still. His focus was on his book but his hand rested on Will’s shin in a manner both mindlessly casual and deliberately proprietary. Erik felt an involuntary squint of his eyes, along with a strong but confusing urge to defend his territory. He couldn’t take his eyes from James’s hand. Outlined white against Will’s jeans. The flat ridge of shin bone against his palm, fingertips curved around calf muscle. Slowly moving back and forth. Up toward Will’s knee. Down toward his ankle. Up toward his knee again, going further this time, fingers kneading.

My mind is open,
Erik thought, with some defiance. After three years in a conservatory program at a fine arts university, he was completely accustomed to gay men being part of his daily life. He had it worked out. They were them. He was him. He knew when to make jokes and when to be cool. He had nothing but the utmost respect for Kees, and considered him a close friend.

True, there had been uncomfortable moments with a few of the more aggressive types. Boys with overt tactics, looking more to provoke and shock than to connect. It pissed him off, but he knew better than to make a scene. The conservatory thrived on gossip. One good altercation and he’d never hear the end of it. It was better to turn off and not engage. Harder. But better. He got used to it. And as long as homosexuality wasn’t blatantly and personally in his face, he rarely gave it more than five seconds thought.

My mind is open,
he thought again, watching James’s hand stroking Will’s leg.

Just stay out of my face.

Erik closed and stacked his books. Without a word he put on his jacket and shoes.

“Going home?” James asked.

“I live here, remember?” Erik said.

Will looked up. “Goodnight, Fish.”

“Night, ladies,” Erik said. And then wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He went out, walked through the hedge into Daisy’s backyard, up the steps into her kitchen, where the teakettle was whistling. Erik shut off the flame and moved the kettle to a back burner.

“Oh, here you are,” Daisy said, coming in. Her hair was damp. She had on a pair of Erik’s flannel pajama bottoms and a tight white T-shirt. “Do you want tea?”

“No,” Erik said, walking by her and taking her hand.

“Where are we going?”

“Up.”

“You’re not even going to say hello?”

He turned, took her face and kissed her. “Hello.” He walked through the living room, pulling her along.

“Are we in a mood?”

“We are.”

“I only have one condom here. Just so you know.”

“At the moment, one is all I need.”

She laughed, following him up the stairs. “Since we’re on the subject. I mean, I was going to wait until your birthday to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“That I went on the pill.”

Erik turned around and looked down at her.

She smiled at him. “I just started. You’re supposed to keep up a second method for the first month. But then…”

He kept staring at her. She stepped up, level with him, and touched his bottom lip. “I can’t wait,” she said. “Nothing between us.”

Erik closed his eyes. “Get up there,” he whispered.