The Ones That Got Away: A Collection of Lost Fish Tales
Author: Suanne Laqueur
Date: 2016-07-07 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Romance; Contemporary; Contemporary Romance
Description: Plenty of fish in the sea. But none like the ones that got away.Author Suanne Laqueur gives her readers an intimate, guided tour of the award-winning novel, The Man I Love. From the embryonic chapters written over twenty years ago to scenes cut from the final draft, you’ll witness the crafting of an emotional journey and the evolution of the beloved characters within The Fish Tales.Includes never-before-seen material and an excerpt from Laqueur’s next novel, An Exaltation of Larks.
Publisher: Suanne Laqueur, Author
Rights: © Suanne Laqueur 2016

Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
Introduction

Part I: How It Began

- Erik

- Julie

Part II: The Embryonic Man I Love

- The Man I Love
- The Report of Gunfire
- Peeling the Asparagus
- Emotional Hamburger
- It Was Me
- A Map, A Pick Axe and a Vengeance
- P.S. Please Call Me
- P.S. I Can't
- Clutching Your Pearls
- Blood
- Francine

Part III: Anatomy of a Shooting

- Miller & Korodowski
- Getting This Nut to Crack
- James
- Passive and Aggressive
- Go, Fish

Part IV: The Cutting Room Floor

- Daisy Chain
- Ingénue
- Dry Hump
- The Point
- Fish Can't Deal
- Rookie Mistake
- Honey, I'm Home
- Nadine
- Orchestrated Kissing
- Red Wine & Chocolate Cake
- Intended Recipient

Part V: The Original Ending

- The Good Wolf
- Broken Halves
- The New Normal

Part VI: Answers Here

- Expendable Moron
- Those Useless Fine Arts
- Judy's Punching Bag
- Give It Back A Little Better
- I Don't Care Anymore
- It's What You Do
- Stage Fright
- Tutoyer
- Liz Taylor & The Wolf On A Hot Tin Roof
- What He Wants
- A Blue Vibration

Part VII: Mr. & Mrs. Kaeger

- Interview With the Vampire
- Look At You A Little
- The Freshman Fifteen
- Passionate, But Careful
- When A Guy's In Love
- Want to Want
- Tête-à-Tête
- Falling On The Blade
- Into My Skin
- How Much Damage
- Desolate
- Understatement Day
- The Best
- Mindful Gratitude

Part VIII: The River

- Goddnat, Älskling

- The Last Fish

Excerpt from An Exaltation of Larks

- Foreign Enemies

Thank You

About the Author

To my readers.

You so much.

And to the reviewer who said I was pretentious and mediocre.

Now nothing bothers me.

So thank you.

“Everything is copy.”

—Nora Ephron

“Fuck everything.”

—Guillaume Maurice Kaeger

So what the hell is this, besides pure indulgence?

Well, if you have this book in your hands, I’m delighted, and I’m going to assume you’ve read all of The Fish Tales and, like me, you like talking obsessively about The Fish Tales.

If not… Well, I’m still delighted to be in your hands, but you may find this collection a little strange and obsessive and not what you were expecting. This isn’t the fourth book in the series. This is companion fan fiction. It’s also the story of the story. A peek behind-the-scenes at the show under the show.

You’re going to be present at an ultrasound and see The Man I Love as an embryo.

You’ll get inside my head as I put together the pivotal event that changed Erik, Daisy and their circle of friends forever, and witness a character being built from the ground up.

You’ll read scenes that were cut from the final draft for one reason or another.

You’ll read chapters I never intended to be in the final draft, but they had to be written anyway. Simply as part of the universe-building. Or they wanted to be written, because it’s just fun.

And yes, there’s stuff about Will. Lots.

It’s all interspersed with my obsessive commentary [You’ll see me jump in like this.] None of it is edited, so you can really get the sense of how a book starts out as rambling crap. There’s no plot to follow, no spoilers, so you can skip or skim or read it any order you want and—… There goes Team Will to his section.

(Waving) Bye, have fun! Don’t get pregnant!

Anyway, if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like.

I give it to you with my love.

He was born Erik Lindstrom, in the dorms of Alfred University, sometime during my sophomore year. He grew up in a manuscript that would come to be known as All the Running You Can Do. Said manuscript would eventually fit in four manila envelopes and sit around in desk drawers, until I finally moved it to floppy disks. I sent it once to an editor, who came back with two enlightening observations:

“This is a fantastic, 500-page character analysis. Now write the story.”

“When you step away from the minutiae and dig deep into the emotional aspects of a scene, you’re actually quite good.”

I thanked him and threw it into a drawer again. Because I was, like, twenty-four and had no idea what he was talking about. Or what I was doing.

So anyway. Here’s Erik as we first meet him at the fictitious University of the Mid-Atlantic States, College at Angelica, New York (because Angelica was an exit I passed on Rt. 17 and I liked the sound of it, all right?)

By the way, this material hasn’t seen the light of day in over twenty years. Nor has it been edited.

In other words, be kind. I was young.

It was two weeks after Labor Day, around six-fifteen on a balmy midsummer evening, and the U-MIDAS Angelica football team was finishing practice. Exhausted, streaming sweat, streaked with dirt, some of them limping, they clambered aboard two buses and rode back to the gym. They’d been practicing at a field six miles away from campus because varsity soccer had a game that evening and was using the main field.

In one of the back seats on the second bus, Erik Lindstrom had his left foot sticking out in the aisle, his arms crossed on the seat in front of his, and his head pillowed on his arms. The bus hit a bump, which jarred his outstretched leg, and his knee howled.

Shit.

Erik ran his fingers through his grimy blond hair and wondered for the millionth time what in hell had made him want to play college ball.

Being recruited was an ego trip, and an athletic scholarship took a big load off the student bill, but when you got down to it, as Erik was getting down to it tonight, when you were one of twenty-odd freshman recruits, it wasn’t any special deal. You didn’t sleep, eat, shit, have sex or a social life. What you had was pain. Pain and being tired all the goddamn time, that’s what it was. It was stuffing yourself with Advil or Ibuprofen or Motrin to keep your mind off wrecked knees or ankles or whatever joint you’d managed to maul during practice. It was two weeks of lethal triple sessions in the blazing heat of August when your soul belonged to Jesus but your ass belonged to the coach. When school started, it was classes all day, practice every afternoon, memorizing plays, being bitched at by the coach and pummeled by the athletic trainer, and then back to the gym for mandatory weight-training. Then you ran like a maniac to catch the tail end of dinner, and you ordered out later anyway because you were so hungry. Then you tried to study, crashed with your face in a textbook, and then got up the next morning to go through the whole bloody mess all over again.

Football hadn’t been Erik’s sole ticket into U-MIDAS; he’d aced the New York State Regents in algebra, geometry and trig (aced as in ACED, 100 for 100), pulled a 4.0 on the Advanced Placement Chemistry exam, and graduated seventh in a class of 210. But now all he had time for, and all he really cared about was merely passing his courses, just getting by, and hang the Dean’s List.

“Academics first, football second,” the coaches had stated time and again, but to every player on the team, that really had come to mean the exact opposite. Football, then school, and a side order of wanting to sell your soul to be able to sleep for a whole day. Erik found himself dreaming of sleeping when he slept. Deep sleep, deep as snowdrifts, warm, numb, no feeling, no care. Just to be able to sleep and never have to wake up.

It just wasn’t fun anymore. Academics first, football second (or vice-versa), and for what?

To stand on the sidelines with all the other rookies except the half-dozen who were good enough to play, maybe even good enough to be starters, that’s what. Good enough. Those two words had become Erik’s despair. Good enough. Erik Lindstrom wanted to be good enough, wanted to be out on that field, wanted it more than he could stand. If he had to sweat it through one or two seasons of Sideline City, then he’d sweat.

Still, it had been a bitter blow to come to college and be so abruptly brought down to earth with the discovery that he wasn’t good enough. Hello Reality! He was big enough—six foot three and two-twenty-five pounds—and strong, and certainly fast enough, in fact, he could run remarkably fast for someone so big. But having strength and speed and being able to tackle whatever was in his way couldn’t be construed as good. Erik didn’t have a lot of finesse on the field simply because he couldn’t think as fast as he could run, and also because of his tendency to get out of control.

“You’re good,” Coach Rooney said to him after pre-season. “You are good, Lindy, but not good enough yet.” Those two words again. “You’ve got a ways to go. Sometimes you’re like a blind bull—plowing through everything just on brute strength. You can’t play ball like that and you can’t go through life like that. Use your head, son. Open your eyes. Watch. You gotta be nervous, you gotta be looking every second, looking in eight directions at once, and your body’s gotta be able to react. And that’s when being strong and fast comes in.”

Erik tried, figuring Rooney wouldn’t pick on him so much if there wasn’t any hope. He worked his ass off. But there were days, a lot of days it seemed, when it was just so hard. Rooney’s despairing look could make him feel lower than an ameba and twice as dumb. The other coaches had their own tactics: Killian screamed at you like a platoon sergeant from hell, and MacInnis liked to grab the faceguard of your helmet and shake the crap out of you. After being top banana in high school, the role of designated benchwarmer was a humiliating demotion (Erik had gotten write-ups in his hometown paper, more than once; he had them in a scrap book and often he thumbed through them just to ascertain that he hadn’t dreamed those glory days).

One of the running backs, an English major, found a quote by Lewis Carroll which summed up the situation, and he scrawled it in red ink on the locker room wall: “In this world, it takes all the running you can do to keep in one place.”

Outside of football and school, there was the question of Erik’s love life, or lack thereof. He had come to the conclusion, a while ago, that a long-distance relationship sucked the big Momma, and he’d better start developing a taste for letter-writing or else he was going to end up with one panic of a phone bill from calling Kathy.

Or maybe not...

They’d talked to each other every night for the first week, three times during the second week, and after that, the phone calls had become rather sporadic on Kathy’s part, causing Erik to get some very bad vibes. He frowned. That’s what being apart did to a relationship. Already, a bunch of his new buddies had gotten dumped or dicked or screwed one way or another, and September wasn’t even over yet.

He’d call Kath tonight. Collect, just to piss her off, he thought impishly.

“Collect call from hell, do you accept the charges?”

He sighed, with the feeling that Kathy, just by coincidence, wouldn’t be home tonight.

Erik was thankful for one thing, or rather, two things: the twins were there, and they were going through the same hell.

Chris and Greg Fragiacomo, their dark heads lolling two seats ahead, had been Erik’s best buddies since fourth grade. It was exciting going away to school and meeting all new people, but at the same time, it was nice to have the twins there, living right next door to Erik in Winslow Hall. Especially Chris. Erik wouldn’t go so far as to say Chris was psychic, or any such bullshit, but he’d swear sometimes the dude could read minds. It wasn’t just thoughts, either—Chris was a walking St. Anthony medal. If you lost your keys or your baseball cap or your calculus homework, Chris knew where they were. If you couldn’t find someone, Chris knew where to look. Chris always knew what was going on, he always knew what to say, and if he didn’t know what to say, which was rare, he would shut up and hand Erik a beer. Chris just knew Erik, knew when he wanted to get drunk and go crazy, knew those rare times when he wanted to be left alone. You couldn’t beat a friend like that.

The seat across from Erik was filled to overflowing with the bodies of Dan Mellsner and Tim Berland. Dan was a steelworker’s son from Allentown, Pennsylvania. He was a place-kicker, or would be, when or if he got to play. With straight neutral-blond hair that tended to hang in his eyes, Dan was rather unremarkable-looking, usually without much to say for himself, and no one ever guessed that he was a mathematical wizard. Only a small part of Dan’s tuition was paid by football, the remainder was covered by academic scholarship. Basically, Dan paid for his books and the rest was a free ride. He was the least visible of Erik’s new circle. Dan’s father wasn’t well, and a stickler for home, hearth and family, Dan would trek back to Allentown whenever he got the chance.

The improbably-named Tim Berland was undeniably the best-looking one of the bunch. One look at his ridiculously beautiful angel face and every pair of female knees in Winslow Hall had gone into collective nuclear meltdown. After the discovery of his washboard abs, and the tattoo of Tweety Bird on his bicep, you practically had to wear waders every time you hung with Tim; the floor around him was ankle-deep in drool. His friends swore he either had a horseshoe up his ass or a notarized agreement with the devil.

Tim walked through life without an opinion and slightly oblivious, both of himself and his surroundings. It was doubtful he’d ever read the paper or watched the news in his life. He strolled beneath scaffolding two seconds before a fatal piece of concrete smashed to the ground. He randomly looked down at the grass and immediately spied the only four-leaf clover. He gazed up to the sky and spotted shooting stars everyone else missed. He maintained a passing relationship at best with his textbooks and brought in a B average. He ate whatever he wanted and the body never changed. If he did have a contract with the devil, there was probably a secret Termination clause signed by Jesus. He wasn’t a flirt; he had a girlfriend back in Cornell (probably a gorgeous, rich nymphomaniac who owned a Porsche dealership and modeled lingerie on the side, his friends grumbled), and generally he kept either with his friends or to himself, and this, coupled with the innocent unawareness of his good looks, naturally made him even more attractive to the girls. They thought he was shy. The boys knew he was a little dumb. No one would ever guess he was still a virgin. And everyone called him “the Bod.”

[Tim is based on a real person, by the way, and I bet my Alfred peeps know who he is. —SLQR]

But far coolest of all, in Erik’s opinion, was his roommate, Steve Kiff, who went by his last name only. Ending up with Kiff was a piece of luck. He was a rookie from Florida, and already he’d insisted on all the guys coming down to Miami for spring break.

[Are your eyes glazing over with all these intros? See what that guy meant about a 500-page character analysis? I sure do now. And this was the OPENING CHAPTER. Yikes. —SLQR]

Kiff was good enough. He was a starting lineman, which meant he worked twice as hard as Erik or the twins or Dan or Tim. But Kiff was adaptable and he’d managed to divide his life into two compartments—Football and Non-football, and, ironically, it was the Non-football Kiff that interested Erik.

Steve Kiff was the kind of guy who spoon-fed you his life. You got to know him a little bit at a time, bit by fascinating bit. He had a lot going on in his mind and a lot up his sleeves. You never knew with Kiff.

He was a mean drummer, and while he hadn’t an actual set up at school on which to practice, Erik got a kick out of how Kiff would turn on the radio and practice on the wall, the desk, the floor; on books, on his pillow, or if Erik was trying to study, Kiff would practice in the air. Erik envied his roommate’s musical ability; he himself had always had a secret dream of being in a band, playing the drums, or maybe the bass guitar.

Kiff had once wanted to be a cartoonist, to work for Walt Disney Studios. He was always drawing things and doodling in the margins of his notebooks during class. He’d drawn a really neat picture of the gang--him and Erik, the twins, Dan and Tim; he’d done it as a caricature, actually, sketching them all with big heads and little bodies, making fun of all their personality mannerisms. For instance, he gave the twins huge, gleaming teeth, because everyone was always commenting that the two of them could do toothpaste commercials, their teeth were so perfect. The Bod was drawn shirtless, shredded and surrounded by a harem of girls; Dan was working at a computer, breaking into the New York Stock Exchange; Erik was bench-pressing Dan and the computer with one hand, biting into a slice of pizza held in the other. Cleverly, Kiff drew himself in the act of drawing, holding a big pencil, methodically enhancing the boobs of one of Tim’s admirers. Kiff then put the picture in a Plexiglas frame, and hung it over his desk. Erik stopped to peer at it at least once a day, both envious and proud.

Perhaps it was Kiff’s hobbies in general that drummed up the most envy in Erik. Kiff always had something to do, while Erik, who considered himself very un-creatively inclined, spent his free time in front of the tube. He didn’t seem to own any inner preserve other than sleeping, nor any hobbies except for drinking and girl-watching, of which he had time for neither.

[We call this telling instead of showing. —SLQR]

The bus pulled into the gym parking lot and lurched to a halt. Forty boys groaned in unison and got wearily to their feet. Kiff yawned, enormously, as they shuffled off, his sunburned face scrunching up. He was a good-looking guy, not nearly as handsome as the Bod, but he was cute and Irish and had light brown hair and a few freckles and eyes that changed colors depending on what he wore. So he got his fair share of attention from the chicks. Kiff just had one of those open, friendly, nice faces. When you met him, you wouldn’t exactly think of a guy who was the equivalent of an enraged gorilla on the football field, which was how Erik had seen him at times; Kiff came across as a guy that you could just talk to. The gang, big on nicknames, was starting to call him “Smiley.”

“I’m getting too old for this,” Kiff yawned again. It was the catch phrase du jour.

“Mm,” Erik grunted, then he yawned.

[Yawn. —SLQR]

They went down to the first floor locker room and changed. The Lewis Carroll quote tugged at Erik’s eye. “In this world it takes all the running you can do to keep in one place.” He read it a few times, then pulled on a baseball cap, took his lifting belt from the hook inside the locker, and headed out to the weight room.

Whether Erik realized it or not, the weight room had become, in certain ways, his inner preserve. He liked the atmosphere—warm and sweaty, music blaring from the radio, the blue floor springy under his feet, and the pleasant clinks and clanks of the iron weights and the frequent clang-THUMPs of weights being dropped. There was talking and laughing and raunchy jokes and grunting and groaning, and Chris Fragiacomo yelling, “Push it, you motherfucker!” when he spotted you, and then you spotted Chris and called him a cocksucker or something to that scatological effect. And unlike practice, if you got tired, you took a break and got a drink, or wandered by the gym and shot a few baskets, or just wandered for a while.

Erik went out to get a drink, just in time to see the most perfect set of female legs in creation arrive at the fountain. Oh wow, he thought, you just made my day. He didn’t think she’d be down here, the owner of these particular legs, and it made seeing her, and them, all the nicer.

She was straightening up now, wiping her lips on the back of her hand. She was flushed and sweaty and wisps of dark hair had fallen out of her ponytail and were stuck to her forehead and neck. She had on black tights and those funny shoes with the hard tips, the ones that she could stand in, right on her toes. Toe shoes.

“Hi dancer,” Erik said.

“Hi!” She smiled at him as she passed and her hand brushed his shoulder.

[Wince. I hadn’t yet conquered my exclamation point addiction. —SLQR]

Erik got a drink, then went into the gym and shot the shit with Paul Brummel, playing a little one-on-one, too. He got another drink, and en route back to the weight room, he peeked into the dance studio, as had become his habit ever since he’d discovered Legs.

Funny that the architects of the gym had designed the dance studios right next to the weight room. As a result, peeking in on ballet classes had become the curious habit of not only Erik, but most of his friends as well, a collective curiosity towards this anomaly of culture and refinement in the midst of brawn and bulk and male-bonding. At first they only peeked in to make fun of the guys in tights. But that really was only a self-assurance check of their own masculinity, and once the novelty of gay-bashing wore off, they began to focus on the women. For Erik, one in particular.

She lived in Winslow Hall, too, but it had been here, down at the gym where he’d first really seen her. Just by chance, peeking in the studio. Oh, there’s that girl. I know her.

She was sitting on the floor tying her shoe ribbons, and then she stood up, shed her bulky sweatshirt and started walking around on her toes in her black leotard and tights. She wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful; she was nice-looking, certainly attractive according to Erik’s taste, chic with her hair pulled off her face, dangling earrings and dark lipstick. But truthfully, it was her body that got to him, sending visceral shock waves through his system, filling him with a sudden desire to touch her. She was small, but perfectly proportioned and she looked fit and wiry and feline and sexy. And there was something Tim Berland-ish about her sexiness: she didn’t know she was sexy. The days passed and Erik looked, and looked some more, eventually noticing that her hair was very long and wavy, that she had really intense eyes and a pretty smile. Within the space of a week, he’d fallen head over heels in...

In what, Lind? You in love or something?

Head over heels in lust.

Erik had a girlfriend. Kathy was finishing up her senior year back in Syracuse. They’d been together over a year and he’d never cheated on her, and he concluded he wasn’t doing Kathy any wrong by simply checking out the scenery. He was only human, and it wasn’t like he was wholeheartedly trying to get this little ballerina in bed...

Well, I wouldn’t exactly kick her out of my bed, he admitted, lounging on the door frame and watching the dancer spin around on her toes. Great legs. Gorgeous legs. He watched her for a long time, rolling her name around in his mind. Julie.

Julie Bianco.

We shall pause for drinks.

U-MIDAS Angelica. I mean, really?

I was young.

Anyway, today, Alfred University boasts a tremendous performing arts center. But in 1986, the sole dance studio was indeed at the campus athletic center. Right next to the weight room. And I was madly in love with a football player who went through pre-season hell every year.

Unfortunately, I didn’t (and still don’t) know the first thing about football. So in later years, as Erik developed, I realized I had to steer his passion into something else. Something I could write about with conviction and know-how.

Also, I felt like I wanted to steer away from the whole “we come from opposite worlds, can it ever work out?” thing. I wanted my lovers to meet in a shared arena. My heroine would always be a dancer, so technical theater turned out to be the perfect thing for Erik.

Speaking of our girl, you’ll see that Daisy was not always Daisy. Here she is Julie Bianco, but in an earlier draft of Running (which died in a floppy disk tragedy) she was Jeanni Maldonado.

So this is how it began. No Fish. No gold necklace. No technical theater. No Will. No guitar. No piano. No Daisy. And Erik’s motley crew of friends? None of them came with him to The Man I Love, although Steve Kiff was a rather self-actualized young man who often steered Erik in better directions. It’s possible he was an embryonic version of Will Kaeger.

(In case you haven’t noticed, I have a thing for the letter K.)

I hauled this manuscript out of a drawer in the early 2000’s, and started re-reading it. I was in my thirties, married with a daughter named Julie. As I read through this 500-page character analysis laden with dorm life, parties, hooking up, drama and angst, I wanted to throw up.

Oh my God, who cares? I thought. I can’t relate to this anymore. It’s not attractive to me.

I chucked it back in a drawer and started writing another set of stories. New characters in a New York City romance called Bury My Heart in Cashmere.

Stop laughing. All right, fine, laugh. Christ, what a title.

So I had this tragic hero Al McKenzie, who needed a new love in the wake of his wife’s tragic death. The woman who would open his heart again and all that sort of thing. He needed someone cool. Did I know any cool single women?

Well, Julie Bianco was pretty damn cool. Whatever happened to her?

Huh.

It occurred to me both Julie Bianco and Erik Lindstrom were now in their thirties, too.

Interesting. They’d grown up with me, so to speak.

Where were they?

Were they still together?

Almost instantly, I knew they weren’t. And not just not together, but extremely not together. Not-speaking not together. Estranged. Because of…something. Something terrible happened. What?

I didn’t know yet. But in the meantime, I started to groom Julie to be Al McKenzie’s new love, which meant I had to start writing her as an adult. On her own. Without Erik…

Stripped of her holiday decorations, New York was sad and gray, a cold and weary debutante after the ball, tired and let-down and bracing for winter. Struggling under the weight of her massive shoulder bag, Julie Bianco made her way through the shifting crowds on 54th Street. It had been five months since she had roamed the streets of Manhattan, but it had taken only a few hours for her pace to adjust, and she now negotiated around tourists, scaffolding, construction and other diversions with little mental effort. She was exhausted, too tired to even yawn; her legs ached, her throat was sore from talking, and a small pinch of pain had invaded between her eyebrows.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and for two days she’d been running auditions at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. It had been a massive turnout. It never failed to surprise her, the sheer crush of young dancers willing to move themselves and their careers from the center of the dance universe, New York City, to a relatively unknown company in Canada. Then again, with the amount of money Buddy was dangling in front of everyone’s face, she shouldn’t be surprised. And it allowed them to be choosy: out of six hundred candidates, they had selected fourteen for the company, plus two young teenagers were awarded apprenticeships.

Without slowing her pace, she lit her last cigarette and crumpled the box in her gloved fist, tossing it at an overflowing garbage can on the corner of 5th Avenue with some concern. The pack had been three-quarters full that morning. Excessive even by her habit’s standards. With a scowl she tossed the butt away after a few drags, and reached for her tin of strong peppermints. She popped three in her mouth and resolutely crunched away the taste of smoke and tar as she considered quitting for good.

She passed a Starbuck’s and paused briefly, craving a Café Valencia, warm and fragrant with a touch of orange liqueur and a froth of cream on top. No, there wasn’t time, plus she had already drunk too much coffee today. She wondered if her nerves would relax in time for her to enjoy her massage.

Her brother Johnny was coming to Manhattan that evening. It was his idea that Julie make an appointment with his new girlfriend, who was a massage therapist. Julie jumped at the chance: in all her years as a dancer, she had never had a professional massage, and Nina Valenti looked positively horrified at the news.

“Are you kidding me? Of all the people in the world who could use one, dancers and athletes are at the top of the list.”

Julie shrugged prettily, while trying to reconcile her twin’s previous descriptions of Nina, and the ensuing mental picture she’d derived, with this strikingly beautiful woman who now stood before her. They saw eye-to-eye, their shoulders, waists and hips lining up precisely. Lowered in water, they would displace exactly the same amount. Julie’s hair was in a ponytail, Nina’s in a French twist, but it was apparent they both owned the same wild profusion of corkscrew curls, Julie’s dark brown, and Nina’s a luxuriant auburn. Nina was crisp and neat in khakis and a white button-down shirt. Her gaze was direct, and Julie fought not to squirm under it, feeling grimy underneath her sweatpants and henley shirt.

There was a bizarre dichotomy in her personality: after a lifetime of dance training, she was emotionally immune to criticism and brutal scrutiny of her body, and rarely did she experience stage-fright when performing before an audience, rather she reveled in the attention. Yet once out of her element, she didn’t bear up well when people stared at her, and strangers made her shy, particularly women. With men, at least there was the safety net of flirting, which, when you thought about it, was sort of like performing.

“I’ve always meant to,” she said lamely. “I never really had the time. And when I had time I didn’t have the money…”

“Well, I’m glad you came,” said Nina, reaching out a hand to take Julie by the shoulder and coax her along the blue-carpeted corridors of the New York Health Club.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Julie echoed.

“Johnny’s told me so much. He really misses you.”

“I’ve heard as much about you.” In fact, from her brother she had heard of little else but Nina, ever since Thanksgiving. Nina did this and Nina said that and Nina was some other thing. Johnny was smitten ass over Achilles.

“Did Johnny tell you that my sister’s a dancer?” Nina was saying.

“Yes. Actually, I saw her name in a review Dance Magazine did on the Houston Ballet.”

“Anything good?”

“She got a mention for the pas de trois from Swan Lake, and there was a little picture. Is she one of your clients?”

Nina laughed. “Susanna books me solid whenever she comes home.”

They arrived at a doorway, upon which was a hand-lettered sign: Nina Valenti, LMT.

“Were you as thrilled as I was to get your own office?” Julie said.

“Hah!” Nina barked, jiggling the key into the doorknob and hipping the door open. “Check it out.”

They entered a close, windowless room with pale green concrete walls. There was just enough room for a desk, two folding chairs and an industrial sink. The lighting was fluorescent and harsh. The only cheerful point to the room was a vase of silk hydrangeas on Nina’s desk.

“It’s lovely,” Julie managed.

“Bet you’re real envious over the sink.”

“Was this a kitchen once?”

“I’m guessing the custodian’s office. There’s a hanger, you can hang your coat. I work in here.”

Nina opened a door Julie hadn’t noticed. She followed to a smaller, adjoining room. By contrast, this room truly was lovely. Still windowless, but Nina had hung two six-paned mirrors which gave the illusion of windows. The walls were a soft peach color, and the light came from two dim lamps. The table was set up in the exact center of the room. There were plants hanging and a ficus tree in one corner. Also silk, Julie supposed, as there was no sunlight to sustain them, but the effect was good. Music filtered from some hidden spot. It smelled pleasantly spicy, with tones of oranges, vanilla, cinnamon and clove, deliciously warm and comforting and somehow familiar.

“Déjà smell,” Julie murmured.

“It’s amazing, how some scents will do that,” Nina agreed. “You know what gets me? The smell of rain on the concrete in summer time. One whiff and I’m somewhere else.”

Julie nodded, inhaling deeply. She was suddenly visualizing her childhood home, the beautiful Victorian house on the grounds of St. Catherine’s Junior College, an edifice known throughout Greenwich as Headmaster’s House. The living room windows faced southwest and caught the setting sun every day at four o’clock, the diffused heat releasing the perfume from Francesca Bianco’s scented candles. During Julie’s teenage years, nothing was as delicious as coming home on Friday afternoons, wonderful Fridays when she had no dance class, when homework could wait, when the evening stretched out before her in blissful and unscheduled peace. It was heaven to shoulder open one of the red double doors of Headmaster’s House, and step out of the cold and into the golden light enveloping the living room, to let the dogs shower her face with kisses and breathe in the subtle myriad of scents. Nina’s treatment room smelled like a fall Friday.

“Here we go.” Nina walked over to a low credenza and lit two candles. “An oasis of sanity.”

Julie still stood by the door, clutching her shoulder bag, caught in a time warp and not sure what to do.

“Do you have any injuries? Is there any particular area you need me to work on? Your back or legs?”

Julie smiled faintly. “Everywhere.” She ached all over, even her skin hurt. It would be heaven just to be touched.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Nina went on. She brushed invisible lint of the small pillow at the head of the table. “Why don’t you start face-down? There’s a towel for you, and you cover up with this big sheet, too. I turned up the heat so it shouldn’t be too cold in here. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to go all-out nude if you don’t want to. Make yourself as comfortable as possible. This is all about you.”

“Okay,” Julie said again, feeling the blush crawl up her neck, but grateful that she hadn’t had to ask about proper attire.

Nina left and shut the door softly.

In the candlelight, Julie swiftly undressed, at first leaving on her underwear, and then deciding what the hell, and climbed naked up onto the table. It was awkward trying to lie down and then unfold and pull the pink, flannel sheet over her bare back, but she managed. She lay quietly. Her feet were cold. The music was eerie, but somehow soothing with its flutes and synthesized strings. She was tired. She hoped she wouldn’t sleep through this hour of supposed luxury.

After an interminable amount of time, Nina knocked and returned, closing the door softly again.

“Warm enough?” she murmured.

“Yes,” said Julie. “But my feet…”

“Oh, yes. Here.” A heavy warmness descended below Julie’s calves. “I put a towel in the dryer. Is your face comfortable in the cradle like that? I’ll take it off and you can rest your head on the side if you prefer.”

“No, I’m fine. It’s very comfortable, actually.” Her cold feet now soothed, Julie relaxed, listened to Nina making noises at the credenza. She came over to the table and adjusted the covers, folded them back around Julie’s waist, leaving her back cool and exposed.

“Do you have any allergies?” Nina said. “Scented or unscented oil?”

“No, whatever you usually use is fine.” This was turning into more of a science that she had expected.

Nina stood by Julie’s head, rubbing her hands together, then her hands pressed, warm and slippery on either side of Julie’s spine, and slid down. At her hips they separated, pulled up along the sides of her back, circled her shoulders, and then met again and slid down.

“Oh,” Julie exhaled. Inside the pocket of warmth created by the towel, her toes curled.

“That feel good?”

“Oh my God.”

Over and over, Nina’s hands moved in long, up-and-down strokes. Julie’s skin grew warm with the friction. “Your upper back is really tight,” Nina said. She came to one side of the table and leaned into Julie, kneading into the trapezium muscle, following the curve of her shoulder blades. She found a knot and applied a slow, intense pressure, sending a painful yet exquisite release up the back of Julie’s head.

“Is that too much?”

“No,” Julie managed to gasp.

“Do you normally carry so much tension in your neck and shoulders?”

“I used to carry all my tension in my stomach. This is an improvement as far as I’m concerned.”

“Still,” Nina said. The sucked her teeth and shifted her stance. “Girlfriend, I’m going to have to marinate you before I can get these knots out.”

Julie giggled, muffled against the face-cradle. The muscles in her neck were screaming in protest against the probing, but it felt divine. Nina’s hands were strong and silky smooth. They worked in broad, sweeping strokes and in tiny feathery touches. Her fingers dug, her palms soothed, her knuckles searched and her forearms cajoled Julie’s body into a state of suspended nothingness. Her relaxation deepened. She began tuning in the music. She liked it. As was her instinct, her imagination began translating the phrases into movement. This music evoked a stage full of women in white. Slow, languorous movement. Adagio. A flowing phrase into suddenly-held balances. Intricate patterns. Too intricate. Her mind grew fuzzy as Nina’s hands wrung the sympathy from her limbs. She couldn’t hold onto the vision. She let it go. Nice music, though. She reminded herself to ask what it was later.

Nina worked Julie’s back for a long time, then covered her with the sheet and turned to her legs. One at a time each was exposed and massaged. Hamstrings, backs of knees, calves and ankles. Julie was sighing.

Thank you thank you oh my goodness thank you. It had been so long since she had been touched, since she had felt affectionate physical contact. Knowledgeable physical contact. She mentally kicked herself for not having done this sooner. This was a whole hour for her, an hour of singular attention. Someone was loving her, soothing the myriad of aches and pains that she carried about her person during the day, and took quite for granted. Someone was focused entirely upon her and she owed nothing in return.

Then her feet were in Nina’s hands. Her poor, callused, bruised, beat-up feet. Her beautiful, strong, arched feet. The tools of her trade, the means of her expression. Her aching, aching feet. When had someone last rubbed her feet? Chris wouldn’t go near them. He hated feet, anyone’s feet. But Erik had rubbed her feet. Back in college, when she had been in training for competition, he had taken care of her. She would come home from rehearsal, nearly in tears because her feet and legs hurt so much. After she took a bath, Erik would take her feet in his huge hands and rub them. He was clumsy at first, she remembered, solicitous of her pain but eager to help her. He had helped; usually his ministrations put her to sleep, but that was just as well, for their sex life was in shambles anyway.

Nina had Julie slowly turn over. The sheets were adjusted, and Nina began working on Julie’s quadriceps and hips, rotating her legs in the joints, gently stretching. The music changed, and Julie’s eyes popped open as she recognized a piece from Ray Lynch’s album No Blue Thing. Buddy Kaeger had used this album for the first ballet he had ever choreographed at college.

[Yes, it’s him. Sort of. He was always her partner. Once upon a time he loved her terribly. And he was known as Buddy. Ugh. —SLQR]

Buddy had been Julie’s exclusive partner at school, a positively brilliant dancer with whom she’d won a gold medal in the Couples Division at the College Ballet Competition. He’d married Lucia “Lucky” Dare, Julie’s roommate, the only one who’d stuck by her side like a stubborn burr through the chaos of Julie’s relationship with Erik.

Before the move to Canada, the Kaegers had lived in Ohio, where Buddy was a soloist with the Cleveland Ballet. Lucky had danced two seasons in the corps until tendonitis forced her into early retirement. She went back to school for a degree in performing arts administration, and had become a pit bull of marketing and fundraising for the company.

[Yes, Lucky was once a dancer, too. Until she told me she wasn’t. —SLQR]

“You’re thinking,” Nina sang, softly jiggling Julie’s calf in her hands.

“I know this. I mean, I danced to this music.”

“I can feel your muscles twitching.”

“I’ve never met anyone else who knew this album.”

“A friend gave it to me. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

The song playing was called “Here and Never Found”; in Buddy’s ballet this had been a pas de deux for Julie and Lucky. Julie’s eyes closed again, mind and body wrapping around the synthesized bass notes and the flute’s lilting melody. The dance was full of arabesques, a pose in which the dancer stood on one leg and held the other out behind her. There was the impossible arabesque penchée balance at the start, lowering the torso and raising the back leg high and holding the pose for twelve adagio beats, holding it without wobbling as Lucky turned and leaped in a circle about her.

Now came the section in the middle, where the two dancers mirrored each other in never-ending series of hops in arabesque, punctuated by sudden relevés en pointe. Grueling choreography, but one of the most incredible works she had ever performed in.

“Here and Never Found” ended and the next track floated on. “Drifted in a Deeper Land”, another pas de deux, this one for Julie and Buddy. Tender, passionate, full of soaring lifts and one slow, spectacular overhead press privately dubbed “the climax”. At that point the violins swelled on one sustained note and Julie arched back, balanced on her hipbones in Buddy’s hands. Precisely at the crest of her extension, the violins went up a half-step and the music, the dance, the stage, the audience, the very theatre seemed to freeze, hold its breath, and come. People often commented to her that they had lost track of time during the pas de deux. No one ever coughed during “Drifted in a Deeper Land”.

Julie had completely left her body behind now, and she was fully in her head, the performer, dancing with the same intensity of those days in college, when she was nineteen and dancing for her life, dancing because it was all she had. Her chest grew tight with remembered anxiety. Something in Nina’s touch was both gentle and ruthless – her hands softly opened doors that had been long locked within Julie, heedless of what secrets might be hiding there.

No, not back there, Julie thought, growing cold beneath the pink flannel. Please not now, I want to enjoy this. But the ghosts of the past were swarming her. She closed her eyes tighter and tried to dance, but only saw Erik, his shocked face, his wounded expression and eyes full of betrayal. “Get your stuff and get out,” were the last words he’d ever spoken to her. “I don’t ever want to see you again.” This from the man who had stood by her in her time of need, the one who had sworn he would love her forever when she could barely stand to look in the mirror. She’d broken his heart, slunk away in shame, obeyed his command and stayed away. She packed up her university life and moved to New York. She hadn’t seen Erik since.

[Madame von Vague, table for one? Clearly something happened. I didn’t know what yet. —SLQR]

I’m sorry, Julie thought, throwing the words out to the universe in an effort to reach him. She missed him, wanted him badly, needed to touch him. He was out there somewhere. He had to hear her.

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

The tightness in her chest began crawling up her throat, as the strain of the past six months reached its peak. Confronting the unresolved issue of Erik was enough to tip the balance, while at the same time, Nina was slowly and methodically kneading away the last of Julie’s determined resolve. In this unconditional atmosphere, where Nina was enough of a complaisant stranger to invite a catharsis, Julie began to cry.

She didn’t sob, but the tears dripped out of her eyes, ran down in diagonal rivulets towards her ears. She didn’t know for what she cried, but something in her was full of sadness, full of longing, full of gratitude, and it was too big to be contained anymore, not here, not under Nina’s hands.

“It’s all right,” Nina whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Julie replied, swiping her face with the back of a hand.

“No, no, you go right ahead. Whatever it is, don’t keep it inside.”

Julie dug her fist in her eye sockets, and then a sob did escape her, explosive and echoing against the concrete walls.

Nina let go of Julie’s left arm, where she’d been working, and got a couple of tissues. After tucking them uselessly in Julie’s hand, she wheeled over a small stool and sat down behind Julie’s head. Her hands made a cradle for Julie’s skull. She held her head and stroked her hair. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “You do whatever you have to. Don’t even mind me, make like I’m not even here.” Her fingers made small circles on Julie’s forehead, between her eyebrows. She’d rubbed a new kind of oil on her palms; this one was fragrant, soothing to Julie’s hot, gritty eyes, like eucalyptus.

“No, please be here,” Julie whispered. “It’s terrible to feel like this and be alone.”

“I’m here. I’m right with you. Do you want to talk about it?” Nina said.

Embarrassed, Julie attempted to pull herself together. Her chest was tight, her palms clammy. She felt freezing cold all of a sudden. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“You don’t have to explain,” Nina said quickly. “We hold a lot of shit in our bodies. Better out than in. Let it go.”

“I can’t,” Julie whispered. “I’m so tired. I just can’t anymore.”

“Can’t what?”

“I don’t know. I was letting it go and I just kind of said it.” She began to shiver, teeth chattering. Her legs trembled on the table and her head gave uncontrollable little jerks in Nina’s hands. “Help.”

“Uh-oh, anxiety.” Nina grabbed another blanket and threw it over Julie’s body. “You’re fine,” she said softly. “I’m right here. Don’t be embarrassed, I completely understand what you’re feeling.” She rubbed her temples, massaging oil and tears into Julie’s skin. “Take a deep breath. Now hold it, count five, and let it out slow. Slower. Breathe in again. Think about breathing in peace and when you exhale, blow out the fear.” Her fingers moved along Julie’s scalp, playing with her hair. She took earlobes between her fingers, rubbed them gently. “That’s it. Nice deep breaths. Breathe in what you need and let go of what you don’t. Don’t be afraid of a little emotional storm. It’ll pass. Let it go through you.”

“I hate this. I hate when this happens.”

“Do you often have anxiety attacks?”

“Define often.” It was hard to talk through her trembling jaw, but joking about it made Julie feel she wasn’t going under.

“Every day?”

“No. Maybe every couple of months one comes on. I hate it. I feel crazed, like I want to run screaming into the street.”

“You have to be bigger than it. It will never beat you. It’ll come at you full force but it always passes and you’ll always be left.”

With Nina’s coaching, Julie got her breath under control. The shivering stopped, which loosened the knot in her chest. After a few moments, Julie blew her nose lustily. “I don’t know what happened.” The wad of used Kleenex dangled in her fingers.

“You released. It’s all right, perfectly all right and the healthy thing to do. Oh, just throw that on the floor. Don’t even worry.”

She didn’t worry, she was too exhausted. The massage was over.

“How do you feel?” Nina asked.

“I’m okay,” Julie said cautiously. “Tired.” She was completely drained, but at the same time she felt clean, husked-out, ready to be filled up with something new.

“Just rest a few minutes before you get up. And when you sit up, go nice and slow so you don’t get lightheaded. I’ll be in the other room, just scream if you need me.” With a last caress on Julie’s head, she left.

She rested, then, weak and wobbly as a newborn colt, Julie slithered off the table and got dressed. She gathered up her bag and walked into Nina’s office, determined not to be embarrassed.

“Well, that was an experience,” she said. “Any extra charge for the therapy?”

Nina came over to hug her. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” Julie was not the type for hugging on a first date or meet, but she liked Nina’s all-encompassing embrace and was almost sorry when it was over.

“Where are you staying?”

“The Doral.”

“Take a nap. Take a bath. Take some Advil if you feel sore; you might. Johnny said he’d be here by seven. Here’s my address, why don’t you come over around six and help me make dinner?”

“Okay.”

“Drink lots of water. You’ll be very thirsty. Massage loosens the lymph systems, releases toxins. You need to flush them out.”

“I will.”

“Did you know the number one cause of fatigue in women is dehydration?”

“No, I did not.”

“And that symptoms of dehydration closely resemble those of acute anxiety?”

“Really.”

Nina wagged her finger professionally. “Water, water, water, my dear. Lay off the caffeine a while.” She smiled. “And this is going to sound dumb, but be careful crossing the streets.”

Julie smiled back. “Thanks.”

Bartender, another round, please.

I liked Nina. I still have her stuff and I should do something with it someday.

Julie’s brother Johnny was ultimately deleted from the story, but authors are among the greatest hoarders on earth. When we say we deleted something, we’re lying. We delete nothing. We have a slush pile of crap we recycle, alter, tailor and adapt to other works. As the late, great Nora Ephron said, “Everything is copy.” So don’t be shocked if you see any unused material in this book show up in another of my books someday. You read it here first.

I tinkered around with Julie Bianco’s life in Canada for a while, trying to make All The Running the backstory for Bury My Heart in Cashmere. I wrote a bunch of stuff, then came 2002-2004, which my husband and I lovingly call The Black Hole.

A lot of shit happened in those two years. Miscarriages and death of a parent kind of shit. Getting pregnant again but then being diagnosed with cancer. Surgery and treatment and then, because we hadn’t had enough, moving houses before my son was born and then I went into a severe depression.

Did you know black holes have black holes?

Anyway, when I emerged blinking into the sun again, shocked I was still alive, I found both the time and the desire to write. I tinkered some more with Bury My Heart. Then I spilled coffee on my laptop and lost all the new work. Discouraged, I left it behind again.

I started a blog. It was just about food at first, and then it was about a lot of other things. People were telling me, “You’re a good writer, you know that?” Or, “You tell a good story.” Or, “You really need to get these scribbles in front of a wider audience.”

I thanked them and I agreed, but I didn’t do anything.

Until 2013.

When something inside me said, “Quit fucking around. It’s time. It’s time to write a story for these characters. Start-to-finish, with a plot and structure. Give it an arc. Make it the best it can be. Put it out there to show your family and close friends what you’ve had inside all these damn years. Hold it as a bound book in your hands and sleep with it under your pillow, just so you can say: I did it.”

I sorted through all the material in All The Running and Bury My Heart, pulling out scenes I liked with Erik and Julie meeting as teens. Chapters showing their love and showcasing Julie’s dancing. Friendships with Buddy Kaeger and Lucky Dare. The scenes with Julie as an adult, mourning the loss of her love. What happened in between? What drove her and Erik apart?

“Someone cheated on someone,” I said.

All right. Fine. That’s devastating. Who?

“Julie did.”

All right. Fine. Why?

“Um…”

She wasn’t a bitch. She didn’t have a cruel, mean bone in her body. What made her do it? What drove her to it? And who was it? Someone she knew? Someone Erik knew? A friend of Erik’s? Someone just unthinkable?

“Um…”

Something happened. An event. A tragedy. Something horrible happened to them and like a domino effect, it tore everything apart.

“All right…”

And you can’t use Julie. Think up another name. Something French with a nickname.

“Jesus, what else do you want?”

Something good that happens to them. I mean awful. Horrible. But make it good. Real. Relevant.

(This was an actual conversation, by the way. We authors talk to ourselves a lot.)

Around this same time, I became sort of obsessed with a certain YouTube Clip: Viviana Durante and Robert LaFosse dancing the pas de deux “The Man I Love” in George Balanchine’s Gershwin ballet Who Cares?

I was familiar with the ballet, but something about Durante and LaFosse’s interpretation mesmerized me. She’s little and dark, and he’s blond and beautiful. Kind of like Erik and Daisy, come to think of it...

Toward the end of the pas de deux, Durante does this amazing lift on La Fosse’s back. She does it twice, actually. And the first time, she overshoots the roll over his back and actually teeters a little on his shoulder. You can see him adjust to hold her steady, because the only thing between her and a ten-foot drop to the floor are his hands.

I kept watching that moment over and over. The precarious wobble on his shoulder that was almost a disastrous fall.

Something happens there, I thought. If this were Will and Daisy dancing, something would happen right at that moment. The tragedy that rips everything apart. This is it. Whatever happened, it happened right here.

And maybe on the eighth, ninth, twenty-seventh viewing, it hit me: Holy shit, someone shoots her.

You can watch the clip here. Around 4:17 is The Moment:

https://youtu.be/VM_91kZVQ1o

What follows next are the twelve chapters I’d written by November of 2013. A school shooting was now THE THING. I renamed Julie Marguerite, Daisy for short, deciding Erik would get a tattoo of a daisy after the shooting.

Twelve chapters. And I was stuck. I’d written all this and yet none of it was going anywhere. In desperation, I sent it to my friend Ami.

“Read this,” I said. “I can’t find the story. I can write characters but I can’t write a goddamn story. Help.”

When I sat down to write in earnest, this is the first thing that came out. I love radio and I love reading radio transcripts. I thought it would be a cool way to give the backstory. I thought of it as a prologue.

Note the date: it’s a year after the shooting, not ten years. And keep in mind that not everyone and everything in the book you read, existed at this time.

Transcript taken from National Public Radio, “Moments in Time”

April 27, 1993

Karen Stark: You’re listening to Moments in Time, I’m Karen Stark, thanks for joining us. Our story today comes from NPR Correspondent Camberley Jones, who covered last year’s tragic shooting incident at Lancaster University for WHPA. The massacre, which left nine dead and dozens wounded, stunned the nation with its chilling randomness. Reeling with unanswered questions, we mourned for the lives cut short, and were filled with anxiety for the survivors and the ordeal that lay ahead for them. How does one overcome the psychological trauma of such random, senseless violence? Camberley went back to the university on this one-year anniversary, and she has for us a story of two of the Lancaster survivors, who are making a comeback in every sense of the word.

[Sound: interior of theater, construction, voices]

Camberley Jones: It seems a cool, serene April evening at Lancaster University outside Philadelphia, but the auditorium of the Mallory Performing Arts Complex is an emotionally charged place. The University Ballet Company is having its last dress rehearsal before the opening of their spring concert tomorrow night. More significantly, it is now a year since the shootings that took place in the theater in 1992, and Daisy Bianco will be back onstage in a triumphant return to her art.

Unidentified female voice: Daisy and Will to the stage please, we need to block “Man I Love”.

Jones: The senior, who nearly bled to death after being shot through the leg, has fought back through twelve months of intensive therapy to achieve what was thought impossible: tomorrow she will reprise the very role she was rehearsing that fateful night, once again partnered by William Kaeger, who also overcame injuries sustained in the shooting.

William Kaeger: It’s been a long road for both of us. Daisy getting back to where she can dance again, and me waiting for her.

Jones: How do you feel?

Kaeger: Oh God, I’m excited. I’m excited, I’m emotional, and I’m terrified. But I can’t wait. The waiting is going to be the death of me. I’m jumping out of my skin, I just want to go.

Unidentified male voice: Clear the stage, please. Off the stage, everyone, we have lights to focus here.

Second male voice: Hold on, hold on, we got people on the catwalk, off the catwalk!

Jones: Daisy and Will have been dancing together almost exclusively for four years.

Kaeger: Freshman year, at auditions for the company, we were randomly put together to do some partnering work, and that was it. It was magic. She jumped, I caught her, our bodies just said, “OK, this is it, this is the one, this is my partner.” And we’ve been dancing together ever since.

Jones: They started dancing featured solos their freshman year. Sophomore year they won a gold medal in the couples division at the College Ballet Competition. They were training to compete again last year when the shootings occurred, shattering their hard work and dreams. Although maimed with a hand injury, Will was able to come back to dance this past fall; Daisy Bianco, however, was not expected ever to dance again.

[Montage of sound bytes: television coverage of the shootings]

Jones: The shooters – James Korodowski and Jared Miller – had no connection to either the dance or theater departments, nor any connection to Bianco or Kaeger. It simply seemed the Mallory Performing Arts Complex was the first stop on a planned but senseless spree across campus. When the two assailants arrived in the theater, Daisy and Will were in a technical run through of their pas de deux. Miller came onstage through the wings while Korodowski came down the center aisle, and with no further preamble, both opened fire.

Kaeger: I don’t remember pain when I got shot.

Jones: Will Kaeger is tall for a dancer, six feet four inches, with blond good looks and a disarming smile. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, he has been dancing since the age of six and came to Lancaster’s prestigious Conservatory Program on a full scholarship.

Kaeger: A lot of it is blocked out but some things have stayed clear in my memory. It was at the part of the dance where Daisy does this really difficult lift on my back; it comes after a big run so I have to be ready, not only to balance her on my back, but also catch her left leg to stop the motion and hold her there. It’s tricky and takes a lot of concentration. Right when I felt her on my shoulders, I heard these popping noises and then a lot of screaming, and it suddenly felt like my left arm was gone. Then it got surreal, I didn’t know what was happening to me. My legs were giving out and there was blood everywhere, blood all over and I couldn’t hold onto Dais, she had gone limp, just dead weight all of a sudden and she was falling off my back, I couldn’t feel my arm, I couldn’t hold onto her. So I just… I don’t remember. I came to on the floor and the blood was everywhere. I was numb. I couldn’t even think what had happened to us…

Jones: Daisy Bianco comes to sit by Will. She’s from Greenwich, Connecticut, and the polar opposite of her partner in looks: dark-haired and tiny, with stunning blue-green eyes. She, too, is a scholarship student at Lancaster, with ballet in her blood.

Kaeger: Do you remember anything, Dais?

Daisy Bianco: I remember nothing. I mean my last clear memory is sitting by the lighting booth, talking to my boyfriend and putting my pointe shoes on. Then I walked down the aisle to go to the stage and…it just splinters apart after that. I don’t even remember starting the dance. Everything literally stops there, it’s just a black hole of no memory, until I woke up in the hospital and I didn’t know what had happened. You know, in a way I’m glad. I mean, that the music holds no memory of the shooting for me. It’s still beautiful music and I love it, it doesn’t trigger a flashback or anything. I’m grateful for that, on top of everything else.

[Music clip: George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”]

Jones: There is much for Bianco to be grateful for. The gunshot wound to her leg left her in critical condition in the ICU of Philadelphia Trauma Center for nearly two weeks, and doctors feared the leg would never bear her full weight again. Here’s Lucia Dare, nicknamed Lucky, a sports medicine major at Lancaster with a specialization in dance injuries. She, too, was in the theater the day of the shootings.

Lucia Dare: The shot hit Will’s hand and took two fingers clean off – his pinkie and ring – then it went on, straight through Daisy’s leg. The bullet fractured her femur, which is a big bone, you don’t snap back from that under any circumstance, and it’s just an egregious injury for a dancer. There was collateral damage to both her quadriceps and her hamstring, on top of that. Then when the bullet exited, it practically sliced her femoral artery in two. That was what could’ve killed her, the arterial hemorrhage. She nearly bled to death on the stage.

Jones: Nearly, if not for heroic actions taken by students in the theater. One was David Alto, the company stage manager, and Daisy Bianco’s cousin. He’s more like a brother: orphaned at the age of five, he was taken in by Daisy’s parents and raised as their own son, and he grew up watching Daisy dance from the time she was a little girl.

[Time out. Cousin? Yes. In the beginning, David was Daisy’s cousin. It wasn’t Aunt Helen who flew to Belgium to collect her nephew after his parents died. It was Aunt Francine. More about this and the twin brother later. —SLQR]

David Alto: Me and Daisy’s twin brother John, we got dragged to a lot of rehearsals and recitals. Both of us ended up getting into the technical aspects – sets and lighting and stage management – just to have something to do.

Bianco: I was the only pre-ballet student with an entourage.

Jones: David Alto was at his post in the stage right wing, calling the show, while his cousin was onstage. In the opposite wing was the assistant stage manager Daniel Ferris. When Miller paused to reload his rifle, Alto and Ferris tackled Miller and tried to disarm him. Miller managed to get away and flee the theater. He was subsequently shot dead by campus police, after taking the lives of four more students in an adjacent building, and wounding nine others.

Daisy Bianco’s boyfriend Erik Lindstrom was in the lighting booth at the rear of the theater. From the small glassed-in space he saw second gunman James Korodowski open fire on the dancers seated in the auditorium.

Erik Lindstrom It was like watching a movie and I know that’s such a cliché but there’s truth in it. You feel like you’ve been picked up and dropped into an alternate reality. You just stand there and…watch. Part of your brain simply refuses to believe what it’s seeing. Men with guns, seriously? Is this a stunt, is the theater department playing some kind of prank? Come on, this is my theater, people don’t get shot in the middle of rehearsal!

Jones: But suddenly dozens of screaming, panicked students were flooding the aisles in the direction of the lobby doors and emergency exits. On the stage, Lindstrom saw his girlfriend of three years crash to the floor in a spray of blood, and in an instant he was out of the booth.

Lindstrom I didn’t think what I was doing. It makes me feel sick now, thinking about how I just burst out of there. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was idiotic. But I was operating on sheer adrenaline. Daisy was shot, she was lying on the stage and that’s where I was going.

Jones: When Alto and Ferris made their move to take down Miller, Korodowski seemed to waver in his stance. He lowered his rifle and that’s when Lindstrom took his chance and threw himself on the man’s legs, bringing him down. A scuffle ensued, into which stepped lighting director Leo Graham, and during which Korodowski was shot dead.

There was pandemonium onstage and in the theater. Four students were dead, eighteen injured. Professor Douglas Tavolacci had been mortally wounded, shot in the abdomen; he would later die at the University Medical Center. Onstage, the situation was grave, with Miller’s two victims rapidly bleeding out. David Alto was frantically trying to help.

Alto: Dan Ferris and I got to Will, and Lucky Dare was with Daisy. Lucky was yelling things to me, “You need a tourniquet, get a tourniquet. Tie it there, pressure there, do this.’ Somebody got, I don’t know, a pair of tights or something and I got that around Will’s arm while someone kept pressure on his hand. I looked over and saw Lucky with Daisy and then Erik was there too and…[pause]…sorry, this is hard…the blood was just pooled around her... I thought she was dead. I was crazy, just crazy, because….[pause]…sorry… She’s my little sister but I couldn’t let go of Will and get to her. Erik was there, though, and Lucky. They had her… And they were just covered in blood, all of them…

Dare: I was numb… I had the training. In our sports medicine department you are trained and constantly drilled to deal with any kind of emergency injury, and now that training was just taking over my hands and I felt very, very disconnected. Like I could feel my brain severing the emotional connections I had to these people, making them just…bodies. I think my own mind tricked me into thinking this was some kind of exercise. I think if I stopped to ponder that my boyfriend and my best friend were bleeding to death in front of me, I would’ve passed out.

Lindstrom I kind of got down where Lucky was, she had the heel of her hand at the pressure point at the top of Daisy’s leg; we had to trade places so she could get a tourniquet on and when we switched our hands this…[pause]… This stream, this arc of blood just spurted up and got us both. In our faces and our hair and our clothes. It was surreal. Daisy was in this little pink dance dress with jewels in her hair, and she was just….lying in this pool of blood… And I didn’t think she was going to make it. And I remember thinking, I can’t let go of her leg, she’ll die. And then thinking, If she’s dying, I need to be holding her…[pause]… Sorry, talking about this...it’s hard…still… I can still see it… I thought, If she’s going to die, it’s going to be in my arms, I’m not gonna let her die on the floor. But I couldn’t let go of her leg and her blood was dripping out of my eyebrows. Jesus, it was just…

Dare: For a long time afterward I had a really, really hard time with blood. Any kind of blood, it could be the littlest scratch, and I would just be nauseated.

Alto: Oh my God, me too. Like if I were flossing my teeth and spit blood in the sink, I was a wreck. I couldn’t go to horror movies, forget it.

Dare: Any movies with any kind of violence, forget it. I was out. Disney only, thanks very much.

Lindstrom Blood was all over everything. It was like… For months afterward, months, everywhere I looked I could still see blood. I could feel it on my hands and I could smell it and it wouldn’t go away. It was even in my dreams. I had recurring dreams of getting out of the lighting booth, trying to get to Daisy. But the aisles of the theater are all bloody, and I’m drowning in it and it’s too late to save her. For months my dreams were filled with blood.

Jones: Lindstrom wasn’t alone. In talking to the dancers and techies, I found that the psychological wounds of the ordeal took longer to heal than the physical ones, with many of the students involved seeking treatment and counseling, and the University Health Center setting up more than half a dozen support groups that still meet to this day.

Bianco: I was a mess.

Jones: Daisy and Will stand at the side of the stage, stretching their limbs. Bianco wears a new version of that little pink dress, jewels winking like stars in her dark hair, a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders and waist helps her stay warm. She has a tremendous presence onstage but offstage, she seems startlingly fragile, especially when standing next to Kaeger.

Kaeger: It’s deceptive. She’s small but our bodies are proportioned the same so we partner well. And she’s a lot stronger than she looks.

Bianco: I get tired of being strong. I want it to be easy again…

Jones: Were you conscious of having a physical recovery, and then a separate mental recovery? Or was it all just one, combined, giant hurdle of…of…

Bianco: Of suck?

Kaeger: It sucked!

Bianco: A cesspool of sucking suckage!

Kaeger/Bianco: [laughter]

Bianco: But seriously. It sucked. And yes, it was all combined together because being shot destroyed the very thing that makes me…me. I’m a dancer. This is all I’ve done, all I’ve been since I was five. And then in ten seconds, it was gone. I had nothing to fall back on. My one great love, the… The thing, the IT… It was all gone, all taken away. They told me not to expect to walk unaided, let alone dance. I was shattered. And the randomness, the senselessness of it… I really struggled. It was bad. I’d go from depression to anger to complete despair, to being on the verge of giving up on ever dancing again and then what was I going to do? I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. When I did sleep I’d have nightmares and wake up screaming. It took a long time. All of it, the physical and mental recovery… It took a really long time.

Jones: What got you through it?

Bianco: [pause]……Erik……[pause]

Kaeger: Oh she’s getting that look. Oh no.

Bianco: Shut up. Dumbass. [Laughter] It’s true. I woke up in the hospital and he was right there. He stayed with me the whole time….[pause]…. Sorry, I get really emotional….[pause]… He stayed with me. He got a summer job near my home so he could be with me. He drove me to physical therapy. First time I tried to stand up on my leg, I was leaning on his shoulder. I cried on that shoulder because I couldn’t stand up. And he kept saying, ‘You can. Yes you can. I know you can.’ First time I tried to take a couple steps, I took them to him, and then I fell down on the floor. He helped me get up again. Then I came back to school and Lucky Dare, my roommate, she’s a sports medicine major and she practically made me into her senior thesis. She watched over me like a nanny, she took charge of all my therapy and was just this perfect blend of friend and coach. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her. And Erik. And so many people…

Jones: Thanks to this support network of family and friends, plus a dedicated team of orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists at Philadelphia’s Hospital for Special Surgery, plus Lancaster University’s own Sports Medicine department, Bianco was back in class just this past December, and ready to rehearse the spring concert shortly after.

Bianco: Just this one piece. We all agreed it would be something short and simple and that was it, no heroics, no full-length ballets or anything like that. And even just this much takes a lot of babying. I do a really specialized warm-up with Lucky. I have to do a lot of focused work on my quadriceps and my hamstring, but I can’t overdo it or those muscles will be fatigued before I even get onstage. It’s tricky but we’ve got it down to a science. And then after class or rehearsal I have to ice everything to keep the inflammation down. It’s a whole production. It’s practically a ritual.

Kaeger: They sprinkle holy water and burn incense.

Bianco: Hey, you better hope I don’t forget the holy water. [Laughter] Don’t mess with the ritual, you’ll be the one who has to carry me offstage.

Kaeger: I will always be there to carry you offstage.

Bianco: Because you’re my bitch.

Jones: Is being so constantly careful and conscious of your leg…do you find that’s changed you as a dancer, are you less spontaneous?

Bianco: Oh God, yeah. You know there are so many days I just want to show up at rehearsal and dance, but if I’m careless like that, I’ll undo everything I worked for…and I worked so hard.

Kaeger: She never gave up

Bianco: I wanted to give up. Plenty of times.

Kaeger: But you didn’t.

Unidentified male voice: All right, places, I mean it this time!

[Laughter, and talk. Sound bite of Gershwin music]

Unidentified female voice: Follow spot ready?

Jones: Bianco and Kaeger take center stage. They are dancing a tender, Gershwin-inspired duet from George Balanchine’s ballet Who Cares? There nothing to suggest this is a girl who was told not to expect to walk unaided again, let alone dance.

Michael Kantz, the company director, watches from the auditorium.

Kantz: It sounds strange to say anything about the shooting was fortunate, but it is fortunate that it was her left leg: Daisy is a left turner, meaning she naturally pirouettes on her right leg, turning to the left. Her solos always favored her right leg, it was the dominant one. So she had a tiny bit of advantage in not having to learn to turn on a new leg in a way that wasn’t instinctive. The rest was hard work, hours and hours of hard work. And now it’s almost impossible to consciously see how she’s adjusted around the injury. It’s been incredible to watch. I know few people with the determination she has. She fought tooth and nail for this. And she was lucky to have Will, because he had both the skill and intuition to rebuild their partnership.

Kaeger: We do things, we partner now in ways that are totally unique, and that’s come out of our injuries. First time we went into supported adagio class, it was a disaster. I didn’t think two fingers was going to make that much of a difference but it was awful – I don’t have much sensation in that hand anymore, so I couldn’t hold onto her, couldn’t feel her weight when I was lifting her. We were falling all over the place, it was really discouraging. We had to go back to kindergarten and start over, and figure out how we were going to make it work. Now it’s completely instinctive again. She knows how to work around my bad hand and I know how she’s going to compensate for her leg. Sometimes I know what she’s going to do almost before she does.

[Music clip: George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”]

Jones: I sit with Michael Kantz, watching the rehearsal. A hush takes over the spectators as the couple reach the part in the choreography where Bianco runs to Kaeger and languidly leaps onto his back in a split arabesque, his maimed hand coming around her left leg to stop the momentum: this was the very moment they were shot, the bullet passing through his hand and her leg. There is no hesitation, no fear today; their timing is flawless, and their colleagues burst into spontaneous appreciation.

[Sound of applause and whistles]

Jones: After an instant of stillness, Bianco slides off Kaeger’s shoulders, her toe finding the floor, still in deep arabesque. Her torso melts down on her leg as he turns her, she revolves around and through and then she is off to the far corner. Turning again, running again, leaping again onto his shoulder. And again…

[Applause]

Jones: During a break, I reiterated to Kantz the question I’d asked Daisy Bianco, if her injury had had an effect on the spontaneity of her dancing, if her dancing seemed to him more methodical and calculated.

Kantz: No. Certainly not her partnered work, maybe if she were dancing solo I’d have a different answer. But in a pas de deux, no, not to my mind. These two trust each other like no one I’ve ever seen. Half the time she doesn’t even have to look for Will. She knows he’ll be where she needs him and that leaves her free. It’s magic. And it’s only gotten stronger this past year.

Jones: Kantz pauses to look behind him in the direction of the lighting booth, then turns and settles back in his seat.

Kantz: Call me a hopeless romantic, but this particular number, “The Man I Love,” is very fitting for this concert, and not just because it was what they were rehearsing when they were shot. Doug Tavolacci, who was killed, he loved Who Cares? It was his favorite ballet in the repertoire, so it feels like a tribute to him. And the very song, “The Man I Love” is fitting. Right now Daisy is surrounded by the men who love her. There’s Will, her partner. And her cousin David in the wings. And her boyfriend Erik back there in the booth. Her father will be here tomorrow, her twin brother. And me, well, that goes without saying. The lyric is ‘someday he’ll come along, the man I love,’ but for Daisy…. They’re here. They’ll all be here tomorrow night. We’ll all be here to watch her shine…

Jones: In the glow of single spotlight, Daisy Bianco does shine, shine like a beacon of hope for anyone who has been the victim of violence and trauma, who has watched a dream shatter into pieces, and then fought to rebuild that dream, step by step.

For NPR news, I’m Camberley Jones in Philadelphia.

So, this was how it all began.

The radio show commemorates the one-year anniversary, not the ten-year.

Erik is present for the interview.

Daisy and David are cousins.

There were two shooters, not one.

The faculty member killed was tech director Doug Tavolacci and not Marie del’Amici.

You’ll be reading more about the evolution of the shooting scene later. But now, let us continue.

September 2002

Lancaster University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The auditorium lights came up following the montage, applause was warm and generous. Sarah Tavolacci came back up to the podium. “Thank you so much for coming today. There’s a small reception in the lobby if you’d like to join us for coffee. Again, thank you so much.”

Another smattering of applause, tired now, emotionally spent, and the crowd began to disperse. Daisy pulled on her coat and slung her purse over her shoulder. She wouldn’t stay for the reception. There was nobody she knew, it was too lonely. And too sad. Not making eye contact, willing herself invisible, she slunk down a side aisle to a door next to the stage, slipped through it without looking back. A wave of sensory nostalgia greeted her, that distinctive backstage odor of sweat, sawdust, musty velvet curtains and damp concrete walls. Taped-down cables underfoot and the catwalk overhead. The disorderly order of everything. It hadn’t changed. The same haphazard stacks of sets, the cubicles for quick costume changes, the stage manager’s station. Daisy breathed it all in, sucked back through a wormhole in time, running her hand along the two freestanding barres where she had warmed up with her friends over the course of four years. She put her feet in a loose first position and closed her eyes.

She was eighteen, making her company debut with Will in the Bach Variations. She was nineteen, dancing solos. She was twenty, stretching and limbering before the technical run of Man I Love, mere minutes before the two gunmen arrived to blow her life to bits. She was twenty-one, poised backstage for her entrance, dancing Man I Love again, the bits put back together

She breathed in again, her heart pounding. This was more difficult than she’d imagined. Leaving the barre, she walked over to a wall of wooden pigeonholes, each little compartment labeled with a name. These were the performers’ mailboxes. Notices and announcements would be left in them, as well as love letters, good luck notes, little trinkets and gifts. Daisy reverently touched the fourth cubby from the left, third row, now labeled “Browning” but once upon a time, “Bianco.” There was nothing in it. Had this been the opening night of one of her concerts, there would have been a pair of daisies taped to a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Erik’s ritual offering to her. He never forgot. After the show she’d pin the daisies in her hair and they’d eat the candy together in bed.

Daisy hurried down the small flight of steps to the dressing rooms beneath the stage, passed through, looked them over, looking but not lingering. No feelings allowed, she was simply crossing it off the list, visit dressing rooms: check. Good. Done. We’re outta here.

She made her way up and out, navigating corridors, passageways and shortcuts on pure instinct, arriving back on the main floor by the auditorium doors. She paused briefly by the plaque Sarah had unveiled, running her fingers over the raised, bronze letters.

Tavolacci Memorial Auditorium

In memory of our friend and colleague,

Dr. Douglas Tavolacci

Professor of Technical Theater Arts

May 27, 1944—April 19, 1992

Outside the day was cool and crisp, a hint of wood smoke flavoring the air. Daisy squinted into the sun’s brightness and looked about, wondering if she’d stay and wander the campus some more, or if she was veering close to the tipping point where nostalgia became outright depression.

A hand touched the back of her shoulder, and a tentative voice said, “Daisy?”

She turned around to face a woman in a belted trench coat. Dark auburn hair in a sleek bob that skimmed her chin, and large sunglasses she was now hastily removing. “It is you. Holy shit.”

“I’m sorry, I…”

“I’m Camberley Jones.”

Daisy’s mouth fell open. “Oh my God. Camberley. What are…Oh my God.” They kissed, left cheek, then right, and hugged, laughing and patting each other. “Oh my God.”

“Hello!”

“My goodness…”

“It’s so nice to see you again.”

Daisy held her away. “I didn’t even recognize you. It’s your hair, it was curly before.”

“Curly and big. It was the nineties, big hair was required.”

They laughed and hugged again. “What are you doing here? Are you working, covering the Memorial?”

“No, no, I heard they were re-dedicating the auditorium and I just came myself. I still feel…attached to it all. Are you here yourself, did you come with anyone?”

“Just me, drove down from my parents this morning, got a hotel room. I did some visiting and taught two classes for Michael. Michael Kantz, you remember, right?”

“My God, he’s still here?”

“He’s here. And Leo Graham, he’s here, too, they’re the only ones left from my time.”

Cam touched Daisy’s cheek softly. “You look great.”

Daisy shrugged. “I’m thirty,” she said with resignation. “How the hell did this happen?”

“I’m thirty-two, shut up.”

“How are you, what are you up to now?”

Cam blinked. “Oh…well, lots of things.”

“Do you want to get coffee or something, do you have time?”

“I’d love to, I have tons of time.”

“They’re serving in the lobby but to be honest I’m drained, I can’t take anymore. There’s a Starbucks in the campus center.”

“Well of course there is.”

“I know, I know, it’s a city ordinance there has to be one every five miles. Should we go somewhere else?”

“No, no, Starbucks is fine, I don’t care.” Cam slid her hand into Daisy’s elbow and they set off chummily, feet falling into step. In ten minutes they were ensconced in easy chairs with coffee, eager to catch up.

“So you drove down from your parents house,” Cam said, unwrapping a blueberry scone. “Where is that again?”

“Greenwich.”

“That’s right.”

“And where are you now? Manhattan still?”

Cam nodded. “Never been anywhere else.”

“Are you still in radio?”

“I’m a regular contributor with WNYC, but being a professional freelancer, I’m into whatever medium will pay me. I’ve even done a few pieces for Dance Magazine.”

Daisy stopped in mid-sip, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“Really. After doing the story at Lancaster, I found I really enjoyed writing about the arts, writing about dance in particular, and I’ve sort of found this niche of writing about schools and university programs.”

“Well, I may have a niche for your niche. I could use a contact at Dance Magazine right about now.”

“Oh? What are you up to? Start from the beginning, what happened after you graduated?”

“After graduation, let’s see…” Daisy shifted in her chair, tucking one foot underneath her.

“Wait, how’s your leg?”

“My leg is good. I don’t really perform anymore but as long as I’m good to my leg, it’s good to me.”

“Were you performing? I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. You tell.”

“After graduation I came to New York because the Joffrey Ballet had offered me a place. I danced with them for a little over a year and then I got hurt—”

“Oh shit,” Cam said.

“No, not my leg, but my arm of all things. My partner dropped me and I dislocated my elbow.”

“Jesus.”

“So I was out for six months nursing that. And they let me teach some classes at the Academy. I never thought of myself as being a teacher but I took to it, and it turned out to be something I really liked.”

“So that’s what you’ve been doing since?”

“Not exclusively, no. Joffrey didn’t renew my contract so I became kind of a free agent. I did a season with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet when they put on The Merry Widow, which I loved. Then a friend suggested I go audition for the touring production of Phantom of the Opera.”

Cam laughed. “More opera—do you sing?”

“I don’t sing. At all. At least that was my perception, but what the hell, it was a Broadway show and it was ballet. I went and auditioned for the chorus and they called me back for Meg Giry.”

“Meg Giry. Oh, the friend,” Cam hummed a few bars and warbled, “Where in the world have you been hiding? Blah blah blah…She sings. Right?”

“Right. I mean it’s not a huge singing role, there’s like two other solo lines after Where in the world, blah blah, and the rest of the time she sings within an ensemble. But I’m called back and I have to sing. And long story short…I guess I can sing. Well enough to get the part, so I go on tour for the next two years.”

“What was that like?”

Daisy smiled into her coffee. Camberley, she remembered, had an uncanny knack for getting people to spill. Her questions never seemed prying or nosy, her tone was always engaged and friendly and, above, all, interested. What was that like, she would say, as if nobody had ever asked you before, as if this were your first chance to really tell your story.

“It was fun for the first year,” Daisy said. “The travel, the gypsy lifestyle, different city every week, you’re seeing the world and living the dream. Then it gets to be rote, and people start getting on your nerves, and that’s when it turns into a tough gig. Parts of it were exhilarating—I was made dance captain, so I’d be giving class every day. And by the end of the second year I was assistant to the choreographer, and I sensed I was heading more and more in that kind of direction. But by the end of my contract, I swear, if I had to put that goddamn blonde wig on again, or if I heard Music of the Night one more time I was going to kill myself. I was fried.”

“All right, you’re Phantomed out, what year is this?”

“1998. I have one last hurrah, I audition and get cast in Fosse.”

Cam’s eyes widened over the rim of her cup. “I saw that!” she choked. “I saw that very soon after it opened, did I see you? I had to have seen you. Shit, I probably looked past your name in the program and didn’t even realize, how crazy is that?”

“Best show I ever did.”

“It looked grueling. Show-stopping number after show-stopping number. And I remember there were like fifteen-second costume changes.”

“Hardest dancing I’ve ever done. Ever. The turnover was insane, dancers leaving and new ones coming in, every other week. I got dance captain again so I’d be in charge of rehearsing all the rookies. After six months they took me out of the regular cast and made me the swing.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was universal understudy. If any female was out, I was in. I knew the whole show inside out: any part, any number, any side of the stage.”

“That sounds completely overwhelming.”

“It actually worked out great. Toughest part of doing a show like that is the repetitiveness, fighting to keep it from becoming mindless and routine. You start zoning out in the middle of numbers. But when I was swing, every week was different. I’d cover one role for a couple days, then have a couple days off, just running rehearsals. Then I’d go on in another part for a couple days. I was constantly challenged to remember what I was doing. I loved it. I did it for a year and then my body just said all right, you’re done, let’s move onto the next thing.”

“Which was?”

“Well meanwhile, while I’m doing all this piecemeal stuff, Will Kaeger—you remember him?”

“Duh.”

“Will went straight from school into the National Ballet of Canada. Rock star trajectory, he’s principal dancer within two years. He and Lucky Dare get married—you remember Lucky, his girlfriend at Lancaster?”

“Of course, the little blonde. Pre-med? No, sports medicine.”

“Right. Anyway, they get married, she starts having some kids, they live that dream and then Will starts getting plagued with his own injuries, he’s starting to develop osteoarthritis, so he’s clearly moving into the next phase of his career. Which ends up being in Canada, at the New Brunswick Ballet Theater.”

“All right, New Brunswick,” Cam sketched an imaginary map in the air, “I suck at geography but that’s like out by Maine?”

“Exactly, it’s part of the Atlantic Provinces, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island.”

“And this is a big company?”

“At the time? Tiny. Tiny company, tiny school, tiny facilities. Tiny budget. But Will takes a look around and decides this is what he wants, to build something big out of tiny nothingness. And he roped me in because he needed someone who spoke French and—”

“I’m sure he needed you for other reasons, Jesus.”

“Yeah really. And I said what the hell, and…that’s what I’ve been doing the past four years. What we’ve been doing.”

“And it’s going well?”

“It’s going very well, we’re really starting to get off the ground. We have a board, we have grant money, we’re getting patrons, and man, could we use a feature story in Dance Magazine. By the way,” Daisy leaned forward and touched Cam’s knee, “you know you’re very attractive…”

Cam crossed her leg over, trapping Daisy’s fingers. “I’m also very expensive.”

“Can I pay you in kind?”

“I will have to come and check out your assets.” She uncrossed her knees and Daisy sat back. “But seriously, I would love to.”

“You would?”

“Absolutely. I mean I can’t guarantee it’ll get picked up but I’ll come out and write something. When?”

“We’re doing our first Nutcracker this year. We held auditions last week and got the children cast, we start rehearsals next weekend. Maybe in November?”

“You let me know. I’d love to see what you’re doing. And to see Will and Lucky again.”

“He’ll be thrilled. I appreciate it so much, you have no idea.”

“Well I’m rather attached to this story,” Cam said. She took the top off her coffee cup and swirled it around to get the last bit of foamed milk. “It never ended for me. You know? I always thought about you, all of you, over the years, wondered what was going on. How’s that gorgeous cousin of yours? David?”

“He’s fine. He stayed at Lancaster a couple years, now he works at SUNY Purchase. I see him mostly at holidays.” Daisy looked down at her own cup, knowing what was coming next.

“And Erik?”

There it was. “Erik and I…are not together. We broke up just before graduation—”

Cam’s eyebrows nearly flew off her face. “Really? That couldn’t have been more than a month after I did that piece. What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

Cam tilted her head, sympathy etching the lines of her face. “Sounds like it was pretty painful.”

“It ended very, very badly. We haven’t spoken in nearly ten years. I...don’t mean to be cryptic but I would rather not talk about it.”

“I shan’t pry.” Cam put her empty cup down and checked her watch. “I do need to be hitting the road, though.”

“Me too.” Daisy fished within her purse for her wallet. “Let me give you my card.”

“I’ll give you mine. Here. Figure out with Will the best time for me to come and I will be there.”

“I can’t thank you enough.”

They pulled on their coats and headed outside. It had turned colder, and the sun was slanting low into the bright foliage. Daisy slid her arm through Cam’s, happy to have spent the afternoon together, but feeling wistful at the same time. It was from being here, walking the old campus in the coolth of dusk with the autumn foliage postcard-pretty among brick buildings. Walking through groups of laughing, chattering kids. They being kids, her being thirty and not part of it anymore. Those years of her life gone. Erik being gone.

[As a joke to my editor, I put “coolth” into the first draft of every manuscript. I know it’s not a word. It should be, though. —SLQR]

“I’m parked this way.”

“And I’m this way.”

“Daisy, I’m so glad I saw you.”

“I loved this.” The hugged a long time and as they broke apart, Cam patted her cheek again.

“Call me. Promise?”

“I promise.”

Cam blew a kiss and walked off, her hands thrust in her coat pockets, her bobbed hair swinging smartly, her stride long and purposeful. Daisy watched until she was out of sight, then turned to go the other way.

It never ended for me. You know?

Daisy knew all too well. She had a scrapbook of clippings from those years after college: reviews and blurbs from Phantom and Fosse, one article from the Arts section of the New York Times, featuring new faces in the Joffrey. She’d never drawn attention to her degree from Lancaster, never once mentioned the shooting, and had begun using her real name, Anne-Marguerite Bianco, professionally. Yet they had always found her. With every mention it tagged along, hanging on her ankle, refusing to fade into the past.

“Bianco, although best remembered as a victim of the 1992 Lancaster University Shootings, brings to Meg Giry a fresh and shining twist…”

“Her languid balances and sweeping grand allegro barely belie the devastating injuries inflicted on her during the tragic shootings at Lancaster in 1992.”

“This is quite a dream come true for one who was told she would never walk again.”

“The report of gunfire still echoes in her gorgeous phrasing and languid balances.” That one piece of prosaic bullshit from a Chicago reporter had infuriated Daisy. The report of gunfire still echoed her dancing, what the fuck was that supposed to mean? How in hell did that unctuous ass know what shadowed her, how did any of them presume to know?

“Enough already,” she muttered, unlocking her car and sliding in. If Camberley did come to Canada to do a story, there would be one single condition: no mention of the shooting. Nobody was going to play that card anymore. Daisy Bianco had prevailed and was at peace with the incident, it was time to excise it from her career. Besides, if anyone cared to know, it was not the report of gunfire that echoed in her dancing and reverberated in every thing she felt and did. It was those seven words Erik had fired into her heart:

I never want to see you again.

November 2002

Saint John, New Brunswick

Canada

Camberley Jones gazed up at the squat, square, brick building at 1017 Clarendon Street in West Saint John. She checked the address against the slip of paper in her hand, beneath which Daisy had scribbled, Used to be a school, you can’t miss it. And indeed, chiseled into a smooth expanse of stone above the double glass doors was Edith Peyton Technical School for Girls. So that explained Daisy’s elusive joke about living in Peyton Place.

Buzzed into the lobby, Cam pulled off her hat and gloves, admiring how the renovators had managed to keep some of the schoolhouse charm. Clearly the doorman’s domain had been the main office, and a row of double lockers graced the far wall by the elevator. They all sported combination locks so Cam guessed tenants used them for storage.

Waiting for the elevator, an adolescent tingle slid down the back of her neck. “David’s coming,” Daisy had said after this afternoon’s rehearsal.

“He is? Does he know I’m here?”

“No, I never got a chance to mention it.”

“Do you think he even remembers me?”

The corners of Daisy’s mouth twisted in consideration. “He should. I mean, why wouldn’t he?”

Impulsively, Cam said, “Don’t say anything. Let’s see if he does.”

“What are you up to? Wait a minute, did you and he have a fling all those years ago, what am I missing here?”

“No,” Cam laughed, “no fling. Not for lack of wanting to but nothing happened. This is just me looking to have fun with residual crushiness.”

Daisy drew a finger across her lips. “Entre nous.”

Now, getting off the elevator on the fifth floor, Cam checked her paper again and knocked at apartment 5C. It was opened rather urgently.

“She’s peeling the asparagus.”

Cam stared at the young man before her, stunned by memory, taken aback by both the absurdity of the remark, and the matter-of-fact way he had delivered it, as she would already know the significance of peeled versus unpeeled asparagus, and furthermore, who was peeling it.

“Hi, I’m David,” he added.

“Of course you are.”

“You’re Kimberly.”

“Camberley.” That ought to have clinched it; how many girls named Camberley could he have met in his life? But he only grimaced slightly.

“I’m sorry. Camberley. People must screw that up all the time?”

“I’m used to it.”

David swung the door a little wider. “Come in.”

She stepped into a small foyer painted a pale gold-green. Coats and jackets hung on a row of pegs, boots were lined up neatly under a wooden bench, and a vase of brazen orange tiger lilies stood on a little table, reflected in a silver-framed mirror, flanked by a constellation of votive candles. Something unfolded inside of Cam’s chest, unfurled in fronds of relaxed pleasure. It was lovely here, just here in this little candlelit space. Easily she could have taken to the bench with a cup of coffee and a book and been content.

David’s hands took her coat and scarf with the practiced, unconscious charm of a boy who has been raised from youth to be a gentleman. As he hung them on the pegs, Cam sat down to draw off her snow boots, reached in her bag for her flats. She felt David watching her, not trying to place her, but simply checking her out. She smiled to herself. For once she had packed successfully, covering the tricky problem of staying warm while looking good, and she was confidently pleased with her appearance tonight—smart wool trousers; her favorite periwinkle-blue cashmere sweater; her silver chain with the St. Jude’s medallion. Those fronds of pleasure extended further, arched and stretched like a cat, grew electric, for never was Camberley Jones happier than when she clothed in cashmere, and under the gaze of an attractive man.

Or two.

“Hi, I’m John.” An almost-carbon copy of David had come into the foyer, the same dark hair, thick brows and chiseled features, but slightly shorter, with brown eyes instead of David’s piercing blue ones.

“Cam.” She offered her hand, not expecting John to remember her; they had met just that one time at the 1993 concert, but it had been nothing more than an introduction and five minutes of polite chitchat.

“Nice to meet you.”

“You’re Daisy’s brother.”

“That’s right.”

“And you,” Cam flicked her head to encompass both men, “are cousins?”

David and John exchanged a single quick glance and answered together, “Right.”

“And Daisy’s peeling the asparagus.” Cam stood up, the picture of innocence, highly amused by this ridiculous act of fraud. She flicked the seams of her trousers into place and ran her hands through her hair, snatching a quick glance in the mirror and tucking the right side behind her ear and leaving the left to swing in a smooth arc under her chin. She looked good. “All right then, where to?”

David gestured down the hall. “Let’s get the lady a drink.”

John led and Cam followed, the heat of David’s eyes palpable on her back.

“This apartment building used to be a school,” John said as they emerged into the living room, a long narrow space with scuffed, wide-planked wood floors.

“Daisy told me. Wow, this is lovely.” Sliding doors at the far end led to a small terrace. The walls were painted a smoky orange and hung with pictures and photographs. Brightly colored pillows and throw blankets were heaped on the cream couch and a dark blue armchair. The lower shelf of the coffee table was stacked with books; atop it were more flickering votives and a tray heaped with green grapes and a bowl of salted almonds.

David indicated with the toe of his shoe, “You can still see where the desks were bolted down. Here. And here, too.”

Cam took two almonds and a grape. “And the blackboard, of course.” She crunched salty-sweetness, regarding the room. One long wall was almost entirely chalkboard, the trough below holding both white and colored chalk. Cam crossed her arms and studied the jumble of half-erased words, phone messages, possibly a shopping list. Eased into and around the text, though, were small illustrations, flowers and butterflies and birds, cartoon-like faces, an elaborately-branched tree dropping leaves, and a preponderance of feet in toe shoe. “Who’s the artist?”

“No artists here,” called a voice. Cam whirled dramatically and threw her arms wide. A glass of wine in each hand, Daisy came in. She looked terrific; then again, with her dancer’s posture, anything looked terrific on her. She had put on the right kind of weight since college, and the lithe definition of her limbs showed through the simple jeans and black sweater, a bibbed red apron tied tight around her slender waist. Seamlessly she handed off the wine to her brother and enfolded Cam in a crushing, delicious embrace, pressing first her left cheek against Cam’s, then the right, then the left again. Cam breathed in Daisy’s layers of scent: perfume from her neck; lemon and butter and garlic on her hands; a little waft of cigarette smoke over all that wasn’t unpleasant.

“Come in the kitchen,” Daisy said, tugging Cam by the hand. Cam looked back and pointed longingly at the tray of almonds and grapes. “Bring those?” she asked David hopefully. He smiled at her and obliged, following everyone into the kitchen with its butter-yellow walls and freestanding, butcher-block island. Cam, David and John pulled up stools while Daisy resumed work on her small mountain of asparagus, carefully trimming and peeling the ends.

“You really do peel it,” Cam said, sipping her wine and munching almonds. “I just cut straight across and that’s it.”

Daisy competently scooped up a pile of peelings and tossed it in the sink. “With thick spears like this the ends are always tough, it just makes a little difference.”

“It looks nice,” John said.

“It shows you care,” David smiled.

Daisy shrugged. “It’s one of those things that you grew up seeing so you figure that’s the way to do it. My mother peeled the damn asparagus, now I have to do it. She put fried onions on the top of her meatloaf before she put it in the oven, I have to do that, too.”

“I like your cast-iron skillets,” Cam said, admiring them, hung on the wall above the range in graduating sizes. This was one of the nicest kitchens she had ever sat in. Small, but efficiently laid-out and very inviting. A candle on the counter gave off a warm, caramel scent. She could hang here with a book as easily as she could in the front hallway. David reached past for more almonds, smiling at her. She smiled back, relaxed and warm, pleased that he had chosen to sit next to her, and pulled his stool a little closer when doing so. She was conscious of his leg by hers under the counter, and kept picking up the very faint smell of his aftershave, not overpowering, just a little nudge coming over the caramel candle. It was very nice.

“Remember I once washed one of Mom’s skillets with soap?” John was saying, replenishing everyone’s wine glass. “I thought she was going to beat me with it.”

“Never soap!” Daisy and Cam exclaimed together.

“My crime was always putting the butter in the refrigerator,” David said. “She liked it left out.”

“Even in summer?” Cam asked.

“I think so,” he replied, looking at his cousins. “Yeah, it was out all the time.”

“Now, tell me again, you grew up with Daisy and John,” Cam said benignly, not meeting Daisy’s eyes.

“That’s right, my mother and their mother were sisters. My parents died in a car accident when I was five, and my aunt was named my legal guardian.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry. Where were you living at that time?”

David’s mouth was full of almonds so John answered, “In Brussels.”

“Belgium? Really?”

David nodded, swallowing. “My father was a cellist with the Orchestre National de Belgique.” For some reason, the manner in which the French rolled out of his mouth made Cam’s toes curl in her shoes.

“Say that again,” she asked quietly.

“Orchestre National de Belgique,” replied all three in unison.

Cam exhaled and took up her wine. “I need to take French lessons.”

“Say it in Flemish, Dave,” John grinned.

David turned a little red as he complied, “Nationaal Orkest van België.”

“Not as sexy,” Daisy declared.

“It’s more guttural,” Cam agreed. “What about Italian, you’re Italian on your father’s side, right?”

John looked at Daisy, who clucked her tongue at him. “Orchestra Nazionale del Belgio, what’s wrong with you?”

“C’mon, my Italian always sucked, you knew that.”

Through their light bickering, David was smiling at Cam again. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “So you were uprooted from Belgium to come live with your aunt and uncle…”

“That’s right.”

“What was that like?”

“I don’t remember really.”

Cam looked at the Biancos. “Do you remember anything?”

“We were only four,” John said. “I don’t recall much. I mean, all of a sudden this cousin was sharing my room, but I don’t remember how I felt about it. It was just how things were and, OK, fine, here we are, this is the family now.”

“What about you?” Cam asked Daisy.

Wineglass in hand, Daisy slowly brushed a strand of hair off her face with her wrist. “He didn’t share Johnny’s room right away,” she said after a moment. “My parents gave him his own room at first. But he cried a lot. In the night, I’d hear him crying.”

“That’s right,” David said absently.

“Then they moved him in with John.”

“And the love affair began,” David grinned and John smacked the back of his head.

“You two are twins?” Cam said to the Biancos.

“Yes.”

The doorbell rang. “Get that, boys?” Daisy said, bending below the counter and rummaging in a cabinet, and when they were gone she made a face at Cam. “I don’t believe it, he doesn’t remember you at all.”

“Not a glimmer, I thought my name would give it away.”

“I swear, men only remember the women they slept with.”

Cam didn’t answer. If that was the case, she intended to be remembered after tonight. She felt no compunction at being in the general mood for sex, and in the particular mood to seduce David. She felt comfortably patient waiting for it to pan out. She was sure it would pan out. Meanwhile, the noise coming from the foyer made it clear it wasn’t one person at the door but several. Cam drained her wine and brushed the salt off her fingertips. “Give me something to do.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Please. I get ridiculously shy in a crowd of new people, it helps to be busy with something.”

Daisy smiled and plunked a large bowl down on the counter. “Very well, slave, asparagus in that. Olive oil, salt and pepper over by the stove.”

Cam washed her hands, caught the apron Daisy threw at her and tied it.

“Put it all on this baking sheet. Is my oven turned on?”

Cam checked. “It’s turned on.”

“As am I.” A tall woman with close-cropped blonde hair came into the kitchen, holding a bottle of champagne and trailed by John, who, Cam noted with amusement, was blushing furiously.

“Maggie Katzen, Cam Jones,” Daisy introduced. “Cam. Maggie.”

“I saw you around the theater today, no? You’re a reporter? Journalist? Doing an article on us?”

“All of the above,” Daisy said.

“Put that in the fridge,” Maggie handed over the bottle. John quietly stepped behind her and put his hands on the shoulders of her leather jacket. Not breaking her line of chatter, Maggie allowed him to peel it down her back, revealing gorgeous, creamy shoulders in a red halter-top dress.

“Nice frock,” Daisy said, her head popping over the top of the refrigerator door. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Cold? At one of your parties? Please.”

“If I had shoulders like that I’d flaunt them too,” Cam said, and Maggie beamed at her.

Daisy nudged the fridge closed with her foot, balancing salami and cheese in one hand and a small glass saucepan in the other. The latter she handed to Cam, “Stick that in the oven.”

“What is it?”

“Artichoke dip. Glass of wine, Mags?”

“Yes, but I’ve got to have a cigarette before I can be completely civil, I’ll just nip out on the terrace.”

“Why’d you let me take your jacket?” John asked.

The feline Maggie looked back at him with a self-assuredness that was borderline smug, but only borderline. “So you can put it back on me.”

Without a word John did so, then stood back as Maggie took her glass and left the kitchen. He stared after her a moment then turned to his sister. “Why do I do this again?”

“Because you love it.”

“Johnny, you coming with me?” Maggie called from the living room.

“Coming, yes,” John muttered, filling up his glass. “With you? Not so much.”

“What’s going on there?” Cam asked when he was gone.

“It’s just an ongoing piece of non-existent drama. Maggie’s gay but she toys with Johnny every time he’s up here visiting. Toys with him. I mean it’s almost cruel.”

“She’s a knockout. The short blonde hair and the red lips, I’d kill to be able to pull off that look.”

“She’s lethal. She’s…you know, just one of those chemical people. I am decidedly straight, but Maggie glances in my direction and I blush like an idiot.”

“She’s not one of your dancers though?”

“No, no, she’s our tech director. And this strapping hunk of dudeness is Jean-Claude!” Daisy tossed her dishtowel aside, threw her arms around the neck of a very tall man in the kitchen door. He looked like a biker: dressed head to toe in black, with a shining, shaved head, earrings in both ears, and a goatee. His arms wound twice around Daisy’s small body and he squeezed her until she squeaked. Listening to them chatter in very fast, very raucous French, Cam tipped the bowl of dressed asparagus out onto the baking sheet and spread the spears evenly. Her acute case of bilingual envy was intensifying by the minute. Maybe she really would take French lessons…

Finally, “This is Cam,” Daisy said in English. “Remember I told you someone was coming to do an article on the company? This is she. Cam, this is Jean-Claude Thiesault, he lives upstairs.”

“Pleasure,” Jean-Claude said, enfolded Cam’s hand in both of his large, warm ones. His face was lovely, with startling blue eyes and a smile that could stop traffic. In spite of the crosshairs she had on David, Cam began to feel a little flustered by the preponderance of attractive males at this little soirée.

Daisy was in and out of the refrigerator again. “Here, Jean, I know you don’t like wine, I got you Stella.”

“You are darling, thank you. Now what are we doing here, let me help.”

“This asparagus is ready,” Cam said.

“And peeled,” Jean-Claude added.

“You’re famous for this, aren’t you, Dais?” Cam laughed.

“I really don’t see what the big deal is, but whatever. All right, look, you take a piece of salami like this, put a little cream cheese at the end, and roll it up. Then just set them on this plate. Cam, you’re standing in front of the silverware drawer, get another spoon.”

Jean-Claude made a roll but ate it instead. “Bon dieu de merde, Dézi, that’s good.”

Cam followed suit. “Oh wow.”

“Try to put some on the plate,” Daisy said.

A cell phone chirped and Jean-Claude felt around in his pockets, then left the kitchen to take the call. As he squeezed by Daisy he ran his hand lightly down her hair. She smiled up at him, then took over his work, her fingers quickly and deftly making rolls.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Jean-Claude? No. I mean…we went on a few dates, yes. He’s a lovely man, and I know he’d take amazing care of me, but I just don’t feel any…” she gestured weakly.

“Heat,” Cam finished for her.

“Heat. Exactly.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“No, I’m rather between lovers at the moment.”

“Same,” Cam said, drying off her fingertips and reaching for her wine glass. She paused a moment, thinking, then asked as casually as possible, “What about David?”

Daisy’s eyes flicked to her, flaring with something that looked like alarm, then just as quickly softening again. “What about him?”

“I meant is he available,” Cam said.

“Oh. No. I mean, yes, he’s available. I think. He hasn’t mentioned that he’s seeing anyone.” Finished with the salami rolls, Daisy wiped her own hands and opened the oven. “All right, this is done.”

Jean-Claude came back in. “I apologize. The new chair of the Board of Directors, she couldn’t get into her email.”

“What do you do, Jean?” Cam asked, taking from Daisy the artichoke dip and a bag of pita chips.

“I’m at the New Brunswick Museum, I head the Discovery Gallery.”

“Plus tech support,” Daisy smiled.

“For my sins,” Jean-Claude conceded. “What can I do now?”

“You take that plate with the salami; Cam you take the chips and dip. Just set it on the coffee table or something. Dinner’s going in the oven now, we’ll eat in like 45 minutes.”

Cam paused at the door. “You need help?”

“No, this will take five minutes then I’m coming out. Go with Jean, don’t be shy. Wait! Hold still.” She came over to Cam and untied the apron from her waist. “I mean, Dave loves a girl in an apron but you don’t want to just give that kind of thing away, right?”

“Not on the first date,” Cam smiled.

“I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.” They kissed the air at each other and Cam went into the living room.

People clustered in twos and threes in the living room. Through them Cam saw John ensconced in the easy chair; Maggie was perched on the chair’s arm, talking with Jean-Claude who sat kitty-corner to them on the couch, his arms spread along the back of the cushions, an ankle resting on one knee. Cam set her tray down on the coffee table and hands reached for chips, hers among them. She scooped up a bit of the hot artichoke dip, closed her eyes in appreciation. When she opened them, David was standing in front of her, holding out her refilled wine glass.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “Daisy throws a party and makes it look so easy. Mom, my aunt, I mean, was the same way.”

Cam chewed and swallowed slowly, nodding. She looked away from him, sipped her wine, then looked back at him. She thought surely she would have romanticized the memory of him in 1992, embellishing it into something much more attractive than he actually was. She had even prepared herself for outright disappointment. But it had been unnecessary. He looked just how she remembered. Maybe even better. He was aging handsomely. A couple lines at the corners of his eyes, a strand or two of grey coming in above his sideburns. He met her eyes evenly, a beer in one hand, the other in his front pocket, his broad shoulders relaxed beneath his blazer. They were staring longer than was socially acceptable but Cam felt no desire to pull out of it. Rather, she was moved to lean into the moment, explore it. David’s head tilted—just that one moment of questioning curiosity—then his eyes softened, his gaze grew expansive, and they stood quietly, the edges of the evening gathering around them into a bubble. Suspended within it, they stared, breathing each other’s air, sending out, Cam imagined, little thought bubbles.

Hi.

Hi.

You feel this?

I feel it.

“Here you are!” The bubble popped and the sounds of the party flooded back in. Will Kaeger and his wife, Lucky, were standing by them.

“Here I am,” Cam said slowly, feeling slightly dizzy.

“I’ll get you guys something to drink,” David said; he looked a little dazed as well. “Wine? Or there’s Stella.”

“Stella, please,” Will said.

“Me too,” said Lucky, and then to Cam, “I’m so glad you stayed.”

“We haven’t even had five minutes to really talk to you,” Will added. “Once those kids come in to rehearsal, it’s a nonstop battle to keep order.”

“That’s what I was trying to capture for the article, how much work it is to keep their attention and keep them motivated.”

“I hope I get a little journalistic airbrushing so I don’t come across as a total ogre.”

“You’re dynamite with them, are you kidding me? I’d have torn my hair out halfway through the party scene.”

“Oh you mean like…” Will ducked his head as if to show her a scratched-out bald spot on his crown.

Cam patted his shoulder. “Thank you so much for having me, I really enjoyed myself today.”

“Well thank you for doing this,” Lucky said. “Any kind of exposure we can get, we appreciate it so much, but to have it be you? It’s just wonderful.”

“How in the hell did Daisy find you? Ah, thank you, my man,” Will said to David who had come back with drinks. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” they clinked and drank.

“So how did Daisy find you?” David asked. “Come to think of it, who the hell are you?” His hand casually moved along the small of Cam’s back. Cam smiled at him, but neither moved away nor into his touch.

“You don’t remember her?” Will said.

David’s confident expression faltered as he looked from face to face. “No. Wait, have we met, do I know you?”

Lucky swatted his arm. “Dave, don’t be an idiot. Come on…”

Cam could barely keep a straight face as she let David stare at her helplessly. “I worked for WHPA in the early 90s,” she finally said. “I covered the Lancaster Shootings.”

“Oh,” said David, but a fog of confusion still wreathed his expression.

“I still have the transcript, I think.” Will looked at Lucky. “Do I? I must…”

“It’s got to be in a scrapbook or an album somewhere, I’m sure of it. With all your clippings.”

“You know I brought a copy but I left it in my hotel room,” Cam said, “I’m sorry about that.”

“What about a sound copy, though. Sound copy? Is that what I mean? The actual taped radio piece, is that archived anywhere?”

Then David stepped back from the group, open-mouthed, and pointed a finger straight at Cam’s face. Will turned away, choking on his beer and Lucky broke down in peal after peal of laughter. David closed his mouth, turned around in a circle, pointed at Cam again. “You!” he exclaimed.

“Hello.”

“Camberley.”

“Not Kimberly.”

“You covered the shooting, but then you came back and did the story on Daisy and Will for NPR,” he said, closing his eyes. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I…” He opened his eyes, looked a long, head-shaking moment at Cam, then stepped in and put his arms around her. “Can we start over? Hello. Camberley Jones. So nice to see you again.”

“David Alto. How are you?”

“I am an idiot.”

“You’re adorable,” Cam said truthfully. She relaxed into his embrace, slightly buzzed and very content now.

“She was only like embedded with us for a week, Dave,” Will said.

“I know, I…” David sliced a hand up and down before his eyes. “Nothing. No recollection. Nothing.” His hand then slid down the length of Cam’s arm to take her fingers in his. “You didn’t even say anything when I answered the door, you just led me on in ignorance.”

“I wanted to see how long it would take to come back to you.”

“This is crazy, I totally remember you now. Your hair was different back then.”

“It was big.”

“Wow, you look great.”

“Thank you. I’m older, anyway.”

“Well, we all are. So, now I know who you are. That just leaves what you’re doing here. You’ve stayed in touch with Dais all these years?”

“No, not at all. I ran into her at the memorial service for Doug Tavolacci.”

“I feel bad about not going to that,” Will said absently.

“I didn’t even know there was one,” David said. “Man, I suck.”

“And we went for coffee and she exchanged sexual favors for a story on the company.”

“I heard that,” Daisy muttered, passing behind Cam and yanking her hair. Cam swatted her ass in return.

“And here I am,” Cam finished.

“That was so weird that I didn’t…” David rubbed his fingertips into his eyes. “How could I have forgotten?”

“Maybe,” Cam said carefully, “you guys block a lot of those years out? I mean, it’s understandable…”

They all digested that thoughtfully. Cam drank her wine and surreptitiously glanced at Will Kaeger’s left hand and its two missing fingers. She noticed he wore his gold wedding band on his index finger, and found it touching that Lucky chose to do the same.

“One thing I always wondered,” she said slowly, “still wonder…I asked Daisy but it seemed like a sore subject…”

“You must’ve asked her about Erik,” Lucky said immediately.

“Yes. Where is he, what happened?”

“Excuse me,” David said, and abruptly left the gathering, so abruptly that Cam was startled and puzzled. She watched him leave the living room, not in the direction of the kitchen, maybe toward the bathroom. She turned back to Will and Lucky. He was finishing the last of his beer with a grim expression, and she stared into her bottle with turned-in lips.

“Is it a really sore subject?” Cam ventured. “Should I not ask?”

Lucky drew in a breath and exhaled, “Daisy and Erik haven’t spoken in like eight years.”

“Nine,” Will said.

“At all?”

“Nothing, no contact. They broke up shortly after you did that radio piece and that was the end of it.”

“What happened to them? My God, one of the things I remember most about that story was those two were just in love like…like nothing I had ever seen before in my life. I mean like it hurt to look at them, it was like staring into the sun.”

“Other than saying it was her fault, Daisy doesn’t talk about it,” Will said. “But off the record, Luck and I have always thought that David had something to do with it.”

Lucky winced. “That sounds so sinister, Will.”

“I know, I don’t mean it that way like he intentionally broke them up, that makes no sense. But at the same time I feel like he knows the whole story. But I won’t ask. I don’t know if I want to know the answer, to tell the truth.”

“There hasn’t been anyone for Daisy since Erik,” Lucky said. “I mean, she dates, but…”

“I thought she and JC had something going on,” Will said, flicking his head back over his shoulder, indicating the couch where Daisy now sat, very cozily, with Jean-Claude Thiesault.

“I thought that too. They certainly look very sweet together.”

“He adores her,” Lucky said. “But it never went anywhere serious though.”

“No heat,” Cam remarked; Buddy glanced at her and nodded gravely.

“That’s pretty much how it’s been since college,” Lucky sighed. “Dating here, dating there, something that looks promising but turns out not to be. She’s never…you know, lost her heart again. I’ve never yet seen her feel for anyone what she felt for Erik. No one’s come even close.”

“That’s sad,” Cam said softly. And interesting, she thought. “I think I’m going to go have a cigarette,” she said. “Either of you want to come with?”

The Kaegers declined, so Cam got her coat herself and went out onto the terrace. It was cold, but not agonizingly so. She welcomed a bit of breathing room to smoke and think about everything.

She leaned her elbows on the iron railing, surveying the street below. Daisy said she had deliberately chosen this place over another, nicer building in Morin Heights. More than the quirky architecture, she loved the neighborhood: it was within shouting distance of the waterfront; no more than 100 feet in any direction from restaurants, bars, or markets; and possessed an undercurrent of bohemia, of youth, of action, reminiscent of her days in New York City.

Cam exhaled a plume of smoke, a thread of music coming to her from the past. “Someday, he’ll come along,” she sang softly. “The man I love…”

It hurt to look at them, it was like staring into the sun…

This scene is way too long with way too much talking and not a lot happening. Will has like zero personality, Lucky is the exposition fairy. Atomospheric to a fault. And did you catch that little thing happening with David and Cam? The eyes? The staring? The bubble? I liked that. Obviously this whole party scene was discarded, but I kept the visual connection concept and gave it to Erik and Daisy.

April 27, 1993

Lancaster University

Camberley watched the performance from the lighting booth, sitting next to Erik Lindstrom. He gave her an extra headset, which allowed her the unique vantage point of being privy to the audience and the backstage vibe at the same time. Even better, it gave her David Alto’s voice in her ear. She found herself tilting her head into it, curling into his words, his confident orders, his fits of joking laughter, his smooth command of everything going on in the theater. Cam was unabashedly attracted to him.

Beside her, Erik lounged, his large hands fiddling with the levers and switches of the board. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up, showing smooth, tan forearms, ropy with muscle. He was no slouch in the looks department either, Scandinavian blond from his father, with dark brown eyes from his Italian mother. His magnetism, however, was much more subtle than David’s. He exuded just as much sexiness, but in an indolent, laconic way. He was thoughtful and expansive, kept more of his cards against his chest. Still, Cam found herself dialed into and digging him, balanced right on the edge of outright loving him. She couldn’t help it anymore.

All during the week she’d kept tight reins on her objectivity, asking the questions, reporting the facts, simply telling a story. But after wrapping up the tape last night, an emotional catharsis descended on Cam’s shoulders and she found herself weeping in the shower, caught up fast in the experience of her subjects. She was in love with this story, in love with David, Erik, Daisy, and Will. At intermission, when Erik introduced her to Daisy’s parents and twin brother John, Cam fell in love with them as well.

Adrenaline kept flooding her chest as the minutes ticked by; Daisy and Will’s pas de deux would be the first number in the second act. It was nearly time. Her heart was pounding. She followed Erik into the booth, drew on her headset with icy hands, pulled her wrap closer around her shoulders. Erik rubbed his hands together, chafing his fingers, blowing on them. He smiled at Cam. “Well I’m dying here, how about you?”

“I am an emotional hamburger,” she replied. Her headset crackled.

“Five minutes,” David said softly. “Flash the houselights.”

Erik reached and slid the master switch down, dimming the house, then bringing the light up again. Once more. The murmur of the milling audience intensified, then people began filing back into seats.

“How we doing back there, Dave?” Erik asked.

“Nobody’s thrown up yet.”

“Where’s Dais?”

“With Will. Doing a rosary.”

“Tell her I love her.”

“Tell me first.”

Erik chuckled. “You know I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Three minutes.”

“Tell her I love her.”

“She knows, man.”

“Tell her anyway.”

Another crackle and David was gone. Erik was smiling into space, fingertips rubbing his chin. Covertly Cam watched the smile slowly fade and his face settle into its handsome lines. He blinked, chewed on his bottom lip, rubbed the back of his neck. She imagined those lips and hands on Daisy’s body and wondered, not for the first time, what kind of lover he was, wondered how the poetry of Daisy’s lithe limbs onstage translated in bed. She had an inkling, for she had seen them kiss earlier this evening.

After the dancers had finished their onstage warm-up and dispersed to wardrobe and makeup, Cam had wandered back toward the lighting booth where Erik had told her to meet him. He was there already, sitting in his captain’s chair with his feet up on the console. And Daisy had been perched prettily on his lap, sewing ribbons on her pointe shoes. Cam drew back discreetly, eyeing them from the shadows, fascinated. Their body language was easy and companionable as they talked and laughed, exchanging a myriad of glances and private jokes. Erik spun a pencil through the fingers of one hand, the other was on Daisy’s thigh. Her left one, the one that had been shot. His fingers seemed intent on one spot, stroking it back and forth. Cam wondered if that’s where a scar was. She imagined he knew them all by touch alone.

Daisy stopped the hand that was caressing her so she could look at Erik’s watch. She said something, probably that she had to go, and Erik set both his feet down on the floor. Daisy barely wobbled as his lap changed position; perfectly balanced and poised, she just kept looking at him with a smoldering calm that made Cam whistle softly. Erik took Daisy’s head in his hands and put his mouth between her eyebrows. Then he kissed each eye, her nose, her left cheek, her right, her chin, and then, her mouth. Her mouth again, with open eyes. There was something ritualistic about the order and length of each kiss; Cam wondered if this was something they did before every show.

Erik kissed Daisy again, and now his eyes closed and his lips opened a little. Daisy put her hand on his face and softened into him. A long, gorgeous soul kiss, then her hand brushed down his chest and she slowly got off his lap. He touched his fingers to his mouth, and pressed them to her left leg. She bent and kissed him once more.

“What are you thinking about?” Erik’s voice broke into Cam’s reverie.

“Hm?” she looked over at him.

“You look a million miles away.”

She smiled. “I was wondering… How did you meet her?”

“Dais?”

“Yes.”

With a wide gesture, Erik indicated the whole of the lighting booth. “Here. Right here. Freshman year, Intro to Technical theater, I came in to learn the lighting board and work the fall dance concert. Dave was in the booth, I met him first. Then the dancers came in and…there she was.”

“Love at first sight?”

“Well, I don’t know if…” he laughed softly. “Yeah. I never described it that way, it sounds so corny. Definitely connection at first sight.”

“Tell me.”

Erik grinned. “Are we on the record here?”

Cam laughed, and held up her empty palms. “The story is wrapped, this is just me being residually nosy.”

“Well…Daisy came over to talk to Dave, she’d brought him a sandwich or something, and he introduced us. I said hello and she said hello and…something weird happened. Jesus, I’ve never told this to anyone.”

“Go on. You said hello and?”

“She was looking at me and I was looking at her and we said hello but, and this sounds crazy, there was like one conversation going on out loud, and another one going on in my mind. I don’t mean imagined, but like literally I could hear Dais talking inside my head. And it was much more than hello, it was a…recognition. Like I already knew her, I was just waiting for a face and a name to attach to that knowing. And when I heard her in my head it was the same feeling. Like, So here you are. Finally. I’ve been waiting. She was the one. I felt it. And then when I saw her dance, I knew it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, not that night, not the next four nights of tech week. Every free minute we had, we’d find each other and talk. Night of dress rehearsal, before I left the theater, Dave kind of pulled me aside and said, ‘Let me give you some advice about my cousin.’ I got a little freaked out, thinking he was going to say she had a boyfriend or that she was completely psycho, which would’ve been my luck.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Go buy a thing of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and leave it in her mailbox tomorrow night. Trust me on this one’.”

“Did you?”

“I did. I got them and I went to like four different places before I could find a bouquet of daisies. I taped two of them to the candy and left it in her mailbox. After the show I went back to my room and paced like a tiger until I couldn’t stand it, and I went over and knocked on her door. When she opened it, she had the daisies pinned in her hair and a mouthful of chocolate and peanut butter.” Erik looked over at Cam, blushing through his smile. “And she kissed me. That was it. There we were and there we went.”

“Bring down the house,” came David’s voice over the headset.

Cam drew in a breath as her insides caved in. “Oh, good luck,” she whispered.

“You don’t say good luck, you say merde,” Erik admonished, the agile, widespread fingers of one hand poised over a section of levers as if he were a pianist about to play.

“Lights up,” David said. Erik slowly pushed the levers forward and the cyclorama began to glow a rich, twilight blue.

“Cue sound.”

Out floated the lush, measured tones of the introduction to “The Man I Love.” From the upstage left wing came Daisy and Will, she in her pink dress, bourréeing in fifth, her hand tucked in Will’s elbow, her head tilted toward but not quite on his shoulder. Tall and tender in black, Will walked beside her, his maimed hand covering her fingers.

And then the auditorium exploded.

Both Cam and Erik jumped in their seats, reared backwards, open-mouthed in shock as the applause came roaring down from the balcony and met with the ovation coming from the orchestra seats, whirling together in a thunderstorm of clapping, stamping triumph that drowned out the music.

“Jesus,” Erik breathed, stumbling to stand up, his hands on top of his head. Cam’s hands closed up her mouth and nose as she got up too. She scanned the crowd through a veil of hot tears: on their feet to a man, applauding and whistling. Will and Daisy had reached center stage, and she had turned on her toes and was bourréeing backwards now, still with the choreography, but the music was lost.

“Oh boy,” Cam could hear David exclaiming low in her ear. “Holy shit. Holy shit I don’t believe this…”

Daisy kept moving, her feet lightly gathering up the inches of the stage floor, her arms liquid patterns. She turned under Will’s arm, his other twining around her waist and she fell back, languid, melting, her eyes never leaving his. Will caught her, but clumsily, he was breaking down, breaking out of the dance, his face crumpling. Instead of bringing Daisy up into the next phrase, he brought her up and crushed her to his chest. She came off pointe, stood in her flat, pedestrian feet. Her shoulders were heaving, shaking and she buried her face into Will’s shirt. The intensity of the applause rose up another level; people were yelling now, as if at a rock concert.

“Dave, what do we do?” Cam heard the assistant stage manager.

“Kill the music. Just run it back to the start. Stand by, everyone stand by, let’s just let this pan out.”

Cam didn’t think it could possibly last any longer, yet on and on it went. Will was whispering to Daisy, coaxing her head up off his shoulder, and finally, gently, he got her to turn around. They stood there then, clasped in each other’s arms, stood and faced it, accepted the moment that was rightfully theirs. Daisy’s face had bloomed with her full, bright beautiful smile. Will was shaking his head and laughing. A whole minute went by before David spoke again. “Erik, can you hear me?”

Erik roughly wiped his wet face with the back of a hand and sat down. “Yeah, I can hear you.”

“Start taking the stage lights down. Leave the cyc lit.”

“Lights going down.”

As the stage dimmed, Will and Daisy retreated into silhouette, disappearing through the upstage wing. The applause petered out and everyone sat down.

David waited another fifteen seconds of murmured shuffling and blown noses, and then gave the cue.

“Sound up.”

And they began again.

Peanut Butter Cups, not Swedish Fish. Because his name was still Lindstrom and I hadn’t yet discovered the whole cult of the Fish yet. In the final draft, I gave the co-pilot seat to Kees, who by that time, deserved it the most.

December 2002

Saint John, New Brunswick

Thirst awoke her. Cam squinted through her fingers at the clock’s digital readout. 2:47. It was an effort to pry her tongue off the roof of her mouth—this hotel room was unbearably dry.

Carefully she extricated herself from the weight of David’s arm and slid out of bed. She crept first to the bathroom, then to the mini-bar, cracking open a bottle of water and downing half of it in three feverish gulps. Icy relief. Thank God.

Rolling her head around her stiff neck she went over to the window and pushed aside the thin, voile drapes. Wind rattled the panes. Outside, snowflakes, large as leaves, were piling in drifts on the little balcony. Standing naked, relaxed and warm inside, Cam drank, viewing the winter scene and the last few twinkling lights of Saint John.

“You look beautiful…”

She looked back over her shoulder. David lay on his side, very still, just his head and one shoulder out of the covers, but his eyes were open, watching her. For several minutes neither of them spoke or even smiled. They just stared, creating their bubble over the small space between them. Slowly one of his arms emerged from beneath the comforter, unfolded across the expanse of mattress where she had been a minute ago. His fingers reached to her, something so tender and yearning about how they uncurled and stretched into the air, wanting her.

She pointed to herself and held up the water bottle. “Which?”

“Both,” he said.

She gave him the bottle, which he chugged empty, pushed up on his elbow. She got them another and set it on the bedside table. Then she got down on the floor, trawling among the flotsam and jetsam of clothing, shoes, coats and gloves, strewn in a Hansel-and-Gretel trail from the door to the bed.

“What are you doing?”

It was darker down here but her hands had an idea where it was, she herself had flung it in this approximate area. Here. Smiling, Cam stood up with David’s sweater, shook it out, put her arms in the sleeves and her head through the V.

“Thief,” he said, his eyes shining in the dimness.

“It’s cashmere,” she said, then put her hand in his outstretched one and let herself be drawn down. He pulled her against his chest, ran his hands over her head and kissed her face, each eyelid, her mouth. Cam nestled onto him with relish, her fingers playing in his chest hair.

“Camberley,” he whispered.

“Mm?”

“Who named you?”

“My mother. Her mother’s name was Kimberly and I would have been named for her, but my mother loved this one British author, Rumer Godden. One of her books had a town in England called Camberley. Close enough to Kimberly. But different.”

“It is different. It’s pretty.”

She tilted her head to look up at him, tracing his features with her finger. “Happy?”

A pleased tone resonated in his chest. “Surprised.”

“Really?”

“Last thing I expected.”

“I had unfinished business with you.”

He opened his eyes. “Get out of here.”

“No. Really. I was insanely attracted to you.”

David laughed, his hand running through her hair, gently working through the tangles. “I had no idea. You didn’t make a move. I would’ve remembered.”

Now Cam laughed. “Are you sure? You looked right through me when we met tonight.”

“All right, I forgot the journalist. But the journalist who tried to seduce me in college, I would remember. Why didn’t you?”

She put her head down again. “I thought about it but I was just exhausted after that story. I think I felt it was better to wrap it up, fold my cards and leave the party while I was still having a good time.”

“I’m glad you came to the party tonight.” The feel of his hands was changing, longer strokes down her back, moving under the sweater, gliding on her skin. Under the sheet she could see he was getting hard again, and she put her hand on him. That tone in his chest and throat again, deeper, breathier, his fingers scooped up her chin and his mouth found hers. “Come on me,” he whispered.

Moving covers, not breaking their kiss, she got on him, got him into her, put her hands on his shoulders and held him down. He was an astonishingly good lover. Tender, ardent, passionate and skilled. Soulful. And a gorgeous kisser. They made love seamlessly.

“Hey,” she whispered into his swollen mouth.

“What.” His hands on her waist, then running along her legs, then moving up under the softness of his own sweater on her body.

“Tell me something.” She paused, her hips raised, holding just the tip of him in her, hovering there, tantalizing.

“What,” he whispered, his lips staying parted and his eyes locked with hers.

“Why did Daisy and Erik break up?” Slowly she lowered her hips down, filling herself up with him. He felt so good.

He stared at her a long time. She detected no confusion, nor was he irritated. Rather he seemed to be measuring something in her. She let him take his time, moving her hips slowly up and down on him. Finally he wet his lips and whispered, “She slept with someone else.” Under the sweater his hands moved in circles on her breasts, holding them, stroking her skin. “She had another guy in her bed. And Erik walked in on them.”

“I see,” she breathed, lolling under his touch. “And he left. And never came back.”

“That’s right.”

“Who was it?”

David sat up, got an arm around her and rolled her, down in the tangle of mattress and pillows and sheets and then he was rising up and over her, the light from the window glinting on his bare back and shoulder and pooling in the hollow of his collarbone. He settled into the cradle of her hipbones and gently held her hands down to the mattress, looking at her unflinchingly.

“Me,” he said softly. “It was me.”

Clearly David thought he was the hero of this story. He started out much kinder and gentler and appealing. And poor Camberley: twice I’ve tried to use her as a main character and it always turns out she’s a bit player. One day, she’ll be the heroine of one of my books. She has to be. Why else would she be hanging around my head? I don’t just make people up to have someone to talk to in my head.

Yes you do.

No I don’t.

You do.

Shut up

You’re talking out loud, you know.

“Shut up!”

January 2003

Rochester, New York

They were married two years when Michelle tossed out her birth control pills and began taking charge of her fertility. Every morning when the alarm went off, she pressed the snooze button and popped an electronic thermometer under her tongue. The thermometer recorded her basal body temperature in a series of measured beeps. She recorded the results on an Excel spreadsheet, complete with bar graph; she counted and calculated and did everything, it seemed to Erik, short of consulting the stars for the most auspicious days of conceiving a child. Every month, for a five-day window, he was woken up early, kept up late, and summoned home at all hours to perform his procreative duties. At first it was highly exciting and entertaining. After a few months, the novelty wore off and a dry amusement took its place. After a year of trying with no luck, he was tired.

By way of male plumbing being less complex than female, Erik got tested first and one phone call later, their efforts of the past year were dismissed, and the years ahead looked bleak: low sperm count with motility levels that were borderline lost-cause. “By chance did you ever have the mumps?” the doctor asked.

“No.” Erik said.

“Are you sure?” Michelle pressed.

“Yes,” he lied, and that night he took the dog for a walk and called his mother.

“Yes,” she said. He didn’t make her explain, he already knew what he would hear: his father had deserted them, there had been no money, his brother needed the surgery on his ears or risked losing his hearing permanently. Christine had probably skipped vaccinations so they could eat or a hospital bill could be paid. Such was their life. It wasn’t her fault.

The motility was the problem, they were told, but before jumping into IVF it was entirely possible that they could conceive on their own, with a few guidelines and prescriptions. Michelle was informed of the guidelines, and Erik got the prescriptions, in the form of testosterone shots which highly offended his male ego. But he took them, and listened dutifully to Michelle as she stood over him with various homeopathic remedies, nagging him about vitamin C, selenium, ginkgo biloba and Asian ginseng. He downed and swallowed and dutifully beat off on demand. They were educated on techniques of style and timing. Erik offered to videotape their lovemaking for the doctors’ critiques. Michelle was not amused and Erik soon stopped making jokes, robbing himself of the only outlet he had for the stress.

Erik remained down for the count and they concluded that they would need high-tech assistance. Conventional insemination was ruled out – it would be IVF, plus they had to go get Erik’s boys direct from the source. But his boys were nowhere to be found. Two separate attempts found no viable sperm. A donor was gently suggested, and Erik’s brother Peter, now a father of two, offered, with uncharacteristic discretion and humility, his services.

“I feel kind of responsible that…that you can’t,” he said in a late night phone call.

“Dude, shut up,” Erik said, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead, feeling older than he had a right to, feeling weary of his private parts being under constant public scrutiny, and worst of all, fighting a nagging feeling that he really didn’t passionately care whether he became a father or not; he just wanted Michelle to be happy. And within that nagging feeling was a worse nagging feeling that ‘happy’ wasn’t the word: he just wanted her to leave him alone already.

“I’ll do it,” Pete said quietly. “I’ll do it for you. I’ll do it yesterday. You let me know.”

Erik would have taken him up on the offer in a fetal heartbeat, but for reasons she could never fully articulate, Michelle refused. She wanted a donor. Furthermore, she was beginning to feel she wanted a black donor. Suddenly it was war. Erik’s paternal hackles were up, he was filled with insulted rage, and he turned on her: she had her eggs, he had nothing. Never, not once in their four years together had race ever come up, how could she be playing that card at this stage of the game? He had no problem raising a child who was a blood niece or nephew. It would be blood. He would have a bond.

Used to him being complacent in the matter, she fought back only with a stubbornness that justified nothing. Their efforts to conceive came to an abrupt and bitter stalemate, and the bedroom grew chill with stinging words and racial accusations that wouldn’t dare be spoken, but couldn’t not be thought. Frosty weeks went by. Small overtures were attempted, the subject of adoption was raised, briefly, but by then they were exhausted with it all.

Sex had ceased entirely. With no procreative purpose, they had forgotten how to make love; hurt and stinging, they had no reason to connect. They slept back to back, she hard done by, he hard and misunderstood. For Erik, to whom sleep had never come easy, it was then that it began in earnest—the reaching out to Daisy in his mind.

She had always been there, tucked away in the folds of his brain, a one-woman Greek chorus, observing, willingly talking back to him whenever he silently talked to her. For years this was all he had allowed himself. The tangible souvenirs—the letters, cards, pictures—were in a box in his mother’s attic; he wouldn’t dare send for them. Casual mental musings were allowed. Wallowing was strictly verboten. And so, with an astounding discipline, he made do with the memory of their bond, their soulful friendship, their effortless support of one another, the comfort her mere presence had always brought him. He kept alive her keen intelligence, her humor and wit, and her astonishing talents as a dancer. He consoled himself with his dumb, made-up conversations, and managed to keep the recollection of his physical relationship with Daisy shut up and sealed tight, locked away in the furthest recesses of his mind. Every now and then he would ration out the thought of her hand on his head, fingers in his hair, because it soothed him. That was all. Until now.

Now, lying in bed, in the shadow of his wife’s angry body, he went looking for buried treasure, with a map and a pick ax and a vengeance. He crawled back through the archives, dug in, and began to catalog the sex. And against all the rules, he bathed himself in it, scooped it up, poured it from his hands onto his head, and wallowed in it…

He combed through the memories of kissing Daisy, those deep, soul kisses that turned him inside out. Daisy kissed him like she was born to do nothing else; in a week he was completely addicted. She had a way of touching his mouth in between kisses that made him crazy. No girl had ever done that before and now he couldn’t live without it. How she would get her teeth gently around his bottom lip became as essential as breathing. He had to kiss her or die. Kissing sober, kissing drunk, kissing their heads off, racking up credits toward a bachelor’s degree in kissing.

Digging deeper he found memorials to skin, to being able to get naked in ten seconds or taking an hour to do it, depending on the mood. Unhooked bras and unbuttoned flannel shirts hung like holy relics. There was a shrine dedicated solely to the feeling of having Daisy unbuckle his belt and unzip his fly.

Candles were lit for screwing in the dorm shower, for getting blowjobs in cars and once, the triumph of his sexual career, going down on Daisy while she was on the phone. She was on the phone with her father, for fuck’s sake, having a conversation with her old man in French with her jeans and underwear down around her thighs, and Erik on his knees and up to his chin in her velvet depths. Joe was telling one of his rambling yarns and Daisy hemmed and hummed at appropriate times, all the while her hand was firmly on Erik’s head, moving him where she wanted, languidly letting him alternate between sucking on her fingers and sucking on her. “I love you Pop, and I gotta go, I have class,” she finally said, hung up the phone, and promptly came her brains out. Then she kicked her legs free of her clothes while her hands tore at his, frank and impatient, unsnapping, unzipping, going straight for what she wanted, pulling him onto her and putting it into her. She’d made the most amazing noise when he slid in, just a shivering moan of something that didn’t even had a name anymore, and when he was finally buried deep in the heat of her frustration, her kiss crashed into his, opened against the taste of herself, and her teeth were on his bottom lip and her fingers were touching his mouth and there was just no topping it, no surpassing it, there was nothing else he wanted at the moment in his life except Daisy wanting him.

[{{Gasp}} Holy shit could I make longer sentences?!—SLQR]

Lying in bed now, hard, crazed, wanting, he went through it all, all those dripping, luscious nights in dorm rooms and, starting junior year, the indolent lazy mornings in off-campus apartments. Sex around the clock. Sex until it hurt. Sex with Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, sweet, willing Daisy, and wanting to die from being so in love and so wanted, wanting to die because he was her first, he was her only, he was her lover.

This last still wanted to make him die. It was deplorable, he knew. Selfish and utterly cruel to his young, fertile wife, her hurt body curved like a parenthesis away from him. He felt the waves of incredulous injustice radiating off her back onto his, but it was Daisy in his head in hot, candy-sweet undulations that could not be ignored.

And it was Daisy and blood coming back to him in the night again.

Melanie started out as Michelle. But then I’d keep seeing Michelle Obama so that had to change. No offense to FLOTUS.

May 2004

Saint John, New Brunswick

Canada

May 30, 2004

Dear Erik,

It’s been a while…Obviously...

Anne-Marguerite Bianco cringed. What the hell was that supposed to mean, obviously. Obviously. “Yes, obviously I have not been in touch with you since we broke up. Or rather I tried several times to get in touch but you wouldn’t return my calls or answer my letters, you slammed the proverbial door, cut me off like a diseased limb and so yes, obviously we have not spoken in…oh, a while, let’s say. Eleven years, to be precise. How you doing?”

Was she speaking out loud again?

She clutched the pen in her fist, drew a deep breath in, then relaxed her hand and continued to write.

…Obviously…but this letter is not about me. I feel terrible that I’m reaching out to you with sad news. I can’t think of how to preface it…there’s no easy way for me to tell you that David Alto has died.

She stared at the words on the page. David Alto. Why would she write his full name, what other David could she be talking about? David Alto has died. Fresh grief ripped through her, as if putting pen to paper and inking the words made it suddenly final. Made it real.

He had a car accident, on the Mass Pike outside Boston. He never regained consciousness and he died on May 15. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, so that maybe you could have come to the funeral…

But would he have come? Erik had cast her out, of that there was no question. “Get your shit out of my room, I don’t ever want to see you again,” had literally been his last spoken words to her. Not even spoken; he had spit them at her, like poisoned darts. Then he had left her and gone after David, not with words but with his fists. David had come to her room after, bloody and beaten, told her about the fight, told her that Erik was gone, really gone, his things were gone, his car was gone, he was gone. Daisy had iced his face and they’d wept together. And later when David was asleep, she’d gone to Erik’s room to see for herself. And it was true, he’d packed up and left. She hadn’t seen him since. Not a glimpse, not a word. All her attempts to reach him had been sucked into a black hole of unforgiving silence.

Eleven years. He erased himself from her life. Would he have come back for David’s death?

Everything has been so crazy, so surreal. We’re all still in shock, and my mother is just devastated. It’s been very, very hard for her. I still can’t wrap my mind around it…

“Mom says hi,” she whispered. “She’s tactful, she never pried. But I know she still misses you.” Oh God, but Francine adored Erik. Erique, she would say in her French accent, kissing his cheeks, Erique, how are you, my darling? And they would just carry on, trading quips and jokes in a way that was almost flirtatious but most definitely not. “In his own way, he’s a dancer,” Francine declared, sealing the deal, or so it seemed.

I still can’t wrap my mind around it…

I couldn’t not tell you.

I’m sorry.

She threw the pen away. Every word she wrote was all wrong, every sentence only buried her deeper in a hole of misery. Face in her hands, she wept, but in a forced, obligatory way that brought no relief. Try as she did to weep, keen, wail, pour out her pain, it seemed nothing would ease the fingers of iron that continually gripped her throat, nor lift the stifling veil of misery that had descended on her shoulders since they had taken David off life support and let him slip away.

One last, deep, fortifying breath to finish it. She picked up the pen from where it had rolled on the floor, chewed it a moment, and then drew the paper toward her again.

I live in Canada now, I’ve been here about five years. It’s cold but it’s beautiful.

“The weather. Seriously,” she muttered under her breath. Should she give him more details, tell him about the company, her teaching, her work, her life? Hint that she wasn’t married?

Would he even care?

Things are going well.

I think of you often. I hope you’re all right.

I’m so sorry I’m reaching out with such sad news.

Dais

She stared at that, and then amended a y, making it Daisy. It looked strange. Erik had only called her Daisy a short time, toughening the s a little, so it sounded like Dacey. And by the time they had become lovers, her name was a single syllable in his mouth, Dais, with the hardened s. Dais, rhymes with face, not Dais, rhymes with daze. Only in bed did her name soften and lengthen again into its long, liquid vowels, the s drawled into a syrupy, longing z.

Daisy, he’d murmur slowly against her skin, into her hair…

“Things are going well,” she snorted, pushing back her chair and going to pour another cup of coffee. She slammed the fridge, slammed the silverware drawer, talking out loud as had become her disturbing habit of late. “I think of you often. Actually I think of you every day. Really. Not a day goes by I don’t think of you in some kind of way, wondering where you are and what you’re doing, or just remembering things, if not outright getting off on them, but hey! This letter isn’t about me. It’s about David. He died in a car accident. And oh, by the way, a woman was in the car with him. You may remember her. Camberley Jones? That name ring a bell? Right. Well she and David dated for a while. Then she got married. And yet she was in the car with David that night. Exactly what she was doing with him, nobody knows. But she was with him. Nobody’s saying they were having an affair, but everyone’s thinking it. But they’re both dead so what’s it matter. It’s…kind of a fucking mess.”

Coffee dripped on the letter as she set her cup down on the table, and suffused with weariness, she sank back into her chair. “And I miss you,” she said softly. “I miss you so much. Every day, Erik. Every day I think about you, I swear. And I wish you could just know that. I wish we could talk.”

Bastet, her cat, looked up from where she was perched on the kitchen counter, intently washing a paw. “May I help you?” Daisy said, eyebrows raised. “This is a private conversation.”

Bastet stared back, unblinkingly.

“Fine. Fine.” Daisy took her pen and scribbled below her signature with its awkward y:

P.S. Please Call Me

Yeah, I ditched the Anne from Daisy’s name. And I killed David. Because I’m an author. You make people up and you try to kill them. You either succeed or make them stronger.

Or something.

June 2004

Brockport, New York

I think of you often. I hope you’re well.

I’m so sorry I’m reaching out with such sad news.

Daisy

P.S.: please call me.

Slowly Erik Lindstrom touched the droplets of coffee that had fallen onto the letter. He counted them carefully, three, four little brown islands in the sea of her words. She had touched this paper, held it steady with her fingertips while she sipped from a cup, and coffee had spilled onto the page. Coffee that perhaps had touched her mouth, dripping on the paper he now held in his hands. Molecules of Daisy on his skin.

I think of you often.

Erik folded the note back into its thirds, put it back into the envelope. He took it out again, unfolded it, re-read it, folded it back up again. He stared out the kitchen window. Outside was torrential misery, rain coming down in sheets, dripping from the eaves, pouring from that one busted drainpipe, turning the small, weedy back yard to mud.

I think of you often.

Please call me.

David Alto has died.

I think of you often.

I’m so sorry.

Daisy.

“Dais,” he whispered, closing his eyes. Would he cry? It seemed the thing to do. But for David he only felt a numb shock; the sadness in his heart that threatened him now with tears, that had always been Dais. He could not cry for her anymore. Not now, anyway.

He opened the drawer of the kitchen table, looking for paper, an envelope, a pen. He had to respond but he couldn’t think about it too much. The reply had to be civil. There was a death in the family. He’d be courteous. Kind. He was an adult, he could do that fucking much. This letter is not about me. Exactly. He would keep it business, keep it about David, not her. Show his sympathies, but not his heart.

June 3, 2004

Dear Daisy…

Daisy. Short for Anne-Marguerite. Or rather, the literal translation of Marguerite, from the French, meaning daisy, the flower. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true. The bouquet he would give her on opening night of every dance concert. The tattoo below the heel of his left hand, white petals clustered tight around a yellow eye. He had gotten it after she was shot. Not out of love or commemoration, but because the love of his young life lay immobilized in a hospital bed while he was whole and unscathed. He needed to be marked. He needed some ritual injury, to be scarred so he could somehow share what she was going through. So he had her sunk, needled and inked, into his skin.

He had left her, but the tattoo had quietly stayed, living under the wristband of his watch. He had toyed with the idea of getting it removed. He ought to have had it removed when he got married. A dozen times he had intended to, a dozen times he had put it off. It was all he had left of her. That, and the pain.

Dear Daisy,

I’m so sorry about David. I can’t believe it. I can’t take it in. My heart’s broken for you and John and your parents. I’m so sorry. Yes, I would have come…

Thank you for telling me.

E

He stared at the initial, disgusted with himself. That’s how disassociated he was going to be? He wouldn’t even give her his name, just the bare minimum?

“Grow up,” he mumbled between clenched teeth. “Grow up already, this isn’t about you. David is dead.”

David Alto has died.

Erik had wanted him dead once. Once upon a time, David was his friend. Once upon a later time, Erik had wanted to kill him. Kill him. Up until then, in Erik’s young, male experience, fighting was mostly show. You talked a lot of shit, you pushed, you shoved, you got in the other guy’s face and hoped he’d back down first or that a buddy would haul one of you out of there. There was a certain unspoken choreography to it. Never had Erik gone after another man with premeditated intent of physical harm, but he had gone looking for David with a savage purpose. He had been out for blood. He had beaten him. He had wanted to kill him. The visceral violence of that day was still shocking. It still echoed in his hands: he could recall, with utter clarity, the impact of his fist against David’s face; he remembered the sound of it, the give of flesh under his blows, the warm blood on his knuckles. He wanted to kill him…

He heard footsteps overhead and knew Michelle was heading for the stairs. Quickly he copied the return address from Daisy’s letter onto his blank envelope. He tore his pathetic note from the pad, folded it and stuffed it inside. About to lick the flap he cursed instead, yanked the note out, and underneath his stubborn initial he wrote,

P.S.: I can’t.

I can’t, he thought, banging around the other kitchen drawers for the roll of stamps. I can’t call you, I want to, but I can’t, because it hurts, I can’t bear it, I don’t know what to do with you. And I’m married. I’m married and she wants kids, I guess I do too except I can’t get her pregnant and it’s my fault. I’m busted, my boys ain’t in the hood, and this is what it’s come to. We’re doing these treatments, or I am anyway, and nothing seems to be working but I’m trying. For her. I don’t even know if it’s for me anymore but I can’t think about that. And I think about you all the time. I’m sorry about David, but if I call you, if I talk to you, I will die. I can’t call you.

Overcome, he braced his hands on the edge of the sink, on the razor’s edge of sobbing now. He gulped air, dug deep, willed himself to stop this, stop it right now, before Michelle came in. Stop now and he promised himself a drive later, he’d make up an errand, drive somewhere, park, read Daisy’s letter again, count the coffee spots, smell the paper, and have a breakdown. Later. Not now.

P.S.: I can’t.

“I can’t,” he said softly. “You didn’t give me your phone number.”

He shrugged with false bravado, and sealed the envelope.

October 2005

Rochester, New York

Michelle announced she was moving out in September 2004 and asked him for a divorce. He agreed without even asking her reasons. She asked if she could take the dog and he agreed to that, too. Then she threw a plate at him. She threw it wide, it smashed in pieces against a far wall but the intent behind it was unmistakable. “You are emotionally retarded, you know that, Erik? God damn it, you won’t fight for anything.” she spat. “You spineless victim.”

She left, with the dog, and that was perhaps the ugliest moment they had. There were a few tense meetings, countless difficult discussions, but all in all, the divorce was amicably achieved. Michelle hadn’t wanted any alimony. She had wanted children. Erik had done everything he could, offered everything and alternatives. It wasn’t what she wanted. Their differences were now legally irreconcilable.

The final papers were signed on an unseasonably chilly autumn morning. Erik walked his now ex-wife out of the courthouse and they looked expectantly at each other.

“I’ll get you a cab,” Erik said quietly.

“Why don’t you get me a drink,” she replied. “Let’s go to a bar.”

Erik stared at her, blankly, not understanding.

“Where was our first date?” she asked. “This isn’t a trick question.”

“At a bar.”

“That’s right. And after we got married at City Hall we went to…?”

“A bar.”

“I think it’ll be all right if we went to a bar to mark the occasion of our divorce. In fact, it seems fitting.”

Still bewildered, Erik nodded, gesturing down the street. Michelle took his arm, adding to his confusion, and they walked silently to a bistro. They sat at a little sunlit table in the window, ordered. Michelle was back to wearing her hair in cornrows, letting the grey come in at her temples. New lines creased her forehead, but her face still retained that air of unshakable regality, and when their beers came, she raised her pilsner with blithe, dry-eyed confidence.

“To us.”

“To us,” Erik echoed softly.

“You will stay in touch with me, won’t you?”

“I… If you want me to.”

“I do. Does it surprise you?”

Erik shook his head. “I don’t know what surprises me anymore, I don’t know anything anymore.”

Michelle touched his hand. “I like you. At the end of the day, that fact still stands. I like you. And I think one day we can be friends. But more importantly, I think it will be good for you because frankly, baby, you don’t know shit about ending relationships.”

He winced, sliding back in his seat. “I haven’t heard you call me ‘baby’ in a year,” was all he could think of to say.

Michelle leaned forward, and began tapping her index finger on his left hand. He looked at her, then looked down at his hand as her tapping grew more deliberate.

“What?” he said. His wedding band was gone, so what, so was hers. They’d sold the diamond and used it for lawyers’ fees, wasn’t that a scream and a half? But she wasn’t tapping his ring finger, she was tapping down by his wrist, flicking with her nail, nudging his hand to turn over. When it was palm up, her fingertip came to rest on his tattoo.

“I never should have married you until you finished things with her,” Michelle said quietly, tracing the daisy’s petals. “There must have been a hundred times when I was going to push you to go find her, go back and get closure. Shit, we were driving to Rochester to get married and I was thinking about it.” She shook her head. “It was too late by then. I didn’t. I should have. You’ve never gotten over her, baby.”

“Shel…”

She smiled sadly. “You call for her in your sleep, you know that? It started happening the last few months I was at home. You’d cry in your sleep, that was nothing new, I’m used to that. But you started calling for her. Calling Daisy’s name. And then I knew it was time to go.”

Erik clenched his fist and turned the daisy down to face the table. His other hand came to catch his brow. It settled onto his shoulders the great wrong he had done this woman. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Shel, I’m so sorry…”

Her hand dropped on his curled fingers, made them soft again, took them up in hers.“

“I’m gonna tell you something, Erik.”

“OK.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t like anything about me right now, so that’ll be fine. Go ahead.”

“If you get left, then you watch them leave. If you leave, you don’t look back. Those are the only ways you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You only know two ways to relate to people: whole-hearted, complete and total commitment; or nothing. That’s it. Intense involvement or abandonment. And who do you think you learned that from?”

He looked up at her from under his cupped hand, shook his head. “I don’t know, who?”

“Your old man.”

He stared past her, reluctant to buy into her psychobabble while at the same time, it did turn a key somewhere inside the gears of his being, set them to turning. “My father.”

“Your father. You learned from him that the only way to end a relationship is to walk out and never look back. You shut it off, shut it down, cease all contact and make like it never happened. And that’s what you did with Daisy. You did to Daisy what your father did to you. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But because that was the only way you knew.”

Erik turned his lips in, chewing on that, nodding slowly. He had never known such weariness. He felt he could put his head down on the table and sleep for a hundred years.

“She hurt you,” Michelle said. “And you never let her explain. Or apologize.”

“She cheated on me,” Erik said, hating the petulance of it at his age.

His ex-wife’s hands slammed down on the table. “She was shot,” she growled, flicking her eyes to the other patrons. “She was shot through the leg,” she went on, more quietly, “she was told she’d never dance again—”

“I was there, remember?”

She ignored the interruption. “She was in shell-shock for a year and lost interest in having sex with you and when she finally found the interest again, it wasn’t with you, it was with someone else. You weren’t the one to save her at the end of the day. There it is, Erik, that’s what’s been eating your guts for twelve years. You walked in on someone else saving her. And that sucks. That sucked from hell to breakfast and nine ways to Sunday and I can’t fault you for being devastated over it. But baby, you walked away and slammed the door and you never dealt with it. You never gave her a chance to explain or apologize.”

“I didn’t want to know her explanation.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was her cousin, for fuck’s sake!”

“And?”

Erik stared at her incredulously. “It was her cousin. David Alto. I walked in on her and David Alto in bed. Her cousin.”

Michelle blinked a few times at him but her face remained strangely placid. “And?”

“And?” Erik repeated. “It was David. It was my friend and her cousin!”

“What, you think people don’t fuck their cousins in this day and age? Look at you clutching your pearls, acting like you never heard of such a thing. Three-quarters of European history, for crying out loud, people marry their cousins all the goddamn time. Miles and Janey Kelly are cousins, why do you think they never had kids?”

“I didn’t know that, how the fuck would I know that, what do Miles and Janey have to do with anything?”

“About as much as David being her cousin has to do with anything. Good God, Erik, incest? Is that what you’ve been clinging to all this time?”

He scrambled to collect his thoughts and reply but his brain was utterly caving in, justifications and objections sliding out of his grasp. He slumped back in his chair, looked at Michelle and tried to smile as he muttered, “Fuck you.”

Her returned grin was filled with affection. “I’m glad we did this. This is good for you.”

“Oh yeah, it’s just great.”

“It is good, Erik. Look me in the eye and tell me the truth, if I didn’t orchestrate this little post-mortem and tell you that I want to stay in touch, that I want to keep you in my pantheon of important people, would you ever call me?”

He couldn’t look at her.

“You don’t know how to end relationships. I mean come on, I don’t know how many casual flings you ever had, but I know you’ve had two great loves in your life and—…wait a minute, do I count?”

He lunged forward, upsetting a saltshaker, and his hand came around the back of Michelle’s shoulders fiercely. She was crying and he pulled her head to his, rubbing his lips at her temple where she was letting the grey come in, whispering in her hair, “You count, of course you do. You do. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Shel.”

“You don’t know how to end things,” she said after they’d calmed down and she was sitting back in her chair again. “How much of you is frozen at eight years old, waiting for your dad to walk back in? And how much of you is frozen at twenty-one, wanting to turn around and go back but you don’t know how? You have to learn how, baby. Go find Daisy and end it. End it properly. You don’t just walk out on relationships. You end them with terms. With apology if it’s warranted. And I don’t know her from anyone, but I’m willing to bet she’s wanted to apologize to you all these years. And I’ll put all the money I have in my purse, right now, that you’re not exactly proud of how you handled things, either.”

Erik opened his mouth but said nothing. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and inhaled slowly. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m not doing it to you, I’m doing it for you. And I’m doing it because you’re never going to be free otherwise.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this years ago.”

“Because I was an idiot. And I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry for not being very nice to you at the end. But it’s divorce. Someone once described it as being in a car accident every day for a year. Ours wasn’t that bad, I don’t think. But it sure isn’t what you’d choose to do on a Saturday night.”

“You’re being extraordinarily good to me. I don’t deserve it.”

Michelle leaned forward again, scooped up his hands in hers. “You do. And I do. We deserve a healthy ending to this marriage. Erik, you’re good, you’re so good. You are. Your heart is huge and I know your love is amazing. You deserve love, Erik. Go finish things with Daisy. Do it so you can start again somewhere else.”

Out on the sidewalk, Erik hailed his ex-wife a cab. She opened the door herself and put a foot into the well. Pausing, she turned to him, eyes still dry and her regal face flickering with some flame of inner peace he envied intensely.

“Stay in touch,” she said.

He nodded, not able to remember a time when he felt less of a man.

They hugged, and as she pulled away she touched the side of his face with a gloved hand. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and ducked shoulders and head into the cab. He shut the door and thumped the roof twice, as if a charm for protection in wherever she chose to go now. Michelle rolled down the window.

“Erik?”

“Yes?”

“For God’s sake, fight. Go find her. And fight.”

The light turned and the cab drove off.

“I will,” he whispered.

This scene stayed, but the revelation about Erik’s behavior mirroring Byron’s was eventually given to Miles Kelly. A lot of Mel’s lines made much more sense coming from Miles. Melanie had grace…but not that much grace.

November 2005

Brockport, New York

He spent Thanksgiving alone, and was chopping up vegetables when he cut himself.

He hated cutting himself. Normally he’d work quickly to staunch and bandage a cut but tonight, for some reason, he didn’t. He stood over the sink, bleeding quietly. He just let it flow. Thought about what was happening microscopically under his skin. The rush of platelets and corpuscles. The small endorphin rush that kicked in so that actually, no, it didn’t really hurt. Not that much.

What was he so afraid of?

Eventually he bandaged it, but wasn’t hungry anymore.

He lay down in the bedroom and thought about blood.

Not the blood of gunshot wounds this time, nor David’s blood spraying from under his fists. No, there was still one more blood-filled incident that had shaped him, a secret buried back in that cavern of sexual memory, so deep it seemed irretrievable. Erik found it now. He found it whole, intact, preserved in golden amber. He lay in bed, where his ex-wife had thought of the names of unborn children. But now it was his own name Erik saw written behind his closed eyelids. His name in red letters, written in blood on Daisy’s leg. Her left leg, he remembered. The leg that was shot. But this was long before. Years before. They were nineteen.

It was the night they became lovers.

He remembered her skin was amazing: burnished gold in the light of a single candle. She was sitting on his bed—the standard-issue, iron-framed single bed found in dorm rooms across the globe. Her long legs were stretched out amongst the tangle of sheets and blankets. He was kneeling between her calves, and together, with shaking fingers, they were ripping open the condom packet and rolling it on him. The air in the little room was close and warm, redolent with anticipation, candle wax, sweat, sex, the faint smell of latex and overlaid with Daisy’s perfume. She lay back down and pulled him along with her, her hand tender at the back of his neck as her knees inched up his hips.

“Put it in me,” she whispered.

She’d never said such a thing before. Not to him, not to anyone. It was almost more than his young, male ego could process. He’d had no idea her inexperience was going to be so profoundly erotic for him. Until these past two feverish months, she’d never taken her clothes off for a boy, never explored a male body, every square inch, with her hands and fingertips and mouth. Only his. It was him. He was all she knew of sex and she’d opened her body to his with complete trust. She was fearless now. In the dim candlelight, her eyes glowed with something close to greed. She wasn’t passively here because it was the next, expected thing. She wanted this. And she wanted it with him.

Cradled in her thighs, Erik put the tip of his cock to that hot, pink mouth, that virgin territory looming before him untouched and unexplored. He grasped in an instant man’s need to walk where none had walked before. He understood Columbus and Neil Armstrong and Hillary and Peary. He pushed into her, hungry. Daisy sucked in a breath between her teeth and her back arched so suddenly that he froze up, sure that he had hurt her.

“I’ll stop,” he said, no longer Prince Henry the Navigator but just an amateur lover, an eighteen-year-old emotional virgin.

“No, no, go on.”

“I’m hurting you.”

“No.” Her damp hands held his head and she kissed him. “You’re not hurting me,” she whispered against his mouth. “It’s just really…tight.”

It was. All of her body was an incredible squeezing pressure around him. He was in some primitive place, the first, the only, the one, sliding his cock into that gripping heat, the sensual effort to get inch by delicious inch inside her nearly undoing him.

“Is it all right?” he whispered, barely holding it together.

“Yes,” she said softly, sounding amazed. “It’s good. God it’s…it’s good.”

Then he was on his elbows, stretched full out on top of her, his sword sheathed to the hilt. She wound her legs around him and they stayed like that, kissing, whispering, feeling what it was to be joined.

“I love your body,” he breathed. “I love you.”

“God, I love you…you feel so good,” she murmured beneath him, her hands sliding over his skin. “You feel so good in me.”

“You’re so…tight…” he gasped, trying to move in her, trying to make it into something more, but it was already too much, she was too beautiful right then, and he was too young, too excited, too inexperienced with making love and being in love. No sooner had the words left him than he turned inside out and poured into her. She hung onto him with arms and legs, crooning, stuck to his body like a starfish on a rock, riding out the tremors.

Interminable minutes passed. The earth stilled. His heartbeat in his ears grew softer. The fine mist of sweat on both their bodies felt cooler. Finally he lifted up his head to look at her. She smiled at him, but tears were dripping from the corners of her eyes, running diagonally towards her ears. Erik’s thumbs smudged them away.

“Don’t cry, Dais,” he whispered through a throat of iron.

“I’m just happy.”

The candle flickered and sputtered. The minutes passed in kissing, and he felt the muscles in Daisy’s body quiver and relax. First one leg, then the other dropped off his hips. Then her head gently fell back on the pillow. Finally her arms released, which he took as a signal, and rolled off her.

“Oh,” she said, looking down between them. He looked, and the condom was smeared scarlet. It wasn’t a lot. But it was definitely blood.

“Is it your period?”

“No, that was over weeks ago.”

“Then…did I do that?” he said.

“I guess.”

“And it didn’t…you’re not hurt?”

“No, not at all…” Her confidence seemed rattled. “Sorry,” she said, a little meekly, which he found odd.

“Don’t be sorry,” he told her. He looked down again. He had made her bleed. He touched it, mesmerized, rubbing the warm tackiness. Now he could see Daisy’s thighs were smudged with it. A small, bright rose had bloomed on the mattress beneath her.

“It got on your sheets.”

“I don’t care.”

“Can you get me a towel?” she asked softly.

“Yeah. One sec.” He pushed up on an elbow, dipped a finger and began to trace letters on her leg, just above her bent knee. E. Then R.

“What are you doing?” she laughed, but now her tone was gentle, easy, and her hand caressed his head.

He smiled, not sure himself, but into it, carefully making the crossbars of the I. Boldly, he slid his finger into her, and then finished with a strong K. And there, on her leg, his name, in her blood.

“Now you’re mine,” he said softly. She looked down at her leg, up at him, and her eyes turned wicked. Her hand, which had been soft in his hair, seized the nape of his neck and pulled him, pulled him on her again, all of his body along hers. She opened her mouth under his, wound her limbs around him like vines. Caught up in her savage grip he kissed her, crushed her down into the bed even as the joy in him spiraled up through the roof and burst into the sky, because it was more than just being her first. It was because he had finally found something he could call his very own…and he had marked it in blood.

You never fight for anything.

Even when he fought David, there wasn’t a prize. It was punitive damage. He beat him up on principle, just to soothe his wounded pride. Sure. Good luck. And then he left.

You walk out, shut the door, shut it down and never look back.

You spineless victim.

For God’s sake, fight. Go find her. And fight.

“I’m too late,” he whispered. “It’s too late, it’s got to be too late.”

Go find out. Do it so you can start somewhere else.

He swung his feet to the floor and stood up, his heart pounding. “I will,” he’d said as Michelle’s cab pulled out.

“I will,” he said now.

Erik switched on his PC. Searched. It didn’t take long. They hadn’t moved. They were still there.

It was between the third and fourth rings of the telephone that his heart sank; he was sure she wouldn’t be there and he’d be forced to leave a rambling, incoherent message. A message that would be at the mercy of faulty machines, power failures, and the incompetent fingers of the careless who press the ERASE button with a dismissive air.

“Hello?”

Erik’s heart rose like one helium-filled balloon released from a bunch.

“Hello, hi,” he stammered, fumbling for the pages of a dropped script. “May I speak with Francine?”

“This is Francine.” The French-accented voice was pleasant, courteous and Erik plunged into its honey-rich tones and the “th” that still melted into a “z”.

“Francine, it’s Erik.”

“Who?”

If he hadn’t already been sitting down, he would have, crumpled, defeated. He had been forgotten. “Erik,” he said. “Lindstrom. I used to be—” his mouth kept forming the words Daisy’s boyfriend in college, but then Francine interrupted him, laughing and shrieking.

“Oh my God, what an asshole I am. Erique, my darling!”

The sun broke through the clouds and flooded him with joy; in Francine’s patois, an assheul was the greatest thing to be.

“Erique, of course,” she sang, “forgive me, darling how are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said happily, woozy with relief. He was fine, he was wonderful. He was remembered. “How are you?”

“Oh, I must be getting old.”

“Impossible.”

“An old, forgetful bag.”

“Never.”

“My goodness, darling, it’s been years. Look at me, I have goosebumps all up my arms.”

“I have that effect on women.”

“Oh, what a pity you were born too late.”

“There’s always the next life.”

“Certainement. Now tell me, what are you doing with yourself?”

“I head the technical theater department at SUNY Brockport.”

“You do? Well, isn’t that wonderful?”

“Are you still catering?”

“Oh yes. I had a big wedding this afternoon, now I’m sitting here with my feet up and an ice pack on my head.”

“And a big whiskey and ginger somewhere close by.”

A rattle of ice cubes answered him.

“How’s Joe?” he asked.

“Oh, relentless, eternal, still running that school up and down and sideways.”

“And doing the same to you, I hope.”

Another rattle of ice cubes and a sputtering laugh. “Darling, not while I’m drinking!”

“Sorry.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Oh, never.”

“So, darling…why are you calling me, of all people?”

“Francie, I…” Erik closed his eyes. “I’m sorry about David.”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed. “Poor David. You know?”

“Yes. I know. I’m so sorry. It broke my heart.”

“Thank you darling, it’s…it’s hard. I try to comfort myself thinking he’s back with my sister, and sometimes it works. Other times it’s just senseless death and I’m tired of it. Today I’m tired so I will thank you for your kindness and change the subject. Bon. Alors. I won’t flatter myself by thinking you called just to butter up an old lady or offer your sympathies. And you won’t insult me by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“How’s Daisy?” he said softly.

“Daisy’s in Canada. She lives in New Brunswick. She and Will Kaeger, you know Will, yes?”

“Yes,” he said, sure the next thing coming was that Daisy and Will were married. Why the hell not, the perfect partnership offstage as well as on.

“She and Will run a ballet company. I never would’ve believed it, not in my wildest dreams. And not in Canada of all places. But it’s been extremely successful and they’ve done quite well.”

Erik clutched the receiver hard to offset the smooth, conversational tone of his next question. “Did Will marry Lucky Dare?”

“Of course he did, you moron. They have three children. Goodness, maybe four now, I can’t remember.”

His chest eased up a little. “That’s great,” he chirped, while still remaining wary of the unspoken. Not married to Will didn’t mean Daisy wasn’t married. Or involved. She had to be. A girl like that. Except she was a woman now. Thirty-four. Probably not only married but had a couple kids herself, too.

“Daisy’s quite happy,” Francine’s voice came back to him.

“Good for her.”

“So. Erique.”

“So.” A few beats of silence, save for the rattle of ice cubes. “Francine, are you going to give me her phone number or am I going to have to come there and get it myself?”

She laughed triumphantly, with a great deal of delight. “Oh, forgive me, darling, I just couldn’t resist teasing you.”

“You’re cruel.”

“Of course I will give it to you. I will even get up out of my chair right now, as we speak, and get it for you.”

“I guess you better tell me if she’s married or something.”

“She’s not married. Or something. At least not since I spoke to her last week. Darling boy, I hope you and Daisy are finished with all this silliness. Call her the minute I hang up…I’m not getting any younger, you know, and I want grandchildren.”

Erik closed his eyes, pained. He would never give her that. “Francine?”

“Yes, darling.”

“I…behaved badly. All those years ago. It was wrong of me to abandon Daisy like that and I know it hurt her. And I apologize.”

Over the miles Francine laughed. Not a mocking laugh, but something rich and warm like melted chocolate, suffused with affection and maybe even a touch of pride. “Oh my God, it’s so wonderful when children grow up. You were terrible Erique, yes. But you’re here now. And I’m so glad. If nothing else happens, you made an old lady happy tonight. Now you’ll call her?”

“I’ll call her,” he said softly.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

This conversation was cut because it resulted in a double build-up. First the build-up to making the call and Francine answers. Then Erik has to work up his nerve again, dial again and then have the phone call with Daisy.

I remember getting the timeline of events in place and figuring Erik was having his epiphany around Thanksgiving. If he called the Biancos on Thanksgiving, most likely Daisy would be there. What if I just cut the drama and had her answer the damn phone? That way both of them would be thrown off and the playing field would be level.

Ami came back to me, with everything just read divided into groups.

“First of all,” she said, “the whole incest taboo thing usually ends up being more trouble than it’s worth and you’ll probably alienate a bunch of people with it. It’s horrific enough she slept with someone else, I’d forget the whole cousin thing.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s too much.”

Then Ami handed me all the chapters from Daisy’s point of view and said, “These are interesting.”

She handed me all the chapters from Camberley’s point of view and said, “These are a distraction.”

She handed me the three chapters from Erik’s point of view and said, “This is your story.”

“What?” I said.

“The reason the story isn’t going anywhere is because it’s from too many points of view. It has to be Daisy or Erik. If it’s Daisy, then the story still can’t go anywhere because she can’t go anywhere. She can’t move or evolve until Erik turns around to face her. So the story is really Erik leaving, and Erik deciding to come back. Or at least turn around and have a goddamn conversation. His story is his evolution.”

And again, she was right. Which is why she’s my favorite and why The Man I Love is dedicated to her.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to carry an entire book through a male’s eyes, but once I shifted everything to Erik’s perspective, I quickly found his voice. And not only that, it was shockingly easy to write in his voice.

Things started falling into place.

David wasn’t a cousin. He was a stagehand and Erik’s friend. Not his best friend, but a good enough friend to be a betrayal. And I kept him alive because I had a feeling I’d need him later.

Camberley remained the NPR journalist but she was confined to the radio show transcript, which was moved to ten years after the shooting.

William Kaeger shed his “Buddy” roots and became Will. Still Daisy’s exclusive partner, but more complex and delicious and intriguing. A standalone character in his own right. A supporting actor who thought he was the protagonist. It amazed even me how he took on a life of his own. I adore him.

Lucia “Lucky” Dare kept her name, her hair and most of her character intact.

I wanted to replace Daisy’s favorite candy with Swedish Fish, because it’s my favorite, too. I wondered what the Swedish word for Fish was. Turns out, it’s Fisk. And Fiskare is fisherman.

Thus was born not only a surname, but a theme. It led to a nickname, the necklace, and David’s little “Fishy fishy” ditty. It led to another tattoo and to a lost family history.

I didn’t yet have a shooting scene, or a shooter. In my mind, I wasn’t going to write that part. It would only be alluded to, talked about in dialogue, or flashbacked to briefly.

More about that later.

I started working on The Man I Love in earnest in November of 2013. By February, I still didn’t have a shooting scene. It was all anecdotal reference within other scenes. No actual scene in the theater with the shit going down.

“You know you have to write this,” my editor kept saying.

I resisted. But she was right. So I sat down and started. And as usual, I started with dialogue. If I can write a conversation about something, then I can write the something. So I began with Erik and David, back in the theater and talking about what happened.

So what happened, guys?

“We’re going in,” David said, like a platoon leader. He had Erik by the shoulders, half hugging him, half shaking him. “We’re going in. This is our theater, we own this place. Say it with me.”

“We own this place,” Erik said in a shaky voice.

“We’re going to walk it. Re-enact the whole goddamn terror.” David yanked the theater doors wide with both hands, threw them open, and they went in.

“I’ll go first,” David said, not giving Erik a chance to look around and reflect. He hustled Erik down the aisle and up onto the stage, over to the wing where David had been that day. Standing at the stage manager’s station, running the show. [This later changed to him being behind the set with Neil Martinez, who didn’t exist at this point. —SLQR]

“All right, let’s do this,” David said, his eyes narrowed. “I’m here. Lucky is next to me. We’re watching Daisy and Will rehearse their pas de deux. A normal technical rehearsal. I think I hear this popping sound. While I’m wondering if I heard something, I hear another one. I look up, thinking a cable sprung or a fixture blew. ‘What the fuck was that?’ I say to Lucky. Then another pop.”

David pointed across the stage to the opposite wings. “Then something is happening over there. Too much activity, yelling. People are supposed to be quiet in the wings. I look at Trevor King, the assistant stage manager, look at him like, ‘what the fuck is going on?’ but Trevor isn’t looking at me, he’s ripping off his headset and holding out his arms and then another pop and it dawns on me. Those pops are gunshots.”

“I didn’t hear them,” Erik said.

David stared out at the stage, then closed his eyes. “Lucky screams and grabs onto me.” He opened his eyes again, pointing across. “Trevor goes down. I see him killed. Three others are already dead in the wings. Then I see him.”

“Jared Miller,” Erik said.

“He’s in the downstage wing, he’s stepping onto the stage and the gun is in his hand. Raised. I grab Lucky, push her down and hit the floor, start scooting backward with her, out of the wing. There’s no exit door on this side, we’re penned in. She’s screaming for Will. Two quick shots. Then a third and—”

“The third one got Dais,” Erik said.

“Lucky screams again. She pulls out of my arms, gets up on hands and feet. She’s going toward the stage. I tackle her back down.”

David put his hands on his hips, looking around. He rubbed the back of his neck, eyebrows pulled in. “I get kind of fuzzy then,” he said. “I’m not sure…”

Erik walked onto the stage. He looked back at David. “My turn.”

They jumped down from the apron and went to the back of the theater, to the lighting booth. They flipped on the lights and went inside.

“I’m sitting here watching,” Erik said, picking up the narrative. “I’m watching Daisy do that crazy lift in the middle of number. Run and leap onto Will’s back and he stops her on his left shoulder. They almost screw it up today, she overshoots and almost rolls off him. He has to grab her leg hard to stop her and she teeters back and forth a little on his shoulder. They smile a little like ‘Oops.’ At the same time, out the corner of my eye, I see someone step out of the wing. It’s unusual, but maybe it’s a tech who sees a nail on the floor or something. Then the first shot.”

“The fifth, actually.”

“But the first one I hear. I just stare. I don’t understand what I’m seeing. The second shot. Will jerks his hand away from Daisy’s leg. He’s got all his weight on his forward leg, holding her on his back. Now all that weight pushes straight up. He rears up and back. Daisy goes flying off his shoulder. I jump out my chair, but I don’t see her hit the floor. I don’t see her fall, I don’t see her leg buckle and break. I’ve looked away because I hear gunshots out in the orchestra. Right next to the booth.”

“Korodowski,” David said.

“James Korodowski. In the aisle with a rifle. I hit the floor and roll under the console. More shots. Screaming. People running up the side aisles.” He stopped, dry-mouthed.

“It’s all right,” David said.

“I crawled toward the booth door. Daisy was shot. I was going out. God, what a crazy thing to do.”

Without a word, David pointed to the door of the booth.

Erik showed how he had come into the aisle, crouched down low to the carpeted floor, up against the side of the booth. As during so many high school basketball games, he had the entire field of play in his vision, and he was mapping his charge. [I used to have more descriptions of Erik’s basketball days, how he could hold the entire big picture of the game in his head at once and always be looking for the weak point. He held the league record in steals because he could make his expression go clueless and distracted and next thing the ball would be in his hand and he’d be gone. —SLQR]

“I look at the stage. Will is curled up on his side. Daisy’s on her back. I can’t tell if either of them are breathing. They’re alone. Nobody comes to them. I look at Korodowski. He’s in the middle of the aisle, facing the stage.”

Knobby wrists at the sleeves of a green hooded sweatshirt. Washed-out jeans that bagged in the ass. Dirty blond hair, lank and unkempt. He handled the rifle clumsily—he didn’t seem to be aiming at anything in particular, just swinging the muzzle around and taking pot shots. He had no easy targets. Nearly everyone was out of the theater or down. Or dead.

“Then I see something...” Movement in Erik’s peripheral. To his right, in one of the rows, a brown dome of a head, stealthily creeping along, a long-fingered hand on the tops of the seats. “Kees is coming,” Erik said.

Kees stopped, looked to the back of the theater, and saw Erik. He widened his eyes. Erik widened his own back. Still facing the stage, Korodowski lowered the rifle. He held it with two hands, but he brought it down.

“Miller was gone now,” David said. “He took back off through the stage left wings, heading toward the Black Box Theater.”

“I look back at the stage,” Erik said. “Daisy’s moving. She’s pushing up one elbow, reaching toward her legs. I think ‘Get down, Dais. Get down, lie down.’ And then she is down again. She falls back and lies still. Too still. I think she’s dead. And that’s when I start moving.”

Still crouched low, Erik started creeping down the aisle.

“Three steps. I was right here. I remember looking at the letters on the seat rows. These seats. O. N. M. Then Kees started talking.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Kees said, rising a little from between the rows.

Korodowski whipped around, fired. Kees howled as an object hurtled through the air, exploded in Korodowski’s face and chest in a steaming brown splash.

“Before he falls on the floor, Kees throws his coffee at James. [I was awful fond of this little detail. Good ol’ Kees. —SLQR] Burning and blinding him. And I’m running now. Row L. K. J. And I dive for him. Go for his legs.”

A yelp of pain escaping him as his ribs crunched against the floor, the burn of carpet up one side of his face and his ear. Muscle and bone twisting in his arms. The musty odor of unwashed denim, mixed with the smell of hot coffee.

Korodowski bucked and writhed. Something smashed against Erik’s cheekbone.

“The butt of the rifle?” David asked. “An elbow?”

“I never did find out,” Erik said. Stars exploded in his vision but he didn’t let go. He kept his arms like iron and tried to keep his head down as he and Korodowski rolled the other way. Then a roaring explosion, a spray of pink and grey across three rows of seats.

“And then it’s over,” he said. “Everything is still. No sound, no screaming. He’s dead. He pulled the trigger. On purpose or by accident. Aiming at me or aiming at himself. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

Erik lay on his back on the stained carpet by Row J.

Bring it, he thought.

Nothing was brought.

He and David went back onstage, got down low, practically put their faces on the floor, mapping the bloodstains. Here, from Will’s hand. And over here, from Daisy’s leg.

They stared down the blood.

The blood blinked first.

“Weird that we assumed there were just the two of them,” David said absently. “Everyone always asks me why I didn’t just run. Get the hell out. We didn’t know then there were only two of them, there could have been more...”

“Once Korodowski was down, it was over for me. I was coming here,” Erik said, patting the stage floor. “If there were more gunmen, there were more. If I was going to get shot, it would be right here. If Daisy was going to die, she was going to die in my arms. End of story.”

They got up, looking around, pointing. Trevor King, dead in the stage right wing. Alison Pierce, Aisha Johnson, Manuel Sabena and Taylor Revell—also dead. Marie Del’Amici, shot in the orchestra, falling between two rows of seats and nobody found her until much later. When it was too late.

The boys fell quiet. They had recreated everything they could remember, daring it to come and get them.

It didn’t come.

They shrugged, young and dismissive, full of resilient bravado. They spit their contempt for fate, rubbed it into the stage floor with their steel-toed boots, and got to work.

So that’s how it was first sketched out. Everyone more or less where I wanted them to be in the theater. Two gunmen on a senseless tear with no clear motive. Erik has zero emotional connection to Korodowski. This is pure cowboy showdown: Kees throws his coffee to distract, and Erik makes his move. He attacks a killer, rather than talk down a friend. There’s a physical altercation, a tussle in the aisle. The gun goes off and Korodowski is killed.

That bothered me. Who pulled the trigger? The possibility of Erik wondering, Did I do that? Did I cause the gun to go off? bothered me. I didn’t want him to have that additional burden.

But for the moment, this was the embryonic sketch of April 19, 1992. Soon after, I realized it would be impossible for me to write the shooters as total strangers. Miller and Korodowski had to be part of Lancaster Conservatory.

But who were they?

I had two gunmen. But who were they? I needed them to have a connection to what was going on in the theater that day and a reason for coming in and opening fire.

I didn’t envision them as dancers. Rather I saw them belonging to David and Erik’s world. Rogue soldiers in Leo Graham’s army.

But what was the motive?

I started playing around.

The Things came spring semester of Erik’s junior year.

Their names were Jared and James but the technical theater population found them so reticent and weird, and so out-of-place, they were soon re-baptized Thing One and Thing Two.

This pair of freshman boys baffled everyone. Neither was a tech theater major but that was nothing unusual—most of the stagehands were either pursuing a minor degree, Erik included, or pursuing tech simply because they loved it. Nobody could figure out what these two kids were doing in Leo Graham’s universe. No cursory interest or knowledge of the theater arts, none of Erik’s behind-the-scenes yen to be the support structure behind a production. But since both boys were so un-personable, everyone soon lost interest in what their motives were.

Nobody cared what had brought them in.

They all anticipated that something was going to get them thrown out.

They lurched around darkly, doing the bare minimum. Two misfit drummer boys shuffling around the ranks of Leo’s well-ordered army. Leo demonstrated an astounding amount of patience with them. He knew to keep them separated, and he often put James on Erik’s working team. Erik was mildly resentful at having to mentor someone so strangely withdrawn. But he was a junior now, up in the elite cadre, and it was time to start letting his knowledge trickle down. He bit his tongue and shouldered the load of getting this nut to crack.

He didn’t do so badly. It took agonizing weeks, but he found if he worked one-on-one with James Korodowski, James would talk. Never a very long nor very in-depth conversation, but at least something resembling civil discourse and every now and then, a weak joke or two.

And once, just the once, they found a place where they overlapped.

Erik noticed James favored a green hooded sweatshirt with the Boston Celtics logo. He wore it at least three days out of any given week. Painting sets one rainy afternoon, Erik said casually, “You play hoops?”

James looked up blankly. “No.”

“You follow the Celtics?”

“Oh.” James looked down at his chest where the leprechaun spun a basketball on its finger. “No. This was my dad’s.”

“Was?”

“He’s gone.”

Erik sat back on his heels. “Gone or dead?”

“Dead. Hunting accident. I was twelve.”

“I’m sorry.”

James shrugged, dipped his brush into the paint. “I got his rifle. And his sweatshirt.”

“Mine’s just gone,” Erik said after a minute. “He left when I was eight.”

“For another woman?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Now James sat back, pushing his hair away with the back of his wrist, to avoid getting paint in it. “Your mom get married again?”

“No.”

“Mine did. My stepfather’s an asshole. He likes the Pistons.”

Erik laughed. Dumping his brush in the bucket he stood up and stretched against the kink in his back. “David Alto’s father is dead, too. We should start a club.”

“The lost boys,” James said. He painted a few more strokes, then dumped his brush as well. “I’m going to have a smoke.”

He scuffed toward the shop doors, then paused to look back. “You smoke?”

“No,” Erik said. “But thanks.” He looked at the hairline crack he had put into his nut and felt rather pleased with himself.

Jared Miller, however, was built of more hostile material. His entire conversation seemed to focus around one word: “gay.”

Who was gay, who wasn’t gay. What was gay. What could be construed as gay.

One day one of the freshman girls asked Erik about his necklace. He was explaining the charms to her, and Jared stopped to listen as well.

“That’s so interesting,” the girl said, peering close at Erik’s neckline.

“It’s fucking gay,” Jared muttered.

The girl clucked her tongue and flicked her head at him, annoyed. Even Erik was provoked, only because Jared’s manner was so blatantly juvenile. Clearly the remark was his genuine, immature opinion, not a joke at Erik’s expense.

“What are you, seven?” he said. And then wished he hadn’t, it would have been better to just ignore.

A few days later, he was standing at one of the workbenches, drawing up some templates, when he noticed Jared lurking at his elbow.

“You drink tea?” Jared said.

Erik looked at him, then looked at his Styrofoam cup and its two tea bag labels hanging from under the lid. “Yeah?” he said, up-talking, not sure what Jared was getting at.

A corner of Jared’s lower lip dropped down in a smirk. “That’s gay.”

Erik looked back at his work. “Only if it’s herbal tea.”

Apparently Jared’s debating skills ended there, for he walked off.

The gay bashing only got worse around the dancers. Jared had a field day with them, dragging James along for the ride, undoing all the goodwill Erik had managed to accomplish. There was no end of the speculation and taunting, muttered under breath or jeered out loud.

“But always at a distance,” David said. “Notice he doesn’t get too close to the animals?”

“Well, they bite,” Erik said.

For that year’s spring dance concert, Marie Del’Amici was staging a ballet called Who Cares? It was collaboration between the famed choreographer George Balanchine and the composer George Gershwin. It was a light-hearted ballet—jazzy and schmaltzy, pure fun. David would be lead set and lighting designer for the production, which would serve as his senior project. He envisioned a New York City skyline across the full length of the stage. They’d go all-out on the lighting, David planned, wiring up eight full boom stands and all of the overheads. Plus the set itself would have built-in lights.

“No fish in tanks,” he said, sketching out his vision, surrounded by his crew. “These are people dancing as people.”

“Gay.” From the peanut gallery, right on cue.

David didn’t even look up from his work. “You got such a problem with gay people, Miller, what the hell are you doing hanging around the theater department?” Then he looked up, and sent his pencil end over end, down the length of the table, pegging Jared on the arm. “Why don’t you do us a favor and go major in auto engineering.”

The Things stayed, though. And as David’s set for Who Cares came together, Jared and James left disaster in their wake—tools left out, Makita drills uncharged, lanterns poorly stored. Leo took them to task. Any day the stagehands expected the axe to fall, yet still Leo remained intent on cracking those two nut jobs. Time and patience was all it took, he insisted. Two things everyone was running out of.

The Friday before the spring concert tech week, Erik was walking up from the shop to the student lounge on the second floor of Mallory. Jared was with him. Erik wasn’t sure why. Jared didn’t talk, he didn’t engage, just shadowed. Erik was adept at ignoring him by now.

Coming down the corridor in the other direction were Daisy and Will, obviously on break from rehearsing. Daisy had on her purple leotard with the crisscross straps, and a short, white practice skirt. Long legs in pink tights and pointe shoes.

“Hey handsome,” she said. She and Erik kissed. Then Will pretended to kiss him, which was something Will always did, it was one of their many inside jokes. But now Erik was aware of Jared, lurking in his peripheral, taking it all in. As Erik stood around and chatted, he noticed Jared’s eyes sliding up and down Daisy’s body. He let it go, it was the normal leer of a young boy. But the look Jared gave Will was unfathomable. Somewhere between hatred and fascination.

Erik tried to see Will through this boy’s eyes. Tall. Lean and built, but the power ran vertically, not horizontally. He was sleek and streamlined, like a seal. Strength without brawn. Tattoos on his upper arms. The dark hair in a ponytail. Tight sweatpants rolled up around his knees and a fitted T-shirt. Ballet slippers. Loud talk and laughter, punctuating his words with little touches, both on Daisy and on Erik.

This was Will. Erik was used to it. What was Jared taking in?

He’s confused, he decided. He’s just young and inarticulate and confused.

As he and Jared turned to go, Erik knew it was coming. He counted off exactly two seconds before Jared said, “He gay?”

Erik rolled his eyes up, exasperated. “Dude,” he said, turning to give this punk the what-for, but Jared wasn’t there.

Will had him.

Daisy had prudently stepped back, and Erik slowly moved to put himself between her and the altercation.

Will had the freshman cornered. He wasn’t touching Jared, but all egress was definitively blocked.

“You have a question for me?” Will said. His voice was casual, with an underlying edge of menace.

“No,” Jared said, his jaw clenched.

“Really? Sounded like you had a question.” Will looked over his shoulder. “Fish, did he have a question?”

“Yep,” Erik said, standing motionless, his arms crossed.

Will turned back to Jared. “What was your question.”

Jared stared through Will, the small muscles around his eyes twitching.

“You wanted to know if I’m gay? Was that it?” Jared stayed motionless and again Will looked over his shoulder. “Fish, was that it?”

“He wants to know,” Erik said.

“You want to know,” Will said. “You can ask me directly, if you want. I don’t mind having a conversation if you’re curious.” He leaned just a touch more into Jared’s space. “You are curious, right? I mean, you’re not…interested?”

Jared lunged then. Erik stepped back, his hand reaching behind to keep Daisy at a distance. But Will’s reflexes were faster, and in an instant he had Jared pinned back again, his palms pressing on the boy’s shoulders.

“Easy, sweetheart. You’re not my type.”

Erik bit the inside of his cheek, trying hard not to laugh. The poor kid was about to piss himself.

“I’m not interested in touching you,” Will said. “Unless it’s like this…” One of his fingers darted out and into the hollow of Jared’s throat. Will pressed down, straight against the nest of nerve endings there. It was a defense move he had learned in judo, and a move he had demonstrated on Erik once. Erik winced, remembering that burst of fiery pain all across his chest and down his arms. Jared let out a cry, trying to twist away.

Will let up and stepped back. “Now. Next time you have a question about me, you ask me. To my face. Got it?”

Jared pushed past him, shrugging his jacket back into place on his raised shoulders. His eyes were murderous. He clomped a few steps down the hall then turned back, looking at Erik.

“Get lost,” Erik said. “I’m done babysitting you.”

He and Will watched until he had disappeared around a corner. Daisy had come and slipped her hand into Erik’s.

“He’s such an asshole,” Erik mumbled. “Him and the other one.”

Will was still staring down the hall, a corner of his mouth twisting. “Story of my life, Fish.” He looked at Erik and grinned. “Fuck ‘em, though. You gotta get to them before they get to you.”

Erik kissed Daisy, dodged Will’s smooch and went back down to the shop. As he passed by the open doors of the loading dock, he saw the Things. Jared and James, smoking, having a heated conversation. Jared glanced at Erik, then glared more intently, the smoke slowly wafting out his nose. Erik raised his eyebrows coolly, then kept on walking to the shop.

That was Friday. Late Saturday night, David came by to see Erik. “I was working in the shop, finishing up my set, and I saw those two yahoos hanging around.”

“The Things? Hanging around where?”

“I saw them up in the lobby first, then down around the loading dock doors. I don’t know what the hell they were doing.”

“Did you chase them out?”

“No, I was busy, for crying out loud, I don’t have time to be a watchdog. Man, if those two fuckers touch any of my sets I’m gonna string them up on the catwalk.”

Sunday was load-in for the concert. The crew was down in the shops, bright and early, ready to bring the set pieces up to the stage.

Everyone except Jared and James.

“They’re fired,” Leo said, his voice a rasp, for he was fighting a cold. “I thank you for your patience in the matter, my children, they will no longer be a burden to you.”

“You feel all right?” David said.

“I feel like crap,” Leo grunted.

“Go home,” Erik said. “We can handle it.”

“You’re short two heads. I’ll get the sets up with you and wire the booms. Then I’ll go home.”

He went home, leaving David and Erik in charge of the army. David was sitting with Marie as the rehearsal progressed, discussing the design and yelling cues back to Erik, who was in the booth. Then it was Will and Daisy’s turn to run “The Man I Love.” Three-quarters into the run, the Things showed up. Jared came onstage from the left wing. James came walking down the aisle, passing by the booth.

And they both opened fire.

It worked. Kind of. I wrinkled my nose as I read through it, not convinced these two yahoos were capable of going on a spree. Their characters didn’t have any dimension yet. They were like Jay and Silent Bob trying to be legit thugs or something. And I especially didn’t like their flimsy, stereotypical, convenient motive—it was something a ninth grader would write.

What I did like, though, was learning how Erik tended to bring out the best in people. This is when I realized he was the true alpha male of his circle.

Alpha male, I thought. Write that down, that’s important.

The tiny connection Erik made with James Korodowski would change everything that happened in the aisle of the theater. It had to. Coming into the aisle, Erik wouldn’t try to bluff or sneak past James or fight his way past. He’d look him in the eye. He’d say, “Hey...this is me. One of the lost boys... Come talk to me.”

Come talk to me. That was important. I jotted it down. Come talk to me. Words over fists. Connection over force.

I was also pleased with Will’s little jujitsu move and though I cut it here, I ended up using it when he broke up the fight between Erik and David. I do like me some irony.

I chewed everything over with my husband. He stays away—far away—from the process but he’s good for bouncing around ideas.

He said, “It needs to be one shooter. One guy with a psychopathic motive is explainable. Two becomes a conspiracy and it’ll take over the story. Get rid of one of them. And get rid of the rifle, you can’t hide that coming into the theater. It needs to be a handgun.”

OK. Not two shooters. One. I picked the one who had the more interesting connection to Erik. I picked James. But what was the motive? As a pair, the gunmen had come in and indiscriminately opened fire on the company. Why? It was too general. There had to be a target.

Who?

“Sorry,” my husband said, putting up his hands. “I’m good for perps and weapons. You handle motive.”

The man I love, ladies and gentlemen.

So who was the target of this shooting spree?

The most obvious answer seemed to be Daisy. A love triangle. A crime of passion. But that was more conducive to David being the shooter, which he wasn’t. Who would target Daisy? Someone who wanted to hurt Erik. But who would want to hurt Erik? Someone who... Um...

Crap, I was in trouble.

I made the decision to go from two shooters to one. And to have the shooter be a part of Erik’s circle. Either a fully-embraced member or a sideliner. But without a doubt, Erik knew him. They had a connection. Of some kind. I wasn’t sure yet.

James had started out as a stagehand. But what if he were a dancer? Then he would be not only part of Erik’s circle, but Daisy and Will and David’s as well. This was much more interesting. Especially given Will’s reputation. If James were gay and openly flirtatious with Will, that could make things verrrrry interesting from all kinds of angles. I started to play with this.

“You’re going where?” Daisy said.

Erik sighed. “I’m going to a gay bar.”

Turning from the shower spray, soap in one hand, her razor in the other, she stared at him, lips twitching with suppressed laughter. “Did you lose a bet with Kees?”

“Worse. James.”

The four boys made a point of playing basketball once a week, which struck Erik as somewhat bizarre. He and David had their high school basketball game, but Will and James had no game whatsoever. But they were both tall, had a natural athleticism and could unequivocally jump. Neither could shoot worth a damn, but they looked damned good flying through the air towards the basket. And their natural competitiveness ate up minimal coaching to form a ferocious defense. As a result, the two-on-two games were surprisingly hardcore. Rough, sweaty, full of hips and elbows and loud with trash talk.

That afternoon James stepped up to the center line of the court, dribbling easily between his calves. “I sink this shot and Fish comes to a gay bar tonight,” he said.

“No way,” Erik said, irritated that James had quickly picked up a skill that had taken himself years to master. “Besides, you don’t like any places around here.”

James flat-out hated the bar scene in Lancaster. “Too provincial,” he always said. Frat parties were out of the questions. “Too fucking homophobic.” He only wanted to go out in Philadelphia. David and Will were game. So was Erik, except if James was picking the venue. He had to draw the line somewhere.

Will put up a finger. “Rules,” he said. “You’re not taking him to any place called Thrust or Prong or Woody’s. You go tame.”

“Fair enough,” James said. “Dave, you got a rule?”

“You get three tries.”

“Fish?”

“I’m not in, forget it.”

“C’mon, no-brainer,” David said. “He’ll never sink it.”

“One chance to make a rule,” James said. “Speak now, baby face.”

Erik looked at him a long time. “You shoot backwards,” he said.

Dave let out a bray of laughter and pounded Erik’s bicep.

“Bitch,” James muttered. He turned around, his back to the basket. “All right, for love, honor and country.”

He swung the ball back between his calves, then lobbed it up and over.

He missed.

“For love and honor,” he said, and again sent the ball arcing over his head.

Not even close. Erik relaxed.

“For love…”

The orange sphere flew in a beautiful, spinning arc. It hit the backboard, then the front rim, the back rim, then dropped.

“Fucksticks,” Erik said.

David fell on the floor, sprawled on his back laughing.

“The fag can shoot,” Will yelled.

James beckoned with both hands. “Come over to the dark side, Willy. I’ll sink something in your basket.” Then he pointed at Erik with undisguised glee. “Pick you up at eight. Look gorgeous.”

“That,” Daisy said, “is fucking awesome.”

Erik rolled his eyes and pulled the curtain shut. Sitting down on the floor, his back against the tub, he was full of moody dread.

“I’m going as a point of honor,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Why are you explaining yourself to me?” she asked. “I hardly think you’re a closet case.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?”

“Erik, that is the dumbest thing you’ve ever asked me. I don’t think it’s anything.”

“Well I’m gonna feel weird as shit being there.”

“Are you afraid you’re going to get hit on?”

“No,” he said, annoyed. “Yes.”

“Listen, I doubt you’re going to be the only straight guy in there. And I know for a fact a lot of straight girls go to gay bars. I’m sure someone will come to your rescue if you’re being buggered in a corner.”

“Normally I find you funny, Dais, but that wasn’t funny.” He poked around in the pile of Daisy’s clothes on the floor, held her T-shirt to his face, inhaled and closed his eyes a moment.

“It was funny. You’re laughing on the inside.”

“Straight girls go to gay bars? What for?” He went fishing in her jeans to see what panties she’d been wearing today.

“To dance and have a good time without getting hit on. I’d go in a minute.”

“You want to come tonight?” He found a pair of navy blue bikini briefs and twirled them absently around one finger.

“No, that would defeat the purpose.”

“The purpose of what?” He got up, heeled off his sneakers.

“The purpose of you letting James pick the venue, going there and being cool about it. I know you. You’ll sit there, or stand around and observe everything until you find the hook that makes it work. You’ll come back saying it wasn’t that bad. And you’ll be tickled over getting a phone number. Or asked to dance.”

“You’re a riot tonight.” Erik pulled his shirt over his head. “I’m not dancing, that’s for sure.”

“Why not? They’ll know right away you’re straight,” she said.

“Forget it. I’ll just wear a sign or something.” He kicked his jeans on top of Daisy’s, scattering loose change.

Daisy laughed. “Honey, trust me. You’ll walk into the place and everyone will take one look at your shoes and know you’re straight.”

He pulled the curtain open and stepped into the tub behind her. “What’s wrong with my shoes?”

“You don’t even own shoes. You own sneakers and work boots. James will be mortified.”

“Good. Can I get in for five seconds, please?”

Daisy sighed and moved. She was incredibly generous in every facet of life except when it came to hot water. She always parked directly under the showerhead, begrudging Erik the necessary space to wet down and rinse off. Still, he had privileged access to that space. He could sleep at her apartment every night and step into the shower with her whenever he wanted. It still struck him as miraculous. And definitely worth being cold and wet.

Daisy sluiced the water off her limbs, then gathered her hair into a rope, twisting the water out of it. “You’re cute,” she said, flicking her eyes up and down his body. “Look at your arms. I love the little cut you got here…” Her fingers caressed his deltoid muscle. “Right there. That’s hot.” With a last smile she stepped out of the tub.

“You’re leaving?” he said. “But I’m cute. I have a little cut…here.”

“I want you good and worked up when you get home tonight, needing to prove you’re a man.”

“I have nothing to prove.”

“Of course not. Your mind is wide open.”

“I detect some sass here,” he muttered, lathering up his hair.

“What was that? I respect your ass, dear?” [Har har, I crack myself up. I lost this scene but I held onto the line and ended up giving it to Opie in Give Me Your Answer True.—SLQR]

“Clever.”

“Love you.”

“Love you more.”

The bathroom door opened and shut softly. Erik put his head under the spray and let the lather cascade down his neck and back. He watched it swirl down the drain, hopefully taking some of his troubled thoughts with it.

My mind is open, he 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.

Just stay out of my face.

His face was, for the most part, left alone that night.

Men were looking at him, no doubt about it. When it was his turn to buy a round, he gave the bartender the order and then stood at the bar staring straight ahead. He used his old basketball trick of making his eyes go empty and dumb. Just project empty, dumb and straight, he thought. And then fake right and go left.

He felt the eyes, but nobody spoke to him.

Maybe his shoes really did give it away.

He took the drinks back to their booth on the upper level, overlooking the dance floor. The bass rumbled through his feet and the backs of his legs. An endless, driving techno beat. Down on the floor beneath, a mass of human bodies pulsed, arms raised like a many-tentacled monster. Daisy was right: women were here. The gender balance was most definitely tipped in favor of males, but girls were gathered in little pockets around the bar. Most were on the dance floor. Wrapped up tight, indiscriminately bumping and grinding with the men, or other women. Nobody was really making eye contact. Eyes were either closed, or expressions and experiences turned fully inward. Everyone was simply dancing. For the sheer joy of it, neither seeking nor desiring a deeper connection from either sex.

James hunched forward, speaking over the music. “Impressions, gentlemen?” he said. “How goes this little sociological experiment?”

“Speaking strictly as a set designer,” David said, “it’s a much more attractive place than your typical bar. My shoes aren’t sticking to the floor.”

“Yet,” James said with a grin.

“And I feel slightly underdressed,” David said. “I mean, everyone looks good.”

“You look good, Dave,” Will said over his beer bottle.

“You look fantastic, Willy. Then again, you always do.”

Erik smiled. It was true. Either it was his carriage or the martial arts training, or the long hair and badass look. Or hell, it was just the combination of magnetism, confidence and willful Will-ness that made everything he did the coolest thing a human could do. He came with his own gravitational pull. Where he went, others followed. Erik followed. He wouldn’t have come tonight if Will hadn’t.

And?

Where was he going with this?

“You look morbid, Fish,” James said. “Guys are going to start buying you drinks just to get you to smile.”

Erik pasted a smile back on.

James grinned. “If you weren’t so settled down and attached, I could show you the benefits of having a gay wing man.”

“Show me,” David said, his eyebrows raised.

“You don’t need help, you whore,” James said, taking a drag off Will’s cigarette.

“At the risk of sounding gay,” Erik said, “do you come here often?”

“Here? To this place?” James snorted smoke out of his nose, the corner of his mouth twisting. “Too sedate. I like it a little more edgy.”

“Edgy in terms of music?” David asked. “Atmosphere? Clientele?”

“All of the above,” James said, shrugging.

“Well I appreciate you keeping it toned down,” Erik said. “And I hope my shoes weren’t too much of an embarrassment.”

“Just stay in the booth until I’m at least ten feet away from you,” James said. He stubbed out the cigarette and looked at Will. “At the risk of sounding gay, do you want to dance?”

Will drained his beer and set the empty bottle down. “It’s what I do.”

He and James shrugged off their jackets and left the booth. They strode off to the stairs. Strutted. Heads high, chests out. Will peeled the rubber band from his ponytail and let his mane ripple down.

Erik looked back at David. “Alpha male,” he said. “Right there.”

David shook his head, smiling.

Erik watched Will and James dance. Two wild horses in black. Circling each other. Touching easily and separating.

“What’s on your mind, Fish?”

“Nothing. Just trying to figure him out.”

“James?”

“Will.”

“He doesn’t give a shit what people think,” David said. “That’s all there is to it.”

It was on the tip of Erik’s tongue to retort that David didn’t give a shit, either, and David was miles from Will. Will had no need for the approval of others, and yet he was decent and welcoming to anyone who wanted to hang around. Will might not care what others thought of him but he possessed an inherent care for people. David seemed only to care for David.

James and Will melted in and out of the crowd, forming new partnerships, then coming back together again. A girl grooved her way into Will’s embrace, got her arms up around his neck and her hips into a rhythm with his. James sidled up behind her, wound his arms around her, his hands on Will’s hips. The three of them moved together. The girl turned, shimmying her back to Will’s chest. She had one hand carelessly on James’s shoulder, the other playing in her hair, making her long tresses part of the dance. Then she slipped away, leaving Will and James dancing alone a minute before another boy hooked into their beat.

On and on, switching, evolving, increasing and decreasing in number, male and female, but always Will and James at the center of a swirling galaxy of bodies on the dance floor.

Erik watched, fascinated. A little envious.

Of what? Will?

That freedom. That liberation from care, from the need for approval. To be human and dance, alone in a crowd but not lonely.

It’s what he does, he thought. It’s just what Will is.

James came up behind Will, slid arms around Will’s waist, his chin on Will’s shoulder. He said something, and Will laughed. Threw his head back with a swirl of long hair and mouth open wide to the ceiling. It was an embrace of intimacy, far out of the context of dancing. Erik felt his eyes narrow. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want James to be part of what Will was.

Erik looked at David, who raised eyebrows and lit a cigarette. He exhaled a ribbon of smoke, picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue with his ring and pinkie finger and flicked it away.

[Kristin Scott Thomas is one of the great onscreen smokers, and she always does this little move. I had to use it. It got cut here so I gave it to Will when he and Erik are hanging in the student lounge. —SLQR]

“I’m kind of bored,” he said.

Erik laughed, thinking he might try exercising his supposed alpha power and say he was ready to split. See what happened.

Go home.

Maybe get Daisy back in the shower and prove something…

This definitely had potential. I liked how James had upset the balance, or rather, rearranged the elements in Erik’s carefully-ordered universe. And how Will acting unpredictably made Erik edgy. This was good stuff. But it was also distracting me from the issue at hand. While ultimately the story would be told through Erik’s eyes, I still needed to know my antagonist just as intimately.

Who was James and how was he driven to do what he did?

I needed to dig deeper into James’s psyche. Build a backstory and figure out his life path up until his arrival at Lancaster. Then there had to be a turning point, a tipping point, an event or thing that set him on a trajectory into madness. Something that defined him as worthless enough to destroy everything he loved, including dance.

How? What? When? Who?

I started digging into James. What had shaped him? What was his family dynamic like? When had he come out and to whom? Did his family know? Were they supportive?

Things like that. I tried two angles: passive and aggressive.

James as a slightly anxious, depressed boy with lots of issues.

Or tougher. Scarred. Wary and used to attacking before he could be attacked.

What was his connection to the established circle of friends? Who was he to Erik? To Daisy and Will and the rest of them? And who was he ultimately targeting when he came into the theater?

First Approach: James as passive, possibly manic depressive

One day in November, Erik came across James and Daisy in the student lounge of Mallory Hall. James was sitting on a couch, bent over double. Daisy sat kitty-corner, holding James’ hand in both her own. She looked up at Erik as he approached, and raised her eyebrows.

“What’s up?” Erik said.

“Not feeling good,” Daisy said. Her hands gently rubbed James’ wrist.

James picked up his head. He looked gaunt and strung-out, a scruffy growth of facial hair marring the line of the goatee he usually kept so scrupulously neat. “Hey, man,” he said shakily.

“You all right?”

“I get these anxiety attacks,” James said. “Out of nowhere. I feel like I’m dying.”

Daisy made a sympathetic noise in her throat, still stroking James’ hand. “You don’t look like you’re sleeping much,” she said quietly.

“No,” he said. “Can’t find the off switch lately.”

“You want a drink or something?” Erik asked. “Water?”

“Ginger ale?” Daisy said. “It settles your stomach.”

“Yeah. That’s good. That’ll be good.”

Erik got him a soda, and hung around a few more minutes. He didn’t understand what was happening, but clearly James was in a bad way. Daisy seemed unphased, or was acting that way to help calm James down.

Later, she expressed more concern. “The man is imploding,” she said. She was soaking in the claw foot tub while Erik shaved at the sink.

“He’s all high highs and low lows, no middle ground. Everything is an issue.” Her eyes flared as she furiously wrung out her bath sponge. “He can’t take a simple correction in rehearsal without challenging it. I ask him to move his foot two inches so I don’t trip over it, and it’s a personal insult.”

Erik rinsed lather off the blade, making sympathetic noises. He was powerless here. Better to just let her rant.

“Maybe it’s seasonal,” she said. “Ever since we put the clocks back. What was that, two weeks ago?”

“I think so,” Erik said, looking a little cross-eyed in the mirror, upper lip pulled taught over his teeth.

“It’s like he’s running out of daylight. Ten days until the concert and our pas de deux is a mess. It should be mindless at this point but instead he’s totally tanking. I’m serious, Erik, he looks like he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

“Maybe he’s one of those manic-depressive types.”

“Well, Jesus, shouldn’t he be taking something for that?”

“Is he?”

“How would I know? I’m not his shrink. I talked him off the ledge the other day and now he’s clinging to me all the time, acting like we’re besties.”

“Is Marie doing anything about it?”

“She just yells at him which makes him more nervous. We have no understudies. If James has to drop out I’m screwed.”

“Can Will cover?”

“No, he’s already cast in four pieces.” Daisy drummed her fingernails on the rim of the tub. “I think I’m going to quietly teach John Quillis the part.”

“Who’s he?”

“He’s a freshman. I’ve had him in partnering class a few times and he’s decent. And smart. Really smart, he picks up choreography fast and retains it.” She looked up at Erik then, her smile mischievous. “And he’s just slightly crushy on me, so I think he’ll take direction well. You know?”

“I know nothing about being crushy on you or taking direction,” Erik said, toweling off his face.

Her smile unwavering, Daisy held up the sponge. “Wash my back?”

“Yes, ma’am…”

Second Approach: James as angry, vindictive and violent(ish)

The boys had gathered at Colby Street to hang out. The Nintendo was broken—fingers of blame pointing in all directions but Erik suspected Will had thrown it across the room in a fit of poor sportsmanship. They started playing poker around the coffee table, betting with peanuts and pretzels because money was for important things like food and beer. When they ran out of the latter, Will and David went on a run to the store.

Erik and James alternated their attention between the TV and lazy games of war. They were both sitting on the floor, kitty-corner at the coffee table.

“Daisy’s beautiful,” James said, rather randomly.

Erik smiled.

“Beautiful dancer. She’s a snap to partner. Definitely going places, that one.”

“You think so?”

James nodded. “She’d be right up there with anyone I saw at Juilliard.” He gathered up his cards and laid them in a stack on the table. “And such a sweetheart,” he said, sighing, as if sweetness were a tragic condition.

They were quiet a while, watching TV, then James reached and touched Erik’s necklace. “This is cool,” he said. “What’s it about?”

Erik told him its history, explained each of the charms. James leaned in, interested, the smell of cigarette smoke and pot radiating out of his clothes.

“What about the scissors, what do they mean?”

Erik smiled, looking down at the necklace’s newest charm between his fingers. A tiny pair of gold scissors. Sax. “Daisy gave me this one. It’s kind of a private joke.”

James lit a cigarette and offered Erik the pack. Erik shook his head.

“So your old man’s gone?” James said. “Will said he just took off when you were a kid.”

“Yeah.”

“Alive? Dead? You don’t know?”

“No idea.”

“Shit,” James said, exhaling a ribbon of smoke around the cigarette clamped in his mouth. “At least I know my father’s dead.”

“Is he? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Motherfucker’s in the ground where he belongs.”

Unbidden and unprompted, James began to talk, telling a story that left Erik’s jaw parted and his stomach in a knot. A harrowing tale of physical and mental abuse at the hands of his father. Of implied sexual abuse by his uncle, his father’s brother. And neglect from his mother who was drunk half the time. Dance class was James’ only means of escape, the one place where he felt accepted, talented and special. Yet his love of dance meant years of taunting and bullying at school.

When James was seventeen, his father and uncle went on a weekend hunting trip. “Only my uncle came home,” James said. “It was ruled accidental but I never believed it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t cry a tear for that son of a bitch, I was glad he was dead. But I still had my uncle to deal with. Luckily I had the means to do that.”

“What means?” Erik said.

James grinned. “My dad left me his guns. The next time my uncle came around our house, I shot him in the leg.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“Hand to god. One of the best moments of my life. Fucking empowering, man, shooting a gun. Watching him cower in the dirt, knowing if he tried to bring anything against me I’d expose everything, now that my father was dead. Said to him, ‘I may be a fag, but now I’m a fag with a gun and I’m twice the shot you are.’ I was, too. My dad took me to the range all the time. It was probably the only time he really liked me.”

“Jesus,” Erik said.

“So I picked up the bits and pieces of my existence, got my scholarship to Julliard, packed up and got the fuck out of there.”

Erik swallowed. “So what made you come to Lancaster?”

James lit another cigarette off the butt of the first and exhaled roughly. “You know what it’s like to be abandoned, Fish. You can hear all the live-long day it wasn’t your fault. Hear it up, down, sideways and in Chinese. But something in you always wonders what you did. Wonders what the fuck is wrong with you.”

“I was abandoned,” Erik said. “You were abused. That’s totally different.”

“Abuse is psychological abandonment. Abandonment is mental abuse. It is the same. It fucks you up. You hide yourself. Don’t tell, don’t tell. Don’t show it, don’t tell it.” James eyes went far away, his lips moving vaguely. David and Will returned then, and Erik never got an answer to the question of why James had come to Lancaster.

At this point I had pulled off the keyboard and was working with pen and paper. Scribbling in notebooks over and over, motive. Motive. Motive. Who was the target? Who was James after? Why? Who did he want to hurt? What had driven him to take it all down? Was he really taking it all down or was he going after one specific victim and the rest was collateral damage? Who was he targeting? Who did he come for?

At the same time I continued to craft all kinds of backstory scenarios. He’d lied about his past to everyone. He said the father was dead but the father was actually alive. There was no uncle. James lied to everyone. He hadn’t transferred voluntarily from Juilliard, rather he had been kicked out. For drugs or harassment or inappropriate behavior. Or grades, maybe. He was a wildcard. Untrustworthy. An unreliable narrator of his life story.

I wasn’t digging it.

I didn’t want to make him a convenient villain. I got a sense James was a mix of passive and aggressive. Street smart but emotionally dumb. Desperate to be loved with no frame of reference of how to act like a loving human being. He fell hard and got infatuated. Obsessed. He put on a big flirtatious show but deep down, he probably was crazy about Will. Enamored. Maybe even infatuated. No doubt Will was the big brother, father-figure, artistic collaborator of James’s dreams. And—...

Wait a minute.

Will.

Will, I wrote in my notebook, circling it. Will was the target.

With a better idea of James in my head, I went back to the shooting scene. Specifically to Erik coming out of the booth. Would it be a confrontation in the aisle? Or a conversation? And how would it end? Who caused James’s death in the end?

I jotted in my notebook, “James would only hurt Erik as a way to get Will to come to him. Will is the man James loves. Erik is the man Will loves.

Will is the target. Erik is the bait...”

So what if it Will took the bait? Out of love?

Like a crab, Erik emerged into the aisle, crouched down low to the carpeted floor, up against the side of the booth. As during so many high school basketball games, he had the entire field of play in his vision, and he was mapping his charge. Looking for weaknesses in his opponent, a break in the dribble when he could steal. A cheer from the past, an echo of feet on bleachers and hands clapping as he dribbled around the three-point line, waiting for his break.

Got any threes? Go, Fish!

He looked at the stage. Will was curled up on his side. Daisy was on her back. An arm thrown over her face. Erik looked at the man in the aisle, down near the tenth row. He was sure he knew by then. He saw the close-cropped hair and the gold earrings and he had to have known.

The silence shattered as James squeezed off another round. A strange squeal of impact and a chunk of plaster fell from the decorative frieze around the stage. It hit the floor with a thud and a puff of dust. Daisy turned her head.

Don’t move, Erik thought. A fleeting image of her crossed wrists in the small of her back. In his mind he seized them, held them tight, held her down. Don’t move.

Did he remember the story of the guns then? “Fucking empowering, man, shooting a gun,” James had said. “I may be a fag, but now I’m a fag with a gun and I’m twice the shot you are…”

Out the corner of his eye, Erik saw movement. To his right, in one of the rows, a brown dome of a head, stealthily creeping along, a long-fingered hand on the tops of the seats.

Slowly Kees’ face rose. He looked to James, then toward the back of the theater, and saw Erik. He widened his eyes. Erik widened his own back. Kees brought up his other hand. He was holding a Styrofoam cup. He nodded.

Erik shook his head, not knowing what he meant.

Still facing the stage, James was still, the hand with the gun at his side.

What am I doing, Erik thought. Why me?

“You bring out the best in people,” David had said. “Haven’t you ever noticed everyone calms down around you?”

I am the alpha male.

Silently, Erik moved down a few rows. He glanced at the brass letters on the sides of the aisle seats. O. N. M. He was now between Kees and a killer. He swallowed. Closed his eyes.

“James,” he said.

He opened them. James was looking back over his shoulder. He had shaved off his goatee.

“James,” Erik said again, making himself look, willing his voice to be steady. “Don’t do this.”

James didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stared.

Erik couldn’t speak. His throat was clenched and his mouth was bone dry, he couldn’t form a word but he looked at James and tried to think through to him, tried to get James to take him.

I am human valium. Take me. You told me a story. Whether or not it was true, you saw something in me that made you tell. You and I were abandoned, James. You were calm enough to tell me. Let me calm you again. You don’t have to do this.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kees said

Erik didn’t dare glance back. He imagined Kees rising from behind the row of seats. Not quite standing. Just showing himself. Past James’ body, Erik looked at the stage. Daisy was moving, pushing up on her elbow, reaching toward her legs. Get down, Dais. Get down, lie down. I’m coming. I’m coming to you…

Kees’ voice. Deep. Quiet. Strong. “You can stop, James.”

James’ upper lip twitched. Then his whole mouth twisted in contempt.

He turned.

My mother doesn’t know where I am.

As the gun came up an object hurtled through the air, exploded in James’ face and chest in a steaming brown splash—Kees had thrown his coffee at him. A shot rang out, Kees howled, and like a runner at the pistol Erik took off.

He went for the legs. A yelp of pain escaping him as his ribs crunched against the floor, the burn of carpet up one side of his face and his ear. Muscle and bone twisting in his arms. The musty odor of pot and unwashed denim, mixed with the smell of hot coffee.

James bucked and writhed, his powerful dancer’s legs kicking Erik loose. Something smashed against Erik’s cheekbone. Stars exploded in his vision. He was grabbed, roughly. A crocodile roll of limbs. Then he was thrown down flat on his back in the aisle and James was on top of him, his hands at Erik’s neck.

His hands.

Who has the gun?

Crushing pressure at his throat then. More stars in his sight as he fought to breathe. Fresh adrenaline lacing his body as every survival instinct focused on the sole need to get air. He twisted, he kicked, he pushed, he strained. He couldn’t fight it.

He grabbed at James’s wrists.

He grabbed Daisy’s wrists.

Nobody, Dais…nobody but me…

The crowd in the bleachers, yelling for him.

Got any threes? Go, Fish!

He couldn’t go.

My mother doesn’t know.

He couldn’t fight.

Nobody but me.

My mother…

The stars. Night was coming. Night was when people always left. The stars were fading, like tail lights down the road.

Dad, you never said goodb—

A sound like a muffled explosion. Far away from another time. The pressure on his throat released. Pain through his eyeballs as a ball of marigold yellow bloomed in the darkness, a pinprick of bright light at its center. Erik stared up at it as his lungs tried to remember the right mechanics to inhale. In the faraway came a muffled thump. A tree falling in the woods. No, not a tree. James had fallen off him. Erik rolled, twisting free, curling on his side. Coughing, choking, frantically pulling in air as hard as he could. Other than the ragged, tortured sound of his breathing, the theater was silent.

Who is breathing?

I am…

“Easy,” said a deep voice. A hand patting Erik’s ankle. Then his knee. “Easy, Fish. You’re all right.” Kees was there. Patting him clumsily. Erik opened his eyes. He sat up, panting hard, coughing, staring at Kees with his aching eyes. Kees, hunkered down, breathing just as hard, clutching his shoulder, rivulets of blood escaping through his fingers.

Erik looked at James, half his conquistador face now a bright red pulp. Erik looked down the aisle. He saw Will, on the floor, curled up by the second row. Next to him lay the gun.

On hands and knees Erik scrabbled to his friend. Will lay on his side in the blood-soaked carpet, his left arm curled into his chest. His hair had fallen out of its ponytail. Erik slid his hand under it, along Will’s jaw, looking for a pulse.

Will opened his eyes.

“Fag can’t shoot,” he said thickly.

“Will,” Erik whispered, his voice an ugly rasp.

“Get Daisy,” Will said. “Get up there. Go, Fish...”

Dramatic as it was, I couldn’t have Will shoot James. Because then the story would become Will’s, how he carried that burden around forever.

“Let James turn the gun on himself,” my husband said. “It’s the only way to keep the focus where you want it. He should start and stop it. But sometime in the aisle...something happens. He almost stops. Or Erik almost gets him to stop. Go deeper there. It’s something. You’re right on the edge of it”

A couple of days later, I got the idea that James had gotten the gun from his sister. Who was a cop. Or a soldier, maybe. It was the time of the Gulf War, she could be stationed in the Middle East. Or killed there. A sister. A soul mate. James’s one and only champion, taken from him. All he had left was her dog tags. He wore them on a ball chain around his neck. Just like Erik wore his father’s necklace.

There it was. The connection.

I started researching Army reserve units who had served in the Gulf. Preferably units from Eastern Pennsylvania but I wasn’t locked into James being from Pittsburgh, I could change it if necess—...

Holy shit. The 14th Quartermaster Detachment. A reserve water purification unit stationed in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Lost 13 soldiers in a ballistic missile attack on 25 Feb 1991 at Dharhran, Saudi Arabia. The unit had only been there six days. Eighty-one percent of them killed.

There it was. Margaret Korodowski was killed at Dharhan. They sent back her dog tags and her guns.

It wasn’t a confrontation in the aisle. It was a conversation. Come talk to me. Erik had one of the dog tags in his pocket. James had given it to him. Because Erik was good. One of the good guys. Yes. Write that. Yes. This is it. I have it now.

The story is the moment of connection between Erik and James in the aisle. When Erik holds up the penny and says he has James in his pocket. That moment is pivotal. That moment is everything Erik is. That is why he is “The Man I Love.”

I had both James and Erik in my pocket now. And the rest was history.

His story.

Erik looked out the kitchen windows to the herb gardens, where Daisy was picking flowers for the table.

“Was it always Daisy?” he asked.

Joe looked up from his paper, eyebrows wrinkled. “Pardon?”

“Her name, I mean. Was she always going to be named Daisy?”

Francine laughed. “Goodness, no. She was supposed to be Camille. After my grandmother, who was from a very snooty Parisian family. She was named for the novel, La Dame aux Camélias. You know it?”

Erik shook his head and shrugged.

“Anyway,” Francine said. “When I had the baby, my sister Chantal came to see me in the hospital and brought this huge bouquet of flowers. And while I was nursing she picked all the daisies out and made a chain. You know. A little garland. And she put it on the baby’s head and said, “Voilà. Camille is so dated. She is notre dame aux marguerites.”

While Francine was talking, Joe went out of the kitchen and came back with a small picture frame. He handed it to Erik. There was Daisy, her eponymous crown slightly askew. She had been a surprisingly plump baby, with cheeks that were a grandmother’s dream. Her eyes were a generic, newborn blue with no visible green yet. But both the tilt of her chin and her inquisitive expression were adorably familiar.

“Look at that,” Erik said.

“We did,” Francine said. “I looked at Joe, I looked at my sister, I looked at the baby. We crossed out Camille on the birth certificate and put down Marguerite Chantal.”

“But to everyone she was Dézi,” Joe said, rubbing at a bit of tarnish on the frame. “And Franci always grew them, wherever we lived.”

Francine laughed again, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Our first house in Fairmount? Little pathetic scrap of dirt between the front stoop and the sidewalk, that was my garden. Poor daisies would grow stems three feet long, just trying to follow the sun. Ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous?” Daisy said, coming through the screen door and heeling off her clogs. She carried a big handful of roses in popsicle shades of orange, pink and purple. On her head, slightly askew, was a crown of daisies.

“Oh look how lovely,” Francine said, taking the roses into her arms as if they were a newborn. “Didn’t they do beautifully this year?”

Camille, Erik thought, holding up Daisy’s intended name next to her, like an outfit to be tried on. It didn’t fit.

“What?” Daisy said, tilting her chin at him. Her elegant cheekbones were sunburned and above them her eyes swirled blue and green.

He smiled and straightened the flower chain on her head. Slid his arms around her slender body.

“Nothing,” he said.

“When performance week arrived, the sets were brought to the black box via the service elevator. Load-in started at seven in the morning with coffee and bagels, and went into the wee hours with pizza and beers. In the wee-est of those hours, a red-haired ingénue lured Erik into one of the dressing rooms and showed him the meaning of “casting couch.” She never called afterward.

He never had so much fun in his life.”

—The Man I Love

Wait a minute. Who was that redheaded ingénue welcoming Erik to college?

Mallory was a sleeping giant. The halls and corridors dimmed and shadowy, the theater dark. Only the shop was alive, humming and chugging in the wee hours. Heading up to the lounge to get a soda, the scuff of Erik’s footsteps echoed spookily.

He was exhausted. His hands ached from turning a million screws by hand. His thumb was howling from where he’d smashed it with the hammer. And he was hungry.

“Hey.”

He stopped and looked back. The door to one of the black box dressing rooms was open and a girl stood there. Blinking like she’d just woken up.

“Hey,” he said, squinting in the dark. It was Stephanie Riordan, one of the senior theater students. “You all right?”

“What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “Almost two.”

“I fell asleep,” she said, yawning and gathering up her long red hair. Then she leaned on the jamb and crooked her finger at him. “Can I have a sip?”

He stared at that beckoning finger five whole seconds before he moved toward her. She took a drink and smiled at him. “Fish, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm.” Her eyes swept him up and down as she took another sip. She capped the bottle and put it behind her back, retreating into the dressing room. “Come here,” she said.

“What?”

“Come here,” she said. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

He went. The door closed and the room was in pitch darkness. And she was on him. A long, hot kiss, her hands grabbing his ass. His own hands flailed around as he kissed back, not entirely sure what was going on until she took his wrists and moved his palms over her breasts.

I’m dreaming, he thought. That’s what this is.

“You cool?” she murmured against his mouth.

“Uh-huh.” What other answer could there possibly be?

She nudged him up against the door and gave him her kiss again, soft and deep and sweet with Coke. Her mouth ran down his neck.

“Do you have a condom?”

“Not on me,” he said, kicking himself into next year.

“Mm. Bummer.” Then she was dropping softly onto her knees, fingers at his belt.

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ...

He tried to say something but his tongue was too thick in his mouth. Hot tightness all through his groin and coiling up into his belly. She unzipped his jeans, pulled them and his shorts down just enough to let his hard, aching cock free. He put his hand gently on her head, thinking this shit simply did not happen. His eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to see her silhouette. She was nuzzling at him with her cheek, running her closed lips along the shaft and then letting the length of him dip under her jaw and slide against her neck.

“God.” It was a dry moan, half stuck in his throat. His shoulder blades ground into the wall behind him as his legs began to shake. Greed coursed through his blood.

“Put it in my mouth,” she whispered.

That’s when he knew he was dreaming. No way in hell this girl could have reached into his brain and plucked numero uno out of the Spank Bank by sheer luck.

Don’t let me wake up. Please don’t let me wake up…

His fingers folded into a fist around her hair. He held her head, took hold of his cock with his other hand and fed it into her mouth. Her lips closing around the tip nearly did him in. She sighed in her chest and drew him in tight, her hands sliding up his thighs and pulling his jeans further down. She sucked him hard. Purred soft around him. Ran her tongue in scrolls along the length of him and then eased him down into her throat again. Her hand followed where her mouth led. Her mouth chased down the skin her hand left behind. With fingers, tongue and lips she started pulling it up out of him. The coiled heat in his belly reversed direction and spiraled down, heading for the warm wet that had no name.

“Christ,” he whispered. The back of his head and both fists thumped the wall. Teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut as he thrust his chin up toward the ceiling and groaned. His fingertips gently brushed her hairline.

“It’s close,” he said, warning her, just in case she wasn’t intent on—

“Go ahead,” she said. “You can.” Her hand worked him faster, her thumb stroking the ridge under the tip, her mouth like a wet pink flower. The spiral threaded out and his insides caved in after it. He dropped his head down on his chest and yelled behind the wall of his teeth as he came on her tongue. His whole body seized, clenching and releasing, heartbeat enormous in his ears and toes curled tight against the floorboards.

“Yeah,” she whispered around laughter. “You’re fast.”

A thunderous shiver through his chest and a wet hiss of air through his teeth. “Jesus,” he said, another shiver going across both shoulders. Then one more out his ears and he was still.

She carefully let go of him and stood up, drawing her forearm across her mouth. “You’re crazy,” she said, pulling his jeans up.

“I’m crazy?” he said, still breathing hard.

She zipped his fly and buckled his belt. “Did I scare you?”

“No.” A contented exhaustion was trickling down from the top of his head. He could drop right down to the floor and sleep like a baby.

She uncapped the soda and took a long drink, then passed it to him.

“Let’s not ruin this with a lot of talk,” she said, opening the door. “Go on, now.”

He almost said thank you, but thought it might sound weird. She was nudging him out the door like a mother sending her kid off to school. Shouldn’t he at least get her number?

“I guess I’ll…see you?” he said.

She plucked the soda out of his hand. Her open palm waved at him, then the door shut.

Erik walked down the quiet hallway, shaking his head. Twice he stopped and looked back, open-mouthed and bewildered.

“What the fuck just happened?” he said softly.

Ha. Every guy’s dream, right, to be pulled into a dark room and spectacularly blown without any pointless talk or questions or needing to return the favor? The hell is wrong with this chick?

See, if I were really mean, I’d have the entire stagehand crew on the other side of the door listening. But there’s only so much cruelty I can inflict on our Erik.

Anyway, we’ll just park this back in the Spank Bank.

Here’s a little scene that helped me develop Erik and Will’s relationship. But ultimately, it had to go.

One afternoon Erik came across Daisy at the bulletin board in the student lounge. Her back and the sole of a foot against the wall, her knee making an improvised desk where she was scribbling things in her calendar. She wore street clothes, and her hair was down and a little damp—indicating she was done with classes for the day.

Coming closer, Erik realized she was wearing his grey, V-neck sweater. He stared, hanging by a thread of a moment, dangling over an open pit of bubbling emotions. Love, desire, disbelief, wonder. All stirred round and round with a big wooden spoon called Possession. His clothing. On that girl. Which made her his girl.

Mine.

Daisy looked up. “Hey, handsome.” The grey sweater made her eyes all but explode out of her face. Erik walked closer, falling into the blue-green gaze. He let his backpack slide off his shoulder and onto the floor. He took the calendar out of her hands and dropped it as well.

“Hey,” he said. And kissed her.

Her wrists crossed behind his neck. A little sigh in her chest. Her mouth soft cotton candy and her teeth gently closing on his bottom lip between kisses and letting go. He opened his eyes, took another long drink of blue-green. Closed his eyes and fell into her. He was getting hard, and because the lounge was empty, he moved closer, intent on getting a good luxurious grind into her hip.

Then someone attacked him.

One arm across his collarbones, the other around his waist. He broke sputtering out of the kiss, heart rearing up and eyes rolling in shock. He looked down at the tattooed arm across his midsection and he twisted in a desperate attempt to get the hell out his own skin as it became clear a guy had grabbed him, was practically bending him over and…

“Jesus, Will,” Daisy said, laughing.

“Oh yeah, baby,” Will said at Erik’s ear, dry-humping furiously.

“What the fuck,” Erik cried, red to his hairline and writhing in Will’s iron grip. Electric adrenaline in his veins screaming to fight or flee, because if he was on the verge of sporting wood, then what the hell was that bashing up against his…

“Don’t move,” Will said. “Don’t struggle.”

“Son of a bitch.” Erik was laughing now. Which was weird. “Get off.”

“Oh, I’m close, I’m close.”

“Just give into it, honey,” Daisy said, sighing. “There’s no stopping him.”

“Good fucking lord,” Erik said. He braced his palms against the wall and put his head down on Daisy’s shoulder as Will bumped and ground against him. “Fine. Whatever. Hey, easy, man. It’s my first time.”

“You’d never know,” Will said. “You’re so good.”

“Thank you. Are you done yet?”

In one smooth move, Will released his grip, ruffled Erik’s hair, and walked away backwards. Making a telephone gesture by his ear and mouthing, “Call me.” Looking all too fucking satisfied with himself. Erik just shook his head, laughing weakly in a mortified but helpless resignation. Anything he could fire at the retreat—fuck you, bite me, asshole—would only be lobbied back in delight—I just did, with pleasure, maybe next time.

It became Will’s favorite practical joke. Sometimes Erik remembered to put his own back up against the wall in a makeout session with Daisy. But Will had an uncanny sixth sense about when Erik forgot to “check six” and he’d swoop in for the kill, like a cross between Romeo and Dracula.

At least he always apologized afterward.

Erik got progressively used to the attacks on his person, to the point where he came across Will and Lucky in a deep clinch one day, and toyed with the idea of a little retribution.

Except Will would probably enjoy it too much.

What the hell.

Catching Lucky’s eyes, he put a finger to his lips and tiptoed in. He seized two handfuls of Will’s leather jacket and started giving him the business, confident the counter-attack was long expected. Even if not, Will was incapable of being shocked. He’d either take it in stride or drop trou and demand a reacharound. Har de har har.

Instead Will seized up and whipped around with an elbow. A single tight hammer blow, straight across Erik’s face, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

“William,” Lucky cried.

“Fish?” Will said.

“Well, that backfired,” Erik said to the ceiling, his brain clanging from one side of his head to the other.

Will fell onto his knees next to Erik, cursing in French and helping him sit up. “Dude, what the hell are you… Jesus, Fish, you freaked my shit out. Are you all right?”

“Motherfucker,” Erik said, moving his jaw around. “You can dish it out but you can’t take it?”

Will was bright red and stammering. Reaching to touch Erik’s swelling cheekbone then stopping. Then reaching again. “I’m so sorry.” He got a strong hand under Erik’s arm and made to help him up.

“No, no, don’t touch me. You hurt my feelings.” Erik got up and let Lucky fuss over him. “Is my nose bleeding?”

“No. But let’s get some ice on your cheekbone there,” she said. “Honestly, Will, what the fuck is wrong with you? Who did you think it was?”

“Not him,” Will said, still red-faced and fidgeting in a way Erik had never seen before. “Jesus Christ, Fish, I’m sorry.”

Erik laughed. “It’s all right. I’ll warn you next time. Maybe.”

“Come to the training room, I’ll get you an ice pack,” Lucky said.

“No, no.” He waved her off. “It’s my first conquest. I need a souvenir.” He brushed off his jeans and smoothed back his hair. Touched careful fingertips to his cheekbone. “How’s it look?” he asked Will.

Will’s arms were crossed tight over his chest. “You look good,” he said.

Erik headed toward the stairs. He turned back once and made a telephone gesture by his ear, mouthing, “Call me.” Then started down, face stinging and a tangled, embarrassed hilarity in his belly.

“I did not see that coming.” Will’s voice floated down the stairwell.

“For once,” Lucky said, laughing.

Sexuality plays a major theme in The Fish Tales, with Will’s persuasions the subject of much discussion. When James comes along, it not only changes the Guy Talk, it pushes Erik out of his comfort zone, making him confront what it is (and isn’t) to be a man.

“I see no point in sucking a guy’s dick,” David said.

“So don’t do it,” Will said, not looking up from his book.

“I have no intention to.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

“James wanted to know.”

“And Dave made my case,” James said. “Just like he has no dick interest, eating pussy holds no appeal for me. I don’t see the point.”

“The point,” David said, nearly squeaking. “Getting a girl to scream, that’s the point.”

James shrugged. “I’m not attracted to girls. Or their screaming.”

“God, are you kidding me,” David said, tossing aside the remote. He lay back and laced his hands behind his head. “Nothing’s better than licking girls. Tasting a chick right out of the shower? Jesus...”

“Right out of the ocean,” Erik said, thinking about spring break and how Daisy was salty before she got sweet.

“Oh God, don’t, Fish,” Will said, laughing softly.

Too late. Erik crossed his ankles and adjusted his textbook.

“You like that salty taste then you’d love a guy in your mouth,” James said.

David pretended to throw up and Erik, quickly deflating, couldn’t help grimacing.

“Don’t knock it until you try it,” James said.

“No thanks,” David and Erik said in unison.

James looked at Erik. “You kiss Daisy after she goes down on you?”

Erik looked back. “Yeah,” he said slowly.

“You ever go down after you’ve come inside her?”

Erik swallowed, conscious of David’s attentive presence. “Maybe.”

James spread his hands and smiled. “Technically you’ve tasted load.”

“It’s different,” Erik said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s mine.”

“And he drinks a lot of pineapple juice,” Will said.

“Shut up,” Erik said.

“So technically, you don’t mind the taste of it,” James said.

“Technically, I don’t think about it.”

James shrugged. “Meaning you don’t mind it.”

“Tasting my own jiz doesn’t mean I want a guy shooting off in my mouth.”

“Talk slower, Fish,” Will said from behind his book.

“Shut up,” Erik said, a little louder.

“Can we go back to eating pussy?” David said.

“No thanks,” James said.

“Don’t knock it until you try it,” Erik said.

James grinned. “What makes you think I haven’t?”

Erik had nothing. “Touché,” he muttered.

James grinned wider. “At least I’ve explored all the options.” He spread his arms out along the couch, one of his hands close to Will’s shoulder, the other resting on Will’s ankle. Looking proprietary.

“I need to get laid,” David said to the ceiling.

James looked at his watch. “I got five minutes.”

Will laughed.

“Fuck you,” David said. Then pointed a fast finger at Will. “And shut up.”

Confused, moody and horny, Erik looked down at his calculus book but it wasn’t equations there. It was Daisy on her hands and knees and he was slowly easing her underwear down over the curve of her ass. She was arching and wet and glistening with the promise of sweet. Thighs quivering, fingers clutching at the sheets. Waiting for his mouth. Wanting it. Pushing it all back in his face and begging for it. Which was the point of going down on girls…

He glanced at his watch, grimacing again. James had five minutes. Erik had at least five torturous hours until Daisy got home, ate something, showered, did whatever work she had to do before they could go to bed. He sighed.

“Tell me about it,” Will said.

As the arc of Part Two was falling into place and I was getting a handle on how the events of 1991-1992 would unfold, it became evident there was a relationship between Will and James. For a while I kept it secret but then decided it made for more dramatic tension if people knew. Especially if Erik knew. So I wrote Erik discovering the affair: running out of condoms one night, going back to Colby Street to find a trail of clothing up the stairs and his bedside table drawer burgled. Will and James in bed.

I told myself I should write something as James, just to get a better handle on his voice and his character. Rewind the tape back to the scene at Colby Street. Erik staring at James and Will on the couch, James’s hand on Will’s leg. Will not minding.

My mind is open. Just stay out of my face.

Erik stacks his books, says goodnight and leaves.

But I was curious as to what happened after he left…so I wrote it.

At the sound of the kitchen door closing, James took his hand off Will’s leg and chuckled under his breath. “Fish can’t deal,” he said.

“Leave him be,” Will mumbled.

James tried to concentrate on his work but the text held no interest and he read the same paragraph three times with no comprehension. He hated reading and Will could just fall into a book and never come out. The most boring, dry reading assignment was no match for Will’s work ethic. He narrowed his eyes and mind like a laser and just got shit done. Rather than inspire James, it made him itch to clown around, to break that intense concentration and turn it on himself like a sun lamp.

He picked up a highlighter and feigned marking something in his book. “You always been in love with him?” he said around the cap in his teeth. “Or is this something new?”

Will looked over the edge of his book. His eyes fixed on James, unblinking. “What makes you think that?” he finally said.

“You look at him differently than you look at other guys.”

“I look at everyone differently.”

Look at me, James thought. He thought it a hundred times a day, from when he woke up in the morning, to when the last thoughts dropped from his mind as he fell asleep. Look at me.

Will did look. But not enough. His eyes fell on James like distracted pats on a good dog’s head. Yet they lingered on Fish in long, affectionate strokes, following him around in a manner so unconscious, it couldn’t be called anything but love.

Love was a sick bitch. Will could have any gay or bi guy he wanted. Instead he set his cap for a guy who was not only straight, but who didn’t want to live anywhere but in his girlfriend’s pants. Jesus, Fish could have anyone he chose but he only wanted Daisy. And who could blame him? Daisy was a great girl.

She reminded James of Penny. They were absolutely nothing alike on the outside. You had to look a few layers under the skin to find that similar core of self-awareness. The calm, shrewd way of regarding the world and retaining its details. And how they liked to make people happy by remembering those details. Daisy noticed if you made your coffee with half milk and three sugars, and if she bought you a cup, she brought it to you with half milk and three sugars. You mentioned your birthday once to her, and she remembered it forever. She wasn’t out to fix or take care of the world, but you never doubted Daisy was listening to you. She took the time to notice you. And sometimes, that was all you needed.

James capped the highlighter and tossed it on the coffee table. “You ever sleep with Dais?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“No. She’s off limits. And I don’t mean just Fish. I mean I never wanted to find anything with her as a woman because I couldn’t bear to lose her as a partner.”

“Like you’d never start anything with Fish because you couldn’t bear to lose him as your best friend.”

“I don’t start anything because he’s straight, you moron. It’s not an option. Quit looking for latent shit that doesn’t exist. He’s my best friend and my roommate. Sometimes the only thing between Daisy and a ten-foot drop to the floor are my hands and Fish trusts me with that.”

“I’d trust him with a whole lot more.”

Will raised eyebrows with a tired expression.

James raised his back. “Don’t look at me like that, I mean it. He’s a good guy. He’s…good.”

“Well, I’m glad we agree on that. Mind if I read now? You need more than my leg weight in your lap to hold you still?”

James smiled. “No, this is fine.”

“Is it helping?” Will’s expression was genuinely curious and it made James’s heart twist into a knot.

“It feels great,” he said softly.

Will switched the cross of his ankles in James’s lap and fell back into his book. James tried to read his. He put a hand on Will and tried again. The words blurred and danced as his palm moved in long strokes along Will’s leg. Even through denim he could feel the muscle definition, the different texture between skin that had hair and skin that didn’t. He wanted that skin. Wanted to taste the ink of Will’s tattoos. Wanted to break down that façade of self-assuredness and see what kind of vulnerability lay behind it. If once, just once, he could see Will weak with an emotion too great to contain. Even if the emotion were pure lust.

His hand glided along Will’s calf. Meeting no resistance he let his strokes grow longer, moving past Will’s knee cap and up to his thigh. That magnificent roll of quadriceps beneath James’ palm. He wanted it. He couldn’t keep up the pretense of reading anymore. And what for? Will hated people who pussyfooted around. The sooner he directly put forth what he wanted, the sooner he’d know if he could have it.

He let the book fall closed around his index finger and boldly he slid his hand the full way up Will’s long thigh, not stopping until the placket of Will’s fly was firmly centered under his palm.

Will barely quivered. His breathing didn’t change. His chest didn’t raise or fall an extra millimeter and his eyes kept up their same side-to-side cadence across the page. But beneath James’s palm there was a stirring. James sat perfectly still. Not blinking or swallowing. Listening to the tick of their wristwatches and feeling Will slowly get hard under his hand. A triumphant euphoria filled James’s veins.

Will closed his book then and put it carefully on the coffee table. He tucked one hand indolently behind his head, making his bicep pop. The other he laid on top of James’s. Not pushing his touch away. Just holding it still.

“This is temporary,” he said.

“What do you mean,” James said, his mouth damp with longing.

“You know what I mean. She comes back in January and it’s over. It has an expiration date. I want it clear now because I don’t want drama later.”

“What else do you want now?”

“I don’t want anything until you look me in the eye and say you understand.”

James did. “I understand,” he said. “I understand a whole lot more than you think I do.”

Will moved his hand.

James put his book on the coffee table. With shaking fingers he undid the button of Will’s jeans, slid his zipper, already high on the scent rising up to his face. Male skin showered an hour ago, then encased in denim to simmer down to musk. His fingers curled, he pulled, dragging the jeans down. Will’s cock sprung free, hard and twitching and James’s mouth caught it fast, eyes closing in the satisfaction of bagging the long-stalked prey. And when a sound emitted from Will’s chest, a small dry grunt of inherent, involuntary pleasure, James’s toes curled in delight and pride.

“Feel good?” he whispered.

Will’s chest expanded until it seemed to fill the room. Then it sank, sucking everything down with it into the vacuum of pleasure. “Yeah,” he said.

“You thought about me doing this?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You think about him doing this?”

An audible click as Will swallowed and he set the palm of his hand on James’s head. “Sometimes,” he said. His voice was so soft. So naked and exposed and vulnerable.

James inhaled. Balanced on the edge of an accomplished high. The same thrill of holding a balance. Or a planned double pirouette that opened up into three or four turns.

“That’s all right,” he said, nestling his cheekbone along Will’s defined iliac line and the design tattooed there.

“Don’t stop,” Will said. His fingertips drew vague patterns on his chest while his other hand moved softly on James’s crown. The same loving strokes his eyes gave Fish.

“I fucking love seeing you want something,” James said, wrapping his fingers around Will’s cock.

Will inhaled, a soft hiss of air through his teeth.

“Close your eyes,” James said. “Just show me how bad you want it.” He took Will in his mouth.

You want it so bad. Let me see. I won’t tell anyone, just let me see you undone by wanting something you can’t have. Show me hungry. Show me desperate.

After a few minutes, Will abruptly sat up and pushed his jeans the rest of the way off, kicking them to the floor by the of the coffee table. He got up, wearing nothing but his v-neck sweater now. “We can’t stay down here,” he said. “Fish might come back.”

He pushed James up the stairs ahead of him. Once on the landing, Will yanked his sweater off and pegged it at the baseboards. Naked and spectacular he came at James and there was a microsecond of… Not fear, but a Rubicon realization James had started something that was now going to be finished. No turning back. He’d wanted this, engineered this and now he was going to get this. And a whole lot more.

Then Will had him. The wall slammed against James’s shoulder blades, arms fenced him in and large, beautiful hands were sliding up the back of his shirt. Will’s neck, long and muscular and tattooed. His eyes burning and intent beneath the perpendicular lines of his brows. His mouth… God, his mouth. That first kiss and James’s given word was taken back. Will stripped away his clothes and took all James’s promises with them.

This will not be over, I will never let this be over. I won’t let this expire. Never.

The night unfolded. Locked in Will’s room, they explored how their bodies fit. The match of their long sculpted limbs, where their tattoos overlapped. Will’s hands were so strong, his passion so bald and unapologetic. James followed, coaxed to bigger acts and braver deeds. He was steeled with desire and limp with trust when Will rolled him over. Running his tongue up James’s spine, he reached for his bedside table drawer.

“Shit,” he muttered against James’s back. “I forgot…”

“You got nothing?” James said, breathing hard.

Will rolled off with a small groan. “I keep them at Lucky’s place. We’re usually over there.”

“Shit.”

“Hold on. Fish might have some.” With all of his customary grace, Will got up and slipped out the door. James put his face into the rumpled sheets, inhaling their combined scents. A thick euphoria coursing along his veins.

“Jackpot.” Will was back. “Brand new box.”

“Left unattended?”

“Probably bought one for here and one for Daisy’s place. Good little boy scout.”

“Here. Let me.” He took Will into his mouth once more, then rolled the condom on. “Got anything else in your drawer?” he asked casually.

“If you mean lube, that I got.”

“Lucky’s a player, huh?”

“Quiet, you,” Will said softly.

James lay back down and held up his arms. Will slid onto him, their bodies pressed tight and mouths coming together. James reached his hands up into Will’s hair, threaded it through is fingers and felt the shape of his skull beneath. The bristling scrape of beard growth on his lips, making his mouth swell. Will’s cock slid tight between his thighs while his own erection was tucked under Will’s stomach. Soon Will slid off him, his hand sliding up James’s arm and around his shoulder, rolling him down.

“You do this before?” Will whispered.

“Been a while,” James said. Beneath the pillow he moved his hand into Will’s. “Just take it slow.”

“No other way.” Will’s fingers were firm around his. “I’m not into pain or domination or any of that shit.” His other hand moved in long, gorgeous strokes up and down James’s back. “I’m into what feels good.”

“I know.”

“I’ll stop whenever you want.”

“All right.” Don’t stop, he thought. Don’t stop, don’t let it ever stop.

Will was nothing he had ever known before. The constant stream of reassurance wound around his insecurity like a silk scarf. The continual encouragement and checking in to see if he was all right. The utter patience of an expert trainer gentling a nervous colt. Under his hands, James unfolded like a love note and then folded again like origami, feeling himself change within the experience.

“Feel me,” Will said, up on his hands like a cobra over James’s back. James had tensed up. It was a body’s natural reaction. “Breathe with me,” Will whispered. “Just feel me breathe and match it.”

James listened and obeyed. Followed Will as if following him the studio, matching steps. He matched his breath. Made his chest expand in contract in unison. Will’s breaths grew longer. James followed. Will put his one of his hands atop his, unclenching the fingers, making them relax and open.

“Breathe,” Will whispered.

James breathed. Sunk down. Opened. Will moved. Every inhale he stopped. Every exhale he moved a little more.

“You all right.” Will’s voice on the nape of his neck now.

“Yeah. Just hold still a minute.”

“All right.”

“I just want to feel it.”

“I know.”

“I wanted this.”

“I know.” Will’s forehead moving across the bumps of his spine, his breath ruffling down James’s shoulder blades.

James opened his mouth but nothing came out. Happiness and desire had wrapped a new tight scarf around his voice.

“Say what you want,” Will said softly.

James had to reach and pry the words out from his teeth. “Touch me.”

Will dropped his weight onto one elbow. He let go the hand he’d been holding and slid it beneath James’s body, caught him up tight in his fist, moving his thumb along the ridge.

“God,” James groaned. “I want...” The air around him began to shimmer and press. “I’m close. I want...”

“You go,” Will said, his hand moving. “Let it come, Jay. You go, I’ll just follow you.”

Jay.

“Follow me.”

“I’m with you. Go, Jay…”

Jay.

With a new name and a bursting heart, James pressed his face into Will’s forearm and ground his hips down, pushed further into the grip of Will’s hand. He let go and let it pour forth as Will groaned hard and dropped his head down and came.

“Jay,” Will said again, through the wall of his teeth.

“Easy,” James said, the guide now. “It’s all right. Let it come down...”

After a while, when their chests stopped heaving and their breathing quieted, Will carefully slid out. “Be right back.”

James hummed sleepily. With a whirring clunk, the tape deck reversed and Peter Gabriel’s So started from the beginning. The windy, stormy chords of “Red Rain” poured down on James. He couldn’t recall ever being this happy. This physically content. Sated. No unease or shame, just a luxurious, worked-over afterglow.

Love, he thought. Pouring down all over me...

Footsteps coming up the stairs then. James thought Will was in the bathroom, he hadn’t heard him go down. But then the footsteps were on the other side of the wall. A drawer being slammed shut.

Fish.

The bathroom door opened.

“What’s up, asshole,” James heard Will say.

James put his face into his hand, smothering guilty laughter. Mumbled, ambiguous words from the hall, then Will came back into the bedroom, a towel around his waist. “We done been busted, Jay,” he said as he collected the stolen, unused condoms packs from the floor.

“Boy scout, my ass,” James said.

“Everyone’s working overtime tonight.”

“Don’t give them all back.”

Will’s teeth flashed in the dark, his grin wicked and wry as he handed one of the packs to James and then patted his jaw. “Don’t go away.”

James felt a surge of affection at the words. Don’t go away. It was perhaps the kindest thing anyone had ever said to him.

He watched Will slip out and then he put his face back into the pillow, breathing in his life.

I love you. I will never go away.

This has no expiration date.

Not for me.

This is just a thing. A moment. Maybe it’s far-fetched, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened. James blew away the old rules. The survivors made new ones.

Erik never dreamed when he napped in the afternoon.

He’d never been one for naps anyway—unless they came on the tail end of sex—but he ended up taking a lot of midday siestas after the shooting, to make up for the sleep he lost in the nights. And he usually napped at Colby Street, because he didn’t like sleeping solo at Daisy’s place. Alone in her bed, his mind liked to play around with scenarios of her being gone forever. He didn’t need that shit in his life.

Daisy was at a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, then she had physical therapy. After his classes, Erik went home, heeled off his shoes, dropped his jeans and crawled into his bed. Thick, dreamless sleep took him fast, held him close for some immeasurable length of time. Then it released him, and he was tossed back into reality with a single, jolting thought:

Someone’s in my room.

It was snowing outside the window, blanketing the panes and making the silence press on his ears. His heart thumped hard as the hair at the back of his neck stood up and looked around. He lifted his head, blinked twice, then slowly turned his gaze over his shoulder.

The back of Will’s head rose above the edge of the mattress. Buzzed hair above the yinyang tattoo at the nape of his neck. He sat cross-legged on the floor. Motionless. Silent. Erik stared, not sure if Will was guarding him, or if Will had come here to be guarded.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” Erik whispered.

Will looked back, then forward again. His shoulders rose and fell.

“Lucky’s pregnant.”

Erik put his head down and closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said to the window. Then he rolled all the way over. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Erik thought and rejected a few things to say. He lay still and quiet, his mind not yet wrapped around it. “When?” he finally asked.

“Thanksgiving,” Will said. “That last night at La Tarasque. The condom broke.”

“Oh.” He and Dais had a broken condom once, but it split while he was putting it on. No harm done. Another time, though, he fell asleep inside her after coming. Classic rookie mistake. He went to roll off her and the whole damn thing got left behind. But her period came a few days later, so…

Lucky’s pregnant.

It sunk a little further in, but not with the sick sense of dread he would’ve expected. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“She doesn’t want to have it.”

“Okay,” he said.

Will breathed in and out. “And I…think I want her to.”

“Really?”

“Kind of.”

“Why?”

“Because fuck him, that’s why.”

Erik nodded at the ceiling, unsurprised. He understood. A few short months ago, he’d be talking Will out of any such idea. Hell, Will wouldn’t be sitting on his floor needing to be talked out of it. But that was back when Will had ten fingers and Erik didn’t need to catch up on sleep.

This was now.

This is my life.

“Fuck him, it’s still my life,” Will said quietly. “And she’s mine. And that baby’s ours. And I don’t care. Life’s too short not to hold onto what’s yours…”

The guy sitting on Erik’s floor looked like Will. He sounded like Will. But the edge of reckless anger in his voice and the words I don’t care… None of that was the Will Erik knew.

But this was Will now.

“I know,” Erik said.

Will sighed. “It’s bad between us. This morning we had a fight like…nothing we’ve had before. I’ve never fought with anyone like that before. I made her cry…”

“I’m sorry,” Erik said. “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Will said, turning his profile back. A faint smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “You don’t have to say or do anything. Go to sleep. I just needed to sit somewhere safe and think.”

A few months ago, this wouldn’t be allowed. Erik would be weirded out. You can’t just sit on my floor while I’m sleeping. Guys don’t do that. He’d get up, suggest going for beers or for a run. Take it out of his bedroom and onto neutral ground. Take it somewhere where he could at least put pants on for fuck’s sake.

But this was now. And he was tired. He closed his eyes.

“You know me,” he said through a yawn. “Human valium.”

He woke up sometime later and the darkened room looked empty, but the second presence still stirred the hairs on his forearms. He peeked over the side of the mattress. Will was asleep on the rug.

This wouldn’t have been allowed either, once upon a time. Long ago when Erik would’ve thought his own brother sleeping on his floor was bizarre. But after the shooting, Pete had stationed himself at the foot of Erik’s bed for a month, him and his dogs keeping the tenuous world at bay. And Erik had been grateful.

Life was short. And dangerous. If you found a safe place where you could put your head down and sleep without dreams, who the fuck cared where it was?

Or who it was?

Or why?

Fuck him, that’s why. He blew away all the old rules and now these are the new ones. I don’t give a shit which of my friends wants to sleep on my floor. In fact, if they feel safer with me, then the goddamn door is open.

“Hey,” he said, nudging Will. “Dude.”

A sharp inhale through Will’s nose. “Hm?”

Erik took his extra pillow and dangled it over the side. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Will stuffed it under his head, tucked his hands between his knees and closed his eyes again.

Erik reached for his throw blanket and threw that down as well.

No point being cold.

I didn’t want to write anything about the women Erik slept with in Geneseo. I didn’t give them names. I didn’t get into detail. Because Erik wouldn’t have been interested. He was scratching an itch, blowing a load and hitting the road with as little emotion as possible.

Yet I knew him, and as disconnected as he was, I still knew he was fundamentally incapable of being cruel. So how would it have worked? Erik would never tell me. But maybe one of those women would. What about the married friend of Janey’s who became his most reliable booty call?

I asked her. And she told me about it, but asked that her name not be used.

His hand closed on her upper arm. “Do you want to get out of here?”

Her blood roared with smug conquest. “I do,” she said, lifting her chin to meet his eyes. “But I can’t leave with you, I’m married.”

He didn’t blink or twitch. “All right.”

“Tell me where you live. I’ll leave now, or you can and I’ll follow in half an hour or so.”

He gave her an address, packed up his guitar and left the Kellys’ without making further eye contact with her. Being kissed goodbye by Janie, he smiled. He seemed to only smile for her and Miles. Everyone and everything else got a cool, neutral gaze. He was attentive to his surroundings, thoughtful as he watched and listened. But that gorgeous face of his was a brick wall.

She felt bold enough to walk into his apartment without knocking and he didn’t seem surprised.

“Honey, I’m home,” she said.

He stood up from the couch. He wore nothing but jeans and in the light of a single lamp on an end table, he looked carved from bronze. Her mouth watered as she set her bag down and heeled off her sandals. Her heart beat hard in her ears as he came over to her, slowly licking his lips.

“Oh, you’re hungry,” she murmured as he put his hands on her.

Hungry and strong. In an instant he had her up against the wall, picked up in his arms and pinned. His mouth came into hers and with a single slide of his tongue she knew: damaged. Rebound City, she’d put all the money in her purse on it. He kissed like a boy who had been cut to the bone and was out for revenge. Trying to share breath without being vulnerable, poor kid. You could hear the internal clock tallying seconds, judging an acceptable interval to kiss before he could move onto the next thing. He didn’t need connection, he just needed a warm, wet hole.

Which was fine. She wasn’t here for romance. “Put me down,” she said, and once her feet found the floor her hands moved in great greedy gulps over his chest and abs. He was muscular and tight, but the leanness was from stress, not discipline. She ran a curious hand down the placket of his jeans, felt what he had for her and it wasn’t lean.

She popped the button on his fly, unzipped him and reached inside. An involuntary, purring grunt of pleasure in her chest as she wrapped fingers around his cock. A good one. A great one, holy hell. Long and hard and young. And hungry.

She dug deeper, scooping his warm balls up into her palm and sliding her other hand down to caress his ass. Tight and hard. Nearly hairless. Jesus, this one could stand in a bar and take numbers from all genders. Wondering if he swung both ways, she bent her head and licked one of his nipples. He teetered a little, then set a palm flat against the wall to steady himself. His head turned and nuzzled her hair just the tiniest bit but he didn’t kiss her.

Fine. Mouths had other uses. And this cock was too good to waste. She slid her shoulder blades down the wall, settled softly on her knees and pulled his jeans down his legs. Great body. And he smelled good, like skin and musk and man. She ran her tongue up the shaft, flicked at the head a little, then took him in. No teasing buildup or establishing trust. She just swallowed him down. A thump above her head and a vibration in the wall behind her—she imagined his palm had become a fist. Good. She still had it. And he had it all going on. He tasted like the world. Her mouth shaped half a smile around his girth, thinking the girl who had broken this boy’s heart must be missing him awful in the dark.

Her loss. My gain.

She released him an inch at a time, enjoying how he glistened in the dim light. He reached fingers into her hair, clenched them tight and for a minute she thought he was going to pin her head and fuck hell out of her mouth. Then his grip softened and another hand slid on her shoulder. Down her arm to take her hand and pull her to stand up.

“Come on,” he said, nearly soundless.

By the hand he led her to his bedroom. Bare and functional. Bed. Dresser. Night table. Nothing decorative. Not a single personalization. This guy had just cut himself off from any pleasures of life. Martyrdom at its finest. Too bad one had to be young and stupid for so long, learning how such attempts to numb yourself were useless. He’d be better off papering the walls with pictures of the one who got away and wallowing in it until he got bored with his own angst.

His breath was hot on the back of her neck.

“Bend over,” he said, and her thoughts snapped back with a crackle. Well, well. A player.

She put her hands flat on the mattress, raising her rump high. Presenting. One of the hottest stances known to womankind. All out there in the open, sugar. Take a bite. Chew slowly.

He raised her skirt, bunched it in the small of her back and then his fingers curled around the waistband of her panties and dragged them down. She was so wet they got caught up in her slippy tight crevices but he worked them free and let them fall around her ankles. She drew her breath in, biting down on her lip, cooch waving in the breeze. Her hips drew faint figure eights in the air. Would he lick her? He seemed the type to love eating him some pussy.

“Stay still,” he said. As if she had somewhere else she’d rather be.

The slide of a drawer. The crisp tear of a condom packet. Then the blunt tip of his cock spreading her lips and oh Jesus fuck all those inches sliding into her, coming to rest at the rear side of her eyeballs.

“God, man, that’s good,” she said, arching her back.

His fingers curled around her hipbones. “Spread your legs more,” he said.

She did, dropping onto an elbow and reaching for a pillow to stuff under her stomach. Tilting her pelvis up as much as she could so he could get in hard and deep.

“You’re gonna ruin me, honey,” she murmured.

The faintest bit of exhaled laughter but he said nothing.

It was a good, straightforward lay—with a cock like that he’d have to work really hard to suck in bed. She rode along on increasingly bigger waves of pleasure, her pussy aching around him. This was good stuff. She wouldn’t mind coming back around for more. See what kind of oral technique he had. Feel the slap of his hand on the curve of her ass. Maybe even feel the lubed length of him slide into her ass…

She was getting ahead of herself. Damn, this kid was filling her up with his hot greed and making her ravenous.

He laid his head on her back then, startling her. His hand came around her waist and slid between her trembling legs. “I’m close,” he whispered. “Tell me when.”

Close? Already? He must be emerging from a drought.

He held still and stroked her clit. Really good action, just the right amount of pressure. Drought or not, this kid had the moves.

“Rub it,” she whispered. “Just like that.”

“Now?”

“Almost. Keep doing that. You’re so fucking good.”

Smart guy, he knew keep doing that meant exactly what it sounded like: don’t speed up, don’t slow down, don’t get clever. Just keep doing that.

“Now,” she whispered, poised on the delicious edge. “Fuck me. Fuck it out of me.”

His fingers didn’t let up. His quads hit her hamstrings hard as he slammed that incredible cock home and gave her the what-for. Stars in her eyes and a string of obscenities on her tongue as her pussy clamped down tight around him and her clit bloomed like a flower. “Jesus motherfucking god, do it, make me come…”

Again his breath hot and damp on her neck and again, he didn’t say a word. Barely made a noise as she felt him clench everything and pull it inward.

Oh let it go… Whether you yell or not, she’s not coming back. Might as well yell…

The quaking room slowly quieted. She returned to herself, bent over on the bed with his warm, slick body curved over her back.

Even emotionally detached, he had nice manners. His arms held her until the shaking stopped. He moved a bit of hair out of her mouth. Once she had her legs back she crawled up the mattress, kicking her panties off her ankle, and collapsed onto her stomach. He followed, falling face down and sliding arms around a pillow. His eyes were closed but he kept his head turned in her direction.

“Are you cold?” he asked after a minute and his hand brought up a fistful of covers anyway.

“Little thirsty,” she said. She wasn’t, she just wanted to get a good look at him. He got up and she ran her eyes down his body. That ass was to die for. Her hands itched. She’d definitely come back around to get a good double handful of that shit.

He came back with a bottle of water. She sat up, drank half of it and lay down again. He touched her shoulder. Seemed about to say something but his mouth only flicked in a small smile and his eyes closed again.

“You needed that,” she said.

The smile didn’t waver as he nodded the tiniest bit.

“Long time?”

“Year and a half.”

“Jesus. She really did a number on you.”

His eyes opened and he pulled back from her a little.

“It’s written all over your face honey,” she said, laughing. “But don’t worry, I don’t need the gory details. I’m not here to save you.”

His lips parted to speak but no words came forth. God, that mouth. She wanted it on her.

She touched one of his eyebrows. “You are gorgeous.” It came spilling out of her before she could check it.

His smile grew a touch wider and a hair sadder.

She stroked his forehead “Feel better?”

“Mm-hm.”

She was getting too comfortable. She had to get home and shower before the troops got back. She leaned and kissed his temple. “That was fan-fucking-tastic,” she said, ruffling his hair. “Any time you want to bury that cock in me, no questions asked, you let me know. My husband’s on the road Tuesday to Friday.”

She got up, smoothed her skirt and collected her underwear. “No, don’t walk me out,” she said. “You’re half-asleep. Good night.”

“See ya,” he said softly, not turning his head to watch her go.

“I hope so.”

She saw him regularly for close to six months, never knowing him any better than the first time. He was platinum hard and invincible while fucking but strangely anxious afterward. A few times he had asked her to leave, or gotten quickly dressed and fled her house. She didn’t ask. He wasn’t her problem.

He got wild a couple times, yanking hard on her hair or pressing a little too sharply with his teeth. And always he pulled back just when she was settling into it.

“You can be rough,” she said. “I like it.”

“I don’t,” he said, in one of his rare revelations.

“You’re good at it though,” she said.

“I don’t like that side of me.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer.

“How many boyfriends do you have,” he asked once, surprising her out of post-coital bliss. Six words strung together—must be a full moon.

She touched his bottom lip and he turned his head a little. He didn’t like her touching his mouth for some reason.

“Is this jealousy?” she said.

“No, just curious.”

“Including you I have three.”

“Why so many?”

“I like variety.”

“Why do you cheat on him?”

“Cheat is such an ugly word.”

“Why do you sleep with men other than your husband?”

“Why do you fuck other men’s wives?”

“Because…” He licked his lips, thinking, and undoing her. God, his mouth. “Because,” he said, “I guess my body craves what my heart is trying to avoid. And sleeping with you, I don’t need an excuse to stay uninvolved. I am the excuse.”

“Same with me,” she said. “My body craves sex. My heart is taken. The emotional partnership I have with my husband is sacrosanct. This is just…scratching an itch.”

“I see.”

She pushed up on an elbow and looked down at him. “Your girlfriend cheat on you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The ugly word applies.”

“Maybe she was just scratching.”

“No. I don’t think so.” He put up a hand and rubbed his forehead with his knuckles. He had a daisy tattooed on the inside of his wrist. She reached to touch it. His hand curled down hard, as if to hide.

Oh dear, the tortured secrets of youth.

“I need to go,” she said.

Another time they were high and she was bent over in garter belt and stockings, taking his slow hard thrusts while his thumb drew gentle circles in the crack of her ass, pushing ever deeper. She encouraged him, lavish with praise and a murmured direction or two. He got her ready, worked her open nice and easy with a lot of lube. Slowly he began to press inside, working that cock into her ass. Her pussy sang out and she slid four fingers inside, feeling him on the other side of that delicate wall. So good. So good.

“I can’t,” he said, pulling out and stepping back from her.

“Ow, hey, easy when you pull out the back door,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

Stinging, she looked over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

He was shaking, peeling the condom off. “I just can’t.” The whites of his eyes darted here, there, everywhere. Looking for an escape even though this was his apartment.

“You’re shaking,” she said, straightening up. “Hey. Hey, come here.” She made herself soft, touched him gently. “Hey. It’s all right.”

“No,” he said, striding away from her and dropping the condom into the garbage. “No, it’s not.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can. It’s never as terrible as you think. Did you have a bad experience?”

He sat down on the bed, elbows on knees, hands dragging back through his hair. “It was only once.”

She knelt at his feet, put a hand on his knee. “With another guy?”

His hands dropped and his expression turned sour. “Jesus, no.”

“A girl.”

“Of course a girl.”

“But bad?”

He swallowed. She could hear the dry click of his throat. “I hurt her. I…tore her.”

“I see.”

“She bled for two days.”

“Oh dear. It’s all right. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. It’s not an issue.”

“It is an issue,” he said, his voice raising. “I can’t… I just…” The breath whooshed out of him. “I need you to go. Please. Just leave me alone right now, I’m sorry.”

Stung further, and bored with this display of nerves, she left and didn’t see him again.

She ran into Janey Kelly some months later. Janey looked upset.

“You look upset,” she said. “Everything all right?”

“That young man we know,” Janey said. “Erik…”

Her stomach tightened in alarm. “What of him?”

“All this time… We knew so little. We knew nothing. We thought he’d transferred from Buffalo but… He was at Lancaster University. He was at the shootings.”

“At them?” she said. “You mean…?”

“In the theater. He was there. His girlfriend was shot…”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Jesus…”

She cheated on you with death, is that what you meant?

“The thunderstorm last night? It blew the lights out in the Playhouse and triggered a flashback. I found him in a dark room having a panic attack. He told me everything…just fell crying into my lap and told me…”

“Jesus,” she said again.

“Miles is so upset. They’ve gotten so close. He loves that boy like a little brother. And knowing what he went through… He needs to get help. I gave him the name of one of my colleagues. She does excellent work with PTSD cases at the VA Hospital. I hope to God he goes because it’s clear now he’s suffering.”

“Poor kid,” she said absently, assembling a thousand puzzle pieces into a picture she didn’t expect. “What was her name?”

Janey blinked. “My colleague?”

“No. The girlfriend.”

“Daisy.”

“Oh,” she said. “Now that makes sense.”

Whoops.

Shit…

Janey crossed her arms and her chin lifted. “What makes sense?”

She stared back, blinking as if it were obvious. “He has a daisy tattooed on his wrist. I noticed it at one of your parties.” Sometimes it was best to hide guilt in plain sight. She blinked again. “That is who we’re talking about, right? He plays guitar?”

Janey nodded slowly. “That’s him.”

She had two scenes and four pages in the first draft of The Man I Love: Erik met her when he moved from Geneseo to Brockport and made his fresh start in a little apartment on Apple Street. I loved Nadine and I loved Erik having a Nadine. But she had to go.

I still love her.

He moved from Geneseo in a hurry, dove straight into the new job and never completely unpacked. He didn’t hang any pictures or buy himself mugs or a bathmat. A skeleton kitchen was good enough. He made sure the windows facing the street were decently covered and hooked up the stereo and TV. The rest was just floors and walls and a drafting table.

The truly ridiculous thing was he had a cleaning woman: Nadine, a single mother struggling to earn her degree, who was woefully strapped for cash in a way that pierced his heart. He paid her to come once a week to clean this pathetic apartment. In return, Nadine mothered Erik shamelessly, despite being six years his junior. She was always giving him suggestions and admonishments on how to fix up and decorate the place. He had politely ignored them all.

“How are you ever going to get a date into bed in this dump?” she said.

“Cash,” he said, engrossed in the sports page.

She kept at him. “How many dates you been on since you came to Brockport?”

“Two,” he said.

“How many women have you slept with?”

“One.”

“Who?”

“None of your business.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

“Where? In your car? It wasn’t here. No self-respecting woman would be caught dead here. What, did you kill her afterward?”

That made him bark with laughter. “We went to her place,” he said.

“Well?” she said, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.

“Well, what?” he said. “It was once, what else do you need to know?”

“Good looking guy like you, lives like a monk,” she muttered, furiously dusting. “What a waste. I may have to fuck you on principle.”

“I could get arrested for that,” he said.

She threw the dust rag at him. “God, even your flattery is pathetic.”

And she stormed off to vacuum.

Erik and Melanie’s courtship was much more elaborate than in the final draft. In the interests of keeping things moving I had to cut and condense a lot. And I was sorry to see it go. I’m so glad I can share it with you. Enjoy.

(Makes telephone gesture) Call me.

It was unseasonably warm the night of their date, an April evening disguised as summer. Melanie was barelegged in a light blue sundress, a red cardigan tied by the sleeves around her shoulders. They opted for a small bar by the canal that wasn’t frequented by students — the goal here was to be alone. And alone with Melanie was, Erik thought, a crazy good time. Her competent, efficient energy now turned flirtatious and touchy-feely. He smiled non-stop, laughed more than he had in months, loved being touched and felt. He was buzzing like a hive and toying with the idea of kissing her. His brain sighed as it watched his fingers run softly up her upper arm.

“Crap, baby, we’re busted,” Melanie said, looking past his shoulder toward the door. Erik turned on his stool to see Miles and Janey Kelly bearing down on them. They were half in the bag as well, on their way to dinner when they’d spotted the date in progress.

“We’re boors for interrupting but couldn’t resist,” Miles said, clapping a hand on each of their shoulders. “Happy for you two, really happy.”

Janey beamed at Erik. “Come on with us, we’ll treat.”

They ended up Hickory’s Barbecue in a down-and-dirty sloppy feast: stacks of ribs requiring an endless supply of napkins and wet-naps, corn on the cob glistening butter, coleslaw and greens. Erik decided eating barbecue was the greatest means of leveling the playing field ever devised. It was impossible to be impressive. It was pointless to even try when the meal required you to be a slob. [I borrowed this for the scene in GMYAT when Daisy meets Ray at a down-and-dirty sloppy crab fest. —SLQR]

He admired Melanie’s infectious joy in eating. She smiled at him often, as she licked her fingers and used single, bare knuckle to repeatedly push one of her shorter plaits out of her eyes. By the end of the meal, her ankle was crossed over his beneath the table, and he had his arm draped along the back of her chair. He tried not to paw at her — it was only their first date — but his fingers itched to play with her hair, draw along the shining silver necklace at her neck. The thought of running his hand along her bare calf, cozied up so nicely against his under the table, was making his mouth water.

Out on the sidewalk afterward, Melanie exchanged telepathic glances with Janey and announced firmly, “Erik and I are going down by the water, maybe get some ice cream.” And the two couples parted ways.

“Do you really want to get ice cream?” he asked.

She gave a glance backwards as if having just escaped a federal raid. “I would like,” she said, sliding her hand around the crook of his elbow, “to go for a walk and be alone with you. I am kind of jonesing for some dessert. And I’d also like to kiss at some point but I’m not going to orchestrate that just yet.”

“Good, I don’t like orchestrated kissing.”

“Good, neither do I.”

“I do like you though.”

She looked up at him, her smile a lovely thing. “I like you too,” she said softly.

The words echoed in his heart, bringing back to him a night in the campus center with Daisy. Telling her, so simply, “I like you.” And her simple reply, “I like you too.” He waited for a pang, but it didn’t come. It was all right. It was all right telling another woman he liked her.

And the relief in that was immense.

They walked on, hand-in-hand, their feet and conversation falling into easy cadence. They did stop and get ice cream, and then headed for the canal, bumping hips and elbows while their hands were occupied with treats. Just the two of them, but the promise of kissing was a sugary third party, walking in front of them, behind them, insinuating itself between them, flitting away and then returning, declaring now, and then changing its mind. No not yet, later. Once it toyed with maybe not tonight, but then they were standing together on the Main Street Bridge, feeding each other spoonfuls and the air grew thicker, sweeter and heavier. Now, yes, no, yes…

Yes.

She put her hand on his chest. He put his hand on the side of her neck, ran his thumb along her jaw. She touched his bottom lip and her fingertip tasted caramel rich. When he leaned his head down to hers, she inhaled deeply through her nose, and when he brought her mouth to his, she made a small noise in her chest. Half a sigh, half a moan. They kissed once, softly. Then again, just a little more.

“Oh boy,” she whispered, sliding both her arms around his waist. He took her head in both his hands then, kissed her deep, her mouth warm outside, cold inside, sweet like chocolate on his tongue.

“You taste amazing,” he whispered. He was dizzy with wanting. It had been a long time since he’d been caught up in a woman like this, caught up tight with her, engaged mind and body to the point of wanting to be inside of it all. Kissing like it was the end of the world and she was making him hard and he knew he was getting her wet and it was just great to be alive and have nowhere else to rather be.

“Oh boy,” she whispered again, her hand on the side of his face as his mouth found her neck.

“Oh girl,” he whispered back.

If there’s any one cut chapter I truly mourned it was this one. It was originally Erik fixing up his bachelor pad to be suitable for Daisy’s visits. As The Man I Love gradually took shape, I knew the book wouldn’t get to that point of their relationship. But I loved it, so I moved it to Erik’s days in Brockport and made the makeover part of Erik and Melanie’s courtship.

It’s adorable. I love it and I love Nadine to pieces. And the book was so damn long, my editor and I were getting ruthless. Chopping this one HURT MY FEELS.

But I got over it.

And now I give it to you.

At first they kept to her apartment, but one Sunday night Melanie laid down an amused law and said he had a week, no, a generous ten days to clean up his place and then she was coming over to see how the white man lived.

Erik paced the apartment on Apple Street furtively, in a small panic. She was coming here, and here was…horrible. His place was god-awful and he had no one to blame but himself. This was it, baby. Home.

His apartment had always been something of a joke, but now with a woman in his life and her presence imminent, Erik paced and viewed his abode as if for the first time, something short of horrified at his lifestyle. Nearly all the kitchen cupboards were bare—he ate out most of the time and when he ate in, he ordered out and ate from the same containers in which the food had arrived, and stored them in the same containers until he either finished them or they went bad. The refrigerator was empty except for milk, eggs, bread, butter and beer. He couldn’t feed Melanie with only that.

He stalked to the living room. Everything was spotlessly clean, but it was just ugly. The apartment had pretty baseboard and crown moldings, but they were the same stark white as the walls. Who would even notice? Boxes were stacked, still unpacked from when he had moved here eight months ago. The most impressive piece of furniture he owned was a handsome brown leather couch. It looked ridiculous in the middle of the living room.

The bedroom was dark. A snap of the Venetian blinds revealed more bare white walls, a double bed and a dresser. Make love here, in all this gloom? He flipped on the light in the john. Again, clean, but dull, almost industrial. A solitary towel hung on the rack, limp and forlorn. His mind wandered to Melanie’s bathroom with its crisp black-and-white tiled floor, the tongue-in-groove wainscoting and the azure blue walls. The ceiling was a paler shade of the same blue. You could lie in the tub, look up and feel you were floating in the sky. Baskets of towels, a vase of flowers—her whole house was bright, cheerful with color, rich with culture, full of the things she loved. She lived alone but she made it beautiful for herself. What in hell was wrong with him?

He called his cleaning woman. Nadine came right away, bringing a pad of paper and a practiced eye. She paced his apartment much as he had done, poking into closets and cabinets, getting down on her knees and up on chairs, measuring, asking simple questions, with none of her usual smartass commentary. She was genuinely excited to help and it touched him.

“I’ve always liked this,” she said, caressing the living room’s brown leather couch. Erik could have hugged her. He couldn’t put a label on his taste or style, but he knew he liked the brown leather couch. He’d spent a sock of money on it, and slept there more nights than he did his bed.

But Nadine made it so easy. “You could go two ways, building around this couch,” she said. “Modern, with very stark lines. Or I’m seeing more of a southwest flavor, earth tones and the like. Robert Redford.”

“Yes,” Erik said seriously.

“All right,” said Nadine, tapping her pad with the pencil eraser. “Today is Wednesday. First thing you do is make up some fliers. We’ll need…” She paused, counting rooms and calculating manpower. “Seven student painters for Saturday. Fifteen an hour plus lunch. You go post those around campus and I’m going to Home Depot. Do you need to come with or will you trust me?”

“I trust you,” he said, switching on his computer. “Charge it all and I’ll give you a check.”

“If you get back before me, start taping off the floors. We’ll do all the baseboards and trim first, let it dry and then mask it off on Friday. Saturday we’ll blitz. Kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. With nine people it should be a piece of cake.”

Erik posted his fliers and within two days got the seven phone calls he wanted. Nadine came back from Home Depot with gallons and gallons of paint, brushes, rollers, edgers, pans and drop cloths.

Thanks to Erik’s sparse furnishings and his lack of décor, they were able to paint all the trim by Friday. The moldings were in excellent shape, they just needed a spruce-up with some ultra-white semi-gloss. Friday night they carefully shielded their efforts in newspaper and masking tape, ready for Saturday’s onslaught.

The students arrived at eight, bringing their cups of coffee and cigarettes. Erik swallowed hard as Nadine pried open the first gallon of paint and a deep tomato-red circle blinked up at him, but the students nodded approval. Sleeves were rolled up, disposable latex gloves pulled on. Confident hands reached for rollers and brushes.

A couple of girls took cans of sunny yellow into the kitchen. Nadine led Erik out of the living room and into the bathroom, for which she had kindly matched the blue he remembered from Melanie’s place. She installed him here and then took her team off to the bedroom with cans of sage green. Someone turned on music. The rooms filled with action, chatter, laughter and singing, and slowly the apartment came alive with color.

That night Erik, exhausted, flopped on his back on the brown leather couch and stared happily at his tomato-red walls. The baseboard and moldings were crisp white against the soupy richness. He had opened up his boxes until he found his framed Ansel Adams print of the Tetons. He leaned it carefully against a dry wall, liking the black and white on the red. He would find and frame more black and whites.

Nadine helped him unpack everything and find a place for it. She took him shopping, prowling stores for the essential things in having a woman stay over: dishes, silverware, wineglasses, good bath towels. “Cloth napkins,” Nadine said, adding four to their basket. “Don’t just tear a sheet off the paper towel roll. You don’t get no blow jobs with that.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Erik said.

“And get the good toilet paper, all right? Not that one-ply prison crap you’ve been buying.”

When they were done, the rooms were far from being complete, but now at least each of them seemed to make sense. In the course of a week, it had gone from a hole to a home.

“My place,” Erik said, savoring the words. “This is my place.”

He gave Nadine a great crushing hug, paid her back every penny on the materials, and then wrote her a check that made her blush.

“Can I meet her?” she asked, almost shyly, as she folded the check and put it in her back pocket.

“You will,” Erik said.

Melanie came. She ran through all the rooms, exclaiming over the colors and his things, praising it all. She tucked one of his new dishtowels into her belt and cooked for them in the yellow kitchen. After dinner they sat within the warm embrace of the living room’s walls at opposite ends of the leather couch, feet intertwined in the middle, talking through red wine and chocolate cake.

He got up and took their plates to the sink, then came back to kneel down by the new coffee table and put his head in her lap. She set down her new wine glass and parted her knees for him. His fingers crawled up her skirt and slid through her underwear. Her hands fell on his head. He drank her in until her voice was weaving its way up to the ceiling, crying out his name, singing it to the Tetons. They had mad, grappling sex right there on the couch, and then made a slower love all night in the sage green bedroom.

“Hell of a place you got here, baby,” she said, laughing in the dark, her voice throaty and pleased.

Remember how I killed David? He was dead long enough to get a chapter written with Erik finding out.

The testosterone therapy was not helping Erik’s counts, and the doctors concluded he and Melanie would need high-tech assistance. Conventional insemination was ruled out and their life turned into acronyms. They jumped right over IVF — in vitro fertilization — to a procedure known as ICSI.

“Intracytoplasmic sperm injection,” Erik said on his daily run with Miles. “You don’t just flood the egg with sperm and hope for the best. You pick up one single sperm and inject it straight in.”

“Sounds foolproof.”

“Ah, but I like to make things difficult. They have to get my boys direct from the source.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Percutaneous epididymal sperm aspiration.”

“Show-off.”

“PESA for short, I mean, who can handle a mouthful like that?”

“Your mother?”

The PESA failed. His boys were nowhere to be found.

“Testicular sperm extraction,” Erik then said to Miles. “That’s TESA to the layman who isn’t getting laid.”

“You know, you’re making this really hard for the rest of us, Fish.”

“Hard. I get it. Good one.”

The day before the TESA was scheduled, Erik was standing at the end of the driveway in the rain, unloading an armful of glossy paper and plastic-sheathed junk from the mailbox. He trudged back up to the house, taking desultory inventory: some days, more and more often it seemed, the pile went straight from box to recycling, without a bill even bringing a degree of personalization. It was all crap. His hands flipped the damp mass carelessly. Four circulars, seven catalogs, three envelopes that were clearly solicitations, two others trying to appear legit with their handwriting fonts in blue ink. And a medical bill. Naturally. How could he have doubted its presence? They always showed up, trilling tidings of comfort and joy, you owe another five hundred please, and if you were thirty seconds late writing the check, a follow-up would be in the mailbox within a day, tacking on another ten bucks for the inconvenience you’d caused them.

No, he wasn’t bitter.

But wait a minute.

Behind the bill was a pale blue envelope, hand-addressed to him.

Mr. B. Erik Fiskare, Jr.

9435 McLachlan Ave

Brockport, NY

A letter. For him. An actual letter. He stood in the drizzle, lingering on the novelty. The envelope had a nice heft — not stuffed full, but definitely more than just a single piece of folded paper. He looked upon his name, neat looping handwriting in firm black ink that refused to budge in the rainfall. And that B before the Erik, and the Jr. bringing up the rear—they were loaded with mystery.

The upper left corner was blank. Slowly he turned the envelope over, revealing embossed lettering in dark blue:

Mrs. Helen Voorhies

PO Box 772

New Paltz, NY

He had never heard of a Helen Voorhies. He racked his brain against the roster of his students and came up blank. He knew nobody named Voorhies, and nobody in the New Paltz area.

Who the hell was this?

It was raining harder. He picked up the pace to the kitchen door, bursting into the small mudroom just as the skies opened up and let rip.

In the mudroom he heeled off his shoes and shrugged out of his jacket. Sitting down at the kitchen table, he slowly worked his thumb under the flap. He slid out of the envelope another, smaller, envelope, around which was folded a single piece of paper of the same pale blue hue.

May 30, 2004

Dear Mr. Fiskare,

My nephew, David Alto—

Erik closed his eyes. Helen Voorhies. Aunt Helen. The sister of David’s mother. Aunt Helen, who had gone to Belgium to fetch David after his parents were killed. Aunt Helen. Of course. He was an idiot. This was not a fun mystery letter, it was just David. David again, coming out of nowhere to drop a bomb on the status quo.

Fucking David.

Erik shook his head clear, set his jaw, braced himself, and began reading again:

My nephew, David Alto passed away a few weeks ago from cancer. He wrote letters to be delivered upon his death. This was among them, addressed as such to Geneseo, New York, but it was subsequently returned to me through the post after an attempt to mail it there.

I hope I have reached the right person this time. If not, please be kind enough to return the envelope to me, so I may continue in my task of seeing it reaches its intended recipient. It was important to my nephew this letter be delivered.

With my sympathies should this correspondence bring you grief, I remain,

Yours very truly,

Helen Voorhies

Erik sat down.

My nephew, David Alto, passed away…

He read the letter again, start to finish, the prim, formal language making it difficult to take in.

…to be delivered upon his death.

The second envelope was indeed addressed to him, B. Erik Fiskare, Jr., at his old Geneseo place, but in different handwriting. David’s handwriting — even ten years later, Erik knew it immediately with its distinctive leftward slant. He remembered it from countless cue sheets and schematics and notes. The envelope was sealed, but there was no postage, no return address.

David was dead.

With my sympathies should this correspondence bring you grief…

Erik turned the second envelope on its long edge, then its short edge, then a long edge again. He could toss it. If he didn’t read it, who would know? What difference would it make?

David Alto was dead.

It was important to my nephew this letter be delivered.

“This isn’t about you,” Erik muttered lowly, rubbing his face. He dug his fingers into his hair, pulled, pulled harder, until bite of pain in his scalp got his own attention. “This isn’t about you,” he said again. He reached for the envelope, slowly slit it open, took out a single sheet of lined notebook paper.

Fish,

I’m nearing the end of my life and I need to let you know I’m sorry. I’ve carried the weight of what I did around with me all these years. I never stopped regretting it.

You only have a little while, Fish. Men with guns miss you the first time and then cancer comes in to finish the job. I spent all those years wishing I could go back and do it over, thinking with enough time, I’d eventually have the time to put things right with you.

Turns out, there is no time.

I saw Daisy at the memorial service in Lancaster. She’s haunted. I thought maybe after ten years the light would be back in her eyes but it wasn’t. And I helped put that light out, Fish. She was weak and I preyed on her. I got her high and when I saw my chance, I took it. I wanted to go down and take everyone and everything I loved with me. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I did it because I didn’t give a fuck anymore.

I know it makes no sense. I don’t know if you’ll understand when I say it just became easier to live in pain and chaos than trust in the joy.

The ink changed color, from black to blue. The handwriting changed as well, becoming looser. Wobbly. Dipping below the ruled lines.

I thought about you a lot all these years.

I missed you.

Don’t discard her, Fish. What you had with Daisy comes once in a lifetime. Don’t waste it. Not because of me. It doesn’t matter now. I’m telling you…it doesn’t matter.

What matters is she’s your soul mate. You know this.

What matters is she still loves you. She still cries for you. I know this.

Call her.

I’m sorry, Fish.

I never stopped missing you.

I’m so sorry.

Dave

Slumped in the chair now, Erik exhaled, closing his eyes. Would he cry? It seemed the thing to do. But even after all these years, even with the news of death, and that dying man’s last call to arms, Erik’s heart remained stubbornly shut. He could only feel a numb shock that still had an icy cold, metallic sphere of anger at its core.

David was dead.

But Erik had wanted him dead.

He had gone looking for David, looking for that fight. Up until then, in Erik’s young, male experience, fighting was mostly staged show, with an unspoken choreography: you talked a lot of shit, you pushed, you shoved, you got in the other guy’s face and hoped he’d back down first, or a buddy would haul one of you out of there.

Never had Erik gone after another man with premeditated intent of physical harm, but that day he had been out for blood, looking for David with a savage purpose. The visceral violence was still shocking. It still echoed in his hands: the sound of a fist making contact, the give of flesh, the warm blood on his knuckles. How long would it have gone on, and how far would he have gone had not Will been there to stop it? Will, who was an expert both in fighting and in choreography.

Now David was dead.

Dead, and talking about Daisy, as if Erik were interested, as if he gave a damn what she was doing with her life. The nerve of that son of a bitch. Who the hell did David think he was, alive or dead?

It just became easier to live in pain and chaos than trust in the joy.

Erik flinched, tossed away the letter as if it had suddenly combusted. His insides seemed to be caving in. Then a wave of nausea smacked him hard in the chest and he bolted for the downstairs john. He wasn’t sick, but he thought about it for a good long while, kneeling on the cold tiles, braced, free-falling, trying to breathe through it and come out the other side. He hit the fan because sometimes white noise soothed him. It helped, and he started to feel the cool sweat along his hairline that meant the worst was over. It spread down the back of his neck and along his limbs. He held still and let it seep out of him. He was all right.

Call her.

He sat, back up against the wall, face in his hands.

She still loves you.

Call her.

“Stop,” he whispered. He could speak loud enough to hear himself, yet low enough for the fan to mask.

Call her.

“I can’t,” he said. “You can’t tell me this now. Not now…”

The doorknob rattled, a clatter of fingernails on the other side. “You in there?”

“Yeah,” he said, “out in a minute.”

“Oh. I just wondered. It stopped raining. I’m taking the dog for a walk.”

“All right.” He got up, flushed for appearance’s sake, then ran the water icy cold over his wrists, splashed some on his face.

Call her.

I can’t, he thought, yanking a towel hard from the rack. I can’t call her. I want to, fine, I admit it.

He sat down on the closed lid, face in the towel, breathing carefully.

I want to.

But I can’t. It hurts, I can’t bear it. I still can’t bear that she slept with you, Dave. I never saw it coming. Not with you. Maybe Will. Will would have made sense. But you…

He stood up, looked at himself in the mirror. The shadows perpetually under his eyes, the grey starting to invade over his ears. He was thirty-one. It had been ten years since he had seen Daisy.

You only have a little while, Fish.

She still cries for you.

He kicked the wastepaper basket. Too bad, he thought viciously. She smashed my heart to pieces, she shit all over me and ruined my life, and she still cries for me? Let her cry.

He slammed out of the bathroom as if to prove a point but it was useless. The words were a script and he was a lousy actor. As much as he had tried to take everything he felt about Daisy and turn it against her in hatred, he could never do it. He couldn’t hate her. Just as he’d always felt something in his genetic makeup made him born to love her, that same arrangement of chromosomes made her impossible to hate.

“You can’t breathe without her,” Will had said. His last words to Erik. Erik’s own words quoted back to him.

He paused by one of the end tables, picked up the silver-framed picture of him and Melanie outside city hall in Rochester. He shook his head, feeling the shame flicker across his face. Surely this, what he held in his hands, should have been his lead-off argument.

“I can’t call her, I’m married,” he said out loud, to atone. He sat on the couch. I’m married and she wants kids. I can’t get her pregnant and it’s my fault. I’m busted, my boys ain’t in the hood, and in the past year I’ve gone from being a semi-normal husband to a stud horse, to a lab procedure. I’m having a big one tomorrow, and it’s the last hurrah, the Hail Mary, we’re out of biological options after this.

“Dave, I tell you, I’m sick of it,” he said. He groaned the words aloud, half in misery, half from the relish in hearing that stifled lament bounce off the walls. The sweet relief in being able to say “Dave, I tell you,” and then unload.

“I’m sick of it. It’s all we talk about. It’s what we eat, sleep, breathe and fight about. All the time.”

There is no time.

She still loves you. Call her.

He got up. This was dangerous. This was a looming precipice on a raging river of vulnerability and if he let Daisy into his head now, if he even entertained the idea of calling her, he’d go right over the edge. He could not do this now, it was impossible. He had moved on, he had a life here, a wife to focus on, and he and his boys had a big day tomorrow.

He exhaled wearily, staring out the living room window at the weedy backyard, now turning to weedy mud from all the rainfall.

I’m sorry, Fish.

I’m so sorry.

Erik closed his eyes, knowing he should just forgive. Three words for a repentant man’s soul. That’s all it took. But he didn’t have them yet. Did he have anything to give, was there any shred of compassion to offer…?

He opened his eyes.

He searched the bookshelves. He looked high, low, knowing it was there. It was Melanie’s, from when the church choir had been saving her from the streets of Buffalo.

He found it, pulled the bible from the shelf and thumbed through the pages until he found the Psalms. As he feverishly scanned the verses, it came back to him: the Sheraton Hotel, the night of the shooting. After they’d cut Daisy’s leg open. David handing over a little blue pill, and sitting up reading until Erik was asleep.

Blessed are those who have regard for the weak; the Lord delivers them in times of trouble. The Lord protects and preserves them — they are counted among the blessed in the land — he does not give them over to the desire of their foes. The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.

But not this time. David lay down on his sickbed and didn’t rise again.

All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me, saying, ‘A vile disease has afflicted him; he will never get up from the place where he lies.’

“Dave,” Erik said softly.

Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me.

Funny that David always skipped that line. Funny?

Or telling.

But may you have mercy on me, Lord; raise me up, that I may repay them. I know that you are pleased with me, for my enemy does not triumph over me. Because of my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever.

The enemy had triumphed. David must have known the enemy was coming, and it was his turn to pay.

“‘Because of my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever,’” Erik read out loud. He closed the book, holding the place with his thumb. “Because of my integrity…”

He walked back over to the window and put his fingertips on the pane. He looked out at the wet and dreary yard, the mottled grey skies and the mud. Out in the bleakness where a ghost might well be wandering, dragging its eternal weight of chained guilt and remorse.

“Go to sleep, Fish,” David had said that night. “Fishy, fishy in the brook, go to sleep while I read the Good Book.”

“Because of my integrity you uphold me,” Erik whispered, his breath fogging the glass. That was why David had written.

To tell the truth.

Go to sleep, Dave, he thought gently. And his shoulders relaxed.

Go to sleep.

His next breath felt deeper, stronger. He couldn’t find forgiveness yet, but he could identify with the weariness of carrying a load around, and speak to that truthfully. With integrity.

Put it down.

I got this, Dave.

Sleep.

That night he wrote a short note to Helen Voorhies. Copying her formal, courteous language, he thanked her for her diligence in finding him, and expressed his condolences on the loss of her nephew. He had been Erik’s close friend in college.

Lying awake in bed later, he chewed over and over on David’s plea.

It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m telling you…it doesn’t matter.

Erik rolled on his side, toward Melanie. How ironic that tonight, of all nights, he was genuinely in the mood to make love. Fundamentally horny as only the news of death or a funeral can make a human being. It would have been comforting to physically connect with his wife. Feel her skin, taste her sweetness, be inside the haven of her body, giving death the finger by engaging in the most elemental act of life.

But no, he had his day in court tomorrow. It would not do to waste the evidence. For a moment he considered jerking off, out of pure spite. Instead he rolled the other way, his back to her now, facing the window.

He imagined the curtains were stirring, imagined he could hear David calling him. Hear the tortured plea coming from the letter hidden so carefully in his bedside table drawer. It was folded up neatly in the blue leather case, keeping company with Joe Bianco’s Purple Heart and James Dow’s penny.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Fish

Erik slowly gathered what David had done ten years ago, and what he had written just a few weeks ago. The pain, the anger, the shock, the betrayal, and the plea for forgiveness — Erik gathered it all into his heart. He put his hand on top of his chest, and like a faith healer he drew it all out, closing his fist around it.

He stretched out his arm, with that fist, toward the window, reached into the void, across the abyss.

Then slowly he opened his fingers.

He let it go.

Go to sleep, Dave.

His hand then dropped on the bedside table, patted it as if it were a shoulder, stroked the drawer front like a weary head. You fought hard, you carried the load, you’re tired. Put it down now.

Go to sleep.

I got this.

And as his own eyes grew suddenly heavy, and his head sank deeper in his pillow, he whispered quietly to his old friend, “Thank you.”

Endings suck.

Knowing when to leave the party is really hard. I didn’t want a cliffhanger. I didn’t want it neatly tied up in a bow, either. The original ending of The Man I Love extended another day after the kitchen scene. My editor wanted it to end on Thanksgiving after Erik picked up the phone to call Daisy. What began was a haggling process worthy of a Turkish bazaar. Back and forth we went on email. How about here? How about there? It’s too prolonged. It’s too abrupt. Slam down phone, slam doors.

Finally she sent it back with the last lines being the scene where Erik and Daisy are eating grilled cheese and tomato soup. I liked the ending being in the kitchen because it’s the soul of the house. But it was still too abrupt. It needed a sweeter note to end on.

A sweeter note.

Holy shit, the cookies.

I put them in so they could make a wish. And if you don’t get your wish, you still have cookies.

“I still love that we’re here.”

“I still love us.”

Ultimately, I thought it ended in the perfect spot.

But here’s how it originally went down. Daisy offered tea and…

She asked him to build a fire while she cleaned up and put the kettle on. He had a roaring one going by the time she came out with two big mugs.

“Still two bags?” she asked. “And a lot of milk?”

He smiled up at her. “You remembered.”

They turned her two easy chairs toward the hearth, dragged over footstools and a little table. Made a camp and settled in. Bastet hopped into Erik’s lap and began kneading her paws into his leg.

“Opie?” he asked.

Daisy smiled, busy peeling an orange. “Funny how we happened to be in Manhattan at the same time. Ran into each other at Steps on Broadway, taking a master ballet class. Went out for coffee. You know, the four-hour cup of coffee? And we just kept going out.”

“It might sound weird but that makes me really happy. I mean, I always liked that kid.”

“He grew up,” Daisy said quietly, dividing her orange into sections. “He wasn’t a kid. He was very good to me. We certainly had enough in common. It was gentle. An excellent transition into the land of the living. Because honestly, I didn’t think I was every going to love anyone ever again. That sounds dire and dramatic but it was how I felt.”

“You don’t have to explain to me. And at least you had a relationship with him. I didn’t open my heart to anyone until I met Melanie.”

“It was so hard. Because what we had, Erik…” She trailed off, her mouth still open. And she looked at him, held up her hand and let her face carry the question. “You know?”

“I know,” he said.

She put her hand down. “So hard to explain what it was about you. So much of our relationship was wordless and soulful, and now to try and explain that and explain what I was missing.”

“The staring,” he murmured.

“The staring,” she said, sitting forward. “The shit we did with our eyes, Erik, what the hell was it? I was stunned to get out there in the world and find other people didn’t do that.”

Erik had his face in his hand, laughing.

“I’m in therapy trying to explain this. Explain I’m having a problem because men don’t stare at me the right way.”

Erik rubbed his eyes. “Your therapy sounds a lot more fun than mine.”

“It sucked. I mean, it’s good, you know this, but the process is just grueling. But once I started spewing it all out… All the grieving. All the unfinished business. They way you had just cut me off and disconnected… Don’t look at me like that, Erik.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know you are,” she said, playfully rubbing her toes against his ankle. “I spent half the time groping for words. There was no metaphor for it. I could say, ‘It feels like a limb is missing.’ That barely did it justice. ‘A piece of my heart is gone. A piece of my soul is missing.’ Yeah, whatever. It was like an element was gone from my body. Like I was walking around with no hydrogen. I was utterly incomplete. And on top of it, I had this impossible standard for any other relationship that could come along. Yeah, I had a relationship with John but it was very limited. He didn’t have all of me, not by a long shot.”

“Sex?”

“It felt fraudulent,” she said around a mouthful of orange. “I mean, it was all right. It’s sex. It doesn’t suck. Physically I got something out of it, but I couldn’t connect emotionally. Or I didn’t want to. And I thought I was ruined. I despaired of ever being a normal person that way again.”

“So who was it? Who finally got through to you?”

She gazed at him a moment. “You’re all right having this conversation?”

“I’ve grown up, Dais. And I forgive you for what happened with David.”

She put her hand up to her mouth but didn’t look away.

“I forgive you, Dais. I have to. If I don’t do that, then I may as well get up now and go home. David wrote me before he died, and he told me he was sorry. I couldn’t forgive him right then, but I let it go. No, I let him go.”

She smiled sadly. “I didn’t get a letter, but I’d seen him at the memorial service. He was so fragile. But serene, too. And simply, and gently he told me he was sorry.” Daisy closed her eyes, thinking. “Not sorry for his actions so much as sorry for the price I had to pay. Sorry for what his actions had done to you and I.”

They looked at each other. The logs in the fire popped and slid. The clock on the mantle ticked softly.

“This,” Erik said, staring.

“This,” she said.

“Tell me.”

“It was about two years after I moved to Canada. I was twenty-eight,” she said. “And he was nineteen.”

“Shut up.”

“Nine. Teen. A mature nineteen. But nineteen. Lucky said to me, ‘What are you trying to do, relive freshman year?’”

“You’re blushing.”

She held out her hands. No defense. “Entirely too young for me. But just…gorgeous. Didn’t speak five words of English, the entire relationship is in French. But honestly, we weren’t talking much. It was…”

“A fuckfest.”

“Fabulous. And I was so. Fucking. Grateful.” Her fist on the arm of the chair punctuated. “I mean, thank God.”

“Welcome back, Kotter.”

“No shit. But at the end of the day, he was nineteen. The fuckfest ran its course and I began to realize I had nothing to talk about with this guy. I’d bring him around with Will and Lucky and just be embarrassed. He was too young for me. So that ended. And then,” she said, picking up her cup, “there was Jean-Raymond Bonloup.” She said the name in a heavily French-accent growl.

“Jean-Raymond,” he repeated, trying to mimic.

“Bonloup. Rhymes with ‘on you.’ I just called him Ray. I was thirty when we met, he was thirty-seven. Lovely man. Really. I have nothing bad to say about Ray which is what made what ultimately happened so baffling.”

Erik could have mouthed along with her as she told the story. He knew it well. The relationship was perfect. Ray loved her. Adored her. He owned one art gallery in Saint John, another in Halifax. He was intelligent and cultured, spoke three languages, loved to travel. He had taken ballroom dancing lessons, he could cook. He got on with the Kaegers. He got on with Daisy’s parents. He and Daisy moved in together, crafted a home, cultivated a circle of friends and had dinner parties. They made love and made plans.

“I became so calm when I moved to Canada,” Daisy said. “I found that stillness in me again. I was content. I had found the work I was born to do. I never thought I would teach or choreograph, but it turned out to be such a passion. I had made a fulfilling life, even without a man. And then I found this lover. Who made me feel so safe.” She looked at Erik, laughing a little. “Do you know what Bonloup means? Good Wolf. Remember the wolves? Three o’clock when the wolves come?”

“And you end up with the Good Wolf.”

“It was a sign. It was meant to be, it was perfect. And yet…”

“Something was missing.”

She shook her head sadly. “I could not explain.”

“Nights when you lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering why it wasn’t enough. Wondering why you didn’t look into his eyes and want for nothing.”

She threw a pillow at him. “Fuck you for knowing that. I swear to God.” She seized another cushion and lobbed it. “You bastard,” she muttered.

He deflected the cushion, trying to protect the still-sleeping cat. “So it ended.”

“Yes. I ended it. Important to note I ended it, I broke his heart, and I moved out.”

“To this house?”

“Not right away, I rented a few months and I bought this place in January. But I left him, and then I set out on a campaign of closure and apology that is embarrassing to look back on. I cringe.”

“Closure and apology. Trying to tackle our breakup from both sides.”

“From both sides, exactly. The same way I used to compulsively scratch myself, I now compulsively apologized to Ray. Explained and apologized. And one day he snapped. And he proceeded to tell me my life.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“He said, ‘You know, Dézi’ —” She took up the French accent again. “—’So many men will love you. So many men, after me, will want to love you. And you will let them in, and you will let yourself be loved, and then you will sabotage the relationship. You, Dézi, you leave before you can be left. And you leave only so you can apologize afterward. You make every man who loves you into him. You leave them so you can apologize to him. You are still waiting for him, waiting outside a door that is closed. Choking on that apology until you die.’”

She stopped then, dropped the accent and mannerism. She sighed. “He was right, of course.”

Erik ran a hand through his hair. “I think I should give Ray my ex-wife’s phone number.”

“That would be a four-hour cup of coffee. Indeed.” She leaned forward to toss her orange peels on the fire. Erik watched them steam and shrivel, his hand moving along Bastet’s warm, purring body. Daisy was quiet. And still. Feet drawn up beside her, tea mug in both hands. Staring at the flames.

“Did you tattoo something over your scars?” he asked.

She glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “How did you know?”

“The picture in Dance Magazine.”

She put her cup down, unfolded her left leg and slid her jeans up. Erik pitched forward to look.

“I got this one first.” She showed him the inside tattoo:

If two lives join, there is oft a scar.

“Robert Browning,” she said. She rolled in the chair a little to show him the outside of her calf. “And this one came after a lot of therapy.”

Realize the strength, move on.

“That’s the one I saw in the picture,” Erik said.

“With Kees?”

He nodded. “I should call him. And thank him. I don’t think I’d be here right now if it weren’t for him knocking some sense into me.”

She was pulling her jean leg back into place. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think eventually you would have looked for me on your own. At least that’s what I kept believing.” She smiled at him.

“You never turned your back on me,” he said.

She started to respond, then stopped. She settled back into her chair and picked up her mug again, gazing at the fire. Her face was peaceful in the light from the orange-scented flames.

He turned to her on the porch. “When will I see you tomorrow?”

“Will and I have some work to do at the theater.” Her face changed, lighting up. “We’re staging The Bach Variations, I forgot to tell you.”

“Really?”

“Lancaster Conservatory had an old video tape from that year’s concert. They made a copy and sent it. Anyway, Will and I were going to go in tomorrow and try to sketch it out. So just come there. Eleven. Noon. We can go have lunch or something.” She shivered, having come out with him with no shoes and just a blanket from the couch wrapped around her shoulders.

“Go inside,” he said. “I’ll either call you in the morning or I’ll just show up.”

“All right. I had a good time tonight. No nausea.”

He smiled, not looking directly in her eyes. If he did, he would never leave. He put his hand around the back of her neck, though, and pressed his lips to her hair. “Goodnight, Dais.”

“Goodnight, sleep well.”

She stayed on the porch until he had started the engine, then waved and went inside.

At the hotel he took a long shower, and was getting into bed when the phone rang.

“I wanted to say goodnight again,” she said.

He was ridiculously happy. “Goodnight.”

But they didn’t hang up. He turned off the lamp and lay down, tucked the phone under his ear. Tucked Daisy under him.

They listened to each other breathe.

“Auditory staring,” he murmured. “It works over the phone, who knew?”

“I miss you,” she said.

“I miss you.” A warmth began to radiate out from his heart, and his body sank lower into the mattress. “Guess what I’m doing?”

“What?”

“It’s so dumb, but I do this all the time. I pile up the pillows behind me and pretend they’re you.”

“Shut up, you do not.”

“I do.”

In his ear, she laughed softly. “I remember when we figured that out. We lost four nights of sleep with you spooning me before I confessed that being spooned drove me crazy.”

“Does it still drive you crazy?”

“It just makes me feel claustrophobic. I can’t explain it.”

“And I love it.”

“We just rolled over, I snuggled up against your back. We were asleep in five minutes.”

“Not even five.” He shut his eyes. They were talking about it. Talking about them in bed. “I miss that so much. Feeling you on my back.”

“I miss your heart under my hand.”

They breathed.

“Goodnight, Erik.”

“Goodnight, Dais. Sleep well.”

“You too.”

He wanted to get back in the car and drive to her house. He wanted it badly. But he stayed put.

Freshman year, he had been willing to wait.

Then, like a fool, he had waited twelve years. Twelve years and two weeks.

He could wait another night.

He fell asleep easily. And he dreamed.

A funny dream. Absurd. He and Daisy were opening matryoshka. An infinite nesting doll. It never stopped. Opening one after the other, they were laughing, getting to the heart of it, surrounded by piles and piles of wooden doll halves.

It went on and on until it was cartoonish, twisting open doll after doll, the room filling up. Finally, they got down to the very last one, an infinitesimal doll that they opened together. The prize. The secret. The meaning of it all.

Into the palms of their hands held together, they tipped out a macroscopic piece of…something. A speck. A thing.

“Is this it?” Erik said.

Daisy shrugged. “This is it.”

He pointed to his palm, peering close. “This? Really? This is it.”

“I guess.”

Erik motioned to the mess piled around them, cleaved dolls to the ceiling. “What about all that?”

Daisy looked at the disaster, the broken halves and the chaos, her eyebrows wrinkling. “I think that’s it, too…”

This was an actual dream I had, right around when I was getting out of therapy. I had to use it. And since I never delete anything, I was able to take it from here and put it right into Give Me Your Answer True. And it ended up working much better as Daisy’s dream, with Rita holding “it” in her palm.

Erik woke up early. He ate breakfast in the hotel, then asked the concierge the best way to tour Saint John by car. He drove around and out of the city, taking in the sights. He felt good. This place felt good.

He sat on a bench by Queens Market, the sun on his face, and he called Kees.

“It’s Fish.”

“Hey, my man, how are you?”

“I’m in Canada.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“No, I’m here. I called her. I’m in New Brunswick.”

“And? Is it going well or are you calling me from a bridge?”

“Let me just say the next time we meet, I really am going to kiss you.”

“Don’t tease an old fag. Oh, Erik, this makes me happy. Really. I’m happy for you two.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Kiss Daisy for me.”

“I’m getting to that…”

He went over to the theater. From the lobby, he could hear the Bach music. The Siciliano pas de deux.

He sat quietly in a back row, watching Will and Daisy work. Daisy wore her soft slippers, not pointe shoes. Black tights and a long shirt, her hair up but sort of falling down. Will was sloppy in sweats and a T-shirt, but still fit and lean. And strong. Daisy’s back was draped over his shoulder, her legs unfolding into that upside down split. The modulation in the music and her head turning against his arm, telling a story. As he brought her down — which was harder than going up — her head lingered, still thrown back, telling another story.

“Daisy,” Kees had said, “is more interested in making something beautiful together with Will than being adored. She’s conscious of him as a dancer, not just someone propping her up.”

“She partners him,” Erik had said.

He watched her dance, seeing how she was aware of Will, covering for him. Incorporating the rough spots into the whole.

Loving her felt like creating something, Erik remembered. Like building a cathedral.

Nothing man-made was perfect. Not even cathedrals.

She fucked up. She was traumatized and weak and not in her right mind. Or maybe she just did something stupid. Either way, she didn’t act the way I expected. And I couldn’t forgive her. Instead of incorporating the mistake, I left. One broken window and it wasn’t worth keeping anymore.

That’s how I fucked up. One window broken and I tore the whole thing down.

“I hate what I did,” he whispered.

The feel of Daisy’s fingers on his chin, turning his face. I love that you’re here.

He was here. It was worth keeping. Worth rebuilding and defending. One window was broken? So be it. It wouldn’t be the last flaw in the structure. But a cathedral had a hundred windows. And stained glass. And bells.

She’s a generous, forgiving partner.

I can be, too.

Will went offstage. Daisy gathered up her things, and started walking up the aisle.

Erik stood up slowly, let her see him there. “Important things seem to happen to me in theaters.”

She stopped. And smiled at him.

He went on. “They seem to also happen in the aisles of theaters, either with you walking toward me or walking away from me.”

“What about when I’m standing still?” she asked softly, still smiling.

Hands in his pockets, he came closer to her.

“When you’re still, I make big decisions about what I want.”

Her chin rose slightly. “What do you want?”

“I want you back in my life,” he said.

She breathed in, her shoulders rising. “How far in?”

“At the very least, minimum, to always know where you are and what you’re doing. Always have your phone number. Nothing less than that, ever again.”

“We can do that,” she said. “It’s done. Never again. You will never have to miss me again.”

“Done.” He nodded. “All right.”

“What about most?” she asked. “What’s the maximum?”

“At the moment, it’s kissing you.”

She dropped her things and flew at him. He caught her. A sound flew out when her weight smacked his chest, something between a gasp and a moan. Maybe the beginnings of a sob. Her arms went around his neck. His snapped shut around her waist and he heaved her up against him. He stumbled, nearly toppled over backwards. He didn’t give a damn, he wasn’t letting go. Not now, not ever. Never again.

Her face against his. Her mouth on his. She clutched at his shoulders. For an instant he felt her calves on his hips: she nearly got her legs around him too, which would have wrecked him. But then she put her feet down, counterbalancing. He took her head in his hands, held her kiss still against his and he breathed her in. Filled his lungs to the brim for the first time in twelve years.

I can breathe now. I can breathe again. With you, I can breathe.

“Done,” she whispered. “What else?”

“I’d like to hang around Saint John a while and be an emotional slob.” He felt her smile curve up and he slid his fingers deeper into her hair. “What do you want, Dais,” he whispered against her mouth.

“I want to find us again,” she said. “The new us.”

“The new normal.”

“It’ll be different,” she said. “I don’t want perfect, I don’t want a carbon copy of college. I want…time. Time to be together with you and see what happens.”

“We can do that.”

“There’s still so much to tell you. Still so much that hurts.”

“I know,” he said, running his thumbs along her cheekbones. “And all of that gets included now. What happened in college, what happened afterward — none of it gets dismissed, Dais. It’s all ours. It’s our story. And whatever happens now, that’s our story, too.”

“You want the story?”

“I want it,” he said, his eyes hot, his heart burning. “And I’ll fight for it.”

Her fingers touched his mouth, then she kissed him. “You came back,” she whispered.

He pulled her against him. “I never really left.”

She rubbed her cheek along his jaw. Her hand was tender at the back of his head. “This,” she whispered.

“This.”

They started walking up the aisle to the lobby doors. Erik slid his arm around her, over and across until the apple of her shoulder was in the palm of his hand. She moved against his side, snug beneath the drape of his arm, where she was born to be.

“Where to now?” he asked, their feet falling into step.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Then I was thinking,” she said, “we could go cut down my Christmas tree…”

The end. Sniff. I liked the circle closing with The Bach Variations and the Christmas tree. I like to circle back to everything in my stories. Tie up all the loose ends.

Because I never throw anything away, a bit of this original ending went into Answer True, and the rest went into Here to Stay. Because nothing is ever truly lost.

There aren’t as many scraps to share from Give Me Your Answer True. Even fewer from Here to Stay. I was a smarter writer, and because GMYAT was a retelling of the same story, I had the structure in place from the get-go. Despite the usual shuffling and shifting and editing, the exoskeleton stayed very much the same. Same with Here to Stay

The real challenge in GMYAT was moving back and forth between past and present before Erik and Daisy’s roads diverged, and we could follow her into the true unknown story. I had to be ruthless in the telling of the college years. My editor had me write everything, and then we chopped and chopped (God, it sucked).

I had a ton of little chapters that were cute and entertaining, but they didn’t really tell the reader anything new. Or reveal something interesting through Daisy’s eyes.

They were cut.

But they were cute.

Here they are.

Leo needed to run a lighting fixture from an extreme stage right vantage. The lantern had to be attached to a free-standing pipe in the ceiling, accessible only by a jerry-rigged catwalk off the main attic catwalk. Traditionally this kind of task was given to a freshman, thus earning him some kind of unofficial but necessary stripe.

Alison Pierce was nearly hysterical at the thought of going up in the ceiling. Which left Erik. He headed up into the balcony with Leo to the serenade of the techies, who warbled Jackson Browne’s roadie anthem “Stay.” Apparently this was part of the initiation.

Daisy squinted up into the balcony. Erik was buckling on his tool belt, slinging a coil of rope over his shoulder. All the while attentive to Leo who was pointing up the iron ladder bolted to the wall, mapping out directions in the air. He gave Erik a light slap between the shoulder blades and Erik started up. Daisy watched him until he disappeared through the hatch.

“You’re awful quiet today,” Will said. He put a hand on Daisy’s shoulder and stretched his quadriceps with the other.

“Things on my mind,” she said. Her gaze followed an imaginary trajectory over the ceiling, imagining Erik crouched and crawling through the dusty gloom.

Leo strode down the aisle and hopped back up onstage, clapping his hands. “Can I have quiet people, please. I need to hear him.”

The singing and talking dwindled away. The dancers gathered in their customary, cliquish groups, stretching and massaging each other’s muscles. The tech students gathered by Leo, cross-armed and staring upward. Keeping watch on one of their own. Daisy made a rectangle of her fingers and framed the group.

“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” Will said, peering over her shoulder.

“The way they’re standing,” Daisy said. “Looks like an album cover.”

“Leo and the Rats.”

She looked up again. Pretended she was crawling along with Erik, holding the flashlight. His accomplice. They were on an adventure. Making an escape. Up in the hot, close darkness, not daring to make a sound. She’d lose her footing and he’d catch her, pull her hard against his body. Curve his chest and arms around her. Taking care of his own.

I got you, she imagined him saying. Don’t be afraid.

“How you doing, Fish?” Leo called up.

The quiet onstage contracted. All shuffling and whispers ceased. Nobody moved.

Don’t be afraid, Daisy thought.

“Fishy, fishy in the brook,” David mumbled. “Don’t fall down and go ker-plook.”

“Oh shut up,” Leo said. “Fish? You with us?”

The sound of metal on metal high above. A clinking shave-and-a-haircut riff. The techs gave a laughing sigh of relief, then the quiet resumed. A minute oozed by. Daisy hardly breathed. Until at last, from a spot directly over the side of the apron, Erik called down.

“Expendable moron stage right, in position.”

Everyone laughed then. A smattering of applause as the end of the rope emerged through a slip in the plastered ceiling and began coiling down to the stage floor. David and Neil caught it and lashed it with expert speed to the crosspiece of the lantern.

“All yours, Fish,” Leo called.

The slackened rope tightened and the lantern was lifted off the stage. Daisy wanted to grab it. Wind the rope about herself. Pull three times in a pre-arranged signal and be hauled up to Erik’s waiting arms.

All yours.

This is a true anecdote from my Alfred days. It was Andrew Gordon up in the ceiling, crawling on his belly to get this one special installed over the apron, while the rest of us waited below in nervous silence.

“Expendable moron, stage right,” he called. “In position.”

It was hilarious. And twice I tried to use it, in both TMIL and GMYAT. Thwarted both times. Dammit. I’m sorry, Andrew.

“The non-talkers read books—Daisy was in this group—or sat and stretched, retreating into private universes. One girl was knitting, deftly stuffing needles and yarn down her shirt whenever she needed to move. A few kids actually looked like they were sleeping in five-minute increments, magically coming back to life whenever it was time to migrate. Will simply sat still, staring, in a Zen-like trance. Any moment Erik expected him to levitate right off the stage floor, but then Will would break out and stand on his head or do one-armed push-ups or something equally enviable.”

—The Man I Love

It was probably just a two-second observation for Erik, but the girl who was knitting always stuck in my mind. Part of the fun of Give Me Your Answer True was taking those little throwaway moments for Erik and making them significant for Daisy. The knitter became Taylor Revell. And the moment unwound like a strand of blue yarn. Ultimately it was cut, yet it stayed part of Taylor’s character, along with “knit one, purl two, don’t forget I love you.”

Not much dancing got done during a focus session. It was a lot of standing around while the stagehands worked their asses off. A lot of hurry up and wait. Daisy read while waiting. Will meditated. Taylor Revell knitted. She worked with funny short needles, barely five inches long, the stitches crowded right down to the nubby ends. When she needed to move, she jammed the needles into the ball of yarn and stuffed it down the front of her shirt like a third boob. At the next lull, she pulled the tangle out and resumed.

Daisy watched the dance of the needles, the mesmerizing rhythm of in and around and through.

“Knit one, purl two,” Taylor said under her breath. “Don’t forget I love you.” She smiled at Daisy. “My grandmother said that.”

“Did she teach you?”

“Yeah. Knitting, crochet, cross-stitch. All those useless fine arts.”

“Teach me?”

Taylor demonstrated a few stitches then gave the needles over. Tongue clamped between her teeth, Daisy tried and promptly dropped three loops. Taylor deftly retrieved them. “Try again.”

She put her hands over Daisy’s and guided her through. “When you get going, it does kind of make a song. Knit one. Purl Two. Don’t forget. I love you.”

“I think I got it. Let go?”

Taylor dropped her hands and let Daisy fly solo. After a few minutes she leaned in and whispered, “The gorgeous blond techie cannot take his eyes off you. No, don’t look, don’t even move your head.”

Daisy’s heart leapt in her chest and fell burning into her stomach. “Where is he?”

“On the ladder over there in the wings and he has been staring at you for the past five minutes.”

“Who’s been staring?” Will sidled over. “Do I smell intrigue?”

“Welcome back to our dimension,” Daisy said.

Will looked around. “Someone checking you out?”

Taylor hissed. “Don’t look at him.”

“Who?”

“The rat with the blond hair and the cute ass. Over on the ladder. He’s staring at Daisy.”

“Him? Please,” Will said. “He’s staring at me.”

“Who doesn’t?” Daisy said. She reached the end of a row and handed the needles and yarn back to Taylor. It took a lot of effort to keep her eyes away from the wing where Erik was.

“He’s a bit of an all right,” Taylor said. “As my grandmother would say.”

“Doesn’t suck to look at him,” Will said, worrying at a hangnail with his teeth. “But here’s the thing about good-looking men.”

“Yourself included?” Daisy said.

Will put his arm around her. “You’re my favorite.”

“Stop fondling her,” Taylor said. “He’ll think you’re dating.”

Will put both arms around Daisy and started kissing her neck, making loud exclamations in French.

“Stop it,” she said, twisting and swatting at him.

“Too late,” Taylor said, sighing. “He saw it all. He looks confused now.”

“I’m sorry,” Will said. “You can’t take me anywhere. So like I was saying. Super hot guys are either totally entitled or totally guarded. Either their looks are a passport to fuck anyone they want. Or they don’t trust anyone is looking past their pretty face.”

“Huh,” Taylor said, knitting. “Which do you think he is, Dais? His back is to us now so you can look.”

Daisy’s eyes slid sideways. Erik was holding the ladder for David. A foot on the bottom rung, his arms braced and his jaw resting alongside. He looked tired. He set his forehead in the crook of his elbow a moment. Then looked up again, his expression thoughtful.

“Guarded,” Daisy said. “He’s had his share but doesn’t think he’s entitled to it.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the shape of Erik’s body as he leaned on the ladder. Her eyes squinted as she inserted herself between him and the rungs, penned in by his bent knee and straight arms. Imagined the expression on his face as he leaned a cheek on his bicep and gazed up at her. Both direct and vulnerable. Wanting. But not entitled.

Guarded, she thought again. I don’t know how I know but I do. I know him.

“Oops,” Taylor said. Across the stage floor the ball of yarn went bouncing along, leaving a strand of aqua blue in its wake. Rolling straight toward the ladder.

Will dug a finger into Daisy’s back. “Fetch.”

Daisy clicked her tongue and pulled a blanket of willed casualness around her shoulders as she set out after the yarn. It rolled along merrily and was nearly by the ladder when Erik turned his head down again. He dropped a hand off the strut, put out his boot and stopped it. The ball bounced back and into Daisy’s hands.

Their eyes met.

“Nice catch,” he said.

Winding the slack, she smiled at him and followed the blue thread back to her friends.

“What did he say?” Taylor said.

Daisy tucked the ball of yarn down Taylor’s shirt and patted it. “He said, ‘Here, kitty kitty.’”

I never got deep into Lucky Dare’s contentious relationship with her mother. I simply didn’t have the pages to devote to it in The Man I Love, which wasn’t Lucky’s story anyway. I tried again in Give Me Your Answer True, as with this scene which took place just before Daisy met Erik. It gave the two friends a nice moment and touched on the depth of Will’s love for Lucky. It also introduced the idea of “love leading you gently back to yourself.” But in the end, it wasn’t Lucky’s story.

Maybe, someday, it will be.

Lucky slipped into the room one late afternoon and shut the door as if in a library.

“Hello, stranger,” Daisy said.

Lucky smiled but it fell halfway. She let her jacket slide off her shoulders and sat down on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing.

“Are you all right?” Daisy asked.

Lucky nodded with the same thousand-yard stare.

A bubble of laughter threatened the corner of Daisy’s mouth. She bit it back. “Are you sure?”

Lucky burst into tears.

“Oh dear. All right.” Daisy went to her friend, still trying not to laugh. “We’re fine. This is fine. Right?”

Lucky nodded into her hands as Daisy took her in arms.

“This is a good cry? You’re sure?”

Lucky kept nodding and crying. Daisy rocked her and let her ride it out. The tissue box was empty so she found Lucky a clean washcloth.

“Thanks,” Lucky said, wiping her face. “Jesus, I’m a wreck.”

“But you’re fine.”

“Yeah.” Her lids were swollen and her cheeks were flushed but deep in her eyes Daisy could see a banner planted. Lucky fought a battle today and won.

Daisy stretched out on Lucky’s bed, plumping a pillow under her head. “This is usually my nap time,” she said. “I’ll rest. You spill. Start from the beginning.”

“The beginning,” Lucky said, wedging the other pillow between her back and the headboard. She exhaled heavily. “I was born after a forty-eight hour labor after which my mother decided I couldn’t do anything right.”

Daisy pulled a teddy bear into her arms.

“My whole life,” Lucky said softly. “Nothing I do makes her happy. Not even my name. My mom is die-hard Irish. My sisters are Colleen and Kathleen. I was supposed to be Irene. But my Dad loves opera. Especially Donizetti. He put his foot down, said it was his turn. And named me Lucia.”

“As in di Lammermoor?”

Lucky nodded. “Nothing I do is… Nothing, Dais. My hair. My clothes. My body. The friends I make. The boys I date. The music I listen to. I know it’s all her heartbreak from when she and Dad split up. She got dumped. She was humiliated. And all her bitterness and all her disappointment and rejection and feeling like she was made a fool of and she wasn’t woman enough to… I know all that.”

“But Jesus,” Daisy said, a flicker of anger behind her eyes. “None of that makes you Judy’s punching bag.”

Lucky’s shoulders shrugged. “She came for lunch today,” she said. “And she met Will.”

“How did that go?”

“As expected. Trashing the arts, trashing ballet, trashing gay men. She didn’t trash Will. Not to his face. She wouldn’t dare. But as I walked her to the car she fired the heavier ammo. Will’s a fairy. She still uses words like that. What’s with the long hair and the French? He’s a year away from coming out, mark her words. I’ll end up with herpes or AIDS, also mark her words. And if I just did something about the way I look I’d attract a real man. If I were skinnier or straightened my hair or…” Her voice splintered. A hiccup that was half a laugh, half a sob. “A real man. Like the string of losers she’s brought home over the years. Including the one who took a swipe at my tits once. Yeah, there was a real man…”

Daisy put the bear aside and squeezed as close as she could to Lucky. “I think you’re beautiful,” she said. “And Will is ten times the man than any of them.”

“That’s why I was crying,” Lucky said. “After she left. Will took me… He just took my hand and didn’t say a word. Took me back to his room. Cut all his afternoon classes. Locked the door, pulled the shades and took me to bed for three solid hours and…” She put her face into her hands again. She was crying, but it was laced with silvery joy.

“Dais, I thought I knew what making love was. But I had no idea.”

Daisy smiled.

“And I don’t care.” Lucky’s hands twisted the washcloth in a tight knot. “He could be bisexual. Trisexual. Transsexual. I don’t care if he’s fucks trees on the side. He makes me feel so beautiful, Dais. You don’t know. When you grow up always being told you’re fat…and now this guy with this amazing hot body who’s constantly surrounded by women with amazing hot bodies… But he wants my body. He loves my body. He loves that I’m not a dancer. He loves my curves and he loves my hair and I can’t… God, you have no idea what that means to me, Dais.” Her voice fell apart again. “It’s like he’s given myself back to me…”

The Tuesday of Tech Week, from Daisy’s perspective. I tried to turn it on its ear a little by having Daisy not be feeling well that day...

She didn’t feel well on Tuesday.

She didn’t sleep much the night before and all day she was been plagued with a vague, anxious unease. The mildest sense of foreboding. Mild enough to be meaningless yet still make her tense. Her head felt nauseous. She couldn’t find a place to put her thoughts down. Nothing was wrong. Yet the world wasn’t right.

Drinking a lot of water and chewing piece after piece of peppermint gum, she got through her academic classes. She hoped her impeccable attendance record would let her to go to Marie and tell the truth: she slept badly, she didn’t feel well.

It did.

“Go rest, cara,” Marie said, patting her cheek. “You always work hard. Go put your little head down.”

Normally Daisy loved a nap and now she had a whole two hours to rest. But she only dozed off for twenty unsatisfying minutes and then she was awake again. Her bones chilly and her chest tight. She wondered if she was coming down with something.

What’s wrong, she demanded of herself. And got no answer.

She took a long shower, dressed in practice clothes and decided to go over to the theater. It would be empty. She’d sew her shoes. Stretch. Practice a little on her own. Act normal. This had to pass, whatever it was.

She was a little hungry, which was encouraging. She went to the campus center, bought water and pretzels and a couple of apples. And an indulgent bag of Swedish Fish, because she deserved them. Dance bag bulging, she was walking through the labyrinth of booths and tables when she noticed a familiar silhouette by the condiment station, stuffing mustard and napkins into his jacket pocket.

Heart pounding, she walked over. Gave him a soft dig in one side, then ducked around the other as he turned.

“Hey,” Erik said. His face—she was sure she wasn’t imagining it—lit up. His brown eyes were soft and wide and she was struck by an intense urge to go into his arms.

They walked over to Mallory together. Once in the quiet, empty theater he surprised her by sitting down at the piano with some sheet music he’d found in the bench.

He was full of insecure excuses. He hadn’t played in quite a while. Sitting on the floor by the piano leg, she went quiet, pulling into herself and sewing her shoe ribbons. She felt strangely on the verge of tears and needed to be invisible. Even from Erik.

If you asked me what was wrong, she thought. Could I tell you “I don’t know”? Would you understand?

Would I make any sense to you?

He played. And though his music was tentative and shy, it soothed the savage beast of her anxiety.

“Play another,” she said.

She could hear him relax. Which relaxed her. By the time she finished her sewing and was pulling on her shoes, she felt, if not perfectly better, then at least capable of getting a full breath into her lungs. She started to warm up, holding onto the edge of the piano. The rhythm of exercise and the ritual of barre work calmed her. So did asking him questions. She was probably coming across as nosy but she still felt fragile, and if he started asking her things she might fall apart.

He seemed at ease though. And as he played, he told her things. That his younger brother was deaf. That his mother was the musician—she taught piano for years before his father left. Then she had to sell the baby grand and go out to work. Erik took lessons at a local Y for a while. Then just played wherever and however he could. Not much anymore, though. He liked guitar better.

Daisy had one leg up on the piano, stretching out over it. She frowned against her knee. She let the mention of his father pass but it niggled at the back of her mind. Did she hear him right?

“Your father left you,” she said against her knee.

“Went out one night and never came back.”

She picked up her head. He looked at her over the music stand. His expression wasn’t defiant. Rather it echoed the slight bewilderment he wore the first time they met. As if he couldn’t believe what he just told her.

She took her foot down. “How old were you?”

“Eight.”

“You haven’t seen your father since you were eight?” He shook his head and she probed a little. “No word, no contact? No nothing?”

“Nothing.” He sat straight on the bench. His shoulders were strong. His hands rough with work. He looked like a man, not a boy. Yet deep within the brown eyes she could see him as he was. Eight years old. When the world was black and white and easiest understood that way. Except when black and white became here and not-here. Overnight. With no explanation.

“Is he alive?” she asked.

He didn’t know.

Her chest was tight again. Tight and upset. But for a reason now. Was this what was bothering her all day? Had some strange premonition of this conversation been preparing her?

You don’t feel well today either, she thought.

She wanted to touch him. Make her hand soft and caress his face. But he was too proud. Sitting straight and quiet, fingers sliding along the keys. Not wanting her pity.

She made her words soft instead as she picked up the unfamiliar garment of his experience and tried it on. Tried to imagine its fit and feel.

“Such a violent thing,” she said slowly. “For a parent to disappear. It stops a story dead in the middle. Like you turn the page and there are no more pages. What do you do with the story?”

He shrugged, and the rising and dropping shoulders were pensive. “It becomes a different story.”

“Your story.”

Yours and mine.

The thought was so presumptuous but she didn’t check it. He was looking at her and she was looking back. They weren’t smiling at each other. Just staring. She breathed him in. Her heart pulsed, dressed in his pain. With every inhale she took it in, held it tight. Exhaled and tried to give it back a little better. She breathed him in and out, being pulled further into his eyes. Moment after silent, staring moment slipped past and she felt him feeling better.

You’re better than him, she thought.

“My real name is Byron,” he said. “It’s his name, too. My father’s.”

“You didn’t want to be his namesake,” she said. And then told him her real name.

“Where did Daisy come from?”

“Marguerite means daisy. It’s what the French call the flowers.”

His eyes were so beautiful looking into hers. Open wide and trusting. She could barely breathe. She could only breathe. She wanted his air.

She wanted him.

“Try the Prelude again,” she said.

Five victims of the Lancaster shootings: Trevor King, the assistant stage manager. Allison Pierce, the okey-dokey tech from Indiana who got on Erik’s nerves but he was never unkind to her. Then Daisy’s two girlfriends: Aisha Johnson and Taylor Revell.

And the fifth, Manuel Sabena.

Who was he?

He always got kind of lost. A fifth name thrown in there. The depth of his character didn’t matter so much in The Man I Love because he wasn’t in Erik’s circle or on Erik’s radar. Erik went to his funeral but he and David went to all the funerals.

In Daisy’s narrative, within the dance world, Manuel would have more of a presence. Thus the challenge once again to flesh out a bit player without wandering off into the bit player’s story. There’s an old adage in writing, “Every villain thinks he’s the hero of his own story.” And a spin-off of that, more of a tip: “Make every secondary character think he’s the protagonist.”

So I wrote a scene for Manuel. In the end I didn’t use it because it didn’t need to be used. It needed to be written, and once it was, I knew enough about him to be able to give him the right amount of presence in a few lines of dialogue, some mentions in Rita’s office and a couple of scattered paragraphs. And he could think he was the star of the show.

Second semester Daisy took choreography and composition. She was paired up with Manuel Sabena who, like her, was classically trained and struggled with modern dance. They met in the studio with their music collections. They brainstormed ideas, proposing and rejecting. They tried dancing to silence, growing discouraged.

“We’re gonna bomb this,” Manny said.

“I don’t care anymore,” Daisy mumbled, sprawled on the floor.

“I don’t either.” He sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

“Fuck it.”

“That’s it, that’s the piece. We just stand center stage with signs. Fuck it, we don’t care anymore.”

“Interpretive dance.”

They fell into silence. After a few moment’s sulking Manuel’s fingers began drumming on the floor. A syncopated, repetitive riff. Daisy turned her head toward him, listening. After a minute her fingers joined in. Manny looked at her, eyebrows wrinkled slightly.

“Do you have it?” he asked.

“I might.”

They went skittering on hands and knees to where they’d left their cases of music and start scrabbling through the cassettes.

“I have No Jacket Required,” Daisy said.

“So do I. And But Seriously... Ah-hah. I got it.” He held up the case to Hello, I Must Be Going.

Manny popped in the tape and out of the studio speakers came the familiar drum riff, hard and hollow. Followed by the tinny, ominous synthesizer chords. And finally Phil Collins laying down the vocals of “I Don’t Care Anymore.”

They listened together. Heads nodding, catching the accents.

“Are we dancing this angry,” Daisy said. “Or are we just dancing like we’re done?”

“Done,” he said. “We’re done.”

“But together.”

“Yes. I think. We’re not a couple. We’re not done with each other.”

“Right. It’s not relationship. I mean it’s not broken relationship.”

“Too obvious. Too easy. It’s the done, the drums and the I don’t care.”

“Done,” Daisy murmured, starting to walk around. “Fed up. Done. Don’t care.”

She was ambling, circling the studio. Manny was doing the same, in the other direction. They spiraled around each other, muttering and moving. Letting the song take them by the hand and lead them somewhere.

He tentatively started a phrase. Daisy built on it. The phrase germinated into a vision. A concept. They passed it back and forth, nurturing it like a fragile-stemmed seedling. Eight bars of choreography grew to sixteen. To twenty-four. The pages of Daisy’s notebook filled up. The hour disappeared as they danced, paused, discussed and danced again. Then they were out of time and the next class was arriving. Slick and high with the sweat of exercise and the fever of creativity, they moved over to the empty student lounge and shoved aside tables and chairs. They didn’t have a boom box but it was simple to sing-speak the drum track, or even bang it out with a fist on a tabletop.

Will appeared. He recognized two artists in the zone and tactfully kept to the perimeter of the lounge, not saying a word as he got himself a drink. Daisy and Manny were hunched at opposite sides of one of the square tables, heads together over the notebook, their fists or palms beating the rhythm as they talked and marked through sections.

“Is the table part of it?” Will finally asked.

They looked up at him. Then back at each other.

“No,” Manny said slowly. “Why?”

“It looked like it could be. The way you’re standing right now. I just thought it was cool.” With a wave of his hand he left the lounge. Daisy and Manuel moved the table further into the center of the room. They experimented with dancing around it, on top of it, under it. It was a pedestal table and they decided it wouldn’t work: they needed a rectangular surface with four supporting legs for the kinds of things they were starting to see. Daisy’s notebook now had pictures and stick figures as well as scribbling.

They spent long hours figuring out how to partner without it being romantic. It helped they were the same height: five feet five inches. Manny couldn’t lift her above his shoulders. But he was strong enough to throw and catch her. Small and compact enough for Daisy to take his weight—she could let him onto her back or up on a hip. The flavor of their partnership began to emerge, peppered by the equal sharing of space and support. Over the bubbling pot of inspiration they kept tasting and stirring. They played with the table like it was a playground fixture, treating it as a horizontal wall through which they could connect in a new kind of pas de deux. An as-above-so-below duet of mutual struggle. The fear shed like an un-needed jacket and they became brave. Even crazy.

Manny took acrobatics before devoting himself to ballet. He still had a gymnast’s fearlessness and could do turning tricks in the air even Will envied. Toward the end of the song Manny choreographed an insane sequence of steps culminating in flying cartwheel over the top of the table. Daisy couldn’t compete in the air so she hit the floor. As Manny went flying over the top, she ran and slid beneath, feet first, rolling from her hip to her stomach and shooting out the other side. They both lunged toward the table, slamming their hands down to match the drums and stare at each other. Not in anger but in defiant triumph.

With sixteen pounding counts left, Daisy reached for the hand Manny extended. They clasped palms and pulled each other, sliding on their stomachs on the table. Heads next to knees, they rested. Then rolled to their backs. They took the last four counts to sit up. And on the final beat, in the dance’s sole vulnerable moment, they flung arms around one another and froze in an exhausted but fierce embrace.

“Holy shitballs,” Will cried, watching one afternoon.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kees yelled at the jury performance in the black box theater. He threw his clipboard at the floor by the table where Daisy and Manuel were still locked in arms. He stood up, joined by the rest of the student audience in a screaming ovation.

Daisy hadn’t breath to laugh or cry. She hung onto Manny and sucked air past the raw, heaving passageway of her throat. Her pulse hammered at her ears and eyes.

“I think I care now,” Manny said against her head.

Rule of drama: if there’s a gun onstage in the first act, it better be fired before intermission. Likewise, if the hero finds a lock of his hair in one of his heroine’s Matryoshka dolls, you better know how it got there. Even if nobody else ever does.

But now you do.

Lucky’s sister was a hairdresser. She taught Lucky the basics and now Lucky made a little pocket money by giving haircuts. Mostly to boys. She was giving Erik one now, in the little kitchen of her and Daisy’s dorm. Erik sat on a wooden chair, a bath towel held tight around his neck, face screwing up whenever a sprinkling of cut hairs fell down in his eyes.

“Sorry,” Lucky said, her fingers deft with the scissors and comb. “Almost done.”

“Not too short,” Daisy said, perched on the counter by the sink, watching.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have enough to run your fingers through.”

Shirtless and handsome, Erik smiled at Daisy. Her heart turned inside out as her eyes swept from the crisply-trimmed hair on his head to his feet in their moccasin slippers. The T-shirt held in one hand and the edges of the towel held in the other. Her eyes met his and held. They did this all the time now: locked eyes across space and went quiet, wandering off somewhere else.

“You two,” Lucky muttered. “If you weren’t so damn perfect together you’d be nauseating. All right, there. You’re done. What a good boy.” She took the towel and vigorously scrubbed Erik’s head, brushing off all the loose hairs.

“Mom, stop,” Erik said, twisting away from her ministrations.

Lucky gave him one last pop with the towel before exchanging it for ten bucks. Daisy scraped together a little of the cut hair from the floor, making a neat lock to scotch tape and put away in her jewelry box.

“You’re keeping my hair?” Erik said, pulling his shirt on. “What for?”

“It’s what you do,” Daisy and Lucky said together.

This used to be the last chapter of the Erik and Daisy courtship in Give Me Your Answer True. My editor said it wasn’t needed and my feels were hurt. But it ended up being replaced by the chapter “Across Three Generations” which was infinitely better.

She and Erik went into the city one night. To dinner and a Paul McCartney concert. And afterward to a hotel. It was heaven making love in a double bed. Heaven to be truly alone.

“I have to pee,” he said, yawning, and sat up. He ran his hands through his hair, then folded back the covers and stood up, stretching his neck.

She tilted her head, watching her lover walk naked to the bathroom.

Lover.

Now there was a word that felt good in your mouth. Boyfriend covered a wide range of social interaction and left a cutesy-poo aftertaste. Lover went down like a shot of vodka, warming your blood and leaving no doubt what was going on.

“Lover,” she said under her breath.

But sometimes even lover didn’t come close to what Erik was. She lay back in the pillows, thinking about how he was comfortable in his skin around her. She pulled the sheets around her own naked skin and thought about being in bed with him. Sex. Their bodies. His skin. How he felt and tasted. The sound he made when he came. They were lovers. They slept together.

It was quiet.

Awful quiet.

She turned her head toward the partly-closed bathroom door. A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

“Stage fright?” she called.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

She laughed.

“Shit, I’m gonna have to turn the faucet on.”

She laughed harder.

“Seriously, Dais. This is weird.”

“I’m going under the covers,” she said. “I won’t listen.” She flipped the blankets over her head, laughing until the tears rolled out the corners of her eyes and dripped into her ears. Helpless with love for him.

He was back, burrowing under with her. “I got all self-conscious,” he said. “She’s gonna hear me pee, oh no…”

“Oh my God, you’re adorable,” she said, gasping, wiping her face. “I love the shit out of you, I swear…”

Lying on their stomachs in that double bed, arms curled around pillows. Faces turned to each other. Laughing in the dark of a hotel room. Caressing. Talking themselves dry.

I’m so in love, she thought.

The caress of his hand grew longer. The spaces between words stretched. His mouth, already swollen from her kisses, begged to be kissed more. She touched it. Ran her fingertips over that tender bottom lip. Knowing the shape he made under her touch. The space he took up in the dark. The rasp under her fingertips because his beard was starting to grow in.

“I can’t get enough,” she whispered. His fingers slid along the bumps of her spine and the edges of her shoulder blades. Then slid into her.

His voice was husky in his throat. “Again.”

Her fingers tore open the foil of another condom. A small plastic smell skittering between their bodies as she rolled it down.

“Turn over for me,” he said, burrowing his hand under her shoulder and rolling her onto her stomach. He moved onto her, kneeled across her legs, his warm strong hands on her back. Thumbs gently easing her apart and then he was all up in her, tight and thick and wanting.

“Feel good?” he whispered.

“Too good,” she said.

“God…” His palms moved up her spine and down her sides. “I knew someday it would be like this,” he murmured. “But I had no idea it would be like this…”

Hours later they were on the cusp of exhausted, blissful sleep. The floor was littered with condom wrappers. They could barely kiss or talk anymore.

Erik rolled away from her. “Lie against my back?”

She moved up to him, curving herself around his body. She slid her hand up to rest flat on his chest, feeling his heart. He loved to be held this way when he was drifting off. And she loved the broad plane of his back against her stomach. Holding onto him like a raft through waves of sleep. It worked perfectly. They made so much sense together.

He sighed. She rubbed her forehead between his shoulder blades, breathed in his scent.

“I’m so in love with you,” she whispered.

He pressed his mouth into her palm, then held it safe to his chest. “Sometimes I still can’t believe this is happening.”

“You’re my man,” she said. Boyfriend is affection. Lover is sex. Man is both.

He sighed again. A single pleased note from the base of his throat. “I never feel more like a man,” he said, “than when I’m inside you.”

A few more sighing breaths. His fingers curled around hers.

Then he was still.

After spending the day with Ray Bonloup, Daisy calls Lucky to say she met someone.

“Another Zygote?” Lucky says.

I scavenged the Zygote from Bury My Heart in Cashmere and he used to have a much bigger storyline in Give Me Your Answer True. Until I realized he really served only one purpose. Served it all night, I bet, but it wouldn’t last long. A fantastic courtship and definitely I can use this material somewhere else, but the serious relationship with Ray Bonloup was more deserving of a storyline. The Zygote was best delivered as a joke between girlfriends. I did steal his dimple, though, and gave it to Opie.

I gave a lot of things to Opie…

By the way, this is lifted straight from the working file dated January 11, 2015, so you’ll see a lot of work-in-progress notes.

At the first stage rehearsal for the opening of the fall season, Daisy was up to her eyeballs in a cold. She was blocking her six female soloists through the Raymonda Variations. It was tricky work because the lighting technicians had left three packing cases on the apron. Respectful of the stagehands’ time, the dancers tried to make do and dance around the huge boxes. But as their circles and diagonals veered helplessly out of shape, they broke rank, Daisy included, and attempted to move the boxes themselves. Bracing with hands and tutu-ed hips, they had managed to budge one about two inches upstage when some strong fingers closed around Daisy’s arm.

“Permittez-moi, Madame,” a soft voice said.

Daisy looked over her shoulder and into a man’s face. She straightened up slowly, still staring, every fiber of her sickly being on the alert and whispering, “Boy.”

His eyes were grey, almost silvery, flashing under dark eyebrows and holding her gaze as she moved out of his way. By now a whole band of stagehands had descended, shooing the dancers aside, and manhandling the obstructions offstage. Daisy knew all of them, except for this one boy, this new one who had touched her arms and spoken in French. He looked back and smiled at her—a single dimple creasing his cheek, damn him—before digging a meaty shoulder against a case and helping propel it into the wings. She blew her nose at his retreating back.

“Let’s take it from the top,” she said, jamming the wad of her tissue up her sleeve. She put the dancers through their variation, making corrections and fixing their spacing, but her concentration was off-kilter. Her skin prickled, not with the heated flush of being sick, but from a sense of being watched. After multiple times turning around to see nothing behind her, she finally tracked it upward, to the catwalk over the stage.

There he was, arms crossed on the rail, the toe of one work boot tapping behind the heel of the other, watching. Their eyes met. And held. She smiled. He didn’t smile back, only held her gaze and raised his fingers up off his elbow, and let them slowly drop back down.

Erik makes this exact same gesture in TMIL when he’s looking down at Melanie so change it.

The unexpected chemical connection cleared her head, filled her with a thrilled energy and an absurd compulsion to dance. To demonstrate corrections full out, to show off. Her rehearsal charges would think she’d gone crackers, throwing double pirouettes with a handful of tissues. She stayed put on her stool and carried on, more than a little disappointed when she glanced up and found the Frenchman was gone from his perch.

She was eating lunch in her office later that afternoon, or rather she was picking at a sandwich that she could barely taste and felt too harsh against her hoarse throat, when her little friend appeared at the door. He was holding a brown paper bag.

“Vous avez un rhume, Madame?”

She turned away abruptly, face in her elbow, and sneezed.

“À vos souhaits,” he said.

She held up her other hand to stay him, cursing inwardly because her sneezes always came in threes and fours. She sneezed again.

“À vos amours.”

A third one.

“Merde, un vrai bête,” he said gravely. Convinced the fit was over, he took two steps and set the bag on her desk. “I bring you this,” he said in hesitant English. “Good for the cold.”

Daisy unfolded the top of the bag, drew out the generous-sized container and took off the lid. Steam swirled up, moist and salty and fragrant. Carrots, celery, and onion drifted in the gold broth alongside chunks of chicken, white and dark. She swirled the spoon in the healing elixir, and stirred up a cloud of orzo, her favorite. Her mouth watered, suddenly interested in tasting something. “Thank you so much,” she said.

“Pleasure, Madame.”

“I’m too young for Madame. Daisy.” What with her recent, germy display of sneezing and nose blowing, she didn’t bother offering her hand

“I am Stephen.” He made no other overtures, either. “I wish I had for it…I don’t know the word…how do you say, le raifort?”

She shrugged, having no idea.

“My mother puts it a little in soup. Wonderful. Sick goes right away.”

She swallowed a prim spoonful, the savory heat luscious all down her throat. Really she wanted to up-end the container and guzzle. “This is lovely. Thank you.”

He raised his palm to her, looking quite pleased with himself, and left her.

She finished her soup, lost in a reverie. Not about her new suitor, but, oddly, her mother. Every spoonful seemed to drip longing for her mother’s butter-yellow kitchen, and the suite of Le Creuset cast-iron pots in a muted rainbow of colors. Chicken soup Francine would make in the oval-shaped orange pot, with broken spaghetti and a strip of lemon peel. She would load it up with garlic cloves and carrots, drop in a handful of chopped parsley, and then ladle it over frozen peas in the bottom of the bowl. Both to cool it, and because Daisy and her father liked their soup to have color.

If Francine lived nearby, she’d make that soup for Daisy and bring it to her in the orange pot. She’d procure lemon ice pops and local honey to drizzle into tea. She’d call to check in on her daughter, commiserate, say à tes souhaits after a first sneeze, and à tes amours after a second.

“You look transfixed,” a voice said from the door. It was Edwina Meagher, the classroom accompanist. “What are you thinking about?”

I miss my mother, Daisy thought. Aloud she asked, “What is le raifort?”

“Raifort? It’s horseradish, darling. Why?”

Quickly Daisy set down the soup container, dug her nose into her elbow and sneezed viciously.

“À tes souhaits, ma reine!”

The next day, Wednesday, Daisy came back to her office after morning classes to find another paper bag on her desk, across which was scrawled simply, Bon appetit—SK.

With the greed of a child on Christmas morning she opened the bag. It was soup again, Italian wedding this time, chicken stock with tiny meatballs, pearls of pasta, slivers of escarole and carrot. Stephen had also brought her two big, crusty rolls with butter, a bag of dried Montmorency cherries and a bar of dark chocolate. It was quite possibly the most perfect lunch she’d ever been served, and she ate it happily to the last crumb, then wandered over to Lucky’s office.

Lucky’s a physical therapist with the company? Make it clear.

“I think I’m being wooed,” she said, licking chocolate from her fingers. “Or fattened up.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Maybe. By the way, who’s the new stagehand?”

“Koszcis? He’s our new intern, isn’t he yummy? Barely speaks a word of English but honestly, with those eyes, who cares…”

Daisy wrinkled her nose conspiratorially and said nothing.

When she arrived at her car that night, a single pink rose was stuck under one of her windshield wipers. She approached it with a diffident wonder, looked back over her shoulder once, then again, before freeing the flower and holding it to her face. She drove home feeling uncommonly fine.

Not sure I like him being a stagehand, it’s too much like Erik. What if he were a rehearsal accompanist? Or actually Lucky’s intern for physical therapy? Or does he have to be working at the theater at all?

Stephen brought her lunch again on Thursday: cream of asparagus soup and a sandwich of grilled eggplant, fresh mozzarella and sweet peppers. This time she offered him a seat and he accepted. His English was abysmal and Daisy wasn’t quite sure why she let him flail along in the conversation while she ate. Maybe for power, maybe for sheer amusement. Finally she broke down laughing and apologized, revealing she was all but fluent in his mother tongue. His mouth dropped open and stayed there a moment, before he muttered “On m’a eu.”

She laughed harder, realizing it had been years since a boy had made her giggle like a teenager. He sat back and continued to look about him, this way and that, bamboozled. One who has indeed been thoroughly had, yet appreciates the ride he has just been taken for.

They talked for nearly the whole hour. When her lunch was gone he produced chocolate-covered mints from his shirt pocket and kept on chatting, plying her with sugar the way a frat boy would push drinks on a besotted freshman.

Stephen Koszcis was twenty-two, Jewish, born and raised in Quebec, and a theatre student at the University of New Brunswick. Requiring a technical internship for his major, he had joined the ranks of the backstage crew for a season, hauling sets and adjusting instruments and acting as a general johnny-on-the-spotlight. His manner was self-effacing, downright charming, and he had the nicest face with that adorable dimple winking in and out of sight. But the eyes didn’t belong in it: his eyes were wild, gypsy eyes, watching her mouth and hands as she ate the food he’d brought. His eyes made her feel nervous. They also made her feel worldly, older in an alluring way, wanton and daring. Countless times she was tempted to break off a bit of sandwich or a spoonful of soup and offer it to him across the desk. She didn’t. And when he asked if she would like to have dinner the next evening, she calculated the amount of free time she had during the day tomorrow against the state of her toenails and, more importantly, her closet.

“I actually have dinner plans,” she said. “But I could meet you for a drink after?”

He agreed, they scheduled a time and place and he left her office. Lucky put her head around the doorframe not twenty seconds later. “Is it on?” she asked, looking over the tops of her reading glasses.

“It’s on,” Daisy said.

“Lovely,” Lucky sang. “Shave your legs, dear.”

Fists to the ceiling, Daisy pushed off and spun two rotations in her chair.

Throughout all of Friday, Lucky had a shameless ball with her.

“Want to come over and hang tonight? Oh wait, sorry, I forgot you’re getting laid tonight.”

Daisy took the ribbing in wobbly stride, for she had sex on the brain and didn’t feel like apologizing for it. But damn, it had been so long since she’d walked this particular edge of anticipatory lightning. She dashed out at her lunch hour and bought new underwear—honestly, she did need new bras—and the red cashmere sweater she’d been eyeing. Then by some miracle she got herself squeezed in for a mani-pedi after work.

At home, she sang in the shower, meticulously shaving. She played music and put on makeup, sprayed perfume, picked out her favorite jeans. After a lengthy consultation with Lucky, she put clean sheets on her bed and turned up the thermostat (“Go big or go home,” Lucky advised). And then into her camel coat, scarf and gloves and the five-block walk to Miguel’s where she was the perfect ten minutes late for her meeting with Stephen.

Through the glass front doors she saw him first, sitting on the leather bench in the vestibule, elbows on knees, feet tapping a tattoo on the terracotta floor. His face lit up when she walked in, and his genuine joy in seeing her made her heart splash in her chest and her own face split with a grin.

“Bon soir, Madame.”

“Bon soir, garçon,” she said, playing along. They exchanged the socially correct triple kiss—left cheek, right cheek, left again—then found seats at the bar.

“How was your dinner?” he asked, shrugging his leather jacket off his shoulders and onto the stool back. Under it he wore a handsome button-down shirt, navy blue, with a raised, textured pattern. His hair was damp and his face gleamed freshly shaved.

“Fine,” she said, taking off her own coat, stuffing the scarf up a sleeve.

“What did you eat?”

She had a flash of insight, and she knew him then. Understood that where she went for dinner and whom she went with was of less interest to him than what she ate. She decided to hell with it, she was going in as herself. “I didn’t have dinner plans,” she said. She set her elbows on the bar and looked at him directly. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date and I wanted to get my nails done after work and...just look nice.”

He gave a bark of surprised laughter and pushed her shoulder. “Are you serious?”

She nodded helplessly, rubbing her forehead and laughing easily at herself. She steepled her hands around her nose, and glanced over at him, waiting for a verdict. He took her fingertips and brought them for closer inspection. “They look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“And you look great,” he said, with a quick flick of his eyes up and down her person. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Their drinks arrived—red wine for her, gin and tonic for him. They clinked glasses and drank.

“So what did you have for dinner?” he asked.

“Toasted cheese. Tomato soup.”

He nodded approvingly.

“How about you, what did you eat?”

He swirled his glass on the bar, smiling into the ice cubes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. I asked you out yesterday, you said yes, and I don’t remember a damn thing about what happened between then and fifteen minutes ago.”

They both laughed then, and it seemed they went on laughing for the next hour. Conversation flowed easily, so much so that their drinks were barely touched and after one each, they were ready to move on.

They went over to the Mirrorball Theatre to see what was playing, found it was À la Mode, in French with subtitles. They sat up in the balcony with snifters of Frangelico. Stephen had a small box of Godiva chocolates in the pocket of his leather jacket. He made no objection when Daisy bit her candies in half to examine the filling, and accepted anything she rejected.

It amused her that he continued to use the formal vous when he spoke to her. The transition from vous to the familiar tu was significant to the French, so much so that there was a verb for it: tutoyer. However most Canadian francophones, Daisy had discovered, found the distinction snobbish and archaic. After an initial introduction with vous, they would use tu within a minimal amount of time, without even the ritual of tutoyer.

Stephen, it appeared, was old school.

“You’re always feeding me,” she commented around a mouthful of raspberry cream, using tu.

“You always look hungry,” he answered, with vous. He picked up her hand and closed his thumb and index finger around her wrist. Daisy drew a slow breath in. This was his first deliberate touch and she savored it. “You are,” he went on, regarding her hand intently, “the most nude woman I’ve ever seen.” He ran his fingers over the edges of her clear-polished nails.

“Nue?” she repeated. “Nude? What do you mean?”

He rolled his lips together and his eyebrows furrowed. “Pas médaillé. Sans ornements.”

“Unadorned?” she ventured in English.

“I mean you don’t wear any jewelry. Except earrings. But no bracelets. No necklace. No rings.” He turned up her thumbnail as proof. “No colors when you get your nails done. You don’t even wear a watch. You’re just…simple. Your bones are beautiful. You don’t need any embellishment. I like that.” His eyes were wide and she noticed there were flecks of gold in his grey irises, with a band of darkest slate at the rim. “I like that,” he said again, across the small expanse of electric air between them.

The lights dimmed and Daisy put her hand on the side of his face, moved her thumb along his high cheekbone, and then gently ran it along his lips. He touched his tongue to it. “Et vous avez un goût de chocolat,” he whispered, you taste like chocolate. “I like that, too…”

She drew his face in. “Et si on se tutoyait?”

His young body flexed, he pulled a breath in through his nose. “Oui, Madame,” he whispered as her mouth found his in the dark.

After the movie, they stopped by the Supper Club. A local and quite popular swing band was playing. Stephen surprised her by being a willing and quite competent dancer. But it was frosting on the cupcake: she had long since made up her mind. After licking the rim of her second snifter of Frangelico, she invited him home.

[Notice quite appears twice in the above paragraph? Huge personal obsession/peeve. I hate when words repeat close together and I crawl up later drafts with a microscope to cut or change them. If you notice it in any of my other books, please don’t tell me. I will lose sleep. Not kidding. —SLQR]

He stayed for two nights and two days of epicurean ecstasy. If they weren’t sleeping or making love, they were eating. Stephen was exceptional in the kitchen as well as the bedroom. Introducing Daisy to the unexplored art of Jewish cuisine, he made her noodle kugel, stuffed cabbage, potato latkes and cheese blintzes. His mother had had no daughters, he explained, chopping onions with a lavish hand, and Sylvie Dreyfus had taught Stephen, her youngest son, to cook. He fried the onions in oil then scrambled them with eggs. Daisy ate a plateful and succumbed once again to his gypsy spell.

For the next two weeks, her life became reduced to work and making love with Stephen, making love with Stephen and work. And eating. Daisy gained four pounds in his care, added weight that he heartily approved of. Hungrily he ran his tongue over her emerging curves as they lay in bed. “T’a la peau du miel, Madame,” he whispered. You have skin like honey. He still called her Madame. He was a marvelous, marvelous lover and her body responded to his with a startling passion.

Annnnnnd… Then it runs its course, his internship is over. A lovely affair. And au revoir

I wrote this for Ray Bonloup. I loved Ray. And I love a black slip.

Ray arrived at her place one weekend with a black gift bag hooked over a finger. A bit of red tissue paper peeking out the top. Daisy immediately recognized the logo from a local lingerie shop that had a thriving sex toy boutique in its basement.

“For me?” she said, wiping her hands off and taking the bag.

“For me, really.” His finger brushed her cheek. “You have a little flour here…”

She let the bag swing by its handles, staring up at him. Inside she was wildly curious, wondering if he had latent domme fantasies. Was it a maid’s outfit? Handcuffs? What? She wouldn’t laugh at him. She’d go with it.

But out of the bag she drew a simple white slip, thin-strapped and silky. A bit of lace at the neck and hem. She held it up against her body and though the cut was slinky, it fell to just above her knees. The bodice was a little padded but that was as racy as it got. She didn’t laugh but she tilted her chin at him and wrinkled her eyebrows.

Slouched in a kitchen chair, fresh and handsome in his shirt and blazer, he smiled at her. Arms crossed over his chest, legs stretched out with ankles crossed.

“Elizabeth Taylor. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The scene where she’s wearing a slip like that.”

“Of course.”

“With her dark hair and those incredible blue eyes. My whole life I thought it was the most beautiful, most glamorous thing I’d ever seen. She wasn’t showing a lot of skin. She didn’t need to. And she was tiny but she had this presence. I thought to myself, someday I will love a woman like that. Dark haired and blue-eyed. Tiny and magnificent in a white slip.”

Smiling, Daisy ran her hand along the shimmering white. “Your wife was blonde,” she said quietly.

“Blonde and Junoesque,” Ray said. “And movie star fantasies are for youth. But then, one unsuspecting night, deep in my established widowhood, I’m at a party at Michael’s Crab House. A woman practically falls into my lap. I look down. And my God, it’s Liz Taylor. And—”

Daisy put her fingers on his lips. Then kissed him. “I got this,” she whispered. She went in the bedroom and put the slip on. She left her hair up, didn’t primp or fluff. She went back out to the kitchen barefoot. Poured them each a drink and continued to make dinner. Ray watched her. His eyes followed her everywhere, full of contented adoration.

She loved the slip. It felt like an extension of her skin. It felt like her and not a costume. She plated the food and then sat on his lap. Feeding him and feeling incredibly sexy.

“I’ll clean up,” he said.

“Leave it,” she said, taking him by the hand. They made love and she kept the slip on, liking its slide across her skin. Liking Ray moving it so he could get to what he wanted.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered on the back of her neck.

He bought her another slip, in black. They became her loungewear. Her sleepwear. And when they grew pilled and seedy-looking, Ray bought her new ones. Always one black and one white.

“Screw garter belts and all that shit,” he said. “Give me a woman in her slip any day.”

Opie came out of nowhere and surprised me. He started as a bit player in a love drama and became an unlikely, beautiful hero. But a tragic one. Because he had such gigantic shoes to fill and no doubt he was tired of being reminded of what came before him, even when he was doing the reminding.

He was incredibly good to Daisy. I believe he was in love with her. Not mere misguided infatuation but an honest and devoted love. But the honesty had to be painful. He probably knew in his heart she would never really be his.

This is just some early fooling-around scribbling from when I was writing Give Me Your Answer True. Scribbling is a vital part of the process. It’s essentially how I find a story: rather than follow the plot, I follow the characters around. It’s like one of those photo booth stations at a party with a big box of costumes and props. I let them put on whatever they want and then take pictures as they pose, carry on, talk amongst themselves or to themselves, get all angsty and react to situations. Then try on another costume.

Sometimes I end up with something usable. Sometimes I end up with insights that allow me to write more deeply from another character’s point of view. Sometimes none of it ends up in the book, but I still needed it in my head.

I always end up with something useful. I haven’t yet looked over the pages of my notebooks and thought, “Well that was a complete waste of time…”

She’d landed like an apple in his lap. Like a four-leafed clover in the grass or a $20 in an old coat pocket, she appeared at the front desk of Steps Over Broadway one day, signing into David Howard’s master class.

John stopped short and stared, sure he was mistaken. But no, he would recognize her anywhere. He knew by heart the curving line of her neck and the slant of her jaw. The round rising of her cheekbones when she smiled at the receptionist buried all the conviction John had dug up over the past two years. One tilt of her head and his firm belief he’d only been blindly infatuated with Daisy Bianco, nothing more, went sauntering out of the building, laughing its ass off.

He stepped closer and cautiously called her name, like he was touching a newborn bird. She looked up. Her eyes a brilliant flash of blue-green. She dropped her pen as she cried out—“John!”—and then she was in his arms.

Jesus Christ…

She flung herself against him, he wasn’t dreaming it. She pressed her cheek against his and clutched the back of his jacket in her hands, clinging to him like a long-lost lover. Saying his name over and over.

“Oh, John…”

He took her for coffee and she laid her heart between their cups. He scooped it up, along with her phone number, and called her that night. Soon they were going to class every day and spending their free time together. And it wasn’t a one-sided pursuit either: she called him and sought him out, wanting his company.

She didn’t shy away if he hugged or touched her. And by some nameless miracle, when he pushed a bit harder against her walls, she didn’t resist.

She wanted him.

It was too good to be true. It was too easy. He braced for the letdown. For the pullback. It didn’t come, which made him brace harder. The more she gave to him, the more he felt she was hiding something away. Certain that another name curled in a corner of her mouth, wanting to be spoken. Believing some last bit of her heart’s treasure was hoarded away under lock and key. Shining and precious. And dangerous, because it was his.

And it wasn’t finished.

She never fell out of love with him. Their relationship never came to a natural end. They didn’t break up. Fish just broke it…

She was his girlfriend now. His eyes could sweep her bare skin and count thirty-two scars. His fingertips could find twenty-one of them in the dark.

She had other scars, but the thirty-two were self-inflicted. She’d cut those herself, with broken glass and a razor blade.

In the dark, she slept naked in his arms while he counted.

Six in the hollows of her ribs.

Eight in the curve of her waist.

Three on her left upper arm.

Two at the top of her left leg.

One beneath the curve of her right shoulder blade.

One at the small of her back.

He hated them. He couldn’t stop touching them.

She loved him.

She said so.

She showed him so.

She was there when he woke up in the mornings, there when he went to sleep at night. There at the stage door, or sitting on the edge of the Lincoln Center fountain, waiting for him. Her feet touched his beneath tables, beneath sheets and blankets. She was brushing her teeth on the other side of the shower curtain, clanging pots and pans in the kitchen. Her legs lay across his lap on the living room couch.

It was her scrape of the key in the lock at the end of a day.

It was her “Hey, babe,” when he turned the knob and walked into the apartment.

She gave him a key. She invited him into her life.

He lived here now.

He loved her now.

And she loved him. Her mouth opened sweet, her arms and legs and hair wrapped around him. She turned to him when she burst out of bad dreams. She drew his head to her shoulder when the day was hard. She smiled under his mouth and called his name in the dark.

He loved her voice curled around his name.

Her hand on his head when he buried his face between her thighs. “John.”

Her long hair spilling across his belly and hips. “John.”

Her scarred body curving down over him or rising up under him, “John.” On her knees between his knees, her back arching to meet him, “John.” The nape of her neck damp with sweat when he pulled it into the crook of his elbow and slid a hand along her throat as he kissed her mouth around his name, kissed her and kissed her…

“Are you mine?” he breathed.

“Yes.”

She was his now.

She gave him everything.

Except…

“What are you thinking,” he asked, when her eyes suddenly went far away and her face filled with sadness.

Don’t go back, stay with me. Say my name.

She blinked and her smile stretched between blushing cheeks. “Nothing, my mind just wandered off.”

Back to him, John thought.

He couldn’t help it.

He lay down between them in the dark. A presence hip-checking John out of the way and curling possessively around Daisy’s back. Mine. His were the true arms that held her in the dark. Mine. Like the scars, he was in her skin—a little red fish tattooed in the curve of her hip bone. Mine.

He left, John thought, pulling Daisy back against him, his fingertips touching the narrow ridges of skin on her arms, her back, her legs, her ribs.

He left and she still loves him.

She was on top of John in the dark, but was she remembering him beneath her?

She blew on a wooden spoon, held it out for John to taste, but was it his mouth curling around what she offered?

She answered when John called, but did part of her heart wonder if he was on the phone this time?

She filled John’s eyes when she was curled in a chair with a mug, staring over the wisps of steam at nothing, but was she looking at him?

Look at me, John pleaded silently. See only me. Yet when her blue-green gaze fixed on him, it wasn’t enough.

Want me. Yet when she led him to bed or woke him in the dark or undressed him on the couch, it wasn’t enough.

Need me. Yet when she asked for a favor, or curled into his lap, or cried on his shoulders, it wasn’t enough.

Love me. Yet when she cooked for him, tended to him, listened to him, cared for him, did for him…

His eyes and his fingertips ran over her body, counting, while the little red fish inked at her hip kept watch, kept him at a distance. Kept him from truly touching her.

No matter how sweetly he loved her, how good her fucked her or how desperately he wanted her, in his heart, John could not get through to her.

Fish lay down between them at night. Invisible, but there.

Always there.

He’ll come back around, John thought. Don’t kid yourself. He’s going to show up one day. Why wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t you?

What will you do?

“What would you do?” he asked Daisy.

“If he called?” She shrugged, a corner of her mouth twisting. “Say hello, I guess. I mean, what could he want at this point? To see me fall on my sword? I fell for years. I impaled myself…”

And cut yourself, John thought. It’s going to hit him one of these days.

Daisy gazed into her mug of tea, thinking. “Funny,” she finally said. “Will said something once. It was during the fight in the kitchen, when he was pulling Erik off David. He said, ‘That’s enough, Fish. You’re only giving him what he wants.’” She unfolded her legs and got up from the couch. “I don’t know what made me think of that.”

John didn’t either. But he remembered the story. And he took Will’s advice the night Erik called.

He’s here to fight.

Don’t give him what he wants.

He wanted to, of course. Wanted to harpoon Fish through the phone, drag him through the chop and club him over the head. Rub his face in the blood and guts of what he’d left behind. See what you did? See how I fixed it? Take a good long look but don’t fucking touch it. She’s not your punching bag and I’m not your lieutenant anymore. I didn’t put her back together just so you could destroy her again.

Then he imagined Will’s cool hands on his shoulders, easing him back, coaching him through this tricky choreography. You’re only giving him what he wants. Don’t.

Fish came back, and the best thing John could do for Daisy was be polite, cool and casual.

The worst thing John could do for Fish was the same.

“What are you doing there?” Fish said.

“I live here,” John said pleasantly, cleaning under his fingernails with a toothpick.

And as Fish’s voice got smaller and shakier, John’s only became steadier and more matter-of-fact. “I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “But I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t make a habit of it.”

In other words: don’t call here again. Without actually having to say the words.

His smile was smug as he hung up, but the triumph was short-lived. No joy was in his heart later, when he picked through Daisy’s jewelry box, looking for a lost necklace. He was ashamed, but once the seal of trust was broken, it was easy to keep looking: in her drawers, on her closet shelves, in shoeboxes and coat pockets.

Where is he? Where are you hiding him?

His snooping, suspicious fingers danced over an accordion folder, stepping over bank statements and tax returns and copies of her contract with the Met. The last pocket had insurance claim forms, reimbursement for her therapy sessions, receipts for the antidepressants. A copy of the admission statement from Westfall Hospital.

Patient was brought to the hospital by her parents after her boyfriend alerted them to increased symptoms of depression including self-injurious behaviors.

“Her boyfriend alerted them,” John said softly, closing his eyes. “Not Fish. Me.”

He found the scars. He got her to show him her skin and show him what she used to cut. He got her to betray the secrets keeping her a prisoner. Together they threw away the glass and the alcohol and the ritual. He took her back in the bedroom and finally, finally he had what he wanted for so long. He became a lover that night and he was good. He buried himself in her body, wound her limbs around him like ribbons, and took her with a hunger he’d never felt before. He had her all to himself that night. Her beauty and her pain, her wild and magnificent passion. Her mouth and her hands and her skin and Christ, he couldn’t get deep enough inside her, she was so wet and tight and hot. Over and over she came in his hungry hands, crying out his name.

“I swear to God, I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured afterward, when they curled exhausted into each other’s arms.

But he didn’t.

He fell into a dreamless, sated sleep and she crawled away to the bathroom and cut herself bloody.

Her boyfriend alerted them…

Patient reports self-injurious behavior began six weeks prior. Patient reports a recent history of increased cutting behavior with glass. Other presenting symptoms include hopelessness, helplessness and anhedonia. Patient reports passive suicidal ideation with no defined plan.

She cut deep but she didn’t cut to kill. Only to hurt. The scars he found the night before, although horrifying, had a strange beauty in their deliberate pattern. Even within self-harm, Daisy’s pragmatic nature and eye for design shone through. Slumped on the bathroom floor, though, her skin was slashed in a careless, haphazard manner. In no manner. That’s how John knew she was in trouble now.

Patient reports persistent nausea, difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep and decreased appetite. Patient also reports a history of nightmares and flashbacks related to her experience in the 1992 shootings at Lancaster University.

That part was slightly inaccurate. The nightmares had history. But there’d been only one flashback, caused by one broken window in a diner.

An entire bite of scrambled eggs spilled out of John’s mouth as a wall of glass came down right behind Daisy’s head, a roar of snowy air like cold death in its wake. It would’ve scared the shit out of anyone. But it shattered something in Daisy. John jumped up from the table as she slid down the bench and disappeared beneath it, screaming. She was screaming his name. Not John’s name. His.

The place was in an uproar. Diner staff yanked back chairs and seized brooms. Daisy was under the table, hunkered down in the dirt and dust and dropped coins and straw wrappers. Her hands fisted in her hair as if she meant to scalp herself. Screaming a name as pieces of broken glass crunched under John’s feet, cut into his palms and kneecaps as he crawled beneath to get to her.

Erik, she cried, her face pressed to her knees. Erik Erik Erik Erik…

John whacked his head on the bottom of the table as he dragged her out. He saw stars as he heaved her up into a chair and peeled her fingers out of her hair.

She’d stopped screaming the name. She was crying now, sobbing through different words. “He shot the glass,” she said. “He shot the glass…”

Patient suffered gunshot wound to the left leg with subsequent complications from compartment syndrome.

Patient, John counseled himself, in the weeks after the night in the diner, when he courted Daisy so carefully, never pressuring, never pushing. Keeping the desire heeled tight to his side, all the while it bit and strained at the leash, wanting her so bad it seemed his skin would peel off.

Patient, he told himself during the long days when she was hospitalized up in Cross River, when worry carved a gaping hole in his guts and his arms ached to hold her again. Just be patient.

Will called during that time, looking for Daisy, demanding to know what was going on. John’s patience bristled like a protective porcupine, but only a bit. This was Will, not Fish. John shook off the misdirected emotion and told Will what happened. It felt good to talk about it. Will had been his mentor at Lancaster. His coach and trainer and sensei both in the studio and out. They’d been close. Blood brothers.

You helped save my hand, Opie. I’ll never forget it.

“Thank God you were there,” Will said on the phone, from thousands of miles away. Everyone and everything from Lancaster was so far away, and yet it was always there. Like Fish.

One gunshot wound.

Subsequent complications.

Patient is assigned an Axis I diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, single episode, severe, without psychotic features and a rule out of PTSD.

“Thanks for being patient,” Daisy said in the dark. The meds made her numb and tired. Therapy left her spiritually exhausted. Her energies were carefully conserved for work and when she came home, she fell into bed, wanting sleep, not to make love.

Yet she did make love. If not to him, then for him. She gave if he asked. He hated having to ask, hated feeling like such an awkward, begging kid when he ventured, “Hey, you think we could…?”

She was open and honest, tried to explain what was going on in her mind and her body. “It feels good,” she said. “It just doesn’t go anywhere. That’s not your fault, it’s nothing you’re doing or not doing. I can barely make myself come...”

She talked about it and she let him in. Sometimes she initiated, which was like warm sunshine on his skin after a long, cold winter. She didn’t shy from his touch. But she didn’t seek it out much, nor melt into it the way she had that first night…

John folded up the admission statement and put it back in the pocket. Behind it was one more envelope. A peek under the flap and Fish’s face looked back at him from a stack of photographs.

John closed his eyes. He had his own snapshot hidden in a closet of memory.

It was after the shooting, when the students were hunkered down with police and nurses and volunteers in the campus health center. Fish came to him, pale and blood-streaked. He set his hands on John’s shoulders and peered close.

“Opie, what happened to your face?”

John’s cheekbone was cut, swollen and smarting but the nurses said it wouldn’t need stitches. He explained to Fish that when the gunfire started, he’d grabbed Lucky Dare and thrown the both of them to the ground, hitting his face against one of the boomstands. Fish nodded. Then his hands slid around to John’s back and pulled him in tight.

They hugged hard, laying their fists on each other. Fish wasn’t much taller than John, yet he seemed a giant that day. He smelled like dust and metal, like blood and nervous sweat and fear. He smelled like war. He smelled like a brother.

“You all right?” Fish said.

“Yeah,” John said. Fish didn’t let go and John hung onto him for a long minute, because within that strong embrace, he could shake off the memories.

James standing over Will and Daisy with a still-smoking pistol. The cramping pain in John’s forearms and wrists as he held onto the pressure point in Will’s bicep with one hand while with the other, he clamped a towel on the raw, mangled mess that was Will’s left hand. The blood that had soaked through Will’s clothes and spilled across the floor. People stepped in it and left footprints. It soaked John’s shins and kneecaps. He couldn’t keep his eyes from Will’s two severed fingers, lying inches from where John knelt. A silver ring still circled one. He stared at them so hard, he swore they moved. Twitched and jumped in the roar of bloody confusion swirling through the theater, all the while Gershwin kept playing through the speakers. “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.”

Fish held him hard. John shook it out and his mind went still. He was all right.

Now, with his hand deep in Daisy’s cookie jar, John gave a shaking shudder and opened his eyes. His fingers made to sift through the other pictures in this envelope but then the memory of different hands fell on his shoulder.

Easy, Will’s voice echoed from some long-ago rehearsal. Let go your mind, Ope. You’re going to make yourself crazy. Stop thinking it and be it. Just tell the story and dance...

John sighed. He closed the accordion folder and wound the string to fasten it. He put it back on the closet shelf, faced off the shoeboxes, closed the drawers and shut her jewelry box. He lay down on their bed—theirs—and buried his face in Daisy’s pillow, inhaling her scent. His arms ached to hold her.

Don’t give him what he wants.

If you love her, then stop thinking it and be it.

Just tell the story…

Pete Fiskare is another character who was slow to show himself, but when he did, he was so complex and his relationship with Erik was so beautiful. I could’ve written much more about the two of them, but it would’ve bogged things down.

This scene is straight out of one of the notebooks for Here to Stay—it was scribbled after the handwritten drafts of Byron Fiskare’s letters to Mike Pettitte. I don’t think I intended to use it. I just wanted to write it and eat my feels.

By the way, when I’m scribbling from brain to hand to notebook, it’s usually in present tense. I change it to past tense when I start polishing on the computer.

Reading over this now, I wonder if I was thinking of The Outsiders...?

Stay gold, Fish…

“C’mon, let’s go for a drive,” Pete says to Erik.

“I really don’t feel l—”

“Get in the fucking car.”

He gets. The brothers take a drive and end up at some kind of Zen Center/Japanese Garden. They amble down walkways, past garden beds. Walk among the statues and pagodas and koi ponds. Finally they reach a small grove of trees hung with wind chimes.

Pete tries to explain how the absence of sound has a sound. The vibrations of the world have a frequency. Different frequencies that Pete “hears,” or rather, he feels, but some trace memory deep in his brain translates as sound.

He didn’t know this until his hearing was restored with the cochlear implant.

And he couldn’t explain the sound of his silence until he heard wind chimes.

He swings the clapper on one of them now, releasing its tinkling song. “This is kind of what I heard all those years I chose to be deaf. And what I hear when the implant is shut off. It’s like whale speech almost. Slowed down and stretched out long. But these same kinds of tones and I hear them with my body.”

He finds a chime with a sultry middle tone. Like a woman’s alto. “This is Mom,” he says.

“You mean her voice?”

“A little. But mostly her. The way she vibrates. Or the way the air vibrates around her.” Pete runs a hand across the crown of his head, brow to nape. “It rings here. Right down the center.”

He goes around the trees, sounding the different chimes. “This is Laura. She’s in my head, too, but all over. She fills up my mind, between my ears and right down to the bottom of my neck. This is Aaron. Val’s like this. They both vibrate in my back, dead between my shoulders. I have no idea why.”

Through the aching fatigue of his grief, Erik feels a slight fascination. “What does Dais sound like?”

Pete rings several before he finds her in one of the smaller chimes. “Vibrations have color, too. This chime is very blue to me. And Dais has a blue vibration. Her eyes, you know. I feel her tone right behind my eyes.”

“What about Dad?”

Pete’s eyes sweep the grove. “He’s… His memory is more like a tympani drum. A thud. Low. Real low down in my gut.”

“Black?”

“No. Black’s a low tone but it’s rich. Dad is like the water after you’ve been painting with a lot of colors. A mucky kind of brown.” Pete sits on a bench, forearms on knees. “Do you remember the night he left?”

“I watched his truck drive away.”

“But did you hear him leave the house?”

“No.”

“I did.”

Erik sits on the ground, his back against a tree, heart thumping.

“I was awake,” Pete says. “And I felt him coming down the hall, past our room. Back then, his footsteps were like silver.”

“I always associate him with gold.”

Pete shakes his head. “Silver. I sat up as he passed our door and he saw me. I said…” Pete’s hands lift to sign. “Where are you going? He shook his head and…”

Pete’s left hand rises to slice vertically across his mouth. His right hand freezes in a chop across his left wrist.

“Be quiet,” Erik says.

“Last thing he ever said to me,” Pete says, his hands dropping. “Be quiet. And I loved him, so…I did what he said. I stayed quiet. For the next twenty-five years.”

“Jesus,” Erik whispers.

Pete’s mouth makes a small smile. He gets up and goes over to the largest chime in the grove, one of its copper tubes over three feet long. He sets it swinging, filling the air with low, solemn baritone notes. “This is you,” he says, closing his eyes. His fist lightly strikes the center of his chest. “And I hear it right here. Orange. Orange and yellow and gold. Like when you stare in the sun a second and then see the circle burned behind your eyelids…”

He opens his eyes and looks at Erik a long second. “You lost your color for a while,” he says. “After the shooting. Your tone wasn’t in my chest anymore and all the gold became like Dad’s muddy water. When you first came home, you’d move around and I kept thinking a stranger was in the house. Long, long time it took for you to sound right to me again.”

“When?”

Pete thinks a minute, his mouth twisting. “When you married Melanie you sounded right again, but the color wasn’t back. Not quite. Not until you found Dais.”

He comes over to Erik and crouches down, then reaches up to his head and turns off the speech processor on his implant. Erik knows this immediately plunges Pete into total deafness. He tilts his chin, staring, listening to the lingering chimes and trying to imagine what Pete is hearing.

Pete reaches and sets his palm on Erik’s chest. “Say something.”

“Hello?”

Pete closes his eyes, head shaking. “Talk to me.”

Erik swallows and pulls a deep shaking breath in. “My son died,” he says. The words hurt in his mouth and he tries to push them through his chest instead. Sneak them out a side door. “I watched my son be born dead. I… I hurt so much, Pete. And I’m so scared for Dais…”

Pete nods a little and his palm presses, strong and warm before retreating. “You’re here,” he signs. “You’re vibrating slower, but everyone does when they’re sad. But I can feel you here.” Pete touches his chest. “You’re right here where you always are. And you’re gold. It’s pale. But it’s there. It isn’t the way it was after the shooting. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Erik nods.

“And Daisy’s still blue. I feel her right where she should be.”

“When you held him,” Erik says, signing at the same time. “Did you feel anything? Hear anything?”

Pete nods. “I’ll show you.” He turns the switch on his implant again, then straightens up. “Go ring hers,” he says.

Erik gets up and goes to the chime Pete identified as Daisy. He rings it as Pete swings the low tones of Erik’s chime. The two songs weave together in a sad lament, high and low.

“This,” Pete says. “Blue and gold. He didn’t have his own sound. It was the two of yours together. You hear that?”

Erik closes his eyes. “I feel it.”

“It’s what I think of as a soul mate,” Pete says. “Someone who makes you vibrate just the right way…”

They stop at the center’s gift store on the way out. Pete has Erik ring all the chimes until he finds one that makes him feel instinctively good, and Pete buys it for him.

Everyone wants Will’s story.

But Will’s story is essentially the same as Erik and Daisy’s story. Yes, the years he spends in Europe would be different, but the arc is identical. He hits his rock bottom and he fights his way back into the light. He forgives himself and emerges a better person, aware of what belongs to him. But he misses his friend. And the unfinished business of the past is always a presence. Like Daisy, a part of his heart always wonders if someday will be today. Until one day, it is.

I don’t think I’ll write his story as a standalone book.

But I do like to write him. I’m a mortal woman, after all. He had good stories to tell.

So to break the ice, I asked Camberley Jones if she’d like to interview Will (after all, she has an amazing way of getting people to spill their guts), and I asked Will if he’d like to be interviewed.

They were both delighted.

As was I.

Camberley Jones: Is this thing with Lucky flexible or kind of a solid?

Will Kaeger: Whoa. I thought you’d start by asking my favorite color. You just jump right in.

CJ: You hate small talk. So are you open to options?

WK: Asking for a friend?

CJ: No.

WK: {Laughs and holds up index finger with wedding band} At this moment in time—

CJ: I see what you did there.

WK: I see you saw. It’s very much a solid. Not to quote myself but I wouldn’t fuck with it if you paid me. With either gender. But my mind stays open to fantasy options. So does my dick, which unfortunately has no mind. And Lucky and I each have a Celebrity Get Away With Infidelity Free card. Unfortunately both cards are for Johnny Depp, so it’s going to involve either a fight to the death or a threesome.

{Crosses fingers} Please please please please…

CJ: Ugh. Sexy Bastard.

WK: {Crosses ankles on coffee table, laces hands behind head and laughs}

CJ: Stop it. Do you remember the first time you saw Erik?

WK: I do. I didn’t know who he was at the time but I remember it. It was in the student lounge in Mallory. I was lying on one of the couches reading. Matt Lombardi was lying with his head at the other end so our legs were together in the middle and…

{Laughs} You’re getting that look on your face already. Jesus. Do I have to explain this first?

CJ: Um. Yeah.

WK: Fine. So Matt was the first guy I’d slept with in college. We had this on-again-off-again thing the whole of my freshman year. I liked Matt. I respected him as a dancer and he was cool and undemanding.

Huh. Matt. I haven’t thought about him in a long time. I wonder where he is….?

Anyway, point being, we were minding our own non-sexual business. I was reading. He was asleep, or I assumed he was asleep. It was a shitty, rainy day. All grey outside the windows and the occasional clap of thunder. I was practically nodding off as well and then I heard the ker-chunk of the soda machine. I looked over and some guy was getting a Coke. I didn’t know who he was but he had on a tool belt and a wrench was sticking out his back pocket (I assume it was a wrench or maybe he was just glad to see me.)

CJ: Har dee har har.

WK: Didn’t take a genius to figure out he was probably one of Leo’s rats. I didn’t do anything, say anything, think anything. I went back to reading. Then Matt whacked my leg. He was sitting up and looking over the back of the couch, staring down the hall where that guy was walking off.

“Who the fuck was that?” he said. And made the famous love child of Bryan Adams and Sting observation we all know so well.

I shrugged, I had no idea who the guy was, I didn’t even get all that close a look at him. Few weeks later, it was the first tech rehearsal for the fall concert. Rats swarming the theater and Matt whacked me again and gave a jerk of his head toward the wings.

“Look, it’s the love child. Rehearsal just got a whole lot better.”

Fucking Matt, man. He was a piece of work. I wonder where he is?

CJ: If Erik had been open to a relationship would you have pursued it?

WK: {Runs hands through hair, exhales a couple times} This is really hard to articulate. I mean, short answer: yeah.

Lucky Kaeger: {Comes into the room and sits in Will’s lap} Please. If Fish said to you, “Dude, it’s on,” you’d be naked in two seconds.

WK: I’d have waited for you to give the go-ahead.

LK: {laughs} In college? Bullshit. You’d have called me afterward.

WK: Yeah. Probably.

LK: So did you top or bottom in these scenarios?

WK: Stop.

LK: Adoring fans want to know.

CJ: They do.

WK: {whacks Lucky with throw pillow}. Fine, if you have to know, I tried to imagine both but I could never get anything fixed in my head and get it to hold still. It was so ridiculously unlikely to ever happen and so not him. It just didn’t work. Not even in fantasy. To the point where I’d be embarrassed for the both of us.

LK: Could you get anything about him to hold still and work?

WK: Sometimes kissing. Sometimes just…lying around and being able to run my hands over him. I had to put him to sleep a lot. Him lying unconscious in a hospital bed was one of my more frequent go-tos.

LK: {laughs}

WK: If I thought about it like a threesome then I could get it to work.

LK: With me?

WK: No, Dais.

LK: Really?

WK: Yeah, but then I’d be aware I was fucking my girlfriend’s best friend, who was also my best friend’s girlfriend. And one of my best friends and my partner on top of that. Then I’d get all confused and guilty and I’d lose my erection. {Hides face in Lucky’s neck} I have issues.

LK: {Strokes his head} Your fantasy life is complicated.

WK: Porn is so much easier. Wanna go watch some?

LK: No, you have more questions from your adoring fans.

(Lucky leaves the room, Will’s eyes follow her.)

CJ: On the {cough} Day Of Which We Will Not Speak, you and Lucky drove David to the health center. What was that like, do you remember? Did he say anything?

WK: It was a quiet ride. I drove, Lucky rode shotgun and Dave just lay in the backseat with a bloody dishtowel of ice on his face. Nobody really said anything. Then Luck and I started talking about what we were going to tell the health center. Like had he been mugged or fallen down the stairs or...

And then Dave spoke up and said, “I’ll handle it.”

We got there and a male nurse was at the front. And he said something like “Holy shit, what happened to you?”

And Dave (I’m laughing about this now) said, “I slept with my best friend’s girlfriend, don’t ask.”

And that was it. Had to hand it to him, he owned it.

I remember thinking it weird he described Erik as his “best friend.” Partly because he was my best friend, thanks very much (I get stupid when I get jealous). But then I thought more about it. I had a lot of time to think about it and I thought, yeah, Fish was probably the best friend a guy like Dave could have. And it was just a horrible, tragic, stupid thing Dave did.

God, the whole thing sucked ass. I look back and I seriously wonder how nobody ended up dead. Know what I mean?

CJ: If you could go back and change anything you did that day, would you?

WK: I wouldn’t have left him alone at Colby Street. Dumbest thing ever. Telling Dais not to go over there, leaving him to stew in rage and pack up and leave. Idiotic. If I could go back, I would’ve slashed his tires, for starters. Then I would’ve parked outside his bedroom and not moved. Or lay down in the driveway. Or better, I would’ve thrown Dais into his room, barricaded the door and not let them out until…something happened. Or someone died. I don’t know. Giving him space was the wrong tactic, I know that now.

CJ: When did you realize your feelings for Erik had changed?

WK: My senior year. We’d rented the place on Colby Street. Erik got to school first, picked up the keys. I think he’d been there a couple days already when I drove up. I hadn’t seen him at all over the summer. I did an intensive with the Winnipeg ballet so I was out in fucking Manitoba. I think we talked a couple times on the phone. Anyway.

I got out of the car and he was sitting on the front porch steps playing his guitar. I got this immediate feeling in my chest. Pure, happy…delight, I guess. He looked up and his hands kept playing, but his face looked like my chest felt. And he called, “What’s up, asshole?”

I slammed the driver’s door and yelled, “I missed your stupid face.”

I started walking up to the porch, grinning so hard my teeth hurt. As I got closer... I was feeling everything and he was filling up my eyes. How he looked how he laughed and how his hands moved on the guitar strings. With every step, something in my head was going, Oh dear fucking God, what the… No. No, don’t do this to me...

But yeah. There it was. Sitting on the steps waiting for me. He helped me unload my shit from the car and it was like I was thirteen. Either totally confused and silent, or babbling to hide the confusion. I was thrown. I wouldn’t exactly define it as a happy moment. Everything in me was yelling, No. No no no no no. Not this. Not him. This isn’t funny. Stop.

And it didn’t stop. It was only starting.

{(Sighs}

CJ: {Sighs}

WK: Yeah. I knew it was big trouble because it was coming out of a long-established emotional investment. When you become physically attracted to that kind of thing, it’s like fucking chains. You have to chew your arm off to escape it. I thought pretty early on, maybe even that very night, This is gonna hurt like hell...

CJ: How did it feel to finally confess your true feelings to Erik?

WK: It had to have been one of the more surreal experiences of my life. I mean, I know I can tell him anything. In my weird head, out my big mouth. But the words were just coming out of my mouth and my head was like, Dude, what the fuck are you doing?

I stood there with my heart in my ears and I thought, All right, this is going to go one of two ways: he’s going to freak, get in his car and drive away forever. Or he’s just going to stand there and be Fish.

This five-thousand-year-long moment went by. Then he asked...something, I don’t remember, but it diverted things to what happened in Germany so it was less about him and I could get a breath back in.

Then the topic kind of veered back to James and started to touch the feelings about Fish again. Adrenaline coming and going in these massive waves and all at once I was just exhausted and vulnerable. Feeling like, That’s enough for tonight. Leave the party while you’re still having a good time. And I held up my hand and called for a rain check on the rest of the details.

He was good. He’s so good. I mean... It was cool. And a relief. Finally out there. Not some huge sordid confession, but just an honest admission. No more secrets.

Truth is liberating. But man, it can scare the shit out of you...

CJ: Can you tell us more about your breakdown in Germany? About the Erik look-a-like?

WK: It’s hard to tell a condensed version. I loved the Frankfurt Ballet. I worked my ass off there. I had the entire repertory memorized, could understudy anyone. I was first one in in the morning and last one out at night. But while I doing some of my best dancing, I was engaged in some of my worst, most self-loathing and self-abusive behavior. When I wasn’t working, I was either stoned or fucking. I slept with way too many people and ended up hospitalized once with a lethal UTI, but that’s another horror story... I’m sorry, where was I?

CJ: Dancing well but living badly.

WK: Right. I was depressed, no question. A lot of artists are, let’s face it. A ton of inspiration has its roots in depression. No shortage of angst and drama and mood to put into your work, but it’s never a big enough channel to get it away from you. It’s in your skin. Like a tattoo. I was fine at work but I’d come home and just be…alone. Lonely. Sad. Something was wrong. I had all this weight on me I couldn’t shake off.

I missed Lucky. I missed Dais. And I missed Fish. Bad. I was hurt and angry but…. Fuck, it was pretty horrid. And then Seb came along.

The thrill of a crush is a superior bandage. Seb just had the perfect look and the perfect resemblance to Fish to make me feel like I was getting a second chance at everything. For a month, when Seb and me were two moths circling around the flame, I didn’t drink or use. I was high on life. High on the chase. High on the fantasy in my head. High on this new narrative I was writing. I thought I was in love. For real. I thought, Wow, maybe this is it? Maybe this is me and maybe this is what I want. Long-term.

Finally we hooked up. In this amazing weekend of…

{Looks away staring a long time}

Seb wanted to know the reason behind every one of my tattoos. He asked me about my fingers. Asked me about the bullet holes in my side. He looked at pictures from college and asked why I’d cut my hair off. He wanted my stories and I gave them to him.

He… it was like had a backpack or something. And one at a time he took my skin, my heart, my guts, my hair, my sex, my scars and my stories… He packed them all up, swung the bag on his shoulder, turned from the door and said, “See ya. I’ll call you.”

And he left. Taking the pack, and me, with him. And that was it. He never spoke to me again.

{Long pause}

It was hard what happened next. But necessary. You know? I had nothing left. It was starting to show in my dancing. My director said maybe I should take some time off. The “maybe” was a courtesy. I was smart enough to know that. I was in trouble and I didn’t know what to do.

So I called Dais. You know what happened there—Opie answered the phone and told me Dais had had a breakdown. I tried to call Lucky. I got Judy. P.S., a nightmare.

{Sighs}

CJ: This is still upsetting to talk about.

WK: Yeah. I think I’ve told all I can now. Rain check on the rest?

CJ: What do you think would’ve happened between you and Erik when you were having a moment in the parking lot? If Daisy hadn’t texted him to interrupt it?

WK: You mean, would I have dropped to my knees and blown him?

CJ: Is that your answer?

WK: No, I was answering for a friend. You know, Cam, a long time later, Fish told me something. He said he wondered if that moment of staring between us was the moment Kees died.

CJ: Really?

WK: He said he felt outside himself, outside of time, with this weird sensation of something important coming to pass. Literally passing through the space between us. And maybe it was Kees passing away. Passing through. Stopping time to tell Erik, “Remember this moment. It’s not what you think it is. It goes beyond all this. It will make sense one day. And it’s going to save your life.”

CJ: Wow.

WK: I know. It makes it hard to take that moment and flesh it out into a “what if” scenario. It’s become kind of sacred to me now.

{Runs hand through hair, thinking} Look, I’d never make a move. He was relaxed with who I was. I flirted with him and he was a player. He had fun with it. But like I said before, he was so unquestionably straight, it was really hard to get him out of that context and into something else. Something that would hold still so I could play around with it in my mind while I played with myself.

CJ: Thanks for the visual but you still haven’t answered the question.

WK: {Grins} If Dais hadn’t texted to break up that moment… I would’ve just let it break on its own. Maybe he would’ve taken a step toward me and things would’ve gotten interesting. Probably not. It’s not who he is. And I never wanted him to be something he wasn’t.

CJ: When Fish called you that night from the hospital... I can’t imagine what that was like for him and Dais, but also for you and Lucky as parents. And for you—both as Erik’s friend and as someone who loved him. When he broke down crying in your arms... It struck me how life can be so beautiful and so tragic, and often both at the same time.

WK: Life has a sick sense of humor sometimes. I mean, there he was. Right in my arms. He came to me, turned to me, fell into me. Everything I’ve ever wanted, right? Wrong. Not like this. Never like this. Not because of this. I was so angry. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.

You know, it’s funny because...

{Breaks fourth wall and looks at author} Can I tell them?

Suanne Laqueur: Of course.

WK: Thanks. The author changed what actually happened that day. After Fish stopped crying and we were sitting on the floor. I was still holding him. He was just limp dead weight on me, exhausted. And I said, “You want to go upstairs?” Meaning, I swear, did he want to take himself upstairs to lay down.

And Fish didn’t move but he said, “With you?”

For a second I was like, What the fuck is he talking about? Finally I managed to laugh, and I said, “You’d never forgive me, but thanks for asking.”

He said, “Thanks for the moment.” Then he got up and went upstairs.

The author changed it. For the better, in my opinion.

SL: I agree.

WK: That moment wasn’t about me.

CJ: It broke my heart when Daisy and Erik lost their son. I swear one of the only things that made it bearable was the thought of you in the waiting room the whole time... Close by.

WK: I don’t know if this makes sense but it was a privilege to be there. You know? I admit later, when we went into the room and I got to hold the baby, I was afraid. I was kind of ashamed of being nervous, thinking holding a stillborn baby was going to be grotesque or something. But it wasn’t. At all. It was an honor, really.

CJ: If it’s not too personal, did you ever sleep with Kees Justi?

WK: {Spits coffee everywhere}

BAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!

{Wipes eyes} Um... No. I wish.

CJ: Can we talk about Lucky?

WK: Lucky’s my favorite subject.

CJ: Tell us about the night you met.

WK: She tells it better…

“I liked how you handled things tonight,” Lucky said. “You took control but you were cool about it.”

Will shrugged. “Dave comes across heartless but if you hang around him long enough, you see he’s ruled entirely by his heart.”

They’d left Daisy’s room and headed in the direction of Lucky’s dorm. Then, without discussion, walked right by the dorm and out the west gate of campus. They ambled down Hickory Street, here to this little park, where they sat on the swings, still talking and eating the last of the cake.

“Well, however his heart is ruled,” Lucky said, “it ain’t cool when it knocks my friends to the ground. That was just a dick move.”

“No, no excuse for that,” he said. “Still. He loves her so much it’s embarrassing.”

“Well, she’s easy to love. I like hanging out with her a lot. Weird because she’s not someone I typically gravitate toward for company.”

“Who’s more your type?”

She smiled. “People like Dave. No surprise I often end up on the ground.”

He laughed. “He does have a train wreck charm to him.”

“He probably attracts all the girls who think they can save him.”

“He needs a chick to tell him to go save himself, then give her a call. Are you cold?”

“Just my hands,” she said, tucking them under her cuffs. “Tell me more about Dais.”

He didn’t play dumb. “I love Dais. She’s my artistic soul mate.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s everything I want in a partner,” he said, breaking the last piece of chocolate cake in half. “She’s a completely different kind of dancer but we have the same vision. We know what we want the end product to look like but we get to it in different ways.”

“Funny,” Lucky said around a mouthful. “When I look at dance I always think of the man being a good partner to the woman. It seems he’s doing all the work. What makes her a good partner for you? What does she have to do?”

“Stay out of my way while I’m doing my job. Especially with lifts. She doesn’t help when she doesn’t need to. Doesn’t freak out or overthink. She just lets me lift her and get her back down. She trusts me. And to keep that alive I have to be trustworthy. Consistent and honest and there when she needs me to be there. Not just in the studio but outside, too.”

“What else does she do?”

“She creates a believable atmosphere for whatever we’re dancing. We both have huge imaginations, but I tend to dance with a mess of raw imagery in my head, while she kind of organizes it into a story. She’s good at bringing order out of my chaos.”

“I’m only good at bringing chaos out of order,” she said, running her finger over the rim of the cake tin, catching a bit of frosting and holding it out to him.

“Oh, I’m excellent at it.”

“Really? You wanna take this outside?”

He smiled and his mouth closed around her finger a second, taking what she offered, then let go. Their eyes held as she touched the center of his bottom lip. Her fingertip trailed over his chin, glided over his Adam’s apple and came to a rest at the hollow in his throat. A single silver, squared bead strung on a black leather thong at his neck.

“Where did you get this?”

“I found it.” He closed his eyes as her touch moved up his neck and back to his lips, which opened for her. She pressed her thighs tight together, let her own eyes close as the heat and wet of his mouth moved over her first knuckle. His tongue soft beneath the tip of her finger. The wind blew a bit of his hair across his face. He was so beautiful it was making her stomach do a slow backward somersault.

“Chemistry’s a fucked-up thing,” he said. “You know?”

“I almost didn’t come out tonight,” she said, touching his face.

“Matt and I almost didn’t come walking that way,” he said. “Funny how a left turn instead of a right can change everything.”

“I hope Matt wasn’t put out that I stole his date.”

He laughed against her hand. “He’s a big boy.”

“Was he your date?”

His eyes met hers and seemed to assess her a split second. “Never exclusively.”

“Have you ever dated a guy exclusively?”

“No,” he said. “My inclinations only take it so far.”

She smiled. “Ever date a girl exclusively?”

“Sure. How about you?”

“No. I did kiss a girl during a game of Truth or Dare once.”

“How was it?”

“Soft.”

“Scary?”

“No. Just soft. Like I kept looking for the hardness beneath it. The thing I’m used to leaning on when I kiss a guy. It wasn’t there. And I think she was looking for it too, and we both leaned so hard, we kind of cancelled each other out. Passed through and came out the opposite side untouched.”

He was slowly nodding, his eyes swiveled to the side. “That’s a great way of putting it.”

She set the cake tin on the ground, then climbed out of her swing and onto his, straddling his strong legs and wrapping hers around his hips.

“Can I?” she said, taking the elastic of his ponytail in her fingertips.

“Mm.” His eyes were closed again. He was beautiful. She let his hair free and dug her fingers into its warmth. He pushed his feet against the ground and set them gently swinging. They kissed and rocked, their hair blowing back and forth. First his dark, straight tresses framed their heads. Then they swung the opposite way and her blonde curls enveloped them. He made little sighs in his chest as he kissed. His hands slid under her jacket and beneath her sweater, pressing flat to her back.

“You feel so good,” he said.

She sank into his touch, simultaneously burning up and melting down.

“I love your hair,” he said, holding a handful to his face.

“Why?”

“It’s so fearless.”

“Has a mind of its own.”

“That’s what makes it beautiful.”

Back and forth in the cool night air. They kissed and kissed. He touched her breasts but didn’t attempt to unhook her bra. She shifted in his lap so she could nestle up against his erection, but she didn’t go for his belt buckle. Not yet.

“You’re like my dream kisser,” he said softly. “You taste amazing.”

She dug all ten fingers into his thick dark hair, gently pulled his chin back and ran her mouth along his neck. She was drunk on the scent of his skin. She didn’t know if it was soap or cologne or simply him, but it was warm like leather and clean like winter air, with a top note sweet like fruit but smoky, like the fruit were suspended in brandy.

And chocolate cake hung around in his kiss, dark with the slightest bitter edge.

“Come back to my room,” he whispered against her mouth.

“Why?”

“Because your hands are freezing. And I want to look at you.”

“Where’s your roommate,” she murmured.

“I don’t have one. Nobody will bother us.”

“What if I change my mind?”

“I’ll walk you home.”

She closed her teeth gently around his bottom lip. “What if you change your mind?”

Even with his lip caught, his smile was a gorgeous thing. “I’ll walk you home.”

“I don’t typically have sex on the first date.”

His hands held her face. “Neither do I.”

What the hell, she thought. You’re nineteen. It’s college. It’s what you do.

They threw away the cake tin and went back to his room. He lived in the suites on the residence quad’s south side, and as he’d said, he had the unit’s single room.

“You drew the short straw,” she said.

“It was a duel, actually.”

He clicked on a little lamp on his dresser, filling the space with pale golden light. It pleased her the bed was made and his room showed a general neatness. It pleased her more he hung her coat nicely on the back of a chair and closed the door only halfway.

“Can I snoop?” she said.

He was crouched down by the stereo, putting a disc in. “Sure.”

He hopped up to sit on the wide windowsill, a foot drawn up and his arms wrapped around his knee. Tears for Fears played “Woman in Chains” softly from the speakers. Will’s gaze fell easy on her as she studied posters and prints on the wall—Alvin Ailey, Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, Bruce Lee, Hendrix and Morrison. A dream catcher hung from the ceiling and books were stacked everywhere.

“I can see you hate to read.”

“Loathe it.”

She carefully touched knick-knacks and little things. A string of Tibetan prayer flags tacked across the top of his mirror. A hunk of quartz crystal on the dresser. A pile of woven friendship bracelets. Loose change in a mason jar. A brass statuette of the Indian elephant god, Ganesh. An unopened pack of Hanes T-shirts. A few yellow-bordered copies of National Geographic. Worry beads. Tiger balm. A hand grip strengthener. A set of nunchucks. Eye drops and Advil, gum and cigarette lighters. She unscrewed the cap of a bottle of aftershave and smelled. Wrinkling her nose, she glanced back over her shoulder. “This isn’t you.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s horrendous. My sister gave it to me. You can chuck it.”

She laughed and recapped the bottle. “I’ll let you.”

She walked over to him and put her arms around the knee he was hugging. “You do smell really good.”

His leg was warm between her breasts. She leaned and brushed his mouth with hers. He freed one of his hands and swept her hair back from her face.

“Is Lucky short for something?” he whispered, winding a spiral curl around his finger.

“Lucia.”

“What’s your middle name?”

“Grace.”

“Are you Italian?”

“No.”

He took his foot down and drew her between his knees. She wound her arms up around his neck and took a full, deep breath of him. They kissed a long time. She unbuttoned his black shirt and peeled it down his back, setting it aside.

“I’m just gonna look at you a little,” she said, taking in his tattoos.

“All right.”

Her fingers began to touch the pictures and patterns. “Which was the first one?”

He pointed to a letter on his left deltoid muscle. “This one.”

“Why a G?”

“Guillaume. French for William.”

“When did you get it?”

“My fifteenth birthday. My mom was pissed.”

She smiled, tracing the letter. “Does she call you Guillaume?”

“Gui. Her and my dad. It sounds weird coming from anyone else, though. I like Gui to be just for them.”

“What was the second one?”

He showed her a cluster of stars inked on his other deltoid. “It’s the constellation of Leo.”

She smiled. “I’m a Leo, too. July thirtieth.”

His eyes widened. “I’m the thirty-first.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

She took his wrist and turned it up, showing a beautiful dragon, wings and tail wrapped around Will’s forearm, flames darting toward the crook of his elbow.

“I got that when I made black belt,” he said.

“What’s your newest tattoo?”

He got off the windowsill and turned around, pointing back to his right shoulder blade and a large compass rose.

“I love this,” she said.

“Why?”

“I always look at the compass rose first on a map. I love old maps.” She lifted up his hair and touched a yin-yang symbol at the base of his neck. On his left shoulder blade was a large Chinese character. “What’s this?”

He laughed softly. “It’s the symbol for patience. Which I don’t have a lot of.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I put it there so it would keep a hand on my shoulder, reminding me to chill when I don’t get what I want the minute I want it.”

She walked slow circles around him, touching and asking questions. “Do you have a favorite?”

“I don’t do favorites. I love too many things.”

“What’s something you love?”

“Food.”

“You wouldn’t know,” she said, running fingertips down his spine.

“I have to keep that love on a short leash.”

She stood in front of him again. “I like that none of them are colored,” she said. “You see individual things, but just having these two or three ink tones makes it seem one design.” Her eyes glanced to his jeans, wondering what he had going on under them and if the tour were only halfway through.

His fingers touched gently at the V of her sweater. “What else?”

“Your tattoos seem to be inspirations. Or tributes to things. But not people.”

“I’m wary of tattoos for people because people come and go. Not that I don’t believe in love or love that lasts forever. But I’m a little young to be inking forever into my skin.”

“If you did ink love, where would it go?”

He circled his left pectoral muscle which was a blank slate. “Right there. Over my heart. Well, I mean, technically your heart is here in the middle. But when you put your hand on your heart and swear to something, it’s over here. That’s where I’d put forever.”

“What’s something else you love?”

He bit a corner of his lip. “You asking me questions.”

She smiled. “I have a lot.”

“I hope so.”

“I think you should shut the door,” she said.

“You sure?”

She nodded. “Thanks for being patient.”

His eyes glanced back toward the Chinese character on his shoulder. “I had help.”

He closed the door, and when he came back to her, his kiss was harder, less patient. She was hoping it would be. She wanted him bad. He slid her sweater off and unhooked her bra, filled first his hands then his mouth with her breasts. His lips slid down her stomach and he sank onto his knees, unbuttoning her jeans. She swayed under his touch and he eased her to sit on the bed.

“I’m just gonna look at you a little,” he said.

A sudden insecurity left goosebumps along her skin. “Nothing special compared to what you’re used to looking at,” she said.

His hands were gorgeous along her limbs as he slid her pants off. “What do you mean?”

“You spend all day around women with amazing bodies.”

He tilted his head, the light from the dresser glinting off his cheekbone a moment. “You mean Dais?”

“Well…” She wasn’t blind. Anywhere Daisy went, guys’ heads turned to follow.

Will sat back on his heels, crossed his forearms on her bare knees and looked up at her. “I’ll tell you something. Her body is amazing. It’s gorgeous to watch in class and onstage. It does incredible things. It’s strong and expressive and it speaks my language. But it’s not the physique I’m attracted to as a man. It’s not what I want to lie down with.”

“No?”

“No. She turns me on artistically, but not sexually. I like a girl to look like a girl. Like you. Your body is exactly what I think of as beautiful.”

His arms unfolded and his hands ran gently up the sides of her ribcage and came to cup her breasts. “This,” he said, running his touch back down, dipping in and out of her waist. “Curves like these. I love this. I love the way it feels in my hands.”

His mouth on her then. She arched into him, caressing his head.

“Your skin is amazing,” he said. He kissed down her stomach and she slowly fell back onto her elbows, wanting his mouth everywhere. She was wet and smoldering, fighting for breath behind the curves he was running his tongue along. His hands slid her underwear down. Softly moved her knees apart, setting her feet on the iron side rail of the bed.

“I’m just gonna look at you a little more.”

“All right,” she whispered, on fire and alive.

His face warm on the inside of her thigh. He set his fingertips down and slowly eased her apart. For a long moment, his breath hovered soft where she was wet.

Please, she thought, anticipation threatening to tear her limb from limb. “Will, please,” she whispered.

Her hands curled down into claws around the covers as he licked her, one magnificent flat-tongued sweep from bottom to top, curling around her clit a moment, sucking a bit, then letting go with barely a sound. Then he did it again.

And again.

Her hand reached for his head, fell in his hair and held on tight. His fingers spread her wider. His tongue reached deeper. She felt her skin peel away and part of her awareness floated off, gazing down at her hand stroking the side of his face, letting him alternate between sucking on her fingers and sucking on her.

“You feel so good on my mouth,” he whispered. No boy had ever said such a thing to her. But then her voice floated down to meet his, “Don’t stop.”

He didn’t. Neither did she. She encouraged him here, held him still there, asked for harder, pleaded for faster. Watching from above and feeling from below as Will made her come, made her go, had her come back and come into her own.

“You taste like everything,” he said.

“Everything,” she gasped.

“Everything I fucking love.” He sat back on his knees, breathing hard, the pad of one thumb slowly stroking the same path his mouth had taken. She was swollen and aching, wide open and ready in a way she’d never known.

“God, I want to be in you,” he whispered.

She sat up, pulled him to stand up, reached for his belt buckle as he reached for his top drawer. She saw more pictures and designs as she peeled his jeans off but she’d explore them later. Now she only wanted him in her. They kissed deep as their hands together dealt with business. He kneeled on the mattress and pulled her hips up into his lap. He took himself in hand and ran the tip along her, easing her open, letting her feel it.

“Put it in me,” she said. She’d never said such a thing.

One hand spread wide on her stomach, he pushed in. Slow.

“Will.”

He dropped onto his hands, his body sliding along hers. “Put your arms around me,” he whispered. Then “Put your legs around me, too. Hold onto me with everything.”

She wrapped him in her limbs, dug her heels in the small of his back and dragged her fingers into his hair. She arched up to meet him, captured his tongue and squeezed as hard as she could around his cock. His hands slid under her back, bringing her up so he could get deeper.

“You feel so good,” he whispered.

“Will...” Having said a little, now she wanted to say everything and never stop. She looked down the length of her body and saw it for what it was. Curved and lush and soft and beautiful. She wanted him to do things to her, do things with her and for her and because of her. She wanted to drag him into her body and her mouth, splash onto his skin and stay there for always, like one of his tattoos.

“It was nice to meet you,” Will said, extending his hand.

Judy pursed her lips before allowing him her limp fingers.

He hitched his dance bag higher on his shoulder. His eyes stared straight into Lucky’s and blinked once, but he didn’t touch her, thank God. With one last wave he walked off. Back straight, hair blowing back behind him.

Judy made a sound of exasperated disgust in her throat. “What’s with his hair?”

“Nothing,” Lucky said, still looking after him. “It’s just long.”

“He’s so…”

“So what?” Lucky could channel Will’s poise and strength as long as he stayed in her sight.

“So affected,” her mother said. “Is he a fairy?”

Will turned through the gates of campus and disappeared. The sun slipped behind a cloud and Lucky shivered. “Really, Mom?”

“Well.” Judy’s hand circled in the air as if to conjure up some kind of justification. “The ballet bag and the long hair and that flamboyant whatever he has going on. You’re wasting your time if you ask me.”

Nobody asked you, Lucky thought, making a show of checking her watch. “I have class in ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“He has a weird accent,” Judy said. “Where’s he from?”

“New Brunswick. He told you at lunch. Twice.” Both times Judy had mistaken it for the New Brunswick in New Jersey.

“I don’t know,” Judy said. “Seems kind of a freak.”

Because he’s not a loser, Lucky thought. He’s so fucking good, you can’t recognize it. You don’t even have words for it. I know, because I’m just learning the words myself.

What she thought would be a meteoric affair—a magnificent but fleeting flash across the night, followed by mutual burnout—had instead lingered sweetly in the sky, like a newborn constellation. He took her to breakfast the next morning. Came to hang out with her and Daisy that night. He slept over, the three of them talking and joking in the dark like they were at camp. She woke up in his arms the next morning thinking it was something she could get used to. And he seemed to feel the same way.

“You’re all over my mind,” he said. “It’s crazy how I’m looking for you all the time.”

“Me too,” she said. “Like I literally keep glancing over my shoulder because I want to see you there.”

He dug his fingers in her curls and brought her mouth up to his. “This is happy,” he whispered.

He was the most stable and grounded boy she’d ever met in her life. Perhaps the most steady human being she’d met in her life. And yet, at the same time, he was one of the most dazzlingly passionate people she knew. His personality had a dozen different facets. His emotions were multi-colored, multi-layered and complex. But he never got overwhelmed by himself. He never got tired or depressed, never milked a bad mood into everyone else’s glass.

“He’s kind,” she said to Daisy. A simple, almost flimsy word that didn’t sound like it could hold all of Lucky’s bursting emotions. Daisy hugged her, though, and said, “He’s kind to you.”

Whether in bed or on a date or in a social setting, she could feel the humming warmth of Will’s attraction to her. His attention shone on her like a sun lamp, attentive like a radar dish tuned to her frequency. Every day, in a hundred silent and sweet ways, he made her feel cherished and worthy and interesting. Smart and relevant and beautiful.

“You’ve gained weight,” Judy said. “I warned you about the freshman fifteen.”

Lucky didn’t say anything. She’d actually lost five pounds since October break, but her mother only saw what she wanted to see.

“Your roommate, though,” Judy said. “Now that’s a body. You could look like that if you put your mind to it.”

“She dances thirty hours a week, Mom.”

“Well, you never will. Waste of time putting you in dance class with those chubby legs.”

What are you trying to accomplish? Lucky thought. Honestly, what are you expecting me to reply here? Thank you, mother? Yes, of course, mother? How silly of me not to have seen, mother, thank you for pointing this out to me, mother?

“Anyway, back to this so-called boyfriend of yours,” Judy said. “I’d be careful. They all have AIDS these days.”

“All who, Mom?”

“You know who. All those gay men dancers.”

“He’s not gay.”

“That’s what you think. Be reasonable, Lucia.” The name always sounded like a foreign curse word in Judy’s mouth. “Do something with your hair, make an effort, find a boy who’s going somewhere. Not a loser who wants to starve for art.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lucky said. She leaned to peck her mother’s cheek. “Drive safe, Mom. I’ll call you Sunday.”

Walking away, she wondered if her mother was looking after with regret, or just muttering self-righteously to herself, wondering what fallen woman had dropped this changeling babe on her doorstep.

Lucky stuffed her hands in her pockets, growing more chilled off. The sun stayed hidden and the wind kicked up, blowing her curls around. Will called her hair fearless and beautiful. He said he’d never known anyone whose personality manifested itself so perfectly in their appearance.

Do something with your hair, Lucia. Can’t you get it under control?

The gusts blew harder, blowing leaves and litter across the parking lot, burning cold against her eyes, which were filling up with tears. She sniffed hard, refusing to give her mother the satisfaction, while all around her, the familiar recriminations swooped like black crows.

What did I do?

Why is nothing ever good enough?

Why don’t you love me?

Why won’t you help me?

Her throat ached against the checked sobs. She dragged the back of her hand across her eyes as she came through the last row of parked cars. The campus beckoned invitingly. It was safe over there. Her mother’s crows couldn’t reach her.

She wiped her eyes again, staring as she neared the brick and iron gates. Will leaned against one, arms and ankles crossed, his dance bag on the ground. He’d pulled his hair back. Only a couple of errant strands blew about his face. As she stepped onto the sidewalk, he unfolded his arms. She walked straight into them and he closed her up tight, pulling her face against him and wrapping the lapels of his jacket around her.

“Give me twenty,” he said against her head.

She put her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek to his heart and held still. Will told her once it took twenty seconds for a hug to go from affectionate to therapeutic. It was now one of their inside jokes. I need a twenty, they’d say, or, You got twenty I can borrow?

The seconds peeled off. Her throat unlocked and her shoulders slumped. Enclosed in the warm, private tent of Will’s coat, she started to cry.

“It’s all right,” he whispered.

She cried harder. The crows wheeled and screamed, meaner ones with longer talons and sharper beaks.

I hate you.

I didn’t ask to be born.

“I got you, honey,” Will said, hiding her head from pecking and gouging and cawing.

I wish you were dead.

Get out of my life if I’m such a disappointment to you…

“Come on,” he said, shouldering his bag again and taking her hand. His stride was purposeful through the piles of dry, crunching leaves. He had class. He was late already. She’d walk him as far as Mallory Hall and then go back to her room and grab a nap.

But they passed Mallory, turning toward the residence quad.

“Where are we going?”

“My room.”

“You have class,” she said.

“I called in sick.”

His life revolved around class. He was intensely disciplined about his art and she’d never known him to cut class, miss a rehearsal or skip a workout. Ever. Bewilderment and gratitude bubbled up in her heart. Her legs felt leaden then, weary to the bone, her spirit crushed to gravel. She followed where he led, up stairs and along hallways, nearly stumbling by the time his bedroom door closed behind them.

He got her a drink of water, unzipped her jacket and untied her shoes as if she were a child. He opened the sheets and blankets of his bed. “Lie down now,” he said.

“I’m sorry I’m so—”

“Shh.” He shut and locked the door, then closed his blinds. “I don’t want to hear sorry.” He took off his watch and his shirt and slid in beside her, pulling her back against his chest. His tattooed arms slid around her, a warm palm on her forehead. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“Thank you,” she said, different tears filling her vision now, blurring the Japanese watercolors tacked on the wall.

He held her tight. “She treats you like shit and you don’t deserve it. She’s the sorry one.”

She sniffed, nodded her head, trying to believe it.

“Go to sleep, honey. Nothing else is going to hurt you today.”

That much she could believe. She relaxed into his safety and spiraled down into thick sleep. Rain was beating hard against the windows when she woke up, but in her head it was clear sunlight, warm and soft.

“Feel good?” Will whispered, turning her toward him. At some point while she was sleeping, he took off the rest of his clothes.

“Mm.”

He popped the button on her jeans and unzipped them. “Want to feel even better?”

She nodded, caressing his face. “Mm…”

“I don’t know what it is.” His mouth moved along her neck, hot and shaking. “Just watching you sleep gets me all worked up.”

She helped him pull her pants down. “You’re so patient.”

“No, I’m not.” He left them bunched around her calves and slid his hand into her underwear. His fingers moved in and up. “God, you’re so wet.”

She let her knees fall open, moving her hips up to meet his touch. “I was dreaming about you,” she murmured.

His kiss pulled her mouth apart, filling her with hunger. “What were you doing to me?”

“Everything.”

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered. “Some days I don’t want to do anything but be inside you. Not dance, not train, not rehearse, not work. I just want to lock us in here and take up all your time…”

Suffused with power and desire, she licked at his lower lip. “Get the hell in me, you greedy beast.”

Fuck me, she thought, not yet bold enough to say it aloud. But the thought alone was dazzling, both crystalline sharp and luscious damp. Watching him roll on a condom, her body screamed for him, aching to be filled up and burst apart. Wanting to curl up small in his arms, then sprawl out wide and let him have at her.

They stayed in bed all afternoon, loving and talking and dozing as the music repeated over and over.

“Look,” Will said. He pointed and Lucky turned her head to see them reflected in the mirror behind the door. They were both on their knees, Will behind her with his arms tight around her body. He was tanned and sculpted across her white curves. His skin telling a story while hers was a blank slate. The spirals of her hair bubbled around his straight, dark tresses. Hard against soft. Small within large. All their opposites making a perfect picture in the mirror.

“There,” he said, moving in her. “Look how beautiful you are…”

Under Will’s hands and eyes and mouth and voice, Lucky came back into her own. She always did. Whenever she got lost, Will turned her around, found her reflection and put herself back in her own hands again.

You’re not lost. You just got misplaced. Here you are. See? Look how beautiful.

“Who was the first boy you kissed?” she asked.

Will’s smile was lazy. “Christophe Mortime.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. He was eighteen.”

“Was he a dancer?”

“No. Hockey player.”

“Hot?”

“Oh.” Will closed his eyes. “God. You have no idea.”

“How’s it different from kissing a girl?”

“That’s like asking how is driving a car different from flying an airplane,” he said, pressing his face into her neck.

“Was it out of the blue?”

“We were drunk at a party.”

“No, I mean…was it in context of stuff you’d already been feeling for guys?”

“Yeah. From the time I figured out what a crush was, it was equal opportunity. I had girls I was stupid over and guys I was stupid over. Often both at the same time.”

“Monday, Wednesday and Friday is girl crush day.”

“Tuesday and Thursday is guys. The weekend is freestyle.”

“Who was your most serious girlfriend?”

“Anne-Karin. I was with her two years.”

“Did you love her?”

“Yeah. She broke my heart.”

“How so?”

“She slept with Christopher Mortime.”

“Shut up.”

“They’re still together.”

“Ouch.”

“Nah,” he said. “We were growing apart. And we were geographically apart—I was at school here and she was still in Montreal. It wasn’t a shock that our relationship ended but Jesus Christ, break up with me first before you hit the sack with someone else.”

“Common courtesy.”

“When I say she broke my heart it was the slimy dishonesty of it. Telling me there wasn’t anyone else—”

“It’s not me, it’s you.”

“When there was. Oh God, she used all those stupid lines. ‘I need to find myself. I’m just evolving in a way that you’re not.’ Please. I already know you hopped on him so spare me the bullshit and just fucking own it.”

“It still sucks.”

“Yeah. Well. Matt Lombardi picked up the pieces.”

Lucky laughed. “Retail therapy. So to speak.”

“Exactly. Scratch my back?”

He loved having his back scratched. He loved being touched, period. Except for his ears. He didn’t like them kissed or licked or nuzzled—he’d actually flinch and swat her away, the goosebumps rippling over his skin. Once a gnat flew into his ear and she had to scrape him off the ceiling.

“Was Matt the last guy you were with?” she asked, running her nails along his shoulder blades.

“Mm-hm.”

“So it doesn’t happen very often, does it?”

“It’s like a craving,” he said, turning his cheek on his crossed arms. “It’s always a physical urge. I just start jonesing for that kind of connection and if I’m not involved with anyone, I’ll go look for it.”

“Were you looking for it the night we met?”

“Matt was. I hadn’t decided yet. I was in a funny mood that night.”

“How so?”

He set his chin on his wrists, staring straight at the headboard. “Ever be in a mood where you were like, ‘I don’t want to make love, I want to fuck’?”

“Sure.”

“That night it was the other way around. I was more horny for cuddling.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And Matt’s great in bed but he likes to sleep alone.”

“What makes him good in bed?”

A long moment of thoughtful silence. “He’s…careful. Passionate, but careful.”

Lucky thought through a moment of her own, shaping her next question.

“Go ahead,” Will said, laughing softly. “Drop the other shoe, babe.”

“Do you top or bottom?”

“Both.”

“Which do you prefer?”

“Depends on the guy,” he says. “But usually top.”

“Why? You’re more in control?”

“Kind of,” he said slowly. “But it’s not about power. It’s... Shit, this is hard to articulate.” He tapped his teeth together, thinking. “I like to make love,” he finally said. “I’ve had sexual encounters that were superficial and casual, but I’ve never been to bed with someone I didn’t have some kind of emotional connection with. I can’t really get turned on without it. Fucking to scratch an itch is boring. I may as well just jerk off and call it a night. That’s just me. I’m not every bisexual guy but this is my story.

“Anyway, in my mind, when you bottom, you’re surrendering. You’re giving up control and if you don’t trust who’s on you, a lot of things can go wrong. When you top, you’re providing the trust. You’re not only in control, you not only have the power but you have a responsibility. That’s the part I like because the emotional connection is even more intense. Vulnerability is hot.”

“Interesting that you’ll make love with it, but you don’t want to be in love with it.”

“It’s not that I’m closed to the idea. It’s just never happened. And it’s not a scenario I can easily shape in my mind, either. I don’t envision hanging out with a guy like this…” His hand lifted, indicating the two of them, naked in his bed, talking themselves dry in between bouts of feverish lovemaking. “On a long-term basis. Yeah, I’ve spent the night with men and woken up the next morning and all that. But never more than a night. I’ve never strung together consecutive nights with day-to-day routine and called it a relationship. When I think about sharing my life, sharing my time—my personal, everyday time, my thoughts and my problems and my weirdness and all that. I close my eyes and I see it with a woman. Always have.”

“You were born to love women,” she said, running her hand down his spine. “And born to want men.”

“I was born.” He rubbed his forehead on his arm, then laid his cheek down again, smiling.

“I know I ask you a lot of questions.”

“I don’t mind.” He rolled onto his side and held his arm up. “Come here, I want to hold you.”

She slid up against his chest, sliding her leg between his. “Ask me something.”

“Have you ever bottomed?”

“No.”

“Lack of interest or lack of suitable partner?”

“Both. Never met a guy I felt that comfortable with and even if I did, it just seems like something that would hurt like hell.”

“It shouldn’t. But I hear you. I’m not into anything that hurts. Or anything that’s violent or degrading. As soon as it stops feeling good or stops being fun, I’m out. I try not to start any of that shit, either.”

Something was starting under the covers though, yawning to life and pressing up against Lucky’s stomach. She reached down and closed him up in her hand.

“Doing it with you would definitely scare me,” she said. “And I mean that as a compliment.”

“Quiet, you,” he whispered.

“Really. Even at half-mast, this is an outstanding cock.”

His lids were closed but she could see his eyeballs rolling beneath, and his smile was a sheepish zigzag line. “Thanks.”

“What does it feel like when it goes in me?”

“Just…warm and tight and wet. Like a fist made out of…velvet, maybe. Softer.”

“Mm.”

“It feels like everything.”

“Have you ever been inside a girl without a condom?”

“With Anne-Karin. She’d let me feel it a couple seconds but we’d get too spooked to keep it up for any length of time.”

“How about with a guy?”

He shook his head. “No. God. Never. I don’t fool around with that. Not in this day and age.”

“I’m asking a lot of questions,” she said, rolling to her back and pulling him on top of her.

One of his arms curled under her shoulders, the other hand reached for the bedside table. “I don’t mind.”

The condom wrapper fluttered to the floor. Will’s hands dug under her shoulder blades. He moved hard against the inside of her leg, then he pushed inside. She breathed in deep at his neck, inhaling the smell of him and the scent of them.

“Ask me now,” he whispered, setting his eyebrows against hers.

Her hands came up to his face. “What?”

His mouth so soft on hers. “Ask me if I love you…”

“You ever see Fish naked?”

Will lowered the book an inch and raised an eyebrow.

James stared back, cool and curious. “You know, happen to pass by his room when he’s getting dressed or something?”

They stared each other down a moment. Uncustomarily, Will blinked first and raised the book again without a word.

Today, he thought, as a matter of fact. I passed by his bedroom door. Which was shut. Mostly. Cracked enough to see in. He was in a towel, rubbing some gel on his hands and running his hands through his wet hair. Wiping his hands off on his hips and then chucking the towel aside. And there he was in the altogether and I had myself a nice long look. Pardon fucking me but he’s shredded these days. Clocking the hours at the gym, working out like a maniac and it’s paid off.

Will’s cock stirred to life beneath his belt, remembering.

He looks good. It’s more than being in shape. When a guy’s in love and getting laid all the time and surrounded by everything and everybody he loves…it shows.

James put a hand on Will’s calf.

So yeah, I’ve seen him naked. I watch him sleep sometimes, too—same thing, if I happen to be passing by his room and he’s snoozing out. I’ll stop and watch. How about that shit? I watch him a lot. It’s deliberate lately. I go out of my way to get him in my line of sight. The air changes when he’s around. It tastes different in my mouth and feels different in my lungs. And when he leaves it’s like the light goes dimmer.

James’s hand was stroking up and down his leg.

What’s it to you? Will thought. Jealous? Bet you are. Bet you’re jealous as hell of Daisy, she gets her fill of that every damn night, twice on Saturday. I’ve heard them. The walls are thin and every now and then you hear them.

Actually, Dais doesn’t make much noise at all. Fish doesn’t kiss and tell but we’ve had some guy talk and apparently when he makes Dais come she can’t make a sound. Fish, though…I admit I’ve fisted my own cock to the sound of him in the dark, so what? What goes on between me and my hand and my mind is nobody’s damn business.

James’s hand was on his fly.

Will’s eyes settled on the blank margin of the page, remembering Fish tossing the towel aside, whistling as he opened drawers and stepped into a clean pair of boxers.

“I see you over there,” James said.

Will pulling back from the door before Fish could see him. Inventing business in his room, then timing it to leave just as Fish did, clean and damp and dressed. “What’s up, asshole,” he said, swinging around the newel post and heading downstairs with a happy thump of feet on the treads.

Me, Will thought, watching him go, watching the light dim.

He was getting harder under James’s hand. Remembering another afternoon and another half-closed door. Fish on his back on his bed, Daisy straddling his hips. They were dressed. Just making out. Fish’s mouth slowly opening and closing under Daisy’s, his hands up in her hair.

“I want you in my mouth,” James whispered.

“I can’t wait to get my mouth on you,” Erik whispered, on the phone with Daisy, not knowing Will could hear him. “I can taste you already…”

James unbuckled Will’s belt and unzipped his fly.

Fish zipping up his jeans, threading a belt through the loops, biceps and back muscles rippling.

James’s mouth opened.

Fish’s mouth open against Daisy’s skin.

James’s wet mouth.

Fish’s wet skin, when he lifted the hem of his T-shirt to wipe off his dripping face.

“I’m crazy about you,” James said.

“Dude, you’re insane,” Fish said, gasping, falling to the gym floor. Red-faced and panting, his hair soaked with sweat, the veins pushed up high in his arms.

“I fucking love your cock,” James said.

“Get up, you pussy,” Will said to Fish, laughing.

He reached his hand down and set it on James’s head.

Reaching a hand down and feeling the warm smack of Fish’s palm against his. Hauling him up. Ruffling his damp hair before shoving him away. “You got one more set…”

“You taste so good,” James murmured.

Will rested his hands on James’s shoulders, not shoving him away.

I can’t wait to get my mouth on you.

“I swear, it’s the best,” James said.

“I swear,” Fish said. “I’m so in love with her it’s just… She makes me be my best. Know what I mean?”

“You’re pretending I’m him, aren’t you,” James said.

Will opened his eyes, the images in his head floating away like bubbles, shimmering one last moment before popping.

“Aren’t you?” James said.

“I think you’re more fixated on him than I am,” Will said.

“I’m fascinated, I admit it.” James rocked back on his knees, licking his lips. “He’s the only thing I’ve ever seen rattle you.”

Will sat up on his elbows. “You have weird pillow talk, dude.” His erection glanced impatiently from him to James, wondering if they were done with this little discussion or if it should leave. “I’m going upstairs,” he said. “You’re welcome to come. Or you can stay down here and be fascinated.” I don’t care, he finished silently. Because cruelty wouldn’t get him laid. And he wanted badly to fuck the pictures in his mind.

James tore his shirt over his head and pitched forward, hands on Will’s shoulders, driving him down into the couch cushions. His mouth crashed into Will’s, hard and soft, wet and deep. Will was startled by the attack, then he sank his teeth into it. Wrapping an arm around James’s bare shoulders he rolled them off the couch, down onto the floor, knocking over the coffee table. He got James under him, pinned his arms with his knees as he ripped his own shirt over his head and threw it into the mess on the floor.

“That’s it,” James whispered.

“You don’t know what it is,” Will said.

“Go ahead. Make me him. I don’t mind.”

“Careful what you ask for, Jay. I don’t do things by halves.”

“Come on. Upstairs. Take me upstairs where it’s dark and make it everything you wish it could be.”

Will got up. Staring at James, he hesitated, then reached his hand down. James smacked his palm against it and let Will haul him to his feet.

If he wasn’t pacing during a phone conversation, Will gravitated toward steps. He’d always found staircases a comfortable and comforting place to talk. He was parked there now with the cordless, staring out the window and waiting for Lucky to call.

Fish was upstairs, asleep. After two years of living together, Will discovered Fish was one of those hale, hearty types who rarely came down with anything. You could sneeze in his face or puke on his shoes and his immune system would shrug it off. But the few times a bug managed to storm the keep, it was total annihilation.

Day before yesterday, Fish raised the white flag and came crawling home to die. Flushed with a fever, eyes glazed, voice a hoarse croak and shuffling around Colby Street like he’d gone ten rounds with Evander Holyfield. Everything hurt, he said, even his skin. Only Daisy could get anywhere near him, and then only to bring him tea or soup and dose him up with Nyquil and Theraflu.

Poor guy.

Will was supposed to go out with James tonight. A sort of unofficial swan song before winter break. Before The Break. Come January, this affair was over.

But Fish was sick. And Dais, Taylor Revell and Aisha Johnson had scored last-minute tickets to the Philadelphia Ballet and they were making a girl’s night of it in the city. Fish was alone at Colby Street, up in his bed, quietly dying. And…

“And what,” James said this afternoon, unloading his clothes from the washer to the dryer in Mallory Hall’s laundry room. If a show wasn’t in production, upperclassmen were allowed to use the machines for personal items. “The fuck, man, is Dais making you babysit?”

“Dais doesn’t make me do anything.”

“Gonna give him a nice sponge bath?”

“Knock it off,” Will said. “I’m beat and I don’t feel like going out now.” Which was the truth. And also, yeah, a little, he didn’t want Fish to be home alone when he was sick. So what? Nothing wrong with hanging around in case something happened. No sponge baths, just simple, friendly concern.

And the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of.

James rolled his eyes, shifting his lower jaw to the side. “You’re not fooling me.”

“I quit trying a long time ago. You invited me to, remember?”

“You don’t want to sleep with me while he’s there,” James said. “That’s what it is.”

“To be honest, I don’t,” Will said. “He might not be there very often but it’s his place. He’s sick and miserable tonight and doesn’t need to be disturbed.”

“And seeing you go to bed with me would be so disturbing.”

“Jay… Stop making it about you.”

“It’s about us.” James nudged the door to the laundry room shut with his foot, then stepped closer to Will. “Come on,” he said around a soft smile. The sun came through the transom windows and lit up the gold in his eyes and the rings at his ears. His teeth flashed straight and white within his goatee. Will had always been a sucker for good teeth. And as much as James was irritating him lately, sometimes, like now, he filled up Will’s eyes and pressed on Will’s brain in a way that made Will really…dumb.

“I can be quiet,” James said.

A single chuckle escaped Will’s chest. “The hell you can.” James was a rather noisy fuck and, if he was relaxed enough, had a filthy mouth, too. Thinking about it made Will start to get hard.

James’s hand glided up Will’s arm, fingertips slipping beneath his T-shirt sleeve. “I won’t come over until he’s asleep. He won’t even know I’m there.”

Will closed his eyes as he felt the goosebumps sweep his skin and his nipples tighten up. James’s woodsy scent filled his nose and then his mouth was on Will’s. Soft. Then a little harder. Opening. The guy could kiss like a motherfucker and without hardly realizing it, Will went after his bottom lip, felt it firm and perfect between his teeth.

What the fuck is this, he thought slowly. He turns me on and I don’t even like him that much…

James ran his mouth along Will’s jaw now. “If you don’t want him to know, we can go to Dais’s place.”

Will opened his eyes. “No, we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s also Lucky’s place and while her and I have a certain understanding, I do not fuck that understanding in her bed.”

“It’s not like her sheets are on it.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“She won’t know.”

“I’ll know.”

“And you couldn’t stand any memory of me there.”

“You’re right,” Will said. “I couldn’t. I made that clear from the start. You looked me in the eye and told me you understood.”

“I understand. I get it. But now I’m not going to get to make love with you one last time. And I’m sorry, but that’s kind of killing me.” His hand went around the back of Will’s neck, gathering a handful of hair. “I miss you already.”

“I know, man,” Will said. “And I’m sorry, too. But I told you when it was going to be over.”

“I know.” His gaze settled on Will’s. “But look me in the eye now and tell me you don’t want one last night.”

Will swallowed. Funny how you could be attracted to something distasteful. Crazy how that kind of twisted desire could choke you…

Both James’s hands slid around Will’s waist and into his back pockets. “You were going to let me take you this time.” His hands squeezed Will’s ass, pulling his hips in. “Remember you said?”

Will remembered. And regretted it. He hadn’t ever let James top him. And contrary to everything he thought he knew about himself, staying on top during this affair had nothing to do with the thrill of being responsible for a partner’s vulnerability. It had everything to do with staying in control. Things were tenuous enough without allowing himself to get under James and surrender his upper hand. He was liable to…

“Worried I’ll ruin you?” James whispered at Will’s neck. “Worried I’ll give it to you so good you’ll only want it again? Won’t be able to stop wanting it?”

“I’m not worried,” Will said, wanting with every atom of his body to rip open his pants and fuck James’s arrogant mouth shut. “And I can stop anytime.”

James stepped back, eyes narrowing and smile widening. “So can I.”

“Fine, then. Let’s just stop. Right now.”

James shrugged. “I don’t care. Hell if I’m going to beg one for the road. I’ve got some pride.” But his eyes were blinking now and the faintest tremble took over his jaw.

“It’s better this way,” Will said. “Neither of us gets what we want.”

“Whatever.” James started folding his clothes. “Go home and nurse your little friend. Then blow a load in your hand later. You’re not fooling me.”

Will went home. Colby Street was dark and silent. A saucepan was on the stove with a can of chicken noodle soup next to it. Apparently Fish had started to heat it up and then abandoned it. Will opened the can, turned on the burner and finished the job. He poured the soup into a big mug and took it upstairs.

Fish was a stomach sleeper. Classic gecko pose: one leg long, the other bent up, a pillow wedged under that hip and shoulder.

“Dude,” Will said softly. “You awake?”

Fish turned his head. “Hey.”

“You want your soup?”

“What?” He pushed up on his elbows and clicked on his table lamp. “Oh yeah, I started to warm it up. Ran out of gas…”

“I figured.”

“Did I leave the stove on?”

“You didn’t get that far.” Will nudged aside empty cups and a tissue box to set the soup down. Fish sat up, rubbed his face, and then reached for the mug.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem.”

“You going out tonight?”

“Nah, I’m beat. Got some studying to do.”

Fish nodded, blowing across the surface of the soup, staring out at nothing. He wore sweats and a thermal top. The color was up along his cheekbones and his dark blond hair was tousled, half-crushed on one side. He brought the mug up for a sip and when he lowered it, his teeth chattered a little. “I think I’m dying.”

“We’re all dying.”

“Thanks, Buddha.” He gave a wry smile over the rim of the mug before his lips curled around it for another sip.

Will swallowed. “I’m going to crash a while,” he said, and left.

He called Lucky and got her machine.

“It’s me,” he said. “Call me when you get this, I’ll be home tonight.”

He shut his bedroom door, pulled the curtains closed, then heeled off his sneakers and lay down.

You’re not fooling me.

The apartment was so quiet, the walls so thin, he could hear the clink of Fish setting the empty mug down and the click of his lamp being turned out. The soft creak of bedsprings as he lay down, pushing pillows under a shoulder and hip, getting settled.

Will closed his eyes and pulled his own pillow to his chest, spooning it. Behind his lids, he saw his hand reach out to Fish’s hot, tousled head. It spread wide on his crown, rubbed back and forth a few times.

“Everything hurts,” Fish said.

“I know,” Will said. His hand glided over Fish’s shoulder and down his side.

“I’m so fucking cold.”

Will moved up close against Fish’s back. He pulled the covers tight, then slid his arm around him. “This hurt your skin?”

“No, it’s fine.” The F trembled through chattering teeth and his shivering shoulders pressed back against Will’s chest.

“Go to sleep,” Will said. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

A chuckle. “You don’t have to babysit me.” He turned his face toward the pillow. The line of his neck smooth and vulnerable in the light from the window.

“I want to,” Will said.

Fish trembled in his arms. His teeth chattered and his skin was so hot.

“What is it about being sick that makes you so fucking horny,” he muttered.

Will laughed against the back of Fish’s head. “There’s fever, and then there’s fever.”

“Jesus Christ…”

Will pressed his mouth to Fish’s neck and slid his hand under his shirt. Goosebumps and heat. He reached up and out of the collar. Fish’s face was scruffy with beard growth and burning under Will’s palm.

“I don’t want to get you sick,” Fish whispered.

“I’m already sick,” Will said. “Sick and crazy about you.”

Fish’s shoulders shook again, but with soft chuckling. Laughter that fell apart when Will’s hand reversed direction, went gliding down Fish’s chest and stomach and into his pants, where he was hard like iron and burning twice as hot…

Will flung the pillow and rolled to his other side, breaking the vision apart. He smashed it to pieces, ground the pieces under his heel to dust, then scraped the dust aside.

Enough already.

Neither of us gets what we want.

After a few more sighing, fretful minutes, he gave up. He unbuckled his jeans, pushed them down and rubbed one viciously out.

“There’s your one for the road, Jay,” he whispered, breathing hard as he toweled off.

It didn’t make him feel any better. But at least he could think now. He chucked the towel, along with his clothes—he thought even better naked—and curled up against his pillow again.

What do you want?

It was one of the meditation techniques his sensei had taught him. To focus on your breathing and concentrate on the specific thing you wanted. Really wanted. Truly. And then to ask yourself if you could want it without having it.

What do you want to want? And what do you want to have?

“I want him,” he whispered, his hand moving along the pillow as if it were a body. I’ll never have it, and the wanting can be enough. I like the wanting for what it is. He’s the only man I love. Ever loved. Ever will love, I think. It can be a star in the sky and just stay there where I can look at it.

But he didn’t like James looking at it. Trying to lasso the star down to earth and play with that want. Will had allowed it, and it was a mistake. James made him want to have. James took a clean, independent desire and made it into something co-dependent and toxic. Took it from an energizing daydream to a draining, insatiable hunger. It was exhausting. And distracting. It wasn’t healthy for either of them.

I don’t want James as a lover anymore.

Done. You took care of that. Fish’s star goes back in the sky. What you feel for him stays there. What else do you want?

He closed his eyes. His hand moved. Closed around blonde curls, moved them aside so his mouth could settle on soft, cool skin. His body relaxed. A full breath of air to the bottom of his lungs and then out again.

What do you want? But it was her voice in his head this time, gentle fingers running through his hair.

“You,” he whispered.

Why? Because I keep you straight?

“I’m not straight,” he said. This had nothing to do with identity. He was bisexual and would be all his life. He could be it without practicing it.

Be it with me? she asked. Do you want to have me? Or do I just keep you out of trouble?

“You keep me content,” he said. “You let me be myself. All my selves. Wanting men is an occasional itch.”

Except for Fish.

“He’s a star in the sky. When I think about sharing my life, sharing my time—my personal, everyday time, my thoughts and my problems and my weirdness. I close my eyes and I see it with a woman. I always have. And I see it with you…”

He shivered, hot inside his skin. “Lucky, come home,” he whispered, fingertips tracing patterns on the wall by his bed. “Please come home…”

He only dozed a half-hour. He got dressed and went downstairs, taking the cordless with him. He sat on the bottom step, staring out the window and thinking about what he wanted. And waiting.

Finally the phone rang.

“It’s me,” Lucky said.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “How are you?”

A sigh. “I’m really tired and really confused and really lonely.”

“Yeah,” he said, propping both feet against the newel post. “Same here.”

“Will?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I need to talk to you, too.”

“I miss you.”

“Same here, I miss you bad. I don’t feel so great about things tonight.”

“Me neither. I don’t think I like this. I don’t think anything of this semester has been what I want.”

Will squeezed his eyes shut. “There’s something… A lot of things I need to tell you,” he said. “I don’t know how you’ve been handing this whole separation arrangement but—”

“I slept with someone else,” she said.

He opened his eyes. “Yeah, so did I.”

They both exhaled.

“So how was it for you?” she asked.

“Fun for a while,” he said. “Then…not so fun.”

“Yeah, you know, the chase was exciting. Being brand-new. But once that was over, it was…nothing. It was empty. And it wasn’t you.”

“I look for you all the time,” he whispered. “I know you’re not here but I look for you anyway.”

“Well.” She let out her breath with a small laugh. “This went better than I expected. I was sure you were going to tell me you were in love with her.”

“Him,” he said.

“What?”

“I didn’t sleep with another woman. I slept with James Dow.”

“Oh,” she said. “I slept with a firefighter.”

“You win.”

“You think?”

“I think I got a problem on my hands now.”

“Selection error?”

“Major. He’s not the most stable guy and he’s…in over his head. He’s not going to let go easily.”

“I see.”

“I never lied to him. I made it clear from the start what the limits were. I ended it today. But it might be tense when you get back to school and for that I’m sorry. I’ll handle it.”

“All right. But don’t shelter me. We’ve always been honest with each other, it’s why we work.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you, too. It’s nothing I need to figure out anymore, Will. I want to be with you.”

He smiled against the tightness in his throat. “God, I need you right now…”

A creaking along the upstairs hall. Fish was awake.

“Soon,” Lucky said. “I’ll be back soon. And then I want just you and me.”

“I want that, too. I want to be your man again.”

Fish was coming down the stairs. Will swiveled on the step, taking his feet off the newel post and putting them on the floor, making room.

“I’m so tired,” Lucky said. “Spiritually tired. The stuff I’ve seen these past few months, Will. People do shitty, shitty things to each other. They do insane things to the people they love. Or for the people they love. It breaks my heart and I don’t have anyone to talk to the way I talk to you…”

“I know, honey,” he said, sinking his forehead into a palm. “I miss you so much.”

“I wish you were here. Right now.”

Fish was squeezing past. His hand dropped warm and wide on Will’s head, moved back and forth a few times, then he heading into the living room without looking back.

Thank you, Will thought. “So do I,” he said.

Will thumped his fist twice on James’s door. His roommate opened it.

“He around?” Will said, without preamble.

“Haven’t seen him all day.”

“Thanks.”

“Want me to give him a message?”

Tell him he’s a fucking dead man, Will thought. “No, don’t bother. I wasn’t here.”

The roommate shrugged and closed the door. Will looked right and left, thinking.

If I fucked up and had a target on my back, where would I go to hide?

“Nigeria,” he mumbled.

In a weird way, he sympathized with James right now. Will sure as hell didn’t feel like going home. No joy was waiting for him at Jay Street. Only Daisy resting on ice, and both Fish and Lucky looking daggers at him.

I fucked up.

“Jesus Christ, I fucked this up big time,” he said under his breath, walking toward the stairwell. As he headed across the residence quad—not even sure where he was heading, his mind rehearsed a confrontation with an invisible adversary: You pull a fucking stunt like that again and I will bury you. You come near me or come near the people I love again, I will fucking destroy you.

He stopped to light a cigarette, exhaling smoke and fury, replaying today’s rehearsal of Who Cares?

During “The Man I Love,” Will watched James like a hawk, his muscles twitching in a sulk as he critiqued James’s partnering. Protesting all the things James did wrong and smugly pointing out all the things Will would do differently.

It was pure jealousy. Will knew he didn’t like anyone else partnering Dais, plain and simple. He knew perfectly well what he was wallowing in, and he knew the more completely he wallowed, the sooner he’d be over it.

Fucking thing’s so wasted on him, he thought petulantly, crossing his arms over his chest. His chin moved in time with the music, his eyes narrowing as his mind kept up a silent stream of coaching. Watch her there. Come on, don’t grab her. That would’ve been a double pirouette if you’d stayed out of the way. Dude, don’t be looking at me, look at her…

But James kept looking at him. Will kept averting his gaze and James kept finding it. Will sat up a little straighter, his skin prickling, his instinct uncoiling like a snake in his belly, lifting its scaled head and putting out a forked tongue to taste the air.

Trouble.

James and Dais pulled away from each other, separating to either side of the studio in a phrase of turning leaps.

Trouble.

They were coming to one of the pas de deux’s trickier moments. Deceptively tricky. To the audience, it was a two-second lift that looked like a piece of cake. It was supposed to look like cake. You weren’t supposed to see the skill involved, only how seamlessly it flowed into the next phrase. Daisy had to jump and turn backward in arabesque. It was a blind leap, with the onus on James to be precisely where she needed him to be.

It was the kind of moment in partnering Will adored. When he was entirely responsible. When it was all on him. When Daisy’s trust in him wrapped around his heart and filled him chivalric purpose he normally would’ve found cornball had it not been redefined by Fish’s recent words:

“Sometimes the only things between Dais and a ten-foot drop to the floor are your hands. And I trust your hands.”

I trust your hands.

He was thinking of tattooing it. Maybe at the base of his wrist, between the two wrinkles that naturally occurred there: I trust your hands.

God, he fucking loved that.

Trouble.

Daisy came out of her last leap and turned on one foot toward James, the other leg extended, ready to run. She hesitated. Her back was to Will but he saw the balk in her torso and the little flick upward in her fingertips indicative of a false start. Then she went, four quick, soundless steps toward James. He stood center, legs bent and arms ready.

His eyes on Will.

No, Will thought, feeling his own eyes widen. Don’t look at me, look at her. Dude, she’s coming…

It happened in slow motion. Dais was in the air, turning, her chin up, her gaze looking out because it was impossible, not to mention pointless to look back for James. She simply had to trust he’d be there.

The only things between Dais and a ten-foot drop to the floor…

I trust your hands.

Still looking at Will, James dropped his arms.

“Jesus, James,” John Quillis yelled.

“Dude,” Will cried.

A collective shout from the students watching and then Dais was on the floor.

Will looked up at the façade of Mallory Hall. His feet had taken him here. Ever since he was eleven, he brought his troubles to the dance studio. Why not now?

He sighed, ground the cigarette butt under his heel and went inside. He wanted to talk to Fish so bad but it was out of the question. So he headed down the stairs to the next best thing.

Kees was lounging on the couch in his office, grading papers. He looked up when Will rattled his knuckles on the door.

“Look what the good Lord hath brought to me,” he said, taking off his glasses. The words were kind, but his face was neutral. Almost stern.

Will managed a smile with a corner of his mouth.

“What’s up, my man,” Kees said.

“Je suis dans la merde,” Will said.

“Close the door.” Kees swung his legs off the couch and jerked his head to the free cushion. “Sit down.”

“I’m sorry about what happened in the studio today.”

“Why are you sorry?” Kees said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, it was.”

Kees sat back, crossing his arms. “Are you sleeping with James?”

“Not anymore.”

Kees sighed, running a hand over his bald pate. “I was afraid of that.”

“I told him,” Will said through the wall of his teeth. “I told him from the start what I could and couldn’t do. I told him it had an expiration date. I told him Lucky and I had an understanding while she was away but when she came back, it was over. I told him…”

“And you trusted he’d behave accordingly.”

“Yeah.”

“That he’d behave like you would. With compassion and sensitivity and maturity and honesty.”

“I was honest with James from the start,” Will said. “Lucky and I were honest with each other when she went to Boston. I made it clear because I fucking hate this kind of shit.”

“And James thrives on it. That’s not your fault. He didn’t behave according to the agreement, or according to your standards. That’s not your fault either. And he’s heartbroken now. Which is nobody’s fault, it’s just human nature.”

“But he’s starting to take his heartbreak out on the people I love.”

“What do you mean?”

“What he did to Dais he did on purpose, Kees. He looked me in the eye and dropped his arms and let her fall. Fish fucking trusted my hands, trusted that I wouldn’t…” He broke off and exhaled roughly. “I swear when I see James I—”

“Whoa, my friend.” Kees leaned toward Will a little, his eyes hard and intent. “Have you been out looking for him tonight?”

Will laced his hands between his knees and said nothing.

“Don’t touch him,” Kees said. “Don’t engage, Will, I cannot stress this enough. You’re not the arm of the law of the conservatory and I want no vigilante justice. He’s gone beyond infatuation into obsession and the only antidote is to give him nothing to work with. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Look at me.”

Blinking, Will turned his head and looked. “I understand,” he said.

“What’s the situation with you and Lucky now? Is she angry you had a fling?”

“No,” he said. “She had one of her own. I’m fine with it. She’d be fine with mine except I picked such a train wreck to fling with… Jesus, I’ve never met a more indiscreet guy.”

“Frankly that surprises me,” Kees said. “You’re usually an excellent judge of character. You surround yourself with like-minded people and, as you yourself said, you avoid drama. So what in hell made you gravitate toward him? Was it go big or go home?”

“It was just easy.”

“How so?”

“The way he was digging me… Something about it made it easy.”

“Easy to what?”

“To pretend.”

Kees made an encouraging circle with his hand.

Will exhaled. “Pretend he was someone else.”

“Fish?”

Will’s brain reared back in surprise. Then his entire throat seized up. “Yeah,” he said, staring at the carpet between his feet. He pulled his eyes wide to keep the tears back and they flooded his nose instead. He sniffed hard, biting the inside of his cheek.

“I see,” Kees said, and his hand patted the back of Will’s neck.

“It kind of snuck up on me this year. I always liked him. But all of a sudden I…loved him.”

“He’s easy to love,” Kees said gently.

“Yeah.”

“And you found a proxy you could pretend with. We’ve all done it.”

“It got kind of twisted at the end.”

Kees’s eyebrows rose. “James knew?”

“Keesja, he knew in thirty seconds. Like he tasted the air at Colby Street and asked me, ‘You always been in love with Fish or is this something new?’”

Kees snorted. “I knew last year.”

Now Will’s eyebrows flew up but Kees waved it away. “Forget it, I’m the gay dance teacher, I know everything. Back to the point of this little tête-à-tête, James is not so easy to love. And I suspect it’s even harder to be loved by him.”

“God, I fucked up.”

“You’re twenty-two years old, my friend. It’s your job to fuck up. Look, I can see you feel shitty about what it’s come to. Because you’re a decent guy and you thought you had things under control. But not everyone thinks like you, Will. You’re years ahead of your time. You chose a circle of friends that closely emulates your values and your level of maturity, but you chose poorly when you picked a lover. Still, James made his own choices. Let him own what he owns. You give him a wide berth and own your own shit. If you’re committed to being with Lucky, then own it. If you think you’ve lost Fish’s trust, own it and get it back. As for Dais, she doesn’t have time for your troubles right now. She’ll only want you to put your head down and dance. And help coach Opie because as of this afternoon, he’s partnering her in ‘Man I Love.’ I appoint you his mentor. Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” Will said, relieved to have a battle plan. It wasn’t anything he wouldn’t come up with himself, eventually, but he was human. He liked having things arranged for him every now and again.

Kees put his glasses on. “Now get out of here.”

Will got. His step was a little lighter up the stairs, his shoulders more relaxed.

Own your shit.

Maybe he’d tattoo it on his other wrist.

“Yo,” someone called behind him.

Will turned. Fish was coming down the hall from the lounge, shrugging his jacket on. His jeans were covered in dust. The strap from his safety goggles had left a matted, horizontal line through his hair and faint pink indentations on the bridge of his nose.

“Working late?” Will said.

“Yeah, I had to finish up what I left this afternoon. You coming or going?”

“Going.”

“Did you eat?”

“Not yet.”

Fish shouldered the front door open. “Want to grab a burger?” He looked back over his shoulder at Will. “Or my ass?”

“I’m really not in the mood for your flirting today.”

“But I’m getting so good at it.”

“Yeah, I know. Hence, my mood…”

Lucky.

He’d never known pain like this.

Lucky.

It coiled around him like a boa constrictor and squeezed him out of his life, flung him limp onto the floor.

I’m on the floor.

Am I dead?

No, I’m alive.

And James is in the theater with a gun.

Lucky…

His heart kicked up hard, he was burning on pure adrenaline. It hurt to breathe. Air was a snake from within, while pain was a snake from without. An evil caduceus intent on crushing him.

Lucky, it hurts so bad.

Am I dead?

He lay on his right side, his body a land mass surrounding a red gulf. The left side of his shirt was stuck to him with blood. Pain sliced through his back, punching through muscle and gut to emerge through his rib cage.

I am so far away from home, he thought. A vision of his parents sitting in the living room: drinking coffee and reading the paper, or perhaps dozed off. Dreaming. No idea their Gui lay bleeding on the stage floor a thousand miles away.

Who will wake and tell them? How will they know to come get me?

Fire in his veins. Every breath was a jolt of agony across his hip and abdomen. But that pain was a twinge compared to the howling mess of his left hand.

He shot my hands.

He curled a bit more around his own blood, cradling his wounded hand close to him. He couldn’t touch more than his wrist without wanting to cry out and if he cried out, his side would tear open. He had to be quiet or he’d die.

Be quiet. Don’t die.

But I want to.

Lucky, it hurts so bad.

Without moving his head he swiveled his eyes to the stage right wing. Opie was facedown on the floor and from under him spilled Lucky’s blonde curls.

Are they dead?

Oh, honey don’t die. Don’t die on me, please. Don’t die over there without me.

The tangled sprawl of their legs stayed motionless but Will’s eyes focused enough to see the rise and fall of their breathing. Lucky’s fingers were white-knuckled around a fold of Opie’s shirt. A grip like that meant life.

Don’t die on me. Stay there.

Carefully, Will’s eyes moved toward the other side of the stage. A moan did escape him then, eclipsing his vision with a curtain of agony. Daisy’s eyes stared back at him from where she lay on the floor. Her arm thrown out, palm up, fingers curled.

Oh God, Dais, no. No, he trusted my hands, I promised him. Dais, no…

He squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them, fighting to focus. “Dais,” he whispered.

She blinked. She was alive. But he couldn’t get her eyes to connect with his.

“Dais, look at me.”

She looked through him, her lips faintly moving.

“Dais, hold on,” he said. “Look at me. Don’t—“

The theater ripped apart with more gunshots, followed by a breaking, splintering and shattering noise. Daisy’s head turned away from Will, then her body followed. She was pushing onto her elbow, trying to get up, twisting her head to look over her shoulder toward the back of the theater.

“No, don’t,” Will cried, except his voice died somewhere in his throat and the python tightened its coils. A sword in his side, his hand on fire, pain everywhere and everything, pain, make it stop, stop, please, just stop…

He stopped.

He went away a long time.

He swam up through the black of his eyes and opened them. He was still on the floor. Was it still today? Was it all a dream?

Am I alive?

The pain flooded his left side, from hand to hip he was sliced open. My hand, my home, my mother, my life…

Dais lay motionless on the floor now, her eyes closed.

My fault…

Opie was still curled around Lucky. From within his grasp, she’d turned her head and was looking at Will. Mouth open and teeth bared in a silent scream, eyes straining from her white face. Her fingers let go of Opie’s shirt and reached to Will across the miles of the stage floor. Her lips shaped his name.

Don’t let me die, Luck. Please…

Opie looked at him then. The tiniest shake of his head as his hand moved slowly, closed around Lucky’s wrist and pulled it in tight. Then his head flicked toward the back of the theater and his eyes asked a question.

Will looked up the aisle.

Fish sat on the carpet, his back up against the side of an aisle seat. His knees drawn up. One hand flat on the floor beside him, the other in the air, palm up, as if he were showing James something. James had the gun in a two-handed grip, feet wide, arms out straight. Aiming right at Fish.

Will moaned. His heart got down on its knees and begged. No, it pleaded. James, don’t. Not him. No. Come here. Come get me.

Me.

It’s me.

And everything that belongs to me. He came back to kill everything I love. He’s going to make me watch… He’s going to kill Fish. Then he’s coming back for Lucky. And Dais. Everyone and everything, he’ll make me watch it die…

Pain chopped his breathing into twitching chunks of air.

Please.

Oh God, Fish, I’m sorry.

You trusted me.

Trusted my hands.

My hands, Fish. Between Dais and the floor. He shot my hands and I dropped her.

James took a step closer. Fish’s fingers stayed curled in the air as he stared up at the gun.

“Erik,” Will whispered. He had to feel the name in his mouth one last time. He had to say it out loud. Just once. “I love…”

His voice gave out but his lips kept moving.

I love you.

Erik, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—

A shot rang out and Will yelled then, exploding in pain, turning the sword of it on himself and falling on the blade, over and over until he stopped again.

When he opened his eyes, he was on his back. Neil Martinez knelt at his left side, his hands pressing hard, front and back. Opie knelt by Will’s head, holding his arm up, a clump of bloody towel around Will’s fingers. Their bodies made a wall Will couldn’t see around. His head twisted this way and that as he whispered, “Lucky?”

“She’s all right,” Opie said. “Hold still.”

“Fish?”

“He’s with Dais.”

“Alive?”

“He’s right over there. He’s fine. Hold still now.”

“Oh my God,” Will said.

“It’s all right,” Neil said. “It’s all over. You’re going to be okay, Willy.”

Will heard Lucky then, calling out, “John, is he breathing?”

“He’s with us,” Opie said, holding Will’s gaze and nodding a little.

“I’m sorry,” Will said.

The nod turned to a shake of the head. “Don’t say that. Just hold on. You hear me?”

“He went after Fish.”

“Fish is all right,” Opie said. “I swear, Will. He’s right behind me and he’s fine.”

Someone was lifting up Will’s feet, setting them on top of something. Boots scraped the floor by his head, then a pair of knees crouched down. Warm, rough hands slid on either side of his face.

“Will.” David’s upside-down face above him. “Look at me, man.”

“I’m sorry.”

David’s palm swept over Will’s brow. “Stop. Hold still now, don’t talk.”

Will’s uninjured hand closed in a fist around David’s shirt. “Where is he? Where’s James?”

David looked at Opie, then back at Will again. “He’s gone. He can’t hurt you.”

“Dave, where is he?”

“He’s gone now.” David got down low and put his face right by Will’s. “All right? He’s gone and it’s over and it wasn’t your fault.” His hand stroked Will’s forehead.

“Oh my God.”

“He did it to himself, Will. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Dave, make it stop.”

“It’ll stop.” David pressed his forehead to Will’s. “Lie still. It’s going to be all right.”

Stop. Make it stop.

Opie shifted beside him and the pain in Will’s arm rose up like a dragon breathing fire. Will cried out and went away for a little bit, until Lucky’s voice sliced open the void and brought him back.

“Is he breathing?”

Will opened his eyes. “I’m breathin’, babe…”

He stared up at the lights over the stage. Dave was gone. He could hear Lucky but he couldn’t see Fish. Opie and Neil talked to him as air and pain coiled around his body.

It hurts.

It will never stop.

This is going to hurt for the rest of my life…

Snow was still falling over La Tarasque. It swirled against the window panes like handfuls of glitter but didn’t accumulate.

Will snapped off the bathroom light and went softly past Erik and Daisy’s door, which was partly open. He peeked inside. Smiled. “Love you guys,” he whispered, and drew the door shut.

In their bed, Lucky sat up on her elbow, drinking from a bottle of water. “What are you giggling about?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

[I was about to chop those two lines, but I thought I’d show you I was going to cut them. Why? Because Will and Lucky don’t do coy. Oh nothing. No come on, tell me. They don’t have time for that kind of bullshit. Say what’s on your mind. —SLQR]

“When I walked by their room, the door was open a little. You should see them.”

“Are they doing it?”

“No, they’re sleeping, but in this amazing naked pile of arms and legs. They’re like two puppies. It’s beautiful.” He drew the voile curtain aside and looked out at the snow again. Then back to Lucky. She was sitting all the way up, the sheet wrapped across her breasts, her arms around her knees. Half her face lit from the window and her hair spiraling and curling everywhere.

“Happy?” she said.

“I don’t have a word for what I am.”

Her smile was a delicious thing in the dim light. “Come kiss me.”

He careened onto her, toppling her down into the covers. Her palm ran across the close-cropped hair on his head as he tasted her mouth, ran his lips down her neck, found one breast and drew it gently in. His hand glided up and down her back, then rubbed a few slow circles on her butt.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I’m…open”

“You feel like you’ll be open that way forever. I promise it all goes back the way it’s supposed to.”

She laughed softly. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“That felt so amazing.”

“You own that. That’s yours. You’re the only one I’ve done that with.”

“I’ve never done it with anyone I was in love with,” he said, pulling her in. Her body was so warm around his. Her trust an even tighter fist around his heart.

She trusts me.

It wasn’t my fault and she trusts me again. They all do.

His heart pounded huge in his chest. “You know, I…”

“What?”

“I don’t know, I just had this feeling of…not wanting you to ever do that with anyone but me.”

“How could I,” she said drowsily. Her hand slipped down his side. She rubbed her thumb on the exit wound scar just under his last rib. Then moved to his back, massaging the muscles around the scar where the bullet went in.

“I love you so much,” Will said, so full of emotion it was leaking out of him.

“Hey…” She picked up her head and touched his face. “Are you crying?”

“I’m just feeling a lot right now.”

“You’re crying.”

“I know.”

“Honey…” She moved up close to his chest and he dug his fingers into her hair.

“You weren’t kidding when you said this place was magic,” he said.

“It is,” she said. “Something about it… I’m always so happy when I come here. It’s something in the air or in the house or…everywhere.”

“I wish we could stay here forever,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Me too. It’s so safe.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I really love you. I’m so in love with you.”

“Will…” She took his face in her hands, the tip of her nose against his, slowly shaking her head. “You’re a mess,” she whispered, but her voice trembled through her smile.

“I love you, Luck.”

“I love you.”

He took her hand and set it on his left pectoral muscle. Where you’d lay your hand when you swore a vow. “I love you in a way that makes me want to ink you into my skin”

“Honey…”

“I know we’re young and I know love comes and goes but the way I feel right now…it means something. It belongs to my life and I want to keep it forever. I have all these ways I get to be inside you, I just want a way you can be…in me.”

She pushed the covers aside and slid on top of him, tossing her hair back over a shoulder and sinking her mouth into his. He was hard again. Filled with a desperate desire. Wanting to fuck and come and cry some more. Their kisses turned raw, teeth and tongues filled with greed. Shaking hands tearing open their last condom.

“I want it hard,” she whispered. “As hard as you can. Put me in you.”

And he did. With her legs over his shoulders and her hair wrapped around his fingers and his mouth devouring hers, he gave her everything he had. Eyes open, mouth open, pores open, letting her sink into his skin as he sank deeper and deeper into her body.

“Stay here forever,” she whispered. “Come in me forever.”

He couldn’t answer. He’d reached the place where he couldn’t find words anymore. A fuzzy static rippling down the center of his brain—like the soundless vacuum within a yawn, or the limbo of nodding off before bolting awake again. He came in his head before his body joined in, his cells peeling opening layer by layer, heart pounding thick and hard in his chest. He came forever, catching the wave of Lucky’s climax and riding it into shore, then sprawling spent in the surf, letting the waves pound him.

“Jesus,” she whispered after a few gasping, panting moments. “What is this place?”

He laughed, carefully letting her legs down. “I don’t know, but I’m moving in tomorrow.”

He was wiped out, his erection starting to collapse. He kissed her, reaching between them to hold onto the top of the condom, then carefully pulled out and collapsed on his back, still chuckling under his breath.

“Oh my God,” Lucky said. “Oh shit, Will…”

“What?” He lifted up his head, then followed her horrified stare between his legs.

Only an inch of latex circled the base of his penis.

The rest was inside Lucky.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Johnny, it’s Will.” He’d curbed the Opie habit but for some reason couldn’t quell the desire to give John another diminutive. He just had that kid brother air about him…

“Hey, man, what’s going on?” John said. “Where are you?”

“Still in Germany. Can you hear me all right?”

“There’s a little delay but the line is good.”

“We just have to talk one at a time.”

“Gotcha.”

Will pulled his breath in. He didn’t have the strength for small talk and this call was costing money. “Is Dais around?”

A long pause. Long enough to make Will wonder if the satellite had dropped.

“You there?” Will said.

“Yeah. She’s not here, Will. She’s…”

Will lit a cigarette and inhaled sharply against the dread in his chest. His pet snake was uncoiling in his gut and flicking its tongue: Trouble.

“John, what’s up?” he said.

“It’s not good.”

“Where’s Dais? Talk to me.”

“She’s in the hospital.”

“What happened, is she sick? Did she get hurt?”

“Not that kind of hospital.”

Will closed his eyes. “What the fuck did she do?”

A hard silence answered him. Through the phone, across space and ocean and land, Will could feel John rising up tall and making a stand. Putting himself between Daisy and the world and refusing to be ordered around anymore.

He’s not a kid. Quit treating him like an understudy who covered while you were out and will gladly step aside and let you take over again. He’s her man now. Show some respect.

“That came out wrong, John,” Will said. “I’m sorry. Can you tell me what happened?”

The silence was softer and shorter this time. “She was cutting herself.”

“Christ…”

“It’s been going on a while. She had a flashback and started remembering when she saw James shoot out the windows of the lighting booth. It’s all tied up in Lancaster, Will.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. It’s everything that happened combined with everything she did. Fish wouldn’t punish her so she did it herself. She smashed a bottle and started cutting herself with the glass. She tried to slice her leg scars open. Then she made hundreds of cuts, all over her stomach and waist and ribs and back. She’d rub salt in them. I’m not being poetic, she’d literally take salt, take alcohol, lemon juice, vodka—anything that would burn and sting and hurt like hell…”

“How did you find out?”

“How do you think I found out? We’ve been dating a month—what, you have it in your head that we hang out and play Scrabble?”

“No. Look, John, if you don’t want to tell me what happened, I respect that, all right? But I love her, too. She’s one of my best friends…”

She’s your only friend, asshole.

A tense exhale across the miles. “Well… Anyway, we were fooling around one night and let’s just say things progressed and I saw what she’d done to herself. I got her to talk about it. Got her to show me what she used. You know, get it out into the open. Not let it be a secret anymore.”

“That was smart.”

“She said she’d stop. I watched her throw out the glass. We went to bed, it was great… I found her in the bathroom the next morning.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“In case you were wondering how much damage you can do with the blade from an eye pencil sharpener, I’ll tell you: it’s a lot.”

“Jesus fuck.”

“She cut herself everywhere this time, man. Arms. Legs.”

“Her wrists?”

“No. She wasn’t cutting to kill. She was cutting to bleed. Don’t you get it? She’s just…”

“Broken.”

“Yeah. I called her parents. My folks helped them find a place up in Westchester. She’s been there a week now. My hope is they let her out before Christmas, otherwise…”

“Is she doing any better?”

“I don’t really know, man, I can’t see her. She’s called a few times but they’ve been short conversations. She’s on some meds. She’s in therapy every day. She’s... Fuck, I don’t know what to do.”

“You did everything,” Will said, a hand over his eyes. “Thank God you were with her. Seriously, man, this could’ve ended a whole lot worse if you weren’t there. And I’m so fucking grateful. I mean it. I can’t even…”

“I tell you, Will,” John said, his voice trembling. “I hate that guy. There was a time I would’ve killed for him but I swear, if I saw him on the street, I’d fucking punch his lights out. She did a shitty thing to him but the way I see it, he’s no fucking saint either. Sorry if he’s your friend and all but he’s one heartless, vindictive son of a bitch in my book now.”

“No,” Will said. “No, he heaved me overboard as well, Johnny. He hasn’t been a friend of mine in a long time.”

And God, I miss him so bad…

Will curled the three fingers of his maimed hand into a fist.

“He ever comes around here, it won’t be pretty,” John said.

“I don’t think he will,” Will said softly. “He’s gone.”

“Good.” A fortifying deep breath. “Well, anyway. When I talk to her next, I’ll tell her you called. How you doing, everything good?”

Everything sucks and I’m doing awful. “Oh yeah, it’s going great. Doing well.”

“Good.”

“But I’m slightly broke so I’m gonna wind it up now. You got my email? You’ll let me know what’s going on and when Dais gets home?”

“I will. She’ll be glad you called.”

“Tell her I love her. And I love you, man. You’re a prince.”

John laughed. “It’s what I do. Take care, Willy.”

Will knelt on the hardwood floor, elbows on the windowsill. From his living room window, he could see the swamp of lights making up the Frankfurter Weinachtmarkt, the city’s Christmas market. It sprawled across three plazas in a festival of lights, vendors’ stalls, baked goods, food and drink and gifts. A giant Christmas tree hovered above the zigzagged rooflines and the crowds swirling and mulling, as they’d been doing at this fair since 1393.

Will was motionless on his knees. The lights below blurred as tears filled his eyes, then came back into focus as the tears dried. He was cold. He was waiting.

“I’ll pick you up,” he’d said on the phone.

“You stay right there. I’ll get a cab.”

So he stayed. On his knees in a dark apartment, looking out on Christmas lights not meant for him and throngs of people who didn’t know who or where he was.

He didn’t know himself anymore. Everything had condensed to two words:

I’m sorry.

The French was better. Je suis désolé.

I am desolate.

And I can’t do this anymore.

It took three legs to make a table stand. First Fish was knocked away.

You brought it down, man, it all goes back to you. You strung him along and then threw him aside. You’re no better than David.

“I did,” Will said. “I own it.”

You brought it down. I wish he’d just shot your sorry ass and been done with it.

“Me, too,” Will whispered.

Then Dais’s leg buckled and broke. Will had never seen her break. A slip of girl, but she’d been stronger than all of them put together. To outward eyes it looked like the circle of friends gathered around her. Bullshit. She had her arms around all of them. Even shot up in the hospital, she was holding Erik, reassuring Will, consoling Kees and comforting David. No doubt John gave her his heart forever in the aftermath of the shooting. They all did. They all leaned on her and took for granted she had it in her to hold them up.

Who did Dais lean on?

“Lucky,” Will whispered, the tears falling again. He put his head in his hands, shutting out the Christmas lights.

“She’s in the Bahamas, Bill,” Judy said. She called him Bill, either because she was an idiot or because she knew it drove him batshit. “With her boyfriend, Ed. He might even be proposing. You know he was dropping hints about rings at Thanksgiving. He got a huge raise at work. They’re looking to buy a condo on the upper west side. That’s in Manhattan, you know.”

I know, you miserable bitch. I know you never liked me. I know you thought I was never good enough for the daughter you treated like shit. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?

“You want to leave a message?”

Like you’d even pass it on. “No,” he said. “Don’t go to any trouble. Merry Christmas, Judy, nice talking to you.”

“You too, Bill.”

Will reached cold fingers inside his shirt and rested them on his left pectoral. Where you’d lay your hand when you made a promise. It was still empty. He hadn’t yet inked forever into his skin.

I should’ve done it when I had the chance.

I should’ve run away with her to La Tarasque where it was safe and stayed there. We’d still be there now, with that baby, if only…

Lucky sobbing in his arms, the toilet beneath her filled with blood.

I changed my mind.

Fish’s obsessive hand-washing, trying to get invisible blood off him.

I feel like it’s all falling apart.

Dais slashing herself with a tiny razor, cutting the pain away because Fish had washed his hands of her.

Fish wouldn’t punish her so she did it herself.

Will couldn’t stop picturing the three people he’d loved best bleeding in bathrooms.

“It all goes back to you and him,” Fish said, that last phone call, when he’d broken Will’s heart. “You fucked him over and brought it all down.”

I fucked it all up.

Three legs to make a table stand. One by one knocked away. No support structure left, nothing to bear the load. Will lay broken in pieces on the floor.

I’m sorry.

The bells of St. Nicholas church began to ring.

Santa wasn’t coming tonight.

Someone else was.

Soon.

He was waiting. Watching the skies.

I’m sorry.

He stayed on his knees, watching the lights and the party and the cheer, until the buzzer in the vestibule cut the silence of the room in two. His legs had locked up, he had to lean hard on the windowsill to unfold them and stand. He limped stiff-kneed to the door. Much like Dais had limped in the days following the shooting.

I trusted your hands.

He took off the chain and undid the locks. Turned the knob and stepped back as he opened the door.

A man stood beside a suitcase. He wore the wool overcoat he’d had ever since Will could remember, and his black felt Homburg, which he now took off.

“Me voici, Guillaume,” he said. Here I am.

Will swallowed and reached for the suitcase.

“No, no, I have it.” The man came in and set the case by the tiny kitchen table. He laid down hat and gloves, unbuttoned his coat and put it across a chair back.

Will crossed his arms over his chest, teeth pressed together tight. His throat was a fist. He’d never in his life felt more ashamed. More small and weak and worthless.

Je suis désolé.

The man facing Will was tall. Even at six-two, Will had to look up to meet his gaze. Which he needed right now. He needed that height, that barrel chest atop long, thin legs. The kind blue eyes above the salt-and-pepper beard. The wool coat and the Homburg.

“Thanks for coming,” Will said.

A flicker of bewilderment in the pale blue stare. “You’re my son.”

Will shivered. He was so cold.

“You’ve been fighting a long time,” Maurice said softly.

Will’s teeth chattered. “I’m tired.”

“I know.”

“I’m so tired, Dad.”

Maurice stepped to him, slid his warm hands on top of Will’s shoulders. “I know, Gui.”

The nickname fell soft on Will’s head, but with enough weight to crack him open. His arms unfolded and dropped to his sides, just as James’s arms had dropped that long-ago day. Will’s useless, maimed hands dangled as he lurched into his father’s chest.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Maurice whispered. A palm crept up to Will’s head and pressed it tight to his shoulder. “I’m here now.”

“I need to tell you something,” Will said, his eight fingers curling around Maurice’s sweater and clutching it tight. “I need to tell you what I did.”

“I know, Gui. It’s all right. Whatever you tell me, it’s all right.”

Will dissolved. Eyes, throat, face, heart, chest. Broke down weeping in his father’s tall, strong embrace. “I’m sorry.”

“Gui, it’s all right.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Mon beau,” Maurice said, swaying side to side.

“I fucked it all up.”

“Mais tu as été fusillé.” Maurice kissed Will’s head, hugged him tight. “Il t’as fusillé…”

He shot you.

Fish trusted your hands.

And James shot them…

This is what often happens: I want to take a scene from Give Me Your Answer True, and write it from another character’s viewpoint. In this case, the scene at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Daisy’s ballet Rakewind is being performed. Lucky is in the audience. Will is in the audience. But each doesn’t know the other is there, because Daisy didn’t tell either of them.

So now I want to write how they find each other in the lobby.

Let’s see, I’ll need to have them leave their seats and make their way up the aisle and be standing around and not see each other and… Wait, where are Joe and Francine? Wouldn’t Lucky be standing around with them? What do I do with them while Will and Lucky are falling on each other?

Then I think, Oh for fuck’s sake, Sue, you’re just playing around. Write the good parts. Who cares how it happens. Write the dessert. All that other logistical stuff is broccoli. Don’t worry how they get into position, just start with her seeing him.

And then I write the things.

Then she saw Will.

Oh there’s Will, she thought briefly, and her eyes moved on to the next clump of people. She didn’t know who she was expecting to see, half of her was looking for the Lancaster Conservatory gang, as if they—

Wait a minute.

What?

Her gaze backtracked. Yes, it was Will. Here. What was he doing here? Well, obviously, he was here for Daisy. But why didn’t Daisy tell her that he—

He was looking at her.

And from the expression on his face, she knew Daisy hadn’t told him either.

You conniving, manipulative bitch, I’m going to kill you. Then I’m going to French kiss you.

Will’s head tilted, his eyebrows coming down a bit. He’d grown his hair back. Not down to his shoulders like it’d been in college, but short and kind of messy, like he’d been made vigorous love to in the last hour and he ran a wet hand through it to—

Wait… What?

Will was here.

They’d stayed in casual, neutral touch these past five years. Emails on their birthdays, which were a day apart in July, to wish each other well, give a bit of news and groan about getting older. Mostly Lucky had followed Will’s life through Daisy. She knew in general where he was and what he was doing, and she assumed he heard as much about her the same way.

But she hadn’t seen him.

Her mouth was open. She could feel air cool against her lips and teeth as she breathed in and let go a ragged exhale. Her heart clenched like a fist, then melted warm in her chest. It was him. Here. Right there. Looking at her, making her heart did what it always did when she saw her reflection in him. Her eyes rested on him happily, her gaze crumpling luxuriously on his face as if it were a couch at the end of a long, tiring day. He was coming toward her, shaking his head the tiniest bit, a smile starting to lift one corner of his mouth while his eyes stayed wide and stunned.

She closed her mouth, inhaled deep through her nose as he came closer. Dark jeans. A blue button-down shirt under a brown corduroy sport coat. Smart shoes. His sideburns a little longer than she remembered. Something older in his eyes that had nothing to do with age. His three-fingered left hand came up to rub his brow and tears gathered warm at the back of Lucky’s eyes.

Then he stood in front of her. She inhaled again through the spectrum of his scent: leather, winter air, sweet and smoky.

They exhaled together. Each managed to squeeze a chuckle through a wobbling smile. Then together they spoke:

“Got twenty I can borrow?”

He put his arms around her. She only hesitated a split-second before she wormed her hands through the lapels of his jacket and slid them around to his back.

Yes, she thought.

You.

Oh, you, goddammit, you. It’s always been you.

“Jesus,” Will whispered against her hair. “That didn’t take long.”

She had nothing to say. She pressed one cheek, then the other against his chest, as if he were a pillow turned over to the cool side. She stood up on tiptoe so she could hook her chin over his shoulder. Yes. It felt exactly how she remembered. Her hand stole to the back of his head, felt the thick softness of his hair. Yes. Still here.

“Well, this feels way too good,” she said.

“I’m making no effort to change it.”

“How are you?”

“I’m great,” he said. “And I had no idea how much I sucked ten seconds ago.”

“We should talk more about this.”

“Yes.” His arms squeezed her tighter. “Let’s.”

Then their arms were being pried apart and Daisy was squashing her way between them, hugging Lucky and pulling Will’s arms around her from behind.

“I totally planned this,” she said.

“Well-planned,” Will said.

[Hmm, anyone have an idea how we transition from the theater to the restaurant? Right, who cares! Just jump ahead and write the fun stuff, then come back later for details, if at all. You learn fast, grasshopper. —SLQR]

At dinner, Lucky felt her mouth moving in conversation, laughing and joking and participating, but she had nothing to do with it. Her universe shrunk down to her left calf muscle, which was snugged up against Will’s leg beneath the table, and her shoulder blades, tingling from the drape of his arm across the back of her chair. A thousand times she thought she couldn’t sit there another minute, pretending nothing monumental was happening, yet she went on sitting and pretending until, at last, the check was paid. Out on the street, Daisy kissed each of them goodnight. “Call me tomorrow,” she said, blithe and casual. “We can do brunch or something.”

[Wait, where are the Biancos? Wait, who cares! —SLQR]

With one more hug and a last wave, she headed toward the subway. Will and Lucky exchanged a single glance, then started walking. Much as they had the night they met. Talking easily. Occasionally bumping elbows.

The light turned green and they crossed Lexington Avenue. The façade of the Comfort Inn loomed ahead, where Will was staying.

[Lexington Avenue? Wait a minute, they were in Brooklyn a minute ago. How did they get to Manhattan all of a sud—… Oh who cares. —SLQR]

So… Just like the night we met? What the hell? Go up to his room and sleep with him?

Why not?

“I had a good time tonight,” Lucky said.

Will glanced at her. “Oh, it’s understatement day,” he said. “I forgot. Yeah, me too. It was fun.”

She stopped, rolling her lips in and closing her eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He gestured with his chin they should get out of pedestrian traffic. They moved against the side of the hotel by the revolving door, where she crossed her arms, hugging herself against the wind.

“I missed you,” she said. “I’m doing all right. Life is good, I’m a grownup. Dig me. But losing you hurt like hell. And seeing you again is like picking right up where I left off. No, I take that back. Be quiet,” she said, stilling the words he was about to speak. “Let me talk. It’s not picking up where we left off when we broke up. That wasn’t us. That was just the bits and pieces that James didn’t blow away. I mean back when we were still us. When we were good. When was that? The last good time. I don’t know, but it feels like then.” She exhaled and took her fingertips from his mouth.

“La Tarasque,” he said.

“What?”

“The last good time was La Tarasque. Up in that goddamn room in that fucking magic place, the night I got you pregnant. Right up until the moment I rolled off you and we saw the fucking condom was broken. Everything before that was the last good time. That’s where I hang out, missing you.”

As soon as he said pregnant, her throat tightened up. The cold air burned her wet eyes.

“Come up to my room,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because your hands are freezing and I want to look at you.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“All we need is a chocolate cake.”

Her throat ached. She put out her hand and smoothed his lapel up and down, played with a button. “I think losing you again would kill me.”

“I don’t want to be lost.” He stripped off one glove, then the other, and stuffed both under one armpit. His hands came around her jaw and he tilted her face up. “Look at me,” he said.

She looked. Her heart burned. “No girlfriend?” she said. “All this time?”

He shook his head.

“Boyfriend?”

He kept shaking it.

“No one?”

“No one I wanted to ink into my skin,” he said. He let go her head. “Come upstairs. You’re freezing and I need to show you something.”

“You can’t show me here?”

“No, it’s up in my room and my telekinesis powers suck.”

“Better not be your dick.”

Not looking away from her eyes he reached beneath his coat. “No, my dick I would show you out here on the street.” He looked up and smiled at a passerby who’d given them a double-take. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Jesus,” she said, swatting his arm. But laughing the way she only did with him.

“Come up. Please. I want to talk to you.”

“All right, fine, who are we kidding…”

Walking through the lobby they said little. Will took off his jacket and folded it over an arm. Lucky unbuttoned her coat but kept it on.

Yes, let’s try to keep our clothes on for a respectable amount of time.

She didn’t deny she wanted to make love with him. All night long. See herself reflected in his eyes and know she was still beautiful to him. But she didn’t want to be stupid about it.

He had a bottle of wine in his room. “I bought it for Dais. Forgot to bring it. I don’t think she’d mind if we drank it.” He used the corkscrew off his Swiss army knife to open it.

“Is that the knife Fish gave you?” Lucky asked.

“Yep. Don’t leave home without it. And a pen.”

“You ever talk to him again?”

“No.” He poured into two plastic cups and handed her one.

[Blah blah blah, conversation, catching up, meat and potatoes, I’ll come back to it later. —SLQR]

Will topped up their cups. He took his over to the window and looked out. “You remember the first thing you ever said to me?”

“Hi, I’m Lucky.”

He looked back at her. “So am I.”

She smiled. “Greatest pick-up line ever.”

“When I got home from Germany,” he said, “I went to Montreal for a weekend. Met up with an old friend from high school. We had some beers, got to talking. Renaud was always one of those people who invite your guts onto the table. Not even two beers in and I was suddenly telling him my story. All of it. Start to finish. Ren didn’t say much, just listened. And when I was all talked out, he smiled and said, ‘You were lucky.’

“And I shrugged it off. Whatever. Ren said it again, ‘You were lucky.’ Then he leaned in, looked me in the face and said, ‘You are lucky…’

“It took me a minute to realize what he was saying. Then I stared off into space as it sunk in. I was Lucky.”

He turned from the window. “And I still am.”

She put her cup aside, stood up and went over to him. His arms opened and she fell into them, felt him against her. Warm, solid, strong. Older. Grounded, yet still dazzlingly passionate.

Her fingers started undoing the buttons on his shirt. “I’m just gonna look at you a little,” she whispered.

His hands slid into her hair. “I’m just gonna kiss you a lot…”

A soft touch of mouths. Once. Again. He kissed her upper lip. Then her bottom one. Her fingers kept unbuttoning as his mouth opened and drew her in. There was a rhythm to his kiss, she remembered. Sultry and subtle, like tango. His mouth moved with hers, slow and luxurious, then suddenly his kiss seized, threw her back in arms, spun her around in a whirling blur before melting into languor again. His kisses had ruined her from the start. She hadn’t forgotten. How could she ever forget being kissed like this?

“You still taste like everything I love,” he said.

She finished the last button, slid her hands between the lapels and began to ease the shirt off his shoulders.

Then she stopped.

And stared.

“Will?” she said, glancing up at him.

“I said I had something to show you.”

Her throat seized up, then unleashed a single sob. “Oh my God…”

Pressing her mouth tight against the tears, she reached fingertips to his left pectoral. Where you would put your hand when you swore to something. Where you would ink forever if you ever found it.

“Will,” she said through her teeth. Her fingers traced the tattooed horseshoe. The four-leafed clovers curving above it and the single word in the arch beneath: Lucky. The tail of the Y extended into a spiral. Like one of her curls.

“Me?” she whispered. “This is me?”

He nodded.

“When?”

“Right after that conversation with Ren.”

“But we… I was nowhere near you. I wasn’t in your life.”

“Yes, you were.”

She went limp. Dropped her chin and began to cry in earnest. He gathered her against him and held her tight.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Will…”

“I’m so sorry, Luck. I treated you like shit at the end. I hated myself so much, I sabotaged us before anything else could. I still loved you. I never stopped loving you.”

“I would’ve done anything.” Crawled through the blood again, pushed my hands against your bleeding wounds because you were the only one who ever gave myself back to me. “I would’ve done anything but you…”

“I know. You were the only one who could’ve saved me but I didn’t want you to.”

“Why?”

“The same reason I didn’t want to ink you into my skin. I didn’t deserve it.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m better at believing that now. At the time, it was all I believed. Because of me, six people lost their forever. Eight if you count Fish and Dais. I didn’t deserve to be saved. I didn’t want to be saved. Deep down, I just wanted to die.”

She wiped her streaming eyes, then tossed her hair back. “So if people ask about this tattoo, what do you say?”

“Nobody’s asked.” He glanced down at his open shirt. “Nobody’s seen my skin in a really long time.”

She traced the tattoo one more time with her fingers, then put her cheek against it, sighing as he brushed her curls back from her face and set his mouth on her forehead.

“I saw you tonight,” he said, “and I felt better than I have in…forever.”

“Like looking in the mirror,” she said. “That’s how it always was for me.”

“But liking what you see. I got this tattoo thinking even if I never saw you again, I wanted to be like the man I was when I was with you. I was lucky to have you in my life and I wanted to keep that with me forever. And tonight I did see you. I looked at you and…there it was. Me. The man I used to be. Oh look, there I am…”

I gave himself back to him.

And he put it in his skin.

“You feel so good,” she said softly.

“I feel like me.”

His heart beat beneath her face and it felt like home.

“Stay with me tonight,” he said. “Please stay.”

“I will,” she said softly, sliding his shirt down his back. “But I’m not here for kicks. Or for old times’ sake.”

“God, I hope not.”

“If I stay tonight, it’s going to change everything.”

“It’s already changed,” he said.

I started to write this. And wrote myself into a corner that I didn’t feel like writing my way out of. So I just left it in the bathroom. Depression sucks. Fuck everything.

Sofia lifted Sara out of the tub and into Will’s waiting towel. “There’s one.”

“The best one,” Will said

“Hey” Jack cried from the tub. “I’m the best.”

“It’s Tuesday. You’re the best on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

“Well, it’s almost Wednesday.”

“Then you’re almost the best.” Will blew a raspberry on Sara’s damp stomach, then laid on her on the bathmat to get a diaper on her.

Sofia pulled the plug. “Come on, Jack. Out you go.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Out.”

“Straight over there,” Will said, pointing the toilet. “And pee.”

“I don’t have to pee.”

“The warm water always makes you pee,” Sofia said, running a towel over Jack’s wriggling limbs. “Go sit.”

“I want to stand.”

“If you stand, you have to aim,” Will said, zipping Sara’s pajamas. “Otherwise you scrub.”

Jack sat.

So went the nightly ballet of the bathroom.

“Flush,” Sofia said. “Seat down. Go put pajamas on and pick a book.”

“Can I have two books?” Jack asked.

“Two short or one long. Go.”

Will reached back to open the door. “Naked man walking,” he called down the hall.

“Running,” Jack cried, taking off. Sofia hung up the bathmat and pulled the shower curtain closed. “I’ll take Sara,” she said to Will. “Go chill.”

“You’re a treasure.”

“I know.”

His knees popped as he got up. Lately all his joints were popping and cracking. As he walked down the hall toward his bedroom, he massaged the muscles in his left flank, digging his fingers into the scar tissue that was bugging him tonight.

Lucky was in her glider rocker by the bay window, nursing Jacy. Usually she read or dozed. Tonight she just stared out on the backyard, her thumb running circles in the palm of the baby’s hand.

Will flopped on the bed between two baskets of laundry, rubbing his face.

“Troops clean?” Lucky said.

“All done. Sofia’s reading to them, I’ll go tuck in later.” He took his face out of his hands. “How are you?” As usual, it was nearly eight at night before he could ask her.

She shrugged with a half-smile, then looked back out the window. Her eyes were circled. The spring had gone out of her blonde curls and the roots along her part were showing grey.

“How’d your appointment go?” Will asked.

“It was good. I bawled my eyes out, she wrote me a script and gave me names of a few therapists.” The rocker made whispery squeaks, back and forth, back and forth. “Your day go all right?”

“Usual madness.” Will sat up, rubbing his back, then started folding laundry.

“I’ll talk about it more in a bit,” Lucky said. “Right now, I’m just…”

“Processing,” he said. “I understand.”

The room went quiet then. He folded, she rocked, staring out the window.

“I miss Dais,” she said softly.

“I do too.” He wanted her home bad. But she was in Moncton with Fish for the summer. Which was the best possible excuse in the world. More than an excuse, it was a fucking miracle. Fish and Daisy were back together. Fish found work and moved to Canada and the universe was in order again. He and Dais were head over heels, walking into the walls, they were so happy, and it was everything Will and Lucky wanted. The four of them together again.

Except they weren’t together right now. With Fish’s job, they might not be together in the same place for a long time. They’d simply shortened the distance on this long-distance relationship. And the distance made it easy for Will to forget, to slip back into missing Fish and giving himself the blues when he didn’t have to…

Will sighed. Patience, he thought. His nemesis. His archenemy. Inked into his skin and he still struggled with it, wanting the world yesterday.

“I love you,” Lucky said. “So much.”

He looked up from rolling socks. “I love you too.”

He felt lonely all of a sudden. Suffused with a sadness he was too tired to identify or analyze.

Je suis désolé ce soir, he thought. That’s all. It is what it is.

Lucky deftly scooped her breast back into her nursing bra and stood up.

“Here,” she said, handing Jacy to Will and heading into their adjoining bathroom.

Will sighed again, rubbing the baby’s back. He smiled and closed his eyes when she gave a small, healthy belch in his ear, then went limp again.

“T’es une bonne,” he whispered. “Don’t tell anybody, but you’re the best one.”

She really was. Not even six weeks old and sleeping through the night. Lucky would do one last diaper change at ten, fill her up on the other breast, set her down in the crib and they wouldn’t hear a sound until 6:02 sharp.

This could be worse, he thought, as he often thought. She could be colicky like Jack or impossible like Sara. But she’s so good. It’s like she knows what to do.

Will kissed her milk-flushed face, then set her down in the center of the bed and pulled stacks of folded clothes around her. Then he went into the bathroom.

Lucky stood at the sink, staring down at a prescription bottle in her hand. She looked up at him, managed a wan smile and shook the bottle like a maraca. “Better living through chemistry.”

“You’ll feel better,” he said softly. “Better than this, anyway.”

“I know.”

“Come here.” He reached for her. “Give me twenty.”

She came into his arms and they breathed, counting twenty seconds. The amount of time it took for a hug to go from affectionate to therapeutic.

“It’s hard,” he said against her hair. “And you’re brave.”

“I just feel like such a loser.”

“Stop. Going on Prozac does not make you a loser.”

“I know, and I feel like a loser for thinking I’m a loser. It just goes round and round at the bottom half of the feeling spectrum. I only go from wretched to meh. Meh to happy is missing and it’s so fucking scary. What if I—”

“You will,” he said. “I know it feels like you’ll never find the joy again. But you will. I did. Dais did. Fish did. We did and you will, too.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry. “Christ, here I go again, I’m so tired of crying all the time.”

“It hurts,” he said. “You feel like shit, your body and your thoughts aren’t your own.”

She took a deep, weepy breath against his chest. “I’ve been hijacked.”

“Abducted,” he said, rubbing her back. “Babe, I love you and we’re going to get through this.”

Her shoulders dropped and she nodded. “I know. I just feel terrible that I’m…saddling her with my shit.”

“You are not doing anything to Jacy that’s harming her,” he said. “I see you with her. You give the biggest damn I ever saw in my life about her. Honey, she’s fine. She’s supernaturally fine. You need her more than she needs you right now. Go ahead and need her. You’re not hurting her, you’re not hurting Jack or Sara. You feel like hell and nothing is the way it’s supposed to be but you’re not ruining your children, I promise.”

She held onto him, fingers clutched around the back of his shirt, nodding into his sternum.

“You took a big step today,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”

She exhaled. “I love you.”

“I talked to Sofia. She’ll come stay the weekend with Jack and Sara. You, me and Jacy will drive up to Moncton. We’ll stay with my parents, hang out with Fish and Dais. Or just be by ourselves. Whatever you want.”

“No, I want to see them,” she said. “It’s a good idea. Something to look forward to.”

“I know you miss Dais bad.”

“I miss us.”

Now his eyes got all warm and watery. “We’re still here. Now come on. I know you’re stalling. Just do it. Just start. You’ve got nothing to do but feel better.”

He ran a glass of water from the sink. Uncapped the prescription bottle, picked out the bit of cotton at the top and shook a pill into her palm. The fluorescent light glinted off the gold of their wedding bands, which both wore on their left index finger.

“I’ll even join you,” Will said, shaking a bottle of Aleve into his own palm. “One for you, two for me. Salut.”

She tilted the glass to him—“Fuck everything”—then popped the pill and chugged.

He took the glass and did the same. “Done. The rest of your life starts today.”

She put her arms around him again. “You’re the best one.”

A long, hard day. A cold rain made the dance studio floors sticky, and the sticky floors made the company pissy. Divas were upping their game and the corps was mastering passive-aggressiveness. Never-ending administrative shit to do and shit that should’ve been easy made unnecessarily complicated. Patience short, the tip of your tongue held constantly in check between your teeth.

Home from work for the second shift. Your wife tired, her eyes far away but no time to ask her how her day was. Your son in a sulk, forcing you into a game of Twenty Questions to find the reason why. Your middle daughter incapable of being silent for thirty seconds. Your baby girl congested and miserable with an ear infection.

The thought of lying down shone like a lighthouse beacon across the domestic ocean. Soon. God willing, soon. Dishes and baths and bedtime rituals. Your hand on the light switch and your son’s voice piping up behind you, “Dad, what happens when we die?”

“We go to sleep,” Will said through gritted teeth. “And wake up to another day.”

Another fucking day and we get to do it all again.

“Where?” Jack said.

“Dad?” Sara called from down the hall.

“Just a minute,” Will said over his shoulder. “Somewhere else,” he said to Jack.

“But—”

“Dad?”

“Just a minute,” Will said, fingernails digging in the wood of the doorjamb. “Dude, no more questions, all right? I’m out of answers.”

Jack flipped the covers over his head and turned toward the wall.

“Dad,” Sara cried.

“Yes, Sara?”

“I love you.”

Motherfucker.

“I love you, too, honey. Go to sleep now.”

The last bits of puttering around and at last: blessed silence descended on the house. Soft, even breathing out of two beds and a crib. The dishwasher purring. Will could finally hear his own thoughts.

“I’m getting in bed,” he said to Lucky. “I’m done.”

She smiled up at him, ensconced on the couch with her laptop, reading glasses on the end of her nose. “I’m kind of in a thing here,” she said.

He leaned and kissed her head. “Stay there. I’m taking my thing upstairs.”

He practiced mindful gratitude in the shower. He could turn a handle and have pounding hot water on the back of his neck, rinsing the day away. A heated towel rack was a beautiful thing. The cars were running, the major appliances working, the roof wasn’t leaking and save a couple fingers, he was intact with four limbs and a head.

Thank you.

He threw on a T-shirt, folded back the covers and added the luxury of sliding bare-assed between flannel sheets to his list of thankfuls. Lucky hanging out downstairs meant he got all the pillows. He could read himself to sleep. With an exhaled sigh of relief, he scrunched his shoulders into a comfortable position, opened the book and fell in.

Far in.

He didn’t hear Lucky come upstairs. Didn’t realize she’d come in the bedroom until he heard her say, “Hi,” as she took the book out of his hands and tossed it aside. His eyes followed the book’s trajectory and then came back to her.

She was naked.

“Hello,” he said carefully.

She crawled on top of him and reached to turn the lamp off. “Don’t ask me a lot of questions, I don’t know where this came from.”

With a click, the light of the room was cut in half. A bright winter moon filled the windows with silver blue.

“Just go with it. All right?”

“Okay,” Will said, his mouth watering. They hadn’t made love in weeks and she hadn’t initiated sex in months. He had a dozen questions, but only one was important right now: “Is the door locked?”

“Mm-hm.” She moved covers and pillows aside, then tugged at the hem of his T-shirt, drawing it over his head. She slid onto him as if he were a surfboard. Her feet neat between his shins, her head on his chest, skin melting to skin. He was hard in a surprised instant, crushed tight and warm between their bodies. His hands ran down her smooth back, curved and curled over her ass and then gently pulled her legs apart so they could hug his hips.

“Miss me?” she whispered.

“Bad,” he said, now reaching hands up into her cloud of blonde curls and bringing her mouth to his. Her kiss settled on him, sweet and deep and weighted with their years. He checked the urge to seize and grab. Breathed through the frantic impatience to swallow it all down before it disappeared because he had missed her desperately. Missed her body and mourned their sex like a lost limb. Now it filled his mouth like a rich dessert after weeks of strict dieting.

She touched his lips, then fed her fingers through them. Kissed him. Slid an expert hand between their bodies and caught him up tight in her fist, stroking and squeezing. He groaned in her mouth, desire thick like a fog in his chest.

“You’re so hard,” she said, her thumb rubbing little circles on the tip and sending an exquisite ache through his groin.

“Put it in you,” he said.

She held him still. Teased herself open with the tip and let him in a little. Just a little. His feet thrashed furrows in the sheets as he crackled like a live wire. A pendulum suspended at the apex of motion. Pure kinetic energy.

“Luck, please.”

She sank down onto him. The pendulum swung to the other extreme and he was in motion and in trouble. Big trouble. Fifteen-year-old-come-in-six-seconds kind of trouble. She was leaning on his wrists, clamping him tight between her quads and not giving him a choice in the matter. Sliding on him, grinding down. Slick and wet. A velvet fist. One minute her breasts warm on his face, her scent thick in the back of his throat, then her mouth on his, her kiss taking his breath. He kept approaching the edge and having to hold her still.

“Stop.”

“No,” she said, taking his hands and pinning them.

“I can’t hold it,” he said, laughing through gasps. “It’s too much…”

And it had been too long.

“Don’t hold it,” she said at his neck. “Just let it go. I don’t care about coming. All I care is I wanted to fuck you so bad tonight…”

He stopped struggling, went limp under her force and let go. She sat up high on him, reached behind to cup his balls in her hand. A half-dozen hard slides along his cock and a squeeze in between each one and he was finished. Flung yelling from the edge as his brain turned inside-out. He came so hard he drooled, sucking wet air between his teeth, cells detonating in feathery white shivers.

“So good,” she whispered, riding him down. “So good.”

“Jesus,” he said, his voice a hoarse thread of sound, teeth rattling in his head.

He shivered and shuddered, heartbeat enormous in his ears and chest too small for his heart. Euphoria crept over his scalp, trickled down his neck, melting into giggles.

Lucky leaned and kissed each corner of his smiling mouth. “Look at you,” she said softly, her palm caressing his face. “Who’s the most gorgeous fucking husband in the world? Hm?”

“Me?”

“Damn right.”

He rolled her down beside him, curling around her damp body in the sheets and gasping in her hair. “That was crazy.”

“No questions,” she murmured.

“None,” he said.

“Do you mind if I finish off with my toy?”

“Shit, no.”

She laughed, reaching in her bedside table drawer.

“I love you,” he said, running fingertips down her back. “That felt so good.”

She rolled over, her expression dreamy and smug, her hands busy beneath the covers and then a low hum of sound between them.

“You want me to?” he said, running his hand over her face, pushing her hair back.

“I’ll start,” she said. “Just kiss me. And…maybe some other stuff. I’ll let you know.”

He took her little face in his hands. Kissed her soft eyebrows. The spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The tiny mole on her jaw line. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

“Kiss me like the night you met me,” she said. “Do you remember?”

He nodded, curling his mouth carefully around her bottom lip.

He remembered leaving Daisy’s room that night and following where their feet led them.

He remembered ending up in local park, sitting on the swings and eating cake.

He remembered licking frosting off her fingers and then her lips. Chocolate in her kiss and her perfume in his head.

He remembered she got out of her swing and onto his, wrapping her legs around him.

He remembered how the cool night rocked them like a cradle. His hands full of her curves, her body lush like a ripe pear and under her jacket and sweater was the softest skin he’d ever touched in his life.

After nineteen years, two houses and three kids, her skin still drove him mad, she could get him hard in one look and get him off in five seconds. He kissed her, playing with her tongue, running his teeth along her lips.

“I’m letting down,” she murmured.

His palm curved around her wet breast. Milk dripped between his fingers and ran down his wrist and all at once her body was a miracle to him. That she could be selfishly sexy and selflessly nurturing at the same time. That she took from him even as she freely gave back. That she was a woman and her body was doing everything a woman’s body was supposed to do. Three times she’d done it. She was everything to everyone in this house and if she ever were to go away...

“You are my fucking life,” he whispered.

She hummed in her throat as her free hand fell over her head. “You do it now,” she said. “Finish me off.”

He took the vibrator and set it against her, following where she led. Marveling how from the start, from that first night, she’d been his sexual soul mate. Fearless and uninhibited. Adventurous about some things, shy about others. Some shit they refused to get into, but the door of their sexuality always stayed open. They could wander in and out and talk about anything. No topic was taboo. No kink, fantasy or desire too weird to share. No vibrator or dildo that could bruise Will’s ego, including the lifelike masterpiece in her drawer that could’ve easily pleasured a Titan. They bought it as a joke but it turned out to be a serious contender. It didn’t buzz though, which brought Lucky around quick and hard. Tonight seemed to call for quick and hard.

Frankly, he didn’t care if she got herself off with the toaster, as long as he could watch. Or participate.

She had both her hands over her head now and Will took them in his, holding her down. He kissed her, whispered her along, holding the vibration where she needed it, until she came with a buck of her hips and a moan in her chest. Milk streaming, mouth open to the ceiling and a fine mist of sweat on her upper lip. A goddess in his bed.

He tossed the toy aside, still buzzing, and slid onto her. Pushed wider the diamond of her legs and flung himself—not even fully erect—against that engorged heat.

“Greedy beast,” she said, nuzzling his mouth, her calves warm around his hips.

Later, curled up tight together, sated and sticky with love, her curls soft against the bottom of his chin, he said, “One question.”

Her hands ran along his forearms. “One.”

“Was it anything specific I did? Just so I can do more of it?”

Her throaty laugh coming through her back and into his chest. “You were existing.”

“I can keep doing that.”

“Don’t stop,” she said, burrowing back into him. “Ever.”

“I love you,” he said, sighing, his arms tight around her. Tired and grateful, he drifted. Almost falling to sleep but curiosity kept picking the night apart.

“I can’t stand it,” he said. “What the hell did—”

“I was watching porn,” Lucky said.

He picked his head up off the pillow. “And you didn’t invite me?”

“You were tired.”

“Porn trumps fatigue. Do you not know this?”

She dug her elbow back into his ribs. “I didn’t know if I’d get into it. I didn’t want you to be getting all worked up if it wasn’t doing anything for me.”

“Obviously it did something for you.”

She laughed. “Uh. Yeah.”

He put his face in her hair, pulling her close. “We should discuss this further.”

She yawned, beautiful in his arms. “Or not.”

That’s all I have. The vault is empty.

I hope you enjoyed this weird backstage tour. From the bottom of my odd heart, I thank you for sharing the passion I have for this little universe.

Wait a minute.

I found something.

A couple present-tense scribbles from the past, which may be a book in the future…

The buff-colored house on Hugunin Street. Filled with sun and the smell of cooking. Chris has been in the kitchen all day, making about a thousand meatballs to freeze.

Byron slides his arms around her, head wearily on her broad shoulder. He is working on Heart Island, part of the multi-million restoration project of Boldt Castle. It’s good work but exhausting.

Chris is running her knife through bunches of herbs she has picked from Kirsten’s garden. She pats Byron’s cheek with fingers that smell of thyme and basil. Byron slides his hands under her shirt, fills them with her breasts. Sets his mouth at the back of her neck where the honey-gold hair comes to a wispy triangle beneath her ponytail.

“Stop,” she whispers, rubbing her temple on his head. “Not now.”

“Later?”

“Later. Go see Erik. He’s been up to something. God knows what…”

Byron goes upstairs. The boys’ rooms are adjacent and in the process of being converted into one big room. Byron has big plans for it, but not a lot of time. He’s only managed to rough out a double-wide doorway in the wall between. He’s promised—both to the boys and Christine—to finish this summer.

Erik is seven. He’s managed to hang two clothesline pulleys between his bedstead and his four-year-old brother’s. He’s used quite a bit of masking tape and, from the look of it, an entire bottle of Elmer’s glue. But the rope is taut and the basket it supports moves smoothly between the two beds.

At Erik’s end it bumps into a bell, signaling a delivery. At Peter’s terminus the signal must be visual because Peter is deaf.

Erik stands with his hands on his hips, eyebrows pulled low as he dissects the problem.

Peter bounces on his bed, hands moving in sign language.

“A light,” Erik says, talking aloud and signing. “But how do you get the basket to turn on a light?”

Peter bounces harder, signing furiously.

Byron flashes the overhead light switch and both boys turn to him.

“Hi, Da.” Pete gets up and begins to jump on the mattress as Byron approaches. He fearlessly swan dives into his father’s arms. Byron stumbles and crashes to the floor. He overdoes the slapstick, knocking over a jar of pick-up sticks.

Erik turns at the sound, eyebrows now halfway up his forehead.

His eyes sweep the rainbow of sticks on the floor, flick back to the pulley affixed to Pete’s bedpost.

Erik never crows about his accomplishments. His face lights up with triumphant revelation but doesn’t say a word as he gathers the sticks back into their can. He sets it atop the squared-off landing of Pete’s bedpost and then scurries back into his room.

“Watch,” Byron signs to Peter.

With a rhythmic creak the pulley turns, the ropes glide and the basket comes into the room. Clunks into the bedpost and the pick-up sticks scatter to the floor.

“Nicely done,” Byron says.

“For me,” Peter says, getting up to look in the basket. Sticks crunch under his sneakers.

“Who picks up the sticks every time?” Byron calls to Erik, still in the other room.

Erik appears, hands on hips again, his triumphant expression cut in half.

“I forgot about that.”

He is Xandro then. His sandy blond head cut short for the summer. Tow-blond eyebrows above the serious brown eyes. His tanned skin and thoughtful look.

Xandro’s look.

Astrid’s ingenuity.

Kennet’s humility.

Byron fights the urge to lunge for his eldest son and crush him to his chest.

Later Christine plays piano. The boys play by her bare feet on the pedals, intermittently communicating in the shorthand system of signs they have devised. Peter reaches up to press his hands on the curving box of the piano, feeling the vibrations.

And even later, love in the dark.

Christine in her black slip nightgown, lying on the chaise chair in the corner of their room. Byron kneeling at its edge, his palms covering her hipbones as he pushes and pulls his way into her heat. Her arms thrown over her head. Her calves climbing the small of his back.

“You’re so good,” she whispers, arching into him.

“You make me good.”

He catches his breath, open mouth against black silk. Her hands on his head. Her insides pulsing around him.

“Don’t move,” she whispers.

“What?”

“Hush.” She smoothly pushes him off her and aside, sitting up in one fluid motion and drawing her nightgown over her knees.

“What’s wrong, Erik?”

Behind the chaise, Byron slides his pajama bottoms back on, now noticing Erik in the doorway. A hand on the knob of the door they forgot to lock.

“Did you have a bad dream?”

Even in the dim light, Byron can see the confusion in Erik’s face. He’s half-asleep and trying to process the scene.

Byron gets up and goes to him. Still with an erection and trying to be cool about it.

“C’mon, kiddo, I’ll tuck you back in.”

He swoops the boy up on one hip and strides purposefully back to Erik’s room. Erik puts his head down and yawns. His fingers come up and close around the charms on Byron’s necklace.

Byron pulls covers around his son, carefully disengaging the little fingers. He pats the pulley jerry-rigged to the bedpost.

“I like how you put this up,” he whispers. “You did a good job.”

A mewing rush of air as Erik yawns again. “What were you and Mom doing?”

“Playing,” Byron says, brushing his mouth on the boy’s forehead.

“Playing what?”

“A game.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Your mother. Go to sleep now. Tomorrow we’ll secure these pulleys better. I’ll show you how to use the drill. It’s time you learned.”

“Mean it…?”

“Absolutely. But you can only use it with me. Not alone until you’re ten.”

The whites of Erik’s eyes shine in the dark as he looks up at his father. Xandro’s face in the dark, circumspect and tenderhearted. “What’s it mean when she wins the game?”

“Everything,” Byron whispers. “Goddnat, älskling.”

Goodnight, darling boy.

But he’ll be a man someday. He’ll know a woman in the dark and then he’ll know what it means…

Byron shuts his bedroom door.

“Lock it, you idiot.”

She’s back in bed, the slip a black puddle on the floor, her summer tan leaving her breasts milky white in the moonlight. Her hands reach for him, greedy and forgiving, pulling the drawstring on his pants.

“Where was I?” she whispers.

“Emilio died,” Christine says.

Erik’s eyebrows wrinkle, “Who?”

“Your great-Uncle Emil. Farfar’s brother.”

Spring of 1987. Erik is a senior in high school. He’s a year older than most of his classmates. When they moved back to Rochester, Erik began fourth grade, but within a month he was struggling to keep up. He was anxious all the time. He couldn’t remember things he had learned at school in Clayton. Christine met with the teacher, the principal and the school psychologist. They agreed the desertion and the divorce and the move was a lot for a nine-year-old boy to handle. Classroom stress would only compound the issue. He needed confidence and comfort. Quietly he was moved back into third grade and put into the same class as a neighborhood boy he’d become friendly with. He relaxed there and began to thrive.

Now eighteen-and-a-half, he’s crossed from awkward, gangling cuteness into handsome. Not as tall as he’d like to be, but dark blond and fit. And sweet. The phone rings constantly for him. Christine has long known he’s sexually active—his body exudes the bristling, curious hunger of all teenage boys, but he’s not a desperate tomcat. In matters of the heart, he flies as low as possible under the radar, dating a handful of girls. Kissing but never telling. Never bitching about what a girl doesn’t do in the sack or bragging about what she does do. The summer before, it seemed he was getting serious with Mindy Meredith, but she went off to college and Christine hasn’t heard Erik mention her since. His prom date was a real looker, but she too has faded into the background. Christine senses Erik doesn’t discard girlfriends out of boredom. Rather she suspects the girls grow weary of trying to breach Erik’s walls.

He’s a guarded boy.

“A lovely boy,” everyone says.

Christine folds the letter from Emilio’s wife. Kirsten, who was always Christine’s favorite. She kept in touch after Christine left Clayton, kept Christine up to date with bits of news. Talking about everything but Byron but trying in her own way to keep a connection. But Christine had little time to keep up her end of the bond, and when she had time, it hurt too much to turn her antenna back toward Clayton.

Kirsten is going to sell the hotel. Retire down to the Carolinas with her sister-in-law and best friend, Aunt Trudy, who is also widowed.

The Fiskares will be no more in Clayton.

Erik seems to read her thoughts because he says, “He was the last brother.”

“Yes.”

“The last fish.”

She smiles at him, catches his rough jaw in her palm. “Not necessarily.”

Later, he leaves for a date and bends to kiss her goodbye. From around his neck swings a gold chain with three charms, warm and bright against his smooth neck.

Christine gave it to him over a year ago. His eyes lit up at first, remembering how he played with it as a boy. Then the eyes went hard, remembering it hung around his father’s neck when he played with it. It hurts him. It reminds him.

“I don’t want it,” he said. “I don’t want anything of his.”

Christine took his hand and coiled the necklace into his palm, folded his fingers over it. “It belongs to your name,” she said. “Your grandfather wore it. And his father before him. It’s an heirloom.” She touched his cheek. “Don’t let one asshole ruin it for you.”

He took it. Put it away in a dresser drawer and it’s stayed there until tonight. Somehow, Emil’s death has moved him to put it on.

It looks beautiful on him.

He was born to wear it.

The charms swing by her cheek, stealing her breath.

Nights in the dark, Byron’s body folding over hers, the golden fish swimming by her eyes.

Where was I?

“I won’t be out late,” Erik says. It’s not lip service. He always lets her know where he is. He’s a good boy.

You’re so good.

Christine smiles at her son but says nothing. After the back door has clicked shut, she pushes aside the voile drape of the living room window and watches her son get into his car. Thinks about him in the dark. With a girl. Charms dangling by her smile.

You make me good.

Even after the taillights have turned the corner and disappeared, Christine goes on staring out the window. Remembering. Slowly melting into tears as she tries to rip her mind free, string by string, from the past.

October 1973

Santiago, Chile

The doorbell rang at three in the morning.

Alejandro Penda was awake immediately, sitting up in the double bed in his parents’ room. His mother sat up as well, her silhouette big and round in the moonlight.

The bell rang again. Alejo moved as close as he could to his mother, his arm creeping across her belly.

“Calmate, hijo,” Clementina whispered. Just as Alejo’s father once soothed him.

“Calmate, hijo,” Eduardo had said. “Friends ring the doorbell. Soldiers and police bang with their fists.”

It’s a friend, Alejo thought. Someone looking for help.

“Get up,” Clementina said, throwing the covers aside. “Come.” She pulled on a robe, tied it above her stomach and stretched hands to her son. “Ahora, Alejito.”

She pulled him toward her closet and pushed him inside.

“Stay here,” she whispered as the doorbell rang again. “Just to be safe. It’s me they want, anyway.”

She shut the door. All was pitch dark within, a pillowy, inky blackness Alejo could almost sink his fingers into. It stopped up his ears, making the sound of his own heartbeat enormous, like an angry fist pounding on a door.

Friends ring the doorbell.

The bell rang one last time. Then silence, except for the blood rushing in Alejo’s ears.

He was not quite eleven years old and didn’t quite understand what was happening in the world. Only that Chile was heaving and bucking, caught up tight in a fist of change that squeezed harder and harder with every passing day. The fist belonged to a man named Pinochet, who was the arm of something called the Right. Alejo tried to fathom his parents’ frantic whispering, but he couldn’t make sense of what was right and left. He knew us and them.

Back in September, they bombed La Monada, the presidential palace, where our president Allende lived. Allende was dead now. They filled the streets with soldiers and crammed the skies over Santiago with low-flying airplanes and helicopters, the latter showering the streets with leaflets. The daily bomb blasts and dynamite explosions—that was their doing. But if they were the Right and the Right was right, it meant we were the Left. Which meant the left was…wrong?

Huddled under dresses and jackets, Alejo pulled his kneecaps tight to his mouth. The fear burned like a hard fire, pressing him from all sides, as if the walls of the closet were moving together. His mind chattered like teeth and silent tears leaked through his squeezed eyes, wetting the thin fabric of his pajamas.

Calmate, hijo, his father’s voice crept through his mind. A flimsy bandage on a severed limb. Four days ago, Eduardo Penda never came home from his bookstore. A doorbell rang that night, too, but at the respectable hour of eight. It was Eduardo’s assistant, Milagros, her eyes reddened with smoke and burns on her arms and legs. She told Clementina the soldiers had torched the shop and arrested Eduardo.

“Alejo, go to your room,” Clementina said. He ducked only halfway down the hall and hid behind a bookcase, listening. Clementina kept the front door half-closed and he could only catch scattered words.

“Leftist sympathy… Dissident literature… Student uprisings… A threat… Arresting foreign enemies.”

Alejo’s mind juggled the words around, trying to extract his father from them. Eduardo Penda was a tall, slender man. Handsome. Almost pretty-looking. Bookish, idealistic and dreamy. Hopelessly impractical but he knew everything about books and history and the magic inside stories. He owned a wonderful bookshop on the Calle Trinidad, filled with the smell of ink and paper and coffee and the hum of students debating.

The shop was a threat? Eduardo was an enemy of the people? Eduardo loved people. The students loved him.

His mother was crying now, which drew Alejo back toward the door. He was man of the house when Eduardo wasn’t home. He crouched down, peering around the edge of the door, avoiding Clementina’s foot that tried to shoo him. In the hall, other apartment doors were cracking open, tips of noses inching out, sniffing for news. The air was heavy with suspicion and fear.

Foreign enemies, Alejo thought, remembering the words on the leaflets showered over the city, calling for Santiguans to denounce all foreigners. He knew Eduardo was the son of Italian immigrants. Clementina came to Chile from Spain when she was sixteen. Were Spanish and Italians Right? Or Wrong?

“My guess is he’s in the Estadio,” Milagros murmured. “Or the Villa Grimaldi. I heard they’re detaining people there as well.”

“Go home,” Clementina said, her hand sliding along her curved belly. “It’s not safe here.”

“You should go,” Milagros said. “Go now while you still can.” Her hand reached for Clementina’s and their fingers laced, knuckles clenched white on Clementina’s stomach.

“I can’t. Not without him.”

The women kissed cheeks. Milagros slipped away and Clementina shut the door. For hours she paced the apartment, her lovely curved brow twisted up with worry. Every so often she looked wild-eyed at Alejo, as if expecting him to make the decision whether to stay for Eduardo or flee without him. He avoided her eyes and went into the kitchen to make them some eggs. On the wall by the phone hung the calendar, still showing September’s page. Alejo had been crossing out the days in anticipation of their upcoming trip to Portillo—their last ski trip of the season. But the X’s stopped on September 11, 1973. The day Pinochet came to town, froze the calendar and put the country’s plans on hold.

Clementina and Alejo ate their eggs in silence, in an unspoken decision to stay.

Not without him.

They should have gone.

It’s me they want anyway.

Worn out by fear, his young nerves shredded, the ball of Alejo’s body tipped sideways until his head came to rest against the closet wall, cushioned by his mother’s winter coat. He began to play the game his father made up: Alejo named an animal, Eduardo gave the group term.

Lions.

“Pride.”

Bears.

“Sleuth.”

Zebras.

“Dazzle.”

Giraffes.

“Tower.”

Pandas.

“Embarrassment.” Eduardo always laughed for this one and added, “An embarrassment of Pendas. So many of us, you know.” Which wasn’t true. In contrast to Chilean norms of community living and large, extended families, the Pendas were private and insular. They lived a life centered around books, skiing at Portillo and time spent nosotros tres—us three.

Alejo went on quizzing himself, his eyes dipping and drooping. When he woke with a start, dawn was evident in the thin crack of light beneath the door.

He snuck out once—to use the toilet and load his arms with things from the kitchen. He returned to his hiding place and waited.

The doorbell didn’t ring. Nor the phone. The outside din of helicopters, guns, explosions and screams slipped into the open bedroom windows and through the crack of the closet door.

Crows.

Alejo’s mouth shaped the collective noun without a sound: “Murder.”

His mother never returned.

If you enjoyed The Ones That Got Away (or any of the Fish Tales), please consider leaving a review on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1ssYymG

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It means the world to me.

Goddnat, Älsklingar

Suanne Laqueur graduated from Alfred University with a double major in dance and theater. She taught at the Carol Bierman School of Ballet Arts in Croton-on-Hudson for ten years. An avid reader, cook and gardener, she started her blog EatsReadsThinks in 2010. Her debut novel, The Man I Love, won a gold medal in the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards and a gold medal for Best Debut Author from Feathered Quill Book Awards.

With her Fish Tales series, Laqueur has gone from choreographing dancers to choreographing words. Her goal is to create a new kind of emotionally intelligent romance that appeals to the emotions of all readers, crossing gender, age and genre.

Suanne lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband and two children.

Visit her at http://suannelaqueurwrites.com

Her Facebook page http://on.fb.me/1TVNBrp

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/suannelqr