The Man I Love (11 page)

With Daisy on the pill, their lovemaking was even more frequent and intense. The spontaneity it allowed them caused a bit of a circus the first month. A second honeymoon. They were doing it all over the damn place. Seduction on the couch, sneaky trysts in the dressing rooms under the stage or the storage rooms where old sets were kept. Erik was waking up hard every other morning, rolling half-asleep onto Daisy or pulling her on top of him. Or he was pulling over in the car or pressing her up against the kitchen counter or surprising her in the shower. But even better than the freedom was the mind-bending sensation of having nothing between his body and hers. He had never been inside a girl without a condom before and he loved how she, and only she, now owned the experience.

She is the only woman I’ve touched this way,
he thought. He held her in his lap, pushed up deep inside her, his hungry hands coursing along the avenues of her body. Arms and legs wound around each other, foreheads pressed together tight. Her entire body clutched him. The air roaring in his head, eardrums bulging against the dark and firework flashes of yellow and orange behind his closed eyelids. The taste of her mouth in his. And through it all he was sliding and pushing inside her and she was sliding and pulling him in. Hard against slick. Tight, hot and aching.

“God, Erik,” she said, the air falling out of her voice. “I want to come.”

“Dais—" He had turned the corner. A hole opened in the night, beckoning him. He was right on the edge of coming. But he had been with her long enough he could control it and wait for her. He knew her body. Knew it by feel and sight and sound. She was closing in on him, contracting down, like a hand slowly curling into a fist.

“It feels so good.”

“Let it go, Dais.”

“I feel it.”

“It’s right there. Let it come. Come to me.”

She jumped with her silent scream. He followed, gathering the air she left behind. Her kiss crashed into his as a moan passed from his throat to her mouth and back again. As what he had burst forth into her body.

Only me.

Time and space reassembled. Riding out the last of the tremors, Erik held tight to Daisy, rocking her in his lap, stroking her head on his shoulder. He could feel her heart pounding against his, the last little trembles making her body twitch.

“I love us,” she whispered.

He smiled, feeling the world to his bones. “I love us, too.”

“It’s so good.” She ran a hand back from her forehead, gathering her hair up and away from her neck.

“Happy birthday,” he said, running his mouth along her throat, tasting her scent.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Being twenty rocks.”

Carefully he helped her down to her back, pulling a pillow into place, pulling up the covers and tucking them around their bodies.

Another December.

Another Nutcracker Mercenary Season.

Another anniversary.

“Two years,” she said.

Fingers twined, he set his mouth against her wrist, feeling her pulse beat. “Twenty-four months.”

He loved her. Sometimes it was just part of the world, like air and water. Other times, like right now, he looked at Daisy and could not get his mind around the emotion he felt for her. “Love” didn’t seem an adequate word anymore. It was bigger than the world, beyond everything he had imagined love could be. Even the phrase “making love” had morphed out of context. Lately he was struck by the literal idea of making love. Not just a sexual expression but a creation-ary one. As if with each conversation, each shared experience and each time their bodies came together, they were assembling something larger. Adding bit by bit onto some magnificent structure. A cathedral within their private universe.

“I love you so much,” he said.
You can’t know. You’ll never know how much. I’ll never be able to say it all.

He put his head down next to hers. Her lips brushed his face, her hand stroking the back of his neck.

“I don’t know where I stop and you begin,” she said. Her voice had the slurred and sultry rhythm which meant she was growing drowsy. “Everything I am is so woven in with everything you are. It’s like… I can’t explain. I can’t explain love anymore, Erik. It doesn’t mean what it used to.”

I am the only one.

Erik moved closer against her as a great bell in the cathedral began to toll.

She knew.

Of course she knew.

Erik returned to school from winter break on the fourth of January. It was nearly a six-hour drive from Rochester and he made decent time, pulling up in front of Colby Street around four in the afternoon.

Daisy came out of his house and met him at the curb. “How was your drive?”

Erik kissed her. “Not bad. A little snow when I got into Pennsylvania.” He pulled his backpack and duffel from the backseat and shut the car door.

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“I have soup ready at my place and I can make grilled cheese.”

“Perfect. Let me drop my stuff off.”

He followed her to his kitchen door. They went into the living room where a clobber of bags, boxes and jackets was spilled. “When did Will get back?” Erik said, heading to the stairs.

From overhead came a long, loud moan. Erik looked up at the ceiling, then back at Daisy, eyes wide.

She smiled. “Will came five minutes after Lucky did. And pretty much every hour since.”

Erik dropped his things and headed back toward the kitchen door. “Let’s eat.”

Later in the evening Will and Lucky wandered over to Jay Street, dreamy-eyed and sated. David and James came by as well. They sat around the living room drinking wine and smoking. Will had Lucky in his lap, caressing her as she told entertaining war stories about her EMT course. As he listened, Erik covertly watched James, looking for exchanged glances with Will or any signs of tension. So far the air was neutral and relaxed. If anything, both boys seemed to be going out of their way not to make eye contact.

“So are you definitely going down this road now, Luck?” David asked. “Do you have the stomach for it?”

“I don’t,” Lucky said. “There are stories I’m not going to tell you guys. Suffice it to say, I saw some horrible shit. And I discovered I’m not one of those people who can un-see things. I would not make it. If I did it for a living I’d be institutionalized within a year.”

“We can’t have you locked up,” Daisy said. She held out her arms. “You had her all day, Will. Share.”

Lucky extricated herself and went over to squeeze next to Daisy in the easy chair. “I missed you,” she said, kissing her friend. “I missed you guys so much. I was bummed about missing the fall concert. What’s the gossip for spring?”

Will had news.
Powaqqatsi
had been such a triumph, Kees was recommending it be expanded and reprised at the spring production. Will was already going through the entire score and picking which segments he wanted. “Definitely the second section,” he said.

“‘Anthem’?” James said, stubbing out his cigarette. “You add it onto the original and you have a good ten minute ballet.”

Will nodded. “Dais, the part I played for you, where the tambourine comes in? I see a pas de deux there. I thought about making it for Aisha Johnson.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Daisy said. “Aisha and who else?”

“Me.”

Daisy pointed at him. “It’s your graduating concert. You better be dancing something with me.”

“I will. But there are no senior boys in contemporary this year. I know Kees will let me dance in my own work.”

“See, I knew you walked both sides of the line, Will,” David said. “Nobody believed me.”

Loud laughter except, Erik noticed, from James.

“Dais, you’ll help me?” Will said. “I have a bunch of stuff I need to try on you.”

“Why don’t you try it on Aisha,” Lucky said.

“Because if it doesn’t work on Dais, it doesn’t work at all.”

Daisy arched her neck, smiling. “I’ll help you,” she said.

“Good,” Will said. “I need it.”

James looked up hopefully, but if there was a need for his help, Will didn’t voice it.

Spirits and energy were high as the semester began. The weather was unusually mild with plenty of sunshine, which kept at bay the customary mid-winter blues. Will was on fire with “Anthem,” the new section of
Powaqqatsi.
In contrast to the fiesta feeling of the opening section, “Anthem” was stately and majestic. A winding, synthesized baseline in five-four time set an almost foreboding tone, like the rumblings of a volcano. Then the brass erupted in the refrain, echoed by flutes and tambourines.

Aisha Johnson wrapped her six-foot, sinewy body like a python around the sensual choreography. She coiled her limbs about the music and squeezed every atom of oxygen out. You couldn’t take your eyes off her.

“Dude, she is smokin’,” Erik muttered to Will, after peeking at one of the rehearsals. “Like Tina Turner.”

“More like Grace Jones,” Will said. “She either gives me a total hard-on or scares the living shit out of me.”

Over in the ballet division, Marie Del’Amici was staging a work called
Who Cares?
A collaboration between the famed choreographer George Balanchine and the composer George Gershwin. It was a light-hearted ballet—jazzy and schmaltzy, pure spectacle. 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 idea in the set shop of Mallory, surrounded by his crew. “These are people dancing as people.”

Daisy had a solo, and was cast with James in a pas de deux to the song “The Man I Love.”

“Great, you get to babysit again,” Erik said.

Daisy exhaled and shrugged.

“Why wouldn’t Marie cast you with Will?”

Her smile was tired and resigned. “Because this is ballet, honey. A lot of times it’s not how well you dance but how well you deal.”

Will, besides dancing in
Powaqqatsi,
was featured throughout
Who Cares?
But his main pas de deux was with a girl named Taylor Revell. He and Daisy were crushed not to be cast together, but they wisely opted to be professional about it. “Man up and dance,” Will said, sighing.

“James is a wild card,” Daisy said. “And he’s taking anatomy this year and already flailing. Anything could happen.”

“Yeah, and anyone with half a brain can see your boy Johnny learning James’s part.”

“No stupid boys are in ballet,” Daisy said.

* * *

Erik was out running one Sunday afternoon in late February when a car slowed on the other side of the street and tooted its horn. Erik squinted and saw it was James. Checking traffic, he jogged across as James rolled down the window.

“Where you off to?” Erik said, panting.

“I gotta go home a couple days.”

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah. Tuesday is the one-year anniversary of Dhahran.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Dhahran. Where my sister was killed—”

“Oh, right, that’s right. I’m sorry.”

“They’re dedicating a monument at the army reserve center. Some general is coming. Big to-do. I gotta be there.”

“Of course.” Helpless, Erik touched James’s shoulder lightly. “I’m sorry. I know going home is never easy for you to begin with.”

James nodded, staring straight out through the windshield. He wore mirrored shades. A scruffy growth of facial hair marred the line of the goatee he usually kept so scrupulously neat. “All three brothers in the house. Waiting for me like vultures. Mom’s probably already drunk. I’m already an anxious wreck and I haven’t even gotten out of town. And I’ll miss two days of anatomy class which will be a bitch. But,” he said, slapping his hands down the steering wheel, “if Penny can go to war, I can damn well go to her memorial. Right?”

“Right.”

James grinned suddenly. “And if shit gets serious, I know where her old guns are kept.”

“Hey, don’t get yourself arrested before the concert,” Erik said, laughing.

“I’m kidding. I’ll be all right. What doesn’t kill us…doesn’t fucking kill us.”

“Drive safe, James.”

“See you in a few days.”

Erik thumped his fist twice on the roof of the car, then took off running. James tooted the horn again and pulled out.

It started falling apart soon after.

Early March sucker-punched them with arctic temperatures and snowstorms. Coursework and rehearsals intensified. Will was struggling with the ending of “Anthem” and struggling with James’s wounded and reproachful presence. James had gone dark since his sister’s memorial service. He was the omega dog now, passively pathetic as he vied for Will’s attentions, resorting either to martyred brooding or biting sarcasm when he couldn’t get it.

Then March spit on its hands and it started to rain. It rained for two solid weeks. The frigid dankness drove everyone into a funk. The air was a tangible, clammy and soporific substance. Skin absorbed it. Muscles sopped it up like a sponge. Half the students were irritable and antsy. The other half were lethargic, suspended in a wet, grey void. The rain beat incessantly on the windows and rooftops. Beat incessantly in heads and hearts.

“Anthem” continued to flounder. “I can’t
end
this goddamn thing,” Will said, cursing in two languages, nearly howling in frustration. Rehearsals were tense. In a creative slump, Will hadn’t the time or energy for neediness. Daisy, being naturally grounded and pragmatic, could hold the atmosphere calm, but just barely. She instinctively knew to keep still and quiet and let Will find his own way to water in the desert. She could follow him in French or English. If she had a suggestion, she knew how to unobtrusively make it and, even better, make it seem Will’s idea. She understood his directions but more importantly, she understood his silences. If he didn’t respond, she retreated with no hard feelings. His approval wasn’t necessary to validate her relationship with him.

James, on the other hand, needed constant validation. He sulked if his advice were rejected. Or he became argumentative. He spoke the wrong language or spoke too much. He stepped on toes and got in the way. Meanwhile, he was weeks behind in anatomy and dancing erratically in rehearsals for
Who Cares?
This put Daisy on edge, which put Erik on edge.

“Dude,” Will finally said to James. “You can’t come to my rehearsals anymore.” It was the first day of spring.

“I feel bad,” Daisy said to Erik. “But James has become impossible. Nobody wants him around. He’s so toxic. I bought him a cup of coffee and tried to talk to him afterward and he just broke down and cried. Said he was in love with Will and he didn’t know what to do.”

“Jesus, what a mess,” Erik said.

“He looks totally strung-out, too. Do you know if he’s still doing coke with David?”

“Only if he’s buying it. David’s not generous with his stash.”

“True. And God knows James is always strapped for cash. But I swear he’s on something. So does Lucky. He was over to study for anatomy the other day and afterward she said he looked like he was on meth. She said she saw plenty of cases when she was in her EMT course and it was the first thing she thought of with James.”

“Where in hell do you even get meth?”

Daisy shrugged. “A lot of dancers take uppers because they suppress your appetite. Is meth an upper?”

“You’re asking me? I can barely inhale the right end of a joint.”

“I know ecstasy is rampant in the conservatory but I thought that stuff just made you all touchy-feely and mellow. James is hardly mellow.”

“You think Lucky knows?” Erik said.

“She totally sees James is infatuated with Will. She’s no dummy. And James is so transparent a toddler could pick up the crush vibe. But the extent things went to while she was gone? I have no idea if she knows.”

“Come to think of it, I haven’t heard her and Will moaning in the night lately.” Erik meant it as a joke but Daisy’s face was sad as she nodded.

“I haven’t either,” she said. “And it’s weird, but the house feels empty without it.”