The Man I Love

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Trust me,” the security guard said, patting Erik’s back. “Cooperate now and then you’re done. We’ll get you over to the hospital as soon as we can. I’ll drive you myself.”

  Erik stared as the two gurneys carrying Will and Daisy were wheeled away, up the aisle and out the lobby doors.

  At least they were going together. Will always had Daisy’s back.

  Lucky squeezed his fingers hard.

  “We’ll stay together, Fish,” she whispered, as if she had read his mind. “We’ll go do this together. We won’t leave each other.”

  Detective Khoury motioned toward the back of the theater. Holding Lucky’s hand, Erik started up the aisle, David following behind.

  Splendid Anguish

  He rode across campus in a patrol car, in the back seat with Lucky and David. The streets were lined with emergency vehicles, a sea of flashing red and white lights.

  Lucky’s composure cracked as soon as they pulled away from the curb. She sank her face into her hands. A cry broke between her fingers. Erik put his arm around her and let her settle, sobbing, on his chest. There she slumped, dead and exhausted weight, making the keys in his front pocket dig painfully into his hip. He reached in to retrieve them. When he pulled his hand out, the flattened copper penny was wedged between two fingers.

  Numb and stupid, he stared at it. Last he remembered, it had been in his hand. When had he put it in his pocket? More importantly—why had he put it in his pocket? Mouth open, eyebrows drawn down he looked out the window, as if the answer were out there. His mind was dumb grey space. An erased blackboard. Blinking and disturbed, he stuffed the penny and the keys in his other pocket.

  “Front row seat to the end of the world,” David said, face pressed to his window, looking up and out.

  Erik looked out his side. Cops were everywhere, weapons drawn. K-9 units, too—officers going in and out of buildings with their German shepherds. Hearing the distinctive hum of helicopter rotors, Erik tilted his head up the glass to see the aerial surveillance.

  More patrol cars in front of the health center, cops patrolling the sidewalk and perimeter. Inside they stood at doors and windows, vigilant eyes constantly sweeping while the regular clinic staff buzzed around. But other people were there, too. Erik didn’t know if they were counselors or social workers or just volunteers, but they were competent and kind and efficient. They ushered the victims in and circled the wagons, pulling close a protective force-field and saying reassuring things. Come sit down. Let me get you a drink. Are you cold? Lie down. How do you feel? You poor thing. It’s all right. Take some deep breaths. Let’s call your parents. I’ll help you.

  Detective Khoury sat Erik down by a window. A woman brought him some tea.

  “Start from the beginning,” Khoury said.

  Erik tried, but it was hard to tell a coherent story. His mind kept dissolving and melding back together, losing the thread. He did better answering when Khoury asked him things.

  “When was the last time you saw James?”

  “About ten days ago. He left school after a suicide attempt. I saw him the day before.”

  “Where?”

  “He came over to my house. I live with Will Kaeger. The guy they just took to the hospital with my girlfriend.”

  “He came to your house. Was he your friend?”

  “He was in my circle of friends, yes. But not like my best pal or anything.”

  “How did he seem to you that night?”

  “Strung out. Stressed out. Sad. A lot of people were mad at him.”

  “Why?”

  “Few reasons. Couple weeks before he was high in a rehearsal and he dropped my girlfriend. She twisted up an ankle and broke a finger.”

  “Was disciplinary action taken against him?”

  “No. Nobody could prove he was on something. I heard he hung with a crowd doing a lot of shit but I have no proof there either.”

  “Why else were people mad at him?”

  “Well right after the incident he failed. Not failed. I mean, he didn’t make his minimum GPA so he couldn’t dance in the concert. Will took over his role.”

  “Will is your roommate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were he and James friends?”

  “Yeah. And they worked together on some choreography last semester.”

  “Any idea why James would want to shoot him?”

  Erik licked his lips. “I think James may have had a thing for Will. A lot of people thought that.”

  “A thing?” the detective said.

  “James is gay. Was gay. He had a thing for Will.”

  “Is Will gay?”

  “No, he’s straight. That’s his girlfriend over there.”

  “So James had a crush on your straight roommate. They were friends to a degree and artistic collaborators as well. That was the extent of the relationship?”

  “To my knowledge, yes.”

  “Could there have been more?”

  “Nothing that I saw.” Which was not a complete lie. He hadn’t ever seen James in Will’s bedroom. He once saw a pair of jeans on the floor and Will in a towel.

  “Did you know James owned a gun?”

  “No. I know his father and his brothers hunt.”

  “You don’t hunt with a Glock.”

  “His sister was in the army. Maybe it was hers.”

  “Do you know his sister?”

  “No, she died. Last February. In Saudi Arabia.”

  “I see.”

  “But how could it have been her gun, wouldn’t the Army have taken it back?”

  “A Glock isn’t Army issue, no. Do you have any idea why he would have wanted to shoot your girlfriend?”

  Erik shook his head, his throat tight. “She didn’t do anything to him.”

  “Why would he have wanted to shoot you?”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  The detective tilted his head. “He shot the windows of the lighting booth out. He must have known you were in there.”

  Numb and stunned, Erik went on shaking his head. “He liked me.”

  “In what way?”

  “As a friend.”

  “When he came over to your house the night before he attempted suicide, what did he want?”

  “To talk.”

  “To Will or to you?”

  “He was out in the backyard, staring up at the window. We all woke up and I said I’d go down.”

  “Why you?”

  “He liked me.” He showed Khoury the penny, told him what it meant. Told what happened, as much as he could remember. “He trusted me. I know he did.”

  The detective again took him through what happened in the theater. “You came out of the booth?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was an insane thing to do, Erik. You could’ve been killed.”

  Erik’s face burned and he looked at the cop through narrowed eyes. “She’s my life,” he said. “She was shot down and bleeding to death on the stage. What was I supposed to do?”

  Khoury put a gentling hand on Erik’s arm. “I said it was an insane thing. It was also a courageously beautiful thing. If it were my wife or daughter, I would have gone out too.”

  “You’re a cop. It’s your job to go out,” Erik muttered, staring between his knees to the floor.

  “True. Which makes your insane act all the more beautiful. Still, I won’t want to be around when your mother gets her hands on you.”

  She doesn’t know where I am, Erik thought. “Jesus, she’s gonna kill me,” he whispered absently.

  The interview went on a while longer. The detective repeated a lot of the questions, twisting them into different angles. Erik’s answers, though not articulate, stayed consistent. Finally Khoury thanked him and gave him his card in case he remembered anything else.

  “You might see me at the hospital later,” Khoury said. “But give me a ring even if you don’t. I know your girlfriend will be all right. But will you call and let me know?”

&n
bsp; Erik nodded, and shook the proffered hand.

  His tea had gone cold. The same woman brought him another cup. Apologetically she said she had tried his mother’s number three times but no one was answering. Erik tried twice himself.

  “My brother should be home,” he said. His jaw felt like it weighed ten pounds. “But he’s deaf, he wouldn’t pick up. I’d need to call on a TDD.”

  “Do we have a TDD?” the woman said to one of her colleagues.

  “What’s a TDD?”

  “The thing for hearing impaired people. You type over the phone line—“

  “Wait,” Erik said, holding his head. “She’s in Florida.”

  He was an idiot. Christine was down in Key West with her boyfriend, Fred. Erik fretted another five minutes over how to reach her, before thinking to check his wallet where, sure enough, he had written Fred’s number. Of course. He always wrote down everything.

  He was exhausted then. After being questioned, the additional mental effort to produce this phone number was nearly too much.

  The women dialed and spoke to Fred first, paving the way. Then Erik took the phone and Christine got on. It was surreal. Through the receiver she was crying and saying things, and his mouth was moving and he was saying things. Moments went by but they didn’t pile up into memory. They fell like wheat before the plow of a recurring image—James firing and Will rearing up, throwing Daisy off his back. It cut a swathe through his mind and he looped through a dull confusion to arrive at the present again, wondering what had happened.

  “I love you,” his mother said. “I love you, Erik. I’m coming there. I’ll get a flight and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I’m all right,” he said, as more images swept through his mind like an express train, bearing down closer and closer until the train hit him with an explosion of glass fragments.

  He wandered, waiting for David and Lucky to be finished with their interviews. He got hugged a lot. By dancers and stagehands. His classmates and friends. He held crying girls, thumped the backs and shoulders of shivering, red-eyed boys. From them he learned the carnage James had left in the wings before he stepped onstage. Five students dead.

  “Trevor King,” they said. “He was first.”

  Allison Pierce was gone. Fat okey-dokey Allison, getting on Erik’s last nerve since freshman year. Now she was dead.

  “And Aisha Johnson.”

  “And Manuel Sabena.”

  “Taylor Revell.”

  The faces raced before Erik’s eyes. Aisha, the gorgeous Grace Jones double whose dancing ruled Powaqqatsi. Gone. And Taylor, who had switched partners so Daisy could dance with Will. It might have been her on the stage and Daisy in the wings. Erik’s mind swam into an alternate scenario, automatically thought Thank God before clamping down in shame. He shook his head hard. “Who else is hurt?”

  Like a jigsaw puzzle, pieces of experience were fit together. Who had been where. Who had seen what.

  “Where’s Kees?” Erik asked.

  “I saw him leave in an ambulance but he was sitting up. It looked like his shoulder was shot. Or his arm.”

  “Marie Del’Amici is in bad shape,” someone else said. “She was shot but somehow she crawled between rows to hide. They didn’t find her right away.”

  “I saw them working on her. They had a defibrillator.”

  “Where’s Daisy?” they asked Erik. “What happened to Will?”

  “Does anyone know?”

  “What is happening?”

  Erik felt a little sick. In the men’s room he ran the faucet cold and splashed his face. The water fell crimson back in the sink. He stared at it, then looked up at the mirror. He stepped back to see more of his reflection.

  He was covered with blood.

  He looked down. Streaked and dried in the hair on his forearms, caked in his fingernail beds, smeared across his shirt like some abstract painting. It capped the toes of his work boots and had turned the knees of his jeans to maroon leather.

  Dizzy and shaking, Erik sat on the tile floor, back up against the wall beneath the paper towel dispenser. He stared at his hands. At Daisy’s blood on them.

  He felt branded. Eeerily and irrevocably owned. She had marked him. He had marked her in blood once—the night of her eighteenth birthday, the night she gifted herself to him. She had bled and he had used it as ink, writing his name on her leg. Now he was claimed. He had gone through gunfire and terror to pass the last test, the final ordeal, and his reward was now in his hands. On his hands.

  It’s all there is, he thought, turning his palms up and then down, taking it in. No one but her. After today I can love no one but her.

  “You live a fucking fairytale with Daisy,” James had said angrily. Erik would never know if James had come into the theater targeting Will, and if everyone else was collateral damage. Maybe Daisy had been a target. Perhaps Erik too. Or their fairytale. The vendetta could have been generalized or specific. But if James had come into the theater with any intent of destroying Erik and Daisy, he had failed. The fairytale was over, yes, but a truer, grittier human tale had begun in its place. A book with the strength of blood in its bound pages.

  Erik began to cry. He didn’t know if it was from fear or joy, but unable to stop it, he wrapped his arms around his legs, put his mouth on his knees and caved into it. He listened to the sound of his chest-wrenching sobs echoing off tile. He was both frightened and fearless. His own splendid anguish ricocheting around him. This was the real story. This was how it started. Not with locked eyes during romance and sex, but with blood. With locked eyes in a crisis. With I am here. Helping even though it hurt. Making your fingers let go even as your heart was breaking. To do what you had to do to survive so the story could go on being told.

  The bathroom door creaked open. Another pair of blood-stained work boots and maroon-spattered jeans. David, crouching down. Back in the theater, he had looked pale and grim. Almost stoic. Now he looked terrified. Though the florescent light was harsh, his pupils were enormous, eclipsing the deep brown irises. His eyes were black pearls, slick with tears, fringed in fear. “Erik,” he whispered.

  Erik could not remember the last time David had called him by name. “I’m all right,” he said between sobs. “I’m all right.”

  David put his hands on Erik’s shoulders. Put his forehead against Erik’s brow. Erik clenched handfuls of David’s shirt. Head to head, like twins in the womb, they hung onto each other, floating in the madness.

  David, Erik thought, filled with a desperate affection. Her blood is on you, too. You are in the story now. You are part of my pack.

  “Come on,” David said after a minute, wiping his face on a sleeve. “Let’s get out of here.” He stood up, put a hand down. Erik slapped his opposite palm against it and let David pull him to his feet. He went to the sink and splashed his face again, scraping the blood out of his hairline and eyebrows. He soaped his forearms, got as much as he could out of his fingernails. Watched the red fade to pink and swirl down the drain.

  David handed him a couple paper towels. “You good?”

  “I’m good.” He balled them up and fired at the garbage can in the corner. Perfect shot.

  “Come on,” David said. He thumped Erik’s back, ruffled his hair. “Fishy, fishy in the brook, come along on David’s hook…”

  This Is My Son

  For an hour and a half, Erik, Lucky and David sat in the main waiting room of Philadelphia Trauma Center. The admitting nurses would not tell them anything, other than Will and Daisy were both in surgery. Not even to Lucky, who covertly switched her grandmother’s sapphire ring to her left ring finger, laid the jeweled hand casually on the counter and said she was Will’s fiancée.

  Frustrated and depleted, they dropped onto couches and chairs. After a few minutes, Erik summoned the energy to get up again and call his mother. Christine could not get an evening flight out of Key West. The earliest flight she could book was eleven o’clock the next morning. Erik wrote down the in
formation and said he would pick her up at the airport. Or someone would.

  “Call me when you leave the hospital,” she said. “If you go somewhere—anywhere different—you call me.”

  “I will,” he said, and then yawned.

  “Don’t you dare not call me. I need to know where you are, Byron Erik.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Erik said, leaning his head against the payphone. It was a riff they had developed since he had become an adult: she called him by full name—which he’d always detested as a child—and he retorted with ma’am, which Christine loathed.

  Back in the waiting room, Erik sank into the couch cushions and put his feet up on the coffee table. He stared at nothing. Felt nothing. In a moment, Lucky toppled over and pillowed her cheek on his leg. He rested his hand on her shoulder, yawning again, his face splitting. He was a little hungry but too tired to do anything about it.

  Lucky slept. The boys sat and withdrew further into their exhausted selves. David’s eyes blinked and finally closed. Erik absently played with Lucky’s spiral curls, picked at the dried blood in them. His mind dipped and rose on waves of disjointed thought until he too, fell asleep.

  At the touch of a cold hand on his brow, he opened his eyes. Looked up at Daisy’s face.

  I’ve slept a hundred years. I’m an old man now. And she’s grown old with me.

  Then he realized it was Francine Bianco’s hand. Daisy’s mother, perched on the arm of the couch, her palm now cupping his jaw.

  “Erik,” she whispered, except in her accent it was Erique. “Oh darling, what’s happened to you?”

  Erik felt bruised and scraped. He put his feet on the floor, disoriented. Lucky’s head was no longer pillowed on his legs. David was gone, too. Joe Bianco walked over. Erik recognized his expression immediately: he was in the war room. Jaw tight, his blue eyes turned to hard slate, shoulders cloaked in disciplined control. He crouched down and clasped a hand on Erik’s upper arm. “How do you feel?”

  Erik breathed in, let it out, testing his lungs. “I’m all right.”