The Man I Love

by Suanne Laqueur

  “My dear,” he said, “when it comes to being shot in the leg, you are a champ.”

  Daisy had unconsciously charmed her way past the double checkpoint of Dr. Jinani’s professional detachment and his naturally shy reserve. They joked and chatted through his daily visits with the ease of uncle and beloved niece.

  He originally wanted her to do her rehab at the Magee Center in Philadelphia. But sensing the strength she drew from her family, he agreed she could go to a facility closer to home as an outpatient. On the fourth of May, three weeks after she was shot, Daisy returned to Bird-in-Hand.

  “I’m fucking home,” she said to Erik on the phone, her voice a purr of relief. They talked every night, Erik following both her progress and her setbacks.

  “‘Rehabilitation protocol,’” Daisy said, reading to him from a lengthy document. “‘Following compartment syndrome release with open fasciotomy.’ Nice to know this is common enough to warrant protocol.”

  “You know, release used to be a much sexier word,” Erik said, curled in bed with the phone tucked under his ear. “Now all it evokes is your leg muscles bulging out.”

  “I told you not to look when they were changing the dressings.”

  “Well you looked. I couldn’t not look if you did. Think you’re going to one-up me in the looking department?”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say compartment?”

  “Cute. But really, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “Thank you, honey,” Daisy said. “I try to corner the market on all your extreme experiences.”

  “You have the freakin’ monopoly,” Erik muttered.

  The first two weeks at rehab, her trainers left her leg at rest and concentrated on getting her endurance back. Daisy worked side-by-side with one man who was a double amputee, and another who was a paraplegic. They did grueling cardio workouts solely with upper body strength, propelling their chairs in laps around the outdoor track, or in specialized treadmill racks indoors. For strength training, the men used heavy free weights while Daisy worked with resistance bands. Her exercises focused on her core, back and shoulders, and keeping the good leg conditioned. She needed strength without bulk, and had the additional goal of maintaining her flexibility. She worked with a stretching coach daily, and saw a massage therapist three days a week.

  “This does not suck,” she said to Erik.

  “Is there a release in those massage sessions?”

  “Cute.”

  She phased into active strength training for her injured leg. She started in the pool, using the resistance of water to gain the suppleness back in her left knee and ankle and build up the strength in her quadriceps. Long hours just learning to put weight on the leg again. And then walk on it.

  She often sounded tired and frustrated on the phone. Her heart wanted pliés and relevés while her body could only handle supported baby steps. Sometimes she cried and Erik, unable to hold and comfort her, wanted to tear the walls apart. Just as her little triumphs brought him joy, her stumbles filled him with aggravation. Those were the days he wanted to take the penny out of his pocket and chuck it in the street. Only a gripping superstition kept him from doing so.

  So the rest of May passed. Cardiovascular training. Treadmill. Elliptical. Weight training. Strengthening and conditioning. Stretch. Massage. Ice. Elevation. Little by little, the left leg began to come back. All the while, the therapists were keeping her right side strong. Her right leg was her ticket out: Daisy was a southpaw in the sport of dance, a natural left turner, balancing on her right leg and spinning counter-clockwise. All her dancing was right leg dominant. It inspired an Abbot and Costello routine Joe Bianco ate up with a spoon:

  “At least he shot you in the right leg,” he would say.

  “You mean the correct leg.” Daisy always went along.

  “Right, he shot your left leg.”

  “Right.”

  “No, the left.”

  “Right.”

  * * *

  June arrived. And Erik began to rebuild.

  The carpet in Mallory’s auditorium had to be replaced, stained as it was with blood and human gore. The upholstery on two rows of seats was unacceptable for public posteriors. With minimal debate, the university decided not only would the carpet and seats be replaced, but the theater was getting a full overhaul, including a new electrical system. And in an astonishing cut through normally-clogged bureaucratic channels, the plans and the budget were approved and the project went out to bid. When construction crews rolled on site the first week of June, Leo Graham had created four summer internships within their ranks, securing two of those spots for Erik and David.

  Erik drove down to Pennsylvania the weekend before his job started. His car ate up the rolling, scenic miles of Amish country, passing farms and vineyards and produce stands. Just at sunset he turned up the dirt road at the sign marked BIANCO’S ORCHARD: Farm to Market. Outside the driver’s side window were hills of apple and pear trees. On the other side, grape vines were rigorously bound to posts and wires, following the ridgeline in near-military formation.

  Just where the private driveway branched from the road was a funny little statue, a squat, ugly creature somewhere between a dragon and a turtle. It crouched at the base of a signpost which read, “La Tarasque.” It was both the name of the house and the name of the odd, lizardy beast—a beloved legend from the region of France where Joe Bianco was born (Joe told Erik “Tarasque” was also the name of a beloved anti-aircraft gun towed by the French military).

  Erik rounded a bend and the farmhouse came into view, pale grey with black shutters and a yellow door. Francine’s treasured flower beds sprawled on either side of the stone walk, a riot of colors competing for attention. The porch ran the full front of the house and wrapped around both sides. Daisy was waiting, her red sundress bright against the grey shingles. As Erik switched off the engine, she took up her crutches and came carefully down the steps, swinging the last few feet as fast as she could. With a cry she let her crutches drop to the ground and flung her arms up around his neck. He locked his arms around her slender waist, buried his face in the curve of her sweet-smelling shoulder and exhaled.

  “Dais,” he whispered.

  “Never again,” she said against his face. “I never want to be away from you again.”

  “Never,” he said. “God, I missed you so much.” The words didn’t do it justice. He could feel the cells in his body perk up, as if he was severely dehydrated and Daisy was a long cool drink of water. They stood a long time in the driveway, holding each other without speaking. And then a longer time passed in kissing.

  “Let’s go in,” Daisy said, smoothing her hair. “My parents went out to dinner. It’s just us.”

  His lips tingling, Erik opened the car door to get his backpack from the front seat. Walking across the lawn, he slowed his step to Daisy’s swinging gait, a hand lightly on her neck. He knew she used the crutches in the evenings, whether she needed to or not. Mandatory rest. Sun went down, she went off the leg.

  “Guess what I did this week?” she said.

  He could barely answer, he was too consumed with stuffing his eyes full of her. “I don’t know. Pressed twenty pounds with your left leg?”

  “Twenty-five,” she said, smiling. “But guess again.”

  He wound a length of her hair around his fingers, dying to undress and wrap himself in its soft length. “I don’t do guessing games,” he said. “Just tell.”

  “I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Jinani. And while I was in Philly, I went to see Omar.”

  “Why?” It took a moment to sink in. “Wait. You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “You got a tattoo?”

  She nodded, biting her lower lip, nose wrinkled.

  “What did you get? Show me.”

  “Come inside.”

  He set his backpack down in the front hall and followed her into her bedroom. The door clicked shut. “Now go find it,
” she said.

  He brought her over to the bed, into the light of the table lamp, where she put down her crutches and stood still for him. He searched her arms, her shoulders, lifted up her hair and peered at her neck. Finding nothing, he crouched down and inspected each leg. His fingers reverently touched the starburst pucker on the inside of her thigh and the long, raised zippers of flesh on either side of her shin. Still nothing.

  He stood up and slid her little sundress over her head. It wasn’t on her back, nor her stomach, nor under her bra. He got distracted there a few minutes, running his tongue in circles around her breasts, breathing in the sugary scent of her skin.

  “Keep looking,” she murmured.

  He knelt down once more, his fingers poised around the waistband of her underwear.

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  He eased them down and saw a splash of color by the jut of her hip bone.

  “Oh, Dais,” he whispered.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, her hand in his hair.

  Inked into her a skin were stylized red letters spelling out Svensk Fisk, but in such a way they cleverly formed the shape of a fish. The little loop of the E made the eye, and the top of the first K was the dorsal fin. The legs of the final K were elongated and curved, creating the tail.

  “It’s amazing,” he whispered. “Did it hurt?”

  She gave a dismissive snort. “Ruptured femoral artery. Compartment syndrome release with open fasciotomy. A tattoo is nothing. Omar cried the whole time, though.”

  On his knees before her, Erik put his fingertips to the little red fish, then his lips to it.

  “I thought hard about where to put it,” she said. “Somewhere only you could see.”

  He gazed at it up close, far away. He laid his head against her stomach and viewed it sideways. He traced the letters with his fingernail as his heart swelled and grew in his chest, a seed blossoming and blooming until he was a wide-open flower in the sunshine of her love. He laid the inside of his wrist against her hip, his daisy pressed to her fish.

  “Nobody loves me like you,” he said.

  We Own This Place

  Their first day of work, the boys arrived at Mallory Hall and Erik froze. He had not walked into the building since the day of the shooting—six weeks ago—let alone into the theater. Nauseous and anxious, he dug in his heels at the auditorium doors and David did an inspired job of getting him inside.

  “We’re going in,” he said, like a platoon leader. He had Erik by the shoulders, half-hugging, 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, his voice sticking in his throat.

  “All my enemies whisper together against me. They imagine the worst for me, saying… What do they say, Fish?”

  “He will never get up from the place where he lies.”

  “My enemy does not triumph over me. Fuck the fucking fuckers. Come on, Fish, we’re going in there. You’re lying down right in the aisle where it happened, and then you’re getting up again.”

  “Raise me up,” Erik said, a little stronger now, caught up in the call to arms. “Raise me up, that I may repay them…”

  “We’re going in.” David yanked the theater doors with both hands, threw them open wide, and they went in.

  Erik sat in the aisle by row M, his back against the seat sides.

  “Here?” David asked.

  “Here.”

  “And he was where? Like this?” David stood a little in front of Erik but Erik waved him off.

  “Don’t. Don’t be him. Just…let me do this.”

  David moved out of sight. Erik closed his eyes. Opened them again.

  His hand went into his pocket.

  He was still carrying the penny around. And every time he tried to analyze why, it was as if a garage door came down in his mind. It was easier not to think about it.

  “You all right?” David crouched by him.

  “I have dreams,” Erik said. “I’m sitting right here and he shoots me. Then he goes back onstage and shoots Will and Daisy. Shoots to kill. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You tried, Fish,” David said, a comforting hand on Erik’s shoulder. “It was a crazy thing to do but if anyone could have done it…”

  Erik put his head down. Tears wet the knees of his jeans. David pulled him close. “It’s all right. You got him to stop. You did.”

  “I didn’t mean for him to…”

  “Nobody did. Nobody knew this would happen. Nobody imagined it.”

  Wiping his face on the back of his hand, Erik looked around. He looked good and hard at the bloodstains. It was them or him now. He’d either get up and face it, or sit here forever.

  He got up and went down the aisle, hopped on the apron of the stage. David followed and stood center, hands on hips, looking stage left.

  Erik walked past him, through the black curtains of the wings. He looked down at the floor. Bloodstains here, too, but something else. A block of graffiti, roughly forming the outline of a human body. He crouched down, peering at the multi-colored words. Signatures. Messages.

  RIP Trevor.

  Love you, my brother. Be with God.

  Trevor, angel, I miss you so much.

  Trevor King, forever in our hearts.

  “Trev died here,” Erik said.

  The scuff of David’s work boots as he came over. “Right there, yeah. The police outlined him in tape, just like you see in the movies. People came back and filled it in.”

  Erik stood up and walked further backstage. He found four more graffiti-filled outlines. Aisha. Manuel. Taylor. And Allison Pierce.

  He patted his pockets. “I need a pen,” he said. “A Sharpie or something.”

  “I’ll get one.”

  Erik sat cross-legged by Allison’s outline, his fingers resting lightly on what would have been her shoulder. David brought him a marker. Erik laid on his stomach and found a few inches of space. “Okey-dokey, girl,” he wrote. And couldn’t think of anything else. He felt lame and useless. He signed beneath the words, then went around signing the four others.

  David was back in the middle of the stage. Erik joined him. They got down low, practically put their faces on the floor, mapping the bloodstains. Here, from Will’s wounds. And over here, from Daisy’s.

  “So much of it,” Erik said. “Jesus, it’s even more than I remembered.”

  “This is my nightmare,” David said. “Right here. Down in the blood. Holding Daisy’s head. It’s fucking horrid. The reality is burned on my eyelids anyway. I don’t need to dream about it.”

  “I know,” Erik said, putting his arm around David’s shoulders.

  “Fuck the fucking fuckers.”

  “My enemy does not triumph over me.”

  “We own this place.”

  Together they stared down the blood on the stage floor.

  The blood blinked first.

  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 rebuilding their theater.

  The Mirror Tells the Truth

  Their landlord was taking the summer to give Colby Street a much-needed paint job and tend to some other maintenance issues. So Erik and David took a dorm room on campus, sharing digs with the students attending the conservatory’s summer programs. On weekends, they headed out to Bird-in-Hand. There they bunked in the Biancos’ carriage house, which had been converted into a little guest apartment. It was a sweet, homey space overlooking Francine’s rose gardens, with two bedrooms, a shared bath, galley kitchen and living room. David took one bedroom. Erik took the other and Daisy came in with him.

  Erik was impressed at how openly the sleeping arrangements were made. The Biancos were astonishingly hip to their daughter’s relationship. No coy pretenses or raised eyebrows when Daisy moved her things over to the carriage house. When it was time to say go
odnight, they simply said, “Goodnight, sleep well.” In the morning, they said, “Good morning, sleep well?”

  It was a lovely arrangement. It would have been lovelier had Daisy and Erik actually been having sex.

  Her hands were warm and encouraging in the night and his body responded. Yet his mind was elsewhere. Detached and idly watching from a corner of the room. “It’s hard to explain,” he said, although he knew he didn’t have to. Under his touch, Daisy’s body was open, but ambivalent. She could take it or leave it.

  “I guess it’s a post-trauma thing,” Daisy said, her eyebrows wrinkling. “I don’t feel much like it. I like touching you. And holding you. But I just feel so tired.”

  “Tired’s one thing but I just feel unwired,” Erik said. “I don’t feel like me.”

  She put her face against his chest. “It’ll be all right. Sex is probably first out and last back in. We’ll just keep throwing time at it.”

  Time was kind and plentiful for them. All the weekends through July and August, when Daisy’s pain levels became more manageable and she gradually gained some mobility back, they lay naked in bed together, as comfortably twined as they could get. They kissed. They never tired of kissing. They talked the hours away. They laughed. They stared—they could still lock eyes and go into their private universe, and they went there frequently.

  But they weren’t making love.

  Not much, anyway.

  Some nights she woke up screaming, and he soothed her. Unlike his Technicolor night terrors, her dreams were without imagery. “It’s pitch black,” she said. “And huge. There’s nothing to see but I can sense it goes out for hundreds of feet and up for hundreds of feet.”

  “Is it a room? Or a cave?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just the biggest darkest space I’ve ever known and it’s terrifying. I’m trapped there. No one else is in the dream. No story. No circumstance or context. It’s just vast black space and I can’t get out. It’s right behind my own eyelids and I can’t open them.” She moved further into the circle of his arms, shivering with unspeakable revulsion. “It doesn’t sound like anything but God, I just feel sick when I wake up…”