“One day you’ll tell your grandchildren about this moment,” Kees said.
David waited another fifteen seconds of murmured shuffling and blown noses, and then gave the cue. “Sound up.”
And they began again.
Torqued and Shadowy
Daisy could barely get out of bed after the concert.
No more driving force toward a goal, nothing to work for or look forward to. She had relentlessly pursued recovery, then rehearsal and finally performance. The curtain was down and the theater of her heart sat empty. She went around empty-eyed and depressed, wandering lost in the vast, dark cavern of her dreams. The light came back into her face when she was on cocaine, but only for interludes growing more and more fleeting and requiring more and more juice.
David brought new offerings for the coffee table altar at Jay Street. As if bestowing communion, he laid ecstasy pills in each of their palms. They locked eyes and swallowed. In a few minutes, Erik felt as though he were swimming in caramel. Everything was wonderful. He and Daisy practically floated upstairs. Her eyes filled with green swirls, her smile wide open, giggling and carefree. They kissed with laughing tongues and lips, deep in one another’s mouths. He dug his fingers into her hair, clenching his fingers through it, pulling tight then releasing.
“Do that again,” she murmured in his kiss.
He pulled on her hair, sucking gently on her tongue. She moaned in her chest. “Harder.”
All he did was kiss her and clasp the lengths of her hair hard in his fists and pull. She straddled his thigh, grinding down. He dragged her until the pain revealed itself in her liquid eyes and she came against his leg. It was gorgeous. She came like a goddess. Wild and terrible. He let go and was mesmerized by the strands wafting free. Later he was slightly disturbed. But only slightly. The intensity of Daisy’s orgasm overcame revulsion, filled his veins with a sick need to do it again.
And do it harder.
From there it spiraled out of control. With no more sweetness to be found in their sex, they delved instead into a vein of bitter gratification. They unplugged the Christmas lights and drew the curtains, pinning the edges so not a chink of light penetrated. A rolled up towel along the bottom of the door and the room went pitch black. The infinite cavern of Daisy’s nightmares. A thick, tangible darkness where they went at each other, scratching and clawing, balanced on the edge between enjoyable discomfort and outright violence. Distilling the pleasure out of pain. It felt good to hurt. It was normal to hurt. Joy was fleeting and treacherous but pain was dependable. It sucked, but you could trust it to suck.
In the dark Daisy yanked Erik’s head back and kissed him hard enough to draw blood. It should have repelled him. Instead, as soon as he tasted it, he was like a shark tracking wounded prey. He took her down to the floor and he was on her, high and crazed, torqued and shadowy. He pinned her fast and took her hard. His teeth on her bones, blood in his mouth, his weight holding her down in the endless dark.
But hurt required feeding. Like a drug habit. It slid around corners of the bedroom and demanded more. Hurt was the lord God and they would have no other verbs before it. Hurt stood over their beds, exacting devotion and sacrifice.
“Tie my hands,” she said one night. And he did.
“Pretend you’re raping me,” she said another night. And he did.
Then there came a night when Erik, higher than he’d ever been in his life, heard his own harsh whisper in the sludgy dark. “I want to fuck your ass.”
She didn’t say a word. He only heard the scrape of a drawer, some rifling around and then a condom was in his hand. His drugged brain could barely keep up with his body, registering what was happening five beats after it had happened. In this surreal fugue state, he was stretched out on her back, pushing into her unyielding body.
“Let me in.” He didn’t recognize his own voice. “Let me hurt you.”
Her fingers twined with his beneath the pillow, clenched to the breaking point. Her neck arched in pain. He took a small, reverent taste of the tight, hot agony and had to fight not to come. He moved further into her and she moaned. With his mouth he moved her hair away from her neck, set his teeth at her nape. “Let me.”
“God it hurts,” she whispered, her voice thick with arousal.
He dug in with his teeth, admiring his own controlled skill. He slid one hand beneath her body. She spread her legs for him, opened up slick and swollen. Her lips caressed the tattoo on his wrist. “I feel alive when it hurts.”
“So do I. Only when it hurts”
“I want to come.”
“Come. Let it hurt. Let it come.”
“Hurt me.”
“Come, Dais. Come for me. Come until it hurts.”
He came just as she did. Brain joined body and he came so hard he saw the rear side of his skull, saw back to yesterday and out into next week. He lay on her, breathing hard, wondering if he had pushed himself too far and he was cut loose in space, his sanity roaming lost around the universe, never to return.
It wasn’t such a bad notion.
Gradually a tingling returned to his limbs and a dull ache between his eyebrows convinced him he was indeed present.
“Get out of me,” Daisy said drowsily, as if asking for an extra blanket. Erik carefully got out, chucked the condom, then lay down again and didn’t move. They sprawled there, passed out, sated and spent.
They woke up and turned to each other, fingers seeking each other’s faces in the dark. They couldn’t see, but by touch they knew no joy was in their eyes.
“We make love and it’s horrible afterward,” Erik whispered. “We’re sweet to each other and it makes us physically sick. But if you bite me or scratch me or draw blood, it’s fine. If I pin you down or pretend to rape you or fuck you in… We go right to sleep. It’s peaceful then. And I don’t understand.”
“What’s happening to us?” In the dark, her voice was small and lost.
“We’re better than this.”
“We used to be.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Erik said. He got up and flung open the curtains, flooding the room with weak light from the street. “No more. I’m not hurting you in bed again. I won’t.”
He plugged in the Christmas lights and Daisy began to cry. Erik drew her out of bed and into the shower. She cried as he washed her hair and her body. He cried over the welts he had raised on her back and the fingerprinted bruises on her upper arms and thighs. Back in her room they stripped the linens off her bed and remade it. Lay down in the clean sheets, weeping tired, defeated tears.
He held her all night. She slept all the next day. Erik could not get her out of bed. He came downstairs after his third attempt, sat on the bottom step in the living room with his head in his hands.
Will and Lucky came in the front door. Lucky took one look and squeezed past Erik to go upstairs. Will sat on the step next to Erik. Put arms around him.
“It’s all right, Fish,” Will whispered. His cheek moved against the top of Erik’s head. His hand rubbed circles between Erik’s shoulder blades. Squeezed the back of his neck. “It’s all right.”
“I feel like it’s all falling apart,” Erik whispered.
“It’s this place,” Will said. “I can’t stand being here anymore. We all need to leave. And we will. Soon. It’s almost over, Fish. You’ll get out of here with Daisy and go somewhere new.”
Whatever Lucky said or did, Daisy got up. She pulled strength out of some hidden, bottomless reservoir and rose to do what she had to do. Her mouth was set and her eyes flat blue. She was in the war room. She went to class and studied for finals. The curtains of her room remained open. She and Erik lay in bed at night, clasped in each other’s arms and staring. It was all they had left. They stopped feeding the hurt and found they weren’t hungry for anything else. So they stopped having sex.
Just stopped.
Fishy, Fishy In the Brook
It was hot the May afternoon when Erik went to David’s place, looking f
or coke. He found David in bed.
With Daisy.
No words. No altercation. Not then. Erik stood in the doorway as David flipped a handful of covers over his and Daisy’s bodies. Then the three of them had simply stared at each other, frozen, as the world exploded in slow-motion.
Erik didn’t know what made him turn around and leave. Shock, he supposed. Or maybe a human body could only take so much stress before it went numb. He felt numb walking down the stairs, walking through the living room of David’s apartment, going out the way he came in. He closed the front door without a sound. Politely. So as not to disturb. What a bizarre thing to do.
He had trouble reconstructing what happened next. More shock, he guessed. His mind shutting down what was impossible to comprehend. Up in his hot, airless bedroom, he sat on the bed staring at the wall. Trying to determine if he indeed saw what he had just seen. He couldn’t feel his limbs. His face burned, his lips were numb, but the rest of his body didn’t seem to be present. He was nothing but a head. A head trying to process an impossible math problem where one plus one equaled three.
I just saw David fucking my girlfriend.
He would have laughed. It was absurd.
Then the problem turned grammatical. A matter of tenses to solve here.
He fucked my girlfriend.
He is fucking my girlfriend.
Will he fuck my girlfriend again?
He could not wrap his mind around it. The problem was unsolvable.
He rearranged the factors.
Daisy fucked David.
He stood up. The rest of his body was back and filled with a shaking nausea.
She slept with him. She’s sleeping with him. She will keep sleeping with him.
It was not only unsolvable, but intolerable. He stood up, hands on the crown of his head, pressed down to keep his mind contained.
What would he do?
“It’s this place,” Will had said. “We all need to get out of here.”
He needed to get away. Yes. He picked up his backpack. He could not stay here. Not in this room. Not in this house.
Not in this town. Not anymore.
A panic began to creep over his head. He had to get out of here. Recklessly he stuffed in some clothes. Random things. He didn’t even think. He was getting out. He couldn’t stay.
He stopped. Blinking. What was happening? What had just happened?
How could she do it? Like a wet bar of soap, the idea she would cheat on him flopped and slipped through his hands. He couldn’t catch it. It made no sense. They were together all the time. They were together. They were in love, they were bonded. Their love defied description. They were each other’s sole means to survive.
They were inked into each other’s skin.
What in hell had just happened?
From the window. Voices and action outside. He leaned on the sill and looked out at the backyard. Daisy was hurrying up her back steps. Little blue skirt, a white shirt. Her arms crossed over her middle, her head down. Hurrying. Scurrying.
And a few steps behind, David.
David, following Daisy. Into her kitchen. She was trying to get away. He was following.
Erik’s eyes narrowed.
Betrayal had refused to stay in his hands, but the notion of theft slammed into Erik’s chest and he crossed his arms over it, holding on tight. Now he had his answer. He was certain of it. David wanted Daisy. He had always wanted her. He wanted her but she went to Erik. And David had bided his time, waiting for a chance. A chance to take her away, chew her up and spit her at Erik’s feet.
He should have known.
He never should have trusted David.
“You only want what you can’t have,” Erik whispered.
Erik closed his eyes. Opened them again. Looked down at his feet and the image of Daisy there, used, thrown out, thrown back at him because David was done playing with her.
“You son of a bitch,” he whispered.
Outside, the sky was pale grey, veiled in sickly clouds. The heat was intensifying. Erik walked through a cloud of tiny buzzing insects as he came through the hedge and into Daisy’s yard.
Through the screen he saw David, sitting with his back to the door—at Daisy’s kitchen table.
Sitting in Erik’s place, smoking.
I get a panic attack after sex with Daisy, Erik thought. David gets the cigarette.
He pulled the door open. David whirled in his chair, white-faced and trembling. He stood up, crushing the half-smoked butt into a saucer.
“Fish.”
Erik stared at him.
“This is all my fault,” David said hoarsely. “It’s my fault, Fish, not hers.”
Erik advanced on him, fingers opening and closing in fists. “Fishy, fishy in the brook,” he whispered. “What to do with David the crook?”
David started to speak but Erik hadn’t come here to listen. He seized David by the shirt collar, pivoted lightly and threw him against the wall.
Though the fight was vicious, his brain was oddly detached. It kept making up little rhymes to finish fishy, fishy…
Not his to take, but still he took.
Blood spraying from under his hands. David’s blood spattering onto the walls of Daisy’s kitchen.
I found you in bed, and the walls shook.
Pots and pans clattering from the counter, a shining arc of silverware across the floor, chairs skittering sideways.
For King David, I was forsook.
Hands on his shoulders, pulling at him. Daisy’s hands. She was screaming at him to stop. He shook her off violently, hoping she stayed to watch.
As I kill you, let her look.
Then different hands were on him, stronger ones. “Let go, Fish.”
A forearm across his collarbones and an index finger set into the hollow of his throat, pressing down against the nest of nerve endings there.
“Enough,” Will said, his voice a low growl. His finger pressed down harder—a defense move he had learned in Taekwondo. Fiery pins and needles shot down Erik’s arms, leaving him no choice but to let go.
“Come on,” Will said, pulling him back. “You’re only giving him what he wants.”
Erik got another kick in, into David’s ribs with the hard toe of his work boot. He felt the soft give of flesh and the resistance of bone.
“Come on, Fish, let’s get you out of here.”
Erik fought, struggled, writhed, but Will’s strength was absolute and his arms were a straitjacket about Erik’s torso.
As he was being dragged away, Erik looked back just once. Looked at David lying on the floor, arms over his head. And Daisy, on her knees, in the wreck of her kitchen. Daisy, her hands in her hair, pulling it from her temples. Daisy, her mouth open, and those eyes, dear Lord, those beautiful blue eyes he had stared into so many times, making time itself stop, making the world go away.
The eyes he had let look into his soul.
He had trusted her. He had put himself into her hands, been vulnerable with her in the dark of night, let her see him at his weakest. And she had gone to David.
Through the doorway he stared into her eyes. Time did not stop. The world stayed as it was. The connection was gone. The bond was lost. She had killed it.
“Erik,” she said, her hands coming out of her hair, falling into her lap.
Then the screen door slammed shut.
Triage
“I don’t want to see her,” he said to Will.
“You shouldn’t,” Will said. “Cool off. Nobody will fault you if you get out of Dodge a little while.”
Erik sat on his bed, staring straight ahead.
“Fish,” Will said. He crouched down by Erik’s feet. “There’s an explanation.”
Erik flicked his eyes to Will. Stared at him.
“I mean,” Will said. He floundered for words, reaching to run his maimed hand through hair no longer there. “This was just something reckless and stupid. You can work it out…”
Erik looke
d away. “Leave me alone.”
Will shut the door. Erik remained in his room the rest of the day, with the door shut, although the house was empty. Will did not come back. Erik lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, watching it get dark. The silence inside the house screamed. The ambient noises from outside puzzled him. How could the world just be going by? Didn’t anyone realize what had happened?
The slam of a screen door made him sit up. He looked out the window, through the hedge to the girls’ backyard. Daisy was sitting on the back stairs. He could see her white shirt in the dusk, and the glowing red tip of her cigarette. The minutes slipped by as she smoked, her arms around her shins, chin on her knees. She lit a second cigarette off the end of the first and smoked it. Then a third.
He could go over.
They could smoke and talk. She could explain.
They could work it out.
He fell back down on the bed again, unable to stop the tears. Great, shuddering sobs in his chest and throat, a lament smothered into the pillow. She was sitting there smoking, wearing the same skirt and shirt and carrying David on her skin. David was all over her body. Maybe even dripping out of her. She had taken her clothes off for David. She had opened her mouth for David, opened her legs for David. She had let David inside her, moved under him like a lover. Her arms up around his neck, her knees hugging his hips.
Was he supposed to sit there and smoke and listen to her explain all that?
How could you do it? Erik went to the window. Stared through his tears to the tiny, balled-up figure on the back steps. How could you? What were you thinking, what made you go? What did you need?
Then he knew what the explanation was.
She needed the pain Erik wouldn’t give her anymore.
He was useless to her.
She went to get it from David.
Erik sat up and threw the pillow aside.
He picked up anything within reach and threw it.
It wasn’t to be borne.
The Man I Love Page 24