“With Erik, it wasn’t love. More like a knowing. A feeling. It was the start of tech week, when we go into the theater and set the ballets on the stage and do the lighting design. Sunday to Wednesday is tech. Thursday is dress and Friday is opening night. I was bringing David a sandwich Sunday morning. I went into the lighting booth and there he was.”
“Erik?”
Daisy nodded. “He spun around in his chair and looked at me. And I looked at him and it was immediate.” She looked at Rita and smiled. “It’s impossible to tell this story without sounding like a Hallmark movie. The truth is I never believed in love at first sight. Love is built over time, it doesn’t magically appear ready-made. And even connection at first sight? Recognition at first sight? I don’t think I believed in those, either. But I walked into the booth and…”
The memory was like a looped movie clip. Erik turned around in his chair. Turned again. And turned again.
“There he was. It was him.”
A BOY WITH DARK BLOND HAIR, dressed in jeans and work boots. Sleeves of a dark blue T-shirt pushed up along his forearms. A pencil jiggling in the fingers of one hand.
“Yo baby, what’s up?” David said.
She looked at him, forgetting why she was here. The heat of the paper bag reminded her.
“They didn’t have the chicken parm. I got you the meatball sub.” As she handed the paper bag to David, she was conscious of her voice. How did it sound in the blond boy’s ears?
She glanced at him. His eyes got a little bigger, his eyebrows coming down a hair. He looked away.
“What are you doing walking around barefoot?” David said. “Marie will kill you.”
The three of them looked down at her feet. Daisy hid one behind the other calf. David was right—she needed to get her shoes on. Too many sharp things littered the theater.
She wasn’t leaving until she knew his name.
“Dais, this is Erik. He’s running your follow spotlight so be nice to him.”
Her mind folded like protective hands around the words.
Erik.
Be nice to him.
She took the bag of food away from David and handed it to Erik.
He smiled like the sunrise, mouth stretching to show his teeth, cheekbones lifting to narrow his brown eyes. Their color made her think of the honey her mother drizzled into a shot of cognac—the Bianco cure-all for head colds and heartache.
Her heart ached with revelation. Looking at him, she felt an assembly within her body. As if she had lived up until this minute in four or five distinct pieces, each complete and content. But disconnected from the others. Now the pieces joined with a satisfying shift and click. Here. Next to here. And this fit here. Yes.
She pulled herself together.
You, she thought.
Leaving the booth, she should have been stumbling. Because love, from what she heard, shoved you from behind, knocked you sideways. Rocked and rattled you. But as she moved down the carpeted aisle, her forbidden bare feet were solid underneath her. Her mind felt fresh, like the first wide-open window of spring letting in soft, damp air.
Erik.
The company gathered onstage. Down in the orchestra, David slipped into one of the rows and Erik followed. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Every time she looked to where he was sitting, he seemed to be staring back. Not coyly or flirtatiously. Not with David’s direct hunger. He looked as thoughtful as she felt.
They started the Bourée. Her feet danced. Her eyes stole glances into the audience. She felt him watching.
Who are you?
During a break, she came down off the stage and slipped into the row behind him, just over his right shoulder. His head turned a little. Then a lot more. His eyes widened and his smile unfolded.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.” She crossed her forearms on the empty seat next to him.
Further down the row, David and Kees were bickering in Dutch and Erik stared curiously at them while drinking a soda. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to kiss him. She asked for a sip just so she could put her mouth where his had been. Their fingers touched when she passed the bottle back.
She watched his hands take notes and twirl a pencil. His fingers, with their short clipped nails and ragged cuticles, scratched the back of his neck. He had a cut healing on one wrist. When he was thinking, he ran his left thumb along his fingertips, the nail worrying at the edge of a callus. Daisy’s head tilted and her eyes squinted. Callused fingertips on the left hand. This boy played guitar.
She stared. The lights picked up the fine golden hairs on his forearms. She looked frankly at his body, his legs in jeans, his feet in workbooks. She studied the bit of gold chain peeking out of his T-shirt collar. She could pick up a scent from the back of his neck. Skin and soap. Citrusy with a mint overtone.
He passed her the soda again and smiled. Something flickered in his eyes. A courageous attempt to communicate the unknown. She could hear him think what she was wondering.
Are you feeling this? Am I crazy?
She must be crazy.
Yet she felt so calm. Filled with the strangest compulsion to lay her hand on the back of his head and stroke his hair. And the even stranger conviction that he would lean into her touch, not shy from it.
She watched him all day. Eyes and ears straining for anything he said or did.
Erik. She threaded his name through her mind.
“Fish.” Leo Graham, the technical theater director, called from the wings. “Come over here, I need you.” And Erik went.
“Fish, catch,” David said later, and Erik caught the hank of cable tossed.
Fish, Daisy thought. She didn’t know what it meant or why he was called that. Asking David was out of the question.
She sidled up by Allison Pierce, one of the female techs, an overweight girl with straw-colored hair in braids. “Why do they call Erik Fish?” she asked.
“I think his last name means fisher,” Allison said. “In Norwegian or something. Not sure.”
“’Scuse us, coming through, ladies. Step aside.” David was carrying the top end of a boom stand through the wings. Neil held the middle and Erik brought up the rear, lugging the heavy base.
“How you doing, Marge,” Neil said in passing, his grin flashing wide.
“Hey.” David looked back. “You don’t call her Marge. I call her Marge. Inside joke.”
Now Erik looked back. “Marge?” he mouthed.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head.
He smiled as if the joke was theirs.
SHE LAY ON HER BED THAT NIGHT, hands behind her head, staring up at the ceiling. A vague confusion had closed a fist around the serenity of the day and squeezed everything into a tight lump. Within it, her thoughts smashed and stuck together. She didn’t have a word for what she felt. She knew nothing but his name.
Erik, she thought. Fish.
Lucky breezed around collecting clothes and her wash kit. Will this and Will that and Will something else. Daisy stared at nothing and made engaged noises.
“Hey,” Lucky said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
She was going to say, “Nothing” and let Lucky be on her way. But the word stumbled in her throat, leaving her staring open-mouthed at the ceiling.
“Dais, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, managing a smile but tears flooded her eyes.
“Tell me,” Lucky said, sliding to her knees on the floor and crossing her forearms on the mattress.
“I met someone.”
“When? You were at rehearsal all day. I turn my back a minute and you take an arrow between the shoulder blades?”
“He’s running lights. He’s working with David.”
“One of Leo’s rats?”
Daisy smiled at Lucky’s use of theater lingo.
“All right. So, you met. And…?”
“That’s all,” Daisy said. “God, I sound so stupid.”
“Exc
use me? You had to practically tie my shoes after I met Will.”
Daisy looked over at her friend. Lucky was blurred by tears but smiling gently. Her fingers smoothed Daisy’s hair. “Funny when it happens, isn’t it?”
Daisy shook her head. “I don’t know if I can talk about it.”
It was too fragile. A wad of tissue-fine papers she had to pick apart without tearing.
Lucky caressed her cheek, then leaned up and over and kissed it. “It’ll be all right. It’s like a fever. Take a couple of Tylenol and get some sleep.”
“Sure,” Daisy said, snorting, curling on her side toward the wall. She felt like jogging. She doubted she’d ever sleep again.
“Take a shower, take a Sominex. That’s what my mother always says.”
“I’ll try it.”
“Hell, if nothing else works, try masturbating. My advice, not my mother’s.”
Daisy looked over her shoulder. “I would if you’d go away already.”
Lucky laughed. “Night, honey. Love you.”
“Love you,” Daisy said, as the door softly shut.
I love you, she thought, sliding the words like beads onto a brightly colored string. Abruptly she rolled the other way, clicking her tongue. A dozen glances and six words exchanged and she was making a necklace out of love. Her hand flicked the air, as if to cut the string and send the beads rolling. She was being ridiculous.
His soft brown eyes. Legs in jeans and a gold chain peeking out of his collar. The touch of his fingertips when he passed her a soda. And she put her mouth where his had been.
As if we kissed.
His smile. His direct, expansive gaze on her.
Every cell in her body whispering, You.
She rolled over again. Picked three beads and strung them.
Who are you?
“SIX DAYS,” DAISY SAID. “We met on a Sunday morning. We were together by Friday night. It sounds so cornball when I say it out loud.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “But we were together three years. Something happened in those six days.”
“And I’d like to hear more about it,” Rita said. “Next time.”
The session was wrapped up and put neatly away. Daisy pulled her hat over her ears as she stepped from under the awning of Rita’s building. As she turned off 82nd Street, the wind came whipping down the canyon of Broadway, grabbed her breath like a purse-snatcher and ran. Eyes watering and teeth chattering, she pulled her collar up and sighed at the grey streetscape. Stripped of holiday decorations, New York in January was a weary debutante after the ball, tired and disappointed with nothing to look forward to.
Daisy frowned at her watch. This wasn’t her usual appointment slot and it threw off her schedule. Not enough time to go home for a nap, and too early to be at the theater. She hated having time to kill. She’d get a cup of coffee somewhere, head over to the Met and if a couch was free in the ladies’ lounge, she’d close her eyes a bit.
In a bakery, she ordered coffee and a chocolate croissant, sat down at a little table in the window. She had no book with her, but she had her music. She slipped her earphones on and people-watched, letting the brisk first movement of Mozart’s clarinet concerto accompany the hustle outside.
With the slower second movement, her mind pulled inward and her eyes stopped seeing beyond the window. She advanced the CD to the next track. The Bach Prelude in C.
“C Major,” Erik said. “The friendliest key.”
She took a sip of coffee, swallowing as slowly as possible, letting the warmth soothe her throat.
Erik passing her his soda.
The callused tips of his fingers.
Her mouth where his had been.
As if we kissed.
Six days.
Six hexagon beads on a string.
All day Sunday in the theater. No meaningful conversation, just a lot of exchanged curious glances and shared sips. And a feeling something was going on. Something that was beyond everything.
Monday afternoon was the focus session, when lighting for the concert was designed and the instruments and lanterns set in place. The dancers mostly stood around—talking, reading, knitting, dozing—while the stagehands were run ragged.
Daisy pretended to read while her eyes followed Erik. He went from stage left to stage right and back again, climbed up to the catwalk or crawled beneath the stage. He disappeared on errands for a length of time, then reappeared up on a ladder. Hauling, carrying, lifting and heaving. Far too occupied to be looking at girls.
“Dais, don’t move or turn your head,” Taylor Revell murmured over her knitting. “But the gorgeous blond stagehand can’t take his eyes off you.”
“He’s been staring at her for five minutes,” Manuel Sabena said. “I’m timing.”
“Matt Lombardi already sniffed him out,” Will said. “Thinks he’s the love child of Bryan Adams and Sting.”
Heart pounding hard, Daisy made her mouth into a vague smile. She counted to ten then looked over at the wings. Erik quickly looked away.
“Five minutes, fourteen seconds,” Manuel said, digging Daisy’s side and showing her his watch. “He’s so your bitch.”
Daisy’s eyes narrowed. Erik was holding the ladder, a foot on the bottom rung and his arms braced. He pointed up, said something to his comrade, then put his forehead against his elbow and his shoulders went up in down in a tired sigh. He turned his head and met Daisy’s eyes. He smiled and the fingers of one hand rose up in a tiny wave.
“Un régal pour l’oeil, hé?” Will said under his breath.
Easy on the eyes.
Later, while rehearsing the Prelude, Daisy went into an arabesque, gazed over the fingers of her extended arm and saw Erik in the wings. His eyes were easy on her as she hit the sweet spot of the pose and held the balance, suspended perfectly above the music, as if his gaze was supporting her. Then the music called and she had to go, pulling back from his eyes and moving, reluctantly into the next phrase of the dance.
At the end of rehearsal, she was sitting on the floor, untying her shoe ribbons when Will came and crouched down by her.
“I had a nice chat with your little friend,” he said, peeling the hair elastic out of his ponytail.
She looked up at him, irritated. “You know, Will, I—”
He reached a finger and set it on her lips. “He talked me up in the wings. I went for a smoke, he came with. Want to know what I think?”
“No,” she said, untying the other shoe.
He held still, balanced on the balls on his feet. Elbows on knees, fingers laced between, composed and patient. She knew his leg strength. He could squat there indefinitely. She sighed.
“Yes,” she said.
“I think he likes you.” He put his hand on her head. “Furthermore, I think he watches and listens more than he talks. Which means he’s just like you.”
Tuesday, she and Erik spent an hour alone in the empty theater before rehearsal. She sewed her shoe ribbons and he surprised her by sitting down at the piano with some sheet music he found in the bench.
She started warming up, accompanied by his playing, and they talked. Or rather, she asked him a lot of questions but he didn’t seem to mind answering. She learned his younger brother was deaf and his mother was the musician—she taught piano for years before his father left them. Then she had to sell the piano and go to work.
Daisy had a leg up on the piano, stretching out over it. She frowned against her knee. “Your father left you?” she said.
“Went out one night and never came back.”
She picked up her head. He looked at her over the music stand, the tiniest bit of confusion in his expression. 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.”
Taken aba
ck, she picked up the unfamiliar garment of his experience and tried it on. Clothed as she was in the strong, unwavering love of her own father, it was a poor fit. She squirmed and itched in it, trying to be eight years old, when the world is easiest understood in black and white. Except when black and white becomes here and gone. Overnight. With no explanation.
“Is he alive?” she asked.
He didn’t know.
Sitting straight and proud on the bench, he looked at her, letting her in through his eyes. She looked back, breathing him in. Her heart pulsed, dressed in his pain. They went on staring, caught up in the strange, delicate moment.
Look away, she thought. You’re freaking him out, stop staring.
Neither moved.
“My real name’s Byron,” he said. He shook his head, smiling. “Since I seem to be telling you everything.”
“Does anyone call you Byron?” she asked, putting it with Erik and Fish. A trinity of identities attached to this boy.
“Rarely,” he said. “It’s his name, too. My father’s.” Then he looked away.
She told him her real name. “It’s French for daisy.”
His chin went up and down in understanding. As his lips shaped Marguerite without a sound, she wanted to kiss him.
I want to taste my name in your mouth, she thought. A fiery blush raced up her neck and into her face. She bent over her outstretched leg, hiding. “Play the Prelude again,” she said.
Wednesday night, after rehearsal, they went to the campus center for dinner: Daisy, Will, Lucky, David and Erik. The embryonic stage of the circle. By the end of the night, it was Daisy and Erik alone in the booth. She had chapters to read. He had his cue sheets to finish. The work went undone because they couldn’t stop talking.
Couldn’t stop staring.
His eyes were magnetic, attracting and trapping hers. They weren’t aggressive like David’s. Or lined with confident self-awareness, like Will’s. They were gentle eyes. Vulnerable and curious. And when she looked into them, she was filled with an indefinable sensation. It was greater than joy. More precise than peace. Not quite love but close.
She felt understood.
He showed her his necklace—the gold chain she’d been admiring from afar since Sunday. He unclasped it now and coiled it into her palm. It was warm from his skin. A handsome piece, square-linked and masculine, with three small charms. A saint’s medal engraved with an ancestor’s initials. (“She’s Birgitta,” he said, “the patron saint of Sweden.”) A gold fish and a flat-bottomed boat with Fiskare engraved on its bottom.
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