“A tattoo parlor used to be next door,” she said to the girl who refilled their cups. “When we were in college ten years ago. Do you know what became of it?”
The girl apologized, saying she’d only been working there a week.
David’s hands trembled as he picked up his cup. Daisy was about to chide him for drinking coffee but bit her tongue. He was a grown man. And not hers to fuss over.
“Can I see your ring?” she asked. He pulled the puzzling band off his index finger and handed it over.
“Funny,” he said as he watched her play with it. “That day…”
She smiled. “The day. Capital D.”
“If I could go back and do it over, Marge. I swear I would.”
“I know,” she said. “Me too.”
“Irony is such a bitch,” he said, smiling into his cup. “I don’t remember a damn thing about…you know…being in bed with you. For however long it was. Five minutes. The one thing I wanted in the world, you’d think it would sear itself into my brain. No. A little glimmer of skin here and there but otherwise, nothing.”
“I remember the shape your smile made in my hands,” she said.
“You do?”
She nodded.
He shook his head. “I got nothing. The memory of you throwing up afterward is crystal clear, though.”
“Great.”
“You’re gorgeous when you’re puking, Marge.”
“Bite me.”
They went quiet a few minutes, their heads moving in unconscious rhythm to the reggae playing over the speakers.
“I don’t remember much from the fight either.” David said. “Two things really. Three. One, being shocked Erik had that kind of fight in him. I’d never seen him touch anyone, male or female, with anything but kindness or love or respect. The strength of his rage… Jesus, I didn’t know who he was.”
“Me neither.”
“And I let him. That’s the second thing. I didn’t fight back. I just tried to shield my most breakable parts and let him have at it. Mostly because I deserved it. Partly because…” His voice broke apart and he looked off to the side, tears tracking down his face.
Daisy put the ring down and reached to squeeze his fingers.
“Because I didn’t want him taking it out on you. When you… You tried to grab him and he pushed you off and you went flying back on the floor. I thought my God, he’s gonna kill her, too. And I hit him then. To get him to refocus on me.”
She put her other hand on the pile of their fingers.
“What’s the third thing?” she asked softly.
David took a long swallow of coffee. “He was punching the shit out of me and he said something. Like, ‘This is the last good thing you’re gonna feel in your life.’”
“I remember.”
“And for a long time, he was right. It was like he cursed me. Nothing felt good for…” A small chuckle in his chest. “Many moons.”
“Me too,” she said. “I almost envied you getting beat up like that. I had to beat myself up. For too many moons.”
He freed one of his hands and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “We made it, though.”
“We did.”
“Wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, Dais… I know he still loves you.”
She shrugged and looked out the window.
“Trust me. If I still love you, he still loves you. If I go, we all go. I got my hands on the curtain rope, remember? Nothing happens until I pull.”
She laughed and picked up the puzzle ring again. “You love the last moment. You just want to get there, not be there.”
He smiled. “Over the years, I’ve learned to make friends with the destination.”
“I’m glad.” Teeth clamped on her tongue, eyebrows wrinkled, she shifted and slid the silver bands around, still trying to solve the arrangement.
David clicked his tongue. “Give me that. Jesus, you’re dumb.” He took the ring, assembled it swiftly and slid it onto his finger.
She set her chin on the heel of her hand. “When will your hair start growing back?”
His shoulders raised and dropped. “Whenever it feels like it, I guess.” He drained the dregs of his coffee and then glanced sideways at her. “Pubes are growing back already.”
“I really didn’t need to know that.”
“Wanna see?”
“No, I have the visual, thank you.”
Grinning, he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go. Opie doesn’t trust me with you.”
“Opie’s not my bodyguard.”
“Yeah, but I bet he throws a hell of a punch.”
Their stride down the sidewalk was companionable. David gave her a stick of gum and took one for himself. As they walked, their clasped hands swung between them, easy and unaffected.
“I’m glad I came,” David said. “And don’t take me the wrong way, but this might be the nicest date we ever went on.”
“It is,” Daisy said.
“Can I kiss you?”
“No.”
“I FOUND HIM,” Will said. “He’s in Brockport. Adjunct professor of technical theater. A little Leo…”
As if it might combust at her touch, Daisy took the sheet of printer paper. An article out of SUNY Brockport’s newsletter. “Fiskare receives accolade from United States Institute of Theater Technology.” A conference in New Orleans and a picture of the eight recipients. Erik in the back row, unmistakable. Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes took him in. She hadn’t looked at him in nine years and her finger couldn’t help coming up to touch his image, handsome in suit and tie. He was wearing his hair shorter but the sweet smile was the same. Her beautiful boy now a thirty-one-year-old man.
“He looks the same,” she said. Her heart pounded fast within her ribs.
“Wasn’t hard to find an address. I mailed the necklace back this morning. Along with a charming letter.”
“What did you say?”
Arms crossed, Will shrugged. “I kept it light. Talked about the memorial and caught him up. Told the story of how we found it. Made a lot of cocksucking jokes because they never grow old and, you know, it’s such unfinished business.”
She laughed.
“So on and so forth. Yours truly in Christ, William. And P.S. Don’t fucking call me.”
She folded the paper, handed it back and smiled at him. “I guess we’ll see if he still has a sense of humor.”
Will shrugged again, staring at her neck. She bought a simple gold chain and threaded the jump ring of the scissors onto it. It rolled and glided over her collarbones and she believed it connected her to Erik.
The belief was flimsy. Both Will and Lucky glanced at the jewelry with identical expressions of concern but said nothing. Daisy ignored them and the unease at the back of her own heart, tinged with a small guilt. It was a game. A silly one. And the scissors weren’t hers. They had been a gift. She was keeping them as bait.
She was only fooling herself.
Will invited her for coffee a week later. And once they were ensconced in a booth, he slid yet another folded piece of paper across the table to her.
“Love note?” she said, smiling.
“Sort of.”
April 28, 2002
What’s up, asshole? I heard the radio show yesterday. Then arrived home to find your letter and my necklace. Mind blown. If you delivered it in person, you would’ve been blown as well. But it’s allergy season and I can barely breathe through my nose. So it’s for the best.
Seriously. I’m an overwhelmed and sloppy mess from this. But I wanted to let you know I got it. And thank you. Thank you for being the kind of guy to step in and help lug a stove out. Thank you for being the kind of guy to hunt me down and send back the thing that means the world to me. I don’t have words to tell you how much I appreciate it. (Other than “suck” and “cock,” of course.)
I’m taking care of my ass. It’s not as high and tight as it used to be, but it’s in one piece. And it is
sorry…
I won’t fucking call you. But I fucking thank you.
E
Daisy folded the note. Unfolded it.
I heard the radio show yesterday…
The impassioned, unstructured lament that had come pouring out of her mouth on the air. He had heard it. Confirmation in her hands. He knew.
She felt a little sick.
Her fingertip touched the words. Erik’s long-lost voice emerging from the void. The same handwriting, slightly slanted to the left. Ink from a pen he had held. A sepia splatter by his signed initial—he had been drinking tea while writing this. Two bags steeped a long time to bring out the tannins, with a lot of milk and barely any sugar.
A sweet boy with a bitter palate.
Daisy imagined his fingers wrapped around the cup, his mouth taking a scalding sip. His lost treasure glinting out the top of his collar. A drip from the cup as he took his mouth away and now molecules of Erik embedded in the paper, touching her skin.
She looked up at Will, who was lighting a cigarette. The diner waitress set a plate down in front of Daisy with a blueberry muffin. She refilled their coffee cups, tossed a handful of creamers on the table and retreated.
“Wow,” Daisy said. It was the best she could do.
Will’s eyes flicked to the ceiling as he exhaled a ribbon of smoke.
“What do you think?” she said, setting the paper down and peeling the wrapper off her muffin.
“I keep reading it,” he said. “And reading it. And reading it. And looking between the words and between the lines. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know why it’s made me upset but it has.”
“He thanks you,” she said. “He’s humble. Genuine. He makes a few cracks. Volleys back the cocksucking jokes. He’s still a player. He sort of tells you he’s doing all right.”
Will’s finger pressed down on the second-to-last line.
And it is sorry…
“The fuck is that,” he said. “His ass is sorry? Or he’s sorry?”
“He is,” she said. “Not for nothing, but I knew him pretty well. This is him saying he’s sorry but not knowing where to go from there.”
His finger tapped again. “I love the E. Real subtle. No name, no Fish. Just E.”
“Bare minimum.”
Will crushed his cigarette out. “So what the hell is my problem, Dais? I mean, what was I expecting?”
“More than you got.”
“He said thank you. Clearly he was moved and grateful. He’s doing all right. He’s alive. His sense of humor is intact. What else is there?”
“I miss you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry and I miss you. I think about you all the time. I was an idiot. Maybe we could get together. It’s been long enough, what the fuck was I fighting with y—”
“Knock it off,” he said, sinking his forehead into a palm. “Jesus Christ, I fucking swear.”
She reached for his hand, threaded his three fingers between her five.
“I guess neither of us got over him,” she said.
Flushed and wet-eyed, Will tapped out another cigarette and lit it. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I knew what you felt for him had no name.”
He sat back, mouth parted. “It didn’t,” he said.
Daisy nodded with a smile and let go his hand.
“It had no name,” Will said. “Because it was a way I’d never felt about a guy before. Men to me were… It was always a physical thing. Another dimension of sex I occasionally dug. It’s just part of me. You know this.”
“I know this.”
“With Erik though… In the beginning, I wasn’t attracted to him that way at all. Didn’t suck to look at him but it wasn’t a thing. The friendship came first. How it was so easy to be myself with him. All my selves. The way the compatibility kept evolving and surprising me. Thinking something and hearing him say it a second later. Talking about everything, feeling flattered when he’d come to me with a problem. And the way we’d crack each other up. God, I’d get an ab workout laughing with him. And then watching him fall in love with you was a big part of it. It was him but it was also you and I was falling for Lucky at the same time. So it became the four of us. One big tangled mess of love and friendship and the physical attraction bloomed out of it.”
“When?”
Will took a long breath through his nose. “Right at the start of senior year. When along comes James…”
Daisy’s heart began to thump and she felt her eyes widen a hair.
“James had it figured out in thirty seconds. He smelled the air at Colby Street and said, ‘You always been in love with Fish or is this something new?’ And Jesus fuck, it threw me. He wedged his foot in the closet door and found the one skeleton I kept hidden away. He didn’t go broadcasting it around Mallory, but when we were alone, he loved to bring it out and play with it.”
“How?”
“He’d say out loud what I only secretly thought. ‘Damn, Fish is hot when he’s concentrating. He gets that look on his face and bites on his bottom lip. Hurts to look at him. Man, if he were my roommate, I’d never get anything done, I’d just be jerking off all the time.’”
“I know the feeling,” Daisy said under her breath.
“One time he said, ‘You ever see Fish naked? You know, pass by his bedroom door when he’s getting dressed?’ And I laughed it off when the truth was that same morning, I’d walked by Fish’s room and son of a bitch, he was getting dressed. I froze up for a few seconds, watching through the crack in the door with a hard-on for my best friend.
“It was shit like that. Being outed and busted, over and over. James constantly caught me in the act. Like he had a sixth sense for when I was distracted and confused by thoughts of Erik. So I took all that turmoil and… I mean I’d be…” He glanced up at Daisy, his eyes vulnerable and cautious.
“Go on,” she said.
“I’d take James to bed and take it out on him. Use him, if you want to be brutal about it. And he wasn’t an idiot. He knew. ‘You’re pretending I’m him, aren’t you? You’re dying to yell his name out, aren’t you? Go on. Give it to me like you would him. I don’t mind.’ Twisted shit but it turned me on like crazy. It was addictive. James made me mine this vein of psychological darkness in my sexuality. He pushed me to pretend and finally I thought fuck it and I pushed back. We fed off each other. Fed on each other. Ultimately, I thrived on it and it slowly ate him alive. He told me he was in love with me and I had to end it. I’d been playing a game and he’d been playing for keeps. Not that I’d ever lied to him about what the situation was but…”
He set the heel of his hand against his eyebrows, rubbed it a moment. “After the shooting, when I was lying in the hospital, feeling like I’d lost control of everything and people were dead because of it… Erik came into my room. I could barely look him in the eye. I promised him I wouldn’t let you get in the middle of my shit but when James raised the gun, you were right there. Smack between us. I thought Erik had come to rip my other hand off. Say he’d want nothing more to do with me, tell me to get out of his life and never go near you again. Instead, he put his arms around me and held onto me. Told me it wasn’t my fault, told me he’d stand by me forever. And I broke down. I was crying like a baby in his chest and I was done pretending. I loved him. I loved him and I wanted him and it made no difference if I’d never have him either way. I loved him without a purpose. I wanted without needing to have. It was one of the purest feelings I’d ever known.”
“I had no idea,” Daisy said. “About any of this.”
“Because I didn’t tell you. Nor did I tell you what Erik said to me that last phone call. How he did a complete one-eighty and blamed me for everything. Said I strung James along and then tossed him aside. Chewed him up and spit him out. I was no better than David. And it all went back to me. I brought it down. James came into the theater looking for me and everyone else was an innocent bystander. And Erik was done being one of my casualties.”
She took his hand and held still.
“Nothing I hadn’t already accused myself of,” Will said. “It just hurt like hell coming from him.”
“He was angry,” she said. “Angry and lashing out. Needing to make everything and everyone else hurt as much as him. I don’t think he meant it. I can’t believe he meant it.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You ever go talk to anyone about it?” Daisy asked, taking a cigarette from the pack.
Will lit it for her, then put the Zippo down and began spinning it on the table top. “No. I ate it. Choked it down in a spectacular feast of self-loathing. Threw it up in Lucky’s lap and broke her heart. Because I suck, so fuck everything. Moved an ocean away, thinking that would help. Then I got into big trouble in Germany. This is something else I never told you.”
“What happened?”
“You mean who happened. His name was Seb. Short for Sebastian.” Will reached in his back pocket and brought out his wallet. “Can’t believe I still carry this around.”
He dug in the tight fold behind credit cards and drew out a tattered piece of glossy paper, something cut from a magazine or brochure. Daisy took it. And once more her chin dropped.
“Jesus,” she said. “He looks just like Erik.”
“Right? But taller. And he could dance.”
Daisy smiled. “You must’ve been a head case.”
“Not at first. At first I thought, now this is going to be fun. I was in a real loner period at that point. Outside of work I kept to myself. Nobody really knew me, knew my life, my story.” He held up his maimed hand. “Anyone asked, I said it was an industrial accident.”
“Same,” Daisy said. “Shark attack.”
“I pursued Seb with an aggression I barely recognized. I was used to it coming to me, know what I mean? This was the first time I went actively hunting for a male lover.”
“And? Did you kill and drag him back to the cave?”
His eyes far away, Will nodded. “Yeah.”
“How was it?”
“Like living a fantasy. Except he left the next morning, said ‘I’ll call you.’ And never did.” Will spread his hands out. “I was had. Hugely had. Seduced and abandoned. And targeted. He turned out to be one mean motherfucker.”
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