Ray’s head tilted. “Yes. Exactly.”
“I have a friend who’s the opposite. Go on, though.”
“I would draw these funny pictures for Arielle. Little people.” Ray wiped his mouth and his long fingers began folding his napkin. “We’d make up names for them, group them into families and create life stories. Noelle had an idea to write a series of children’s books based on them. I thought it was a spectacular idea. A husband and wife collaboration. I churned out a hundred drawings. But she was still working on the story when she died. Ah, thank you,” he said to the waitress, who brought the check. “Do you want to drive over to the Arts Center?”
“No, it’s beautiful out,” Daisy said. “Let’s walk.”
After three hours at the Hopper exhibit they went to lunch—a long one in a sunny window at the Wharf Tavern.
“You look sleepy,” Ray said, chin resting on the heels of his hands.
“A little,” she said. “After lunch is usually when I nap.”
“I love to nap,” he said, sighing. “And I’m so good at it.”
She laughed and was genuinely disappointed when he checked his watch and sighed again. He was due back in Quebec City for an opening and needed to get to the airport.
While the conversation was non-stop, they hadn’t been particularly touchy-feely during the day. Only now, on the walk downtown, did Ray take her hand.
“I’ll call you when I land.”
“Yes, let me know you got there safe.”
A strange sadness came over her as they neared the building where he was renting a studio apartment. She was filled with a thick longing.
“I feel so emotional,” Ray said. “I’m not sure why.”
“I do too.” Her hand hesitated then reached up. She glided her thumb across one of his eyebrows. He leaned and kissed her mouth. Soft, like a promise. His scent filled her head.
“Come back soon, good wolf,” she whispered.
“I will.” He kissed her again. A corner of his bottom lip curled under his teeth. He tried to smile through it, but ended up shaking his head and touching her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Go,” he said. “Or I won’t.”
With an effort, she walked away, turning back twice to wave. Once at home, she called Lucky.
“I met someone.”
“Who?” Lucky said. “Another zygote?”
“Oh my God, are you ever going to let that go? Seriously, it was six months ago.”
“Let go of you having a fling with the nineteen-year-old behind the deli counter? Not anytime soon.”
“He was twenty. And he served a certain purpose.”
“Served it all night, I bet.”
Daisy laughed. “He didn’t know what he was doing, but he could do it all night. Anyway, this guy isn’t a zygote. He’s forty-six.”
“Forty s— Hold on, I need both ears for this. Will. William. Man the fort, I have to talk to Dais. She met someone.”
Through the receiver, Daisy could hear Will give a bark of laughter. “Another zygote?”
The sound of a closing door and the domestic cacophony was silenced. “All right, my dear. Say again, he’s how old?”
“Forty-six.”
“Holy shit,” Lucky said. “You met a man.” She sang the word with relish.
“A man,” Daisy said, echoing the high note.
They sang it together. “A man. She met a man.”
“Not a boy but a man,” Lucky said. “And what line of work is this man in?”
“He owns an art gallery in—”
“He’s gay.”
“Goddammit, don’t say— Now you ruined it.”
“And we were doing so well.”
“Fuck,” Daisy said.
“Well, we won’t jump to conclusions. Let Will meet him. Out of all of us, he’s got the superior gaydar.”
“I do want you to meet him. He’s coming back next weekend. We have tickets for the Symphonie New Brunswick.”
“I insist on meeting him. Let’s go for drinks. Or brunch. Hey, not for nothing, Dais, but it’s been a while since you had that goofy tone in your voice…”
“IT’S SO NICE TO MEET YOU,” Lucky said, shaking Ray’s hand. As he turned to greet Will, she widened her eyes at Daisy.
“Silver fox,” she mouthed.
Daisy’s returned smile was smug.
They chatted through a first round of drinks. Daisy excused herself to the ladies’ room and coming back, met up with Will buying a second round at the bar.
“Un régal pour l’oeil,” he said.
“He is easy on the eyes, yes. And he also speaks French, so behave.”
Will smiled and put his arm around her. “I meant you look beautiful, dumbass.”
Daisy felt beautiful. Her dress was new—pearly grey brocade with a halter top and a swingy skirt.
“I’m not getting a gay vibe,” Will said.
“From me?”
He lightly swatted the back of her head. “He’s a good guy.”
“I like him,” Daisy said. “We’ve talked every night this week until the wee hours. My phone bill is going to be a scream.”
“He’s how old?”
“Forty-six.” She drew in her breath. “He’s going to be a grandfather soon.”
Will’s eyebrows flew up. “What, did he get married when he was twelve?”
“Almost. Got his girlfriend pregnant when he was eighteen.”
“Well. I guess no wondering if he’s a decent guy. Did they end up divorcing?”
“She passed away ten years ago. Their daughter is having a baby any week now.”
“Making Ray the hottest grandpa in town.”
Daisy smiled.
“Age doesn’t mean anything. Let it unfold.” Will laid his hand on her cheek. “I like seeing you happy.”
She hesitated. “He comes from money.”
“What kind of money?”
“Montreal banking money.”
“Patron of the arts money?”
She nodded.
Will gave her a little push toward the table. “Go fuck him before I do.”
DINNER WAS BOTH EASY and relaxed, smoldering and chemical. At the symphony concert Daisy sat with her arm looped through Ray’s, her hand in his, buzzed with both wine and attention. Luxuriantly content in her skin. Slightly bored.
Ray brought her hand up to his mouth a moment. Then tilted his head toward her. “I’m bored out of my mind,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
She suppressed a giggle. “And go where?”
“Dancing.”
“As if I didn’t like you enough.”
In the coughing pause between pieces, they took flight, skulking down the aisle and not making eye contact with the ushers. They dashed like bank robbers down the wide front steps. As he peeled out of the parking lot, Ray’s laughter filled the car. “Stupid,” he said, shifting gears. “But I always wanted to abscond with a beautiful female and lay rubber as I drove away.”
“Am I your first abscondment?”
“You are. Did you make that word up?”
“I did.”
Ray shifted gears again, a delicious smile around his face. “Make up another.”
“Absconce.”
“Sounds like a lighting fixture.”
“A stolen lighting fixture.”
“Oh, fuck this,” he said. He downshifted and brought the car to a stop on the shoulder.
“Did you see a cop?” Daisy said, turning in her seat to look out the back. Then Ray’s hands were on her face and he was drawing her to him over the console. The warm smell of him. His inhale catching her exhale. “Come here,” he said, just before his mouth took hers.
She melted into his kiss, running a hand up the back of his head. A rush of air in her ears, layered with the click of the hazard lights. The jingle of Ray’s keys as his knee set them swinging from the ignition. A sigh first in her chest, then in his.
“Where,” he said, his forehead aga
inst hers. “Where have you been?”
“Right here,” she said, and kissed him again.
I’M SO HAPPY, she thought later, caught up in Ray’s arms as the band played “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
“I’m so glad you dance,” she said.
“Not all that well, I’m afraid,” he said. Which was untrue, but typical of Ray’s self-effacing manner.
“I don’t care that a man can’t dance,” she said. “I care that he won’t dance.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. He was warm and solid beneath her. She felt both powerful and protected in his embrace.
During all the late-night phone conversations of the past week, her stories had easily flowed from her heart to his ears. Erik. The shooting. The cutting. Therapy. Life on the road and her career. Ray listened, gathering her tales in his hands, examining them and asking thoughtful questions. Peeling her open.
“I want to hear more,” he always said before they hung up. “I can’t wait to talk again.”
She couldn’t wait either. She woke up thinking about him. Fell asleep with his voice lingering in her ear. His inviting manner made her want to share herself. Folded in his strong arms, swaying to the music, she was enveloped in a multi-layered attraction she hadn’t felt in years.
Are you the one? she wondered, tilting her head to smile up at him again.
“You’re so beautiful I want to die,” Ray said. He took her hand and put it up behind his neck, then slid both his palms against the small of her back.
The band modulated and segued into another song. The female vocalist stepped up to the mic and began singing “The Man I Love” in a throaty alto.
Daisy sighed.
Someday he’ll come along…. The man I love… And he’ll be big and strong…
“This was your song,” Ray said.
“Yes.”
“Does it bother you to hear it?”
“No,” she said against his neck. “But I’m bored out of my mind. Let’s get out of here.”
HER BEDROOM GOLD with candlelight, a dozen votives melted into clear liquid around sputtering flames. Her dress was in a silvery heap on the floor, the sleeve of Ray’s flung shirt across it protectively. One of his shoes was spooning one of her sling-backs. A constellation of loose change twinkled on the rug.
On the bed, Ray sprawled on his stomach, his expression intent as he stroked her left leg, fingertips touching her scars.
“You were only twenty,” he said.
“Just.”
“Turn over.”
She rolled away and showed him her back. His fingers were curious but gentle. They touched the one deep scar by the base of her spine. Its companion beneath her shoulder blade.
“Can you see any others?” she asked.
His breath floated warm over her back as he peered.
“Yes,” he said, touching the curve of her waist. “They’re there if you look close. And know what you’re looking for.”
“I wondered.”
“You cut where you couldn’t see,” he said.
“It was a dark time.”
He kissed the back of her neck.
“I’m thinking I might tattoo over them,” she said, nestling a cheek into the pillow.
“Don’t.” His hands were turning her again. “Leave your skin alone.”
She toppled onto her back and her hand went to his head, playing with his hair. Both his hands were at her hip bones, his mouth on her stomach. He was majestic in her bed. King of the wolves.
“Rex tremendae majestatis,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Does Raymond mean king?”
“Protector,” he said. “Or counselor.”
The behind-the-scenes man, she thought.
His thumb ran a circle around the little red fish by her hip bone. Stretching her skin taut then letting it go.
“It’s what you do when you’re twenty,” she said. “Ink a boyfriend into your skin. Because forever is only as far as you can see.”
“You do these things when you’re in love,” Ray said. He laid his cheek on her belly, his warm palm sliding over the fish, almost reverently. “You do these things when someone tries to shoot down that love. It’s what you do to survive. Maybe the lover goes away but what you do for love stays with you forever.” His arms slid up her sides and he held her. “Maybe you did one terrible thing to him. But everything else you did for him, Daisy, was beautiful.”
She breathed in the truth of that, making Ray’s head rise. Slowly she exhaled him down then opened her arms.
“Come here.”
He slid up her body, crushing her with his warm strong weight and his heady scent. Hard shoulders and arms. Soft hair on his chest. Her head in his hands.
“What do you want from me,” he whispered, kissing around her mouth. His voice caressed the words. They were an offering, not a lament.
“Your time,” she said, touching the neat edge of his sideburn. “Your attention.”
He kissed her, slow and gorgeous. His eyes open and staring into hers.
“Your secrets,” she said, her chest thick with desire.
“I don’t have secrets.”
“Everyone has one secret.”
He looked off to the side a moment then gave a resigned sigh. “My name isn’t Raymond,” he said. “It’s George.”
“Shut up,” she said, laughing.
He dodged the swat of her hand, grabbed it in his and pressed it against his smile.
“You’re a lovely man,” she said.
His eyes closed. “Say that again.”
She kissed him. “You’re a lovely man.”
His body shifted. She felt him hard on her inner thigh, and then moving into her.
“What do you want,” she said, wrapping her limbs about him. He was moving in her. All up in her legs and hips, his arms holding her tight. Soft like the coat of a wolf. Wild and commanding inside her. Beautiful.
“I want to take care of you,” he said. “Not because I think you’re helpless. Helpless women don’t fight your kind of fight and win. It’s because of your strength that I want to take care of you.”
She rolled and rose up over him, planting her knees on either side of his heaving chest. The ball of his shoulder in her palm, his hands twining up into her hair. She slid along the length of him, delicate and precise, as his hips pushed up hard.
“I want to fall in love with you,” he said. “Don’t stop me.”
She let him fall, tumbling right alongside. Her heart was free. She was in. She felt beautiful and glorious. A daisy made up of ray flowers.
AT FIRST DAISY THOUGHT the illustrated notes Ray left on her pillow were darling. Little flowers, faces and figures punctuated his loving and funny words. She tucked the slips of paper into the mirror frame at her dressing table. Collaged them on the refrigerator door and used them as bookmarks.
Little by little, she noticed when his hands had nothing to do, they reached for a pen. And he never went anywhere without scraps of paper tucked in his inside pocket.
“Why not carry a notebook?” she asked once.
“If I have a notebook with me, I don’t feel like drawing,” he said. “It seems to be only when it’s inconvenient to draw that it strikes me.”
Ray liked to make swift decisions and not be second-guessed by others or himself. He did the crossword with a pen. He drew only in ink. “I like having one chance at some things,” he said.
As if, Daisy thought, he had missed a crucial chance once and was forever drilling and rehearsing not to miss again.
Without the safety net of eraser he drew creatures with large eyes and no mouths. Their bodies were roly-poly and too small for their large heads. But as the weeks with Daisy passed and Ray spent short hours observing her in performance, and longer hours running his hands over her in bed, his little beings began to change shape on paper. Their figures grew elongated and slender. They began to leap over flowers instead of sitting upon them.
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“Hold still,” Ray would often say, catching Daisy in the middle of stretching up to retrieve something off a shelf, or bending to pick something off the floor. She was a dancer. When she did such mundane things, one leg or arm unconsciously went up in an accompanying pose. She didn’t even think about it.
“Don’t move,” Ray said around the cap of his pen held in his teeth. His dark eyebrows furrowed as he pinned the lines of her body to the paper.
“They’re silly,” he said, shrugging. He capped the pen and slid the paper across to her.
“I love them,” she said.
As a serious joke, she bought a pack of washable magic markers and slid it under the pillow on his side of the bed. (They had been together a little over a month, and he had a definitive side.)
Ray laughed and bopped her lightly on the head with them, but she could tell he was pleased. And after loving her, he made a mural on her back. Little fey with wings of gold, coral, azure and violet. Fluttering up her spine and nestling beneath her shoulder blades. Sprinkling petals on her shoulders. They smeared rainbows from her skin to his when they made love again, color melting into the sheets. Enchantresses bubbled away down the shower drain the next morning.
“I love you,” Ray said, washing her back. Under the spray of water he began to sing softly. “Daisy, daisy… Give me your answer, do.”
“True,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s give me your answer true.”
“No, it’s not. It’s do.”
“Excuse me, it’s my song. It’s true.”
“Excuse me, I’m more than a decade older than you and I know what the lyrics are.”
“My father sang me the damn song. It’s true.”
“He sang it wrong. You are absolutely wrong.”
She reached and turned off the taps. “I’m right.”
Ray snapped a towel off the rack and threw it at her then took one for himself. “Would you care to make a small wager on this, darling?”
“You will lose, darling.”
“I’m giving you the chance to capitulate with dignity.”
“Never.”
Wrapped in towels, leaving damp footprints on the floor, they marched to Daisy’s desk.
“If I’m right you’re buying me shoes,” she said.
“You’re wrong and I’m getting a blow job.”
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