The wolves were on him. They had him by all four limbs, one tearing open his chest, another devouring his belly, a third at his throat. They had him. “God, Dais, what’s happening to me?”
She wrapped him in the blanket, in her arms and legs, and her hair. “It’s all right. It’s all right…”
They leave in the middle of the night. He couldn’t shake the foreboding thought, couldn’t discern who he meant by “they.” They left. It left. Everything left. Nothing would stay in place. It was a constant clutch and grab and fight like hell to hold onto anything good anymore.
Beginning Of The End
The winter was cold, bleak and relentless. The sun never seemed to break through the veil of sickly grey clouds pressed down over Lancaster. All ice and slush and mud, a dirty film on the sidewalks and windows. A dull malaise permeated the student body. The whole campus seemed to be shivering, sunken in on itself, looking for warmth within instead of reaching out to build a fire.
Since the miscarriage, Erik could not deal with blood. Of any kind. A cut or scratch made him queasy. One of the stage techs suffered a nosebleed in class and Erik almost passed out. He had never been bothered by Daisy having her period, now he couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t revulsion, it was fear.
Life had become tenuous and bloody.
He wasn’t doing well.
In the apartment on Jay Street, nobody was doing well. Lucky was withdrawn, a shadow of herself. Even her curls lost their spring—they gave up, and unwound into sad, mournful tendrils.
Will looked haunted. Nobody had ever seen him so subdued and distracted, even as he wrapped himself in work and preparation for the spring concert.
Daisy chain-smoked and lost weight, her body diminishing back to ballerina fragility. She was jittery and frenetic, prone to weeping for no reason. She lost her stillness.
Erik was smoking regularly, too. He buried himself in work, buried the struggle against constant anxiety and the never-ending visions of blood. The nightmares came regularly. He woke up Daisy. She woke him. Sex was infrequent and unremarkable.
David’s mean streak was back. He regressed into old ways, like a child acting out, looking for love by asking for it in the most unloving ways. But everyone was too consumed with their own wars to pay much attention.
They gathered together in the evenings, yet each struggled alone. The winter was hard and long. One night, as they sat around watching TV, David brazenly cut cocaine out in the open, razoring the snowy powder into neat snakes on a little mirror on the coffee table.
Had the color of cocaine been the irresistible temptation? The pristine whiteness? Its seductive purity?
Erik flinched at the harsh, sucking sound of David doing two lines.
“Anyone?” David said.
They stared. Not a glance was exchanged. Everyone was making up their own mind.
“I’m good,” Will said. A beat of silence. Then he stood up. “On second thought, fuck everything.” He went over.
“Fuck this fucking world,” Lucky said, and crossed.
Daisy got off Erik’s lap. “I don’t care anymore.”
Erik followed. “I could get shot tomorrow. Screw it.”
They knelt around the altar of the coffee table. Will patted David’s head, and David smiled like a well-praised puppy. He was the high priest now: King David, singer of songs, bearer of gifts and bringer of comfort.
In later years, Erik viewed that night as the beginning of the end of the world. The descent into hell.
And he never forgot David had opened the gate.
Emotional Hamburger
The night of the spring concert, Daisy and Will’s comeback, Kees asked Erik if he would mind having company in the lighting booth.
“I need to be somewhere soundproof so I can cry in peace.”
“You just want to be with me, Keesja.”
“Yeah. And if anyone tries anything the least bit cute, you and I are gonna take their asses out.”