“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…”