Daisy phoned regularly those nine months. Christine soon wearied of fielding the awkward calls, and Erik had his own phone line installed. He rarely answered it, screening every call by letting it go to the machine and picking up when it was warranted. He never picked up for Daisy and didn’t return any of her calls. He wouldn’t speak to her. Could not speak to her. A few times she managed to catch him live on the phone, and each time he froze into silence.
“Talk to me,” she would whisper. It was a stranger’s voice, a pathetic keen of agonized chagrin. “Erik, please talk to me. I’m so sorry.”
In his mind she was still on her knees in the kitchen at Jay Street. Kneeling in the bombed-out crater of their love, beseeching him. He gazed over the top of her bowed head and said nothing. Like an Easter Island statue he stared out to sea, stony and resolute, refusing to engage or acknowledge, until she hung up in tears. Then he would crumple on the floor, undone, and he’d have to start all over again, scrabbling to collect the bits and pieces of his life and glue them together.
She continued to call. He kept throwing fire at the bridge, and she kept putting the flames out and shoring up the timbers. He laid land mines, and she picked her way through them.
Figures, Erik thought. Her father’s a fucking sapper.
The last time she got through to him, she was pulling heavier artillery.
“I can’t believe you’re just going to give up,” she said. “One stupid mistake and you’re going to walk away from me. Walk away from us. Without even a word.”
It would be any man’s cue to whip around and bombard her with a million heated words. Unleash hell, give her a ripshit battle to decide the war.
Erik couldn’t do it. He had no fight left in him. His throat was sodered tight and the shaking anger in her voice merely made his heart shrink further and further into a corner.
“Say something,” she cried. “Yell at me, curse at me. Say you hate me. Say something, Erik…”
I can’t hate you, he thought, almost startled she would demand it of him. I could never hate you.
But now I can never love you.
The two nevers cancelled each other out. Leaving nothing.
I can never love her. And I can never love anyone else. This is my life now. Everything is ruined.
“There’s nothing to say,” he whispered. “It’s done.”
“It’s not. Erik, please, you can’t—”
He hung up.
Will’s calls were harder. Will had done nothing wrong. Will was an innocent bystander. But Will was also a conduit to Daisy. If Erik wanted nothing more to do with her, then he couldn’t have anything to do with any of her.
Will phoned relentlessly, leaving messages. At first they were warm with sympathy.
“Fish, call me. Let’s talk about it. I feel terrible.”
Then they turned cool with jokes.
“Dude, when I said you should get out of Dodge a little while, I meant for like a day? We’re going on weeks here, this is crazy.”
Finally they were hot with hurt and anger.
“Fish. What the hell are you doing? This isn’t funny anymore. This isn’t about Daisy. This is you and me, all right? Fucking call me already.”
Erik made a stone of his heart and ignored the pleas which grew more emotional and angrier. Finally Will got through by calling at three in the morning.
“Hang up this phone and I will kill you.”
“Jesus,” Erik muttered, half-asleep, his heart pounding from the shock of the phone ringing. “What do you want?”
“What do I w— I want your fucking meatloaf recipe, that’s why I’m calling every day. Jesus Christ, Fish, it’s me.”
Erik breathed in through a clenched jaw.
“Fish, what are you doing?” Will whispered. “Talk to me.”
“Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“Did you know she was fucking him?”