I’m sorry, Fish. I regret what happened more than you will ever know. I will always regret it. I think about you every day and I’ll love you until I die. But I’m done now. I won’t contact you anymore. Dais.
He stared at the Fish, not recognizing his own moniker, not coming from Daisy. She had never called him Fish.
He put down the note and inventoried the items again, went through them twice, including the pockets of all the clothing.
His necklace was not in this box.
He sat on the floor, surrounded by bits and pieces of a past life, and wasn’t sure what it all meant.
Drummed Out
“Directory assistance, what listing please?”
“Last name Bianco,” Erik said. “First name Daisy. On West Eighty-Sixth Street.”
A brisk tapping of keys against a background hum of voices and more tapping.
“I show no listing for Daisy Bianco.”
“What about Marguerite Bianco?”
“Margaret?”
“Marguerite.”
“Spell that, please?”
He did, and waited through more tapping.
“I show a listing for Marguerite Bianco on West Eighty-Sixth. Hold for the number, please.”
A click and a crackle, then a chopped, automated voice began intoning digits. Erik wrote them down and hung up.
He was falling apart.
It had begun a month after Daisy sent back his things, when it dawned on him he was waiting to hear from her. She’d said she was done, but so what, she couldn’t have meant it.
I’ll love you until I die, she wrote. She wasn’t done. She’d never be done.
Month after month passed, and nothing in his mailbox.
He realized he wanted to hear from her. As painful as the communications were, he had looked out for them. Even with no intention of responding to her, he must have subconsciously needed the regular bit of assurance the bridge wasn’t totally burned.
More months passed, and he realized the depth of his reliance. The streak of cruelness at its bedrock. He had been punishing her. She was full of guilt and remorse and he sucked on that like a piece of candy. A gobstopper of spite set like a sticky, snarling pitbull at the door kept slammed shut in her face. Knowing damn well her unrelieved chagrin meant she would hold her end of the structure up, no matter how much firepower he threw at it.
But then she had enough.
I’m done now.
Daisy let go and the world collapsed. Erik was buried in rubble and ruin. Buried alive. His chest torqued tight around his heart. He couldn’t get food down his throat. Couldn’t get words to come up. Tonight he was pacing his apartment, riddled by an agitated depression and filled with a shamed remorse over the loss of his necklace.
It was the loss of his necklace making him ashamed and depressed, wasn’t it?
He was more than certain Daisy didn’t have it. She would have sent it to him by now. He knew her. She would not keep something so precious, simply out of… He couldn’t even formulate a motive for keeping it. She would not have sent back his things and kept just the necklace.
She doesn’t have it.
But it’s an excuse to call her.
Just call her.
Because you can’t breathe without her.
Her number now in hand, with a need to stop the insanity and take drastic action, Erik dialed.
One ring.
Two rings.
“Hello?”
It was a man. A crossbolt of confusion went through Erik’s mind, pierced the mental sheet of paper with his scripted lines and pinned it to the opposite wall.
“Hello?” An edge of annoyance in the voice.
“Yeah, hi,” Erik said. “Is Daisy Bianco there?” I must have dialed wrong. I was nervous, I switched some digits.
“No, she’s not, can I take a message?”
Open-mouthed and stunned, Erik couldn’t think what to say. “No. I mean, yes…”
“Who is this?”
“It’s… I knew her in college, I was just calling to—”
“Erik?”
His eyes widened as his stomach turned inside-out. “Yes?”
A chuckle in the voice now. “Fish, it’s John.”
“John?”