Daisy was bad for a while. Now she was living with John Quillis. And she was better.
Erik thought her motivation to send his things back was simply reaching the bottom of her well of sadness. She mailed the box, said goodbye and made to carry on, empty and alone. Above all, alone.
Not the case.
She returned him because she had found someone else. She said goodbye, shut her own door and now John stood there as a sentry. The alpha male. A line drawn in the sand. A perimeter of piss around his territory.
The man she loved.
Don’t make a habit of it. You understand, right?
He could. He had always liked John. He was crushy on Daisy but in an innocent, non-threatening way. Part of the conservatory lore. He had been down in the blood with Will the day of the shooting. Making his bones. Initiated into the circle. One of Erik’s pack. If anyone was going to take Erik’s place…
He stopped, turning his face into the wind, letting memory blow over him. A rehearsal for “The Man I Love.” Him and John watching Will and Daisy. Will had picked Daisy up and set her on John’s back, advising him on how to catch her hip bone in his shoulder and stop the roll into the arabesque lift.
“Now you, Fish,” John had said, turning his head and looking at Erik with a sly, conspiratorial expression.
Not me, Erik thought. Not me now.
Now John slept with Daisy against his back. Her hand over his heart.
Or maybe he spooned her. Holding her all night and keeping her safe from the wolves. He’d wake up and put his face into the curve of her neck. Run his tongue up the bumps of her spine. Grow hard against her legs and butt until she…
Erik started walking again, lighting another cigarette. John Quillis. It made sense. Another dancer. Someone who spoke Daisy’s language. Earnest and kind and devoted. Protective. Appreciating if Erik wouldn’t make a habit of calling.
John holding her in the dark.
Partnering her in the day.
Daisy’s face pressed to the back of John’s neck. The hip bone he had learned to catch with his shoulder now lovingly pushed up against him. The hollow by the bone where red letters were inked. Erik’s fish swimming in the shadow of another man’s body.
Again.
He chucked the rest of the cigarettes and went home. He ran a low-grade fever for two days. Then he ran an emotional fever for a week, alternating between impassioned conversations with himself or crying in the shower.
A postcard showed up in his mailbox. The front was a panorama of the Metropolitan Opera House. Daisy’s pretty handwriting filled the back.
John told me you called. I was out of town at an audition. I’m really sorry, but I don’t have your necklace. You were wearing it last time I saw you. I’m sorry, Fish, I know how important it was to you. I feel terrible it’s lost. I hope you find it. D.
Bewildered, Erik sat down and stared at the card.
She didn’t have it. He knew she didn’t but he had hoped.
Not even Dais, this time. Just her initial. The bare minimum.
D for dismissed.
Twice she had used Fish in her notes to him. She had returned not just his things, but his name.
She was gone.
You will feel nothing.
His necklace was gone and Daisy was gone now. Really gone.
They died. You are left. It is time to go.
He boxed it up tight, took it to the backyard of his heart and buried it.
Dead Center
“Janey?”
“Erik, honey, how are you? Goodness, we haven’t heard from you in months.”
“I know.”
“Miles is out for a run.”
“Actually,” Erik said, “I called to talk to you.”
“Did you now?”
“I promised you I would.”
As he’d hoped, Janey went into her professional voice. “Are you all right?”
Erik was sitting on the floor of his apartment, curled up, mouth on his knees. “I think I’m in trouble.”
“What’s the matter, Erik?”
He squeezed his lips in. He had been so afraid to call her. Now he was even more afraid to tell her the reason why.