“Can you tell me about David?”
He spoke of coming into the hall at the top of the stairs, seeing David’s bedroom door open. Peering into the dimness to discover David had a girl in bed.
“I was about to leave. Turn around and tactfully get the hell out of there.”
“Why were you there in the first place?”
He blew his breath out. “That,” he said, “is not one of my finer moments.”
Diane sat still.
“I went over there to see if David had any coke.”
“I take it you don’t mean the beverage.”
“No.”
“Were you doing cocaine often in college?”
“I’d never touched it before senior year. But after the shooting I started doing it. We all did. Coke and ecstasy.”
“Daisy too?”
“Yes. Her and I. Will and Lucky. We got it from David. We were getting high all the time.”
Diane’s chin rose and fell. “I see. Let’s table that for another day. Right now I’m just confused about the situation. You went to his apartment looking to score.”
“Fine, put it that way. Yes.”
“Why did you go upstairs? To his bedroom?”
“Because,” Erik said. “I got to his apartment and the door was open. And he did have coke that day. It was left on the coffee table. It was just out, in the middle of the living room. And I immediately thought something was wrong. David would never… He was reckless but he wasn’t stupid. I put some magazines over the mirror to hide it. I tied up the baggie and went upstairs with it. I thought something had happened to him.”
“I see. And you went upstairs and you saw he was in bed.”
He saw the bared upper half of David’s body emerging from the sheets, his arms and back tensed and ropy with muscle. The unmistakable rhythm and groove of his hips. A girl’s hand at the back of his head, pale against his dark hair
“Funny,” Erik said absently. “When I was about six, I got up in the middle of one night and walked in on my parents having sex.” He trailed off, staring at the wall. “I don’t know why that just popped into my head.”
“Push it a little,” Diane murmured.
“I guess,” he said, both pushing and pulling at the two unrelated images. “There’s watching porn, and seeing sex in the movies, but when you actually see it in front of your face, you walk in on the human, unstaged act of…” He laughed a little. “When you’re a kid it’s sort of horrifying. When you’re an adult, there’s something ridiculous about it. When I saw David banging this chick, I almost laughed. But in a friendly, almost affectionate way. I could tease him about it later. Nicely done, Dave, perfect ten for technique.”
“But it wasn’t some chick.”
“He was on top of her. I didn’t see who it was. But then…”
David had rolled, tumbling to his back, pulling the girl on top of him. He had been smiling. Erik saw the flash of his teeth in the dimness. An open-mouthed grin of gasping delight. David was happy, which was such a rare thing to witness. The girl’s body glided on top of his and her eyes slid past the door, then doubled back. She pushed the tangle of hair out of her face.
And then the slow-motion nuclear explosion, a mushroom cloud of disbelief, and the skies opening up to rain down death. Because it was Daisy in David’s bed. Daisy sliding on top of David, making him smile like that. Naked, tousled Daisy staring at Erik, who stared back. The staring. Their way of drawing together into a private universe. Now they stared as their universe blew itself to smithereens.
“Do you think it had been going on for some time?” Diane asked.
Erik shook his head, mouth open. “I never saw it coming. I had no suspicions. None. She and I were barely having any sex but we were still so close… I never imagined she would go sleep with someone else.”